Her Feral Beasts (Her Vicious Beasts, #1)

by E.P. Bali

I swear under my breath as me and my cock—not Eugene—register our regina’s vanilla cake scent. “This way,” I gruff to my brothers. “We’re close.” A frown pulls at my brows. “And she’s weak.”

In a panic, I flash into my human form, wildly searching my surroundings. I can’t see them yet and I scramble to my feet. With my shields being back up, I can’t ‘sense’ them in the way a regular regina would sense the mates of her pack. “Lee-uh,” Savage calls softly. His voice is like a sweet caress down my naked spine and suddenly I’m as still as a deer, my muscles quivering in anticipation. My anima writhes under my skin, pining for the one who hunts me. The one I’ve already had inside my body. My mate. Savage is my mate.

I can’t deny that I want my mates. That I feel their presence at the corner of all things in my reality. That just the knowledge of them being nearby is sending me mad with the need to run towards them.

It’s my brain that’s telling me to run, and right now, I think my brain isn’t working properly. I summon the last dregs of strength to fling up my shield of invisibility just as I hear the purposeful crunch of heavy boots. Freedom from my father and this thing that haunts me is so close I can taste it. I just need a little more time. I’m going to the new blended university. I’m going to live my life away from the clutches of my father and his court and be free of this shit.

A scent like pine and spring wafts towards me and I breathe in a full lungful. The female anima inside of me snaps up its head. My blood pounds in my ears and every cell in my body stands to attention as I fix my eye on the spaces between the trees. Shards of sunlight pierce the canopy above, cutting through the air in diagonal slashes, illuminating the space in an otherworldly glow. They walk into the clearing like three kings of hell.

I suck in a sharp, shocked, primal breath. Because this is the first time I’m seeing all three of them in their solid, physical forms without the bars of a cell between us or in their astral forms, and the sight is a sweet and severe jab to my lower gut. Savage is in the lead. And as my w...

Somewhere in the last week, Savage has had a haircut. A dark curl flops onto his forehead, and he has a fade down both sides. He’s also shaved the scruff on his jaw, but even with smooth skin, there is a feral, brutal look to him. Savage is even more devastatingly handsome in ...

I have literally zero time to ponder this new development because Savage’s hazel eyes are predatory as they sweep the clearing, his head lowered in the fashion of a beast hunting his prey. He knows I’m close.

Scythe prowls after his brother a little distance away. He’s the first shark I’ve met because none of them like to be land-dwellers, and he has that characteristic out-of-this-world, high cheekboned beauty and the long silver hair of his kind. But that’s where his prettiness ends.

It’s his appearance that surprises me the most because he’s hunting through the forest in what I’m sure is an expensive black business shirt and slacks. With the tattoos on his neck and black ink across his hands, he looks like some dangerous hitman. Ice-blue eyes search the clearing and a chill consumes me at that purely lethal expression. Unlike the others, he’s only ever spoken two sentences to me. Xander strolls in behind Scythe.

The dragon’s got his usual nasty sneer on, but on a face that is sheer fine-boned masculine beauty, he manages to make it look sexy. The last time I saw him, he was strung up, half naked against a dungeon wall, an...

His long black hair is currently tied up at the nape of his neck. He’s got a black nose ring and a dangling cross on his left ear. In a black tank top and slashed jeans, he’s pretty devastating—even without the glowing silver eyes that allow him to see through his physical blindness. He’s got one headphone in, but I note that his old music device is gone—swapped for a shiny new black phone stuck into his front jeans pocket. Put that all together and you have three six-and-a-half foot beasts who would se...

My eyes hone in on the fact that Savage is still wearing my black hair tie—from one night of weakness—where he’d slipped it off my hair and onto his own wrist. Oddly, that same hand is also holding a fluro pink handbag. It’s tiny, glossy, looks expensive, and is ridiculous hanging off his large, tattooed hand. Completely out of my control, my traitorous anima lets out a silent, sad cry. All three heads snap towards me. Dear Wild Mother, I’m so dead.

Xander is little more than a blur and I don’t realise that he’s circled behind me until I’m tackled to the forest floor. We fall onto the leaf-litter with a crash and my side explodes with pain. My invisibility shield goes down as a pathetic sort of wail leaves my throat. Some primal part of me relishes the feel of Xander’s large, hard body encircling mine, but it’s quickly overtaken by a rage borne of the realisation that they’ve actually caught me despite my best efforts over five whole days. Call me an overachiever, but I thought I could do better. Xander’s arms tighten around my bare stomach as his breath tickles my ear. “You’re weak, serpent girl. I could hear your panting from twenty paces away.”

Get yourself together, Aurelia. Think. Perhaps it’s being so close to my mates that gives me a burst of energy, because as Xander roughly hauls me up to standing, my mind is suddenly sharp. I’m stark naked. Tits out, bits out, buns pressed against some part of Xander I can’t afford to think about right now.

Xander roughly pulls my arms behind my back, holding both my wrists in just one of his own. And even as I hate him for doing this to me, I can’t help but feel how warm his hand is against my cold skin. How his fingers are curling around my wrists. I swallow my desire down and fix a scowl to my face as Savage and Scythe stand like rigid giants before me, glowering with hate. Oddly, strangely—perhaps disturbingly—neither of the brothers look down past my face. “Lia,” Savage says quietly, and my heart cries at the way he says my name. But he’s frowning and fingering the pink handbag.

He comes forwards, bends to place it at my feet, swiftly turns around and stalks off, his shoulders tight like he hates himself for it. For the second time, I stop breathing. I know exactly what this is. The male animus inside Savage is forcing him to give me, his regina, a gift. If we were in a normal mating group, this would be the right thing to do. The normal and expected thing. But we aren’t normal in any way, and I can’t give into the powerful urge to reach down and cradle the bag in my arms and kiss it like a baby.

Savage finds me attractive, I know, and he’s been the only one to touch me. He gave me the best orgasm of my life with those strong fingers, and I think that’s why his beast feels the urge to gift me things more than the others. Plus, he’s a wolf, and they prize family structures more than any other order. As touched as I am, it’s heart-wrenching because I can’t accept it. “You know the price of that bag?” Xander snee...

My heart sinks so low into my body that I’m pretty sure it’s sitting in my feet. “And do you know what?” Savage cries, suddenly whirling around to glare at me, his eyes wild and furious. “I’ll kill one hundred fucking more beasts to get rid of this fucking rage I feel. I can’t believe you tried to kill us, Lia!” Scythe is silent and pacing behind him as I stare at them in shock. I close my gaping mouth before crying, “I didn’t try to kill y...

Being looked at by Scythe is like having a pair of ice picks spearing into you. Being stared at by him? It’s like those ice picks are twisting. It’s cold and calculating, but damn, he looks hot doing it. To think I’d snuck in track pants to cover his naked ass in that dungeon, when he’s used to wearing expensive clothes like this? I’m embarrassed I even tried now. Xander’s grip tightens painfully around my wrists. “Snake’s not l...

It’s a heinous crime to reject your mates. Among our kind, only the truly evil would choose to destroy something so sacred. I remain silent…until Scythe advances towards me, looking like the devil himself with the darkness that wraps around him. It’s then that I see what he has in his hands. A shining length of obsidian chain. Terror that’s deeply ingrained in my being grips m...

Scythe pauses in his advance, and that’s all I need. I slam a shield of power into Xander with every calorie of strength that burger gave me. The dragon stumbles back, releasing me, and I run. As I do, I whip three shields over the males behind me, trapping them inside bubbles of my force. They immediately rage against them. “I’ll get you, Lia!” Savage roars from behind me, pounding his fists against my shield. “You’re fuckin...

“You can’t hide!” Xander shouts, slamming the entire force of a dragon’s burning fist into my shield. I scream, stumbling as pain erupts in my brain and I have no choice but to let the shield holding Xander go. A shard of fear shoots through my center as Scythe silently rips his jail like it’s a piece of paper, instantly freeing himself. With a pri...

Bursting into eagle form, feathers tear through my skin, a beak bursts through my mouth, and I’m airb...

Golden success lifts me higher on the wind…until a mighty, guttural roar funnels through the air. There is only one creature in our world that can produce that terrifying, hair-raising sound. I feel only dread as I register a wild and ferocious heat chasing me. In the face of a dragon, I’m nothing but a piddly little pigeon.

Xander’s power hits me like a heatwave from a forest fire; a wall of blazing energy that makes me falter in mid-air. A huge shadow passes over me like a missile, and panicking, I dive into the trees. I fly at trunk-level through the forest, zipping through the trunks, my mind scrambling to figure how the hell I’m going to escape a real live dragon. Xander must really be furious if he lost control and shifted. The Council of Beasts places strict rules on when and how dragons fly. Well, either that, or he simply doesn’t care about rules. Something about Xander tells me it’s the latter.

As I fly for my life, a roar shakes the very particles of air above me. I don’t know what type of restraint Xander has on his magic—or his morals—because he could very well incinerate this forest in one breath. But that would land him in an actual beast prison or he’d become a fugitive they’d have to put down. Even so, a dragon flying through the air is an issue for the council and he’s giving our location away to everyone in the area.

My best bet is to head right into town, where my mates will be reluctant to cause a ruckus. I mourn the loss of that handbag for a single awful second. Okay, I know they’re unhinged, but seriously? I need to move faster. Snapping my beak and swearing bloody murder, I clear the forest and come to the main road that leads up to town. The road becomes a bridge where, underneath, travels a slow-moving river, bordered by tall eucalypts and red bottle brushes.

Hiding is useless because they’ll sniff me out right away. But…Savage can’t scent me if I’m in water! Thinking fast, I glide towards the bridge where I promptly tuck in my wings and dive headfirst into the river. The impact hurts when I hit the cold surface and it’s jarring to my already strained nerves. It’s murky underneath and eagles were never made for swimming, so I hop out and huddle in the shade of the bridge. A truck zooms past above me and I shiver, trying to catch my breath. I check in with my power and see that I’m down to my last two shields. I’m severely depleted--the type of depletion that will take me days to recover from. My anima howls miserably.

Huffing through my beak, I try and piece my mind together after seeing my three mates in the flesh. Xander touched me for the first time, and his body is like an imprint on my naked back and his fingers like a brand on my wrists. They were big, firm hands that⁠—

Shit. No, arousal is something I can’t have mixing with my scent. Female anima can send sexual signals to their mates without the need for scent at all. We had a…little incident a week ago when, in a moment of great horny weakness, I accidentally let my guard down and sent out a regina’s siren song. That was the thing that revealed who I was. All five of them arrived at my tiny one-bedroom ramshackle bungalow of exile in their astral forms.

Though I hadn’t been able to see anyone—except Savage—as shadows, they’d all seen me and my mating mark. All five will recognise me on sight now. A stupid mistake and one I would definitely not be repeating. The memory makes me shiver and I clamp down on my wild anima, who knows that sex with my mates would be excellent fuel for my power. ...

I would know Scythe’s ice and tundra power anywhere. The water. He’s found me. How could I be so stupid as to sit here, by a body of water, when one of my mates commands that element?

There’s a group of buildings on my left and I turn around to see a large park full of people…and no less than ten black hunting vans, blue and red sirens flashing. It’s funny because for the past five days, I knew all these beasts were after me, but seeing the vans sprawled out, officers in black tactical gear running around with automatic weapons, blue and red lights flashing? I’m stumped. Actually stumped that this is all for me and my mates. Just as my stomach drops in tortured realisation, a voice like the jagged edge of a knife cuts through the air. “Don’t touch her, she’s mine!”

Frantically, I look down to see Lyle Pardalia in a navy three-piece suit standing like the archangel of death at the head of the tactical forces. There’s a long black machine on his shoulder that’s aimed right at me. His amber eyes flash in lethal calculation. Seriously? A bazooka…and a suit? What is wrong with this guy? His tanned jawline could cut skin open, I’m sure, with the signature long blonde hair that lions typically wear, tied off his face. I’m stunned by his figure, by the fact that he looks like he wants to kill little old me. The lion really doesn’t like me. I probably hurt his male ego by thwarting him that first time at the motel. He’s definitely out for revenge now.

Just as I try to veer backwards, I am held in place by a force so great I think it’s going to squeeze me until my intestines burst out of my abdomen. I let out a high-pitched shriek just as Lyle fires his weapon. The ball shooting out of it becomes a black net of tourmaline and obsidian. It swallows me ...

Lyle levitates me—telekinesis being the feline power—down to land as they all shamelessly stare. But from this high, I can make out a flurry of activity across the clearing. A group of council hunters are surrounding three males.

Savage is putting up, what I’m sure is, a half-hearted fight, thrashing out, kicking and punching as he manically laughs. Abruptly, he shouts, “If anyone hurts my chicken, they’re fucking dead! Hear me? Fucking dead!”

Sure enough, the rooster gives a sad, muffled squawk from his own cage, a tiny black hood on his head stopping him from seeing anything. A very human and naked Xander is laughing as two council hunters are spontaneously ...

Scythe is coming willingly, on his feet, already handcuffed in the black shackles, and I’m surprised when I see the hunters keeping a respectful distance from him. The shark’s cold eyes are on me, however, as Lyle dumps me unceremoniously onto the grass, my arms bound to my torso, thankfully covering my breasts. But my ass is laid bare to the world in between the thin ropes of the net. Knowing the deputy headmaster of Animus Academy is in complete control of my body when he comes to look down upon me, amber eyes narrowed, makes me want to punch him in his pretty face. But I can’t even snarl at him with my frozen form. “You made me do this the hard way, Miss Aquinas,” he says in that flat monotone he seems to enjoy using. I’ve dubbed it his ‘shopping-list voice’. “At Animus Academy, you’ll get the help you need. You’ll be safe.”

This beast thinks I’ll be safe in a prison school? Where the most feral and criminally minded eighteen to twenty-five years olds of our kind try and learn how to be civilised?

Because, as he levitates me back up, I can see that now there’s a crowd of humans waiting on the other side of a line of police tape, and many of them have their phones out. I die a little on the inside at the humiliation of it all as Lyle levitates me through the open back doors of a waiting military-grade van.

I’m so deeply fucked by this capture I don’t even know whether to cry or scream when the doors shut and plunge me into an all-encompassing darkness. As the vehicle rumbles to life and rolls onto the road, my exhaustion comes back in full force. My eyes slide heavily shut and my entire body goes limp, my anima warbling sadly. A teeny, tiny piece of me is relieved that I now get to lie down and rest. That I don’t have to run for my life for the next few hours. That was getting really tiring, really fast.

This is just a reprieve for me, right? Only a teensy detour in my well-laid plans. Except, I know in my heart it’s more than that, because Animus Academy is just as much a prison as it is a re...

I’ve never been more pissed off in my life. Aurelia was so close. So close I could practically taste her perfect fucking olive skin on my tongue. Taste those rosebud lips and those delicious chocolate nipples. Xander got the first physical touch over me, and as we sit on the floor of the rumbling military truck, I’m ready to pull his brains out of his eye sockets for it. Snapping out my leg, I strike the ugly dragon where he sits against the wall. “Fuck you, Xander.”

Even rendered blind by the magic-suppressing shackles, my dragon brother doesn’t take it lying down. He launches himself at me and we break out into a vicious scuffle. Does it matter that we’re bound neck to pelvis with tourmaline chains? Not one bit. As Scythe sits, still and brooding next to me, Xander and I try and break each other into pieces by sheer force of will. He snaps at me with his teeth and I jerk my head to the side before body slamming him against the titanium wall. The entire truck shakes from the force of our aggression.

Just as I’m considering shoving my teeth into his eye holes, there’s a shout from the driver’s seat. It’s only a matter of seconds before they’ve swerved us off the road and I go tumbling to the other wall. Xander lands on top of me with a grunt. “Ugly lizard,” I snap as he rolls off me. “Fetid mutt,” he spits back. Once again, Xander proves his entitled upbringing by throwing bi...

It’s Ruben fucking Lunaris. An almost seven foot tall motherfucker with a ruddy beard and even though he must be at least fifty years of age, he’s tanked.

“Separate them,” Ruben barks like he doesn’t know us. “Full gurney restraint.” I turn to give Scythe a look to see if he’s seen the wolf our father used to call the ‘Monster Wrangler’, but my half-brother is staring drolly ahead at the wall. He often does that, stares into the distance, thinking dark thoughts. He’s probably thinking about how he’s going to kill me. Or maybe he’s thinking about Aurelia and her long fluttery eyelashes.

When I see what they have planned for us, I tilt my head back and give a hacking laugh. “He’s rabid,” mutters one of the retrieval mutts. “Nah,” says Ruben, before he shoves a cloth sack with a breathing mesh over my head, “just mad.”