Page 3 of Beast

Kidnap Natalia Mikhailov and keep her safe until her father votes for Pavlischchev’s new boss before the election in seventy-three days.

Natalia. The popular girl who put me down in high school and had me running around the track at night to get in shape? I was the big one. The one they all teased and made fun of, thanks to her. Until I dropped out of school at the start of my sophomore year after getting bit by a freaking werewolf one night while running on the school track.

I was sick for three weeks and on my own. And my body changed rapidly. I had already begun losing weight, but with the werewolf bite, I packed on muscle and dropped all the chubbiness. Had to make it through life on my own and joined up with the Bratva doing odd jobs for them, stuff no one wanted to do, cleaning up messes, and working my way up to pay-to-hire gigs. Now, I never wanted for friends or money. I even had my own group of guys who had my back.

When Natalia was graduating high school, I’d even thought about crashing her prom, but of course it was during a full moon and I had to lock myself up for the night. The next day, I left for America and carved out a reputation here for my comrades in the States and overseas.

Taking her would have to be done delicately. She was smart and wouldn’t come with me willingly. She hated me, and the feeling was mutual.

It will be a pleasure to see her beg. To have her plead for mercy. I grinned. The election was two and a half months away. And I had so much time to make Princess Natalia wish she’d never met me.

2

NATALIA

“You coming out tonight?” Gail, my best friend, purred as she gave me those longing eyes when she stopped by the door of the bathroom in our dorm. It was the type of look where she asked a question even though she already knew the answer. I wished I could go out with her, but I couldn’t, as much as I was dying to.

“Remember? I have that blind date thing. You know, the guy I met online.”

Her dark hair was tied up in a bun, something she did before she would be ready to hit the town when we had the funds, but most of the time we went to frat parties. She pouted, making her green eyes appear sad. “Oh.”

Then it was as if she had a light-bulb moment and lifted one finger up. “Wait. You mean the one guy who loves serial killers and shares your crazy obsession?”

I felt a little weird telling her about the group I joined and this guy that I met online. I didn’t tell her that he was a jerk; one who claimed to have enough information to say that all the stuff they said about Ted Bundy was bogus and there was no correlation between serial killers and the inner workings of their brains.

They were psychopaths who loved to bring harm to others, that was all there was to it. That idiots like myself wanted to believe that it had to do with mother nature or the way their brain was wired.

He insulted my intelligence, which should have told me to stop talking to him from the start.

They were sick.

Fucked up.

All the screws were loose.

However we wanted to sugarcoat it, it all boiled down to the same thing: We lived in a world where there were good people and bad people. Serial killers were the bad ones, and we could glorify it, but it was as simple as that. He liked to think of the world as being so cut and dry, but my world was completely different. I joined for a reason; a reason no one knows. A secret I was holding on to, the real reason I left Russia.

And just in case this turned into a fabulous date and I got lucky, I had to make sure I took my medication beforehand because if I didn’t, I’d feel super horny. Whenever I got too wound up with a guy, it would be like I had a terrible stomach flu and I’d have to leave, to crawl into my own bed until the horrible cramps and nausea ended. The downside was that it left the side effect of me not being remotely interested in sex.

At times, I wondered if I’d ever be with a man intimately.

And then this guy I was meeting from the online chat. He intrigued me and I wanted to meet him in person after the long conversations we’d had about serial killers.

I needed to see him tonight to prove that his theory was wrong, that it wasn’t as simple as that. And supposedly he had the proof to show that it was, whereas I had the opposite.

Her green eyes gave me the look, not the begging one that she’d given me moments ago, but one of terror as her eyes widened and she froze like she were in shock.

“I don’t want you to meet this guy. I mean, you being in this group freaks me out enough, but the idea of you meeting someone who is in it worries me. I mean aren’t these groups full of copycats?”

I chuckled as she said it, not realizing what she was implying about me.

“I’m twenty-one, I can handle myself. Besides this means I am a copycat too. And if I were, then I would have been done with you already!” I said as I jumped in front of her and started to tickle her.

“Stop it! Stop it!” she protested, so I moved away from her, back to applying my makeup.

We started college as roommates and clicked from day one. We vowed to always be roommates because it was clear that we were BFFs. Everyone said we were always together, and she was the friend I never had in high school because I had to keep people away back then. Some knew my history and background, and there were others who knew part of it and were too scared to be close to me.

“Right. If there’s anything that you’re not comfortable with, you just get out of there. No going back to his apartment or anything like that. You get me?”

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