Page 88 of Her Tortured Beasts

I had never asked Minnie about it because it was a sensitive topic, but my anima still calls for him. I’d thought it was a broken, lonely call into the dark, never to be returned. A wound that would never heal. Just as sad as the story of the last Kauai bird. The last of his species calling to a mate who didn’t exist.

And yet, in these three days, the callisreturned. My soul no longer calls into a void. Wherever I turn, he’s there, earnest, serious in his invented duty to me. How can a broken heart deny itself that medicine? How can a broken bone decline healing?

It can’t.

Xander feeds me, keeps me warm, strokes my hair, whispers pretty things. I watch him as closely as he watches me, looking for any sign of the end of this treasure haze, as it’s called. I hadno idea what that would look like, but in a far corner of my mind, a quarantined corner meant to keep me safe and sane, I know it will be ugly.

At dawn on the fourth day, I find out what that looks like.

Xander wakes up. Slowly, with that predatory grace only monstrous animals possess, he walks naked to the window and opens it.

I recognise this immediately because at no stage during the three days did he leave my skin or open the window. So I too slowly get up and a sense of self-preservation moves me to the other side of the room.

When he speaks, his voice has the deathly seriousness of a man about to lose his mind and is trying hard to stop that rhinoceros’ charge. “I want you out of my sight. I never want to see you again.”

A chill breaks out along my bones.

I blink at his form. Utter naked perfection, gilded in sunlight that could inspire ancient Greek sculptors.

Whatever crucial thing in me that broke the day he formally rejected me, doesn’t break again. It shatters into fine dust. And it makes me feel worse than before. There’s an eternal cold inside my heart, one that has nothing to do with my great white shark form.

Silently, I turn around and press on the wall panel that contains my two dresses. It opens and I shove one over my head. Quiet as a mouse, I escape through the front door, closing it behind me.

Despite my racing heart, I feel lifeless. Guilt and shame hover at the edges of me, like hungry serpents ready to tear my throat to shreds. I don’t even know where I’m going, I just duck under the new ropes that cordon off the wing and head down the grand stairs.

But they all know. They’re all waiting.

Flores, Francesca, Lady Drakos, Selena, and a whole bunch of servants are assembled in the entrance hall.

“There she is,” Francesca hisses as I clear the final step. “Seize her.”

Flores flicks his wrist and a gold chain snaps towards me directly from his hand, latching onto my collar with brutal force.

I stumble backwards before he heaves his arm and I go flying towards the floor. I break my fall just in time, my palms slapping on the cold tiles with a loud snap of flesh. Flores yanks again and I’m dragged across the ground towards them. My hands fly up to the chain, pain blasting through my neck as the melded flesh tears anew. I end up on my back, sliding over the tiles until I land before them.

Flores and Francesca’s upside-down forms stare at me. The dragon king shakes his head in dismay while his daughter-in-law crosses her arms and glares.

“You’ve ruined this family,” she hisses.

“Hardly my fault,” I mutter.

“You’re right,” Flores says, and I blink up at him at this unexpected response, with hardly any energy or motivation to get off the floor. “This is hardly your fault too.” He gestures to Francesca.

The smug dragoness shows me her phone and a news report with the headline:

LILY INSTITUTE DEVASTATION— Hundreds of patients left homeless after ‘freak’ accident.

Below it is a photo of the crumbling remains of the biggest mental health hospital in the country. If I could sink any lower into the floor I would. That had been Scythe’s pride and joy. His life’s work. And because of the auction, because of the greedof these bastards, they’d destroyed something important and beautiful.

Steps sound from behind me. I lift my head just enough to see that at the top of the stairs stands the dragon heir, in a fresh black suit and shirt. His face is grim, his jaw clenched.

“I’m ready,” he says.

“You are not,” Flores sneers.

I don’t know what happens to Xander after that. What the consequences of his purchase of me are. All I know is, after the scientists check me over in their lab, I’m taken back to Flores Drakos’ room, where my cage has been moved.

And that night, as I lie curled as small as I can in the corner of the cage of the grand room, I hear Flores fucking someone who is definitely not his wife.

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