Achilles Morgan
"I should just kill him."
Alfie threw his head back and laughed. "I don't think that's an option Ace. He's the crown prince and future King. Murder won't go down well."
I pointed my spoon at him. "Murder is always an option but never an optimal one."
He rolled his eyes, bumping his shoulder against mine. I had missed moments like this when we just got to enjoy each other's company. Where I wasn't a wanted criminal and he wasn't under pressure to become the Alpha of his father's pack. We were just two teenage boys without a care in the world.
I grinned as I made a quick move to scoop up some of his ice cream with my spoon. He looked at me scandalized as I ate his mint ice cream, waggling my brows teasingly.
Alfie glared at me, his eyes narrowing. I shook my head. "I'm not scared of you."
He raised a brow. "I can change that."
"See I'm sure that was supposed to be threatening me but it honestly just sounds like your trying to flirt. Like really badly."
Alfie scoffed, pouting into his small carton. Wrapping my arm around his waist, I tilted my own carton towards him. He smiled and took a huge scoop.
I chuckled before we continued to walk around the busy mall and talk about nothing useful.
I had never been here before. The mall was huge, with architecture that schools and hospitals could only dream of. The ceiling was domed higher than any cathedral and made of the most beautiful glass. The walkways flowed like tributaries to the main rivers of people, not a sharp angle to be seen. It smelt like heaven in a handbasket and the floor shone like the surface of a lake at sunrise. In the background is music to soothe, gentle flowing notes to take the shopper's cares far away. In a world so chaotic it was ordered. In a world of pollution and desecration, it was clean perfection in bubble-wrap.
It was a huge difference from the places I was used to. Saying that I usually avoided populated places like this because it was highly likely that I'd run into someone who knew of me and thought they could earn some money by taking me into whichever person or prison had put a bounty on my head.
Someone knocked into me before hurrying away without even an apology.
"Fuck you too dude," I called, earning a couple of glares from shoppers passing me by. I didn't pay them any mind.
Alfie nudged me again taking my empty ice cream cup his and putting them in a nearby bin. "Do you always have to be an asshole?"
I shrugged. "Everyone has to excel in something right?"
He sent me a look that I could only describe as anger but not. "You could at least try to be polite."
Waving him off I stopped in front of a small fountain and watched as people closed their eyes and threw coins in. "I have no interest in being polite or heterosexual."
Alfie chuckled, pulling a coin out of his pocket and offering it to me. I shook my head.
Wishes were pointless. Just another gimmick that allowed people to have a little hope about something that will most likely never happen. If you wanted something to happen don't just long for it. I know in some cases that wishes weren't always possible but most of the time it was.
Still even having told him this, Alfie simply smiled at me and made a wish as he threw the coin into the murky fountain water.
He then grabbed my hand and pulled me along and into some clothing store. As we both looked through jeans I had no intention of buying I asked the question I was curious about. "Soooo..." I looked at the price tag of a pair of skinnies and moved on quickly why would anyone pay that much for pants? "You and Elliot?"
A faint blush tinged his cheeks but he played it off by grinning at me. "Jealous?"
"Is there something for me to be jealous of?"
Alfie shook his head, holding up a pair of black jeans and testing the length on himself before folding them back up and placing them in my arms. "It was stupid. I was drunk, he was drunk and he was looking at me like...like..." His eyes met mine. "Like you used to look at me."
I snorted. "A lost puppy begging for attention?"
The corner of his lips twitched. "No, like he needed someone to remind him he was worth something." He shook his head again, turning around and walking through racks and racks of shirts and hoodies. "It was stupid. It was meaningless."
I stepped in his path, forcing him to look at me. "Okay, first of all, I know for a fact that Elliot doesn't drink anything, you know due to my never-ending knowledge and second of all it clearly wasn't meaningless otherwise you wouldn't be trying to avoid him like the plague. Tell me what happened?" He frowned and I tried to lighten the mood. "Come on I want all the juicy details."
Alfie chuckled, shoving at my chest lightly. "I don't know Ace it was nice we danced and talked and talked some more and then the next thing I know we were just laying on the couch and he had his arms around me and it was so damn comfortable. Then I remember waking up in his bed with his arms around me and he was already awake watching me. We were both still clothed so I knew nothing happened and then we were talking again and it felt like hours." My friend sighed dreamily a small smile on his face. "I kissed him first I think then one thing led to another and...well I'm sure you can guess what happened next."
I groaned. "Nooooo come on, I want to know everything."
He waggled his finger at me. "Uh uh."
"At least tell me who topped." He stuck his tongue out at me and picked up a shirt laughing at it before spinning it around to show me. "What do you think?"
I laughed as I read it. On it, the words 'Bisexual' was printed on the front in big bold letters and underneath it read 'I'll ride anything.'
I grinned. "Oh yeah, definitely you."
Carrying the shirt around, I followed him as he viewed other items of clothing. How anyone found joy in clothes shopping I didn't know.
"Okay, so what else happened? You had sex, so what?"
Abruptly Alfie stopped, turning around. If looks could kill I'd have been staked, buried, dug up, and then staked again for good measure. "Sex isn't meaningless for me Ace. I can't just turn off my emotions like you can. I can't just let someone touch me in that way and not feel something." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before looking back at me and smiling sadly. "Like with you, I know when we first slept together It wasn't something that I did just because I was horny, I had sex with you because I really liked you."
I stared at him for a moment. I could never truly understand how Alfie could say so little but affect me so much. There was kindness in his smile, a gentleness. It was the smile of one who laughed with ease and saw a person under the behavior, a soul-connector. He was the kind of person who lived how he believed people should as if he were sunshine that only radiated from the best aspects of those he met, their flaws entirely invisible to his gaze. He was a calm sea, dancing birdsong and the new buds of spring. Yet, most of all, he was my friend.
Reaching out I cupped Alfie's face, placing a gentle kiss on his lips. "I know." Resting my forehead on his, my green eyes met his blue. "I love you, Alfie, I always will. You were my first and I'm glad you were because you showed me how to feel. I know that you can't turn off your emotions and that makes you a better person than I will ever be."
My friend smiled warmly at me. "Thanks, Achilles."
I nodded before pulling away unable to take this much emotional conversation. We strolled around for a little while more, Alfie eventually coming out of the one store with like seventy bags. He made me carry way more than half.
"Dude, why am I carrying your bags like some sort of slave?"
Alfie shot me a grin over his shoulder as he looked around some game store. He lifted some sort of Xbox game before frowning and putting it back. "Because at some point in the near future you'll be my other King and then I won't be able to make you do this crap for me."
My brain seemed to malfunction as I stumbled and a noise that sounded very inhuman escaped my lips.
Alfie stopped in front of me, patting my back in concern. "Jeez, are you okay?"
"Wh-what did you just say?"
He looked at me weirdly. "Are you okay?"
"No, no not that, before that."
He squinted thinking to himself. "That you'll be my King as well in the near future so I need to take advantage of you while I can?"
I paled. "That." My stomach felt as though it was tossing and turning. "You...you know that that's not true right? I'm not actually ever going to be your King."
Still wearing a pinched expression, Alfie's eye roamed over my face. "Of course it is. You know cause you're mated to the crown Prince soon to be King of the Lycanthropes, therefore, you'll be by his side as his partner."
Needing to be out of this tiny store, I spun on my heel and practically ran out the door and to the nearest exit. My chest was feeling unbelievably tight and if I didn't get outside soon, I wouldn't be able to breathe at all.
I threw myself outside shoving aside other shoppers trying to enter. I could hear Alfie utter an apology behind me. I sucked the fresh air into my lungs, relaxing as breathing became a little easier. Alfie stayed a considerate distance away letting me calm down before he made a move at all. "Ace...?"
I looked up slightly, trying, and failing to smile. "I'm okay."
He sighed in relief. "I didn't...I-I meant..."
"It's okay." I settled myself against the building, the rough brick felt cold against my back. "He is not my mate and I will never, I repeat never be King."
Alfie scoffed, folding his arms across his chest and looking down at me with a skeptical expression on his face. "Anyone within a ten-mile radius can tell you two are mates and after last night that only-"
"Last night was a mistake," I said, cutting him off. "I was drunk, I wasn't thinking clearly."
Everyone gets one night to plead insanity.
"Don't use that excuse, you were sober enough to spend hours dancing and talking with him. I watched you Ace, whenever he looked away you looked at him with this dopey little smile on your face. You were always touching and now you're avoiding him because you know it meant something and feeling that scares you."
"No, I'm avoiding him because I had a fucking nightmare and panic attack in front of him three days ago." I slammed my hand over my mouth, regretting the words but knowing that I was unable to take them back.
My best friend sighed as he sat by my side reaching over and lacing our fingers together in a comforting motion. I dropped my head to his shoulder. "No one gets to see me like that Alf. I've spent my whole life building myself up from nothing. Making myself into something that people fear and won't pity or second guess. Then all because I fell asleep in the same freaking bed as him all that fell away. He saw me at my weakest and most vulnerable and I-I..." I trailed off and Alfie hushed me running his fingers through my hair. He was silent for a moment.
"That's why you never slept in my bed after our nights together." It wasn't a question but I nodded anyway.
I had stayed in the bed with him occasionally but I never slept. I would just be a total creep and watch him sleep or read with his bedside lamp. I was having a nightmare practically every night back then as well so that just gave me another reason to only sleep when I was alone.
Alfie grasped my chin lightly forcing me to look at him. "It's hard Ace, I know its hard but you've gotta learn to trust people. Whether you like it or not Logan is your mate and by the looks of it, he's not going anywhere either. You can't keep running away when it gets too hard."
I chuckled quietly. "But I'm so good at it."
Alfie smiled into my hair. "You need to stop trying to be the Wraith and just be Achilles Morgan."
"I don't even know who that person is anymore," I whispered more to myself than anything.
"Then maybe it's time you found out."
Everyone keeps telling me it will be okay but no matter what my anxiety grips my insides and demands that I believe that instead. I had grown up always having to look over my shoulder. I had learned at a young age that hope gets you to know where the only reliable way to get through life was to always expect the worse. After all then at least you have a plan and you can't be disappointed but what Alfie was asking was for me to throw every belief I've ever had and everything I've learned away and what? Try to trust? Believe in someone who just like everyone else could run and leave?
I couldn't do it. I know I couldn't. I'd been hurt and broken too many times for me to throw caution to the wind completely. However, I could try. I could try to be a little less controlling and a little less self-deprecating. I could try to believe that maybe just maybe someone would like me for who I was and not the persona I showed the world.
I am apprehensive, yet unafraid. It is the jolt I need to know that I am walking into a storm, but not so much that my steps will be hindered. If anything it gives me the courage I need to make them, knowing that few good things in this life come without a cost to the self.
"Okay." I murmured.
"What?" Alfie asked, straightening.
"Okay, I'll try."
A humongous smile spread on Alfie's face. Wide enough that I was concerned his face may split in half.
"It's not that exciting. " I said as he pulled me into a standing position.
"It is."
I rolled my eyes as I picked up Alfie's bags. "Shut up, now come on we have to be the Cinderfella's of the ball tonight."
Alfie's eyes glinted. "Oh don't worry, I've already got a plan for that."