Hekate’s Bride

What had been meant to be a light shove results in Darian being thrown across the room and he crashes into the wall.

An image flashes through my mind, haunting me momentarily at the sight of Darian and the dent in the wall, and I shove it down, deep down, where the rest of my fears lay in deep slumber.

Breath hitching and eyes widening with horror, I shoot to my feet, hands covering my lips. “Oh my, are you alright, Dar?!”

He groans, peeling himself off the wall. More grunts and sharp breaths has me rushing over to where he tries to pull himself up but he raises a hand, stopping me. “Don’t.”

His eyes flick to mine for a heartbeat, but is long enough to see the disappointment therein. But it is soon replaced with something that causes the hairs on my skin to rise. “Your eyes,” he notes, standing. “They’re black.”

I’ve been having a lot of those in the past month. Flashes of darkness, hazy visions that are filled with red, moments of unwarranted rage. It’s been terrible and for the most part of it, Darian’s on the receiving end of it.

I can’t tell what’s wrong with me and why I’m having these episodes. Darian has suggested often times than not that I go see the nurse, but I am not sick. I don’t need her running tests on me and alerting my parents to come take me home like I’ve got the flu or something.

“It’ll pass,” I say. “I’m really sorry. I got excited and… sorry.”

“This cannot keep happening, Astrid.” His voice is soft and his gaze hard on the ground as he refuses to look my way. “You should see the–”

“I’ll go tomorrow,” I lie.

His eyes snap to mine and he smiles. “Dinner?”

I nod, feeling like shit.

The rest of dinner is quiet, solemn. Darian doesn’t speak. I don’t either. I eat, even if I do not have an appetite. It’s the least I can do. I steal furtive glances at him, but his gaze is distant, no doubt hating me and wishing he was with someone who wouldn’t throw him across the room for nipping on her neck lightly.

I’m a terrible, horrible girlfriend.

I leave his room when it is a few minutes to curfew. He doesn’t kiss my cheek or my forehead like he usually would. He says bye and closes the door before I can reply, leaving me to stare at the oakwood.

I sigh and start down my room, but I find myself circling back to the section of the hall reserved for the school staff. I walk lightly down the hallway, scanning the badges for each door, in search of the nurse’s office.

Might as well get it over with. If something’s wrong with me, I might as well start trying to fix it now, before it ruins my relationship. *Ships*.

Before I kill someone. Again.

I shake my head, dispelling the thought. It rarely ever comes up. There are times I find it scary that I have forced myself to forget it and live without the weight of it on my shoulders. It happened many years ago, and even as a child, I locked the memory in my mind, tossing the key away, never to be found again.

Seeing Darian in that state, pushing him off like that, it has triggered the dreadful memory.

Her door is just down, at the end of the hallway, and I knock twice upon locating it. There are sounds coming from within. Crashing sounds and muffled grunts, and I start to wonder if I should be worried when she opens the door, eyes wide and lips swollen.

Not beaten swollen.

Kissing swollen.

Her dress is ruffled and she is missing a few buttons.

She is panting lightly and the unmistakable heady scent of arousal is strong enough to cause my throat to close up. Think I might have interrupted something?

Her brows narrow upon seeing me and she all but snaps at me, “Isn’t it past your curfew?”

I give her a wolfish grin. “Twenty minutes.”

“Tomorrow,” she says again, brown eyes flicking into the room behind her. “I will examine you tomorrow, princess.”

Not particularly feeling generous enough to leave her with her ‘affair’, and because I’m also curious, I push. “This cannot wait till tomorrow. Shall we go to the infirmary, or shall I invite myself in?”

“Infirmary!” She says sharply, shutting the door behind her when I start to peek inside, but not before I sight a glistening shaved head.

Vesper?

Hell, I could laugh my head and ass off right now. My shoulders are shaking and I am clenching my teeth tightly to keep the laughter from slipping from me.

She notices and turns a bright shade of red. “Need to get my keys. This better be worth it,” she mutters before disappearing inside.

A few minutes later, I’m sitting on the bed, telling her what’s been happening to me. Her arms are crossed and she’s seated across me, observing me sternly. It looks kinda funny, her stern gaze and her kiss-me-some-more-Vesper lips, but I don’t say that. She’ll probably throw me out.

“Stand,” she says when I’m done.

My brows furrow in confusion, but I do it anyway.

“Turn around,” she says, walking over to where I stand. “You haven’t happened to notice any changes in your body in the past few months?”

My eyebrows rise a bit and my lips tighten. There have been a few. The flare of my hips have become wider and my ass fits snuggly in all of my loose pants. I have had to go shopping more times than usual, spending my points on bigger pants and slacks. My bra feels tighter than normal too, and my breasts are now… well, perfect.

I tell her all of this and add quickly, “I am not pregnant.”

Because I’m not. The last time I had sex was with Orion–Goddess bless his soul–and I have bleed every month since then. Hell, I bled last week.

“No. You are not,” she says, pinching the under of my eyes, searching for something. Her gaze drifts to my neck and she pulls down my collar. “But your body is changing. Have you been bitten? Marked?”

I shake my head on impulse. Hekate biting me in my dream doesn’t count, right? Right?

“How long has this been happening? The dark flashes, and then the changes in your body.”

The darkness flashing in eyes happened once when I was a child, but I don’t tell her that. Instead, I say, “A few months ago in the rest room. It started during the fight with Ginevra. The changes match the same timeline.”

Her thumb frees my collar and she jerks her head to the bed. “You can sit.”

“So, what is the problem? I’m not sick, am I?”

“No. These are not symptoms either. Lycan and wolves are not physically compatible with each other, being that we are bigger, in every compartment, and you are… smaller.”

I have a lot of ideas running through my head on what she might mean by, ‘in every compartment’, and what does this have to do with me getting bigger?

“When the connection between a lycan and a werewolf deepens, namely, through the marking, the body of the werewolf begins to undergo a gradual metamorphosis to achieve perfect synchronicity. Their forms mold and meld, bones shift and muscles realign to accommodate the unique union. Their very essence intertwine, adapting and joining together like two halves of a greater whole. Childbirth becomes easier and less life threatening, sex becomes possible and enjoyable, the body becomes stronger, adapting to the brute strength of the lycans–”Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Why are you telling me this? I have not been marked, and I do not plan to be mated to a lycan.”

The nurse snorts, and in a split second, she is standing in front of me, ripping down my collar again. “Here,” she says, prodding the skin on my neck that hasn’t stopped tingling since Hekate bit me. “You’ve been marked by my kind.”