Page 175 of Beau and the Beast

I am loved, I am loved, I am loved.The information pulsed through him like a heartbeat. Itbecamehis heartbeat.

And then he was present in a body again—a big and unwieldy body with fangs and claws and a tail that was crushed uncomfortably beneath him. Everything hurt and something was happening that he’d never felt before. His body was mending itself so fast that he couldfeelit, veins and arteries revived from nothing, being plumped with newborn blood cells, replacing old ones at a breakneck pace. He could feel his fur grow and his muscles patch together.

He could feel a body on top of his.

Beau. Of course. He was the one who loved Wolfram.

Wolfram opened his eyes, wanting to see the man who loved him and who he loved in turn.

* * *

“Did you feel that?” Violet said, looking over at Alfie and Geoffrey where they stood at the side of the living room.

It had been a pulse of energy, concussive but invisible, and it rocked through her entire body. From the corner of her eye, she’d seen Alfie react as if he’d felt it too.

Slowly, the other two nodded at her.

“He’s alive!” James crowed from his place in the foyer.

“That’s impossible—“

But when Violet made her way toward the ugly scene at the front of the penthouse, it was true. Not only was Wolfram alive—he was moving, pushing himself up to sit.

“Does that mean—“

Adrenaline gripped her and Violet strode past them, through the open door. For the first time in nearly ten years, she left the confines of the penthouse, standing in the lobby outside.

She waited for stillness to grip her heart. She steeled herself for the feeling of her blood slowing and stopping in her veins, for the crushing weight of the curse to settle into her lungs.

Song appeared in the doorway, looking out at her.

“I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head. “I feel… fine.”

Song took a cautious step past the threshold. Then another. And another. Four more steps and he was standing beside Violet. Slowly, he nodded.

“I’m fine, too.”

Without knowing what she was doing, she pulled him into a hug, shouting, laughing, crying all at once, and he hugged her back.

“It’s over,” she said, loud enough for them to hear inside the penthouse. “Come out—it’s over!”

* * *

“You’re back,” Beau said, shaking his head, unable to make any other words come out as he stared at Wolfram, a man who had returned from the dead.

Wolfram was seated now, no longer bleeding—though blood was still matted dark in his fur—and he pulled Beau in a tight hug, nuzzling against Beau’s neck. He was shaking, Beau realized.

“You brought me back,” Wolfram said. “I love you, Beau. I was dead and your love pulled me back.”

Could that be possible?

But even as he questioned it, Beau knew that it was true.

Light can lift his shadowed soul,

when beauty frees the beast.

He didn’t know how to wield magic and break curses, but somehow he knew in the fiber of who he was that his love had defied death, had plunged past the rules of how the world worked.

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