Page 134 of Beast

I flee along the hallway and up the stairs toward the old turret.

Unfortunately, he catches up to me outside the forbidden room.

“Belle.” His deep voice rumbles my name.

But I slay him with a glare. “Open the door.”

He thinks for a moment. Our gazes locked, I notice the rapid pounding of his pulse in the thick vein of his neck.

Without a word, he unlocks the door.

I don’t wait for him to stand aside, I shove past him and storm into the forbidden room.

The room is vast with stone walls and ceiling-to-floor arch windows. It’s been set up like some kind of office or a den. I scan the walls in the dim light. Pieces of paper stuck to the brickwork grab my attention and I charge over to them.

They’re photos.

Of me.

And there are a lot of them.

I feel Beast come up behind me, but I don’t turn around. “You were following me?”

“Yes.”

“Since I returned to St. Bon.”

It’s not a question. But he answers anyway. “Yes.”

I stare at a photo of me in the doorway of Julian and Dani’s home. Then another of me glancing over my shoulder as I walk down the street.

And that’s the moment it clicks.

I turn around to face him. So I can see his eyes if he is telling the truth. “The night Gaston stopped us in the street, you were following us.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Do you really not remember?”

I frown. I’m so tired of feeling like I live in a riddle. “Remember what?”

“This place. Us.Me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were born into the club, Belle. Until your mom and dad died, you used to live here. Your father was a Knight. Your mom was an old lady. You were a club brat.”

My heart begins to pound rapidly. “No,” I whisper.

Out of nowhere, a fractured image flashes across my mind’s eye. The flight of a car going over the edge of a cliff. The glitter of a shattered windscreen. The feeling of falling. The rush of the sea coming for me.

No, that’s just a nightmare.

A stupid nightmare that’s haunted me for years. Except this time I see the moment before the shattering of the windscreen. A motorcycle swerves on the road in front of us, and my father yanks the steering wheel to avoid him, sending us over the edge of the cliff.

“How could I know that? I wasn’t there.” I say it more to myself than Beast, because it doesn’t make sense. My whole life I was told I was at my uncle’s house the night my parents died. It was date night, so Uncle Maurice was babysitting me.

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