Page 115 of Her Psycho Beasts

My muscles seize up as I stare at the aged papers within the folder. I don’t touch the thing, my hands refusing to move towards it. Minnie takes my left hand in hers as Lyle opens it up in front of me.

A wind howls outside, whistling past the windows. Under my bare feet, the floor trembles slightly.

“If it’s too much, we don’t have to look at it,” Lyle says gently. “We can do it another time.”

I take a deep breath and the floor goes still. “Is there anything important in there? Honestly, I just want to burn it.”

Lyle nods. “Yes, regina,” he says quietly. “I found records of blood draws. They were drawing blood so regularly it drew my attention. And none of them came with blood test results. It leads me to believe they were selling her blood.”

A pressure on my heart makes it hard to breathe. “He couldn’t get children from her, so he started selling her blood.” The ways he wanted to exploit her were boundless. “But of what value is her blood?”

“Her blood. Her venom, too, but they couldn’t get that as regularly.”

“How did they even expect to bypass the conception ritual?” Minnie asks, her voice harsher than I’ve ever heard it. “Why didn’t he keep her awake?”

“The notes indicate she was conscious for some time,” Lyle says, leafing through more yellowed notes at the back of the binder. “But eventually, they sedated her, and somewhere alongthe line, her body gave up. They should have let her go, but Mace gave the order to keep her on life support, then he hired Halfeather and his specialist eagles.”

I rub my eyes and push the folder away. “I don’t want it, Lyle. Thank you for getting it and the information, but…you keep it for the moment.”

“Of course, regina,” he says, closing it and taking it off the table. “I’ll have it if you ever want to look at it.”

I swallow the nausea down. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at that thing. And if Ghoul was the one who provided it for us…well I can’t even begin to understand what that means.

Chapter 59

Aurelia

Somewhere around noon the next day, as I lie fast asleep in the pack bed, Scythe’s hand skims along my thigh. Sleepily, I place my hand over his and am suddenly greeted with a nose to my pussy.

My eyes fly open.

Scythe looks up at me from between my legs, and it’s a stunning sight until he rasps, “Blood.”

Iamslick between my legs, and I’m suddenly aware of a terrible ache in my uterus.

“Oh fuckity fuck,” I mutter.

“Pardon?” Lyle asks, rolling over and looking very offended.

“Painkillers,” I moan. “Wait, do we even keep any around here?”

“What for?” Savage asks, alarmed, grabbing my thigh from my other side.

I cry out, throwing the sheet over Scythe’s head and pulling my underwear down. “Oh no!”

“What’s wrong!” Savage exclaims. Then he too starts sniffing.

“Nothing,” Scythe says, pulling the sheet down to free his face. “It’s her cycle.”

Everyone except me leaps off the bed all at once, striding in all different directions for some reason I can’t fathom. In the distance, Savage gives an excited shout, “I’ve been waiting for this!”

Which makes me frown as I roll off the bed and walk bow-legged to my wardrobe, where I have stowed one regular pad from the communal stash in the anima dorm. My periods have been so infrequent and irregular that while I’ve been at the academy, I’ve never bothered with keeping much of a supply. But Savage bursts back into the room, doing a sharp left-hand turn when he realises I’m not in the bed.

“Regina, I’ve been saving these!” He opens a big paper bag that’s filled to the brim with packets of sanitary pads and tampons ofalldifferent brands and sizes. “I didn’t know what you would like best,” he says, excitedly pulling a packet out. “See, I thought you’d like this because it’s purple, but I looked inside and theactualpad isn’t purple, which seems like false advertising to me. And then there’s little writing on the back and I got Xander to read the back of it and he told me they were different facts!” He looks back up at me with a puzzled expression. “Why do they have to teach you things when you’re on your period?”

I grab a packet of super-size pads in one hand, and a new pair of undies in the other.

“Shall I rub your tummy?” he asks.

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