Page 151 of Her Psycho Beasts

“I…” I have to swallow the sudden lump in my throat. “I would do anything for Scythe.”

“Regina,” Savage whispers, pulling me into his lap. I allow it, untangling myself from my chair and retangling myself all up in him. He cups my face. “We’re going to get through this together.We always do, Scythe and I, since we were kids and he planned for us to run away.”

“I don’t know, Savage,” I whisper back. “Maybe it’s the regina in me, but I feel… I feel…” The words remain stuck in my throat and I command them to stay there. I don’t want to entertain even the thought of them--the bad feeling that if Scythe chooses the ocean over us, he chooses it forever. Living as a shark until the end.

Savage nuzzles my cheek. “I love you.”

I have to put my arms around him then, and hide my scrunched-up face in his neck. “I love you too.”

We sit there for a moment, just holding each other, making space for each other’s emotions. Savage doesn’t cry or speak what he thinks, but he tells me how he feels by the tightness of his arms around me, the way he seeks comfort in the scent of my neck and hair.

After a while, our librarian, a tall feline animus, clears his throat and I hastily straighten. “Do you know anyone who knows what it’s like”—I swallow—“to be changed?”

Savage searches my eyes. “You never felt it when you were a lioness in your cave?”

I search my memory, wondering if I’d repressed some of it, if not all. I’d been so upset that I’d regressed into my most basic instincts. My anima had forced my human side down and she took over, living on instinct only. How much of a stretch then was it, to exist in my changed form? Completely animal? Never to be human ever again? But I shake my head. “I shift beasts too frequently, so I don’t think I’d ever be a changed beast because of that. But it’s different for the marine shifters. They can’t shift into human form in the middle of the ocean, so they stay in their marine form for years and just…forget to shift back.”

Savage shakes his head, and for the first time, I watch him mull over something gravely serious. “Scythe could never forgetus. He could have run away into the ocean at any time, but he never did. And now he knows you.” He squeezes my hips. “He’ll never be able to stay away from you.”

I don’t know if that’s true. I know Scythe has the ability to go cold. To turn off the things that make him human and enable him to do his business. If he can do that, then surely he could simply turn off his draw to me. I keep these thoughts to myself, because what Scythe and I have orhadis between the two of us.

Savage is staring at Eugene with a slight squint and so I stare at the rooster too. Eugene glances between the two of us, looking more and more concerned. The stick-on diamantes on his goggles glint prettily in the sunlight streaming through the window, and I even caught him staring at their reflection last night.

“Areyouchanged, Eugene?” I ask tentatively. “But you can’t be. You understand us too well.” I turn to my wolf. “Has he ever spoken to you?”

“Well, yeah,” Savage admits, rubbing the back of his head. “He was in his human form when Scythe swore him in.”

“What?” I hiss in shock.

“Yeah, but I think he’s rabid now.”

“He’s not an animal though. You understand everything, don’t you, Eugene?”

The rooster ducks his head.

My heart leaps with hope. “How can we talk to him? Maybe he can tell me about?—”

But Savage has already gotten an idea into his mind and his hand snaps around Eugene’s throat in a tight grip.

“Shift, rooster,” Savage commands, his wolf coming out in a latent threat.

Eugene’s eyes bulge out of his head.

“Stop! Stop!” I whisper-yell, grabbing Savage’s hand.

Savage growls in his chest, but lets the rooster go. I jump up and cradle Eugene, checking him over for any injury. I heal a few broken blood vessels in his neck, but Savage knows his anatomy enough not to have caused any real harm.

“Answer my regina, Eugene,” Savage says.

“How about yes and no questions?” I ask Eugene, setting him down.

I draw out a big YES and NO on two different sheets of paper and set them on the table in front of Eugene.

“Are you rabid?”

Eugene looks between the two papers but doesn’t choose either. I quickly draw up a third scrap that says, UNSURE.

He pecks at it immediately.

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