Third Person's POV
The man stared wistfully at the small treasured box, touching the delicate ribbon used to tie it together. He remembered when he gave it to her. They had both just turned 17, their birthdays only being days apart. He remembered saying nothing about being her mate, not wanting to bring a pressure to the girl he had long since had feelings for. He remembered going to a shop in a nearby town and seeing the box in the window. It was meant to keep jewelry but the woman in the shop said she pictured it being used to store letters. "Perhaps love letters between two star crossed lovers", she said to him as he asked her to see it. Star crossed, he didn't realize at the time, always has its consequences.
The ribbon was once a brighter blue, having since faded to years and the amount of times the girl had taken it with her on outings. Letters. . . Letters indeed. The girl took it with her on every date the two shared, insisting at the end of the night they write a short letter to the other. They wrote them on index cards. Cute moments from the date, things they noticed about the other, thoughts and feelings that came upon them during the outing.
Inside laid the index cards, two small stacks of them, as well as several other items. A necklace, grey in color of the gem. A small ornate bottle of perfume the girl was gifted from her mother. A small jeweled frog she had held onto from her childhood.
He brought the perfume bottle to his nose, inhaling the delicate floral smell coming from the nozzle. It brought back memories, perhaps too many. Perhaps not enough.
He was studying when she, one day, slammed open his door. She strode in and sat across his lap, taking the large medical textbook out of his site. Her perfume surrounded him then as she moved her hair across her shoulder. "We should move out," she had said, no question or doubt in his voice.
"Together?" She nodded, toying with the collar of his shirt. "Yeah, I'm sure your parents would be real happy with that." Her parents never liked him. He was an orphan, the son of two nobodies who died when he was 10. He grew up in the pack house beside her, her being the only child to their packs Alpha and Luna. Were she a boy, she could inherit the pack. Her parents were only more displeased when they discovered that they were mates. They had picked out her pair for her the day she had turned 13; a slightly older boy from a neighboring pack. Their union would have brought the packs together. But she refused. Of course she did, more admittedly every day. She had long ago fallen in love with the man, even before they discovered their status of fated mates. A large part of him was sure they still intended to marry her off to the neighboring pack boy. He had met the boy several times. He hated him more and more each time.
"Who cares what they think," she said with a clear disgust in her voice.
"You do," he reminded her. He had brushed back a stray strand of hair from her face. She was always so gorgeous.
She was even gorgeous as she died in his arms.
Move out. . . She wanted to move out. She was a stubborn girl and even more stubborn the older she got. So they moved out. More than that, they moved from the pack. They went as far west as they could without losing sight of the trees. Maybe some 50 to 100 miles outside of their pack. He should have known they would send the boy after them; the boy from the neighboring pack.
The boy had brought a gun with him on the hunt. The hunt for her. He was to bring her back at any cost. They, the man and the girl, had already marked each other. To shoot the man was foolish. It could very well have cost her her life, were his to end. Even more foolish was to miss. Foolish of her to push the man out of the way when she heard the gun cock. The bullet landed off the center of her chest. She didn't die instantly. No, instead she fell to the ground, quickly pulled up into the man's arms. The boy already ran. The man wouldn't know until a year later that he never returned to his pack nor hers. He ran, aware of his action.
The girl gasped for a breath she never seemed to find. Her eyes searched his as he pressed desperately to the wound, begging her to hold on. Her hand shakily found his before falling, her eyes going dull.
Oh, how the man cried and screamed.
He remembered his parents passing. First his father by illness then his mother by heartbreak just days later.
And now her, his mate.
The only important people in his life, all ripped away too soon.
He already doubted the greatness of his supposed Goddess above but at the girl's death, he lost his connection to the Goddess completely.
He remembered going back to their small shared house. His medical textbooks from years prior rested on a shelf. He burned them in a fire. What good is a healer who has lost those around them?
He hunted the boy down the next year. The black pit in his heart had only grown in that year between until it completely consumed him. He slit the boy's throat in his sleep, having found him several towns away from the similar area they had all grown up in. It was clear he had stopped running. Should've kept at it, he thought as he stood above his resting form.
It would be years later, many years, when he would cross another copy of the medical textbooks he had once owned. He stole the book, paying no mind to the small business that sold the used book. He took that book and then others. He bought several books of the magi's, not wanting to fear their wrath. Their books were the most helpful.
Ten years passed before he tried his first experiment. He had befriended a fellow rogue but the friendship didn't stop him but taking her against her will to a small shack he had long ago broken into; where he stock piled all he felt he needed for his new practice.
He tried to infuse blood of another species into hers, having bought the vial of blood in a shady market for those of the darker sciences in his world. She died instantly, crying and begging him to let her go.
It took several years before he got closer to his goal, having learned that the patient must first be stripped of their blood, flushed with the proper mix of wolfsbane and other herbs.
Sometime in those years, he met a boy. The boy looked no older than 17. It was over a shared drink in a shady town, one where creatures of several kinds mingled together, where he learned the boy came from a unique origin. He had the smell of a wolf but he had the blood of a lycan. The original species. The species some thought to be merely a myth. The boy talked negatively on his father, drunk on wine.The man wasn't so drunk to not retain the info but the boy was so drunk as to have shared it. The man was sure it wasn't something he meant to share. The boy said how he'd been as young as he appeared for a long time, too long he had said. The man tried to ask him questions but the boy was drunk. 'Lycer' the boy had said his name was. Real creative, the man thought with a roll of his eyes. The man was just drunk enough to let the boy slip away. And that was one of the last times he ever saw him.
He passed him briefly some years later. He tried to get the boy to go with him then, saying he had medical marvels the boy simply must see. Simply must give his input on. The boy gave him the slip, staying amongst the trees as he seemed to like to do. The man was never good at climbing trees, not even as a young child.
He passed him again more years later. He was having a bad day. His latest experiment that was showing progress had passed in the night. The boy caught him in that bad mood. True to his words years earlier, the boy looked the same. Whereas the man had aged somewhat since their first meeting. The boy saw the real him that day and ran. Ran far for the man never saw him on his own after that.
At some point, the man's experiments began to show real progress. Their abilities strengthened. They didn't always live too long but the man felt he was closer nonetheless. If anything, their lives often shortened. This was the opposite of the man's initial goal. Somewhere along the way, however, he lost sight of this part of his goal. It lingered in the back of his mind. To stop death. But years with a blackened heart often leads to greedier goals. Goals of power. Goals of overwhelming consumption.
It was when his experiments began to live that he gained control of himself. Only in a way to aid his harsh actions and growing goals. He gained a way of speech, enough to convince those around him to join his cause. He often lied to do this; tricking rogues into becoming one of his experiments. Some went willingly, which often made the experimentation itself easier. No strapping down of a body of various strengths in order to begin the process. He gathered many rogues to a point where he needed a base that he built in a mountain range. For months, the nearby human towns spoke off the odd shaking of the ground which was really holes being blasted into the mountains. Nothing came of the curious humans and eventually the hideout was built. Large enough to house the experiments and rogues as well as a cell block he had built for anyone he deemed necessary, be it the occasional magi, faerie, or vampire he needed information or blood from. Then he started sending out his experiments to find the boy. They found him several times but every time he managed to escape.
Until the girl.
The man wasn't sure if the girl was the boy's mate. He wasn't sure if the boy could have a mate, considering his blood. But she was his weakness.
He never sent out the specific instruction to take the girl too. Perhaps that was his downfall when it came to the taking of the boy. Because of the girl, he got the boy. Having him taken in her own reach. But the boy never spoke. Several years passed and he rarely said a word. The man tried starvation, torture of several kinds. All to no avail.
He also took the boy's blood. It instantly killed any experiment it was used on. He thought it tainted. Perhaps by the boy's mother who, from his understanding, was not of the same origin as the boy's father.
He needed the boy's father, he thought.
So he sent out word to find the girl again. She was seen several times but never captured. Due to pure stupidity of his experiments, he blamed. It wasn't until he specified that she was to be taken on sight that he felt another notch of progress made.
But then she found a pack. The most powerful pack in the north east. And the Alpha is her mate.
He didn't give up. He couldn't. Not when he felt so close. Though, so close to what, sometimes he was no longer sure of.
Luckily, many of his experiments had an interesting quirk. Their smells simply ceased to exist, if they weren't altered from the distinct smell of a wolf. This, he used to his advantage. And he succeeded. The girl would be brought in any second now.
The door to the tunnel system opened and in stepped several of his experiments. "Well?" he asked.
One experiment stepped forward from between the first two to have entered. In his arms, a small brunette girl. Her breathing was slow but steady as she lay unconscious in its arms.
"How much have you been giving her?"
"Enough to keep her out. Administering more every time she begins to stir." The man rose a brow but nodded. He walked over to them, brushing the girl's hair away from her face. She wore a pretty necklace, expensive looking. He picked up the stone. It was cold and heavy in his fingers. Expensive, indeed.
"Take her to the cells. Put on a show for the boy," he said coldly, "but don't kill her."