Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Beast’s face contorts as he watches us, his jaw clenched tight. And I wish, more than anything, I could cover his ears and eyes and stop him from hearing these words.
These words that rip through my soul.
“You’re a Frankenstein,” he growls.
And without a second thought, he grabs my arms by the elbow and rips off the gloves.
The small pieces of fabric protecting me from the harsh looks and judgment of the outside world.
The ones that kept people from looking at me like a freak. Like the monster I was born into.
Lex holds up my arms for all to see, the scars lining my skin, the deformed, crooked fingers … the missing ones.
Guards erupt into gasps and laughter, the same sounds I used to hear back in school.
Lex chucks the gloves on the floor right in front of Beast, the sound making me violently aware of how badly I wish I could hide myself from this world.
But there is no hiding from his perpetual gaze.
You’re nothing. You’re too ugly to look at. What are you doing here? You belong in a zoo.
All the things kids and adults said to me, floating through my head all at once.
But I can’t look away.
Not from him.
The one beastly looking man who didn’t see me that way because he didn’t know.
And now … he does.
CHAPTER 26
Beast
Nothing could’ve prepared me for the amount of hatred that would fill my body the moment he tore off her gloves.
Not because of what she looks like, but because of how everyone else in this room reacted.
How my owner has turned her, the one girl who belongs to me, into an object of ridicule.
“All that fucking money, gone up into smoke to fix this.” He flicks Aurora’s wrist around, showing everyone the three fingers she has, which are thick and clubbed. “And it didn’t even fucking work.”
His words are like a knife, cutting deep into her. I can see it from the way she looks at me, her eyes filling with more and more dread with every passing second.
And I wish I could take it all away.
He throws her arm down and clamps her chin between his fingers again and forces her to look at him. “You thought I didn’t know what your father was up to all those years? What he spent my money on?”
Tears stream down her face as she shakes her head.
“What a fucking waste,” he growls, and he directs her chin back toward me. “Look at her,” my owner shouts at me. “Look at what you chose to bring home instead of kill. This monster is the reason you’re still not free.”
The reason I’m not free.
A monster.
Two words bound by one another.
Bound by rules, by injustice.
Just like us.
Aurora’s eyes flicker with tears, but I refuse to look anywhere else, despite the fact that she’s trying so desperately to look anywhere but at me. My owner won’t let her.
“This is what you’ve been fucking around with,” my owner tells me. “Was it worth it?”
“Stop,” I say underneath my breath.
“What was that?” my owner barks, pointing at his ear. “I can’t hear you with that goddamn collar around your neck.”
He tilts his head and grabs one of her fingers and bends it until she screams. “Please!”
The mere thought of him hurting her pushes me over the edge.
Pushes me to rebel.
I take one step forward. But it’s enough to make my owner stop midway through almost breaking her finger. A vicious smile forms on his face.
“So I was right. You have feelings for this girl, don’t you?”
There’s cruelty in his voice, but his words fade into nothingness when I look into her eyes. Because all I see is the same pain I’ve felt for years, reflected right back at me.
Shame. Neglect. Fear.
The kind that brings visceral pain.
All of it hiding under a thin veneer of a pretty face and a beautiful smile.
A smile I would break the world for.
“You actually fucked her, didn’t you?” my owner asks with contempt.
When I nod, he begins to laugh.
“And you came inside that thing?”
Aurora’s eyes beg me to make him stop, but I can’t.
“Is it still dripping out of her?” he asks.
Some guards make obscene movements with their hips swaying back and forth, howling like actual wolves. I have no fucking clue what it means, but Aurora seems to get upset.
“Stop,” she growls.
My owner, along with all his guards, continue laughing.
“And you let him?” he asks her.
“It was too late to stop,” she murmurs with agony in her voice.
“Too late to stop, so now you might be pregnant,” he mutters.
My owner shakes his head. “Well, if you won’t get me his fucking money, maybe I can sell the fucking baby that spawns out of you in nine months.”
Aurora’s eyes widen in shock.
Does he mean … an actual baby?
Made because I spurted my seed inside her?