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

by Mallory Dunlin

I felt like someone in a disaster movie, or maybe one of those grim books about people dying while mountaineering.

The agony of my losses settled down into an ugly clump at the base of my heart, like silt settling out of water, and only when I started thinking did the turmoil disrupt that delicate balance and send the grief flaring out in searing pain through the whole of my person.

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 was either currently vividly hallucinating while dying on the shore of an alpine lake, or I had been kidnapped by honest-to-God magic people.

I wasn't the sort of rube that believed NPCs were always trustworthy,

"It really is fairytale rules around here. They can't tell a direct lie, don't ever thank them, and don't ever say you're sorry. Debts will get you in trouble."

"If you tell me that I am Crown Prince Dain Sundamar's beloved soulmate and that we are getting married in three days, I am going to scream and not stop,"

He would have been right at home in any one of the stories in my e-book reader. But, alas, he was a murdering asshole,

I'd never been pushed quite into a rage by condescension before, but there was always room for personal growth.

"Faerqen is the wolf-god of winter, illusion, death, and the moon," he said. "My body makes me moon-called, which is to be tied to him."

"Seriously," I said. "Cut it out. Only cartoon villains are this over-the-top. It's getting ridiculous."

"What makes the sort of intense situations in romance books satisfying and alluring is the removal of uncertainty. No matter the differences between the people, or their struggles, you know that in the end they're going to be in love and happy, and that it's going to last forever for them." I shrugged and put the book back down onto my lap, the grief waking inside of me, sharp talons clawing at the inside of my throat and heat pricking the corners of my eyes. "There's no guarantees in the real world,"

"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."

"Don't torture yourself for being made of steel instead of glass. A broken woman would never have been able to face down the Beast of Phazikai and spend hours in his company. Let your heart mourn as it sees fit. It doesn't shame his memory to continue to live. Our loved ones would always want that for us."

"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."

Rejection hurts so much worse when you're trying.

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."

He said it in the cadence of a joke, as if the answer didn't matter, but with all that had come before, I thought that his tone of voice was nothing more than armor. 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.

"You're worth claiming,"

Why did I even want to go back to rush-hour traffic and grainy dick-pics on dating apps? How could catcalls and internet ads stack up to someone who would literally take an arrow for me with no reward, then look at me with total contentment? Men in love songs always proclaimed such things, but Dain actually did them, with zero hesitation.

I'm much more willing to suffer your crankiness than to see you in pain."

"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."

Dain coming home had been like the sun rising after months of night.

It's not a flaw to ask friends and loved ones to help us when we can't do things on our own."

"It really, honestly, doesn't matter to me how or why you were conceived, or who your parents are. The magic and glamor is pretty cool, and I really, really like all of what you've got going on physically, but none of it matters all that much. I'd still love you if you were a plain old ordinary human."

"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."