Three tall lupion get their meat and leave, saying a polite thanks, before a petite lady with a red tail and ears steps up. She’s wearing a thin denim jacket, arms folded close to her body. It’s autumn, and though it’s not cold to me, the wind is starting to pick up, creating a chill.
“Hi,” Yasmeena says, smiling wide. “We have boar meat, bluegill, and a little bit of helfowl. Which would you prefer?”
She hesitates, like it’s a trick question. “Whichever one you’re okay giving me.”
“I’m okay with giving you anything. Which do you prefer cooking? Or would you rather eat it raw?”
“Probably the boar or the helfowl. It stretches farther,” she answers, and guilt explodes in my chest.
My Alpha is controlling, but at least we never go without.
“It’ll stretch even farther like this,” Yasmeena says, and takes another package from off the table, handing her both. “Here.”
My instinct is to remind her that Gemma said one per person, but I reel it in, because I’m starting to sound like my father.
“Oh, I couldn’t take two.” The lupion’s deep blue eyes are wrinkled at the corners, matching the smile lines by her mouth. She’s frail, reminding me much of Saoirse in the end.
My mind flashes back to childhood, when Saoirse would pack me double the snacks for school, telling me togive them to someone who needed them.I didn’t realize it in the moment, but I think she was trying to raise me to be kind and giving.
Yasmeena gestures to the rest of the line. “We’re really busy, so I’ve got to quit chatting, but it was lovely meeting you.”
That was her way of having the final say, and I can just tell from the look on the older lupion’s face, that she was grateful for it.
The line continued, one person after the other, until there were only a few packages of meat left. As Yasmeena hands the package of helfowl to a lupion, there’s a scuffle happening from behind them.
A long, dark-haired female lupion appears to be last in line, directly behind a taller, more muscular felion. The lupion kicks the back of the felion’s legs, causing him to nearly fall before he crashes into a young lad.
“This food is for the lupion,” she spits.
“This food is foreveryone,” Yasmeena just about yelps as she moves from behind the table, going to assess the young boy.
He’s got mousy brown hair with matching ears and a tail. A lupion. His eyes are green and wide, and as Yasmeena approacheshim, he darts from where he was standing in line, hurtling towards the cross between this street and the next.
I feel awful for this young boy. He waited all that time in line, and now he’s going to go hungry because of these two assholes.
They continue to push and shove at one another, and before Yasmeena can put herself in the middle, I let icicles shoot out from my hands, freezing their feet to the ground in just a single flick of my wrist. If Yasmeena is surprised by my use of magic, her features don’t show it.
“Are you two not embarrassed?” I shout as I walk towards where they’re stuck, the last two containers of meat in my hands. “Grown adults fighting over food. Well, here you go. Since you scared that child away, you both get what you wanted.”
I shove the packages into their hands, and they take them, a red flush of shame painted onto both of their faces.
“I will try to find him.” The lupion bows her head.
“I apologize,” the felion says. “But did you have to shoot ice shards at us? They almost cut my feet.”
Yasmeena gives him the nastiest glare I’ve ever seen from her. “If it happens again, I’ll have herensurethe ice does some damage, how about that?”
Pride swells in my heart at her passion and her defense of my people. I can’t help but think that if things were different, maybe something could’ve happened between us. Somethingreal.
If we weren’t from opposing sides, we might have become friends, or even more. From the moment I saw her, before I ever learned the truth about who she is, I felt inherently drawn to Yasmeena. She was a golden beacon of light in that dark bar. Now, despite the truth of our situation, she still manages to shine, illuminating every space she walks through.
The lupion and felion look at us with wide eyes, and I use my magic to strike the ice surrounding their ankles, breaking them free. The felion nods, and they both skitter away from the tent, the scent of fear radiating off their flesh and fur.
I zone out, my mind taking me to alternaterealities where Yasmeena and I were born as half-demons, and were able to be… something. But then, if she weren’t a felion, and I weren’t a lupion, we wouldn’t really be us.
“Are you okay?” she asks, snapping me back to the present.
“Yeah, but so much for bonding with our communities,” I say, feeling a bit defeated.
