Page 13 of Chaos At Second Sight

“Your human is a pain in the butt,” I mumbled. He’ll be a pain in your ass…literally. Heat rushed to my cheeks at the intrusive thought.

Lucien tilted his head.

“But not you.” I squeezed him tighter. “You’re the best.”

His tongue lolled happily, like I’d just told him he was the goodest boy in the universe, and his arms folded around me. “Lucien best only for Mate.”

I smirked. “And you’re so much bigger than Logan.”

He puffed out a laugh.

“But next time…” I leaned back enough to look up at him. “Let me help.”

I swore I heard him scoff.

When I peeked around the boulders, my eyes widened. A dozen rogues. All dead. All sliced to surgical perfection. Now I understood why the other four had fled.

I would have done the same.

Without warning, Lucien whirled around, his long tail knocking me to the ground. “Oof!”

I glanced up in time to see him leap over a nearby rock.

He yanked out another hidden rogue and threw it down onto the dirt. Lucien’s roar only ended when the rogue stopped twitching. The echo faded, but my heart still hammered. I staggered to my feet after witnessing his brutality.

Suddenly, he turned to me, and the fury vanished. His ears twitched, his tail wagged, and he purred like a radiator.

My rational side urged caution. But a mountain of muscle, black fur, red eyes, and incorrect grammar stood between me and doubt.

Later that evening, tucked in Lucien’s arms as he carried me through the dark hills in search of somewhere to sleep, too exhausted to tell him to return to the MacKenzies—not that I wanted him to—I mulled over what he was.

What made Lucien stand out the most? The way he treated the forest like a resource, a birthright, his in never-ending abundance. He moved like he owned it.

My mate was something else. Gold wrapped up in faux darkness, sweet yet unhinged.

Logan wasn’t a werewolf.

My mate wasn’t like me. He wasn’t like Archie. He wasn’t like anyone I’d ever known.

No. He was really a lycan.

A creature I had always assumed belonged to old stories.

And this creature? This giant, beautiful, fierce creature?

He was mine. All mine.

CHAPTER FOUR

YVAINE

Ever since the invention of fairy tales, humans have been sold the society-approved fantasy of finding their own prince charming. You know the one.

The man of every heterosexual woman’s dreams. Chivalrous. Heroic. Smelling of expensive soap and wearing clothes I’ve only ever seen as curtains. He rescues the damsel in great, often silly, distress, sweeps her away on an obligatory white horse, and gallops into the glowing sunset, with the happy birds chirping to their eternal love.

Me? In a way, I did get my own fairy tale.

Except I wasn’t a damsel, and I wasn’t in distress. Instead of the prince, I got the beast, the sort that would snack on the prince…and the horse.