75. Savage
Chapter 75
Savage
M y head is out the window, my hair flapping wildly as I scan the sky because I know our regina is close. The road is empty this early in the morning, with dense forest on either side of us. I listen carefully to my spirit.
A hint of phantom pain hits me like foreign claws in my spine. It’s her.
“Next left!” I shout to Lyle. “They’ve found her!”
Lyle doesn’t answer. Instead, the car lifts off the road completely and I let out a whoop as our lion shoots us down the road like a bullet. The very skin of my face seems to fly backwards under the force of it, and I have to open my eyes wide to maintain vision. A dirt road appears through the forest on the left and Lyle swerves violently. I hold onto the edge of my window with all my might, the aggression of it riling me up, getting me ready to reclaim my regina.
“Slow down,” Scythe commands. “We’re near.”
Lyle halves his speed and I scan the forest for any sign of movement.
In the distance, a falcon shrieks in pain.
“Aurelia!” I scream.
Lyle and Scythe let out snarls of pure fury and I feel Scythe go cold.
I almost break the door wrenching it open. Lyle stops us and drops the car abruptly and my brain rattles as I slam into Scythe’s seat from the force of it.
Lyle and Scythe are already out of the car and leaping into the forest as I explode into my wolf form and dive after them.
We run like the devil himself is on our tails, desperate, enraged. We come on them quickly and I crash through the bush into a small clearing, leaves crunching under my paws.
It’s not every day you see a lion fly through the sky and take down a falcon in its jaws, squeezing it until it squirts blood and guts.
But we are the Boneweaver pack.
“Give me a go!” I cry to Lyle.
The lion’s rabid eyes flick to me while he gnaws on the bird and I feel myself lift. “There!” I indicate to one of the birds and Lyle doesn’t make me fly, the bastard piffs me, like a football, right at the thing.
Soaring in a giant, deadly arc, I open my jaws wide as I slam into the mass of feathers, chomping in every direction until I feel flesh and bone. The birdy screeches and I throw him down to the ground, just as I hurtle for the ground too.
“Lyle!” I growl.
He catches me in the air just before I hit the ground and then lets me plonk onto the dry grass. I immediately jump back up onto my paws, my head snapping left and right, looking for more enemies.
“Where is she?”
That primal instinct guides my nose left and forward, where Scythe is already bent over a falcon, a human male lying with its head in pieces next to him. My heart near flies out of my chest and I shift into human form, rushing towards them. “Regina!”
Scythe holds up a hand to pause me and it makes me rage to think I’m being stopped from getting to her. But I realise he’s telling me to be careful.
My growl spreads out through the clearing as Lyle comes up next to me, breathing hard. Scythe cradles Aurelia to his chest as he stands, turning around to show her to us. Lyle and I immediately crowd him, cooing and reaching out to pet the feathers of the one we live for. Her eyes are closed where she rests against Scythe’s chest, her beak slightly open, panting for breath.
She’s in pain.
“Aurelia,” I say telepathically, panicking a little. “ My regina. Are you okay? You are not okay, I’m sorry, I know that, we’ll make you better, you’ll see ? —”
Lyle puts a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Hush, wolf. Don’t overwhelm her.”
“But I want to tell her that I love her.” Then I realise that I actually missed that part and turn back to her. “I love you.”
“She has both her legs,” Scythe says, angling her up so Lyle and I can see two powerful eagle claws. I bend down, inspecting her body.
“That one looks different,” Lyle says, adoringly brushing her right leg with the back of his knuckle. “It’s lighter in colour. The skin is softer.”
She pulls it away from him, tucking it under her like a lame wolf.
“It hurts her!” I exclaim. “Baby, what did they do?”
“Let’s get her out of here,” says Scythe, pushing between the two of us and heading back through the forest. “We need to get to safety. The hunting wolves won’t be far behind the falcons.”
“Right,” I say as Lyle goes flying past us to take the lead. When we see the coast is clear, he throws himself into the car and guns the engine.
Scythe gets into the back seat and I run around to get into the other side. We take off with screeching tyres back the way we came. I scoot over to the middle seat so I can be close to my regina. My little chompy. Scythe holds her like his life depends on it, one of his thumbs caressing her wing.
I lean in and run my finger down her face, then lightly kiss the top of her beak. “Baby, I need you to respond to me,” I whisper into her mind. “I need to know you are okay.”
“I’m sorry,” the reply comes, small and frightened.
My face scrunches up of its own accord and I wipe a tear from my eye before pressing my forehead against hers. “ I love you. You know that, right? You know you could take out my heart and eat it and I would still be madly in love with you. Everything will be okay now.”
“Regina,” Scythe’s rough-as-cut-class-voice-says, “you will be okay.”
Her body relaxes into him then. “You came back,” she whispers.
His silver brows crease a little. “For you, I would do anything. For you, I gladly curse the world with my presence.”
“You’re not a curse,” she says, her voice tight like she wants to cry. “I think I am.”
Three angry growls fill the car.
“None of that, regina,” Lyle admonishes. “None of us hate you for leaving us.”
“In fact, it gave us something to do,” I say, settling back into my chair and nodding at her even though her eyes are still closed. “Didn’t it, Scythe?”
“We had a great time,” Scythe says flatly. “Very productive.”
“We did lots,” I snort. “And now I’m full of joy again!” Unable to help it, I lean over and nuzzle her neck with my nose. Her mating mark shines bright and I kiss her there three times. Once for love, once for luck, and once because I’m horny.
Lyle glances at me, fully jealous because he can’t kiss her from all the way over there. “One kiss for Lyle,” I announce, kissing the top of her head because it’s something our lion would do. “When will you turn human again?”
Scythe cuts me a sharp look, to which I sit back, like an admonished pup.
“Take your time, Aurelia,” he says, stroking her wing. “You are safe now.”
He’s so possessive, I’m sure I’m not going to get a turn holding her in the car, so I make do with giving her kisses on different spots once every while.
Once we get to one of our city hotels, it’s night time and Lyle parks in the staff car park so we head in from the back. We’d fed Aurelia cheesy nuggets and fries in the car, but Lyle isn’t happy with that nutrition, and so once we’ve snuck into our hotel room, he goes down to the kitchens to supervise the cooking of Aurelia’s meal. Scythe has to send the hotel manager after him so he doesn’t scare the kitchen staff into pissing their pants. I take a quick shower to wash off the dirt and blood, and then we both put Aurelia in the bath.
It’s there we discover that she can’t, or won’t fully stand on her right leg, so I get to hold her under the shower while Scythe washes her up a bit. She still won’t open her eyes and I have to wipe my own eyes a few times because I can tell that her leg hurts.
“She’s not injured anywhere else, is she?” I ask as Scythe wipes her beak with the washcloth.
“There is some marking under the feathers around her”—he exhales in anger—“neck.”
The thought makes me hold her tighter and I press my lips together to stop from saying something that might upset my regina.
“It’s okay,” I coo after a minute, kissing her crown again. “It’s okay now.”
We gently dry her and ourselves off and head into the bedroom. Lyle returns with a trolley of covered food, but Scythe already has our regina in bed.
Lyle and I eat our food on the bed, watching over our sweet eagle until sunrise.
As the first blue light of morning eases the night away, I rub my eyes and look back to Aurelia. Her sleep was troubled. Through the night, she twitched and flinched, and at one point, she stuck her right leg out and moved it around like it ached her.
“Should we get her a wheat bag?” I asked Lyle at the time.
He shook his head and went back to staring at her as if he couldn’t believe she was here now. I can hardly believe it too. But whatever luck we’ve come by, I’m not going to ruin it by questioning it.
Early in the morning, just as dawn’s bright rays shine through the curtains, she finally, finally blinks her pretty eyes open. I gasp softly and peer into them. Blue as the deep sea, but heavy with sadness. “Oh,” I say. “Oh, regina.” I cup her face with my hands. Lyle has fallen asleep at the end of the bed and Scythe is also dozing, so it’s just me and her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into my mind.
“I’m sorry too, baby.”
Her beak opens and shuts and I want to tear a hole in the universe at the pain and longing I see.
“I missed you so fucking much.”
She blinks at me, soft and sad.
“Look what Lyle made for us.” I turn around and grab the plate on the bed behind me. “Fairy bread!” I hold up the triangle with the butter and coloured sprinkles. “I think they use the good butter here, too.”
“Savage?” she whispers.
I drop the bread and lean in towards her. “Yes, regina?”
“I…”
I wait for her. Hang onto the end of that first word like a man hanging onto a cliff’s edge by his fingernails.
“ I missed you too.”
My grin is wide and triumphant. “See! I knew you didn’t want to leave me.”
“Savage?” she whispers.
“Yeah, baby?” I pick up the fairy bread and tear a chunk off before chewing it happily.
“I was in the tank.”
My entire body, my entire mind, freezes, and all I can do is stare in horror at those eyes, pleading with me. Calling to me. The tank in the corner of The Collector’s throne room had drawn me in, and I hadn’t known why. I’d wanted to take a swim in it and see what had been at the bottom, even though I’d known it was too small. I had dipped my fingers in it, wondering if I could somehow take it home, or empty it of the plants and see what else had been in here.
Something in me had known my regina was in there.
“Excuse me one moment,” I whisper.
Very carefully, very gently, I get off the bed and exit the room, padding down the long corridor of the penthouse to the elevator. I take it down five levels and head to the end of the corridor, my bare feet silent on the thick red patterned carpet.
Red like my vision.
At the end of the corridor is a window, with two chairs and a table for people to sit on and admire the view.
I pick up one of the chairs and slam it with all my might through the window, roaring with all the rage of a mate who did not see his regina, who did not save her when he should have.
Who’d completely failed her.
Guilt and shame rip at my heart and I tear my throat open, screaming into the awful, ugly dawn. Once I have no more breath in my lungs to spare, I thud my ass onto the floor, slumping against the wall, and crying into my hands.