All Chapters of HIS BEAST ANSWERED MY HEART: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter 2"Don't go inside yet."My father said it from the porch, one hand out like he was calming a dog. Behind him the door was half open, and I could see the study light spilling yellow down the hall."You sold me," I said."Now hold on—""You sold me to somebody. That was a broker, wasn't it." I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Mascara came off gray. "What'd you get for me, Dad?"He looked at the road where the car had gone. Then at me."Debt's cleared," he said. "All of it.""All of it.""Every dime. The house, the land, your mother's medical bills, all of it, Ella. Wiped. We're free."We. He said we like I was in the room when he signed."Dad." My voice came out wrong. Too calm. "What did you sign?"He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded paper. Didn't hand it to me right away — held it, the way people hold a receipt they're embarrassed about."The Culling," he said.The word landed like a slap. I knew what the Culling was. Everyone knew. Once a year the

Chapter 4 Nobody moved.I don't know how long it was. Long enough that my legs started shaking. Long enough that I could hear a kid up in the third tier asking his dad a question and getting shushed.The Beast stayed down. Its head was on the floor between its paws, and its breath came out in slow, heavy huffs that moved the hem of my shirt."Get her out of there," somebody said. Not the announcer. Somebody closer, near the railing, a man in the pack's black and gold."Nobody move," the announcer said. His voice had gone thin. "Nobody — nobody move."The Beast lifted its head.I swear to God the whole hall leaned back. Three tiers, hundreds of people, and they all leaned back at the same time like the seats had tilted.Its eyes came up to mine. Gold, and close, and it didn't blink.My knees were doing that thing. That stupid thing they do when I'm scared, where they turn to water and I have to lock them straight or I go down.Don't run, the woman had said. He only kills the ones that

Chapter 6 "Get up."I sat up so fast my head spun. The maid was standing at the foot of the bed with a jug of water and a towel over her arm, and she was looking at me like I was a stray dog somebody had let inside."What time is it?""Almost eleven." She set the jug down hard. "He wants you in the west hall at noon. Wash your face. You look like hell.""Who wants me?"She stopped. Looked at me like I'd asked her what color the sky was."Who do you think," she said, and left.I washed my face in cold water. My shirt was ruined, so I put on the one thing in the room that wasn't mine — a plain gray dress hanging in the wardrobe, too long in the sleeves, smelling faintly of lavender and dust.I was not going to look at the black windows on the other side of the courtyard. I looked anyway. They were still black. In daylight, somehow, that was worse.A different servant walked me down. Through a corridor with paintings of men on horses, past a door with a wolf carved into it, down a stair

Chapter 8 "Nobody touch him!"Arthur came up the stairs last, and he came up slow, and he didn't look at Lucifer on the floor. He looked at me first. Then at the walls. Then at the fallen door."Get him a coat," he said. "Get him up. One of you on each arm. If he goes down, you go down with him."The guards had their poles up. They were scared. They kept looking at Lucifer like he might grow teeth again."He's not gonna shift," Arthur said. "Look at him. He couldn't shift a chair right now."Two guards grabbed Lucifer under the arms. He got his feet under him on the second try. There was blood running down the inside of his arm and dripping off his elbow onto the stone, and nobody was doing anything about it."Sir," one of them said. "Sir, the west wing—""I know about the west wing. Get him down the stairs. Put him in the blue room. Not his room. The blue room. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out, and if anybody so much as knocks on that door before I get there, I'll have their hands."

Chapter 10 I put the key in the pocket of my dress and got out of that study before anyone could come back for it.It took me four wrong turns to find the east stair again. The castle didn't make sense — doors where doors shouldn't be, hallways that turned back on themselves, and about a hundred paintings of dead men on horses watching me try to figure out which way was up.By the time I made it back to the tower I was mad again. Not scared. Mad.The dress was hanging over the chair where I'd left it. That was the only thing that had changed. The bed was still a mess and the tray was still on the table with a cold egg on it, and there was nobody in the room.I sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the key out and looked at it.New scratch. Bright brass under the dark. Somebody had cut a copy and they'd done it sloppy and fast and they'd done it on this key, on the end, where the metal's soft.So Arthur had the only key. And somebody had gotten to it. Which meant somebody had got