Title: Damsel

Author: Keily Shinra/Soshite

Started Chapter Date: January 8, 2005 11:30 a.m.

End Chapter Date: January 30, 2005 6:43 p.m.

Scenario: Fairytales have a way of coming to life as Detective Orcot discovers in a widow's two look alike daughters, Rose and Yuki. Will there be a 'happily ever after'? Or will everything end in tragedy?

Disclaimer: I do not own Pet Shop of Horrors or any of its characters; Matsuri Akino owns them. I also have no claim to any of the fairytales featured in this fanfic. I do own the original characters as mundane—or twisted—as they may be.

"It's very dark in here."

"This particular animal likes to stay in dimly lit places."

Yuki laughed. "Dimly lit? I can barely see around in here…" she said, straining her eyes to look around the dark room using the light from the hall. The room smelt sweet and the teen felt all her troubles float away all of a sudden. She let go of the count's hand once her eyes adjusted a little, as her eyes caught sight of something on the right wall, overshadowed by some drapes. It was rectangular in shape, soft, but also rough at the same time. It was a painting!

She could almost see all of its features, but there was a tear in it, hanging depressingly off of the rest of the work. She tentatively picked up the piece, her heart suddenly beating hard in her ears as she slowly lifted the piece back into place, so she could see the whole picture. Though she never could get a good glimpse of the painting when she felt something pass by her from behind and she had to whirl around to see what it was.

"What was that?" she demanded.

"That…is your pet." Count D's voice said. A small light suddenly came on, a candle, followed by a few others so the girl could now see what the room was truly like…and it was dreary. Lovely, but dreary. "His name is Duke. He is, but a wolf from a mountainous area located in the Czech Republic. A rare breed. Fit for royalty. Come out and meet your new master, Duke." There was a soft growl, but nothing came out into view for the girl to see, no matter how much she tried looking.

"Where is he?" Yuki asked sounding a little worried. "And you said wolf…aren't wolves dangerous…?"

"Yes, they are, but don't worry…Duke is quite domesticated." The count said reassuringly. He rounded the girl until he was behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, making her jump in surprise. She hadn't even seen him move. "Perhaps Duke is a little shy. Maybe a call from a fair maiden shall give him the courage to come out into the light?" he suggested into Yuki's ear. The girl remained paralysed for a moment. Should he call him or not? What if he attacked her? He was a wolf after all!

"Have no fear, your highness. He may appear gruff, but rest assured…he has a heart of gold buried beneath his beastly exterior." D whispered softly, encouragingly. Yuki swallowed and raised a hand into the darkness before her.

"Come here, Duke. Please…" She took another nervous swallow. "…Please…let me see you." She took a sudden step backwards into D with a soft gasp that escaped her lips. A hand, elegant, long and big with elongated, sharp looking nails reached out from the dark and took the girl's offered hand. Slowly, the rest of him came into view and Yuki's ebony black eyes seemed to grow wider in shock.

A man. It was a man of tall stature, wide shoulders and very regal bearing with the way he stood proudly as he held her small hand. She could not see his face for half off it was covered in what appeared to be a wolf's mask. Over his dark clothes was a mantle of deep brown fur kept fastened around his neck with a brooch of some sort of family crest that was red and silver with a wolf over a cross. From his fur boots, to that wolf's mask, he seemed strange and very dangerous looking. Was D a slave trader? Maybe he was going to give her to this man. Pet shop indeed.

"What better pet…to a girl in a red hood…than a wolf?" D asked.

"W-wolf! This is no wolf Count! This is a man! A human being dressed as a wolf!" The count said nothing to this. He simply remained silent for a few moments as he exchanged glances with the wolf-man. Yuki looked up at the pretender wolf, into his eyes, as he receded back a step into the dark. If her eyes could widen any more, they would have fallen out of their sockets. His eyes glowed. They glowed an unsettling amber as he bore into her.

"No, he is just a wolf, your highness." The dark man behind the girl said softly. "After all…this is a pet shop…and all that we sell are pets."

Pets? Do human beings count as pets! He looks human to me!

"Does he not please you?" D asked. "He will be loyal, protect you within the last inch of his life. He will care for you like no other…Don't you want…to never be left alone ever again?" That had hit home. He heard her sniffle softly as she bowed her head and shook it.

Her mother was always at work. So she hardly ever saw her aside from times that she decided to stay up late for one reason or another. And before he died, her father would disappear for months on end before coming back, but even then he wouldn't even be conscious enough to tell her a greeting. And her sister, her dearest sister…had been stuck in a two-year coma and even now had shown no signs of waking up at all.

In their mansion home, Yuki was alone.

So maybe…she could believe that he was nothing more…than a wolf.

As a few tears escaped down her cheeks, Duke swept forward to kiss her tears away—no he licked them away the way an animal would. He spoke no words, he merely comforted her with his actions. He kissed his way to her neck where he just gave her a soft bite that made her try to recoil further. What was that about?

"It would seem that Duke's taken a liking to you, Yuki." Count D stated, sounding pleased with himself. "So…would you like to take him home?" He saw that Duke's hold on the girl's hand tightened a little and he chuckled. "Hmm…it would seem that you don't have much choice, do you?"

Mrs. Linda Grimm was not happy. And she was thus for many different reasons. One, she had been stuck babysitting her step-daughter—yes, step-daughter—for a whole day, losing a good eighteen hours worth of good work. Second, she had just been called by one of her firm's best clients saying that she was switching to another firm, resulting in a great loss of a financial asset. Thirdly, her step-daughter had bought the most horrendously ugly animal she had ever laid eyes on.

And most importantly of all, there was still no sign of Thomas' proper will.

All Linda had were hunches, clues and various other little snippets as where his will had went. The only last piece of testament that he had left behind was what he wrote for his personal physician before he died. It was a piece of scrap that said: 'Please give everything to Yuki'.

What had been he thinking? Giving it up to some bastard child of his when his legitimate child needed the money more? How long before her own funds would disappear with each of her clients as they switched to other firms?

The fair woman plucked an apple from the tree she had bought from Count D some time after Rose had been sent into a coma. As he had said, the tree brought her good fortune. Every time she ate an apple, something fortunate had happened for her. Well, now she needed a miracle her faith could never provide. She wondered vaguely what would happen if someone were to eat from the red side…?

"Mother!"

Linda looked up from her musings to see Yuki standing by the sliding door a ladle in her hands, an apron covering her clean clothes and a rose hanging out of her pocket. "Mother! Come inside! It's really late! Dinner's ready!" The woman put up a smile and waved her off.

"I'll be fine. I'm not too hungry right now! Start without me!" She looked at her apple with an almost animalistic look to her eyes as Yuki went back inside to tend to their dinner.

She bit the red side as her cell phone rang.

When Yuki had gotten Duke, she felt very uneasy about the whole affair. Had she been put under a trance? Just what had possessed her into taking the strange man in? Her mother had not reacted well to him at all and even went as far as to call him ugly. When she stole a glance up at him, she…found that he wasn't so bad looking. Just a little disconcerting. He wouldn't say a word at all. Sometimes he would just stare off as if she weren't there and when she did have his attention, his hands were all over the place, not to mention his lips. Her mother had mentioned how dogs loved to shower their masters with affection, no matter how they looked, because they couldn't talk.

But this was no dog that was touching her! This was a man, couldn't she see!

And it wasn't just Duke's appearance or strange habits that made her feel uncomfortable either. The clauses given to her by Count D made her shiver a bit.

"You must always give him fresh meat and water three times a day." the man said as he led the girl over with the contract on hand. Duke stayed close to them as they walked and talked, like a shadow. "You must never leave his side, for if you do, he will hunt you down until he dies." At this, Duke pulled Yuki's hand up to kiss it lovingly. Feeling embarrassed and bothered, the teen snatched her hand away.

"Even at school? I'm not sure they'll let him roam around campus…" She said, still unsure about what she was about to do. She did find Duke attractive for all of his oddness. "Is there anything else?" D smiled at her.

"And also…you must also take care of this rose." He told her as he brought out a perfect blood red rose coiled around a spindle. The girl in red found it strange that such a flower could be wound around a spindle without being dried or fake, but as she felt it, it was real as the wolf-man standing beside her. Soft velvet petals, firm stem and—

"Ow! Those thorns are sharp!" she yelped, looking at her bleeding finger. She blew at it, hoping that a cool bit of air would stop the throbbing. The prick finger began to bleed and she noticed her new 'pet' looking at it a bit ferally. He wasted no time of taking her hand licking the blood off, then sucking on it for a few moments, then biting her finger, to which she yelped again in pain and pulled her hand free. She was about to yell at him for hurting her when she saw what he had spit out when he bit her finger. A thorn.

She bit her tongue to keep herself from saying anything nasty. D, who had been keeping an eye on the whole affair, wore a smile that was neither warm nor chilling. It was mysterious and a little smug.

"You should be careful. We were lucky that it was a thorn this time…what do you think would have happened if it were the spindle that you had pricked your finger on?" he asked sweetly. Yuki blinked at him.

"Like in Sleeping Beauty in the Wood?"

"Precisely. I see you've been keeping track of everything that is Grimm." The girl smiled and chuckled lightly.

"Well, besides becoming a world famous chef…I'd like to write one day." D raised a brow.

"Oh? What would you like to write?" The girl smiled softly as her eyes were cast on something faraway. Something only she was able to see.

"Something…incredible, I hope." She laughed and scratched the back of her head. "But that's a long way off, anyways…" She took a deep breath as she picked up the rose around the spindle again, wary of the thorns and the sharp ends of the spindle. "…why do I have to take care of this rose? That's certainly an odd request."

The Chinese man merely gave her an all-knowing 'You'll see' smile as they signed the contract.

Yuki sighed as she wiped her forehead of sweat. So now she was stuck with Duke who would follow her everywhere. He dogged her steps and showed his affections with no self-restraint whatsoever. If he was, in fact, an animal, then he was the strangest looking one she had ever met in her entire life. He stood near her now, even as she was cooking her and her mother's late night dinner. On the way home they had already stopped at a supermarket to buy some meat, so the wolf had already been fed and watered properly. She went out to call her mother in for dinner and went back, all with Duke following her silently.

It finally got to her.

"Can't you speak?" she asked of him, sounding rather distressed. His eyes softened as he picked up both of her hands and kissed their knuckles, sadness shining in his eyes. She sighed and went back to overseeing the dinner in order to keep it from burning the house down. "I suppose not…you're only a beast, aren't you?" He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and rested his head on top of hers. Yuki's breath hitched in her throat for a moment, but she then forced herself into acting as normal as possible. Maybe if she gave him the cold shoulder long enough, he'd take the hint without her having to hurt his feelings. She realized just how tall he was, how broad his shoulders were, how strong his chest seemed to be. If this were some cruel joke and he really was a man in disguise, she was going to have to be on guard. What if he turned out to be some sort of pervert!

But her mother had said that he was a dog and the Count had assured her—as suspicious as he seemed—that he was, but a simple wolf that would be devoted to his new master.

"Hey, Duke…you're not some guy in disguise are you?" she asked, waving her ladle around. "Because if you are, I'll smack you so hard, you'll wish you never met with Yuki Grimm! Understand? I…I know kung-fu!"

Duke looked down at her in confusion for a few moments before smiling an amused smile; a smile that soon blossomed into soft, guttural laughter. Yuki blinked up at him for a few moments before pouting at him until he stopped laughing. He kissed her forehead before making a hand gestured that she didn't quite get. He laughed and kissed her again. For the time he laughed and kissed her, she had stayed silent and fumed. When he was done, she continued with her cooking like nothing had happened between them.

"…Your laugh is neither melodious nor cheery, sir." She said to him quietly. "…But all the same, whether ye be human or animal…I love your laugh just the same." He made a sound, something like an inquiring whimper. She didn't know what he wanted to ask, so she merely made a shot into dark water. "I don't know…I just do. It's…different."

"Yuki, dear! Are we still set for the Debutante's Ball?" Linda yelled as she entered the house again, eating an apple. The woman threw it into the trash as she approached her daughter and her new pet. "Oh! Duke is a friendly little beast, isn't he?" she commented, shocked to see him so close to the girl. "Anyways…you'll handle the house, am I right? I'll be back at around…half past midnight. Is that fine? Do you mind being alone in the house?" Yuki sighed and nodded as she stirred their soup.

The Debutante's Ball was one of the highlights of the year for anyone of high social status, but most importantly, for the introductions of new and young debutantes. It was the biggest coming out party in the entire state. This would have been her year, but midterms were coming up and Yuki could not miss a moment of studying. And it wasn't as if she could go even if she decided to at the last minute. She had no dress, no shoes and absolutely no training needed for the ball. She couldn't dance to save her life. Not to mention that there was the little problem of…

"Are you sure, dear?" the blonde woman asked as she set the soup bowls on the table. "I heard that that boy…Frederick Charmant will be there."

Frederick Charmant: a senior, student body president, captain of the football team and very popular with everyone at their high school. He was as rich as he was good looking. He had transferred to St. Michel High some four years ago and had taken it over by storm. He was charming; he was handsome. No wonder that he had been named the city's most eligible Prince Charming. For a while, Yuki had a crush on him, but she knew very well that an odd girl like her would not be so easily accepted into social circles or into his sight…To him, she was invisible.

"No, thanks. I've got test results to worry about." Yuki said finally as she sat down and ate her soup. Her free hand absentmindedly reached out to scratch behind Duke's ear and he whimpered blissfully. "So, no…I don't think I'll be going."

"But Yuki…you're always working…always staying inside and studying. There are more things to life than just work." Linda said. The girl scoffed quietly to herself. She could say the same thing about her workaholic mother. She was out of the house more than any other person she had ever known. Ambitious, prudent and self-conscious. That was her mother in a nutshell.

"No, I think I shall stay home."

A/N: I have a feeling this story is becoming bland, as I predicted. O.o