Beautifully Beastly

Chapter 1

ONE

FENRIR

PRESENT

I’m a trained killer. I can kill people with a simple bullet to the forehead, a quick cut to the femoral artery, or a powerful fist to the temple.

But if looks could kill, there’d be a dead man at the bar right now.

He’s wiry as fuck, with slicked-back hair and a tan that looks like it came out of a bottle.

He has no business being in this bar—let alone on this earth—and I want nothing more than to bury him, but I have my orders, and dealing with him isn’t one of them… yet.

The starched white collar cuts into my neck, the fabric stretched tight across my pecs.

It makes me look smart and in control, but I’m as uncomfortable as a madman in a straitjacket—and the asshole at the bar is doing nothing to calm my agitation.

This isn’t attire I’m used to, not the terrain I’ve been trained for.

The beat of the music in the club is so loud, I feel the bass reverberate off my ribs, like the bass player is strumming the strings across my chest. The lighting is dim, smoke swirling across the dance floor as if it’s guiding the clubbers on how to move.

I can barely make out my hand in front of my face, but despite the poor visibility, I can see her.

An avalanche of dark hair.

Beautifully luminous eyes.

Lips that so very rarely smile.

It’s a blessing that I have a licence to stare, to watch her intimately. It is, after all, my job. The only reason I’m here.

To keep her safe.

To keep her alive.

Taking a step forwards, a man knocks into me, his hands gyrating in the air to the infernal pound of the music. He turns, hackles raised, about to berate me for not watching where I’m going, even though he’s the one who is blind.

“Hey, man—” His words die on his tongue as he registers my gigantic stature, my immovable breadth, and if this isn’t enough, his eyes finally reach my face. His pupils expand when he clocks the scarring that runs up the left side of my neck and claws its way over my cheek.

His jaw drops as he holds his hands up in defence. “Sorry, man. My fault.”

I pay him no heed; his reaction is nothing new.

My sights are on Hayami, who is perched on a stool, the slimy scumbag sitting opposite her, his greasy hand having found its way onto her upper thigh where the split of her dress exposes her like a gash.

I see red, a thick bloodred as I march over to them.

“Fenrir.” Willa’s warning erupts through my earpiece, echoing against the sound of her voice not three feet to my left. “Don’t overreact.”

“Define overreacting,” I reply as I slam my fist into the scumbag’s face, sending him flying off the stool.

“What the…?” Hayami cries as Willa pulls her away from my fury. This isn’t the first time Willa has had to intervene when I’ve lost my head, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

“You don’t touch her. No one fucking touches her.” Grabbing the dickhead by his shirt, I haul him to his feet. A tiny bead of blood pools at the corner of his lips.

“What the fuck?” the slimeball says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What the hell are you doing?” Hayami fights her way out of Willa’s hold.

“My job,” I spit, still eyeing the fucker as I cling onto the shoulders of his shirt.

“Your job?” Hayami shouts above the music. “Did it look like I was in danger, Beast?” Her hands are on her hips, the split of her dress having ridden further up her leg.

Reluctantly, I let go of the creep.

Seemingly recovered, he touches his mouth, surveys the blood on his hand, and laughs. I want to punch him so badly that my hand aches.

“I think we all just need to calm down,” Willa says, inserting herself between me and the cretin. “Everything is fine, Fenrir.” She glares at me with a look I’ve seen countless times before. “Hayami is fine, aren’t you?” she asks, glancing at Hayami for confirmation.

“Yes, I’m fine. Just trying to have a good time like a normal twenty-year-old until this fucking beast steamed in.” Hayami rolls her eyes.

“It’s okay,” Willa reassures her. “You can go back to having a good time. We’ll be here.

” Willa places her hand on my chest, exerting a gentle push that, in normal people, would cause them to step back, but I don’t move, not even an inch, until she stares at me with pleading eyes that are asking me just to be a good dog and do as I’m told.

Although there’s no official hierarchy where Hayami’s bodyguards are concerned, Willa has been doing this far longer than I have, which means she has a degree of authority over me that I try to respect.

I swallow my fury as the fuckwit I just punched straightens his shirt and smirks before climbing back onto the stool like a little lord clambering back onto his pedestal.

Even through my blaze of anger, I can’t help but be impressed by the guy’s resilience.

Most men don’t stay within a mile of my presence when they see me, let alone laugh at me, but this guy is either very brave or extremely stupid.

I put money on the latter.

“What is with you?” Willa hisses through gritted teeth. “You know you can’t pull this shit.”

“He was touching her.” I back off, fists still clenched, eyes like lasers on the jerk.

I want to add that she is Hayami Devall—daughter of gang lord Barrett Devall, one of the richest, most influential, and most powerful men in Rothkor.

No one rivals him, except perhaps the Castro family, who’ve been vying for control of this city ever since Devall took the reins more than thirty years ago.

Bottom line? No one fucks with a Devall.

But I’ll be damned if I use the Devall name to define Hayami. That’s not the reason I punched that slimy fucker.

“She’s a consenting adult who’s allowed to have a man touch her.

Our job is to keep her alive. We only act when there’s a threat to her, or have you forgotten that?

” Willa’s eyes narrow. She’s one of the few people who isn’t scared by my looks, and she can give as good as she gets.

Her bark is worse than her bite, sure, but she’s not someone to be messed with. Then again, neither am I.

Hayami is back on her stool, looking far more regal than the fucker with the fat lip who’s leering at her as if he’s just won her at a fairground stall. He pulls his stool closer, and I have to fight the monster inside me not to explode and bring the walls of this place down around us all.

“Besides,” Willa says as she brushes her hand down her starched shirt and tugs on the lapels of her black jacket, reminding me that I’m not the only one trussed up in a smart suit, “this isn’t the kind of venue where you can let your fists do the talking. Have you forgotten where we are?”

As if this suit could let me forget.

The club is new, recently opened by one of Barrett Devall’s business cronies, probably furnished with dirty money and decorated in blood. From the outside, it’s a high-class, swanky club for the super-rich. On the inside, it’s just another laundrette.

Of course, Hayami has a pass to the premier suite—one she refused. She chose instead to stay on the dance floor with the regular crowd, and I can’t blame her. The premier suite will be full of wealthy assholes whose sole purpose is to flaunt their riches.

“No, I haven’t forgotten.”

“Good.” Willa pats me on the chest like the good mutt I am.

Blending into the darkness, I retreat into the shadows. The beat of the music drops, and I try to slow my heartbeat to match the rhythm as I watch Hayami. Willa nods, like she’s congratulating me for doing as I’m told.

She knows what I’m like. Knew it the first day we met, six months ago, when I was introduced as Hayami’s new bodyguard. She sniffed at me and muttered something about not being able to take the hound out of the dog.

This bodyguard business isn’t how I began working for Barrett Devall.

A year ago, after leaving the army—where I’d served for just over ten years—I walked into the large warehouse known as the Kennel with blood-encrusted fingernails, a black eye, and sore knuckles.

The Kennel is the headquarters of the Hellhounds, the name given to Devall’s foot soldiers—the muscle behind all his business dealings. A motley crew of people who wear their battle scars like armour. We’re the messengers, the heavies who handle the dirty work. We are your worst nightmare.

After being dragged into the warehouse by a couple of Hellhounds patrolling the site, I was dumped before Callan Croft, the head of the Hellhounds, a hulk of a guy with tattoos on his face and dark hair like a wire brush. He asked me what I was doing on his turf. I told him I was looking for work.

He took one sweeping look at my bloodied knuckles, snarling teeth, and knotted scars before he slapped me on the back, called me one ugly motherfucker, then introduced me to the rest of the pack, who were as unsightly as I am.

Background checks happened, but Callan had already known I’d fit in.

I was welcomed with open arms and wagging tails.

It felt like fate—working for the Devall family, the biggest rivals of the Castros, Rothkor’s second-largest gang. I never questioned it.

Not until six months ago.

That’s when it all changed.

When I swapped my dog collar for a shirt collar.