Page 2 of Her Tortured Beasts

The boy screams, shoving me away and turning towards Scythe.

I turn to the side and gag, wiping out my mouth because there’s some foul magic or something on my tongue now. “Urgh!” I cry. “Scythe! Urgh!”

“Serves you right,” my shark brother admonishes, throwing a black leather square at me. “Come on, let’s get him out of here.”

I catch the thing as Scythe puts his arms under the guy and hoists him up, carrying him like a bride. The thought makes me snicker. Scythe says, “Check his wallet.”

Suddenly I want a wallet too. I open it up and poke through it as we hurry the fuck out of there. His driver’s licence is the first thing I see, and I squint at it before pouting. I hold it up to Scythe. I can only tell that he’s got his P plates because of the red strip across the top, but I can’t read the rest of it.

My brother frowns deeply. “Xander Drakos.”

“Do we know him?” I ask, squinting at the photo. His eyes are green like an expensive gemstone.Weregreen.

“Yeah, Savage,” Scythe says darkly, his face awfully tight. “I know the family.”

“He’s just a hatchling, though,” I say, glancing at the unconscious boy. “He wouldn’t have been involved in any ofthatsort of stuff?”

“You don’t know these dragons,” Scythe rumbles. “They’re not regular beasts.”

“Yeah,” I say, brushing a wet strand of black hair off Xander’s face to look at him better. “But he’s our brother now.” We arrive at our car and Scythe sits him in the back seat. I lean down and click his seat belt into place. “Don’t worry, Xander!” I shout in his face. “You’ll be right as rain, real soon!”

Xander grimaces before I shut the door and throw myself into the passenger seat.

Scythe glances at our new pack-mate. “I might know someone who can help him with his vision,” he says. “It’s worth asking anyway.”

“I wonder who did it,” I say as Scythe pulls out onto the main road.

A mumble comes from the back seat, delirious and faint, but it’s definitely from Xander. “I was only trying to help.”

Chapter 1

Aurelia

I’m jolted out of a troubled, heavy sleep by the sound of multiple truck doors slamming shut. My body is nothing but pain after the endless hours of travel, sprawled on the floor of this rumbling monster of a vehicle, and my bladder is close to bursting. After shock melded with fatigue, I managed to get a few hours of sleep, but chained to the side of a titanium, military grade hunting truck was like a small torture to my rattled bones. My rattled soul.

A soul that has been torn asunder by a nightmare made reality.

One of my mates has formally rejected me. While the wound on my arm has healed into a shallow red scratch, there is a deeper, darker serration within that primal place reserved for the other parts of my soul.

The part of me that was reserved for Xander Drakos is now shredded beyond repair. The regina in me lies in a pool of her own blood, her eyes barely open against the agony, her beak open under a low, aggrieved keen.

But I have no time to mourn a severed soul bond.

Because I am in enemy territory, clutching tight onto a promise.

I need to be alert. I need to be observant. Because whatever is coming for me outside of this truck is the key to my revenge. I’d sworn a solemn vow over my mother’s funeral pyre: to destroy the monster who kept and abused her body for fifteen years. The monster who’s a threat to every person I love.

So I scrape the aching parts of my mind out of that proverbial pool of blood and force the predator in me to come forward and bare her vicious teeth. I am the regina of the Boneweaver pack. Savage Fengari, Scythe Kharkorous and Lyle Pardalia are my mates. And though I’ve forbidden them to pursue me and have shut them out of my mind, they will always be with me, prowling steadily alongside my own uncertain gait.

The truck doors, on the other hand, slam open with heavy certainty, creating a new void in my reality. I crane my neck to get a look outside. The silhouette of a hulking beast forms a shadow against the night sky, and even without seeing his body, I’d know his dark, infernal presence anywhere. It tickles my deep regina instinct and I clamp down on that with all my might.

Because Ghoul is also my enemy.

A cold night wind brushes past him and rustles my long blue evening gown as the basilisk lord steps up and into the truck with ease, his weight jostling the floor like a boat on choppy water. He undoes the steel chains binding me to the wall, then hooks his arms under my armpits and hauls me up to standing.

Despite this truck being made for massive beasts, Ghoul, at seven feet, still has to stoop to be inside of it. I stare up at him, those mysterious shadows slithering around his body like dangerous, seductive snakes.

I don’t miss the way he inhales the scent of my touseled hair before he steps away, flashing a bit of fang.

---