Page 10 of Her Feral Beasts

My heart shatters into pieces at the rage in his voice. That sound is a song no mate should ever hear.

“You can’t hide!” Xander shouts, slamming the entire force of a dragon’s burning fist into my shield.

I scream, stumbling as pain erupts in my brain and I have no choice but to let the shield holding Xander go.

A shard of fear shoots through my center as Scythe silently rips his jail like it’s a piece of paper, instantly freeing himself.

With a primal cry, Savage is out a fraction of a second later and I have no choice but to take flight. Bursting into eagle form, feathers tear through my skin, a beak bursts through my mouth, and I’m airborne in five jittery strokes. I clear the trees just as the males behind me storm through the forest under me.

Golden success lifts me higher on the wind…until a mighty, guttural roar funnels through the air.

There is only one creature in our world that can produce that terrifying, hair-raising sound.

I feel only dread as I register a wild and ferocious heat chasing me.

In the face of a dragon, I’m nothing but a piddly little pigeon.

Chapter4

Aurelia

Xander’s power hits me like a heatwave from a forest fire; a wall of blazing energy that makes me falter in mid-air.

A huge shadow passes over me like a missile, and panicking, I dive into the trees. I fly at trunk-level through the forest, zipping through the trunks, my mind scrambling to figure how the hell I’m going to escape a real live dragon.

Xander must really be furious if he lost control and shifted. The Council of Beasts places strict rules on when and how dragons fly. Well, either that, or he simply doesn’t care about rules.

Something about Xander tells me it’s the latter.

My little heart is pounding, my head is throbbing, and I swear some of my feathers are singed. I have no idea where Scythe and Savage are, but they can’t be far behind.

As I fly for my life, a roar shakes the very particles of air above me. I don’t know what type of restraint Xander has on his magic—or his morals—because he could very well incinerate this forest in one breath. But that would land him in an actual beast prison or he’d become a fugitive they’d have to put down.

Even so, a dragon flying through the air is an issue for the council and he’s giving our location away to everyone in the area.

Once they saw the damage at the Opal Feather, someone will have called the animalia police and the state’s elite retrieval unit will have been dispatched. My best bet is to head right into town, where my mates will be reluctant to cause a ruckus.

I mourn the loss of that handbag for a single awful second.

Okay, I know they’re unhinged, butseriously? I need to move faster.

Snapping my beak and swearing bloody murder, I clear the forest and come to the main road that leads up to town. The road becomes a bridge where, underneath, travels a slow-moving river, bordered by tall eucalypts and red bottle brushes.

Hiding is useless because they’ll sniff me out right away. But…Savage can’t scent me if I’m in water! Thinking fast, I glide towards the bridge where I promptly tuck in my wings and dive headfirst into the river.

The impact hurts when I hit the cold surface and it’s jarring to my already strained nerves. It’s murky underneath and eagles were never made for swimming, so I hop out and huddle in the shade of the bridge. A truck zooms past above me and I shiver, trying to catch my breath.

I check in with my power and see that I’m down to my last two shields. I’m severely depleted--the type of depletion that will take me days to recover from. My anima howls miserably.

I know, girl,I tell her.But we’ll figure it out. We have no choice here.

Huffing through my beak, I try and piece my mind together after seeing my three mates in the flesh. Xander touched me for the first time, and his body is like an imprint on my naked back and his fingers like a brand on my wrists. They were big, firm hands that—

Shit. No, arousal is something I can’t have mixing with my scent. Female anima can send sexual signals to their mates without the need for scent at all.

We had a…little incident a week ago when, in a moment of great horny weakness, I accidentally let my guard down and sent out a regina’s siren song. That was the thing that revealed who I was. All five of them arrived at my tiny one-bedroom ramshackle bungalow of exile in their astral forms.

Though I hadn’t been able to see anyone—except Savage—as shadows, they’d all seenmeand my mating mark. All five will recognise me on sight now.

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