Page 22 of My Vicious Beast
Our fingers brush as I take the cup, electricity shooting up my arm. His breath catches and mine stops entirely.
What the hell was that?
It’s as if my body recognizes him, responding to his presence with a visceral pull I can't explain. A part of me wants to run, but a deeper, more primal part wants to move closer.
I drain the water, and the coolness provides me with a distraction from his intensity. Helping me remember what’s really important here. I need to focus. No matter how attractive he is, I need answers, and this is not the time for whatever this is.
“What happened to me? How did I get here and get in... this?” I pluck at the shirt softly.
His expression shifts, pain flickering across his features so quickly I almost wonder if I imagined it.
"I saved your life...” he begins, then his jaw clenches so hard it begins to tick. "I changed your clothes because they were soaked in blood. Yours and... his. But I swear to you, I did not touch you inappropriately."
I believe him. I shouldn’t. But something in the way he says it, his voice a mixture of anger and such deep sincerity. The way his eyes beg for me to trust him touches my heart. And that scares me.
I take a shaky breath. “What are you?”
His body goes still, but his eyes flicker through a mirage of emotions, and the ones I recognize—shame, guilt, fear—cut at me.
I hate that I hurt him with my question. Before I can stop myself, I reach for him. And that seems to jerk him back to the present, away from whatever nightmare he was reliving.
He takes a step back and I immediately drop my hand to my side.
“I’m sorry I?—”
“No.” He swallows hard. “I’m happy you asked, but I... don’t want you to be ashamed of me.”
I open my mouth to say I won’t be, but I close it without speaking. Because once he does share his story, I just might be.
He sits at the far edge of the bed, slightly curved like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and when he speaks his voice sounds strained. "I was created long ago, near the time of the first humans. My kind were tasked with guarding yours from dark forces—demons and creatures that could corrupt souls.”
Created. Not born.
Created. To fight demons.
"Demons are real," I breathe.
"Yes." His voice is steady, patient. "And so are the gods who made us to fight them."
He tells me about battles that lasted millennia, wars I've never read about in any history book. About beings of pure light and creatures of absolute darkness. How his kind stood between them and humanity. And as he speaks, I find myself leaning forward, drawn to his story, his voice, him.
"Many of my siblings fell to darkness or simply disappeared. But I..." His voice grows heavy with something that makes my chest ache. Regret, maybe, or despair so deep it's carved into his bones. "I questioned everything. The nature of good and evil, whether the beings I had destroyed could be saved. If I had the right to judge them at all, when truly I didn’t understand them. I’d never been taught how.”
The pain in his voice cuts away at me. This isn't ancient history to him—these are his sins, his wounds that haven't healed despite the passage of time, and he’s offering them up to me.
I can't even fathom the weight of what he's describing. Millennia of killing, of wondering if he'd condemned beings who could have been saved. The guilt alone would crush me.
Compared to him, my regrets are nothing. Even those I’m still healing from and in a way, using as a shield to hide behind.
I've told myself I need to change, to grow into the person I want to become, yet I often lose the confidence to fully commit. I wonder if I even have the right—to be happy, to be loved. To believe I deserve these things at all.
But watching this man be so brave, so vulnerable, and find the strength to keep going even after everything he’s been through, lights a fire within me that I don’t think will ever burn out. Because he’s trusting me with the parts of himself that he’s most ashamed of.
He didn't have to tell me any of this. He could have deflected, could have given me some sanitized version of his past. But he chose honesty. Chose to show me exactly who he is—the good and the bad—and let me decide if that's something I can accept. And I think that clear, raw honesty is something I’ve been waiting my entire life for.
"What did you do?” I ask quietly. “How did you learn to understand them?"
"To ensure I didn't make the same mistakes again, I went into hibernation. I watched and listened to everything I could while the world moved and grew around me."
