Chapter 65 Chapter 0065
•DANTE•
\[EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO.\]
I was six years old when I was sold to work at a factory. My parents had died before I even learned to talk, so I never knew them.
The factory was generous enough to enroll us in primary education before we were moved to another facility when I turned eighteen.
The factory processed metals. The air inside was always thick with heat and the smell of burning, and the floors were permanently stained with grease and rust.
We slept in rows on thin mats and barely had enough to cover ourselves when it was cold.
When I turned eighteen, factory life had become adjustable. I never complained when they introduced new rules and decreased our wages.
"Have you thought about escaping?" Drax asked when we returned from our night shift. "I have."
I looked at him and sighed. "What's the use? There's nothing there for us. This is all we know. So no, that stupid idea has never crossed my mind."
I headed inside the hostel and changed before lying down to sleep. But no matter what I did, sleep never came.
I kept tossing and turning, and I felt hot as if I were inside the factory bending metal.
The pain in my stomach, bones, and head became so unbearable that I started screaming. I wanted it to stop, but it got worse.
"Shut up!" A guard snapped as he banged outside my door. "You're making noise, freak!"
I tried to muffle my screams, but the pain wouldn't stop, and my bones felt as if they were melting beneath my skin.
It was as if someone had poured hot lava on my skin. When my ankles snapped, I screamed so loud that my throat almost choked.
"That's enough, asshole!" The guard outside sneered before he kicked down the door and beat me up with his button stick.
But his outrage made me even angrier, and without thinking, I got up and lifted him off the ground.
He gasped when he looked down at me as I snarled at him. "W-what–" he stuttered. "What are you?"
I didn't answer him as I yanked my teeth on his neck and snapped his head off his body. His blood sprayed all over my body and I dropped him on the floor.
By the time the door opened again, I had finished turning into whatever was happening to me. I stood tall and shrieked when I looked at my hands.
I was a monster.
When more guards came into my room to find out what was happening, I fought and killed them on instinct until the factory itself burned down.
But I knew in the back of my mind that my time at the factory was over.
And when I saw Drax in the crowd, I looked at him once before I ran into the forest.
What happened after that came in a haze and the next thing I knew, I was so exhausted from the running and fighting, that I lay flat on the ground and slept.
The following morning, I woke up in a bed. I gasped and sat up, and when I saw a picture frame near the bed of a little baby, I forced myself to calm down.
"You're awake," a voice said.
An old woman stood in the doorway with a clay cup in her hands.
"Where am I?" I asked. My voice came out rough.
"Goldenmane Court," she replied, crossing the room and placing the cup on the small table beside the bed. "I found you in the forest. You were unconscious and half shifted, so I brought you here."
"You are a lycan," she continued. "Which made me wonder what you were in the humans' territory.
I stared at her. "I don't know what that means."
She pulled the chair beside the bed closer and sat down. "It means you are stronger than most," she answered. "And it means you are going to need help understanding what you are."
Her name was Mira. She was the oldest member of Goldenmane Court, a small and quiet community of shifters who had chosen to live apart from the larger packs.
She fed me that morning, and the mornings that followed until I referred fo her as my mother.
But the nights were never fully peaceful.
When the moon was strong, the lycan inside me pressed against every boundary I tried to hold.
I woke up in cold sweat with my hands already changing. The memory of that factory caused my heart to race.
I couldn't get the screams off my mind and the images of the factory burning. I knew I had killed so many people and ruined the lives of those who were working there.
Two years after arriving at Goldenmane, I made a decision not to tell Mira or anyone about my past.
After three years I had been in Goldenmane court, I went in search of a powerful witch who would help me keep my transformations in control.
Arsela lived at the edge of a forest that most people avoided without being able to explain why.
Her home was unremarkable from the outside, a small stone building with herbs hanging in the doorway.
I sat across from her at a narrow table and told her why I was there.
"This will suppress the shift," she said as she placed a small ring in front of me. "The moon won't reach you while you wear it."
"What does it cost?" I asked.
She looked at me for a moment before she answered. "You won't be able to feel a mate bond. The ring severs that connection completely for as long as you wear it."
I looked at the ring for a long time. Then I picked it up and put it on.
I told myself a mate bond didn't matter when I could hurt the people who meant the world to me.
For years, the ring did exactly what Arsela promised.
I studied, worked, and became a doctor.
Somewhere in that work I found the closest thing to peace I had ever known. Healing people allowed me to heal the number of people I had killed that night.
But now Arsela's warning sat in my chest like a stone, and the full moon was coming whether I was ready for it or not.
And the thought of Cassandra seeing what I truly was, what I had always been beneath the ring and the quiet life and the man she believed she knew, terrified me in a way that no full moon ever had.