Page 125 of Mate of a Monster

Ben crashes through what’s left of the roof, and I move before the dust can even settle. Stone and splintered wood scatter across the floor where the table used to be. His massive head swings, scales scraping against loose beams as he angles toward Haide.

I pivot with him, positioning myself between that mouthful of teeth and her out of pure instinct. I don’t give a single fuck about the logic of standing between a dragon and his target when I’m half his size.

Then a voice slips into my mind.

Through her.

A channel I didn’t know existed cracks open, and Ben’s voice shudders through both of us, raw and too human for that body. “The wall of dark water around Valeryth killed Thyrix.”

Haide’s grief detonates through the bond first, sharp enough that my knees go soft. My breath stutters, and I reach for a chair to steady myself when it almost knocks my ass clean out.

Fuck.

My hand finds her, fingers hooking into her shoulder and dragging her against my side with more force than the moment probably calls for, considering her connection to the dragons.

“How?” Haide’s voice splits in the middle of the word. She steps forward, fists tight at her sides, smoke curling up from her knuckles in thin threads. “How the fuck is that possible? They’re indestructible.”

Ben doesn’t answer. Nobody answers.

The silence is broken only by the slow crumble of rubble from the ceiling that shatters against the floor. Magic stirs through the dark air, smelling of gasoline and hellfire. “Settle, baby. I can almost taste you.”

“No. Thyrix was mine.”

Grief slams through me again, hot and blinding. My jaw locks, a hiss escaping between my teeth.

Smoke thickens around her shoulders and hands, but I pull her in closer, brushing my lips against her head.

“They are not indestructible,” Mother says. It shouldn’t be shocking that she’d be the one with answers. The woman has been walking this earth entirely too long.

Relaxed and unfazed, she leans against her chair at the far end of the table, leaving the silence out in the open for fuck knows what. Theatrics.

“Then what the hell killed him?” I ask.

But her attention is on Haide, which instantly puts me on edge.

“Magic did not arrive fully formed,” she explains, and her voice drops. Gentle, but always threatening. “At the beginning, it was carried. By creatures. One for each element: fire, earth, water, air. Over generations, through exposure and conflict and the slow mutation of blood, magic fractured. Branched. Became what you know now.” She pauses. “But two elements never fully lost their original form. They evolved, yes, but they kept the core of what they were. Because they were always in opposition. Always canceling each other out.” Her gaze stays fixed on Haide. “Fire and—”

“Dragons and Sirens.” Haide says it quietly, but the smoke continues to curl around her hands, heat waves rolling off her.

“Sirens.” I’m moving before I decide to. “What are you saying? Sirens haven’t existed since—”

“The texts I found.” Creed’s voice cuts under mine, flat and focused, and he’s already pulling back through whatever mental filing system he keeps. “The elemental opposition. I read it as theoretical. Historical,” he says it more to himself, as if realizing yet another mistake, which is pretty on-brand for him lately.

Knight looks around. “What do Sirens have to do with whatever Arabella sealed Valeryth behind?”

“Everything.” Mother raises her hand in that way she did when she ruled the kingdom. It’s the specific power to shut everyone up while reminding them exactly who they’re fucking with. It works. Immediately. Even on me.

She lowers her hand.

“The water surrounding Valeryth is not ward magic. It is not Stygian or Argent craft, and it is not anything Arabella constructed by herself.” She rolls her eyes. “You give her far too much credit. What Arabella used to trigger it carries the elemental signature of water in its oldest, purest form. The same source. The same lineage.” She looks at Haide again, and her voice stays even. “The only force that has ever been capable of killing a dragon.”

The rubble shifts somewhere along the walls around us, and Ben’s wings drag over the carnage.

Haide’s throat moves.

I see the exact moment the full weight of Mother’s words click into place behind Haide’s eyes. Her whole body goes still, the air in this ruined garden hitting temperatures that you could cook in. Her fingers curl into fists at her sides, and something shifts in her expression. It’s lethal, dark, and drips of every feral instinct that lives inside of her.

There she is.