"I want to stop being kind," he said. "Kindness was the nightmare. This?" He raised a hand, and claws extended not with effort, but with the quiet certainty of a flower opening. "This is waking up."
"You're wrong," Elias said. "Instinct isn't freedom. It's the oldest leash there is." Instinct Unleashed -Chapter 9- By Kind Nightmares
"Then call me leashed," he whispered. "Just don't call me broken anymore." "I want to stop being kind," he said
Behind him, a twig snapped.
Kael didn't turn. He already knew the scent—smoke, old leather, and the metallic tang of suppressed rage. Elias. The alpha who had raised him, who had taught him that instinct without discipline was just chaos with teeth. "This is waking up
The rain had started to fall harder, slicking Kael's hair to his forehead, dripping into his eyes. He blinked slowly. When he looked up, his irises caught the fractured moonlight—amber now, where they had been brown.
Elias circled slowly, never entering Kael's peripheral vision. A tactic meant to unsettle. It didn't. Nothing unsettled Kael anymore—not the blood under his nails, not the dreams of running on four legs through cities of bone, not the way his shadow sometimes moved a second after he did.