Page 121 of Her Tortured Beasts

Chapter 74

Aurelia

The night welcomes me with loving arms as it always has. The cold mountain air on my face, sweeping over my feathers and brushing away at the bad thoughts heckling inside my skull.

As ambrosial as the open sky is, it can’t take away the pain.

There is the pain in my thigh, marrow-deep from where the femur was broken, and the occasional bolt of lightning that goes down the entire leg as if it protests its own existence. I cringe against the sensation of the new limb, the ache, the untested bone and muscle. The entire thing might have re-grown, something I hadn’t been sure I was capable of, but it cannot bear my full weight right now.

It’s as good as useless.

My heart drops as I do, losing altitude as I follow my beak north-west. With my mating mark shield and other protections removed, I can feel my mates and their direction, and no doubt they can also feel me. These look like the Blue Mountains, and if I’m right, I have a distance to travel to get to the academy. Hopefully my mates will meet me halfway.

I’m still tired from the healing and what was no doubt a catastrophic level of blood loss, my stamina at its lowest point.So I drift lower and lower into the trees below me, choosing a steady branch to nest in for the night. I should have left in the morning, after I was well rested, but I just couldn’t stand it any longer in that place. With him. All I want are my mates—the ones who actually love me. I tumble into a heavy sleep, pure luck that no one came upon me in the isolated bushland.

The next morning, I drink water from the river nearby and sigh before taking flight again, this time into a stormy grey sky. The rain makes my leg ache all the more, but I keep it tucked tight against my body as I fly towards my mates.

Excitement mingles with fear as I feel us growing closer. I block telepathic communications, because though I feel requests multiple times, Savage the most insistent and impatient, I’m just not ready for talking.

It’s probably why I don’t notice the three falcons swooping in behind me in hunting formation.

At first, they follow at a distance, letting me know they are there, letting me see their numbers. They each carry a bag in their claws, probably with weapons or tools for hunting.

I have no doubt in my mind they are from the council’s retrieval team. No doubt they’ve been scouting the state for me this entire time, probably under some false crime allegation. It’s an old game between us.

These are full-grown males, practised in taking down wild, criminal birds, and as one, they decide to catch up to me. Two of them line up on my left and right, and the third takes up position right over me. From the trees below, a fourth spears towards a lower altitude, right under my belly.

We fly for a few crucial seconds where I decide what the hell I’m going to do. Council birds, at the end of the day, work for Mace Naga and Flores Drakos.

They’re here to take me back.

The screaming in my head starts up again, and I cringe against it. This can’t be happening. My mates are close, I just know it. But if these guys keep me to the wind, none of them will be able to help me.

Reaching my power out to the one below me, I find his beating heart and squeeze it ever so gently until he falters in mid-air. He quickly folds away, falling towards the trees.

I nose-dive, dropping into the line of trees with the hopes of shifting into something not falcon-friendly.

But they follow without hesitation and one of them drops from the sky, piercing my back with his claws. A screech leaves my beak, and I let myself fall through mid-air, pulling us both right towards the treetops. A second falcon joins in and digs its claws into my neck. But he’s too late to bring us back up and I cry out again as we hit the canopy and tumble through branches and leaves. Pain erupts through my back and I screech, desperately wrenching at my attackers with telekinesis.

We are a jumble of feathers and leaves as we hit the ground, and despite the pain exploding through my spine and leg, I summon the energy to shift. My wolf form morphs slowly into being, but the falcons are ready for this.

One of them shifts and becomes a naked man holding a navy bag and points to me.

“Aurelia Boneweaver, you’re surrounded. Cease your fight.”

I growl in fury, taking a step forward and realising too late my right hind leg can’t take any weight. Growling in frustration, I raise it up and hobble forward three steps. The two falcons continue to dig their claws into my back, searing pain suffocating my thoughts. I trip over my own feet and they takethe opportunity to wrestle me to the hard packed earth. The pain in my leg forces me to shift back into my eagle form, where I tuck it safely underneath me and away from further harm.

Someone’s beak stabs at my neck, another digs his claws into my spine. I came all this way just to be felled at the last minute.

The falcon in human form opens his bag, takes out a small dart gun.

There’s a moment between us, hunter and prey. Where we both acknowledge that I’ve lost. That despite everything, despite being the last Boneweaver I don’t have the strength, or the cunning or the wiles to get out of this. Defeat slides through my body like sludge.

“Mace Naga will be so happy to see you,” he says, hoisting up the gun and aiming it at me.

Something sounds in my head. Like a knocking. Distant screaming begins. But my body has no strength for this.

I accept my fate.

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