Cari
"He's going to be here in a week's time!" She exclaimed as she barged into her cousin's room.
Dani was already in bed and like the warrior she was, she shot up even before Cari had uttered her first word. "What the heck Cari?" She demanded.
"You called him!" Cari accused.
Her cousin shifted her feet to the floor so that she could face her. "Yeah," she agreed in a dry annoyed tone. "You were being a baby about it and moping around worse than when you got here."
Cari reared back a bit at that, as if her cousin had just slapped her. "No, I wasn't." She denied.
Dani rolled her eyes at that. "You were walking around like someone had just killed your dog right in front of you. And yes I called him, you'd set him up to fail."
"No," she said through her teeth, annoyed at the unfair accusation. "I didn't." Her heart sank, Dani was the last person she'd expected to be against her.
"Cari," her cousin emphasized. "There was no way he was going to win. If he had called, you were going to panic and tell him he called too soon or something. Even though your brain has been torturing you with ideas that he hasn't called because he gave up on you."
Cari bit her lip, unwilling to concede her cousin might be right. "What are you now? Our grandmother?" She deflected.
Her cousin walked over to her chest of drawers, opened up the second one then took out two packets of cheese snacks. Cari caught the one Dani threw at her before they both sat on the bed. Dani had her back against her headboard and Cari sat near the base facing her.
"She's the one who put me up to it. How do you think I got his number?"
Cari shivered at that. "Nana is scary."
Dani crunched on some cheesy goodness. "Right?" She agreed.
"I don't know how you do it, living with her."
It was a recurring conversion, though both girls loved their Nana and had no problem living with her. "I deserve a royal badge of service." Dani deadpanned.
Cari laughed, the first free laugh she could remember having in a long time. Which meant Dani had been right to call Andre. Or maybe their grandmother had been right to play puppet master. Not that Cari had any plans to tell her that. It'd invite more of her meddlesomeness.
"Hey, do you think Nana has ever advised the royal family with her powers? I know the king and queen keep track of human mates' abilities. They have to be aware of hers."
Dani paused to think about that then shrugged her shoulders. "Don't know. I doubt she'd ever tell, Nana's good at keeping secrets." She met her gaze meaningfully. "Your mate was angry at her for not making sure you were sent to the castle."
A thrill raced down her spine at that. She couldn't help the pleased smile that bloomed on her face. "He was?"
Dani smiled back at her, that conspiratory smile girls had when they were sharing secrets about a boy one of them liked. "Yeah, when I explained about Nana he said..." Dani deepened her voice. "You might be willing to trust her inane reasons for making her granddaughter suffer but I'm not."
Cari giggled, pleasure settling her centre as she held those words to her heart. Dani joined her and they looked at each other with happiness. "He said that?"
"Yeah. He really seems to care about you. He didn't call you because he felt you still needed space. He thought you'd call when you were ready."
Cari winced. "You're right, I did set him up to fail."
Dani held out her hand and Cari took it. "Hey, it's okay. Everything is going to be okay. You deserve to be happy and you will be."
Tears filled Cari's eyes at that. After all she'd been through it was nice to have someone believe in her. "Thanks."
"No need for that Cuz."
Cari sniffed her tears away then gave her cousin a tentative smile. "I haven't asked how you're doing." She admitted. "Sorry."
Her cousin's face fell a bit and she avoided Cari's gaze. "I'm good." She stated, though her voice lacked the sincerity that testified to her truth.
"You know I'm here for you anytime you want to talk right?"
Dani gave her a genuine smile. "I know." she rallied once again. "But right now we're concentrating on your happy news."
Cari nodded then smiled. "How did he sound?"
Dani leaned forward. "He has an accent, a sexy European one."
Cari squealed and then covered her mouth so she wouldn't wake anyone who might be sleeping already. Once again she giggled and her cousin joined her. She wanted to stop herself, she was too old for this kind of behaviour but she just couldn't help it.
Even though she'd talked to him, she needed to hear what her cousin thought. It made it real somehow. "He sounded so cultured." Dani continued, then recounted every word of their conversion while Cari drank it up.
Even as she still found it hard to believe this was really happening her heart couldn't help but hope. She took out her phone and opened the photo she'd been looking at constantly for the past five days.
"Is that him?" Dani asked and she nodded. "Can I see?" Her cousin enthused and Cari passed on the photo.
"OMG!" Dani screamed. "He's so hot!"
Cari smiled as she nodded then she frowned a bit. "He looks a lot like Xander though."
"No way, Xander can only wish to have that bad boy aura on him. Andre has power any blind person can see, not the whiny spoiled brat kind either."
Cari took her phone from her and Dani scooted over so that they could both see. "He does seem intense."
"He looks like the type to hold you close and tear into anyone stupid enough to look at you funny."
Cari looked at her cousin with hope in her eyes. "You think?" It was part of the werewolf makeup for a female to want a mate who stood between them and the world but knew when to let her stand.
"He was really mad at Nana. I hope Bimbo Barbie doesn't try anything silly. I have a feeling he'd love an excuse to put her in her place."
Cari looked into her nearly finished bag of snacks. "I still can't believe Claire knew Xander was my mate and decided to take him anyway."
"You've never been able to see her for who she is," Dani said quietly.
She shook her head. "Everyone in the pack loves her, she can't be that bad. Maybe she'd always loved Xander and was afraid to lose him."
"That's no excuse, Cari."
"Yeah." She looked up to meet Dani's sympathetic eyes. "It's better to believe that than to believe my own sister would hate me that much. If she had asked me to exchange mates I would have agreed in a heartbeat."
Dani's brow rose at that. "You would have?"
Looking down at the comforter and picking up none existent lint, Cari shrugged her shoulders. "Everyone wanted her as their luna and she and Xander thought it was a given so I wouldn't have stood in their way. It would have hurt but nothing like what they did."
"She's always been jealous of you," Dani told her.
Cari frowned, unable to comprehend that. "Why? She's the one who had all the friends while I had just one. Everyone wanted to be her or be seen with her. She's the most popular person in the pack."
"But every one of those people would bring her down at the first chance. Besides, she can make people love her. That's got to make it hard to believe they truly care for her."
"Shouldn't that have made her want to wait for her mate? Someone who'd truly love her?"
Her cousin gave her a mock shocked look. "And risk he wouldn't be an Alpha?"
Cari sighed. "I don't understand why that's so important."
"We're beta-bloods Cari, we either mate betas or alphas unless we're too weak."
"And I'm supposed to be the weak twin."
"Doubtful, but Claire probably thought she'd get the weak mate so why take the chance?"
"Yeah." She sighed.
"Anyway." Dani drawled. "You better go to bed since we have a lot of shopping to do tomorrow."
Cari frowned at that. "Shopping?" She asked, Dani knew she hated shopping. "Why?"
Her cousin smiled and gave her an excited but conspiratory smile. "The royals are coming with your mate." She whispered.
She froze. The royals? She was going to see the royals, be presented to them? She couldn't... "Why?"
"Nana said they're going to make an example of Claire and Xander."
That didn't sound good. All Cari wanted was to live her life without having everyone know what was happening in her life. If the royals came then the surrounding alphas and important humans would come. Everyone would know what had happened, would know her shame.
"We need to get a start to get ahead of everyone before they find out."
"Okay." She agreed while inside she was screaming. How was she going to handle meeting the royals? "I better go and sleep."
"Goodnight."
"Nite."
As she closed the door after her Cari knew she wouldn't be able to sleep, she was too wound up. The royals were coming! they'd want to talk to her, ask her what had happened and she'd have no choice but to relive it all. So far her family hadn't questioned her, her father had seen what she had been going through and things had spiralled from then.
They had been gentle with her as if she were a fragile dandelion that a small breeze would scatter. She hated that despite the fact that she felt that fragile. Not that it was anything new since she was a non-shifter in a powerful family of shifters, maybe even human. And she was going to meet the royals.
What were they going to think of her? Would they let her know what a waste of good genes she was or would they be too polite? She couldn't decide which of the two would be worse.
Getting to her room she made her way to the bed and sat down then took her phone from the dresser where she had left it. The room had always been hers but since she didn't live here it was one of those small bedrooms that could take a three-quarter bed and a small dresser beside it.
She hadn't been here in a while given that her Alpha hadn't wanted her gone from the pack. Probably afraid someone here would realise what he had done. Which begged the question of why no one in her pack had realised what had been done to her. Was she so insignificant that people didn't care as she slowly died before them?
Was she really that unimportant?
There it was again, the lump that had taken permanent lodge at her throat. It came with the useless tears she had been shedding for longer than she cared to remember. Why was this her life? She'd thought she wasn't that bad a person but it seemed whatever governed life, balanced it, had different ideas about that.
Drawing her legs up she scooted back until she was leaning against the wall and hugged her legs. The news that the royals were coming was like the last straw, the last bit of humiliation. Her sight dimmed and became shallow until only a pinprick was left until that too fluttered away. The walls closed in on her as the air became hard to pull in. She was drowning despite her mind telling her she wasn't in the water.
Cari knew she was having a panic attack but knowing that didn't make it easier. She still felt the heaviness of the air around her, the weightlessness of being stuck in a body of water. She felt lightheaded, her eyes bulging and her lids blinking hard to clear her vision to no avail. With everything inside her screaming, she reached out in desperation needing an anchor but found nothing.
Because her mate had chosen another. Because her twin had eroded the connection they used to have. She was all alone.
Cari had no idea how long she was lost in her nightmare, unable to breathe and yet continuing to exist. Then her phone rang, vibrating in her hand when he had forgotten she had it. She couldn't hear it but the feeling of it jarred her back to reality and then she heard the sound of it ringing.
A sob escaped her. She swiped the accept icon before she had fully registered that it was a video call or who it was that was calling her. "Hie," she said with a teary laugh.
"Cari," oh his voice was like dark smooth cream lathering over her skin at the same time that it went down her throat with smooth delicacy. "Are you alright?" he questioned, the concern in his voice doing something to her that had every inch of her melting.
She blinked away the tears and her smile became less strained, more free. "Now that you called, I am."
He smiled back at her and her toes curled at the sensual expression. His eyes became a burnished gold as his full lips became even more enticing and smooth creases appeared on his face. "I was afraid you had already gone to bed and I would be disturbing you but I felt the need to call again, to see you."
Cari felt her cheeks up as pleasure flooded her body, her eyes fluttered as she suddenly felt shy. Dani had been right, he was intense and power oozed out of him as if it was a natural part of him that didn't even need to be bothered about. And the way he looked at her as if all his focus was on her and nothing else, it curled something in her wildly beating heart that had her breath catching.
She swiped her hair behind her ear and looked down, away from his tempting face. She hadn't been expecting to see him yet and didn't know what to do. He was so much more than his photo had shown. And what did he think of her? Was he disappointed in how she looked? She had never really been the knock-out that her sister was and was still not back to a hundred percent.
"Cari, look at me." his voice was gentle and low, but the command in it was one she found she couldn't ignore. Her eyes fluttered up to the screen, her breath catching as she waited to see what he wanted, what he was going to say. His face was tender but still hard to read beyond that. There was a steely factor to it that had her heart hammering with something she couldn't understand. "Are you alright?" he asked again.
"I...I..." something in his gaze told her not to lie, or maybe it was something inside her that didn't want to lie to him as much as she didn't want him to know what was bothering her. "I was just having trouble sleeping, wondering why no one noticed what was wrong with me."
For a brief moment, anger flashed through his eyes before he took a deep breath and it vanished as quickly as it had come. "Rejecting a mate is forbidden," he stated in a controlled way. "A lot of people don't know what happens when someone is rejected. Aside from which, no female has ever been recorded to survive it."
Her heart stopped. "What?" she asked in a barely-there voice.
His eyes were pained for a moment before again he took control. "Most recorded females killed themselves after and the rest lost their minds. You cannot imagine how strong you are Carimou."
"Carimou?" she questioned.
"My Cari," he explained, his gaze heating up and causing more heat to burn her. He smiled, this one lazy and deliberately sensual. "Have you forgotten that you are mine, Cari?"
Dear Lord, the things that low voice did to her body! She didn't know where to look, or what to do, but the intensity in his eyes demanded she keep hold of his gaze, demanded an answer. "No." the whisper came out breathy, maybe even needy.
"Good," that smile again and oh she wanted to crawl into the phone and do...well, something to him. "I don't ever want you to forget."
It was a decree and Cari found herself accepting before she even thought about it. A warm feeling seeped through her as it finally sank in that he was hers, that he wanted her. It was exhilarating like air had been infused into her blood. She felt light-headed, dizzy with happiness.
"Are you alright now asteri mou?" he asked.
"Yes."
He grinned at her, a sheepish one as he raised his hand to run it through his hair. Cari almost moaned as she watched the bulge of his muscle at the move. "Good, because I have to go, my training master is glaring at me. Call you later?"
"Yes."
"Sleep well, Carimou."
"have a good day Andreas mio." she replied before quickly dropping the call but not before she saw the fire that burned in his eyes at that.
Her heart skipped a few beats before racing wildly. Had she really called him hers? She didn't know if it would have been right to call him Andreas mou but she knew mio was Spanish and pretty much meant mine. Cari had wanted him to know she thought of him as hers and yet she felt as if she had exposed herself too much. Yes he had called her his so many times but it didn't mean she hadn't jumped the gun right?
And...oh, he'd called her asteri mou! Opening up her browser, she searched for the phrase and squeed when she found the meaning, provided she had the spelling correct. Her heart felt lighter as she hugged the phone to her.
My star, he had called her his star.
Copyright© Tafadzwa Josephine Kashiri.