One
Beast
I’m going to fuck her until she forgets her own name.
That’s the first thought I have when I catch her scent on the wind.
After decades of this curse… yeah, it’s been decades, maybe longer; time gets weird when you’re a monster…I’ve had plenty of opportunity to reflect on my choices. Plenty of time to regret being an arrogant bastard. Plenty of nights alone in this castle thinking about the enchantress I humiliated and the curse she slapped me with.
“You’ll remain a Beast until your true mate chooses you,” she’d said, her eyes glowing with magic and spite. “Not a prince, but amonster. If she can love what you’ve become, only then will you be free.”
Poetic. Painful as fuck. Exactly what I deserved.
I was Prince Pierre once. Powerful alpha, ruler of kingdoms, and a complete piece of shit. I used omegas during their heats and sent them away before dawn with gold and no promises. Imocked the ones who begged for bonds, who wanted knots, who believed in that true mate bullshit.
The enchantress came to my Winter Ball disguised as a desperate omega in heat. She threw herself at my feet, begged for help, and I laughed in her face. Had my guards drag her out while my court scoffed along with me.
Two days later, she came back.
Except this time, she wasn’t pretending to be weak. Her curse was the most powerful thing that ever happened to me.
My transformation was instant and excruciating. My bones breaking and reforming. Fur erupting all over my skin. Fangs and claws pushing out. My body became too big, wrong,other... My servants got caught in the spell too…trapped between forms, neither human nor object… stuck.
And the castle twisted in on itself. The neighboring forest grew thick and wild, keeping the world out, and us trapped. Time stopped meaning anything.
And I waited. Alone. Unmated. Slowly going insane with the need for something I’d spent my human life denying existed. A mate. My mate. The one omega whose scent would make my beast howl with recognition.
But after a while, I stopped believing she would come. Stopped hoping. And just… existed. I prowled my castle like the monster I’d become, tending roses that mocked me with their beauty, watching seasons that didn’t change pass by.
Until three nights ago, when an old man stumbled through my gates.
He was lost, freezing, pathetic. I let him stay, fed him, gave him shelter.
See? Not a complete monster.
In the morning, the ungrateful bastard tried to sneak out through my garden, and picked one of my roses.
My rage was instant. Everything here ismine. My castle, my roses, my cursed existence. And he justtookfrom me like he had the right to.
I had him by the throat in seconds.
“A life for a rose,” I snarled.
He babbled something about a daughter. About her asking for nothing but a simple flower. Pleading for mercy, for understanding, all that human bullshit.
I let him go. Mostly because killing him seemed like too much effort.
“Go home,” I told him. “But I’ll be collecting. A life for a rose. Those are my terms.”
I sent the rose with him…frosted, perfect, impossible to forget. A nice dramatic touch. Let it bloom in his home so he remembers a debt is due.
I expected him to come back. Maybe with gold, or offering himself.
I didn’t expectthis.
Standing in my garden tonight, I catch a scent on the wind that makes my entire body lock up.
Omega.
