Aimée and the Bear: Fairy Tales with a Shift

By Cara Wylde

A retelling of Beauty and the Beast

 

Who thought my favorite flowers, the red roses, would get me into so much trouble? One moment, I was picking them from the jungle-like garden of an old, abandoned mansion, the next I found myself hauled up into the air and thrown into a dark, filthy dungeon. Who was my captor? What did he want from me?

 

When I learned the only way out of this mess was to become the beast's wife, I decided I'd rather die. What made me change my mind? The mysterious, handsome stranger who started appearing in my dreams. His name was Gabriel and he was trapped, just like me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cara Wylde
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386797661

Book preview

PROLOGUE

I should have known better. I should have known this wouldn’t end well. I wiped my tears and tried to clean my dirty cheeks with the rim of my sleeve, which was probably useless since I was almost sure I was going to rot in this filthy dungeon. The little light that was coming through the small square window was just enough to allow me to see how dirty the floor and the walls of my prison cell were. I was sitting with my back against the cold iron bars, trying to make myself as small as possible. I could see the shape my body had left on the dusty floor when the thing had thrown me into the cell. I shuddered at the thought that half the filth and dust in this enclosed space was now on my face, hands, and clothes.

Yes, I should have known better. This was all my fault. Stealing is bad even when you’re starving and the thing you want to steal is not that important or valuable. I deserved this.

It was only a bunch of red roses... I whispered to myself. The dark, hollow corridors turned my words into a soft echo.

CHAPTER ONE

My family wasn’t always poor. Until a year ago, my father was a wealthy merchant who brought fine silks, exotic spices, and precious stones from the Middle East. Sadly, he wasn’t very good with managing his income, so when his trade ships were destroyed in a storm on their way home, we lost everything. Instead of buying new ships and hiring a new crew, father had to pay all his debts, which led to us losing our house and having to start a new life out of the city. My two sisters and I had been raised as proper ladies, and when we saw ourselves at a farm, away from the world we loved, with no servants to cook and clean for us, we panicked. Actually, they panicked. I was a little more adaptable. After all, I couldn’t just stand there and wait for a miracle to happen when my father woke up every day before dawn and started working.

He was a good man, my father. After mother died of a strange, incurable disease, he took care of us and made sure we studied with the best professors and had everything we wanted. Beautiful dresses, expensive jewelry... We might have been the daughters of a merchant who had worked all his life to get where he was, but we were as well-dressed as the queen herself. In retrospect, maybe father should have saved the money he spent on us and invested it in a second business. It was all gone now, and there was nothing we could do about it. So, while my sisters, Cécile and Diane, moaned about how hard life at the farm was, I decided to help my father as much as I could and learn the little he knew about farming. If we stayed united, we’d eventually rise back to a respectable social and financial status, I was sure of it.

Usually, I was the one who went with him at the market to sell our produce. My sisters avoided the market at all costs. They didn’t want to be seen in washed-up dresses, mingling with what they called the common people. Honestly, I couldn’t care less. All our friends already knew about our misfortune, so it wasn’t like we had anything to hide. To them, we didn’t even exist anymore.

Little by little, we managed to get some loyal customers. Our vegetables were always ripe and fresh, and we often sold everything in just a couple of hours. The clients were wealthy people who sent their servants every morning to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. But these were not the only things they bought... It was at the market that I saw how servants and maids were looking for... roses. Of all the flowers, roses were the most popular, but they were also very rare in this part of the country. Of course, there were a lot of people who sold greenhouse roses, but the wealthiest members of the highest society wanted nothing more and nothing less than big,