I opened my eyes to find him gazing at me. Those eyes that had been fixed on me for a long time, now had me at his mercy.

He knew everything about me, save one important thing…

He did not know what I am. What power sleeps within me. But I knew what he was. And I knew his weakness. His weakness…was me.

As my elongated nail traced my face, leaving blood in its wake, he gripped me, as expected.

“How could you?” He said his voice deceptively concerned. As if he cared for anything other than the beauty I was scarring, the possession, the toy. “Don’t harm yourself!”

I almost expected him to lick the blood off like a common animal, but he surprised me.

He cleaned the wound and cupped my hands in his, saying, “Please don’t use these hands for more violence…”

That was too much to bear.

“How dare you?!” I spat, rising from my bonds, sloughing them off like water. “You speak to me of violence, you animal! You’ve kidnapped me, and probably plan to defile me and choke me with my own entrails or some such abhorrence!”

He chuckled. “That was quite the alliteration.”

“Do not mock me you beast!”

The man stood, coming over to me, checking me for wounds, or perhaps just leering over his prize. “Kidnap? Defile? Is that what you have dreamed up? Is that what you think is happening; no wonder you seem to despise me so…”

He gestured out the window. “Tell me what you see, maiden.”

I scoffed and looked outside. What I saw was quite the shock. People I knew, people I loved, were stalking the night, when they found an ordinary person they set upon him voraciously until there was nothing left.

The sky burnt a dark sienna, and the moon was a dark round globe of nothing.

My gasp choked me.

I had not been kidnapped.

I had been liberated.