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

by Mallory Dunlin

I barked out a sharp laugh and closed my eyes, feeling for the lines of reality and overlaying what I wanted with my glamor.

Nope. That was not okay. Strike two against Fairyland: being accorded status as royalty—strike one obviously being the mystical eye thing.

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

"Are you trying to scare me?" I asked, putting on my best Elle Woods

"What you want doesn't matter."

He hadn't said he would return me to my world when our time ran out. Motherfucker.

"Gross," I informed him, though it was anything but. I needed the distance, though. Skulls, I reminded myself, and shuddered. "That's way more information about your love life than I wanted."

Without further ado, I flicked him on the nose, as if he was being a naughty animal.

"Seriously," I said. "Cut it out. Only cartoon villains are this over-the-top. It's getting ridiculous." "I don't know what that is," he said, his voice rumbling with the edge of a growl. "Pretend bad guys for children's stories."

When we got to Regina's description of the male lead, which was both remarkably racist and over-the-top horny,

"On a scale of one to ten, one being no different from a horse and ten being certain death, how likely am I to regret also riding a deer of some sort?"

"Lovely," I said. "Well within tolerances. I would like to ride whichever deer can keep up with Crown Prince Sundamar's stag, but who is also the easiest one to ride, given that requirement."

"You're really committed to the all-black thing, aren't you?"

"Are you trying to train me like a dog?" Dain asked, in a casual tone but with narrowed eyes.

"Think of how embarrassed I would be if you already had a clever repartee prepared."

"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."

We were going to see each other a lot, and whatever mystical shit tied us together had clearly done some form of pattern-matching, putting a girl who liked weird monster romances with a weird monster guy, and picking someone with a spine to shove in the face of someone like Dain.

Rejection hurts so much worse when you're trying. How often can you put yourself out there, bare your naked soul and get told you're monstrous, before it's not worth it anymore?

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."

Dain wheeled away and stalked out of the room, breaking the door at the side of the room off of its hinges and storming away.

She was a god-fucker. A person who had sex with gods. A whole Leda-and-the-swan situation, but with deer and wolves. And that meant Dain was... a demigod?

That was... a gift. He'd given me a gift, shown me something about himself that he didn't have to. People in the High Court called him the Beast of Phazikai with fear and disgust, but for the soldiers, he was their Beast. He'd led them, and he'd protected them, and he had their loyalty until the end of time. Here, in the fighting courts, he was respected and accepted in a way he never was surrounded by courtiers, and Dain had cracked the door for me. He called to me like a wolf, and his pack sang back to him.

He must have asked me something, and I'd been busily contemplating the horror of being his soulmate. But it had nothing to do with him as a person, and I wouldn't add that pain to the wounds he carried with him everywhere.

"You are sometimes very rude," he muttered to me. "Striking the crown prince is a capital offense." "You gonna kill me for it?" I asked. He only snarled, which gave me plenty of answer.

Even the distant sensation of my options falling away as Dain and I slipped towards alignment couldn't shake my certainty that there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

but apparently he'd carved out a place for himself in his own heart, and not using his wing-arms was only an inhibition.

"'M th'Beast of Phazikai," he said, sounding disgruntled. "Rrr. Scary." "Terrifying," I said solemnly. "Fear has been stricken into my heart."

And finally," Dain said, with a little nuzzle. "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." I'd

"Of course not," he said, holding me tighter and burrowing his face a little closer to my skin. "That's courtship, which we are explicitly not doing. Besides, it's winter. There won't be wildflowers again until the spring."

If you choose to miss me, you are welcome to my space and my possessions. The enclosed key is to the adjoining door. I hope that it does not disgust you that I will likely be thinking of you every waking hour. You are my most cherished friend, and I will try my best to repair the things I have broken. Yours, Dain

and a collection of antlers, some of which appeared to have been gnawed upon by a dog. That went straight to the top of my list of embarrassing Dain facts: the man apparently chewed on antlers like a vigorous hound.

I don't know how to tell you how good you smell—"

He loved me. Dain loved me endlessly, with his entire heart.

"Not even my yearning heart can trick me into believing you would abandon your beloved family for the poor comfort of my scaled arms."

"Dain, of course I do. You're the best thing in my life." I had to fight back tears at the look of desperate want on his face. "I didn't kiss you for the sake of sex. What I wanted to do was love you."

"As you desire, my princess," he said, his smirk spreading into an easy smile.

and my horror finally battered itself to death against that generous love.

Together, we turned the landscape around the palace into a death trap. I ordered the forest behind the palace cut down to a distance of five hundred yards, and we used the trees to build rough walls and baffles that we soaked with napalm. The horses and deer all got brought through the palace and into the gardens; no reason to leave them in harm's way. An incredible amount of C4 got buried in a series of long trenches, with remote detonators, and the walls were supplied with rocket launchers and grenades.

but as the day turned the fae had the rather unpleasant experience of watching the overlooked humans they'd surrounded themselves with turn absolutely feral, as they built gruesome traps and prepped for war.

might enjoy knowing that there were many barrels of iron nails in the Crown's possession. I did, in fact, enjoy knowing that.

By nightfall, there were humans turning regular grenades into homemade frag grenades,

The fae, not keen on being outdone by their human servants, started scheming about how to make ...

To the west, long after the sun had set, the horizon glowed red from the approaching flames.

Three thousand years of devotion, answered with betrayal. How can you pay back that kind of pain?

the son she'd wanted with such desperation and whose price had broken her.

A fork in the road, with two paths to choose from. But the thing about paths is that they're only one part of the landscape. It's so much easier to walk down an existing path than to forge your own, but if you're in the woods, you can always step off the path and find your own way. Sometimes you'll get lost, and die—maybe often.

Unbelievable. I was the soulmate of a big fuck-off wolf monster, a straight-up demigod, whose godhood waxed and waned with the moon and the seasons. What even was my life?

I thought I would always be able to turn my face towards him, no matter how far apart we were. We'd found balance at last, with eight hours to spare. Soulmated trueloves, the King and Queen of Stag Court, a demigod and his mortal lover.

"Are you aware that Zhiolas and Alluin are currently having what sounds like spectacular sex in your bed?" he asked, closing the door behind him.

will strive to believe you."