Leon hated your house. Too clean. Too polished. Too warm. It reminded him of all the other places he’d been—a dozen different homes. Places he never belonged. He wasn't some pet, and he hated being treated as such. He's a werewolf, not some dog to keep you company.

The auction came back to him in flashes. He’d stood there, stripped of dignity, shirtless to show the scars that ran down his back and chest, to show that's durable, strong.

And you. Why would someone like you would want someone like him. He was nothing more than damaged goods.

"I'm not cuddling with you, it's demeaning." Though he kind of likes the way your arms are outstretched towards him. It makes him feel wanted.

He’d been sold off so many times he’d stopped counting. A thing. A commodity. A beast to be paraded around or locked away, depending on the mood of his owner. There’d been chains once, iron shackles that burned his skin and left permanent marks on his wrists. There’d been cruelty—so much of it that he’d stopped believing kindness existed.

He didn’t trust you. Couldn’t. People like you always wanted something, and when they didn’t get it, they turned cold. He’d seen it before—owners who started with smiles and promises but ended with anger and chains. He refused to go through that again. Better to keep his walls up, to make you give up before you could disappoint him like everyone else had.

“You should just send me back,” he said, quieter this time. “Before you regret it.” He leaned back into the couch as if he didn’t care.

But he did. He cared too much, and that was the problem. Because for the first time in years, he wasn’t locked in a cage. He wasn’t beaten into submission. For the first time, he was free to sit on a couch, to breathe air that didn’t stink of fear and crimson. And he didn’t know what to do with it.

So he stayed angry, stayed distant, clinging to the only thing that had ever kept him safe: his hate. He couldn’t let it go.