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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ava Thorne
Read between
October 1 - October 5, 2025
How fitting, I had thought through the haze of pain. The monster’s azure eyes had stared up at me from the floor while monsters wearing human faces looked down.
Had she not suffered similarly before death claimed her? Had she not whispered warnings about wolves in men’s clothing; about the price of beauty in a world that devours the vulnerable?
The pain was there, sharp and immediate as always. But beneath it, something else stirred. A hunger that wasn’t mine. A rage that tasted of ancient forests and forgotten gods.
I smiled then. I couldn’t help it. Because at that moment, with blood in my mouth and pain singing through every nerve, I knew without a doubt what I would do. I was tired of being prey.
None had answered my prayers for mercy or death or even simple sleep free from nightmares. But perhaps there was another kind of prayer. Perhaps what I needed wasn’t a god at all, but a demon.
“My dear bride, if I wanted you naked, you would be naked. If I wanted you spread beneath me, you would be trembling and begging for more. The fact that you’re still clothed and defiant should tell you something about the nature of control here.”
“Your scars tell stories. They speak of endurance, of survival, of a will that would not break despite every effort to shatter it. These are not shameful marks.”
“You are mine, including all those pretty sounds you make. Don’t you dare hold them back, they belong to me now.”
“I trust you.” His eyebrow quirked up. “Some would deem it unwise to trust a monster like me.” “You did tell me I was likely very stupid.” His face split with a grin and he leaned forward, his long tongue extending to lick the entire length of my neck and along my jaw. “Then let me show you the beauty in surrender.”
She was the most beautiful thing I had seen in all my long years. She was like the moonflowers that grew around my spring. Pale and fragile in appearance, but beneath it all, deadly to those who disrespected her power.
“Mine to transform. Mine to teach. Mine to keep.”
“But you are mine, neidr. The forest will have to make do with lesser servants. I did not wait three centuries to share you with anything—not Romans, not gods, and certainly not the ambitious dreams of trees.”
He was mine. My guardian, my creator, and my monster.
He had seen me when I didn’t deserve it. I had lied, I had been desperate, but he had claimed me as his all the same. Like I had been worthy.
And I had used him. Intended to renege on our bargain. I had come into the woods seeking a monster, when I had been one all along.
They had tried to break me. Instead, they had forged something infinitely more dangerous. What had started as the forest’s scheme would become my weapon, its power the instrument of my vengeance.
“The monster was always there. You didn’t prevent it. You just gave it rage to grow on. Fed it pain until it was strong enough to feed itself. Without you, I might have stayed human.”
When I spoke, my voice was not just my own. It was generations of women held down by weak men who feared us. It was a forest older than man who knew more of this world then we could ever comprehend. It was a god who would swallow everything that stood in its way. “Let them come.”
“You are nothing. A speck in the timeline of humanity. Your legacy is gone, and soon you will be too. But I…the barbarian girl you sought to control, I am every woman your empire ground beneath its heel, given form and fang. We do not forget. We do not forgive. We become.”
“And I am yours, Ysu. This forest may have called me, but you made me want to stay. I was taught to fear monsters, but you taught me to fear nothing at all. I love you Ysu, from now until the last star falls from the sky. ”
