The Hunted

Ten

He had looked different than she remembered, though. More human. In that clearing, ripe with pain and blood loss, he'd only been a creature to her. Claws nearly bursting from his knuckles, teeth elongating in his mouth, eyes darkening as a snarl tore from his throat...It'd been a monster defending her.

If that's what he'd been doing. It was the only word she had for it anyways.

In the cell, he'd simply looked like a man. Tall and broad. Thick muscle and dark hair. Brown but she suspected that there might be a slight hint of red there too if he spent enough time in the sun – though certainly not enough to warrant it as a nickname. His lips were a soft, pale pink. The bottom was slightly too full for the top. He had high cheeks, a strong jaw, and a straight nose with a few hard-to-spot freckles dancing across the bridge.

And the eyes – a deep green that reminded her of a forest canopy. That shifted as he moved, shadows and light taking form. Dancing in and out of view. Fluid and changing and inhuman.

No human had eyes like that.

The eyes were made worse by how he stared at her. As if he knew her, somehow. A deep kind of knowing, like he was seeing down to her very soul.

It was ridiculous, of course. Even if there had been concern in those supernatural eyes when he'd raked a gaze over her. Injured and dying in the cell. She wondered if he'd been able to smell the death on her then with those enhanced senses that he had.

The pain and delirium had taken root by that time of that green-eyed werewolf's first visit to her cell. He'd come back only once since then, what she estimated to be two days after his first visit, asking the same questions he had the first time. Blake wondered if he realized that not only was she refusing to answer, but even if she wanted to, she couldn't.

Days of rotting in that cell, allowing her wound to fester, sacrificing her thirst and hunger for pride, was surely going to kill her. Now, she was hardly strong enough to keep her eyes open.

Perhaps she would simply close them and not wake up again.

It didn't sound like a terrible way to go. Not when the other way was a werewolf ripping her to shreds. Skinning her alive, severing limbs, mauling her. It was only a matter of time before that Alpha charged back in here and did it himself.

If Blake were lucky, the dehydration and infection would take her by then.

Though she knew that she shouldn't want to die, it was almost welcomed. It would be easy, so easy, to slip into the darkness and nothingness of the beyond. To join her mother and father in the afterlife, if there even was such a thing. Let go of the pain and misery, of the hate that fueled her and drove her mad, and descend into a place of serenity.

She couldn't help the low groan that escaped the back of her throat as she slumped further against the wall. God her head throbbed. A thousand tiny jackhammers thundering through her brain.

Each breath that passed through her lips was a wheeze. Laboured and burning.

The end was near. Blake could feel it coming. Knew, somehow, that she would close her eyes, fall asleep, and that would be it. She couldn't even find it in herself to be afraid of that ending. There was no energy left in her, not for that.

So Blake closed her eyes and went willingly into the darkness.

*~*

It was not the ending she had envisioned.

Mostly because it was not an ending.

When Blake felt consciousness rushing to greet her, she was certain that she was not going to die. Not then at least.