Claimed by the Beast Bundle

by Dawn Michelle

  “What?” Crystal gasped. “You’re going to burn me alive!”

  “You agreed to the deal,” Clover reminded her.

  Crystal turned to stare at Guntar. He shook his head. She felt Ember’s presence behind her before the woman touched her shoulder with her hand and whispered, “Never cross a witch.”

  Crystal turned her head and found Ember staring at her with a bright intensity in her eyes. “But—”

  “You’ll be okay,” Ember said. “We’ll be here for you.”

  Crystal tore her gaze away and looked at Hank. He nodded, adding his unspoken promise of support.

  Crystal let out her breath. She wasn’t ready for this, but she didn’t have a choice. She walked to Hank and leaned into him, kissing the surprised man before he could react. “If this is it, then I want to spend the rest of my time with you.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Hank mumbled.

  “I don’t need to know what you’ve done to know who you are.”

  Chapter 10

  Crystal buried into Hank’s side and looked up over her shoulder at where Ember sat on a large root beside her. Throughout the long afternoon and evening, Ember’s leg remained in contact with her shoulder. The fiery haired and tempered woman kept looking around the room as Clover worked, or towards a bird or animal that happened by, but she never moved away from Crystal. Crystal didn’t understand why Ember insisted on being near her and touching her, but she appreciated it. It was comforting.

  “Why are you looking at me?” Ember asked even though she was watching a honeybee that was drinking nectar from a flower in a windowsill.

  “Trying to understand,” Crystal said. “That’s all.”

  Hank squeezed her with his arm that was around her back. “It’s what we do,” he said. “Takes some getting used to, but it’s how we show that we’re a pack. We care.”

  Crystal shifted her attention to where Gwen and Guntar were sitting along another wall and then glanced at the front door that Adrian stood outside of. In a soft voice, she asked, “Does that mean they don’t?”

  “No,” Gwen answered, proving she’d heard her. “It means we’re watching threats.”

  “Oh.” Crystal looked around. “What threats?”

  Ember pressed her leg against Crystal’s shoulder to get her attention. She nodded at Clover while she explained, “Adrian’s making sure nothing comes after us and Guntar and Gwen are the second line of defense against anything coming from anywhere else.”

  “We’re the final line,” Hank added.

  “This should feel weird,” Crystal said as she looked up at Ember.

  Ember glanced down at her and smiled. “Why? Because you’re not gay?”

  “Um.” Crystal paused, not wanting to offend the feisty woman.

  “This isn’t about sex,” Ember said. “We share the Hunter’s blood; it’s about protecting our pack mates.”

  “Sharing blood sounds like a family.”

  Hank fidgeted beside her and glanced down at her.

  Crystal turned to look up at him and patted his hard stomach. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to let it stop me from being with you. We’re not that kind of family.”

  She felt his body relax and his eyes lit up. Ember chuckled beside her. “It is like family. We don’t have to like each other, but we’re bound together. Not so different from love.”

  Crystal frowned. “Um, it’s not?”

  “You risked your life to help us kill the Beast,” Ember reminded her. “And all of us will fight to the death for you now.”

  “Okay, but that’s not what I think about when I think about love. I don’t mean romantic love either.”

  “Would your mom nurture and tend to you when you’re sick? Would she, or a sister or brother if you had one, do something they didn’t want to if it meant they could help you out?”

  Crystal licked her dry lips and nodded. “Yes.”

  Ember nudged her with her leg again.

  Crystal looked down at it and then looked up the lean and long limb to the rest of Ember’s body. It didn’t bother her that she was nude. It felt normal. More than normal, it felt good to know that Ember was showing her so much compassion and trust. She made herself vulnerable, physically and emotionally, for Crystal.

  Crystal leaned her head over and pressed her lips to Ember’s knee. She smiled and then leaned back into Hank. “Thank you,” she said.

  Ember scowled. “Don’t be getting any ideas.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I’m just trying to show how much I appreciate you all.”

  Ember harrumphed and turned to look around the hut some more.

  Hank was smiling when Crystal turned to look at him. It was such a cute smile she wanted to kiss it off his face. She shifted and felt her body tremble and ache. Crystal relaxed back into his grip and sighed. “I can’t wait for this to be over.”

  “What if it ends badly?” he asked.

  She frowned. “Okay, good point. I can’t wait for this moment in time to be frozen forever.”

  Hank chuckled and squeezed her again. His lips brushed her forehead and she heard him inhale her scent. It made her heart beat faster and sent tingles through her belly. Good tingles, not the kind announcing a fresh bout of diarrhea.

  “Ember told me her story,” Crystal murmured into his side. She looked up at him and asked, “What’s yours?”

  “Blew out my knee wrestling in college,” he said. “I’d always been a big, strong guy and that was like a bullet to the heart.”

  “Silver bullet,” Ember added.

  He smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t know what to do if I couldn't be who I was. I’d heard about leaving it all on the field or mat so I didn’t have any regrets when I was older, but I’d never paid attention to the banged-up old guys. They talked about how sports ruined their bodies and left them with nothing but memories and prescription painkillers. Sometimes worse, like disabilities.”

  Crystal winced and hugged him. She pressed her lips to his side, ignoring the stains on his shirt, and then laid her head against him. He was big and strong now so she knew there had to be a happy ending for him.

  “I moped around for a while. Almost got kicked out of school. Then I started reading. Really reading, I mean, not just textbooks. I found that my life didn’t suck as much if I could escape for a while and pretend to be living the life of someone else. Sooner or later, I got the crazy idea that maybe I could write too.”

  “Crazy doesn’t cut it,” Ember teased.

  Crystal found the strength to lift her arm up and lightly swat Ember on the thigh. “Hush, it’s his turn.”

  Ember waited until her arm was back in place and retaliated by nudging her again with her knee.

  “Yeah, she’s right. I wrote some crazy stuff at first. Fantasy mostly, about heroines that were part superhero and part porn star. It was stupid, but I ended up working on a book about werewolves.”

  “Uh oh,” Crystal guessed.

  Hank chuckled. “Yeah, I started digging in for research and did a lot of guessing. Posted on a lot of writing message boards, trying to figure things out and get ideas. Ended up going to some hole-in-the-wall shops people told me about and talked to people there, too. Before too long I met this lady named Wenona.”

  “Winona? Like the actress?”

  Hank shook his head. “No, Wenona, with an e.”

  “Oh, that’s weird,” Crystal said.

  “What’s wrong with having an E in your name?” Ember growled.

  Crystal smiled up at her and then leaned back into Hank. “Sorry, go ahead.”

  He sighed. “Not much more to tell. Wenona had the blood. I didn’t know it, but she asked me as many questions as I asked her. More, probably, because she was sneaky about it. More than that, she had a way of knowing things.”

  “She could smell you,” Crystal breathed.

  Hank nodded. “I had no idea then. But she played me and then, when we were done and she’d told me mo
re than a norm should ever know, she, um, tricked me.”

  “Tricked you?”

  “She seduced him,” Ember supplied. “Rode him like a bitch in heat.”

  Hank grimaced and Crystal gasped. She stared at Hank and then lightly slapped his belly. “She did, didn’t she?”

  “I was a kid—I didn’t know!”

  Crystal shook her head and sighed. She leaned back into him. It upset her a little, even though she knew she had no right to be upset. That was before she’d come into his life.

  “It wasn’t love, anyhow,” he said. “She tore me up and left me for dead.”

  Crystal gasped and hugged him as hard as her exhausted body would allow her to. Her jealousy drained away to nothing.

  “They found me,” Hank said, nodding towards Gwen and Guntar. “I should have died, but Gwen made Guntar give me the blood.”

  “She made him?”

  Hank nodded and smiled. “Guntar’s our alpha, but sometimes even he has to take orders.”

  “But why?”

  “Gwen reads a lot of smut.”

  Crystal’s breath hissed through her lips. “Smut?”

  “I don’t write smut!” Hank protested. “Mostly.”

  Ember laughed and a moment later he joined her. Crystal frowned, not understanding.

  “A lot of my stuff is kind of sexy,” he admitted. “Turns out Gwen had read some of my stuff and liked it. She felt like she knew me. Or at least she knew my story. Now she had a chance to help me so they agreed to do it. They gave me the blood and helped me get better. A month later, I survived the change and now, a few years later, here I am. Here we are.”

  “Here we are,” Crystal agreed. She kissed his side again. “Remind me to thank them later.”

  “Thank us when tonight’s over,” Guntar called over to them. Gwen looked like she was sleeping again as she lay with her head on Guntar’s lap and a soft smile on her face.

  Clover stepped away from the cauldron she’d been tending and walked over towards them. “Stop worrying about what happens tomorrow,” she advised. “Worry about what’s going to happen now.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Crystal complained.

  Clover smiled and leaned over them to pluck a bowl off a shelf concealed by leaves and vines. She pinched a giant ant out of it and popped it in her mouth. Crystal heard the crunch as her teeth bit down on the inch-long insect and felt her own stomach twist. Clover turned away, uncaring of the effect her actions had caused.

  She walked back to the cauldron and dipped the bowl into it. When it emerged, she held it out towards Crystal. “Disrobe, child, and return as nature intended you to be.”

  Crystal gulped and looked at the two people resting with her. Hank looked more concerned but both offered supporting smiles. She rose up, forgetting to hold her pants, and nearly tripped when they started to slide down her legs.

  Crystal cried out and caught herself and her pants, but only because Ember lunged forward and grabbed her arm. She regained her balance and straightened, pulling her pants up over her hips again. Clover raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “You must be as bare as the day you were born.”

  Crystal glanced around and then sighed. She forced herself to keep her back to Hank. If she saw the look on his face when she exposed herself and knew that he saw she was still fat, she’d die. Not that wearing pants and a bra hid much, but she’d at least kept her stomach covered and the bra made her boobs look like they didn’t sag.

  “This better work,” she muttered before she let go of her pants and reached up to slip her bra off.

  Chapter 11

  “Take it all,” Clover said as she offered Crystal the bowl.

  She eyed the steam coming off the milky soup and said, “It’s hot.”

  “It must be,” Clover said. “It will burn, but you will heal.”

  “This is stupid,” Crystal muttered.

  Clover’s eyes narrowed. “You ask for help; you must do as I tell you.”

  Crystal dropped her eyes to the bowl again and frowned. She glanced over each shoulder and received a nod from Ember. Hank’s cheeks were red but his eyes met hers and he smiled. She wondered if she’d almost caught him looking at her cheeks. The bottom ones that were on display now that she was standing nude in the witch’s hut.

  She lifted her hand that was pressed over her crotch and took the wooden bowl. She felt the heat and glanced at Clover again. The witch watched without change. Crystal took another breath and lifted it to her face. The aroma overwhelmed her. Spices and onion and something that made her think of fresh cut grass. There was a musky odor hidden beneath the others. It reminded her of the girl’s locker room after the gym teacher decided they needed to run a mile.

  Crystal squeezed her eyes shut and touch the edge of the bowl to her lips. She tilted it and sipped, and then jerked her head back as the hot liquid spilled over her lips. She panted to cool it down and swallowed by reflex, warming her throat and stomach. She swallowed again and stared at Clover. “This is too hot!”

  “It must be,” Clover said again. “Now drink it. There is pain in your future, pain you cannot imagine. This is only a sample of it.”

  Crystal turned her head to look back and saw the solemn expressions on the face of her friends. Her pack. Her family. “Does it hurt?” she asked them. “When you change?”

  “Every time,” Hank said.

  “You get used to it,” Ember said. “It’s over in an instant.”

  “This will not be,” Clover promised.

  Crystal turned back to her. “What won’t be? Oh, this pain? Great.”

  “Before it cools too much, hurry,” Clover said.

  Crystal bit her lips and sighed through her nose. She nodded. “Okay, I can do this. I’ll heal. Just like falling off a bike.”

  Crystal put the bowl to her lips and opened them. She tilted it up and leaned her head back, spilling the hot liquid into her mouth and sending a hundred sparks of agony into her brain. She opened her throat and swallowed, desperate to get the heat out of her mouth and off her tongue. It seared her throat and made her chest seize up. She tried to cough the fire out of her chest but couldn’t get the air out.

  Crystal’s body trembled. Her shaking arm spilled the soup across her lips and burned her chin as it ran down. It dripped onto her arm, covering her chest, and ran onto her breasts from there. Her belly warmed as the witch’s brew pooled in her stomach and then it spread the heat through her. It was worse than right before she’d vomited up blood.

  She dropped the bowl, spilling the last few drops on the floor. The bowl hit less than a second before she did. Crystal tried to cry but the agony in her throat made noise impossible. Even worse was that she could barely breathe. Her throat was swollen and closed off.

  Clover squatted down and picked up her bowl, pausing long enough to study Crystal and say, “Breathe. It will pass.”

  Crystal’s lips were puffy and red. She moved them and made a few choking gasps but couldn’t find the air to tell the witch that she couldn’t. She groped at her chest and then her throat, digging her fingers into her skin, trying to find a way to pull the burning away. She felt her fingernails ripping skin but instead of hurting worse, it felt almost therapeutic. It lessened the intensity of the hurt inside.

  She managed to roll up onto her knees and shoulders, forcing her cheek into the ground. She twisted her head until her forehead was resting on a vine and her arms were clutched tight across her chest and belly. They felt hot and slippery against her skin. She lifted her head and drove it down, desperate for a release. She did it again, striking the spongy flooring harder and driving a spike of agony into her brain that failed to knock her out. She reared back to do it a third time when somebody grabbed her from behind.

  Crystal thrashed, wiggling and yanking on her arms. Her right arm slipped free and she used it to grab the arm that went under her shoulder and across her chest. She buried her fingers into the limb, no longer caring who it was, and pulled agains
t it while she twisted her body.

  Crystal rolled free and swung her other arm around, connecting with the man grappling with her. Her hand swept across his side; her fingers curled into claws. Blood sprayed from her nails, spattering the woman next to him. Crystal stepped back and crouched down, breathing hard and fast, and set herself so she could defend against the next one to attack.

  “Crystal!”

  She shook her head after the word pierced the clouds in her head. She relaxed and straightened. That was her. She was Crystal. And these were her friends. She blinked the madness out of her eyes and saw Hank cradling the torn flesh on his side. His shirt, once stained with swamp water and vomit, was now a dark red with his blood. Ember stood beside him, spattered with lines of blood across her chest, neck, and face.

  Crystal looked down at her hands and saw only that, her hands. They weren’t weapons of war and didn’t possess any amazing metal claws or vicious talons. How could she have done that? She turned to looked behind her and saw Clover had backed up several steps. She turned back around and staggered. She didn’t understand. Her legs wouldn’t support her anymore.

  “She did good. There is hope,” Clover said from a thousand miles away.

  Crystal blinked and stared up, her tongue too thick to move in her mouth. She was panting again, her nose pulsing as she breathed in frantic breaths.

  “That was good?” Hank snarled. “She almost tore me in half!”

  “That wasn’t the Hunter,” Ember said. “Was it—is she cursed to be a beast?”

  “The change hasn’t come yet,” Adrian said from where he stood in the open doorway. He shifted his gaze to Clover. “Has it?”

  “No,” Clover agreed. “We have to bring it out yet.”

  Crystal could feel her strength returning. Her stomach was clenching and twisting. Was the stew doing this to her, or was it something else? She gasped anew and managed to lift her head up. “I’m dying,” she groaned.

  “Perhaps,” Clover admitted. “But I think you have more strength than you realize.”

  Crystal managed to shake her head. “Not like this. No more. Please. Just kill me.”