Chapter 37 Isabeau #2
“Tonics, mostly. For coughs and fevers and women’s monthly pains.
Common poisons. Nothing fancy. We didn’t have access to exotic ingredients in Thorndale.
” I twisted a lock of hair around my finger, a habit from childhood that resurfaced in moments of vulnerability.
“I never charged for them. Mama always said a life was worth saving, not holding against their loved ones for riches.”
“A rare philosophy,” the prince commented, and I couldn’t tell if he meant it as praise or criticism.
“It served us well enough. People paid in other ways when they could. Eggs, fresh bread, and others mending Papa’s clothes when they tore.” I shrugged. “We weren’t rich, but we never went hungry.”
The memory of those simple exchanges—healing given freely, gratitude returned in kind—made my heart ache for the uncomplicated life I’d once had. Before sacrifice and curse and princes in beast form had rewritten my story.
“I had a friend,” I continued, the words flowing more easily now.
“Colette. We grew up side by side, shared everything. Secrets, dreams, fears.” I laughed softly, the sound strange in the quiet room.
“We used to take walks to the edge of the village and talk about which of the local boys might make tolerable husbands someday.”
I fell silent then, the mention of potential husbands suddenly striking too close to the heart of everything that had changed. To the claiming mark on my shoulder and the three princes who had placed it there.
Alain noticed my abrupt pause. “And did you find any of them tolerable?” he asked, a strange edge to his voice.
“No,” I admitted. “They all seemed... lacking somehow. Too simple. Too predictable. Too focused on my...” I gestured vaguely at my face and body.
“Well, people always noticed my looks first. I was declared the beauty of the village, but none cared for anything else about me. My mind was secondary, if they bothered to notice it at all.”
“Beauty can be its own curse,” Alain murmured, and for a moment, I wondered if he actually understood from his own.
“It’s a currency you didn’t ask to trade in,” I agreed. “One that others value more than you do yourself.”
Something passed between us then, a moment of genuine connection that caught us both by surprise. I looked away first, unsettled by how easily he had slipped past my guard.
“How did you end up where I found you?” he asked, bringing us back to the question I’d been avoiding.
I took a deep breath, steadying myself for the part of my story that still had the power to wound. “My father was taken as the Harvest Moon sacrifice to the forest.”
The words hung in the air between us, heavy with implications I knew the prince would understand. In a world where women couldn’t inherit property or trade without male permission, a father’s absence left his daughter with painfully few options.
“The sacrifice is a town draw of family crests. Once the family is drawn, they must choose amongst them who will die.”
“So your father sent himself.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t come of age until the next day. By law, I could not be chosen.”
“And you were left alone, barely of age,” Alain said quietly.
I nodded, letting the silence stretch as the full weight of that reality settled between us.
Left alone as a woman in a world where women weren’t allowed to exist independently.
A woman who couldn’t inherit her father’s home or workshop.
A woman whose only value to society lay in her ability to serve men… as wife, as servant, or as whore.
The prince would know this. Would understand without me having to spell it out what happened to women like me. What choices, or lack thereof, we faced.
“So you see, Your Highness,” I said, my voice carefully neutral, “the forest wasn’t the first thing to claim me against my will. Society did that long before I ever set foot among those trees. Just like I learned my family crest being pulled from the bag hadn’t been as random as decieved.”
A moment of silence. Then the sound of the door slamming made me jump.
I turned fully from the window for the first time since our conversation began, only to discover that Prince Alain had left abruptly.
But we hadn’t been alone. Brigida stood near the entrance, one hand pressed to her mouth, tears glistening in her eyes.
She’d heard everything. Of course she had. The servants here probably knew more about me than the prince himself, listening from shadows, gathering scraps of my story to whisper about in kitchens and laundries.
“Who?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. The question didn’t need elaboration. Which category did you fall into? Whose possession did you become when your father was taken?
I turned back to the window, staring at the starry magic scattered across the night sky. The same stars that had witnessed every humiliation, every horror, every unexpected moment of grace in my strange journey.
“The cruelest man of them all,” I answered softly.
“His name,” she begged.
“I cannot give it without wrath finding me,” I whimpered in my sorrow.
“I’ll never share it. You have my word, miss.” Brigida knew I wasn’t lying, trying to get them to feel sorry for me. My words rang true inside her because she knew a man’s cruel touch too. And maybe, that’s why I chose to trust her.
“Gaspard Coventry.”
She left me then. Maybe she knew I needed time to collect myself, but I was grateful to be alone while my mask was down. While I couldn’t hide the protections inside my mind were beginning to crumble.
Warmth spread through my body like honey, slow and sweet, pulling me from the depths of dreamless sleep into something far more enticing.
At first, I thought it was just the silk sheets against my skin, a luxury I still wasn’t accustomed to after months on cold stone.
But then fingers—familiar yet strange—skimmed along my hip, and I knew this was more than simple comfort.
I kept my eyes closed, afraid that opening them would shatter whatever spell had brought one of my beasts to me across the impossible distance separating us.
“You found me,” I whispered into the darkness, my voice catching on the words.
The touch paused momentarily before resuming its exploration, more confident now.
Large hands slid beneath the thin nightdress, caressing the hollow of my waist where starvation had carved away what softness once existed.
I should have felt self-conscious about my wasted body, but beneath these touches, I felt beautiful again.
Whole. As though his hands could restore what months of imprisonment had stolen.
Which beast had come to me? Marcel with his thoughtful intensity?
Laurent and his gentle intellect? Or Bastien, whose fierce protectiveness had often manifested in passionate claiming?
In the haze of half-sleep, I couldn’t tell.
Perhaps it didn’t matter. They were parts of one another, three facets of a love I’d only just begun to understand when they were ripped away.
The bed dipped behind me as he shifted closer, his body heat enveloping me.
I remained on my side, not daring to turn for fear the illusion would dissolve.
His scent seemed different, less wild, more refined with notes of leather and cedar rather than forest and fur, but I attributed this to my addled mind, to the weeks of separation that had made memory unreliable.
“I’ve missed you,” I murmured, arching back against the solid wall of his chest. “Every day. Every moment.”
His response came not in words but in the press of lips against my shoulder, trailing up to the sensitive spot where my neck joined my collarbone. Teeth grazed the claiming mark there, and pleasure shot through me like lightning, a direct connection to the deepest part of me that belonged to them.
God, how I’d missed this. The sensation of being wanted, cherished, marked as theirs. In the dungeon, I’d sustained myself on memories of these touches, these moments where my body was worshipped rather than merely used. Where my pleasure mattered as much as his own.
His hands continued their reverent exploration, tracing the curve of my hip, the flat plane of my stomach, rising higher to cup my breast with a tenderness that brought tears to my eyes.
My nipple hardened against his palm, and he teased it between his fingers, drawing a gasp from my lips that sounded embarrassingly loud in the quiet room.
“Please,” I begged, though for what exactly, I wasn’t sure. For more? For the completion I knew only they could give me? Or perhaps for this moment never to end, this precious reunion that logic told me couldn’t possibly be real.
The hand at my breast drifted lower, skating over my ribs, my stomach, down to the apex of my thighs.
I parted my legs without hesitation, offering myself with the certainty of someone who knew her offering would be treasured.
His fingers found me wet, ready, my body remembering what my mind had tried to forget during our separation.
He teased me with light touches, circling without giving the direct pressure I craved. I whimpered, pushing against his hand in wordless demand. His chest rumbled against my back, not quite a growl but something similarly possessive, and his teeth found my earlobe, tugging gently.
This wasn’t like the desperate couplings I’d endured before with Gaspard who saw only my beauty, who wanted only their own pleasure.
Nor was it like the frantic passion that sometimes overtook my beasts when their animal nature demanded claiming.
This was deliberate, measured. A slow build designed to drive me to the edge of sanity before granting relief.
“Don’t tease,” I gasped as his fingers slid through my folds without entering, without providing the friction I needed. “I’ve waited so long. Too long.”
He shifted behind me, and I felt the hard length of him press against my lower back, proof of his own desire.
The nightdress that had twisted around my waist was pushed higher, exposing me fully to the cool air of the room.
But I wasn’t cold, not with the heat of him behind me, not with the fire building low in my belly.
When his fingers finally slipped inside me, I cried out, my body clenching around the intrusion.
One finger became two, stretching me gently, preparing me for what was to come.
His thumb found the bundle of nerves at my center, circling with just enough pressure to make my toes curl but not enough to push me over.
“Now,” I pleaded, beyond pride, beyond restraint. “I need you now.”
The fingers withdrew, leaving me empty for just a moment before I felt something larger, hotter pressing against my entrance.
He held my hip with one hand as he pushed forward, entering me with a slow, inexorable pressure that had me gasping for breath.
The stretch was delicious agony after so long without this connection.
This is what I’d missed most in my cold cell. Not just the physical pleasure, though God knows I’d ached for it, but this sense of completeness, of being joined to someone who saw beyond my pretty face to the woman beneath. My beasts, my princes, my salvation.
He began to move, slow at first, each thrust careful as if afraid I might shatter.
But I wasn’t fragile, not in this. I pressed back against him, demanding more, and he obliged, his pace increasing as his control frayed.
His hand snaked around to where we were joined, fingers finding that sensitive bundle again, working it in time with his thrusts until I was trembling, suspended at the edge of something monumental.
“Let go,” he whispered against my ear, his voice deeper than I remembered, smoother somehow. “Let go for me.”
The command broke whatever restraint I’d been clinging to.
Pleasure crashed over me in waves, each more intense than the last, my body convulsing around him as I cried out.
Though which prince, I wasn’t sure. My mind had gone blank, reduced to nothing but sensation and relief and gratitude that somehow, across whatever hell separated us, he had found me.
As I floated in the aftermath, he groaned, his rhythm faltering. Strong arms wrapped around me, rolling me onto my back as he positioned himself above me to finish too. I opened my eyes at last, eager to see which of my loves had come to me.
And found myself staring into eyes blue as winter sky, not amber like forest honey.
Prince Alain gazed down at me, his handsome face taut with pleasure, black hair falling across his forehead in damp waves. Not a beast. Not a prince of a cursed realm. The second son of Durand, my captor, my would-be savior.
I woke with a strangled gasp, my body still pulsing with the aftershocks of a very real climax. My thighs were slick, my nightdress clinging to sweat-dampened skin. Alone. I was alone in the white room, moonlight streaming through curtains I hadn’t closed before falling into exhausted sleep.
My hand flew to the claiming mark on my shoulder, touching it as if to reassure myself that the bond remained. It did. I could feel them, distant but present, three faint pulses of connection across the veil between worlds. My beasts. My true loves.
But my body still thrummed with the phantom pleasure given by a different man entirely thanks to my muddled thoughts.
Kisses instead of licks.
Flesh instead of fur.
Hands instead of claws.
Prince Alain… with his suspicious blue eyes and gentle hands. With his misguided determination to save me from what he couldn’t understand.
Shame burned through me, hot and sickening. How could my subconscious betray me like this? How could my body respond so readily to the image of a man who kept me prisoner, who stood against everything the princes represented?
I curled onto my side, pulling my knees to my chest as if I could physically contain the confusion threatening to overwhelm me.
This didn’t change anything. Couldn’t change anything.
My loyalty belonged to the beasts who had saved me, who suffered in hell while I lay on silk sheets dreaming of another man.
Tonight, in the quiet darkness of my gilded cage, I couldn’t deny the truth my body had already recognized. Something in me was drawn to Prince Alain Legrand, whether I wanted it to be or not.
And that terrified me far more than any corrupted beast lurking in the Forbidden Forest.