Page 5 of Psycho Beasts

Their ancestors were the skulls that made up the seat of death. Slaughtered by a power-hungry monarch.

I was now that monarch.

My vision kaleidoscoped until the car spun around me, and my head floated into a different dimension.

I was now the queen of a realm I loathed.

Ruler.

Obligated to the people.

The powerless princess who’d had no predilection for a fae element. My back hurt unmercifully, and I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

I was more comfortable masquerading as a boy. It was the only time people didn’t ask to breed me, didn’t look at me like I was an object.

Royalty was intense in the fae realm.

They revered rulers like gods.

Since it was extremely rare for an immortal fae to give birth. My status as the first fae princess in eons was no exception. I was an object of veneration: more than a fae, but less than a person.

And yet I’d never developed a predilection for a fae element. In all recorded history, every fae had shown signs of their abilities as a young child.

There were no exceptions.

I was a dud.

Instead, I housed a monster.

Sun god, Sadie was an alpha shifter, and even she was part blood fae. She was more fae than I was.

Yet I was supposed to rule on the throne of death, for all my immortality? I’d be slaughtered by a challenger immediately.

Brutally.

I should have just turned myself over and let them end me. But I was a coward, and I’d fled, too afraid to accept the escape of death.

The worst part about everything that had transpired was I didn’t regret it. If I could turn back time, I would do it again.

Did it make me a bad person, that I wasn’t mad about destroying my mother’s immortal life by consuming her beating heart like a savage animal? Of course it did.

I smushed my face harder against the window.

The worst part wasn’t my lack of regret.

It wasn’t the why.

It was the how.

It was the steel cage that slammed against my soul and the monster that bellowed to be released.

When Sadie had knelt in front of Lothaire and infected my mother with her blood, the icy darkness inside my soul had become an inferno of malice.

It had overwhelmed me until my vision had become tinged with darkness and the entire world had been dipped in sepia tones: dark yellow, burnt orange, blood red.

The colors of rage.

The colors of my monster.