Monster

.1.

They called her a monster, a beast in the woods. They said that she ravaged females who spoke too loud, who flashed fangs, who showed claws, and took up too much space. She was a reminder to stay small and unseen. The males could be loud and brash, she wouldn't hurt them. She was created as a punishment for the females. A beast to remind us what happened when we stepped out of line.

She had teeth of obsidian and hellfire in her gaze. Her claws could fell trees and venomous saliva dripped from her fangs. She would linger in the night, hidden from the moon. She was cursed, they said, couldn't stand the touch of the moon to her blackened skin. Rotten from the inside out.

A demon.

A hell hound.

A reminder for females to stay in their place.

They would cast us to the trees when we showed too much fire. Tie us up, take us to the darkest parts of the forests where not even the wolves roamed, then they would leave us. Broken, scared, and bleeding. We never knew the fate of those taken to the dark places, never knew what became of them but the males told us of the beast.

Why wouldn't we believe them?

They knew more of the world. They knew the darkest depths of this world. Some of them steeped in it. You could feel the darkness in their gaze and I wondered if she didn't come for them because the darkness in them matched the darkness of her. I wondered if she called them kin.

I had fought hard to be silent, to be unseen, but those too pure always caught the darkest of gazes. The eyes had scrapped along my flesh, sent my stomach rolling before gazes turned to grips. My flesh became bruised underneath their fingers. Their darkness marking my pale skin with a startling contrast. Pain bloomed when I pressed the marks too hard. I hated the pain, it reminded me of their touches.

I had almost wished I was like her.

I wanted to be as they said, hard, cursed, rotten from the inside out.

They wouldn't have touched me if I had.

I had thought it would stop with the touches but it hadn't. They had tore into me like the ravenous wolves they were. Left me bleeding, wounded, and tormented with images and feelings I could never escape. I had cried and raged, destroyed my room when I had limped back to my tiny sanctuary. The broken images of who I had been feeling like they were cutting the bottoms of my feet.

Each step hurt.

An inner ache deep within me that matched the outer ache that pulsed with each movement I made.

My dress in rags, scraps covered in blood from the marks they had left me with. Blood painting my inner thighs, trails of it running down my legs.

They had laughed and so I screamed. I tried so hard to drown them out, to silence them with my own sounds but they were in my head, a loop forever taunting me. The anger had lit a fire in my veins and I taken out the destruction on my soul in the physical realm.

I wanted something around me to look like I had felt.

Females had tried to calm me, to calm the raging storm in my veins, but they hadn't been able to. The males came for me after. I fought, hands turning to fists as I struck out. Teeth sinking into flesh as I threw out my rage at my defilement.

Slapped, beaten, dragged to the Alpha.

My fate in his hands.

I was cast to the dark.

To the monster.

Tied and crying I had been drug to the deepest parts of the woods. Left as a sacrifice like those before. I had sobbed for the pain deep within me and the fear that coated my tongue with the taste of bitter bile.

Ruined.

I had been ruined.

I had been ruined and they had punished me for expressing it the only way I could. I had just tried to explain it with the fire in my veins, the rage in my mouth. I had lashed out because it was all I could do to keep from breaking.

I had been punished for being the wolf I had been born to.

I had been punished, left alone with my pain and my sorrow, left in the dark as tears seared my skin with their bitterness.

I had been left to the monster.

They called her cold, cruel, and hard. There was no softness to her edges, there was nothing about her that indicated mercy but I didn't understand it.

Had they not seen her before?

She had emerged from the dark like a beacon lit by the moon herself. Small, delicate, and graceful. She moved like the wolf that lingered in her eyes. Her skin looked like the moon, pale and cast with the scars and craters of many impacts but she stood defiant and true underneath my gaze.

Hair tumbled around her shoulders, drifting through the air as if she had her own orbit. She was power and beauty all wrapped in one. I had been terrified, my heart thudding in my chest like a war drum the males beat and played in my nightmares.

I had been terrified that it was a trick, that the beauty disguised the monster underneath it all. I wondered if the males saw her true nature but we were deceived by the delicate nature she showed, perhaps it was what made us such easy target for her to devour, to destroy.

She had moved closer, her eyes never leaving me as she crouched low, holding out a hand. I had trembled underneath the force of her presence but she did not strike out. There was no blow to end my life, just the merest brush of rough fingertips along my jaw line as eyes of an impossible blue filled with tears.

She slowly embraced me, her form strong and resilient but she held me close and tight as if she were all that was holding me together and if she let me go I would break. I found peace in her arms, found a sea so calm that the surface was like reflective glass. It reflected the universe and I was left in the awe that the sight inspired.

Her scent entered my nose and I wondered if she had been a direct descendant of the wolves that roamed because she smelled of pure moonlight. I wanted to bathe in her scent, wrap myself in it so I could never leave the moment where I found someone whose touch did not hurt and whose arms held only comfort.

She called me her kin, cut my bonds, and took me away from the beasts who lingered on the edges of the forest, pretending to be men.