Familiar Ties

Chapter 1-2

Alec sat on the train, staring through his brown-haired reflection, his honey-coloured eyes watching with growing discomfort as the scenery passed in a blur of greenery while fat raindrops bombarded his window.

The clatter of the wheels upon the track chuckled their mocking laughter, goading him as he made his way home. Home, the thought made him scoff. The last time he had thought of a place as being home, he had been a child, unaware of the fate awaiting him, of the life of servitude into which he had been born.

There was only one thing that had made his fate bearable, one person. Her letters had been a light in the darkness for the first four years of their separation, but in the last ten years not once had she written back to him. Not once. Without warning, her letters had simply stopped. He blew out a breath, lifting his thick, angular fringe slightly.

Despite her absence, he still found his gaze straying to the stars at night, seeking their constellations, wondering if she was doing the same. Even now, a sad smile tugged at his lips as he remembered nights huddled together in the garden, wrapped in blankets, while she invented their names and stories.

He never had the heart to correct her. Her tales were so much better.

What had happened to that girl? What became of Jesse, whose fair hair and blue eyes would cause even the most beautiful angel to pale in her presence, the girl he had known, from the moment her hand was placed in his, that home was not a place but the feeling he had when they were together. He missed those days as much as he still missed her. Things had been simpler then, and now she was married. She had moved on so easily, but he never had.

He remembered chasing her around the garden and listening as she spoke of magic and wonder and wove captivating tales of fairies and creatures who lived within the trees. The sound of her laughter had been enchanting, making a smile appear on the face of anyone who heard it. It wasn’t a delicate sound like the tinkling of a bell, more like wind chimes trapped in a storm, full of passion and energy. Genuine. But her innocent laughter had never quite sounded the same after her mother had died.

When he entered his second septennial—the time when preternaturals’ abilities gained strength—Lord Kyron had sent him away to be trained. That had been the second day he had seen bruises on her she wouldn’t explain, the same kind of bruises he had seen on her mother. He still remembered his goodbye, a promise that he would return for her, that he would protect her. It was a vow he had broken many times over.

No wonder her letters had stopped, but if she'd read his surely she knew he was trying. Perhaps she hated him for leaving her there, for not trying hard enough to save her. For letting her down.

For fourteen years, he had been trained while working for her father. Fourteen years of being shaped for the duties he would be expected to fulfil and being mocked because he had been born without a shifter essence. Some said it was because he had been bound to the family too soon, that they should have waited for his other form to emerge first. He had been glad it was absent; he had seen how the animal side was beaten into submission since it was known the master’s orders could control only the human. His inability to shift simply meant there was one less lesson to endure.

It had been a day before his seventh birthday when he had been forced to take the oath and be bound by blood and magic. He was their servant anyway, his line already bound, but this had been a necessary rite linking him to his master’s will. At the time, it had seemed like nothing.

“—to further this, you will be acting in the capacity of bodyguard to Lord Kyron.” Alec yawned as the old man before him droned on. His hooked nose reminded him of a vulture, an image not quite dispelled by his small beady eyes. The figure looked up disdainfully.

“No, please, do go on. I always yawn like this when I’m interested.” Alec did not need to hear this again. He had spent years having the commitments and laws of his contract outlined and drilled into his mind.

He knew all about how his master could use their bond to draw his essence to him, and how the part of him summoned could be used as a shield reflecting any damage back to his own physical form. He understood all too well any order given was not a request but a compulsion that could not be refused.

The training had been to hone his skills, to ensure he had the best chance at protecting his master and surviving. Not once had he felt the compulsion of a command and he was certain he could overpower it. His mind was strong and, if he could break his family’s curse, then perhaps he could even get Jesse to forgive him.

He wasn’t sure why she had stopped writing to him, if he had put something that made her angry, hurt her, but the silence was worse than any poison she could have penned. At least as long as she had been writing, he knew she was alright. He had written so many apologies, begging her just to let him know she was alive, just one letter so he could breathe. But it never came. So he settled for his dreams, where she lay in his arms in a cottage so dark the stars shone like beacons.

For the last two hundred years his family had been enslaved by the Kyrons, generation after generation for a debt no one could even recall. His father had sworn never to have a child, to ensure the curse could not be passed on. The same vow that had been spoken by all his previous ancestors. Yet somehow an heir to the curse was always born. This was a feat in itself, given that preternaturals had difficulty continuing their lines.

Lord Kyron had gifted his mother to his father, ordering them to copulate each night until an heir was conceived. A second child may even have been ordered, if not for his mother dying a year after his birth. His father said she took her own life, that she had chosen to embrace death rather than watch her son be enslaved. It was only later he discovered that it had been her intention for both of them to die that day. But by some strange intervention, his life had been spared.

His father always claimed Lady Kyron had beseeched the spirits, asking that they save him so he could look after the child she knew she would one day conceive. Jesse.

He had known he was going to marry that girl since the day she first took his hand in hers and led him barefoot around the garden. It was a far more innocent time, a time when he hadn’t understood that his blood made him nothing more than a plaything for her father, a throwaway shield. Even learning this hadn’t changed the way he felt about her.

He remembered the day he was leaving, how she had beckoned him to bend so she might whisper in his ear. Instead, she had pressed her lips to his. There had been nothing but innocence behind the gesture, butterfly soft, a parting kiss between close friends destined to one day become more, but it became the kiss he had judged all others by, and he had found each one lacking.

As the outside scenery slowed, he saw the nostalgic view of the wind turbines in the distance, their forms reaching out towards the heavens, spinning freely while their solar-panel-lined blades created secondary generators of energy. Their hurried movement told tales of the racing wind that caressed the open plains, and all too soon the small station of Windmere came into view. His stomach sank.

For the last two years, he had been working covertly for Lord Kyron while still being pushed to his limits in training. Now he was here, it was as if his real sentence had begun.

There was but one glimmer of light in the bleak prospects that was his future, and that was the thought of seeing Jesse. Being tied to the Kyrons meant he was tied to her as well by something more than just his heart and soul. He wondered how the years had changed the eleven-year-old he had left behind.