Page 23 of Psycho Beasts

My jaw dropped.

Holy mother of the son god. Witches were real?

My entire world tilted on its axis.

I’d read fiction stories about witches and had always thought they gave off amazing energy. In one story, a witch had basically single-handedly saved a world from an evil dude who didn’t have a nose.

Iconic.

But it was always fiction.

Spike continued, “It’s a pretty little potion made specially for the don. Paralyzes a beast and pumps their body full of excruciating pain that maximizes fear. It’s the only solution in existence that can accurately recreate and predict how an individual will act under extreme torture.”

Suddenly, the pain in my shoulders didn’t seem so bad.

Why the fuck was I putting myself through this?

Before I could announce that I was quitting and would start my own gang where people didn’t have to go through an awful initiation, Spike stabbed the needle into the annoying alpha in the corner.

Immediately, the large man began to moan and writhe with his head flung back and his jaw clenched.

I desperately searched for the switch in my head that activated the numb, or the song of the hunt—whatever made me an emotionless brick wall.

Nothing happened.

Like I’d suspected, it needed to recharge.

I was fucked.

Spike walked swiftly down the line and stabbed my men in the neck.

Now he developed a sense of urgency?

I smiled sweetly at him and tried to give off helpless-female vibes. “Um, could I speak to your manager? I think there’s been a mistake.”

Spike stabbed me in the neck.

“Fuck you,” I growled as the awful pain sliced through my neck. There was a 100 percent chance he’d hit my spinal cord.

I moaned for the rafters and thrashed my legs desperately as a pain like nothing I’d ever known consumed every cell in my body.

It was like being lit on fire from the inside.

Jax roared loudly, and Ascher shouted expletives.

Cobra screamed.

Xerxes was dead silent.

The pain coursing through my body, which was the worst thing I’d ever experienced, somehow tripled in intensity.

I heaved and sobbed.

Cobra kept screaming.

Apparently, I was an awful person, because I was glad that I wasn’t suffering alone.

My momentary satisfaction left as my chest collapsed with agony. The pain morphed into the sensation of a boulder crushing me. It paralyzed my limbs.

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