#renata

In truth, she saw less slavering and more… Suffering. Some of the creatures were pacing in their enclosures, each too small for its occupants’ comfort. Others were asleep, though awakened by their approaching footsteps.

None showed aggression before their eyes landed on Cobane. At the sight of him, some of them cringed away, cowering in the backs of their prisons. Others lunged, hungry for his blood.

His protective arm around her shoulders felt far less comforting than it should have.

Cobane pointed out this creature or that, telling of its rarity and how he had managed to acquire it, how many fights it had won and how much money it had earned him. Renata listened with half an ear, her attention more taken by the dried blood splattered about the cages, and the wounds both new and scarred littering so many of the poor creations.

She stopped listening to his rambling entirely when they were passing thick bars that did not form a cage, but a cell. Within, on a shelf of hewn stone, sat the slumped figure of a man, elbows resting on spread knees.

He, too, was covered in marks of a violent life, visible for all the world to see on the form only clothed by a pair of dirty, ragged trousers. His head hung between broad shoulders, the lean sculpt of his muscles interrupted by grime and bruises flaring darker yet than his skin. Long, messy hair hid half of his face behind its black strands, another half taken by a beard that was equally unkempt as the long, worn nails on his hands and feet.

Her eyes fell to the shackles bound to his wrists, thick chains leading from them to the rocky wall behind him where they were attached to two heavy rings embedded into the rocky wall. He didn’t seem aware of their presence like most the rest of beasts and animals. It was almost like he was… Sleeping?

Renata slipped out from under Cobane’s arm and slowly approached the bars separating them from the battered stranger. “Who is he?” she asked quietly.

Neither her soft steps nor her softer voice seemed to awaken the man—it was only when Cobane spoke that Renata could see his eyes open.

“It,” Cobane answered with a sneer as he followed after her. “A werewolf. Savage, mindless creatures, but formidable.”

The man in the cell lifted his head slowly, his face as blank as his dull yellow eyes as he looked at Cobane…Then at her.

If she had hoped for a reaction, some sign of… Intelligence, humanity…

There was none.

Not even curiosity.

Only a blunt stare almost entirely devoid of life in a face she thought could have been handsome, under different circumstances.

“I’ve had it for twelve years and it’s yet to let me down in the ring—but it has cost me some employees that got… Careless around it.”

She listened to Cobane idly, watching the silent, motionless creature that showed neither fear nor aggression, unlike the others, and in contrast to Cobane’s description of it.

A werewolf.

The only savage thing she could see about it was its treatment.

Cobane caught her troubled expression. He scoffed, then scolded her. “Darling, don’t feel bad for it. It’s a beast. You haven’t seen it in action; it kills without thought or conscience, even its own kind.”

Did she imagine it? The flash of hurt in the lycanthrope’s eyes—just a slight tightening at their corners—before it bowed its head and retreated back into itself?

“Oh, it’s feeling shy tonight,” Cobane laughed. His arm snaked back around her shoulders and he turned to steer them away from the cell, already going on about an owlbear, his most recent acquisition–

But even once her eyes could no longer linger on the broken, shackled man…