The beast had appeared and the emptiness vanished. The beast disappeared and the feeling returned.
Bria’s pulse quickened painfully.
Her thoughts flew wildly back through everything she had seen since meeting Kaelan. The strange connection between them. The fierce possessiveness she felt inside him. The way he always spoke carefully whenever the beast was mentioned. His unexplained injuries vanishing completely. And now this.
Fear and disbelief twisted violently together inside her. It could not mean what she suddenly feared it meant.
A man could not become a beast. Could he? The thought horrified her. Yet somewhere deeper inside, beneath the fear and confusion, another truth settled heavily upon her.
If the beast truly was Kaelan… then even in her terror, some part of her had still recognized him. That realization unsettled her more deeply than anything else.
Slowly she walked toward the stream and crouched beside it, lowering her aching wrists into the cool rushing water. The vines had left angry red marks across her skin, but she barely noticed the sting.
Her thoughts remained trapped elsewhere: on Kaelan, on the beast, and on the impossible truth beginning to take shape inside her.
How could she fear him and yet still feel safer with him near than apart from him? Nothing made sense anymore.
Bria closed her eyes briefly while the cool water rushed over her wrists. Then a shadow fell across the stream. She did not startle, nor feared who stood behind her. The emptiness consuming her had vanished once more, which could mean only one thing.
Bria slowly lifted her gaze.
Kaelan stood above her, not a bruise marked his face, not a trace of blood remained upon him. Even the swelling around his eye had completely vanished.
The savage beating she had watched not that long ago looked as though it had never happened at all. Yet strangely… seeing him whole again did not frighten her nearly as much as it should have.
Kaelan said nothing. He simply lowered himself beside her near the stream and gently reached for one of her wrists. His fingers remained careful around the angry marks left by the vines as he scooped cool water into his palm and slowly let it flow across her skin.
The tenderness of the gesture tightened painfully inside her chest.
He tended her other wrist the same way, his touch gentle and filled with quiet concern while silence stretched between them.
Bria watched him carefully. He had risked his secret that could prove dangerous if discovered outside of Driochmor. He had risked his heart, declaring his fierce love for her even though she might reject him and leave him to never truly love. He risked everything for her without hesitation.
She may have risked chasing after him into Driochmor, but she had yet to risk her feelings.
All her life she had focused on the hurts and needs of others. She comforted pain, soothed grief, and offered strength wherever she could, rarely pausing long enough to examine the quiet emptiness living inside herself.
But Kaelan changed that. He made her feel too much and too deeply.
Sitting beside him now while he carefully bathed her wounded wrists as though her pain mattered above all else, Bria finally allowed herself to admit the truth she had been avoiding had tried not to feel… she loved him.
But if what she thought, felt were true… how could she love a beast?
“Bria,” he said pulling her out of her thoughts. “There is something you need to know about me.”
Chapter Nineteen
A Lone Cottage
Where Hearts Find Shelter
Asudden crack of branches somewhere beyond the trees shattered the quiet moment beside the stream.
Kaelan’s head lifted instantly, every muscle in his body tightening.
The peaceful moment beside the water vanished at once beneath sharp caution. He had lingered too long already, distracted by Bria, by what she might now suspect, and by the dangerous relief that nearly overwhelmed him when she had not recoiled from him after the beast vanished.
But she suspected something. He had seen it in her eyes when he returned to the stream. Questions lingered there now alongside emotions she no longer tried entirely to hide from him. And that frightened him far more than the fight had.
