Page 135 of Her Rabid Beasts

I tear my eyes away from the staring ghost and shake my head at the lion. “I want to see her too.”

Lyle shoots up from his desk, pocketing his phone, clearly unable to contain his need to lay his eyes on his regina. I head out his office door behind him.

Outside, it’s dark and quiet, which does nothing for my morbid mood. The automatic lights come on and when we pause before the elevator, Lyle’s posture is strained.

“But when her real heat comes…”

I smile without humour. “Then you better have all the obsidian chains in the school ready for each one of us.”

Chapter 54

Aurelia

Afamiliar beeping resounds in my ears, and then the scent hits me. Hand sanitiser, starched sheets, and under that, ancient forests, the deep earth, and something inherently mine. Obsidian shackles are cold on my ankles, neutralising my power.

I drag my eyes open with all the effort of pulling myself from unconsciousness. The lights are blinding above me and I groan as something cold runs up my left hand. The entirety of both arms throb with heat, but the burn is thickest in my forearms. Something is clutching my right hand.

Someone.

I turn my head to the right to see Savage sitting with one hand clutching mine and the other clutching his head as he stares at the medical wing linoleum between his legs, rocking slowly back and forth. I lift my hand reflexively, only to have a shooting pain fly up my arm. “Argh, that burns like a bitch on a stick,” I groan.

Savage’s head snaps up. His eyes are rimmed red, his cheeks wet.

“Why?” Savage’s voice is a broken, shattered thing. “Why, Lia?”

I try to reach for him, but I realise that both my forearms are in casts. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

“You made me do it,” he whispers back. “Youmademe do it.”

My heart is shattering into a million little pieces at the look of devastation on his face. I want to crawl into his lap and kiss it better. To tell him I’ll never make him do something like that again.

But then his face turns dark with anger. “I told you toneverregina-command me.”

“You did,” I agree faintly. “But you know why I had to make you do it. Better you than someone else.”

He frowns and squeezes my hand as if to reassure himself that I’m okay. It sort of feels like a lobster’s claw. A meaty lobster claw. With tattoos.

A giggle works its way up my throat, brushing past my lips and emerging into the air on manic wings. It sounds like a kookaburra’s call.

Savage’s frown deepens.

“What?” I giggle again. “You thought you were the only one allowed to be a little bit nuts around here?”

The corners of his mouth twitch like he wants to laugh. “Now I know how Scythe feels about me, I suppose.”

“And,” I say prissily, “youtold me I could askanythingfrom you.”

“I said you could ask. I never said anything aboutdoinganything.” He frowns up at the bag of IV medication running through my drip. “What is in that stuff?” he asks himself.

“Um,” I sing with a brilliant vibrato, twisting as far as I can to look up at the bag and flipping my feet side to side like windscreen wipers.

It’s then that I see the second person sitting behind my bed. Brooding in a corner seat with his glowing eyes narrowed on me is my big, scary dragon.

“Hi dragon-man!” I say cheerily. “I’d wave, but, well…” I glance back down at my two immobile arms. I pucker my lips and give him an air kiss. “You don’t look happy to see me. And whatdidthey put in that bag of IV fluid because I feel really, really, good.” I look back up at the bag and squint. “What does it say, dragon-man? My wolf-man can’t read.”

“I’m only here because I want the answer to a single question,” Xander says, leaning forward in his chair. His voice is infinitely low and dangerous.

I stare at him in awe because how does it do that? Look so sexy and scary at the same time? “Well, you can come around here and ask it because my neck hurts from twisting.”

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