Page 12 of Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning
So IknowI’m a complete loony as I’m heading down into a dungeon of darkness with a group of apex predators and my anima purrs with glee. My lips twitch with a faint smile as Beak opens the second steel door.
I waltz in with the Hershey’s Kisses in my hand and, this time even the creepy cold can’t affect my good mood. Beak shakes his head in amusement as I pass him. He probably thinks I’m mental, and I doubt he’s all that wrong. They’ve put the lights on for me already, and it’s slightly brighter than yesterday. Making a surprised noise at the back of my throat at Beak’s further kindness, I stride down.
It’s like my body knows Savage is waiting for me because I immediately forget about Beak’s lingering gaze and clench in anticipation of those wolfish hazel eyes. I’m walking past the leering male’s cage, stiffening in case I get another lewd comment, but as I glance inside his cell, I stop dead in my tracks.
Dear Wild Mother.
Lying on the stones of his cell is a hyena, clearly having shifted into his animus form before his head was separated from his body. There’s a pool of blood between the two parts and my stomach gives a fell lurch. One of my hands finds my mouth, covering it as if I can also cover the scene of the murder from my mind.
“Lee-ah.” Savage sings my name in the cadence of a happy children’s song.
Chains scrape, a body shifts, but I ignore him and turn, forcing my eyes to the cell opposite of the hyena’s, where the naked male is still sitting on his metal chair. I can see a little more of him today. He’s a big beast, a late-twenties animalia covered in black tattoos from his feet to his neck. But one tattoo stands out: five fine lines of ancient text on the left side of hisneck. This and two other signs tell me what his animus is. Ice-blue eyes glint at me through the dark. Long, silver hair that brushes his shoulders stands out amidst the gloom. On the left side of his neck are five lines of text representing five gill slits. He’s a shark.
He’s still. So still as he looks at me, powerful chest taking slow, deep breaths, large biceps pushed out from where his arms are tied behind his back. In my woeful life healing all sorts of dark creatures, I’d yet to meet a shark—and for good reason. Most of them go mad on land, the theory being that they were never meant to leave their marine home. Indeed, almost all marine animalia choose to live out their lives in deep parts of the ocean in converted form, never turning human ever again.
So what the hell is this one doing here?
Chapter 9
Aurelia
“Princess, get away from my brother.” Savage’s deep voice cuts through the spell the shark has on me and I shake myself before moving away to the steel door my patient lies behind. Savage pushes his head through the bars of his cell. He’s sitting down already, but there are bags under his eyes that make him look even more dangerous. He gives me a sort of deranged smile that makes my stomach flop.
“What happened to the hyena?” I ask quietly.
A low, dark laugh, like a rumbling volcano, comes from the dragon in the cell behind me. “It got what was coming to it.”
I turn to look at the dragon, feeling Savage watch my every move. I can’t see much of the male except to note that he, too, is chained, but not to a chair like the shark. Instead, both his arms are stretched out, chains binding him to the walls on either side. Barbaric; his arms must hurt so much.
I can’t make out his face, where the light doesn’t reach, but I can see he has black jeans on the bottom half of a typical dragon male’s body.
Cut from stone, lean, shredded muscle that’s puckered with scars, old and new. He has a piercing on one nipple and, in typical dragon style, long black hair cascading down his definedpecs. But the thing most interesting about him is the pair of white headphone cords leading up to his ears. A device is hooked into the waistband of his jeans.
“Checking me out, hatchling?” the dragon rumbles. His voice is cold and monotone.
I jump, pulling myself out of a thirsty haze and hope my face isn’t sheepish. “Sorry. Don’t your arms hurt?”
I get the impression he’s glaring at me through the bars, but Savage snorts from behind me. “My brother is a little bloodthirsty shark. He took care of the hyena, princess. You don’t have to worry about him talking shit to you anymore.”
My heart leaps into my throat as I whirl back around. “What?” I exclaim. “How did he— When— What?!”
Savage smirks, looking me up and down, and I heat up immediately. Even slumped against the bars of his cell, he looks capable of jumping up at a minute’s notice and tearing somebody’s throat out. But the shark in the other cell couldn’t have gotten to the hyena in the celloppositehim, surely.
I don’t know what is more confusing. The fact that he’d managed it, or the fact that he’d done it out of some chivalry.
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Savage says.
I scowl at the condescension in his voice and then stop short of a retort. “Wait, did you saybrother?” I frown at Savage.
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Mmm.”
“But he’s a?—”
“Our father was the rex of two females. One wolf, one shark.”
While it isn’t uncommon to have a mating group with different orders, a marine in a soul-bond with land animaliaisincredibly rare and unfortunate since they could never all be truly together for their whole lives. But this is also the very reason I can’t reveal my mating group to anyone—allfive ofmy mates are males of different animus orders. It’s more than strange—it should be impossible.
I promptly decide that’s enough interacting with the prisoners for today and sit down in my usual spot in front of the steel door. Before I start, I glance behind me at the dragon.
