Blood of Gato

They say people learn from their mistakes. Maybe that's true… but William seemed to be the exception. How else could you explain the fact that he was standing on the same rake all over again? Instead of finishing off the wendigo, just like the beast inside him demanded, he'd once more chosen to play the hero and save the girl.

This time, the details differed only slightly: he carried her out of the forest, treated the burns with ointment stolen from his mother's clinic, and wrapped her wounds the way he vaguely remembered seeing her do before. The bandages came out clumsy, uneven — but good enough to ease the pain.

Bringing her home was out of the question. How the hell could he explain to his parents why a half-naked, half-dead girl covered in burns was lying in their living room? So instead, he dragged her to a grimy roadside motel, paying for a single night with the "blood coins" of Cain. At least they were good for something.

After hauling her limp body inside, he laid her gently on the bed, pulled a faded blanket over her, and placed a change of clothes nearby — stolen, almost absentmindedly, from his sister's closet. Then he sank onto the chair opposite the bed, fidgeting with his fingers, listening to her ragged breathing.

His own heart hammered like he'd just escaped death himself.

What if she doesn't make it? he thought, lips twisting in a humorless grin. Nearly a minute in the fire… for any of us, that's a death sentence.

Inside his chest, two cravings clashed: he wanted her to wake up, to prove that she was still alive — and at the same time, a thread of dread tugged at him. What if, once she opened her eyes, she'd try to tear his throat out again?

He stole a glance at her. Even through the bandages, even marred by burns, she looked fragile. Beautiful, actually. Especially compared to the monster she had become only hours earlier. The contrast was almost painful. Guilt bloomed unexpectedly — guilt that he had been the one to hurt her.

"Damn it…" he muttered under his breath. What the hell am I even thinking?

She had gouged out his eye. She had literally tried to eat him alive. If not for regeneration, he would be nothing but ash and meat by now. Or worse.

He jerked his head sharply, like shaking the thoughts loose.

It's just hormones. That's all. Stupid hormones, he told himself.

The minutes crawled, slow as tar.

And then— a faint groan. William froze, leaning forward. She stirred, lashes fluttering weakly. At last, her eyes cracked open, blurred and clouded with pain. She tried to rise, then gasped and whimpered:

"Edward… it hurts. Help me…"

A cold shiver ran down his spine. Edward? Who the hell was Edward? And why was she calling for him?

He swallowed and forced his tone to stay calm.

"Uh… sorry. No Edward here. Just me."

The moment the words left his mouth, he winced. Just me? Really? Why not throw in a "ma'am" while I'm at it — like some cowboy from a cheap '70s flick.

Her pained gaze drifted toward him. "Who…? Where am I? Who are you?"

William raised his hands slightly, palms open, signaling he meant no harm.

"You're safe… as safe as you can be, anyway." His voice was low, almost weary. "I'm the guy you tried to kill in the forest."

Recognition flickered in her expression — fragile, bitter, edged with something close to hysteria. She studied him for a long moment before her lips curved into a wan, almost mocking smile.

"Then why… are you still alive?"

A nervous tic pulled at his cheek. He dropped his gaze, scratching absently at the wood of the chair with a fingernail.

"Honestly? …I've got no idea. Maybe I'm just too damn hard to kill."

For a few long moments, the girl just stared at him. Then her eyes squeezed shut, her whole body tensing as if she were tightening every nerve and fiber from the inside. Her lips trembled. It was as though she were pulling all her consciousness toward some single, invisible point inside herself.

And then—shock. Her eyes snapped open, wide with sudden panic. Animal panic.

"I…" Her voice cracked. "I can't feel it anymore!"

She clutched her head, fingers digging so deep into her scalp it looked like she meant to rip something out. Tears welled instantly, spilling down her burned face.

"Edward!" she screamed, hoarse, broken, her voice shredded to ribbons. "Edward, please! Answer me! I know you can hear me—you have to hear me! Don't leave me… please, don't leave me!"

The desperate pleading hit William harder than any claw or fang. He had braced himself for hatred, for rage, even for her to lunge at his throat again—but not this. Not raw pleading grief. Right now, she was not a hunter, not a monster—just a shattered girl who had lost the one thing that meant everything to her.

A broken sob slipped out of her chest. If she'd still had hair left, William was sure she'd be tearing it out in hysterics.

"Hey… hey, easy," he muttered, half-raising a hand toward her but stopping short of touching. "Calm down. What's happening to you?"

Her head snapped up, her gaze latching onto him. Her eyes were pale and empty, wide as if she were staring at a murderer.

"You…" Her words came in jagged bursts, thick with dread. "You were the one who burned me, weren't you?"

"I—" he began, but didn't finish.

Like someone possessed, she tore at the bandages. Each movement was wild, hopeless, and raw—every tug an act of maddened desperation.

"Wait—stop! Don't do that!" William flinched forward, then froze, realizing from the feral blaze in her eyes that if he got too close, she'd sink her teeth into his throat without hesitation.

The wrappings fell away in strips, revealing the scorched, angry flesh beneath. Patches of raw, half-healed skin and dark burns stretched across her body. She stared down at her ruined skin—and her face twisted into a mask of horror.

"No…" The word came first as a whisper. Then louder. Then a scream. "No… no, this isn't real. This isn't real! It's just a dream. It has to be… I'm dreaming! I'll wake up, I'll wake up any second!"

She screwed her eyes shut so tightly that painful creases carved into her face, clapping her hands over her ears as though she could erase the world itself if she refused to hear it. Refused to see it.

And William—William felt something twist painfully inside him. Shame. The sticky, suffocating kind. Though he wasn't even sure why. Was it for saving her? For hurting her anyway? For watching her break apart in front of him? All of it pressed heavily in his chest, and he hated himself for it.

He rubbed the back of his neck, voice low, almost guilty.

"I'm sorry… I really am. I never meant to put you through this. I was just trying to defend myself." His tone quavered before he forced it still. "You're scared of the burns, I get it. But… you heal fast, don't you? You'll regenerate. And look—" he hesitated, embarrassed by what he was about to say—"you still look… honestly, you look pretty good. Better than most would after all that."

He gave a crooked shrug, as though trying to excuse himself to nobody but himself.

The girl raised her head slowly. For a fleeting instant, the corners of her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. But that ghost of warmth curdled instantly into something sharp and furious.

"You…" Her voice broke apart, then flared into a ragged scream. "You're mocking me? You think this is funny?" Her chest heaved, her eyes blazing with a hatred near feral. "I don't care about the burns, you bastard! You condemned me—you cut me off from HIM!"

Her voice cracked but didn't falter, venom spilling on every syllable.

"You should have let me die in that fire! Why didn't you?! Why couldn't you just let me burn?!"

She staggered to her feet. Her body was weak, barely holding her upright, but rage pushed her higher than any wound could drag her down.

William stared at her, bewildered, trying to make sense of her words.

"Listen… I swear I'm not mocking you. I'm sorry. I just… I thought you were like me, you know? That you had a beast inside you too. That you weren't alone." He faltered, eyes dropping to the floor, his voice softening. "I thought… not killing you, saving you… was the right thing. If it wasn't—then what did I do wrong?"

He kept his gaze down, knowing every word seemed to pour salt into her wounds. But silence felt just as dangerous.

She trembled, her whole frame shaking as though something had collapsed inside her, a hollow exploding outward. The bandages slipped from her arms as they shook violently.

"You don't understand…" she whispered, teeth chattering like she was freezing. "Edward… he was my Alpha. My strength, my very existence—everything came from him. We weren't just bound by blood, not just by flesh. We were merged. Do you get that, mortal?"

She reached out into the empty air as if groping for some invisible thread holding her together. But there was nothing. Only silence.

"And now I scream—and it's empty. I call—and there's no answer!" Her voice broke, rasping as she struck herself hard in the chest, as if trying to tear out the void rotting inside. "It means I don't exist for him anymore. It means I died. And…" Her eyes snapped wide, a twitch jerking across her face. "And you did this to me—you severed it!"

William stumbled a step back. The weight of her panic was so suffocating he could almost feel it like a storm pressing against his ribs.

"Hold on—I don't… I don't understand what you're saying," he stammered. "You're telling me you had some kind of bond with this… Edward?"

"Had!" she howled, the sound ripping free of her throat so wild, so inhuman it made William flinch. "You burned my thread with my flesh! You burned his voice out of me! You took away the only thing that kept me tied to this world, and now I'm nothing but an empty shell!"

Her legs gave out and she collapsed back on the edge of the bed, trembling as though her body couldn't contain so much grief. Tears streamed freely, but they felt less human than animal—like the cries of a she-wolf who had lost her Alpha.

William shifted uneasily from foot to foot, and for the first time, shame gnawed at him in earnest. He'd killed monsters before. Defended himself—that was all this had been. But now… now in front of him was not a monster. Just something broken, dragged out of the life it knew and left to wither.

"I… I swear, I didn't know," he whispered, eyes wide and frantic. "All I saw was a fight. You attacked, I defended myself. I didn't know anything about bonds, or Alphas, or—any of this."

Her eyes snapped up to him, brimming with despair and sharpened with hate.

"You don't understand what you've done, boy. An Alpha isn't just a partner. Not just a leader. He is part of my soul. Without him I'm nothing whole. You lose a hand—you're crippled. I've lost him, and I'm crippled forever."

She thumped her chest with a clenched fist, gasping through the words.

"You should have finished me in the fire. Do you understand? Better to burn, to vanish—than to live with this emptiness. This…" She shuddered. "…this is worse than death."

William swallowed, his throat painfully dry. The word sorry wouldn't survive here; it would crumble into dust in the air between them.

"Maybe…" he forced out, his voice cracked but desperate. "Maybe it isn't gone. Maybe the bond isn't dead, just—broken, severed. Maybe there's a way… some way to bring it back."