Page 13 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
“I hurt her.” The words are stones in my mouth. I look at the beautiful, broken girl in my arms, and the truth finally claws its way out. “Ibrokeher.”
20
LYSSA
The pain is a white-hot sun blooming in my side, so bright it eclipses everything else. Every shallow breath I draw is a fresh wave of agony. But the sound of Thorrin’s voice, a broken, desperate rasp of self-loathing, cuts through the haze of my own suffering.“I hurt her. I broke her.”I feel the tremor that runs through his massive frame as he holds me, see the chaotic, sick-green light of guilt and panic swirling in his chest. And a fierce, protective instinct I didn't know I possessed rises up to meet his despair.
This was not his fault. Not entirely. This was a storm we both willingly walked into, a fire we both fed. I knew the risks. I knew the monstrous strength he held in check, and I was the one who dared him to let it go and retreat into the darkness of his own guilt over this.
“Thorrin,” I whisper, the word a painful effort against the tightness in my chest. My hand, trembling and weak, lifts from my side and finds the cold, hard bone of his jaw. He flinches from my touch as if he expects it to burn him. “It’s… okay.”
His skull snaps down to look at me, his hollow stare blazing with a wild, uncomprehending grief.
“I knew,” I force the words out, each one punctuated by a sharp stab of pain. “I knew what I was doing, Thorrin. I chose this. I choseyou. This doesn’t… change that.”
I try to offer him a reassuring smile, but it feels like a grimace. I want to soothe him, to tell him that this physical pain is nothing compared to the emotional torment of the life I lived before him. But a wave of dizziness washes over me, sudden and overwhelming. The sharp, moonlit edges of the clearing begin to blur, the trees melting into indistinct shapes. The pain in my side is no longer just a sharp point; it is a deep, grinding ache that seems to be spreading with every beat of my heart. My brave words feel like lies in the face of my body’s betrayal.
The pain is becoming everything. It is a grinding, relentless presence in my side that makes it impossible to draw a full breath. The world is tilting on its axis, a nauseating swirl of moonlight and the chaotic, pulsing glow of Thorrin’s heart. A deep, seeping cold is spreading through my limbs, the snow I am lying in has everything to do with the life that is draining out of me. The brave front I erected for his sake crumbles into dust, replaced by a raw, primal fear.
I am dying. The thought is a cold, simple certainty in the midst of the chaos. After everything—surviving my mother’s disappearance, enduring the village’s pity, finding this strange and terrifying connection in the woods—I am going to die here, broken by the very creature who made me feel alive for the first time.
My fingers, which had been gentle on his face, now dig into the hard planes of his arm with desperate strength. “Thorrin,” I gasp, my voice a weak, reedy thing. The reassurance is gone, replaced by the pure, undiluted terror of a child lost in the dark. “Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me alone.”
The thought of dying is terrifying, but the thought of dying alone, of my last sight being the indifferent stars and the silent,watching trees, is unbearable. I cling to him, to his monstrous, solid form, the only anchor in my spinning world. A flicker of memory—Clara’s worried face, my father’s weary sigh—flashes through my mind. They will never know what happened to me. I will become another ghost, another girl swallowed by the forest, my story a cautionary tale whispered by fireplaces for years to come.
Through the fog of my fading consciousness, I feel a shift in him. His panicked, whispered apologies cease. The trembling in his massive frame stills, replaced by a new and sudden stillness, a grim sense of purpose. He pulls me closer, his arms a cage of impossible strength, his body a solid, grounding wall against the encroaching darkness. I hear him murmur something to himself, the words too quiet for me to make out. Something about Waira, about healing and devouring.
Then I feel myself being lifted, his movements now impossibly smooth and swift. He holds me as if I am made of spun glass, but he moves with a desperate, ground-eating speed that tells me he has made a decision. A new sound rumbles in his chest, not a growl of despair, but of grim, unwavering resolve.
His voice comes, a low whisper against my ear, but the words are a lifeline, cutting through the haze of my pain with shocking clarity.
“Hold on,” he says, his breath warm against my cold skin. “There’s someone who can help.”
The words are a spark in the overwhelming darkness. Someone else? A healer? Here, in these desolate mountains? The questions are a confusing swirl in my fading mind, but underneath them, a single, fragile feeling takes root. Hope.
“Even if she hates me,” he finishes, the words a dark, ominous promise.
I don’t understand. I don’t have the strength to ask. But the words are enough. As he begins to run through the forest, hisstride impossibly long and fast, I cling to that single, flickering ember of hope. I cling to him. The darkness is pulling at the edges of my vision, a soft, welcoming abyss. My last conscious thought is not of fear, but of a desperate, burning curiosity. Who is this person who hates him? And how can they possibly save me?
21
THORRIN
Irun. The forest is a blur of white snow and black trunks, a landscape I know better than the contours of my own skull-face, but it is all rendered meaningless by the single, terrifying focus of my flight. Lyssa is a fragile, impossibly still weight in my arms. Her head lolls against my shoulder, her breaths so shallow I have to press my ear to her lips to feel their faint, ghostly warmth. Every jarring step, every stumble over a hidden root, sends a fresh spike of terror through me.
The snow begins to fall in earnest, no longer the gentle flakes of early evening, but a thick, wet curtain that clings to my bones and obscures the path ahead. It should hinder me, but it doesn't. My senses are screaming, focused on a single scent marker that grows stronger with every ground-eating stride. The scent of a rival. The scent of Kaerith.
I am trespassing. The thought is a distant, academic thing, a law from a world that no longer matters. For centuries, the invisible lines of Waira territory have been as real and as solid as mountains. To cross one without invitation, without a formal challenge, is to invite death. Our kind are solitary, territorial beasts, and we do not suffer intruders. But the ancient laws aredust, the old ways meaningless in the face of the small, dying human in my arms. The only law I answer to now is the frantic, desperate beat of her fading heart.
Ahead, I see them. A line of sharpened femurs driven into the earth, their surfaces bleached white by years of winter suns. Interspersed between them are the skulls of worgs and dark elves, a clear, brutal declaration of ownership. This is the border. This is Kaerith’s domain. I do not slow. I do not hesitate. I crash through the line of bones, the sound of their splintering beneath my feet a declaration of my own desperate war against tradition, against pride, against everything I once was. I am no longer a Waira abiding by the laws of my kind. I am a supplicant, a beggar, and I am about to throw myself at the mercy of a king whose throne I have just defiled.
The air in Kaerith’s territory feels different. Thicker. Charged with a latent power that speaks of a Waira who is well-fed, dominant, and utterly in control of his domain. The scent of him is everywhere, a powerful musk of ancient stone, pine, and a faint, underlying warmth that I now recognize as the scent of his human mate. The thought triggers a memory, a ghost of a hunt from years past that rises from the depths of my mind with a bitter, shameful taste.
I was younger then, more reckless, the hollowness inside me a sharper, more painful ache. A new scent had drifted into my territory, the impossibly sweet perfume of another human, but this one was different. It carried a strange resonance, a quality that promised a satiation my usual prey never could. A Keeper’s Balm. I had tracked her for a day, a beautiful, dark-haired human with eyes full of a fire that only made the hunt more thrilling. Her name was Elira.
I had cornered her near a waterfall, the terror blooming on her face a symphony to my starving soul. I remember the satisfaction, the primal joy of the predator about to claim itsprize. And then, I remember him. Kaerith. He had appeared from the mists of the waterfall like a vengeful god whose wrath whose fury dwarfed my own simple hunger. He had not challenged me. He had simply moved to kill me. I had fled, outmatched and humiliated, the taste of my failure a bitter pill.
Now, the irony is a poison in my gut. I am returning to that same territory, a trespasser once again. But this time, I am not here to hunt his mate. I am here to beg for her help. I am about to kneel before the very rival who once drove me from his lands in shame, and I am going to ask him to save the life of the human I have broken. The humiliation is a searing fire, but the fear for Lyssa’s life is a tidal wave that extinguishes it completely. Pride is a luxury for those who have nothing left to lose. I have everything to lose, and she is growing colder in my arms.
