Make Her: Transformation Trilogy - Book 3 (Special Edition Hardcover)

The final book in the Transformation Trilogy, an intense fantasy romance retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Rhaim produced a key from somewhere upon his person. “The collar has a lock.” He tossed it out onto the table. “If I cannot solve the Deathless, I will become your loyal servant, until the end of my time.”

I was suddenly in danger of fainting. Rhaim had just as much as admitted he didn’t have an answer yet, and the price he would pay for failure was too great for me to bear.

I knew what it was like to be trapped in a cage.
I would never, ever, send anybody else—much less the man I loved—into one.

“Father, you cannot agree to his terms,” I told him. I rose up on my tiptoes, leaning over Helkin’s shoulder to shout, “I still hate you, beast!” willing Rhaim to change his mind.

Rhaim gave me a wicked smile, and spoke in the growl that bypassed my ears and went straight to my core. “As well you should, princess. And know, too, that if I am given you, I will never show you kindness again . . . and the things I will do to you will make the unicorns weep.”

A Dark Beauty and the Beast Fantasy Romance is the story of Rhaim the All-Beast, a cruel beast mage doomed to die at the hands of the woman he must protect at all costs, and Lisane, the sheltered Princess of Tears, who has been given into his care and who needs him to teach her magic so she can be free—no matter how much it might hurt her.

LISANE

For one perfect moment, I was in a unicorn glade, astride one of the proud beasts’ backs, smiling down at Rhaim and ready to pledge the rest of my life to him. 

I didn’t know how to quantify the way that I felt, but I also knew I didn’t need to because I knew he felt it too. Something had changed between us last night, vastly for the better. I could tell in all of the actions he’d taken with me this morning, how he felt free to touch me now, but was gentle when he did so. How he teased me, while still giving me a smile. 

Finx could create webbing from himself to use to bind things together, and while what Rhaim and I had was not so literal, we had somehow done the same. There was a thread racing from my heart to Rhaim’s, growing tighter by the moment, and I knew that it was love. 

Then my father came to kill him. 

I felt the portals opening around us, only I didn’t know what it meant, as Rhaim swept me off of the unicorn and tried to hide me behind himself, and as they were talking, I realized the truth, though I made Rhaim repeat it in my horror: my father had known where I was all along. 

And now? 

Everything was through. 

We were completely outnumbered, and there was only one way for me to save Rhaim’s life from my father and his guards. 

“Don’t hurt him!” I shouted, stepping away from his protection. “I’ll come out!”

“Moth,” he growled and reached for me, but I yanked away before he could catch hold. 

I had to deny everything between us. 

Vehemently enough that everyone would believe it. 

Even him. 

“How dare you?!” I shouted at him, backing up, as tears started streaming down my face, feeling the thread between our hearts grow taut. “Everything was a lie, and I was your joke! And to think I almost let you ruin me!” 

I watched my words hit Rhaim like so many blows. “Do not say those things, Lisane,” he pleaded. 

“Or what?” I asked him, begging him to understand, to know that I would choose a life without windows for a thousand years, as long as I knew he was safe. “Or you’ll torture me more?”

“Stay by my side and we can fight or flee, but do not abandon me like this,” he growled, obliviously. 

I ran for Jelena and she caught me with open arms. “I could never love you!” I shouted back at him, knowing I was lying. “I could never want to be with you!”

And then I plucked my father’s ring I’d found among his treasures from a pocket and threw it at him. It was the only clue I could give him that I was doing this intentionally—that I had figured out some small piece of my own captivity the prior night and that it hadn’t mattered to me. 

Because every moment of this morning among the unicorns, here, with him, had been true, and I would treasure the memory of it for the rest of my candle-lit days. 

Jelena grabbed me, and then my father did, and I could feel the thin thread in my heart begin to fray. “I never want to see you again, beast!” I screamed, sobbing, and I saw Rhaim surging forward on instinct, changing into his monstrous form to take me back, even if it cost him his life. “Live with the knowledge of my hatred in your heart!” I shrieked to repel him—and it worked. 

He stopped—mid-step, mid-change—and the thread between us snapped. 

Rhaim didn’t dare take my love for granted, even though he ought. 

Even though I knew I would love him helplessly, until the end of the world. 

I stepped into the cold dark of Castillion’s portal, knowing I would never have my freedom again, but at least Rhaim was alive, hearing him, still half a beast, broken-heartedly howling my name.