Page 79 of The Beast King's Bride

Not when she says, “Take me to your room.”

It sounds like a promise, and I shouldn’t trust it, but I run through the empty wing of the palace nonetheless, carrying her to my door.

I have lost everything. What more could I lose?

Always a mistake, to ask such a question, because life makes sure there is always something more and that something will break you to pieces.

Sliding off my back, she steadies herself with a hand on my side. Her gown rustles on the floor, and I turn my head to sniff at her hip, her thigh, between her legs—

“Hey!” She laughs and pushes my head away, as if I’m a house cat and not a terrifying horned monster. I’m too surprised to do anything but turn my head away. I love her smell. A growl rises in my throat.

I want her arms around me again. I want her body on mine.

I’m thinking a different kind of riding might be in order.

“Come.” She turns the handle and opens the door. I never lock my door. Nobody in their right mind would come inside and in my beast form, I cannot turn keys and handles. Now she enters and I follow, padding after her, growling softly under my breath.

The only women to enter my room are the maids who clean and make my bed. I haven’t had a woman in my bed… in ages. Many were willing, despite the curse, the horns, the ghost of fear lingering over the palace. But I lost my appetite for fun. The energy for it. When you feel dead inside, tumbling in the sheets is not exactly a priority.

I nudge her with my head toward the bed and she laughs again. It’s a beautiful sound.

“Easy there, tyger,” she says.

I follow her around my room as she takes off her shoes and sits by the slow-burning fire. I lay my head on her lap and she strokes between my eyes. A languor comes over me, a calm I haven’t felt in a long, long time. I need to return to my body but the moon is up now, the pull of the beast is strong. The curse is on me.

And right now, I don’t care.

She falls asleep on the chair and I curl up beside her on the rug, guarding her, luxuriating in her nearness. Her scent, her shape, her warmth, her heartbeat echoing through me. How can I tell her that I knew from the first instance I saw her?

That I knew from the start that she belongs with me but that I can never have her.

Something shifts—in the air, in me—and I lift my head with a growl only to realize that I’ve shifted back. The moon must have set. Outside it is still dark though some birds are already awake and fluttering in the branches of the trees.

I’m curled naked on the rug before the dying embers of the fire. How many times have I woken up like this? Too many.

Countless.

Sitting up, I toss my braid over my shoulder and stretch sore, cramped muscles, hissing as old and newer, healing wounds protest. I look down at the wound in my side that is taking forever to close, pleased to see it isn’t bleeding anymore as it usually does after a shift.

Small victories.

I have to think of those. Not think that I’m not allowed to leave the palace grounds at night, prowling its long corridors, chasing shadow monsters. Imprisoned in his own home.

Then I look up and find her gazing at me. I go still, caught in a moment of strange uncertainty. She told the Empress she liked my beast form, I recall, and all her petting and stroking told me it was the truth—but what about my real form? What about this form?

What about me?

Damn, I never lacked confidence, not before the curse. I’m suddenly more aware than ever of the cursed horns on my head, the scars and wounds all over my body. It is a hard-worked body, used daily in the fight against the monsters, but what must it look like to her?

I’m waiting for her gaze to lift, I realize, so that I can read it, try to see what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling when looking at me.

But she looks away and I haul myself to my feet, a cold feeling seeping into my chest. I limp to the closet, grab a pair of britches and pull them on, keeping my back to her.

“Talen,” she says softly.

I need a drink. If I’m not getting to hold her, kiss her, touch her, I might as well get roaring drunk.

I pad to the liquor cabinet and take out a bottle of old amber firewater and two glasses. I raise them. “Interested?”

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