Page 104 of Her Feral Beasts

Minnie looks up at me with wide, shiny eyes. “You’re enjoying yourself?”

“Yeah,” I say with dismay.

“Aw!” She leaps for me, flinging her arms around my shoulders. “I am too! I think you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

We cling onto each other for a while before Minnie wipes her eyes and puts her business face on. “But… look at the date for when the detention starts.”

I read the slip again and see that the start date is set the dayafterthe trial.

“What’s he playing at?” I say in anger. And the duration is set for one month. “Does he think this is some type of game?”

“Or maybe…” Minnie says, biting her lip. “He’s trying to give you hope.”

“That’s twisted.” I shake my head because Lyle isn’t the hope-giving sort.

* * *

When we get to the library, I’m surprised to see Xander wandering through the stacks. He stiffens as we walk in, and immediately storms out.

“But how does he expect to read them?” Minnie whispers.

I shake my head because that’s the question of the year. I don’t know how long they’re supposed to have their black shackles on, but I hope it’s a while.

We sit down at the academy laptops and search through the case reports of the trials Lyle mentioned to me. It’s not a half an hour until Minnie grabs my arm.

“This is a pretty big case involving the serpent court,” she says nervously, turning the laptop towards me. “Do you remember it? It was five years ago.”

It’s a mass murder trial, the accused Black Mamba allegedly poisoned an entire family of pumas. Mother, two fathers, and their five adult children. My heart drops as I read about the case.

The serpent, a twenty-one-year-old male, was acquitted of all charges and a dingo got charged for it instead.

“How?” I gasp, staring at the screen. “How does a dingo get charged for what was clearly a serpent’s job? The autopsy came back as a match for his venom!”

We can’t tell if there was any media coverage of the event, because we’re not allowed access to the wider internet, but I would have seen it on the Animalia Today news app.

My stomach churns at the thought of an entire family being murdered, but more so because I don’t remember the trial either.

I would have been fifteen at the time, and I hadn’t heard anything close to it, and being so cut off from the world, I was always checking the news.

“I don’t remember this trial at all,” Minnie says. “It should have been big news, being in our own state!”

Something tells me to look for the name of the defendant’s lawyer and I scroll up to find it. When I see it, I grab Minnie’s hand.

“Kahliso Naga is my father’s lawyer,” I say in disbelief. “He’s my great uncle.”

My father was involved with this trial. Minnie turns her wide eyes towards mine. And her eyes are saying what I’m thinking. I push away from the table in disgust.

“So the trial was rigged. If my father can get a man off scot-free in what was a clear-cut case, then it’s going to be easy for him to get me charged as guilty.”

I nervously tug on my student lanyard, as the bold black letters stare back at me.Flight Risk.They still use that name in the hallways. Still tease me with it.

But opposite of that, the path I’m now travelling down leads me to one place.

At the end of a chain in a breeding pen.

Chapter46

Aurelia

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