Her vicious beasts the b.., p.1
Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning, page 1
part #0.50 of Her Vicious Beasts Series
Her Vicious Beasts
The Beginning
E.P. Bali
Blue Moon Rising Publishing
In a world of vicious beasts, if you are not a predator, you are prey.
Aurelia Aquinas is a discarded girl. Forced to live a life of isolation, she is forbidden to speak of her powers and forbidden to find her soul-bound mates.
She awaits the day she can escape to a human college and live a life free and away from her father and the beasts that might come after her.
But when she is called to heal an injured beast, locked away in a dungeon, he's not the only monster caged there and the course of her life changes forever. .
This is book 0.5 in Her Vicious Beasts, a contemporary fantasy spicy shifter MFMMMM series. It is best suited to readers 18+.
*This story was previously titled: A Song of Steel and Shadows as a part of The Blood of the Covenant Anthology*
A Note on the Content
I care about the mental health of my readers.
This book contains some themes you might want to know about before you read.
They are listed at www.ektaabali.com/themes
Her Vicious Beasts: The Beginning is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and locations are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by E. P. Bali
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This first edition published in 2023 by
Blue Moon Rising Publishing
www.ektaabali.com
ISBN ebook: 978-0-6456909-1-0
Paperback: 978-0-6456909-0-3
Hardback: 978-0-6457846-0-2
Cover Design by David Gardias
Book Formatting by E.P. Bali with Vellum
Contents
1. Aurelia
2. Aurelia
3. Aurelia
4. Aurelia
5. Aurelia
6. Aurelia
7. Savage
8. Aurelia
9. Aurelia
10. Aurelia
11. Aurelia
12. Savage
13. Aurelia
14. Aurelia
15. Aurelia
16. Aurelia
17. Aurelia
18. Aurelia
19. Aurelia
20. Xander
21. Aurelia
22. Aurelia
23. Aurelia
About the Author
Also by E.P. Bali
Chapter 1
Aurelia
My vibrator is broken.
Pressing the on/off button aggressively over and over again does nothing. Neither does changing the batteries. I swear under my breath, tossing the cheap pink silicon towards the end of my bed where it bounces off my faded purple coverlet and onto the floor with a thunk, almost knocking over my huge stack of thrift store romance novels.
That tiny saviour of a device had been the cheapest I could find on my limited budget, and I can’t afford to get a replacement. A heavy blow, to be sure.
Morning beams of sunlight stream through my tattered curtains and I fling an arm over my eyes for a single moment of mourning before I have to get up for the day.
An orgasm—fuelled by Draco and Hermione fan fiction—is the best way to recharge my powers, and the one highlight of my miserable days. I’ll now have to settle for being a little lethargic and irritable until I can get back home tonight for a proper self-care session. My anima prowls under my skin, annoyed and demanding release, but the poor beast inside of me will just have to make do. She’s been particularly jumpy lately, but I’m sure it’s all to do with me leaving town soon.
Reaching for the phone on my bedside table, I open up my Animalia Today news app and check the latest:
A rabid wolf serial killer has finally been caught, many thanks to the Lioness Mums United Retrieval Team. His head is on display at the front of their headquarters for all to see.
Relations between the human population and Animalia are “better than ever” according to the Council’s latest reports.
There’s a missing dragon, heir to the Drakos line, who appears to have gotten caught up in some underground crime ring.
The Deputy Headmaster of Animus Academy is being praised for his feral youth rehab program.
Political nonsense, yada yada. Council of Beasts ass kissing, yada yada.
Nothing new.
I only have two weeks of summer holidays left before I leave for college. An actual human college. For the first time in seven years, I’m actually excited about something. After I finished high school, I did an online course on advancing my healing skills where I did super well, so that got me a scholarship at an interstate college. My bags are already packed. I’m making a life for myself, by myself and I couldn’t be prouder.
When I turned twenty earlier this year, I was officially an animalia adult meaning that freedom from my father is on the horizon. After moving states, I’ll join the local branch of the Court of Wings and get to live my life away from him forever.
I only have to survive fourteen more days in my aunt’s shop.
When I turned thirteen, my dad made an agreement—well, let’s be real—had ordered my aunt that I was to work in her store every day after my schoolwork was done. Now that I no longer needed a guardian, I’m to work there until I leave for college. In exchange, I get a tiny allowance to cover food and am allowed to stay in this one-bedroom rustic affair, one huff and puff away from falling apart. The paint is peeling in every one of the three rooms and the living room ceiling leaks during even the lightest of rain, but it is mine to do with as I please.
Which is just as well because I’m not allowed to leave it for anything other than work.
It’s a way for my father to keep me in my place. To show me where I belonged after I hit puberty and it was revealed that I’d taken my mother’s genes and my anima was not a serpent like everyone had hoped. Father moved me out of home, I got kicked out of the Serpent Court, removed as serpent heir and put here, out of sight but still under his thumb.
I’m forbidden from speaking about my mother and the genes I inherited from her. In fact, I’m forbidden to speak to any animalia at all unless it involves one of the occasional jobs I do for my father.
But nothing can stop me now, and I grin at the thought of finally making some friends at college as I haul myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I just manage to shower and get my work clothes on before a tingle of warning shoots through me.
Someone is walking through the shield I’ve set at the perimeter of the house. I stand to attention, heart pounding, simply listening to the dreaded panging of my heart.
There is only one person in the entire world who could get past one of my house shields and simply walk onto this property.
Just one.
Chapter 2
Aurelia
Panicking, I dart from my bathroom into my tiny living room just in time to see the front door slam open and two of my father’s lackeys skulk in. I stiffen, frozen to the spot as the two women, wiry and hunched, dressed in black overcoats and black jeans, check my house for threats, looking anywhere but me. They both wear black lipstick and heavy black eyeliner—the snakes of my father’s court prefer a grunge style of fashion. In general, animalia always like to dress to the style of their order, so there are always telltale signs of what beast they are:
Lions always wear their hair long, often braided; males and females both.
Eagles and other birds choose spiky hair styles, mohawks and so on.
Wolves love denim on a religious level, and their men always wear short beards.
Part of this is so other animalia can discern who they’re dealing with quickly. We can usually tell via scent, but human perfumes and other conflicting smells in public make that difficult.
With their tongues darting out, tasting the air in the habit of half feral reptiles, my dad’s servants come to stand on either side of my front door.
I stand facing them in a sort of lame disbelief as two tall males come in next—security guards by the guns they openly carry at their waists. They give me a droll look before bracketing the women to stand against the wall, their arms crossed, eyes staring over my head.
My heart threatens to leap right out of my ribcage.
This is very bad.
He’s come himself with his full contingent—as if I’m some foreign court member and this is a formal meeting. The warning bells are loud in my head. Either he has one last big job for me, or something much worse.
I haven’t always feared him. He had been a good father when his hopes for me were grand. But the same day my anima was revealed, he’d gone from doting father to cruel taskmaster in the space of minutes.
With his presence announced, my father comes in next, striding through the door in military-grade black boots. He is a wraith of a man, far too tall and far too lean, his cheeks hollowed out, deep bags under his eyes—as if the King Cobra bore some great worldly burden on his shoulders. But I know better. That was the weight of black magic, and he used it like an addict. We look a little similar, I suppose; I get my olive skin and dark hair from his si
I haven’t seen him for an entire year—his assistants text me his orders—but he doesn’t look any different from the last time.
Those black eyes fix upon me like a predator’s hunting gaze and I want to sink inside the ground and never be seen again. I can’t help but notice he’s standing just inside the doorstep, as if he’s too disgusted to come in any further. As if it’s beneath him to enter properly. I only have two weeks left until I’m out of his life. He couldn’t have just left me alone?
“Aurelia.” His voice slithers up my spine and I suppress a cringe.
“Father.” I nod, keeping both my voice and face blank.
Both female scouts hiss with displeasure at my lack of use of his honorific, ‘Your Highness’. If I were any other person, that would warrant a death blow, or in Serpent Court style, a call for slow execution via poison. He doesn’t like it when I call him ‘father’ or ‘dad’, because I could be no daughter of his. But in a world where complete submission is expected of me, calling him ‘father’ is the single act of defiance I allow myself.
The only sign of his displeasure is a twitch at the side of his mouth as he raises his hand to placate his lackey scumbags; the picture of a fair and benevolent ruler.
“Are you well?” he asks flatly, his eyes clinically darting around my body to check for signs of disability or disease. His dark presence falls upon me like a heavy blanket, and I suppress the urge to shift uncomfortably. I want him gone, out of my space and out of my life. I’m a legal adult now and not a part of his court—that surely means I have some autonomy. Some leg to stand on now.
“I am well,” I confirm, and in a sudden burst of uncharacteristic bravery I say, “What do you need, father? I need to get to work.”
He takes a single step forward, and that movement has my heart skipping multiple beats. I can’t help the fear rising in me and I am so ashamed of myself when I take a woeful step back in response.
His black eyes gleam at how much I’m acting like prey. “You will not be going to the shop today, Aurelia,” he says.
I know he can feel my fear, taste it in the air, hear it in my heartbeat. But I can’t control that right now. Not as they crowd my tiny house, not as my entire world narrows onto one realisation.
I am twenty now.
I am a woman in my father’s eyes.
Perhaps going away to college was a fool’s dream. The dream of a stupid, hopeful girl.
Is this it?
Is this my day of reckoning where my father reveals our secret for his own gain? Where he sells me like chattel to the highest bidder? The Old Laws permit it and there are many who still hold on to them.
“And why is that?” I hate the tremble in my voice.
“I have a colleague in need of your healing abilities.”
Cool relief washes through me like a king tide and I know I visibly sag under the weight being released from the thought that I was being sold into marriage or a breeding pen. I let out a shaky breath, almost laughing out loud. He needs to let me go to college. I can’t be doing his tasks anymore.
“You have access to better healers than—"
“You know that’s not true.” His voice interrupts me with a flash of his fangs. I shudder.
For a secondary power, I’m rather good at healing. While it’s rare for a shifter to have a second power, I—like my mother—am a rare creature.
My father has kept me hidden so no one finds out exactly how rare I am. But all the same, it’s taken years to become a good healer. To learn all the ins and outs of a shifter’s body. Whenever my father wants me to help, it means the case is something unusual and dangerous no one else will touch. Something that will, no doubt, put me at risk.
“I’m twenty now,” I blurt. “I’m not a part of your court. You can’t order me anymore—"
His eyes flash in anger and he flings out his arm in a strike. The shadow of his huge serpent animus flies out of his palm head first. It hurtles through the air straight for me, its jaws dislocate, snap out, and find their place clamped around my neck. I choke on a scream, staggering backwards as sharp teeth pierce the delicate sides of my throat. My back thumps against the kitchen wall and I blink rapidly, trying to stay still as my father advances on me. His lackeys grin behind him.
This is why he is king of his court. It’s easy for animalia to shift into our animal forms. To shift part of our body one at a time was rare. To remove the spirit of it and use it to attack someone else? Unheard of. It’s unnatural. But unnatural is something serpents respect.
When my father speaks again, his voice is dangerously calm. “You will be given the name and address of the place I need you to go today. And you will go. Is that clear? I have already spoken to my sister.”
I grind my teeth as the shadow-serpent squeezes its jaws around my neck, choking my blood supply. Stars erupt in my vision, making my father’s face twinkle with faint lights. He looms over me, grim-faced; no love, no light in those black eyes. My heart splits in two all over again, and I understand just how naïve I’ve been.
His voice drops even lower. “I said, Aurelia, is that clear?”
I let out a sorry grunt. My age means nothing to him. It’s no more than a legality. He will always own me. “Yes, father.”
He turns on his heel and the serpent is ripped from my throat, disappearing back into my father’s hand, leaving me reeling. I gasp, my knees buckling, and I collapse onto my kitchen tiles.
They leave in a procession and I watch them, a hand over my burning neck. The last—a female viper—turns and gives me a black-lipped smirk before she slams my front door shut, making my windows quiver in their frame, just like me.
I can’t help the hot tears that slide from my eyes as I feel them all depart through my shield outside.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I bring my hand away from my neck, and it’s smeared with red. I stand on shaking legs and hobble to my mirrored kitchen splash-back, leaning down to check the damage. All seven of the personal shields I permanently keep around me are down—that’s the effect my father has on me.
But it means I can see myself properly, and I’m forced to see my latent mating mark on the right side of my neck. It’s a mark that only animalia from your mating group can see, marking you as soul-bound in all lifetimes. Animalia spend their entire lives looking for others with the same mark. Mine is a skull with five streams of light bursting from it.
And the five reasons I’m forced to live the hidden life that I do.
Oozing crimson dots line both sides of my neck. As angry tears burn the backs of my eyes, I heal them just enough to stop the bleeding.
I want those wounds to remain painful.
Because every time I feel that burn, I want to remember the type of man my father is. That one day, I will be free of him. Somehow. Some way.
My phone pings and I fish it out of my pocket to see that his assistant has texted me the address he wants me to go to. I sigh in resignation. Wherever this leads, it’s not going to be good.
I fling all seven of my shields back up and watch my mating mark disappear along with my scent. Being hidden is how I will survive this life. What my father has left of it, anyway.
Chapter 3
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.
