Chapter 83 Naming the Beast Without Letting It Rule
I sat on the edge of the therapy table, the room quiet except for the faint hum of the fluorescent lights above. My fingers drummed against the cold metal frame, tapping a rhythm I didn’t even realize I was making. My body still ached from yesterday’s training in the underground facility,Vincent had pushed me hard, and every muscle screamed for rest,but it wasn’t just physical exhaustion. My mind felt frayed, every memory of the lab, of my father, of the things I had seen and done, pulsing behind my eyes like a storm I couldn’t stop.
When Dr Voss entered, I rolled my eyes automatically. Not out of disrespect, but because I wasn’t in the mood for conversation, for probing, for pretending that talking about my trauma could fix everything that was broken inside me. I told her to leave because i felt better and that now i was suee with training i woukd conttol my beast.
She didn’t seem offended. Instead, she sat in the chair opposite me, her gaze steady and calm. “I’m not here to make you relive it,” she said softly. “I’m here to help you notice what’s happening right now. That’s all.”
I scoffed. “Right. Because noticing myself panicking every time someone looks at me will totally fix me.”
She tilted her head, a faint smile brushing her lips. “Maybe not fix, but understand. That’s the first step.”
I wanted to snap at her, but the room was small, and somehow, her calm held me in place. My breathing had been shallow, erratic, and she noticed it. Without asking, she guided me through a simple exercise: to notice the sensations in my body without reacting to them. “The heart beats. The claws want to come out. The adrenaline surges. You don’t need to act. You just need to notice.”
I closed my eyes, trying to focus. The pounding in my chest. The tight coil of muscle along my spine. The restless energy that refused to settle. All of it felt like a storm, an endless surge I could never control. And yet, she didn’t call me a monster. Not once.
She called it a guard dog. A dog trained too young, too fast, too intensely, and without proper guidance. The word hit me harder than any accusation ever could. My beast wasn’t evil. It wasn’t the thing everyone else had told me I was. It was a creature born of fear and survival, a part of me that had been ignored, punished, and never taught how to stop.
I broke.
The tears came first, warm and relentless, sliding down my cheeks as I clutched my knees. I had never realized until that moment that no one had ever shown me how to pause, how to tell my body to stop before it destroyed something,or someone I loved. The thought of all the moments I had lost to instinct, to uncontrolled rage, to the bloodlust that sometimes flared inside me, made my chest ache.
“I—” I started, my voice trembling, “I don’t know how to stop.”
She didn’t rush me, didn’t tell me I was weak or broken. Instead, she leaned forward slightly, her voice soft but firm. “Power doesn’t make you dangerous. Silence does. Not knowing. Not noticing. Not giving yourself the chance to decide. That’s what makes someone dangerous.”
I wanted to hate her for saying it, for making it sound so simple when it felt impossible, but instead, I just stared at her. My body felt raw, stretched between exhaustion and awakening, and I realized the truth in her words. I had been afraid of my own strength, afraid of what I could do, afraid that my instincts meant I was a monster. And in that fear, in my silence, I had let myself be defined by it.
She gave me a simple tool, almost laughably simple compared to everything I had endured: pause. Pause before I shifted. Pause mentally, pause physically. Notice. Decide. Separate instinct from decision. My hands trembled as I thought about it. Could I really do that? Could I really stop myself before the beast took over?
She watched me carefully, not pressing, not judging. “You’re not your beast. You’re the one deciding how it moves, how it reacts. You’ve already survived more than anyone should. Now, it’s time to teach your body to follow your mind.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to scream that I was broken, that my body had made choices I couldn’t take back, that my beast was a war machine that had no concept of mercy. But she didn’t flinch, didn’t pull back from my fear. Instead, she let me sit in it, let me breathe through it, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, I felt the tight coil inside me loosen.
For the first time in weeks, I felt present in my own skin. The pulse of my heart, the tension in my muscles, the weight of my claws, all of it was mine to notice, mine to command. I could pause. I could decide. And maybe, just maybe, I could learn to trust myself again.
We spent hours working through it, guiding the grounding techniques, identifying the physical sensations of my hybrid nature without reacting. I learned to feel the surge of power, the hunger of instinct, and instead of panicking, I practiced pausing. Breathing. Acknowledging, not attacking. The shrink never asked me to recount the horrors of the lab. She didn’t need to. I could feel the ghosts of those memories, but now I had a tool to anchor myself before they could take over.
By the time the session ended, I felt exhausted but strangely lighter. My limbs still ached from yesterday’s training, my mind still buzzed with tension, but I had something new: control, or at least the beginning of it. I had learned to recognize the beast inside me not as a monster, but as a part of me that needed guidance. That I could guide.
As I left the room, my steps slow, measured, I realized that the storm inside me had quieted, not vanished, but quieted enough that I could hear my own heartbeat over it.