Page 16 of The Beast's Heart

He whirls towards her. “Don’t you see? None of this matters! All we need to do is pretend we’re little angels for The Beast’s friends. We don’t need to do any stupid tests.”

He snatches the quiz off her desk and reads the first question before letting out a bark of laughter that’s on the verge ofhysteria. “He wants to know how manybooksyou’ve read, Alisha. Because that’s what’s going to keep you off the streets when you age out. Fucking books.”

He attempts to throw the page at her, but it’s not particularly aerodynamic and only drifts to the desk. This appears to anger him further. “You have no clue, do you?” He yells at me. “You thinkweare the stupid ones!”

“When did I say that?”

“You don’t have to say it. It’s what you all think. But you’re the dumb ones. You know nothing about how the world really works!” He grabs Ben’s quiz, tears it in half and then pushes past me, heading for the door. “I’m done with this.”

“Mal!”

He ignores me. I need to make him stop. I need to regain control of the situation. What do I do? What would dad do?

No. What would Zane do?

Zane, who teaches preschoolers. Because Mal is behaving exactly like a member of Zane’s reception class. This is a tantrum.

Regulate.That’s what Zane always said about tantrums. Before you can do punishments or anything else, you have to get their emotions regulated.

I let Mal leave.

He slams the door hard enough that the blackboard rattles. But, once he’s gone, it’s like the calm following a particularly violent electric storm.

I collect the scattered paper and stationery from the floor. My hands are trembling. Alisha hugs Enrique and distracts him with a toy. His wailing turns to gulping sobs.

Ben is still all curled in on himself, so I kneel in front him and put a hand on his knee. “That was quite something, wasn’t it?”

He jerks away, still hiding his face.

“He didn’t mean those things he said,” I say gently.

“Yes he did,” comes the muffled response.

“Even if he did, they weren’t true.”

The door slams open again. I jump and Enrique cries out again.

The doorway is blocked by The Beast. Adam has one giant hand wrapped around Mal’s upper arm. The boy’s face is sheet white, aside from the red around the rims of his eyes and nose. All the defiance that was so overwhelmingly present mere moments ago is gone.

“Found something that belongs to you,” Adam rumbles, shoving Mal into the room.

Even now, despite everything, I rankle at the ‘thing’ and ‘belong’.

“I sent him out,” I say.

“Sure you did.”

“Truly. We had a… disagreement, he needed to walk it off. I sent him out.”

“Oh, we all heard yourdisagreement. I’m sure I speak for my entire staff when I request that you lower the volume of any subsequent disagreements so that we might get some work done.”

As if it’s my fault that Mal lost his temper. Mal hasn’t moved from his spot just inside the door. His head is bowed now and his body tensed, as if bracing for an attack.

“I’ll be certain to do that,” I say to Adam.

He eyes me, expression calculating. Then, without saying anything more, he turns and leaves, shutting the door securely behind him.

“Take a seat, Mal.” I keep my voice soft and even and I’m a little surprised when he does as he’s told, sinking into his seat with his eyes downcast and his expression blank.

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