Her Psycho Beasts, page 19
part #3 of Her Vicious Beasts Series
“Savage!” I cry. “Are you burned?”
He turns over his palm, showing me a giant red welt.
I gasp, grabbing his wrist and immediately directing my healing power into the injured tissue.
Savage sighs wistfully, and when I glance at him, he’s propped up his head on a fist and is gazing at me with a goofy smile. “I knew you’d fix it for me, regina. Like you fixed my heart.”
Raquel and Connor snort with laughter while I hide the flush in my cheeks.
After I’m done, Minnie hands me a new colouring book and we begin our session. Savage takes to it with gusto, loudly declaring that Scythe really should be here because there was a whole page of sea creatures in the booklet. We all snigger as we watch Xander pick up a black pencil and angrily scribble over the page full of fairies and toadstools.
After class, Savage and I sit on the soft grass at the back of the school where we start on the spelling book specially made for wolves learning to write.
“I know most of my alphabet but miss some of the letters in the middle,” he says, concentrating on the tiny wombat in his arms that he’s dubbed ‘Toastie’, because he’d tried to grab the ham and cheese toastie Savage had been eating at lunch.
He holds Toastie on his back, with his private parts angled towards the grass. In one hand, he has a wet wipe and is tickling the joey to make him pee. He has to do this multiple times a day to simulate what its mother would do in the wild so he won’t pee in his pouch.
“Go on then,” I instruct. “Recite it out loud and then we’ll trace it in the— Argh!” I jump to the side, narrowly avoiding the stream of urine being shot at me.
“Almost got you,” Savage chuckles, before kissing Toastie on the head and placing him back into the sack around his neck.
I shake my head and we sit down and get to work. Savage is always a step ahead, however, and refuses to do anything unless I agree to give him a kiss when he’s successful.
After dinner, I lie on the couch in our TV room with Eugene and video chat with my animas before lights out. We’re plotting our revenge on Dolores and a strategy to rescue our nimpins. I’m so used to having Henry on my shoulder that it leaves me bereft not to have him. Cherry is still missing, and it’s a real shame because Sabrina could have used her help right now. But I have a bad feeling about our little red friend, and I could see the same thought in Minnie’s eyes. Savage must have been thinking the same thing this morning, because he gave Sabrina a contraband phone, declaring that she was allowed due to kidnap privileges. She’d snatched up the phone, immediately planning what rhinestones she was going to hot glue gun onto a custom case.
Once I bid my friends goodnight and hang up, I kiss Eugene goodnight on his head frills and head to the bedroom. The guys had gone to the gym after dinner, but Scythe and Xander’s beds in the front bedroom are still empty. The bedroom I share with Savage and Lyle, with its gigantic pack-bed, lies in shadowy darkness in the room beyond. I tiptoe in, and when my eyes adjust to the darkness, I stop dead.
Scythe is lying with his head on Savage’s chest, my wolf’s arms holding him tight. Next to him, Lyle is on his stomach, the steady rise and fall of his bare, muscled back telling me he’s fast asleep. And on his other side, as if reluctantly there but too tired to be anywhere else, Xander lies shirtless on his back, one arm over his eyes, as if even in sleep he’s unimpressed with the world. They must’ve been so tired after working out they just collapsed into the same bed on instinct.
My chest fills with warmth.
None of them have noticed me enter, all breathing deeply and evenly in sleep. Smiling faintly, I seat myself in the tub chair by the wall where I have a good view of them and pull a blanket over my bare legs. I sit there, resting my head on my propped-up hand and simply stare at them.
Four males that are supposed to be mine. Dangerous, lethal, unhinged males that fate demands I have.
Savage twitches and growls in his sleep and my eyes are drawn to the blood brothers again. What had made Scythe seek this comfort from his brother? The same thing that sent him away after what happened in The Jewel of the Jungle?
Me?
Quite suddenly, tears prickle my eyes as a dark feeling winds its way through my stomach. For the longest time, I felt like an outsider looking into everyone else’s lives. An invisible person with no place in society. But the last months made me realise that I do have a place. I have beautiful, strong, kind friends. Savage and Lyle dote on me, declare their love for me on a daily basis, and cater to my every need.
But there are five parts to my soul. And three of those parts do not want me. There is still an entire void in my chest. A cavern where my heart should be.
I whip out my phone and take a picture, then hold the screen to my chest as if I can fill the empty spaces within me with their image.
A shift in the air, a tug at the core of me, makes me open my eyes—only to meet Scythe’s intense stare. Through the dark, his light eyes are glowing sapphires. Beautiful and raw. Like power made into crystals.
He takes my breath away every time.
My breath catches, because he raises an arm, the hand stretched out in an offering. In a command. It’s so unexpected that I’m stunned for a moment, before a spark of excitement and a shower of relief tunnel down my spine.
He does want me. Or is this something else?
Unravelling myself from the tub chair and setting my phone down, I tentatively make my way to the edge of the bed, wondering how I’m supposed to get in between all these sleeping male bodies.
Scythe moves backward, and Lyle blinks open one amber eye and rolls onto his side, making more space. Scythe moves Savage’s arm and I see my spot, climbing over Savage and easing myself down.
I’m nestled between wolf and shark before I look up at Scythe again. I find him watching me, his gaze unreadable. Those eyes have always seen through me. Into me like I’m splayed open for his perusal. It’s spine-tingling and on the edge of uncomfortable. But tonight, there is something else in his gaze. From what Savage says, he must remember everything of the night at The Jewel. A night that was wholly unexpected.
Because the Great White shark that I’d met many months ago had made a decision that had almost gotten me executed. Had looked at me without compassion, without any emotion, and had decided that I deserved to be dead.
“You wanted to kill me once,” I whisper. “Is that still true? Do you still wish me dead?”
Chapter 36
Scythe
Aurelia’s question is blunt, but she says it with such open vulnerability that a dark emotion triggers like a gunshot to my gut. It tears me open.
Her face, when I’d first seen it tonight where she sat in the chair, half in shadow, half cast in moonlight, had been full of graceful sadness. She looked so small. So lonely. So much like a creature who had spent years alone that I couldn’t bear it a moment longer.
And now, nestled next to me in a way that eased some of my dark pain, I consider this young woman that has changed our lives so much.
She was a maelstrom that raged in, tore us open, and left me wandering in the wreckage.
“I’ll never be safe with you.” Those words had torn from her mouth, a repressed cry so many months ago, but I’d carried them like poison ever since.
Because she had been right. I had intended for her to die. I had willed it and arranged for it. Decided it was the best possible path for her. For us all.
But the path we are on now, this twisted, dangerous one, held at its end an even worse fate.
Her death would have been a kindness.
But if that were true, why then do I feel a violent need to make sure that it never happens? Why do I feel the ferocious need to destroy anyone who would harm her? I had killed for her. Multiple times now. Defended her honour like it was my own.
Her mating mark shines with that infinite celestial light.
I’d fought the regina draw for so long. I had the capacity to fight it still. Had the capacity, the coldness, to arrange for her death even now.
And yet I won’t.
The horde of spectres continue their forever-march around the bedroom. Stringy-haired, malevolent-eyed, cruel. Effective. They continue their heinous dark chant. They continue to chip away at my sanity.
I do not have long. Not in this realm.
It’s not her fault. And yet it is.
So I whisper the words into the night, “I cannot give you what you want, Aurelia. And I will always be sorry for that.”
Her aura pulses a mournful blue. The smell of her tears cuts into my heart and I should not, but I brush at her cheek with the pads of my fingers, as soft as I dare. She can’t help but lean into it, letting her tears slide down her face in a silent, sad song.
“This is a story that will end in tragedy,” I tell her. Tell myself. “We cannot be anything.”
She swallows hard, and I get the strong urge to kiss her. Those lips that had sucked me so lovingly, so hungrily, and swallowed me down with perfect relish. Instead, I solidify my resolve and remain watching her.
It comes out as a halting gasp as she asks again, “But you still want me dead?”
I walk on a knife’s edge. One wrong move will send us into an abyss. And if I fall, we all fall. I can’t allow that to happen to my brothers. To her.
I lick my lips, wishing they were hers. “No.”
She closes her eyes as shades of relief wash through her auric body. Perhaps I want to give her a little light before the coming darkness, because I finally decide to lean down and brush my lips against hers.
Electricity zings between us, hot and biting. She gasps at the sensation. I taste her bottom lip, then her plump upper lip. Savouring her sweet taste, her golden scent, the softness of her mouth that yields to me as if she wishes for more. Her arousal is perfume to my soul, and I inhale it in like a drowning man, before whispering against the perfect blossom of her mouth. “I am so sorry, Aurelia.”
She doesn’t know that I mean that in two ways. And I’ve never in my life been afraid to reveal something to someone.
Because though I’ve already hurt her, what is coming will hurt her tenfold. It will cut her so deeply that the mark will leave an immortal scar.
A scar like that changes a person for good. And my beautiful, strong, little regina will have to choose the person it will make her.
Sabrina reports that she is ready to tell her story the next day. Having suspected what she’d been through, I’d given her plenty of time. We sit in the room she now shares with Raquel, Stacey, and Connor. Marduk and Yeti also sit in the big circle of chairs, Marduk with his arm possessively around Minnie.
Minnie is no longer unsure about Marduk. She trusts him implicitly. Whatever happened between them at Clawson House drew them together, just as I had hoped.
The spectres rage around me, stuffing the room and my consciousness with their presence. Today, their voices are thankfully stifled, allowing me to hear Sabrina properly.
“I was knocked out for most of the trip, then concussed afterwards,” Sabrina mutters, as if this annoys her. “I’d always thought that if I ever got kidnapped, I’d try and figure out where they were taking me. They always say not to let them take you to a second location.”
The fact that she’d lost part of her tail in the process told me just how hard she’d fought her kidnappers.
“And then when I woke up, all I could smell were felines and serpents, so I thought I was at one of their secret locations. But…” She squints as if remembering some detail. “But there was something weird about the stones the dungeon was made out of. They were all laced with faint traces of gold.”
She shakes her head, her eyes distant.
“A jewellery thief knows her gold,” Stacey laughs, then stops herself short.
Sabrina nods seriously at her. “That’s right.”
I glance at my dragon brother, because Xander knows exactly where this is.
“There was one guy, a higher up general or something,” Sabrina says, holding Connor’s hand. “He was awful. It was like he knew just how to get to me, you know? Said he’d researched about me. Knew I hated closed spaces.” She swallows, tugging her hood lower looking around the large room as if reminding herself that she is no longer there. “He was completely mental. The cells just kept getting smaller and smaller, until eventually…” She shudders and I watch her aura closely. It shifts from grey storm clouds to black.
“Did they speak to you?” I say quickly, aiming to detract her from the dark place she’d just entered. “Did they reveal what they wanted?”
Her eyes focus on me and she nods. “They told me a lot, actually. I was pretty surprised. They didn’t seem like they were even hiding from me, really.”
I nod encouragingly.
“They wanted me for my ability to manipulate tiny objects,” Sabrina says bravely. “But I never expected them to ask me to manipulate something so fucking small. I called them insane, but they just went about their business like it was nothing. I think they’ve been doing this for a while.” She looks at Aurelia. “I thought about you, and your dad, and how he wanted you for a breeding pen.” She shudders. “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t.”
“Believe what?” Aurelia asks softly. “What did they want you to manipulate?”
“They’ve been trying to do IVF,” Sabrina says. “Trying to make babies of rare orders without the conception ritual, except…it wouldn’t work. The cells would never work together. They wouldn’t tell me what orders, but I can guess…”
Dragons. Phoenixes. Shoe-bill storks. Komodo dragons.
Boneweavers.
Animas go into heat every month, their bodies ovulating and giving them the opportunity to create children. But being a magical species, our bodies have evolved to require a conscious creation of offspring. There must be a deliberate merging of powers from both anima and animus.
They were trying to bypass that magical process using technology.
Aurelia lets out a long sigh. “So, what exactly did they want you to do?”
Sabrina shakes her head. “They wanted me to try to…” She scratches her nose awkwardly, then raises her two index fingers and squashes them together. “Telekinetically make it happen in the lab.”
Connor and Aurelia gasp at the same time. Raquel, already privy to this information by way of the other wolves under my command, shakes their head in dismay.
“They’re trying new ways to create embryos of dying orders,” I confirm, then turn to Aurelia. “That is one of the reasons Mace was in contact with Fredrick Ulman, the biologist.”
“That guy that kept all those feline animalia captive?” Stacey gasps.
Lyle nods. “My captor, yes.”
“Who Aurelia executed,” Sabrina says firmly.
“Right,” Savage says. “He’s as dead as they come.”
I cast my brother a sharp look, but Sabrina didn’t hear him. She’s still thinking about what happened next in her story.
“Then they moved me and I knew for sure it had to be the Clawson’s place because it smelled all…dirty tiger. Most of them are feral. They don’t even shower daily.”
Minnie makes a disgusted sound. “The smell was the first thing I noticed. Grubby bastards.”
“Indeed,” Marduk says. “They are known for it. The only place that was clean was Titus’ hospital room.”
Minnie abruptly stiffens. Had I been there, I would have arranged for Titus’ death, but the Devi pack were too honourable to ask for such a thing.
“But why did they move you?” asks Lia, quickly changing the subject. “For what purpose?”
Sabrina’s grey complexion pales further. “They…” She presses her lips together, unable to find the words.
“Because Titus wants a new pack,” Marduk explains gently. “They likely wanted to consummate a bond and pledge her allegiance to the Clawsons.”
“It would have happened, too,” Sabrina whispers. “Until two of my guards turned out to be my mates. But then news about Brutus’ death came through, and the place became a madhouse.”
Xander subtly turns towards the door, and my ears pick up the pounding feet five seconds later.
Savage gets up to open the door. Outside, one of our guards stands panting, a red envelope in his hands. “It’s the Headmistress,” he says breathlessly. “She’s awake.”
A trickle of dread stalks through my body. I glance at Aurelia, memorising the last whisper of innocence in her face.
Because I’m about to wipe that away forever.
Chapter 37
Aurelia
We leave Sabrina’s meeting for Celeste’s office. The guard handed me the red envelope, which states that the headmistress needs to see me immediately. To my surprise, Scythe glances at Lyle, Xander and Savage, and they all silently accompany me to the academy’s central building and up the elevator to one of the top floors. There’s an air of solemnity as we silently stand in the cramped space. Four males tower over me, the tension in the room so thick I could bite at it. I try to catch their gazes, but only Savage smiles lovingly down at me, brushing his pinky along the back of my hand.
When the metal doors slide open, we find Celeste waiting for us in the boardroom of her offices, sitting at the head of the ancient conference table.
The guard said that she had ‘awoken’, though from what type of sleep that lasted weeks, I don’t know. She doesn’t look well rested at all. In fact, she looks more weary than I have ever seen her. She is a beautiful middle-aged woman in a light pink pant-suit. This time, her crimson hair is straight and long down her back. She wears very little makeup today, and the slightly bluish circles under her eyes stand out to me. Despite this, her power pulses as strongly as ever around her, that wave of energy all mythic orders seem to have, marking them for what they are.
I smile at her tentatively and am surprised when her own smile is strained. Practically forced. It’s then that a feeling of great unease rears its head around me like a cobra’s hood.
