Fiercely Feline

02 - ariella

A R I E L L A

The Venerer are a species dead set on erasing my own from existence, created for the sole purpose of killing.

There is many different types of Venerer, but the most important - and the most deadly, are the Venerer Elders. They are the hunters who have killed numerous of my species, who have built a tolerance to pain. Almost as if with every Fel life they slaughter, theirs becomes a bit more indestructible.

There are rumours that a flower, if used correctly, can make them weak, evening the playing field. I haven't tested the theory, not yet anyway.

But once Jax and I find the monkshood, you better believe we'll put it to the test.

The rest of Venerer were easy pickings, nearly as weak as humans, if it wasn't for their training.

They're taught to fight and where to strike to kill us, though they rarely succeed, unless they kill us nine times or with one of their iron daggers.

I flip one of the said daggers in my hand, the weapon taken from the lady last night. One of nine in existence.

Jax and I are in the possession of two.

I catch it from the handle and place it beside the second, nestled inside a case.

My species could only be killed indefinitely if we were on our last life and died, or if we were mortally wounded by one of the nine weapons in existence - it was poetic, I guess, nine weapons created to kill a species of nine lives.

Created with a specific iron, with traces of nickel and cobalt, many have tried to replicate it but the nine that exist are the only ones that can kill or mortally wound a Fel.

I wipe a thumb across the engraved hilt, a long-forgotten language sacred to the Fel. But I know what they say, the words beneath my touch finding their way into my mind.

'The bond we share, takes nine to wear, and even then, it lingers.'

The words were often said when I was younger, said by my parents during bedtime stories.

Little did I know then that they weren't just stories.

Jax liked to remind me often that our parents should have told Oakley and I what we were earlier, sometimes I agreed.

I mean, I knew we were feline shifters but I didn't know the extent of which we were hunted, not until my family was killed and Jax and I went on the run.

That's when I found out the full truth.

My parents wanted me to grow up normally, or as normal as they could create.

Which meant, I knew nothing of the Venerer, and now it's the only thing that consumed my thoughts.

Vengeance.

My parents and sister deserved more then a shallow grave, if they even got that. I doubt they did. I don't know, I never got to bury them, not when Jax and I were running.

And apparently, this town holds the answers to the start of revenge.

I just have to find it.

I click the case closed, taking it in hand as I walk out the back door, sticks crunching under foot as I walk further into the dense woodland.

Jax wasn't at the house when I awoke, I didn't know where he was but I could guess, he'd gone into town to scope out the people or he was running, possibly both, but it was still early, school hadn't even begun yet so I doubt many in the town were even awake.