WE MEET AGAIN?
877 Words
When I first opened my eyes, fear hit me before anything else. Then the memories rushed back all at once. Adam. What he’d tried to do, and how I had collapsed out of exhaustion.
I was still somewhere between that evening and this room when I heard him.
“You’re awake.”
It wasn’t really a question. I sat up fast.
“Yes. Thank you for what you did. But I need to go.”
I looked at him properly for the first time. He was handsome in a way that felt almost unfair for someone his age. Fifty, maybe. Something like that.
“You’re not going anywhere, Elma.”
I went still.
That name.
Nobody called me Elma. Nobody except my father, and he’d been gone a long time.
“How do you know my name?”
He smiled, just slightly. “Call it a guess.”
He was lying. We both knew it.
I got up anyway. Made it two steps before he stopped me.
“Anyone who tries to harm you again won’t live long enough to regret it.” His voice was low and even, like he was telling me the weather. “I need you close. That’s the only way I can keep you safe. You’ll have everything you need here this place is large enough.”
Then he walked out and left me standing there.
I didn’t understand any of it. I didn’t even know where here was. My stepmother would be home soon, and if I wasn’t there, It would be another round of trouble.
I slipped out of the room and started looking for a way out.
I didn’t get far.
Two men appeared from nowhere and walked me back without a word.
When he returned, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to hold myself together.
“I want to go home,” I said. My voice gave me away.
“No.”
He said it simply, already pulling his shirt over his head. I turned away immediately.
He noticed. He angled himself away from me without comment.
“You’re staying, Elma. That’s the end of it.”
He crossed the room and stopped in front of me. Tipped my chin up with two fingers gently, like I was something breakable and pressed his lips to my forehead.
“There’s a gathering tonight. I will send some ladies to prepare you.”
And then he was gone again.
I went straight to the window.
We were too high. There was nothing below but a long, bad fall.
The women came and dressed me without asking. Did my hair, my face. Led me downstairs like I was supposed to know what any of this was.
The hall was full of people.
I nearly hit the floor when I saw them.
Some had tails. Some weren’t pretending to be human at all, wolves, moving through the crowd like it was nothing.
I grabbed the arm of the woman closest to me. “Please. Take me back upstairs.”
She didn’t even look at me.
Before she slipped away, she leaned in close and said quietly, “Don’t take off the necklace. They’ll smell your human blood. And then you won’t be a guest anymore.”
I pressed my hand flat against it and didn’t move for a long moment.
Then I moved.
Slow at first, edging through the crowd toward the door. Then outside, into the cold air, and I ran.
I ran until I didn’t.
I hit someone solid, like a wall and stumbled backward onto the ground.
I looked up.
Those eyes.
I knew those eyes.
The man from the woods. The one who had glowed like something that didn’t belong in the world.
He was glowing now too.
I scrambled back. “Please I’m not please don’t…”
“Who are you?” His voice was sharp but there was something underneath it. Confusion, almost.
I couldn’t answer.
“You make me glow.” He said it like he was working something out. “You again, you’re my mate. I can feel it.” He tilted his head. “But I can’t smell human blood like last time.”
His eyes locked onto mine.
“Are you human?”
The woman’s warning was still in my ears.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
Something in his face shifted. Relief, maybe. He reached down and pulled me to my feet, then walked me back inside without another word.
The moment we crossed the threshold, his voice cut through the noise of the entire hall.
“I’ve found my mate.”
The room went silent. Then erupted.
I stood very still while everyone stared.
“What clan?” someone called out.
Every face turned toward me.
My mouth was dry. I guess they meant last name.
“Azura,” I said.
He let go of me.
It happened fast one moment his hand was at my back, and the next he’d stepped away, something shifting behind his eyes that I didn’t have a word for.
“Azura?” He repeated it slowly. Too slowly.
The room had gone quiet again. A different kind of quiet.
“That clan is cursed!” He shouted.
- Writer
