One & Only, page 2
I missed him, my stranger, with all of my being. His appearance was the start of my cure but then his family moved the next weekend and I never saw him again. Not from lack of trying, but their tracks seemed lost. It was like the minute that family entered the airport, they disappeared. Trackers from the pack tried to help me find him but there was no trace. We had even considered that they were of supernatural origin and might have gone into hiding but even through the super grapevine, they were nowhere to be found. Some of our vampire friends were also still helping trying to locate him because I only had a few more years before I either lose my mind, die, or become rabid if he was not found.
He was mine at least that’s what I deduced from the description of mate and how to identify them that I was given. For four years, David and I had tried for a relationship hoping we would develop a bond out of mutual understanding and trust. That would have negated the one I would have had with my true mate. It was also one way of me to hide since I was still afraid of rejection.
I understood that I need my true mate but I also resented the fact that I was expected to swoon over somebody I didn’t actually know, and the automatic trust I would bestow on him would not be by choice but because I was genetically driven to do it. I also resented the fact that he knew me but he wasn’t looking for me. Even after the encounter with him, yes, not tried to ever seek me again. He’d just forgotten me.
“David honey can we just skip this once please?” I tried to beg
“No, we can’t put this one of. As a matter of fact, we can’t put off the next six months meeting or training. You are in line for consideration in becoming the beta and I will not let you lose this chance. It will be a good opportunity for you especially since your great grandparents were once great leaders in the pack.” he said as he picked out weapons from the hidden room behind our closet.
“I know but I don’t want to be a leader...” I whined and realized it was too late. I had made him angry.
There was one thing David valued more than he loved me, heritage. He believed we lived our life as memory for those gone before us and in doing so, we walk in the path that they did upholding their values.
“Don’t ever repeat that again.” He warned me as he dropped star darts in the bag making me jump quickly from the bed and into the bathroom duly chastised.
I understood where he was coming from since he actually didn’t know his own parents. His foster family had found him abandoned near an old factory wrapped up in an old sheet and they had raised him with love like he was their own. It was their heritage that he proud himself on. I washed up while in thought about what I actually needed to do.
I loved David but even with our relationship, there was no bond development. I knew it was my fault that we had actually not gotten that close. He loved me with his all but I had tasted what my mate would give me, completion and as much as I tried, it felt like I was settling with David. Settling with him wasn’t a bad thing either because he kept me safe, he provided for me, he stood by me and most of all he gave me space to do whatever I wanted.
But he didn’t give me colours. Whenever he was near, I could feel the imbalance in our wavelength and the out of rhythm heartbeats. We just didn’t mesh and I had already glimpsed into paradise. I sighed and plucked the towel then got back into the bedroom. He’d already packed and was waiting for me.
Lying on the bed with his right hand on his temple, the T-shirt clung to his body defining the muscular chest and mouthwatering abs. I stretched my hand and caressed him causing him to moan. It was always the same reaction and though I knew what I was doing wasn’t fair for both of us, I couldn’t stop myself. I felt guilty, and every time I did, I ended up seducing him to make myself feel better. Yeah, I was a jerk but I didn’t know what else to do, he’d always done everything for me.
“Love, if we start now, we are not going to make it.” He said as he held both my hands kissed them as he said the rolled off the bed. “I will be downstairs.”
I tried to pout but he just laughed and closed the door after him. Once he was gone, I sighed and forced myself to dress up. It was going to be a long week. A week that would have trials of its own and possible change due to the upcoming pack meeting, the training, with other packs meetings, and then the general meeting with other supers for the annual social ball.
“I am ready now can we go before I change my mind?” I said as I walked into the living room where David was waiting.
He looked at me up and down then licked his lips, adjusted himself, bent down seductively, and picked the bag just to frustrate me. I laughed at his antics and smacked his ass before I ran out laughing.
It was fun running into the forest and up the mountain to meet up with the rest of the pack. The air smelled fresh and I could pick up the scent of the oncoming rain. The leaves drying below our feet mixed with the soil was producing an earthy smell that was beckoning me to bury my snort in, but we had somewhere important to be and we were almost running late.
Running really, really late.
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CH1-II
“Who put this stupid cup in my way?” I called out down the hall.
Ever since my parents moved into this cold place and forced me to take up a position, I hated nothing really mattered. They were grooming someone for grandpa’s position and what that did was turn me into what I am today. I remember having a simple life I had that was snatched away without notice.
“Reese, you don’t have school tomorrow. We will be leaving for good so you better pack everything you might need.” That was all the warning my mother gave me before she was running up and down the house picking things and throwing them in boxes.
I tried to ask but my father shouted at me for the first time in his life, so I shut up and packed the few things I thought were important.
Luckily, I didn’t have friends to tell goodbye to and I had no sentimental feelings for the town. I only had one regret; I couldn’t see the boy with the painful soul again. I wanted to see him at least once yet there was no time. After our encounter, I’d seen him a few times here and there but he gave off this aura like he didn’t want anybody near him, so I had never gone near him. I knew how irritating it was for people trying to connect with you when you didn’t want them to do, I could not subject him to that.
That was ten years ago.
As I sat in the dining hall alone with servants lining up waiting to cater to my every need, I wanted the scent of that boy, the boy whose dreams sometimes invaded my sense even when I was awake. Unfortunately, I was in hiding and I had not seen outside the wall since we stepped into this forsaken place. We had been blindfolded immediately we stepped off the plane and three hours later we were at the centre of a room too big to even be called a cathedral with several people looking down at us. My parents bowed to the people but something in me couldn’t follow suit. My Mother tried to make me but I found myself growling at her. Everyone laughed while my mother apologized to me.
“Leave the boy.” An authoritative had voiced from one side of the room and my parents were taken away as I was given a chair beside the owner of the voice.
The faceless man masked from head to toe with armor and a scent I didn’t want near me. The people who were seated kept talking to themselves pointing at me then going back to their discussion sometimes arguing and sometimes agreeing. I sat there for about half an hour before I became irritated and stood to walk out. When I stood, they all stood so I turned to face them and found shocked faces as if what I had done was beyond comprehension. I moved a step towards the exit and I heard whimpers which made me turn again. All of a sudden, there were voices in my head, and it felt like I was carrying the burden of all the people in the room. I also had the feeling that they wanted me to acknowledge each and every one of them or they would die.
“It’s okay son, breathe slowly, and it will come to you.” I heard a voice in my head and it soothed me.
The faceless man released a whimper and was suddenly quiet and I knew he was no longer there; his soul was no longer in the room. I breathed in once then twice and in my head, I felt as if I had petted the heads of the fifty people. It was strange but, in that moment, knowledge from different generations of beings who had been in my position flowed in me. I knew what I was and why I had been brought to this place. He had died, the vampire who ruled before me was dead. The wolves were the next in line and I and been chosen the very first day my mother found out she was pregnant with me.
This didn’t make anything easier for me. I was ten years old and made responsible for a whole society of beings I had previously no knowledge of. My parents couldn’t help me with this. I wanted to laugh at how fate worked, I had asked for a challenge when school work seemed too easy for me but I was not prepared for this. I knew deep down I was not ready but I also unconsciously knew if I told them, there would be panic and chaos everywhere.
How did I know that, the voices of the old told me? With the knowledge of my place, I felt tired so I excused myself and let the servants lead me to what was to be my bedroom. It was the furthest room from the hall, and even without them saying it, I knew my parents were at the opposite end of me and past several rooms, I could see them in my head. My mother was crying for her old life while my father tried to comfort her.
I could pinpoint the exact position of everyone in the place and knew there were about five hundred workers within. The people I had talked to were from the Council of Supers and even though they had seen me in the room, they didn’t know what I looked like due to glamour that had been placed on me the moment I stepped into the compound. So that’s why they had been in discussion wondering why they couldn’t see me but they could feel how overwhelming I was. Apparently, something was blocking them from knowing what I was, which was a good thing as they could no longer plot until I was well versed in the present political state of the supers.
“My liege, we need to hide you until you are of age and trained. Do not trust anybody, not even your parents.” the voices of the old told me and that was the last day I lived any normal life.
My parents had dinner with me every twice a week. I always took breakfast alone and trained with an old woman who claimed to be a dragon, my dragon. I was home schooled by a man who claimed to be two thousand years when he looked no older than twenty and who also claimed he was not actually in the same plane of existence as I was. He’d been asked by the voices of the old to give me enough knowledge to last me a millennium. For ten years, he was my source of entertainment and the closest being to me. My parents and I were like strangers and had moved out after my mother was pregnant with the twins. It was during the fifth year of our stay and my mother was miserable living without friend that she begun to hate me. Ten years down the line I knew all the languages ever spoken by man and beast. I could read any living thing like a book including plants.
I could recite all the books that have ever been written and more and I could see into different ť planes of existence yet my educator was still insisting I was at amateur level. So, you would understand why everyone disappeared from my sight because I was cranky. You could understand why there were rumors being spread that I was a blood beast who hated everything in my sight. You could understand that the last time anyone held me in their arms was nonexistence in my head. Out there was my mate. The person I was meant to be with and I knew exactly who he was but I couldn’t go to him nor could I call him. I had already convinced myself he’d be miserable with me and ten years of repeating that mantra had finally worked. I actually believed he was better off without me.
One lucky fact that he had working for him was because he was my mate, he could live well even after age twenty-five that most of the unmated wolves ran mad. I hoped he was happy and whoever ended up with him could make him the most beloved being in the universe. However, it was a few weeks to my birthday which also fell on the day of the social ball so that was the day I was going to be revealed to all the supernatural beings and a chosen group of the humans who knew about us and were there to take care of us. This group of humans were from a generation of royals who were there from the beginning of everything. They were normally called the chosen.
“So, when is the council meeting again?” I asked my beta; he lived off the ‘front’ as they called it.
“Two days from today. Most of the council members will arrive starting later in the evening.” Andra said.
He was a mage and a very powerful one who was chosen to be one of the eight supernaturals chosen to serve in the inner circle beside me. They came from the main categories of supernatural beings known to exist. They were rarely together unless in crisis but they each served a purpose in the council from their specific factions. In each of their faction they were referred to as the chosen kings. It was rare to have more than two from each faction and their birth was an honour both politically and spiritually in the sense that gifts of different powers would be bestowed on their key leaders.
“Okay, it’s going to be noisy for a while. I just wish it was the good noisy. Can you find out what they be cooking I hate the way they cook chicken.” I told him and almost laughed as he frowned in the way I was changing the topic.
Like all the chosen royals, Andra was trying to work his magic to find out what I looked like. He always tried whenever he came in contact with me and I always ended up laughing at his efforts.
“Jeez, and they say I am the most powerful magic user in the universe.” He sighed and left talking to himself.
They all always thought they could catch me off-guard since they thought it was me who was shielding myself from them with magic. I remember one time asking Andra what I sounded like and he said like an older person who had gone through hardships that shape even my resolve in any decision I made. He would guess that I was probably late-thirties. When I told him my actual age he stepped back, and almost fainted. I was fifteen at that time.
Well, that was long ago and as of the meeting we were holding, I needed to go over all the reports sent in by the council before the meeting. There was an uproar with a rogue community of vampires who were experimenting on different supernatural creatures which was affecting everyone due to the call of the blood of innocence. It was getting out of hand therefore, needing my input.
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CH1-III
My input was in the form of reaching an amicable agreement on who to be trusted to lead the investigation form one of the clans. This was important as the incentive was to get payment from each of the clans present and thus a source of income that could very well put the investigator as one of the richest clans in the region. However, this had to be done before the day of the annual social ball yet the council members were misbehaving. It was making me irritated but that was only until the werebear clan decided to accuse the Sun-Vampire Clan of being the master mind of the attacks and kidnapping. My interest was piqued since even though my knowledge of the old, it was shocking it was for us to find out especially since we didn't even know at the time that there could be so many species of vampires. I found at then that they were mainly classified based on their facial features, body characteristics and what was their weaknesses the same reason why the Sun-Vampire Clan. All the dead bodies had their eyes removed. This was significant because they were the only supers that despite moving during the day, could not clearly see in presence of the sunlight. A curse believed to originate form their touch on the dark side of vampirism.
The sun-vampires were a happy bunch of the time, bubbly but deadly. They could move at daytime which was when they were very active. Their skin looked tanned all the time even during winter when they went into hibernation. Their biggest weakness was the moon. It was like they burned when under its illumination which is weird when you think about it because the moon reflected the sun's rays. Legend was that they angered the moon goddess a long time ago during the war of the heavenly. This tribe were also famously associated with buff bodies and they loved water and open seas. They lived along coastlines. When they got old, they were known to have grey wings which they could easily hide with glamour. It wasn't weird that the were-bear clan was accusing them. It's weird to know of people who were happy all the time because you could never figure out if they hated you. The were-bear clan were a simple bunch. There expressions were easy to read, when they got angry you would know, if they were happy you would know, their sadness was chaotic every time. It applied to the almost all were-lupines and among the were species, only the were-birds were a difficult to read.
"That's enough!" I spoke softly and yet my voice reverberated in the room.
I had tried shouting in our first meeting and they had all been sick for almost a week from a mixture of fear, and anxiety. They couldn't go home in their state so they stayed in 'the reserve' for a week. It took so much from me to soothe them and get them back to the courageous, arrogant, and defiant creatures I had met. I slept for three days after they were all gone. If you'd seen them, you could have thought they were kids who'd been given ice-cream then it was taken back. I hated feeling all these powerful over them and the way they would cower when we met in the hall made me uncomfortable. It was constantly tiring and I kept wondering how psychiatrists in the world lived through that every day. It gave me new respect for them. Especially considering how many of them I had gone through with my mother’s constant need to know more about me. I wished she would still do the same, but my position was something that she seemed to have failed to accept and as such given up on me.
