Chrysalis (Book 1.5 in the Wolfen Brethren Series)

Earth, Wind, Fire

22 Years old
Juy

Seeing Veris for the first time in 2 years was the most awkward and unpleasant experience ever. The way he kept staring at me made me feel like a piece of fruit just dangling from a tree, reddened and ripened as he prepared to devour me. Maybe a year ago I wouldn't have minded but now I definitely did.

I wasn't his female and I wasn't his friend, we were just about acquaintances but still he tried to slide up beside me and talk as if we were. As if air only existed between us. I seemed to attract males that had pride in abundance, so much so that they were virtually incapable of apologising. I wasn't waiting for one but common courtesy dictated that if you were attempting to talk to someone you had wronged, you generally apologised first.

Not Veris or Carson. Both males were as stubborn or perhaps as inattentive as each other. They did nothing but flop about like lost children waiting for their mothers to give them guidance. Well I was no mother and I 100 percent was not theirs. If no one had taught them then I wasn't about to try it, I didn't have the energy and I genuinely couldn't care one iota about it.

So when Veris tried to pull me to the side to have a chat, I flipped my middle finger at him and kept walking, hoping that the delicate eyes of 3-year-old Carly didn't see aunty Vanya swearing. If she did then I would meditate and ask the gods for forgiveness but until then... He could fuck right off.

He seemed genuinely surprised by my animosity which was only made so much more apparent when Eliza took him to work. She called him all sorts of names, swine, scumbag and my favourite; a writhing cesspit of human bacteria and mucus.

He soon got the drift, especially when his brother stood by wincing in pain at the abuse but hadn't interjected. Veris deserved it all and more, and no one would come to his aid.

I thought I was saved from him because Eliza was like a hound with a lead... sniffing for blood, growling at any untoward movements from her victim but I forgot that Veris was the wind. He was fluent and soluble, he was not tangent he was complex and sneaky. Very sneaky and sly.

Slithery like a serpent.

Yes, Veris was like a snake but I was earth and everything came from me and eventually it was Mother Earth that their decomposing bodies returned to. I was the Earth, pivotal and unbending and so I wouldn't be moved by this male. His gravitational pull was a tiny inconsequential blip in the grand scheme of my life. So I told myself but that talk disappeared like Veris' nature the moment he caught me alone and unaware.

The party had just come to an end and Nerro and Niko had this really cute moment where they had gathered Carly in their arms and taken her up to bed. Nerro carrying a warm glass of milk and a child's book that he had drawn and written especially for her. Everyone had oohed and ahhed, even Eliza who had begun to think about babies now that her and Samyuri were officially married and mated.

The big red mark on her neck was always on display because as much as she didn't want to admit it, for a moment in time she thought she had become me and Cobalt. A human who had lost one of the most important things to them.

Carson had been that. He had been the centre to my orbit.

My sun.

A burning ball of molten fire consuming anyone who dared to get close. Yes, he had been the centre to my world but not anymore.

As Nerro and Niko had climbed up the stairs, people had begun to vacate the house. Veris had long since disappeared and so I had thought it was safe for me to make my way back to the compound, how misguided I had been. He had come at me like an unsuspecting torrential storm, wind howling and wailing as it dragged you to the centre of the emerging tornado.