“I am!” he cut me off.
“Why is it so important to you that I see you as a monster?” I was getting frustrated now. I couldn’t understand why he was clinging to this identity so tightly when it clearly bothered him so much.
“I don’t want you to see me as a monster, but I can’t let you go on believing that I’m not one when I am.” He stood up and started to pace the room.
“Did they tell you what happened to my mother? To my sire? What I did to them?”
“I’ve been told your parents died, but no one told me how they died,” I admitted.
“I killed them.” He stabbed his finger into his chest to emphasize the point.
What was he talking about? Surely, if he’d killed them, someone would have said something by now.
“My mother died giving birth to me, and my father, he must have known I was a monster, a beast only good for killing, because he killed himself shortly thereafter.”
My jaw hung open as I took in his words, each one a piercing dagger into my soul. He really believed he was responsible for their deaths.
“I tried to convince myself otherwise, and I’d almost done it, but that night, the one where we all shifted for the first time, everyone looked at the hunters beside me with awe and wonder.Then all eyes turned to me, and their faces turned to horror. All the other hunters looked like heros, while I looked like a beast.
I ran to the river to look at my reflection, and they were right. What stared back at me was the stuff of nightmares. Not even my face had been spared.
The others, when they shift, their face, neck, and chest remain unchanged, but not me. Even my face is covered with that monstrous bone plating, marking me as cursed by the goddess herself.
I am only good for one thing, and that’s killing. So don’t look at me and tell me that I’m not a monster when I am one. Now you know the truth, the full extent of it. I am not worthy to be your mate, and you should not want to be with me.”
He sat down in one of the chairs and buried his head in his hands. His whole demeanor looked down trodden and exhausted, as if carrying this knowledge had been weighing him down for quite some time.
This was not an issue that my friendship or even love would be able to solve. This was a long-held belief for Brexl, and like it or not, he was the only one who’d be able to change his mind, not me.
I got up and moved his small table in front of him. Then I picked up the water basin that he kept next to the door and set it down on the table.
“Brexl,” I whispered his name to test the waters. If he growled or argued with me, he wouldn’t be ready for this conversation.
When he said nothing, I pressed on.
“Women on my planet die in childbirth every day. No one blames the baby for killing their mother. There are a number of things that could cause a mother to die while giving birth. I know it’s not common for your dekes for women to die in childbirth, but that doesn’t mean it was your fault.”
He remained silent.
“I want you to look at your reflection,” I put my hand on his knee.
“I know what I look like,” he said in an annoyed tone.
“Please,” I pleaded, and he reluctantly dropped his hands from his face and opened shiny eyes full of unshed tears.
When he looked at me instead of the basin, I asked again. “Please. Do this for me.”
He slowly turned his head downward and looked at his reflection in the water.
“You know what I see?”
“No,” he whispered.
“I see a kind soul, a considerate spirit, and a compassionate sirret. I see a male who has been molded and shaped to survive on a harsh planet, and do you know what you need in order to survive on a planet like this one?”
“You,” he breathed, and that one word gripped my heart in ways I didn’t know where possible. I wanted to be wanted by Brexl. I wanted that very much, but he had to learn to like himself first.
“You have me, Brexl. We’ve lumincesed. We are bonded for life. I am not going anywhere. You got that?”
