The Dark Beast's Love

The woods were dark that night. Darker than I remembered, and more endless as well. This was what should have tipped me off that something was wrong, but instead, my attention was drawn to the gravestones on the ground. Not crosses of wood, real gravestones, endless and endless of them with names carved in. Some which I recognised, others which I didn't. Theo's name was one of them, my mother's was another.

It was the sound of snapping branches that caused me to turn around, and what I saw right in front of me made it impossible to breathe. There was blood dripping everywhere, even the leaves of the trees seemed to cry in red. The sound of dragging feet was ear-deafening, but not as overwhelming as the smell of rotten meat and iron that took over everything. "Liliana..."

That was probably the worst thing of them all, that I still remembered her voice enough to know who she was despite the hanging pieces of flesh and the exposed eyeball. After all these years, I could still remember the sound of her voice. Even through the blood. My mother took one step forward, and I could have sworn that she would crumble to her knees. Her step was unnatural and I could see parts of the bone poking out through the thigh. Still, she remained standing and took another step.

"Liliana..." She said again and I couldn't move. "Did you forget? Did you forget me?"

She reached out her hands and held it inches from my face, not really touching it but still living a ghost-like sense of its wrongness on my skin.

"Did you forget me?" She asked again, softer this time. "Did you forget the promise you made me? Did you forget that this was your fault?" "Mother," I croaked out, my voice swallowed by the sound of moving dirt. "Please..."

"This is your fault, my dear," She stopped in front of me, hand still hovering over my cheek. "I wouldn't have been sleeping on the couch if it wasn't for you. I wouldn't have attracted the monster with my blood. You just needed to come home."

As if to make a point, more blood started dripping from her wounds and skinless parts.

"Have you forgotten that this is your fault?"

And had grabbed my shoulder and I violently flinched back to see corpse after corpse looking right at me, some rotten and green, while others were a little more like my mother, red and bleeding. "Liliana..."

I looked down and saw Theo, the wounds on his chest seemed deeper than I remembered them and the sacks under his eyes were dark, hollow, and tear-streaked. His hand had managed to remain on my shoulder despite the hard flinch and I was unable to do anything to force him to let me go.

"You promised," He said, tears mixed with blood streaming down his face. "You promised that we would be alright. But he's alive."

"I... I can't," I manage to stammer just in time to feel another hand on my shoulder. This time, it wasn't a face I recognised. "Liliana..." The corpses were singing in a choir now. "Liliana..."

"Liliana!"

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The clear sound of my name made me turn back to where my mother stood. But she was no longer the bloody body that was imprinted in my mind. Instead, she was the mother from before the accident, the one with hair always in order and eyes bright but stern. She was the mother that made me hold on to her after all these years. The one that baked bread in the morning and scolded my brother for taking my toys. She was the mother that tucked me into my bed every night and told me tales about the life I was supposed to have. She was the mother I'd tried holding onto. And she was also in the claws of a monster.

Riven wasn't in his beast form, at least not his complete transformation during full moons. Instead, he was in the form he'd shown me that he could control, where he was mostly human, but with long claws and sharp fangs. He held my mother in a death grip with pointed claws towards the pulse point. His eyes were dark and hungry, and I could sense his thirst for blood by only looking at him.

It took all I had to tear my eyes away from him and face my mother who was looking at me with teary eyes.

"Liliana," She pleaded. "Stop him, please. Liliana."

I looked back at Riven.

"Riven?" I said slowly, trying my best to reason with him. "Please don't. This isn't you."

"You cursed me," He bit out. Voice deep and growling. "You made me this. A killer. A monster. I tried to warn you. But you gave me no choice."

"Please," I begged. Not only for my mother but for him, and for everyone else that was a victim of this curse.

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He slashed her throat without hesitation. And before I could even let out a scream, he leapt over me and I heard him tear into flesh. Body after body refilling the graves. One after one bleeding under his mercy.

An inhuman scream ripped out from my throat at some point and the next thing I knew, I was on my knees, begging him to stop, begging my mother to forgive me, begging the world to end this now. It was just prayer after prayer. Plea after plea. And all were left unanswered.

I bolted out of the bed in full panic, and had Riven jumping closer to the edge in the process. Sweat was covering my body and I could still hear my violent heartbeat thumping in my ears and blood rushing past everything and up to my brain. The world outside the window was dark, but I could still see every silhouette clearly as if their shadows had souls. At some point, I could have sworn that there was a silhouette of a boy in the room as well. But almost as quickly as I'd spotted it, it was gone.

It wasn't until then that I realised that I was gripping something cold and hard with my right hand. Looking down at it, I saw the dagger in my hand, glowing and almost taunting me with its presence. Almost as if it had burned me, I threw it out of reach and looked to my left.

Riven's eyes were wide as he was looking between the dagger and me, and one of his hands was hovering over my shoulder, as if he was uncertain if he was allowed to touch me or not.

I grabbed that hand with my own and squeezed it tightly, using the feeling of his solidness as a grounding point. He moved slowly after that, manoeuvring our body until I was leaning towards him and giving me every opportunity to move away. I sighed when his warmth wrapped around mine, and he took it as a sign to pull me closer.

"We'll have to bury that dagger," I said after a moment of silence had passed. "I don't know why the witch wants me to kill you but we can't have it magically manifesting in my hand."

Riven rested his head upon mine.

"We will take care of it tomorrow, love," He placed a gentle kiss on the top of my head. "Now we rest.”

I exhaled slowly and pressed my body even closer to him. The dream had been horrible but it had also only been a dream. Riven and I had found a way to keep him from killing. Which meant that no more had to die under the curse of the full

moon.