General Alaric Macintyre had dreamt of this moment for days. He had pictured every possible scenario that could have ensued after his confession, but nothing had prepared him for the shocked way she had stared at him, nor how she had suddenly burst into hysterical laughter.
He had not thought she’d stand up, still in shock, pacing to and fro like that, pulling at her beautiful curls as she muttered the word ‘no’ over and over again.
And he had most certainly never thought, that instead of love... o-or at least joy, he'd instead see digust in her beautiful eyes.
Was the thought of being with him that bad for her to imagine?
“Artemis, what is going on? You’re freaking me out.” He said, standing up,
Kendra’s heart was hurting… so bad.
It never ended with her, did it?
How poetically ironic. That the very thing she had been running from, the very thing that had practically let her selfishly leave her best friend to his doom had followed her here in another form?
Was this the great destiny her parents had drummed into her head since she was young?
Did that great destiny mean that she was going to have to be tied down to a man or a wolf?
Why was fate being so cruel with her, taunting her with the one thing she was in no way ready for?
She felt the General reach for her arms, and she pulled away, the action snapping her from her pensive state as she stared at him, shivering in disgust… eyes blazing.
“I’m sorry, my lord… but I do not feel the same way,” She started, but he cut her off angrily, passionately. “Nonsense, Artemis! You can tell me every other lie in the book, but don’t go telling me that you do not feel the same way, when you know that is definitely not the case.” He tried to close the distance between them, but she stepped away again, much to his increasing frustration.
He had this crazed look in his eyes that Kendra met head on, “Thanks again for lunch, but I’ll be taking my leave now—”
“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re rejecting me, Artemis,” He told her angrily, reaching for her hand, grabbing so hard that it hurt, but Kendra wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking that he had the power to hurt her. “Alright,” She said, forcefully pulling her hand out of his hold, “You want to know why I’m rejecting you? Fine. I’ll tell you.” She said, her eyes revealing how she truly felt about him, “You’re a cruel and a heartless man, who thrives on gore, and who gets off of hurting others. You claim you want to rid the world of werewolves, who are so evil and deserve everything that is coming to them, and how do you go about it? You storm small villages, towns and cities, taking them by complete surprise. You slaughter families in their sleep, your soldiers torture and rape any woman they happen to come across in sight, and then the very few people that manage to survive the entire ordeal are brutally lynched to death. And so now tell me, if you were me, would you accept any blessing some goddess you don’t even believe in puts on you, forever binding you to one who may be human but is more beast than the beasts themselves?”
Apart from the strong clench of his jaw, she got no other action from him, and so she turned to leave, but he grabbed onto her again, this time going on his knees and hugging her by the waist. She tried to push him away, but his hold on her was too tight. “Let go of me, Alaric,” She ordered, but he only held on tighter, “Everything you say about me is true, Artemis…” He confessed, “I am a beast… maybe even more than a beast even, but you know why? Because I had already condemned myself, right from childhood. The werewolves may have killed my mother, but my disobedience had been the triggering factor that had sent her to her grave in the first place. For a long time, I had sought redemption, in the only way I know how— by killing the very beasts that had made me like this in the first place, because it was the only way I could calm the many voices in my head,” He sniffed, “But then you came along, and simply being in your presence brought me that calm that I had to go extreme lengths for, and even more than I could dream of ever having— peace, happiness, contentment. I like who I am when I am with you, Artemis… and I would put a stop to my evil ways if that is what it would take to get you to give me a chance. I would give up on my thirst for revenge, even though I still haven’t found the wolves who killed my mother just yet. I would give it all up for you, if you would have me.”
Kendra looked down at him.
He didn’t get it, did he?
It wasn’t even about him. She knew he could change— change was possible… and in all the time they had been together, she had felt safe with him, even though he was supposedly this very evil man whose bad name preceded him. He would easily be able to turn his ways… there was still some good in him after all, that much she was sure. But that wasn’t the part that she was worried about, and she didn’t want to go saying something that would incriminate her— revealing who she really was, which meant that she was going to have to make this all about him.
“And you think you deserve that chance?” She narrowed her eyes as she looked down at him, “You don’t think that the cries of all that innocent blood you have spilled is atop your head? Face it Alaric, you’re cursed now… perhaps even more than the werewolves are, because they at least had no say in how they became who they were, but you willingly chose the path that you are on now. The last thing I would want is to be saddled with someone whose sins would affect me and any children we may possibly have… I’m sorry but I can’t take that chance with you.” She finished, expecting some reply from him, but for a long moment, she got nothing, just silence.
“Then I’m afraid that I’m going to have to keep you with me, even if I have to do it against your will,” He admitted finally— softly, looking up into her dark browns, his blue eyes shining with unshed tears.
“Even if I’ll be hating you in all of that time?” She asked with a humorless chuckle, still surprisingly calm, even though he had literally just told her that she would be his prisoner.
“That won’t matter,” He countered her question, “Because you will learn to love me too… a-and with Aphrodite’s blessing, that won’t be such a hard feat to achieve.”
She knew he was right.
And that knowledge made all the emotions she had been trying to suppress since she had been told about her and Killian— all that anger, the hate of the fact that she had been made into some kind of puppet for the gods— that nothing she did was going to be of her own accord had her pushing him away with a force than even she knew had not been human.
She had officially had enough.
This was the end of her quest.
She hadn’t completed her mission, sure… but at that point she didn’t even care that she hadn’t got what she had come here for… that she hadn’t met the witch who would have been able to save Killian. She told herself that she would find a way, they still had time.
And so she said, “Thank you so much for your kindness and your hospitality, General, but I’m afraid this is the end of the road for the both of us. You want something that I can’t give you, that I’ll never be able to give you.” It was almost humorous seeing him sitting down on the picnic mat like that, looking so lost and broken. The almighty war General, brought to his knees by a mere woman.
If that wasn’t poetic justice right there, she didn’t know what else was.
“I do hope that you change your ways, while there is still time,” Those were her last words to him as she turned to leave, but his loud cry of pain stopped her in her tracks.
The General seemed to be in agony, his hands clutching his head as he groaned again. That would have been the perfect finishing touch— fate ridding the world of the vile man, but Kendra couldn’t bear the thought of knowing that she had left someone to die… even though that had been the initial plan— to kill him when she had a chance. This looked like plenty a chance, but she couldn’t seem to see it through. The she wolf was by his side in a minute, “Alaric, what is wrong?” She asked worriedly, but he only groaned some more… and then it just suddenly stopped. The General sneezed loudly, once… twice, three times.
A fourth.
A fifth!
That was a lot of sneezing for one person, Kendra thought in amusement, but then it seemed like he was okay.
“Alaric?”
When the General raised his head to meet her gaze, she found his pupils a horrifying black instead of their normal blue. “Who are you, Artemis?” He growled lowly.
She was going to open her mouth and lie like she had been doing all along, but she felt something invade her mind, something making its way into her consciousness. She tried to ward it off, but it wasn’t working.
She watched in horror as coffee brown fur began to grow on her hands— the very ones that had been holding onto the General. The man in question cocked his head to the side in interest, a menacing look making its way onto his face, “Well, I’d be damned.” He chuckled. “I didn’t tell you the full story on how I know someone is wolf, did I?” He snorted, watching as she tried to fight his invasion into her head, “After I sniff them out, a look into my eyes reveals who they truly are, and then that is the end for them.”
Kendra’s eyes widened as her transformation into her wolf form completed. She was weak, inexplicably so, and yet how she was still in control of her senses even in her wolf form surprised her very much.
She had definitely underestimated the General hadn’t she?
And now, her mistake was going to cause her her life.
The last thing she saw before her eyes finally closed was the General hovering above her, pistol in hand, as he whispered maniacally, “See you on the other side, blessing.”