And that’s when the beatings became intolerable.
They became almost unbearable.
After a year of enduring the same weekly hell, I felt something stir deep within myself, and Bestia showed up. Once I overcame my fear, I tried to study her, but I had no idea what sort of animal she was, so I named her “Beast” in Latin—Bestia. She seemed to like the name, so it stuck.
Her presence is what made me start to think deeper and open my mind to the possibility that she was a product of a mental illness—a form of protection that my innocent mind made up in order to help me cope with my situation.
Since there wasn’t anything I could do about her being there, I began to spend time with her, and in that time, I found her soul. When I looked deep into her eyes, I saw that she was, in fact, separate from me. Her essence was detached from mine even though we seemed to be linked mentally.
It was when I located her soul that I found comfort in the murky white depths of it. I knew in my heart that she was good despite her dark dragon-like appearance. She was mean looking—her fur made up of a million tiny black needles, her body three times my size, her face dangerous and terrifying.
She may have been dark and lethal on the surface, but on the inside, she seemed to shine with the brightest white light. She was comforting and warm. When I was scared, she would lick my face with a rough tongue and rub her snout against my cheek.
It was because of her that I first became obsessed with souls.
The idea of someone’s soul showing who they truly are. The idea that what you saw on the outside might not show what actually lay beneath the surface.
When you can’t speak for one reason or another, you find other ways to communicate…other ways to get answers. And I couldn’t speak to that man, my foster father.
I never found the courage.
But I learned quickly that looking into a person’s eyes showed everything you needed to know if you knew what you were looking for. And when I searched his eyes, at the raw age of ten, I didn’t like what I found.
This was the man who was supposed to give me love after my real parents decided that I wasn’t worthy of it, but instead, he kept me around to satiate the sickening evil within himself.
His soul was pitch black and thorny. It radiated with its need to inflict pain on the innocent.
So, once I saw beneath the surface of him, I knew that if it wasn’t me that he beat…it would be someone else in the foster home.
So I let him brutalize me to save the other kids I lived with.
He and I had an unspoken arrangement. As long as I didn’t fight back, as long as I let him do whatever he wanted to me, he would leave the other children alone. It was only me that he came for, week after week, and I forced myself to be okay with that. I reminded myself that it could be any of the other kids—it could have been my sister.
Over the years, Bestia seemed to grow stronger and more protective, and I became more and more submissive to her presence. I would zone out in class and just watch her. It was then that I noticed she was growing white wings. She didn’t have them when I first found her in my head, but over time, they began to grow until finally, after about a year, a set of deadly wings protruded from the fur on her back.
By then, I guessed that she wasn’t a creature of this world, but she certainly lived up to the name I gave her.
She was a beast made of something else.
Year three of the beatings, I began to use her as a shield.
I clung to her.
Instead of enduring my foster father with open eyes, I mentally escaped by searching deep within myself and holding on to Bestia’s lethal presence. She protected me even though she wasn’t a physical being.
After a while though, she got restless. During the beatings, she would roar and snarl and frantically fight to get out of my mental block. Every time he raised his hand to me, her eyes begged me—pleaded with me—to be let out, but I could never figure out how.
She did the protecting during those hours, shielding me from seeing what was happening to my body. I let her watch him—let her endure the sight of him while I hid my face in her neck. To this day, I wasn’t sure how I managed to do that, but I just chalked it all up to PTSD. She was a product of my imagination, a defense mechanism, a coping technique. I couldn’t look at him as the years went on, and I found a home in Bestia. The tough fur that covered her body acted as a blanket of midnight peace.
And when it was over, I lived with the pain.
Now, all these years later, I was beginning to question my assumption that she was just a product of my own brain.
After the encounter in the alley, the words those guys said, after thinking about my abilities…I could say with one hundred percent certainty that I could be something else—something other.
And Bestia had something to do with it.
Something I had yet to understand.
“But I will figure it out,” I promised myself out loud.
With new purpose, I walked up the three steps to my apartment. Pausing before I entered, I reached for her. She was there, sitting patiently while I worked through the memories that swirled inside my head.
A sick feeling was lodged in the walls of my stomach—those guys weren’t done with me yet.
I felt her shudder in anticipation at my thoughts, her cobalt blue eyes hard as she watched me. I mentally ran my hand along her fanged jaw. I kissed her big nose.
Pulling away from her body, I faced the front door of my apartment once again. Turning the knob, I stepped through the threshold.
“She’s got no fucking idea what she is.”
I realized then how wrong those guys were…it was they who had no fucking idea what I was, who I was.
But I’d show them. The next time they showed up, I’d show them exactly what lived within me.
And we’d face them together.
It was midnight by the time we got home. I was sitting on the couch in our penthouse, looking out into the city, the night sky a dark shade of blue.
“You can’t possibly tell me that you don’t think that’s a bit—oh, I don’t know—fucking obvious?” Lanier asked me, looking over to Quint, who sat upside down on the black leather couch—his feet in the air, his head near the floor. Weird fucking guy. “No mating bonds have formed, none even mentioned in the last twenty-one years, and all of a sudden this girl shows up and my beast freaks out? How’s yours doing? You’re telling me that you’ve been seeing her fucking face for eleven years, but you don’t want to claim her?”
He was pacing now, angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Who fucking cares, Lanier? Even if she, somehow, was the reason the mating bonds no longer exist, at least you found your answer. Clearly, she must be your mate if you’re responding this way. Look, now they’re back.” I shrugged my shoulders. “You can figure out how to complete the ceremony, deny the bond, and Fall. I don’t understand why you’re throwing a fit right now.”
My voice didn’t betray me, it was strong and sounded bored. I, however, was having my own kind of fit.
I saw her tonight, the girl I’d been seeing for almost half my life.
At first, I tried to explain the visions away as daydreaming, but then the little girl pulled me in. I wasn’t much older than her at the time, but in my eyes, she was frail and tiny. She needed protection—my protection.