Page 45 of Mate of a Monster

“A fated bond. Yes.”

“But I can still keep you?”

“Yes, but little mate, we still need the rest of him”

I go still. Memories of that stupid ball flash through my mind, Legend’s words echoing with painful clarity: “You’re nothing, you never were.”

A growl that is not my own vibrates through my chest cavity, rattling my bones. “Those were not his words,” The beast snarls in my mind. “They came from the bitch who has manipulated herself as his mate from the way of magic. Very, very, Argent magic. She will pay.”

I don’t answer, rolling my lips between my teeth and pressing my back to the wall. Anger and confusion war inside me and I’m ready to tear this fucking palace apart with my teeth. My claws rip from my skin and heat burns up my throat.

And then I feel it, the strange tickle at the base of my skull, and I narrow in on the beast in my mind.

“Mind Sedation. This is how you controlled the Island. How you calmed me.” I look around. Of course. How the hell else could the beast tame this place? “You’ve been using Legend’s principal power. This is why he couldn’t harness his magic. He’s split in two.”

“Three, Hellpet,” he corrects, “He hasn’t only lost the strongest part of himself; he’s lost half his soul.”

My heart beats wildly. “Me.”

“You.”

I swallow, my throat growing hotter with each passing second. “Well, that part he’ll just have to live without. I don’t want him. I only want you.”

“I am him.”

My eyes squeeze shut. “Beast,” I breathe, fingers wiggling at my sides. “What happens to you if you’re not returned to him?”

“That is the question, isn’t it. That is why, right now, it is all up to you to fix this.”

“How?”

“By taking what is rightfully yours and becoming what you were born to be. The island is weakening by the day, but you only grow stronger, more powerful. I can feel it even now.”

His words make sense, and yet they contradict everything I’ve ever thought to be true. All my life I was led to believe there is no magic on the island. A belief I never doubted when exile after exile were tossed here and brought not a flicker of magic with them.

But if there is no magic, then none of this would be possible. How could we die and come back to life?

How would we survive with virtually no food and not feel starvation?

How the hell would the Isle Kiss not only bloom here, but exist in the first fucking place?

We used to say it was a curse— and maybe there is one—but it takes magic to curse something at all.

I study the area as if taking in the island for the first time.

The shimmer in the air, the faint trace of sulfur.

I turn my hand over, staring down at the blue veins running through my fingers.

Beneath my skin, they start to roll, like restless snakes trapped in a glass cage, ready to strike the second they’re set free. Heat, swift and eager, crawls across my palm, and a thread lifts, spiraling upward in messy loops, like the last exhale of a flame that’s been smothered. Except this one doesn’t die into the air around me. It hovers, pulling together and just—waits.

A strange sensation slips down my spine and, suddenly, I know what it wants. One by one, I close my fingers to make a fist and capture the smoke, allowing it to slip back beneath my skin.

My head snaps up, eyes narrowing on the empty skies. “We need to go to the dragons.”

“Why is that your first thought?”

Why was that my first thought?