Page 110 of Her Feral Beasts

“Lia.” It’s a low warning.

I lamely stand still for a moment before I slowly raise my eyes to look at his. He’s a glorious, beautiful picture of male perfection lying on that bed, muscles glistening with sweat, his dark hair tousled, his cock still huge and wet with my slick. And yet his expression is dark. So dark that it sends me bolting.

“I’m sorry,” I blurt, fleeing the room.

Chapter48

Aurelia

The next day is the Saturday before the trial and I’m sitting across from Lyle in the armchair by the bay window in his office. My mental health has never been the best, and this morning I’m left to pick up the pieces of a regina’s overactive libido.

My pussy burns a little in memory of the beast who claimed me last night, and I had to cover up the worst hickey I’ve ever seen, and yet my body is singing a song of pure joy. Henry has been sniffing me constantly, as if he knows what I did last night, and this morning, I woke up to the smell of incense and Minnie meditating in front of her altar for the Wild Goddess, no less than five candles burning. We all have our ways of coping, I suppose, and I’m certain I need new ways that are not moping and crying on the floor of the shower for half an hour.

Worst of all, the lion in front of me at the moment is not helping my cause.

Lyle frowns over Hope’s latest report.

I think he’s confused because it doesn’t fit his picture of who he thinks I am: a bratty child who grew up spoilt and then ruined it by being a delinquent.

“Hope is… impressed by your last shift. She says that you re-attached an ear.” He looks up at me, his amber eyes piercing right through the skin of my face. If he can see through to my brain, why doesn’t he just pick me apart himself?

I shrug in a way that says ‘I told you so’. “It was hanging on by the skin, a fresh wound, so it wasn’t too difficult.” I tried to look nonchalant as I internally cringe at the two hours I sat in the hospital reattaching the eagle’s ear centimetre by centimetre, sweating and dizzy by the end of it. I even had to end my shift early.

“Quite a feat,” he says in his special shopping-list voice.

“Will it go into your report for the trial?” I ask, sitting myself straight.

“Yes, Miss Aquinas, it’s all going in there. However, whether or not they take it into consideration is a different matter.”

Reality is a sharp barb through my chest. “What do you mean?”

Lyle’s features go hard, and just for a moment he looks… disgruntled. I forget how young he actually is, because his bearing is so commanding you could mistake him for someone much older. But what he says next wipes everything from my mind. “Your father has built quite the case against you.”

I knew he’d do anything to keep me under his fangs, but as Lyle hands me the thick stack of papers that shows my assigned lawyer’s notes on the case against me, I’m still gutted.

Flipping through the lines of the lawyer’s predictions, old wounds are torn anew by the second. It shouldn’t surprise me that my father would try to tarnish my name by exaggerating my faults, but making them up completely? Lying about harm I’ve caused?

This trial is my death warrant. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I see the notice on the thick black vellum the wealthy animalia use to write proposals to each other:

Boneweaver female. 20yo. Prime condition. Unmated. Unbred. Offers over $20 M.

Panic is a serpent that constricts my neck and I clutch the sides of the armchair so hard my circulation cuts off.

“Miss Aquinas?” Lyle’s voice is exaggerated as if this is the second time he’s said it.

My hand moves to my stomach where my breakfast is trying to catapult out of me.

“N-No.” I breathe. “I… I…”

“You’re scared of him.” Lyle sits back in his chair. That is not a profound thing to notice in itself. A lot of animalia fathers are terrifying to their young. But my father is no normal animalia. He is something much, much worse.

“I really thought I could get away from him.” I don’t even know why I say it out loud. Lyle doesn’t care. He’s had his revenge on me. Now he’s just got a job to do.

But I keep coming back to the same fucking conclusion. I need to run. I need to go far, far away from here. To another country. Fiji is supposed to be nice in the winter.

“Aurelia, youcannotrun.” Lyle grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me so hard the shock makes the running thoughts cease. I stare at him, his face too close to mine, his minty breath fanning across my face. Abruptly, he sits back as if he realises he shouldn’t have done that.

Perhaps I needed the shock. “How did you know?” I say dully.

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