Hunger beneath the moon.

Dawn.

The first light of dawn crept through the window, soft and merciless. It always came too soon. Kael woke on the floor. This was always the case. The curse always consumed and took from the victim as from the prey. Azruk could never maintain his state; it always returned the reins to Kael because the curse took his strength and fought for total dominance. He hated himself at that instant. He hated himself for being born with a wolf, hated that he could transform at will, and hated the curse. The curse manipulated them both, and he hated it for that.

His body ached—deep, bone-heavy exhaustion dragging through every limb. His breath came slow, uneven, as though even breathing required thought now. He wanted to jump out the window; he wanted nothing from the woman in the room. For a long moment, he didn’t move. He didn’t want to look because he already knew. The scent lingered in the air—faint now, fading with the night, but enough. Enough to tell him Azruk had fed. Again! Kael squeezed his eyes shut, jaw tightening as a wave of shame rolled through him. His fingers curled against the floor, nails scraping faintly against wood as he forced himself to sit up.

“What have you done?…” he whispered hoarsely. He knew that Azruk was beyond reach. He always behaved that way after being dominated, controlled, and suppressed by the curse. It was bigger than both of them combined. They could not fight it, neither man nor beast. There was no way of getting round it. There was no depth to bury it. They had been fighting it for a century now, and they were tired.

His gaze lifted slowly, and he found her. Lira lay on the bed, still caught in the fragile edge of sleep. Peaceful. Too peaceful. Her breathing steady, her face untouched by the storm that had passed through her in the night. To anyone else, she would look fine.

Untouched, but Kael knew better. He always did, because he had seen what happened when he didn’t come back to mend what the beast had wrecked. Confusion and fear eat at the heart of their victims. He had seen it in the past, when he didn't know any better, when the curse first took over; he had turned a blind eye to the victims, but with time he had learned to come back and check. Stay at a distance and observe how they act? What are the consequences of Azruk's actions on them? What he saw had touched his heart.

A gnawing sense that something had been taken… or done… without memory to anchor it. Victims left unraveling, their minds circling something they could never name. It didn’t kill them. The curse was far crueler than that. It left them living, with questions, with unease, with a quiet descent into something close to madness.

The realization of this had turned him into the mender. He mended them. It was a sick way; it was as if he were giving them aftercare treatment, but such an action should not merit such a word to describe what he was about to do. So he stayed, and he gave them sanity, healing, a dream instead of a nightmare.

Kael swallowed hard. “No…” he muttered, pushing himself to his feet. “When will it come to an end?” He moved to the side of the bed, every step heavy with urgency and regret. His hands hovered for a moment over her, trembling—not from weakness, but from the weight of what he had to do. What he always did. Fix what the beast could not. Kael drew in a sharp breath. Then he reached down and dragged his nails across his own forearm. The skin split open. Not cleanly, not gently, but with intention. Dark blood welled instantly, thicker than it should have been—tinged with something unnatural, something that pulsed faintly under the dim morning light. He didn’t flinch. Pain was familiar. Expected. Necessary. “Take it back…” he murmured under his breath. He was begging the author of the curse to take it back. That has been his cry, a silent prayer that he always says with so much agony when he sees the damage done to the unexpected women. But it was left unanswered.

Slowly, carefully, he pressed his bleeding hand just above her heart. For a moment—nothing. Then—a faint warmth spread. Subtle at first, like the echo of heat beneath the skin. It moved outward in slow waves, unseen but felt, weaving through whatever damage the curse had left behind. Kael’s jaw clenched as the process deepened, because it wasn’t just healing. It was undoing. Pulling back the unseen weight, the lingering imprint of the night, the fracture the curse left in the mind. It didn’t erase what Azruk had done — nothing could, but it softened it. Sealed it, buried it deep enough that it would not rise to consume her.

Lira stirred faintly, her brow tightening for just a second—like someone passing through a dream she couldn’t quite remember.

Then it eased; her breathing steadied again, and the tension left her body. Kael sagged slightly, his strength draining as the last of the warmth faded from his hand. It was done for now. He pulled back, staring at the faint mark his blood had left—already disappearing, already leaving her untouched in any way the waking world could understand. Just another night that would become… nothing. A feeling she couldn’t place. A dream she couldn’t recall. A shadow that would never quite form. Kael exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down his face, smearing what remained of his blood across his skin.

“This is not living,” he whispered. Not for him, not for Azruk, and certainly not for them. His gaze lingered on her a moment longer—not with hunger, not with instinct, but with something far heavier. Regret. Then, as the light of dawn grew stronger, Kael stepped back. The window waited, just as it always did. He paused there for a second, glancing once more at the quiet room, at the woman who would wake without answers—but at least without fear. It was the only mercy he could offer, and it was never enough.

Without another word, Kael slipped back into the fading night, leaving behind no trace of Azruk, no trace of the curse. The damage was done, but he had mended it. She would never be able to tell what had happened to her, that she was a victim of a beast, a predator that was guided into her bedroom and devoured her p***y. In some way, Azruk had quenched her own thirst. The insatiable itch she had been feeling was thoroughly quenched. She would wake up glowing and satisfied, but she would never know how her thirst was quenched. Kael and Azruk had never understood why the curse drew them to specific women. They were just animals, driven by instinct they themselves had called the curse.

Kael started running. He was far away from his home at the coast. He could not call on Azruk to come and take over. He was fast, though he was in human form, but not as fast as Azruk. The run back home would do him good, for who wanted to be alone with his thoughts after such an ordeal? He did not want to, so he would rather run, run, and pretend that he was running away from the curse. Run, believing he was fast enough to outrun the curse, and it would never catch up to him again. Run and run away from the burden he carried alone.