Page 182 of Her Rabid Beasts

He purrs and I continue, tracing my finger along the lines of his glowing mating mark. “I want to kiss you. I want you to hold me and tell me it’s going to be okay. I want you to tell me to put more clothes on and to wash my hair.”

Lyle nuzzles my neck with his face, long whiskers brushing against me.

“I killed for you,”I say into his head.“For you alone.”

He closes his eyes and I feel something in him moving. Shifting.

“And I would do it again,”I say into his head, only for him to hear.“You, my mate, will never fight alone again. You will neverbealone again.”

And then Savage, Xander and Scythe are there, crowding us in, nuzzling against Lyle’s massive mane, and talking silently to him in their own private conversations.

Something in me shifts too. The backs of my eyes burn. Four scents surround me in a torrent of emotion, of desire, of… potential. There are so many things those scents could mean to me.

Lyle’s animus chuffs in contentment.

And shifts.

Chapter 78

Lyle

You will never fight alone.

She acknowledged us.

She killed for us. One mortal enemy who deserved to die in the brutal way she dealt him.

She did it formealone. Risked her life forme.

And that eternal ache in my bones, sharp as canines and heavy as a cattle prod to the sternum, finally,finally eases.

For the first time since he came into full power, my animus takes a slow, measured breath and sighs.

Each breath our regina, our pack, takes is the same. It’s still torture to look upon her beauty, only now it’s sweet and crisp, like the sensation of her nails dragging down my back.

It’s not a gentle union with our regina that my animus wants. But a brutal, possessive force that will stake our claim over her forever. For all of eternity.

The desire to fuck her, to come in her, to feel her power twining around mine becomes unbearable.

My animus slips back behind the door I made so long ago with the help of the Lady Phoenix. He doesn’t allow me to close it, not anymore, but I sense I don’t need to. While Aurelia is here, I don’t need the chains. While our regina is here, we can befree. My human side takes back our body and fur becomes skin, mane becomes hair.

We are both already naked. Perfect.

“Lyle?” she asks softly. The hope in her voice and sapphire eyes makes my cock twitch and my heart turn golden.

I can’t waste any more time. I lunge for her, grabbing her around the waist and taking her to the rough ground, protecting her soft skin with my arms.

She fights me and the scramble of her delectable skin on mine ignites me further.

“I need you on your back,” I growl, my animus speaking through me, with me. “Submitting to me. To my cock.”

“Lyle,” she moans, understanding what we need from her. Her sweet sound of assent tells me everything I need to know.

I thrust into her in one powerful stroke.

We cry out together. As we always will from now on. I know it because I will make sure of it.

My claiming is vigorous and thorough, nothing more than a beast rutting into his mate, a lion king claiming his lion queen, strong and hard, her wetness flooding us both, making her entire centre slick.

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