Arthur
I counted her footsteps down the corridor before I heard her shift—the flap of her wings growing distant.
BLOOD.
“You must control your bite,” I spoke through gritted teeth, watching the change come over me. Fur, almost black, grew over my arms as they widened. Claws, sharp as knives, curled over my fingers.
BLOOD. brINGER. NOW.
“If you truly harm her, I will find a way to impale myself on a sword and end us both.”
HUNGER.
My body shifted fully in a torrential rage.
The Beast, free of the control I’d held since catching a new scent on her earlier that day, flipped the dining table on its side before he tore through the corridors.
Hunting, salivating, fueled with need, I felt it too, deep within the confines of my soul.
Questions of why she’d smelled that way, why the Beast had caught the scent of desire, had plagued me all afternoon, and sitting with her there at that table while she ate and the scent lingered over her skin…
It was a divine moment indeed that I had kept myself together.
She could have worn a potato sack and the Beast would have roared and raged, recognizing in her the same desire in me.
A Beast could not understand the intricacies of our relationship. For him, blood was blood, hunger was hunger, and sexual desire was easy enough to satisfy when both of us had felt it.
The Beast’s claws dragged along the corner of the wall leading to the staircase. Bits of chiseled stone flew across the floor, hitting my door and shattering to dust.
Goddess, he was the worst I’d ever seen. A bellow of the promise that was coming for Reshina shuddered over the stone, shards crumbling from the ceiling as he climbed the stairs, turning all thoughts to the scent of her.
I peered out from his gaze, seeing the world in his black and white and red.
It was all he cared for, the hues of red.
The blood from a fresh kill, the marks he’d left on her.
In a moment of clarity, I regretted allowing her to do this.
I should have walked away. I should have let her leave the table.
I’d never been challenged to keep the Beast at bay for this long and with this much difficulty.
I’d need to put everything I could into holding him back from ripping into her flesh in a way that could not be repaired.
She’d already keep those teethmarks for years, if not centuries, and new ones would appear from this night, but I could control where.
“You cannot bite her neck again. You will not maim her there.”
BITE. BLOOD. MINE.
“Her wrist,” I ordered. “You may bite the underside of her wrist, so she may easily hide your mark.”
The Beast paused in the snow, sniffing heartily.
Reshina was playing with him. She could have been there at the top of the staircase, offering herself and getting this over with, but she was not.
She hid, just as she had earlier, and the Beast’s euphoria flooded through me, heating my blood into nothing more than unsatiated lust.
For there, upon the soft chilled breeze, came hers.
She hid at the side of the castle, under the short bridge leading to the servants’ quarters. She hid directly over my rooms in the Underrealm.
“Steady,” I commanded as he turned, prowling low over the mounds of snow. “She is offering herself. There’s no need to—”
He bolted, flying over the hedged wall and landing on the gravel under the bridge, spraying rocks into the air.
Reshina waited, leaning against the gray stone of the castle, her cheeks flushed red, her chest rising and falling quickly as she caught her breath. “Record timing, Beast. Good. I’m frozen out here already.”
It wasn’t true. She didn’t know she couldn’t lie when it came to her temperature in front of the Beast. The blood in her veins glowed a brilliant crimson, hot and succulent, ready to be consumed.
The Beast prowled forward, creeping over the distance with careful strength.
She rolled her shoulders, the scent between her legs permeating the air with a luscious sweetness, her eyes dilated as they flicked over the monster.
“Careful,” I reminded him. “Her wrist. Bite her wrist.”
The Beast drew a long inhale, his eyes shuddering shut for a moment as he filled his lungs with blood and nectar.
Reshina lifted her chin, turning her face to offer her neck like she had a death wish.
“WRIST,” I reminded him, but it was something like my voice that echoed in the dark.
“What?” she gasped. “Did you just speak?”
The Beast shook his head in confusion and I mirrored it.
“WRIST,” I repeated to him, but the word came out of his mouth.
Her lips turned down as she lifted her hand in offering.
I’d never spoken through the Beast before.
I’d never heard him say a word or utter more than a monster’s roar.
But he’d done it. I’d done it.
He turned her hand, wrapping his long claws over her forearm. The underside of her wrist was pale, but the rapid beating of her heart pumped through her veins, glowing in our eyes.
BITE. BLOOD.
“With ease,” I told him calmly. “Please.”
His tongue grazed across her skin, tasting the surface, savoring the sweetness.
I held the reins as he bit down, allowing him one second, two—it was on the third, I told him that was enough.
It was on her sharp inhale of pain that I gave everything I had to restrain him from biting harder, sucking on her broken skin longer.
At our battle, her blood dripped onto the rocks and the ground shuddered, opening wide for a Beast and a Goddess to fall back into the Underrealm.