Inhumane

1. Lustrate

Hebe couldn't see a thing. Those people she considered family back in the village, how could they? Her eyes burned, the same way her skin burned as it bled. Her whole body drenched in blood, and not once or twice did she slipped on the blood. Some of it were hers, some of it.... she dared not to wonder where did it come from.

The echo of a slap silenced the whole land, as if the entire village had frozen still. Even the thud that followed it sounded hesitant, afraid to make a sound.

"I don't know!" She wailed. Frail fingers cradled her cheeks. Though she was little in everyone's eyes, she gathered herself up, and stood tall.

Cynical chuckle left his mouth. "It must've been you all along! They knew we hid one of their mates, and now they'll come for us."

His words made no sense to her. "I was born with this, I had no recollection of what it meant."

A yelp left her when he grabbed her wrist, gripping the flesh in its lethal grip. "So this showed up out of nowhere then?"

Just like his words, his free hand slithered itself on her body, leaving trails of sins across her skin. She shuddered at it. When his fingers touched the sensitive mark on her neck, her stomach churned and she was ready to lurched over.

"You were theirs all along!" He accused, "It was a wonder they kept you alive, a token of pity."

She trashed her body in his hold. "What are you talking about?"

He didn't answer, his eyes then glint dangerously. Filled with such malice. "I wonder if it is an Alpha's mark you bare."

"How dare you?" She pulled her body one last time, and freed herself off of him.

The man who stood before her. How did he became corrupted like this? The man who stood before her resembled nothing like the man she grew up with. Carius was once a compassionate soul. The man who raised her when her parents were never to be seen. Now power corrupted him to his very core. Poisoning him. He thought of nothing but revenge. He thought of nothing but the slaughter that happened countless of moons ago.

"Seeing you only disgust me more. I bet you have always wanted to be their whore."

Tears pricked her eyes. How could he? How could he accused her of such things. She mourned the same death as his, mourned the same people he mourned, hated the same murderer he hated. It was never in her will or power to bare the mark.

The mate mark of the same murderer who killed her people. Slaughtered their entire kind, and took the throne to himself.

"I buried them with you, and I saw them died before my eyes the same way you did. Do not, and I truly mean do not ever think I consent to this."

She never knew the mark existed. She had never seen it her whole life. Even if she knew of its existence, it did not make this any less painful. How could fate play a disgusting game like this to her. She thought she had suffered enough. But to mate her with the same people who had killed her people. That had crossed the line.

"You murdered them, Hebe. This is all your cause."

Stones, and sharp twigs cuts her skin open. Skin that were once as soft as the silk linen she covered herself with before she entered the woods for the Lustrate.