Page 75 of Her Psycho Beasts

“Almost got you,” Savage chuckles, before kissing Toastie on the head and placing him back into the sack around his neck.

I shake my head and we sit down and get to work. Savage is always a step ahead, however, and refuses to do anything unless I agree to give him a kiss when he’s successful.

After dinner, I lie on the couch in our TV room with Eugene and video chat with my animas before lights out. We’re plotting our revenge on Dolores and a strategy to rescue our nimpins. I’m so used to having Henry on my shoulder that it leaves me bereft not to have him. Cherry is still missing, and it’s a real shame because Sabrina could have used her help right now. But I have a bad feeling about our little red friend, and I could see the same thought in Minnie’s eyes. Savage must have been thinking the same thing this morning, because he gave Sabrina a contraband phone, declaring that she was allowed due to kidnap privileges. She’d snatched up the phone, immediately planning what rhinestones she was going to hot glue gun onto a custom case.

Once I bid my friends goodnight and hang up, I kiss Eugene goodnight on his head frills and head to the bedroom. The guys had gone to the gym after dinner, but Scythe and Xander’s beds in the front bedroom are still empty. The bedroom I share with Savage and Lyle, with its gigantic pack-bed, lies in shadowy darkness in the room beyond. I tiptoe in, and when my eyes adjust to the darkness, I stop dead.

Scythe is lying with his head on Savage’s chest, my wolf’s arms holding him tight. Next to him, Lyle is on his stomach, the steady rise and fall of his bare, muscled back telling me he’s fast asleep. And on his other side, as if reluctantly there but too tired to be anywhere else, Xander lies shirtless on his back, one armover his eyes, as if even in sleep he’s unimpressed with the world. They must’ve been so tired after working out they just collapsed into the same bed on instinct.

My chest fills with warmth.

None of them have noticed me enter, all breathing deeply and evenly in sleep. Smiling faintly, I seat myself in the tub chair by the wall where I have a good view of them and pull a blanket over my bare legs. I sit there, resting my head on my propped-up hand and simply stare at them.

Four males that are supposed to be mine. Dangerous, lethal, unhinged males that fate demands I have.

Savage twitches and growls in his sleep and my eyes are drawn to the blood brothers again. What had made Scythe seek this comfort from his brother? The same thing that sent him away after what happened in The Jewel of the Jungle?

Me?

Quite suddenly, tears prickle my eyes as a dark feeling winds its way through my stomach. For the longest time, I felt like an outsider looking into everyone else’s lives. An invisible person with no place in society. But the last months made me realise that Idohave a place. I have beautiful, strong, kind friends. Savage and Lyle dote on me, declare their love for me on a daily basis, and cater to my every need.

But there arefiveparts to my soul. And three of those parts do not want me. There is still an entire void in my chest. A cavern where my heart should be.

I whip out my phone and take a picture, then hold the screen to my chest as if I can fill the empty spaces within me with their image.

A shift in the air, a tug at the core of me, makes me open my eyes—only to meet Scythe’s intense stare. Through the dark, his light eyes are glowing sapphires. Beautiful and raw. Like power made into crystals.

He takes my breath away every time.

My breath catches, because he raises an arm, the hand stretched out in an offering. In a command. It’s so unexpected that I’m stunned for a moment, before a spark of excitement and a shower of relief tunnel down my spine.

Hedoeswant me. Or is this something else?

Unravelling myself from the tub chair and setting my phone down, I tentatively make my way to the edge of the bed, wondering how I’m supposed to get in between all these sleeping male bodies.

Scythe moves backward, and Lyle blinks open one amber eye and rolls onto his side, making more space. Scythe moves Savage’s arm and I see my spot, climbing over Savage and easing myself down.

I’m nestled between wolf and shark before I look up at Scythe again. I find him watching me, his gaze unreadable. Those eyes have always seen through me. Into me like I’m splayed open for his perusal. It’s spine-tingling and on the edge of uncomfortable. But tonight, there is something else in his gaze. From what Savage says, he must remember everything of the night at The Jewel. A night that was wholly unexpected.

Because the Great White shark that I’d met many months ago had made a decision that had almost gotten me executed. Had looked at me without compassion, withoutanyemotion, and had decided that I deserved to be dead.

“You wanted to kill me once,” I whisper. “Is that still true? Do you still wish me dead?”

Chapter 36

Scythe

Aurelia’s question is blunt, but she says it with such open vulnerability that a dark emotion triggers like a gunshot to my gut. It tears me open.

Her face, when I’d first seen it tonight where she sat in the chair, half in shadow, half cast in moonlight, had been full of graceful sadness. She looked so small. So lonely. So much like a creature who had spent years alone that I couldn’t bear it a moment longer.

And now, nestled next to me in a way that eased some of my dark pain, I consider this young woman that has changed our lives so much.

She was a maelstrom that raged in, tore us open, and left me wandering in the wreckage.

“I’ll never be safe with you.”Those words had torn from her mouth, a repressed cry so many months ago, but I’d carried them like poison ever since.

Because she had been right. I had intended for her to die. I had willed it and arranged for it. Decided it was the best possible path for her. For us all.

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