Taming the Beast

“He’s not a monster,” I insisted. “And I don’t want to go.”

“We don’t have time for this. Tie off that rope and come down before I have to come up and get you. Don’t make me come up there. You won’t like it.”

I swallowed hard. Roul hadn’t been around, but I remembered that when I was little he used to slap me when I annoyed him and call me common-born. His mother’s blood was blue and she could trace her ancestry back five hundred years, and my mother was just from the village.

“I’m coming.”

I looked around the bedroom. Was there anything that I could leave for him so that he knew that I hadn’t left willingly? We didn’t keep any paper in the bedroom.

“Cateline, you have thirty more seconds.”

I was sweating as I tried to figure out this situation. I took a pillowcase off a pillow, rolled it, and left it in the shape of a heart. I hoped that he would understand that I loved him.

“Cateline!”

“I’m coming.”

I tied off the rope and went out the window. I hated heights, and here I was, being “rescued” by the stepbrother who barely tolerated me and despised me. Maybe this method of rescue was just a grown-up version of slapping. He would do it, but he would do it in a way that scared me as much as possible while not physically harming me.

“Hurry!”

As soon as I was near the ground, one of Roul’s friends grabbed my waist and swung me to the ground. With one hand on my back, he shoved me so hard that I nearly fell on my face.

“Run!”

The pack of them fell in a crescent formation around me as they made me run forward. My lungs were burning. They were all tall men, and I was a much shorter woman. I didn’t run for joy or exercise, so I was gasping for air. We were running around the garden and toward the path that went to the castle, which was extremely unsubtle. Knowing Roul, he’d gone with one of the most straightforward plans, which meant that a dimwitted three-year-old child would be able to understand or thwart the plan.

“You left a huge carriage with six horses standing next to his mother’s rose garden?” I was surprised to see a horse trying to eat a rose.

“Bad! Stop.”

The horse didn’t listen to me. Horses weren’t dogs.

“Get in the carriage and shut up.”

I could hear a roar behind me as Marceau came outside.

“Mine!”

He was running toward the carriage, but my stepbrother was already hitting the horses with his whip. The carriage was carrying me away too fast for me to safely jump off. I was still in the middle of the group.

“Marceau!” I screamed.

“Cateline,” he bellowed. It was a cry of loss and shock.

Left Behind

Marceau

Even though I knew that I couldn’t outrun the carriage, I ran. My shifter speed and strength had declined. When I finally stopped, they were out of sight.

I had to get her back. I didn’t have time to wait for whatever the cook’s gran had to say. I could feel a pain in the center of my chest, as if I were being spread thin, being rolled out flat like cookie dough before it went into the oven.

Then I felt whatever it was snap, and I was back in my own skin with a hole inside my center. I opened my shirt and felt it. Nothing physical was there, but my bear was roaring, the most active he’d been today. My mate bond had snapped.

I fell to my knees, not caring that the ground was getting my clothing dirty.

I needed a solution, but I just couldn’t move.