Taming the Queen of Beasts

THANK YOU WEBNOVEL! (For real!) If you didn't see it, last week it was officially announced that Aaryn and Elreth won a Bronze Trophy in the 2021 NovelFull Spirity Awards! I am so thankful and surprised. This is a serious compliment. 

Thank you to YOU for being here, and for supporting this book. If you hadn't loved these characters so much, they wouldn't have made it this far. So thank you for helping (and Aaryn & Elreth) reach this point!

Here's praying the added exposure will bring us a lot of new friends to share this journey! (This message added after publication so you aren't charged for the words)

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GAR

Gar's mouth dropped open. Stifling his original urge to snap his teeth on her neck too, he turned on Elreth, who still stood in front of her seat, stunned.

"Did you hear that? Did you hear what she's saying?" The room was silent except for Hannah and Rika's heaving breaths. "These are your spies, Elreth. I don't know how it can be. We tested them for truth. But… these are your spies. Stop accusing my mate and turn your eyes. We've trusted the wrong people and it wasn't my mate!"

Elreth shook her head in disbelief. "We tested you… how did you…"

Hannah turned on her, her upper lip curled away from her teeth. "You stupid, ignorant pussy cat," she spat. "You are so backwards and… god, I hate this place!" she screamed, then turned around to speak to all of them gathered. The Anima gaping at her as she unleashed.

"You all live in a world CENTURIES behind ours, do you get that?! Your senses, your strength, your fucking noble intentions don't matter. You're animals. Fucking stinking, ridiculous animals who need to be trained, and medicated and put away for your own safety! And for ours! The beauty of your bodies has outstripped your minds. You're running around here like children, convinced of your own superiority while an entire planet of people out there is just waiting for the right time to take you.

"You can't win this!" Her eyes were wide with rage, her hands balled at her sides. "You can smell us, so-the-fuck what? We have machines. We have weapons. We have intelligence and planning and fucking NUMBERS that mean you will fail. Give up! Stop convincing yourselves that you can do anything about this. You're going to die if you don't give up! Is that what you want?"

"So you admit it?" Elreth said quietly, her voice breathless but firm. "You were spying on us?"

"No, I wasn't spying, you idiot!"

Elreth's eyes flashed her lion. Gar would have laughed it if hadn't been so tragic.

But Hannah wasn't finished. "I didn't need to spy on you! I was just fucking curious. I was bored! And your stupid, naïve males can be led around by their fucking balls—wake up!"

"You had the mate bond," Gar growled.

"Not anymore, I guess!" Hannah shrieked at him. "Because you're so fucking out of control you have to kill a man before you even know what's happening. Fuck! I can't wait until I'm out of here! I can't wait until you're all in cages or dead! You didn't deserve to have him here, and he didn't deserve to die and… fuck!"

Then Hannah whirled on Rika, her face twisting into something even more malicious. "You're the traitor here! You were fed and trained, and fucking educated by the smartest people on the planet and this is how you repay them? This is how you repay me?!"

"I don't owe you a thing," Rika said, her voice shaking with anger and fear. "You're just sick, and the plan you have for this place is wrong."

"You wouldn't even be here if it weren't for my father!"

"Then you go ahead and tell him I said thanks, because I'll never stop being grateful that I am."

Hannah rolled her eyes, cursing again. "Somebody drank the fucking Kool-aid. My god!"

"Tarkyn," Elreth said quietly.

The Captain stepped forward to grasp Hannah's hands. Hannah just rolled her eyes. "You should definitely put me in prison and make me sad. You'll all still die, and they'll free me and I'll laugh over your corpses, because you're all fucking crazy.

"The real world is not one with nature. The real world doesn't let you act noble and wise and… fuck, so fucking naïve you make me sick!"

Tarkyn and another guard had pulled her arms behind her and tied her hands, but Hannah didn't seem to care. She just kept spitting curses and protests at Elreth and Rika. They were about to shove her towards the door when Elreth put up a hand to stop them.

"What have you done since you've been here? What have you betrayed to your people?"

Hannah gaped at her. "Oh, right, I'll just reveal everything to you, shall I? You're right… the cult of personality you've got going on here is going to magic me into submission. Yay, Elreth! Gorgeous Elreth is finally queen, yaaaaaaaay."

Gar growled at the disrespect, and heard his father do the same. But Elreth's lips pulled up on one side.

Gar reached for Rika, to pull her close as his sister began to prowl towards the human woman, but Rika dodged his grip, still panting and shifted into the gap that had been left by the guards. Gar wanted to hold her, to comfort her, but he understood that he couldn't just then.

The grief hit him like knuckles to the solar plexus.

Then Elreth stopped, looming over Hannah who, to her credit, didn't back down. So all that timid fearfulness had been an act? Gar didn't understand how she could have done it.

"Tell me what you've done, you little bitch."

Hannah smiled for the first time. "No," she said, then laughed. "You'll find out. And when you do, I will be laughing—laughing! You aren't important, Elreth. You're the king of a village, do you get that? You've got what… a thousand people here? There's more people than that shopping at my local supermarket in a day. You. Are. Nothing."

"How did you get here without us being able to smell your deceit?"

Hannah's eyes flashed and she grinned. "There are powers at work here that you don't understand, baby queen. And they know about you. Just wait. Just wait."

Elreth frowned at her. Gar was about to tell her that she shouldn't listen to any more of this bullshit, but when he wiped his face with his hand, a disgusting scent on his skin suddenly registered.

The voices.

"El," he said, shocked. His sister turned, but Gar was crouching down over Marryk's body, and gesturing for the disformed to join him. "He smells like the voices. He didn't smell like them before, but now that he's dead, he does."

Elreth's face paled, then she whipped her head back to Hannah. "The voices?"

Hannah laughed in her face. "I told you!" she crowed. "SO. FUCKING. NAÏVE!"

Gar growled, and felt the shift of males approaching from behind him, all of them done with this show of disrespect to their Alpha.

But before he could even get all the way to his feet, Elreth's jaw went tight and, without a word, she took Hannah's head in her hands and jerked, twisting until the woman's spine snapped.

As she fell to the floor, twitching, Elreth stared at her, jaw twitching and cold. "Maybe not so naïve as you think," she said quietly, then turned around to face the rest of them.

"They're finding ways around our defenses. There's no more time. We have to move on this while they're still ignorant to the fact that we know about them."

She turned to Gar. "Ready your people," she said calmly. "You're walking the Rite of Veneration tonight.. In three days time, I'll already be in the human world."