Free Reluctant Mates - 21 Paranormal Romance Stories (Werewolf, Vampire, Minotaur and Monster collection) by Francis Ashe Page A

his gaze to the work in his forge. Finally, I managed to ask him where I was, which, looking back was a fairly ridiculous question.
    “Well, we haven’t gone anywhere since the last night.” After he spoke, another of his powerful, deep-throated snorts sent a chill through my blood. 
    The snort was followed by a groan as he lifted a hammer large enough to crush half a man in one blow off the floor of his workshop and clanged against whatever was being made. He grunted and held it above his head, then brought it down with such an explosion of sound and muscle and fury that I felt my entire body quake.
    “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m making repairs to a part of my temple. A door, it...fell.”
    It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized I had a fear that he was creating some kind of torture device to use on me.
    “What are you called?” His voice was deep and rumbling, but it was barely above a whisper.
    Looking around the room he was in, it was a cavernous space and I was encased in a tiny alcove of one side of the main room. There seemed to be many other rooms just like mine, though most of the doors were broken, almost torn off the hinges.
    “I asked you a question, girl.”
    “S – sorry, I was looking around the...area. I never had any idea there was so much to this old building.”
    “We’re far below the surface. The top floor, level with the ground, is nothing but a husk. What are you called?”
    “Aiden.”
    He grunted.
    “What do you mean with all the grunting? You asked my name and I gave it to you.” I felt such courage come through me that I began to know myself again. “What are you?”
    “I’m exactly what you think I am. You were given to me by that coward of an elder who refuses to face his ancestor’s sins, so he continues to give me girls. I can’t say I’m unhappy about it, but you can only eat the same thing for so long.”
    “Eat? You can’t be...”
    Again, that laugh. That damnable laugh. His massive shoulders shook as he enjoyed my misery.
    “No. No, girl, I’ll not eat you. Yet, anyway, if that makes you feel any better. But you’re mine. You were given over, and now your name makes no difference. It is nice, though. I’ll keep it in mind if you please me.”
    That pale orange light that bathed him made the beast in front of me somehow look even larger than he really was. Again he brought his enormous hammer, one that any normal man could not have lifted without two or three partners, up with one hand, and struck the metal on his anvil, sending up a shower of sparks that bounced along the floor and hurt my eyes. He held it up – a thick, long rod that still glowed from the head of his forge – and turned it round and round in front of his face to inspect his work. Satisfied, he put it down with a heavy sigh.
    And then he turned.
    I threw my gaze to the floor. No matter what I did, no amount of concentration or focus or anything else would let me look up to see the visage of the monster to whom I belonged.
    Heavy, plodding footsteps scraped against the stone, and settled in front of my prison door.
    “Look on me.”
    He snorted.
    Hot air caressed my cheek and my neck.
    “Look, I said.”
    I couldn’t do it. I knew what waited for me if I did. I knew the terrible reality that my life had become and I knew that as soon as I saw the monster’s face...
    “I said look!” He slammed his fist against the door so hard that the lock rattled against the wood. “Now!”
    “I want to,” I whispered in between heavy breaths from the bull man. “I want to look, but I just...I just can’t.”
    “You will do as you are told,” he said softly. Somehow, the control in his voice was even more terrifying than the shouting.
    Another hot blast of air shot around either side of my throat and again I tried to look but lost my nerve at the very last second. “I’m...I’m sorry but I can’t. I – I just woke up in this place, my shoulders hurt, and I’m in a bunch of