Page 189 of A Soul to Embrace

“We understand this may be hard for you,” Laele said gently, as if to soften the delivery of her words. “But–”

He didn’t even realise he was keeling over in fear until he heard Zylah gently call his name out. But he couldn’t stop the way he panted in distress, nor the bile rising in the back of his throat, or how his entire body was quaking.

He was fuckingafraid, and he hadn’t felt that way in such a long time.

How dare they ask this of him! How dare they evenbring upthat prison cell, as if they thought he’d walk to it willingly with his tail between his legs.

How dare they threatenherwith it! To let her taste just adropof the suffering he’d gone through.

The rage that boiled inside him had been simmering for years, and it finally bubbled past what he could contain. The fact that he’d managed to keep a hot lid on it just proved how much he’d longed to fuckingforget.

“You will not put my mate in that fucking prison!” Jabez roared, rushing to his feet and balancing his legs into an offensive position. Every fibre of his muscles swelled to leap into battle, ready to protect and destroy at the same time. “I’ll rip out your throats before I let you!”

“Jabez,” someonewarned, and he didn’t care who.

He blindly ran forward. “I was just aboy!” he bellowed, reaching the end of the tether of rope connecting him to the hook in the ground. He fought it, his feet digging in to go forward, to run at them, to enact the violence he’d been waitingforeverto gift them. “I was only eleven years old! You left me in that prison forfive yearsto rot, when everything I did wasn’t my fault!”

Some idiot named Kalmen, a young man who hadn’t been there, who likely hadn’t even beenbornyet, decided to take the mantle up to speak about the past. “You killed a fellow classmate, a teacher, and tried to kill Mericato, now rendering him incapable of speaking without pain. And let us not forget how you and the Demons who escaped with you murdered multiple people on your way out.”

Kalmen’s most basic retelling of history only infuriated Jabez further.

“Because of you Elysians! I was defending myself against people who werehurtingme, and yet I was the only one locked away! No one stopped them from ripping my fangs out to watch how fast they grew back, or from trying to shave off my horns to see if they would regenerate too! I was mocked, ridiculed, and laughed at every minute of my life, and yet you expectedbenevolencefrom me?”

All his pulling at the tether did nothing. Sweating from fear and exertion, he fell to his knees as his foot came out from underneath him, and his forehead hit the ground.

“And you all did nothing!” Jabez roared, clenching his eyes when he felt liquid rising in them. “You all looked at me like Iwas a monster from the moment I was born. You letherbring me into this world because life is apparently sacred, knowing what she’d done, and yet you scorned every breath I took. You shunned me from society as much as possible, worried I would turn on you when youdroveme to do so!”

With his face pressed against the cold obsidian floor, he opened his eyes to find multiple droplets on the ground. The warmth of wet tears cooled, only to be rewarmed by more.

He didn’t know when he’d started crying, but he choked back his quiet sob to hide it. He was thankful his long hair had thrown forward from his fall, as it stopped them from seeing his pitiful face.

“You all pretended not to see it. You pretended that you were doing the right thing to alleviate your own guilt, and when I finally lost it, it was an excuse to get rid of me. To hide me away like I was a shameful creature to be forgotten, and then I was blamed for becoming what you turned me into.”

A shudder racked his entire body, and he closed his eyes once more when he couldn’t stand the sight of his own tears splattering against the ground. He took in a deep breath, trying to calm himself, and yet his stomach was just so knotted and sick it came out broken and harsh. His voice softened as the weight of what he was saying came down on him.

“How could you do that to a child? For all the things I have done, I have never been cruel to the young, to the truly innocent, no matter what they were. I sat in that prison wishing you would just put me out of my misery and kill me. Would show a scrap of decency and end me, so I no longer had to suffer. Yet every year, you did nothing buthopeI would change, without doing anything tohelp me.”

At the silence that greeted him, he bit out a growl that quickly died. He couldn’t muster up the anger he wanted when all he felt was pain. His damaged inner child gripped at the bars of a cageinside him, finally yelling what he’d never gotten the chance to voice as a boy.

This was never how he wanted to greet his traumatic past. He wanted to do so cackling as he stood on a mountain of Elysian corpses, not pitifully on his knees, with fuckingtearscoming from him. His shoulders drooped in shame, and he turned his head to the side so he could take a breath that wasn’t brushing against the ground and fanning his own face.

“You only saw what you wanted to. I tried to be a good pet. I tried to get better. I ate what you gave me, and played with your toys and puzzles. But nothing will stop me from being what I am,” he said quietly, wishing his chest didn’t ache the way it did. “You have no idea what it was like being in that cell for years. It’s inhumane to lock a creature away for so long, but you cared little for my wellbeing under the guise of protecting thousands. Yet you sit there, telling me you’re sorry and that I should swallow your demand because it’show it’s done? Where is the benevolence you believe yourselves to have? Where is your supposed compassion? From the moment I was born, I have seen nothing but your wickedness.”

He heard a loud sniffle before a deep sob followed, and he cringed at the sympathy he could almost taste in the air.

When he lifted his head, he peeked through the long lengths of his hair to see who the fuck had the gall tocryfor him after what they’d done to him. He was surprised to find many eyes were filled with tears, but it was the sightless woman with starburst pupils who was weeping loudly. She’d even covered her face, as if to hide and muffle it.

He grimaced in disgust at her. Why would she cry so deeply for someone she didn’t know? He hated such softheartedness.

He looked away from her and purposefully met the ashen expression of Mericato, uncomfortable regret in his gaze.

“I don’t care for your regret, your apologies, or excuses. I don’t care that we were all just silly children, doing foolish things, because actions haveweightas adults. I have done horrid things in the name of getting back at you Elysians, but at leastIcan admit to them. Find another way to detain us or throw us from this city like you all will decide to do. I refuse to be subjugated for one more minute in that prison, as I already wasted countless in it.”

Then he lowered his gaze to his knees when he sat back.

Zylah is healed.Other than that, he regretted bringing them here and trying to move forward when they obviously hadn’t changed.

They didn’t understand just how deeply that’d scarred him inside; he was the only witness to it in the recesses of his mind. They had no idea how leaving this realm had further twisted him from all the cruelty he’d suffered at the hands of humans and Demons because he had nowheresafeto be.

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