Griffin's Salvation

chapter 5: Kian

I slammed into my room furious, what the f**k was her deal, why run away from me? I was her freaking soulmate. She must know I could feel her close by and I would be able the smell her in my home. the constant cat-and-mouse game she enjoy was driving me up the f*****g wall. She's the first clear memory I have of my childhood, I remember the day we met and the way she smelled like a mix of lavender and candy. the years ten and eleven were a blur of confusion, but by twelve years old my nose had gotten better at differentiating between scents. Before it had been a relief to cuddle with my mom and sometimes the twins because they smelled heavenly and it soothed something inside me. on my twelfth birthday I could tell scents apart, I knew which scent belonged to my family and which one was hers. she'd sent me a present that day, I zeroed in on it opening it first, it was a medium griffin with blue wings. the damn plushie was still on my bed now even though the original griffin was pissing me the f**k off.

A few months later I heard her, she was overthinking. She was hanging out with my mother, and I just heard " I hope Kian is okay today, should I ask Marissa about him? I always ask how he's doing she might find it weird. I want to know though. I shouldn't! What if I enquire about his siblings first? they are right in front of you dumbass. but..." and on and on she went doing mental backflips. At first, I was freaked out to hear a female voice in a classroom especially since my teacher was a man, I looked around the class for the person talking and panicked when I couldn't find them. It was a math class and everybody had their head buried in the books trying to follow the teacher. I almost got up to go to the nurse's office when Ju-ri's next thought rang in my head " Kian probably doesn't remember meeting me, he was so young and Seoul was full of people milling about that day" I sat back down.

At some point, I started to see what she saw and that was when she developed the nasty habit of shutting me out. she did it so often these days that every time she opened up again I was enraged because I knew she was just checking up on me and pretty soon I'll get shut down again. I know I'm her soulmate, that she's a griffin, and that we never completed the first bit because those were the only recurring thoughts she had. the relief she felt at those thoughts was palpable, so why the hell was she running away from me?

Six months later, I was coming home from school when smelled it, canine. the same dog smell that's been hanging off my mother these days, he was finally here. The way I smiled at the scent, I was so excited. someone looking from the outside might have thought I was happy for my mom, but nope! I was happy, I finally had someone who would answer my questions. I knew the fact that the canine scent was recurrent, he was surely my mom's mate. Ju-ri looking for my mom's soulmate was one of the few things I had gleaned from her thoughts. I followed the scent to the kitchen where I could hear them laughing, and banged the door open.

- well, well, well... who let the dog in?

-Kian! my mom gasped. I raised you better than this.

I had him, there was nothing in my mom's gaze that suggested he told her he was anything but human. I could stop the smug smile that stretched my lips

-I was referencing the song, you know" Who Let the Dogs Out, who, who" I singsonged. This is a song from your youth how could you forget it?

-what?

-never mind, so this is the new boyfriend?

- you say that like there's been a lot of boyfriends before.

-you have three kids mother one would assume there's been at least one boyfriend before!

-Boy I brought you into this world I can take you out!

- murder threats aside, why don't I and your new boyfriend step into your office and I can ask him what his intentions are?

-boy!

-Mom, can you please... just, I really do have a few questions to ask him.

-Elias, do you want to humor my kid?

-sounds like fun, lead the way, kid! Elias said intregued. the twins who had been observing the conversation like spectators at a tennis match. with their head swinging from one speaker to the next

- can we come too?

-no you'll get your turn when I'm done. I said leading Elias from the kitchen through the corridor to Mom's at-home office. so... I said closing the door behind us. mom still doesn't know you're a werewolf huh?

-what? he asked surprised how do you know, did someone tell you?

-no, I'm mated to a griffin, I picked up things here and there.

-what? this isn't the conversation I expected to have with you. Julie told me you didn't know anything about the supernatural world.

-Julie enjoys lying to herself, thankfully here you are mated to my mother with a secret I can blackmail you with in exchange for information.

- it seems like you already know everything kid.

-I don't, I still have a lot of questions.

-how do you know as much as you do?

- I can hear her thoughts and see what she sees when she's not actively shutting me out.

-I didn't think humans could do that.

- so does she, that's why most of what I know are guesses based on what little I know.

-I should call her...

-No! I'm very mad at her, bringing her here will not lead to anything constructive. I've been swimming in the mud for six years I just want the hard truth!

-okay, ask away, I can use my prerogative as your stepfather.

-you're not yet...

-actually, by inhuman standards I am. we may not have exchanged the first or second bite yet, but that's just because I want to take things slow. we are a mated pair and not even death can separate us, you can't divorce the other half of your soul.

- so if you die today Mom would also die?

- since we haven't merged our lifelines, that's one of the things the second bite does, she won't die the second I die, but probably a few months after. she definitely won't last a year.

-what does the first bite do?

-it connects the two souls, grants immunity from all worldly diseases, and I know it also makes humans a lot more durable. for example, if you were to be in a bad car crash now. where as a human your chances of survival would be 20 percent now they're at seventy to eighty percent. not quite immortal but not mortal either. human soulmates are really rare so I'm not sure what else the first bite entails for you.

- what else does it come with for humans?

- you usually gain a small percentage of the person whose blood you've ingested, so super strength, teleportation, power to scent which you do, shifting? but griffins are a bit of a special breed so I don't know what you would shift into.

-if I wanted to see her, could I teleport her to me?

-Technically yes but you're human so I don't know. we get taught the art of teleportation when we're young.

-give me the cliff notes.

-you make sure you can picture perfectly where you want to go and step through. manifesting people is actually only for soulmates, in theory, you're supposed to follow the mate bond to your mate and pull them to you. I don't think it'll work out for you since the first bite wasn't completed since Julie never took blood from you.

- how old is Ju-ri

- three thousand and six hundred years old.

-damn! how old are you?

-five hundred years old

-why was she dying before we met?

- griffins are a volatile breed, they are the albinos with sickle cell anemia of the supernatural world. Before they meet their soulmates they live in constant pain and sometimes when they've had enough of the pain they go on a rampage and another griffin has to kill them.

-Her parents aren't griffins

-no, her mother is a dragon her father's a wolf. that's how we're friends her dad and mine were born the same year in the same pack.

- how many griffins are in the world right now?

-four unmated and nine total.

-they are so few.

-there used to be nine but my mom says killing him sank the Altantis so, I'm glad there aren't more of them around to burn the world to the ground, oh! That reminds me, Julie can breathe fire since her mother's a dragon, so maybe you could too.

-So Griffins are like a rare mutation?

- yes, very rare in fact in the whole history of the world there's a record of only twelve griffins one is rumored to be the cause dinosaurs are extinct.

-wow, thank you I can't think of anything else right now but I'll come to you again if I have anything else to ask.

I ushered the Twins in and left them to do their things. That night I locked myself in my room and tried to see if I could summon her, I was sick and tired of playing hide and seek with her. I wanted to talk to her it felt like there was a reason she was avoiding me.