Chapter 14
“You know, Rus, I think you’ve grown a little.”
That morning, as Tina ran a comb through his fur, Cain merely blinked as always, maintaining his placid facade.
“When we first met, I thought you fit snugly, right inside my arms.”
Cain gazed up at Tina as she pulled him into an embrace.
He had increased his size because a form closer to his original proportions was more effective for recovery. He had briefly considered reverting to his true shape entirely, but doing so would have sent this frail human woman toppling over in shock, so he had decided against it.
“Rus. I’m heading out. Rest up, okay?”
But despite Cain’s restraint, Tina grew thinner by the day.
The previous incident hadn’t been the end of things. Tina was summoned to the main house quite frequently, and whenever she left her room, she didn’t return to bed until late at night. What was more, as time passed, visible injuries began to multiply, one by one.
Every time Cain caught sight of Tina’s swollen, reddened cheeks or the bruises spreading across her body, he was confronted with a level of irritation that startled even himself, and it left him steeped in a bone-deep revulsion.
“Sorry for leaving you alone so late again. They said there’s a lot I need to learn for the wedding preparations…”
Especially on nights when she returned particularly late, the words she always repeated pushed him past mere revulsion into something closer to unbearable agitation.
“I… I’ve just never really known things like proper etiquette, so… But Mother is personally taking the time to teach me, so I’m sure it’ll get better soon.”
That forced smile she aimed at him with a split, reddened wound that was obviously from being struck grated on him beyond all measure.
More time passed, and the accumulated revulsion swelled to a point that could no longer be ignored.
‘Do the humans in this estate not know how to read the time?’
Cain glared at the sluggish hands of the clock and thought. The minute hand looked like a bear that had only just roused from hibernation, and through its plodding crawl, Cain tried to identify why his mood was so particularly foul.
It was probably because Tina had come back yesterday with a fresh bruise near her calf. Because this morning she had stumbled from the pain, yet still smiled at him and told him to rest well before she left. And above all, because right now, her return was running much later than usual.
‘Perhaps I really should just rip out all their throats. If I toss the heads off the cliff before dawn, the human woman need never know…’
Before long, Cain’s mind was filled with nothing but images of shredded human flesh and blood pooling beneath.
“Rus? Are you asleep?”
Just then, a click sounded and light seeped through the crack in the door. While Cain, enslaved by the dark impulse coiled within him, couldn’t so much as lift his head, the owner of that voice fluttered to his side like a spring butterfly.
“Actually, I brought you a present.”
Even when Tina appeared before him and held out a clumsily tied bouquet, Cain could only sit there, frozen and blank.
“Yesterday, walking through the corridor, I noticed yellow flowers blooming in the garden. They reminded me of your eyes, so I wanted to bring them to you.”
Tina beamed and pressed on. Only then could Cain shift his gaze.
What he noticed first were the scratches scattered across Tina’s palms. The flowers had done that to her.
“When I got closer, they were growing on top of a rose thicket, so picking them was a little hard, but still—”
Tina’s bright chatter broke off mid-sentence. The creature before her was no longer small enough to be called little, now grown to roughly the height of her waist, and was drawing its tongue in a long, slow stroke up her hand.
“That tickles.”
Tina burst into a fit of bright laughter at the sensation against her skin.
‘I—’
When that laughter met his gaze, Cain realized he could deny it no longer. His racing heart, the rising heat of his body. They were telling him something with absolute clarity.
The eyes that shone clear in the soft moonlight, the brown hair cascading along her shoulders, and the gentle smile resting upon it all. Every part of her, directed at him and him alone, was stoking something raw and primal within him.
‘I must—’
What had been born in him in that moment was not love, nor affection, nor any such sacred feeling. He had never seen, never once felt, the noble capacity to cherish and treasure another being.
And so what he felt was better described as a beast’s primal desire. Raw instinct, nothing more.
‘I must have this human woman.’
He knew only one truth. If he was drawn to something, he must possess it. This woman who stirred that pull in him had to become his.
By any means necessary. By whatever method he could bring to bear.
That was the emotion was a kind of self-indoctrination harbored by Cain, the one who bore the name Rus, as he watched Tina smile brightly before him.
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