The Cursed Kingdom

ELEVEN

~ THE BEGINNING ~

"When I first met Furkan, I didn't know he was a Lycan," Ingrid explained, pushing the plate of flapjacks and fruit away after only a couple bites. "He was in his human form and, not realizing how far off I'd wandered off, I thought he was a merchant." She looked down at her hands and smiled as she remembered something pleasant. "He was so handsome and gentle with me and when we touched hands, I instantly felt the sparks of matehood and it was hard to walk away. After that, I snuck out and visited him every night in the same spot along our border for a week until finally he persuaded me to go with him—not that it was a difficult decision to make." She muttered the last part.

"Sparks?" I asked, my eyebrows furrowing at her choice of wording while I propped my chin on my palm, watching her curiously.

Her eyes glowed as she talked about her partner, Furkan, with a type of mirth that left me envious, the young girl inside me, the one that used to play dress up with Oriana and pretend she was a princess, yearning to find someone who could fill me with the same amount of joy.

"Yes," Ingrid said with a confirming nod, biting her lip bashfully. Her eyes remained on her hands that sat comfortably on the table, running her fingers across her palms mindlessly. "It comes with being mates."

"Mates?" I'd heard the word before. It rang in the back of my head like a distant memory but I could not pinpoint who'd uttered it or where.

"Oh, dear," she sighed, a look of astonishment crossing over her face. Looking towards the almost empty plate on the table, she shook her head and took in a deep breath. "He really hasn't told you anything has he?" When a look of bewilderment was my only response, she continued, "Well, it's no wonder then why you're so..." she trailed off, looking at my face and assessing every feature. "Stressed."

I snorted at her word choice and noticed the corners of her lips twitch upward. It was faint and gone in a blink but there nonetheless.

"Mates is a shortened term for soulmates. For many Mage cultures, it's seen as a gift. For Lycans, it's sacred." Her voice adopting a tone that could've been described as indifferent, it sounded as if she was merely repeating a passage she'd once read in a book. "Mates can instantly identify each other with either smell or sight, the tells varying with different species. But one factor remains the same for all: when true mates touch, there's this sense of warmth and sparks that not one other living thing can create. It's pure serenity."

"Then why would Henrik want to marry me?" I asked. Ingrid's words were supposed to make things clearer yet I felt more trapped in a fog of frustration and befuddlement than ever. My hands fingered the lace sewn along the bottom of my nightgown, tugging and twisting it around my digits. "Why would he want to give that up having serenity with someone who might actually want him?" I threw my hands up in exasperation at the same time that I scoffed, slumping back in my seat with an emotion close to defeat.

Appearing conflicted and almost terrified, Ingrid opened her mouth and then closed it before opening it again once more. "Because you are his mate, Raena," she stated quietly, like she was telling me a terrible, terrible secret that should've never left her mouth let alone entered my ears.

My heart felt like it stopped, stopped so suddenly that it was hard to breathe, and yet it was beating the hardest it ever had before, seemingly just as unsure of what to do as my brain. "What?"

"You are His Majesty's mate, Raena," Ingrid reiterated, her hand reaching over to take mine in what I guessed was her attempt at being comforting. And perhaps it had worked on some. But when her skin made contact with my clammy palm, all I pictured doing was slapping it away the way I wished I could to her words, regret filling my abdomen that I'd ever opened the door. "You and him have been destined for each other since the beginning of time itself."