365 Days to Bond With the Cursed Beast King

I woke up on silk sheets that had no business being part of my life.

For one desperate second, I tried to convince myself it had all been a fever dream; the sudden drop, the sprawling throne room, the monstrous expanse of dark wings. 

Then I opened my eyes to a ceiling carved with soaring dragons, where gold leaf caught the flicker of candlelight floating without a wick, and my stomach plummeted straight through the mattress.

"You're awake."

I bolted upward, the motion sending the room spinning off its axis. 

A woman stood near the door, hands neatly folded over a simple dress. Her dark eyes were guarded with a quiet, routine stillness; the kind born from a lifetime of learning how to be invisible on purpose.

"Where am I?" My voice sounded shredded. "Where's the man I landed on? Where's the..." I slammed my mouth shut before the word dragon could spill out, as if speaking it aloud would forge it into reality.

"His Majesty is resting," she said, approaching with the cautious slowness you'd use on a wounded, unpredictable animal. "You gave the court quite a shock, landing the way you did."

"I gave them a shock?" A short, humorless laugh cracked in my throat. "I fell through a tear in my uncle's ceiling and woke up in a gothic nightmare. Someone owes me an explanation."

"My name is Mirelle." She poured water from a silver pitcher shaped like a coiling serpent, extending the goblet toward me. I left it untouched. "You are in the royal sanctuary. You are safe here."

"Safe?" I scoffed. "The last thing I remember is that man's back tearing itself open."

A shadow crossed Mirelle's face; something between pity and grief. "That was King Vyrn. He rules the Beast Realm. And... I am sorry to deliver it so plainly, but he is cursed. He has been for ten years."

The word hung heavy in the quiet room, thick as smoke. "Cursed how?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but the doors crashed open before she could draw breath.

Vyrn filled the doorway like he'd been carved directly from the stone frame. 

He was human again; devastatingly, and terrifyingly so, dark hair damp against his temples and a linen shirt left half-buttoned over a chest I now had a humiliatingly personal knowledge of. 

His eyes had settled back into a dark brown, yet embers of gold still banked low in their depths, smoldering.

"Leave us," he commanded. 

Mirelle vanished before I could even blink.

"You don't get to do that," I snapped, using anger to mask the sudden, erratic hitch in my pulse; a reaction that had maddeningly little to do with fear. "I want answers. Who are you, why am I here, and why is everyone treating me like a time bomb?"

"Because you might be." He stated it flatly, stripped of any pretense or apology. "You shouldn't have survived landing on me. No one survives contact with the curse mid-flare."

"Well, I did. Congratulations to us both."

I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress to prove I was fine, but my body betrayed me. 

My knees turned mushy, and as I stood, the room tilted. I lunged, barely catching the carved bedpost to keep upright.

Vyrn crossed the space between us before I could fall. 

He didn't touch me, but his hand hovered a breath from my elbow, close enough that a wave of heat rolled off his skin; the same l warmth from the throne room.

"Don't," he muttered, the word strained.

"Don't what? I didn't ask you to catch me."

"That's not..." He cut himself off, his jaw clamping shut as if battling his own tongue. "The council wants you purged. Half the guards want you executed, for what it's worth, so consider me your best option in this palace."

"How reassuring."

"It isn't meant to be." He looked directly at me, the embers in his eyes flaring into brilliant gold. "I don't know what you are to this bond. I don't know why it woke up when you fell into my lap. All I know is that every guard who comes near you makes something in my chest want to put them through a wall, and I detest not understanding my own instincts."

"Then don't let them near me," I challenged, taking an impulsive step toward him, too furious to care about proximity.

The air between us instantly snapped tight as a drawn bowstring.

Heat flared beneath my skin, sending a sudden, intoxicating pull low in my stomach. It defied logic, binding us across the mere inches I had just recklessly erased. 

Vyrn gasped, a ragged sound, as though the sudden closeness struck him like a physical blow.

"Stop," he rasped, though he didn't retreat an inch.

"I'm not doing anything..."

"I know," his voice dropped into a harsh tone. "That's the problem."

Neither of us moved. 

The pull tightened, hooking beneath my ribs like an invisible wire, and for one breathless second, I understood why an entire court had gone pale at the sound of a single word from him.

Then the gold in his eyes flared without warning. 

Jagged lines of molten light split down his arms, and his skin bubbled as dark scales pushed outward from beneath his flesh.

I froze, stomach seizing, convinced the monster was coming back; that I was about to watch him turn into the thing that had emptied the throne room in seconds.

Except he didn't attack.

He didn't even rise. 

Vyrn dropped to his knees right in front of me, his body tearing itself apart in transformation, yet his glowing gold eyes remained locked on mine; anchored to me like I was the only fixed point left in a realm coming apart at the seams.