Aurelia
A pure and blinding ache filled me from the inside out as I walked away from him. The dark strands of desire making a home inside of me, following me with every step I took and holding me down against everything I had so wilfully done.
A moment in his presence had weakened my resolve significantly, the consequence of it binding me together like strands of silver doused in the wickedness of wolfsbane.
It was the agonising result of my lapse in judgement, to look upon an unmated Alpha without the express permission of the power that had saved me for someone else. The moon had taken account of my transgressions as it watched me from over my shoulder, noting the change of my breathing and the itch to become one with him—and now it was going to make me suffer my punishment.
But the moon's punishment was useless when I knew I couldn't have walked away from him any sooner even if I had tried. Still, it was scorning me for my disobedience, and as I disappeared from the view of them both, all I had left was this magnetic pull and a delirious ache in the pit of my stomach for a man that was not meant for me.
The clouds covered the light from the night sky as I walked back to the heart of the sanctuary, trying my best not to get caught as I dragged my hands along the familiar white stone walls. I knew this journey by exact memory, having ventured out of this place in the cover of night to seek peace from the vicious whispers of my sanctuary sisters as they slept.
This time, instead of peace—I had coveted something much worse.
The claiming ceremony was in the morning and if I didn't find my mate this time, I would only have myself to blame.
The image of him was a stagnant thought in my mind even as I tried to force him out of it, but as I reached my room I couldn't help the way my body was reacting to the memory of the way he had devoured me with such unapologetic conviction.
He had looked at me like I was the only thing worth looking at.
His towering form was sculpted with precision and perfection, I knew this even as he had stood in front of me fully clothed. The moon showered him with its light like it was his right to receive all its blessings—and all I could do was bask in the shadow of him. His body was much bigger than mine in all aspects, but it did not scare me as it should have. Instead, it enticed me in every way, luring me to him.
If Meena could hear my thoughts now she would have already smacked some sense into me. Still, I didn't care—I was enthralled by much more than just his body, even as he had destroyed the distance between us and even as he had touched me.
There was a desperation in his gaze that I knew all too well, and an ache that mirrored in my own soul. It held such a familiarity that when he had recognised my mark, I was so sure that he was going to tell me that I was his— that nothing in this world had made any sense to him until he had laid his eyes on me.
It looked like the words were on the tip of his tongue as I begged him to recite them, but then he had decided against it—retracting them and withdrawing from me.
I should have made him show me his mark in retaliation, but the pain of his rejection had already hurt harder than any I had received before, and I didn't think I could suffer the blow of it a second time in front of him.
I pulled my wet clothes from my skin, and they hit the floor with a heavy thud as a dense feeling sprouted at the base of my joints, floundering with the calamity of everything I was so suddenly feeling.
I wouldn't be able to wash until the morning, but the thought of sleeping with the water of the celestial spring melded to my skin wasn't the worst of my worries.
I tried to get him out of my head as I tossed and turned in my sheets, staring out the window at the moon and praying to it. But time was passing by too slowly, and even as he no longer stood in front of me, the Alpha was still holding me hostage and hounding the honesty of my thoughts. There was nothing I could do to stop the way he was infiltrating my waking desires—nothing I could do that didn't involve running back to him.
Instead—I closed my eyes and pushed my hand between my thighs, and in the deliriousness of my dreams, he was right where I needed him to be.
***
I awoke when the sun had fully risen, groaning as I turned in my bed.
The aches of last night still clung to my skin with a vengeance even after everything I had done to try and remedy them.
The scent of my desperation was still heavy in the air, undiluted and angry as I stretched. I felt the remnants of my yearning body and the new bruises I had gained from when Meena had pulled me from the ledge of the roof, trying to hide me from the Alpha that had now managed to dig himself under my skin.
The first of my sins felt minuscule compared to everything I had done in its wake.
The panic and pain sprouting in unison as I pulled myself up from my bed, turning to the clock on my side cabinet.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
In the three years that I had stayed in this sanctuary, I had never once missed the morning rituals and now here I was, a mess in every single way. The accumulation of all my problems leading back to the Alpha who had seen the crack in my armour last night.
I moved quickly, grabbing my robe as I shook the sleepiness from my system.
Morning rituals were not an obligation, but on a morning like this— everyone would have already gathered in the dining hall to eat breakfast by now, arranging their ceremonial plates and having conversations as if they would be their last. Ever since the girls in the sanctuary had turned on me a few years ago, I had made it a rule to myself to be the first one there—to hide in a corner until the time of the claiming ceremony came, but this time there would be no hiding.
It wasn't their fault really. Emotions were always high this close to the ceremony and their wolves saw me as a threat, so they ridiculed my misfortune and believed the curse they had all made up in their heads.
I rushed to the bathing room, letting out a shriek as I smacked into someone just as I made it past the entrance.
"You missed morning prayers, I thought for sure that the matrons had caught you last night—did they let you off?" Meena's hands were on my shoulders as she stopped me in front of the sinks, her nails digging into my skin as she proved her fear for me.
"There's nothing you need to worry about, the matrons are none the wiser of what we got up to last night," I assured her as she pulled away from me with a sigh of relief.
Meena didn't look like she had gotten much sleep worrying about my predicament, her eyes ringed with red and her skin far too ashy considering her golden complexion.
"So, the Alpha hasn't said anything then?" She whispered, almost as if she was speaking to herself, the frantic pace of her heart slowing to a lull for a moment.
"He isn't going to," I assured her again.
"And how can you know that? Maybe he is waiting to see if you are his so that he can punish you himself—either way, when he leaves with another girl you will still be disciplined by the matrons." She said, working herself up all over again.
She paced in front of the sinks, the relief that had rushed through her moments ago dissipating and returning the tension she held in her battle-trained body.
Her bare feet lapped briskly against the wet stone floors. She seemed so damn tense—so much more tense than she usually was when the claiming ceremonies came around, and I couldn't help but take the blame for it.
I was the one who had urged her to the roof, and I was the one who always gave her such unnecessary stress.
"Meena—I'm going to be fine, stop worrying. He's not my mate anyway, and he promised me that he wasn't going to say anything either."
She froze and I realised the admission of my words too late.
Even as I sought to comfort her, I couldn't have said anything worse in this moment. Keeping my interaction with the alpha a secret was something I had planned to do, but I always struggled to keep secrets from the woman in front of me—she was the only person that would listen to me, and the only person that cared about the whims of my heart.
"What do you mean he promised you?" Her glare was vicious, her hands curling to fists at her side.
"Don't be mad at me."
"I'm not mad." She tried to say even as her words came out in a snarl.
"But I can already see you getting mad at me." My lips trembled, hating the scent of her angry disappointment more than anything.
"Aurelia, what did you do?" She took a step, and I stumbled backwards despite myself, a hand on my ribs as my hip pressed into the edge of one of the sinks.
Meena was well trained, in strength, endurance and fighting technique—it was her best skill, and even as I knew she would not harm me, I still found myself cowering away from her.
"He found me at the spring last night after you left," I admitted quickly, her eyes widening now as she closed the little distance we had left between us, her hands gentle even as I flinched against the certainty of her hold.
I had seen Meena in fits of rage before, but this time she seemed far too concerned about my wellbeing that her anger had suddenly taken a backseat.
"Did he lay his hands on you?" Her gaze rushed over my entire body as if she would be able to tell if any part of me was out of place. Then her tone lowered, and in barely a breath she asked another question. "Did he force himself on you?"
She looked at me with an urgency I was far too sheltered to understand, and my heart seemed to shatter under it.
Surely a man couldn't force a woman to do something like that, surely she—
"Answer me!" She shook me, like the sheer thought of it was making her ill.
"He was a gentleman, Meena—I promise you, he did not touch me in the way you are implying," I swore to her.
But he had touched me, even if his intention did not hold the same darkness she was talking about.
"How can you call him a gentleman when he has seen your mark, Lia? He ruined the sanctity of this place by disturbing you in prayer and then he forced you to bare yourself to him." She said in astonishment, but I was too enamoured by him to see a problem in his demeanour—all I could remember were my own sins.
"He isn't as you are describing him," I whined, my eyes brimming with tears even when they had no reason to.
She seemed shocked by my show of emotion, her hand moving to my cheek.
"You're the closest to a sister I've ever had Aurelia, but you're too sweet and naïve. I'm not going to be able to protect you when your Alpha comes to take you away from me." She said as if getting taken by your mate was the worst thing that could happen, even though it was the only reason we were all here in this sanctuary in the first place.
I knew she had adverse feelings about the ceremony, but I didn't know how deep her resentment for it went until now.
"Why are you so sure that my mate is going to hurt me?"
"The hand that feeds you can also be the hand that poisons you." She said with a softness filled with agonising memory—and I almost forced her to explain herself, to unfurl the darkness around her heart so that I could understand her words.
"That's not possible, we are gifts to them—the reason their bloodlines will continue. They will take care of us and they will love us, they will—"
"Any man can hurt you, Aurelia—regardless of their attachment to you." My body went rigid as I watched her, the conviction blistering in her words and her stance. "You are more important than any duty that you think you have, the mark you were given is not who you are. We were people before the witches decided to uproot our lives for men who are lesser than us." She urged, but I didn't understand her because since my childhood this was all I had lived for—all that I had hoped to become.
I wanted so badly to be an Alpha's mate, it was the only thing that would make me feel whole.
She pulled away from me, running a hand through her hair when she realised her words weren't registering to me the way that she wanted them to.
"I need to get some air, I will meet with you later and we can both arrange our ceremonial plates together."
She was gone before I could say anything else.
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