by Alyse Zaftig
Suddenly, my entire body felt like it was freezing. I had signed up for imprisonment with a beast, but somehow he had vanished and I was on my own. I went to wash myself between my legs, the soreness intensifying as I touched it. I saw that the servants had brought my trunks to the dressing room, probably during our very short wedding ceremony. What kind of prince only had a priest and two attendants at his wedding?
I dressed into a simple muslin gown that I could get on myself and went to look for my husband. I put something between my legs to catch the slight bit of blood that was dripping between my legs. Last night had been good, but I was hurting just a little.
When I got downstairs, I didn’t see anybody. I followed my nose to the kitchen where I had been yesterday.
“Good morning,” I told the cook.
“Good morning,” she replied, still chopping some carrots. “I guess you and the master slept late.”
I dithered, because I didn’t know what to say. “Yes, we were up all night,” would be a lie. I had fallen asleep immediately, only to wake up to an empty bed in the morning. So I changed the subject. “Could I have some bread, please?”
“I made some plates for you and the master. I thought that you might have worked up an appetite.”
I blushed a lot. None of my father’s servants would have dared to be so bold, but it was rapidly becoming clear that the prince’s servants did not fear him. They were extremely informal, as if their jobs were assured and always would be.
Strange.
“I, um, haven’t seen him this morning?”
The cook grunted as she pushed some metal skewers through a chicken.
“I expect he’s getting his beauty sleep.”
Beauty sleep? He hadn’t been in bed this morning. If he was getting beauty sleep, it wasn’t in our marriage bed.
What if he had vanished to sleep with someone else? The thought made the blood in my veins turn to ice. I just didn’t know what I would do if my new husband stepped out on me so soon.
I’d enjoyed last night, but what if he hadn’t? What if he didn’t like aggressive women and sincerely regretted marrying me?
The bread and cheese tasted like sawdust. I knew that logically they were probably fine. The bread was warm. But I just couldn’t eat more than a few bites. I tore the bread into two pieces, put a slice of cheese in the middle, and snuck the rest onto Marceau’s plate.
“I saw that. What, you don’t like bread and cheese?”
She had turned around and was giving me the same kind of look my governess gave me when she found me hiding with a book yet again.
“I am just saving it for later. Goodbye now.” I slid sideways out the door and ran for it. I didn’t know my way around the castle, but I saw a door that looked like it would connect to the outside.
Awoken
Marceau
When I woke up after the night of the full moon, I could smell something. My mate. My new wife. She was here.
She shouldn’t be here. The secret passages were well concealed. My room was definitely far away from anywhere that she should venture. My mind said one thing, but my nose said another. My bear insisted that our mate was outside.
I looked around the room. Less destruction than usual. I must have slept too deeply to tear up the room as I sometimes did. I found my discarded clothing and got dressed. I needed to see my mate.
I didn’t have a mirror, so I did the best that I could. I didn’t have a valet unless it was absolutely necessary. One of the footmen assisted me in times of dire need, but otherwise I didn’t care. My people didn’t see me very often. I smiled ruefully as I thought of my subjects seeing me like this, the night after a transformation.
As I got out of the room, I knew instinctively that she was outside of the door to my mother’s rose garden. Roses were sacred to our family, since they were the heart of our right to rule our kingdom. My mother’s specially bred two-toned roses required a lot of care, so it was a big tangled now. None of the gardeners could work in it. It was simply too thorny. But I knew that she was inside it.
I made my way to the door and opened it. The bright sunlight hurt my eyes. As a bear, I could see in very low light. The sun at full strength was painful. I sniffed the air. She was definitely here. I followed my nose and my bond to find her at the edge of the rose garden. There wasn’t a path cut through the garden, so I picked my way through it to her.
She was climbing the wall.
My heart sank. I knew that I hadn’t been the most attentive husband in the day that we’d had together, but I thought that taking her to my bed meant something.
Apparently not.
She was three feet off the ground when I put my hands around her waist and brought her back to Earth. She screamed like I was a demon coming out of hell, and I wasn’t feeling too angelic at that moment.
“What were you doing?” my bear growled. He didn’t like the idea of our mate leaving us. I liked it even less than he did.
“I was just trying to get out of the garden. It’s beautiful, but it’s totally unkempt. You’ve got to get your gardeners in here.”
I grunted and kept her body in my arms. She felt so good and her scent was enhanced in the rose garden. I buried my face in her neck, smelling her. I could feel a moment of tension and shock in her body, and then she relaxed like a kitten in sunlight.
“You were trying to escape.” I said it like a lover, but my bear put a bite into my voice.
“I wasn’t. I promised. We’re married,” she protested.
“You’re not leaving my side until I can be sure that you’re not going to try to escape again. It’s only been one day.”
“But I...”
My mouth fell upon hers. Her hands went to my waist. My small wife was kissing me as hard as she could. I would have to be careful to keep her happy. I sniffed a little harder. No wonder her scent was so strong. I broke the kiss and said, “You’re bleeding.”
Both of us looked at her. Her hands were badly scratched.
“What’s wrong with your hands?”
“I tried to pick a rose. That’s what I asked my father for... flowers.”
“That’s why he tried to take my rose.”
“Your rose? You have so many. They’re wild now, but they’re still lovely.”
I looked around the rose garden that I’d spent time in as a child but abandoned as an adult. “Too many thorns.”
“Sometimes, you have to take the rose with the thorns.” There was a hint of steel in her voice, as if she were censuring me for not appreciating the beauty of the garden.
I looked at her, still in my arms, the most beautiful flower in the garden. She was everything that I had asked for and more than I deserved. She was beautiful, I knew. She had an acceptable bloodline. Her father might only be a baronet, but he was a good man. He had followed through on his promise.
I picked her up and slung her over my shoulder.
“What are you doing?” She hit my back with a fist. “Put me down now.”
“I’m saving you from the thorns, Princess.”
She laughed, although the sound was strange when she was upside down.
“My hero,” she said. She was still laughing when I got us out of the thorny rose garden and onto the main path. I put her back on her feet.
“I think that’s enough of an adventure for you today, wife.”
“What else did you have in mind, husband?”
“I think that we need to...ah...see something in our bedchamber.”
“Bedchamber?”
“Bedchamber.” I was firm. She was smiling at me. The warmth in her face melted something in the darkest part of my heart, ice that I didn’t even know was there.
Upstairs
Marceau
I would like to tell you that we were decorous when we went upstairs, but we were not. We were like children on a secret mission. We snuck upstairs into the bedchamber, which the maids had already tidied. I had her dress off within seconds. She fumb
led with my clothing, but we were naked and holding each other within a minute or so.
“I’d like to try something different today,” I said, moving her on top of me. Her thighs fell to either side of my body.
“Oh?”
“I want you to ride me like a stallion.”
“Like a horse?”
“Yes.” My hips surged upward. She gasped as my hardness touched her soft petals.
“I don’t know how,” she said.
“I’ll show you.” I ground against the outside of her body, careful to touch her pleasure center. Her eyes closed and mouth opened as I rubbed against her, giving her the smallest taste of what she would have. She breathed in big gasps.
“That’s right,” I praised. “Ride me.”
She rocked her hips as my tip entered her outer folds. My hands were on her hips now, and she was moving in a steady rhythm on top of me, taking just a half inch of me inside her before letting me fall out again.
I loved her teasing, but when the need to come filled me like a forest fire, I gripped her hips a little harder and pulled her body down onto mine. She opened her mouth and screamed, but I didn’t give her any mercy. I was now slamming her small body down on top of mine as her mouth opened even more widely.
“Take me,” I growled, and I knew that my bear was at the front. “Take me.”
She put her delicate hands on my chest, her hair hanging down and tickling my face. I didn’t mind the tickling, though, because her body was merging with mine at a very fast pace. I could tell by the way that she was arching her back that she was close.
“Mine,” I growled. I turned us so that she was on the bottom. My hands were pushing her knees apart as I went just a little more deeply into her perfect, soft body. “Mine.”
She screamed wordlessly when my middle finger stroked her clit, slowly at first. But when I picked up the pace, her hips went wild as her body bucked under mine. As her muscles contracted, I could feel my own orgasm being drawn out of me. My bear roared its pleasure. Right here was where we belonged. When I was done, I was still hard. I knew that she had until very recently been a virgin, though, so I pulled out of her, even though my bear protested. He wanted everyone to smell us on our mate. I knew that it was impractical to stay inside of her forever, even though it was what my bear insisted that we do. We had responsibilities.
I stroked her sweet-scented hair and bit the top part of her ear. My bear wanted me to leave a mating mark on her neck, never mind that it would be noticeable. I licked it instead, placating him but not giving him enough.
My hand made its way down between her legs. She was coated in our juices, hers and mine. I used the slickness to coax her clit into giving her an orgasm again. She was so sweet like this, panting and exhausted but unable to stop herself from clenching down on my fingers.
“That’s it, my dear.” Her eyes were shut tight now, and I could see in her face that she was trying very hard not to scream.
But when I got my thumb on her clit, she couldn’t hold back anymore. Her scream of ecstasy echoed off of the stone walls of my bedchamber. Our bedchamber.
My bear was extremely smug after we pleased our mate over and over again. I went to my washbasin and washed my hands quickly before taking the towel and wiping between her legs. She was a little sticky. I kissed the top of her mound when I was down, which made her gasp a little. I could see her core clench a little bit, as if she were experiencing aftershocks.
“I think you killed me,” she murmured so softly that if I hadn’t had shifter hearing, I might’ve missed it.
“No,” I said, leaning in to kiss the tip of her nose. “You’ll live to do that many more times.”
I pulled the quilt over her and made sure that she was warm. She was a fragile human who could get sick from the chill in the air. A castle was difficult to heat.
“I feel so lazy, sleeping in the middle of the day.” Her eyes were closed. Her voice was soft, stroking something inside of my chest.
“I’ll join you.” I untucked the covers that I had pulled around her and wrapped her soft body in my arms. I buried my nose in her hair. I could feel warmth in the center of my chest, as if my heart were sitting in front of a roaring fire.
I felt a depth of contentment that I’d never felt in my life. From the first moment I saw her, I knew that she was it for me. Yes, this was an arranged marriage. She was only here because her father had bargained with his daughters. But any man who couldn’t hold onto somebody like Cateline didn’t deserve to have her.
I thought of the sight of her climbing the rose garden’s wall. I moved her hair aside in one swift motion and I bit her neck. My bear roared in approval. It was what we’d wanted since that moment in the garden. Even if she wanted to leave us, I knew that my bear would follow her to the end of the world if it would make her happy to live elsewhere. He was satisfied.
“Are you purring?”
“No,” I said, even though my chest and throat were vibrating. “It’s my bear. And it’s a rumble, not a purr.”
She turned in my arms, bit my neck just hard enough to break the skin, and then kissed me. I loved the feeling that she claimed me just like I had claimed her. “Whatever it is, I like feeling it vibrate through me.”
She slid downward to rest her head on my shoulder. I don’t know what happened, but it was almost as effective as a lullaby. I fell asleep immediately.
Nosebleed
Marceau
I woke up when my bride shook my shoulder.
“Marceau! Wake up!” She sounded like she was crying. I could smell her tears, just like spring rain.
“What?” I tasted something hot and coppery on my tongue. I opened my eyes. My nose was bleeding.
I was a shifter. The curse ruined my life in many ways, but I did have accelerated healing. I didn’t get nosebleeds. She was trying to give me a handkerchief.
“Please pinch your nose. I was worried about obstructing your breathing when you started…when your nose started.”
“It’s okay,” I said, my voice nasal and high with one hand pinching my nostrils closed. “Just a little blood.” A little blood that shouldn’t be there.
I sat up and saw that there was blood on my pillow. The housekeeper would throw a fit. All of my staff would know that it was strange.
The blood flow didn’t feel as heavy anymore, so I pulled the handkerchief away from my nose. I couldn’t feel any blood dripping down, which was good news.
“Everything is fine.”
“We need a physician.”
“No.” I shook my head. I hadn’t seen a physician since before I had been hit with the curse. What I could remember was that he had smelled awful and was mean to me. Those were the impressions of a child, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never interacted with a physician as an adult. “It won’t happen again.”
“You scared me.” She went to the corner and picked up the washbasin, carrying the heavy thing to the bed so that she could wipe away the blood. “You are sure that you feel fine?”
“Yes.” I felt a little dizzy, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “I should eat something.” On cue, my stomach growled. “I haven’t eaten yet.”
“The cook made a plate for you for breakfast, but I couldn’t find you. I don’t know my way around yet.”
I debated what to say. It wasn’t safe for anyone to be around me when I was in bear form. The beast was in the front, and bears were apex predators. Humans were soft meat. My father had the keys to the secret passages and knew how to navigate them. Ever since he’d died, I’d been in charge of handling the curse on my own. The potion fixed everything.
I didn’t know why my nose had started bleeding today. It was the first time that the potion had any side effects besides the desired soporific effect. If I couldn’t take the potion, what could I do? I hadn’t healed at the pace of a shifter. I’d been human-slow. Something was wrong. I clenched my teeth.
“If you could call a servant to bring up a meal for
us, that would be good.”
She slipped into the dress that I’d torn off her earlier. “I’ll be right back with food for us.”
I watched her leave our bedchamber. As soon as she was gone, I threw the covers off the bed. There was a lot of blood. I understood why she’d been scared.
I breathed in slowly. There was a mystery here, but I didn’t want to spook her. I needed to find someone who could tell me what was going on.
There was only one person who could.
Roasted Chicken
Cateline
When I came back upstairs, I was followed by one of the scullery maids carrying a thick tray loaded with roasted chicken, a loaf of bread, and a small bottle of wine. She averted her eyes from the partially dressed prince and set the tray on a table before bobbing a curtsy and leaving the two of us behind.
I took the loaf of bread and began to tear it into manageable pieces. “Eat,” I said, brandishing a piece of bread at him. He got out of bed and sat at the table in our room. I watched as he demolished most of what was on the tray while I ate a piece of bread. I wasn’t that hungry after the scare that I’d had.
He’d been thrashing around in the bed before the nosebleed. He seemed to be battling something in his dream, but I didn’t know what it was.
The tray was basically clean when I finished my piece of bread.
“We should get more.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, waving my hand. “It’s fine.”
“I’m still hungry.”
That tray had been loaded with enough food to feed three people, let alone one person. I went and rang the bell to let the servants know that we wanted them. Marceau got dressed.
The same scullery maid was in our room within 10 minutes. “Can I take the tray?”
“Yes. And we’d like another.” Marceau’s voice was a little more alert than it had been before.