Page 4 of Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning (Her Vicious Beasts)

Aurelia

S hit .

I stare around at my icy cold, stone-walled surroundings. The steel bars of the cages are like the bare incisors of a greedy animal, ready to gobble me whole.

Ahead, in the dark, something shifts . My insides turn into slush.

He’s keeping people down here. Gods help me.

“It’s not exactly legal ,” Halfeather says conspiratorially, his dark eyes gleaming with excitement.

“I dare say it’s not.” I smile sheepishly, as if I’m being coy. “Is this where you keep your debtors?”

He tuts at me in a casual manner that suggests he’s thought about it before. “Hardly, my dear. Just the feral beasts who do me wrong. Cross me, as it were.”

I try to hold myself together, at the same wondering how I could have been so stupid not to think my father’s type of colleagues kept prisoners. Of course they do. They are all monsters like him.

“If you do this for me, my dear,” Halfeather drawls, “you can consider your father’s debt repaid in full.”

My father’s debt.

Fucking asshole! Rage bubbles through my veins, heady and hot as I realise my father is using me as his lackey. That to him, I am a valuable thing he can use over and over. That the likelihood of him actually letting me go for good is practically non-existent.

If this is what my life is going to be like until the end of time, I will not accept it.

I need a plan. I need to figure out how to get out of this. How to get out of my father’s clutches. Merely crossing state lines to go to college isn’t enough.

I have to maintain my composure here, with this powerful beast and his security. So, I act like I already know about the debt.

“Really?” I say, stopping our advance down the aisle to stare at him.

“Really,” he replies with a wan smile.

I hesitate before saying, “I’d like that in writing, please.”

His smile widens. “Clever girl, aren’t you?” I bat my eyelashes in what I hope is a pretty manner, but I’m not sure because I haven’t had much practice. It must work because he says, “I’ll have my lawyer draw the papers up right this minute.”

“You’re so kind, Mr. Halfeather.”

He makes a contented sound and sweeps me deep into the dungeon. Our four pairs of footsteps echo off the stone walls and I see hulking shadows lying in the cells we pass. We’re surrounded by darkness when Halfeather stops in front of another steel door set between two cells.

“Just here is my prized possession. But he is consumed by a deathly illness of some kind that won’t heal. Can you fix him, my little healer?”

I try to ignore the condescension in his voice as I look at the shadows about us uncertainly. I can barely see through the gloom and am more than certain that the large cells just feet away are all occupied with animalia.

“It is virtually impenetrable, my love,” Halfeather says breezily, noting my nervous look at the other cells. “They cannot harm you, and they know better than to talk to you.”

Talk to me!

Geez, he is far too comfortable in this dungeon, and it makes me think he enjoys coming down here. I look back at the steel door he’s indicated. Unlike the others secured with bars, it looks like this inmate is in solitary confinement. There’d be no light in there at all.

My skin crawls at the thought of such mental torture.

Asshole father or not, as a healer, I have the innate urge to help people, and that is something I won’t fight my anima on.

“How long has he been in there?” My voice is quiet, and I hope he finds it respectful.

This is not a male I want to be on bad terms with.

Halfeather waves a dismissive hand. “You can do it, can you not? Your father assures me you are some… anomaly?”

“I suppose I am.” I shrug. “I just think I have more patience than others.” It’s only half a lie.

“You can reach him through the door, yes?”

I close my eyes and send my awareness out towards the door, then through it.

The thing is made of metal as thick as the length of my arm and I almost swear out loud.

What kind of beast are they keeping in here that requires this ?

An animalia in human form lies on the floor, unmoving but breathing.

I can’t register the order he is, which is odd in of itself.

“I can get through,” I confirm.

He turns on his heel. “Simply knock on the door when you are done.” He strides away as if business is finished, the two security males following him.

My heart sinks into my nether regions. “You’re going to leave me here?”

His voice gets further and further away. “As I say, it’s quite secure. Beak and Scuff will be down to check on you.”

I swallow. What choice do I have here? “Right. Okay.”

The boom of the steel door shutting echoes down the passageway like a prophecy of doom. Okay, so that’s a bit dramatic, I know, but I’m in a real, live, literal dungeon. I can’t help but feel I’m being made a prisoner, too. Halfeather’s message is clear to me. I have to do this.

I stand in the gloom for a moment, my skin crawling, my heart pounding, feeling all the resentment in the world for my scum of a father. I really should just focus?—

A masculine voice reaches out to me like midnight silk. “You can’t help him.”

I freeze like a deer, straining my ears, not daring to breathe.

The voice comes from the cell next to the steel door and I’m close enough to look inside, but I can’t make anything out.

The voice says nothing further and heavy chains slide across the floor.

Gulping, I slowly swivel my head to look into the cell on my right.

I adjust my eyes by pulling my eagle form into them, and even with that, I can only just make out a man-shaped figure in the middle of the cell.

I look behind me, and with relief, I see a stone wall—I won’t have my back to one of the prisoners. But on either side of that wall are two occupied cells.

Cloaked in darkness, the prisoners are nothing but menacing shadows, and that makes the whole thing worse.

But I know where the voice came from, so I look again to the cell to the left of the steel door.

I clear my throat. “Why do you say that?”

Chains clink as if he’s moving closer to the bars. “None of the healers could do anything and they were all a lot more experienced than you.”

I know two things from his voice. One, that he is not rabid because those beasts don’t talk in proper sentences, and two, he’s had some sort of education by the confident way his mouth moves around his words.

Animalia criminals deserving of a dungeon usually aren’t the school-going sort.

But that arrogant voice, that condescending tone cuts into me and I know then that I will fix the beast behind the steel door, even if it kills me.

Do I have an ego? Maybe. I suppose this means I do.

Perhaps a lifetime of being shunned by my own family has made me into someone who scrambles to achieve something with her life.

And every healing I do is an achievement. A success.

And some arrogant male questioning my ability is the single most irritating thing to me right now.

I level a look in his general direction. “Interesting. I suppose we’ll see.”

The figure of the beast who’d spoken shifts, and he leans further forward, pushing himself between the bars and into the field of the meagre light.

My breath catches in my throat as a face of wolfish, masculine beauty comes into view.

Oh, he’s a wolf, no doubt about it. He has wavy black hair and scruff on his jaw, but neither of those things are what gives him away.

No, it’s the devilish, white-toothed smile and a rogue gleam in his eye that promises trouble .

Metal glints and I know he wears a stud on his ear.

He licks his lips and I can’t help but zone in on the movement. When he speaks again, his voice is heavy with flirtation, and he cocks his head playfully. “What is your name, princess?”

“You’re not supposed to be talking to me,” I say, forcing myself to look away.

A second voice, from the cell behind me and opposite the wolf’s, drawls in a slow voice like molten fire made into sound. “There are no cameras.” Then his voice takes on a deeper, colder cadence. “There’s no one to see what goes on down here.”