Page 158 of Her Rabid Beasts

Lyle meets us on the way to our dorm, a serious, calculating expression on that angelic face.

“What—” He sees Minnie and his face softens.

We all begin to talk at once.

“I saw what happened,” he says stiffly, cutting us off and putting out his arms. “Let me?—”

“No!” all four of us bark at the same time.

“Use your telekinesis,” Lyle says gently, bending down to look at Minnie’s face. “It’ll be gentler on her.”

The four of us get our shit together and Sabrina, Stacey, Connor and I use our collective telekinesis to hover Minnie so we can gently manoeuvre her towards the dorm. Lyle follows us ata prowl, all the way up to our room where we put Minnie on her bed.

“Keep her warm,” Lyle says from the door.

We don’t say that Scythe has already told us that.

“Will she be okay?” asks Stacey, wringing her hands as I climb into Minnie’s bed and pull her to my chest. Raquel kicks off their shoes and sits at the foot of the bed, pulling up the covers around us.

“She’s shivering!” I exclaim, watching as my best friend curls into the fetal position against my body, trembling like she’s freezing.

Theresa places a hand on Minnie’s head like she’s checking her temperature. “I’ve never seen this happen before.”

Sabrina goes to the panel on the wall to turn up the heat of the room.

“That won’t help,” Lyle says softly. “Whether she wants to recover is up to her now.” And with a gentleness that makes my heart weak, Lyle steps up to Minnie’s altar and strikes up a match. He lights a candle and burns an incense stick, placing it in its crescent moon holder.

“Oh Goddess,” Stacey cries, her voice thick. “Why didn’t she ever tell us about being his regina?”

“I don’t blame her at all,” I say, my voice dead and empty. “Have you met the guy? I would’ve done?—”

But I did the exact same thing. Am currentlydoingthe exact same thing. Stacey goggles her wet eyes at me, nodding. “Yeah, I get it.”

Lyle turns to look at me, desperately clinging onto Minnie’s tiny shaking form. His amber eyes glow with something as they take me in and I wonder if he’s ever considered it. If any of them have ever actually considered formally rejecting me.

Even though they tried to hand me over to my father with every intention to kill me, they’ve never struck me like Titusstruck Minnie and made her bleed. Have never bitten me to cause damage. Nor have they humiliated me in public. They’ve been villains with… standards.

Then, to my surprise, the deputy headmaster comes up to where I lie on the bed. Theresa moves to the side.

Minnie unconsciously stiffens at the presence of another animus and I hold my breath. But Lyle only brushes a tender knuckle over my cheek, and his voice is a low rasp, almost as if he’s talking to himself. “Keep her safe. Remind her what she needs to live for.”

I turn back to my best friend, babbling and blubbering into her hair and hoping she can hear me. “You matter, Minnie. You matter to me and you matter to all of us. I even think you matter to Savage. He has a soft spot for you, did you know? It might have been the fairy bread incident, or maybe it was because of that time you tackled him to the ground to save me.” Raquel and Connor laugh softly through their tears.

I clutch my friend tighter to my chest and pray.

Chapter 66

Lyle

Ten years ago

It’s fitting that my mating mark arrived from the heavens bathed in blood, burning through it as if uninhibited and unrestrained despite the darkness around it.

I’m crawling through the red, dusty soil on my hands and knees, like an animal through the gathering death, when I see something glimmering. It’s in a pool of blood, deep enough that it hasn’t yet clotted or dried in the harsh heat of the outback. I drag myself to it and stare. Because there is the reflection not of some foreign thing, but my own self. Upon my own human flesh, freshly forged in the stars and now branded on new skin is a skull, wreathed in five beams of light.

“I am not alone,” I whisper in wonder.

When a man has nothing left, he might become an animal. Teeth and claw, hate and fear. But he also might become something else. Something that yearns for a vision of more than just himself. I do not believe in a god anymore. But in that sacred symbol, I find belief in my regina. My own blue fairy. Because she’s there, as real as the dawn on my skin and etched into my soul. Her heart beats alongside my own.

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