Chapter 72

Jo
She rolled her eyes and stormed past Ethan to her room. She left the door open for him to follow her. He shut it quietly behind him. She threw herself down on her bed.
“Talk. You have five minutes of my time,” she snapped.
He hesitantly looked around the room. She knew he was trying to decide where to sit, but she didn’t care. He could sit on a cactus for all she cared. He opted to sit on the edge of her bed and she scooted away from him. She wanted to reach out and touch him. She wanted to lay him on the bed and kiss him again. She shook her head. She was an idiot. They were never going to be together. He didn’t deserve her. She sighed. If she was honest with herself, she didn’t care if he did or not, she wanted him, but she would never allow herself to have him.
“Jo?”
She snapped out of her thoughts. “What?”
“Did you hear anything I just said?”
“No. What did you say?”
“I said I want to explore this,” Ethan repeated.
“No. Next.”
His head lowered to hide the way his face fell. “Jo, listen, I know I hurt you when I said I was in love with someone else. I know-”
“You didn’t. It’s fine,” she lied.
He looked up at her, sadly. “Jo, will you just listen for a minute, please?”
“Fine. Make it fast.”
“I know I was an ass. I have no excuse for anything that I did. I always thought it would be me and Sasha. I thought she was the one for me. I didn’t want anybody else.” Her jaw clenched hard with every word he spoke as she tried her best to hide how much he was destroying her right at that moment. He took a breath. “When I got here, I tried to get her to leave with me. She turned me down, but I didn’t care. I still wanted her.”
He stopped talking and she forced herself to not look in his direction.
“Okay? Is that all?”
“No. Please, just listen. I’m trying to talk to you. I really need you to listen. She told me that there was nothing that could compare to the mate bond. I didn’t believe her. I thought that nothing could compare to how I felt about her.”
He paused again. Goddess, she hated this. She just wanted him to finish so she could go lick her wounds in private.
“I would see the way Aiden looked at her and I hated it. I hated that she had chosen him. I wanted her to choose me.” He reached across the bed to take her hand. The electricity started and she tried to pull away. “And then you walked in. You literally stole my breath from my body. She had never done that. At that moment, it was like my whole world was centered. Artyom stopped pining away for Sasha and so did I. Well, we wanted to at least. We don’t want to love Sasha. We want to love you. We want to be with you. I know that you like girls, but if you agree to be in my life, I swear we could work something out.” He looked away. “I just need you to be around me. I need to feel your touch and I need to hear your voice. I don’t care if you're screaming at me or want to stab me 682 times, as long as it’s me and you, I don’t care.”
She stared at him in shock. What the fuck did the jackass confess to her? Was he serious? There was no way in hell he was being honest. She tugged her hand out of his and sat up.
“I don’t do emotions, Ethan. This is all wasted on me. I am gay. I like women. I don’t want a man.”
“I’ll get a sex change. I’ll do anything and everything you ask me to do, just please, don’t leave me.”
She closed her mouth and shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why not? The humans do it all the time.”
“Because you are a man, Ethan. Even if you did that, you would still be a man. There’s more that goes into that process than just a quick idea. It’s not meant to be used like that. That belittles people who feel trapped in their bodies.”
He looked at her desperately. “I am trapped. Just in a different way.”
“Ethan, come on. The LGBTQ community is so much more than I think you realize. We can’t just change who we are. Not even for the mate bond.”
He reached out to touch her again. “Jo, please. Let’s just try to be together. I won’t pressure you for sex or anything like that. I just want to be around you.”
She hesitated. “I’ll prove it to you.”
“Prove what to me?”
“That it doesn’t work that way.”
She got on her knees, crawling across bed. She stopped in front of him, placed her hands on his shoulders and timidly pressed her lips against his. His eyes darkened and she closed hers, trying her best to fight the pull to him. Isla sat still, watching and enjoying the feel of his touch. She pulled back and he leaned forward, following her lips. Her eyes opened and she swallowed.
“Ethan, I-”
He flew across the bed and pinned her on it. He captured her wrists in his hand and he forced her legs open. She knew she should be struggling. Why wasn’t she struggling? He settled between her legs and her eyes widened when she felt his erection. She gulped nervously. He lifted her leg and put it over his hip.
“If you don’t want me, then why are you wet?”
“I’m not, “ she denied.
His eyes flashed angrily at her and his hand slid up her thigh. It moved into her shorts and stroked across her wet pussy. It helplessly tried to clench onto his finger as he slid it in.
“That does not feel like you-”
Jo zoned out as pressure was applied on Kalani’s link. She let it open.
‘Kal, what’s up?’
‘Sasha, Lily,’ she panted. ‘Help!’
Jo jerked her hands out of his grasp and pushed him off. She hopped off of the bed and was out on the balcony in seconds. She leapt into the sky, shifting in seconds.
‘Where are you?’
‘We’re coming from the south border.’
‘On my way.’
There was a roar behind her as Ethan shifted and was swiftly flying in the same direction she was going. She pushed Isla faster.
‘Oh, Goddess. What is going on?,’ Isla asked.
A few hundred yards in front of them, she saw a flailing figure. She turned her head towards Ethan, who tilted his at the figures struggling to stay in the air. He flew past them and she turned to catch Lily and an exhausted Kalani on her back. She rapidly got them back to the castle, before depositing them gently in front of the door. Aiden came running out of the castle and he went to shift. Lily cried out and he cursed, before going to pick her up. Jo took off back towards the south border.
She followed the sounds of fighting and when she landed, she was human again. She let her aura flare out and every single dragon was forced to shift back into their human form. They were stuck in place, waiting for her order. She slowly turned around in a circle. Her eyes landed on Ethan who had a gash across his stomach. She let out an angry roar.
“WHERE IS SASHA?,” she growled. Nobody answered. She pushed her aura out harder, focusing it on the six dragons that her mate and his beta- wait. Her mate? She glanced at him. Was she claiming him, now? She shook her head. Now was not the time for those thoughts. She stomped over to the biggest man and knelt in front of him. She met his eyes.
“I will ask only once more. Where. Is. Sasha?”
“We will never tell you,” he snarled, spitting in her face.
A growl came from behind her and she smiled at him. She patted his cheek. “Suit yourself. You’re about to find out why I am the beta of betas.” She walked to the wall and opened the gate. She pointed to it. “The castle is that way. And we’re walking.”
Her aura surrounded the men, almost choking them. They got to their feet and started moving towards the castle. She put her hands behind her back and spread her legs apart until they had all passed her. She fell into step behind them.
“Faster!,” she ordered.
They all took off sprinting towards the castle. Jo easily kept pace, not even getting the slightest bit winded. They got to the courtyard where Aiden and Kalani were waiting. Lily lay asleep on a chair on the patio.
“Silence! If you wake her, it will be worse on you.”
“Where’s Sasha?,” Aiden asked, panicked.
“Gone, but one of these fuckers is going to tell me where she was taken. We will be in the dungeon.”
Jo led them down to the dungeons quickly, before restraining the biggest one to the wall. She smirked at him. She let her finger shift into a talon.
“When you get to the Goddess, make sure you tell her JoAnn said hello,” she told him, as she approached him threateningly. “Let us begin.”