Don't Touch My Men - Helen Scott Page 0,22

I knew it haunted him still. I couldn’t imagine…cutting off a part of my friend. Not just because of the physical pain, but because of the emotional horror.

“It’s the only way,” he said softly. “If I leave a piece of my horn inside him, the curse will continue to hurt him, but my horn will continue to save him. Like I said, it won’t be a perfect solution, but he’d live tonight. And eventually, the magic of my horn will either destroy the curse, or the curse will destroy the piece of my horn.”

“Fuck.” I rubbed my face, feeling sick. “You really want to do this?”

“I need you to do this, Hunter. If you care about Alastair, you’ll do this.”

My blood felt like ice running through my veins. “What do I need to do?”

He reached into his bag and pulled out a metal file. His hands shook as he handed it to me, and I took it reluctantly. He closed his eyes, and his horn shimmered into existence on his head. The little pieces that had been shaved off of it when he was young were barely visible scars in the light of the room.

He leaned over Alistair, planting his hands on the bed, his horn just a few inches from Alastair’s open wound.

“Where should I do it?”

Ellis shuddered. “Anywhere. I don’t care.”

“And you’ll tell me when to stop?”

“Yes.”

I moved closer to him, willing my nerves to stay in check. Reaching out, I took hold of his horn with one hand and placed the metal file against his horn. Ellis was panting, his entire body shaking. I didn’t want to do this, but it was happening. The worst thing I could do was drag it out.

So, I started to shave his horn.

I was shocked when white blood instantly began to drip from the horn, splashing down into Alastair’s open body, but I followed each drop of blood with my eyes. I watched each flake that fell from his horn.

“Is that enough?”

“Not yet.” His voice trembled as he spoke.

So I kept going, and the sense that I was destroying something beautiful and precious cut deep into me, down to my very soul. Somehow, even though I didn’t want to feel this way, I was sure that nothing would ever be the same between Ellis and I again. I felt like I had gone from his friend to one of his assaulters, whether I wanted to be that man or not.

“Enough?”

“N-no.”

I kept going, but my head felt light. This was too much. His horn now had a clear spot where I was shaving. It would never be the same again… Ellis would never be the same again.

“Okay,” he said, and I fell back, almost tumbling to the ground.

Ellis said nothing, he just wrapped his horn in gauze and sat down beside Alistair. He cleaned around his wound, and then began to stitch it closed. Which was strange. His white blood and the pieces of his horn shimmered like strange pearls in Alastair’s chest, but as Ellis pulled his skin together, the shimmering white disappeared.

“Need help?” I asked.

His voice was gruff when he said, “Just go, please.”

I felt like hell. Ellis had to hate me, and I didn’t blame him. It didn’t matter that it was his idea or he’d told me to do it, all that mattered was that I had violated him the same way as his captors.

Returning to my room, I went to the bathroom and hurled into the toilet. It wasn’t my finest moment, but I felt disgusting, like I could never feel clean again. I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and changed my clothes, but that feeling lingered.

When my phone beeped on my nightstand, I rushed to it.

There were more problems in the city, and for the first time since this chaos unleashed, I was glad for it. Fighting monsters was the perfect way to try to forget that I’d become a whole new kind of monster.

Would I ever stop hating myself?

11

Mae

I had barely made it out of the building after the executions before the rage consumed me. Most women would have cried, or vomited, or both, but I just got pissed off. Normally, it wouldn’t be an issue, but this time however, the magic restricting bracelets and anklets made it so my rage couldn’t be expressed. I couldn’t summon the fire or the wind. I wanted to expel the rage in my system without hurting myself, so I just marched back out to the graveyard and