The Dark Beast's Love

Once inside, Riven was quick to manoeuvre the tray from the bedroom to the table in the living room, the same room I rushed through to get to the exit door that led me nowhere. By now the food was cold, but the growling in my stomach told me that I didn't really care as long as it was edible. As if he was some kind of gentleman, Riven pulled out on of the chairs on one side of the table only to round it and take the opposite one, and I was far too exhausted to continue my constant scepticism so I took a seat and gratefully accepted the plate of food that he pushed over to me. It was nothing too advanced, some roasted tomatoes, cold sliced meat and soft bread alongside with my cold tea and a glass of juice. "Don't eat too fast," Riven warned when he saw how I was about to inhale the food. "You'll regret it later."

I glared at him, but did as he said and allowed the silence to overtake us both until I swallowed everything down with the glass of juice.

"Okay," I said as I placed everything organised on the plate again. "You wanted to explain."

"More correctly, you wanted an explanation, I prefer not to actually," Riven responded and I raised my brow at him, causing him to sigh. "Some things you've already figured out."

I nodded slowly and found myself slowly leaning closer to the table in anticipation.

"I am the werewolf, or more it's a part of me," Riven explained. "Every full moon, he gets the strength to take over our shared body and do whatever it is he wants to."

"Like murdering innocent people," I pointed out. "Slaughtering them until their corpses become unrecognisable."

"Something like that," He admitted and his causality caused a flare in my anger.

"So where are we, exactly?" I asked, hand gesturing to the building around us and mind referring to the area within the walls. "Why are we here?"

"For me to explain that, I first have to explain how I became this half-creature," Riven responded.

"You weren't always like this?" I asked surprised and he shook his head.

Logically I knew this. The town hadn't always been haunted, it had started some years ago which I suspected was around the same time that Riven became the thing he was today. But I could not imagine what a person would have had to do in order to serve such a punishment from the gods that one would turn into a beast once a month.

"What did you do?"

When he heard my question, he only grinned as if he'd been waiting for this moment. "I made a deal with a witch."

My breath hitched in surprise.

People have always talked about the super natural, some believed in magic while others claimed that the only creatures over us were the gods themselves. I never really knew where I stood when it came to that discussion. The beast alone had been a counter-proof of the religious believer's sayings, but that did not mean that it had been magic. Hearing Riven mention a witch without as much as an afterthought made me wonder if magic's existence had another role in other parts of the kingdom. Since the monthly visits of the beast, fewer and fewer people left the town, the same way fewer and fewer foreigners came to visit. Traders were usually the only ones that dared to visit, knowing that the town was desperate and willing to pay a lot for products they couldn't produce themselves. But they never stayed until dark, instead, they always made sure to be out of our woods hours before the night even settled.

"A witch?" The doubt was obvious in my voice. "What kind of deal?"

"Try not to judge me too much," Riven said as if his major problem was the deal with a witch and not the fact that he was a murderous beast."I was a lot younger back then, and still naive. I had grown up believing that a girl from my town and I would be married, and grew cruel when she instead accepted my best friend as her fiancé." The way he told his background revealed that there was more coming. "There were rumours about a witch, just in the outskirts of our woods, and I became tired of watching them being happy, so I sought her out, hoping she could help me with my one wish."

Then he chuckled, the sound sad and forced. "And oh, if only I'd known. The witch cursed me for my wish, claiming that it was a punishment for my cruelty and selfishness, saying that she would bring out the true me so that I would have to face him every day."

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"What did you wish for?" I asked, sensing how he'd tried to avoid those details.

He looked down at his hands, shame washing over him. "I wished that she would fall out of love with my best friend so that I would have my love. And for my naive youth, cursed me with this." Now his hands were strained as he flexed his fingers, the frustration that must have been haunting him for years showing in his tense jaw and burning eyes.

"But what does it have to do with me?" I asked, realising that I was a missing piece in his explanation. "Why didn't you or he kill me like you did the rest." "Haven't you figured it out?" Riven scoffed. "You are my promised love," The cursed boy said. "My mate."

I could only stare at the boy in front of me, my head still working around the fact that he'd just revealed his curse some minutes ago.

"You are cursed," I managed to get out, my eyes finally daring to meet his. "The witch cursed you."

"She did," He agreed, his tone almost bored. "She cursed me for my wish, but she didn't deny it. You are my love in this lifetime, and you are the beast's love."

I was out of the chair even before I had realised the decision had been made, causing it to fall back in a loud slam.

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"No." I protested loudly with the blood rushing to my face. "I'm not your love because I love another. And I was supposed to marry him in three days when you just took me away without my consent."

Riven's expression turned into something wild, beast-like, similar to the expression the werewolf had worn inside my house the night it took me, which felt like ages ago, but was as soon as last night. The reminder of Nathan sent me down a spiral of guilt. We were supposed to meet today. The last pieces of the wedding were supposed to come together and then I'd just have to wait for two days before we finally belonged to each other. Did he know? Was he aware of the fact that I was missing? Or was he still hopefully waiting for me at the cottage in the hopes that I would show up as I'd promised?

"I have a fiancé," I choked out before collecting myself. "I have a fiancé and I'm not letting some curse that your selfishness caused change the fact that I am someone else's, the same way he's mine."

I swore I could hear a growl in the bottom of his throat towards my last words.

"Do you think I want this?" Riven asked, voice cold and low. "Do you think I wanted to become what I am today and live in this miserable place for years only to have the lover I was promised hate me? I know what I know, and now you know it as well. We're mates, and that is already foretold and sealed in stone."

"Don't call me your mate," I hissed. "I'm not yours."

"No," A feral grin spread over his lips. "You're not my mate. You're the beast's mate, the wolf', the murderer's. But you're my destined love, and that is the end of this story."

"I will never love you," I spat out, facing him with the same intensity that he gave me.

"Suit yourself, hold on to your bitterness," He laughed mockingly. "But you are stuck here, and you need me to survive."

"Need and want is not the same thing," I responded. "You might have forced me to this place. But you'll never be able to force me to love you. And that is my curse to you."