“If I explained it,” he said, “if I told you what is going to happen, you won’t believe it. It is better to simply let it happen, and I will support you as it does. That is what is going to happen, Tobias, whether you like it or not.”
Tobias stepped back until his back hit the counter on the other side. He clenched his fists, his head spinning, his body shaking. This was so much worse than he had imagined. So much worse…
A change.
A metamorphosis.
And he hadn’t agreed to any of it!
And he wouldn’t have. Despite his desire for the Beast, despite the painful craving that he could not shake off, Tobias would never have agreed to anything that would change him. Hadn’t he spent the last year working on his body, moving away from the out of shape, unhealthy person that he was? He had calculated everything, worked out all of the dynamics of his system, for someone to change that without his permission…
“You shouldn’t have done this,” he whispered. “You had no right.”
“I had every right,” the Beast said, and he was in front of Tobias now. “You are my given mate.”
“Your mate?” Tobias gasped. “You can’t say that.”
“And yet it is true,” the Beast said. “I knew it the moment I saw you. The moment I looked into your eyes.” He paused. “I will miss their color.”
“Miss them? They…” He shook his head, aghast, as the Beast’s meaning became clear. “You’re going to turn them yellow?”
“It is part of the process,” the Beast said.
“No,” Tobias whispered. “No!”
“Yes,” the Beast said. “It has already begun.” He held out his hand. “You are going to come back with me now, Tobias.”
“Back?” He moved away, following the counter out of the room, his body trembling as he did so. “You said you weren’t here to take me back!”
“I’m not taking you,” the Beast said. “You’re coming with me.”
“But…” Tobias continued to back away, his mind a riot of thoughts. How could this be happening? How could the man who had pleasured him last night, pleasured him to the point where Tobias had felt dizzy, have done this? Tobias couldn’t get his head around it all. He had known that something was happening. Known that he wasn’t going to like whatever it was, but this? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it, and he didn’t want to. Worse, it was all tangled up in the way he felt for the Beast and that just made everything hurt all the more. It was in that moment that Tobias realized that the warring desires hadn’t been about the curiosity and the fear. They had been about whatever was happening to him and the Beast.
The two were inextricably linked and Tobias didn’t want them to be.
He wanted the Beast, but he didn’t want the rest.
He moaned then, the knowledge all coalescing and making his head hurt and his belly ache. Why couldn’t he have met the Beast in a bar somewhere? Why couldn’t he live in a little house on the bay? Why couldn’t this have just been normal? Why was his dating life always so fucking hard? Was a little bit of normal happiness too much to ask for?
“Stop, Tobias,” the Beast whispered, and Tobias knew he wasn’t referring to his steady escape towards the door.
“Stay away from me,” Tobias hissed. “Just stay away.”
“I can’t do that,” the Beast said. “And I’m sorry, and it hurts me to do this, but I have no choice.”
“What are you—”
“You are coming back below ground with me, Tobias,” he said. “Whether you like it or not, that is unavoidable now.”
“Don’t you dare,” Tobias snapped. “Don’t you…”
But the Beast advanced, and his intention was very clear. He was going to dare, and there was not a damn thing Tobias could do to stop him.
Chapter Eight
The Beast dropped Tobias, now gagged and bound, onto the bed in his chamber. Tobias shot him a nasty sort of glare and tried to shift position, but the Beast had tied him in such a way that there was little he could do to get free.
“I wish you hadn’t forced me to this,” the Beast said, and he meant it, because he did wish that things had turned out differently. He still wanted Tobias to have come to this place of his own accord. He still wanted his mate to want him without any kind of reservation. But it was clear now that that was not going to happen, and time had practically run out. It wasn’t just Tobias’ hands that were tied.
The Beast looked up, to the antique clock over his desk. It was coming to evening now, and that meant that they had less than two hours before night fell and the moon rose in the sky.
Two hours until the turning.
Two hours until Tobias was going to have to make a choice.
The Beast shivered at that thought, because, as things stood, he had no idea what Tobias was likely to do once the turning happened. He hoped that his mate would accept the change, that he would realize that it was something special, that what they were likely to have together was going to be something special, but…
He sighed and looked down at his mate. He lay on his back, hands tied together in front of him. The Beast hadn’t planned to have to truss his male up and so had been obliged to get pretty creative in terms of how he bound him. A belt kept his wrists together and one of the Beast’s own ties—taken from his basement apartment—gagged him. The Beast had decided to do that, not because he thought that Tobias might cry out, once he’d taken him down to his basement it didn’t even matter if he did, but because part of him wanted to see his human tied in such a way. It stirred his primitive instincts, and that was apt today, considering what was about to happen.
Tobias narrowed his eyes at the Beast and stretched his lips. The gag did not give.
“I am sorry,” the Beast repeated. “But you’re here now and so we must deal with what is to come.”
He leaned forward and pulled Tobias’ gag free. Tobias responded by coughing and licking his lips. Even with the situation as it now was, the Beast couldn’t help his cock from twitching at that action. He really was that far gone.
“These too,” Tobias said.
The Beast did as his mate asked, undoing the belt quickly so that Tobias was free in no time. As soon as he was, he clenched and unclenched his fists before shooting up from the bed and heading to the door.
“Exactly where are you going?” the Beast asked.
“Home,” Tobias said.
The Beast sighed. “You are home.”
Tobias turned at those words, and if the Beast couldn’t already feel the anger coming off him, it was obvious in other ways, stamped across his face, clear in the tense lines of his body. It was not what the Beast had wanted, and he could still recall the look of horror on Tobias’ face as he pulled him into his arms and slung him over his shoulder, not to mention the way he had struggled and gasped during the long journey back below ground.
But it was necessary!
Why couldn’t his mate understand?
“I can’t believe you just did that,” Tobias snapped. “Just throw me over your shoulder and…and…abduct me!”
“You left me no choice,” the Beast said.
“Choice?”
“You need to be here, Tobias. It is imperative that you are, and I gave you the option to come willingly.”
“You…I…this is…” Tobias shook his head. “After what happened between us last night? After the early hours of this morning? How can you think it’s acceptable to treat me this way? I said I didn’t want to be back down here.”
“It isn’t about what you want right now,” the Beast said. “It’s about what is best for you.” He paused, and then because it was past time he spoke with complete honesty. “I should never have let you go,” he said. “When you were here last and we connected.” He sighed. “I wanted to keep you. To have spent these last weeks pleasuring you, but I knew you did not want it. Oh, I knew you wanted me, but this? The look on your face when I showed you our city… It was stupid of me, but I wanted yo
u to want to be here, and I thought given enough time you would. You would return and accept what was to come.”
“But I don’t want to be here,” Tobias said. “And what’s to come…” He visibly shivered. “I just want to go home.”
Though the Beast already knew it, it hurt to hear those words, especially after laying himself bare. This was his home after all. These were his people. Tobias was going to be part of it all, one way or the other.
“You’ve met Layla,” he said.
Tobias gave a curt nod.
“She resisted also,” the Beast said. “She was brought here against her will because she saw something she should not have. Once here she…fought…against what was to happen. But by that point it was too late. Two years later and she still resists. She would have, would be, much happier, if she simply accepted her fate.”
“You can’t just expect people to behave as you want them to,” Tobias said. “Maybe because you live down here, maybe because you’re different, but it’s like you don’t even see it from my point of view.” He paused and the Beast knew he was steeling himself to say the next words. “I was brought here against my will, unconscious, only to wake up manacled to that bed. And then when I tried to escape you wouldn’t let me. In the end you only did so because I gave you what you wanted.”
“You wanted me as much as I wanted you,” the Beast growled.
“Yes,” Tobias agreed. “I did. I still do, I can admit that.” He lowered his eyes, crossing his arms as he did so. “But I don’t want this. I don’t want whatever you have done to me to happen. I don’t want my eyes to change color. I don’t want to be different. I just want to be me.”
His low, softly spoken words made the Beast’s chest tighten, and for just a moment he wondered what he would have done if they’d had this conversation weeks ago, before the bite, before the claiming.
The answer came to him instantly.
He would still have done it.
He would have claimed Tobias regardless. There had never been any choice about that, and though the Beast understood Tobias’ worries, understood his desire for normality, the simple fact of the matter was that from the moment they had met Tobias’ chance of a normal life was gone forever.
They were mates.
It was unavoidable.
“Do you want me, Tobias?” he asked. “Not just for a quick fuck. Not just for a few weeks. But as your partner, as your lover, as your friend.”
Tobias lifted his eyes. The confusion there was obvious, but when he spoke the words made the Beast tremble with satisfaction. “You know I do.”
“Then if you want me,” the Beast said. “This comes with it. The life underground. The changing. One cannot be separate from the other.”
“But you gave me no choice,” Tobias whispered. “You simply decided.”
“Because this is meant to be,” the Beast said, a pause and then, “And as you consider this, as you think it all through, you must remember, that I had no choice in it either.”
Chapter Nine
Tobias slumped down on the bed, his head in his hands, his mind a riot of thoughts questions and turmoil. He could feel the Beast next to him, the heat coming off him, the tenseness of his body, and he didn’t know what to say, what to think, because he had never considered what had happened between them in those terms, and now that he did it changed everything.
He had been given no choice.
And if Tobias were to believe what the Beast was telling him, about there being some sort of bond between them that could not be denied, then he hadn’t either, they both were caught up in something they had no say in.
This was always going to happen.
Was that really possible? To Tobias, in that moment, it seemed that anything was. Abruptly, he recalled how he had felt the first time he realized that there really was a city below the cliffs, both surrounding, and containing, the human town in the midst of it. That tunnels snaked up from that city into the bay, the forest that was miles from the town, even the next bay over. And that people, and though Tobias was yet to find out exactly what they were, but those people were not the same as those living in the town. They were yellow-eyed, tawny haired, and they chose to be below ground…because they’re not quite human.
Tobias shivered at that thought and dropped his hands. He looked up at the Beast, and it seemed painfully obvious to him then, like he had denied it for as long as he could but deny it no more. Not here, not below ground where it had all started.
“What are you people?” he whispered.
“I am not going to tell you,” the Beast said. “Because soon you will see it for yourself, and though it might not seem like it right now, it will be easier for you to experience it than to hear it.”
“How will that be easier?” Tobias asked.
“Because,” the Beast sat down next to him, depressing the bed only ever so slightly, “when it happens, the way you will feel, you will instinctively understand it all. It will all make sense to you then.”
“But how?
“We’re all connected,” the Beast explained. “Our community. When you become part of it you will be connected too.”
“But…” Tobias shook his head. “You’re saying that you…claimed me…only because you had to.”
“No,” the Beast said. “I am saying that when I saw you I knew you were mine, and mine alone, just as I am yours. The choice was taken from both of us then because this is what is right for us. That is the way of our people.”
“And were you happy about that?” Tobias asked, and he wasn’t sure what he wanted the Beast to say because during all those weeks alone, the weeks resisting the call to return, of telling himself that he would not do as the Beast desired, Tobias had simply assumed that the Beast wanted him simply because he did. It had never occurred to him that it could be otherwise.
The Beast leaned forward so that had no choice but to look at him. “It’s complicated,” he said.
Tobias’ heart skipped a beat then, because if the Beast hadn’t wanted him… “That means no.”
The Beast sighed. “It means it is complicated. I am the Alpha of our group, Tobias. Whether you knew it or not, whether you understood it or not, you felt that as we fucked. It is why you were happy to submit to me, to let me lick you, to suckle you, to fuck you.”
Tobias couldn’t help but nod. “Yes.”
“Because I am the Alpha,” the Beast said. “It was expected that I would take a mate from my own kind.”
“And you got me.”
“Which I am more than happy about,” the Beast said, and he grasped Tobias’ hands. “Never doubt that, Tobias. But my people may have to experience a period of adjustment. That is not to say they won’t adjust, but it may take some time. Of course, it would help if they didn’t have to see me constantly dragging you back below ground, if you came willingly, happily.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Tobias whispered. “I am so fucking confused.”
“That confusion will clear,” the Beast said. “Very soon, once it begins, everything will make sense.” He paused. “It will have to.”
“But what if it doesn’t?” Tobias asked. “What if, whenever what happens is going to happen, what if I still feel this way? And,” he pulled his hands free. “The fact that it is going to happen? I don’t know that I want it. I’m almost sure I don’t. I know you say you had no choice, but you took all mine away. Not just whether I wanted you—”
“Do you want me?” the Beast demanded.
Tobias groaned. “You know I do, but I don’t know if I want the rest, and yet I have no choice. Whatever you did to me is already happening.”
“Yes,” the Beast said “I…” He looked up, to the granite ceiling, to the something beyond. “It is, Tobias. Any moment now it will begin.”
Tobias gasped, a shiver running through him, something like urgency hitting him with the force of a slap. “Any moment?”
“It is almost evening,” the Beast said.
“I can feel it, and that means we must begin our preparations.”
Tobias reared back, the dread, the panic, the worry, spiking all over again even with the Beast so close, even with the new knowledge that he had, even with the urgency—an unknown urgency—that was now running through him. “I don’t—”
But the Beast stood up, halting whatever it was Tobias had planned to say, and in truth, Tobias had no idea what that was even going to be! Suddenly there was a look on his face that Tobias had never seen before. A seriousness. A sort of reverence.
Tobias blinked once, then again, trying to work out why everything suddenly felt different.
A heartbeat later and he knew.
He felt it.
The changes these past weeks, the feeling that something was looming ever closer, the knowledge that crisis point was going to be reached…it wasn’t just the fact that the Beast was different, or the fact that there seemed to be a change in the air, it was inside of him, almost like something was trying to break free.
Urgency.
“It is time,” the Beast said.
And in that moment, Tobias knew that it was too.
Chapter Ten
It didn’t take as long to make their way to the surface as it had to make their way down. Tobias realized as they moved that it was because they had taken a different route entirely, one that came out on the edge of the forest rather than the top of the cliff. It was longer in terms of length but took less time because it wasn’t a question of taking twisting and turning tunnels downwards.
The journey was different in another way too.
On the way down, Tobias had been bound and gagged, and the Beast had carried him pretty much all the way. He had been wrapped up in a cloud of righteous fury, outraged that the Beast had abducted him again. Panicked over what was to come. Wanting nothing more than to run back home.
But now? Now he was moving alongside the Beast, and the panic running through him was of a different kind entirely, and he couldn’t even seem to form any words. Something was pulling him upwards, pushing him to move, making him hurry. It was like the nights when he had been at home, excessive energy running through him, and the only option had been to head to the cliffs and run as fast and as far as he could.
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