The good news is, Ben has been finally, finally getting some spotty sleep. The bad news, of course, is the nightmares.

He's had nightmares before, certainly, but they haven't been this vivid in a while.

Between his time in the brig, his nightmare about Hound-- about Chase, he corrects himself-- and his largely accidental killing of Alex reminding him of the death of his brother, he finds himself startling awake every morning with the taste of blood in his mouth.

It's during one of these rare and fitful bouts of sleep that he hears a knock on his door. He nearly doesn't crawl out of bed to open it, out of fear it might be someone come to punish him more for Alex's death-- like three days in the brig could really pay for that crime, fleas or not-- but he finally drags himself to the door and cracks it open. One big brown eye peers out, exhausted, dull, and scared.

CLOSED TO LILY and BEN until the aftermath

Alex had done what he could to warn others to stay out of the halls. He had no way of knowing if Ben was going to be able to keep him in his cabin, but he was hopeful... he had to be hopeful. The last thing he wanted was to hurt anyone because he'd been unable to take proper precautions.

All those thoughts, however, had begun to flee his mind as he'd slowly given over to the beast at its most feral. He'd changed and with that change came the lust for blood and fighting; everything that was at the most base of his desires.

He was approximately two and a half times larger than his natural counterpart, bodied more like a mature tiger than a leopard, but retained all the agility that he would if he were smaller.

And then he'd succeeded in managing just what he'd been trying to avoid; he'd attacked and ultimately gotten past the werewolf and was now stalking the halls of the Black Tide, searching for the one thing that would satiate him... blood. Blood already flecked his muzzle and paws from the successful it he'd made on Ben while escaping, but it wasn't enough; not by far.

He pads on silent feet through the halls, cupped ears flicking this way and that and whiskers fanning widely as he scents for anything that might entice him.