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As they dragged him down a tunnel that led to the plateau toward the back of the mountain, away from the walled inner and outer courtyards, he pretended to be weaker than he really was, shuffling his paws, staggering off balance.
“Get up, you mangy animal,” one of the Dark soldiers growled, poking him in the rump with a spear, digging the sharp blade deep enough to make him bleed.
He made a clumsy attempt to snap at the guard and earned a hammer to the head for his troubles.
Good thing he had a hard skull. He shook his head and moaned low, pretending to be disoriented from the hit, dragging his paws and stumbling.
In reality, the abuse only incensed him further, fueled him with adrenaline and powerful hatred. His muscles quivered with barely-contained savagery. He’d rip the throats out of those two soldiers first when he got free.
As they neared the tunnel exit, he narrowed his eyes against the light of the rising sun, breaking through the clouds. The brilliant wash of colors across the skies and the fresh mountain air were almost enough to make this ordeal worth it every time he was dragged out of his pit.
A kaleidoscope of faded memories and aborted dreams flashed before him:
Racing across the rugged plains and jagged hills as a cub, tongue lolling, heart thundering. Wild and free.
His first kill—an antelope buck, almost as big as he was, barely a toddler in human age. The bracing night air had invigorated him. Fueled his body with exhilaration and power. He was a born predator, and he reveled in the chase, the kill, even as he awakened to a reverence for the circle of life in that moment before he delivered death.
Another memory, ghostly like smoke…
The first time he caught sight of his mate. Or rather, the first time he realized he was being stalked by a hunter of a different sort.
He was solitary by nature and didn’t voluntarily seek the company of others. His parents having been hunted and killed by Dark Ones, he learned to fend for himself at an even earlier age than most. He knew all of the feline prides in the extended territories, and even ran with them on occasion, rutted with the females who sought his attention if he felt inclined, though he never sought theirs.
He had a Dark base, after all. And when he felt the urge to rut, he indulged in it fully until the itch was scratched.
It was on a day much like this one that he felt compelled, for the first time, to pause and pay attention.
The memory was so elusive, he squinted mightily to dredge the shredded remnants to the surface of his mind.
That dawn, ribbons of brilliant color had strewn about the skies like an elaborate cloak woven by the gods themselves. He’d stopped to drink his fill at a watering hole nestled in the valley of a nearby mountain when his hackles raised and his whiskers stiffened and vibrated with tension.
When he looked up, two glowing eyes stared back at him from the shadows of a dense cluster of bushes that hid the rest of his observer’s form, save a tufted tail that undulated playfully back and forth.
He’d growled low in warning even as his heart began to hammer and his pulse began to race, both with the adrenaline to pursue and the foreign sensation of being the prey.
A soft, rumbling purr had been his answer. In the shadows, those feline eyes curved into half moons as a toothsome smile spread wide beneath them.
Turned out, she’d been watching and tracking him for days and he didn’t even know. When it came to stealth hunting, he was no match for his would-be mate.
It hadn’t been love at first sight; he didn’t think he was capable of it. It hadn’t even been lust, though he eventually capitulated to servicing her during her heat. But over time, her affection, attention and persistence bore fruit. Little by little, his animal heart learned human emotions, and while he still preferred solitude, she became the exception.
She became part of him.
There was no ceremony for animal spirits to mate. There was only the recognition and acceptance of heart, mind, body and soul. And once that acceptance happened, the bond was irrevocable. Beasts mated for life.
But when one of those lives ended before the other…
To ward off insanity borne of uncontrollable rage and violence, he’d suppressed his memories and those tender human emotions his mate had taught him.
All that was left wasanimal.
Sin shook his head to clear it, the fresh mountain air in his nostrils somehow making his eyes burn.
In the end, it made his incarceration even harder to endure, this tiny taste of freedom. The reminder of what had been and all that he’d lost. Physical torture he could withstand. But being caged was a thousand times worse.
This “reprieve” he received every ten days or so always occurred at dawn, where spectators of all Kinds gathered to watch his humiliation, both by choice and by decree. During a time when Pure Ones and humans could see just as well as Dark Ones and Beasts.
The demonstration was a warning for the oppressed first and foremost, to dissuade them of even the notion of rebellion. The other objective was to underscore the power and domination of Dark Ones:
