Page 106 of Her Feral Beasts

“W-Well, I know it’s not Savage.” Minnie gulps. “He can’t write properly.”

“Right.” I whisper it because I can’t bear that I’m actually saying this out loud. “This is my father’s work.” I cover the snake’s body again and my mind shudders back online like an old, worn engine.

My father has owned me since the beginning. Even when he exiled me, he still held me on a chain. Hestillcommanded me. This is him staking his ownership. Reminding me whose I really am.

Evil, manipulative, bastard. He would kill his own just to send me a message. Just to try and make me look bad. To set me up, yet again.

“No one can know about this,” I say quietly. “If they find out, it’ll hurt my case at the trial, I’m sure of it. Lyle will think it’s all my fault. I’ll be branded a murdereryet again.Everyone will think I did it. They already think I tried to kill my dad.”

“So what are we gonna do? Hide a dead body?” Minnie hisses, pulling her towel tighter. “Please, don’t tell me we’re going to try to sneak it out of here unnoticed!”

I stare at her because she said ‘we’. I don’t deserve her, I really don’t.

And it’s like my mind shifts into an old, less-used gear. “I want you to pretend you never saw this,” I say in a calm, deep voice that does not sound like my own. “I want you to go back into the bathroom and get dressed. When you come back, it’ll be like it never happened.”

“Lia.” Minnie’s eyes boggle out of her head. “Please don’t tell me you’ve done this before.”

“No, I haven’t done this before.” But Ihaveseen it before. When your dad is the King Cobra, the princess sees more than her fair share of murdered snakes at court. It’s the only way to deal with defiance, according to my father.

“What are you gonna do with the body, then?” she whispers. “He has a family. Friends. Who is this person?”

I gulp the very big lump in my throat. “I know, Min.”

She looks at me like she wants to throw up, and honestly, so do I.

“Minnie, I don’t want you involved in this. So please, I’m begging you, get back in the shower and we can pretend this never happened. Alright?”

She stares at me but sees something in my gaze that makes her nod slowly. “Alright, Lia.”

“Henry, go with Gertie.”

He chirps like he doesn’t want to, but thankfully obliges.

Stiffly, I watch Minnie’s retreating back, and when she clicks the door shut, I spring into action. Everything will have to go. All my sheets and my duvet. Thankfully, they have a mattress protector on these beds and I bundle everything up in it so I don’t have to touch the dead body.

But I feel his weight in my hands like a judge’s gavel.

There’s no time to wonder who it is. I didn’t recognise the viper, but it’s likely they come from the academy. With my heart hammering in protest, I envelop myself and the bundle into my invisible eighth shield.

It’s been weeks since I used the eighth shield, but it’s like sliding into an old dance routine. A cloak of air surrounds me in a soft whoosh, and it feels good to know that no one will see or scent me as I run to get rid of this. Opening my cell door, I find the corridor empty and slip out and down the narrow stairs. I’m just lucky the night time locks have not yet activated. I estimate that I have a little over an hour left.

I loathed my father before, but I can now say that has evolved into full-blown hatred. He’s turned me into someone who hides dead bodies. He’s turned me into anactualcriminal. Goddess, it should be blood-curdling anger that I have coursing through my veins. Instead, I feel only terror. And it pulls at that tether of steel and bone I keep around myself…and the cracks already fracturing it.

There are two armed guards at our dorm entrance, so I have to wait a few torturous minutes for girls to return from their supper to sneak through. Once I’m out, I think fast.

My first instinct is to find the kitchen dumpsters and dump it in there. The good thing about being in my scent shield 24/7 is that my scent is not on my clothes or sheets, meaning the animalia police won’t be able to scent me on the cobra at all. So I head around the back of the dining hall, and thankfully, the space between buildings is devoid of patrolling guards. I ease open the dumpster and stand there for a moment, just looking at where I need to put this snake’s body.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so fucking sorry. Whoever you are.”

Realistically, if my father is killing a snake, it’s for some reason—whether it was insubordination, disrespect or failing his duties. But whoever it was, they don’t deserve to have their body put into a dumpster. No one does.

I can’t do it.

Tears streak down my face and I try not to sob at what my life has come to. At the control that he has over me, even here, where there’s a federal peace treaty. I sink down onto the cold concrete, breathing hard.

Something primal in me looks eastward.

Because Idoknow three beasts who know how to get rid of a dead body. Who’ve done such a heinous thing many times. Running around campus with a dead body is a new sort of low, and that devastation takes me over, turning my mind numb, turning my thoughts into nothing but smoke and shadows.

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