Page 23 of Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning (Her Vicious Beasts)

Aurelia

M y eagle form is not a cure-all to my issue.

Lyle will have access to the recovery team, which tracks down feral and rabid beasts and takes them to prison, or if they are under twenty-five, to Animus Academy for rehabilitation and education.

That recovery team will include winged animalia trained in hunting.

Not knowing how he’d come to find me in the first place, I’m still not safe and I don’t know how quickly Lyle is going to get a team together—or how long it’ll take him, as a lion, to hunt me down again.

It will be embarrassing for him to return without me, and lions have big egos, second only to dragons.

He won’t stop until he finds me, I just know it.

That just means I have to be cleverer than anyone else.

I focus on gaining as much height as I can and head north, as I’d initially intended.

So I don’t have my car. This might be a blessing in disguise because travel for me now has no boundaries, and with my eagle sight, I will be able to see anyone coming from land or sky from miles away.

If I can find a tall tree to roost in for the night, I can even sleep as a bird for one or two nights.

Any more than that and I will likely turn feral myself, letting my anima take over in its animalistic mindset.

And all my anima wants to do right now is find my mates.

No, my human brain needs to be in control at all times.

I can’t believe my awful luck. In the span of a week, I’ve managed to find three of my mates and the other two know what I look like from my little siren call that one night.

And now them, Lyle fucking Pardalia and the Council are hunting me.

Savage likely has my scent from that one night of disaster, and if he’s following his instincts, he will scent me out in no time on foot.

The image of him standing over me, sucking on his fingers, fills my stomach with tumbling emotions. I want to cry, but I just can’t afford to lose focus.

Flying is one of my greatest joys; as an eagle—or hawk or raven, it’s all brilliant.

I felt closest to my mother when I was an eagle because, apparently, it was her preferred form.

The feeling of the currents shifting below my wings is at once comforting and exhilarating.

It feels like true freedom to be up here as an actual bird of prey, capable of simply seeing the world in the highest definition.

Mice scurried in the fields below me, tiny sparrows flitted through the trees and I even saw to rabbits going at it under a bush.

At least someone was living their dream and getting some action.

If I’m not careful, it’s easy to get lost in the sensation of flying. When I think of this, understanding why animalia become feral or even rabid is not surprising.

But alas, my anima knows that I am not an eagle by nature. I’m getting a little tired because my wing stamina isn’t the best as I don’t fly very often, so I push myself to get as much distance as possible between myself and what feels like the entire world pursuing me.

Before long, I’m weakening in the dark of night, and though my eagle eyes are brilliant in the dark, I need food and a place to rest while I recover for the next long stretch of travel.

I make a slow, controlled descent, following the twinkling lights of a shopping district and heading to the outskirts of that, spotting a small group of half constructed houses.

There has to be a warm, vacant spot there for me to sleep in, undisturbed and hidden.

I wheel down, choosing a house that looks like it has only just gotten its bricks set today.

Heading in straight to the open entrance, I sigh happily through my beak.

I dare not shift back to human form tonight, though.

I have no clothes after all, and I imagine a tableau where human builders arrive early in the morning for work and find a naked girl in their construction site.

Huffing, I settle down in a corner, pulling my wings about me to snuggle in for a nap. But even as tiredness pulls me down like a heavy blanket, my heart pounds like I’m still in danger.

Adrenaline spikes through me like a wild wind and I’m on high alert immediately, blinking through the dark.

Crickets chirp outside. The wind whistles through the empty house, stirring my feathers just slightly.

I smell drying cement and the fresh scent of the wood used the build the frame of this house.

It should be peaceful. But instead, the world around me is buzzing with raw, dangerous energy. Something is nearby. Something powerful.

And then a voice like shadows and dark places effortlessly pierces my seven shields. “I’ve been inside you, princess. You can’t hide from us.”

Savage is here.

This is the beginning of Her Vicious Beasts , a spicy MFMMMM fated mates contemporary fantasy series.

The story really gets going in Book 1, Her Feral Beasts.