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◤ chapter fourteen: ❛ his piercing voice ❜ ◢
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THE WAY COOPER SAW IT, SIRENS WEREN'T THE RARE BEAUTIES PEOPLE THOUGHT. According to different definitions, sirens were hideous creatures whose song was the most beautiful part of them. Others thought of sirens as mermaids who lured sailors to their deaths, devouring them whole as food. And then there was the modern interpretation, the ones just like him, where people saw dangerous and powerful creatures – the rare gem.
Cooper knew he was a rare breed. It was a wonder that three sirens ended up in Beacon Hills, finding each other. Before him, Julia had only met one other siren, and that was twenty years ago. Not all sirens got awoken with the bite, and there weren't many to begin with.
Humans hunted us many centuries ago –Julia explained one night – they heard the legends us, and deemed us murderers from conception. They massacred our kind.
Rare, he knew, in the sense that there weren't many. He agreed. Rare, in the sense that they were beauties who should be sought after, he didn't agree. Cooper Whittemore might be powerful, but he wasn't dangerous, not in the ways Deucalion wanted him to be. The Alpha wanted a siren whose song brought death, wanted a charismatic boy to charm the world and kill it.
He didn't want to join Deucalion, but that was his future if they didn't stop him. So he had to have hope that they would.
"Cooper?"
The sound of his brother made him instantly relax. He meant to call Jackson often, they weren't used to being away from each other for long periods. Any period, really. They grew up together, lived together, and stayed together. Until London, the longest they had been apart from each other was two weeks when Jackson was at a lacrosse camp.
He meant to call, but Beacon Hills got in the way. With the darach, the Alphas, the funeral of Boyd...there was too much going on. So he didn't call as much as he wanted to, didn't pick up all the calls Jackson sent him, because there was too much to say and too much he didn't want his brother to know.
Cooper didn't know Boyd. Seen him in passing some, but didn't know him. Boyd worked at the ice rink, he remembered seeing the boy on the Zamboni with Jackson, Lydia, and Danny. He'd seen Boyd after being captured by the Alphas, but they never spoke. He doesn't think he's ever spoken a word to him.
And now Boyd was dead – murdered by Deucalion's pack.
The funeral was a small affair. Barely a funeral, really, just all of them gathered around his grave, the boy already buried. Derek looked grim, sadness swelling in his eyes, mixing with guilt. Cora and Peter stayed by him. Isaac had the same guilt. Cooper couldn't imagine watching a friend die the way they had.
