Chapter 12
Naia stayed away from the mountain for ten days.
In the mornings, she used the water she’d stored to tend to a few budding tomato seedlings.
In the evenings, she rocked Kano and watched him coo in his sleep.
She feared to return to the mountain—feared whatever had imbued the beast with such hopelessness—but something had gone missing from her life.
Something whose absence inched closer and closer to outweighing her fear.
On the eleventh day, Naia woke in the darkness. Dreams of glistening fangs and soulful dark eyes sizzled in her mind, and she could no longer keep from stealing out into the night.
She climbed. And climbed. Up on the mountaintop, moonlight flooded the cave. She tiptoed in, following the bluish rays to the back.
What she saw there robbed her of breath. There, beside the pool, slept not a monster, but a man.
He looked nothing like the storybook princes.
Raven curls tangled around his ears, and heavens above, that face.
It made all its own rules. She wondered why she’d ever considered Elias’s generic beauty compelling, because it wasn’t, not compared to this ruthless grace.
Yet somehow, this man’s features still echoed the beast’s.
If Naia looked closely, she found tenderness in the flicker of those sleeping fingers, in the creases of his eyelids.
She strayed closer. He wore nothing but a pair of old-fashioned breeches, and heat rose off him, drawing her in. He shifted in his sleep.
She knelt, brushing at his cheek with a knuckle. His eyes feathered open. They looked just the same as always—dark enough to hold a century in their depths and still have room left over.
“My beast,” she whispered.
He frowned. “My rose. With all your wonderful thorns. You came back. Why did you come back? I told you not to.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you turned into a man at night?”
An eon passed, broken only by his breathing, which grew choppier by the moment. He reached for her cheek. “Would it have mattered?”
She considered. “Well, no. Of course not.”
His chest hitched. Some silent thing passed between them, a needful promise, maybe, because in the next moment, he pulled her down and kissed her.
Sensation flooded her. She melted against him, a hungry moan welling in her throat. At the sound, he took hold of her shoulders and turned her beneath him. Her arms rose, clutching him close.
“Naia,” he panted, and she opened to him, welcoming his tongue with the curl and coax of her own.
Dizzy heat whirled in her stomach. Elias had kissed her before, but not like this. Not like he yearned to give of himself instead of take. Not like he’d mapped every dark corner within her and found each one enticing.
The beast kissed Naia until her toes curled and her skin burned. The weight of him atop her was the most delicious thing she’d ever felt—more satisfying than a cold gulp of water, more thrilling than a sky full of summer lightning.
She hitched her legs up around his hips, and he groaned, his fingers raveling in her hair. His heart was a wild drum, a frenzied beat against her breastbone.
She angled her head, deepening the kiss, and in that moment, something changed. A new sensation rushed in, tingling and alive. It was...an oath, she realized. A vow about garnet leaves and mist-gray mornings. And rain.
Rain, rain, rain. The song coiled on her tongue, aching to be sung.
He pulled back, his eyes wide. “Oh, no. No, no, no. I didn’t mean to...” His voice broke. His entire being seemed to break along with it. “Oh, gods, what have I done?”
Naia stared up. He looked horrified, his beautiful face crumpling, and she wanted nothing more than to comfort him. To curl into his arms and press herself closer, to feel her skin against his and fuse their bodies into one.
But she couldn’t. Because she understood something, now. She understood everything, in fact.
All the things he hadn’t been able to tell her.
A ray of sunrise pierced the gloom, lighting the curve of his cheek. The moment it touched him, his teeth elongated. Fur sprouted everywhere. He tensed as if making to cage her in his arms, but Naia wriggled out from beneath him.
She leaped to her feet and ran.
The beast roared as she hurtled away. Claws scrabbled in the dirt behind her, but she tucked her chin and pelted toward the dawn.
She hurtled out of the cave, whirling just in time to see the beast bounce back from the entrance like he’d charged into a wall.
A frantic bellow ripped from his throat, then another.
He raked at his invisible cage with his claws, then charged and bounced back again.
Not because he wanted to hurt her, Naia knew.
No, because he wanted to save her.
A lump gathered in her throat. Every nerve in her body, every sinew and muscle, bowed toward him, a living wish that curled around her heart and begged her to stay.
But she couldn’t. If she did, Kano and his butterflies would die. So would everyone else. Eventually.
One of the many things she now understood.
So she turned away. A single tear streaked down her cheek—the paltriest of offerings, considering all the water her beautiful beast had given her.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and chased the sunrise down the mountain.