Unleashed

Chapter Three: Drug

Connor

Him.

The word the human had said still lingered in my head, wondering why she'd said it. No other human has ever called me by that pronoun. Yesterday had been the first time I wasn't called an "it," as if I was a thing, as if I was Darius's property alone and not a man.

For a moment, I caught myself wondering who she was. I knew her name, as I've heard it before. Mila. But what kind of person was she? What were her thoughts? Was she different from her uncle? She seemed to be.

My wonderment didn't last long, though, for I soon realized that I didn't care. I hated them. I hated them all. They made me sick, those humans.

Us, Lycans, have lived in servitude for as long as I could remember and if I were to believe my oldest family member, the humans have only gotten worse over the years. Their greed for power grew stronger, thinking they were Gods. But pride comes before a fall, and they will fall. At least, the house that I served for was going to.

Soon.

Before the humans' hunger for power, they and Lycans lived in harmony. We were many and we lived free. And even though Lycans were always stronger than the humans were, we'd never harmed them.

Then the change came, and where Lycans only got one or two children, humans got five or six, or even ten, and they quickly outnumbered us by tenfold. They became monsters when they understood how much easier things were in life if you had slaves that could do your dirty work. Slaves who were twice as strong as you were.

We were physically stronger but less monstrous than they were. There was always something that they used against us. They threatened us, blackmailed us, or offered us things we couldn't refuse so that we would be weak and malleable for them.

Lycans became caged beasts, but the way I saw it, humans were the real beasts in this story. They have a cruel nature to get their way. Most of us lived as slaves and some lived a life of loneliness in the woods.

Lately, my master has gotten even smarter. He had invented a new way to weaken us which came in the shape of something so little, yet so powerful.

An addiction.

The content of the vial that Caspian had threatened me with yesterday was like a drug to us. I still didn't know how they'd invented it, but it was the worst thing ever. It made us weaker than ever. Not physically but mentally.

But soon...soon it'll all be over. Soon, I wouldn't have to call that snake my master anymore. I hated how I'd become so weak because of the drug, but I was fighting it, pretending to take it, while I didn't. I was clean for weeks, and have planned to become more dominant, more controlling over the other Lycan fighters than the drug itself was. Right now, I wasn't there yet, but I was going to be.

Soon.

***

"The moon is beautiful tonight," said Rhett as we both laid outside on the arena sand.

It was almost night and completely silent. The other Lycans were either asleep or fucking one of the human whores, so it was just me, Rhett, and some of Darius's men. They guarded the ludus but didn't care whether we slept inside or laid in the dirt.

"It is," I agreed. I loved the nights where it was just me and my brother, looking at the moon. It made me calm. Silence before the storm, you could call it because during a full moon, which will be in a few days, we were always at our strongest.

"Did you hear what the human said?" he asked and I immediately knew what he was referring to.

"I did," I answered.

"She seems...different from the others."

"She's a human," I answered. "In the end, they're all the same."

My little brother was a lot naiver than I was. He was more innocent as well. Thankfully, the evil ways of the humans didn't scar him as much as they did me. He was spared from most of the horror.

Rhett took a big breath. "Maybe..." He paused for a moment. "Have you already thought about using her?"

Out of all the others, he was the only one who knew about my plan of taking matters into my own hands. I'd told him a while back when I quit taking the drug. Sadly, he wasn't strong enough to go against it himself, at least not yet.

"I haven't thought about that, but I will. You're right, we never know how she might come in handy."

"What they did yesterday wasn't right. They shouldn't have made you shift in front of everybody and laughed at you."

"Is it anything new, though?" I answered my own question before he could. "It's not. They're despicable. You know that."

"Well, you got a little over a month to decide what you can do with her," he whispered.

"If she's still here."

"Yes, I think she always stays a few weeks."

I needed to be a little more patient, knowing I wasn't ready to dominate the others yet. During the next moon, I was going to execute my plan, and who knew? Maybe the human would come in handy for something...

***

I almost fell asleep before footsteps caught my attention. I heard footsteps all the time, since a Lycan has much better hearing than an average human, but these were soft and hesitating.

I sat up straight when they came closer, until, on the other side of the bars, a young woman held her steps. She was dressed in a long blue dress, decorated with golden curls.

Mila looked at me with anxious eyes. In her hand, she held a torch so tight, her knuckles had gone white. I, however, didn't require light to see in the dark. I could see her perfectly fine. I could see every brown-golden hair on her head, every lash that circled her speckled blue eyes, every stitch that was made for the golden embroidery adorning her tunic.

"I...I...h-hope I didn't wake you up," she stuttered, walking closer towards the metal rods, which were the only things that separated us.

Was she insane, coming here all alone without any guards? I could easily stick my claws through the bars and twist her little neck right here and now. I think she was even thin enough for me to pull her dead body through the bars and consume her, making her disappear without any trace that would lead towards me.

Slowly, I stood up and closed the space between us. She took a step back but no more than that.

"I wasn't asleep yet," I replied.

She fumbled something in her other hand while her eyes fluttered from me to the cell that was my sleeping place, to the thing she held in her hand, and back to me again. I could hear her nervous heart beating rapidly.

It was a piece of paper that she was holding. "I made this," she then said, offering it to me by taking a step forward and laying it on the floor. "It's for you."

After she had taken a step back again, I picked it up. It was a drawing, and I realized it was me that I was looking at. My face. I've seen my reflection in the blade of a sword more than once and it looked exactly the same.

"..."

"It's a-gift. I mean, it's a gift to say sorry for what- It was my fault because I...I wanted to see the Lycans. You can't show anybody but it was all I had to o-offer. I'm sorry," she said, and she left much faster than she came, leaving me confused as fuck.

What just happened?