Lycanthropy

I have been talking to my grandfather for a few days already, telling him about all the things that have happened to me in the past and about the things that I wanted to do in the future. And he had been listening to all of it, sometimes growling at the bad parts, and laughing about the good ones.

I had also asked him about all those markings and tattoos that most people have here.

“Those are called runes, and they represent different kinds of things.” He said, upon standing up and grabbing a thick book from one of the shelves behind him in the room.

He turned some pages and showed me some of them. There appeared to be a whole alphabet made of these strange markings, as well as some represent complete words. There where one single vertical line meant ‘standstill’ or an ‘F’ shaped one that meant ‘possession’, there were also more intricate ones which existed of multiple lines, which wouldn’t make sense in any other language. If I were to learn this language, it would take me ages to memorise each and every single one of them.

But I’m not interested in learning them all right now. I wanted to learn about only one, that has been on my head the moment I was shot. The rune was not something I could have seen, as it was gone before I knew it was even up there. Berrant had told me that my grandfather was granted with this rune as well, but what did it mean?

He had shifted to the page of where the mark was drawn. A vertical line, with two crosses drawn over it, where the ‘legs’ of the crosses, touched each other in the middle. And beneath it was the explanation written in the old language, which I did know how to read.

“Protection.” I said out loud, and my grandfather nodded.

“I knew your mother didn’t have the mark, as it never had shown itself at her birth. But knowing now that she had you, I was hoping that it would have skipped a generation, and was happy to know the Goddess had granted you the mark instead. The mark won’t make you invincible nor immortal, as its power will only be granting you the gift of another life, for only a few times. But… we don’t know how many times.” He said with a sigh and I was slightly understanding where this is going.

“You have been in terrible situations, where I could understand you to want to end your life. But trying to get yourself killed…” He started.

“…Might have used up all the possible times for me to be saved already.” I finished his sentence, at which he nodded.

So not only had Milos neglected to feed me on multiple occasions, beat me to ‘death’, used and abused me over and over again, but he had also taken some of the times to have me saved, whenever I would be in mortal danger. He has taken the possibility to keep me alive for quite some time.

Of course, other people have only one life, and apparently I had numerous, but If I had known this before, I wouldn’t have been so careless with my life. I would have wanted to save up some of those ‘lives’ and to have spent them at appropriate times. Not at those times where I had tried to commit suicide or didn’t bother to eat, as the ‘I can’t die anyway’ kind of moments I regularly had at the dungeons.

I hadn’t known before of course, but the mark is a gift from the Goddess and I practically had wasted a lot of her power, by giving up a few times.

I never took life for granted anymore, ever since I left the arena, but now I was surely going to pay more attention for not getting myself killed.

“So, you’re saying that you don’t want to leave your pack, but you’re thinking about living here?” My grandfather said after another day of talking.

I could tell that he was glad to find out that I was intending to stay here with him. I’m happy here, really. The land is beautiful, as I love every aspect of nature that is here, and my roots lie here too.

“Yes, I never wanted a mate, and I promised myself to stay with my pack. I am the strongest Alpha on that continent, so no one would dare to fight me for the right of it. Besides, I have worked my ass off with those people!”

“So you let your pride get in the way, of what your heart desires?”

Is it? Do I? Well, somehow it is, I guess. But that is just because I truly don’t want to leave my pack behind. I want to take care of them, and to make sure that they have a sustainable life. I can’t just leave them alone!

“Why not? I mean, we have done everything for each and every separate packhouse to make sure they have a healthy way of living, right? We never intended for all of our people to stay in one house, together. We made sure that they could stay where they wanted to, still keeping the six packs apart.” Dakota said smartly.

She is right. I never intended to force them into one single house. I didn’t want them to be living together, unless they wanted to. So plenty of transfers had been made between the houses, and several people had found their mates too, that way.

I even kept the financial books apart, I thought it would be easier for me to organize it better. But now I realize that if I would have put them together, it would have been much more convenient.

Was there still something that kept me from making it a whole?

And then I realized something. I wasn’t a Queen of one pack. I was a Queen of six!

Fuck… now my idea of transferring my pack to one other Alpha, was going to turn into something quite difficult. Because now I have to find more than one!

I explained my grandfather my thinking, and we talked about finding six Alpha’s to grant them each their own pack. They would get a healthy and good working pack, handed to them on a silver platter. So, we agreed upon not giving it to them that easily.

We had rounded up our ideas, as we had spent a few hours to them already and I was getting tired.

“And what about Aron?” He asked, as I yawned big time.

“What about him?”

“Well he is your mate, isn’t he? Are you going to accept it?”

I wasn’t sure yet, but I remembered the sentence that my mother used to say.

“Love doesn’t ask for anything, love just longs to be accepted and to be there for another day.” I said to myself.

“But if the love is not reciprocated, it will find another way.” I heard a deep voice say in my mind.

And the voice wasn’t that of Dakota. It was that of my grandfather’s! How is this possible? I looked at him with wide eyes and open mouth.

“We are family, and we are Lycans honey. I can’t truly read your mind, but if you say it to yourself that clearly, I can hear it too. As within Lycan families, we have a mind-link as well.” He explained.

“And those words you spoke, are the words that I have taught your mother, just as my parents had taught me, and theirs had taught them. Generation upon generation has lived by those words, and I’m glad that you know them too.” He told me with some sadness in his eyes.

I bet that he misses my grandmother dearly, as because he must have lived by those words too, just as he just said. So he must have loved her, more than anything.

“But what about the part that ‘love will find another way’?” I asked him.

“Well think about it for a moment. You have rejected Daniel, for being your mate, and now you have found another. Life throws us things that we are supposed to be able to handle, not only the bad things, but also the good.”

“But Daniel was truly not what I wanted. No matter how many mates I could possibly have!”

“The Goddess doesn’t make mistakes, not even by granting you Daniel as your mate. I guess he was, to make you realise something. To help you make sure of what you wanted, and what not.”

I yawned again, this is getting too deep for me.

Even in my tired state, I managed to ask him a few questions about Aron, and his pack. Because we hadn’t had the chance for me to see his pack, and I wanted to make sure that he has the reputation of a good Alpha. He answered my questions with some satisfying answers, and I yawned again.

“I’m off to bed, I need to think about all of this for a while Gramps.” I stood up and walked away.

I heard him chuckle behind me, and he wished me a good night’s sleep. I raised my hand, and waved to him, absently, while not even looking at him.

I was so tired that I couldn’t keep my eyes open clearly, as I was on my way to my room. I stumbled across the halls and reached the door. I took off my clothes, and slid underneath the blankets. While grabbing a pillow and laying my head upon it, I drifted off.

Lying in bed with her:

I was already asleep when I heard her coming in my room. She didn’t say a word, but just got undressed, crawled in bed right next to me, grabbed my chest and laid her lazy head on top of it.

It was really hard to not laugh at that moment, or to ask her about what she was doing. But I just let her do what she wanted, and what she unknowingly craved for. Úlfur was content with her being so close, naked and purring on top of us.

I took the hair out of her face, and gently rubbed her back. She shifted a little and I was worried that I had awoken her, but she just moved in further and put her leg over mine.

This was going to be the best night ever, falling asleep with my mate.