Page 164 of Her Psycho Beasts

After all this time, Charles Halfeather still haunts his old land.

“I thought we would build an empire, you know,” he sighs, looking around wistfully. “Me and the girl. One that would surpass even Mace Naga.”

I try to forget the fact he’d ordered my shoulder broken. I’d let him do it, just to see how far he’d go and I’d gotten my answer. I also try to forget the fact that he’d beenthiscloseto breeding Aurelia. “Instead, Mace played you.”

“As he played us all. Even you. Even now.”

The musings of the dead are not always helpful.

“I do what I must. I follow my fate.”

“Fate,” Halfeather spits. “Men like us carve our own fate. Look at me. The Wild Mother’s gift to me was healing, and I flipped that on its head out of spite.”

Instead of healing organs, he’d ripped them out of the innocent.

“She is yours now, I suppose?” he says. “Mace will see you and your entire institution dead for it. As he did me. Mark mywords, do not underestimate that serpent. He came to me, you know, after my death.”

“Who?”

“Mace. And his puppets. They have powers you can never imagine, shark king.” Serpents are known for their black magic. I supposed that meant they contacted the dead too. Or perhaps just one of them did. “Look past the surface.”

“Be on your way, Charles Halfeather,” I instruct. “Go in peace.”

“Look past the surface.”

He disappears into the ether, and I shake my head, stepping into my old cell. I turn around and look through the opening in the bars, as if I can re-live the memory of her all over again. Before I’d known what she was, what she would become to me and my brothers.

The horde is a continued maelstrom around me. Swarming, raging, screaming.

Soon it will be gone. Soon it will all be gone.

I collect myself and head back outside to the car, where Rufus waits for me.

“Let’s go,” I rasp, getting into the passenger seat.

Rufus takes me to the ocean, where I hand him multiple envelopes with instructions, as I often do when I’m gone for a few days.

It’s just that none of them will know that this time the conditions will be permanent.

After he goes, I stand on the silent beach for a moment, feeling the wind on my face, feeling the sand beneath my bare feet.

Something in my soul feels weary. Something in my soul feels so old. Bent and broken. It was always going to come to this. It was always going to end this way. Regina or not. Love or not.

In pain. In agony. With a bleeding heart and tears in my eyes, I brush a hand over my mating mark.

If you truly love a wild beast, you let it go. We will be free of each other now.

For the final time, I shed my clothes.

For the final time, I head into the sea and let her embrace me, like Aurelia never will, ever again.

Chapter 88

Aurelia

Iwake in the middle of the night, lurching upright with a start. A deep, dark feeling of foreboding lurks in my bones.

Something is wrong.

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