“Once upon a time,” Leif began, smiling up at the ceiling when Alec made a tiny, exhausted giggle at the line. Smiles were rare. He gently tightened his grip on Alec, who snuggled in even more.
“In a far off land, along the seaside cliffs of what would one day be Denmark, a very long time ago, an evil vampire and an even eviler witch decided they wanted to be together forever,” Leif began his tale, and he could tell Alec was listening, not quite limp in the way of deep sleep. Hopefully this tale wouldn’t give him nightmares. “But as everyone knows, vampires can only mate where true love flourishes, and neither the vampire nor the witch were the kind of souls capable of truly loving someone more than their own selfish desires. Obsession and lust could not grow a soulbond, so desperation and greed turned to murder.”
He paused, and Alec stirred a bit, nuzzling into Leif’s chest, warm breath brushing across his skin. “Keep going.”
Leif gave up waiting for Alec to fall asleep and took up the tale again. “The evil witch concocted a spell to tie her to her vampire lover for eternity, since the soulbond failed to grow between them. She hunted for victims to steal their years of life, and keep them for herself so she need never grow old and die. Humans had too short a lifespan to interest her, and the fae were impossible to trap and kill. Vampires spurned her lover and he lacked a clan to provide unsuspecting victims, so she turned her eye to the werewolves.”
“Oh no,” Alec whispered, likely guessing where the story was going, arms holding Leif tightly, as if afraid he might disappear into the dark.
Leif hummed in agreement with Alec’s dismay. “The evil witch, with her lover, hunted for werewolves, and in the depths of a moonless night killed a small pack, sacrificing the children to fuel her dark magics. Whispers of the atrocities they committed spread through the forests and glens, and packs united to stop them. Alphas led hunting parties after the killers, but the vampire was old, strong, and willing to kill to protect his lover. The witch was canny and skilled, and obsessed with immortality. The losses were great.”
Memories of funeral pyres and the howls of grief echoing through empty forests rose up, and he took a moment to breathe in the warmth of the man in his arms. Nearly a thousand years later and he held proof that no spell lasted forever.
“What happened next?” Alec whispered, barely awake.
Leif was feeling tired too, but he wanted tofinish the story.
“A young alpha, full of bravery and not much sense, tracked the vampire back to his witch, and they fought. Nearly dying, the alpha prevailed against the vampire by pure luck, having attacked near dawn when the earliest rays of sunlight weakened the old vampire enough that the werewolf took his head, but not without being grievously wounded himself.”
Blood, hot in his mouth and on his skin, haunted his memories. The bitter vampire blood, not sweet as humans claimed, choked his senses, and he remembered dropping the headless corpse and collapsing to the forest floor a few steps away from his defeated enemy.
A scream of rage heralded the witch’s appearance from the trees, and the flash of silver as she struck with a wickedly sharp athame, plunging it into his chest and narrowly missing his heart.
“The witch stabbed the alpha as he lay wounded not far from her dead lover, missing his heart, and he struck out in reflex, claws ripping her from throat to belly. She had enough breath in her to lay a curse, her own life’s blood giving it power as she died.”
Alec was on the edge of sleep, but fingertips gently ran over the scar on Leif’s chest. “What was the curse?” The words hung in the still, quiet air, too soft to reach farther than the comfortable softness of the bed.
“To die, but not alone—the cursed blade was meant to drain the life from an alpha, along with every member of their pack, using the pack bonds, stealing their long lives and power and giving it to the witch.” Leif sighed before finishing the tale. “The wounded alpha knew he would die unless he removed the blade, but he was too hurt for control, and the athame broke within his flesh when he tried to pull out the blade. A part remained lodgedin his flesh, behind bone and muscle, but the breaking of the blade blunted the worst of the curse, and he lived. But not without cost.”
Alec was silent, and Leif wondered if he was awake enough to hear the end of the tale. “Instead of draining his life-force and leaving him a husk of fur and bone, the broken athame and weakened curse became instead a siphon of life magics. Instead of draining the alpha, the curse pulled from the pack bonds, eating away at his family, friends, loved ones. He healed, but his mere proximity weakened any wolf he shared a bond with, and so in the end, he still lost everything. Any werewolf he shared a bond with was in danger. They would never be safe. So he became an alpha without a pack, and carried a curse that killed any chance of gaining a new pack. And so the alpha left behind his people and his homeland, and wandered the world for a thousand years until he found a small, abandoned mine and made a den, still carrying a curse that can’t be lifted.”
Alec was asleep, totally limp, breathing slowly. He figured that was for the best. Alec wouldn’t remember the sad tale, and Leif could avoid the pity that usually came his way when someone learned of his…affliction.
With the witch dead, the years she had already stolen from innocent lives cut short went instead to Leif. A healthy werewolf might see five to six centuries before dying of old age—he was cursed with the life-force of every werewolf killed by the blade, potentially a dozen or more lifespans, and he suspected he had a few thousand more years to go before he saw his first gray hair.
After a thousand years, with the witch long dead and the curse a mess, the tip of the silver blade burningwhenever he stayed too long among his own kind, he had given up trying to lift the curse and retreated from the world.
Practitioners of all types and creeds tried to remove the curse, but the consensus was that it was tied too indelibly to his flesh and blood, and removing the silver blade would require an intrusive surgery his own nature would compromise. He healed too fast for a surgeon to remove the metal, and the curse drained his heart and soul if anyone tried defeating the magic and leaving the metal behind. Removing the curse would kill him, and removing the metal was an impossible task of butchery he refused to ask of any surgeon.
The silver didn’t hurt him, not anymore. His body covered it in scar tissue and he was in many ways immune to the effects of silver after constant exposure. It wasn’t fatal to him, not like human stories claimed. Not anymore. The early years he suffered through sporadic illnesses and spates of weakness until his body grew accustomed to the toxic invasion and adapted.
All he had in the end was an ache in his chest to match the loss of his people, and he got by as best he could.
Yet now Fate sent him a gift, in the most unusual fashion, so maybe he wasn’t meant to be alone. He never thought his future might include a wildflower-scented young man with pretty gray eyes and a smile that lit up a room.
No avoiding it, not really. Fate somehow decided his time had come, and his mate was at last in his arms. Whether he lived to see his happily-ever-after remained to be seen, but he had hope now, instead of endless years of loneliness.
Chapter 5
Alec
He was in bed with a giant werewolf.
That was the first thought that crossed his mind when he opened his eyes in the dim light the next morning—at least, he assumed it was morning. Wherever he was, and no matter his bedmate, he was far more comfortable than he had been in weeks—hell, years.
Living with his stepfather had been stressful and frustrating and he was glad to be free, though he wanted to visit Stu merely to see the fear in his eyes when Alec punched his smarmy face. Stu was a grade-A asshole and deserved to reap every drop of karma Alec could wrangle up, but none of that was currently as pressing as his need to pee.
He remembered everything from the day and night before, mind clearer and body on its way to healing now that the magic-nulling shackles were off and he had a decent meal in his belly after weeks of junk food and dirty cistern water.
