Arthur
Pacing did little to hold him back.
As soon as the challenge was issued, the Beast began to rattle his cage.
Just hearing her say Beast caused a riot within my chest, and the civility of the gentleman I once was became impossible to find again. Reshina had been under this curse for a little over a day and she was already driving me to madness.
OUT.
“Not yet,” I seethed between gritted teeth, flexing the fingers that had tied up her dress. The Beast could not leave the confines of the castle grounds, so if Reshina left them…perhaps she truly could escape this curse and leave me to rot here for all time.
HUNT brINGER.
“Wait,” I urged, my arms spread wide over the stone wall, my head falling, breathing, sweating, giving her as much time as I could before she was hunted down.
BLOOD. HUNGER. MINE.
The shift came as I felt her spirit, tied to mine, soar into the winter air. In the next moment, I was no longer a man, but a Beast with a man trapped inside, raging through the corridor, leaving claw marks across the stone as the monster rounded the corner faster than should be possible.
Get out, get away, I thought with no control over anything that would happen next. The Beast skidded across the halls, knocking into Piffle on his way to the kitchen.
“Master!” he yelped, but the Beast did not heed his cries, finding the staircase in record time, sniffing the air when the cold hit above the Underrealm.
I could see glimpses of what the Beast saw, but I could not easily control him, only occasionally able to convince him of one decision or another. He looked up to the sky, exhaling enormous puffs of air, uncharacteristically not speaking to me, instead focused like the hunter he was.
Finding his target, I caught a glimpse of black wings against a dawning horizon. The pounding of his feet rumbled the earth. The scraping of his claws over the hedges filled the air. He sprinted past the marble statues—once an adornment to the castle, now broken monuments to a broken kingdom.
She neared the iron fence around the boundary of Heartstone Castle, and the Beast picked up speed, one word echoing in that all-consuming growl.
MINE.
Faster. She’d need to be faster if she was to make it, for the Beast now leapt beyond the limits of any creature of the realm, picking up speed instead of losing it. She grew tired—her flight dropping, her speed slowing. The Beast’s roar boomed as, with one final leap, he secured his prey.
“Do not harm her!” I bellowed in his head.
He’d trapped her near the edge of the grounds.
Pinned in fresh snow, she shifted back into her Ravenfae form.
The Beast’s claws dug into her wings spread out behind her.
For the first time, she looked frightened, her breath coming in milky white puffs of air as she looked up into the face of a monster.
“Take her down and be done with this,” I commanded.
The Beast didn’t bother to respond, instead dragging his tongue across her chest, tasting, marking—and I knew what came next.
“STOP!” I ordered, urging myself to say it even though I wanted it just as much as he did.
She strained under his form and screamed into the frozen air as the Beast’s fangs dug into her neck, spilling her blood onto the snow.