"What is a soulmate?"
The inquiry was both simple and provocative, but not even the simpleton of men could be able to subdue a full-fledged rebuttal to what drove the same men crazy.
It was extremely difficult to category a soul mate into a placid word even as the vows of Love, or even its companion, Hatred, made teasing devotions of one coming together easily.
With means of convincing a shield over the boy's shoulders, pants of wool to clothe his legs, the eager juvenile kept a steady foot quickened pace advance, towards his mother who tightened a cordial scarf around her neck. It matched her lips, red in hue, while she smoothens her amber tresses to press thinly against her chin. Not until her son made his way, standing firm in front of her did she finally smile, upon taking his gentleness underneath her wing.
A young, implausible male teased at his hair top, as his nose crinkled out of configuration. A question lingered on his tongue like the shyness that painted his cheeks, Rosemary.
With the same painted cheeks which departed the lips for a laugh to flee, the mother's pores spewed admiration. "What is a soulmate?" She repeated the question while she licked over her bottom lip out of anticipation. A soulmate was defiantly vague, compassionate yet miraculous all at the same time. The boy's eyes lingered on her expression for a while before he sweetly nodded, he looked over yonder at the fields in front of the manor, the packhouse, and all the people who performed labor just adjacent to them.
The mother tightened the scarf even more around her neck before within swift action she had snatched the boy by his shoulder, sharply.
"You listen," She began. "A soulmate is the one thing you need most, if not the only." A young Alexander couldn't do a thing but squint his eyes at her frail state. How quickly emotions ran deeply and changed in the blink of an eye, at a chance of a flicker in a light? That was his mother. She never had known what to do with herself.
She tugged Alexander in even closer, looked around for the last time at all the citizens of the pack before cooing him inside without another proclaiming word leaving her mouth, not until she draped a blanket over his shoulders and ushered him onto the balcony. Then there they were once again, gauging the scenery of their poised reality. Time moved perhaps more slower when it was spent with his mother, Alexander would never fully register this until she was no longer there to provide her infamous scolding.
Reassuringly, "A soulmate is an ambiguous thing as it is appointing and fragile. The bond, of course, compared to your endlessly rough, boisterous, opposed lover." Alexander's mother continued sheepishly tucking him into her side.
Alexander glittered his eyebrows together as he gazed confusedly. Although her words seemed vaguely right, his mind couldn't help but configure they were terribly wrong. They crawled underneath his skin and sizzled feverishly like hot coal had leaped onto his bones. He'd known better to question his mother, solely because she'd always been the embodiment of love, herself.
Although she rocked side to side as she continuously tried to explain herself, stumbling on every syllable she'd mumbled, the words she'd mustered so quickly came out incoherent. Alexander didn't care, or else he didn't mind it.
"Why would you ask me something like that, Alexander? Out of all the things we've talked about, you've suddenly decided to ask me that of all things-" Mother went on, becoming more flustered as loose strands of hair began flying all over the place. It only made a boyish grin spread across his lips out of contentment. "A soulmate, well, everyone has one. Do you know? Even you somewhere, you will someday meet. They're predetermined, that's what they are."
Abruptly did Alexander begin to giggle until he began to choke, causing Mother to erupt into a soft chuckle of her own, before they were both doubled over in dramatic fits of bubbly laughter.
Not even the sound of approaching heavy footsteps ceased their chatter and disheveled manner.
"It's the one person you'd live to die for." New yet so familiar, you could hear approbation in the newcomer's voice who interrupted the parent and child misbehavior. Immediately, the mother had recognized him, though Alexander only remain dumbfounded as he tried to place a name on the man who was a stranger to his small developing mind.
"A soulmate is what you asked if I'm not mistaken," He ruffled his hair as a slightly mischievous smile recoiled on top of his mouth. Glittery gray eyes twinkling and easily Alexander had noted, he'd only known one other person with those eyes which everyone complimented that they were charismatic.
Hard to fall into. Hard not to love, divinely sorted into pools of despicable color. Those dazzling greasy eyes? They both shared, however, Alexander has only seen them once, threw a mirror at his reflection. "Well, it isn't posing to be complicated or assessed similar to a math problem. It is organic, it's supposed to be existent like breathing." Slowly the smile washes from the young man's face as he observed the older man's appearance and all he could think about is how they shared the same irises.
Alexander finally scoffed, forgetting his mother was beside him, even after he'd unnoticeably tugged her behind him since the older male's arrival. "You just said it's who you'd love to die for, then you say it isn't supposed to be complicated." Narrowing his bushy eyebrows, Alexander retorts sassy, "What's more complicated than dying?"
"Gregory-" Margaret attempted to intervene lightly, there was just no winning a debate with her young Alexander. He was too smart, too bold. Strongly repetitive that it made her heart swell with the greatest of pride. He was everything.
Just like his father.
Gregory hushed her easily with the flick of his palm until he leveled himself to Alexander's height. "Death doesn't always have to be complicated. It's almost as natural as living, if not more." Gregory wanted to continue irrationally; however, he ended himself short, seeming appeased by his answer. Slitting his eyes, he'd countered that Alexander couldn't have been what, maybe a little under twelve but too young to be eleven years old.
Finally, when Alexander was satisfied with the beta's answer, he falls back impatiently on his feet. "What are you doing here, Gregory?" She intertwined the knitting of her sweater between her fingers as she asked. The atmosphere around them became all the more suffocating as he watched her wordlessly before gathering what he'd say next. The beta just wanted to see her, had been searching all over.
"I'd come to see my Luna, why is there something wrong with that." Alexander eyed the transaction, sighing under his breath. Maybe because he didn't like Gregory's teasing tone or the way his mother shied away while hugging herself like a cocoon.
The autumn breezed sweeping over them all, as Alexander was reminded again of the weather. How his mother had stuffed the rest of him in a blanket and moved them both to the balcony. Now Alexander was starting to think it was more to this than what he initially thought, they were hidden away from the public eyes.
Almost as if she became energized, Margaret thoroughly ignored what he said and pointed an accusing finger, "You can't be here. Not at the same time as me. You know that." She stated matter-of-factly. "In fact, how did you even know where to find me?"
Without a second to spare, Gregory instantly retorted, "Of any recollection of memory, you've never been good at hiding from me, Margaret."
"Your scent? No matter where you are or wherever you go, it has a way of lulling me. I find it extremely hard sleeping at night because of it." The beta admitted this with his gaze transfixed on the woman in front of him, and for a split second, all he could ever see was her and only her.
As if the world was spinning on its hinges and would soon plunder into a void of stardust, he only dreamed of spewing everything which crossed his mind. He'd live to purge everything he was thinking. To reenact on much of what he wanted, and he sought her truthfully, undoubtedly. "Do you now? Do you really?" Matching his stance, Margaret teased back to prevent herself from falling into his arms like a mouse into a trap with cheese. "You know I do," Gregory interjected.
Swiftly and smoothly Gregory began to lean in, like pudgy into her hands, he melted softly inside his shoes. Margaret was a pool he so badly wanted to dive into, but she's always so gentle. So majestic, like a kitten that would run away if you advance so impetuously. Gregory is much closer, to what he desires, that he could almost taste it. Taste her.
Margaret bites back her lip brushing past his shoulder, not daring to face him anymore. She blinked many tears away,, but these were much harsher and reddening. "No. Not now. I can't have this right now." She seemed keen on convincing herself the most rather than him. They just couldn't happen.
"I'm sorry." Margaret started an apology before she felt his ghostly warm hand snake around her mellowed waist, arising goosebumps relied there pressing into Gregory's own cordial arm. "Why must we go through this, why do you do this to me?" Margaret's voice fell short to nothing as her back molded into his front side until she could feel every animation of him, and yet she feels scorned as if she'd fallen into a ball of the sun and a snow blizzard at the same time. If she hadn't known any better, this feeling was identical to perfection.
"You shouldn't apologize to me," Gregory whispered inside her hair into her ear. His lips skim the skin as he refrains himself from nibbling the area. "It's him you should be apologizing to." The flame has run out, and it leaves Margaret empty as Gregory releases her harshly about to evacuate. Maybe he had overstayed his welcome. Maybe she was right, and he had finally realized that this was forbidden to happen. "He's the one who will have to live with this. Not me, not you. We'll both be too good for dead by that time."
Reeling him around, Margaret began to fist Gregory's shirt until she could feel an inch of his muscle sculpted by her fingernails. "Hey! You don't say that to me or anything else like that in front of him ever again!" She exclaimed, Margaret was gritting her teeth as if she'd take a sudden bite out of him before recollection scoured across her frown lines until abruptly she'd released him. Her mouth lay agape as her hands froze over her mouth.
Margaret had taken two large steps backward and Gregory only smirked following her movement. "You- You've known?" Margaret asked, but her inquire came out more like a statement than an inquiry. "You've known this entire time." Gregory nodded as Alexander grew even more flaccid, hiding himself from behind the balcony's curtains.
"I looked into his eyes, Margaret." It is all Gregory says as if it was plain as day. Hot tears began to spill from Margaret's sappy nature, swooning into Gregory's arm further while her head resides in the crook of his neck, Gregory watches Alexander hushing his mother's sobs, how his head upturns out of curiosity. "Their just like mine."
"He's everything that I am."
• •
Present
••
"You are feral which means you were always human before. Now you're something entirely different, you are turned." Well when he says it like that, it almost makes me want to tear his throat out.
Everything changes now, does he know that?
I steal the moment to relax my shoulders almost figuratively slouching but I stand so stoic and rigid that I feel as if I've just thrown myself, my chest becoming a throbbing tremor encompassing my nerves. Hallowed inside out. I am nothing. I've become nothing compared to what I've known my whole life. "Relax darling, you look like someone has just thrown a bucket of water at you." Snickering, I hear Clarity's nasty voice probing at the back of my head. At this moment, I don't know whether to run or just fall apart on the spot.
"I'm not sure you know what that is so I am just going to tell you," Alexander began stepping closer toward me until he was the only thing I can see. His smell becoming all the more intoxicating, the sight of him is enough to make me weak at the knees, all I can think about. "Feral is what my family is thought to be by the mortal. By the townspeople, it's all you've been taught for the entirety of your life. But oh boy were they wrong." Provocative, and so much alive.
Just hearing the word is enough to send my anatomy into overdrive. A mixture between what's natural and unearthly, who's to say I fit in between either one?
"How come," I barely recognize my own voice. The words came out more sarcastic than intended, Alexander clenches his fist almost instinctually, I can tell he wants to wring my neck, but color me even more confused when I have more of a right to be pissed right now, I just can't bring upon myself that anger. A wave of anger that reigns and burns inside of me, I'm scared it'll be too much that it could incinerate my organs from the inside.
For the first time Alexander's jaw ticks and he's piercing my soul with his eyes, "Lycans, Vera. That's what we are. Royally divine. Our blood compared to werewolves is essentially far from the same. Always has been," He's nodding for me as he speaks because I am too insentient to produce words let alone mouthy noises, "Now ferals, they're nothing like us lycans. Their nothing like wolves..." I've always been human. I'm only sixteen, I wasn't expected to shift until about this age so when it finally happened? A sense of belonging enveloped me. I thought I was finally reaching a designated peak of growth.
I met a mate I was never supposed to even meet who just so happened to be an obsession, an idolized pawn that I was never supposed to have. My life was suddenly crashing down and I would soon decimate with it. Running sounds a lot more granted than it has ever done.
"There's so much about them we still bargain to learn there's only so many our kind has come to know. Because where they've come from... Where they've come from disrupts a system— royals deem to enforce." Time or running out Alexander, I am slipping from within your palms, and I stand to rip your throat out with talons. Can you feel that? My love, my peaceable aggression thinning ever so slightly.
"Where do they- I come from?" Is all I care to ask but I'm serial I'll probably choke if I genuinely wanted to know. I don't think I'm ready for that, this is all too much for me in one night.
Alexander and Mavis exchange worried glances as a beating sound thumps rushing blood inside my ears. If feels like I'm floating, I'm afraid I can't move my feet.
My throat runs dry, and all I can fear in wedged between my tonsils is sandpaper but I try again. I demand an answer, quickly before I don't want to know anymore. You started this Prince, now you have to end this.
End me.
"Vera," Mavis stutters out, but I hadn't dared to refuse my eyes from my mate whose violently shaking. He can't say it, as if the truth is more bitter from the mouth of a familiar. So she will.
"Feral beings come from the moon."