Monster

.7.

We met the dawn with fire and steel.

We came from the trees like the monster they painted us.

They had not been expecting us, expecting the monster to strike out at them. I did not know the pack we descended upon, did not know their faces but it did not matter. We needed land to give to our pack and we would take it.

It had been chaos, we killed the males who opposed, consumed the females and the children, pushing them to the back of the line, to the trees where they could rest within the belly of the beast. We burned houses, killed warriors, and destroyed the Alpha.

It had taken us such a pitiful amount of time to decimate the pack but I also knew what came next. We could not allow news to spread, could not allow them to mobilize against us.

Persephone stood, her unruly hair escaping from her braids, the strands caught in the orbit of her power, she howled.

We had won the beginning but we still had more to go. She lead our charge to the next pack, and then the next. Our destruction and fire rained down upon the males who had harmed so many. It was hard to stop because the more we burned the more land we needed. We consumed females and children and the males who defied their Alphas, our pack grew and grew while we fought for more and more land.

Time moved by, they were getting harder and harder to fight. They were learning, mobilizing, strategizing. But it did not help them. We were forged in the fire of their creation, we were the monster they created. We were made to destroy them.

They thought our defeat would be easy, their victories assured. It was just females against males but we had teeth of obsidian, claws of steel. The moon looked upon us with favour, her gaze giving us strength to push them back.

It was a brutal life on the front lines, protecting those we had in the back, protecting the pack we kept safe in our belly. It was lonely, no time for longing, for musing. Cyan fought by my side as I fought by Persephone's. He did not speak of the night in my tent, he seemed so utterly at peace with it all. He did not move towards me with possession when the battles were over but with worry for a friend. He would look me over as I would look over him and then I would see his gaze wandering, searching for someone before he would leave. I hoped he had found a female who wanted him as I did not.

I would find my gaze looking for Persephone, the sun to my Icarus, the only one who could kill me.

At times I would find her gaze seeking too, her blue meeting me before she would nod, looking away.

We pushed forward, our war forms scarred and stained. They didn't know what to do, how to defeat the monster they had created. They threw themselves at us, hoping to break us but only managed to shatter themselves. Males who had tormented now whimpered in fear at our very gazes.

Their tails tucked, their bellies low in their retreat.

The moon laughed at them.

Look at what you have done.

Look at what you have created

Death.

She mocked them. Demanded they see what their actions had wrought, what their abuse had formed. We were a monster with thousands of teeth, we were a monster who did not eat and did not sleep. Fires for the territories we burned glinted off of our steel swords.

We worked in shifts, the front lines never ceased pushing, we never ceased reaching. Persephone never wavered, she looked like the goddess. The moon. I had seen her softness in the comfort of the pack but now I saw the side of her that was so dark that even the stars could not brighten her with their shine, so cold that the sun could not burn on her.