Page 86 of Her Rabid Beasts

Confirmation that I look like shite. “Yeah, I got jumped. Where’s the medical centre?”

By the time they rush us to the emergency room, I’m a breath away from crying. My neck hurts and is sticky with blood, my stomach burns like an absolute bitch, and that venom is burning through my entire circulatory system. I heal myself, but with my power being taken up by all my shields, it takes a sweaty, near-fainting toll.

The worst part? No matter how hard I tried to stop the guards, they phone Lyle.

The even worse part? I’mgladthey’ve called him and realise with a sort of numb shock that I’mmissingSavage.

I wish he was here to put his large arm around me. He’d probably make a joke to make me feel better. He’d also probably kill every serpent on sight.

The only good thing is that my favourite nurse Hope is on duty at Emergency. She rushes towards me, her eyes wide as she takes in the guards, me, Henry, and Eugene.

She steers me right inside and sits me down on a bed. Eugene evades the guards and rushes to follow us in.

“I’m not here for me, but for Henry.” I hold him out for her inspection and she frowns before taking the tiny ball of fur and setting him on the rolling table. “Someone did something to him,” I explain, getting to my feet to carefully watch her work. “His heart rate is steady at one hundred and twenty, his breathing is sixty, and there are no signs of fang marks or injury, but I wasn’t sure about needles.”

She gives me a look and glances at my neck and bloody clothes. “Calm down, Aurelia. Take a breath. You look like you’re going to pass out. Did you get into a fight? You’ve lost blood.”

I plonk myself down on the bed again and it makes that sadpoofsound all hospital mattresses do; an echo of how I feel.

My head is spinning and I clutch my hands tightly together to stop them from shaking. Eugene perches himself on the equipment counter, watching over us through his funny brown goggles.Pull your shit together, Lia,I tell myself.Pull your fucking shit together.

“Lia?” Hope’s voice brings me back to the present. What had she asked me? It wasn’t even a fight. Not bloody close.

“No. I mean yes.”

“Which is it?”

I sigh, rubbing my neck. My hand comes away sticky and I almost gag. Not at the metallic smell of my own blood but what they’d been about to do.

They tried to cut my mating mark off.They were literally going to flay my skin off my body like I was being prepared for cooking.

My vision blurs at the realisation that comes crashing into me like a freight train. I barely hear Hope get out her phone to rattle instructions to someone about giving Henry an opiate reversal, plus IV and fluids.

A tiny bit of relief. Henry is one friend that will be okay. One friend that won’t be killed by being associated with me.

I’m sobbing into dirty hands within seconds; vicious, shoulder-wracking sobs. My anima is asking if we want to shift and I really want to shift into feathers and talons, head back into my nest under the school to curl up and hide away from this mess. But I can’t do that. I need to stay here and keep alert. I can put up with my father’s shit if it means my friends are safe from injury. I re-route my shields with a shift in my power. Any psychic attacks inflicted upon the school will be re-directed to me. For my friends’ safety, it’s the least I can do.

A tissue box lands into my lap and a cup of water is set next to me as Henry is taken away. That makes me sob even more because now no one is here to tell me when to breathe or how to breathe or evenwhyI should breathe.

A storm rages within me and all I have is a rickety dingy that I just keep paddling in. Holes litter the sides and it fills with water and yet I still keep paddling.

In my darkest times after my father abandoned me, I remembered my mother. Imagined her ghost was with me in my little boat, a second paddle gracing her slender hands. She kept me company. She kept me strong. But now I’m older, I ask questions that cannot be answered. Why is it that we both spent our lives fighting so hard for life? Is her fate my fate, too? Do I keep going now, only to succumb in the future?

My heart hurts so badly and so does everything else. I let my heavy body fall onto the mattress, falling short of the pillow entirely, but I don’t care.

But my life is nothing like my mother’s was.

For a few golden moments these past few months, I had a glimpse of a future that could be beautiful. A place that is as bright as the sun. That is filled with friends. Kind, compassionate creatures like my Henry, Eugene and Minnie, Sabrina, Raquel, Stacey and Connor. Savage. I have to fight for that hope. For the memory of my mum gone too soon. I fight to make her proud and do our bloodline justice. Boneweavers were kings and queens once. I have their spirit in my veins. They fight with me, too.

Warmth envelops me as a heated blanket is draped over me. I roll into it and pull the edges around my body, cocooning myself in with my misery, because the last thing I need to do is spread it around. I can almost imagine the blanket is my set of wings, folding around me, secure and safe.

I make sure all my shields are back up, all seven of them, and the extra one that I have aroundeverythingto keep us all safe. Perhaps it’s that, but I fall into a deep sleep and can’t even control it.

The sound of a familiar baritone wakes me up from a sea of murkiness. That voice is deep and whole, like a bass drum, and it strikes up a memory. Of soft hands under dim light. A gentle, soothing voice. But today, there is an undercurrent of violent power in that deep drum. Like a volcano moments away from erupting.

Something primitive inside of me preens at that terrible, profound anger.

I force my eyes open to see the curtain is drawn all the way around my cubicle and Eugene is sitting on the rolling table, watching over me. Large, perfectly polished business shoes stand under the curtain, opposite a worn pair of blue crocs. The feline in me stretches and yawns lazily. I whisper his name, to no one or nothing in particular, but just because I want tofeelthe sound of it in and around my mouth.

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