Page 145 of Her Psycho Beasts

Chapter 74

Aurelia

If I thought my week couldn’t get any worse, the next morning, Lyle informs me it’s parent visitation day. I’d forgotten all about it, of course, because I’d ticked ‘no’ on the consent forms and had been so focused on how angry I was with everything else.

Minnie is excited to introduce me, Marduk and Yeti to her parents, and there is an excited buzz in the air as we walk out of the animus dorm.

“Fair thee well, Lady Boneweaver!” Bastien, the animus door gargoyle, shouts, adjusting his monocle with his spindly fingers. “Enemies are afoot!”

Someone throws a tennis ball right at his bulbous, cast iron nose and it bounces right off, making him shriek and cuss in the most imaginative way.

I don’t actually realise Bastien was genuinely trying to warn me until we get to the dining hall and Damien points at me with a long, pale finger. I raise my brows and look over my shoulder as if to say, “You can’t possibly be pointing atme.” But then Savage steps between us andbarksat Damien. The people around us snicker.

“Wolves don’t bark,” the phoenix says drolly. “Unless you actuallyarea dog and are revealing this information to us now.”

“Don’t point at my regina, you dodo,” Savage says.

“Detention,” Damien says smoothly. “You can join your regina in cleaning toilets for the next week. And you have no visitors, so get out.”

The toilets all around the school must be sparkling clean at this rate. I put a hand on Savage’s shoulder, go up on my tiptoes, and plant a kiss on his lips. Grumbling, he stalks back to the dorm, leaving me with Stacey, Connor, and Raquel. Minnie had already been called inside with her mates.

They’d all wanted me to meet their loved ones, and it warmed my heart immensely.

Damien looks up from his clipboard. “You too have a visitor, Miss Boneweaver.”

I cross my arms. “I didn’t consent to that.”

Damien looks down his nose at me. “A council member does not need permission to see one of their subjects.”

“Which council member is it?” I ask suspiciously. When I’d first outed myself as a Boneweaver, all the council members had been present. The Queen of Wolf Court had said we should meet at some stage and the feline king had also shown a great interest. It could be either of them. On the other hand, I’d been masquerading as a member of the Avian Court for years. Possibly the high-nosed queen wanted to have a meeting.

But Damien shrugs in response to my question. “Go in and see.”

I doubt Xander’s father is going to come here to see us, and Scythe is the representative of Marine Court, so that only leaves…

The dining hall tables have been split up from Damien’s order groupings into pairs, allowing for two to four people to sit around each.

He sits by one of the stained-glass windows, his hands clasped on the table before him like it’s any other day. Like he is any other father visiting his daughter.

My father. The King of Serpent Court is here to see me after I burned his house down.

His heavy obsidian duster is draped around his body like a king’s cape, and his dark power sits like regal fur on top of that. He’d never been handsome. Striking, perhaps, with sharp, dark features. His posture is perfectly straight, his black shoes perfectly polished by some servant, and his hair has been freshly cut, swinging just above his collar. He shows no sign of any rage or anger that might have come from me destroying his estate.

“Go on then,” Damien’s voice comes from behind me. “Don’t keepHis Majestywaiting.”

I realise I’ve frozen three steps into the hall. I whirl around to give the phoenix lord the filthiest look imaginable. “I didn’t consent to this.”

“What you want, Miss Boneweaver,” Damien says matter-of-factly, “stopped mattering when you entered this institution. You are here under legal order and under my jurisdiction.”

A growl sticks to the back of my throat. Suddenly, every fucking man thinks they can tell me what to do. Thinks they can dictate how my life works. Fire burns through my veins, aching to be released. Aching to lash out.

But Mace Naga is here now. I can’t change that no matter how much I want him to explode into flesh and liquid just like Brutus Clawson.

I refuse to let my father see me rattled. I refuse to look weak. I’d vowed to take this creature’s life and I wouldnotbe led by anything other than rage.

So I square my shoulders, cloak my power around me like my own protective cape and stalk towards the man who’d sunk his fangs into my mother for fifteen years.

My stare is cold, dominant, and unfaltering as I come to stand before him.

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