Shielding the Beast (discontinued)

Twenty-One | Cold

A/N:
This chapter was an add-in (meaning I wrote it to stick between two previously published ones), so if you spot a plot hole please tell me.
Also, it goes straight to the aftermath of the full moon, so there is quite a time skip. After this book is completed, maybe sometime before, there will be a bonus chapter released that contains the events of Amber's Bloodlust, but as of now you don't need to know those to understand the story.

Happy reading!

///

Cold. So cold.

Encompassed by darkness, my senses seem drugged. I see nothing. Hear nothing. Feel nothing except a bone chilling cold cutting into my flesh, and a biting metallic aftertaste lingering on my tongue. Forcing my eyes open, reality comes rushing back, causing my head to pound like a bass drum.

Immediately sitting up, the rapid movement only worsens the nauseating headache. With a palm pressed to my forehead, I take in my surroundings with adjusting vision.

Like clockwork, just as I've done so many times before, I lay back down and press my back forcefully against the ground. Mud squishes beneath me, sticking to my skin and working with the old stains of blood to obscure the gnarled scars from view.

It was a habit now. To hide the thing that so plainly screamed out my name, my identity. Nobody should ever see them, no matter the cost. Yet somebody did. Whoever bandaged me while I laid unconscious in a dungeon cell, they saw them. But who was it?

Fog lays like a veil around the forest, the air crisp and opaque. The exaggerated iron smell of old blood causes my nose to wrinkle, the wafting stench of death in the distance accompanying it.

Even from potentially miles away, I can smell the multitude of dead bodies. Like the rank stench of rotting meat, the hint of something sickly sweet mixed in to make it all the more worse.

Why can't I feel remorse?

Their blood is on my hands, smeared all over my body. A crimson puddle pools on the ground around me, whether mine or theirs who would know?

I slaughtered them, yet I feel empty inside.

The usual satisfaction isn't there, yet the foreign concept of guilt doesn't plague me.

Why aren't I fulfilled? Why does the taste of blood in my mouth only disgust me rather than please me?

A shiver runs through me like a jolt of electricity, making me flinch. My skin is tarnished with mud both dry and wet, and stained with blood old and new. My fingers and toes are cold to the touch, numb of feeling.

I'm still a monster.

But monsters don't feel. I can feel the cold.

I'm still not remorseful. But I want to be.

This yearning inside me, to feel regret, to want to be sorry; it's all foreign... And it's terrifying.

What's happening to me?

And then I know.

Asher.

He's made me love. He's made me feel. He's made me care...

A sudden burst of joy makes my stomach knot with excitement, and my lips curl into a grin. He's changing me. And if he can do this, then I could be normal.