Page 74 of Her Feral Beasts

Does any of it help me? Do I find comradery with the women involved? Not really. I’ve not actually murdered anyone. I can’t find anything remotely similar to my situation and plan on telling Lyle as such.

Friday night means I have my first shift at the medical wing. I bid the girls and Henry goodbye at dinner and have the guards escort me to my shift. Because of the potentially volatile beasts who come into emergency environments like the medical wing, nimpins aren’t allowed. Henry, on Minnie’s shoulder, gives me a sorrowful look as I leave. If he had lips, I’m sure he’d be pouting.

The plus side is that the lovely charge nurse Hope has volunteered to be my buddy nurse and show me around.

She makes extra sure to tell me that the glass sliding doors we came through on enrolment day are barred and locked shut with fingerprint ID. I nod sombrely, like I’ve never thought about escaping that way, but more than once I catch myself looking longingly out into the carport through the bars.

It’s all going well as I restock the bandage cupboard until a commotion through the academy side-receiving bay makes me snap my head around.

A voice is mentally projecting through the entire room and I lurch towards it on pure reflex.

“Lia!”Savage shouts into every head in the vicinity.“Where is Lia?”

Four bloody lions are hauled through the door, all unconscious, followed by another massive beast I recognise instantly. All I can see of Savage is black fur made darker than ink, because it’s wet and splattered with blood.

Cold fear shoots right into my throat as Hope and several other nurses turn to give me raised brows. I force myself to shrug casually and shake my head, trying to make it look like he’s crazy and I have no idea why he’s calling for me. The fact that Savage can blast his voice into the entire room without any trouble is alarming.

Hope is astute, giving me a side eye, and I know she’s wondering what relationship we have. The idiot is giving us away and Idon’tappreciate that. Though it kills me to see his blood spilled and my anima roars with outrage, I take every last reserve of discipline and turn my back on him, busying myself with tidying up a messy bundle of wound dressings. The two security bears haul his wolf body onto one of the wide veterinary tables while his victims are taken to the other side of the wing, far away from him, as is protocol.

“Calm down, Mr Fengari,” says one of the veterinarians as Savage thrashes on the table.

“Don’t fucking touch me!”Savage projects again.“I want Lia!”

I’m blasting expletives in my own brain when I see them getting a dart gun ready. Hope jerks her head at me to get over there.

I stride over to Savage, lying on his side, whining low in his chest as everyone except the two bears give him a wide berth. These bears are under their employment, from memory, because they’ve been all around the school and were at the loading dock that day of my escape attempt.

“I’m here, Savage,” I sigh. He goes still and turns his big wolf head to look at me. “Where is it hurting? There’s a lot of blood.”

“You should see the other guy.”His voice is an annoyed grumble and he licks his chops.

I want to say that he deserves to be injured because of what he did to that snake in their dorm, the guards outside the anima dorm, and likely countless other beasts, but my need to heal him is overriding everything. After steeling myself, I say begrudgingly, “Honestly it’ll be easier if you turn into your human form. But it’ll—” With a groan he changes, his joints audibly popping. “Hurt.”

Before me is a naked Savage, who promptly flops onto his back, giving us all an uninhibited eyeful of the entire length of his spectacular, tattooed naked body. Completely out of my control, my gaze flicks down to his cock before hastily shooting back up to his eyes. He’s looking at me half-lidded, covered in sweat and blood, but there’s a lazy smirk on his lips as if he knows how massive his manhood is.

Someone clears their throat behind me before a blanket is thrown over him. It’s only when the dart gun is put away that I take a breath and take a look at his arm, which looks like someone has tried to take a bite out of his bicep.

He points to his arm as if I can’t already see that’s his only injury and I roll my eyes as Hope wheels over a dressing table with equipment on it.

But then he says, “Bray-kee-al artery.”

I realise that he’s saying brachial artery. How the hell does he know that?

“Are you alright to do this?” Hope says, watching me carefully. “I can take over—”

“No one will take over,” Savage growls. The violence in his voice has me glaring at him.

“Behave yourself, Savage,” I snarl. “Don’t youdarethink I’ve forgotten what you did.” I look at Hope. “I’ll do it. I’ll just pretend he’s someone else.”

She gives me a smile. “Very professional, Lia.” She gives Savage a look of warning before locking the wheels on the dressing table. “Looks like we’re putting you to healing sooner than I thought.”

I give her a small smile, slipping on the sterile gloves and seeing what equipment she’s given me.

There’s definitely a nicked brachial artery, so I don’t waste time. Slapping on a wad of gauze to the wound, I press down to staunch the flow and close my eyes to start the healing.

I can feel Savage’s eyes on me as I work. I can feel him breathing, the movement of his muscled chest, the way the wolf inked there is hot and shiny with his exertion. My body is so attuned to his that the rest of the room fades away as I stand there, enraptured by his heavy presence. Does he feel me in that same way? Is he wondering about what he saw last week? Is he thinking about how our bodies were roughly pressed together when our lips met?

As I knit the fibres of his muscle back together, my anima flutters in contentment, fluffing its feathers and preening itself, extremely happy at being watched by our mate and even more happy that we’re healing him.

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