Solitary

Chapter 58- Past Lessons

It was the beginning of the seventeenth century when I had first witness the extremities of the mentality of an abandoned wolf.

I had seen wolves losing their minds without a mate or a pack. Many, many, many, many times. Mostly they became sociopathic and withdrawn, eventually committing suicide or dying early due to something else.

But it was that day, that I had seen what happens to a truly scarred

Raphe.

He was a grown man, somewhere in his late thirties. He was brought to our prison in what was now Russia, after apparently killing five lycans in a blind rage. He was apprehended by another group of lycans and brought into custody.

Lycans dying at the hands of a wolf was unheard of. It was shocking to hear it at first, parts of me kept denying it. But I was also intrigued.

My father and I arrived to the prison, my father was angry that day. Raging about killing the man that killed five of our people. But I was curious, my mind was far from his death.

He would die. This was inevitable. But I wanted to learn about him first.

Fascinated that it was a wolf that did it. I expected a group of vampires or a couple of ogre's.

I only wanted to know how.

I remember how silent the prisoners were as we heard the guttural screams coming from the cell where the man was brought to.

The other prisoners were much more mouthy when they saw us. Provoking us with their words was how they got back at us for imprisoning them. Other lycan criminals that sat behind bars, spat at my feet as I walked by.

It was a swift death every time.

As we reached those cell doors, the iron door was pulled open by someone on the inside. A Lycan guard who looked absolutely distraught as the screams of the prisoner, then the screams suddenly stopped at our entrance.

"Are you death?"

He was chained to the stone floor, cuffs around his wrists and a bulky iron collar keeping him chained down. He wasn't a large man, in fact rather lanky and tall even when kneeling. But what shocked me was his blood soaked clothes. The smell.

It was the blood of lycans.

"Yes." My father grunted. He already made up his mind about killing him. How he would do it. How long it would go on for. My father was a lot more sadistic back then. Now he's less so.

The prisoner watching us watch him. I studied his face, his eyes were bloodshot and sunken in, ready to fall back into his skull. He looked like he hadn't slept in days. He was filthy, he smelled awful like something in him was rotting.

His brown hair was down to the floor, matted and dirty and his beard was almost the same length. He tugged against the restraints earning a loud growl from the guard in the room.

"Kill me quickly." He said, a sort of shakiness in his voice. Like he was eager. "The lycans I killed couldn't do it, but you can."

"What makes you think we won't make an example of you?" My father sneered.

The man looked at my father with wide eyes, and I saw it before my father did. The insanity that was boiling beneath the surface of his skin. Truly seeing him, seeing that he had nothing to live for anymore.

A man this beaten and broken killed five lycans?

I asked my father and the guard to leave the room. I needed to know him. I needed to know how he became this unhinged, suicidal murderer.