Page 47 of Her Feral Beasts

My brothers are so different from one another and yet the same in many ways. They carry violence around their shoulders, and to my shark eyes, I see it as colours of crimson and blood red, roiling over their muscular frames. Right now, both of them also carry swathes of dark colours. Our regina is responsible forthatdarkness.

While Beak and Yeti prepare to get rid of the serpent’s body, Xander hands Savage one crystal glass and brings me a second, drinking his own, his face drawn.

I knock it back in one go. Blood and whiskey, our favourite combination.

The apparition that has been following me around for the past eleven years appears by my side.

I ignore it.

Back in Lamington National Park, I scented Aurelia for the first time, and her presence hit me then, right in a deep-seated part of me. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Ambrosial, heady, as earthen as deep parts of the sea and as light as dawn. But her desire just now had been something unfathomable. Unquantifiable.

Some people think that the mating bonds we share with other animalia were created in the stars at the dawn of creation. That our souls have followed each other in groups since then, pining until we meet up each lifetime.

Fish exist in schools, whales and dolphins in pods, but sharks generally like to live their long lives alone.

But that option was stolen away from me a long time ago, by a father who held greed and violence as his gods.

The ocean still calls to my blood and bones in the same way it always has, but there are things on land that pull me just as strongly.

And I saw one of those things with my own eyes today. Or smelled it, when I scented her neck so intimately.

My regina desired me with the full force of her entire being. I could see it, scent it, taste her primal desire in the very particles of the air. The soul-crushing need to consume her, to spread her legs and feast from her centre might have destroyed me if I wasn’t the man I am.

And yet, she did not want us. Lied to us. To me. She looked me dead in the eye and tried to manipulate me. I’m still vibrating with rage and desire, my cock uncomfortably hard and straining against the seam of my slacks.

The apparition prances past me, his long, silvery hair swinging, his eyes dark and sunken, face gaunt. He hums a familiar song under his breath. A funeral chant.

“Leave,”I mentally command.

There are spirits and ghosts haunting or watching over this land, and most of them fled when I came along this week. But this one is no spirit. Is no ghost of the dead. I could say that he is a shadow of the darkness and madness that haunts the edges of me and creatures like me who walk this plane. Sometimes Xander calls me an alien, and at those times, it doesn’t feel like he’s wrong.

So, as usual, the apparition doesn’t obey me and continues to skip around the room.

“Kill her,”he mutters.“Destroy her. Liar. Widow. Dangerous.”

I sigh and block out its noise and face the same way I’ve been doing for eleven years.

But today it’s right.

Aurelia is a bad regina, and thatisdangerous to our mating group. It defied everything I thought I knew. No beast has denied me in a long time and now my own regina? It’s so vastly wrong it makes me itch from the inside out.

I know madness when I see it, and yet Aurelia isn’t mad. A little unhinged, but there is no psychosis behind that face of celestial beauty. So then why lie? Anyone who lies to me is strongly punished for it. That’s the way I’ve run my business from the beginning.

As my regina, I own her like I own my own body and soul. And if she needs to be removed, it’s my responsibility to do it. Perhaps we can try again in the next life, when she isn’t this way. And whenI’mnot the way I am either.

Savage is still oozing anger from his pores while Xander pours him another glass and I can taste it in the air. He’s normally as wild as the Wolf Father himself, but now that we’ve met Aurelia, his world has suddenly changed. He’s struggling with his desire for her, and his wolf is not helping. Affection is a wolf thing, but also, it’s a Savage thing. He’s already tasted her, and his obsession is making our task here difficult.

Yeti, Beak and the wolves leave out the dragon door down the corridor. It’s dark now, and Ernie and Bernie are always patrolling our back door in case we need them.

“We need to close this.” Savage holds his index finger up where the King Cobra’s blood covenant is etched. “Things are getting out of hand.”

That’s as close as Savage will come to admittinghe’sgetting out of hand.

“I agree,” Xander says. “She’s had her one chance, and that was more than generous. Let’s get this done, Sy.”

I grunt in agreement.

The Serpent King wants his daughter back for a within-court execution. I condone execution for uncontrollable beasts. It’s the best way to keep the wider community safe. Serpents use venom to punish their court, and it will be a slow, painful death for Aurelia. Savage doesn’t know that, and I’m not going to tell him. Xander definitely knows, because though he would never admit it, snakes and dragons are eerily similar.

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