Ascension - Book Eight - Man x Man

Chapter 1 (New)

Nothing prepares a person for the unrelenting torment of a second being taking up residence in their body. Every last scrap of peace, every thought that is their own, is shadowed by the set of eyes that hides behind the veil in silent judgment. It's a heavy feeling, overbearing and inescapable, and as a mortal, it was something I'd never truly experienced to this degree. 

Verando had warned me that the lycan gene was a curse, I had wrongly convinced myself from watching the cunning professional that it would be easily mastered. I'd told myself I'd need a week or two, and then I'd be resuming normal function like everyone else. 

In my travels, I'd been to purgatory before, I'd dealt with spirits and communicated with the other side, and that did not hold a candle to the experience of becoming a lycan. There was no escape with sleep, no way to slip off and recharge my mind, where ever I went the wolf would follow. 

A permanent fixture, I could see now why so many lycans chose to run away from their wolves. Two weeks, and I was barely managing to get by in my day-to-day tasks. Try as I might to put on a happy face, and appear as though I was enjoying this life, I felt so painfully out of place in this new body that at times I regretted the choice. 

Those moments were fleeting, I loved my family so dearly, and yet the difficulty of navigating such a lifestyle change threatened to drive me to madness.

From the simple task of brushing my teeth to deciding what to eat, the secondary opinion hovered in the background. It was a being that I could not see or touch, yet could cause me so much pain at a moment's notice simply because it disagreed with my choices.

I could see why some even opted to die instead of going through this. My body was no longer my own, even the way it was composed now belonged to the beast. It could bend and break me, forming me into its creation should I lose the battle for who was in charge of this meat suit. 

I found myself tiptoeing around my tasks, afraid to trigger the wolf, afraid to anger it into retaliating and attempting to crawl out of my body. At times I lay on the bathroom tile, curled up and sobbing, as my body threatened to shred itself. Verando encouraged me to let go, but I couldn't imagine committing to such a fate. 

It felt unnatural; as if he was asking me to go ahead and die. 

Exhausted and mentally spent, my temper was getting the better of me. I found myself drifting in and out of the haze, overstimulated and underfed. No matter how hard I tried, I could not agree with the beast's palate. Verando did his best to feed me, to coach me through these harsh days, but it did little to persuade me. 

I wanted greens, the wolf wanted raw meat. I wanted warm tea, the wolf wanted lukewarm tap water. My favorite foods smelt like putrid garbage while I shamefully salivated over something as simple as the children's morning bacon. It should be simple, eat whatever the wolf wanted, but then would there ever be room for me?

Looking at Verando's expression every time I asked, I knew the answer was shaky. We had to learn to get along first, then I could begin to reinsert my desires. I was a wild card, an unknown, my wolf was manufactured from nothing as I carried no Lycan DNA.

 I chop vegetables as quietly as I can manage, flinching at every crack of the knife hitting the countertop. It was jarring, ear-splitting, making me cringe with each blow.

My ears were one of my most sensitive attributes, and it disturbed me to feel like a constant eavesdropper in my own home. Phone conversations, television shows, even someone rummaging through a closet, nothing escaped my ears in the silence of our house. I found myself getting increasingly irritated with our children, the little chirps and squeals that emanated while they played.