To Thaw A Frozen Heart (2020 - ON HIATUS)

The Beginning.

 Being the young idiot that he was, Eli Afron had unintentionally gotten himself into a witches union at the age of sixteen. He was in his third-to-last year at Highgate Academy in Louisiana, the place where alpha heirs are to learn the importance of politics and gain an understanding of the other supernaturals. Eli never cared to learn about the otherlings, they were beneath him after all. Even while his classes covered witches and their craft, he refused to pay attention, not even for his girlfriend's sake. He wasn't with Alice because he genuinely liked her, she was just pretty. Her culture meant nothing to him.

The union was created while the couple had been walking through the shopping district of the little town that Highgate was located in. One of the charms of her bracelet fell as the two were walking, but she hadn't noticed. Eli had seen it glittering on the ground and retrieved it. The charm was an inverted triangle with a line through it. It was the symbol for earth, not that Eli knew that. The element was one of constancy and stability, known for its unchanging nature.

The act of returning a lost item was what solidified the union, much like a selkie marriage, wherein their souls are bound and dependent on one another. Unlike a selkie marriage, the witch would not be the one who would perish if their bond were broken, but the fool who had initiated the union. Nor was the bond dependent on him remaining faithful to her, but rather him being useful.

Eli doesn't know what he had done. He was too busy learning the ways of being an alpha to consider that his witch girlfriend had her own set of beliefs and customs. He was so unaware of the issues beyond being a wolf that he didn't even know that Alice's family, the Naismiths, were one of the most influential witch families in the area, and they had been long before the wolves had settled here.

He never really cared for her, she was simply a pretty face. Alice was a year younger than him, and he was her first boyfriend, so she wasn't aware when his interest in her started to fade. By the end of the fall semester, he had grown tired of her but wasn't sure of how to best dispose of her. He approached his friend group about this. The almost dozen boys he called friends were other alpha heirs at Highgate, between the ages of twelve and sixteen, from all over the country. Their friendships go back to when their fathers were young, they had grown up with political alliances between their territories.

The other boys were inconsistent with their reaction to him wanting to break up with Alice. The ones who had a greater understanding of witches told him to be careful, to let her go gently. There were the others who ragged on him for being with an otherling in the first place. They were werewolves, after all, on top of the social and political food chain, the one in control of the way that the world was structured. Without them, it was believed that the whole world would be in chaos. All of the other supernaturals--aptly referred to as otherlings--could not be trusted to have total control of themselves. The elemental tribes would be at war with one another; sirens would drown and murder who they please; the fae would play their deadly games. The wolves were doing everyone a favor by being the ones in control, even when they believe they are above learning about these other cultures.

Eli needed the perfect plan to break up with his girlfriend, He couldn't be expected to try to be nice to her about it. He could simply say that he would rather wait for his destined mate, that he wasn't really prepared to have such a serious relationship. All of those ideas were lost beneath all of the terrible proposals that the other boys were presenting to him. The group was in one of the back gardens of the school during their lunch hour. The garden was on the school's property line, touching the edge of witch territory. The only separation were hedges and a couple of trees.

Overhearing their conversation was Giles Oakley, a friend of Alice's. He was seventeen and nearly seven feet tall, not so much a physical threat but he was very advanced in his studies. The Oakleys are another notable witch family in the Louisiana region. They were one of the most powerful families on this side of the Atlantic and had a good footing in the local political scene.