Her Psycho Beasts, page 2
part #3 of Her Vicious Beasts Series
“Well. It’s clearly my father who has her. So I’d…call him. If he’s holding my friend hostage, he clearly expects contact from me.”
“Is that his usual tactic when taking hostages?”
She goes silent and I know she is far away, in a place she doesn’t like to linger. The distant past. Then I get a quiet, “Yes.”
“And how do you think that phone call, that negotiation, would go?”
She closes her eyes because she knows the answer. Her shoulders sag. “Not well. It wouldn’t be a negotiation at all.”
“And what would he ask of you?” I push her towards the truth.
Her eyes search the darkened landscape through the window behind me, as if she can see Mace Naga and his retinue rushing back to Serpent Court. “To present myself. To…surrender myself.”
“And how would you respond?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbles.
“You do know. Think. How should you deal with a beast like Mace? Don’t think of him as your father. He’s not. He showed that today. He’s shown that every day since you were thirteen.”
She flinches like I’ve slapped her.
My shark thrashes inside my body, promising violence. I say more softly, “When a man shows you who he is, you believe him. Every action is revealing.”
Her dark brow furrows as she considers this, hands on her hips, staring at the floor and biting her lip, deep in thought. Aurelia’s life is going to change dramatically now, and I wonder if she’s ready for it. For what she has to do.
Sitting back in the chair, I do what I do best. “You and I are going make a little agreement.”
She eyes me suspiciously. Good girl.
“We don’t react, Aurelia. We respond. I will help you bring back Sabrina, alive and hopefully mostly well. In exchange, you will be one of my…beasts. You will obey my every command. You will follow my rules. You will swear allegiance to me.”
Surprise flickers across her beautiful features.
But she doesn’t know that I have no animas sworn to me. Anims, yes. But never animas. She would be the first and only one.
“Take it or you get nothing from me.”
Her eyes flick down my body so fast I might have missed it. What do those eagle eyes see? What do those Boneweaver eyes see? With training, could she see as a shark does?
Something fresh and clean glimmers in my stomach, wholly unexpected. Perhaps it shows on my face because Aurelia takes a smooth, controlled breath.
Chapter 2
Aurelia
I’d never considered myself capable of killing someone. I am a healer. That is my calling—it has been for many years.
But now violence thrums in my blood like a song of war. It’s heady and strong. Alluring. I killed Fredrick Ulman tonight, and the echo of that bloody melody still remains.
I should feel sick to my stomach that I’ve taken a life. Destroyed something precious.
And yet it feels right. I’ve saved one of my mates and eliminated a threat to his life. You’ll never fight alone, I’d said to Lyle. And I’d meant it in the core of my being. And as I stand in Sabrina’s dorm room, a girl who has become my family, I realise I would do it again. That I want to spill blood and tear flesh and break bones to save her.
The animal part of me also knows a predator is studying me closely.
Not only a predator, but a mate.
This is the first time Scythe has asked anything of me. Sure, he likes giving me little commands, but he’s never demanded anything.
Given me an ultimatum.
I should hate him for it. I should want to tell him to go fuck himself and his shark for being so cruel as to hold my friend’s kidnapping over me like this.
Instead, the primal part of me that became a saltwater crocodile and crushed the skull of Fredrick Ulman cocks her head and considers our shark carefully.
In the lines of his powerful body, in the set of his hard, square jaw and the cold cruelty in his ice chip eyes, I see he wants control over me. I see this is a last, desperate effort from a dangerous mate who could become even more dangerous given the chance.
But I also see the way this could be used against me. I will be inhibited by his…rules.
So I level him an even look right in his tundra eyes, because there is more than one predator in the room now. “And what kind of rules do you demand your beasts follow?”
Scythe answers me coolly. “I enforce the rules of the jungle.”
I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s barbaric and dangerous. It’s the way of the criminal underworld of beasts, and I’d been exposed to it at my father’s knee.
It had been a long time ago, but there is really only one rule to remember—complete submission to the most powerful. Within that one rule is everything you need to run a successful criminal organisation: ultimate loyalty, established hierarchy, subordinates who reward and punish each other.
This is the world that Scythe is asking me to enter. His eyes bore into my soul, intimidating and oh so confident.
It is that confidence I need to get Sabrina back.
But how similar is Scythe’s world to the way my father runs his court? I will be bound to him now, to obey his every word.
Sabrina, or freedom? Which do I want more?
A teensy, tiny part of me is excited at this offer and the challenge of it.
“Fine,” I say in a clear voice. “For Sabrina, I’ll do it.”
Something like pleasure flares in his eyes, turning ice into cold fire.
The command just rolls off his tongue. “Come here.”
Swallowing down the residual fear, I oblige him and take a few steps forward on my bare feet.
“Kneel.”
I swallow before obeying. This position is completely unfair because his groin is right in front of me. This close, his sharp, powerful scent reaches my nose, and I have to force myself to look up at him and our mating mark, scoring his pale skin with celestial light. To swear to a beast is to submit to him. Henry hides on my left shoulder, so I raise my arms up to my mating mark side to sweep my hair off my neck and bare it in the universal sign of ultimate submission. Scythe is one of the few beasts in the world I would do this for. I hope he knows that.
Without taking his eyes off mine, Scythe reaches into his pocket and takes out his silver cigarette case. He opens it.
On one side is the expected neat row of hand-rolled cigarettes, animalia-strength blue ganja, by the smell of them. But on the other side is something wholly unexpected. A bone-white shark’s tooth, triangular and serrated.
I want to ask if it’s his, but I bite my tongue because now, his movements bear the cadence of a ritual. Like something sacred is about to occur. I glance back up at him and find Scythe has gone still as he stares at the tooth.
The temperature of the room plummets and a cold caress shudders down my spine. The tiny hairs all over my body stand on end.
Any of those things should have shaken me, but it’s what he does next that actually rattles my bones.
He extends his hand towards me.
I stare at it for a moment. His broad palm, one of the few places on his body that is not possessively marked with ink. The regina in me knows this is rare. Knows that Scythe does not like to be touched. Actively does not touch others.
With time moving like sludge around me, I take a breath, raise my own hand, and with infinite slowness, place it in his, palm up.
My body responds immediately.
Tingles shoot up from the point of contact, right up my arm and through my body. From the sharp inhale Scythe takes, he feels something too.
Uncharacteristically, he clears his throat. “Repeat after me. I, Aurelia Boneweaver, swear loyalty to Scythe Kharkorous.”
Goddess, I’m really doing this.
For Sabrina. I repeat the words carefully.
“I swear to obey his commands until Sabrina Panthera is returned safely to me. I swear it by my blood, or so death take me.”
A chill runs down my spine as I say it, and I quickly add on the end, “As long as you don’t betray me to my father.”
Scythe’s lips twitch before he presses the tip of the shark tooth to my index finger.
I suppress a hiss at the sting as a droplet of blood wells up.
Scythe seems to go still and blinks at the crimson bead. Then blinks again. Before I can compute what’s happening, he suddenly brings my finger to his mouth.
And licks my blood off it.
His tongue is hot against my finger. My head spins, my heart pounds, my senses come alive. I can only stare at him in shock as he leans back in the chair, closing his eyes as if he’s tasted the most delicious thing on the planet. Somehow, I don’t think this is part of the ritual. This is not like a serpent blood contract either, the same magic isn’t there. No, I surmise that this ritual is wholly…Scythe.
I whisper his name.
His eyes snap open. Abruptly, he drops my hand and rises from the chair, saying with finality, “Good girl.”
Wait, are we not going to talk about what just—
“But you failed that test, Aurelia.”
My brows shoot up as he towers over me. “What? How!”
“You didn’t try to negotiate.”
“But you said—”
“It doesn’t matter what a beast says. It’s what he does that matters.”
Fuck. I’d failed his test. A sudden wave of exhaustion threatens to drown me. But there’s still so much to think about.
“So what now? Are you going to contact my dad—”
He shakes his head. “That man is not your father. He’s not a husband. He’s not even a mate.” Before I can ponder what he means, he quickly continues. “Let me teach you something about my world, Aurelia. Your father didn’t do this. He would never implicate himself directly. He’s used an intermediary. Who do you think he would use? To take a feline captive?”
I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t think of this. My father knows no bounds to his cunning, of course he’d do everything in his power to avoid being associated with this.
But a feline captive? With telekinesis?
My heart sinks. My voice is hoarse as I whisper, “The Clawsons.” I shake my head. “But to kidnap a student from the academy is illegal. There’s a truce here, for fuck’s sake! The council—”
“The crime lords deal with our own business. We do not involve the council. You should know that.”
Shit. Yes, I should. “Right. So then what?”
“Leave it with me.”
I stare at him blankly. He stares right back. I suddenly realise I’ve been on my knees before his towering form for the last minute. Hastily, I get up. “What about Savage? We need to do something about him too.”
The corner of his mouth twitches—actually twitches like he’s about to smirk. “I’m sure my little brother is having the time of his life.”
Chapter 3
Savage
I’d like to think I’m a positive sort of person. Xander calls me delusional, but Scythe calls me spirited.
Whatever it is, it’s the only thing that helps me now, as I’m speeding away from the best thing in my life. My regina. Aurelia Boneweaver.
The armoured truck rumbles beneath my bare feet, a monster made of metal, specially built to hold monsters made of flesh, just like me.
I’m bound to an upright gurney, tied down Hannibal Lecter style, with obsidian chains so tight that I have zero wiggle room. I have a muzzle on and a spit hood over that. I can’t see much beyond the hood, but I can sure feel them.
My new guards.
They’d been waiting in the nearby town. Ruben and the council had called them to stand by so it wouldn’t rouse Lyle’s suspicion. Once I’d let the academy guards take me into the prison transport vehicle, they’d rumbled off only to stop in town and swap the guards over.
Six beasts in tactical gear now surround me, their rifles pointing at my chest and head. I’d once called the academy guards, with their gaiters and cattle prods, cute. These are Blackwater Penitentiary guards, with all the pretty bells and whistles to deal with unhinged monsters.
I’d sort of missed the drama of it, you know? The seriousness. The laser-pointing rifles, the claw-proof uniforms…the slam of a baton against your skull.
I flex my toes in excitement, because that’s the only part of my body I can move, while humming the new song I’m making for my sweet regina.
“My regina, with teeth so sharp, is better than yours,
My regina, with her leathery skin, is better than paws,
She’s a sweety chompy-pie,
For her, I’d gladly die…”
“Will someone shut him up?” says one guard.
The rear end of a rifle slams into my gut and I let out an “Oof.”
But it can’t ruin my mood.
You see, the cinematic vision of Aurelia shifting from a tiny bird into her saltwater croc form is playing on a loop in my mind. What a stunning perfect beast she is in any form.
I’d told her that you sometimes need to walk right into danger to get what you want. Well, a good animus leads by example for his regina.
I want to show her just what me and my brothers are capable of.
Eight hours later, we drive into Blackwater Federal Penitentiary for Naughty Beasts. We stopped every two hours for the guards to pee, according to their rules, but because I’m not allowed to move, I’ve had to pee into a bottle each time.
Barbaric people, these guards.
Eventually, the convoy of three trucks trundles through all five gates, right into the bowels of the place that reeks deliciously of feral male, violence, and blood. A perfume for my own heart.
Creaking to a stop, everyone gets out to prepare for my entry.
“I need a moment with him,” Ruben’s voice booms outside before his heavy steps thud onto the back of the truck. He roughly pulls off the hood and I happily take a breath of fresh air. Ruben stands in front of me, all loomy and impressive, his massive arms crossed, his bearded face grim. He’s one of the few males who can take me on in a fair fight, though we’ve never really gone at it. “I’d say I’m sorry but—” he shrugs those mountain shoulders. “I’m not. You’ve become worse than your old man ever was.”
I scoff. “Didn’t know you liked him so much. What was all the stuff you were telling me about my regina for?”
He snarls. “I was trying to help you. I’ve known you since you were a pup, but you’re completely beyond it now, Sav.”
“Uh-huh,” I hum. “Let’s get going then. Toss me in there, throw away the key.”
Lyrics for a new song.
Ruben rolls his eyes before reaching around to grab the handles of my upright gurney and wheeling me to the open doors. He doesn’t even use the elevator mechanism to get me out, just uses his own muscle to lower me right down.
He was definitely a bear in his past life—a big ol’ shaggy one with blood in his teeth all the time. I wonder what beast he’ll be in his next one.
It’s nice to be out in the fresh air, even if it is spicy with the testosterone and aggression of the prisoners inside.
Ruben wheels me through a lovely guard of honour, all with their guns cocked and aimed, just for me. They’re worried I’ll try something drastic like last time; somehow wrangle my way out of these Hannibal restraints, kick and bite my way through them and stroll out of here, happy as Larry.
Of course, they’re wrong. This is nothing like last time.
Ruben unwinds the kilometres of chains wrapping around me and the gurney. Underneath, I’m naked, to the great delight of the guards.
They smirk eagerly.
“I suppose this is goodbye then,” I say with a dramatic sigh. “I’ll miss ya, Rubes.”
There’s a really good poem in there, but I’ll make my point soon enough.
Behind me, the escorts are loitering around the trucks, smoking and gossiping like old birds. Since all the prisoners are locked up in their beds, they like to slack off on the night shift.
“Bye, Savage,” Ruben says coolly, before turning on his heel and striding away.
The Blackwater guards chuckle.
“Welcome back, Savvy boy,” sneers an older cheetah who remembers me. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Oh yeah?” I say, sauntering as far as possible from the trucks, cock swinging. “Couldn’t wait to see me naked again, could you, love?”
The other guards laugh nastily, fingering their cattle prods. Behind me, a truck door slams shut as Ruben gets ready to return to the academy.
“Let’s get into medical,” the cheetah says, copping a feel of my bicep.
As I enter the building, I throw a glance over my shoulder to see Ruben turning the ignition of his truck. He hears it, then.
Every guard in the vicinity does.
The tiny click.
I smirk and Ruben’s grey eyes snap to mine.
That’s when the bomb planted under his truck goes off.
Setting off the rest of the bombs in the other two trucks in a beautiful chain reaction.
A ball of fire fills my vision, just before we all go flying backwards.
Chapter 4
Lyle
Istorm back into the anima dorms, taking the stairs three at a time. In my fucking school. An anima student had been taken in my fucking territory. Violence is a living thing inside my veins and doors slam closed as I pass the lower floors. My animus roars for retribution and vengeance so furiously that my vision winks in and out. But we work together now, my animus and I; he has no need to take over my human side.
On the fourth floor, Yeti watches over a huddle of Minnie, Raquel, Stacey, and Connor. The animas flinch and flatten themselves against the wall as I pass them. Yeti possessively takes Minnie’s hand.
“Get ready to head back in your rooms.” I command. “Lockdown in ten.”
The Council might have removed me from my official capacity as deputy headmaster of this academy, but the beast in me still claims this territory as mine to protect.
