#Chapter 2 - Curse

Atwood

I find it amusing that I didn’t even have to track down my runaway bride.

She simply climbed into my car, completely oblivious to the fact that I am the man she was running away from.

I admit, I didn’t believe her story about her grandmother. Her story about the wedding gown and the wild dog was laughable, but I kept it to myself. It wouldn’t hurt to take her where she wanted to go just in case she was telling the truth about her sick grandmother, and besides, we could catch her if she tried to make another run for it.

I could catch her.

Hunting women down is the last thing I want to be doing, truly. I mean Ruby no harm, even though she unknowingly said some awful, untrue things about me in the car. In time, she’ll learn that those things aren’t true. I’m not like my parents.

Still, I have no choice but to marry this girl. She’s barely  nineteen, three years younger than me, but it’s fate.

All of this mess started about a month ago.

I was sitting in my study one morning, enjoying a cup of tea as the sunlight streamed through the large window. There was fog still on the ground; the sun hadn’t yet warmed the chill of the early autumn morning. Autumn is my favorite time of year, when the world is in a lovely and vibrant state of imminent death.

My phone rang, yanking me out of my daydream. I sighed and picked it up, still holding my teacup in my other hand.

“Hello?”

“My Lord,” a familiar voice said on the other end of the phone. “It’s Doctor Yang.”

“Good morning, doctor,” I replied. “What brought you to call me this morning?”

There was a silence on the doctor’s end before he spoke again.

“I’ve looked over your test results from last week. Would you be available to come into the office today for a consultation?”

I sighed, having a good feeling that I knew why he wanted me to come in, and set down my teacup with more force than I had expected, causing the cup to break and tea to spill out onto my desk. I swore and jumped up from my seat, ringing the bell for the servants to come and clean it up.

“My Lord?” Doctor Yang said curiously.

“Uh, yes,” I replied, “I can be there within the hour.” I switched the phone from my right ear to my left and pointed silently at the mess as the housekeeper, Alive, came in, then I shrugged and mouthed a silent apology to her.

“Excellent,” Doctor Yang said. “I will see you soon.”

I hung up and called for my beta, Kayne, to pull the car around while I put on my coat and readied myself. Within a few minutes, we were on the way to see the doctor.

“Trouble, Atwood?” Kayne said, glancing at me in the rear view mirror.

I nodded and looked out the window at my castle as it shrunk into the distance. “Always trouble,” I said.

When we arrived at the office, Doctor Yang was waiting for me. He showed me into his office and gestured for me to sit down as he stood behind his desk with his hands clasped behind his back.

“I’m sure you know why I asked you to come here so urgently,” he said.

I nodded.

He cleared his throat and scratched his chin before speaking again, and as he spoke, he paced back and forth.

“I’m afraid your condition is getting worse,” he said morosely. “The scans of your brain don’t look good.”

“You say that every month,” I said with a smirk.

For two years, Doctor Yang had been scanning my brain and telling me that I was one step closer to psychosis every month. Still, I was here despite everything, and ruling my kingdom with no trouble whatsoever. Sure, I had nightmares, but I could handle those just fine. In my waking life, I was as alert and sane as ever.

Doctor Yang sighed heavily and sat down at his desk, pulling out a folder with test results inside. He opened the folder to reveal the image of my brain and slid it toward me.

I picked up the image and studied it.

“Yes, the shadow is still there. We’ve been over this,” I said with a bit of an attitude, and set the scan back down in front of the doctor. I stood, slipping my coat back on.

“No, Atwood, you don’t understand!” The small, normally benign doctor stood suddenly and slammed his fist down on the table, glaring up at me with frustration drawn across his face. I was shocked, to say the least.

The doctor sighed again and shrunk back down into his chair. “The shadow is larger, and several shades darker than it was on the last scan. If you don’t find a mate within three months at most, you will not only face a decline in all physical indicators, but outright insanity, internal bleeding, psychosis, and even death.”

It wasn’t unheard of for werewolves to go insane and die if they didn’t find a mate in time. Still, I had more important duties to attend to, and I felt fine! Why should I rush to find my mate when I had a kingdom to run?

“Beta Kayne tells me that you intend on going to war with the Bears,” Doctor Yang said sheepishly. I clenched my fists, angry that my Beta had spilled our secrets. “If you don’t take this seriously, I can guarantee you that the bear tribes to the north will take advantage of your insanity. They will win the war, and when they do, you know what will happen. No man, woman, or child will survive.”

In a fit of rage that I couldn’t control, I swung around and punched the wall as hard as I could. The wall crumpled around my fist, leaving a hole. When I came to my senses, I turned back to the doctor and profusely apologized, promising to pay to repair the damage.

He seemed unbothered, and was simply scrawling something on a piece of paper.

“I know someone,” he said, handing me the paper. It contained a name and a phone number. “Call her. She has ways to help you find your mate.”

When I arrived at home, I was seething. I stormed off to my room and paced back and forth furiously, crumpling and uncrumpling the paper in my hand as the doctor’s words echoed in my mind.

My door opened without a knock, and my mother stepped in.

“I won’t see a witch,” I growled, to which my mother simply came and guided me to the bed, laying me down and resting her cool hand on my hot forehead. I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth.

My mother didn’t speak for a long time, but when she did, her voice was low and soft.

“Perhaps it would be worth a try,” she said, taking the paper out of my hands.

The witch found my mate almost immediately.

“Your mate is named Ruby,” she said. Her eyes were rolled back in her head as her hands rested on her crystal ball. “She is young and plain, but will grow to be a great beauty. Her hair… It’s as white as snow.”

The witch gave me my mate’s coordinates, and within a week, I was neck-deep in wedding preparations. They had found Ruby, and while she didn’t seem pleased at the arranged marriage, my mother assured me that her wolf would come to love me. The only caveat was that using a witch to find my mate removed my ability to mark Ruby, so it was of the utmost importance that her wolf recognize me and mark me first.

If she didn’t… It would be a disaster.

When the white-haired young girl leaped out of the forest in her wedding dress and climbed naively into my car, I’ll admit I was pleased with her looks. I merely needed a mate so that I could continue running the kingdom, but still… It was nice to know that I was attracted to her.

As we sat in the car, my wolf desperately searched for her wolf, to no avail. It was as if her wolf wasn’t there, despite the fact that she’s nearly  nineteen and that most teenagers discover their wolves by sixteen at the latest.

“She has the scent of a wolf on her,” my wolf said to me in frustration, “but her wolf won’t come out to meet me, won’t respond to me. Or, she doesn’t have a wolf at all.”

“No,” I answered in my mind. “I can see it in her eyes. She just needs a little more time.”

I knew that she had made a run.

Truth be told, the girl’s spunky nature turns me on.

I decided to take her away.