Page 16 of Monster's Pretty Bride

Slowly, deliberately, he turns back to the gathered crowd.

“The next one to question my rule,” he says, his voice even, measured, deadly, “will not walk away from this arena.”

Silence reigns.

Without another word, he steps past the broken gargoyle at his feet, wings unfurling slightly as he strides from the arena, the tension rippling through the gathered ranks in his wake.

He does not look back.

But I feel his challenge in my bones.

He has given me permission to try again.

I will. Somehow, this makes my blood boil, igniting an ember in me.

8

NARANUS

Something is brewing in the stronghold.

I feel it in the walls, the heavy silence of my kin, the unseen glances pressing against my back as I stalk through the stone corridors. Whispers curl through the dark, hushed voices carrying across the cavernous halls, but none dare to meet my gaze as I pass.

They watched. They saw.

They felt the shift.

They will not speak it aloud, but the truth gnaws at them, the same way it gnaws at me.

She was there.

Watching.

The thought clenches in my chest like a vice. The purna’s presence was not accidental. She had followed, crept through my halls, pressed herself into the dark corners of my world, and she did not look away.

Even after I crushed my challenger into the dust.

Even after I made it clear that she is mine to ruin.

The truth slithers beneath my skin, uncomfortable, unwelcome. She should be afraid. She should have recoiled from the violence, from the raw display of dominance. Any sane creature would have.

Instead, she had held my gaze.

Unflinching.

Unbowed.

Now, the embers of something unpredictable smolder between us. There’s something about her that makes her undefinable.

I reach my chamber, shoving open the heavy doors, the smell of stone and old magic thick in the air. The flames in the brazier flicker as I enter, casting wild shadows against the walls. The heat of my earlier fight still lingers in my veins, coiled tight in my ribs, but it is not the battle that haunts me now.

It is her.

Her defiance.

Her patience.

The way she watches me, not with fear, but with purpose.

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