Page 137 of Her Psycho Beasts

My being shatters. Heartbreaking and soul-destroying is my echoing roar into the cavern as I come inside my regina. Hoping the heavens and the Wild Mother hear my anguish, and knowing what she’s done to us, I hope she weeps too.

Chapter 69

Aurelia

Scythe leads me back into the ocean and we swim back together through the dark.

“It’s you and me against the dark, shark-man,”I muse.

“Dawn is coming,”he replies quietly.

He held me after he’d come. Undid the fabric binding my wrists, wrapped me in a soft blanket, and positioned me in the crook of his arm. He was quiet as he’d pressed his nose into my hair and I’d fallen into a little doze.

I’d woken to his lips brushing against my mouth before he’d pressed a gentle kiss to my shoulder, where there was a faint pink mark. He fussed over that before turning me over and inspecting every part of my skin. It makes me smile to see him fuss over my body, worrying about every mark as if they are injurious to my health. I heal each one with my power before his very eyes and watch as a faint line appears between his silvery brows. I took his hand and kissed it before wrapping my arms around his shoulders and pressing myself to him. He sweeps his hand down my back in long strokes as if that comforts him. It settles something in me to know that my touch doesn’t bother him. That hedoeswant it and doesn’t find me disgusting like Xander does.

We make it back to the beach while it’s still dark, the smell of petrichor in the air, the storm seemingly passed. We hurry naked to the car where we dry off and get dressed in the spare clothes he has stowed in his boot. Then we sit in the car for a while, in silence, and to my great pleasure, he takes my hand as the eastern sky lightens.

Something in the air around Scythe changes when the sun begins to clear the horizon. The sky turns a fiery orange-gold, and as I glance at my shark, his damp, silver hair reflecting the golden hues, I realise the space around him is actually dark.

He turns to look at me, and the moment his gaze catches mine, everything turns dark. The entire car is swamped by a murky, wholly cruel power. It’s not at all like Ghoul’s shadows, which look and feel like the void of space.Thisenergy roils like a maelstrom in the middle of a violent storm.

“You see it, don’t you?” Scythe’s voice is like nothing I’ve heard before. It is dead. Devoid of life. Of hope.

And then the screaming starts.

I clap my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut against the violence of the shrieking permeating my mind. Multiple voices, shrill and sharp attacking me all at once, vying for the loudest position. They’re saying something and though I can’t make out the awful sentences, I know it’s inherently malevolent.

I don’t realise that I’m also screaming until cold fingers press against my temples.

“I’m sorry.” That rasp is frantic, deeper than the rest. “I’m so sorry.”

Something swallows me whole and pulls me down, down, down.

When I wake up, I’m still in the car, but I’m bundled into Scythe’s lap, lying across the back seat. Looking around, I see that we’re back in the basement car park of The Lily Sanctuary.

It’s achingly quiet.

“You fell into me, just then,” Scythe rasps, gently setting me into my own seat. The car feels so much colder. “It must have been the sex. We won’t let it happen again.”

I straighten myself and sit there in silence, clutching my seatbelt in one hand, wiping my eyes with the other.

“That’swhat you see all the time.Hearall the time?”

The distance between us, the sheer cold, feels like a valley. We stand on opposing mountain peaks, an eternity between us. “Lately, yes.”

The fact that he endures this on a daily basis just to be here—I can’t fathom it.

“You are so strong. All of my five mates are so strong.”

He looks at me sharply. “You’ll never have five mates, Aurelia.”

My head snaps to regard him. “So I’m doomed to have an empty space within me the rest of my life?”

“Two. Maybe three.”

“What?”

“Three empty spaces. Xander will never agree to be yours. His will is too strong. And Ghoul fights for your enemy. He is a lost cause. He always was.”

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