He actually walked me back to the castle and followed me inside too. Neither of us made a sound. Of course the tiny unimportant bit of inconspicousness would have been harder if he hadn't left his bloody red cape at home as he'd done all other nights he'd been with me since he arrived.

And the bloody in that sentence wasn't a curse. It was a description. The cape was Blood Red, so it would have been a bit of a problem to sneak around wearing that. Like I said, Kerran had always been quite brilliant.

We slipped in easily and I left to change to my night clothes as soon as I saw his face. 'I'd had enough excitement and I had to be put to bed immediately.' it read. Well... I begged to differ.

First off, I was a commander. I could put myself to bed myself, thank you very much.
Second, we just talked, so I was fine. Or so I thought. As I trudged off, the weariness crept in, but the only reason I went off to change was because I saw something in his expression.

He knew something I didn't, so I complied obediently. My room was dark and I couldn't be bothered to light a candle so I shuffled my way through the dark, searching for my night clothes. I took them to the bathroom still not bothering with the light. Kerran didn't mind. He could see perfectly in the darkness. He liked being in the darkness.

All weariness as I shuffled my clothes on slowly disappeared when I heard footsteps. Then a voice.

"What're you doing here?!" A gruff voice asked, trying and failing desperately to whisper.

"I could ask you the same thing." Kerran's deep voice replied. Only it was much darker than it was when he spoke to me and quieter than the man he was with. It was calm, gentle when he spoke to me. Right now? It was anything but. It held a threat, warning in the undertones.

Something along the lines of 'Say the wrong thing and I will enjoy severing your head and presenting it to Nora on a gold platter.'
Or maybe I was just reading more into it than I thought.

"Where is she?" The gruff voice asked. If you needed prompting as to who he was referring to, then I'm very worried for you.

I pressed myself as close to the door as flat as my body would allow. Kerran probably heard me but said nothing about it.

"She's in the bathroom." Kerran replied. The threat disguised itself as a normal sentence, but I could practically hear the rest of the sentence. 'So what're you going to do about it while I'm here.' But he graciously didn't add that part, considering it'd have blown our cover.

"Why are you here?" He asked instead.

"Tania said to remind you to do your job, seeing as you might, get a bit distracted." The gruff voice replied.

Meaningful silence.

"I won't blame you if you got distracted though. I saw the girl from afar. Although girl wouldn't quite suit her. If I had seen her before I might have taken this job earlier or asked for it specifically." Gruff voice grunted.

Kerran was probably itching to teach the man a lesson as much as I was, but he didn't.

"Yes, in fact, that was why I took this job. She appears to be quite captivating." He told gruff voice. His voice grew hard at the word captivating. His Mylidred side was clawing through the surface. His control was slipping.

"Hmm. You're right. She looks quite captivating. You didn't do anything with her yet right? You can't keep her all to yourself. Tania would let us share the spoils, won't she?" He asked.

"Yes, it appears so." Kerran replied, not hesitating this time. His voice was hard alright. As hard as a bat about to whack someone over the head, but gruff voice didn't notice. He was busy thinking of other things, it seemed. Things I would be very well obliged to actually whack him over the head with a bat for.

"Hmm. Well it appears all is well and I will report so to Tania. I'd also ask her about the other thing. I wonder how you would manage to keep the girl under your thumb." Gruff voice said.

I decided then to flush the toilet. Then I turned on the tap pretending to wash my hands. Leaving it on, I tiptoed to the door to hear what I could.

"Yes, you do that." Kerran said. His voice was uncharacteristically calm, considering his slip moments before. "I'll take care of her now."

I heard footsteps receding and I came to the door just as gruff voice stepped over my ledge. I shut off the tap.

"Kerran, is someone there with you?" I called as I came out of the bathroom looking up into his eyes. I could only see his eyes in the darkness. They were a stormy gray now. Like the kind of sky you see before a thunderstorm.

He knew I heard. He knew what I was doing, but that was the least of his problems. He was battling with his Mylidred, not to change, jump out the window immediately and rip the man into bits. I saw just by looking in his eyes, and he knew I knew.

Anxious he started pulling bits of cloth off his body. Jacket? Off. Shirt? Off. Trousers? Off, but he didn't get much farther than that before his control snapped and I'm glad he didn't because I wasn't sure what I would have done as I stared wide eyed at him trying to grasp the situation.

So he did the one thing he hadn't done in years before me. He changed to his Mylidred right before my eyes. I had seen his Mylidred, once. When we were very little, but it was a vague memory. Very vague.

The growl that tore out of his mouth as he sank to his knees was definitely not human, neither was whatever was kneeling in front of me now.

It was a scary sight. I had actually forgotten how scary Mylidreds looked. I used to wonder why the saviours of our world couldn't have looked less frightening. But at that moment I believed I understood why. If they had looked less frightening, they wouldn't have scared the hell out of their opponents before they even bit a chunk out of their body. It made me wonder how their human forms were so beautiful.

In any case, nothing about them screamed pretty except their eyes, which were most definitely the same as their human eyes. Only bigger. And scarier. Its eyes glowed silver at me from the dark. Its face practically screamed big bad wolf but ten times louder with the size of its jaws and teeth.

Why, the sharpness of the teeth itself was also quite a mesmerising distraction. If you didn't object to being eaten that is. It looked like a cross between a wolf and a panther, a particularly confusing sight, the face having more wolf like features and the body being panther like. Feline. It had black fur. Everywhere. It lounged in the feline way, but its face told you how much of a mistake it would be to let your guard down even slightly in that moment.

It's fur was silk, looked soft, but the skin underneath, I knew was definitely not soft. No mortal weapon could kill it. I believed Kerran when he said they couldn't kill him. I would not have seen it, if it's eyes weren't glowing at me from the dark of the room.

It wasn't even as big as a normal animal. Oh goodness, no. That would have taken all the fun out of it. It was almost as tall as me, barely at my shoulder. It filled out the space of my room from one end to the other. If it looked like that kneeling, I wondered how it'll look standing.

It's ear flicked lazily, and I caught silver glints in the dark. Apparently Kerran's piercings remained on the beast when he changed. All of them. Nose, ears, lips, brows? They all did. It was a wonder how they did and it also made me smile. Yes, almost.

That was until I remembered Kerran wasn't in control. This thing could kill me with a leisurely swipe of its paw, and by the looks of the claws on his paws, I'd be minced meat in one swipe.

This was the stuff nightmares were made of, and this creature was the type people said prowled in their nightmares. And unfortunately, I was the victim of that nightmare that night.