Celestial Bodies: Of Runts and Lycans

Chapter 43: Experiments

Third Person's POV

The man stared wistfully at the small treasured box, touching the delicate ribbon used to tie it together. He remembered when he gave it to her. They had both just turned 17, their birthdays only being days apart. He remembered saying nothing about being her mate, not wanting to bring a pressure to the girl he had long since had feelings for. He remembered going to a shop in a nearby town and seeing the box in the window. It was meant to keep jewelry but the woman in the shop said she pictured it being used to store letters. "Perhaps love letters between two star crossed lovers", she said to him as he asked her to see it. Star crossed, he didn't realize at the time, always has its consequences.

The ribbon was once a brighter blue, having since faded to years and the amount of times the girl had taken it with her on outings. Letters. . . Letters indeed. The girl took it with her on every date the two shared, insisting at the end of the night they write a short letter to the other. They wrote them on index cards. Cute moments from the date, things they noticed about the other, thoughts and feelings that came upon them during the outing.

Inside laid the index cards, two small stacks of them, as well as several other items. A necklace, grey in color of the gem. A small ornate bottle of perfume the girl was gifted from her mother. A small jeweled frog she had held onto from her childhood.

He brought the perfume bottle to his nose, inhaling the delicate floral smell coming from the nozzle. It brought back memories, perhaps too many. Perhaps not enough.

He was studying when she, one day, slammed open his door. She strode in and sat across his lap, taking the large medical textbook out of his site. Her perfume surrounded him then as she moved her hair across her shoulder. "We should move out," she had said, no question or doubt in his voice.

"Together?" She nodded, toying with the collar of his shirt. "Yeah, I'm sure your parents would be real happy with that." Her parents never liked him. He was an orphan, the son of two nobodies who died when he was 10. He grew up in the pack house beside her, her being the only child to their packs Alpha and Luna. Were she a boy, she could inherit the pack. Her parents were only more displeased when they discovered that they were mates. They had picked out her pair for her the day she had turned 13; a slightly older boy from a neighboring pack. Their union would have brought the packs together. But she refused. Of course she did, more admittedly every day. She had long ago fallen in love with the man, even before they discovered their status of fated mates. A large part of him was sure they still intended to marry her off to the neighboring pack boy. He had met the boy several times. He hated him more and more each time.

"Who cares what they think," she said with a clear disgust in her voice.

"You do," he reminded her. He had brushed back a stray strand of hair from her face. She was always so gorgeous.

She was even gorgeous as she died in his arms.

Move out. . . She wanted to move out. She was a stubborn girl and even more stubborn the older she got. So they moved out. More than that, they moved from the pack. They went as far west as they could without losing sight of the trees. Maybe some 50 to 100 miles outside of their pack. He should have known they would send the boy after them; the boy from the neighboring pack.