Page 86 of Beau and the Beast

Maybe Wolfram would bedisgustedwith him to know that Beau still wanted him just like this, twisting horns, swishing tail, and all. Maybe his self-loathing was so deep that it circled around and extended outward to people whodidn’tfind him loathsome, Beau thought with a snort. He wouldn’t put it past the man.

Wolfram was taking forever. The others would certainly be getting up soon. What time even was it?

He reached for Wolfram’s gold watch on the bedside table, unsurprised to find how heavy it was.

The hands were close, the minute hand halfway between 11:58 and 11:59. That didn’t make any sense. It was far past midnight and hours until noon would arrive. Damn thing must be stopped.

Stupid automatic quartz watches,he thought. His father had had one and it had always been unreliable. Beau wasn’t surprised to find that even expensive ones were finicky, too.

It was a shame that it wasn’t more functional because the watch itself was beautiful, he thought. It was understated and gleaming with a simple matte bezel, no branding visible anywhere on it.

Beau brought it close to his face and fiddled with the crown, trying to turn the dial to get the minute hand to respond. He spun it but nothing happened. Then Beau remembered the way that with his father’s watch, he’d always had to pull the dial out before the mechanism engaged to change the time.

He worked his fingernails under the dial and it pulled out with a soft click.

The world around Beau shattered.

Too many things happened at once for him to sort things out in his head. Something enormous glanced off his shoulder, not hurting him but pushing him hard down onto the bed.

At the same time, a noise so loud exploded into the room that it seemed to be coming not from some external source but emanating from inside his own head. The noise, deeper than deep, made his molars vibrate, made something in his brain tilt on its axis. It struck fear into him so deeply that he tossed the watch away, holding his hands up to shield his face even as he kicked away at the thing that had pushed him down.

The noise continued like thunder and Beau scrambled, tangling himself in the clean blanket before falling in a heap at the foot of the bed, landing hard and cracking his head against the stone floor.

“Fuck fuckfuck,” he said, clutching his head, the edges of his vision going dark. He looked for someplace safe, feeling too exposed, feeling too frightened by the noise—but there was no cover, he couldn’t get under the bed and—

Wolfram. The noise, the thing was Wolfram.

* * *

The momentthat he saw Beau had the watch in his hands, the instant he’d heard Beau click the dial up and the mechanism engage to change the time, the human parts of Wolfram were gone.

In that moment, there was only survival.

With a movement so small—mere millimeters—Beau could end his life. The watch wasn’t broken. It never had been. It didn’t measure hours. The ghastly cursed thing counted down the remaining years of Wolfram’s life, the time he had left to break his curse before his fate was sealed, before he died alone in his glittering prison.

Three weeks ago, it would’ve been a pleasure to die that way, by someone else’s hands.

But the past two weeks had been the best of his life. He’d known that somewhere deep in his mind without acknowledging it.

And so the animal part of himself didn’t see Beau, the reason for his happiness, the person at the center of his world. The animal only saw mortal danger, imminent, the window of opportunity to stop it closing with lightning speed.

The beast in him took over and there was no logic, nothing linear in what happened next. Wolfram was muscles and impulses andfear, launching himself from one end of the bedroom, feeling his claws rake into the stone floor, scrambling across the bed and shredding the mattress beneath him, snatching the watch as Beau tossed it away and curling his body around the wretched thing that held the timeline of his last days on earth.

He was bellowing, roaring, the sound shaking his bones, his throat disgorging spittle and hot air as he clutched the watch, struggling with clumsy hands to push the dial back into place.

* * *

Wolfram had never looked solarge, so foreign and impossible as he did in that moment. His roar tapered off but continued to roll, sounding like a diesel engine and setting off every terrible, primal alarm that Beau’s mind possessed.

What had he done? What was wrong?

“Wolf—“

The man whirled on him, lunging to the foot of the bed and perching there like an enormous gargoyle, snarling at him.

“What the fuck?” Beau said, pushing up off the floor. A sudden stripe of anger overcame his fear. This was Wolfram—not a wild animal—and the man wouldn’t hurt him, no matter how fearsome he looked in that moment with fur bristling and canines bared. But hewasacting like a brute, had pushed Beau down, and the realization made him want to snarl right back at the other man.

Wolfram bellowed again, his eyes wide, pupils contracted into inhuman slits. His muscles strained, visible and mighty, wicked claws flexed out into the mattress. Wolframdidlook like an animal in that moment—no bit of humanity about him, no soft expression or understanding look. He looked like something to be feared, foreign and unknowable, impenetrable.

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