How was I to know that love would be my own undoing?

Love for my town. Love for its people. Love for its safety. Love for a woman.

Love for Belle.

I had never been the most conventional of people. I was an adventurer by heart, desiring nothing but to take on the next greatest challenge while ensuring the safety of my poor, provincial town with its many citizens too oblivious to know the obvious threats of the surrounding French countryside, including wolves and beasts of all shapes and sizes. But I kept them safe, and what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them as long as I was on watch.