Page 20 of Betraying the Beast

“Is that fear in your voice, Ceryn Vale?”

Her breath caught.

“No,” she whispered. “Not fear.”

Something else entirely.

The air between them crackled. The flickering light gilded his wet fur in firelight, and for a moment, all she could hear was the lap of water and the steady pulse in her throat. He leaned forward, rising just enough that his chest emerged above the surface—bare, slick, powerful. Scars mapped his ribs. Silverfruit veins shimmered faintly across his collarbones.

“Then come closer,” he murmured. “And say my name.”

Her heart thundered at the longing in his voice. Not Vael’Zhur. The name that mattered.

“Auren.”

He growled low—not with threat, but with something far more primitive. The sound pulled at something deep in her belly.

“That name,” he said, “will always sound different from your lips.”

She didn’t know who moved first—her, or him—but suddenly the distance between them didn’t feel so vast. He stood slowly, the water sluicing down his form in rivulets, revealing more, but still shrouded in mist and magic. She couldn’t see everything. But she saw enough.

And she wanted more.

“How did you find this place?” His voice echoed off the stone walls, deeper than usual in the enclosed space.

“The castle showed me the way,” Ceryn replied honestly, remaining close to the edge of the pool. “I think it’s tired of our avoidance.”

A rumbling sound emerged from his chest—not quite a laugh, not quite a growl. “Meddlesome pile of stones.” But there was something like affection in the words. “Leave me, Ceryn. This is not a place for you.”

Instead, she took a step closer. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“With good reason.” He turned his body partially away, as if to hide himself from her gaze. “What happened in the library was a mistake. One that cannot be repeated.”

“Was it?” Another step closer to the pool’s edge. “It didn’t feel like a mistake to me.”

Vael’Zhur’s hands curled into fists beneath the water’s surface. “You don’t understand what you’re doing. What you’re risking.”

“Then help me understand.” She was at the edge of the pool now, looking down at him, at this strange being who was neither fully beast nor fully man. “Because all I know is that you’ve been in my thoughts since the moment I saw you in the forest. That I came here to steal from you but find myself unable to betray you. That I kissed you, and for the first time in years, I felt?—“

“Stop.” The word was harsh, pained. “Whatever you felt was an illusion. A trick of the curse, perhaps, or your own desperation to save your family.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Ceryn knelt at the pool’s edge, bringing her face level with his. “That what’s growing between us isn’t real?”

His amber eyes met hers, filled with an agony that went beyond the physical. “It cannot be real. I am not a man, Ceryn. I am a monster wearing the remnants of a man’s form, a beast whose very nature is to destroy what he touches.”

“Yet you haven’t destroyed me.” She reached out slowly, giving him time to withdraw, and brushed her fingertips against his wet cheek. “You could have killed me in the orchard. You could have forced the fruit upon me. You could have locked me away. Instead, you showed me your world. You shared your wine. You kissed me as if I were precious.”

His eyes closed at her touch, his massive frame trembling. “I am trying,” he said, each word seemingly torn from him, “to protect you. From Aldaric. From the fruit’s curse. From myself.”

“And who protects you?” she whispered. “Who soothes the man beneath the beast? Who touches you not with fear but with desire?”

His eyes opened, naked longing replacing the anguish. “Ceryn,” he breathed, her name a warning and a plea.

She had a choice in that moment. She could retreat, maintain the fragile boundary he sought to establish between them. She could remember her mission, her family held hostage, her duty to the warlord who held their lives in his cruel hands.

Or she could follow the pull that had drawn her to this creature from the first, the inexplicable connection that defied logic and caution.

Ceryn had never chose the safer path.

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