Seren

"Vyra Lupine is to be your eternal mate."

It had been a long, cold two days since the Mating Rights. Those words still played relentlessly in my head.

Fate is a fucking bastard.

I knew who she was, my title as Alpha depended on it. She was the greatest impossibility as my mate for a million reasons, and yet she was chosen for me.

She knew nothing about me, I laughed at myself out of pity and poor delusions. I gathered that much for our tense agreement the other night.

She did not take the same notice of me.

Not in the way I noticed her, even before the ceremony.

When I was younger, it was just an obsession with the possible idea of usurpation. I had been rewarded with a crown through blood, and I never wanted to give it up. Or disappoint my father.

Vyra was one of my first memories. I was four years old, and I remember standing beside my mother, holding her hand. We ventured out into the dead of night in Winter, just to witness what my father would do.

I remember seeing them place the newborn on a rock formation, flat enough the moon coated her flesh easily. I remember crying when my father brought down his blade on her chest.

My mother nudged me, telling me not to show emotion, or my father would do everything possible to make sure I was worthy to be his heir. I did not ask her why her own tears streaked heavily down her face.

I have not cried since. Instead, I hid my relief that Vyra was kept alive and well.

During our childhood years and early teens, I kept an eye on the girl who refused to die.

It was drilled into my head by my father that she was a threat and a martyr. That if given any power, she would take it and enact revenge upon the Umbra Clan. That she hated that he was Alpha, and she would not want me to take his place after he was gone.

It became a fear and obsession that she would kill me. I had nightmares, of a girl with snow-like hair and round teeth, that would come to my bed in the night and rip out my throat.

The more I watched her, the more I changed.

How could someone like Vyra hurt me? She did not seem to be frightened, nor envious of me.

It seemed like she did not acknowledge my existence at all. But it gave me the advantage, for I could watch her as long as I liked without her noticing.

She was so soft, and sad. Her body was frail and tiny, unlike the rest of the strong and healthy pack. Her delicate face was always covered in a frown, and her white hair made her appear even more fragile. Her dark, human-like eyes sat like two coals in her face and rarely looked up from the ground.

Even when Rolga, the Mistress of the outcasts, pinched her or reprimanded her she never sent her back any disrespect.

She was a hybrid, an outcast, and was void of her wolf form. It led to taunting from Clan Umbra, and complete disregard by the rest of the pack. I watched her get called every name in the book, and still, she did not protect her softness against their edged blades.

That is when I began to feel protective over my blood-born enemy, despite my fears.

When we were teens, she was still as passive and unassuming as ever. She faithfully followed the rules for Outcasts, and never crossed a line. While my father remained suspicious and defensive, I left behind my prejudice.

Her ill-defense made me feel protective as always, and it continued until we both reached adulthood.

But then she changed.

She still appeared in my dreams, and they were no longer nightmares. Even when I woke up with a frantically beating heart, a cold sweat, and a smile on my face.

No one else caught my mind, or possessed my eye in the way she did. I always thought about her, the frequency did not change. But the nature of my thoughts about her turned darker, warmer.

All consuming. 

Before my eyes, a snowdrop bloomed into a gardenia. Her softness became devastating.

Her pearlescent hair reached low past her spine, the curve of it particularly enticing. Her fragile body became more filled out, and supple. Elegant and alluring.

I traced over the patterns and lines infinitely more than what was necessary to study someone for possible threats.

Her face became more structured, catching the light in striking ways. The set of her prominent cheekbones was wide, meeting a graceful chin. An ethereal being rose from the ashes before me.

Her full, red lips were often part of my dreams. The way they softly turned down at the edges, and the peaked bow of her upper lip. They curled wickedly around her pretty teeth, during the rare times she smiled.

I couldn't stare at her for longer than a few moments when she did that, in fear of my heart failing me.

Most captivating of all was her eyes.

They disturbed others, as they were a symbol of just how human she was.

Her eyes. Surrounded by inky lashes, coal turned into the midnight sky, with irises as shiny as obsidian. Filled with a thousand hidden thoughts, and a stark brightness and understanding I would never get to know.

Her eyes weakened me, despite them never glancing my way.

When they fell upon the other male Outcast it wounded me. Brutally. When she sent him her rare smile, it only injured me more. For a time, that was all I could see.

Friendship or not, I had to excuse myself for months to shift into my wolf form. It would happen, even when I merely thought about the pair together. I could not control the shift. 

That was when I knew I was in deep shit. And that my father had been partially right.

She was dangerous for me. She was a distraction, a wound that would not heal.

I knew it was a problem.

Vyra Lupine was forbidden fruit, and I wanted to take a bite. Desperately.

It made me angry. It made me crazy. It made me hate her, finally. It made me feel everything for her except hatred.

I began to pay attention to other things in secret. I watched her all the time, and as close as I could get without raising suspicion. It was difficult, considering our widely different levels within the pack.

Still, I did it.

She would be sewing, and I would be learning the history and origin of our kind, with the suggestion that we take in fresh air during the lesson. My tutors never questioned why we were close to the weaving cottage.

Vyra would be taking walks to gather berries, and I would be learning how to best track larger predators in the forest at the same time.

She would be washing clothes by the river, and I would be training in the freezing cold waters.

I rationalized it at first. I told myself I was just trying to better understand my enemy, as my father recommended. I was not stalking her. I was just practicing how to track prey without getting caught. This was my body and mind coping with the guilt of her loss.

The lies always tasted like poison and betrayal.

I thought I could change things. As Alpha, I did not have to hold onto harmful traditions. I prepared in more recent years with my father to take his place and offered my ideas for change. To include the outcasts. To rid our pack of harmful practices, like young boys fighting to near death at age thirteen to prove they could become valuable men. He rejected them but approved of my quest to challenge him.

Until I crossed a line a couple months before his death, during the height of his illness.

"What did you just say boy?" My father asked me through bared teeth, an expression I was used to with his oppressive temper.

I did not falter at his tone. My father had raised me to inherently believe my own words and actions to the fullest extent. I feared no one's reactions. "I think Clan Lunae should be reinstated into the pack. Vyra is alive and has proven herself to be a loyal member of the pack."

"She is not a member of the pack. She is an Outcast. Her human mother was known to be a witch. Felix fell for her love spells...and I wonder if her daughter possesses the same tantalizing magic,"  he insinuated, inspecting his claws.

"No, of course not." I said the words slowly, careful not to spit them out quickly. Too quickly. It had been my father who taught me how to lower my heart rate, my body temperature. Physical indications that a being was lying, that Lycans could sniff out.

My father smiled, and I felt nauseous. There was love between us. Yet at my age, I began to feel like an object of his legacy. A vessel for respect and obedience.

He was a good father. But he was a better Alpha, and that is all that mattered to the pack.

"I know. Why would you when you have your pick of women that are better bred?  I will kill her myself, and if I were to die before I get the chance, I will have someone else from Clan Umbra do it in my place."

I hold my tongue, and the instinct to defend her. I never had the urge to hurt my father, but at this moment, I wanted to lash out at him.

"But when I am Alpha-"

My father interrupted me, with a cold glare that chilled me down to my bones.

"Our people transcend space and time in the spiritual realm. I swear if you do anything of what you just said, she will die."

It would be over when I met my mate, I had so foolishly believed. I had no one in my mind. I told myself that any woman would end my strange and inappropriate obsession. Then I could finally let go of the idea of Vyra.

I had been looking at her during the entire ceremony. Every glance I stole at her, I promised it would be the last. But I just could not give her up.

I was the first to see that she received the moonlight of fated mates. I thought it was wishful thinking, and I had finally gone insane. I only believed it to be reality and not another dream when the Priestess announced her name.

It was like the gods plucked my own morbid fantasies from my head and threw them back in my face to torment me.

To torment her.

Then, I felt my hope rise. With her named as my mate, I could bring about change. No one in the pack could deny fate, and I would have to follow the gods' plans for me. I could not deny the bond. And with it, I could tell her just how sorry I was for my Clan's actions.

Then a deeper, more primal urge took over. One that had been barely kept in its cage our entire lives and explained my unending pining for her.

I wanted her to want me back. I wanted to take her. I wanted to rip her from the insolent stares of the people around us, and as soon as she trusted me with her heart, I would claim it. Claim her.

I saw her face when we were named as mates. I couldn't give less of a fuck about everyone else around us, and their ignorant remarks.

She was horrified. And my heart cracked. I was nothing more to her than the child of the man who wiped out her family. That was all I could be to her over the years, without risking her life.

When she shifted, all thoughts of fixing our circumstances and changing the pack left me.

Fate made sure every single path I could take would bring her to her death.

I failed at being her protector, as I had no chance to save her. I failed as her mate, as I could not love her. I failed as an Alpha, as I would have to kill a member of my own pack.

Vyra could never know me, never know my intentions. It would only hurt her more. All I wanted to do my entire life was to know who Vyra Lupine was.

No. I wanted to know who Vyra Lunae could be, if not for her own terrible fate.

I know more than anyone else, it's selfish that I am taking advantage of my only chance to do so.

Then, and only then, will I have to kill her.

***

The next chapter will become free on August 14, but until then, it can be unlocked for only 5 coins.