Soul to Soul

Chapter Ninety-Two - This isn't Goodbye.

Alex Tepes...

Given who my family are, you'd think that I would be used to death by now. I mean, I have been surrounded by it from an age where I couldn't even understand what death actually was.

I watched my family kill those they believed inferior to them.

I watched my own family members meeting their ends when they underestimated those, they believed unworthy.

I fought not to be like them. Incurring their wrath when I refused to kill for them, or with them. It just all felt so utterly pointless. I mean it was truly senseless really. Fighting others just to make yourself feel superior was the weakest form of power that one could attain. Or at least that was the way I had always viewed it. So, when I was accepted to Never-More Academy; I had jumped at the chance because it was a way for me to get out from under the thumb of the oppression that surrounded my home and relatives.

It never once occurred to me that I would find my mate at the academy. Most Supes never found their mates until well into their adulthood. Only a few lucky ones managed to find them early and I was one of those. I never once considered myself lucky but the moment that my eyes landed on Eve, I knew that I had been blessed. It wasn't hard to imagine that this was my reward for refusing to go down the path that the rest of my family had. And I liked that idea because that is what Eve was – a true gift.

And here we were preparing to say goodbye to one another.

I hated that.

I hated that we were being torn apart before we even got a chance to really spend any real time together. My heart was dormant in my chest – the tell-tale sign that I was in fact dead, but I knew it would have been breaking simply from how devastated I felt at having to let her go.

Fucking Malacoda's.

I had been careless. I had been reckless. And now I was paying the ultimate price for that.

"I'm so sorry, 'Lex!" the tears tracked down her cheeks as she held me as close and as tightly as she could.

"This isn't your fault, moya malen'kaya soblaznitel'nitsa!" I growled softly, "we all knew the risks in coming here, we all knew that there was no other course of action, and we all did it because we love you, I love you, and you have given me something that I never once believed that I would ever experience -"

"I don't understand -" she furiously brushed the tears from her cheeks as she unashamedly displayed her emotion.

"Growing up in the world I did – love was never something that I was given, not really and definitely not freely. I never even had a hug until you..." I started and her eyes widened in disbelief making me chuckle softly, "don't feel so sad about that beautiful, I am glad you were my first!" I winked and her smile was as bright as the sun, I desperately wanted to bask in it and in her, but I knew that we wouldn't be granted a lot of time, "my world was narrow, and my only real escape was coming to the academy where I felt more, free than I have ever experienced. The things my family do are deplorable and their quest for unending power is what made me stay away from you for as long as I did, and I now wish that I had just followed my heart because once again I feel like I have been cheated out of something and that is a pretty huge regret to have when going into your afterlife." I explained, thinking about all the things that I had been denied in my life and this was the hardest one to accept, "you are the only pure, truly good thing I have ever had in my life, and you once said to me that I was a coward for holding back, and you were right, I was a coward but not for the reasons that you think -"

"What are the reasons then?"

"My family will do anything to gather more power, they have done countless despicable things that make me sick to my stomach, and when I realised just how powerful you are and have the capacity to become, I knew the moment they realised it, they would find a way to make you beholden to them, they would have you over a barrel and I just couldn't allow that to come to pass-" framing her beautiful features in my palms for the last time, "you made me want to be better Eve. You changed me in ways I never knew that I wanted to be changed. I want you to know that I am at peace because of you, and I will be waiting here for you for however long it takes to make it here,"