Page 3 of Hated By the Gargoyle

As ugly as me.

No.

We were not suitable. Not at all.

It was why I set my eyes on Carlota in the first place. I needed a wife that was unlike me. Someone who was all smooth curves and panes to contrast my harsher scars.

And I had fucked it up and taken the wrong bride.

Hatred brimmed and boiled in my chest, making my body glow an angry shade of red. I hated this human, just like I hated myself.

Why did she have to get in the way of my carefully constructed plans? Why did she have to push my wife away from my arms and fall into my hold instead?

An ugly human and an ugly gargoyle did not make a match.

This was not supposed to happen.

I flew down onto the earth, landing in a deserted area surrounded by an outcropping of giant rock.

I loathed to have the woman in my arms any longer than necessary. With heavy footsteps, I stormed towards a flat rock and lay her prone body atop it, glaring down at her as if she could feel the force of it.

She slept heavily, having fainted in her shock or fear or both.

I scoffed at the pathetic little sight she made. The red garment she wore that covered the upper half of her body was askew, the buttons ripped, the material rumpled. Blue material hugged her lower half, molding against her frame. She wore boots and around her neck was that black, human contraption that was permanently tethered to her fingers.

Using the end of my tail, it snaked around, nudging her body with the tip. She moved, but did not awaken. I gave her another shake, more violent than the last, but she scarcely breathed or showed signs of waking soon.

I tugged at my broken horn in frustration. The jagged end scraped across my palm, and I ached where the tip once was. Sometimes, I could still feel it, even when I knew it was no longer there. Touching the proof of what I had lost grounded me to the reality of my world, my life.

Roaring at the sky felt appropriate, but I bit my tongue, tasting blood in the back of my throat. Wailing would do me no good.

I had stolen away the wrong wife.

After weeks of careful stalking and planning, I had vowed I would ignore my brother Nazzar’s advice. He thought he was giving Xavir and I a gift in his warnings about not stealing humans. That the women were delicate creatures with the desire to be courted slowly in the human traditions.

An idiotic notion.

We were not human, so why should we stoop to their customs when we had our own?

Besides, he had his bride already. He had stolen her and she accepted his mating. I would find mine, regardless of what he advised. He was selfish, foolish. I would follow in our traditions and take the one I wanted.

But I had taken the wrong one.

The echo of that thought could not be expelled from my head.

I stared at her, wondering with dawning horror if that meant she was my wife now?

No.

I shook my head side to side and swiped a hand down my scarred face.

I refused to let that be my reality.

All my life, I had yearned for companionship. I thirsted for violence and blood and sought to fight and destroy. I had lost parts of my body and deformed the rest.

I deserved the bride I wanted.

And so I would go back and retrieve her.