What is stronger than the human heart
Which shatters over and over again
and still lives.
.
The sound of rustling waters did little to nothing in efforts at easing my nerves.
The idea of mates generally had snuck its way into my mind as I tried to fight back the thoughts of my translucent, implacable mate who now seemed to haunt me in the back of my pulsating brain. No matter what I do or did, somehow he's all that I can think about.
I'd been given a nightgown which pooled at just above my knees, rocking with each fleeting step I took, and the only sound that could be heard was the crutching of leaves in between my calloused toes that I'm sure grew tarnished.
Mrs Hart- Heidi I meant, walked silently beside me and I have to admit — I couldn't entirely recognize her anymore as my year long English, semi history teacher.
Something about her grew distant despite her shoulder that occasionally bristled past my own, and every time she did little to no action —her hair would flow delicately past her ears. I have to admit, I wasn't entirely use to seeing her like that. Filled with youth and liveliness, "You never answered my question." She started for conversing.
I don't try to hide the roll of my eyes as I crossed my arms across my chest out of agitation, and that's when her annoying voice rung over in my ears again from her previous inquire, how are things between you and my brother? Oh wouldn't she like to know. It's kind of ironic.
"Considering I ended up on my damn near death bed, you'd think things were kind of whimsical and fairy-tallish." I display a forced smile which made her giggle, though deep down, I thought it was far from comical.
Heidi shrugs while also wrapping her arm over me out of playfulness, "You know- all you have to do is accept him and I swear that little mark would lessen in pain." She suggested, and as of right on cue I winced simultaneously upon a leaf brushing against it. Without a second to spare I had my palm cupping it to shield. I'm sure I've been a sleep for an awfully long time, had no one nursed me or I'm that fragile?
Heidi smirked which I corresponded to with poking out my tongue. I think I liked her better during the awkward silence.
"You know this whole situation is a big joke." I said what I'd been long thinking. "Just weeks ago I thought I was blessed to even live in the same time period as the royal family and now I wish I were either dead or unborn." I admitted rather sharply, and I could feel Heidi gapping at me with a look of, stifled condemnation.
Easily trailing behind her, I ducked underneath a long elongated branch in which she flung at me instead of holding it for me to pass threw.
Here we were walking threw a gloomy yet cold forest that had only in-heightened my superstition of Heidi, and how had she suddenly appeared here just present for my irritation. If it was the latter well, I'd say she were succeeding.
She cleared her throat peeking at me with her blue irises that hid beneath her long eyelashes, "I've educated you for years in a lot of different fields,Vera. I've known you since you were a mere pup," Heidi chastised now that she had decided it was the right time to hand me some clothing. I glared at her fully now because all of this time I've been muttering about how cold I was, while she led me wordlessly like a Boy Scout.
"However never once did I teach you to be ungrateful if given things such as a mate." She countered before coming to a halt. Impatiently I tried to tug the clothes on as fast as I possibly could.
I stopped right behind her to gain some form of privacy where I soon began to undo the strings around my night gown, observing, as it fell to reveal my nudity.
My cheeks glistened shyly and I soon turned my back to Heidi, where I began to scamper on syllables to conform a stored apology, "I'm sorry. If I offended you at all in any way about Bane." Secretly deep down though I thought she should be the one apologizing to me. To be precise, I never asked to be in this mess. To be soul tied to a future king who was also temperamental and hateful. I've always wanted love with two kittens and three babies, but I guess the universe had other plans for me.
Groaning aloud while buckling the clasp inside the denim jeans I hoisted up my leg, I just decided to keep on talking so Heidi could bare with me, "I just don't think you know the pain he'd caused me since I've been here. You know better than anyone how important a mate had been. That's all I've wanted my entire life!" I exclaimed but Heidi didn't dare to respond.
Just minutes ago I couldn't get to stop prying and she'd replaced her consistent bickering me with dead silence.
"He doesn't even want me." I said this while wholesomely sliding the shirt over my head only to hear Heidi scoff. "A lot of things have been confusing me. With these reoccurring dreams and nightmares, I just-"
Suddenly she yanked the back of my shirt as I squeaked at the tightness.
"Enough!" She waved off with the palm of her hand. I squinted my eyes at her and tried to scarf down the refusal of being hushed by her only so she could repeat herself, hammering me behind a tree.
"Someone's coming."
In a hurry without warning, Heidi shoved me into a nearby bush and she gave me a pointed finger as if she was scolding me like a mother would. She then turned in the direction to where we could soon hear voices. With overzealous, I found myself gripping the sweater she wore on her back with my fingers stabbing her from anticipation. "Keep it down," she whispered-ly shouted again.
In my sight of vision did realization come down on me that Heidi was indeed right, because eagerly there were two males running from within the tree line. First they led and soon more soldiers were seen piling up hot behind their trail.
One was facing us while the other had his back to me and Heidi. I followed the sweat that retreated down his back muscles, which were painted in scars and black ink, taking the shape of differentiating symbols. These tattoos could be seen for miles traveling from in patterns around his neck, taking up all the skin on his back, until it disappeared underneath his black pants.
They both had rather darker skin with coarse hair that resembled ashy coal and they reeked of some kind of absolute strength that was so powerful and energetic. Simply gawking at them peeled my eyelids backward and it flowed off in heated waves that were foreign to me. Their aroma didn't scent of decaying flesh so it was safe to pronounce them as members of a pack.
They just weren't members belonging to Alexander's pack.
As Heidi assessed what they were doing I could feel her flinch softly and her irises widened to the size of saucers, I could tell she recognized them. So I slowed down my breathing just so I could hear what they were saying.
"He still has means for negotiating," One of the men say. The one facing us held a rag to his face that was filled with blood and water. I intently gazed as he leaned over the riverbed where he rang out the rag to where he again, clutched it tighter against his cheek. "I thought that's what we were here for."
He sighed as if he were waiting for a response from the other male, who was bend over rubbing his hands together, his skin ripples each time he moved. He must've been really disoriented because I could tell by the way he murmurs incoherent words that he'd gone mad.
He did what I least expected,
He began to chuckle.
"Nonsense." He poised. More men who followed behind them began to surround the two and they all had their gazes fixated on his silhouette while he breeches his undoing. I wonder if they could smell Heidi and me?
"There's nothing more to negotiate for the bargains of peace, nothing can suffice life long suppressed war," The male who violently shook stood upright and a cold fleeting tear began to bead from my forehead where I easily swiped it away, and suddenly I was no longer freezing cold but burning up so bad my chest felt to be facing an inferno.
"Now that I know that she exist...Now even a false king such as Alexander Bane cannot keep me away from her." The other man cladding his side anticipated everything this alien alpha was saying, I had to be a fool not to be able to recognize he must've been the beta.
Something about him stood out to me, something more familiar that barked in the back of my head, that it tried to tell me something. He stance was cold and unforgiving. He was a true menace adjacent to his partner.
As his alpha is speaking ill of my mate, I watched his eyebrows furrow and he moves the rag again to reveal a grilling scar where three claws previously must've swiped across his face. He balls up the rag in his hand, discarding it into the soil staining it with greenery.
But he had a scar that would remain there forever.
This man was, Juliard.
The beta my mate had caught me with, the one he claimed I was so attracted and aroused by when all he had done was help me train on pack lands. That must've been the infliction my sadistic mate had done for simply touching me, but what was he still doing on our territory? The other guy had to have been his alpha he spoke so highly of.
Now that I think about, I don't think he praised his alpha at all. He just spoke as if he was something to be feared rather than appeased by.
Juliard's green irises no longer reminded me of a hot summer's eve where I plunged into many oceans, neither did I want to swim in them again. They held something uncanny and deluded, I craved to see that infectious, boyish smile spread across his lips. Whereas, he was no longer that friendly acquaintance I once spared with.
I cursed underneath my breath as I wanted to see his alpha so badly so that I could place a face to this ill forsaken man, who threatened the life of Bane, for no one would be spurring death insults against my other half but me.
"The seize for the throne is still on. The blood bath we've been trying to avoid for the millennia is now is approaching." The alpha consolidated his demand by griping the shoulder of Juliard who only stared into pits of nothingness. All the following men around them made grumbles of their own and began to chant something, something I couldn't decipher.
The Malediction
It has arisen.
"I can almost smell her scent taunting me, in stimulus for my dispose of teething. To stain the floor with sheets of gore." The Alpha rips out a growl from the depths of his chest that was so loud that it sent my insides into a frenzy. Soon he's turning in the direction of us to the point I could almost feel the pollution of anger he was announcing. My heart beat has increased so rampantly, I know Heidi can feel me shuddering.
As if with synchronization, Heidi turns her head to come face to face with me but my eyes are transfixed on Juliard's and now the alpha who dared to look at me. He'd been scenting for me this entire time and I was too mesmerized to notice.
The Malediction
"He knows-" Heidi stutters with no warning at all that her body soon wraps around both of my arms instinctively, trembling with me in her hands. I watched with tears that I couldn't blink away while she brutally tried to shake me from my lucid state, "He knows you're here."
Spoken in a vibrant yet warning scowl, "Vera I think it's time you come to me." All I could do was shake my head in transgression, wanting to plead No!
His voice sounded only centimeters in front of me when he couldn't have been only a few feet away. Like we'd been keeping up a conversation this whole time, he'd always known I'd been watching him. He knew how terrified we were and he wanted us to hear the soon battle he'd invoke.
"I won't forcibly clutter you at my side because you know what I want. Nonetheless," His leeching voice has entrapped mine to the point my breathe is caught in the bottom of my esophagus, I could only see him and he could only see me. "And no one can stop me from receiving what I have asked for as nicely as I've asked."
The men around him started to bubbly laugh, giving each other glittery nods of slyness and shiny smiles as their alpha shimmered me his golden eyes followed by a smirk to which he raised to reveal these big shiny canines,
"I don't ask nicely neither do I ask at all." He says so surely of himself, he sported this wickedness about him keeping our line of sight. It linked us together almost. It now had became just me and... him.
Heidi fists my shirt where she instantly started to string me along and I quivered, succumbing to my feet. "Come on Vera. We have to go!" Heidi barked but I couldn't stray my irises from off of his sick animation. He was too beautiful even god had to have cursed when he created something so celestial.
He raised to his full height, he knew we were here this entire time and yet he watches as we leave. This is not an escape, he allows us to flee.
How could he watch our cowardice innovation at an escapade when he openly made it known he wanted me? He insisted he'd stop at nothing to have me and there's nothing I nor Alexander could do... he swore he'd behead my mate and paint the universe in his ichor. I'm sure he's powerful but my mate is the lycan prince and soon to be king. But something persisted this idea inside of my head that Alexander's title, as a lycan prince, was futile against this masculine entity.
Something assured me we were indeed in mortal danger, and I felt powerless.
"I'll be coming for you Vera." This man deemed, and I watched him through the whipping branches with his golden bulbs teasing me, filled with lust and ultimatum. Dominance. "In your dreams until I have you in the flesh, either why you'll be mine." The chanting doesn't cease and neither does the pounding ache my heart makes.
The Malediction.
Is upon us.
This Antagonizing alpha extends his talons as the fur sprouted from all over his body but he refused to fully shift. I cup my hand over my mouth in realization what he'd do next, Juliard's haunting eyes penetrate me and I have his provocative figure stained into my mind when he doesn't even wince, this is the last I'll see his animation come to life. The last of his summery gaze.
The last of him. "Make sure you tell that boy of yours of the show."
This foreign alpha smirks.
Before I knew it,
The Malediction
Is upon you.
The Alpha had sliced Juliard's head off savagely with a single hand as if he were wolverine. Heidi still pulled me threw bushes with branches cutting my open wrist and naked legs, my pants coming down into shreds.
Heidi doesn't stop tugging on my arm that grew numb until we passed the borders and tree line, my mate's pack house is not reached yet until we finally collapse in front of it.
Lost for words hot tears immediately start emptying from my eyes and all I could do was crumble onto the stairs with Heidi encircling me to comfort. She's panting heavily and I tried to listen to sweet words of serenity but all I could do was think about Juliard.
That bloody sick bastard who killed him.
"Who was that?" I'm being milked of raw emotion resting my head into Heidi's neck.
Flashes of Juliard's smile invade my head and I feel plagued, sick to my stomach. I hadn't known him long but I'll surely be traumatized for the rest of my life. Under that short expanse of time spent, why had that alpha killed his own beta, all for what?
Why do I feel like everything has finally caught up to me.
"Vera... I'm sorry." Heidi murmurs, she doesn't even care that I've soaked her shirt up with my tears. I didn't understand why she was apologizing, why couldn't I get those hell forsaken golden eyes out of my head.
The Malediction.
"I'm sorry you had to meet my brother, this way."
Is here.
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