Page 20 of Her Psycho Beasts

So the giant cockatoo already knows who I am. Great.

“I’m going to kill him,”I shoot into Lyle’s mind as we’re all forced to disperse to our designated order tables. Alone, I make my way to the avian table and take a seat next to Beak, who casts me a disapproving look.

“Please refrain, angel,”Lyle grits back into my mind.“Keep your head down for the moment.”

“I’d rather eat my own beer-battered fried wings,”I retort.

“Do it for me.”

Well, that shuts me up. Lyle’s never used those words before, and I can see how this situation is going to be incredibly difficult for him. I suppose for him I can try.

When we’re all seated, albeit glumly and hungrily, Damien takes up his spot at the head of the hall, while more guards than I’ve ever seen assume positions all around us. Lyle stands beside his replacement, glaring at us all as if in warning.

“Things at Animus Academy are going to change,” Damien says. “The previous leadership was incredibly lax in multiple key areas of importance.”

I cast an incredulous look around the tables. Back when I didn’t even like Lyle, I’d had to admit that he was doing a good job with the school. At the same time, we did have a generous amount of freedom under his rule.

“Discipline! Control! Integrity!” Damien shouts at us. “If we are going to keep you all out of federal prison and serving as responsible members of the animalia community, we will need to overhaul your education.”

“What bullshit,”I mutter to Lyle.“What a dick.”

“Breaking of rules will lead to immediate, memorable disciplinary action,” Damien continues. “Test me and find out.” He looks impressively at the guards and I can already tell a few of the more rebellious males are sizing him up. I glance around and realise Xander has chosen to sit with Yeti and Minnie, but Scythe is nowhere to be seen. I wonder if that is a message from the shark king.

“Eat your breakfast,” Damien commands us. “Classes will re-commence at ten a.m. sharp.”

With that, he strides out of the dining hall, leaving the guards to organise us to line up at the buffet, table by table.

Chapter 10

Xander

Istalk into the deputy headmaster’s office after Scythe and Lyle, who are on the tail of the self-proclaimed Lord Phoenix.

The fact that this haughty peacock has taken over his school isn’t sitting well with the territorial lion, and I can see it in the way his aura pulses around him in clashing colours of red and black. To my delight, Lyle is positively murderous. This change in hierarchy is mildly annoying for Scythe and me, as Damien Agnis has the potential to be a royal nuisance.

During the middle of the lockdown, I’d forged a dragon-door from the animus dorms into Lyle’s office so he could collect his things, including the carved blue angel Savage had made when we were children.

Well, the oneI’dcured for him with dragon heat. I’d almost fried the thing back then. Being five, I’d only just managed control over the power I emitted from my palms.

So when we enter the office now, it’s clear Damien has made quick work of moving himself in. The walls smell of fresh paint, barely dry. He’s chosen black, with red accents on the skirting. It’s garish interior design, and I sneer at it and the red leather wing-back behind the new amber desk. Lyle’s wall-to-wallbookshelves have been removed from the right-hand side and replaced with a series of three ornate gold-framed illustrations: a newborn phoenix rising from the ashes, a phoenix blasting a group of humans with a stream of fire, and a third, a phoenix tied to a stake, but instead of the stake being on fire, the crowd of onlookers have been set alight.

The mythic orders have a habit of spreading their own propaganda, and phoenix court is no exception.

Damien saunters around the desk and sits on the red leather chair, leaving us to realise that he’s removed the two chairs that used to be on the visitor’s side. Scythe, Lyle and I stand on the other side like naughty students sent to the principal’s office.

“Damien,” Lyle says, barely suppressing his aggression and rendering me rather impressed.

“LordDamien,” the phoenix snaps with a warning flare in his golden eyes. The sort of gold a dragon might like to add to his collection.

Lyle stares at him, hard, his power flaring out around his head like a mane of lethal energy.

“Easy,”Scythe warns in our telepathic group chat.

“I know,”Lyle snaps. That mane of power sways on a phantom breeze, controlled but waiting.

“Firstly, how you were considered fit for teaching is beyond me,” Damien continues, clasping his hands on the desk before him. “Why the council did not detain you immediately was, frankly, a bad judgement call.”

This bird has no idea that the reason the Council didn’t cart Lyle away was because the obsidian chains the feline king had thrown at him simply hadn’t worked to detain his power.

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