Forbidden (BoyxBoy)

Chapter XX : Danté

Alaric.

I sat, shocked and unmoved, like a statue on my couch, waiting for Kathleen to come home. There was nothing else to do. Reliving my experience at Neuengamme had left me numb, cold and disturbed to my core. Now all I could do was wait for her to come home and wake me from this paralysed state.

After what felt like hours, I heard the key turn in the lock of the front door. Then again. I hadn't locked it, and now Kathleen knew that. That was a bad sign, I always locked the door. You never knew if there were going to be creatures that go bump in the night banging down your door one day. That was the world we lived in, after all. I supposed I was more tangled up in that world now than ever.

Then there was something I didn't expect: murmuring from the other side. I didn't have time to come to any conclusions before the door creaked open and Kathleen came teetering in, a cooler bag over her arm and Danté behind her.

He was a towering man, at least seven feet tall, with imposingly broad shoulders and a rugged, handsome face. His skin was the honeyed gold of the latin americas, and his coarse, dark hair was perpetually slicked back stylishly. A stylish gentleman in the body of an ancient, barbaric warrior. Beside him, Kathleen looked like a child, her white hair gleaming brilliantly against the background of his black button-up shirt.

"Kathleen... Danté." I greeted them incredulously, snapping out of my trance out of pure survival instinct and rising from the couch. There was no way that I was going to blank out on the acting Heir of our coven. He couldn't know what was going on here, with me or with Jason and his family. His werewolf family.

"Alaric, it has been a long time." Danté stepped forward, and offered one of his giant, roughened hands for me to shake. His voice was deep and thickened with a Spanish accent. I took it and shook it firmly, trying not to give in to the painfully tight grip he had on my hand.

"It has. I must say," I looked at Kathleen pointedly. "I didn't expect you."

Kathleen grinned at me apologetically, her pale cheeks flushing pink. Danté glanced in her direction, a small smirk appearing on his face.

"I'm afraid this isn't simply a social call." He added, although I could see the desire in his dark, golden eyes as he looked at Kathleen. I guessed they were coming close to one of their 'lovers' periods. It was a constant cat and mouse game for the two of them. "I'm here because of Louis. He's dead, Alaric."

My mouth hung agape. "What?"

"Kimiko found him at their house in Marseilles, ripped to shreds by werewolves." He explained.  My heart hardened like lead, uncomfortable grief nestling deep in my gut.

Louis and Kimiko were members of our coven, and lifelong lovers. Eve had made creatures of them just over a century ago: Louis a French aristocrat whose grandparents had fled to Vietnam - then called French Indochina - months before Marie Antoinette was decapitated. Growing up on the streets of Hanoi, he had met Kimiko, a Japanese artist visiting the city with her father. They had fallen in love, to the horror of their respective families, and in an act of rebellion the two were married on board a ship on the way to their new lives in Ottoman Turkey. By a stroke of luck, Eve was on the same boat. As it went down in a storm, she made the choice to save the lovers lives. Why she did so is unknown even to Danté. It had been 121 years since then. 121 years of bliss, and it had come to an end.

"He isn't the first, I have heard word from other covens that many more of our kind have been killed over the last few months." Danté added gravely. He was fond of Louis, that I knew for sure. We all were. He had been a vivacious jester, filled to the brim with french charm and charisma. All I could think of in that moment was poor Kimiko, alone in the world for the first time in her immortal life. My heart ached for her.