Promised to a Gargoyle King but the Werewolf King wants us.

Chapter 1 - The man belonging in 723, Adult Non-Fiction.

Kate hated her dreams about her childhood.

Last night's dream, about the night when she'd pissed on the man her father had wanted to marry, had not been a welcome one. 

Not when she remembered what'd come after. The beating for it, for running, and the reminder that her sister was always the favorite. The agreeable one. Her father had not been impressed and, even if it was just a belt, just a bruise, she never was able to accept it.  That night had been bad. She had no memory of it, exactly, but having no memory was a sign that it had been bad. The worse it was, the more  Kate as a little girl forget.

She had memories of after- when she'd been in pain and upset, knowing she'd been hit, and traumatized by it- but no memories of what her father had done to punish her. 

The problem with your father hitting you at that age was that you didn't know it was wrong, especially at five, you just hoped that he'd stop. Or that you could hide and after a while he'd calm down. Kate had never believed it was his fault, at that age, she'd assumed it was her fault.  So she forgot and she forgave every time.  Maybe that was why she hated conflict so much. Or maybe she was born hating conflict- her father's rages, his physical abuse, maybe that just added to it.

There were a lot of foggy parts of Kate's childhood where she'd forgotten it. A lot of memories of the aftermath, of being upset, knowing she'd been hit but not remembering how or why. She didn't need any of her childhood to come back to her now in dreams.

She scowled as she tried to focus on shelving books in the right numerical order. She was old enough now to know it was wrong. Old enough to stay the fuck away from him. Kate didn't care how much money he had, or how many nice things he could buy her, she couldn't look her father in the eye without feeling hatred for what he'd done to her as a little girl. Only her. Krystal had always been spared.

The thing was, it wasn't just physical. It had always been emotional too. She'd been called manipulative for as long as Kate could remember, which had hurt when she was little, because she knew it was bad but she hadn't known what it meant. Again. She was older and wiser now and knew that it was Krystal who'd manipulated her daddy. Kate had been the one who never did things right and got the bad side for it.

That was all in the past now though. Kate was independent. She had a job. She had a home. She had left Krystal behind to her expensive parties, her Goo-chi toys and her shiny engagement ring. 

She also had at least a hundred books to shelve by lunch.

She focused on it, thumbing through the books on the trolley, carefully putting them in a quick order so that the shelving could be done faster. 

 It was while doing this that she caught sight of some guy wandering around half naked. He spotted her, spotted her uniform most likely, and made a beeline for her. Oh crap. Why did the weirdos always come for her?

“I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to put your shirt on.” She didn't even glance sideways as she shoved a book between 619.6523 and 619.6525, just saw the far too expansive amount of skin on the man's chest and automatically knew she was dealing with a sleezy creep. Who came into a library half naked anyway?

“Constance.”

Oh god. Someone knew her name. She glared at whoever it was and understood exactly why this man was half-naked. Something about the supernatural men. They had to wander around with their nipples on display, snail-trails hanging out, and pecs ...pecking. Or something. She wasn't sure why they all had muscles. It was like an unwritten law of the supernatural world. Male must have a bare chest and keep it muscular at all times.