Monster

.8.

I had named myself Persephone.

The destroyer.

The old female had told me that we needed a monster and that is what I had become. I destroyed what had been needed, had burned the rest in the fires.

We had rebuilt on the ashes.

The sky was a brilliant blue. A blue that brought a smile to my face. I knew I was no beauty, knew I was not a female males would fight over but it did not matter.

I did not want males.

My gaze looked over the rolling green hills, looked over what my destruction had birthed and I sighed. Such a blissful and wistful sound that I had not even been sure I could make, yet there it was.

"Stop." Her voice was soft and sweet like the first bite of a summer peach and I let it wash over me. I knew if I tasted her lips they would taste just as sweet and fresh as her voice. She was bliss for me, her voice rolled over me like fog over the hills, encompassing and comforting.

Feminine fingertips traced around the scars on my arm, a need in her that could not be quelled, nor did I wish to be. "Why should I?" I felt my mouth twitch upwards as I gazed to where the birds danced in the sky, listening to the children as they laughed in the meadow.

She laughed, a sound so soft and sweet that my heart turned in my chest. I wondered if she knew what she meant to me. I wondered if she knew that she held my heart in her hands and that without her it was gone forever

It almost had been.

Sword thrust into her side, those blue eyes shimmering with puzzlement before she fell. My heart had fallen with her. I had fought to her side, slew the male who had tried to take her away from me. I begged her to breathe, to live. Those blue, swirling with warmth as they looked at me, had closed and I had kissed her, not wanting her to leave, begging her to stay with my lips pressed against hers. We had breathed together, I had breathed for her.

It had taken all of the healers to stitch her up, to keep her heart beating, to keep her clinging to life.

I did not leave her side, guilt heavy in my chest and stomach, tasting sour on me tongue. I had asked her to fight for me, asked to come with me towards death because I couldn't bear to leave her behind. She was everything to me and she couldn't understand how much I couldn't leave her behind.

It was selfish and she had paid the price for it.

I had curled up next to her side, baring my teeth at the male who wished to enter, his eyes filled with worry for the female I had claimed as my own. I had denied him entrance, denied him because I wouldn't let another male take her away from me. I knew how he had looked at her back at the pack, like she was his moon. I turned him away, my teeth bared and a feral growl rattling my chest.

Selfish.

Selfish.

Selfish.

I couldn't find the regret for it though. She had survived, had opened that blue before she had looked around, meeting my gaze. I had trailed my fingertips across the smooth expanse of her cheek, tracing the thin lines that rested on them. She had been unmarked before our battles, now she was littered with scars but I hadn't cared before I kissed her.

My lips pressed to hers, my heart thumping in my chest like a war drum before she kissed me back. I had pulled back and she had blinked that blue, where it turned into a warmth of blue fire before she fell back into the darkness.

It had taken her a long time to recover but she did. I stayed by her side, letting my fingers and hands trace the curves I had ached to touch before. I doubted she knew how much I had longed for her. The female I had found broken and bleeding in the woods, who I had turned into a warrior.

I had wanted her with my everything.

"Where do you go?" Her voice brushed against my ear on a breath of hot air and I growled, returning to the present before I grasped her, kissing her soundly. I could never get over how I could reach out and find her there. In my life, in my walks, in my bed.

She was right there for me.

I pulled away, loving the dazed but heated sparkle to the blue of her eyes. "I go to memories of you." I would not lie. She was my thoughts, my musings, she was my life. A slow smile crossed her face, a scene that unfolded and made my heart skip a beat.

"Lay with me." She lay back into the grass and I moved to my side, tracing the lines and curves of her face with my eyes. I knew each one by heart but I did it still. This female was the moon the wolf inside me called to. She was the divine magic that drove me forward. I grasped her hand, pressing it to my chest where my heart beat hard against my ribs. "You are supposed to look at the sky." Her voice was teasing, a note that made my heart turn over in my chest but I didn't care.

"There is nothing captivating about the sky, Kin." I murmured the words, tasting her name upon my tongue and my lips with abject pleasure.

I pressed her palm to my lips, closing my eyes as I inhaled her scent. She smelled of pure moonlight, a descendant of the wolves like me.

She was my moon.

My warrior.

Though scars were etched into her flesh, she never let anything get in her way. Resilient. A fighter, not by choice, she had been born it. She was a warrior at heart and I loved her all the more for it.

She met my gaze, the blue simmering, warming for me. I kissed her hand once more, pressing my cheek into her touch.

We held gazes until she turned onto her side, moving close enough that we shared breaths. The scent of her filled my lungs, made the wolf in my veins raise her head and howl.

She was perfect.

It did not matter that she could not stand as straight as she once did, the scar on her ribs pulling her to one side. It did not matter that her eyes would flash with fire and she would remind me she bites. It did not matter that she held the power to destroy me, to burn our kingdom to the ground. It did not matter that she could be my ruin as easily as she was my salvation.

I stroked her cheek, feeling the softness beneath the rough of my fingertips. Hands that had worked a forge and held a sword for many years. It did not matter to her that I was rough, that I was scarred, that I was no beauty. She looked at me as if I were her heaven, even though we had both been born of hell.

We had become monsters, forged in the fires the males had sparked in us. We had been divine retribution, had been death and war. We had walked the front lines, killed thousands but in these moments I could only see the female I loved and who loved me.

After all, monsters still had hearts and they loved too.