Master

Chapter 23

Lincoln's P.O.V

"Please," The woman begs, her arms tightly bound around her child. "P-Please don't do this."

I brush my wrist across my chin, collecting the blood dripping from my chin on my skin while I look around the clearing around us.

The second was ripping through all he could find that moved, once it had a heart he ensured it wouldn't beat again. The third didn't seem to enjoy her kills quite as much and the fourth, only two days present, seemed to stick a bit before she delivered her kills, but she got them done.

Tears still ran down her stoic face, that would stop by the seventeenth day.

You couldn't see most of the bodies, the fields covered the massacre. Though the tall, once green grass was now a sea of red that sept into the ground, bleeding into the soil the same way these wolves bled now. The terrified screams and mournful cries rode the wind, filling my ears with the sound of the sorrow I'd caused.

No. I didn't cause this. 

There was laughter too. 

Vile, immoral laughter that made my skin crawl and my brand pulse in response to the ones who'd put it there, the ones who owned me. They were enjoying this, watching their creations carry out all they ever imagined, watching us tear down their stunned enemies.

I saw it in each of their eyes before I took their lives from their bodies, that fearful look as they stared into my bloodshot eyes, not knowing what it was that killed them.

Lowering myself to this werewolf's level, I find the same look in her eyes.

I didn't know my eyes were red until the made more and I saw the blood irises, no one but us had eyes like these.

They, like our brands, showed others we were something different.

"Y-You don't h-have to do this," She pleads as she curls her sobbing child closer to her chest.

I do. I don't want to, but I do.

I try to tell her but the words don't come out, they never did, unless it was to one of them.

Not wanting to elongate the inevitable, I make her death quick and the child's even quicker. If they saw the child, they'd take it and that would surely be worse than death.

I couldn't imagine anything was worse than this.

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I open my eyes to find Kalem's smaller frame squeezed against me, my arms caging him tightly as raged breaths brushed my chest in a rush. 

I realise, in a treacherous moment, that I was holding him the same way that woman held her pup.

Startled by the very thought, I unwind myself from Kalem and try to put some distance between us as my mind struggles to place me back in the present, after my unwanted mental visit to my past. 

Kalem, fully awake and perfect, wore eyes strained by his worry, worry he harboured for me. Before I can let that warmth calm me, he sits up to face me as I run a shaky hand through my hair.

It was wet with sweat like the rest of my skin that was slick with the evidence of my eternal ghosts. Closing my eyes, I try to settle my skittish thoughts that threatened to make my still heart race in an effort to escape the things and people I'd already buried centuries ago.

Small, soft fingers slide over my shaking ones, taking them in a careful hold that makes me shudder. I open my eyes to look at the source, Kalem offers me a gentle smile that said so much, none of which was filled with judgement of any kind.