All Chapters of Bride of the Beasts: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

ANWEN'S POVTwenty years later.Monsters rule the world now.They don’t hide in shadows or lurk beneath beds. They sit in councils. They wear crowns. They walk our roads in broad daylight as if the world belongs to them.Because it does.They call themselves the Scions—magic wielders, shifters, and chimeras—descendants of the Radiants who once walked the earth, and of humans.I used to think they were just stories Mama told me when I was small. She said monsters roamed the woods—that they snatched little girls who wandered too far, that they carried women away to their lairs.“Stay inside, Anwen,” she would say, smoothing my hair back from my damp forehead. “The forest is not safe.”Papa would nod from the doorway and add that they had sharp teeth and furry hands.I thought it was all just a way to keep me inside.Because I was always sick as a child. And, truth be told, I’m not much better now. Even as an adult, the sickness lingers—breath that comes too short, bones that tire too qui

ANWEN'S POV“What do we have hiding in here?”His eyes pinned me as if he could peel back my skin and see the truth beneath. Then his hands closed around my shoulders—hard, immovable. Strong. The kind that could crush bone without trying.I kept my head down.I nearly yelped when his grip tightened, and he turned me to face the second monster. The sound clawed up my throat, but I swallowed it down so fast it burned.I couldn’t let them hear my voice.One wrong note, one slip, and they’d know I wasn’t a boy.Slowly, I lifted my head.My trembling only worsened.This one was even broader, his chest a wall of muscle beneath dark leather armor. Slightly shorter than the Lycan, yes—but still massive enough to make Arlo and me look like dwarves beside him. His shadow alone could have swallowed me whole.His arms were etched with dark markings that curled over muscle and vanished beneath his sleeves. His brown hair was pulled back at the crown, the rest falling just short of his shoulders. H

ANWEN'S POVI stirred as my body met something hard, cold, and rough beneath my back.Voices hovered nearby, low and tense, like men arguing through clenched teeth. Their words blurred together, but the tone alone told me I was the subject of their dispute. The murmurs cut off the moment I whimpered. Sharp, searing pain lanced through my side when I tried to shift, forcing me to go still.For a heartbeat, I lay still, letting the pain ebb just enough to breathe. Then I forced my eyes open.The world above me was a blur of shifting shadows and torchlight. As my vision steadied, the shapes sharpened into towering walls of dark stone, carved with spirals and jagged lines that seemed to writhe in the flickering glow.The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and old blood. Narrow corridors branched in every direction, twisting away into darkness.A maze.My stomach dropped as recognition set in.The Minotaur’s labyrinth. The infamous maze encircling the fortress of the Triarch Kings

FENRIC'S POVShe weighed almost nothing in my arms.Humans were always small to us—fragile things of bone and breath—but Anwen was the smallest I had ever carried. A slight, breakable thing, gone limp now. She no longer fought me, no longer clawed at my grip.Her head rested against my shoulder, golden hair brushing my jaw as I carried her into the cavernous mouth of Blackreach.The fortress swallowed us whole, its stone corridors stretching ahead in twisting, branching veins as cold air breathed against my skin.For a moment, I allowed myself to look down at her—just a glance. Her eyes were open, but not on me. They were fixed somewhere past my shoulder, as if she had retreated to a place far from here.Then I saw a flicker. It was so subtle it would have been easy to miss if I hadn’t been watching closely.Her gaze shifted at each turn, her lips moving faintly under her breath. A quiet laugh curled in my chest. Clever little thing.Even now, afraid and shaken, she was mapping the p

ANWEN'S POVI woke up shivering again.My skin burned, yet I was drenched in sweat. Damp hair clung to my temples; my nightgown stuck to my back.None of it surprised me.The fevers always came like this. Sudden and consuming, wringing me out until I felt hollow. They had followed me for as long as I could remember. If I pushed myself too hard, stayed out too long, forgot to rest, or if the weather simply turned against me... the fever always found me.But Arlo always found me too.So when something warm and wet pressed against my forehead, relief washed through me. My muscles loosened. My breath eased.“Arlo…” My voice came out small, rough with sleep and fever.No answer.I blinked my eyes open, but the world remained black. That wasn’t strange. Our small, aging cottage was always dark at night—Arlo insisted on it. No lanterns, no embers, nothing that might draw the monsters prowling the forest above us.A hand slid beneath my head, lifting it gently. Then a low voice—rougher than i