The Beastman King’s Darling Novel – Chapter 1 Some Things Were Better Left Buried “Stella…” A voice came through the crack in the door, thick and raw with desire. “I want to fuck you, Stella.” Stella Yoder stumbled backward in her long white nightgown, her face pale with shock. Her bare feet pressed against the old wooden floor as her slim lower back hit the hallway railing on the third floor. She was standing outside Michael Quinn’s bedroom in Quinn Manor, and he was her foster father’s younger brother. The thin straps of her nightgown had slipped down her shoulders, exposing her slender collarbones. She was small-boned and fragile, and the quick rise and fall of her breathing made the elegant lines of her shoulders shift beneath her flawless skin. The sounds from inside kept coming. She gripped the railing, her slight frame trembling. Fear swirled with other feelings she couldn’t name, and she didn’t know what to do. ‘What the hell is Michael doing? Did I get a second chance at life to walk in on this?’ she wondered. It was late, the door wasn’t fully shut, and she turned to leave on shaking legs.
But she barely took a few steps before stopping. She remembered the staff. There were still plenty of people living in the manor. She thought, ‘If one of them happens to be up and sees Michael, with his door open in the middle of the night, doing that while calling out my name, how will he live that down? ‘He’s the future Beastman King, the one who will tear through every superhuman, beastman, and variant monster when everything falls apart. ‘He’s going to rule the entire beastman world as the highest-ranking power there is, and here he is, carrying on like this, where anyone could find out.’ Stella pressed her lips together and turned back with a resigned sigh. She crept to Michael’s door, took the handle, and intended to pull it closed. ‘You owe me one, Michael. I saved your future kingly reputation,’ she muttered inwardly. She could almost laugh at the absurdity of it. ‘So this is what I’m doing with my second life. Covering for a grown man’s midnight activities,’ she added. The second she was about to click the door shut, something caught her eye.
A massive snake tail coiled twice across the bed, with the tip spilling off the edge and trailing across the floor to the couch. Michael lay with his back to her, twisting restlessly. The tail scraped against the carpet as if it were trying to wear a hole through it. She stared, frozen. By her reckoning, the beastman era hadn’t started yet. Most people hadn’t shown any signs of change. Even she, someone who had already lived through all of this once, felt nothing different in her own body. ‘But Michael is already transforming into a beast? Did it begin tonight?’ she thought. She couldn’t believe how early his transformation had kicked in. Now she understood why he ended up dominating everyone later. When the world reshuffled, his territory would be the largest, and his power would outrank everyone else’s. If his transformation started this soon, it made sense that his future strength would match. Stella’s heart started pounding as a thought hit her. She’d been back for a short time and had barely had time to think, but now the idea was all she could see. ‘If I stay with Michael, I will have someone strong to protect me.
‘With my skills, I’d get crushed if I ended up with those two assholes again, like last time. I’m better off latching onto him from day one. Whatever he needs, a sidekick, an assistant, a shadow, I’ll make myself useful.’ She could coast through the whole beastman era this way. As long as no one took him out, she would be safe. “Stella, I want you.” Michael’s voice drifted out again, low and dirty. She shut her eyes and pulled the door all the way closed, cutting off every last sign of the future Beastman King’s shameful behavior. She’d already decided to throw in with him, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t roll her eyes about it. ‘What a piece of work, my dear, perverted uncle,’ she said in her head. She hurried back to her room and dove into bed, pulling the covers over her head. The sheets were still warm from before. Then, her phone lit up on the nightstand. She reached out, grabbed it, and pulled it under the blanket to find a text message. Charles: [Will you be my girlfriend?] Her stomach turned the second she saw the name. She tossed the phone out from under the blanket and buried her face in the pillow. ‘I’m not dealing with that scumbag,’ she told herself inwardly. But a moment later, she grabbed her phone back.
Under the blanket, in that small enclosed space that gave her a shred of security, she started scrolling through her phone, looking for any signs of the beastman world’s approach. In her previous life, it had arrived as if a switch had been flipped overnight. No one ever figured out why. It could have been radiation or something science couldn’t explain, something that felt almost supernatural. Whatever the cause, humans split into different branches, and the beastmen came out on top. Some people developed animal traits, like Michael, with two forms, human and beast. What she’d glimpsed through the door was him somewhere in between. She lay there under the blanket, and the image of that tail kept coming back. It made her shudder. ‘Good thing he didn’t lose control and come for me. If he had, I would have been fucked to death,’ she mused. She shook the thought off and forced her eyes back to the screen. The early days of the beastman world were pure chaos, worse than those of any post-apocalyptic story she’d read. In her previous life, she’d let Charles Shaw lure her out on the first night. That was when she and Michael started drifting apart. They went in opposite directions, quite literally.
She ended up south, and he ended up north. Years passed before electronic communication came back online, and they found each other again. By then, the hatred in his eyes was unmistakable, pure and burning. She never understood why. Michael used to be so good to her, and she didn’t think she’d done anything unforgivable. But everyone who had lived through those early years knew how ugly people could get. There was no bottom to it, and everyone came out different. She knew there was no point digging too deep. Some things were better left buried. Chapter 2 Going To Live for Herself Under the covers, Stella focused on browsing the latest news across several popular apps. She didn’t miss a single platform that could give her updates from the outside world. She searched for any early signs of beastmen, but instead, her screen flooded with steamy fanfic recommendations. ‘That’s not what I wanted. Damn it,’ she grumbled inwardly, kicking her legs in frustration. Finally, she gave up and checked her bank account balance. Stella was “an orphan,” but not the kind whose parents had died. Her parents, who only cared about having a son, had ended up “selling her off” to the Quinn family.
After moving into Quinn Manor, she’d considered herself an orphan ever since. She never had any assets of her own, but Michael was so generous that he always made sure she had more than enough. The Quinn family was already wealthy, and with Michael’s knack for business, their fortune had skyrocketed within a few years. Over the years, he’d pampered Stella like she was a true heiress. He’d handed her a black card with no limit and never bothered to ask how she spent a single dollar. But she always remembered her place. She was treated like a rich heiress, but she wasn’t truly one herself. ‘So what if Michael gave me a black card? Can I spend recklessly? Can I have the sense of security that those real heiresses at school inherited from their families? Not a chance,’ she’d thought. She lived carefully, working hard to support herself even with that unlimited black card. And she had to keep it a secret from him, afraid he’d be upset if he found out. Back in her previous life, whenever supplies were scarce, and she was starving, sometimes fighting off dumb beastmen and variant monsters for a single piece of bread, she’d pull out that black card and stare at it. In the early days of the beastman world, cash was nothing but scrap paper. Actual food became the real currency.
Even with an unlimited black card, she couldn’t use it for anything. If she’d tried, those cold numbers on the card couldn’t have bought her a single thing, and people would’ve laughed at her like she was an idiot. o the black card became a keepsake, a reminder of her time in Aethelburg’s elite circles, and that it’d been given to her by the Beastman King himself. In the beastman world, that was practically a royal seal of honor. So even though she’d been scraping by at the very bottom of the beastman world, she’d always kept that black card safe. At least it had his name engraved on it. Now, Stella stared at the black card for a long time. Then she carefully transferred 3 million dollars from the card into her own account. She hopped on Ponbay and placed bulk orders for each essential item, such as jug water, crackers, instant noodles, solid fuel, oil, grains, salt, medicine, and pads. She didn’t need a huge variety, but enough to handle any unexpected situations. When the beastman world first hit, things would get chaotic for a while. If she ran out of something, she could head out and get it for free.
Since everyone would be pretty weak at the start, with her fighting skills, grabbing free stuff would be no problem at all. Besides, she’d already decided to cling to Michael’s coattails. Maybe she wouldn’t have to go out at all. The Beastman King could handle everything.