Page 2 of Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning
Wolves love denim on a religious level, and their men always wear short beards.
Part of this is so other animalia can discern who they’re dealing with quickly. We can usually tell via scent, but human perfumes and other conflicting smells in public make that difficult.
With their tongues darting out, tasting the air in the habit of half feral reptiles, my dad’s servants come to stand on either side of my front door.
I stand facing them in a sort of lame disbelief as two tall males come in next—security guards by the guns they openly carry at their waists. They give me a droll look before bracketing the women to stand against the wall, their arms crossed, eyes staring over my head.
My heart threatens to leap right out of my ribcage.
This isverybad.
He’s come himself with his full contingent—as if I’m some foreign court member and this is a formal meeting. The warning bells are loud in my head. Either he has one last big job for me, or something much worse.
I haven’t always feared him. He had been a good father when his hopes for me were grand. But the same day my anima was revealed, he’d gone from doting father to cruel taskmaster in the space of minutes.
With his presence announced, my father comes in next, striding through the door in military-grade black boots. He is a wraith of a man, far too tall and far too lean, his cheeks hollowed out, deep bags under his eyes—as if the King Cobra bore some great worldly burden on his shoulders. But I know better. That was the weight of black magic, and he used it like an addict. We look a little similar, I suppose; I get my olive skin and dark hair from his side of the family and I’m thin from my diet of two-minute noodles and the rare poptart.
I haven’t seen him for an entire year—his assistants text me his orders—but he doesn’t look any different from the last time.
Those black eyes fix upon me like a predator’s hunting gaze and I want to sink inside the ground and never be seen again. I can’t help but notice he’s standing just inside the doorstep, as if he’s too disgusted to come in any further. As if it’s beneath himto enter properly. I only have two weeks left until I’m out of his life. He couldn’t have just left me alone?
“Aurelia.” His voice slithers up my spine and I suppress a cringe.
“Father.” I nod, keeping both my voice and face blank.
Both female scouts hiss with displeasure at my lack of use of his honorific, ‘Your Highness’. If I were any other person, that would warrant a death blow, or in Serpent Court style, a call for slow execution via poison. He doesn’t like it when I call him ‘father’or‘dad’, because I could be no daughter of his. But in a world where complete submission is expected of me, calling him ‘father’ is the single act of defiance I allow myself.
The only sign of his displeasure is a twitch at the side of his mouth as he raises his hand to placate his lackey scumbags; the picture of a fair and benevolent ruler.
“Are you well?” he asks flatly, his eyes clinically darting around my body to check for signs of disability or disease. His dark presence falls upon me like a heavy blanket, and I suppress the urge to shift uncomfortably. I want him gone, out of my space and out of my life. I’m a legal adult now and not a part of his court—that surely means I have some autonomy.Someleg to stand on now.
“I am well,” I confirm, and in a sudden burst of uncharacteristic bravery I say, “What do you need, father? I need to get to work.”
He takes a single step forward, and that movement has my heart skipping multiple beats. I can’t help the fear rising in me and I am so ashamed of myself when I take a woeful step back in response.
His black eyes gleam at how much I’m acting like prey. “You will not be going to the shop today, Aurelia,” he says.
I know he can feel my fear, taste it in the air, hear it in my heartbeat. But I can’t control that right now. Not as theycrowd my tiny house, not as my entire world narrows onto one realisation.
Iamtwenty now.
I am a woman in my father’s eyes.
Perhaps going away to college was a fool’s dream. The dream of a stupid, hopeful girl.
Is this it?
Is this my day of reckoning where my father reveals our secret for his own gain? Where he sells me like chattel to the highest bidder? The Old Laws permit it and there are many who still hold on to them.
“And why is that?” I hate the tremble in my voice.
“I have a colleague in need of your healing abilities.”
Cool relief washes through me like a king tide and I know I visibly sag under the weight being released from the thought that I was being sold into marriage or a breeding pen. I let out a shaky breath, almost laughing out loud. He needs to let me go to college. I can’t be doing histasksanymore.
“You have access to better healers than?—"
“You know that’s not true.” His voice interrupts me with a flash of his fangs. I shudder.
