Page 21 of Her Feral Beasts

My stomach sinks at the label we’ve been given and I immediately admonish myself. This is the way it’s got to be. I imagine a scenario where I’ve arrived here, only to be told I have to share a room with those three psychopaths. I’d collapse on the floor right then and there. Share a fucking room? Dear Goddess. No, these girls, at least, don’t look like they’ll kill me in my sleep.

We are housed on the third level and have to trudge up three long flights of stairs to get there. One bonus of my stay here: my thighs are going to be made of steel by the end of the week.

If I stay that long.

“Room assignments!” Theresa says, pointing at the first wooden door. “Yana and Stacey.” The two girls I figure are lionesses get shown how to buzz into their rooms. They wheel their suitcases in and shut the door behind them. Raquel and their friend Sabrina get the room next door, then it’s just Minnie and I.

The tigress squeals and throws her arms around my shoulders. “Roomies!” she shrieks before bolting into the room, her suitcase swinging wildly behind her.

Theresa smiles at me. She seems like a kind bird, and I wonder if I can get any information out of her to help me escape. But my gaze is drawn to something behind her.

Our room is at the end of the corridor, and on the wall, hangs a magnificent oil painting in a gilded frame. It’s a depiction of a dragon, flying high over craggy mountains. There’s a waterfall gushing under him and I just know the view from up there would be spectacular.

“You like that?” Theresa says, pulling me out of my reverie. “It’s left over from the old family that used to live here. It’s stuck on by some dragonic super-glue, we can’t get it down.” She huffs at her own joke.

“It’s beautiful,” I say wistfully.

“We’ll chat in the morning, Aurelia. Get some rest for now and then tomorrow morning, head downstairs with the other animas. Alright?”

I say a quiet “thank you” and head into the room after Minnie, who’s already thrown herself on the bed on the farthest left. Shutting the door behind me, I turn around to simply…stare.

This will be the first time in seven years I’ll be sharing a dwelling with another soul. This room matches the outside of the building. There is white ornate scrollwork not only in the corners of the room, but along the entire ceiling and along the windows. A glance to the right shows me a second bed with a crisp white coverlet and pillowcase. I let out a sigh because sleeping in an actual bed instead of a tree branch sounds like heaven. Past that is a wide wooden door that must lead to our shared bathroom. We each have our own small desk where there sits two paper bags, which I assume holds our dinners. There’s a wardrobe and chest of drawers for each of us, and between our two beds is a set of glass doors that leads to a pretty balcony with cast-iron railings. I swallow, clutching the zip-lock bag that holds my medications.

“Did you eat your wormer?” Minnie asks, unzipping her luggage and beginning the process of carefully unfolding her clothes.

Her question is so casual, but it’s jarring to be asked about my welfare. In our room. Which we’ll be staying in. Together. For the duration of our stay—which is usually three years.

“Not yet,” I say hastily, heading over to my bed and opening up the plastic bag to cover up my awkwardness. I laugh and it’s a little shrill. “I have to use this stupid lice, flea and scabies shampoo as well.”

Minnie opens her wardrobe and stares at the empty space assessingly. “I used LFS a few years ago. It’s so gross, but you don’t want mites in your feathers, do you?” She sighs and begins laying out a purple cloth on one of the shelves in her wardrobe making it into an altar. “Look, this place is a bit plain, but we can spruce it up a bit with things we can get at the student store—”

But I’m not listening because sitting on the floor next to my bed is a familiar battered black duffle bag.

An involuntary sob rips from my throat as I lunge towards it. Thumping it onto the bed, I roughly unzip it. Inside are all the possessions I packed when I run away. My one pair of jeans, the two dresses I own, four blouses, my underwear and a box of tampons. My little box of jewellery and two of my second-hand romance novels. My cash is nowhere to be seen, but in its black case is the diamond choker Charles Halfeather gave to me to wear on the day I was married to him by force. And to my great and terrible surprise, tucked in the corner is Savage’s pink Opal Feather handbag.

The beaten-up duffle is not much, but it’s home to me. The expensive handbag is a whole other issue. Both, I never expected to see again.

As I wipe the tears from my eyes, I realise what’s different. The bag is neatly packed, my clothes folded in sections—definitelynot the way I haphazardly threw everything in there. Something cold trickles through my chest.

Someone has organised my things.

I left all of this in my car at the motel when I escaped Lyle Pardalia for the first time, almost a week ago. The thought ofthat liongoing through my possessions, my underwear, with his huge paws sends me into a feral, embarrassed fervour. I keel over and press my palms to my eyes, trying to claw out the image of the deputy headmaster. Especially the image of him looking unimpressed down at my naked body as I lay in his net on the grass, defeated and pathetic.

The bed depresses next to me and small, gentle arms carefully encircle my shoulders. Bangles chime softly as Minnie presses her warm cheek against my arm.

“It’s alright,” she says in the softest voice I’ve ever heard. “We’ll be okay, Lia. You’ll see.”

I sob even more then. Shoulder-shaking, voice-quaking sobbing worthy of a prime-time movie. And it’s because I haven’t been treated like this since my thirteenth birthday. It breaks something in me a little to think that it took me to come tothisplace, where the worst youth of our kind are sent, for someone to hug me like they mean it.

Chapter10

Aurelia

Minnie’s happy tiger alarm clock goes off at seven in the morning. I rub my bleary eyes open amidst a chorus of “wake up, sleepyhead. You’ll miss the bright day!” in an annoyingly cheerful, digital voice.

Minnie is up and bouncing in her rainbow cupcake PJ’s, rushing towards the bathroom like she’s excited to pee. I take a moment to stare up at the complex scrollwork on the ceiling to steel myself. It looks like whorls of fire encircle the room and I wonder if it’s an omen for how our day is going to go. My body doesn’t feel like it’s been hit by a truck anymore, but I still ache all over and my stomach growls despite the cold chicken sandwich and apple juice I devoured last night.

It had been extremely difficult to go to sleep. In fact, Minnie and I spent the first hour with our noses pressed against our glass balcony doors—which we discovered are locked shut—listening to the noises of the night. I grew up in serpent and lesser order territory, so I wasnotaccustomed to hearing night-time roars and the various calls of feline and canine apex predators. Some, Minnie identified as mating calls, and some were howls and snarls of protest by the feral first year animus’. Guards ran around outside all night, and more than once, shots went off, no doubt darting some escaped troublemakers. I have no idea how people were running about in the night, because our room doors were locked at eleven p.m. sharp.

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