Page 3 of Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning
For a secondary power, I’m rather good at healing. While it’s rare for a shifter to have a second power, I—like my mother—am a rare creature.
My father has kept me hidden so no one finds out exactlyhowrare I am. But all the same, it’s taken years to become a good healer. To learn all the ins and outs of a shifter’s body. Whenever my father wants me to help, it means the case is something unusual and dangerous no one else will touch. Something that will, no doubt, put me at risk.
“I’m twenty now,” I blurt. “I’m not a part of your court. You can’t order me anymore?—"
His eyes flash in anger and he flings out his arm in a strike. The shadow of his huge serpent animus flies out of his palm head first. It hurtles through the air straight for me, its jaws dislocate, snap out, and find their place clamped around my neck. I choke on a scream, staggering backwards as sharp teeth pierce the delicate sides of my throat. My back thumps against the kitchen wall and I blink rapidly, trying to stay still as my father advances on me. His lackeys grin behind him.
Thisis why he is king of his court. It’s easy for animalia to shift into our animal forms. To shift part of our body one at a time was rare. To remove the spirit of it and use it to attack someone else? Unheard of. It’s unnatural. Butunnaturalis something serpents respect.
When my father speaks again, his voice is dangerously calm. “You will be given the name and address of the place I need you to go today. And youwillgo. Is that clear? I have already spoken to my sister.”
I grind my teeth as the shadow-serpent squeezes its jaws around my neck, choking my blood supply. Stars erupt in my vision, making my father’s face twinkle with faint lights. He looms over me, grim-faced; no love, no light in those black eyes. My heart splits in two all over again, and I understand just how naïve I’ve been.
His voice drops even lower. “Isaid, Aurelia, is that clear?”
I let out a sorry grunt. My age means nothing to him. It’s no more than a legality. He will always own me. “Yes, father.”
He turns on his heel and the serpent is ripped from my throat, disappearing back into my father’s hand, leaving me reeling. I gasp, my knees buckling, and I collapse onto my kitchen tiles.
They leave in a procession and I watch them, a hand over my burning neck. The last—a female viper—turns and gives me ablack-lipped smirk before she slams my front door shut, making my windows quiver in their frame, just like me.
I can’t help the hot tears that slide from my eyes as I feel them all depart through my shield outside.
Fuck.Fuck. Fuck.I bring my hand away from my neck, and it’s smeared with red. I stand on shaking legs and hobble to my mirrored kitchen splash-back, leaning down to check the damage. All seven of the personal shields I permanently keep around me are down—that’s the effect my father has on me.
But it means I can see myself properly, and I’m forced to see my latent mating mark on the right side of my neck. It’s a mark that only animalia from your mating group can see, marking you as soul-bound in all lifetimes. Animalia spend their entire lives looking for others with the same mark. Mine is a skull with five streams of light bursting from it.
And the five reasons I’m forced to live the hidden life that I do.
Oozing crimson dots line both sides of my neck. As angry tears burn the backs of my eyes, I heal them just enough to stop the bleeding.
I want those wounds to remain painful.
Because every time I feel that burn, I want to remember the type of man my father is. That one day, Iwillbe free of him. Somehow. Some way.
My phone pings and I fish it out of my pocket to see that his assistant has texted me the address he wants me to go to. I sigh in resignation. Wherever this leads, it’s not going to be good.
I fling all seven of my shields back up and watch my mating mark disappear along with my scent. Being hidden is how I will survive this life. What my father has left of it, anyway.
Chapter 3
Aurelia
I’ve been working odd jobs for my father since I was a child, even before my anima was revealed. Back then, he tread carefully, using thesejobs—as he’d called them—to train my shielding and healing abilities to make me a powerful addition to his court; someone he can use to strengthen his hold over other beasts.
But once I’d been exiled from said court, the jobs became a little riskier, a little more dangerous. My father, being the King of Serpents, deals with the dangerous and wealthy. So they’d gone from simple healing tasks to life-threatening injuries after big fights, evenduringinter-court fights or underground fighting rings between valuable beasts. I’d often have to make myself invisible using my special eighth shield, so no one knew I was there. It made my father a sort of enigma, that he could promise powerful healing but no one knew by what means. I think they all assumed he used some type of black magic from a distance.
I’m sure he got paid well for my services.
Since my father forbade me from getting a proper job, I had thought about taking up human sex work for money to generate an income. A side-hustle. Stripping was too public, but I couldpossibly make money quickly selling my body. Any money I made I would have to hide from him, so cash payments were my best option, and in addition, I’d get a power boost. I never got the courage to follow through with that idea, though it would have really helped me recharge some days, I’m sure.
They’d messaged me the location of one ‘Mr. G. Halfeather,’ and the address of a property a little way from town—an area I’m not familiar with. It can’t be an illegal cage fight or a battle for territory. The former are in locations well known to me and the latter are always in Council-approved fields or warehouses. In addition, the text message states: “Visibility required”. My heart drops as I see this because it means that he expects me to go to this client without my invisibility shield. This is a first for me since I was child.
Nervous, I grab my handbag and keys and jump into my old, beat-up blue Beetle, my precious Maisy, and follow my phone’s directions down the highway. I don’t know what I’m expecting—perhaps a dark den full of shifters smoking pot and snorting cocaine—but I find myself pulling into the circular driveway of a palace-sized mansion with an actual boom gate at the front complete with a security booth.
It reminds me of the place I used to call home as a child. But I shove that thought away as fast as it came.
Having been frequenting cage fighting dens for years now, I’m no stranger to brawny males flinging their animus around. I usually eighth-shield myself in the car park, however, and don’t have to have contact with them when they can’t see me.
