PowerHouseCreatives Contest | A Wolf after Your Own Heart

This is an entry to @powerhousecreatives community contest A Villain's Story by @zord189.

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Author's note: I regularly participate in @freewritehouse #We-Write by @zeldacroft. This story is an expansion of the character from Behind Shadows You Hide (We-Write #10).

The character is inspired by a Norse mythology character but by no means copied. It is a work of fiction, a by-product of imagination.

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Image by Vincent Boulanger from Pixabay

She would run if she knew what I had become. That is, if she'd still remember me.

Centuries I've suffered from this curse! 721 years to be exact; once my sweet girl turns 21 in a few weeks' time, I have to make certain that all my sacrifices have not been for naught.

This very manor that once stood witness to our love, now lies as a spectacle to these commoners! Oh my sweet Clara, if you could just remember, would you let them just traipse around our home.

You may be wondering who I am, the man in the shadows... I've come by many names during these past centuries, the Wolfman being one, but I digress. You may know me as Fenrir.

Direct descendants of the monster himself, my family was known, his thirst for bloodshed I seemed to have inherited. But alas, I was only human then, and it was Clara who made me see the errors of my ways. She was to be my queen, the light of my life.

Until the gods took her away from me.

I had planned to take my own life that day. I would never go back to my life before her; without her, everything was pointless.

But as if the gods were not through with me yet, Loki had appeared, the god who gave life to my monstrous namesake. A deal he had offered me, blood sacrifices for his name in exchange for Clara's rebirth.

I asked myself then, would Clara have approved? The uncertainty of death without her, or the promise of life again with her. I made my choice.

It was only after the deal was made that I failed to realize the one detail that I should have asked about, when would the blood sacrifices be enough?

Now, after centuries of blood shed by my hands, many months of transforming into a wretched beast, and endless days of agonizing solitude, I felt my freedom drawing near.

As I silently watched from the shadows as Clara's lithe form passed by, I couldn't help the grin slowly spreading on my face, fangs barely visible to the human eye.

Clara, my love, we would never be apart again.