4. Chapter 4

Chapter four

W e didn’t speak again for the next few hours, and I finished the row of plants that needed to be repotted.

Garden. Check .

Do you not care for that bird of yours?

I straightened at hearing her voice. No, not here. Give me this moment, you old hag.

That is rather rude, Callie. Respect your elders.

“You don’t have a right to ask for such a request,” I answered aloud.

I heard rustling and remembered that Emilia was still in the greenhouse. She set aside her tools and quietly exited through the front door to give me privacy.

Once the door had closed, I addressed her again, “You are merely a figment of my imagination. You have no power over me.”

That doesn’t take away from the little fact that he has yet to return.

My eyes widened as I looked up at the sky and realized that she was right. Callum would have immediately sought me out if he had returned.

Oh, that’s right. You don’t care about him or anyone else for that matter.

“I don’t care. You saw to that yourself.”

I only gave you exactly what you deserved. I wonder what Callum deserves…

I calmed my racing mind. “The only apex predator in these woods is me. I am the one to fear. No one would dare enter these woods so close to the Reaping.”

I could hear her scoff behind my ear. And yet…two arrived last night. Who is to say that it won’t happen again?

“You’re wrong.” And even to my own ears, I could tell that I was lying. I didn’t know anything about the couple or where they came from. She was right, but I would never admit that to her. I sucked in a fast breath.

I could almost feel her shrugging as her voice faded. Maybe you’re right. Though you know what happened the last time you believed you were right. And then she was gone.

I tried for another moment to focus back on the task in front of me, but she had won. I couldn’t stay in there any longer as my beating heart wouldn’t cease its erratic rhythm.

Ever since that day, the sun could never fully penetrate the overcast sky, but I could tell that it was well on its way to its descent for the night. I tried to take a few calming breaths and center myself. And when that didn’t work, I cursed into the sky and stormed to the front of the castle. He should have returned by now, the pest.

Why wasn’t he back? Did something happen?

I shook my head at the absurdity of that thought. Of course, he was fine; he was more than capable of taking care of himself.

But…it wouldn’t hurt to go see. If I went to the gate, I would see the moment he returned and I could release some of this pent-up anger right there in the forest.

I strode through the rose garden and over the long, winding bridge that was now covered in vines and leaves that had fallen from the forest. It was dense, having overgrown throughout the centuries. Though for me, it was so familiar, I could walk it blindfolded.

I made my way through the forest until I reached the rundown gate that had one of the sides ripped off a hinge and rested on the ground. The other side of the gate had fallen to the ground long ago, vines growing around it all, threatening to consume it entirely.

I walked forward until I could feel the buzzing energy of the barrier, I lifted my hand toward it and tapped. The force of the magic zapped my finger, causing it to burn my skin. I rolled my eyes at the predictability of the curse. At the beginning, I’d run into this barrier about a hundred times, burning my body, screaming through the pain. I wasn’t going to stop until I found a weak spot.

There wasn’t one.

I dropped my hand and took a step back, stared out into the distance, and loathed Callum for a moment, for the ability to travel beyond the barrier. If I had to kill every single human in the world to be able to walk off of these grounds, I would without a second thought.

I heard a rustle not far from the gate, and I disappeared into the shadows of the woods. I breathed a sigh of relief. He was back, safe. I stalked the shadows, wishing to scare Callum, loving the squeal he made whenever I caught him off guard. I let out a breath, my muscles relaxing at the sound. I smirked, ready to see the look on his face when I emerged behind him, and see how high he would jump this time.

The rustling got closer, but the movements didn’t match Callum’s footsteps. No, Callum’s were loud, and he would have walked the main path straight up to the gate. These footsteps were soft, and I could barely hear them. They stalked like I stalked, as if they didn’t want to be seen or heard. A hunter?

Was he with the others that had come? Or sent to find them?

I stepped back further into the darkness, becoming one with my surroundings, and waited for the human to appear, to see if my assumptions were true.

No matter how much they wanted to avoid the path, they had to walk through the gate to come onto my land. I could hear their footsteps pause before finally taking the first step out of the thicket of trees.

I narrowed my eyes at the sight before me. The human turned out to be a man studying the path. There were multiple blades strapped around his body and another larger weapon tightly around his hip. He was too far away to make out his face, but that didn’t matter. The moment he stepped foot onto my land, I would attack. I would find out if he was an accomplice with the couple from last night.

He slowly made his way over to the gate, but before he stepped over the threshold, he stopped. I cocked my head, wondering what was going on in his mind.

Just one more step, human, then you’ll be mine.

His curly black hair covered his face while he stood, assessing his surroundings. He was alert, quiet.

Finally, he took a single step over that invisible line. I was about to attack, but before I could make a move, he threw a blade toward me. The blade lodged into my shoulder, and the pain from it fueled my rising anger. I yelped, startled by the action.

He was quick, quicker than any human I had encountered before. To catch me off guard was a testament to his skill, but I would make sure it didn’t happen again.

I ground my teeth together and pulled the blade out, gripping the handle so tightly that my knuckles had turned white. I wanted to rip him to shreds, but I refrained and slowly walked out of the thicket of trees and watched his eyes go wide. He stood staring at me, mouth agape, in utter disbelief that it was not an animal he attacked.

His eyes were a bright emerald green scattered with flecks of gold around the irises, so piercing that I would have been drawn into them if they weren’t attached to a leech of a male.

I stopped a few feet from him. “What did you wish to accomplish with that stunt?”

If he wasn’t confused before, he was now. I could see he was at a loss for words until his eyes looked over to the blood dripping down my arm. Unbeknownst to him, the wound healed the moment I pulled the blade out of my shoulder.

Instead of saying anything, he quickly threw his bag onto the ground and bent over it, searching for something. I prepared for another attack when he pulled out a few supplies that had me puzzled.

He barely paid me any mind as he started to walk toward me, barking orders, “Miss, please take a seat on that stump. I made an ointment that will heal your wound before it becomes infected. And—”

“Stop right there.” My voice rang out, cutting through his incessant rambling.

He stopped mid-step, supplies in his hand. His eyebrows knit together as he said, “I am not here to harm you. I apologize greatly for injuring you. I would never harm a woman.”

“Oh, how comforting,” I mocked.

“Honest,” he said. “I thought you were an animal.”I took a demanding step forward. “Stories your people tell children to scare them.”

“My people?” He gave me a guarded look. “Where are you from, miss?”

“Do you believe women are weaker than you? That they don’t have what it takes to fight? Is that why you would never harm a woman?”

Men were all the same. Useless. Never stopped to listen to what anyone with a cunt had to say.

“What? Of course not. I would never hurt anyone without just cause. Please, miss, we need to go to the castle that is just beyond these woods, it isn’t safe for us here.”

Interesting… I continued to entertain him, to see where he was going with this.

I widened my eyes as if his words scared me and asked in a hushed tone. “Not safe? And what are we not safe from?”

He scanned the area with that expert hunter's eyes, ready for someone or something else to jump out of the woods at any moment. “You know, there are rumors about this place.”

“Rumors?”

“Yes, they say that there’s a beast that prowls the woods, taking men who dare come unto these lands.” He looked back toward me. “There’s an infamous story about the first surviving hunter who spoke of a beast in these woods. In my village, they tell the story every year.”

“During the Reaping.”

He looked at me, confused. “You know about the Reaping?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “I know about the hysteria of the beast, and your town thinking sacrificing innocent children to the woods will satisfy the monster’s hunger.”

He cringed with distaste. “It’s worked so far, has it not?”

Strangely enough, he had a point. Long ago, when I’d torn apart that hunting party, I’d only done it because they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was one of the days that I was using my magic against the barrier, and they attacked me. I ended up killing them all except for one.

I planted a fake memory in his mind and sent him home to hopefully keep others away, but it had the opposite effect. Others came to hunt down the monster that had mauled their friends, and I killed them as well. Resentment festered inside of me until one day, the men stopped coming and instead, there were children. They had deemed me la bête de la forêt —a god.

Never, in my wildest dreams, did I think they’d start feeding the forest with a child once a year to appease their new god. And in my silence, my lack of action, I’d given them all the reasons to continue their awful tradition.

I played demure. “You’re hunting a fairytale in the woods. In all my years here, I have never seen such a beast.”

“You are right. If there were such a mighty beast, then someone would have seen it by now, but here I am. If I find nothing, I’ll report back. If I find something, maybe I’ll end it all then…” he paused, leaving the words hanging. “Wait, all your years? Do you live out here?”

I turned my back to him and shrugged over my shoulder. “I needed a place to live, and it was empty.” Then I stopped because something he said struck me rather violently. I drifted back to Merrill, who’d uttered the same words. If there had been such a mighty beast, then someone would have seen it by now. Are my intruders connected? Was the hunter lying and looking for his friends?

He stepped closer, eyes narrowing. “Aren’t you afraid of the beast?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe I am the beast.”

This time he laughed, and it made my blood boil. Though he wouldn’t be laughing for much longer.

He lowered his defenses, continued for a few more moments, and then took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “Thank you for the laugh. I needed that. Now, if you would allow me, can we please go to the castle so that I may tend to your wound?”

He stepped toward me again, oblivious to my rising anger, and tried to grab me when I swatted his hand away. He took another step back.

“Miss, you must let me help you!” He growled in annoyance. Such a short temper.

“Tell me your purpose here, boy.”

“Boy?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“I am hunting,” he uttered strongly.

“There’s nothing to hunt,” I countered. “You’re intruding on my land, just like your friends did.”

“Your land? My friends?” His face pinched together in confusion.

I was done. I threw the blade and saw his eyes widen at his weapon barrelling through the air back at him. He barely jumped out of the way as I shot out my hand, grabbed a hold of his neck and threw him against the cold metal gate.

I bared my teeth and demanded, “Tell me why you’re here.”

I could feel my power rising to the anger flowing through me, the shadows flew around us, balking at how close we were to the barrier.

I tried to calm down my powers, not wanting to kill him yet, but the anger wouldn’t subside. His eyes bulged out of his head as he was barely able to get a breath from the way I was squeezing his throat. He stared at me, as if he couldn’t understand what he was seeing.

I released him slightly, threw him harder against the metal, and repeated, “Say it, hunter.”

He took a moment before croaking out, “Why can’t I move? What the hell is this…” He cursed when he saw the shadows, “Witch!”

I narrowed my eyes, and eased up on my magic, not letting him go, but allowing him enough space to speak. “I’m waiting.”

His eyebrows knitted together, clearly confused about his current predicament. His eyes traveled from my face to the blood on my shoulder.

He remained silent, so I continued, “You have three seconds to say something of value to me, or I start removing body parts.” I looked down at his trousers and then looked back at him, smirked and said, “I know which part I would start with.”

I could feel his throat bob under my hand. My eyes never left his, waiting for him to seal his fate just as his friends did before him.

“I was hunting in the forest when I came upon this path and followed it. I’m hunting the beast.”

“Liar.”

“What?” He questioned.

“I can feel your heartbeat, boy. It beat faster the moment that lie left your lips.” I took a step closer, staring down at him despite our significant height difference. “How about I take a little guess? You and your friends came into the forest looking for weaker humans to steal from. You found an innocent woman in a little shack and thought she would be an easy target. Your friend told me how much pleasure she took in taking her life. Somehow, you got separated, and you followed them here. I have bad news for you, I killed them for what they did.”

The question was… Were there more of them? I could take them on, but I wasn’t sure Emilia and Callum would make it. I couldn’t guarantee that I could hold in my anger and not kill them in the process. I needed to know how many more were coming.

“Friends? I don’t—”

“Don’t worry, I won’t kill you, yet. Tell me what I need to know, and I will make your death swift.” I grabbed his chin between my fingers.

“I didn’t come with any friends,” he ground out, “but you should kill me, because the second you let me go, there will be no stopping me from gutting you just like your ancestors.”

Just like they did to me, Callie. I gasped at how loud her voice was, and my hand loosened around his throat. He reminds me of someone… Your father, perhaps?

Tears began to fill my eyes. I squeezed his throat until his face almost turned blue and then finally let go of him. He fell to the ground, coughing hard, trying to catch his breath. And as he looked up at me, the expression on his face was no longer that of worry, but of rage.

Good. That was something we had in common.

I used my shadows to infiltrate his mind and bend his will to believe that he didn’t wish to move. Little sparks of gold floated around him, my eyes glowing a bright violet. Always did when I used my magic.

It was my turn to smirk. Smirking at his stunned expression, I walked closer, nose to nose, and said in a low voice. “As I have said before, I am not afraid of the beast. I am the beast.” I waved my hand in front of him. “ Somnum .” I blew powder that I kept in my pocket in case Emilia had one of her spells into his face.

His body immediately slumped to the ground as I had placed him under a sleeping spell. I walked over and stood directly above him. “You will answer my questions.”

I waved my hand over him. My shadows moved until it was directly underneath him. I bent down, touched his shoulder, and thought of the destination and my magic did the rest.

We were transported directly to the tower while my prisoner slept. Too bad he wasn’t going to be getting much sleep after today. I preferred the open environment of the tower because it was completely vulnerable to the elements as I had smashed out the windows long ago when converting the space.

The stone heightened the temperature of the weather. When it was winter everything in the room would be unbearably cold to the touch. In the summer, the stone could get so hot that your core body temperature would rise so high that you would die from heat exhaustion. Sometimes I would see what would kill them faster; the weather or starvation.

I chained him up to the wall with his wrists above him.

I stood back waiting for him to wake, but he was out cold. I didn’t think I had given him enough powder to be out for more than a few minutes. I scanned my eyes down his body. His hair was curly and wild, draped over his face. I walked closer to him and raised his chin up so that I could see his face better. His forehead had creases as if he was in a constant state of stress. He looked tired.

His body on the other hand looked like it had been sculpted by the gods themselves. I knelt down and ran a single finger over the grooves of his arm, which was hard to the touch, and he wasn’t even tense. This was someone who could inflict an immeasurable amount of damage under the right circumstances.

A hunter… Just as I thought.

My core clenched together, seeing this male tied up against the wall… It did things to me. I would have to do this to Callum later. My thirst had yet to be quenched. I blinked a few times, coming back to my senses, and realized that I had leaned into him, my face dangerously close to his. I pushed from the ground and let out a shaky breath.

I was just about to rouse him with cold water when the boy started to wake, clearly dazed and confused as he was slowly coming to.

“Hello, you.”

He snapped his face to me. He didn’t say anything, but pulled on the chains, testing their strength and when they wouldn’t budge, he yelled, “What is this? Let me go right now or so help me when I get out of he—”

“You will what? Kill me?” I threw my head back and laughed. “You are my prisoner and you will answer my questions.”

“I told you already! I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He was pulling harder at the restraints, attempting to break free, the sweat gliding down his body. If he wasn’t in league with them, I would already be licking that trail of sweat. He was that handsome.

“I have already told you I would free you of your earthly bonds and kill you once you tell me how many more people are in your band of miscreants.”

“I have traveled here for no such purpose!”

“We will see about that.”

I walked to the wall and spun the wheel that slowly pulled on his chains until he was standing and then hanging from the ceiling while I informed him, “I killed your friends quickly. Don’t think that you will get the same luxury.”

He blasted a string of curses at me. He had such a colorful mouth and a rather large vocabulary for someone who conspired with urchins.

“I will let you down if you tell me the truth, hunter.”

“I have tried to tell you the truth, but you refused to listen.”

Surprisingly, he did not plead for his life. I walked over and strapped weights to his feet to stretch him as far as I could. He took the punishment as his arms strained to try and hold himself as still as possible to not tire himself out so quickly.

After a few rounds of this, he smirked, but weakly. “Is that all you got?”

My anger soared through my veins, and I knew that if I stayed here any longer, I would end up killing him before I got the necessary information. He wasn’t broken enough to talk yet, but that would change very soon.

“I think a little alone time up here will do you some good.” I released the weights with a snap of my finger as I walked out and down the stairs to find Emilia outside the door. Without looking at her, I said, “That man is in league with the two from the other night. He doesn’t eat, and no one goes into that room until I say so.”

Before I turned from her, she raised a hand and I stopped, barely turning to look at her.

She signed, Callum has returned.

I walked into my chambers without calling for Callum because I needed a moment to think, and began to pace. I couldn’t sit still. If I didn’t find out fast, it could be too late, but if he wasn’t willing to talk, then a little isolation would do the trick. No one could last in the tower for long, especially being hung from the ceiling like that. I could use my magic and get into his mind, but it was too dangerous to do that while in my current state. I might kill him before he told me anything.

I needed to release my energy more than I ever had before. I snapped my fingers and a full glass of wine appeared. I drank it sloppily, some of it dripping down my chin. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, breathing hard, but it wasn’t enough. The rage was still boiling under my skin, I screamed and threw the glass across the room at the wall. The pieces shattered all over the ground. I needed more.

The sun had fully bid farewell as I yelled, the sound vibrating through the walls, “Callum! My chambers, now!” Even if I hadn’t yelled, I knew he would have heard me. He was never too far away.

It didn’t take him long until he entered. “Yes, your grace?”

My fingers were itching to punish him for how that boy continued to lie to me. Golden sparks flying everywhere. There was no holding back my powers tonight. If I didn’t hurry and fuck this anger out of me, then I ran a high risk of losing control.

I strode over to him and ripped his linen shirt to shreds, the material hanging from his wrists and the hem of his pants. I ran my fingers over his chest, scratching him all over. He hissed as each nail dug into him and then moaned as I licked up the trails of blood and then bit his nipple.

Flashes of the hunter chained to the wall came back to me, helpless and completely at my mercy.

“Get on the bed.”

He did as I commanded, and I chained him to the bed, both hands and legs. I wasn’t in the mood to have him touch me, and I didn’t want to give him a chance to get out of what I had in store for him. Though I knew he would never ask to stop, always craving my depravity.

Once I had him chained to the bedposts, I took a moment to look him over. He had filled out in the last ten years of being here, with lean muscles, shiny hair, skin healed from the horrors of his previous life, and eyes full of life. That look he gave me had me pooling between my legs, ready to ride him. I stood at the edge of the bed and started undoing my lacing. Slowly pulling on the string until it was loose enough to pull off. Shrugging my dress off, giving my breasts room to breathe.

Left in just my skirt, breasts bare, exposed to him. I turned to the side and slid my skirt over my hips, bending forward slightly, exposing myself to him, and I could hear him panting. I loved the way I affected him. I climbed up slowly onto the bed and over him, straddling his lower stomach.

I could feel his erect cock pressed against my ass. I leaned forward, dragging my nails over his chest, drawing a little bit of blood, and he hissed. I stood up, which surprised him. His body arched, yearning for more. I moved my feet so that they were between the headboard and his chained arms when I saw the look of recognition and lowered myself down on his face.

The moment that my core met his face, he started sucking and licking as if his life depended upon it.

A starved man.

I gripped the headboard and started rocking back and forth. We had a steady rhythm when his body started writhing, I knew that he was running low on air, but I couldn’t stop myself. I sat down lower on him, giving him my full weight, not allowing him to get away from me even if he wanted to.

I wanted to punish him. The desire was so strong.

He was in a frenzy, but still, he kept licking me and then stuck his tongue inside of me. Causing me to squeeze my legs around his head as I found my release. I screamed Callum’s name.

Once he had licked up all of my cum, I leaned a little forward giving him a chance to get some air into his lungs. He sucked in a huge breath, panting.

I thought he would be done when I felt him lift his head, running his tongue from my ass to my clit, and purred into me, “Again.”

My daring little bird.