Page 3 of Her Rabid Beasts

Boneweaver female. Twenty years old. Unbred. Unmated. Offers over ten million.

My scream is a shrill cry. Power from the depths of me doesn’t explode through the night.

Itimplodes.

The primordial darkness long kept dormant, claws its way up my throat, pincers digging into my spine, fangs piercing my sternum, claws ripping through my consciousness.

The human woman is shoved deep into the recesses of my body and placed in a new cage. A cage of necessity and safety.

Too long have we lain trapped within bars of fear. Too long have our roars of protest gone unheard.

But no longer.

I tear forth. The primal female that shares Aurelia’s soul. The one they call a Boneweaver.

Through the dark, my primitive instinct turns my beak with purpose. My heart yearns to soar into the wide-open sky beyond, but it is covered in a crackling dome of pure heat that will cook my flesh. Instead, I’m led to swooping for a familiar building. Black and gold and… glass.

A window has been left open, and it feels purposeful. Friends are in there.

My sister-pack.

Propelling myself forward with powerful sweeps, I spear towards the open window. At the last minute, I tuck my wings in and lower my beak, nothing but a spear made of feathers and talons entering my old den.

Surprised female yelps are sharp in my ears, but I ignore them, knowing my mark is close at hand. I sweep through the room and turn a sharp right down the corridor. Human feet pound in my wake, the voices striking core memories like a song only I know how to sing. But it’s not only the members of my sister-pack in pursuit of me. Tiny squeaking balls of fluff zoom through the air like giant bees.

This is good. They need to come with me so I can build a nest and keep them warm and safe.

Warm. And. Safe. This is the ultimate goal. This is the thing upon which all life depends.

Venomous fingers brush the sides of my protections and I sink deeper yet into the primal beast at my core. My power expands out. Further out. And further still.

Only when my protection is all-encompassing do those green-tipped fingers recede.

Safe. Keep them all safe.

My wings almost brush the sides of the corridor, but I only have a few sweeps before I reach my mark: a wall made of something that looks like open sky, covered in magic that I recognise with my bones. Safe. Secure. Good for nesting.

My heart expands with joy and I pummel beak-first through it. I go straight through like I knew I would, but… I stop short, rearing up and back-flapping to slow down.

There is darkness and a smell like ancient and hidden things. A fizzing sound erupts on either side of me, and I drop to the stone below just in time for twin flames to flare up. I squint at one, and then the other, warmth and light sputtering to life.

I am being welcomed.

My human-shaped pack of animas stumble through the dragon-door, making sounds of surprise and shock through their flat beaks. I can barely register the noises they are making but decipher their general meaning well enough.

“Holy m-moon mother,” my wolf-anim mutters.

“Shit,” my leopard says.

“What in the Phantom of the Opera is this?!” my tigress shrieks.

“This is a dragon-trick door?” my fair-lioness huffs. “When Lia told us about it, I imagined something less…”

My dark-lioness sneezes. “Creepy?”

“Well, we didn’t have all that much time to put the plan together this afternoon,” my tigress says haughtily. “This is insanely cool though.”

Impatiently, I let out a cry that makes them all violently flinch. The sound echoes all the way down the stone stairs, making me peer into the gloom. But I cannot continue to my place of nesting with these wings.

---