Lola shut her eyes as tightly as she could and continued to bury her face into Russel’s chest. She wanted to be as close to his warmth as possible. Her whole body felt cold and he felt so warm. It was soothing to have him carry her. It helped to push out the horrible images she kept seeing.

The claws.

The fangs.

The blood.

She shuddered at the memory of all that blood. Of the body of Nora, a Harvenk werewolf she had never met before. Well hadn’t met before the woman had helped slaughter her entire village. She tried to use that knowledge to alleviate the massive guilt she felt at killing her but it wasn’t working all that well. Even the fury whirling around inside her before, just looking at Nora, evaporated, which left her feeling weak and small. She had never killed someone like Nora. Despite not being fully human, she was still as close to it as one could come before being an outright monster. She had been a thinking, sentient creature with feelings and hopes and dreams. Most of which, Lola admitted to herself, involved killing her in as bloody and gruesome a way as possible.

That should have made her feel a little better but she couldn’t stop picturing the woman when she’d been human. Was that what killing werewolves, vampires, daemons, and other monsters that liked to masquerade as human would feel like every time? If so, then she had made a terrible mistake in telling Russel to train her to fight.

To kill.

After…whatever she had done to Nora, she found out very quickly she did not have the taste for killing, even if it was a monster. Or at the very least, the human-looking monsters. The ones like ghouls, who were basically no better than scavengers and animals themselves, she didn’t feel as bad about. Plus they looked like monsters. She realized how bad that sounded, even to herself, but it was true. The monster monsters, she might be able to kill without feeling as horrible as she had with Nora because they looked evil. They looked scary. Terrifying. If set upon by a monster like a ghoul, it was clearly kill or be killed.

So why was she having such a hard time applying that logic to Nora?

She wished she knew and wished she could. Maybe looking so human had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was some deeply rooted character flaw of hers she never even knew she had up until now. She was even starting to hate herself for feeling so much guilt over the crazy woman’s death. She’d deserved it after all.

The second she started thinking she might be feeling just a little better, those images came at her again. They assaulted her mind. Broke down her mental barriers. Crushed her feelings of justification until they were nothing but dust.

She started crying again, wishing beyond hope that the wrenching pain and emotional turmoil she felt would just go the fuck away. But it wouldn’t. As Russel carried her from the Serenity Pond, it even intensified. She was starting to realize with growing horror why she felt so bad about killing Nora.

The brutal, savage killing could only have been done by…

She shuddered at the thought, not wanting to let it fully form inside her mind but helpless to stop it.

…another monster.

Russel felt the way Lola’s body just couldn’t seem to relax. Every single muscle felt tensed and coiled in on itself. She buried her face so far into his chest, he felt like she was trying to burst straight through his ribcage.

And she was shuddering.

He didn’t mind carrying her. Didn’t even mind the somewhat uncomfortable tightness of her arms wrapped around his neck. He would bear any and all unpleasantness for the rest of time if need be if it meant being able to help her even a little. She had been through something so traumatic, so overwhelming, that she had shut down. It made sense. She was a human girl from a small farming village deep in the heart of Alcroft. The worst thing she most likely had to deal with in life had probably been droughts maybe, possibly illness, or other such mundane things.

Not werewolves trying to kill her.

Not fighting for her life against a pack of ghouls.

Not facing down her werewolf lover when he had been nothing but a savage beast. A killing machine.

And she had never had to kill a human-adjacent, supernatural being before.