Page 3 of Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning (Her Vicious Beasts)

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 these jobs —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, even during inter-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 could possibly 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.

So, with my heart pounding in my ears, I roll down my window as a smartly dressed man in a grey and black security uniform and a gun at his hip strolls up to me.

“Aurelia Naga?”

I swallow as his eyes survey me. “Aurelia Aquinas, actually.”

It’s animalia protocol that you take the surname of whichever parent you take after—so I naturally took my mother’s name.

He nods as if this suddenly makes more sense, and waves me through the boom gate.

Okay, so this Halfeather is possibly more loaded than my father.

I briefly wonder if he is a dragon. They are rare—only a handful of families in our state—and they are always higher-up officials in the government or businessmen.

I mean, who would say ‘no’ to a dragon ?

The threat there was permanent and assumed, so it only makes sense they get whatever they want and are able generate extreme wealth.

I find out immediately what order of animalia I’m dealing with as I drive through the boom gate, though the name should have given it away. The fountain in the middle of the circular drive is of a massive stone eagle, its wings poised as if about to take off in flight.

I personally think that arrogance of the bird shifting population is warranted. There is no greater pleasure in this world than flying. Soaring high above everything and letting the wind carry you? Honestly, everyone else should be envious.

But I’m no more comfortable knowing what type of beast this Halfeather is. Each order of animalia has their own genetic powers, and it just so happens that birds are the healing beasts of our kind.

If he is a wealthy eagle, that means he is probably related to, or best friends with, the top healers in the country. Whatever he needs, the fact that I am being called to help makes my skin crawl with anxiety.

Another security male, tall and in all black, guides me to park in a designated space next to a shining red Ferrari.

I inwardly cringe, knowing full well I haven’t washed Maisy in months and her faded blue paint is practically peeling.

But on sight of the young male guard, my anima begins purring and preening inside of me alongside a bubbling nervousness.

I clamp down on it because I need my head clear to deal with this.

The tall security guard, also an eagle by his dark blond spiked-up hair, gives me a handsome smile as I get out of my car.

He gives me the usual, assessing once over unmated males give unmated females.

Heat flares in my cheeks at his approving smile and I’m glad my shields hide the likely desire in my scent.

I haven’t had sex in a few years—a lone serpent who’d seen me at the shop, and that had ended badly.

I really feel the absence of it in my life and an ache throbs deep within my stomach.

Once animalia hit puberty, we are taken to the city’s oracle, who is a member of the ancient House of Phoenix. They have the ability to see a person’s soul-bound mates by the touch of a hand. When I’d gone at thirteen for my reading, the news had not been good. Another strike against me.

I had five mates. And two of them were already in jail.

If I’d thought my father had been furious about my anima, it was nothing compared to his furore when he’d found out how many and what orders my mates were.

He’d gone back inside to the oracle to blackmail the names out of her.

He told me that he didn’t end up getting any of them, as it was a difficult skill for an oracle to perform.

It didn’t matter because I had then been forbidden to speak of my mates to any living soul under any circumstances.

To do so would lead me to disaster, father had said.

If anyone knew who my mates were, they would know what I was right away.

It would be a dead giveaway, and that information could not be out in the world.

I would be stolen away by powerful beasts, chained up and used as a career breeder.

No one can know what I am.

That means I have to stay away from my mates and do everything in my power to avoid them finding me.

I follow the security guy—Beak, he tells me his name is—as he leads me past the white Grecian pillars of the entrance into the mansion.

It’s all gold and white marble inside, gilded portraits of birds on the walls and clinically clean.

There’s a small table off to the side where Beak puts on latex gloves and checks my battered black handbag.

I shift with unease as he searches through it, pushing aside my case of tampons and compact mirror and opening my wallet to check my driver’s license.

Then he apologises as he confiscates the entire bag into a big safe behind his desk.

I raise my brows but say nothing as he leads me up the marble staircase, through a maze of red-carpeted corridors, and to a mahogany door.

The entire time I stare at his ass and I let out a puff of air to try and let out some of the pressure building up in me.

He glances back at me then, and I heat up like a wheat bag.

Smirking, he smartly raps on the expensive wood, opens it, and leads me through.

“Aurelia Aquinas, Mr. Halfeather,” Beak announces formally.

I gulp as I enter, feeling underdressed in my jeans and t-shirt combo as the wealthy male’s office is revealed, dripping with all the expensive trimmings.

Wood-panelled walls fitted with oil paintings, gilded wall sconces, and a heavy mahogany desk.

The room is big enough to hold a full lounge set, and everything matches in maroon leather.

What is not matching is a weaselly man coming around the desk, a sly smile curving his face.

My skin crawls at the pale, narrow-faced male and the brown eyes eagerly focused on me. He wears a long black robe like a medieval sorcerer, though he can’t be older than fifty. His hair is black and receding and he gives off an observant, scummy sort of energy.

“Aurelia.” He purrs my name with the familiarity of a doting uncle. “Thank you for coming.”

I suppress a cringe as I try to give him a small smile. My father’s colleague. I wonder what dark business they do together. “It’s no problem.”

“Your father tells me you are a talented healer.”

I’m surprised my father has revealed to someone that he has a daughter. It’s not like it’s a huge secret, but he hides it when he can with non-court members. “Some might say that, yes, Mr. Halfeather.”

His smile widens as I say his name. He’s a man with an ego as big as his house, no doubt about it. But I’m kicking myself because who would say I’m a ‘talented healer’? I’ve been so isolated, no one, except my assessor during my healing course, knew me well enough to say that.

“Do you have any other powers?”

“No, sir.” I lie.

He nods as if this confirms what he already knows. “I have a rather difficult situation that none of my healers have had much success with. I’m afraid you are my last effort at recovering this certain individual.”

Ice slides down my spine at his clinical manner of speaking, at the fact that experienced, qualified healers have already tried to heal this person. Halfeather himself has probably also tried.

Is this a trap? A way for my father to teach me a lesson about trying to leave for college? I try not to appear nervous, but I think it still shows because Halfeather leans forward and speaks as if to a child. “Can you keep a secret, my sweet?”

I clear my throat. “I guess I can, Mr Halfeather.”

“Just for me?”

“S-Sure.”

Every instinct I possess tells me to run from this eagle. To leave and never look back and ring my father and blast him for sending me here. But they have my bag, they have my phone, and there is a bloody boom gate at the front.

There is no escaping.

He leads me from the room and a second security guard joins us from nowhere—another eagle, bulky, with dark brown hair and blonde tips. It seems Halfeather only trusts his own kind. It makes sense if he’s doing shady business with people like my father.

Instead of taking me up the stairs, where I imagine the living areas are, we go down . One set of stairs and then another, and another. The elevators don’t go down to wherever we’re going. I know that because we pass two on our way.

We reach the end of a final set of stairs and Halfeather beams at me as we emerge into a dark room made of grey stone.

It’s cold and barely lit with little lights on walls.

I put my arms around myself, rubbing my gooseflesh and cursing my father’s name.

It looks more and more like the shady place I’d first expected.

The entire thing is creepy, but I’m somehow drawn forward, wanting to know what the hell he’s keeping down here.

I’ve been privy to the secrets of many animalia, but no secret as grand as this one.

Despite my rising panic, my feet move forward by some primal curiosity.

Power is floating at the corners of my shields, but I do my best to ignore it.

We walk through one set of locked steel doors, and then a second set. Talk about secure.

“Here we are,” Halfeather says brightly as the second set of doors swing open. “My pride and joy.”

We stand before a cold, shadowy maw. There’s stone set into the shape of a wide, low-ceilinged corridor that’s long and dark enough that I can’t see the end of it.

Tiny lights are set at intervals along the walls, barely fighting away the shadowy gloom beyond.

In between those intervals are steel bars.

Cold realisation trickles down my spine.

Holy Mother…

Cells. This is a dungeon.