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

by Mallory Dunlin

I knew what I was, I reminded myself again. A man, a prince, a monster—and people always saw the monster first, the prince second, and the man never.

The world was huge and wild, still full of things no one had ever seen, a vast, uncaring, rugged place on which humans were merely visitors recently arrived.

My e-book reader was full of the sorts of novels you don't usually want physical copies of, in case your mother decides to come over and tidy up for you, and I knew all the tropes.

I would have recognized him anywhere. He was as familiar to me as my own reflection, as if I'd seen him every day of my entire life.

If he wasn't a murdering asshole, he would have been straight-up gorgeous.

He walked towards us with a pretty great murder strut, half saunter and half deadly intent, and when he reached us he stopped and got down on one knee, pressing a hand over his heart.

I might be convinced to kill him if he kept talking to me like that. I'd never been pushed quite into a rage by condescension before, but there was always room for personal growth.

He might be a monster and a murderer now, but Dain had been innocent when his own mother had decided to treat him as monstrous instead of demanding the world accept him. She was the Queen. He could have grown up loved.

Who can set aside their grief and let it claw only inside of them, until it curls up quiescent, like a cat in a carrier? What did that make me?

"People say foolish things about grief," she said, getting a brush and returning to pull it through my hair. "Always saying things about the healing power of time and choosing to be happy. Ignore them all and feel however you feel. We all grieve differently, and how you mourn will look different from how I mourn."

"It is as acceptable to be resilient and to mourn in the back of your heart as it is to be fragile and for that mourning to take everything you have. Some people are left breathless from pain, and others can walk on broken legs."

"If you can't bear the fact that I'd rather you be comfortable and fully-realized or whatever, you can fuck all the way off.

"To lose all hope is to die. When true despair has you in its teeth, the only option is to embrace death, and I have never been ready to die."

Sit with me. Dine next to me. Walk by my side. Do these things and I will strive to unlearn the lessons of my childhood and the century since for you.

Things have bloomed to fill the empty space, like flowers in the sunlit patch of the woods where a tree has fallen. How could I come back and destroy the gardens they've grown? That's not love."

Beside me, he walked with a predatory stalk, his ears surveying the room. I fell into rhythm with him as naturally as breathing, and him with me.

We always tell ourselves rejection can't hurt if we can play something off as a joke, instead of something we long for. We're wrong, but we do like to pretend.

Dain moved the way wildcats and snakes do, with coiled, liquid power and absolute precision even in his fastest strikes.

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. Give me the feral one any day, holy fuck.

His expression softened like seaglass in the waves, the sharp edges wearing slowly away.

He didn't like pain, and he wasn't trying to hurt me. Dain knew exactly how much pressure to use—knew my body intuitively, the way I knew his.

I suspected Dain could be... vigorous. And he had seemed very motivated to make me scream his name and forget my own.

Dain groaned with pleasure, tilting his head back against my fingers. His body stayed exactly as relaxed as it had been while he was asleep, a loose sprawl of man wrapped around me with the affection of a tree python wrapped around a branch.

"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."

We dream about wounded men who love us passionately enough to do the hard work of healing.

"I only want to claim your forever if you desire to have mine.

I kissed Dain thoroughly, sliding my tongue into his mouth when he opened it for me, tasting wine and the dark heat of him.

This was like kissing lightning. Desire blazed down my spine and roared through my body with such intensity that it stole my breath and made my body tremble.

My world narrowed down to Dain. Nothing mattered but him, the movement of his body and the heady taste of his mouth and the demanding throb of his heartbeat pushing against my skin. I needed—needed—needed—

I looked up into his face, bewildered, and he looked back at me with a soft expression, the faintest smile touching the corners of his mouth and his ears low and tilted towards me. It was the face of a man looking at his treasured love, and he looked at me like that in front of everyone.

Dain smelled like heat and darkness, full of the promise of sex and vitality. The scent of him made me want to have him naked and sweaty on a sultry summer evening, the kind of night where you make love for hours and lick the sweat off of your lover as he drowns in you.

The warmth of his hand settled onto the bare skin of my lower back, then stroked slowly upwards, leaving heat in its wake. I melted into the sensation, Dain touching me for no other reason than intimacy, putting his hands on me because we both wanted to drown in each other.

Those eyes would hold me for the rest of my life, always in perfect balance with me, my true north in a crazy world.

"I was lost from the moment you laid your hand on me for no other reason than kindness," he said.

It felt like a sun was being born inside of me, blooming into being, filling me with light. My Dain. My soulmate.

We'd built our anchor, plunged over the cliff, and caught each other. We were hand in hand, spinning on the dance floor with our eyes on each other, and we were binary stars in an eternal balance.

"I chose you, and I choose you. I will stay with you forever. You're my soulmated truelove, and I love you exactly the same amount when you're on four feet as I do when you're on two."

"You are a treasure I did not deserve, and you took the hand of a monster and let him become a man." Gently, I pressed a kiss to his nose. "You were always a man, beloved. All I did was give you a place to stand."