Captured by the Fae Beast (Monsters of Faery, #1)

by Mallory Dunlin

What better place for someone to die? The ravens and the coyotes would eat my body, and the mice and foxes would chew on my bones, and then there would be nothing left to mourn. All the pieces of me would slip into the wilderness, entering the endless moving pattern of a world that wouldn't remember mankind. There was still awe here, and danger. There's no shame in being forgotten by the mountains and remembered by the crows.

"Leah Escarra, called the Duchess, a missile defense programmer. Mortal soulmate of a fae prince who probably should kill fewer people," I said, wrinkling my nose as I said it. I didn't like labeling myself his soulmate, even if it didn't mean that I had to love him, but the symmetry was too pleasing to resist.

"If you want to be my friend, you're going to have to accept that sometimes something is going to remind me of everything I've lost and of how badly I want to go home. I'll do my best not to take it out on you, but you're the reason I'm here. I can't promise that I won't someday hate you for that."

I appreciate her honesty here

Dain looked like he could and would fuck you until you forgot your name; then, while you laid sprawled across the furs of his bed with legs that no longer functioned, like he would go out, kill you a deer, and feed the fire-roasted haunch to you bite by bite.

Dain said, looking at me with a contentment I didn't expect from a man with this many holes in him. "But most of the time I really like it." "That I know what you look like?" I asked, a little confused. "That you'd hate it if I looked any differently." He smiled for me again before turning his head back to the side. "You're the only one who feels that way."

"You have my scent on you, which combined with the fact that I would know your scent even if I lost my entire memory, makes me feel like there's a place in the world for me where I don't have to fight to keep my footing."

"But I want to be your soulmated truelove, and I don't think it's possible without taking down every wall of my heart for you." Dain's voice wavered on the last words, but he looked into my eyes as he wiped away the last trace of his blood.

"To forgiveness and second chances, and to finding a place to stand," he said, looking only at me. "To choosing one another, and the joy of being chosen in return." Held forever in my soulmate's eyes, I raised my glass and drank to that.