Mason’s P.O.V.Did I hear her right?
Before I could even ponder on that thought, she was pulling me upstairs towards an unknown destination. As soon as we step on the first floor, she takes a right turn, walking towards a door which is at the farthest end of the hallway. Opening up the door and she pulls me inside, before slamming it shut. I look at her, trying to analyze what she’s thinking about, but her expression doesn’t give out anything. So I plot to hold her at least then I’ll be able to hear what she thinks; before I can even act on my thought, she pulls me towards her king size bed.
Her room has a theme somewhere between dark and light, the walls has different hues of blue with a wave design on the wall behind her headboard which gives it a fresh feel. The furniture is all black wood which provides a dark vibe to it. She has quite a few pictures on the wall; some with her parents, some with her friends, there is this one in particular which has two girls standing, each on either side and they look almost like her so my guess is that they are her sisters. I am busy staring at the walls when I notice a white ring hanging near the window.
A dream catcher?
“What do you need a dream catcher for?” I ask, still looking at it. She looks at it once, smiles at me and says, “They help me sleep.” Curious at her reply I ask again, “What do you mean by that?” She exhales a loud sigh, was it a good question to ask? I think to myself. When I’m busy having a mental argument with myself, I feel a light tug at my hands which brings me back to this world. Her forehead is creased, face contorted; I wonder if I really need to know about it and come to a conclusion that it’s not important than her sanity and peace; hence I say, “You don’t need to answer that.”
She looks at me, gives me a small smile and says, “But I want to answer that question and every other question that you have for me” I tighten my hold on her hands as my heart swells with an unknown feelings. “I want to and I will” she continues.
Sitting with her back towards the headboard, facing me and me settled in front of her, she folds her legs in criss-cross fashion and grabs my hands again. Exhaling a loud sigh she continues, “I have nightmares. Horrible nightmares, which don’t let me sleep and it is said that dream catchers are supposed to keep the nightmares away, so I have them in my room.”
I can feel her tensed posture and try to think about the reason for the same as I ask her, “What is bothering you babe? You know you can tell me anything right?” She looks at me with pleading eyes; I wonder what is bothering her so much when she asks, “I want you to keep an open mind as you hear me out, before passing any judgments. Can you do that for me?” I nod and encourage her to say what’s on her mind by saying, “I’ll never judge you, you can tell me whatever it is and I promise we’ll get through it together.”
She gives me a small smile and starts by taking a deep breath as she speaks, “Okay. So I’m basically an orphan who has five siblings, but I guess you already know this. The…” Before she can continue whatever it is, I say, “What? I didn’t know that.”
She gives me a displeased look as she grit’s my name out, “MASON. What did I tell you?” I lower my eyes at her expression, it’s a first for me to bow down before someone; I mean I never, have never bowed down before anyone since I turned eighteen and even before that I only bowed down to my father since he was our pack’s Alpha. This is new to me, as I’m busy having a squabble with myself over it, I feel her palms on the sides of my face moving it upwards to look at her. I give her a small smile and she takes it as her cue to continue, “Never ever bow down to me Mason. I know you take me as your equal and I’d love to stay as your equal; if you want to say something, say it but also hear me out as well.” I nod at her words which I think, isn’t convincing enough when she says, “I know you might be thinking why I’m making a big fuss about it, but you are a part of my life, an important one at that. You need to know what kind of a Monster; the Moon Goddess mated you with.”
Monster? What is she talking about?
“Yeah, a Monster. That’s what I think I’m, though my friends don’t and I think once they know I told you about this, they will try to convince you that I am not what I think I’m; but we can’t run from the truth Mace. I know it’s going to come and bite me in the ass someday, so it’s better to deal with it for once and for all” she says, I look at her and I think she can see the question lingering in my eyes when she asks, “What is it?” I take it as my chance to put my question out in the open, when I ask her, “What do you mean by a Monster, I don’t understand?” She shrugs at my question, with a small smirk dancing at the curve of her lips she says, “You will.”
I wait for her to continue, the smile that is plastered on her face is a sadistic kind of smile, which gets me worried for my mate. She pats the space beside her on the bed for me to move; I look at her a little perplexed and do as she says. Once I’m settled beside her, she intertwines her arm with mine and lands her head on my shoulder; all my doubts, worries and insecurities vanish in that moment and I can feel our nerves calm down in that exact minute.
She feels peace within my arms just as I do in her.
I am happy on realizing this and get comfortable in that position as I place my right hand on her arm and start rubbing as a notion of encouragement for her to continue. She takes the hint and says, “I was seventeen when my Mom died and eighteen when my dad did. After dad’s death, it was just me and my siblings. They are quite younger than me so their concern turned into my responsibility. I grew up training to be the warrior head, as my dad always said that I was supposed to stand after him and that is exactly what happened” she paused to take a breath and I saw how her composure was turning stiff by every passing minute. I let her take her own time to speak and after a break of a few minutes, she continues, “It was around a year ago when I first interrogated a rogue, who was a spy. I beat him till he turned black and blue, until he couldn’t take it anymore, after that I passed electric current through him to get the truth out and once I was done with it, I electrocuted him up to the point where he took his last breath and since then I haven’t stopped.”
“What do you mean by ‘Electrocuted’?” I asked her thinking that maybe it couldn’t be the type of electrocuted that I think it is.
“The same thing that you think it is. When I say that I’m a monster, I mean it. I will ask Matt to show you the video clips from my interrogations, which will answer a lot of questions for you” she says.
“Video clips? You guys record it?” I ask her out of curiosity, it’s never heard of. I mean Police investigations include recording of such interrogations for further use during trials and in courtrooms, but for what purpose does Matt record it for? She senses my doubt in the question as she answers, “None of them are allowed to be present in the cell while I’m interrogating, so Matt got a camera installed in the cell; that way he can see what goes on in there, those footages get recorded and are saved in Matt’s computer.”
“Okay” is all I say, so that I don’t stop her from getting the thing that’s bothering her off her chest.
“None of my prisoners have survived till date Mason. I kill them in the most brutal and painful way, I have a habit of giving them a taste of their own shit. I have killed more people in those cells in a span of a year, than my dad had in his whole life”
Listening to her words, I now understand why she feels like a monster, why she thinks that something is wrong with her, why she feels that I might reject her of leave her. Because that’s exactly how I feel and trust me when I say this; I wouldn’t want that feeling to be faced even by my worst enemies. Okay maybe by my worst enemies but not by my mate, never by my mate; so to ease her pain, I tell her what she needs to hear at this very moment, what my mother once told me, “That doesn’t make you a monster, babe. You are just doing your duty towards your pack and I really appreciate it. If anything, I am proud of you for being the strongest female of your pack. Hell, I am relieved and happy, that you are mated to me or else I would have been the unlucky one.” She giggles at my statement and turns to look at me, placing her palm on my cheek; she grazes it lovingly and gives me a small smile before saying, “It’s the other way around, because I’m the one who got lucky, to have you as my mate Macey” as she places a kiss on my cheek.
I move a little to lie down on her bed and pull her with me, so that she can lie down as well. She looks tired, as if all this thinking has drained the last drop of energy from her and I know it has. I extend my left arm out for her to place her head and she does, but later scoots near me to lay her head in the arc of my neck as I play with her hair with my extended arm. Her palm rest over my heart, feeling my heartbeats thud under it; I place my right palm on her hand, coiling it within mine. She takes a deep breath as if trying to capture my scent in her lungs, inhaling like she doesn’t know when she might get such a chance again. Her hair smells like ocean breeze with a tinge of floral scent, as the smell wafts through my nose, I feel serene.
She tilts her head to look at me at the same time when I look at her, giving me a pained smile she says, “I crave it Mason.” Before I can ask her what she craves, she continues, “DEATH”; I am left speechless, she pulls away from me looking at my shocked expression, maybe thinking that her words or most probably a single word will make me reconsider the whole thing about being mates with her. I don’t say anything, just pull her closer to myself and place a small kiss on her forehead as I say, “That makes the two of us.”
Now it’s her turn to be surprised at my statement, I give her a warm smile and say, “I am not big on forgiving love. I tend to kill a lot more than you did, when I lose it; I think it’s partly because my wolf is very aggressive, but it will be wrong from my side to blame it on him when I know whatever I do is my decision and Alastair is just there to support me throughout the process.”
She looks at me with adoration and pain, as if to tell me that she understands what I want to say. “Aurora too is a little bit aggressive; you’ll know when you meet her. But whatever happens in those cells is because of both of us, we can’t stand crime and evil. It’s like we lose our shit when we see criminals and hear about their crimes; something within us provokes us to give them a taste of their own doings and that’s exactly what we do. But once I’m done with it, the guilt and the screams traumatize me to no ends. The accusations in the eyes of my friends, it rips me apart; piece by piece and I can’t help but avoid them till everything turns normal. I hate it when they look at me as I’m the MONSTER” she whispers.
I tighten my hold on her, to the point where she is plastered to me when there isn’t even a millimeter of distance between us as I mumble to her, “Babe, listen to me very carefully. You are not a Monster and none of your friends take you as one.” I see doubt in her eyes and questions loitering at the tip of her tongue as I continue, “I know this, because when you called me today in the morning for breakfast; I knew something was wrong. So I called Matt to ask about the same and that’s when he told me that you left early, because something happened yesterday. He even told me to take care of you and to make sure that you were fine; from the background voices I could guess that Ryan was worried as well and Rose was consoling him for the same. They all love you babe, more than you can imagine and I don’t think you need to be a genius to know that people who love you would never judge you for your decisions. They understand what you do and why you do, they aren’t scared of you; it’s more like THEY ARE SCARED FOR YOU.”
She analyzes my words, pondering over the thought for a while when I see her stifle a yawn. I coo her a little and ask, “How about we sleep for a few minutes?” She shakes her head to deny my request, but I cut her denial by adding, “Come on. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to leave.” She looks at me for a few minutes as if trying to convince me with her baby eyes to do otherwise, when she sees that her puppy dog eyes aren’t working on me; she exhales a loud sigh and closes her eyes, drifting off to sleep.