Page 143 of Her Rabid Beasts

So instead of telling him the truth, I reach up and run my finger along a strand of his golden hair that’s come across his shoulder as he leans over me. It’s in perfect condition, soft and glowing. “You should let me do your hair,” I say softly.

He braces his arms on either side of my head, his gaze softening as he examines my face. I think he’s going to kiss me. I really want him to kiss me again. But he doesn’t and instead says, “Would you like that?”

I try to blink away the sudden burning in my eyes, try to send away the burning in my weary heart. “I would.”

“Aurelia, I?—”

I feel the beginning of my face crumpling, a weakness gathering behind my sternum. I don’t want to hear what he’s going to say to me.

“Don’t say it—” I breathe, looking at his chin because those eyes are too much. I see the beginning of the end in their deep, powerful amber hue. Like the last rays of sun as it sets. A herald of the darkness to come. “Please. Don’t say it. I have one last night here.” I gesture to the apartment beyond the bathroom. “Let me enjoy it while it lasts.”

He leans down and kisses my forehead then, and I think it might very well kill me because I know his kisses are numbered.

How am I supposed to live the rest of my life, having known this side of him—his gentle tone, his soft touch, those intenseeyes, only to…leave?Before I’d come here, I was going to live as far away as possible, and lead a life blissfully free of my mates. But to go back to that plan now I’d known them?

“I wish I had never met you,” I murmur as something inside me breaks in the saying of it. “I wish I had never come here.”

He blinks at me—in surprise, I think—before a terrible anger flashes across his features and he places a large, dominating hand around my throat. It’s gentle but firm, made to elicit obedience. He snarls softly into my face. His scent wraps around me like wings, heady and overpowering. I breathe him in, desire and fear flooding my consciousness.

And what he says into my mind, his voice guttural and harsh, restraint made into a man, rattles my entire reality.“I did not exist before you.”

He leaves me there, like a glass doll, her pieces sliding down to shatter onto the floor.

Chapter 57

Aurelia

On my final night in Lyle’s apartment, Savage crawls into bed and pulls me onto his chest. It’s the first time we can cuddle properly, now that my arms are healed and free from their casts. He pats my back and strokes my hair as I cry just a little bit, and though I fight sleep, pretty soon I succumb to its comfortable lull.

A little after midnight, Ifeelit.

That darkening of the room, the soft snick of the window latch. I blink open my eyes and stare at the window from Savage’s chest, my heart pounding like in a nightmare as the glass pane swings smoothly open.

A voice, like the darkest things scuttling in the night, slithers into my brain.“Pretty, broken, little snakelet. You didn’t listen to me.”

A heartbeat later, a booted foot steps onto the carpet as my fifth mate saunters into the room. I keep forgetting how big he is—just as tall as Xander and broad through the shoulder. Covered in those moving, pulsing shadows, I can’t see much of him except that raw athleticism. As he walks in, I follow his stride. He doesn’t have the silken grace of an apex predator like Lyle or Scythe or Savage, but the bestial lope of an apexmonster.

He settles himself in Lyle’s armchair, opposite the bed, stretching one leg out and resting an elbow on the armrest. It’s an arrogant pose, and he’s in the perfect position to stare at me lying on Savage’s chest. Those two red points of light are like laser beams through the dark of the room, and I can’t help but shiver to be under their perfect, narrowed focus.

His presence seems to empty the air out of the room—out of the entire building. As if the spirit of the school knows a beast of nightmares has entered the premises and is drawing its breath.

“I don’t follow commands from people I don’t know,”I say into his mind,but my reply does not have the bite I want it to. If anything, it just sounds sad.

His shoulders move up and down in a deep breath.“But I know you quite well.”

“So you’ve been stalking me this whole time?”I accuse, allowing myself to get hypnotised by the pulsing shadows moving up and around his face. They’re like dense storm clouds, only the blackest I’ve ever seen.

“It’s my favourite thing to do.”

I almost snort out loud. And he wasn’t even the one to steal my panties.“Well, I’m flattered.”

Those two red points don’t move, don’t blink. It’s really unnerving, but somehow, I enjoy being under them. We stare at each other in silence for a moment, and though it very much shouldn’t be, something in my heart settles at the fact that all five of my mates are in the same vicinity. Lyle, Scythe and Xander are in the apartment, eating a late second dinner, as I’ve learned they like to do.

“Why won’t you show yourself to me?”I ask.

“Because it would ruin all the fun.”

“I want to see you.”I say it firmly, and for a moment I consider regina-commanding him.

---