Page 2 of Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning (Her Vicious Beasts)

Aurelia

P anicking, I dart from my bathroom into my tiny living room just in time to see the front door slam open and two of my father’s lackeys skulk in.

I stiffen, frozen to the spot as the two women, wiry and hunched, dressed in black overcoats and black jeans, check my house for threats, looking anywhere but me.

They both wear black lipstick and heavy black eyeliner—the snakes of my father’s court prefer a grunge style of fashion.

In general, animalia always like to dress to the style of their order, so there are always telltale signs of what beast they are:

Lions always wear their hair long, often braided; males and females both.

Eagles and other birds choose spiky hair styles, mohawks and so on.

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 is very bad.

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 him to 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. Some leg 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 they crowd my tiny house, not as my entire world narrows onto one realisation.

I am twenty 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 his tasks anymore.

“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.

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 exactly how rare 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.

This is 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. But unnatural is 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 you will go. 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 na?ve I’ve been.

His voice drops even lower. “I said , 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 a black-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, I will be 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.