Sophie Oak - Beast

Yes.

Beck nodded. “You are more than welcome, cos. You are needed.”

Dante was surrounded by his family. They formed a tight circle.

“I love you, brother,” Susan said. “You come home to us someday.”

“My baby.” His mother wept unashamedly. “I’m so proud of you.”

They walked away one by one, each doing his or her part to get ready. Dante’s father looked at him.

“Do you understand what you’re doing?”

“I’m fighting for what’s right.” He waited for his father’s lecture on how naïve he was being.

His father’s strong jaw trembled. “I raised you right, son. I always knew it. You make me proud. Anything you need, you call your family. And Kaja, thank you. You’re my daughter. Dante’s told me a bit about your plane. Forget them. This is your pack. You are always welcome here, daughter.”

Kaja held on to Dante, her chest shaking with emotion. He felt her great love for his family, but he was doing the right thing. She would never belong here, and he would never be happy without her.

Four hours later, Roan proved true to his word. The guards lay unconscious, and the door to the Refugee plane opened before them.

“Your Highnesses.” Roan gestured to the doorway. “It will be a day’s journey to the Unseelie plane. The decoys have not been caught yet. We will be safe. It is my great honor to serve you.”

Beck thanked him, his face grim. He showed his wife and brother through the door.

They were on the run. They would win their throne or be buried under it.

Kaja smiled at Dante as she walked through the door.

He followed. He left his plane behind because his whole world was wrapped in one small woman. She held his heart, his future.

He would have it no other way.

The door closed behind Dante, and he faced his destiny.

The Seelie plane

The sun warmed her face, and Bronwyn Finn looked out over the meadow. The fields were filled with wheat. Tall stalks swayed in the wind, and dust blew up from the tiny dirt road that led to her tower. Her hands already ached from just the thought of harvesting all that wheat. She put that reality aside. It was weeks before she would spend every day in the field. She could remember a time when she’d been a pampered princess.

Now all she had was this tower. From her vantage, it felt like she could see the whole world. Well, hers at least.

“Bron, it’s time for supper.” Gillian’s voice drifted up from the bottom of the tower.

Bronwyn had to smile. Gillian still thought of her as the child she’d saved that terrible day in the White Palace. That day when she’d lost her mother and father, Bronwyn had found Gillian McIver. The Unseelie princess had become her healer, her savior, her surrogate mother. When she was younger, she would never have believed it. Unseelie and Seelie living together, dependant on each other. Loving each other as family. But Gillian had been her world for a very long time.

And Gillian was a slight pain in her ass. Bronwyn was twenty-seven years old and still being called to supper.

“I’m coming,” Bronwyn called back, but she let her head drift to her hands as she stared out over the peaceful field where she’d spent the last thirteen years of her life.

She’d had the dream again last night. It was the same thing every night. When she closed her eyes, she tried to envision her brothers, alive and whole, but every night when conscious thought fled, they came to her.

The Dark Ones.

She’d dreamed of them for as long as she could remember. It was as though they had grown up with her. She’d lived a whole second life in her dreams. Sometimes they were so real that she wondered which reality was the dream. She remembered them as children playing through her mind as she slept. As she grew, they did as well. They talked about everything in her dreams. She knew them as well as she’d known herself. And then they were gone for a long time.

The dreams stopped when you died .

So much had stopped when she’d taken that final breath and died in her brother’s arms. She shook off the terrible memory. She’d died, but Gillian’s magic had brought her back. Unseelie magic that would undoubtedly cost Gillian her life if Torin the Pretender ever caught them.

She got up from her perch. The sun was going down. It would be time to go to bed in a couple of hours. It would be time to dream again.

The dreams had only come back in the last few years, and they had taken on a distinctly adult tone.

Four hands caressing her. Two mouths vying for her attention. She didn’t know their names, but she knew how they felt when they moved against her. She knew what it felt like to be between two hard bodies. Beloved. Wanted. Whole.

Bronwyn stood and smoothed out her dress. Sheer fancy. She was alone, and she would remain that way. She was untouched. A virgin at twenty-seven. It was pathetic, but true. Her only real experience was an attempted rape that her brother, Cian, had halted. She knew only violence. Nothing could change that.

The Dark Ones were just a figment of her imagination. She’d latched on to her childhood fantasies in order to have a relationship—even one that only happened in her dreams.

But Bronwyn had left dreams behind long ago. She’d stopped believing the day Torin had slaughtered her family.

The Dark Ones weren’t coming for her. No one was. She was alone. If Beckett and Cian were alive, she prayed they had found a safe place to live and happiness.

Bronwyn went to the chest where she kept her meager possessions. She opened it and moved aside her second-best dress. She let her hand move under the fabric to wrap around the cold metal hilt of a knife.

It was the knife used to kill her.

It was the knife she intended to kill Torin with.

Bronwyn let the knife be, content that it was there. She closed the drawer and started down the stairs, a weary feeling stealing over her.

It was hours until she could slide into sleep and see them again. They were figments, but they were hers.

Her Dark Ones. Her loves.

If you’re out there—come for me. Please come for me .

Tears blurring her eyes, Bronwyn started down the stairs.

THE END

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