Page 156 of Her Rabid Beasts

I want to tell her to get away from him. To run, to hide, to fucking just stop touching that monster. But she won’t. She loves him. She’s his regina. She won’t ever let him go.

“Stupid snake girl,”Xander says coolly in my head.“Youreallyfucked up.”

I take a step forward to run to Minnie, but Scythe’s harsh voice cuts through the racing panic in my brain.“Let it go, Aurelia. You’ve done enough.”

It’s only that last sentence that stops me in my tracks as Titus pushes Minnie back so hard she cries out.

Blood pours down her forearm from a long, thin laceration.

The tiger claw that is now Titus’ right hand is tinged red with blood. “It’s not enough,” he snarls. “It never fucking was.”

Chapter 64

Scythe

Blood spills, streaming down Minnie’s arm. My shark stills in fascination at the sight of the crimson droplets as the little tigress stares in horror and disbelief.

And then Titus says the Old Words, snarling and hateful. “I officially reject you as my regina, Minnie Devi.”

In my mad, sorry life, I have never seen a person shatter as Minnie does now. Her aura fractures in the same way bone does; it bleeds the same way a mortal laceration does.

Her face crumples at the same time as her knees.

This is a soul wound and it will live with her forever.

Aurelia cries out as Minnie collapses to the wooden floor, her body limp, her skin suddenly ashen. I take a step forward, but the one of the two ghosts beside me jumps up and down.

“Unholy,”he hisses excitedly.“A black blade makes a black wound.”He looks at me and points at Minnie.“End her pain. End her. Mercy.”

The second ghost just stares at me like he always does. That malevolent smile fixed on his ugly face.

I tear my gaze off him like I have every day since he appeared.

The limp tigress emits no physical cry, but the timbre of grief shatters through the astral plane, sharp as a knife, black asdeath. It makes me shiver. Pure shock sweeps through the crowd in hues of black, grey, and dull red.

I have seen and done many a dark thing in my life, but I’ve never witnessed the official ritual of rejection. It’s a heinous act for our kind, worse than murder. Murder ispreferredover this. We all turn towards Titus, who stands defiantly, with his chin in the air and his hands loose, as if he’s completed some grand act. Something worthy of admiration.

Only a true psychopath would be so unaffected by an official rejection of his soul-group.

The shark in me levels him a new look. It marks him for his lack of emotion, marks him for the potential threat he poses to our family.

As Minnie was his regina, it was his right to reject her. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t slit his throat over it.

Minnie’s friends hurry to surround her, but she doesn’t move from her face down position. Theresa pushes through the crowd to kneel beside them and shake Minnie’s shoulder. But the tigress is completely unresponsive. She could’ve been dead if I couldn’t hear her heartbeat. A heart that will never beat quite the same.

Aurelia tries to turn her over, but Minnie is a dead weight.

“We have to get her out of here,” she says to her friends, but they’re all awkward hands and limbs.

Ernie, one of my own guards, steps forward, but I hold up a hand. “She shouldn’t be touched by an animus. Not now.” I gesture to Connor, likely the physically strongest of her friends. “Lion anima. Take your friend back to her room. Keep her warm.”

Connor nods and puts his arms under Minnie’s body. But I’m not watching him. I’m watching the Siberian tiger across from me, where he stands at the edge of the crowd, as pale as his whitehair. Like a spectre. As if he’s also left his body and staring at Minnie as if he’s seen heaven and hell all at the same time.

“Everyone out!” I bark.

Everyone jumps out of their shocked stupor rushes to leave the rec room, as if they can’t get away fast enough from the dark deed that was done here. The guards and counsellors herd them all along. Titus also leaves and doesn’t so much as cast a glance back at his old regina. Eventually, only a few of our own remain, solemn and quiet.

But still, Yeti stands unmoving, his eyes unseeing his hand limp. It confirms everything for me. No doubt it’s an agony worse than death to see your regina broken by a bond cutting. Let alone realising she’s your regina at the same moment.

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