?“I choose – ”
?“YOU CHOSE NOTHING!” she roars. Her hands slamming into her desk as she stands and her aura ravages the space. Dominating all of us withrawpower. Not blue flame, not lightning, not blood – raw, uncontrollable, wild magic. “There is never a choice in fate. I had just told you that. Fate is always set no matter what path you take or how long you try to delay. And thisfatebetween us means nothing in regard to whether we’re compatible, or right for each other, or that we love each other. It simply means a power higher than the primordials wanted to play with their magic.”
?Her head bows and I can feel the agony threading through Varian, Callahan, and Castiel’s aura. Their magic dimming from her words. It makes me want to strangle her delicate little neck because that is not what it means to be fated.
?“You’re wrong.”
?For once my voice is not lazy. Not drawling. I force my aura into my tone, feeding my wrath into it because that way of thinking is barbaric. This cannot be the same Mavyllora Esmirra would speak about. This cannot be her.
?“You’re not worthy to have them as your fated. To believe that is what it means.”
?She still refuses to look at me. “You don’t think I know that.” Her voice is barely loud enough for me to hear even while straining my ears. “You don’t think,” she seethes, her tone rising, “that I wouldn’t beg to the gods orcursemyself even more than I already am just so you all wouldn’t have to be connected to me? So you wouldn’t have to betrappedwithme!”
?She finally raises her head and all-consuming eyes, burning eyes,cursedeyes look at me. Her body trembling with so much emotion I can’t differentiate each feeling.
?And within. . . thatthing, it begs with a need for her.
?We’re not fated.
?“IknowI’m not worthy. IknowI’m not good enough. Iknowyou all will never be happy with me because I am cursed and broken andnothing.” She raises from her desk and with a crack and glitch of red she appears in front of me. “I was tortured in ways you will never comprehend. These scars on my body, they’re only the ones made from weapons embedded with blue belladon. He had skinned my entire leg for my seventh birthday. He whipped my back until there was no flesh left when I was eight.”
?Her eyes consume me. Her aura, her scent. . . there’s nothing else but her.
?“You know he was an empath,” she continues. Her voice deadly calm – no fluctuation, no hesitation, no remorse. “He had been waiting until my tenth birthday to actually stick his dick into me, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t use his fingers, didn’t use his tongue, didn’tforceme to orgasm. I wasn’t even nine yet the first time he forced my body to do it. With his fangs sunk into my inner thigh, his venom and empathic magic working through my body.
?“I am broken. I am tainted. I am worthless. You will never be happy with me because there will always be him before. You will never be satisfied with me because I never learned how to please I only know how to be used. You will never have a future because heshredded. My. Fucking. Uterus. And the scars? The bitemarks? The claiming mark he made. . . they will never fade.
?“Do you know what it feels like to never have a choice?” she whispers. She stares straight into my eyes and I bare everything to her. “This is the closest you will ever feel to knowing what it feels like. Because this is not a choice.”
?My soul pulls. Stretching to its limit towards her begging to connect. To cement the tie within us because wearefated. Wearemeant to be together. Wearemeant for each other.
?“I will find a way to rip my soul out so you can be rid of me. So you can make your own choices.”
?But that’s wrong.
?“You can’t change fate,” I whisper to her.
?She’s so close I can see a thin ring of black and silver at the edge of her iris. So close, connected, and yet I can’t see past red eyes that turn remorseful.
?“This fate is connected to our souls. A being can live without a soul.”
?“Amonstercan live without a soul,” I correct softly. “Let us show you you don’t have to be alone.”
?The door slams open and we all turn to icy blue eyes shining with slyness and the Dean furious.
?“Varian Asier,” he rumbles with a quiet rage. “What the fuck is going on here?”
?Darian raises a brow at me and then slides his eyes to Mavyn. He tisks at us and then lifts his hand to curl his finger at her. “Trouble, trouble. You’ll be coming with me now.”
?Rage swells and my shadow forms form around us in defense.
?“Don’t start, Arcturus,” the Dean growls as Darian grins at me.
?“Let’s go, Trouble,” the angel calls. To my astonishment she obliges.
?Before she is out of my reach I grab her arm and pull her back to me. “Why are you going with him? Why were you in his house last night?”
?Her burning eyes turn away from me but she wrenches her arm out of my hand. “You can ask Castiel what happened the last time someone demanded I tell them what I am doing that does not concern them. We may be fated, but our fate is not cemented and you do not own me.”
