Page 142 of Beast

I can’t believewhat I am hearing.

Dodger killing my family over this land. Beast stalking me since I got back to town.

An entire lifetime I can’t remember.

Why can’t I remember it?

Did the trauma of my parent’s death cause some kind of dissociative amnesia?

“You kept all of this from me,” I whisper, trying desperately to make sense of it all.

“I didn’t want you to leave.” His voice is a deep, tortured rumble. “I couldn’t protect you if you left.”

“Protect me from who?”

“Gaston knew who you are. Now Boney does too.” His brows pull back. “I wanted you here with me where I knew you’d be safe.”

“Is that really why you didn’t want me to leave? Or was it because being married to me was the only way the club got to keep this land?”

“Fuck the land. I married you because I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can fucking remember.”

“Don’t—”

“It’s true. I know you don’t remember me. But I remember you.”

“But I do remember. This whole time I felt drawn to you, and I thought I was going crazy because I didn’t even know you. I thought I was losing my mind. You could’ve told me and it would’ve helped me understand what I was feeling. But instead you chose to protect the secret so you could save the clubhouse.”

“You know how I feel about you. You can’t think I’d do this just to save the clubhouse.”

He takes a step forward. But I take a step back. “The club comes first, isn’t that the club motto?”

“No,youcome first. Always. And if you need proof, then take this. It’s yours.” He removes his cut and holds it out to me. “I choose you, Belle. Over everything. Including this club.”

“You expect me to believe you’d give up the club for me? The club is in your veins. It’s the reason you breathe.”

He throws the cut on the floor. “You’re my reason for breathing. Not the club.”

I look at the cut, then back to him. “You don’t know me very well if you think I’d ask you to give up something you love.”

“But you are. Because you’re asking me to give upyou. And you’re what I love the most in this world. I’m yours. All of me.The truth is, I was the moment you took your first breath. Even when I thought you were gone.”

“I don’t want your cut.”

“And I don’t want it if it means I lose you.”

He comes toward me.

I take a step back. “You’d die without the club.”

“No. I’d die without you. And I’d die willingly because I’ve already lived in a world without you in it, and it wasn’t worth every painful moment I existed in it.”

I look up at him.

The man who has been the missing piece of the puzzle for my entire life. I didn’t know it, but my broken heart was aching for him. The boy from my childhood.

The boy I couldn’t remember, but my heart did.

“You’d just walk away?”

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