Beloved Beast

Chapter Forty-Two

****Trigger warning!****

This chapter contains violence and strong language.  

Elle felt her heart take flight as her eyes landed on the cloaked figure leaping from their saddle; wresting an enormous blade from its scabbard as they breached the dark of the forest, bellowing her name.

She would recognize that deep timbre anywhere.

For a suspended, heart-stopping moment, she could neither blink nor breathe, the unbearable pain and the threat of death melting away as all of her focus locked in wide-eyed disbelief on the towering man with a hooded cowl for a face.

"Don ..." she rasped his name as if her lungs were bereft of clean, crisp air, her cry faint as she could hardly believe the image rendered before her watering eyes.

He had come for her.

Seraphine lowered her dagger as a look of unadulterated fury swept over her stolen, youthful features. With a deepening scowl, she wasted no time in arming her men.

Raising her free hand, Elle watched in horror as her palm curled inward and then flexed, her powers expanding, molding various weapons of steel to appear from thin air. "If you cannot slow him down," she informed her small horde of brigands while seizing Elle's lame arm, "Then kill him."

"No!" Fresh, hot tears pricked her eyes as white-hot pain fired through her limp appendage. Bile welled in her throat, and she nearly lapsed into unconsciousness, her one hand fumbling in the dirt as she strained to break free of the witch's ruthless grasp.

Now fitted with weaponry of their own, the men hoisted their instruments of steel and grinned maliciously as they slowly fanned out.

Don was horribly outmanned, four against one, and what little hope that sparked within her chest fleetly ebbed.

Solomon shoved past his companions; his mangled face mottled with rage as he adopted a plow stance. "We are not through, ye and I."

"Indeed," Don's voice rumbled low from the shrouded cowl, deadly but eerily calm. "Let us see who is the better man."

"That's an impressive broadsword ye have there," one of the men uttered with a snicker as he stepped to his left, flaunting an axe. "How does a beast come into the possession of such a magnificent piece? No matter, we need only to disarm ye once and yer as good as dead."

"Assuming you can take it." Don challenged.

"Aye, and here I thought we had bonded over a tipple or two," another quipped, prompting all but a seething Solomon to laugh.

"How about ye show us that mug now, eh?" the third baited, stepping to his right, swinging a smaller blade back and forth with a cheeky grin. "Let us see the face of the monster we intend to bury."

Elle watched helplessly as the men edged closer, widening their stances, and fencing Don in, but for all their deliberate goading and flashy steel, their shifty glances belied their bravado, exposing their unease, whereas the Rossetti Beast was composed, showing no emotion.

Whatever they muttered next was abruptly drowned out by a resounding clap of thunder as rapid bolts of forked lightning cut across the night sky. Startled, she flinched and shrank from the sharp, fleeting light, unnerved by the sudden volatile heavens that livened before her eyes, darkening with thick storm clouds that half-masked the full moon when moments ago there had been none and all was still.