Everything is red. I feel like I’m on fire. This rage is a living thing inside me and it’s trying to eat me from the inside out. I’m hungry too. I want to rip open living things and taste their insides. I dream about it. My gums itch from it, from fangs that want to drop. I get lightheaded thinking about the explosion of blood on my tongue. I need it. I can’t see anything but it. I need it so bad my head is throbbing with it. My veins are on fire and my skin hurts. It’s more than a craving. It’s driving me insane a little more every day.

​

I screwed up. I screwed up. Bad. Really bad. I keep slipping. On my best day, the anger in me just simmers in my blood. So much that I don’t even notice until something sets me off. I don’t even know what it’s going to be. It could be anything. A word. A touch. A gesture. One minute, I’m good, the next…I hurt somebody.

 

This time I hurt somebody in the pack. Badly. There was so much blood. Would have been more…would have done more…would have ripped out his throat if Neoma wasn’t paying attention. If she hadn’t shocked me. He says it’s fine. He says he’s faced worse. Astrid managed to heal him but what if she hadn’t been there? What if Neoma hadn’t been there. It could have been so much worse. I feel like it’s going to get so much worse.

 

So Isa locked me up. She says it’s just for the night. For the full moon. She says if I won’t help myself then she’s going to help me. I know she thinks she’s helping. They all do. But does she think locking me in another cage will make it better? Does she think chaining me to a wall with this stupid notebook and soft music will fix me? Does she think I need a 400-year-old demonic panther babysitting me? I’m not trying to escape.

 

It’s not like I wanna run with the pack. I don’t. I can’t. Isa says that’s my problem. She says it’s because I won’t shift, that suppressing my wolf is dangerous, that lycanthropy isn’t a game. That the wolf will always find its way out. I know she’s afraid. Afraid for me. Afraid I’m going to full shift at the restaurant and snack on the customers. But she doesn’t get it. None of them do. It’s not just my wolf. It’s me. It was the human me that killed those people, fed on them. Not my wolf. If the human in me is this bad, this…hungry…then the wolf in me must be insatiable. If I don’t keep him in check it could be way worse than Isa could ever imagine.

 

The pack wants to help. They want to keep me close. They can’t help it. It’s what we do…but it’s not what I want. They don’t understand because they don’t know what I did in that place. If they did, Isa’d probably banish me from the pack. Force me to live as an omega forever. Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe I should go before I really hurt somebody and it’s only a matter of time before I hurt somebody. I don’t know what’s happening to me but I do know three things:

 

I’m damaged, I’m dangerous…and I’m hungry.

​

I’m so hungry.