Page 18 of Her Rabid Beasts

Those eyes. Those stunning blue eyes, which I’ve previously seen flash in anger, dull with grief or dance with playfulness, are now only embers. Like coals burned down past their main heat.

As if she’s powered her body right down to skeletal functions.

She has hidden her mating mark once again, no doubt a part of the mysterious power lent to her by her Boneweaver ancestry. But that mark has been seared into my mind as if she’d taken a white hot branding iron to me herself. I know it’s there. I know it’s on her skin, same as mine and the memory of it speaks to my animus in a wild roar.

Something more than me compels me to sit right there on the stone floor. And so, I do. I leap out of the boat and sit before her, suit and all. Staring at her golden fur, her long, white whiskers, the very regal pose.

I don’t intend for it, but my voice emerges soft as down. “Some people think being rabid means you’ve lost control. That when beasts are driven to madness, they… regress into a shadow of themselves.” I take a steady breath through my nose. “That’s not the case, Miss Aquinas.” I observe carefully for any reaction to my using her official family name, but I get none. To call her by her first name seems… forbidden. A shiver threatens to course through me and I tamp it down. “I know it to be for what it really is. Protection. Self-preservation. Our beasts protect us in the only way they know how. The most primal way.”

She never blinks. And I withstand the judgement in that glimmering blue gaze.

I don’t think my words register. I see no recognition in the dull consciousness behind her eyes. But just perhaps, somewhere inside of her, human Aurelia is listening. That fierce girl so intent on defying me.

Quite suddenly, I become aware of the rest of the cavern. The chaotic mess of a week’s worth of blankets, pillows, soft toys, and discarded food wrappers. One of the plushies smells new, no doubt a gift from Savage. It’s a small pink wolf with the glass eyes painted blue by hand. Henry the nimpin sits at Aurelia’s front paw, blinking wide, sleepy eyes at me.

And in front of them both is a tray with a teacup and saucer, no doubt taken from the dining hall by her friends. But it’s what I scent inside the teacup that catches my attention. Milo. A chocolatey malt drink I make sure to provide because it’s so popular, especially amongst the younger students before bed.

A memory beckons, distant but… burning.

Deep inside me, chains rattle, followed by a low, steely growl.

The sudden urge to smash that porcelain to pieces almost overwhelms me. Henry squeaks in question, and I’m brought out of my reverie.

“I was just thinking about the Milo,” I say to him. “I knew a girl who used to drink Milo in a set just like that.”

Aurelia blinks at me, and I wonder if she can see, somehow, what I am to her. What I should be to her. I wonder if she’s angry that her mates handed her over to her father. Correction:Triedto hand her over.

No doubt that’s what tipped her over into this state.

Sighing, I think of the sixty-two emails in my inbox that need replying to.

I’m about to get up when Aurelia growls, low and soft, at the base of her throat. I freeze, staring back at her. To my utter surprise, she heaves herself to her feet, pads the five steps between us, turns around and settles down next to me. Her body is soft and warm against the length of my thigh. She lays her head down on my knee.

I’m fixed to the spot. Stumped by this wholly unexpected action.

I swallow at the sight of her resting on me. At the warmth that spreads through not only my leg but every other part of my body. I swallow again. Then clear my throat.

She begins to purr.

While the human might loathe me, clearly, her anima does not.

Henry settles down on her other side, a ball of blue fluff amongst the gold. A strange urge strikes me. Aurelia might not remember any of this. I realise that anything uttered here is unlikely to be repeated. It makes my animus purr beneath his chains. It makes his tongue loose.

Careful not to touch her, I murmur words I never thought I’d utter.

Chapter 8

Lyle

One of my earliest childhood memories is drinking Milo in the evening with my siblings.

There was a human girl, the daughter of the man who owned the illegal wildlife park where I was born. Skye’s mother would give her hot Milo at bedtime, and she’d sneak down to the cub cages and pour half her teacup into our food dish.

We’d all scramble around the dish and lap it up as fast as we could, my four brothers and sisters and me. Skye would giggle and call us “silly little things” and often she’d babble about her day. I don’t think she had anyone else to talk to.

It’s a good memory despite the hellscape that place was.

Ulman’s Wildlife Sanctuary, it was called. They had “all manner of koalas, wombats, Tasmanian devils, and a unique pride of lions who perform amazing feats of intelligence seven days a week between nine and three.”

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