He took a breath. Given how unnatural it felt, he didn’t know if it helped.

The fear wasn’t as bad now. Away from other Kindred, the supernatural terror that other Beasts invoked wasn’t there. It vanished as soon as the rival creatures of the night were out of sight. Which just felt the ‘regular’ mortal terror.

His body still remembered enough of its life that the next breath come shaky and slightly ragged.

He needed to recenter. Work things through. Reexamine and try to separate what he’d done and how he’d felt from what It had influenced him to do… and feel. Or at least how things fell into the larger whole of his being. Rediscover the part of himself… that wasn’t a part.

Was it still there? Buried deep behind stalwart protectors and exiles? Sometimes he thought he felt it but then Predator came. Hungry, consuming, and full of raw anger and fear that infected everything. Was Clay right? Was ‘he’ gone? Was what he thought of as himself just become another part? If he was to truly ‘recenter’… would it be the Beast he found there?

He took another breath but he couldn't get the thought out of his head.