Free Bargain With the Beast by April Andrews Page A

door and placed his ear
against it. The wood was cool, but not cold. Nowhere was cold down
here, though Tobias was sure it should be, they were underground
after all.
    He closed his eyes, trying to catch
the voices, they weren’t right outside, so it was difficult, but
after a moment, breathing steadily, Tobias caught them.
    “ He’s fine,” Tobias heard
the Beast say.
    “ Does he know?” someone
asked. Tobias felt sure that voice belonged to Gregovitch, the
Beast’s brother.
    “ No,” the Beast said. “It
is not time to tell him yet.”
    “ So you’re letting him
go?”
    Silence held for a moment. Tobias
waited with it, eager to hear what the Beast was going to say,
because they were obviously talking about him, but the next words
answered a different question entirely.
    “ Have you spoken to
Layla?”
    Gregovitch cursed. “I’ve spoken to her
alright. That girl…” He paused. “Karl needs to take her properly in
hand.”
    “ He will,” the Beast said.
“After the turning.”
    “ She has already been
claimed,” Gregovitch said. “Already been turned. She shouldn’t
still be behaving this way.”
    “ She was an outsider,” the
Beast said. “It will take her some time. More than it would usually
considering where she was taken from. Give her time.”
    Taken ? Tobias let out a soft breath. So Layla had been abducted
too? Was trying to get home. Was maybe even being held against her
will? Only, the Beast had said she was engaged to Karl, and
behaving petulantly, so what did that mean?
    “ Time?” Gregovitch
snapped. “Two years is not enough?”
    “ Time passes differently
here,” the Beast said. “You know that. The years can slip by so
quickly and yet sometimes slower than one would ever
expect.”
    “ Perhaps you should speak
with her?” Gregovitch suggested. “She’s always had a soft spot for
you.”
    The Beast sighed. “Once I have taken
care of Tobias I will.”
    Gregovitch laughed. “You already took
care of him last night.” He paused. “You claimed him didn’t
you?”
    “ Yes,” the Beast said.
“There was no choice about that. I knew as soon as I looked into
his eyes that I would have to.”
    “ As did I,” Gregovitch
said. “The way you looked at him…”
    Silence again. Tobias shifted. His
mind racing.
    “ And the complication?”
Gregovitch finally asked.
    “ I will find a way to deal
with it,” the Beast said. “It might take some time but I will fix
this.”
    “ You better,” Gregovitch
replied. “One human cannot destabilize your position.”
    Human ? That had not been the first time that the people here had
referred to him in that way. Tobias didn’t understand it. It was
almost like they were suggesting…he shook his head and placed his
palms against the cool wood. He was already too full of fantastic
ideas to let more in, too consumed by curiosity about this place.
It would do him no good at all to allow that curiosity to
grow.
    Because you’re
leaving.
    He dropped his hands, the bargain with
the Beast suddenly uppermost in his mind. Perhaps the
‘complication’ as they referred to it was why the Beast had been so
willing to bargain with him.
    Sex for your
freedom.
    Tobias shivered, because it did not
feel like that anymore.
    “ Take care of it,
brother,” he heard Gregovitch say. “For our sake as much as
yours.”
    “ I will,” the Beast said.
“I will.”
     

Chapter Twelve
     
    A half hour later Tobias sat opposite
the Beast in one of the rooms next to the bedroom. This room was
part sitting room, part dining room, and Tobias had looked around
it with wide-eyes. The more he saw of this underground world, the
more he began to realize just how homely it was. This was no awful
place below the ground where the people were hidden away in
tunnels, lacking the basics that made life comfortable. This was a
real place. It had everything that those above ground had,
including electricity and plumbing…and food.
    The moment he saw it all, laid out