The Dark Beast's Love

Waking up next to Riven was not something I'd ever planned to do, but now with his arms around me and my face pressed into his chest, I start wishing that I'd done it sooner. It wasn't just his warmth that was welcoming, nor the feeling of his skin pressed against mine. It was the sensation that he was real, that he was alive and breathing beside me and that everything from yesterday that should have been a dream was real. I was miraculously still blissed out when the sleepiness left my body and all I could think about was Riven and the soft white curls that covered parts of his face and the scars that I can feel under the tip of my finger. His facial expression was so unnaturally relaxed and once again I found myself thinking that he looked ethereal, as if wasn't just cursed but born to be in another world.

He had told me that he had been a scrawny boy, not impressive nor good-looking enough to attract anyone despite his money. He had told me that while he was born into a rich family and grew up with a cruel persona and that it was his friend that managed to charm everyone with his personality and make friends, not him. Everyone including Riven's best friend and crush since childhood. He told me how he had been too scared to do anything as we lay beside each other underneath the sun, that he had feared even the tiniest drop of blood. The explanation had drawn a bitter laugh from him because right now, he is drowning in blood month after month. His younger self would never have believed his eyes if he saw him now. Riven had told me that he had gotten this body after the curse, which was logically due to his body adjusting to the needs of the beast and he had been overjoyed at first because he thought that he was finally better than everyone else. That joy had been short-lived when he realised that there was no one else.

I thought about it sometimes at night, of how young and vulnerable Riven had been when he was forced to live on his own. He was only two years older than me and I had been around sixteen when the first murder happened. This meant that at the age of eighteen, Riven had already been stripped of choices. I allowed myself to touch the edge of his eyebrow where it rested peacefully with the rest of his features and wondered what the younger Riven would have thought of himself now. Would he have feared the man he had become and wished to relent for his cruelty or did he find appeal in the body and the strength that the curse offered?

The way Riven had spoken of his eternal fear had my mind drifting back to a man of a similar kind, Hector Wallaby. I had not spoken of these thoughts out loud due to the fact that it would mean breaking our silence, but I had allowed myself to remember the frightened look on Hector's face when the ladybug had landed on me. It hadn't just been a fear of the unknown, it had been the fear of being harmed. Hector, just like Riven had been, was a boy who feared too much, but where Hector had turned to cowardice, Riven had turned to cruelty. Still, I had wondered if the same desperation for love would have been enough to drive Hector out to the woods to seek the same fate that Riven was currently living. Looking at Riven now, I couldn't see the child he had described. While the relaxed expression on his face definitely made him look younger, there was no hint of the cruelty that Riven mentioned. I tried to search for it, for something that revealed that Riven was created to hurt people, but all I found was a softness that didn't belong to a boy who had to take lives. It made my heart ache for him. But it also made the soft morning sunlight him up like an angel, peaceful and kind. His expression shifted and he let out something that sounded like a happy sigh as his arms tightened around me. At first, I thought he was on his way to waking up, but his breath evened out again and he remained asleep despite the time being way past his usual rising hours. As I continued staring at him, I realised that for the first time in my life, the restlessness wasn't bothering me. I didn't know how long I'd been awake and just allowed myself to embrace Riven while allowing my thoughts to run free but I knew that in any other situation, the restlessness would have killed me. But here, under the weight of Riven's arm, time didn't matter. It felt like I could lay here forever with the sun on my back as long as Riven looked as peaceful as he currently did. And that realisation scared the hell out of me.

I hated him. There were no doubts about that. Not only when I only knew him as a beast but also when I met him for the first time. I had hated him and had every intention of killing him that night if only he hadn't stopped me to tell me that it was impossible. I had hated him the morning Theo arrived and I had hated him when Theo died. Even now, in the morning bliss, I was pretty sure that I still hated him, but not for the same reasons as before but because he was impossible to hate. I have so many reasons to hate this man, and even more reasons to avoid him for the rest of his life but I simply just couldn't. Because he was him. Because he had, despite every harsh glare, remained him. And because when I look at him now, deep asleep and unbothered by the world, I could not see the beast the same way I hadn't been able to see his younger cruelty. I found none of the darkness I should have found, but instead only the boy he could have been if only he'd been raised right.

Riven stirred again and this time I was certain that he was resurfacing from the ocean of sleep. His breath pattern changed and his brows furrowed for a while before he let out a yawn and his eyes fluttered open. It took him a while to readjust to the light, and even longer to realise that I was in his arms, but the grin I was greeted with when he did realise made the butterflies in my stomach flutter like their lives depended on it.

"Good morning," Riven said, voice grumbling but eyes bright.

"Good morning," I said back, certain that I looked as starstruck as he did right now.

"You're amazing, you know that right?" He said as he pulled me closer. "Gods, I can't stop thinking about last night."

"You just woke up," I pointed out with a chuckle.

"Who said my dreams weren't of that night as well?"

I stopped breathing for a moment and Riven threw his head back in laughter and I was caught off guard by how wonderful it was every time. I wanted to trap the sound and listen to it forever. I wanted to wake up hearing it and fall asleep to its echo.I swore, if Riven only knew where my head was at right now, he would have never let me hear the end of it.

"Are you okay?" He asked and let his hand rest on my hips.

It wasn't until now I realised that I was a little sore between my legs, a consequence of not prepping properly before taking him in. Still, I couldn't find my sanity to regret it. It had been painful, but it had been a part of it all. "I'm fine," I assured. "Starving, however."

A grin spread on his face that revealed that he felt exactly the same.

"How about I make some food for us then," He suggested and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

"Depends on the menu," I teased. "Is it fish, deer or eggs today? And will it be served with bread or potatoes?"

Despite my intentions of making a joke, Riven frowned..

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"I wish I could make you something different," Riven admitted. "You're going to grow sick of the same food every day."

"How about we make something different?" I suggested as I thought about what we had. "We can bake a pie. We have both flour and water and I'm sure that we can manage an acceptable dough from that." Riven looked at me with a questioning look, but then smiled.

"Whatever you desire," He responded softly. "But you'll have to help me."

I nodded in agreement and shifted my body to prepare myself to get out of bed when I felt something brush against my thigh. We both froze and looked at each other with wide eyes. "Really?" I breathed out in both astonishment and amusement.

"What can I do?" Riven shrugged nonchalantly but the tip of his ears was pink. "A man has his needs."

Let's just say that I had Riven crying out my name and cursing my "magical" mouth again before we both headed up to make a pie.