Page 14 of Her Feral Beasts

They’ll soon learn they’re not wrong, but I’m not interested in them. I want to know who’s already in there and if they can throw a decent nose-shattering punch. My body is coiled tight, just waiting for a chance to vent my rage. I want blood on my hands and this is as good a place as any to get it.

Satisfied this prison-school might not be as bad as I initially thought, I settle back on my gurney, getting comfortable until they release us.

The animalia inside are veterinarians as well as medical doctors, and two academy guards wheel us through within minutes. Mostly because I think we’re scaring the parents.

We go past two sets of steel doors which are locked behind us before they take Xander and me into cubicles separated by curtains where there are more armed guards. I know immediately there’s no point trying to escape. Scythe can probably get out, but if Aurelia is here, I can’t leave until I kidnap her to return her to where she rightfully belongs.

Reuben takes my spit hood off and wheels me against the wall where there are height measurement lines for my celebrity photo. A guard holds a piece of printed paper just under my chin and I think it says my name and inmate ID.

“Say cheese,” gruffs Reuben, holding up a large black camera.

“Suck my cock!” I cheer, sticking my tongue out to the side and winking as the flash goes off.

He shakes his head, passes the camera to a guard, and proceeds to unloop my many obsidian chains. It takes a while and five guards have their weapons pointed at me the entire time. They leave me in plain metal handcuffs and footcuffs that bring back all sorts of memories that make me warm and fuzzy.

“Wrangler, I want Eugene back,” I say, cracking my neck.

“What is he? Your emotional support rooster?” Reuben is serious as he says it, but his grey eyes are glittering over his full beard as he towers over me and everyone else in the room. It’s why they used him to referee my matches when I was a teenager.

“Something like that.” I roll my shoulders and try not to laugh at the fully covered guards. They have their faces covered with a black gaiter like they do in real prison. “Kind of like Xander’s headphones,” I lie. “If I don’t have him, I go berserk and start a killing rampage. You know what I mean?”

To my surprise, he nods and I sense him transmitting a mental message to another wolf on his team. Within seconds, I hear a questioning squawk.

“I’m here, Eugene!”

He appears in the arms of a she-wolf with his feathers all ruffled and I snatch him from her.

“You behave for the nice doctor, pup,” Reuben warns, “and you can keep your rooster. If not, he goes on a spit for me and my boys.”

I’d like to see you fucking try.But I ignore him as the nurse enters, and he steps sideways to guard her.

She’s a tiny female with a black bob—an eagle, by her scent—and holds a clipboard that she checks carefully. Since eagles are the order with healing powers, a lot of them become doctors and nurses. I wonder if that’s what Aurelia wants, seeing as she is an eagle, too. She’sreallygood at healing and it was the entire reason I’d met her. They’d sent her to heal the beast in the cell next to mine when we’d been held captive by Charles Halfeather. At first I wondered why they’d sent this young anima to do a job, but it soon became clear as I stared at her while she worked.

“Is Savage your real first name, Mr Fengari?” the birdie doc asks slowly. I decide she mustn’t care much for her life if she works in a place like this.

I glance at Reuben. “Yeah, my parents were assholes.”

She nods like she already suspected this and hands me a bright red lanyard with an ID card swinging on it. I take it and examine my picture. Satisfied, I put it around my neck and shake my head because they’d never give us a lanyard in a real prison—they’re too good for strangling with.

“What does it say?” I ask, running my finger down the black writing that loops in a repeating pattern all around the lanyard. I can tell it’s the same sentence and that it starts with a ‘D’.

Birdie is not surprised because illiteracy is common amongst the feral population.

“It says ‘Dangerous, do not approach’.” Ah, a warning for the other students. Cute. “And I hear you’ve been to Blackwater Prison.”

“They’ve been talking about me, have they?” I say with a chuckle.

“Your reputation precedes you, yes.”

I smile wistfully at the memory as I stroke Eugene. “Yes, nurse, I was sent to Blackwater Penitentiary on my sixteenth birthday.”

Her brows shoot up as she stares at me. “They sent you to an adult federal prison atsixteen?”

Leaning forwards, I whisper to her as if it’s a great secret. “It was a life sentence. There was nowhere else to put me.”

Until Scythe planned his little jailbreak, that is.

I chuckle at the horrified expression she tries to hide and the fact that the guards standing behind her go all tense. Reuben hasn’t taken his eyes off me the entire time, but he’s always been the clever sort.

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