Page 42 of Her Feral Beasts

At dinner time, I loiter behind to make sure the three males head to the dining hall ahead of me. They’re always eating a lot, so I know they won’t miss this meal.

“I just need to get a tampon,” I say to the girls.

I wink at Minnie as I leave and dart into the nearest toilet. My plan for retaliation is a good one, I think, but I’m still nervous as all hell.

The bathrooms are the one place guaranteed to have no security cameras, so I eighth shield myself inside a stall. Once I’m completely enveloped in invisibility, I speed-walk out. With a quick check to make sure the men are seated at their usual table in the dining hall, I follow a random unmated lion out of the hall.

Connor speaks at length about the chaotic, unmated animus dorms during our meals, so I think I know what I’m in for when I get there. With the majority of students in the dining hall, there are a couple of guys who have eaten quickly and are taking animas back to their dorm—to fuck, I’m assuming—because by the way they’re all groping each other, they’re definitely not going there to play cards. I follow them all into their dorm, slipping in when the door is opened. Up three flights of stairs, I assume that, like us, they’ve put the newest guys on the upper floors. It smells like male, deodorant and what I think is perfume. Sure enough I pass an A2 black and yellow poster that outlines the hygiene regulations. (‘Shower twice a day, use soap and deodorant is your friend!’). It’s there that I sneakily un-shield myself in an alcove and snag a hyena, skulking down to the communal bathroom they have to use.

Hyenas are matriarchal so I try and put on a dominant voice to appeal to his instinct. “Hey you, where’s Savage’s room?”

He frowns at me, his curling family tattoo stretching along his brow. “Why do you wanna go in there? Are you nuts?”

“I’m going to surprise him. I want to fuck.”

His face brightens. “Will you fuck me?”

“No.”

He sighs dramatically and points to the end of the corridor, right at a painting of a dragon that someone has stuck a blue paper party hat on. “There are trick stairs there. When you pass through, you’ll see it.”

“Trick stairs?”

“Old dragon magic,” he explains. “To hide secret rooms. They’re using it to hide from the guards now.”

Oh, those sneaky bastards. Of course Xander noticed dragon tricks right away. What other trickery is there in the old parts of this place?

I nod and cautiously make my way there, though my heart pounds as I do. Sure enough, the end of the hall looks like a solid wall, and so does the painting, but as I press my hands against the canvas, it gives way like jelly and I press myself right through it. I end up at the bottom of a completely new staircase that curves left.

Awed, I eighth shield myself again and climb up the stairs carefully in case one of them creaks. At the top, is a whole other level that you can’t even see from the outside, complete with a dining table, comfy chairs, and many adjoining rooms. Muttering darkly about dragons, I decide I’ll check the rooms sequentially.

A soft whimper stops me in my tracks.

Slowly, I turn to see that in the far corner, behind the dining table and almost hidden from view, sits a male student with long shaggy hair. His tongue slips out to taste the air, so he’s a snake, but that’s not the most alarming thing.

He’s tightly bound to the chair with magic dampening obsidian chains, and his face and bare torso are a bloody mess, lacerations and grazes marring his pale skin. Both his eyes are black and I think some of his teeth are missing by the way his mouth is swollen. My power lurches, wanting to heal his terrible wounds.

My breath seizes in my throat. I make a split-second decision. Crouching down behind the dining table so he can’t see me, I unveil myself, then rush over to him.

He’s gagged, so when he sees me, he makes a muffled, desperate scream.

There’s a black padlock locking the chains in place by his belt. “Where’s the key?” I ask quickly.

I place my fingers around the gag and carefully pull it down. He chokes on a breath and I know his jaw is broken when he cries a muffled, “Get me the fuck outta here!”

“Have you seen the key to this thing? I need the key!” I panic, wildly looking around for some sign of a way to get him out.

“I don’t know! I don’t know! Get me out!” He thrashes around in his chair, clearly losing it, and fair enough, because I would totally be doing the same.

“Alright, wait.” I have no choice but to do a search. It’s just as well I came up here because I can’t imagine what they’re doing with a snake hostage and what they would have done if I hadn’t found him.

Bolting to the first door on my right, I find a bathroom. I shut that door and open the next. This room is huge and opulent. Three single four poster beds with red velvet curtains form a line. Bingo.

It’s not uncommon for members of the same pack to prefer to sleep together in the same bed or same room. Even anima or animus who are heterosexual. In fact, to see these three monsters share a room makes the anima in mewhine. There should be two more beds in here and a regina would share her time between each—

The sudden yearning for my pack to be whole and complete hits me like a train at full speed. I keel over and clutch my stomach as a very real physical sensationburnsmy insides. Henry coos with worry, rubbing himself against my neck.

I need to get the fuck out of this room.

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