The massive beast’s chest was heaving, blood dripping from his hands. He spun, glowing orange eyes locking on Margot’s.
She felt her breath catch in her throat. This was it. She was a dead woman.
But there was something new in those eyes. Something she hadn’t seen on that first encounter. They glowed orange, fierce and frightening, but there wasmoreto them now. The beast glanced at the dead Raxxians, its tensed shoulders relaxing. It turned back to Margot with a pained look on its face.
“Braxxos?” she said quietly, gingerly walking closer.
“I-” he tried to say, his deep, beastly voice gravelly and halting. He was a killing machine and not accustomed to speech. At least, not before. “I did not know how to tell you,” he managed to say, the words so deep they rumbled her belly with the vibrating force of them. “It is my curse.”
The eyes were that of a beast, but she saw something else. There was intelligence now where there hadn’t been any before. And more than that, there was love.
“I’m sorry,” he said, tears welling in his eyes.
Then turned and ran away.
“Braxxos! Wait!” she called after him, but he was gone in a flash. If his regular form was fast, this startling other self was even more so.
She stood there, trembling with shock. This was why he’d left her those times. Why he locked her in his elevated home for her own safety. When he was the beast, he would not recognize her. A mindless killing machine. But now? Now something had changed.
She felt the burning in her chest grow strong, the Infala rune glowing bright, just as his had.
Her shock turned to resolve.
I guess I know why he stripped in the middle of a fight, she realized with dark amusement as she gathered up his clothes. Margot let out a morbid chuckle as she wondered just how many times he’d had to re-stitch them after not shedding them fast enough.
She turned a slow three-sixty, taking in the carnage dealt at his hands as well as the utter silence surrounding her.Hewas the biggest, baddest thing in the forest. And, whatever it meant, he was all hers. She took one step in the direction he’d fled. Then another. Then another.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, she chided herself, then headed after him. The most unlikely of chases; the tiny human in pursuit of the massive beast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Margot didn’t know why or how, but it was a certainty to the depth of her core that she had to find Braxxos. It was her turn to help. This time,heneededher.
She ran the familiar route, not sprinting carelessly, but moving at a steady pace, eyes scanning for danger, just as he’d taught her. Danger, he’d told her, could be anywhere.
Little did I know, she thought with morbid amusement.
On and on she ran, not needing to track him. She knew where he would be. And as she drew close to their hidden waterfall refuge, something shocking caught her attention.
The animals.
Nature was not silent. Not entirely. It was still muted, most definitely, but there was also a gentle buzzing of life all around.
“I knew it.”
She waded into the water and pressed against the stone, sliding behind the waterfall and walking through the hidden passageway to what had become their special place. He was there, a massive beast of immeasurable power, crouched still in the water, his back to her. His runes were still glowing, churningwithin his skin. And as soon as she moved even a little bit closer they flared up even brighter, her own pigment reacting in kind.
Her heart beat hard. He was incredibly intimidating, this beastly thing. Deadly. Primal. But this wasn’t a raging animal. This was Braxxos. She knew he was in there. He just looked a little different right now.
Margot took a deep breath and placed his bundled-up clothing on the shore then slowly waded out to him. She stopped a mere pace away, reaching out with only a hint of hesitation, resting her hand on his radiantly hot back. He flinched at her touch, his boulder-like musculature shuddering as he suppressed a sob.
Slowly, he turned to her, his orange eyes blazing bright, gleaming with the power within him as well as the tears running down his face.
Margot’s heart broke at the sight, such a feeling of love surging through her that she felt as though she might burst into flames from its intensity. The beast looked at her runes, noting the way they burned bright and her reaction to the change.
“They are hurting you,” he said in his growling bass voice.
He reached out with his enormous hands. Hands that had just slaughtered three full-grown Raxxians with ease. The blood was long washed away, but the power in them still remained. But it was with the gentlest of touches that he pulled her closer, urging her lower into the water.
