You're going to have to be faster than that

Although he knew deep down that it would take some time for him to truly come around to the idea, Alastor was at least thankful that Manea vowed any lives taken would be done mercifully and that he wouldn't have to have a paw involved and that she appreciated him being beside her through it. Perhaps it was the horror in her eyes he had seen when he described his daily childhood traumas to her that made him believe her words, but he trusted her word. It would probably still break a piece of his heart to see any of his children being executed, but at least they wouldn't be children he had a chance to bond with, to give names to and watch as they grew into their own people. He could rationalize allowing her beliefs, and perhaps with enough learning and exposure from her, he could be won over to her beliefs as well. Religion had not been something he had ever been exposed to—only the hell he had grown up in with the Devil himself. "Then I can accept your beliefs, Manea... at least enough to give myself to you wholly... I'd like to learn more about your beliefs before we get to that stage though... I want to understand all of you..." he said, a trace of a smile returning to his face while her paws cupped either side of his face and began to stroke gently around his soft, thick fur, chuckling to himself while she traced the red markings around his eyes. She really was so beautiful and so fascinating...

Her words made his heart wrench for a moment in his chest when she offered her sympathies for him and his deceased siblings. His mouth twitched in a little sad smile, the wound still raw in his heart and soul despite all the years that had passed since then. She looked so angry at what he had endured. It was touching in a twisted sense, and he appreciated the empathy she had for the wolf she had just met. Despite the short amount of time they had spent together, it felt as if their souls had known each other for far longer, like they were two halves of the same whole being. She asked about his parents, and instead of further anger or pain, a sick, malicious grin worked its way across Alastor's lips. His eyes darkened again, but this time it held a wicked malice that spoke of the actions he had taken even before his words did. "When I turned one, I led my father out on a hunt along a nearby canyon... I convinced the stupid bastard to try to follow a goat up an unstable slope, and when he was halfway up, I kicked the rocks out from the bottom..." Alastor paused while he relived the day in his mind, recalling the heat of the sun, the sound of the landslide he had caused and his father's shocked cries of terror as he was buried alive. "I found him crushed under some of the larger rocks, half dead and barely able to breathe while his lungs filled with blood... He looked up to me like he was asking for help... I just sat there and watched him slowly drown in his own blood with a smile on my face... I wanted him to die slowly, to know why this was happening to him, and to watch his one chance at help slipping away."

A dark, husky laugh rumbled in Alastor's chest while the brute remembered vividly the way he'd watched the light in his father's eyes slowly fade into emptiness. It had been one of the most euphoric feelings of his life. "I covered his corpse with more of the rocks and left him out there... To my knowledge, nobody ever found his body," he explained, his smile slipping a little while he thought of what came next. "My mother saw me return home alone that evening and knew what I'd done... She'd sat by throughout my whole life, never intervening to save me or my siblings, just quietly letting that monster abuse us and kill us... her own children... She left that night and never said another word to me... Cowardly bitch..." His mother's impassiveness had made her equally guilty and complicit in his father's abuse as far as he was concerned, and he hoped she had died a horrible, painful, slow death too. "So, here I am... All on my own, trying to find where I belong in the world..." he said in conclusion, his more cheerful demeanor returning to his face as if he had flipped a switch, meeting Manea's concerned aqua gaze with a crooked smile and a squeeze of his paws around her body. Now she knew all of his history and what had made him the way he was. Would she still want him after all was said and done? Would she look at him like a monster, as so many before her had done?


"Alastor"