Now the questions focussed more on the threat that Bestia posed in the immediate future. What kind of shifters they had now, what kind of wards were on the compound, what were the defensive tactics that the coven tended to use. He grilled her on the expertise levels of the witches there, the number of witches, their combat strengths and weaknesses. The questions went on and on.
Melody had to draw extensive maps of the compound layout, and Oz had been horrified at her living conditions. She’d lived in a fucking cage, right alongside the shifters that she’d bested. It was obvious that Melody was as much of a slave as the shifters were.
Oz just couldn’t get his head around how strong she was mentally, despite everything that she’d been through. No matter the beatings, starvation, loss of shifter bonds, deaths of people she cared about; Melody had survived and had grown with enough backbone to actually stand up to some of the bitches that she’d lived with.
And that was another thing that had disturbed them all.
Bestia was an all-female coven. The witches bred with the shifters at hand to produce the next generation, but there were no sons, at least none that Melody knew of.
Melody had said that there was a high miscarriage rate, and that she suspected that male foetuses were aborted, but she couldn’t prove it. From the sounds of things, some of those had been late-term abortions too. Oz shuddered. Life was sacred to shifters, so that kind of thing was a total anathema to him.
As the afternoon wore on, he could see Melody become paler and paler, folding in on herself more and more. Dean and Asher wouldn’t leave her side, helping her to walk across the room when she needed a bathroom break, and then back to her seat on the couch. Still, Councillor Argrum kept asking more questions.
Nick? he called the dragon, mentally, hoping that he would hear.
Nick turned his head to him and raised an eyebrow, indicating that he had.
Can you force her to take from them again? She’s wilting. If she doesn’t draw on them soon, she’s going to pass out.
Nick’s attention turned back to Melody, he frowned, his eyes focusing and studying her. Beside Melody, Dean and Asher both startled, indicating that the dragon was talking to them. Rather than working together as they had the other night when Melody was too weak to leave the dome, Dean turned and interrupted the proceedings.
“Excuse me Councillor, Melody, you need to draw from us, otherwise Nick says you’re going to pass out,” he told them all.
The man looked annoyed, but sat there waiting for Melody to do what she’d been told. The stubborn woman, though, just sat there. He could tell that she wasn’t doing anything by the reactions of Dean and Asher.
“Mel,” Oz snapped, and her eyes jerked to him. “Just fucking do it, draw on them, it’s part of what we do as familiars.”
Her face fell, and he instantly regretted being so harsh with her. Of course she knew that, Melody had literally bonded hundreds of them.
“I assure you, Ms Canticum, that failure to do so will be seen as hindering this inquiry,” the councillor growled at her.
“I, …” she looked around helplessly. “I need them to initiate it. I can’t do it. It’s too much like what she did to the shifters back at the compound. What she used to do to me.” Her shoulders slumped even further.
There was a moment of stunned silence before Nick stepped forward. He simply put her hands on Dean’s and Asher’s thighs on either side of her, and then Oz smelled it, that ozone scent that indicated magic was being used.
If nothing else, this moment really brought home to the shifters how awful her existence had been. Constantly stripped of the shifters who had submitted to her, not even being able to form the most basic of emotional bonds with them, and unable or unwilling to draw even a little strength from them, she truly had been alone.
Inside his head, Oz’s wolf howled, and Melody’s startled glance met his. She’d heard his beast. Very few witches could do that.
It all came crashing down on him then, how alone she’d been, how desperately she must have tried to protect her shifters. How it must have hurt to have them stripped from her time and time again. She would have been able to hear their beasts calling out in pain and fear, even as their human forms remained stoically silent. That probably would have hurt her more than any of the physical torture her coven had bestowed upon her.
No wonder Melody had avoided claiming them all. If they’d gone back to her coven, she would have been forced to bond and release them hundreds of times before they would’ve been weak enough for another of her coven members to step in and claim them. It would have been agonising. And now, Melody was unable to reach out to them because a lifetime of trauma prevented her.
With a horrifying clarity, Oz realised her fear wasn’t just about protecting them all from her aunt, but about protecting herself from watching them all die, inch by inch, battle by battle.
The breeding thing she’d mentioned earlier also horrified him. There was no doubt in his mind that if the dragons had refused her, they would have been made to, and Melody would have been forced as well. Imagine looking at your friends and knowing that if you were weak, even for a second, not only would you be forced to destroy them, but they would be forced to destroy you right back.
Oz dropped to his knees with a heavy thump, scaring everyone, their heads whipping around to look at him. His eyes met hers and the agony he saw there, matched what he felt in his soul for her.
“Whatever you’re thinking
