’Stop pretending.’
“I-I’m not!”
‘Why are you suppressing it?’
“I can’t control you!”
‘You are meant to run free in rivers and oceans of blood.’
“I-I hate blood! It makes me sick!!”
‘You hate that you cannot lose yourself in it. ‘
‘You hate that your body calls for bloodshed so fervently that it makes your head spin.’
‘You feign sickness so that you can run away. ‘
‘You are a wolf playing sheep.’
“I-I’m not like that!”
‘No?’
Suddenly, the images of Bekka’s past flooded her mind.
Images she’d forced herself to forget, ripped through her subconscious and flooded her mind.
Scenes of her losing control and attacking her friends in the tribe.
Scenes of her absentmindedly walking towards bloody battlefields when she was only a small child.
And finally, the scene of her kicking a woman so hard in the chest that she crushed her insides and condemned her to a slow death.
“I-I’m a monster.”
‘Spare us that weak human sentimentality. You are of the abyss. We are heralds of the end. We are wrath made flesh. We are creatures so sinister the death gods dare not take us into their realms. Eventually, you must accept that you are one of us. ‘
‘The same as your mother.’
‘The same as Carter.’
“Carter?”
Unfortunately, Bekka got no reply from the strange voice and was instead thrust back into the waking world.
–
“Gahhh!”
Waking up with a yell, Bekka then noticed she was in the bedroom and it was still dark out.
Feeling movement, Bekka looked over to see that Lailah and Lisa had been woken up by Bekka’s yelling and were giving her looks of concern.
Lisa : “What’s the matter Bekka?”
Lailah: “You’re sweating a lot are you okay?”
Hearing such concern for her well-being as well as the sudden resurgence of her darkest memories, the usually cheerful and carefree woman finally showed a broken expression as her body shivered and she began to weep furiously.
Without asking a single further question, Lisa and Lailah instinctively wrapped their arms around Bekka and held her while she cried.
Lailah :”It’s okay, it’s okay we’ll be here as long as you need.”
Lisa : “We have you so just let it all out.”
Bekka could only cry harder when she felt the warmth that her friends were showing her.
She’d never felt so unworthy to be loved.
“I-I’m a monster!!” Was all she could wail before she eventually passed out from exhaustion.
–
When Bekka awoke, the sun was shimmering through the curtains and coming to a rest directly on her face.
As she lay in bed, her thoughts drifted to her strange dream as well as her behavior afterwards. “Ugh, so embarrassing.”
She couldn’t believe she’d let her friends see her like that.
She wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
“I don’t think you have anything to be embarrassed about.”
“Me neither I’m actually quite touched you were so vulnerable with us.”
Bekka’s eyes opened wide when she realized she wasn’t alone in the bedroom like she’d previously assumed.
Sitting at the foot of the bed were Lisa and Lailah with Yara and Mira standing not so far away.
The hellhound was still too shy to face them, so she hurriedly burried herself under the covers and prayed that she’d just vanish.
She prepared to spend the rest of the day like that only to stiffen immediately when she felt something fluffy graze her skin.
“Meow!” (There is no escape.)
As Bekka stared into those two violet eyes that were seemingly saying there was no place to run, an exasperated sigh escaped her lips before she crawled out of the covers. “H-hey guys. Beautiful day huh?”
“Bekka…” Yara began.
“I-I’m fine mother really. I just had a bad dream is all.”
Lailah: “Liar.”
Lisa : “You shouldn’t lie it’ll rub off on Mira.”
Mira : “Mommy is a liar.”
Megumin: “Meow!” (You’re a shit liar.)
Bekka could only scratch her cheek in embarrassment when she realized she’d been completely found out.
Yara walked forward and sat on the bed before she gingerly took Bekka’s hand.
“What happened my daughter?”
One by one, Lailah, Lisa and Mira all followed Yara’s example and sat in a circle facing Bekka.
Realizing she’d truly been cornered, Bekka begrudgingly shared all the details of her dream and the things she’d seen.
Surprise, shock and confusion could be seen on all of their faces but more than that there was concern.
Normally, Bekka hated those looks.
She hated to be seen as something weak that should be pitied by others.
But the feeling she was getting now was something she just couldn’t describe.
It was a warmth that was completely unknown to her, and yet it was not at all unpleasant.
Suddenly, Yara took Bekka’s face in her delicate hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “My sweet girl, you don’t need to suppress anything for us.”
“B-but what if I-“
“Compared to any physical injury you could deal us, watching you wrestle with yourself like this hurts us so much more. And it’s not like I lack the power to restrain you should you lose control.”
All the girls around the room nodded their heads in agreement but Yara wasn’t done.
“This… abyss was it? It is part of you whether you like it or not. You should not concern yourself with whether it is good or evil. Instead you should embrace it. Because whether you are a monster or a saint, you are family.”
Bekka’s head was swimming.
Could she really just let go?
Be free?
𝒩𝐎𝑣xt.𝒞𝐦
Embrace all of her darker impulses?
Her body cried out for her to just give in but she was obviously scared.
What would Exedra tell her to do?
It’d been three months since he’d left and she’d never felt his absence more than she did in this moment.
She didn’t notice but Lailah now had an uncomfortable look on her face.
The subject of this conversation had hit a little too close to home and she ended up taking a stray bullet.
“But what about…” Bekka didn’t even have the strength to finish her sentence but with one look at her Yara knew what she was about to ask.
“Honestly! Do you girls have no faith in my son?” Yara asked in a frustrated tone. “I’m talking to you too Lailah!”
“Eh? B-but I didn’t say anything?”
“You hardly had too! Bekka is the beastkin here yet you’re the one who looks the most like a lost puppy.”
Lailah released a small yelp when she took a major blow to her pride.
Yara released a frustrated sigh before she spoke to both girls. “Exedra is not one of those sniveling humans or elves. We are dragons. The concept of good and evil do not apply to us.”
Her words carried a weight and a seriousness they had not seen from her before and these woman then remembered that the kind gentle person in front of them was an evolved.
Yara released a bit of her pressure to convey her point and her silver hair began to float as her eyes glowed a neon violet.
They all became slightly afraid under her suffocating pressure.
Well almost all of them….
‘Grandmother is so cool!’ Mira was looking at her grandmother like she was the brightest star in the sky and subconsciously made a vow that she’d become just as strong if not stronger!
“We are not cheering heroes.”
“We are not sympathetic villains.”
“We are forces of nature.”
“I can assure you my son does not care in the slightest whether you sink or burn an entire continent, as long as you are happy and have the strength to protect yourselves.
I can guarantee my son will do a great many things that will make those weaker than him see him as a monster, but so what? He will do whatever he needs to do to become stronger and keep flying higher.”
Yara retracted her pressure and looked directly into the eyes of the two girls who were looking at her in awe.
“That is what it means to be married to a noble dragon. So tell me my daughters, do you think you can ascend to the heights that my son will reach if you are afraid to pile up a few bodies?”
Lisa looked back and forth between Lailah and Bekka who were still processing the weight of Yara’s words.
The reason she didn’t have this problem is from the moment she was first embraced by Exedra she pledged all of her being to him.
If her husband asked her to kill she would do it without question and pile up enough bodies to fill a gorge.
And since she was also a dragon she also did not struggle with morality.
Mira just went back to playing with Megumin…
But if her previous antics were any indicator, she’d have no problems killing either.
After a long silence, Bekka looked into Yara’s eyes with a new intensity.
Before she might’ve still hesitated but now, hearing that there was a possibility she could become deadweight for her husband her will burned anew.
Her mother in law was right.
She could be free, she could run wild and she could finally stop hiding.
Lailah’s eyes also glowed with a red light as she felt something inside of her snap and she was finally unbound.
Seeing the looks in the eyes of the two girls, Yara smiled wide.
“That’s my girls. I know just the thing needed to give you girls a proper rebirth.”
_______________________________________
I finally made a discord come join and ask me any questions you may have or pitch me new ideas for the story!
/K9crny6P