Feral For Her Freedom
EIGHT

A deep hatred, a loathing I’d never felt before, coursed through my body. It overwhelmed me, took over me. It was as though this feeling had replaced my need for oxygen, like I could survive off of hatred instead.

The source of this uncontrollable thirst for blood?

Myrin.

When he’d first entered after an extremely uncomfortable night—a night of being cold and in pain from my dislocated shoulder that desperately tried to fix itself but couldn’t do so correctly because of the stretched position of my shackled wrists—he had looked at my shoulder obviously seeing the wrongness of it and simply dismissed it.

Instead, he reached and grabbed the pulley system of chains and pulled it back, the chains clicking and clanking as they reeled up slowly, bringing me higher and higher off the ground until my feet no longer touched. Gravity pulled all my weight down causing my arms to stretch and throb, doing my injured shoulder no favor. I snarled at him, flashing him my teeth, just waiting for him to get close enough so that I could tear out his throat.

The male sneered, his lips curling up in distaste. “Absolutely disgusting that you’ve been allotted the time to master a pure state.”

I laughed wickedly, “You’re just pissed that a female can master it as well as any male.” Seeing his frown deepen made a little ray of happiness shine through me. “In fact, I’d say I can use it better than most males seeing as how they’ve all walked away with worse wounds than I ever have.”

Myrin’s eyes flashed dangerously. He held up a hand sporting five deadly claws and hooked one under my chin. “You’ve never been taught to know better,” he said, looking down his nose at me as he turned my face side to side. “Like a child you need someone to teach you of your place. The meaning of rules.”

I yanked my face away from his touch, slicing the underside of my chin on his claw in doing so. “Teach? You don’t teach. You beat us into submission.”

“Pain is the best and fastest way to learn,” he told me dismissively.

“What a load of bullshit,” I easily snapped back.

I hadn’t even finished the sentence when his thumb pinned down my tongue in my mouth. “Such uncouth words will never leave your mouth again.” There was an underlying growl to his words.

My first choice would have been to reply with a good old ‘fuck you’ but seeing as he held my tongue hostage, I settled for biting down on his thumb instead.

I was backhanded across the face, my head sent snapping to the side, a dull throbbing in my cheek. He seized me by the neck and snarled in my face, “Let me enlighten you on something, female. I am tallying up every offense, every wrong that you do. And you will pay for it at one point or another, so learn to moderate, it’s my only warning.”

My fear from yesterday had vanished since I’d seen him again and it was replaced by defiance and perhaps a bit of stupidity. Suffice to say, in answer to his ‘warning’ I spit in his face.

That was the last straw for Myrin. He wrenched open my mouth and grabbed my left incisor between two fingers and ripped the damn thing from my mouth.

I howled in agony as blood gushed into my mouth and he took the opportunity to yank out my other one. Next, he grabbed my hand, and one by one, he removed my claws while saying, “The pure state is only for males to use. Females can’t control the urges that come with it, they go crazy. They go feral.” He grabbed my other hand and continued his actions. “I don’t care about that. I only care about one thing. It is a right only afforded to the males and a female caught breaking those rules will be punished.” He stepped back, looking over my bloodied hands and my lips stained with blood. “You don’t get a choice. Females don’t get choices. They get orders and they will obey them. So, here’s my order to you. Don’t ever enter the pure state again. If I replace that you are, I’ll simply continue to pull out your teeth and rip out your claws until you learn.” He gathered the broken off claws and teeth from the stone floor and clenched them in his fist. “You’ll conform. I’ll make you see the errors of your ways.”

With that he left. For my first day I thought it went better than expected.

As the days drew on, they blended together all seeming like the last. Every night my claws and teeth grew back and each morning he came back to see me in the pure state and repeated his actions saying the same things over and over.

“Don’t ever enter the pure state again. If I replace that you are, I’ll simply continue to pull out your teeth and rip out your claws until you learn.” Then he would leave with the same statement as before. “You’ll conform. I’ll make you see the errors of your ways.”

It got to the point where I started second guessing myself wondering if maybe I really had been euthanized and this was my hell, reliving this day over and over again. I couldn’t tell if it was real or not, if I was sleeping or awake because whenever I opened my eyes he was gone, like it really had just been a dream.

But then I’d look up at my hands, at the layers of dried blood that streamed down my arms, fresh blood beading out from my nailbeds.

The only substance I consumed was my own blood and every day I grew weaker and weaker until I could hardly stay awake much less maintain my pure state.

The familiar high-pitched shriek of the opening gate—I’d taken to calling it that now as door just didn’t seem to be accurate—startled me from blissful unconsciousness.

I wouldn’t really say I was awake. My eyes didn’t want to open, and it was too much effort to speak. My ears were the only thing that functioned normally.

Myrin looked me over, tossing my head around, prying my jaw open to look at my teeth, and then grabbing my hands to look for any signs of claws. Seeing none, he whispered to me. “Exhaustion has won over you, Beastie, as it always has and always will. You know what though? I control your food which means I control your exhaustion. By losing to it, you lose to me.”

All I could manage was a groan. He patted my cheek. “I’ll give you one more day for that to really sink in.” He caressed my cheek, a gesture I hated with all my heart. “You’ll conform. I’ll make you see the errors of your ways.”

With those words my eyes finally snapped open, but he was gone. I looked around for any sign of what I’d just experience having been real. I looked at my hands seeing human nails, no claws visible. Those damn last words never let me know the difference between reality and imagination. I was always in darkness, so I had no sense of time.

Then it dawned on me, I might have to let Myrin win this one. I had to have a strong mind, I couldn’t continue this way, not knowing if what I was living was real or not.

I had to let Myrin win this battle so that I could win the war.