The knife was tight in my grip as we raced through the night toward a lifetime of hell that he was planning for me, and I thought of all the things I hadn’t gotten to do yet. All the plans Beast and I had, the dreams we shared. I didn’t want to be a nurse anymore, but maybe I could still have worked with people. Maybe I could have become a counselor for children. And Jenna, what would she do without me? Would she be happy that she was free of my burden and she and Gregory could finally marry and travel like he wanted them to, or would she be broken by the loss of me? Would she suffer?
I couldn’t let it happen.
I thought about when I’d first met Beast in the hospital. How broken he’d been. How ill. And how much he’d already survived at that point. He hadn’t given up at any point. He kept on fighting, his will to live stronger than his will to die.
It would be easier if I could accept my fate and sit back and wait for whatever was coming next, but if Beast had taught me anything it was that no matter what, you never gave up fighting. You fought until your last breath, no matter the consequences.
And you never fucking begged!
I glanced across at a raging Lorenzo, his eyes wild as he continued to yell and spit all the vile things he was going to do to me. He believed me now; he knew it was me that had killed one if not both brothers.
“Lorenzo.” I said his name, my voice too quiet for him to hear me over his own raging. “Lorenzo!” I suddenly yelled, cutting through his monologue of violence and forcing him to look at me.
“What?” he yelled back, and I lifted my hand and slashed it across his throat in one brutal blow.
His hands left the wheel as he fought frantically to stop the bleeding, but it was no good. He tried to speak, his words coming out as nothing but garbled, bloody nonsense, and the car began to veer quickly toward the edge of the road.
I grabbed the door handle and threw it open, giving one terrified look at the ground speeding past before I dove out of the car, hitting the ground with a thump. I rolled over and over, feeling my skin tear and bones break, and I screamed out loudly before coming to a stop in the ditch. The world was ringing and then it was ablaze as Lorenzo’s car hit something in the distance and the sound of crunching metal and glass smashing had me covering my head in case something fell on me.
I wasn’t sure how long I lay there, panting and too terrified to try to move, before I heard the sound of motorcycles coming toward me. They went straight past, not seeing me in a heap farther away from the wreckage. I forced myself to move and I stood on unsteady feet as several bikes came to a stop before the destroyed car.
Beast’s voice found me in the darkness as he called my name, yanking open Lorenzo’s door and dragging his dead body from the wreckage in search of me.
“Beast,” I called for him as tears poured down my face, stinging the fresh cuts. “Beast!” I screamed for him and I watched him turn and seek me out.
He ran toward me, stopping himself as I came into view, his dark eyes washing over me, taking in all of my cuts and bruises and the way I was cradling my arm against my chest.
“I thought,” he said, his arms reaching for me.
“It will take more than that to kill me,” I replied, my voice hoarse from screaming. “I’m your old lady now, and you taught me never to give up.”
Epilogue
~ BEAST ~
I watched her sleeping, feeling like a creeper but not caring enough to stop doing it. When Laney had come and found me and told me Belle had left, my heart had sunk. Shame clawed at me that I’d thought that maybe she’d tricked us all. That maybe she’d been working with someone all the way along and this had all been one big fucking trick. That perhaps she hadn’t loved me after all.
I’d never known real love before—not the kind between a man and a woman. Not the kind between a mother and a son. I only knew club life, and the bond between a man and his brothers, and even that I wasn’t sure on sometimes. These men didn’t owe me anything, yet they gave me it all. Couldn’t quite get my mind around that, just like I wasn’t sure that I’d ever get used to the fact that Belle really did love me.
How could it be that I, the Beast with no heart and a soul as black as the night, had found love in this unforgiving world after all?
She stirred in her sleep and I went to her, getting in bed behind her so I could cradle her small body with my own. She was so precious and so strong, and I’d almost lost her. Almost was too close, and I would never allow that to happen again.
“Beast?” she whispered, her eyes fluttering open.
“I’m here,” I said, squeezing her gently.
“I thought I died…” she said quietly. “I dreamed that I died and I went to hell, and I was all alone there without you.” Her shoulders shook and I kissed the back of her neck and hushed her.
Two people dead at her hand.
If there really was a heaven and hell, she was headed for the latter for sure.
“I won’t let that happen. Not ever,” I promised. “Where you go, I go, forever.”
She looked over her shoulder at me, and the fire in her eyes was there—the little spark of Belle that made her who she was. I thought that part of her was lost after what she’d had to do to Mateo, but it was still there. Thank God it was still there.
“I love you,” she said.
I leaned down and kissed her gently, even though every muscle in my body wanted to kiss her hard. I was gentle and tender and everything that I wasn’t used to. I guess we both had to become something else to stay together.
“Can you really love a beast like me?” I asked. “I’ve caused you nothing but pain, Belle. I’ve destroyed everything and almost gotten you killed over and over…”
She kissed me, silencing my words for the moment, and when she pulled away her expression was vibrant. There was no other way to describe it. She was vibrant with life.
“I love you, Beast. And no matter what you think, this wasn’t your fault. What I do know for certain is that after everything we’ve both gone through, we’ve still come back to each other. We’ve survived it all.”
Fuck me.
I was done for.
I could have died right then and I would have died a happy man.
Did I deserve her love after all the evil I’d done in the world? Probably not. But was I going to grasp it with both hands and never let go? Hell yeah.
“I love you, Belle,” I said, the first time those words had ever left my mouth. “I love you now and forever, and until the end of time.”
She smiled up at me and I kissed her again, our tongues moving in sync. She pulled away first and looked at me, those big Disney eyes staring right into my wretched, rotten soul and accepting everything about me. Man, beast, biker. I was hers and she was mine.
“Do we get our happily ever after now, Beast?” she asked, and I smiled, the biggest smile I’d ever smiled in my whole Goddamned life, because for the first time ever I felt the truth of those words and I believed them.
“Hell yeah, we do, Belle. Hell yeah.”
The end.
Thank You.
To the Queens in Claire’s Queens … thank you so much for everything. For being so passionate about my stories. For loving my tortured alphas and for wanting them to have their happily ever afters.