Rite of the beast, p.1
Rite of the Beast, page 1
part #1 of Gothic Monsters Series
Rite of the Beast
Gothic Monsters : Book One
Amber Foy
Creature Features
Rite of the Beast
Gothic Monsters : Book One
by
Amber Foy
© 2019 Amber Foy
All Rights Reserved
This book is for adults only and will contain:
Unprotected sex, a wolf-like beast, monster cock, shifter/monster cunnilingus, mating bond and a virgin heroine
Contents
Gothic Monsters
The Beast beyond the Gate
About the Author
Also by Amber Foy
Captured by the Hell-Dog
The Orc’s Willing Prize
The Stable Girl
Gothic Monsters
The following story plays with the taboo of sentient monsters and the joy they share in having sex with their women.
If it’s not your kink, turn back now.
However, if you’re curious…
It’s time to find the Beast beyond the Gate
The Beast beyond the Gate
I pressed my palm to my mouth and dug my fingers into my jaw.
Silent. Quiet. Still.
I had to be all of those things.
The thick stink of cloves rose up from the stairwell and my covered nose itched. It was how I always knew where they were.
I pinned myself to the cold stone curve of the wall and my heart thudded. The shadows would hide me. They had to. This was my one chance to escape. My last chance.
The shadows in the archway thinned and flickered and the tramp of solid leather soles on the curve of the steps chased after the alerting stink. Deep voices drifted upwards. My father’s stewards. Men of hewn muscle, as solid as the bedrock on which the castle sat. And my wardens in this hated fortress.
“She won’t get out.”
Sour male laughter curdled my belly. Captain Ross. The friendlier of the two men, in a way. He had no interest in me. Captain Burke? That bastard made my skin itch.
“And even if she did escape her tower and the beaks of her watching women, would the Beast ever be so desperate?”
I closed my eyes to deny the burn of familiar tears. They’d never been shy of telling me how little they thought of me as a woman and as one of the Blood of the House of Draevan. They’d been assigned as my castle guardians at the sign of my first blood. For me, there’d been no say. No choice. They’d simply…appeared as hulking shadows in my school room.
“She’s a virgin. The Beast doesn’t look beyond owning a pristine cunt.”
Ross snorted. “Taking her side? As if you don’t agree with me, Burke.”
Their boots grew silent. They’d stopped on the stairs. Damn them to the pits! This was my last stairwell, the one that connected to the stables and the best and darkest path to the Forest Gate. And time ran thin. I glanced to the narrow slit of a grilled window, open to the freezing night. Moonless with the flicker of stars shifting behind dark clouds. I had to move through the forest at the witching hour…or I couldn’t follow the path to his open altar.
To the bare earth where the Beast took his willing virgins.
Ross’ voice rose from the shadows, echoing over the cold stone. “The one’s with even a little beauty, stagger back from the forest…glowing. The trolls, do not.”
Burke abandoned any consideration for me. As he always did. Any support was only offered to needle his fellow warden. “And there’s something in her mother’s blood. Something tainted. You can see it. Almost smell it.”
I ached for the full dark power they always foisted on my poor, long dead mother. Would happily take it all into my flesh and lash it at the utter bastards who pilloried her and me.
“True enough. Gods, she was a strange one.” Ross huffed another sour laugh. “A brave man, His Grace, to stick his dick in that.”
“I wonder if Lord Hall will see to his new wife…”
“Fuck’s sake, Burke! You’re…you’re wrong in the head.”
Dark laughter, low and skin-pricking wove through the silence. “What can I say? I’m…curious. And Hall is old enough for his dick to be little more than withered skin. Someone has to break her in.”
My belly cramped, the wild surge of old anger churned and I fought the real need to surge down to them and lash hard words. Not that they did any good. The odious men always laughed and copied my voice in rolling squeaks and gibberish. But I’d have the last laugh, when I was found to be gone. When I came back from the forest, glowing or not, with the Beast’s marks on me and his seed staining my thighs.
I’d be decidedly…unfit for a marriage-bond. And especially for the one which my father was so eager to see worked upon my flesh with the next dawn.
The Beast was a last resort. One I’d happily grab, as forbidden…and unnatural as it was.
The heavy stomp of boots echoed again, and I shrank back, pressing into the shadows. My breath was hot and damp against my palm and only the thinnest wisps escaped into the chilled air. I could not be seen. They would not see me.
“Of course, his Lordship is all bent and twisted over that bloody Prophecy.”
Prophecy? My heart lurched. What prophecy?
Burke hissed and there was the hard smack of leather against leather. Ross swore and the echo of their heavy boots stopped again. “The fuck, man? I’m not your horse to curb.”
“The fuck man, yourself!” Burke’s panicked and pressured voice cut through the silent shadows. “We’re under oath—oath—never to speak of it.”
Ross muttered, and he took three steps. “Almost done with, anyway, isn’t it? To see the next dawn. And forgive me, oh, Oath-Master, but that’s only hours from now. Then we can declare it from the battlements. And, therefore, it’s fine to mutter it on a bloody stairwell the night before.”
“And if she heard?”
“She is tucked up in her bed. Warded. Rocking and sobbing out her little ugly heart.”
My chest bloomed. Not from the old insult, but from the knowledge that Ross at least had damned himself. I had heard. And he was oath-bound. The breaking of his oath would fire into his flesh three-fold.
But…a prophecy? A prophecy that somehow twined around my flesh and ended with the first morning light?
Was this why Father was pushing for the hated marriage-bind to the equally hated and foul Lord Hall? What would happen if I was…free with the rising of the sun? My blood surged, and I wanted nothing more than to escape the castle, to break any chance that the bond would sink into my soul. Would hold me.
Yes, I’d welcome the Beast, his slavering tongue and monstrous cock. A forbidden pulse jumped low in my belly, a twist, a squeeze that said I wasn’t breaking free of the castle just to escape my bond…
I pushed down those thoughts. Wicked and licentious. I could not welcome the dark touch of an…an animal. It was wrong. This was all necessity. Just that. Nothing…more. And with the revelation of a hidden prophecy, all the more urgent.
Ross and Burke’s muttered voices—a back and forth about the nature of their oath—grew louder. The cloying stink of cloves fogged the passage and the golden glow of a lamp pushed back the final shadows of the too-narrow archway.
Close. So close. I stopped breathing. Closed my eyes. Light caught them—sometimes, rarely—and sometimes, sometimes a glow of silver burned there. My mother’s heritage. Always said with a sneer by those foul men. A growl of disgust that something…other lurked in my royal blood.
Gods, I had to look, and I narrowed my eyes till only a sliver of light pushed in.
“It’ll fall off. I swear. That was a part of it.” Burke was shaking his head as he lurched out of the archway, his attention fixed on his companion. Not me. He hadn’t seen me. He hadn’t.
Ross’ face was scrunched and red. “No, no. I don’t remember that. I wouldn’t agree to being dickless to protect the fucking creature!”
A joyous heat surged in my chest and the sharpest grin, hard and tight, cut my mouth. Revenge. Would the breaking of the oath also pull Burke in? I could hope. That would be…utterly delicious.
Ross’ panicked defence that he had not broken his oath drew closer. Sweat beaded his ruddy forehead. Thick fingers snatched at his cropped hair and the fearful light in his pale eyes was a blissful warmth around my heart. Good. Good.
“You need a drink.” Burke slapped the other man on the shoulder and he was distracted enough to stumble. Burke snorted. “Several strong ales, I think.” He smirked. “And a willing maid, if this is the last night you have the use of your measly dick.”
“Fuck you,” Ross growled.
“Not a chance, my friend. Not a chance.”
And…and they were past me—finally—a shrinking ball of golden light in the narrow passage. Voices and heavy boots faded…and I sagged against the cold stone. Breathing. Just breathing as the relief flooded my flesh. I was still free. I still had a chance to escape.
Silence pushed around me, only the solid and quick thrum of my heart there to break it. With a final glance at the heavy shadows of the passage—and seeing no one—I picked up the thin silk of my skirts and darted down the twisting steps.
The heavy door to the stables was bolted and metal grated against metal as I slid back the bolt. Hinges whined, wood creaking and the metal plate ground against the worn, cobbled floor. So much noise carried on the night air as my pulse drummed and I tried not to breathe. To make a sound. To have the warm, white wisps of my breath give me away.
Out. Out i
Torches guttered and snapped in the night winds, light dancing across the silent and empty courtyard. The black bulk of the castle loomed over me, my own spindled tower wrapped in stone, surrounded and contained. A single prick of golden light shone out from a narrow, iron-grilled window. The only sign that it was inhabited—
The thunder of a metal klaxon slammed into my flesh.
“The Princess is not abed!”
My father’s roar echoed and bounced over dark stone.
A nosy lady-in-waiting had looked in on me. Bet it was Rosina…
Fuck.
Wrapping my skirts in and around my fist I bolted for the little used Forest Gate. It would be the first place they looked for me. Every reluctant bride, if she still had her virtue, hunted out the Beast…but to go into the Forest without the protection of being untouched? Even then, there were rumours, legends of…a dark and unforgiving god lurking in the gnarled and ancient trees. He was all too ready to taste foolish flesh. And there was no escape from him.
The clatter of metal shod boots on cobbles and the rasp and clank of armour drummed my heart. My lungs screamed, my breath coming out in white-aired pants. The gate was there, solid and black against the deep blue of the sky. Just a bit further. The gate was warded. Only…only a virgin could open—
“There. There she is!”
An arrow clattered to the cobblestones no more than a foot to my right. I shrieked and darted left and right, desperate to put off their aim.
No countermand followed. No screaming at the soldier to point away, no scramble to contain him…
The shock of it chased fire through my flesh.
My father…my father would rather see me dead than…than escape the bind. Than run from whatever hidden prophecy worked over him. And me.
An arrow thunked into the thick panel of the gate a yard ahead of me.
“The next one won’t miss, girl.”
Was that Ross? I snorted. “I know. I know about the Prophecy. and you? Oh, you’ll be missing something later, Captain. Trust me.”
And I lurched for the wrought iron handle as the man spluttered, but it was the moment I needed, the half a heartbeat to snatch at the iron—
Magic surged over my skin in a blinding flash. Fire and a rain of silver sparks danced across my flesh, splashing molten against the stone…but there was no pained blisters or smoking holes in the silk of my gown. A wild wind whipped the air, sharp and quick, snagging my feet out from under me and dragging me forward.
The great wooden gates threw themselves back and around me a burst of fire and ash; the once-sharp cut of arrows whistling through the air. My thoughts churned as fierce as the gripping winds. What would I set in play that so terrified Father?
The boom of the gates banging shut filled the night and just as quickly as the wind had risen, it died. And I dropped like an ungraceful stone to the thankfully soft—if cold—earth.
I rolled over onto my back, blew out bad air and dug the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. It was a welcomed pressure of pain. Insanity. It was all complete and utter madness. Shouts and thumps and the grey curls of smoke rose from the other side of the solid black of the high stone wall and its huge gates.
They would not get through. They couldn’t.
I was safe…
A howl ripped through the night air, low and wild and it rippled through my flesh. I bit my lip, craned my head to the side and the dark bulk of the forest loomed over me. Something…shifted in the spiked blackness, trails of silver eldritch light, there and gone again. Air teased over me, warm, warm and rich, as if someone, or something breathed against my breast…
No, I was not safe. Not safe at all.
The order to find a virgin rang out and jerked me to my feet. They’d happily sacrifice some poor girl to open the Forest Gate and get to me. Bastards.
I pressed my dirt-smeared fist to my chest and stared into the blackness of the forest. No, not completely black. Those wisps of silver, threaded lines of pale light over sharp branches and gnarled roots. And there was…structure there. Magic had dragged me through the Forest Gate and now I had to believe it was leading to where I had to go.
Where I wanted to go.
I pushed down that illicit thought. It wasn’t right…but I’d always, always leant in closer when the ladies-in-waiting whispered of the Beast beyond the Gate. The creature with a stone-heart, untouched. Untouchable. And the ached-for hints of his…licentious nature. Those quick whispers were of a black haired and monstrous hound, muscled and wild, who would mount a maiden and take her for both their pleasures…
And in the nights that followed, my dreams would be filled with the hot brush of thick fur against my naked back, heated breath panting against my neck, as the great Beast curled around me, all muscle and sinew, heavy paws under my heaving breasts. And my cunt, at the opening of my untouched flesh, his cock, hot and wet with his leaking seed, would breach me in a single, fierce thrust.
That shocking need, the ache in my flesh for it to be true lurched me out of my bed with a half-strangled cry most mornings.
I drew in a shaking breath, pulling in the scents of the forest. Of loam and damp leaves, wood and something…something like leather, heat, skin…
I shook my head. Was this the start of the forest’s working on my mind? Twisting it. The lascivious forest god denying me the chance to break my bond. To keep me for himself. I knew—as everyone did—that only the way to leave the forest was to fuck the Beast. And not just anyone could take my virginity. If that had been the case, I would’ve thrown myself at the hideous Captain Burke.
An echoing thud behind me said they’d dragged over the battering ram to try to break through the warded Gate. But more urgently, they would soon find a virgin to pry their way into the forest. My only choice was to step into the wood.
“Onwards.”
I willed myself forward, to pick over the fall of leaves and black knots of ancient tree roots. The air was strangely warm and the silence…heavy.
Expectant.
A curl of air teased over my spine, slipping down as if the silk of my gown had vanished to play against my bare flesh. That… I pressed my knuckles to my mouth, teeth grazing the damp skin. No one…no one had touched me, not like that. Dear gods, I was hardly touched at all, my heritage always there—whatever it was—to put people off. As if I were a stain, a taint they would draw into themselves. But this…
It was as if someone—I had to think someone—drew the slightest of breath-hot kisses against the curve of my hip. And it was distracting. Lovely. I stopped and closed my eyes, leaning against the cold trunk of a rough-barked tree. Lovely and…wanted.
“Your skin. To move through the forest, you must give me your skin.”
My eyes shot open, and I stared into the gloom. Only the brief flickers of magical light wove over the leaf-thick floor. Nothing else. No sign that the voice had come from anyone.
Was…was this the forest god intent to keep me from my goal?
“Untouched flesh…”
It was a hot and searing whisper against the shell of my ear and I let out a startled squawk. The low rumble of male laughter wove around me.
“Shed your silks, Your Highness.” Air moved around me, teasing over my nipples, the kiss of a hot mouth riding my pulse, making it thud. “If you are to find the Beast, then you must find him naked. Bare to the earth and sky.”
“I…”
A ripple of wind tugged on the hem of my gown, dragging it up to expose my thighs. The bodiless voice grew deep. And dark. “Or we can rip them from you…if you’d prefer?”
The splinter of wood and the groan of metal hinges slashed through me. Orders, orders to spread out and search for ‘that fucking bitch’ cut through the still night.
