MEET the BEAST!

And the Beast of the Month for July is (ta-da!) —

My Beast! The true hero of Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge.

To celebrate the imminent publication of my novel (this Tuesday, July 10!), I am thrilled to offer up the prologue of my story. Just to get you in the mood.

Enjoy!


                                                              PROLOGUE

                                                                  LUCIE




It wasn't all the witch's fault.

    She was just the one he saw as his spine hunched forward, as claws sprang out of the furry paws that had been his elegant hands only moments before, as long tendrils of mane erupted out over his eyes.

    "What have you done to me, Witch?" he bellowed, although it was difficult to understand him with the lengthening of his snout.

    "I have done nothing," she told him, with a coolness I had to admire, as if he weren't crouching before her with animal horns and shaggy pointed ears sprouting from his head and long rows of raptor feathers cascading down his back. "This is the truth of who you are inside."

    "Change me back!" he thundered.

    "I cannot," she told him. "That power lies with you, not me."

    Well, that wasn't the whole truth. I had something to do with it, although even I didn't know it at the time. So I was surprised when the witch suddenly turned to me in her awful majesty. "And you, girl. What do you want?"

All I wanted then was my revenge, to see him groveling on all fours, his handsome face and manly form reduced to beastliness. Things might have been very different had I left it at that, run off with the other servants on that terrifying night, taken up a new life in some other place. But as soon as I had what I most wished for, I found I craved more.

    "I want to see him suffer," I breathed. I was drunk on my own hatred, more powerful than anything I had ever felt before.

    "As you wish," she said, and that was the end of it. And the beginning.

    I didn't know then the journey I was on, could never have imagined any power that burned brighter than hate.

    I had so much to learn from the beast.

    My Beast.

    Until she came.