DALIA, the secretary of the Moon Goddess, is met by the deity's most troubled victim; the first and only lycanthrope. In a violent heist, the lycan abducts the loyal secretary as leverage.
Two figures from different worlds are forced to revaluate t...
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"She's the reason I'm still alive today."
"Pardon?"
"I was born a long time ago, as a were, well before you were here."
"You're a werewolf? That shouldn't be possible, I...older than me?" How could that be? I'd read his journals, the language they held, I already knew he was from an era long past, but as a werewolf? Infeasible. He had to have experienced numerous centuries, werewolves scarcely lived past 150.
"Aye, when I was a pup that master of yours cursed me." His voice was dry when he revealed his undoing, yet his eyes had migrated somewhere else, caught unfocused in the distance.
Gods were known to have indulged in curses, and this affliction fit as a perfect explanation for his uncertainties. Curses were the most callous of punishments, an unjust punishment was as cruel and immoral as the crime. For the duration of our relationship I had never known Dima to license a curse, but this was before me.
The Beast's screams haunted me, the highs of his voice, burdened with more than could fill him, overflowed. Now, he was noiseless.
He offered his hand to me and I eyed him curiously. Holding up my rope bound wrists he reached forward and made an incision with his claw. My restraints fell from me. Both my wrists were slightly raw, mostly from my own exertion. I suppose I was never much of a threat to him.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize, you weren't alive then."
"But Beast, to kill her will not produce the closure you desire," I warned. In his pain he would only cause more harm, to others as well as himself, these negative emotions would only multiply. His revenge would not die with her, it would be inherited.
"I cannot let her get away with this." He clawed at the bed sheets, fisting them in his anger. His knuckles were whitened.
"No good will come from her death, not for you or anyone else." I was going to nip this murder plot in the bud, the only way I knew how, before it cost any more lives.
"You're wrong, the world would be better off without her, or any of the gods for that matter." He was slipping, his back trembled easier than a tampered leaf. My words betrayed me, cutting him in all the wrong ways.
He leaned forward, this time to corner me, not to relieve me of his restraints. Taking my chin in his hands he tyrannized me, inches from my face. His claws battered my cheek, where I'm sure little indents would be speckled if he ever released me. He flexed my face to the side and advanced farther, till our eyes departed from one another and our cheeks met, his breath beated in my ear. My accelerated, terror stricken heart rate mingled with his own.
He was a metal gate, forcing me into an iron box. He was alive, yet burned like ice against me. From his deceptively sweet lips came the most degrading of words, "You know nothing."
