Page 54 of Her Psycho Beasts

There are hyenas on my left and hawks on my right, but it’s the Clawson tigers next to them who stare the most. Big males and females take up a lot of space, glaring at me as if I’ve spaton them. They want to kill me, I realise with horror. Like they actually want to tear me apart. I couldn’t have hurt Titusthatbadly. Egotistical maniacs. I’m also surprised he’s not here.

In another life, my mother’s mate would have sat with them, holding his court, leading his beasts with respect.

“I do not like the way they’re staring at you,”Lyle murmurs into my head.“Should I fuck you right here and tell them all you’re mine?”

“More staring will be done yet,”Scythe says.“Hold your beast, Lyle.”

A male approaches Xander, striding behind me. “My lord,” he says, “please, can I—” and it’s not until the loud crash and scent of the blood that I know he’s shoved the beast so hard his head cracked open on the floor.

After that, it feels like my sinuses have opened and I notice the two serpents right away. Theirs is a corner space, with Xander being right about them being reluctant to come tonight. I know they are there, hidden amongst the shadows where the dim lights of the room don’t reach. Spies. Tattletales ready to report back tonight’s events to their master.

Scythe claims a spot in a warmly lit corner of the room, which looks like a prime position to me, and there is already a group of males patiently waiting for us. They stand as we approach and incline their heads respectfully.

Scythe nods back and takes the seat clearly left for him, surveying us in a bored and cold manner. It’s the cornermost seat, a black and gold low-backed leather chair that looks like a throne. This is Scythe’s space. And he commands it not like a general, but a cold, dark king.

Xander takes a spot a little away from everyone else, immediately taking out a joint. One of the wolves hurries forward to light it for him.

Scythe holds out his hand, indicating that I take the plush black and gold seat next to him. Without missing a beat, I stride up to him, take his hand and sit down as gracefully as I can, crossing my legs at the ankles and trying to master the unimpressed look.

Everyone else sits down after that, with Lyle taking a seat on my other side. It’s then that I see a group of women, barely dressed, waiting,on their knees,just beyond the last couch of our section. I tear my eyes off them as a man in his forties—a jaguar, by his scent—presents Scythe with a new bottle of top-shelf whisky. Scythe nods and the jaguar opens it, then pours it into a crystal glass held by another jaguar.

It’s interesting that Scythe has a collection of orders working for him. Animalia usually stick to their own, but with Scythe being a marine shifter, he never had that option unless he wanted severely unstable beasts wandering around. I can tell he trusts these beasts implicitly, and I don’t even want to imagine the things they’d done to inspire that kind of trust.

“And for the lady?” the jaguar asks, bowing and looking respectfully at the carpet beyond my feet.

“She’ll have the same,” Scythe rasps.

I refrain from making a face because I can’t stand whiskey.

There must have been some non-visual signal because the waiting women suddenly scuttle forward. And when I say scuttle, I meanscuttle, because they literally crawl before me. One, in a gold G-string bikini and black leather collar, crawls as fast as she can towards Scythe, brushing her long chestnut hair over her shoulder to bare her long, tanned neck as she reaches him. I hold my breath, my hackles rising, but she does not touch him directly. Seemingly, this is a rule everyone knows because instead, in a very feline manner, she rubs one cheek on the armrest near to his hand and then turns and does the same withthe other cheek. She whines in her throat when he doesn’t touch her.

“My lord,” she whines, “May I?—”

“There is no need to talk,” Scythe rasps, without looking at her. “There is no need to stay.”

She pouts as she crawls away and I have to keep my eyes off her because I’m suddenly imagining that slender neck between my teeth.

But on my other side, a red-headed girl crawls into Xander’s lap. At one of our first days at the academy, Xander set a girl’s hair on fire for not getting off his lap, but to this girl, wearing a thong and nothing else, her large tits bare as she presses herself against him, he sets his hand on her milky pale thigh. She runs long red nails up his biceps, smiling up at him suggestively.

My stomach roils as the urge to vomit and rage lashes through me like lightning. I want to stride over there, rip that girl off him by the hair and then wrench Xander to his feet by his collar. The dragon smirks at no one in particular, and I just know he’s aware of my anger and loving every second of it.

That cements it.

There will be no reaction from me. I won’t give him the satisfaction.

The other girls roam around, offering drinks, cigarettes, and giggles. A curly blonde in a tiny red babydoll dress offers Lyle a cigar from a case, but he ignores her, instead taking my hand and pressing kisses to my fingers, one by one. She moves on, but not before looking me up and down.

A primal tug draws my attention to the right side of the room. As I survey the bar, a small crowd gathered there parts, and my heart skips a beat. And then another. Something in the core of my being howls in a ferocious song.

Because I’ve just seen my wolf.

And this is in no way, shape or form, how I imagined our reunion. Savage is shirtless, lying on his back on the bar while the grinning bartender pours Johnny Walker Black Label right into his open mouth while male and female wolves excitedly gather around him. I frown though, because something black and cage-like is fixed to his face. It looks almost exactly like?—

“Is that a muzzle?”I shriek into the group chat.

“Do not approach him,”Scythe commands.“Let him come to you. Let everyone come to you.”

“Is. That. A. Muzzle. Scythe?”

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