Moon Bound (Glorious Darkness Book 1) (22 page)

(43) Feast

|Regan's POV|

Like putting out small fires, their lives are being taken. Resting on my hind legs next to my mate, I watch as the hybrids in wolf form put down the remaining wolves, wounded and struggling to keep their breath for another moment of life just before hungry canines clamp over their exhausted, vulnerable to attack frames.

This is no longer a fight to the death; those are the final touches in the end of a massacre.

The rest of my pack, what's been left of it, a few hours ago almost two hundred people and that not counting the juveniles, are now just silent observers to that show, people awaiting their own fate after deserting their leader, their alpha.

Standing at the edges of the vast forest clearing, they no longer possess that air of defiance, instead, they are hunched in their defeat, hopes to overthrow my rule over them squashed.

Some of the mated females and most juveniles are missing, being charged to take care of our pack's little ones who were not supposed to see this or just excluded from the fight because of their age. Some of them probably already on the run after being notified by their husbands, fathers or brothers about the outcome of their rise against me, sent away to seek the protection of other packs or even live outside of our small, secluded from humans society.

There are no more than just a hundred of them now - ten of the ranked wolves who shared the packhouse with me already dead, only two of them left.

The house is going to feel empty without them. There have been about twenty others besides me who lived there and now there are only a handful of juveniles and two ranked wolves left. Some of them will still die from their punishment.

An earned punishment I can't avoid giving them, I can't deny myself. But first things first.

You may want to get back to the house, Scarlet. I don't think you will like what I'm going to do next, 
I warn her, unable to hide the delight I can feel now when I am able to communicate to her through the mind-link. So much closer to her than a few hours ago, the need to keep her next to me for what's to come overwhelming, contradictory to what I've just said.

She turns her head towards me, unusual for an animal intelligence swirling in her wolf eyes, the same color her human eyes are. Her scarlet fur is gleaming different shades of red under the pale moonlight, lighter in the illuminated spots and darker where the shadows stay unperturbed by the Moon.

Desire heating my core, warmth is flooding inside as I fight to keep my muzzle away and not bury it in her fur, scent her, mark her wolf body just like I've marked her human one.

You forget who I am, Regan,
 her voice rings back, soft and gentle like a quiet lullaby sang only for your ears in the darkest of nights, giving solace yet stating a claim over your mind. Addicting you to its timber.

I know you are not some gutless juvenile who will be scared or flee at the sight of blood,
 I admit to her, pained to do so, pained to acknowledge that I've turned her into this savage, bloodthirsty creature. 
I just... I just don't want you to witness-

It's fine,
 she cuts in, turning back to the scene of death and gore, dispersed all over the forest floor. 
Whatever you are about to do won't harm our bond or our relationship.

My heart clenches inside my chest, the beast clawing and raging against the pain. The words hang in the air between us, unspoken into the mind-link. 
We are damaged enough just as we are.

I stand up from my sitting position, a soft rumble escaping my parted jaw as I close the distance between us and gently bite the tip of her ear, my muzzle seeking that spot behind her ears. The wolf inhales her feminine scent, the barbarian inside coveting her as much as he does to let his nature out. The man is holding him back, keeping him at bay in his fear to show her once again who he truly is, what he's made of.

Once a gentle and caring boy, the Regan she's going to see is nothing like him. His feelings are alight just for her now and not for this pack of traitors.

Her hackles rise, her body shivering with my closeness to her, testing the wolf's control. I lick her fur, tasting her the way his male is supposed to. I'm withdrawing before I lose it completely, unwilling to risk it, mate her right then and there.

Stay here. No matter what happens, stay here and don't move. Don't fight me when I come back,
 I command, using my Alpha voice on her for the first time since she rejoined the pack, hoping she won't try to fight my order once it starts or once it ends.

Why? What are you going to-

Just don't, okay?
 I interrupt, turning towards the massacre, taking it all in.

The hybrids are now standing on the other side of the clearing. After having done their work, they are just waiting for me to finish what we all started.

They have already shifted back to their human forms, unperturbed by their clothed in red nudity now when the battle is over. Perhaps, they think this is the end of it, that there won't be anything else for us to do to the wolves lying stiff and cold on the forest ground.

Collen, however, knows better than that. His emotionless, almost innocent mask is back but his eyes reveal his knowledge. He knows of the old ways, he has seen my father do this to his own wolves.

The others may not be aware that there will be more, but the wildlings' leader certainly is. I can see his own hunger lurking inside the glimmering with knowledge eyes. Dark as the night itself, they burn with the same need I can feel rising inside me, or it's maybe just the moon's reflection.

I make my way back into the carcass of bodies, stopping in the middle of the clearance, upturning my muzzle towards the moon overhead. A long, high-pitched call leaves my parted lips, a cry for a pack who has defied my authority to join me for their punishment. Our punishment. The fallen's punishment.

Cries and whimpers replenish the night once again, pleas for mercy sprinkling over the pack bond like raindrops barely felt by the savage taken my place now. Human bodies shift in a violent and painful change. Forced on them.

Come!
 I shout into the pack link, my voice an audible terror even in my own mind.

Hesitantly, now transformed wolves approach me, heads bent in submission, bodies shaking as they keep their eyes downcast in surrender.

My body heats up, my chest vibrating against a heart that speeds up in anticipation. The Moon is caressing my fur with ghostly, silvery fingers. The fever is spiking up.

Freeing the beast out.

The wolves stop, waiting for my next command. Some of them have probably heard of this punishment. Forcing the traitors to stay, their spirits turning into nothing but a reminder of a past that shouldn't be repeated, haunting the ones who have locked them into the world no longer meant for them instead of letting them ascend.

This is a punishment for all of us. For them because they were stupid and reckless and for me because I am their alpha... supposed to carry the burden just as they are.

I let out another howl, the words of the order echoing inside the pack link like a curse being repeated by hundreds of different voices, yet all one and the same.

Feast or die! Feast or die! Feast or die!
 it says again and again.

(44) Prove You Are A Man

|Scarlet's POV|

Watching them, a pack of hunger-driven, mad animals, this is like nothing I've seen before. I have killed too. Ended lives without a justifiable reason so I'm not much better than them but this... this is something else. This is not losing control, neither is it protecting the ones you love and it's definitely not a battle.

It's simply wrong. Wrong in so many ways that even to the idle observer this seems like some kind of horror movie scene come to be replayed with all its detailed gruesomeness in reality.

He never said to me what he was going to do. Never told me why either. Nevertheless, he warned me.

I shouldn't have doubted him. I should have taken it at face value and just gone back to the house instead of staying to watch it.

A monster on the loose. I'm wearing the mark of a monster. I'm a part of him now even if he's not a part of me yet.

We're all monsters, some of us more than others, I guess, but he's something entirely different. A barbarian in his own league. A living, breathing terror that has claimed me as his and now is doing the unimaginable.

Heavy paws are padding like thunder over the blood-saturated ground, the earth taking in what the wolves won't. Only the flesh is for them; the remaining bits and pieces will be fed to the ground.

They take everything they can, consuming their pack mates or rather what's left of them, strong jaws putting pressure on dead flesh, tearing limbs along with the bones, savoring the taste of the fallen in a cloud of angry snarls and growls as they fight for their right to bite into the carcass.

The command from minutes ago still ringing in my ears, I tremble, the animal muscles clenched in my need to hold my ground, stay still and not bend to his demand to join.

Now when I am a part of this pack, his orders are more than just words. They carry influence, my body responding with a need to follow I can barely keep denying, yet my will struggles to.

Refusing to see them doing this, I close my eyes and collapse down on the forest floor, not caring if I get more blood on my coat. The blood can be washed, the memory, on the other hand, will never be.

There are just the sounds now, the scents spraying into the heavy air. Almost tasting it. Almost like I'm one of the flesh eaters.

Am I not? Am I any different since I am only withholding that same hunger? Just not acting on it like they are?

The sound of approaching steps reaches me, human steps hurrying closer to me in alarm. "Are you alright, Scar?"

I recognize the voice as Micah's. Concern audible in her words even without me actually seeing her face. I can't look now and I don't need to look to know she's looming over my form on the ground.

"You're shaking all over. I've been watching you shaking for a while. What's happening, Scar? Are you alright?"

My belly clenching, my stomach somersaulting, wave after wave of disgust are sweeping over me, my body revolting against the commands my alpha has given me; more so not just against what they are doing but against what I've done... against what I have become.

I keep listening, the veil of my lids tightly closed still, no longer watching the horror but just listening to the sounds of flesh being torn, chewed, swallowed by my own kind. Maddening.

"Just give me some sign that you are alright. Scarlet?" The voice is laced with worry, pleading with me to answer somehow, however, it's swallowed by the other noises before I can think of a way to tell her.

I'm not alright. I've fallen deeper, further into that quiet desperation of finding the truth I can no longer deny. Is any of us anything but a monster? Are we anything but a force of destruction?

My friends, a family I've found for myself, they have their own crimes. 

My pack, the one I left and the one I'm a part of once again, they are mindless animals.

And who am I in the midst of all this craziness? Who am I supposed to be?

The tremors are now more violent, turning into raking over my body spasms, the shift just a breath away.

I'll be a different kind of monster when I turn back human. There's no redemption of nature. But is it only nature that defines who you are?

"Scarlet!" the voice shouts, ringing in my head soon to be gone again.

My body's heating up, my mind humming from the pressure of the change as my own voice deafens the sounds of the wolves, screams echoing inside.

Shifting back and forth is supposed to become easier after the first time, however, now it's not easy but a battle against the compulsion to stay as a wolf, join the ones who are devouring the dead or just stay still. Even my own body is defying the orders I've been given.

There should be more than nature. Your own choice must matter too.

"What's wrong? Just listen to me, Scar. Whatever's happening you need to listen to my voice and calm the fuck down!"

It's not just my internal voice and hers screaming but my very soul. Rotten to the core. Caged inside a body it should not belong to, trapped within the fate of being a monster, that girl from two years ago, the one who was so much more than this one, all along she's been somewhere inside and now she's finally emerging from beneath all that darkness. Her conscience, just like she has, has suddenly sprung to life. To fight. Showing me paths I have forgotten or chosen not to follow.

I choose not to be defined by nature.

Stop it! Stop it! Now!
 A voice rings loud and clear into the pack link, my own voice. Commanding, holding authority I didn't know it possessed.

The focus of the pack shifts, now directed towards the echoing in the mind-link voice. The pack-bond is trembling, searing hot under the pressure of my own willpower over it. A will that bends it, molds it to a different shape, letting go of every defense, letting them in for the very first time. Accepting of the monsters in hope that there's still something that could save them.

Save him.

The sounds coming from the wolves still into silence. The girl next to me doesn't utter another word as a howl sounds from somewhere close, pleading with me to follow the order I've been given while his mental voice speaks into the pack-link.

Don't do this. I am the alpha. You can't give them orders, Scarlet!
 Barbaric, just like the creature he's turned into now, that voice shouts into the link, laced with barely held-in anger, the intent to squash my defiance of his authority audible in his desperation when he adds, 
Don't.

I told you to stop it. No more!
 Her voice – mine, rises to a crescendo, repeating the order as my body ripples under the change, an agony I didn't know could exist is overtaking my world until I feel her... complete.

I am. A girl who shed the skin she no longer needed, I rise to my human feet.

I pin his wolf under my stare, note his blood dripping muzzle, his ebony fur soaked with remains of all the kills and horrors this night has given us. Shadows swirling inside his irises, the wolf stares back as shaken by my defiance of him as I am, nevertheless, none of us gives in.

I don't want to do this. You know I don't. Please, don't make me do this.
 His voice makes the link tremble. A wounded heart crying out to be heard.

Doesn't he understand that I'm not trying to hurt him? I'm not trying to undermine his authority but to save him.

I raise my hand, touching the mark on my neck in a silent reminder of what we are, what he wants us to be. His wolf's eyes follow the motion. 
You wanted a chance and I gave you a chance. I let you mark me. I fought next to you. I killed for you. I never agreed to any of those but I did it for you. And now, it's your turn to prove to me you've changed. Prove you are a man and not a monster. Prove it, Alpha! Let it be more than just meaningless words.

His wolf shakes, hackles rising while the spring eyes keep watching me, the tension thickening with every passing second spent in silence.

Finally, he breaks the stare-down and saunters to where I stand, leaving the waiting for orders wolves amidst the still unfinished carcass reminding me that I should have ended it sooner.

Hopefully, it's still not too late to steer them off that path.

The wolf nudges my belly, silently asking for my attention and I look down at him, his eyes scornful yet determined when he asks, 
A man?

Holding my breath, I give him a nod and watch the shadows clouding his spring eyes disperse until there's just the forest green staring back at me. The man, not the monster.

Clean up the mess then go back
 
to
 
your homes,
 once more slipping into his alpha role, he gives the command, this time - his voice more human than beast. And then, like it's no more but a mere snap of his fingers, his wolf morphs back into his human shape.

The man towers over me, shameless in his naked glory, his own eyes raking over my own naked body with a different intent than the one from a few minutes ago. He leans closer to where his mark sits at the creak of my neck, inhaling all there is to take in from me.

My body shivers, growing weaker with his proximity, skin meeting skin, the sensation exquisite despite the fact that we're both covered in dirt and blood.

"We need to go back and clean ourselves up," my voice wavers as I struggle to maintain my cool facade. He's affecting me now, more than he ever did before, more than I'm comfortable to admit.

"We need to do that and then more," he says, tracing a finger over the skin on my collarbone, every second of his touch electrifying.

I give him a questioning look. "More?"

"I need to prove to you that I'm a man, don't I?" he chuckles. His voice sounds contained, like he's putting everything in it not to shout to me, masking the anger I know must be burning inside of him.

I swallow down my embarrassment and let him hold my hand on the way back.

Is he a man now? Or is he that beast?