Page 89 of Her Rabid Beasts

My hand tingles from the contact and I pause for a breath before leaning down to sniff the delicate, smooth olive skin of her cheek. Her scent is like a sweet flower, but more heady than floral. It calms the lethal beast behind that door and makes him settle down to rumble a soft purr. Perhaps if I scent her for a bit longer, I will calm enough to return to my normal self. I lower my face to hers, brushing my nose against the line of her jaw. So soft. So beautiful.

What the fuck am I doing?

Aurelia murmurs in her sleep and the sound is like a siren song that holds me in its grasp. I have no choice but to lay my head back down and hold her tight, inhaling her scent and remembering that one fateful night when I first laid my eyes upon her and then just a few days later when she ran from me in the daylight.

More than one part of me stiffens.

I’d killed for her. After years of abstaining from murder, keeping my promise, on pure instinct, at the sight of her being chased by someone other than me, I killed. Five serpent souls returned to the Wild Goddess because my animus is a rabid fucking beast triggered by her.

It’s the blood. It has to be the sight of her spilled blood pushing me to behave this way. Through a feat of sheer willpower, I remove my nose from her jaw. In one movement, I roll away from her, leap off the bed and stride into my bathroom.

When I return, Aurelia doesn’t wake under the friction of the wet washcloth and the primal bastard in me is purring low and hard, satisfied to be cleaning our regina. He loves that we’re touching her, caressing her in the gentle way she deserves.

It’s just hygiene, like we keep teaching the students. A part of the syllabus. It’s the first rule of the academy. The students must keep clean.

I’m covering her back up when the video call comes through and it’s Ruben, his face sombre. “Boss, take a look at this.”

He switches to the outward facing camera and what I see turns my vision red.

“It smells like dragon,” Ruben says, as if I can’t see the three steaming mounds of ash, a few stray red flames licking upwards. I hang up on him before I can throw my phone through the wall.

I’m so riled up I can’t bear to use the new telepathic connection we have. I dial Scythe and he picks up on the second ring. He should be back by now.

“Put me on the phone to Xander right now or by the Wild God, you’re all fucking dead.”

Chapter 37

Aurelia

When I wake, it’s in a large, luxurious bed with silken sheets that aredefinitelynot mine. None of this is mine.

My eyes snap open to see black. Black sheets on a king bed and a lion who sits in an armchair close to his bedroom door and as far away from me as possible.

“What?” I ask myself.

Lyle sighs and it’s a strained, self-punishing sound.

“I brought you here,” he admits, not looking at me and gripping his armrests hard enough to turn his knuckles white. It has the feel of a man seeking contrition. “I slept next to you for a time. I… held you.” Suddenly, he stands, like he’s furious, staring hard at the wall like he’s thinking hateful thoughts. “I don’t know what madness possessed me.”

My eye catches on the fluidity of that motion, how he moves through the world like his body is not strong, rigid muscle, but silk.

“We both know what possessed you,” I say softly, my own hand tightening on the soft material that encloses me. “The same thing that possessed me to come in here the other day.”

Me, on the other hand? I don’t regret my actions at all. I let the knowledge of that sit there in the gaping void between us.

“I knew Christine was up to something.” He runs his hand through his hair, uncharacteristically loose, staring at his bedroom door like it’s his worst enemy. I’ve never seen him like this. Not when he casually murdered my father’s retrieval serpents before I got here. Not in the many times I’ve seen him furious and irritated by me. Never have I seen him at a loss for words. Never have I seen him… lost.

Something else is out of place, and I look down to find myself covered in one of his shirts. My dress is on underneath, so he thankfully didn’t remove it and see my wounds, but I smell of masculine body wash and the skin of my face, neck and chest is soft and clean, like?—

“Did you…” I whisper in shock. “Did you…”

He nods stiffly. “Bathe you? Yes.”

A tingle shoots up my legs. “Why?” I whisper, clutching his shirt to my chest and wondering if it would be inappropriate to sniff it.

And then I remember that Ilickedthis man’s hand.

“You were covered in blood,” he replies. “Your own. And it wasn’t helping… things.”

---