I Just Kidnapped My Twin Alpha Mates

Chapter Three (Part One): A Mate's Tale

"Oh God, Elliot." I slumped over the desk chair, throwing a rubber duck at the floor. Something about this one was particularly bouncy, and each time if flew back up, I caught it again, only to fling it down to the hardwood floor. "I have a mate. I have two mates. I don't even want one mate."

"At least the moon goddess's given you a choice." Elliot was thoroughly done  with my complaining. I could see it in the way he clutch his head, and occasionally banged it against the table. He had headphones shoved in his ears. They were the fancy kind, you know, the little shiny white ones with no cords that I constantly wanted to feed to my familiar.

"Ellliiooootttttttttttttt........."

He set down his book with a little bit too much force. My glass of lemonade shook, barfing its contends all over the counter. All the more tragically, the popsicle accompanying it fell to the floor.

I swooped down to pick it up. "Now look what you've done!"

Elliot got there before I did. With a thumb and a forefinger, he dangled it in front of my face. "Listen to me, and you get this back."

"Fine." I pouted in the chair like a toddler, legs crossed crisscross applesauce, spoon in the bowl.

"I've been reading up on the scientific and religious aspects of mating." Elliot flipped to a page in his book. I turned away and refused to look at it. As a norm, I preferred pouting and wallowing in a stew of my own misery.

"Cassandra." My supposed bestfriend who wasn't being very supportive at the moment snapped his fingers in my face. "Earth to Cassandra. Cassandra I will melt your popsicle down into lemon flavored juice and set the juice on fire if you don't listen to me, so help me Jesus, Elijah, or any god/savior to be thought up by any race of creatures during the past millennia."

This got me out of my funk. Threatening me was one thing. Threatening my popsicle was something completely different. I could already see drops melting to the floor. Maybe the popsicle was a metaphor for the destruction of my heart..... "I told you I'm listening!"

"The moon goddess picks to mates for a person who demonstrates qualities that are so, well I don't want to say abnormal, but abnormal, that he or she doens't have a perfect soulmate. She finds two people that each suit different needs, and then makes you choose between them before the next full moon. You only have one real mate." He took a lick of my popsicle. I wanted to beat him to the ground, take him out, dunk him in honey, set a pack of rabid geese on him, then deliver him to whatever current girl he was dating all wrapped up like a Christmas present. That was how much I hated him at the moment. Mostly, I hated him for being right.

"Fine. But why do they have to be werewolves?" The duck took a plunge towards the floor with suck force, that it popped back up and hit the light fixture on the ceiling. The glass let out a few sparks, then flickered out. "Oops."  I retrieved the offending duck, and pushed myself up onto the table. My magic wand was lying on the counter. Trembling from the effort it took to balance on one leg with one arm holding the light fixture, I managed to hook a forefinger around it.

Elliot was still talking over my antics. "I have no idea on that one. But you can't say all werewolves are horrible just based on what happened..."

"Oh yes I can." A few muttered spells under my breath, and the light fixture was as good as new.

"Cass, that's exactly what they said about you."

Except for all of Elliot's positives, he's not right this time. I didn't take a baby girl and try to drown her in a river she sprouted feathers instead of fur.

"Elliot, I wasn't the one to try and kill a baby girl becuase she sprouted wings and claws, not the teeth of a wolf." I was seven years old the first time I transformed. I was in the cleaning, down by my old pack. We were somewhere in Alaska, somewhere cold, when the snow fell year round. It hurt like hell. Each pore of my skin expanded into a feather, my nose elongated into a beak. And after that, I still wasn't done. I turned from raven to lynx, and back to human, Wolverine style claws of bone tearing the skin of my knuckles away.

"You can't judge the beheavior of an entire species by one pack, Cass." Elliot's eyes were filled with pity. I would have preferred rage.

I stepped down from the table. I could still feel a dagger going in just below my rib. They'd missed my heart, just by a hair. One last act of sentimentality from a pack who wanted one of their own burried six feet under ground for a set of wings and claws. Elliot was still staring at me with those moss green eyes, welling with pity. I wanted to become the monster he feared, become any monster he feared just to wipe that look off his face. "So my old pack's the only one that's cruel? What about the Montana pack, where I found you, cowering in a corner, with them ready to cut of your ears and tails? And then the stories from New Mexico and DC, the little boys missing becuase their eyes flickered green like snakes? The organization is corrupt, Elliot. Why do you think we hid our buisness?"

"It's not like the clients we serve are an more savory." He sat down, trying to ignore me and go back to his book. I knew I had touched a never, but no quite enough of one.

"At least they know they're evil bastards. No self righteous pride there. Not like you, or the man who pushed me up against the wall, or your stupid girlfriend, whats her name this time..Catrina? Fairies are always so stuck up."

A pulse quickened in Elliot's neck. He snapped his book shut on his pinky finger. "I'm not going into this with you, Cassandra." He stood and shoved his phone into his pocket.

I wanted him to stay as soon as he started for the door. "Elliot, where are you going?"

"To be with Catrina, the stupid girlfriend. Frankly, to be away from you. Try thinking of someone before yourself, and see where that gets you. I'll come back when you give me a call and can prove you've had a change of heart."

The door blows cold aire back at me, almost like a parting shot.

Though I hated to admit it, part of Elliot was right. My kind had massacred werewolves before they started to hunt and kill us. Maybe I owed these mates of mine a chance. A very small chance. One that involved spying on them through a reflective bowl full of oil. I tired not to think of Elliot, or my own messed up psyche as I prepped hot escrying bowl. A few magical words that I won't write down becuase they'd burn a hole right through the page, and a handful of basil leaves, don't ask me why, I have no idea, and an image through the oil zoomed in on a small hospital room.

The one who pushed me against the wall lay on the bed (good riddence). The other, who I had previously shot in the face with smoke, leaned against the back wall, trying hard not to laugh.

"How did I do?" The asshole one asked.

The other doubled over laughing. "Slayde, she stabbed you with an epipen, and you wound up in the hospital." He was blonder than the asshole, and his voice had a nice, melodic British quality to it. At that point, I didn't follow werewolf politics that closely, but I knew the resident pack had sent their beta off to England in some sort of exchange program before the boy turned seven. Something about nurturing inter pack relationships.

(Xander, stop shooting me nasty looks. That's what I knew about you at the time! I mean if you were writing this, what would you say about me? That I almost blew your face off with a magical slime bomb? I though not. So be quiet)?

I stirred the oil with my finger tips. I didn't want either of them. I wanted to retract back into the laboratory and never come out again. Elliot could take all of my casting orders from the desk.

I watched the wall on the clock, wondering when he'd get back. Maybe I really had overstepped myself that time. The oil began to grow hot under my finger tips. I didn't notice until the burning began to race under up my arm. Beneath me, the oil caught fire, until all I could see was a dark hood, and one glowing, bloody eye.

"Do you have my Kitsaria for me, little which who's tongue I'll cut out for lies?"

The spell. The hag, or whatever, had traced my magical currents back to me on account of the spell. Black specks dotted my vision. Everything was sinking. The abyss was black and burned like hellfire, and that was where that thing wanted me. Someone was screaming spells, old Gaelic ones, and somehow I knew it was my own tongue. My raven cawed, and the roaring, I seized a quickly slipping away soul. My own.

The connection fractured in a glass explosion of the seeing bowl and oil. Steam hissed from marks burnt into the walls by fiery liquid splatters. With one hand, I reached out to grab my cellphone. Angry or not, Elliot and I had bigger problems that mate drama.