Page 124 of Her Tortured Beasts

We gently dry her and ourselves off and head into the bedroom. Lyle returns with a trolley of covered food, but Scythe already has our regina in bed.

Lyle and I eat our food on the bed, watching over our sweet eagle until sunrise.

As the first blue light of morning eases the night away, I rub my eyes and look back to Aurelia. Her sleep was troubled. Through the night, she twitched and flinched, and at one point, she stuck her right leg out and moved it around like it ached her.

“Should we get her a wheat bag?” I asked Lyle at the time.

He shook his head and went back to staring at her as if he couldn’t believe she was here now. I can hardly believe it too. But whatever luck we’ve come by, I’m not going to ruin it by questioning it.

Early in the morning, just as dawn’s bright rays shine through the curtains, she finally,finallyblinks her pretty eyes open. I gasp softly and peer into them. Blue as the deep sea, but heavy with sadness. “Oh,” I say. “Oh, regina.” I cup her face with my hands. Lyle has fallen asleep at the end of the bed and Scythe is also dozing, so it’s just me and her.

“I’m sorry,”she whispers into my mind.

“I’m sorry too, baby.”

Her beak opens and shuts and I want to tear a hole in the universe at the pain and longing I see.

“I missed you so fucking much.”

She blinks at me, soft and sad.

“Look what Lyle made for us.” I turn around and grab the plate on the bed behind me. “Fairy bread!” I hold up the triangle with the butter and coloured sprinkles. “I think they use the good butter here, too.”

“Savage?”she whispers.

I drop the bread and lean in towards her. “Yes, regina?”

“I…”

I wait for her. Hang onto the end of that first word like a man hanging onto a cliff’s edge by his fingernails.

“I missed you too.”

My grin is wide and triumphant. “See! I knew you didn’twantto leave me.”

“Savage?”she whispers.

“Yeah, baby?” I pick up the fairy bread and tear a chunk off before chewing it happily.

“I was in the tank.”

My entire body, my entire mind, freezes, and all I can do is stare in horror at those eyes, pleading with me. Calling to me. The tank in the corner of The Collector’s throne room had drawn me in, and I hadn’t known why. I’d wanted to take a swim in it and see what had been at the bottom, even though I’d known it was too small. I had dipped my fingers in it, wondering if I could somehow take it home, or empty it of the plants and see what else had been in here.

Something in me had known my regina was in there.

“Excuse me one moment,” I whisper.

Very carefully, very gently, I get off the bed and exit the room, padding down the long corridor of the penthouse to the elevator. I take it down five levels and head to the end of the corridor, my bare feet silent on the thick red patterned carpet.

Red like my vision.

At the end of the corridor is a window, with two chairs and a table for people to sit on and admire the view.

I pick up one of the chairs and slam it with all my might through the window, roaring with all the rage of a mate who did not see his regina, who did not save her when he should have.

Who’d completely failed her.

Guilt and shame rip at my heart and I tear my throat open, screaming into the awful, ugly dawn. Once I have no more breath in my lungs to spare, I thud my ass onto the floor, slumping against the wall, and crying into my hands.

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