Claimed By the Beast King

Chapter 1

Every shifter, man, and fae has a beast living inside them. It scratches for survival, to be heard, to be fed, to be loved.

It hides in that deep place inside, in the cavern of your heart, and it doesn't care about any moral code.

It wants what it wants, and nothing else will satisfy it.

That was the truth Delphi had learned long ago. Right now, her beast hungered for the tome the bookseller had in his hand. Its cover was stained and battered cloth, the title barely visible because the gilding had long since flaked away.

"It was sold to me from a deceased estate. The nephew said the owner had it wedged under a table leg to keep it steady. I knew as soon as I opened the cover that it would interest you," the bookseller said, holding it ever so slightly out of her reach in case she tried to grab it.

Gregoire Savatier was the only bookseller in the tiny backwater town of Grisvallon.

He was too clever for his own good, but he had a weak spot for pretty things.

Delphi was the prettiest thing in the whole miserable place, a fact she often resented when it didn't have its uses.

She had learned to use her face and body to her advantage from a young age when she grew tired of the gnawing hunger in her belly.

Gregoire was nothing more than an easy mark. She usually would have toyed with him, played the game he wanted, but she hadn't slept. Her nightmares had caught up with her, and she had woken covered in sweat with the stench of burning flesh in her nose. She was in no mood for games.

"Just tell me what you want for it, Gregoire. I don't have time to dance around it today," Delphi sighed and locked the door to the little bookstore.

Gregoire's eyes widened, and his tongue wet his bottom lip. "Let me touch them."

"There will be no touching. The book looks interesting, but it's not worth that," she replied, shifting her dark brown braid over her shoulder and stepping into the back office. She raised a brow at him. "Coming or not? I have things to do today."

Gregoire didn't hesitate. Delphi had left him high and dry more than once when he decided to be stubborn. Delphi hated him and the deal they'd made when she was short of coin. She hated her father, too, for forcing her into the poverty she was living in.

She wasn't desperate enough to make her living with her body, not yet, but there had been a few times in leaner years when she had said yes to sex for coin.

That had been in Chantelun's large port city of Bellemere before they had been forced to leave because of her father's disagreement with the local lord.

Grisvallon was too small to do such a thing without the entire village knowing about it. Letting Gregoire look at her tits occasionally was as far as Delphi was willing to go for the sake of needing to survive in the town.

They had already exhausted the cities. Grisvallon was their last refuge, or they would be forced to leave the realm entirely.

Grisvallon was far in the north, at the edge of the scar that was the Mistwood, or the Brume, as the locals called it right before they spat three times.

The cursed forest split Chantelun from the neighboring kingdom, and there was a long detour to get around it.

No one was dumb enough to try to go through it.

One day, when Delphi had enough money saved, she would hire a spot on a cart to take her far enough away that no one, not even her father, would be able to find her.

Think of the book. Think of the book, Delphi chanted before her thoughts could spiral into anger or despair. She would escape, change her name, go to the university in Kyllene, and never think of her father again.

Unlacing her bodice, Delphi turned back to Gregoire. He was already fumbling with his belt, so eager it was almost comical.

Goddess, spare me from men. Delphi went down on her knees, fixed her eyes on the university library in the future, and tried to keep the disgust from her face.

She was still going through her checklist of things to do that day when Gregoire grunted and sprayed hot come on her chest. Red-faced and panting hard, Gregoire looked like he was about to have a heart attack.

"Fuck, Delphi, you are too beautiful to be stuck in this place. Marry me, and I will take you out of here," he said, offering her a cloth to clean herself with.

"Alas, I will have to decline as always," she replied sweetly. "I have a duty to my father, and he wishes to remain here."

"Narcisse is a drunk, useless bastard. You shouldn't be so loyal to him."

"According to him, the wine eases his suffering and the whispers in his mind," Delphi replied and laced herself back into her bodice. "I can't abandon him."

Not yet, anyway. Being a drunk bastard was the least of her father's faults.

Narcisse had always been keen for a drink, but since moving to Grisvallon, he had remained in a semi-permanent state of inebriation.

He said being so close to the forest's cursed magic made him feel crazy, yet he refused to move, not even to the slightly larger town half a day's ride away.

Gregoire sighed. "I just think there should be a man in your life who can actually protect you, Delphi."

A man to protect her? Delphi tried not to laugh in his face. She held out her hand, and Gregoire reluctantly placed the book into it.

"It is kind of you to say so," she replied, putting the book safely into her bag. "But I'm quite capable of protecting myself, Gregoire."

"For now, but there are worse men than me that you could be married to," he said under his breath as she reached for the door. She pretended not to hear him, ignoring the way his words sent a cold spike through her gut.

Gregoire was an old pervert, but he wasn't an evil man. Delphi had been born with the burden of her father, so the last thing she wanted was to be bound and weighed down by another man through marriage.

Delphi pushed Gregoire out of her mind and went to do her rounds. The village, being a complete backwater, had some uses. For one, there was no one but a midwife to help the women with anything remotely medical.

Delphi quickly saw an opportunity to help out, and now she discreetly traded preventative teas to the baker's and butcher's wives in exchange for bread and the minor cuts of meat.

She had healing balms for one of the tavern's bar maids' aching feet in exchange for the dark hair dye she made, and tonics to help the carpenter's arthritis-riddled mother get some relief.

She was mainly paid in trade, which meant there was never much coin to save. Between the food from her clients and the vegetables and herbs from her garden, Delphi kept herself and Narcisse from starving. Sometimes it was a near thing.

Last winter, when everyone was desperate, a group of men dared to venture into the forest in search of deer or boar.

Only one man returned, and he babbled like a crazy person about monsters and fae in the woods.

Delphi suspected the men had foraged and eaten the wrong kind of mushrooms, and their imaginations had gotten the better of them.

Everyone knew the tales that Mistwood had been the site of the last battle, where men from Chantelun and an army of shape-shifters from the North had fought against the fae thirty years ago. The fae had been driven through the gateways back to their own lands and hadn't been seen since.

Afterward, the people of Chantelun had turned their attention to hunting any witches with fae blood in their veins.

The last witch had been burned in the capital, Montcrillon, when Delphi was five years old.

Narcisse had forced her to watch as a reminder always to hide the small spark of magic she had inside of her.

In a place like Kyllene, where they trained alchemists and mages, she wouldn't have to hide it. She would be able to disguise it as their wise teachings and not worry about being burned at the stake.

Delphi didn't forget Narcisse's lesson about hiding what was inside her, and she still had the nightmares to remind her never to get complacent.

She would smell the smoke, see the red of the dress the woman had been wearing, hear the jeering men, and feel the bloodthirsty hatred and fear in the air.

When Delphi began to get too comfortable, she would go and stand at the edge of the Mistwood to remind herself always to hide what lurked in her veins.

The trees had grown from what was left of the magic-filled bodies of the fae after the battle. It had sprung up in mere months, fueled by magic and blood. Fear and danger breathed in the air near it, reminding her of that horrible crowd.

The magic and the danger were why everyone in Chantelun, from the youngest child to the old grandparents, knew never to go into the woods or eat anything from them. The hunters should have remembered that, but hunger does stranger things to the mind than bad mushrooms.

Every five years or so, some noble from one of the cities would come up with a plan to destroy the wood. They always failed because the wood fought back.

Delphi knew more than she should about magic, and the type that had created the Mistwood? That kind of power you left the fuck alone.

The sun was going down once Delphi made her final delivery and began to head along the road towards home. She stood at the crossroads and touched the sign back to Bellemere, where she knew she could get her ticket out of Chantelun either around the Mistwood or over the sea.

Just pack your things and run while you can, a voice inside of her whispered. You can work along the way. You know how to take care of yourself, and you would be better off on your own.

"One day," Delphi said wistfully. "One day I'll be free of Narcisse and will follow my own destiny."

Sadly, it wasn't going to be that day, so Delphi summoned her strength and cursed under her breath at the darkening sky. The mist rose at sundown and began to leak out of the woods and over the road.

Delphi was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. Getting caught in the mist wasn't how she planned to die. She grabbed the hem of the annoying skirts she would soon be rid of and ran to get home.

If Delphi hadn't been brooding so intently, she might have noticed the small catlike creature that watched her from the high branches of a twisted oak.

Its eyes shone golden for a moment, waiting for her to get a reasonable distance away, before it shook out its black, feathered wings and followed her.