Aries

Aries POV: Lyra

The West wing was empty apart from four people in their cells. I had met three and I was quite close to one. But who was the newcomer? Was it their scent that was teasing me now?

Only when I was close enough, I saw who that fourth person was. Her brown hair was sprawled all over and skin over her wrists were red from all the thrashing and twisting in the chains. I could see a pair of boots peaking from the seam of her dress. Who wore sneakers with a dress? Apparently, this girl did.

Her heart-shaped face was streaked with tears. Her parched lips were crying out in pain. Her eyelids fluttered and her jaws trembled. Even with that grime and tears, she was a female who had a beauty like no other. I simply could not take my eyes off her. Her scent was not the only thing that rooted me. It was the female her self.

Something about her soul that made me stay.

Have I seen people cry in my life? Yes, I have. Did I want to comfort them? Sometimes. But seeing this female cry out in some pain, I could not bear it. I just wanted to kill everyone responsible for her pain and be done with. If doing that would put me in the Dungeon, I would gladly take my place in the same cell as hers.

As much as she was a female I did not want to see cry, she was the first apart from Antlia who triggered protectiveness from me.

How I wished I could step in just to wipe those tears away and wash her sorrows.

But even amidst the pain, I saw her fighting spirit. She was not someone who gave in easily. I admired that. Even at times like this, she was fighting.

"She will die if she continues like this," Miguel helpfully said.

"I am trying to take her pain," Cathara said, her voice having a break in between. Cathara had lost her daughter and she still had that motherly instinct in her. "But I cannot."

Alioth said, "I can't bear to see another die."

After all, seeing her mother's mutilated body had made Alioth snap and go on a rampage.

But what was she taking a form as a nine-year-old kid? If I did not know any better, I would have walked past her.

"Is it necessary that I have to commit a felony to go in?" I asked, hating the rules Polaris made. That made me realise something. Was she the reason Polaris came down to personally tell me to inform Alioth about her release?

It was as if that North star knew this would happen.

"Unfortunately, yes," Miguel replied.

While I could not go in, I could do my best to alleviate her pain. When I reached for her, her mind was guarded. Even against me. Ignoring that fact, I focused on what was causing her the pain.

She was a shifter and she was going through heat. Or that was what anyone else would have said. But she was going through something that mimicked heat. Since it dealt with rising in body temperature, I tried my best to bring it down. I called to the pain to my surprise, it listened to me as though it knew me.

Upon a few commands, the heat was under my control. Usually, Amaris or Luna were the ones who controlled this stuff. What was I doing? Why was I doing this?

"Arien!" Alioth snapped. "What are you doing?"

"I am taking her pain," I replied. "She has been wronged. I don't know why."

I could not tell her that her scent was my undoing. That her face was something I could keep looking at for the rest of my life.

"So many are wronged, Arien!" she said. "Will you go an take away their pain?"