The Stolen World

Chapter 4

Kiara Antine Jaysune

            I was barely through the door when I heard someone yell my name. One of the twins. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” Joden shouted as he came whipping around the corner to confront me, Nev following close behind him.

            My mother and father trailed after them, both of them with furrowed eyebrows and clenched jaws. “Yes Kiara, please explain to us the logic in this plan, because I for one cannot see it.” Father’s voice was quiet, and that made it all the worse.

            “I wanted to help someone. I was tired of just hurting people damn it! I wanted to finally help someone.” I tried keeping my voice under control, I knew it would be worse for me if I lashed out against them.

            “How do you plan to control what you are? How do you plan to feed? You expect to help people when you’re just going to end up killing them because you couldn’t control yourself?” Father growled.

            Nev shook his head. “You really screwed up this time.”

            “We could always send her out to the woods for a while, said she ran away, and hunt her down after the war is over.” Joden suggested.

            “No, she did this on her own. She ruined her own life. We’ll claim we knew nothing of it when they bring back her body. She knew the consequences when she followed the new Selven girl into the barracks. She could’ve backed out then. It’s too late now. Now she has to deal wither own issues. I will not have this family brought down by you, Kiara. I will not let you ruin everything this family has worked for.” My mother said before turning her back on me and walking up the stairs with my father behind her.

            Joden and Nev cast me sad looks before they turned and when up to their rooms as well. I knew they didn’t want to see me go. I knew nobody wanted this family to be torn apart like this. But I had to do this. I had to make up for the evil I had done. I had to save at least one person from death. I’d killed so many people, but I thought that if I saved at least one person, that maybe I wouldn’t be such a bad person.

            I sat there, trying to believe that was true for a long time before I finally went out to hunt, I had hunted the night before, but that meant I’d have to hunt tomorrow if I didn’t hunt tonight. I needed to try and keep my secret for as long as I could before I was killed by my allies instead of my enemies.

            I later fell asleep in my bed, covered in the drying blood of some stranger who lived out in the middle of nowhere. Someone nobody would call the guards on a mysterious dog accident. Someone nobody would really miss. Someone I didn’t even bother to know the name of. And I later woke up in the same clothes that were coated in the drying blood of that stranger. I had left dark red stains all over my bed, and I couldn’t give a damn. This was my last day here. It may not be the last day where I would kill innocent strangers and turn into a beast, but it was the last day where I would hear my father’s voice command me to do something. The last time my mother would tell me that I am what I am, that it makes me stronger. The last time Joden and Nev would hunt with me.

            That part almost hurt. I would miss my brother’s. Sure, they were annoying and sometimes rude, but they ween’t bad people. They had been my friend ever since I’d been here. They’d been with me through everything. Since my first change, they were there to explain everything. In a way, they had been more of parents to me than my mother and father. Maybe that’s why it hurt so bad to leave them.

            But I would have to. I loved my family, but they could take care of themselves. And maybe Atiri could too, but I wasn’t going to leave that up to chance. I was going to protect her from the war. I would not let her die out there. She was my redemption. She was my friend. She was the only person I felt like I could trust when things got bad. She knew who I was, that I killed people and creatures for a living, stole from people to help, and she was the only one I had even considered telling the truth. She was the only one who didn’t care about my reputation as a bad guy, but about me as a person. And I wasn’t going to lose that to this damn war.