Page 82 of Her Rabid Beasts

“Who said anything about questioning?” Yuran regards the knife, holding it up as if he’s checking it for his sharpness. “This is a message.”

My stomach plummets into my nether regions. “Really,” I deadpan. “And what does daddy dearest want to tell me?”

Yuran lunges, grabbing my chin with iron fingers and angling his knife at the right side of my neck.

My mating mark side.

And I’m really not ready for the flash of hot pain that sears across my skin.

I scream and he lets me go immediately. Warm liquid trickles down my neck as I stare at them all in shock.

All five serpents are sniggering at me, like it gives them pleasure to see me bleed.

Yuran takes out a bleached white cloth and casually cleans his blade. “Honour your sentence. Surrender yourself to the King.”

His words hang in the air like a guillotine.

“Or?” I grit out, blinking away the burning in my eyes.

“Hold her head,” Yuran whispers.

Primal terror grips me, but I refuse to beg or plead or ask questions. Annoyingly, tears leak from my eyes, blood slides down my collarbone, and my skinburns.

But my efforts at self-restraint only seem to egg them on. Natalia strides behind me with nothing but her best customer service smile and grips my head in both hands, wrenching it to the side to present the bleeding skin to Yuran once more.

“If we cut off the mark completely,” says Thaddis, excitedly looking on, “will it grow back?”

“Yes. But it will hurt,” Yuran murmurs, back at my feet, selecting another tool. It makes me shiver at the confidence in his voice. He’s done this before. Or seen it. I know my father tortures beasts, butthis?

Natalia is shutting my jaw with her hand on my chin, but I manage to grit out, “My father really told you to do this?”

The cobra is in my face, and upside down she looks like a monster. “Yeah, His Majesty did. And what he wants, he gets.”

“Eagle,” Yuran says, standing before me. “Surrender yourself to the King Cobra in two Saturdays’ time, or he will take your mates down, one by one. He knows exactly who they are.”

“I’d like to see him try,” I spit.

“He said you’d say that,” Yuran nods. “So he also said, we’ll take yourfriendsdown, one by one. He also knows whotheyare. The little pink-haired tiger. That slutty leopard. That nerd lioness and the wolf anim.”

Dread forms a living snake around my ribs. I can’t believe this is happening.

“Don’t forget Connor,” Thaddis offers. “He’ll be the easiest to get since he lives in our dorm.”

Yuran stares down at me, black eyes wide and fixed at my bleeding neck like he’s getting off at the sight of it. He’s creepy as hell and I half expect the guy to adjust himself at any second.

Suddenly, pain erupts across my abdomen as old, necrotic wounds burst open anew.

For the second time, a scream rips from my throat before I clamp my mouth closed.

I squeeze my eyes shut and suppress a whimper as violent fangs slowly scrape across my stomach, tearing skin, searing muscle, infiltrating with venom. It feels like he’s really here,gouging deep wounds with his massive king cobra fangs. A laugh resounds in my head, low and macabre.

They’ve coordinated this attack.

Sweat drips down my spine, my brain seizes at the sheer blinding pain. I want to faint, I want it to stop, I need it to stop.

I’m completely powerless here. My muscles strain, wanting to shift, wanting fangs to descend, wanting claws to tear and wings to sprout. But I can’t and instead I’m splayed on a psychic torture table, unbearably open for my father’s full use of my body.

Natalia laughs and it’s the ugliest sound I’ve ever heard. “His Majesty is getting her, isn’t he?”

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