by Alyse Zaftig
“No.”
I was tolerant of my servants, but outright insubordination made my bear, what was left of him, come to the fore. “What did you say?”
“My gran doesn’t like cursed folk, Your Highness.”
I felt as if she’d slapped me in the face. “But it’s my…”
I never got to finish that sentence. She was out the door before I could. Royalty didn’t stand around with their mouths open, so I went back upstairs to spend time, whatever time I had left, with my bride.
Rescue
Cateline
I heard a rock hit my window. I opened it and looked out.
My stepbrother was on the ground. “We’ve come to rescue you, Cateline. We have some rope. Catch.”
A heavy length of rope came up and I caught it, although it made me stagger back. It was too big for me to handle.
“Hurry up. The big oaf is in the kitchen. We don’t have much time.”
“But he’s my husband. I can’t…what about Father?”
“He sent for me. All of us are here to take you away from this monster.”
“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.
That’s where the cook found me when she came back, on my knees and still staring after the carriage.
“Prince Marceau?”
I looked up at her, and she must’ve seen my loss in my face. “Where’s your wife?”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“In a carriage — too many horses for me to outrun.”
“My gran told me that there was a way to save her.”
“How?”
“You have to break the mate bond—immensely painful, but that way she won’t die when your bear does.”
I barked out a small laugh with a high dose of pain in it. “So having my heart ripped out will save her?”
“Yes.”
“Then the work is already done. The bond snapped when she was being carried away from me.”
“Do you know that she was carried away or did she want to escape?”
“Did she say anything about escaping to you?”
“No. Even when you weren’t besotted with her, she always intended to do her duty.”
“So what should I do?”
“Wait until your bear dies, and then claim her as a man.”
“How long will I need to wait?”
“Two weeks from the end of the curse. You can’t see her until then. You’ll always have a little bit of the bear inside of you.”
I couldn’t let a servant see me weep, so I got to my feet.
“Thank you. Your assistance has been appreciated.”
“Anything for her, Your Highness.” She bowed to me. “I hope that they haven’t burned down the kitchen.” With that, she went back to the kitchen.
It turned out that whoever had stolen her from my castle had saved her life. I highly doubted that I would have ever done it to myself. I didn’t know what it was like for Cateline in that carriage, but I was sure that the end of the mate bond must have impacted her.
I had to wait a week and a half more before I could see her. But as soon as I could, I would. I knew where I’d send my own carriage to collect her. It didn’t seem like mere days ago that we’d married. The time we’d spent together felt like years, even though it was short. She was it for me. Both my dying bear and I knew it, and it went against everything that we wanted to watch her leave.
That’s when I made my plan. I’d get in my carriage, then I could stay near her until it was safe. I thought that she might go home, and my coachman knew where to find her.
Inn
Cateline
Only minutes after my stepbrother whisked me away from my husband’s castle, I felt something in the center of my chest. It felt like something was stretching too far.
And then abruptly it snapped, rocking my body so hard that I slammed against the side of the carriage.
“Are you all right, miss?”
Roul snorted. “She’s just being dramatic and ungrateful. I bet she’ll start to cry soon. Females.”
I bit my lip and sniffed so that I didn’t cry. He’d stolen me away from my husband. I hated to leave Marceau, but I couldn’t deny that I looked forward to seeing my father again. He’d been so sick when I left. If he’d sent Roul on a rescue mission, he must have been extremely desperate. If he hadn’t come himself, it meant that he was too sick. I knew he loved me.
I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep so that I wouldn’t have to d
eal with Roul. Pretending to sleep actually made me sleepy. I’d had an eventful day, running around and being kidnapped back from my husband. I was exhausted.
I woke up when the carriage stopped at an inn. I couldn’t recognize it, but I’d been to only one inn in my entire life, the one that the coachman had taken me to when he had retrieved me.
Roul was shoving me out of the carriage, even though I’d clearly just been asleep.
“Idiot female,” he muttered. I didn’t say anything. Maybe I’d be able to convince one of the stable boys to help me get back to my husband. I just had to wait for Roul and his friends to fall asleep.
We went into the inn, where Roul immediately commandeered every available room for us. I was shown the smallest one. It had a plain bed and it was the size of a broom closet.
“I apologize that we don’t have anything better for you, my lady. All of the other rooms have been…otherwise distributed.”
I didn’t intend to spend very long in the broom closet, so I said, “I don’t mind. Thank you for your help.”
She curtsied to me. I had no luggage at all, no maid, and so I went inside. There was a washbasin and a bed. I peeked out the door. Roul and his stupid friends were already sitting down for a game of cards. They motioned to the barmaid to bring them a round of drinks. I wasn’t going to be able to use the stairs, so I went back into my room, which didn’t have a window. There didn’t seem to be any windows that I could use on the upper floor. The staircase was my only hope. I needed some kind of distraction so that Roul wouldn’t notice when I escaped.
There was a frustrating lack of resources here. I decided not to fight it. I would fall asleep and wake up in the middle of the night, when Roul and his friends would either be extremely drunk or asleep.
I climbed into the lumpy but very soft bed and closed my eyes. In a few hours, I could make a bid for freedom.
Instead, though, I woke up the next morning inside of the carriage.
Coachman
Marceau
Within a day, I had assembled my team: the coachman, the footman who had been there when she’d been retrieved, and someone to take care of the details and money, my steward. The four of us rode out in my lightest carriage. Speed was of the essence. I didn’t know where she’d been taken. I didn’t know how far I would need to travel, but I didn’t want to be unprepared. The housekeeper put clothing into a trunk for all of us, along with a hamper of food as well.
I was impatient as I waited for everyone to get the necessary things together before we traveled. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see her for another week or so, but I could stay out of sight near her home. We made good time on the road, traveling through the night. I almost wanted to be stopped by highwaymen, just so that we could have a fight. There was frustration boiling in my veins. I’d have to wait for a while to reclaim my bride if I wanted her to live. Meanwhile, the castle was undefended, although my servants were all there. I was sure that they could handle whatever came.
It was a two-day journey before we got to the village near her family’s manor. We went straight past it, since they would surely notice, and we waited in the inn in the next village. They didn’t know how to deal with royalty. I used one of my lesser titles and received service barely tolerable for someone of lesser rank.
I sent my steward to the inn in her village. He reported that they were behind us, since we’d driven through the night. The youngest sister of the local baronet had been stolen by a monster, they said. A vicious beast of a man had threatened the life of her father before forcing her to marry him with that threat.
I felt a shred of shame, but I’d known when I smelled her on him that she was it for me. And I wasn’t about to apologize for how we had met. If I had been some sort of commoner, a blacksmith’s apprentice perhaps, I would never be able to give her everything that I wanted to. I would have had to convince her to love me before getting married. I knew that I’d done a good job after we’d married.
She could be carrying my child, and someone had taken her. They may not have known that they’d done me a very painful favor. She was unlikely to thank them, but she hadn’t known the danger that she was in. I tried to shift every morning, but I could only lengthen my canines and change the color of my eyes to gold every day.
Until one day, when I couldn’t will myself to shift at all. That day, I knew I was ready to reclaim my wife.
Reclaiming
Cateline
I’d been home for fewer than two weeks, and my father still hated to let me out of his sight. He was still weak and unable to get around, but the pure happiness and relief that I had seen in his face when Roul brought me home was worth Roul’s rough handling. Melisende and Aalis were less horrible than usual, because they’d genuinely thought that they had lost me forever.
Within a day, I’d settled back into my old routine. I held classes for the stable boys and hid in the hayloft, just like old times. Roul left nearly right after he had left me in the “decaying manor house” with the rest of the family on the very boring estate that provided all his money and the support that he needed for his own lands.
I was disappointed not to hear a word from Marceau. No messenger came. No letters arrived. It seemed that my husband, whom I’d fallen deeply in love with in a very short time, didn’t care that I’d gone away. Maybe he was still at the castle. He had shouted when I’d left. I knew that he had tried to run after the carriage, since the footman with the carriage had said as much to Roul. But I had truly thought that he had claimed me.
Days had passed. All the color seemed to be gone from my life. My quiet life, with which I’d been so content, seemed dull without the companionship of my husband. I’d spent so many years without him, and in mere days he made himself indispensable. But he did not come, and I could not stop myself from crying at night when there was nobody to hear. My bed felt as cold as ice when there wasn’t anybody to hold me. I developed moderate insomnia, running through all of our time together in my head over and over and not understanding why he’d let me disappear.
I must not have meant much to him. I believed that and internalized that by a week in. My father, after the initial shock of my return, forbade all of us to talk about what he considered a highly traumatic experience.
I was smothered to death in the grayness of my life. I needed him, but I knew that it would kill my father if I left again. He was already weakened, and I just could not hurt him again.
I thought that everything was done, but I was in the hayloft when Marceau arrived.
Welcome
Marceau
The morning when I could not shift, I got into my carriage and went straight for her manor, the largest home in this area. Before I could even get out, her father was storming out of the front door.
“How dare you show your face here, at my own home? Leave immediately.”
“You don’t have the right to keep my wife from me, sir.”
“Get off of my estate,” he hissed. He didn’t look much better than he had when he’d left my library.
“I don’t answer to you. I only answer to her. Cateline!”
Her father moved toward me as if he wanted to fight, but I easily sidestepped him. It was inadvisable for me to engage in fisticuffs with my father-in-law, no matter how angry he was.
It took only a minute for Cateline to come running into the yard and throw her arms around me.
“Get away from him!” her father bellowed.
“No!” She turned around and glared at her father. “I know that it might be hard for you to believe, but I love him.”
“You don’t know what love is,” her father protested. “Falling in love with your kidnapper isn’t real love.”
“It is,” she insisted. “I’ve had enough time on my own to know my own mind. I want to live with him for the rest of my life. I’m a princess, and one day I’ll be the queen.”
“You want that life? He doesn’t mistreat you in any way?”
She sl
ipped out of my arms and kissed her father’s cheek. “I’m happy with him.”
Her father’s face fell. He looked very old and very tired. “Very well, then. You have my blessing.”
Her things were still at my castle, so it took less than an hour to gather everything she wanted, get into my carriage, and say goodbye to the manor. Her sisters, who were beautiful, cried over her as she left. But this time, she left as my willing wife, not as a sacrifice.
In the carriage, I refused to let go of her. She slept with my arm around her. I could barely believe my good fortune, and she was a miracle.
Two years later, she gave birth to a little boy with black hair and gold eyes. We named him Dagobert, but we called him Little Bear.
Part IX
Beauty Is The Beast
J. M. Klaire
Belle
“Another restless night, Belle?” Mrs. Pulse asked, pouring a fragrant stream of hot, dark coffee into a tall mug for her charge.
Belle accepted it gratefully and sipped, letting the caffeine have a moment to find her bloodstream before answering the kind, motherly, multi-speed vibe who rarely let her frustrations show.
Mrs. Pulse had been the quite-human head cook in the years before the curse had altered everyone. Belle knew that she found it beneath her to pour something as vulgar as coffee when she’d much rather be serving a more civilized drink like tea, but she was still grateful that she did so.
Most days Belle found it rather easy to let Mrs. Pulse have her way, letting her pour tea instead of coffee, but this morning she needed the less civilized option rather badly. Mrs. Pulse must’ve already heard how her night had gone, since there was no tea to be seen and the coffee had been ready to pour when she got here.