DESPOINA
There is relief in finally giving into the anger.
It was easier that sinking further and further into sorrow. It was easier than feasting on her own pain, on making herself smaller by gorging on her own heartache. It was so much easier to turn to the fury that had always been her own—letting the hellhound overtake her so that she was nothing but this hellish creature. In this form, she wasn’t sad Despoina. She wasn’t the girl nearly killed by her mother and then abandoned. The girl adopted who had run away. The girl who fell in love with a shadow she knew nothing about and then left to her own devices again. A girl who longed but who was never wanted.
She was a killer in this form.
She was predator and not prey.
Her red eyes sharpen when he too shifts and that relief clicks even further, something in her mind switching as she regards him. He isn’t Torryn anymore. He isn’t the boy she loved from the first. He isn’t the one who turned from her and had children with others without a second thought.
He’s an opponent.
Her lips peel back from her sharp-edged teeth and there is a growl that builds in the slender column of her throat. “Maybe I am,” she barely recognizes the pitch of her own voice. It is throatier than usual and she takes a step forward, refusing to be cowed by him. Refusing to be the one to turn away and run this time.
“Maybe I deserve to be difficult,” she spits out and her hackles raise.
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do