Page 58 of Her Psycho Beasts

Aurelia

Poker is a favourite game of the beasts who rule the underworld. I’ve seen people killed in brutal games during the time I secretly worked for my father. I see some vaguely familiar faces amongst the three poker tables, though I can’t exactly place where I know them. Scythe leads us to a table being set up by a group of hyenas. I spot their matriarch immediately. A wizened old lady with heavy black eyeliner and brows, and an intricate tattoo rounding the bottom of her right eye and temple. Her beady, dark eyes mark me as I approach. She is as shrewd as she is cunning. I’ve always wanted to know her secrets.

I double check my shields. The hyenas have no precise order power, but they’ve always been known as witches. Whatever dark spells and incantations they brew in the midnight hours are often successful. That’s why they’re hated by the other orders.

“My lady,” I greet, inclining my head.

“Bah! I’m no lady, which you know quite well,” she spits. “Andyou”—she points an arthritic finger at me—“are a little girl in a monster’s world. I remember you as a hatchling slithering under my feet with your dolls.”

“That was a long time ago,” I reply evenly. “Another lifetime.”

“Aye,” she continues. “Back then, I told Mace you’d be walking these paths before he knew it, and here you are now. A snake might shed its scales, but it’s still the same damnsnake.”

Xander snorts behind me before taking a seat at the table next to her. The Hancock witches alliance with the Nagas has lasted over a hundred years. I have to tread carefully.

“I heard she can do a possum as well,” Xander says mildly.

The hyena matriarch tilts her head back and cackles, then looks at me and waves her hand. “Oh, don’t fret. I won’t be tattling to your father. I won’t need to. Hah! Are you playing, or are you going to keep gawking at me?”

But now that I’m looking, all the high-backed leather seats at the table are taken. Scythe, Lyle and Xander take up three seats, with Savage being mysteriously missing, the Lady Crocodylus in one, and the last seats are claimed by two brutish, black-haired tigers who rake their gazes down my body.

I recognise both because of their resemblance to their son and brother,andMinnie’s ex-mate, Titus.

Cain Clawson. The Clawson patriarch, brother-killer and in alliance with my father, is even more imposing than Titus. He’s a huge, striking male, thick black hair, and midnight bushy brows over dark, plotting eyes. His skin is deeply tanned, and he’s just as tall as Lyle, only wider, but not because of muscle. Hairy, meaty fists rest on the table before him as he regards me with a glimmering malevolence that borders on hate.

The other male can only be Cain’s second son. Brutus. A slightly younger version of Titus. He has scarred knuckles that have dried blood and dirt caked on them. In fact, he’s shiny with sweat and dirty all over. He shows me his teeth in an entirely feral way, and I remember Cain had a nasty habit of keeping both his sons rabid for his own use. Lyle coached Titus out of his rabidity, and it looks like Brutus has been upgraded to plain feral.

“Going to put your money where your mouth is, Cain?” the hyena matriarch asks rudely.

Instead of replying to the hyena, Cain smirks at me. “Titus told me you were a specimen, but now I understand what all the fuss is about.”

Brutus chuckles darkly.

“Aye, she’s prettier than her mother,” Lady Hyena says, shuffling her newly dealt cards. “Andshewas something to look at.”

I look at her sharply.

“Patience, Aurelia,”Scythe says smoothly into my mind.“We don’t react. We respond.”

“Brighter eyes,” Lady Crocodylus muses between puffs of her cigar. “Morefightin them.”

I don’t like the way our opponents chuckle.

While The Collector’s chained beasts wait silently behind her, the perimeter of our table becomes crowded with spectators, both male and female.

“What are we playing for?” The Collector asks innocently, stroking her cards with her gloved hands.

A dark feeling coils in my stomach before every eye on the table turns to me.

“Offer yourself.”Scythe’s mental order surprises my brain like a slap on the ass.

“What the actual fuck?”

Lyle shifts in his seat.

Scythe hasn’t moved at all.“If you can’t handle this, Lyle, leave.”

It’s then that I see my lion’s power pulses around him in overt lethal dominance.

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