In the castle of the beasts the wind screams loud and the dungeon doors slam shut.
A dark haired woman sits alone in the middle of a large room; she is within a magic circle, runes and symbols glowing bright. This woman is his salvation, though she does not yet know it. The woman raises her bright green eyes, so like her mother's, to the book before her and reads aloud an incantation:
Beast trapped within the other plane
Come back to the chateau once again
Find here your mate
And seal your fate
She repeats the spell five times as she lights each candle around the pentagram within the circle, leaving the spirit last.
Find here your mate
And seal your fate
She repeats the last two lines of the spell once again before lowering her blood red lips to each candle and blowing them out.
When nothing happens at first she becomes discouraged. She had done everything that the book said, had read the tarot cards and the runes and had timed the spell accurately. Distraught she realised that perhaps she didn't have any magik in her after all.
Just when she is about to leave the spirit candle flickers to life again, glowing a bright blue and the mark upon her right breast begins to burn and itch. It begins to hurt. The dark woman covers her breast with her hand and awaits the oncoming male. She wonders if she could really be a beast's mate. After all things like that was the stuff of Grimm fairytales. They didn't really exist did they? So why was she getting all the symptoms of the fateful meeting between mates?
In the scant spaces between her and the door a growl sounds and she jumps. Yes she considers herself strong but when faced with the unknown it did frighten her.
'Hello who is there?' She asks, getting up from the floor and carrying the spirit candle, the only light in the now otherwise dark room.
'Don't come near me!' the shadows bark out a stiff order and the dark woman snorts derisively.
'I'm sorry but I'm afraid I don't take orders,' she informs him, edging closer to his location deep in the darkest shadow, but she cared not she loved the dark. Worshipped the dark goddess Hecate herself. She was blessed with the courage in the dark by the goddess. The dark fed her and strengthened her in everything that she did.
'Well you'd be careful to heed mine. I am far too dangerous for any mortal being. I could render you in half with but one of my...paws,' the shadows barked back and she realised that it was indeed a creature that she was conversing with, but for it to be a beast?
'Are...are you my mate?' The dark one asks of the shadows as she edges even closer, she can see the brown of its eyes now.
'You! You are the one that has bought me here? After it took so long for me to tear myself away from this dimension, this plane for everyone's safety. Do you have any idea how long and how hard I had to study the magik to get there in the first place? And I had sworn never to get involved in magik again, but here I find myself summoned by a mortal...girl claiming to be my mate, when I have lived over hundreds of years and more lifetimes than I would have preferred. I don't deserve to be alive. I don't deserve this grotesque appearance. I never wronged anyone when I was in my human form,' the being spoke and the woman edged closer, gasped.
He was a beast! With claws made for ripping through meat and fangs that looked like they could tear your head from your neck with a single bite. He had ears that spiked so harshly he could have been an elf. He was covered in fur, and scars. And yet she was not scared by what she saw, he was of the darkness just as she was. She could relate. They'd both been dealt a harsh hand by fate. And she would help him, they would help one another.
'What are you staring at?' The beast growled, bearing its fangs but she was not deterred. She examined those lips more closely, saw that they were as soft as petals and longed to kiss them. It had nothing to do with the excruciating pain in her breast or the fact that she would wish to sleep soon. No the dark woman found herself attracted to what was supposed to be, or would be, considered by society, a grotesque monster.
'You...you're...' she trailed off when he blew the candle from her hand.
'Not another word woman,' he growled a warning and then came darkness.
