Beasts Within by Lexi Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

you come in with me, I can bring you back here on my break.”
                  “N-no. I…I’d rather stay with you, if that’s alright.”
                  He could understand that. Being left alone in a strange place didn’t sound particularly appealing to him either. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m sure Allie and the others will find something to keep you entertained.”
                  “Thank you.”
                  It was funny how different Camilla could be from moment to moment. Sometimes she seemed to be more snarky and a bit sarcastic, but as soon as something troublesome got brought up, she seemed to retreat into herself. Karic found himself wondering what she would be like if she didn’t have to be afraid. Probably bright, funny, those full lips quirking in a smile at some joke she had made. He bet that she would be a joy to be around, and his heart went out to her that she had to live her life in fear.
                  Mentally he scolded himself for thinking like that about someone he barely knew. It was things like that that made people call him a bleeding heart and had gotten him taken advantage of. He fell for every sob story in the book, and it had only led him to trouble before. But somehow he could tell that if was different with Camilla. The fear in her eyes, the quiver in her voice…all of that was real. Karic knew enough about fear to know that.
                  “Is there anyone you’d like to call?” he asked, wiping his hands on a dish cloth and cleaning the counters with it. “Your family maybe? A friend?” It was probably a dumb question, and the silence that followed it told him he was right. If she’d had someone to call, she probably would have done it already and not been in this predicament. Why did he even open his mouth?
                  “I don’t know where my family is,” Camilla said, and her voice was so soft that Karic barely heard it, even with his enhanced hearing. “It’s been me and the pride for as long as I can remember.”
                  “Oh. I…I’m sorry,” he replied. And then because it seemed only fair that he offer something in return, he sighed and continued. “I know my family, but we don’t talk. It’s been ages since I’ve seen either of my parents or my older brother.”
                  “Why? Don’t you miss them?”
                  “We never saw eye to eye,” Karic explained. “My dad and brother are both shifters, and they have that whole…we’re better than everyone else because of what we can do mentality and it drives me crazy. I don’t know how many fights we got into because I dated human girls all through high school and college.”
                  Camilla sighed, and Karic went into the living room so that he could see her while they talked. “Yeah,” she said. “Paul, the leader of our pride, he’s like that. He thinks of himself as the king, and everyone is below him. Especially humans. I’ve never understood that way of thinking, though. I mean, yeah, they don’t have any special abilities, and they can’t change their forms, but they go about their lives the same as we do. Most of the time we look just like them. What makes us any better than they are?”
                  Karic’s eyes widened because those were the exact things he had said to his father when he’d walked out, insisting that he couldn’t live the way his father wanted so he would go live on his own. Since then he hadn’t really had the time to talk to many other shifters, and so he felt a lurch in his stomach when he heard Camilla’s words. “That’s…pretty much how I feel about it. If anything humans are better than we are for coping with life without any special powers.”
                  “Yes.” Camilla granted him a small smile. “I can see why you are