XXVII ||| She’s My Mate || Oliver-Sean pov

She's my mate!

My mate. Hel is my mate.

"She was here," I said when we headed to the back of the library, as I felt her scent near the last wall. And when I looked closer, there were some drops of blood in the tiles. Blood of the wound I gave her.

Ivy nodded, "A bit ago."

I clenched my jaw, "Was she alone?"

"No. Felix-Gabriel Moore was in the library where she stormed out of nowhere in here. If I'm right, she was having a breakdown. He stepped over and nullified the magical barrier she unconsciously set around herself, then he helped her through a panic attack."

What? "She," I clenched my fists, "had a panic attack?" Because of me? "And he helped her?"

"Felix suffers from it himself," he does? "So, he helped her. It took her some time, but it worked. When I came to tell them that it was time to leave, her blue eyes were burning with intense wrath again. She didn't even flinch when I talked to her."

Yeah, I felt that fire in her eyes too. "Do you have any idea of what she might be, Ivy? Of what kind she's member of." She has dragon eyes, but she's not a dragon. She has fangs, but she's not a vampire.

The old witch grinned mischievously, "She's ancient. Her kin long gone, only the legends remaining. Born of a recessive gene, she's a miracle by herself. A sign that times are changing, that change will come. And she is powerful, Oliver."

"I know," I can feel it.

"Your friends are waiting for you in the secret chamber. The others will take a bit longer to come, but they will. I hope you can get through this storm that will take over your life, Oliver!"

Does she mean my mating bond with Hel? "I will. Thank you for telling me, Ivy. I'll appreciate if you always tell me anything you have on her." Greeting her with respect, I turned around and entered the office, then I went to the magical mirror and used my fire magic to enter it.

When I got to the obsidian round table with the twenty-six leather chairs, thirteen of the twenty-four of us were already there. Irene, Rio, Igor, Nevena, Henrihk, Shiryu, Kalisha, Melvin, Sabrina, Ivar, Dora, Nicolette, and Agost. The other ten missing being my brother, Dimitry, Yumi, Elsa, Savannah, Yuliana, Noah, Dorothy, Priya, and Danielle, but I know very well where they are and what they are doing.

"Finally, Oli!" Rio gasped as I sat in the chair in the left center of the table. "Did Ivy tell you anything?"

Nod. "New girl was here. She had a breakdown and a panic attack."

Irene frowned, "That girl had a breakdown? She didn't look like the type to have neither that, even less a panic attack. Did Ivy help her?"

I clenched my fists, "Felix did. Apparently he has that too."

Ivar scoffed bitterly, "The breakdown or the panic attack?"

"Panic attack," I leaned on the back of my chair, my eyes going to the dragon siblings. "What do you have on the girl? Your grandma despise you, but you must know something, no?"

Agost passed his hands through his hair, "It's weird. Grandma did not even give us attention when we called, which is normal. But when we talked to our mother she freaked out. Telling us to stay away from the girl. Saying she was dangerous monster."

Frowning, I turned to Nicolette who had her hands locked on with Melvin's. No surprise on that. "Like Agost said, mom told us to stay away and not even talk with her. She said she was problem."

Irene and Rio shared a look with me, and then to the dragons again, "Aren't your mother like your grandma's left arm?" Rio pressed softly. "Why would she act like that when your grandma was the one who sent Hel here? Could she know her?"

Sighing, they both looked conflicted, "We don't know. Father also never even talks to us, or with anyone," Agost clenched his jaw in pure annoyance. "We tried to ask him if he knew anything, but he said nothing. The only one who had a reaction was mother. And as we told you, it was terrible one, Oliver."

"Mom never acts like that, she isn't the type," his sister added.

"Then there must be a horrible reason for Meredith to send Hel to Belladonna," Igor exclaimed. "You should have seen the way she acted when we met on the way to dinner. She must have some anger issues!"

Irene made a distasteful sound, "Anger issues is an understatement. Hel is definitely insane. I was just messing with her and she got all worked up and almost fucking slit my throat open," she caressed her neck, her eyes eerie. "There was death in her dragon eyes, bro. I swear. If Oli hadn't poked her like that and made her turn to him, she might have really wounded me!"

"Nothing happened, babe," Rio brought her chair closer to his. "But I'm kind of worried, Oli. We have no idea what she is, but she has fangs, bat wings, dragon eyes, and let's not even get started on how she seems to have an arsenal of weapons with her."

Dora snapped her fingers, "Miralanthor weapons at that."

"Do you guys think she was telling the truth when she said she was related to Shay Miralanthor?" Kalisha asked, eyebrows raised. "Or when she said she was the daughter of two dragons? Or could it all be a scheme from Meredith to mess with us?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," Henrihk mumbled annoyed.

"I'm more worried by the fact that she could face Oli toe to toe," Shiryu gasped, eyes covered in shadows. "That's probably what's worrying me the most. I've never seen anyone do that. As much as we all hate the kid, Felix is the only one who can go against us, even if it's by using that Null shit he has. But he's always been a coward who runs from fights and hides away in the underground!"

Agost leaned closer, "Maybe that's precisely why grandma send her here. Felix is useless and will never be the weapon she probably wanted. He also can't overthrow Oliver from the first place no matter how hard he tries. But she does has a chance to fight fair and square with him."

His sister nodded, "And she did proclaim in front of everyone that she was coming for the first place. Maybe that's what she's doing here!"

"What about her special abilities?" Sabrina pointed.

"She showed many," Nevena tilted her head. "Tsk, she even has a kind of time ability, dude. That's too unfair. She literally froze us to go after Oli when he poked her. How many so far? Telekinesis, time, summoning, sound, super speed, super strength… even purple fire. That shit is rare as fuck. I've only seen Oli and Meredith with it."

Rio sighed, "Don't forget the air manipulation and the channeling. Because before she ran away after exploding all the windows around us, she was clearly channeling and absorbing the magic around her. There was even something glowing under her shirt."

"Let's not forget the Wolpertinger guys," Ivar added.

"Also as weird as it sounds, I think she might be scared of mirrors. She acted fucking weird when I hit her with my fist covered in it, and definitely wasn't because of my punch, which healed instantly. Meaning she has a extremely high healing," but why would she?

"Why would she be scared of mirrors, cousin?" Nevena asked.

"I don't know, but I swear I saw fear in her way. She jerked away from me as quick as a lightening when saw a glimpse of herself in my fist!"

"That's true," Igor snapped his fingers. "She screamed something at her Wolpertinger. She looked horrified, saying something about being distorted. She also said something to him about wanting to keep a memory intact, whatever that meant, and told him to stop lying to her."

She can't have a distorted vision of herself, right? She's literally the most gorgeous girl I've ever seen in my life, that can't be the case. "Did you talk with Cosmos? He's an arse, but he's a lot easier to talk to than the rest of the dragons, as he likes to talk a lot. Probably to hear his own voice!"

They shared a gaze then turned to me, "He laughed at us!" He said.

I blinked, "I'm sorry? Cosmos laughed? In a mocking way?"

A nod, "He straight up laughed at us, Oliver," Nicolette exclaimed in pure annoyance. "That fucker. And he said that if we didn't want trouble, we should stay away from her. He said she's chaotic."

"Well, and here I thought I would never agree with him," Rio let out a scoff. "Chaotic doesn't even begin to sum that girl up."

"You weren't there yet," Kalisha began, "but when she arrived in a grand style playing Centuries by Fall Out Boys, and using her telekinesis to fly over all us only to stop in front of the Headmaster, she had no love for her life at all. She talked to her as if they were equals, and she even made the Headmaster froze when she brought up someone called Abellona."

"Oh, yes, that was insane," Henrihk gasped. "I thought Mia would send her flying away, but no. She even smiled at her."

"Another thing I'm curious about," Rio clicked his tongue. "How old do you think she is? Because she sure act all high as if she was the oldest in here," then he turned to me, "which is definitely not the case when we have Oli with us. She kept calling us kids as if she was all grown up herself."

"But what if she is as old as she claims?" We all turned to Agost, eyebrows up. "Guys, our grandmother is a psychopath, we all know it. She is obsessed with finding someone with the strongest special ability. What if she had been keeping Hel a secret for centuries? What if she kept the girl in stasis for that long just to get her to come out powerful in the way we all saw her being."

He has a point. A terrible point, since after spending more than nine centuries in stasis, I know it's impossible to stay unconscious through it all and it's fucked up.

But he wasn't done, "And if that's true, what is the possibility of her being connected to Shay Miralanthor like she said she was? No, seriously, what if she's her daughter? Because when Shay disappeared, she was believed to be pregnant. What if Hel is the daughter? That would explain why she has dragon eyes, would match with what she said about being a Miralanthor and daughter of two dragons, and it would also match the fact that she does have Shay's weapons with her."

We all shared a fearful gaze, not saying it out loud, but understanding that if that was the case, it would mean Hel is around two thousand years old and stayed in stasis for twenty centuries. And there's absolutely no way any person in the world would stay sane if that kind of situation.

"Or," Igor gulped, "we are seeing too much into it, she's full of shite, everything is a lie made up by Meredith, and she's here to destroy us all. Or try!" He turned to me, worried, "You aren't the quiet type, Oli, and you are scaring me by staying so silent. You're acting weird since she attacked you when she froze us. What the hell happened?"

They all turned to me, all worried, and I felt sick. Passing both my hands through my hair in frustration, I growled. "Hel was angry. But more than that, she looked… broken. She screamed at me to stop calling her beautiful. Told me to stop trying to manipulate her, to use sugar-coated words on her, to stop lying. She told me to call her all kinds of horrible names but never beautiful, and she said it was humiliating."

"What?" The gasp came from all of them.

"I… I got so thrown off guard that I just… touched her face!"

When I let it sit, slowly their eyes widened, "No way!"

"Are you sure, Oli?" My friends of the Circle asked, worried.

Covering my face with my hands, I felt my eyes burning, "It was explosive. We froze for a second, on the other we were both thrown away to the extreme sides of the place. And when I tried to go to her, she… she looked terrified. She was scared," I looked down at my hands. "She lost it and told me to stay away from her. And when she screamed, she shattered all the glasses and crystals around us." As her eyes came to my mind again, I felt everything hurt. "That's why she ran from me like that."

After taking a deep breath, I said what was unspoken between us.

"Hel is my mate," I clenched my jaw. "She's my mate."