Feral Bonds

Chapter 26: In the Wild

Akecheta wandered the depths of the forest, far from the world he once knew, and the remnants of his old life were reduced to little more than a distant memory. The trees towered above him, their canopies thick and tangled, casting the forest floor in perpetual shadow. He lived like a ghost among the trees, slipping in and out of consciousness as the days bled into one another, his body and mind both fractured by the dark magic that consumed him.

He had dug out a crude burrow beneath the gnarled roots of a large, ancient tree—a hollowed-out place where he could hide, where he could sleep fitfully when the fever didn't burn too hot in his veins. It was primitive, animalistic, but it was the only shelter he knew. He no longer felt like a man. Whatever humanity had once lived within him had been slowly eroded by the relentless hunger and the savage transformations. He was something else now—something caught between wolf and man, beast and spirit.

Every time he shifted, his body betrayed him. Bones would grind and disjoint, muscles tearing with each brutal transformation. His skin, already riddled with scars from the fae's sigils, split open at the seams when his form changed, the wounds weeping blood as his body reshaped itself. The dark magic within him twisted everything, warping the natural flow of his lycan abilities. Where once the transformation had been seamless, now it was a violent struggle, a war within his own flesh. He was always caught between forms, never quite one thing or the other.

The pain was constant. His bones ached, his muscles were raw, and the magic burned through him like poison. His glands, once attuned to the natural rhythms of his lycanthropy, now mixed chaotically with the dark magic that flowed through his blood. The hormonal clash sent his body into fits of fever, his skin hot and flushed, his mind fogged with delirium. Some days, he couldn't tell if he was awake or lost in a nightmare.

He would lie there in his burrow, half-checked out, feverish and trembling, his mind fractured by the constant strain. The runes on his skin, the dark marks that had cursed him, flared with pain whenever he tried to resist the transformation, whenever he fought to stay human. The more he tried to hold onto his humanity, the more the runes tightened their grip on him, like chains pulling him deeper into his feral state.

Each shift left him brutalized. His body no longer fit into itself—like it was too small, too broken to contain the monster he had become. The magic and his lycan nature were at war, and he was caught in the middle, torn apart from the inside out.

He stopped fighting it after a while. There was no point.

The hunger never left him. It gnawed at him from within, a constant, insidious need that he could never satisfy. At first, he had tried to subsist on animals—wild deer, rabbits, anything he could catch. But no matter how much he ate, it wasn't enough. The magic twisted his instincts, making him crave something darker, something that could only be satisfied by human flesh.

The first time he killed a hiker, he had wept afterward, his body slick with blood, the taste of flesh still bitter on his tongue. But as time passed, the guilt faded. The hunger was stronger than his regret, stronger than any moral compass he had once possessed. His humanity slipped away with each kill, each bite of flesh consumed under the weight of the dark runes.

Now, there was no hesitation.

Akecheta lived like a nomad, wandering the deep woods, hunting the occasional human who strayed too far into his territory. His kills were quick, brutal, and he felt nothing but the brief satisfaction of feeding, the momentary relief that came when the gnawing hunger was sated. He didn't think about the lives he was taking, the people he was destroying. They were just prey now, just meat to keep him alive for another day.

As the days bled into weeks, and the weeks into months, Akecheta lost track of time altogether. His days were spent in a feverish haze, his body ravaged by the dark magic that pulsed through him, his mind growing more disconnected from the world around him. He would wake up in his burrow, his body covered in blood and sweat, the memories of his hunts blurred and indistinct. Sometimes he wasn't even sure if the things he had done were real or just fragments of a nightmare.

The fever that burned in his veins made it hard to think, hard to focus. His thoughts came in scattered fragments, his memories tangled and disjointed. He could barely remember his old life—the pack, his father, the ritual that had set everything in motion. All of it felt like it had happened to someone else, in a different world. Now, there was only the forest, the hunger, and the endless cycle of pain and transformation.

Akecheta's body had become a patchwork of scars, some old, some new, crisscrossing his skin like a map of his suffering. His muscles ached with every movement, and his bones seemed to grind together painfully whenever he tried to shift. He was never fully comfortable in either form—human or wolf. His body was broken, twisted by the magic that coursed through his veins, and he could feel himself slipping further away from the man he had once been.

There were moments, brief flashes of clarity, where Akecheta would stop and stare at his reflection in the river, trying to remember who he was. But the face that stared back at him was not one he recognized. His eyes, once crystal blue, had turned a strange, sickly maroon, the colors of the omega blue and feral red mixing unnaturally. His face was gaunt, the bones of his cheeks and jaw sharp beneath the skin. The constant transformations and the insatiable hunger ravaged his body.

In those moments of clarity, he would wonder if there was still any part of him that was human, any part of him that could be saved. But those moments never lasted long. The hunger would return, the fever would spike, and the beast inside him would take over once again.

And so, Akecheta wandered, a broken, feverish shadow of his former self, living in the deep woods like a wild animal, hunting and killing with no purpose beyond survival. The runes on his skin glowed faintly in the darkness, a constant reminder of the curse that had consumed him, turning him into a cannibal, a monster.

Each day, he lost a little more of his humanity. And each day, the beast inside him grew stronger.