Page 100 of Her Feral Beasts

Fear fills me like a thousand tiny knives.

“Monster,” I choke. “You fucking monster. I’d never be safe with you.”

The aggression in his facade falters, but I don’t care. I tear out his grip, snatch up Henry, and Scythe allows it. Minnie, Raquel and Stacey are already standing, stricken with fear as I bolt towards them, and together, we flee the library and the monster within it.

Chapter44

Scythe

For the next two days, Aurelia and Savage continue to play their game of taking turns aggravating each other. One part of me is amused. It’s cute to see her rebel against Savage’s alpha tendencies in a way that no else could get away with. But another part of me heats up to see each risqué outfit gracing her body like a glove. The only time she doesn’t wear anything showy is for her sessions with Lyle on Saturday mornings.

It also does something to me because I know exactly what this is, even if Aurelia doesn’t. It’s clear to me that she has lived away from her court, isolated. She is not entirely familiar with the ways of reginas and rexes.

The regina in her is pushing back, demanding the submission of her pack.

In another life, I would have enjoyed teaching her how to make us submit.

But Aurelia’s scent has gradually become more and more of a problem. She’s now dropped all pretence of hiding it and uses it as a weapon. As a result, I’ve put a stop to eating at her table and we’ve taken to entering and leaving the dining hall early to avoid her.

I could almost laugh at the irony of that, but it’s not at all amusing that she has this power.

Xander is unusually quiet and more aggressive than ever. He broke a jaguar’s arm for ‘looking at him crooked’ and exhales smoke at anyone who so much as walks past him.

Us fighting it, fightingher, will be impossible for much longer. Even without her scent, she draws my eye. Her presence in this academy is a lure I can’t deny my Great White. Even across campus, my animus knows she’s here. My senses go beyond scent and sight and sound.

Aurelia has a power over us that’s cunning and brutal. And that’s a danger I can’t stand by and just watch.

The day of her trial will be a relief for all of us.

* * *

It’s on a night with no moon that Xander and I leave the academy. Just after lights out, we make our way up to the top of our dormitory building, where the black stone tiles are decorated with golden patterns of the ancient dragons and my star-bonded brother assumes his real form.

My shark eyes see well in the near dark and there are a few floodlights on in the Hunting Games field that make the black tiles of the animus dorm gleam.

With a crunch of ligaments and a sigh of satisfaction, Xander’s naked muscles burst outwards along with his powerful, colour-tinged magic. Orange like fire, red like pain.

In seconds, he becomes colossal muscle, broad sinew, and tendon covered in impenetrable blue-black scales. If this building wasn’t dragon-wrought, it would have collapsed within seconds. He’s easily bigger than the roof, his foreclaws gripping onto the sides of the building, making a clacking sound. He smells like power and something ancient that’s probably the secrets all dragons keep. Glowing silver eyes flick at me through the night—an impatient order to get on.

I oblige him, quickly scaling his hind leg and bear-crawling up his thick scales to sit in front of his wing joint.

You have to be careful not to cut yourself on dragon hide. His scales are sharp, and if they catch you the wrong way, they can shred your palms and shoes.

My dragon-brother flexes and it’s the only warning I get before we shoot up into the night like an arrow. Wind screams past my ears, burning my face with harsh intensity, and yet I love it. It’s not unlike tearing through the Antarctic Ocean, and perhaps that’s why I can take it when Xander doesn’t hold back on his speed.

I can feel the joy in him as we breach the dragon-shields around the school and fly freely into the stars. It’s times like these that I’m reminded that our bond runs deeper than blood. That we were made to be together.

There’s plenty of cloud cover in the sky to hide us from prying eyes tonight and because the council prefers dragons to fly after dark, we have to be careful about fellow skyward travellers.

But the academy is in neutral territory, here in the regional area of the state, so the next two hours of southward flight go smoothly. I sit and enjoy the view of the clouds and the cold while Xander stretches his wings, swooping, banking, and occasionally plunging to see if he can unseat me.

He’s never able to, however. Savage and I have had too much practice on his back, and there’s something about the air that feels like the deep ocean. Vast space stretches out in every direction, with the wind currents sweep around us just as ocean currents do, and it can be peaceful if I block out the air rushing past my ears.

We begin our descent and my blood sings as I see the eastern coastline stretching out like a ribbon beneath us. Lights dot the coast like the hem of a jewelled dress, the ocean swells like its ruffles. I might be high on the smell of the ocean, but my mind shows me an image of Aurelia in a gown like that, a shimmery, puffy thing that cinches at her waist and flares out to sweep the ground.

I shake myself out of my delusional reverie as Xander circles lower and lower, looking for his mark, a bit of craggy stone that spears into the air like a weapon. A kilometre south of that, seated precariously on a shelf of rock, is a multi-story estate complete with swimming pool, tennis court and helipad.

Xander scouts the property, circling twice, lower and lower, to check for anything suspicious and to scent the air so we might know how many beasts are inside.

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