In the Arms of the Beast

by K. A. Merikan

  Lana turned around, so the light coming through the window lit up the crown of hair, leaving her face shadowed. “I’m his little sister. I’ve been having some trouble, and he said I can stay here until I get back on my feet. The guys are moving some of my stuff, but Xavier started crying, and I didn’t want him around all that noise.”

  Laurent walked up to her, intimidated by the baby’s constant screaming. “I’m sorry to hear that, but the house is vast, so I’m sure you will have a pleasant stay here.”

  She grinned at him. “Travis tells me you two also have a baby on the way. Xavier here is only seven months old, but if you have any questions, let me know.”

  “Seven months? But… he’s tiny.” Laurent stared at the red face of the boy who was slowly calming down in his mother’s arms. Maybe Laurent had that kind of effect on children and didn’t even know it? He sure hoped so.

  Lana sighed. “I know. He was born prematurely. I had a lot of stress when I was pregnant, and that’s not good for a developing baby. But now I’m here. We’re both gonna be fine.”

  “What kind of stress? I don’t want to pry, but I would like to know for Marcel’s sake. That will be our son’s name,” he added with pride.

  Lana scowled but met Laurent’s gaze. “I suppose you will all find out soon anyway. I don’t have the best taste in men, and his daddy? He got even worse when Xavier came into the picture. If only you knew who was your true love when you meet them, life would be so much easier. Wouldn’t have to waste your time on all the losers.”

  “What if true love is not enough?” Laurent reached out to the baby’s face when it stopped crying, but then realized what he was doing and recoiled. He couldn’t just touch someone’s child at will. Lana smiled and encouraged him though.

  “With true love, both people want to work through things no matter what obstacles are in the way.”

  Laurent dared touch the soft skin on Xavier’s face, thinking of how Marcel would look . A creation of true love. “Beast and I… We have our differences, and only time will tell if they are reconcilable.”

  Lana opened her lips and gently rubbed Laurent’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Will you be taking a new husband, or will your brother take care of you from now on?” Laurent asked, unable to keep his gaze away from Xavier’s shockingly blue eyes.

  Lana gave a short laugh. “Oh no, I’m gonna give myself a man-detox. Don’t tell Travis. I know he’d love to just pay for everything and keep me here, but that’s not right. I need to be back on my own feet as soon as possible. I know it won’t be easy, but I’d rather be a single mom than go back to Ron and his assholish attitude.”

  Laurent couldn’t stop stroking the tiny cheek, even more so when coping with such shocking revelations. .“You plan to raise the child on your own?”

  Lana shrugged. “Not having a partner won’t mean I’m ‘alone’. I make friends easily.”

  Laurent pondered that in context of the clubhouse. It always burst with people, and he’d made friends here who would undoubtedly support him if needed. The idea of raising Marcel alone was so fresh it still throbbed in his head, causing him pain, but Laurent would do what needed to be done. He always did.

  Even if Beast resented him.

  Chapter 15 - Beast

  Beast didn’t want to do this.

  After witnessing what had happened to Nick, cutting the tree again was the last thing he was willing to do, but Magpie insisted he needed a sample of the corrosive sap, so there Beast was, facing the monster again. After discussing it all with Vars, who’d grown back his fingers, as well as Shadow, their resident specialist on the Other Side, and Gray, without whom Shadow wouldn’t have gone anywhere, they decided to target the smallest of the demonic creations.

  It happened to be the one closest to the club, on a hill just off the public road, but despite the tree’s average size, and the bright sunlight raining on them as if there were no cares in the world, Beast’s mood remained somber. Magpie did send them a couple of containers that, according to him, should withstand the burning substance, but Beast was sceptical, and Vars didn’t seem keen to suffer either. Since Vars needed blood to recuperate and speed up his regeneration, they’d brought along a live chicken in a cage, and the prospect of seeing his friend drink from it freaked Beast out even more than having to interact with the tree.

  At least Shadow remained his usual sunny self, even though his presence made the tree trunk lean their way ever so slightly. That, or it was a product of Beast’s imagination going crazy from all the stress that had recently plagued his life.

  As if he didn’t have enough on his plate already, Laurent had decided to move out following their spat in the garage, and Beast had to go out for a long walk in the forest to not wreck his own apartment in fury. Why now? Why did everything have to get out of hand on that front as well?

  Beast’s heart was continuously bleeding because of this bullshit, but he needed to be a man about it and grit his teeth until it could be dealt with. If Laurent wished to spite him by moving into a spare bedroom on the other side of the clubhouse, then that was his right. He wasn’t in danger, and Marcel wasn’t yet hatching, so all that stuff could wait while Beast took care of what mattered.

  It still hurt to see Laurent ignore his presence and go the other way whenever they spotted one another in the corridors, but Beast was a big boy, and he’d had his fair share of rejection to build up a thick skin.

  They would eventually make up once Laurent took his head out of his ass, but maybe it was for the better that he stopped inquiring about the trees and trying to push further ideas how to improve their situation. Beast didn’t want Laurent anywhere near those ugly creations.

  Nick was recovering well physically, but Fox had told him the boy woke up screaming each night, plagued by vivid nightmares. The sole thought that Laurent might have done something stupid and gotten hurt in a misguided attempt at helping Beast out, made Beast’s breakfast rise in his throat.

  If Beast’s pain was the price for Laurent’s safety then so be it. With Laurent’s attitude to family and marriage, it wasn’t like he’d file for a divorce. They would get back together eventually. Or was it just blind hope Beast clung to out of desperation?

  “How are we going to do this? You know Shadow’s body doesn’t regenerate. He only has the one,” Gray said, holding onto his lover’s hand as if this was a romantic picnic in the park, not work. Beast could swear those two were even worse with their PDA than Knight and Elliot. Especially now that it all reminded him of what his life was lacking.

  Shadow gave him a brilliant smile and tossed his black hair over his shoulder. “I’ll just leave my body with you. You know I trust you with it.”

  Vars cleared his throat. “How do we know the sap won’t hurt his shadow form either? Maybe I should be one to deal with it? I mean, whatever gets burnt will eventually grow back,” he said, staring at the grass with a tense expression.

  Self-sacrifice. Beast couldn’t deny it made sense, but it still irked him that they had to go through with something this dangerous again. Magpie should have come to collect the samples himself.

  A third hand, black as tar, burst out of Shadow’s side, extending until the whole third arm was out. Beast forced down the nausea at the sight of the additional limb bulging from an otherwise healthy side, but Gray smiled and entwined his fingers with the shadow hand.

  “I can test it with this one. But I can already sense that there are places in the tree where the veins are thicker,” Shadow said.

  Vars frowned. “Really? Damn shame we didn’t wait for you that first time.”

  Beast swallowed the passive-aggressive remark and approached the black trunk, which loomed in front of him, spreading its many arms and creating shadow with leaves like paper sheets covered in coal dust.

  “Where? We might as well deal with it now. It’s not like we’re getting any more safeguards.” Beast rubbed his forehead
when the chicken clucked from its cage as if commenting on what was happening around it.

  Shadow approached and pointed at an irregularity in the bark without touching it. Upon his approach, the ground under Beast’s feet vibrated, as if the tree wanted to consume a chunk of its fellow shadow creature.

  Shadow nodded and walked up to Gray, sliding into his embrace and placing both hands on Gray’s shoulders.

  Beast was annoyed by the hugging, because the two lovebirds could have at least kept it to their time off, but then Shadow went limp in Gray’s arms, and his dark form drizzled into the grass. A few seconds later, the tall, faceless figure emerged from the ground right in front of Beast and took the container from his hand.

  The smooth, expressionless face always gave Beast the creeps, even when he tried to reimagine it as a perv in a gimp suit. There were no eyes to watch him, no nose to smell him, yet he felt scrutinized until Vars offered Shadow an axe and the creature walked off.

  Gray adjusted the limp body in his arms, struggling with its weight yet unwilling to ask for help. “Be careful.”

  Beast watched the black figure kneel by the trunk, press the sharp end of the axe to the bark instead of swinging it, and then cut in.

  Beast’s head throbbed with worry, but by the time he could again breathe, he saw there was no blood sap spraying all over Shadow, and where he’d cut a vein, Nick must have lodged the axe into a major artery.

  Next to him, Gray kneeled to rest Shadow’s earthly shell in the grass, and Beast could see tension leave his body. “Good. Be vigilant until you come back to us.”

  Vars hummed, looking at the dark tree top as if he were expecting the branches to pound them into a pulp. “Is the container deteriorating? Can you see smoke or sense a strange smell?”

  Shadow shook his smooth black hair, and his buzzing, inhuman voice answered tonelessly. “Just of the tree.”

  “Hey you! What are you doing here?” came from behind them so unexpectedly Beast didn’t know how to react.

  Shadow melted his dark form against the shape of the tree, dropping the axe, and Beast turned his head so stiffly if felt as if there were rusty hinges in his neck.

  A man in a trench coat approached them in fast strides. A large camera hung from his neck, and he held binoculars in one hand. Red-faced, at least sixty years old, and wearing camo pants, the chimera of Sherlock Holmes and a high school teacher remained a mystery to Beast even when he stood just a couple feet away from them.

  “What?” Beast asked, frowning. Most people would have felt uneasy about meeting a single man his size in a hidden location, even more so when he was tattooed all over and had friends to back him up. But the stranger seemed unbothered by the biker vest or all the muscle on show.

  “It’s not private property,” Vars said, but Beast was way more concerned with the old man seeing Shadow out of his body than anything else. He didn’t want to kill the guy over something so idiotic.

  The stranger adjusted his thick glasses and pointed at the tree. “I ask you again. What is your reason for being here? Are you sacrificing that chicken to the devil?” He pointed at the damn cage. “Our local association for Biological Science has been watching this tree for weeks now. It’s a rare specimen, not a place for indecent acts!”

  In the corner of his eye, Beast could see Shadow moving against the tree at the pace of a fly caught in a spider’s web. One would have to have known he was there to have spotted him.

  Vars spread his arms. “Nothing indecent’s going on. We’re just admiring the tree.”

  The man raised his camera and took a snap of them, causing Beast’s blood pressure go into overdrive and boil his brain. “Why is he laying like that then, huh?” He pointed to Shadow’s human vessel. “And I saw the axe too. Are you intending to hurt this miracle of nature? People like you have no care for the future of our planet!”

  Shadow crawled in the grass, a flat shape among the darkness cast by the branches above, but the man was too busy with his tirade to notice. Once he finally reached his body, it came to life in an abrupt jerk. He sat up, gasping for air as if he’d been drowning. The sealed container of sap was in the grass behind Gray’s back.

  “Jesus Christ! What did you do to that poor fella’?” the older man said, this time taking a step back. The camera was ready to take another shot, but he let it dangle from his neck when Beast took a step toward him.

  “We were about to leave. Have fun tree-hugging.”

  The man shook his head. “I’m birdwatching. But I will report this to other members of the association. We will keep an eye on this tree, so don’t you think about coming back here in the dead of night for your Satanic rituals. I will also confiscate that poor chicken!”

  Beast sighed and glanced at Vars, who shrugged and passed the birdwatcher the cage, shaking his head. If the fucker only knew…

  Vars discreetly took the sample from Gray, checked the seal once again, and put it into a second container, which would then go into his saddlebag. Easy-peasy. Though Beast wondered what Magpie expected to find out from the sample. Maybe it had been yet another meaningless chore to pass the time before they could pull out the big guns.

  The ride back to the clubhouse took a couple of minutes, but once they arrived, Beast excused himself with the excuse of having to do some maintenance on his bike and watched the others leave. Finally, some peace. Without Laurent to worry about, he would have a few hours to himself for once. He could play a video game, or maybe read. Or take a bath, since Laurent often hogged the bathtub in the evenings. Or watch porn without having to sneak around because of Laurent’s disapproval.

  But there was a problem with that plan. He’d tried to treat himself to the filthiest of movies, and even some of the sweeter ones, but they directed his thoughts to Laurent every time. He might get an orgasm out of masturbating to a video, but he wouldn’t have a warm body to hug once it was over.

  After years of being single, he hadn’t expected Laurent’s absence to hit him so hard, but after only forty-eight hours, the empty apartment had stopped feeling like a peaceful oasis. And now, three days since Laurent had left him, he resented going back to their place on his own.

  Fuck video games. Fuck all the unread books, the bathtub, and the goddamn porn.

  What the fuck was wrong with Laurent? Why hadn’t he listened to what Beast had to say?

  He was in the process of wiping bird shit off his bike when the hum of a car appeared at the edge of his consciousness and gradually got louder. Great. Maybe Beast could make whoever this was get out of his hair fast.

  The black vehicle was Elliot’s, and Knight sat next to him in the passenger seat, but it was the third person sitting in the back that made Beast pause, throw the wipe into the trash and tidy his hair.

  His heart thumped, his body too hot for the clothes he was wearing, but no matter how much he itched to approach the car, he pretended to rummage through his saddlebag.

  Laurent left the car, chirping to Elliot about an upcoming shopping trip, and it felt as if he were talking a lot only to make a point of not saying a word to Beast.

  So maybe Beast shouldn’t have said that he didn’t want a kid, but what did it matter? The egg was here, had a name, and wasn’t going anywhere. Just because Beast was freaking out over fatherhood didn’t give Laurent the right to judge him. Like Laurent knew anything about parenting.

  Beast followed Laurent with his gaze, and was startled by the unusual elegance of his outfit. Laurent put a lot of work in his appearance, but he favored T-shirts over ironed dress shirts and typically kept his hair down, not tying it back into a tidy ponytail. But worst of all was the fact that the property vest was gone, as if Laurent didn’t want to be associated with him any longer.

  The chatter of Laurent and Elliot left a buzz in his head, even when the two men had gone behind a heavy door, and only the loud sigh reminded Beast that there had been a third person in the car.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked, without s
paring Knight a glance.

  “Aren’t you going to ask how he’s doing?”

  Beast wished there was a stainless steel surface he could bang his head on. “How is he doing?”

  “Pretty good. He got the job,” Knight said so happily it took Beast’s brain a couple of seconds to understand what it was he’d said.

  “Job? What job? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Knight seemed a bit stiffer than usual when he offered Beast a close-mouthed smile. This was unbelievable.

  “We’re a couple of miles from town,” Beast roared, heartbeats from shoving Knight at the tool cabinet behind him. The smell of gasoline, metal, and oil that he knew so well were suddenly potent and choking. “He couldn’t have gotten any job if he didn’t have help. Did you go behind my back?”

  Knight rolled his eyes and sucked on his upper teeth in a way so infuriatingly dismissive Beast wanted to drag him by all that perfect hair that had never been touched by male-pattern baldness. There wasn’t even a drop of guilt in Knight’s expression, and Beast wouldn’t hesitate to call him out on it.

  “You should have asked me!”

  Knight moved his mouth, as if he wanted to say something without Beast hearing it, before meeting Beast’s gaze. “I should have asked you if I was allowed to help him get a job? Really? Do you even hear yourself?”

  Beast’s jaw muscles ached when his teeth ground together in fury. “Better get down from that high horse before I throw you off it. You’re one to talk. Elliot does nothing without consulting you first.”

  “Yeah, but that’s what he wants. I don’t make him report to me.”

  Beast’s head was already pulsing with an upcoming ache. There went his quiet evening. “Laurent’s different. He’s not from here. He might do something that exposes him, or do something reckless, because he thinks he always knows better.”

  Knight actually had the guts to snort while meeting Beast’s gaze. “Really? Sounds like this one friend of mine.”

  Beast stepped back, because if Knight remained within reach, he might have lost it. “Fuck. You. What’s the fucking job?”