Page 16 of Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning
A cold, dark feeling consumes my heart, and something tells me to look at the cell behind me. Slowly, in a dazed trance, I get to my feet and turn to look at the dragon chained in his cell.
In the darkness, there is a golden glow, and it’s on Xander’s neck. My symbol is obvious through the gloom.
I don’t breathe. I don’t blink. I don’t think.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Fuck. No. How?
My feet move of their own accord, somethingmorethan me guiding me towards Scythe’s cell. He’s sitting there as he always does, only this time It’s not only his ice eyes that glow. It’s the golden mark on the right side of his neck, beckoning to the deepest parts of my being.
My anima lets out a roar of sheer, joyous release, and my knees buckle. I catch myself with my shield just in time and make myself go still.
With the pressure of containing my emotions, an involuntary tear trickles down my cheek and Scythe’s alert eyes follow its trail.
It’s a blow to the gut. My insides are going to explode.
I have to get out of here. I need to leave and never come back. How could I have been so stupid? How could I not have known?
But I know exactly why. I’ve had seven shields around me, and I’d dissipated one of my psychic shields in order to get a better grasp on my patient today. I’d never let that shield down in front of the prisoners before and it was the one responsible for protecting me from external psychic forces—so it had also hidden their mating marks from me.
I want to be sick.
All three of these animalia are my mates. Three of the five I was promised to by fate.
I swallow through a sandpaper throat, knowing both Savage and Scytheare instinctually tracing my movements, pupils dilated. They do it because they are my mates and even if they can’t see it, their animus is making them more responsive to me. To want to care for me. To want to kill for me.
Their beastly spirits know who I am. I can see that plain as day.
But their minds don’t.
I turn on my heel and all but run for the exit, but it feels like I’m striding through water, my limbs slow and wobbly.
Savage’s rough voice chases after me in a playful bound. “See you tomorrow, princess.”
Thankfully, my time is up anyway, and Beak is smiling at me from the other side when he opens the door. The smile I give him is of genuine relief, and his face brightens with pleasure to see it. But my body does not respond to him in that desirous way it normally does.
Now that I’ve seen my mates, my body will never elicit that same response for anyone else.
I’m not prepared for the level of emotions I’m experiencing.
For animalia, the mating bond is the strongest magic in existence and it is not in our nature to ignore it.
I stumble out of Halfeather’s mansion in a dream-like haze. The world outside hits my retinas in a dazzling display of colour.
It’s as if I’m seeing everything for the first time. My world had been black and white this morning. Now, I was seeing it in 4k with surround sound. My soul has woken up and is crying out in a happy song.We’ve found our bonds,she sings,we’re finally home.
Beak says something to me as I fall into my car, but I don’t hear him.
I don’t even know how I get home, but I’m drenched in sweat when I do. Functioning on auto-pilot, I somehow get ready for work, the faces of my three mates flashing in my mind like a slideshow on repeat. My stomach is swirling, my brain is tumbling. I feel like I’ve been lost at sea and now the port is within view on the horizon, but I cannot set anchor. It’s relief and pain. Happiness and despair.
My mind rages for the rest of the day, so much so that Aunt Charlotte asks me what’s wrong multiple times. The third time I drop a can of tomato paste, she sends me outside for a time-out like I’m one of her naughty kids.
All I do when I go out to the loading dock is pace back and forth from the dumpster to the door. My mates are here. Does my father know? He can’t know. Only the central mate, me, their regina, and the other males in the mating group can see the marking. They would’ve seen mine if I hadn’t spent my entire life with a shield of magical titanium around my entire person. I’d had it drilled into me from the moment I’d returned from the oracle and she’d declared my mating group numbering five of the most dangerous animalia of our time. We should have known, being what I am.
With what I can do.
The anima in me wants me to get in my car and go back to them. It’s demanding we go in there and jail-break my mates immediately. The desperate anima wants to mate with them and complete the bonding ritual—complete our union and make them mine. To join our power in a pool and share magic so intimately we all orgasm over it.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
