The Cursed

Bryan

As I stared at myself in the mirror while fixing my tie, I could see an exhausted wraith looking back at me. I had dark, nearly black circles under my eyes from years of little to no sleep piling up against me.

It had been a long five years since I took the throne from my father, and there was still so much left to do. There was always something to address. For every item I crossed off my list to build the pack in the way I envisioned, fresh new hellish problems emerged that I had to deal with—problems that haunted me every night, issues that plagued my thoughts on repeat, attacking my weary mind. For me, sleep meant worry, not dreams.

Between creating the patrol charts, organizing the schedules, and overseeing every other detail while running the pack, my job never seemed finished. Yet, the urge to find my mate grew.

I tried to dismiss it, as finding a mate felt like a distraction from getting the real work done, but I could never fully suppress the urge of the beast inside me.

So, I made time to look. I visited many packs throughout the kingdom over the last five years in search of her. My lycan, Shawn constantly paced within me, making me feel like a caged animal desperate to find her.

A mate could ease the growing tension between Shawn and me. As much as I understood the need to find my mate, I didn't want to feel chained to someone for the rest of my life just yet or to burden someone else with my mountain of problems.

My father always said it was better to be with a mate than with other females, but I was still young. Thirty is young for a lycan. It isn't until someone reaches over one hundred that anyone starts to call a lycan old. I still had time to find her.

Maybe I should take a break from this distraction and refocus on my work. I needed to get into a better headspace to find a mate.

My eyes flashed blue as Shawn surged to the surface to confront me. No. Find mate now. End the curse.

It always annoyed me when he chose to do this. The constant push to find my mate only frustrated me. Shawn acted like one of my annoying advisors or needy subjects, but I couldn't shut myself away from something that could boil up inside me. I could see the redness of my skin creeping up my neck as I contemplated throwing my lycan into a mental cage just to make him stop.

Unfortunately, most of the time, that didn't work either.

The anger grew as I realized what Shawn had mentioned: the curse. That fucking curse.

Following my father's sudden death and my subsequent ascension to the throne, I began casually dating to find a mate. Nothing ever serious, but at least a few months to find someone to choose as my luna, in case I never found my mate. Not everyone finds their fated mate in this world, and I refused to believe I would find mine.

It was only a year or so ago that the other alphas in the neighboring kingdoms found their mates. Alaric's mate, Tala, turned out to be a white lycan, bringing peace to their kingdom like nothing I had ever seen before. If only there were more females like her, then I would be on the hunt daily to find mine. But alas, there is only one white lycan. Even Talon found his mate, but that's only recently been solidified. It took them a few years to find theirs, so I knew there wasn't much of a chance I'd find mine within a short time frame.

So casual dating it became, and it led me to being cursed.

Witches weren't common throughout the kingdoms, but they existed. There were far fewer witches than lycans, and sightings were rare. Some didn't even believe they existed. Yet I found one at a tavern during one of my trips to visit a pack. That woman must have bewitched me because I couldn't stop myself from taking her to my bed. I heard rumors that witches were wild in the bedroom, and those rumors were true. I spent two months with the witch before I realized it was nothing more than sex and that it distracted me from my pack duties. I called off the relationship.

She was a witch, not a lycan. I couldn't mark her even if I wanted to.

And then the bitch turned around and cursed me in a language I didn't understand. Whatever details there were about what she did to me were known only to her.

Since then, my hunt for a mate and my sex life had become painfully slow. Every female I met felt off-putting. Grating. Nothing about them made me want to bring them to my bed for some fun after realizing they weren't my mate. It frustrated me to no end, with the witch's laugh echoing in my mind each time I turned down a female.

Karma is such a bitch, huh?