Page 45 of Beast

A slither of movement caught my eye and an icy cold finger traced down my spine at the sight—a viper lay next to her shirt.

She wouldn’t be able to see it in the dark with her human eyes, nor would she be able to move away in time before it struck.

My vision tunneled to the snake and a growled snarl erupted from my lips. I had to save her.

18

NATALIA

Tomas's eyes narrowed and my heart stopped. Before I could move or scream, he crashed into me, knocking me off my feet and onto the sand. The air whooshed out of my lungs with a grunt.

"Wha—"

But he was already up on his feet with a snake in his hands that he wrenched its neck. "Are you okay?" He tossed the snake aside.

He knelt next to me, pulling me into his arms and I realized I was shaking all over.

"It's okay, it's dead."

I took gulping breaths. "Thank you."

He nodded, but there was a pinch to the corners of his eyes like something bothered him.

Over the next couple of days even after he saved me from the viper, the distance that had grown between us, my omega managed to fill. Tomas spent his time on the radio, trying to figure out if there was any news, any way forward. And each time he came back with nothing.

“Three days left.” He sighed after we had another magical session in the bedroom. But our sessions weren’t the same asbefore, as if we were distant and not cherishing each other. It made sense seeing as we now knew what was at stake.

Both of our lives.

“I feel like going out for a walk.” I turned to face him, then sat up, not waiting for a reaction. It was clear by the sadness in his eyes.

“Good idea. Maybe we need a little time to focus. Whenever we’re together, we just get distracted.”

Part of me felt sad about the idea of him not fighting to stay with me, to protect me. But his observation of there only being three days left said it all.

He was thinking the same thing I was: if we didn’t leave the island soon, then Dad would find me, if he hadn’t done so already. The first day he told me about the meeting with Dad, he’d made spaghetti and then forced me to eat it. I couldn’t even consume anything back then. The more time I spent with Tomas, the more I could trust him. It had nothing to do with being stuck on an island, but he’d opened himself up to me.

“I think about my dad and realize with your own experience, we’re not that much different,” I said once we were off the bed and getting changed.

“Yours never physically hurt you. He treated you like a princess. I don’t see how we’re similar.”

The one time Dad did get physical was enough to let me know that if he saw me again he would quite happily kill me. I didn’t tell Tomas that part of the story. And as I got ready to go out, that was the reason I needed time to process what had happened over the last few days. I discovered Tomas was a wolf and that I was wanted dead. It had been so heavy on me that memories of the past had shifted to the back of my mind.

Once I had my dress on and faced him, I saw his concerned expression, as if he’d thought I was keeping something back from him.

“No. He never laid a hand on me because I was his perfect princess. I did everything he said I should do, so he had no reason to hurt me, until now.”

He inhaled sharply. “Why?”

“Because he probably thinks that I’ve ratted him out to others about what he did with his brother. Once word like that comes out, then we know what could happen.”

“Yes. A man who happily slaughters members of his family is a monster.”

It was stupid in the dark world called Bratva, which was full of selling and taking drugs, prostitution, arms dealing, and the rest of it. But there was some kind of code. Not with everything, but a few things were held sacred, and this was one of them.

“Like killing children too.”

“Some guys, like Ivan, think of men who kill women and children as devils.”

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