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

by Mallory Dunlin

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.

Weird mystical eye things were way up there on the list of things that were fun to think about and probably extremely terrible in practice.

I did not want to be in a weird codependent mystical eye relationship with someone who was happy to leave a stranger to die in the woods. I did not want to deal with mystical eye things at all.

"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,"

Someone had filled the case with a bunch of copies of books from Earth, an eclectic selection that included no fewer than three Bibles and the Book of Mormon sitting cheek-by-jowl with bodice-rippers and mystery novels. I counted seven copies of books from the Twilight series and what looked like John Grisham's entire catalog. It was as if someone had raided the Goodwill dumpster and come back with the leavings like some sort of fae packrat.

taking off the brown cargo pants and mauve t-shirt with an aggressively frumpy illustration of a tabby cat and the words "I'm a cat purr-son" in well-nigh unreadable cursive script. Whoever had collected human clothing for me had eclectic tastes, at best. Surely there was less weird stuff to find, even in the Goodwill dumpsters.

"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."

"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."

"Are you trying to train me like a dog?" Dain asked, in a casual tone but with narrowed eyes. "Humans domesticated wolves, o moon-called Beast," I said, and waggled my eyebrows at him. "Who knows, maybe one day you'll fetch my slippers and put your head in my lap to ask for pets."

Ogres have layers, I thought, my lips twitching at the idea of the crown prince as Shrek. Did that make me Donkey?

He looked sideways at me again. "Are you going to infuriate me?" "Prior experiences suggest it's almost unavoidable," I said, smirking at him. "Maybe it's part of my charm, and I'll grow on you." "Like mold," Dain muttered.

Campsite rules: always leave a place better than you found it.

"You could consider giving me the benefit of the doubt, your royal growliness," I snapped.

"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."

"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."

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."

He had a forked tongue. I tried not to appreciate the thought of what that tongue might be able to do to me too much, and made a mental note to ask Kamharida for perfume or something to baffle his nose against the scent of desire.

Zhiolas looked like perfection itself. 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.

"This is why I didn't want to introduce you," Dain said, his voice almost unintelligible through his growl. "You and she are matches for being unable to hold your tongues."

"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.

"I looked at the soap, and then at this guy with his hand on his dick, and made the connection. So I walked over to him with some sort of 'um' noise, totally dazed, put the soap on his dick, stared at it for a minute, and walked out." I shook my head. "The guy had the gall to call me the next day, ask if I'd had a good time and if I wanted to maybe try it without the soap next time, now that he was nice and clean."

"I want to ask, but I'm frightened of the consequences," Alluin said with great interest. "Are you enjoying tormenting our prince, your highness?" he asked instead, looking at me.

My eyebrows shot up and I gave Alluin an astonished look. He smiled at me, broad and easy. "Dain enjoys women, I enjoy men, and Zhiolas enjoys everyone," Alluin explained. "I'm plenty fond of our prince, but he has no interest in the fascinating things I can do with my tongue and throat."

"Did they apple-core you, too?" I asked, worried about him having big holes in his pieces. "'Apple-core'?" he asked, sounding confused. "Um, you know. For the blood magic poison stuff. They took a big cylinder of, erm, meat? Out of my leg."

If he kissed me, I wouldn't be able to say no to forever. I wouldn't even want to. Lying in bed with him after the nightmare of the morning, lost in the gold and black of his eyes, my old life seemed so very far away. 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.

"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."

His nose wrinkled, and he made a sound of disgust. "I don't mind scented soaps. I even use them myself. But perfume?" Dain's ears laid back against his head. "I imagine my relationship to perfume is something like your relationship to skunk-spray."

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

With my best growl, I lifted my lip and leaned forward. "If you ever have a soulmate, General Xilsatra, I will tolerate a lecture on overprotectiveness from you. Until then, I suggest you watch your tongue." Alluin and I managed to hold our serious expressions for about three seconds before we dissolved into peals of laughter, Zhiolas following with. I buried my face in my hands and laughed until I cried, with Zhiolas growling "General Xilsatra" at me to spur me on. At last I managed to stop laughing and leaned back against the booth's couch and my friend's arm.

"I would love to see you do that in front of him," Zhiolas said, tossing back the rest of his cocktail. "It would delight me if you saved the debut for when Alluin and I are present." "Well, it wouldn't be any fun to do without someone to observe his reaction," I said, grinning. "Hear, hear," replied Alluin, and together we laughed our way through the night.

I had no concept of where he might fall in the dick spectrum, and whether we were talking Bad Dragon or regular human.

He also possessed a ludicrous number of swords and daggers, an eclectic variety of objects from the human world, 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.

He gave me four interesting rocks, three feathers, two small bones, and a lock of his hair as his tokens from his journey, and he spent a number of evenings declaiming the adventures of Regina as she was thoroughly deflowered, while I brushed copious amounts of shedding hair out of his long, voluminous tails.

He did smell like a wet dog. I decided not to mention it.

A mental image of me on his throne while he buried his face between my legs came unbidden. That would set people's hair on fire: Crown Prince Sundamar on his knees for a human woman.

"You've got four hands and a tongue piercing, so I'm sure we'll be able to find something to satisfy," I said, while he ducked his chin and smirked up at me. "You may be as overwhelmed as you like." "As you desire, my princess," he said, his smirk spreading into an easy smile.

"You know," I said, flicking my gaze back up to the smoldering wolf eyes of an almost-panting Dain. "In my world? Guys with navel piercings tend to be both slutty and gay." "One of those was true," Dain said in his purring flirtatious voice. "Does it still count as slutty if I only want one woman, but would likely have sex with her anytime and anywhere she desired?" "I'll allow it,"

"Tell me how you fell in love with me," I said. His eyes went soft, full of longing and unconditional love. "That's what you want to know?" Dain asked, his voice hoarse. "More than anything,"

"I never would have imagined myself in a situation like this a year ago. Swords are so conveniently straightforward, and I'm so very good at using them."

"I know you, and I love you. You're not a different person because you can apparently level a city. You still love wildflowers, are terrible at chess, and sneak looks at my ass when you think I won't notice." He barked out some sort of laughter-adjacent sound. "I did, in fact, think you didn't notice me doing that."

My Dain stood before me, a war all around us, given a choice: sacrifice a nation for the woman he loved? Or watch her die, and end a third war?

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?

"The gods gave you a soulmate from another world to look at you without prejudice, and she sees the man you are."

I wanted them to have the opportunity to find comfort and bliss in each other's arms without anyone else knowing the details unless they wanted to share, and I also suspected that Dain would feel insecure and unhappy about finding me hot for his two best friends as they fucked in my bed.

"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. "Yepperdoodles,"

God, no wonder women kept throwing themselves at the Beast of Phazikai. We were solidly in Bad Dragon territory, and I was looking forward to every damn inch of it.

A fucking piercing pressed up against my clit, and through the incredible sensation of the heat and stretch of him inside me, I suddenly remembered finding those long barbells in his jewelry box, and made the connection between them and the hard nubs along his shaft. "You have eight barbells through your dick?" I panted out.

"Come again for me, Leah," he demanded, his voice harsh and full of desire. "Come on my fae cock, mortal girl."