Claimed by the Beast

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Her words tattooed themselves on his bones and she’d marked him soul-deep. Yes, he belonged to her—and she to him.

“I asked if you could speak,” she reiterated, her neck flushed and nostrils flaring.

He placed both hands on the glass and waited.

She shook her head.

He nodded in answer, smiled and let himself enjoy the scenery. The things he would do to this woman—the fantasies he’d given her didn’t begin to quantify them all. Konstantin licked his lips just thinking about how she would taste as she thrashed beneath him, digging her nails into his back just as she’d imagined. He’d seen all of that, experienced it as she had.

Konstantin shrugged his massive shoulders and arched a brow.

The flush darkened as it crept up to her cheeks and her eyes narrowed. Her expression told him he was on dangerous ground and if he did anything she didn’t like, she was going to make him pay. It made his blood run hot and his cock hard.

She swore and gasped, making a point to focus on his face. “Stop that.”

He shrugged again, but flashed a smirk. Konstantin knew his body was without flaw, knew she enjoyed the sight of him. It was his duty to indulge her. He flexed his hands on the glass again and the angry line of her mouth crumpled tighter into a rosebud scowl.

Daphne slammed her hands against the barrier. “Fine. But none of that other stuff. Got me, dog?” She looked around the enclosure as she spoke, eying the other beasts and obviously searching for Bethany who’d hidden herself behind the trees.

Konstantin nodded. He hadn’t even spoken and she’d already devolved to name calling. He didn’t need to hear the thundering beat of her heart, or smell her lust and fear to know she felt vulnerable.

“Parlez-vous français?”

Daphne swore again and rested her forehead against the barrier, her shoulders slumped.

“Such a mouth you have, ma cherie.” Such a mouth indeed.

Her head snapped up and a fierce sound rumbled from her. “I see you like to play with your food, but I’m in no mood for games. Why did you infect her?”

Konstantin was proud of her ferocity. She was a worthy mate. “Would you believe me if I told you the truth?”

He watched as a change fell over her, almost as if a magic wand had wiped away her hostility, and her eyes were suddenly clear and open. Just like her mind. She would listen.

“I can’t know if it’s the truth or not. Only you can.”

“You can read the data in front of you and the data your machines collect about my heart rate, respiration, body language, micro-expressions.”

“I will.”

“She was already infected.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Beasts don’t lie.”

“Yes, they do. There was an article in the Journal of—” She cut herself off and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to argue biology or animal behavior.”

“Okay, I don’t lie. Not to you.”

Incredulity stained her features. “You think I haven’t heard these lines before? I work with death row inmates who all have a reason to sweet-talk me. Who all want me to think I’m special, that we have some kind of connection.” She rolled her eyes.

“We do. You’re mine. I’m yours. You said it. It is so.”

“People say things—”

“People,” he interrupted her. “Of which I am not, and neither are you. There is a wolf under your skin, lovely Daphne.”

She jerked away from the glass. “No.”

Konstantin didn’t like the taste of her fear. She wasn’t ready. “As you say.”

“If you ever say that to me again, I’ll close the wall and I will never open it again. Do you understand me?”

The part of him that wanted to court her gently was quickly silenced by his new role as species Adam—his title by genetic right as the first of his kind, he was the Alpha of all Alphas for this new race.

“You mistake me, my love. I’m here because I choose to be.”

“Prove it.”

He let his gaze linger until she fidgeted under the weight of it. “Do you really think you’re ready for me to be on that side of the glass with you, my Daphne?” He cocked his head to the side and studied her hard. “Say the word and I’ll tear this place down for you brick by brick.”

She feared it, but her pheromones spiked. She liked his ferocity.

Daphne swallowed and licked her lips. Her pulse fluttered against her throat like hummingbird wings. “If you can, why don’t you?”

“Because I want you to find a cure. For them.” He nodded to the significantly smaller group of infected. Those who had died a true death were devoured during the night. “The antibodies are in my DNA.”

“All this is well and good, but you still scratched Bethany with the intent to change her, and now she’s one of those things.”

“She’s not. That’s why I scratched her. She reeked of infection.” His lip curled with disgust.

“The bio suits—”

“Are worthless. They didn’t attack her because the origin of her infection was the same as mine.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor will you until you turn the cameras off.”

“I can’t do that.” Her shoulders slumped.

“Then I can’t tell you my story, Daphne. Your government would use this knowledge to weaponize the virus. I can’t let that happen.”

“No, we’re looking for a cure!”

So heated, so passionate. But somehow still so innocent. “Don’t be naive.”

Trust in me.

“You agreed!” She jerked away.

You told me I couldn’t pleasure you, not that I couldn’t speak with you. Are you afraid they’ll see our connection and dump you in here with us, the same as you did to Bethany when you saw she was infected?

“Playing with your food again?” she growled. “You don’t need me to turn the cameras off to communicate.”

He didn’t speak; all he did was watch her.

“You should know that if the cameras stop recording, there’ll be an F-16 here in five minutes to drop a payload that will destroy anything in a twenty-mile radius.”

“Good to know. I can run faster than that carrying both you and Bethany.”

“So much talk and no action. I believe nothing you say, dog.” Her face was like stone.

“Believe this.” Konstantin flooded her with his desire. It was a gift for mates to feel each other’s bliss, but he’d had enough of being called a dog.

Only, he gave her more than his pleasure. He gave her his pain, too.

Memories erupted that were poisonous and black, filling her mind’s eye with images he didn’t want in his own head, let alone in hers.

“Dog!” They snarled as they kicked him, stabbed him with silver pins. “Beast! Devil!” As they’d dragged him and his mother, his father and his brother out into the freezing darkness toward four pyres. But dog was what seemed to stick. They’d chanted it, some sick spell as his mother was violated, then burned as a witch for trafficking with the devil to change her skin.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. Daphne put her shaking hand back to the glass. “I didn’t...” The flood continued to crash over her, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t pull it back.

Because that wasn’t the worst—that wasn’t the most horrible. What he didn’t want her to know was that when they had searched the cellar, the townspeople had found what they’d been looking for. Henri La Croix was the legendary Beast of Gevaudan—the horror from which most mortal werewolf lore sprang. The animal that slaughtered women and children walked among them as a man.

The Aeternali had taken him, exorcised the madness from his blood in ways more horrible than even the Inquisition could imagine.

They had called him “dog.”

And yet, he did not want her to feel this. He would suffer the Aeternali a million times over if it would keep her from experiencing it for even one second. He’d failed as a protector. This was his punishment for using their connection against her. Perhaps his father’s madness was still in his blood, after all.

Konstantin tried to close the connection, but she fought him, opening herself to all of his memories. “Let go, Daphne.”

“No.”

“Now,” he growled, his beast angry.

“I said no.” She stood her ground, devouring everything that poured out of him.

The memories combined with his failure and her pain were all too much, and the beast exploded from his skin—one minute he was a man, the next he was a predator that could crush her between his jaws. Her fear was fetid and tasted of death. She didn’t look at him, and she shook with terror, but she refused to back down.

With his animal brain in the forefront, he didn’t communicate the same way. Their link should have been broken, but it wasn’t. She was there, inside his head with the animal, and he couldn’t protect her.

The animal didn’t want the cure, didn’t care about the cure, only wanted to taste his mate—run with her beneath clear skies and mount her on soft summer grasses. Drill into her until her cries shattered the moon.

Tasting her—yes. That sweet salt of her on his long tongue, the give of tender flesh beneath his teeth as he released the wolf that lived under her delicate skin with his bite.

“Please don’t,” she whispered.

The beast was drunk on the scent of her, the intimacy of being inside her head. Konstantin fought for mastery and regained his human shape.

He didn’t want her to be afraid of him, but Konstantin was afraid of himself.

“Daphne,” he said softly.

The movement of her head as she turned to look up at him was like a glacier, slow and infinitesimal. He turned the topic of conversation back to what was safe, back to the pleasure he could bring her, rather than the things in the dark. “Before the Beast of Gevaudan, there was a Greek island where fathers would offer up their firstborn daughters to appease the appetites of the beasts.”

“You’re just trying to scare me now.” Her voice was hoarse, choked.