Chapter Text
“It’s ok, Mags, it’s over, it’s all ok,” I whispered, stroking her hair, holding her close, tight. I never felt so happy to be close to her.
“No Mikey, it can’t be!” she moaned, crying, choking on her tears. She broke away and looked at me with those black and red jagged eyes. They made me shiver to the core – they thrilled me. “Look at the moon, Mikey! It’s the new moon tonight! I wasn’t meant to change! I’m losing it, Mikey! I’m becoming an animal!”
I’m becoming an animal.
That’s what she told me, that day she broke all the rules. I wish I’d known more back then – about her, about us, about everything to do with her kind. I wish I’d known I was going to become one of her kind, and I wish, more than anything, I’d told her what I truly believe now.
It’s better to be an animal in human skin than a human in animal fur.
It’s better to be a hunter, a tracker, a killer with the skin of a wolf than the hands of a man.
It’s easier to be a monster when you are one.
A savage paw swung around in an arch, my whole body spiralling in the air as my claws connected with soft flesh, piercing through skin and muscle and jutting on bone. A brief howl as blood soaked my arm and we rolled, my body crushing his beneath enormous back legs and shoulders decked in tawny gold fur. My teeth latched around his throat, talons slicing open a delicious new palette of smells to make my gums water, and I tore.
The other werewolf’s head rolled across the ring, slumping to a rest, the smudges of blood painting the floor a new colour.
I stood up, dropping the useless carcass at my feet and cupping my paws in the cavity of ribs, blood and organs – cupping blood and smearing it down my face, drinking it with my lapping tongue.
The screams and chants of the crowd made my blood boil with power.
I lifted my arms high and felt the lights of the Ring bear down on me. A hunter. A killer.
A monster.