Page 110 of Her Rabid Beasts

“Of course I said no,” she said. “But then I think that really pissed him off because he texted me?—”

“You’ve been texting him?” I say, grabbing her arm. With the phone I had Savage get her.

She turns her face up to mine and nods like she’s guilty. “Titus saw that phone you gave me and I’ve been texting him. He has a laptop he uses for messages that the school gave him.”

Guilt is poison in my stomach. “Okay, and?”

“Oh, Minnie, no!” Stacey suddenly covers her mouth in horror.

“Yeah, Stace. I’m a complete idiot.”

Connor slaps his own forehead.

“What am I missing?” I look between the felines.

Sabrina gives me a droll look. “What Minnie is too polite to say is that she’s beensextingwith Titus.”

“Nudes,” Stacey adds.

“You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to send that tiger nudes,” Sabrina says snidely.

“I trusted him!” Minnie’s voice is high-pitched with strain. “I should have been able to trust him! My—” She cuts herself off and wipes angrily at her cheeks.

“He’s going to share them, isn’t he?” Connor deadpans, going ashen.

I stare at my friend, horrified.

Minnie shakes her head. “Notyet.But he’s going to, if I don’t do what he asks.”

“That shit-eating vermin,” Sabrina swears. “What does he want?”

Our friend wrings her hands while Gertie chirps softly in her ear. The other nimpins cluck in awareness of the high emotions.

“Minnie,” I say gently, “I think it’s time you told us how you got in here. It’s because of Titus, isn’t it?”

She nods and takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Alright. Well, it all started at my first university ball. He came with another girl and brought some of his friends. He caught my eye and I suppose I caught his. My parents were really strict and didn’t let me do anything outside of uni, so when he came along with his fancy car, and was super nice to me, I thought my white knight had come.”

“Yeah,” Sabrina says darkly. “We get that all too well.”

It was the same with me and Theo Krait. He came along at the right place, at the right time, and Ifellinto him. Except Minnie hadn’t been responsible for Titus’ death.

“So when he asked me to ‘transport some money’”—Minnie makes air quotes—“I really wanted to help, you know? I wanted to be useful, not just go to university and study boring banking and finance. I wanted to do something thatmattered. And I really wanted to show him I was dedicated to him and aresponsible… adult. So I got the money he gave me and drove it across the border, but I got stopped by police on the way, and, well…” Minnie’s cheeks go red. “The bag was full of counterfeit money.”

Sabrina groans into the air, while Raquel and Stacey shake their heads with dismay. I just feel sick to my stomach.

“Since it put my dad’s banking job at risk,” Minnie says, “he had to pay the council to keep this quiet. They just said as long as I enrolled at Animus Academy, I would have all the charges dropped.”

“That scumbag,” Connor sighs. “Why are the hot ones always evil?”

“Yeah, that’s why no one can know about it. And look, I know how it sounds, but Titus felt really bad afterward, and look at the state he was in when he got here! He was rabid and had to have rehab and everything. It really affected him, you know? There was a misunderstanding with the bags. He didn’t intend for that to happen.”

Alarm bells are going off in my head. I can’t reconcile my intelligent, book-loving friend with this girl who has fallen head over heels for someone who’s manipulating her. But Titus has an allure. A huge seductive draw to all the animas, so much so that even the serpents are fucking him, and they rarely step outside their order. The whole thing screams that something is off about this.

“So what does he want you to do now?” I ask.

“He wants to set up a meeting with my dad,” she admits. “Talk about finance or something. But I can’t have him and my dad in the same roomat all. He might want to blackmail him too! I need to protect my dad from this. He’s so embarrassed about me already.”

“So if you don’t?” I dread the answer. “What will he do?”

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