I wanted her.

She was just two floors away from me here in my castle.

And some piece of her—naïve and inexperienced—wanted me.

The man who was doomed to die at her hand.

I could mostly ignore that fact, now that I was used to her presence, and my intermittent lust. But I wondered if not telling her about it was a bigger betrayal than not telling her about my arrangement with her father. If she did manage her Ascension—and when she found out what that meant—then she would know the truth.

That there hadn't been a moment, ever since we met, that I didn't see my death inside her eyes.

I could only hope that the shame of her learning that would be absolved by a second realization: that I had loved her anyway.

Break Her: A Dark Beauty and the Beast Fantasy Romance novel is the second book in the Transformation Trilogy, about 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.