Hidden Heart (Beauty and the Beast AU)

Birth of a Hunter

Nothing looked the same anymore, but his heart was beating far too fast for him to notice. A haze of darkness ahead. Uneven ground. Once fertile, now altered swiftly into relentless moorland and hidden maws of deep mire. Fanged, waiting to devour.

Klint stumbled, lungs burning, his precious child gripped in his arms, the only thing left. Behind him limped his hunting hound, muzzle and paws darkened with blood, injured. Balmung had tried to obey his master's orders, but Klint knew the beast was alive. Alive and drenched in the untimely fate of Klint's wife, his little brother, his best friend.

I have you. Only you. I will protect you. I will not fail you.

I will kill the monster that stole everything from us.

Klint's breath sawed, loud in his ears. His vision bounced from the force of his desperate sprint. The woman guided him forward, her hand on his sleeve, something aglow in her hand.

And then the ground sank its teeth into Klint's ankles, dragged him down. A cry leapt from his lips. He reached for Balmung, tugged on the massive hound, reached for the jewelled collar encircling his muscular neck. Tried to drag himself out of the mire, the creeping, sucking mud and water. The cold falling harsh into his chest. Needed to protect his child. Needed out.

Her hands reached down. Drew his precious child from his chest, pulled the wailing baby away from the jaws of the mire. Relief swarmed Klint, even as he felt his body grow heavy. He started to sink, Balmung scrabbling for purchase. The collar snapped. He whimpered.

The woman grasped Klint by the arm and fought with him, struggling to pull him free, one-handed. His baby crying. Long, wringing, carrying over the flat lands. The lurking depths.

Klint staggered onto solid ground. Was drawn towards the trees. He trembled and fought to collect his breath. Stared at his child, resting in this woman's arms. And felt his grief and rage and the need for blood crystallize in his chest.

"I will make it suffer," he growled through his teeth.

Just as Klint was about to turn back towards the darkened manor, to once again risk the dangerous moorland now distorting the surrounding lands, something seared his brow.

The woman had her fingers upon his forehead. Below the shadow cast by the rim of her large hat, her eyes were wide, her cheeks shone with tears, and her lips were in a solemn line. They twitched at the edges.

His baby continued to cry as a thick mist swarmed the manor, blotting out its shape. Erasing it completely from view. It swirled, impenetrable to the eye, at the far edge of the vast and conquering wasteland. A land that had once been green and filled with rolling hills and flowers and the white roses his wife had loved so much.

Somewhere, through the wall of fog, that wretched beast wailed.