The Curse

5.1 | In which, two and two make four

"I was just exhausted." She finished, looking at the couple pointedly. Xavier must have surmised she was a wolf, it was the obvious one given the circumstances. But, she wasn't sure if he'd realised that wasn't the extent of her being.

Xavier gave another look towards the couple before nodding in Madeline's direction. Lightly furrowing his brown in return to whatever expression her face held, she sighed before the group holding the stretcher stopped, and lowered her to the ground.

Pushing herself up, and folding her legs underneath her, Madeline winced at the pain still throbbing through her body. Stretching her limbs slightly before looking at Xavier expectantly, a single eyebrow raised.

"Madeline, you asked earlier why your wolf was infatuated with me?" he prompted her, and she simply nodded in reply,

"Have you ever been taught about mates?" He asked, and this time refrained from indicating any response.

"Madeline, a mate, at least to most primal of the shifter races, is the shorter term for a soul-mate. A, person you are inexplicably attracted to. A person, whose being is the perfect other half to yours." She gaped at him. It wasn't hard for her to figure the rest out. If she was feeling his emotions, if him smiling filled her heart with joy, it was an easy assumption that he was her soul mate. Shaking her head slightly, she could feel his emotions moving through her, as though they were her own. Of all the emotions he was feeling, the most potent was that he was afraid.

"So, not mates as in friends then?" She asked, smirking at him. He laughed, shaking his head, crouching down beside her before taking her hand,

"No Madeline, not friends." He said rather decisively. Knowing as much as she did about mate-bonds within other species, she felt an innate sense of trust in Xavier, and took a deep breath.

"Xavier..." she hesitated before Martina's insistence had her continuing, "I'm not simply a shifter-were, I'm more I guess..." She paused again, fighting the hesitation buried so deeply within her. She was about to share a secret, that had been ingrained into her as just that, a secret.

"I'm a hybrid, half-shifter, and half-faerie."

She didn't bother explaining any further than that, it wasn't hard for him to work out. She was a hybrid, and that had a plethora of implications beyond defining her actual being. He nodded, almost dazed by her revelation as she glanced toward Elenor and Robert.

Elenor, stood smiling and nodding as though the biggest secret Madeline held, was no secret at all to her.

"We know," she said, looking towards Robert, "We mentioned a friend earlier, but that was not it at all. It was our daughter, twenty-five years ago, she left us a letter detailing everything that was to occur in our future, and subsequently yours, her daughter, up to this point. She said, we would be the ones to summon you here and beyond that, she had nothing more to say."

She was stunned, to say the least. Madeline wasn't able to form a single coherent sentence. Her mother, not the one who'd raised her, but her actual mother. It wasn't that she was confused, more stunned by the amount of information she'd learnt in the past few hours. She sat there, in a simple attempt to absorb everything.

"Madeline", she looked towards Xavier, making eye contact, before glancing away. The emotion in his eyes was too strong, and overwhelming for her to deal with at this point in time.

"I didn't want to say anything, because I didn't know who, or what you were. All I knew is that the Faerie Royals had advised us to call you in," he said nodding towards the Naeera's, before looking back towards her, "beyond that you were simply a human scientist."