Page 13 of Beast

“Uncle Maurice…” I cry.

He’s been badly beaten and bruised. Blood drips from his nose and mouth, and one eye has already swollen shut. But he still downplays the situation.

“It’s okay, child. Like I said earlier, it’s just a misunderstanding. I’ll sort this all out and?—”

Gaston’s fist strikes him across the mouth, silencing him, and the second hits him in the temple, knocking him unconscious. My uncle’s chin drops to his chest.

“No!” I cry out, ignoring Gaston’s warning to be quiet as I rush over to my uncle. I crouch at his feet. He’s out cold.

Outside, a crack of lightning lights up the night and then dies on the rumble of thunder.

I stand and swing around to face Gaston. “You animal. He’s just a defenseless old man…why did you do that to him?”

Across the room, Gaston smiles evilly. “You askwhy?I askwhy not?” He makes a point of slowly unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt and pushing his sleeves up his pale forearms as he walks toward me. He’s like a predator stalking his prey.

When he reaches me, I slap him across the face and his head snaps to the side. Righting himself, he gives me a dark look and then punches me in the jaw, sending me to the floor. But he doesn’t leave me there. Instead, he reaches down and hauls me to my feet and sends his fist into my stomach, exploding the air from my body and sending a violent pain throughout my abdomen.

Seeing stars, I fall to the floor again and gasp for breath.

“Tonight is not your night, Belle,” Gaston says, undoing his belt buckle. He nods to the two thugs who pull me to my feet. I flinch when he steps toward me, certain he is about to hit me again. But he doesn’t punch, he grabs, and his fingers tighten around my chin as he holds my face close to his. “See, I’ve got plans for you and me. And I’m afraid it’s going to be a lot less enjoyable for you than it is for me.” He releases his grip on my jaw and pulls his belt through the loops of his dress pants and snaps it between his hands.

The thugs shove me toward him, and he grabs me and forces me over the kitchen table. I fight him with everything I have, but he just laughs. “That’s it baby, fight me. It will make this so much sweeter.”

He bends me over the kitchen table and presses my face to the tabletop.

Puts his hands on my hips.

I tell him I will kill him for putting his hands on me.

He laughs, and it’s cold and evil.

He reaches for his zipper, and my heart roars in my chest.

He’s going to rape me.

But out of nowhere, a wild roar stops him. The kitchen window explodes as a giant male form crashes through it, sending glass through the room like an exploding confetti ball.

Beast.

Gaston yanks me upward and spins me around, as the giant takes out the two thugs with ease. I see the flash of a blade, the men drop, and then the Beast stalks toward us.

Gaston throws me at him, and I hit the wall of muscle with a thud and fall to the floor, completely winded. It’s too much for my body and a crawling darkness creeps into my head. But it doesn’t claim me right away. Before I see myself slipping beneath the black sea of nothingness, I watch the Beast lift Gaston up by the throat and repeatedly smash his face into the brick wall until he is a limp and bloody mess.

Beast drops him to the floor and crouches over him. “Consider this me starting something.”

As the last of my breath leaves me, the darkness finally takes me.

CHAPTER 6

BELLE

When I wake,up I’m on a bed somewhere, with a girl sitting next to me, looking down at me.

She has a blonde pixie cut and is wearing big gold hoops in her ears.

“Um… hi?” I say with a wince, struggling to sit up.

The girl leaps into action. “Here, let me help you.” She leans past me to rearrange my pillows, and I’m hit with the tantalizing scent of Patchouli and Ylang-Ylang. She punches the pillows then guides me down so I can settle against them. “You got a nasty bump on your head when you collapsed, so you’ll need to take it easy for a while.”

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