Page 103 of Her Rabid Beasts

A large part ofmealso wants to claim her. To compete with the brothers who’ve already claimed her, to fuck their cum out of her and drench her cunt, her womb with my seed instead.

The whiskey glass in my hand shatters.

I don’t actually want that, but neither did Lyle and the bastard lion gave in. It’s natural for pack mates as dominant as we are to compete against one another. And if she grows more confident, how long do we all have before we’re under her thumb? I’ve been right to stay away. And I was right to send her back to her dad when we thought it was for her execution.

“I love her,” Savage says quietly.

Xander splutters around his whiskey. “You keep saying that! Again and again, but you don’t even know what it means. It’s just her manipulation. It’s just your fucking hormones?—”

But Savage is shaking his head back and forth, with a sure smile on his face as if he won’t be swayed. “No, I do. You don’t know her like I do. She’s sweet, and kind, and even innocent in many ways.” Xander scoffs in disbelief. “And when I found out that she’d been taken, I?—”

I can barely breathe as my brother’s eyes glisten in a way I haven’t seen since we were children. Since the night I killed our father and his mother?—

“You’d think I would have been in a rage,” Savage continues. “But it wasn’t the first thing I felt. The first thing I felt was”—he gulps—“fear. That she’d been hurt, or wounded, or scared.”

Xander smashes his whiskey glass on the ground, almost as if to try and shock Savage out of his stupidity.

“See!” the dragon cries, pointing a finger at Savage. Heat rolls off our dragon-brother in a wave of harsh anger. “This is exactly what we were avoiding. This is exactly what’s going to happen.Sav, you need to snap out of her spell. She’s going to control you with her pussy and then we’re all fucked. You need to control your fucking wolf’s cock!”

But my brother, the most unhinged and out-of-control member of my entire organisation, shakes his head as if he pities Xander. “I don’t feel it here.” He points to his dick. “I feel it here.” He moves his finger up to his chest. His heart.

Xander snarls and turns his head back on him, crosses his arms, and stares out the window into the gathering night.

The shark at the base of me thrashes around, protesting, raging and refusing to grieve for a lost cause. I knew Savage might succumb, but I didn’t think it would be this quick. My little brother is not the type of wolf who can be swayed from his urges. I’ve tried my best over the years—not to tame him, but to re-direct him.

But there is nothing to re-direct him to.

There is noequivalentto his regina.

“I won’t let them take her, Scythe,” Savage says, unblinking eyes boring into me. “You know I’ll tear apart every court one by one if they take her away for…breeding.”

We all know it. We would have a rabid wolf on our hands, who wouldn’t care for the consequences of any amount of slaughter. It would be a massacre.

But it is that one triggering word that sets off a dangerous, psychotic bloodlust in me.Breeding.

I refuse to let her be bred by anyone but me or one of her mates. Onlywehave that fucking right. In this life, in any lifetime.

Even the thought ofothersmakes me want to drag Aurelia back here and chain her to my bed and covet her.

Seeing Mace Naga’s smug face today at the council meeting sent my shark on high alert. I gave my vote to extend the phoenix court’s injunction, but I had to go for a swim in the undergroundpool afterwards just to calm myself down. I didn’t think I’d been so affected until she turned up here.

With that stunning, ferocious face and wild power that plucked an ancient thread right in my marrow. She awoke something in me today. Something dangerous, potentially disastrous, but true.

I value many things in my life. The truth, most of all.

Suddenly, my fingers crave the feel of her. Suddenly, my retinas crave the sight of her. I crave the sound of heartbeat, her breath. I need to know what she’d look like being fucked on a beach amongst crashing waves or in the water itself. By my cock. By my…

“Brother…” Savage’s voice is almost drowned out by my thoughts, but there is caution in his tone.

Caution?

I come back to reality.

“Uh-oh.” Savage grins at me with all his teeth, his eyes flicking down to my bleeding hand and the glass shattered all over my lap. Xander turns, staring at me, though there is disappointment in his glowing orbs.

“Don’t say it,” I say, my voice low and dangerous. “Don’t fucking start.”

Savage holds his hands up in a way he knows will placate the Great White.

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