Page 19 of The Beast of Ashwood Manor

“Cale, come here . . .” Royce said in that fatherly voice of his. I closed the door before I could hear him lecture Cale and stood in the rain, letting it calm me.

I looked down at my hands and noticed the black claws replacing my regular nails. That beast had become angry for no reason. Because of Cale? Over something so minor? It was getting harder to tame the damn monster. I needed a hunt. Blood and flesh was always enough to sate it for a while.

So, two days later, I prepared to go on a hunt. Cale was an absolute distraction to the routine I’d put into place for the past eight years: Sitting in my room away from everyone, hunting, eating, writing. I had accepted that no one was going to come along and break the curse, not after knowing the dark part of what I was. All the ones who remained with me in the house knew it, too. It’s why they were still here and not in Ashwood, turning into monsters.

What a fool Cale was, thinking he could try and feign love. It wasn’t possible. The curse would only break with the real thing. And it had to be equal, real, on both our parts. How ridiculous. Howcliche.Even worse, he had to see the other side of me. I wasn’t sure why the curse worked this way, but it did. Loving someone despite the monster they are, I suppose.

How incredibly frustrating.

I sighed and ran a hand down my face as I finished writing down a poem. It was the only thing that helped me escape this world of monsters and closed walls. I looked it over, knowing it wasn’t something one would find in a book, but the words made me feel a little better.

These walls once granted comfort

But now they only bestow distress

The suffocating air that chokes

The icy eyes that look my way

Why, how am I to bear it all much more?

I have caused such anguish

They deserve greater than this

I set the paper aside, took off my spectacles, and rose from my desk. Pulling my shirt off, I rolled my shoulders, loosening them up before I dropped on the ground and pushed off my hands over and over, until I could hardly stand the burn in my muscles. Then I lifted the cannon balls I’d found some years back. Working my body was something I always did before I went out on a hunt.

I haven’t talked to Cale since the other day in the kitchen, and now, he isn’t trying to talk to me at all.

Expelling a breath, I put the heavy ball down.

Why am I thinking about him? I don’t even know him. He’s just a pretty face and nothing more.

Even so, he was still new, and I’d been rude to him by refusing to talk to him again. I needed to at least be on good terms with him so he didn’t try to find a reason to kill me.

And he will kill you if you keep being a jackass.

‘You look hard at work,’came a new voice into my head.‘Are you trying to impress someone?’

I looked over at Dyna as she came in through the window and jumped down to my bed. “What do you know? You’re a cat,” I told her.

Dyna stared at me with green eyes, the sun shining down on her short, dark-striped coat.‘I know everything that goes on around here. That is why you keep me around.’

I pulled on my shirt and nodded. “Then what of our new arrival? Did you find anything out about him?”

‘I have been watching him closely from his window. He does not scheme like you think. He mostly sleeps, walks around talking to himself, looks at pictures in books, and paints rocks.’

I raised an eyebrow. “Paints rocks?”

‘Often. He is very strange.’She licked her paw and wiped her face with it.

“Why don’t you see if he’ll take up with you? Tell me what he’s talking about in there.”

‘You want me to spy on him?’

“Yes. Well, only on the things that stand out, such as any plots to kill me.”

‘You are a very paranoid person. No one here wants to kill you. I would know if they did.’

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