His teeth slash and tear through not only her neck but chest and shoulder blade. She screams loudly as an immense amount of blood runs down her body. The scream all but stops my heart, but it beats insanely fast as I watch through Kaif’s eyes how her body goes limp in his arms.
A newfound need to get to her surges through me as I push the barrier again and finally manage to smash through it, forcing Kaif back.
Her head falls forward as I carefully scoop her. Marabella’s body is all floppy in my arms as I notice I am still in Kaif’s body, not my own. I sniff her, and her head rolls back in his furry arms. Blood drenches her, and her mark looks more like she has been mauled by a bear.
Blood oozes out of her, dripping off our arms, and the color fades from her face right before our eyes. I listen to her heart rate, but it slows to a deadly beat as I look on, horrified by what he has done.
My body has a mind of its own as I start shaking Marabella, but she doesn’t wake. Although just a moment ago, I still listened to her heart, now there is no sign of life within her.
My eyes fall on the markings around her neck. There are thick lines etched into her skin from the shadows of the past. I look around, unsure of what I’m trying to notice, but then I feel Kaif surge to life and stir within me. “What have I done?” he gasps as the shadows evaporate and fizzle.
A cold, nearly freezing, feeling seeps out of me and down our arms, forcing the shift as they go. I grit my teeth, refusing to drop Marabella’s body as the shadows leave me, and once again, seep back into her.
“The ruins! Get her to the ruins!” Kaif screams at me, and I look up the hill. I don’t risk wasting the time we don’t have so I take off and run towards the ruins.
Kyan
We lay Marabella down on the ruins. Intense pain courses through me at seeing her like this. My eyes take in her lifeless-looking body. Blood still gushes out of her neck. It doesn’t heal, and the wound looks as fresh as if she received it only a moment ago.
I feel how the weight of this place is suffocating Kaif. It is forcing him down and away from the surface, deep in a place where he is the safest, caged within me.
Marabella is still bleeding profusely, but since the very moment I brought her here, the moment we stepped in, I could feel her healing. If only a little, it is happening. I can feel the pull on Kaif as he is desperately clawing at her injuries and pain, taking it all away from her.
Since we brought her back all those years ago, the bond is strong, far stronger than that of some fully mated werewolves. However, just because of that, we can feel not only Marabella but also Jonah. My heart skips a beat as I feel him drop.
I know he has dropped – out cold, by the freezing feeling that settles over me. Kaif can feel it, too, as we lose our other mate.
It’s like a domino effect. As Marabella bleeds out and Kaif pulls on her life force to keep her here, Jonah is taking it from Kaif. That’s exactly how the bond between us works.
It’s at moments as such that I truly realize and accept that I am not a human, not a person, not someone with a heart, capable of love and feeling emotions, but purely a vessel for a bigger monster, and by loving Marabella, I’m also killing her.
But now, I have gained a new view of Kaif, a different understanding of how he is. After I witnessed his past life through the memories, after I witnessed the shadows of his crazed past mates try to kill their children and now Marabella, now I understand him better and why he did the things he had to do.
Whatever it was, the state that brought me to his memories, it gave me a chance to see all those memories firsthand, as if I was there to witness it all from the get-go. As if my eyes never left him, life after life, I was there with him. An endless cycle of suffering and pain.
My chest squeezes as I think of the things his past mates tried to do and the heartache that still surges through me, the one Kaif felt every time he was forced to kill them. All of them.
As carefully as I can, as if I’m handling the most delicate thing in existence, I pull Marabella into my lap. I bury my face in her neck and start running my tongue over her wounds. Slowly, I manage to seal them closed, along with his mark. It doesn’t work as good since I’m not in his form, but it helps a little, and I feel her stir as she comes back to the world of the living.
I stay silent as the shadows that fill me from Kaif become tortuous. The darkest parts of his past will forever haunt me. All of those inhumane, sickening things he had to endure, and all of that for his curse of choosing his children over his mates.
“That happens every time you mark them?” I ask Kaif.
His voice is muffled, but still it is here, with me. He can’t reach the surface here, not that he is willing to come out, anyway. Kaif is rightfully terrified of the possibility of hurting Marabella again, especially now that we are barely holding onto her essence to keep her alive.
It truly breaks my heart. As horrifying as the things that I saw are, especially what he did to Marabella, I understand it wasn’t him, and feel bad for his fear. Kaif couldn’t stop. He was captured by those shadows, controlled by the very women who dragged him through hell over and over again as each tried to kill his children.
“Yes, I believe when Luna was trapped in the stone, Hades cursed all mates to share her hate, share her heartache at losing her son, forever to live with the darkest parts of her once marked. I have tried, and a few times we thought we broke it. Turns out each mate becomes a little wiser. It is my punishment for turning her son against her, for taking her as my mate, for Celeste’s sins.”
“But you didn’t,” I tell him and raise an eyebrow. How does this make sense?
Kaif shrugs. I barely feel him. “I didn’t defend her either; I let him believe his mother was dead. We didn’t think she would come back. So I let him believe she was dead.”
“So there is no way of breaking the curse?” Although I think I know the goddamn answer already, I don’t let the hope inside me die. Maybe, just maybe, if we try hard enough, we could find a way to break the curse and free ourselves. All of us.
“No, it’s an endless loop, my Karma. No one can live with the shadows once released. No one is strong enough to block out their hate. No one can live with what I have done,” Kaif says. His voice nearly breaks, which is enough proof that even he, himself, can’t accept the things he has done. The things he was forced to do to protect his children.