Leaves crunch beneath Hadrius' bare feet.

He moves with agile ease, in hand he carries the limp body of the woman he had murdered amidst fucking her.

His eyes idly scan the campsite, seeking men who sat outside their huts or around the fire speaking in low tones, sharpening their battle swords or simply dozing with chins tucked on their chests.

Hadrius steps past the treeline, walking deeper and deeper still. The woman in his arms sways lifelessly, eyes dimmed like the onset of glaucoma and staring at the twilight sky. The trees rise all around forming a thick canopy of leaves that block out the moonlight, allowing only faint slants of white that cut across his bare back and ponytail that sways with elegant laziness, the silver barbells pierced horizontally on his nipples glimmer wickedly.

He ducks beneath a low branch and straightens as the trees slowly part, revealing a partial clearing where his second-in-command currently stands, nude, arms crossed over his chest whilst gazing at the pile of female bodies.

At the sense of his superior, Dante glances up and tilts his head downwards in a formal, cautious bow. "Hadrius," he acknowledges him, attention slanting towards the girl in his arms.

"Dante," crossing to the man's side, Hadrius crouches and sets the girl above the stack of corpses.

He lingers low and stretches out a hand to briefly card through her silk obsidian hair then down her dainty etiolated neck, trailing a finger along the curve of her clavicles before flicking her nipple. "How many?"

"Tonight?" Dante inquires with a thoughtful lick of his teeth, "twenty women."

Hadrius touches another female's face, she is no older than eighteen and rather unattractive with a half-shut blue-black eye and busted lip. Her body is mapped with swellings and contusions, there is no bite mark meaning she had possibly succumbed to inflicted injuries by her owner.

Weak, he thinks as his chiselled lips curl in exquisite disdain.

They were all pathetic, miserable, whining little mortals. The world had no place for such creatures, and it still surprised him at how they had not yet been wiped off the face of the earth. Disease, drought, famine, floods, war -- mundanes somehow found ways to survive, either through procreation like the rats they were or simple deception.

Hadrius loathed nothing more than the sight of them.

If he had it his way, the women would not have been spared during the raid. Neither would the children. His own curious anger is what drove him to murder the human that lay beneath him moments before - the sight of her flushed face, the heart that juddered strongly beneath a thin wall of ribs.

Weak, he thought while wrapping a hand around her throat, feeling the startling jump of her pulse beneath his grip.

Puny, he thought as his gums began to ache and redden, teeth spacing for canines that lengthened and dropped with an intensity that sliced the skin of his lower lip.

He still tastes the coppery blood that swirls like acid in his mouth, bits of flesh and skin sticks between his teeth. She had died rather swiftly and with the struggle of a flighty bird as her throat was ripped apart viciously.

Her death, however, brought about mild anodyne to his own irritation that still stirred his own skin. Hadrius flattens his palm over her gaping wound then raises it to the moonlight, staring in disconsolate silence at the dark red sleekness. His sigh is long and exasperated as the palm cards through his own hair, mixing red with obsidian black, runs down the side of his chiselled face.

Dante shifts behind him and a moment later, something taps against his shoulder. Wordlessly and without looking, Hadrius accepts the cigarette and perches it between his lips before craning his head sideways as the man strikes a match, wicking brief warmth against his mouth as the flame dances precariously. The cigarette lights. He takes a slow drag then holds it away from his mouth and smoke escapes through flaring nostrils.

There is silence all around, it pervades from the dead bodies as those derisive yet empty stares tilt to the sky. Their skins are as pale as melted wax, soon drenched in the stench of burning oil by the help of Dante who circles the pile with a wooden pale of it.

Once done, he steps back and waits for the Beta to rise.

Hadrius straightens, drawing one last inhale of the cigarette before flicking it onto the pile of bodies. The darkness is absolute as the cigarette falls.

Hadrius watches with motionless eyes as the flame begins to wick and grow in confidence, a black wisp of smoke curls upwards, eddying in the late fall air like the perfect strokes of an artist. In seconds a yellow flame consumes the entirety. An acridness of the fumes stings either of their eyes, and Dante is repulsed a step back but Hadrius remains within range, unaffected.

"Gather the men tomorrow," The smell of burning skin, flesh, fat and hair follows next and his beautiful face finally marries itself with a cruel smile. "We will be going on another hunt."

As Hadrius enters his room, his steps falter at the sight of the human girl peeling off the bloody sheets from his bed. Her complexion is pallid despite the lack of visible shaking. He leans against the doorframe watching her, remembering the girls that lay in dead piles like piteous things and feels a sliver of satisfaction.

"What did you make?" His voice box is prominent enough to cast its own distinct shadow, and it startles the human who flinches away before meeting his steady gaze with her own wide-eyed ones.

She blinks in bemusement; "What did I make?" His human repeats and Hadrius nods, walking up to the desk where a small lidded tin lay. He twists the cap off and sniffs the contents, his lips press into a thin, disgusting line.

"What is this?"

"Oh," the human wrings the sheets between her palms, then scratches at her wrist absentmindedly, "You are injured... so I figured... you know..." she gestures at the tin in his hands lamely, "When my mistress was ill with sores and boils I would make that paste and apply it to her wounds, it helped."

Hadrius studies her with an unimpressed expression that slowly morphed to one of sardonic inquiry. "You assumed that I possess the same pathetic healing abilities as mortals?" He regards her amusedly, voice dry as driftwood.

"You have not healed," she tries to explain, "I just thought-"

Hadrius blindly tosses the tin across the room and it lands in the bin perfectly.

"It seems," he begins taking a casual step towards her, forcing the mortal back by reflex, "that I have not made my rules clear to you." Hadrius hears the tremors that palpitate in her chest, he sees the slight pulse leaping along the crook of her neck and his gums ache with a foreign longing to sink his canines into that soft spot.

"I just assumed-"

He raises a palm, silencing her, "That is where you are wrong, human," he reproaches her, "never assume anything with me, understood?"

The girl seems to absorb his words at a slow pace, she nods unsure of whether to speak or not.

"Do not pry into my life, do not assert yourself in instances when I have not requested you to do so. Your job is to serve me in silence, understood?"

Another nod.

Hadrius steels his spine, conscious of her gaze which remains fixated on his chest. His eyes cast over the unmade bed, "Finish changing the sheets, two females will be joining me tonight."