Submit to the Beast (7 page)

“
Below ground?”

“
Yes.”

“
But…” Tobias swallowed
down the sudden lump in his throat and shook his head. “What if I
don’t want to do that?”

“
Don’t
want
?”

The dread again, the panic, and Tobias
spoke before even thinking about his words. “Whatever you’ve done
to me I had no choice in. I didn’t ask you to change me. You can’t
simply assume this is something I am okay with.”

“
You have no choice but to
be okay with it now,” the Beast said. “It is
inevitable.”

“
Is this what you did to
Layla?” he demanded and again, he pulled his hand free, and stepped
away from the counter. “You changed her without her permission?
What did you do to her? What did you do to me? How is any of this
even possible?”

The Beast sighed and stood. His face
was blank now, the pleasure and happiness Tobias had seen,
gone.

“
If I explained it,” he
said, “if I told you what is going to happen, you won’t believe it.
It is better to simply let it happen, and I will support you as it
does. That is what
is
going to happen, Tobias, whether you like it or
not.”

Tobias stepped back until his back hit
the counter on the other side. He clenched his fists, his head
spinning, his body shaking. This was so much worse than he had
imagined. So much worse…

A change.

A metamorphosis.

And he hadn’t agreed to any of
it!

And he wouldn’t have. Despite his
desire for the Beast, despite the painful craving that he could not
shake off, Tobias would never have agreed to anything that would
change him. Hadn’t he spent the last year working on his body,
moving away from the out of shape, unhealthy person that he was? He
had calculated everything, worked out all of the dynamics of his
system, for someone to change that without his
permission…

“
You shouldn’t have done
this,” he whispered. “You had no right.”

“
I had every right,” the
Beast said, and he was in front of Tobias now. “You are my given
mate.”

“
Your
mate
?” Tobias gasped. “You can’t say
that.”

“
And yet it is true,” the
Beast said. “I knew it the moment I saw you. The moment I looked
into your eyes.” He paused. “I will miss their color.”

“
Miss them? They…” He
shook his head, aghast, as the Beast’s meaning became clear.
“You’re going to turn them yellow?”

“
It is part of the
process,” the Beast said.

“
No,” Tobias whispered.
“No!”

“
Yes,” the Beast said. “It
has already begun.” He held out his hand. “You are going to come
back with me now, Tobias.”

“
Back?” He moved away,
following the counter out of the room, his body trembling as he did
so. “You said you weren’t here to take me back!”

“
I’m not
taking
you,” the Beast
said. “You’re coming with me.”

“
But…” Tobias continued to
back away, his mind a riot of thoughts. How could this be
happening? How could the man who had pleasured him last night,
pleasured him to the point where Tobias had felt dizzy, have done
this? Tobias couldn’t get his head around it all. He had known that
something was happening. Known that he wasn’t going to like
whatever it was, but this? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it, and
he didn’t want to. Worse, it was all tangled up in the way he felt
for the Beast and that just made everything hurt all the more. It
was in that moment that Tobias realized that the warring desires
hadn’t been about the curiosity and the fear. They had been about
whatever was happening to him and the Beast.

The two were inextricably linked and
Tobias didn’t want them to be.

He wanted the Beast, but he didn’t
want the rest.

He moaned then, the knowledge all
coalescing and making his head hurt and his belly ache. Why
couldn’t he have met the Beast in a bar somewhere? Why couldn’t he
live in a little house on the bay? Why couldn’t this have just been
normal? Why was his dating life always so fucking hard? Was a
little bit of normal happiness too much to ask for?

“
Stop, Tobias,” the Beast
whispered, and Tobias knew he wasn’t referring to his steady escape
towards the door.

“
Stay away from me,”
Tobias hissed. “Just stay away.”

“
I can’t do that,” the
Beast said. “And I’m sorry, and it hurts me to do this, but I have
no choice.”

“
What are you—”

“
You are coming back below
ground with me, Tobias,” he said. “Whether you like it or not, that
is unavoidable now.”

“
Don’t you dare,” Tobias
snapped. “Don’t you…”

But the Beast advanced,
and his intention was very clear. He
was
going to dare, and there was not
a damn thing Tobias could do to stop him.

Chapter Eight

The Beast dropped Tobias, now gagged
and bound, onto the bed in his chamber. Tobias shot him a nasty
sort of glare and tried to shift position, but the Beast had tied
him in such a way that there was little he could do to get
free.

“
I wish you hadn’t forced
me to this,” the Beast said, and he meant it, because he
did
wish that things had
turned out differently. He still wanted Tobias to have come to this
place of his own accord. He still wanted his mate to want him
without any kind of reservation. But it was clear now that that was
not going to happen, and time had practically run out. It wasn’t
just Tobias’ hands that were tied.

The Beast looked up, to the antique
clock over his desk. It was coming to evening now, and that meant
that they had less than two hours before night fell and the moon
rose in the sky.

Two hours until the
turning.

Two hours until Tobias was going to
have to make a choice.

The Beast shivered at that thought,
because, as things stood, he had no idea what Tobias was likely to
do once the turning happened. He hoped that his mate would accept
the change, that he would realize that it was something special,
that what they were likely to have together was going to be
something special, but…

He sighed and looked down at his mate.
He lay on his back, hands tied together in front of him. The Beast
hadn’t planned to have to truss his male up and so had been obliged
to get pretty creative in terms of how he bound him. A belt kept
his wrists together and one of the Beast’s own ties—taken from his
basement apartment—gagged him. The Beast had decided to do that,
not because he thought that Tobias might cry out, once he’d taken
him down to his basement it didn’t even matter if he did, but
because part of him wanted to see his human tied in such a way. It
stirred his primitive instincts, and that was apt today,
considering what was about to happen.

Tobias narrowed his eyes at the Beast
and stretched his lips. The gag did not give.

“
I am sorry,” the Beast
repeated. “But you’re here now and so we must deal with what is to
come.”

He leaned forward and pulled Tobias’
gag free. Tobias responded by coughing and licking his lips. Even
with the situation as it now was, the Beast couldn’t help his cock
from twitching at that action. He really was that far
gone.

“
These too,” Tobias
said.

The Beast did as his mate asked,
undoing the belt quickly so that Tobias was free in no time. As
soon as he was, he clenched and unclenched his fists before
shooting up from the bed and heading to the door.

“
Exactly where are you
going?” the Beast asked.

“
Home,” Tobias
said.

The Beast sighed.
“You
are
home.”

Tobias turned at those words, and if
the Beast couldn’t already feel the anger coming off him, it was
obvious in other ways, stamped across his face, clear in the tense
lines of his body. It was not what the Beast had wanted, and he
could still recall the look of horror on Tobias’ face as he pulled
him into his arms and slung him over his shoulder, not to mention
the way he had struggled and gasped during the long journey back
below ground.

But it was
necessary
!

Why couldn’t his mate
understand?

“
I can’t believe you just
did that,” Tobias snapped. “Just throw me over your shoulder
and…and…abduct me!”

“
You left me no choice,”
the Beast said.

“
Choice?”

“
You need to be here,
Tobias. It is imperative that you are, and I gave you the option to
come willingly.”

“
You…I…this is…” Tobias
shook his head. “After what happened between us last night? After
the early hours of this morning? How can you think it’s acceptable
to treat me this way? I said I didn’t want to be back down
here.”

“
It isn’t about what you
want right now,” the Beast said. “It’s about what is best for you.”
He paused, and then because it was past time he spoke with complete
honesty. “I should never have let you go,” he said. “When you were
here last and we connected.” He sighed. “I wanted to keep you. To
have spent these last weeks pleasuring you, but I knew you did not
want it. Oh, I knew you wanted
me
, but this? The look on your face
when I showed you our city… It was stupid of me, but I wanted you
to
want
to be
here, and I thought given enough time you would. You would return
and accept what was to come.”

“
But I don’t want to be
here,” Tobias said. “And what’s to come…” He visibly shivered. “I
just want to go home.”

Though the Beast already knew it, it
hurt to hear those words, especially after laying himself bare.
This was his home after all. These were his people. Tobias was
going to be part of it all, one way or the other.

“
You’ve met Layla,” he
said.

Tobias gave a curt nod.

“
She resisted also,” the
Beast said. “She was brought here against her will because she saw
something she should not have. Once here she…fought…against what
was to happen. But by that point it was too late. Two years later
and she still resists. She would have, would
be
, much happier, if she simply
accepted her fate.”

“
You can’t just expect
people to behave as you want them to,” Tobias said. “Maybe because
you live down here, maybe because you’re
different
, but it’s like you don’t
even see it from my point of view.” He paused and the Beast knew he
was steeling himself to say the next words. “I was brought here
against my will, unconscious, only to wake up manacled to that bed.
And then when I tried to escape you wouldn’t let me. In the end you
only did so because I gave you what you wanted.”

“
You wanted me as much as
I wanted you,” the Beast growled.

“
Yes,” Tobias agreed. “I
did. I still do, I can admit that.” He lowered his eyes, crossing
his arms as he did so. “But I don’t want
this
. I don’t want whatever you have
done to me to happen. I don’t want my eyes to change color. I don’t
want to be different. I just want to be me.”

His low, softly spoken words made the
Beast’s chest tighten, and for just a moment he wondered what he
would have done if they’d had this conversation weeks ago, before
the bite, before the claiming.

The answer came to him
instantly.

He would still have done
it.

He would have claimed Tobias
regardless. There had never been any choice about that, and though
the Beast understood Tobias’ worries, understood his desire for
normality, the simple fact of the matter was that from the moment
they had met Tobias’ chance of a normal life was gone
forever.

They were mates.

It was unavoidable.

“
Do you want me, Tobias?”
he asked. “Not just for a quick fuck. Not just for a few weeks. But
as your partner, as your lover, as your friend.”

Tobias lifted his eyes. The confusion
there was obvious, but when he spoke the words made the Beast
tremble with satisfaction. “You know I do.”

“
Then if you want me,” the
Beast said. “This comes with it. The life underground. The
changing. One cannot be separate from the other.”

“
But you gave me no
choice,” Tobias whispered. “You simply decided.”

“
Because this is meant to
be,” the Beast said, a pause and then, “And as you consider this,
as you think it all through, you must remember, that I had no
choice in it either.”

Chapter Nine

Tobias slumped down on the bed, his
head in his hands, his mind a riot of thoughts questions and
turmoil. He could feel the Beast next to him, the heat coming off
him, the tenseness of his body, and he didn’t know what to say,
what to think, because he had never considered what had happened
between them in those terms, and now that he did it changed
everything.