Wolf #2: The Beast Within [COMPLETED]

Chapter 44

A/N: Sorry for the delay! I've been rewriting the ending of this second book! Double update for y'all since I missed yesterday and last Wednesday!

Warning: This chapter contains violence and disturbing imagery. Reader's discretion is advised.

Chapter 44

"Are you afraid of me?"

Mother's eyes are wide and frozen in perpetual torture. Her hand still loosely grips the athame she used to end her friend's life and her own. Their fingers are entwined tightly together...

The only touch I ever knew from those hands was a slap across my cheek. I never came close to her often—she and I chose to keep our distance.

"Stop," Asena sobs as she shuts Mother's eyes and hides that awful expression she wears even in death. "Just...just leave her be, Kaltain."

It comes of no revelation that my sister would stay so protective of the woman who gave birth to us—even after she chose to leave us for The Moon. Asena is just like her...and Cecily sensed it. Asena had been the only one she would talk to—the only one of us who knew the tenderness of Mother's hand.

My sister looks nothing like us either. My two other sisters and I inherited our complexions and features from Orion. But Asena is the only one who took after Mother—her stature, her appearance...even her voice and temperament.

"She never loved us..." I grit my teeth and feel the monster inside me grumble. It has been growing more vocal these days. I scratch my chest in a sore attempt to alleviate the pressure it creates against my ribcage. One day, I think it will burst through my chest cavity and eat everyone. "She had nothing but hatred for us—"

"That's not true..." Asena begins to drag them outside. Rieka says nothing as she picks up Canaan and helps our eldest sister. "She loved us all—but we terrified her. We...our existence disgusted her."

"How can you love something that revolts you?"

"A fine question, Kaltain."

Asena and Rieka are motionless at the sound of his voice. I have no fear of him—only the vaguest feeling of heightened awareness. Orion is a man who had brought me into this world, and continued to fill it with the darkness and turmoil that created me. But he is the only one who does not recoil away from my outreached hand. In terms of paternal affection, the most I have received is a warm meal and clothes on my back.

But Orion and Mother had come to the same realization about me a long time ago—I am gifted. The potential inside me grows with every passing day, and even I can sense the power that will allow me to shift the world in my favor.

Orion bends down and grips my chin roughly. I don't look away from him, unlike my older sisters. Daciana is rocking in the corner of the room, gurgling and giggling like the ignorant infant she is.

"The ones you love the most are often the ones that will disgust you. They will do things to you that you will not deserve. They will strip you down to the bone and mark you with their sins—"

"As you did to Mother?" Asena must be very upset about Mother's death if she is speaking up against Orion. Most days, she has a hard enough time not soiling her skirts near him. "She may have dragged the blade against her skin—but you are the one who ended her life—"

"The question is not how can you love something that hurts you," Orion continues to speak to me as if Asena's voice is nothing but the wind that rattles the trees outside. "The question is how will you react? What will you do? Will you cower to the one thing that can destroy you...or will you make it cower?"