Chapter 59 The Missing Basilisk Eggs

Chapter 59 The Missing Basilisk Eggs
Aurelia

The drive out of the human territory passed in a blur of headlights and fractured thoughts. Maybe it was because my mind kept snagging on the same humiliating truth, I had caved too easily.

I had sworn I would never return to the Onyx Fang Pack. Sworn it with all the fury in my chest, all the hurt still bleeding inside me. And yet here I was, being driven straight back into the jaws of the place that had nearly broken me.

The moment the Packhouse came into view, all jagged stone and towering shadows against the darkening sky, something inside me locked tight.

I sat up straighter. By the time the car rolled to a stop, I was already reaching for the handle. I didn’t wait for the shifter guards to circle around and open the door for me like I was some fragile, prized thing. 

I pushed it open myself and stepped out, the cold air biting at my skin as my sandals hit the gravel.

Then I started toward the compound without a backward glance.

“Aurelia.”

Zhayad’s voice followed me, but I kept walking.

“Aurelia.”

I ignored him, my spine stiff as a drawn blade.

I was halfway across the compound before I noticed the crowd gathered near the center of the open space. What stopped me wasn’t the sight of them at first, it was the mate bond.

It thrummed hard inside me, sudden and insistent, like a fist pounding against a locked door.

‘Aurelia, I know you’re angry, but stop. Please.’

The softness of his voice through the bond snagged against my temper and slowed my steps. I froze, but I didn’t turn around. I refused to give him that much.

Only then did I truly look.

The people ahead of me were strangers, and wrong in a way that prickled across my skin.

One of the women standing near the front had eyes with thin vertical slits, serpent-like and glinting under the courtyard lights. 

When she smiled, my stomach tightened. Her tongue flicked out between her lips, and I realised with shock that it was forked.

“The Luna is here,” she announced, her voice dragging slowly, like something slithering over stone.

A faint chill crawled down my arms. So it wasn’t just her eyes.

The crowd parted with eerie, practiced precision, making way for a young man to step forward. His skin was so pale it looked almost translucent, as though moonlight lived beneath it. 

His ears lay flat against the back of his neck, and when he opened his mouth, it was to reveal the small and jagged pearl white set of teeth.

He wasn't human, but he wasn't a wolf shifter either.

Realization slid into place like the click of a blade. Basilisk shifters.

I had heard of them, of course. Everyone had. They were ancient, dangerous, and unnervingly intelligent. Creatures who moved through politics the way venom moved through blood, silent, efficient, and not to forget, very deadly. 

They shifted into great scaled serpents just as wolves shifted into beasts of fur and fang.

But hearing stories was one thing. Standing in front of them was another.

“We do not come in peace, Alpha Zhayad,” the pale male said, his tone smooth but edged. “You promised us an audience with your council court, yet you did not even trouble yourself to arrive on time.”

Behind me, I felt Zhayad before I heard him. His presence pressed at my back like heat from an open flame.

“I went to retrieve my mate from bounty hunters,” he said, every word clipped.

The basilisk male tilted his head, studying me with the detached curiosity one might give a beautiful weapon.

“She is a great deal of trouble,” he murmured. “And yet your Moon Goddess refuses to look away from her.”

The warning growl that rumbled out of Zhayad was so deep it seemed to shake the air.

My pulse jumped.

“What is it you want?” Zhayad asked, his voice turning colder, harder. “She needs rest. You are wasting my time.”

A female somewhere behind the pale male gave a loud, contemptuous snort.

I turned my head and pinned her with a sharp glare.

If she wanted to sneer at me, she could at least have the courage to do it to my face. No need cutting through the corners.

Her slit-pupiled gaze met mine without an ounce of shame. There was something almost amused in it, which only irritated me more.

The pale male didn’t look away from Zhayad. “Two of your wolves crossed into our territory,” he said. “They stole three of our eggs.”

For a second, the words didn’t fully register.

Then they did. Eggs. 

I blinked. Of all the accusations I had expected to hear tonight, ‘your pack stole basilisk eggs’ had not been one of them.

A sharp, unpleasant tension rippled through the courtyard. Even the guards seemed to go still.

Zhayad’s voice came out flat with controlled disbelief. “I assure you, Nero, my pack would do no such thing.”

“You speak with the confidence of a man standing on certainty,” the female basilisk drawled from behind him, “when all I smell on you is assumption.”

“Keep quiet, Nimaya,” Nero warned, though the rebuke lacked real force. “You are not part of this discussion.”

“My sister’s eggs—” she snapped, stepping forward, fury flashing across her strange, beautiful face.

“Will be found,” Zhayad cut in, each word landing like stone. “I give you my word.”

Nimaya let out a soft, humorless laugh, the sound like scales dragging over rock. And suddenly I understood that whatever had been waiting for me inside the Packhouse had just become far worse.

Because now I wasn’t returning to a nest of hostile wolves. I was walking back into a den already scented with accusation, fury, and the promise of blood.

“We’ve heard the rumours,” Nimaya drawled, her slit-pupiled gaze sliding over me with open disdain. “Of your precious Luna. The curvy little witch who sank her claws into the mighty Alpha of Onyx Fang and wrapped him in whatever spell she pleased. We are not a people of peace. We do not kneel to diplomacy, and we certainly do not—”

“Enough.”

Nero’s voice cracked through the courtyard like a whip. The single word from him silenced the air.

Nimaya’s lips pressed into a thin line, but the contempt in her face did not fade.

Nero turned to her slowly, something cold and royal settling over his pale features. “Shut your mouth, Nimaya. I am heir to the throne, and I will not tolerate your interruptions again. If you cannot control your temper, I will do it for you.”

For one sharp moment, it looked as though she might defy him.

Then she lifted her chin, swallowed whatever poisonous retort sat on her tongue, and stepped back into line, her nostrils flaring with fury.

Only when she fell silent did Nero return his attention to Zhayad.

The courtyard seemed to tighten around us. Even the wind felt watchful.

This was definitely not what I'd imagined when Zhayad said we would return to the pack today.

“You have two weeks, Alpha,” Nero said, and there was nothing loud in his tone now. That made it worse. “No more. Those eggs hatch in exactly fourteen days. They are not symbols of our bloodline. They are our bloodline.”

A hush dropped over the compound.

His pale gaze sharpened, turning lethal.

“They are our young.”

Something in the way he said it struck deeper than a threat. It was not politics speaking now. It was not pride or posturing. It was something… older. 

Nero's statement bore the kind of fury that lived in bone and waited patiently for a reason to tear flesh.

“If the ones who stole them do not return them before the last day expires,” he continued, “we will not send another envoy. We will not ask again. We will come to your gates with war in our mouths and ruin in our hands.”

The words slithered through the courtyard and coiled there.

I felt them, and I was sure everyone did.

Beside me, Zhayad went still in that terrifying way powerful men did when rage became too heavy to show. The air around him thickened, sharp with dominance and restraint, like a storm forcing itself not to break.

His jaw locked. His shoulders squared. And when he finally spoke, his voice was quiet enough to make my pulse stumble.

“If anyone from my pack took your eggs,” he said, each word hard as iron, “I will find them myself.”

Nero studied him without blinking. “And if you fail, Alpha?”

Zhayad’s expression did not change, but I felt the violent ripple that ran through the mate bond. It was dark, furious, and absolute. So different from the feelings I usually felt from the bond other times.

“I won’t.”