Page 30 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger
THORRIN
I am an outsider in this place of warmth and light.
I stand in the shadows just inside the entrance of Kaerith’s cave, an outcast of the cold, dark forest unable to step into the domestic world he has built.
The air here smells of woodsmoke, roasted meat, and dried herbs—the scents of a home.
It is a profound and painful contrast to my own lair, which smells only of damp stone, old bones, and a loneliness so ancient it has become a part of the rock itself.
Lyssa’s innocent question from moments ago echoes in the hollow space inside me.
“Isn’t this place kind of… cozy?” Each word is a fresh twist of the knife in a wound that is entirely of my own making.
She sees this place, this sanctuary built by a Waira who learned control, and she sees a possibility.
A future. She does not yet understand that she is with the wrong monster.
I watch as Elira gently tends to the last of her wounds by the firelight, her movements efficient and sure.
Kaerith is a silent, protective presence at her side, his massive form a wall of quiet strength.
They are a unit, a pack of two, a monster and his mate who have found a balance I cannot comprehend.
They have built a life here. And I… I have only ever known how to take them.
The guilt is a gnawing beast in my gut. I can still feel the sickening grate of Lyssa’s ribs giving way beneath the force of my passion.
I can still smell the sharp, metallic scent of her blood in the snow.
I broke her. I brought her because I was too weak, too uncontrolled, to keep her safe.
The shame of it is a heavier weight than any mountain.
I remain frozen in the shadows, a statue of misery, unable to move forward into the light, unable to retreat back into the darkness.
I can only watch Lyssa, my heart-light a dim, pathetic green, a flickering beacon of my own failure.
She is so beautiful in the warm firelight, the colors of the flames dancing on her skin.
She is alive, and that is all that should matter, but all I can feel is the chasm that has opened between us.
I am the source of her pain, the monster in her story.
How can I ever stand beside her again without seeing the memory of her cry of pain, without feeling the ghost of her broken bones beneath my claws?
Elira looks up from her work, and her sharp, intelligent eyes find me in the gloom.
Her expression is one of pure, unadulterated contempt.
She sees me for what I am: a pathetic, guilt-ridden creature wallowing in its own failure.
Her voice is a low, cutting murmur, meant only for me, but it strikes with the force of a physical blow.
“Waira guilt is useless,” she hisses, her words slicing through the comfortable silence around the fire. “Just make it right.”
Her words are a slap, a bucket of ice water to my fevered self-pity.
She is right. My guilt does nothing for Lyssa.
It is a selfish, indulgent emotion that centers my own pain rather than hers.
It is the mewling of a weak and pathetic creature, not the action of a protector, not the resolve of a mate.
The choice she presents is a stark and brutal one.
I can either find a way to become the Waira that Lyssa deserves, a creature capable of control and true care, or I can do the only other honorable thing: remove myself from her life entirely, so that my monstrous nature can never harm her again. Both paths feel impossible.
As if to punctuate Elira’s ultimatum, a sound drifts from the fireside.
Laughter. It is Lyssa. The sound is soft, a little weak, but it is genuine.
She is teasing Kaerith about a large, comfortable-looking armchair, its frame clearly carved by hand, its cushions lined with the thick, white fur of a snow iypin .
“Did you make this all by yourself?” she asks, her voice dancing with a light I have not heard since before I hurt her.
Kaerith grunts, an acknowledgment that makes Lyssa laugh again.
The sound, which once filled the hollowness inside me with a painful, beautiful light, now only serves to highlight the impossible distance between us.
She is in a world of warmth and gentle humor, a world I have no right to enter.
To hear her laugh with him, in his home…
it is a new and complex kind of agony. It is not jealousy.
It is the profound, crushing weight of my own unworthiness.
She is healing. She is finding moments of joy.
And I am the shadow in the corner, the ghost of the pain she is trying to forget.
Elira’s words echo in my mind. For now, I can do neither.
I can only watch from the darkness, a loving a girl I no longer believe I have the right to claim.
My heart-light, which had been a sick green, settles into a low, steady, and aching gold—the color of a love that has become its own kind of torment.
I do not join her by the fire. I do not step into the light.
I remain in the shadows, my decision made in the silence of my own broken heart.