I love the way she says the name she has given me. Like a pet name, it has a softness in it that the rest of the world doesn’t get to see. Our own private sweetness.
We head back out into the corridor and the wolf falls into step next to her other side as we pass cell after cell as we wind around the dungeons. “What are we looking for?”
She stops suddenly, head tilted. Frowning, I listen and then I hear it—crying. It’s soft and wispy, definitely feminine and far away. I look to Dawn to see that her eyes are black. They flick to me and I realise I am now holding hands with her monster, not her, so I hold on tight, my own fangs dropping. She turns away and leads me towards the cry. It gets louder and louder until we are outside a cell that looks like all the others.
“Blood,” I murmur, sniffing the air and scenting the copper tang. “Human.”
Letting go of my hand, she stabs her hand straight forward. I move to intercept, to protect her from hurting herself, but she throws me away with a thought. I hit the wall just as her hand plunges through the metal with a screech. She looks at me as I get to my feet, a look that tells me I need to trust her in this. So I nod and stand behind her, although it is hard. I am used to being the first person through the door, uncaring of my safety, but these protective instincts towards my mate are strong, a continual fight between defending her and letting her do what she needs to.
With a shriek she warps the metal and flings the easily four-hundred-pound door away like it is a feather. We both peer into the dark as the cries suddenly cut off, a small scream coming from a form huddled in the corner.
“No, no, not again, please,” comes the soft voice. It’s weak and afraid. The whole cell stinks of fear and blood.
My fangs descend farther, and the human woman whimpers, burying her head into her knees and rocking back and forth. We step inside and I glance around to see the bucket in the corner. Ignoring the stench of piss, I spot the rotting food on the tray next to the door. But then something else hits me.
“Two, two heartbeats,” I snarl, looking around for the other person as the wolf snarls behind me, drawn by my anger.
“She’s pregnant,” Dawn says softly, and I look over to see she is right. The woman’s belly is rounded, her face raised now, pink and dirty, her tears leaving white tracks down her plump face. Her eyes are a deep brown, her hair a mucky, greasy brunette. She is naked, I note in a clinical way, and her feet are also bare and covered in dirt.
Blood coats the soles of her feet as well as her thighs. “Dawn.”
She nods, crouching down before the woman as I block the wolf to try and help calm her. “Hello,” she begins, but the woman cries and jerks away. “I won’t hurt you, I’m not here to hurt you. Look at me, I’m not with them.”
The woman eventually lifts her eyes, eyeing Dawn with a frown before glancing at me and cringing away. Dawn glances over her shoulder, her eyes smouldering. “Wait outside?” she pleads, and I nod, throwing the woman one last look before standing at the doorway where she can’t see me, but I can still hear. I can hear the rustle of them shifting before Dawn’s sweet voice comes again. “I’m sorry for what they have done to you. What’s your name?”
“I, erm, I’m Kelly,” she whispers, voice a bit stronger now.
“Hi, Kelly, how long have you been here?” The woman doesn’t respond, and I hear Dawn sigh. “I swear they won’t hurt you again, I swear it, Kelly. Look at me, that’s it. I know what it feels like to be seen as nothing, to be a punching bag. To be scared of your own shadow. They make you hate your own body, make you feel like it’s no longer yours, but it gets better. I promise you, you heal. You don’t forget, but you heal and come out stronger. This? This is a blip in your life, you are so much stronger than you will ever know. Look at you, surviving in the midst of such destruction. And you have another to think of now.”
“I—he—it,” Kelly stutters before lowering her face. “They-they raped me,” she cries out before getting a hold of herself. “It’s—this thing in me could be a monster.”
I stiffen at her admission. They forced their seed into this woman? I will spike them all!
“Look at me, Kelly. We both know human monsters can be so much worse. This baby in your belly, they might have made it, but you will raise it, it’s part of you, and trust me, sometimes the monsters are better than those who paint themselves as your saviours.”
“I’m tired,” Kelly admits. “So tired, I don’t think I can fight anymore. I thought when-when that thing came that I would die, but then I didn’t. But now I feel it, the baby, moving inside me, and now I don’t think I can do this.”
It goes quiet and I listen carefully, knowing this woman is on the precipice of giving up, I have seen it in soldiers often. Their will to go on gives out and they die.
“You will go on because you have to. It’s never easy to be a woman, Kelly,” Dawn starts, her voice strong and commanding, that of a true leader...a queen. “When men are born, they are told the world is theirs for the taking, to dream big and never give up. Us? We are told that the world isn’t fair, that our dreams might not come true and to be prepared for that. As I grew up, I was told to bite my tongue, because boys will be boys. I was told not to be too smart. Too loud. Too sexy. Too opinionated or rude. Well, fuck that.”
“I was told what I could be while men were told they could be anything. Even when I became an adult, I saw the injustice every day. The men I worked with, dated, they stood before me confused as I got angry, because they have never had to fight just to be heard in a room full of men. To be taken seriously. To have to walk home quickly, clutching your keys out of fear. To cry in the shower as blood runs from my body, because they made it their own. And it’s not mine anymore, and no matter how I dress or how I act I will never be good enough.
“I became an object, like you, since birth, raised to be perfect for men. But I never was, even when I was everything they dreamed of. They still hurt me, still pushed me around and treated me as lower than them. Just an object. Fuck that,” Dawn spits, her anger palpable.
“If you want to scream, do it. If you want to rage or run naked down the streets, do it. I will do it with you. If you want to get drunk and tell every man they are wrong and womansplain their asses, do it. If you want to murder the people that hurt you, want nothing more than to kill them. I’ll help. If you don’t want this baby, that’s fine. It’s your body, your choice. You are not just an object. You are a person. You are stronger than any man because you have faced battles they never could. We are women, and we are stronger than you will ever know.”
I suck in a breath, pride at my mate filling me.
“Kelly, it’s your life, I will set you free. But you need to be strong enough to take it, can you?” she finishes, and I hold my breath with her. Her speech makes me want to kill all men. Everyone who ever told her to be quiet, who hurt and used her. Who made her afraid.
Maybe this is why I am here.
To help her, because my mate is a fighter. A fighter for everyone who has ever been wronged. She will set it right. She sees the pain and the underdog and understands them, feels for them. Protects them.
Because she was one.