Tame his Beast - Claire C. Riley Page 0,3

death take me. But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. I had to try. I owed it to Echo.

So I told my burning hands to move. I told them to do something. To drag my sorry ass out of hell and back into the world. I told them I wasn’t dead yet, that I wasn’t done with this world, but it wasn’t until I begged them that they began to move.

A man don’t beg for nothing.

That’s always been my mantra, but in that moment I begged every muscle in my body to work. To move and stretch and flex and drag me out of there.

The roof above me creaked before giving an almighty roar and collapsing on top of me. Wood and debris showered the ground, slamming into my back and stealing the poisoned air from my dying lungs. Flaming horses ran past me like the apocalypse had begun, their hooves kicking up dirt and flames into my bloodied face, their screams scorched into my brain for all eternity.

I clawed at the ground, roaring in agony as I dragged my dying body out from under the flaming pile of wood, the air growing thicker with smoke and death as I pulled myself along. Things cut into my body, pain slicing from my chest to my stomach. But I ignored it all and continued to pull and drag and claw myself away from the barn, toward freedom as Echo screamed in my head to keep moving. I dragged my broken and burnt body until I had nothing left in me, finally collapsing next to an old maple tree.

I rolled onto my back, groaning in pain as something sharp dug into me. My breaths crackled in my chest as I stared up at the dark starlit sky, wondering how it could still look so fucking beautiful when everything else was so fucking rotten and ugly.

Everything blurred into one. A myriad of death and destruction. Of chaos and anarchy. Of death and devastation.

“…Beast?...”

“…Echo?...”

The screaming of the horses.

The creaking of the barn.

The burning of the wood.

The scent of death.

The stars above me.

The ground below.

The agony of dying.

The burning pain of living.

“Whatever it takes,” I groaned as a stampede came toward me.

Chapter Two

~ Belle ~

I poured my cold coffee down the sink with a heavy sigh. Gripping the edge of the metal basin, I closed my eyes and took some steadying breaths. I was exhausted. I’d been working sixteen hours straight with no end in sight, and that had been the third coffee I’d tipped away.

The sound of footsteps coming into the cramped room drew my attention, but I didn’t have the energy to open my eyes. I just needed five minutes, then I’d be good to go.

“It only makes it worse,” my godmother, Jenna, said from behind me before placing a gentle hand on my back.

I groaned. “How do you do this all the time?”

I’d been working here for five months and had initially thought that I’d get used to working such long hours, but it was becoming apparent that I wouldn’t. Ever. Maybe nursing wasn’t for me after all. I’d wanted to be just like Jenna, but it felt like I’d never be quite good enough.

Jenna chuckled. “You just get used to it.”

I opened my eyes and turned around slowly, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hands. Jenna was a beautiful woman, the spitting image of my own mother, no doubt. I looked like neither woman, unfortunately. Where Jenna had blond hair and pale blue eyes, I had long, untamable brunette curls and hazel eyes. She was petite and slender, and I was five seven and curvy. And clearly I didn’t have her stamina.

Jenna leaned in and placed a kiss on my cheek. “You’ll get used to it,” she said again soothingly. “Or you won’t and you’ll find your way in something else. We all have to try a few paths before we find the right one, Belle.”

She set about making us both a coffee, and I took a huge mouthful of it when she passed it over to me. I only had a thirty-minute break, but I was determined to use as many of those as possible drinking caffeine.

There was a metal clang out in the hallway—the unmistakable sound of one of the stretchers falling over—and Jenna frowned at me before putting down her coffee and heading to the doorway. I looked longingly at my own before doing the same thing and following her to the door.

She pulled it open