by J B Black
Surely, Ælfweard still loved him.
Throwing open the door to their room, William swallowed back the panic rising in his throat at the sight of Ælfweard packing to return to his home for the winter.
“You’re leaving,” the warlock whispered.
Ælfweard’s brow furrowed, but he kept his gaze on the sweaters he folded. “Of course. It’s winter break. Wizard Hampstead is teleporting students back home.”
“Right...okay…”
William crossed the room. When he touched Ælfweard’s shoulder, the wizard froze. His eyes widened, and the agony which contorted his features pushed down the anxiety in William’s heart. He loved this man. Temporary or not, he wanted whatever time he had with him, and if Ælfweard wanted to ignore fate alongside him, then he would want for nothing else.
“William…”
“I love you,” the warlock professed. “I know we’re not mates, and I hate that, but I don’t care. I want to be with you for however long you’ll have me.”
Ælfweard’s lips trembled. His eyes watered, and he looked away, glaring at the window as if the light would push down the emotions bubbling to the surface. “William...please…”
“Even mates aren’t guaranteed forever. We’re mortal no matter how long our lives are, Ælfweard, and I just want to spend however long I have with you,” William told his roommate. “Please, Ælfweard, I should have said that in the arena, but I was a coward, and when we weren’t mates —”
“We are mates!” Ælfweard cried, pulling away.
Blinking, William stared in disbelief. “W-what?”
“We. Are. Mates.” Shaking his head, the wizard bit his lip, struggling and failing to push down the grief welling up inside him. “We are mates, William. I felt it when we kissed, and maybe this bond is one-sided, or maybe you don’t really want me, but you are my mate, and I can’t — I can’t be your right now when you’re my forever.”
Stunned, the warlock stood frozen as the wizard grabbed his bag and fled the room. As his mind caught up, William spun, chasing after him. “Wait! Ælfweard!”
The stone of the tower trembled, and the warlock fell back as the wizard ran from him, and every time he tried to teleport, the blocks he had used in the arena were turned against him, leaving him baffled. He hadn’t taken the time to explain them to Ælfweard, and though he might have been proud in other circumstances to see the blond use warlock techniques, they prevented him from catching up, leaving him scrambling and calling out futilely. Running through the main hall, the dark-haired warlock watched in horror as Ælfweard stepped up to Wizard Hampstead and, without looking back, disappeared from William’s view.
Chapter Sixteen
Never had William heard of a bond going unrecognized when both mates were free of curses. Packing his bags, William teleported back to his home, tossing his things aside in his room as he searched through his parents’ spellbooks and pulled up his laptop for the first time since arriving at Aelion Academy. There had to be an explanation. Perhaps Ælfweard got it wrong. Maybe the sensation of kissing someone that one loved matched well with the surge of rightness which came with a fated mate’s first kiss.
Or maybe William was cursed. Perhaps Ælfweard himself had one from the Blythe family. It wouldn’t be entirely outside reality if the Blythe family cursed Ælfweard when he was young and introduced to them in hopes of his mother rejoining the family and preventing the blond wizard from running off in a similar manner, but that wouldn’t make sense if Ælfweard felt the bond and William didn’t. None of it made sense.
“I would know,” the warlock insisted.
“Know what?”
Jumping, William spun to face his younger sister. Still in her winter coat, Agatha stood in the doorway to the study, untangling her scarf from around her as she dripped melting snow onto the wood floors.
“For fuck’s sake, Agatha! I should put a bell on you,” he cursed. His eyes narrowed, and he glanced around for a clock. “Shouldn’t you still be at school?”
Scoffing, she rolled her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be in England?”
“Scotland, and I’m one of the top students in my class, so I got to come home early,” William snapped back.
Agatha’s eyes studied the room, sliding over the open texts. “And you’ve decided to spend your break studying string theory?”
“Agatha! Where’s the hot chocolate gone?” Stomping up behind her, Casey popped into the room. Her eyes lit up, and she flung herself forward with a squeal of glee. “William!”
He caught her, pulling her into a tight hug. “Hey, Casey.”
“Agatha refused to drive me to Feduci’s, and I want eclairs. Grab your keys,” his youngest sister demanded, racing back out of the room again.
“Wait? What? No, Casey, I’m not driving you anywhere,” he yelled after her. With a sigh, he ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “Seriously? This is what I come home to? I’m not your chauffeur!”
Agatha picked up one of the texts her brother had consulted. “Did you find your mate?”
“No,” William snapped. Then guilt roiled in his stomach. “Maybe.” He glared. “Shut up!”
Smirking devilishly, she cackled. “Only you wouldn’t know if you found your mate. You’re such an idiot. You probably were too busy being a nerd to notice, right?”
“Says the girl who wants to talk to animals.”
“Talking to animals is cool,” Agatha retorted, setting the book back down in the pile. “You’re the weirdo who decided to go to a wizarding school because you’re a nerd. You don’t even care about alchemy. It’s like, what? Advanced transformagrafication?”
Unable or unwilling to dignify her accusation with a retort, William waved a hand at her, sending her winter outerwear to its proper place and cleaning the mess she had made tracking snow into the house. “You’re damn lucking Mom didn’t catch you stomping into the house with those nasty boots on. Were you communing with dog shit again?”
“Ohh, burn,” Agatha snarked, rolling her eyes. “Seriously though, did you find your mate or what?”
William groaned. “Or what.”
“No.”
His shoulders sagged, and the warlock collapsed into the tall back chair beside the study’s fireplace. “I had no idea, Aggie.”
With a huff, Agatha set her hands upon her hips. “Alright then. Talk it out, and we’ll figure this out. Mom and Dad had to go to Aunt Lucy’s, so we’ve got the study to ourselves until tomorrow.”
“Is Aunt Lucy okay?”
“Of course, she is. She threw out her back snowboarding off her roof. Seriously, if I’m not that badass at a hundred and twelve, I have failed in life,” Agatha informed him.
From down the hall, Casey screamed, “Come on, William! You know I haven’t mastered teleportation.”
“We’re in the middle of a crisis,” Agatha yelled back at their sister.
Without missing a beat, the youngest of the three retorted, “All the more reason for eclairs!”
Turning to face William, Agatha sighed. “You know she won’t give up on this one.”
“Fine. Driving might get me out of this headspace and give me some time to think,” William grumbled, summoning his wallet and the keys which had been in Agatha’s coat pocket. “Ugh, Mom’s car? I hate the van.”
“It’s better than nothing.” Shuffling through the books, she asked. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything on the first kiss. How intense is it? Can it sometimes be missed? Oh! And look for anything which accurately gives information about someone’s mate. Initials or type of magic user. Anything that could be used to confirm a mate if the first kiss was one-sided,” William told her as he headed down the hall to where Casey stood impatiently.
Agatha followed him with her arms crossed. “One-sided fated mates exist. You know I wouldn’t want that for you, but if they didn’t feel —”
“They weren’t the ones who didn’t recognize it,” William said, cutting her o
ff.
Brows rising, both his sisters stared at him. Casey came out first, grabbing him by the forearm. “Eclairs and explanations in the car.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Agatha promised.
***
William had no idea what he expected. Having faith that his mate would find him and their romance would be incredible, the warlock had never bothered to focus on studying the strings of fate. No one in his family had a talent for it. He never regretted anything more.
“This is dumb,” he grumbled, glaring down at the apple in his hand. “I’m biased. What if I cut it in his initials?”
“First initial,” Agatha corrected. “And how are you going to purposefully cut an ash.”
Casey’s nose wrinkled. “I can’t believe there’s actually a name for the combined a-e thingy.”
“It is a letter,” William pointed out, and with a deep breath, he cut the peel, murmuring the incantation beneath his breath. He tossed it over his shoulder and closed his eyes. “Fuck. I can’t look. What is it?”
“It’s an apple peel on my nice clean floors.” All three siblings spun to face their mother, but William’s eyes darted down to the peel on the floor. It didn’t look like any letter at all. “What’s going on?”
“We were trying to find the first initial of William’s mate,” Casey readily informed her.
Frowning, their mother sighed. “That method is very inconsistent. I did it before I met your father, and I was convinced I saw a F for Frank, my boyfriend at the time, but he broke up with me the next week after finding his mate at a festival.”
Agatha hummed. “And F isn’t close to D for Daniel.”
“No, it isn’t, so pick up that peel and put it in the trash where it belongs,” their mother told them. “I’m here to pick up a few ingredients for another healing potion. I forgot your Aunt Lucy doesn’t keep chamomile on hand.”
Scooping up the peel, William chucked it in the trash and dropped the knife in the sink before shoving the apple at Agatha. “If that spell won’t tell me, how am I supposed to figure it out? I didn’t feel anything when he kissed me, but he did.”
“Though rare, one-sided bonds exist,” their mother replied as he followed her toward her study where she kept her potted chamomile. “William!” she gasped. “I expect you to clean this too!”
“But I love him,” William insisted. “Maybe I’m cursed, or he is. His mother rejected a betrothal and was disowned after running away with her fated mate, so maybe —”
Collecting chamomile, she interrupted, “I have only ever heard of two cases of one-sided bonding. The first happened due to a curse and was ultimately reversed; however, the cursed individual didn’t feel the bond. In the second, the bond was originally reciprocal but became one-sided after one of the partners requested the mating to be broken.”
“I haven’t requested anything to be broken, and we’ve already run every test for curses we could think of,” William groaned, sinking into the high-back chair.
Standing, his mother turned to face him. “I’ve never looked much into strings, so there might be more cases that I don’t know about, but if you love this young man, I can’t imagine you felt nothing when you kissed.”
True, William had felt something. After they fought in the arena with the battle magic students, his pulse raced. Every fiber in his body thrummed with excitement, but that hadn’t been because of the kiss. Boundless energy filled him before that. When he told his mother, she hummed softly and sat on the edge of her desk, careful to avoid the mess of books he and Agatha had piled there.
“And did you two kiss again after that?”
William shook his head. “He withdrew, and things got awkward.”
“Understandable. His heart just got broken. I doubt you were much happier,” she pointed out.
“I kind of expected it,” William confessed. “There was no way we were mates. At least...that’s what I thought.”
Tilting her head, she asked, “Why’d you think that?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“I don’t know. He’s smart and handsome, and at first, I really wanted him, but he said something stupid, and I don’t even remember what it was anymore — just that it hurt and was prejudice about warlocks, and somebody like Ælfweard who already has it tough because of his parents shouldn’t fall in love with somebody like me,” William proclaimed, pulling his knees to his chest as he wrapped his arms around them. “They hate us, Mom. Wizards think witches and warlocks are just — just mortal succubi sent to spread our legs and be some sort of sick sexual fantasy for them.”
Shaking her head, his mother sighed. “Your father was worried this would happen.”
“When has Dad ever come into contact with a wizard?” William grumbled.
“Wizards have always been a reclusive bunch. Druids, sorcerers, even seers — they’ve adapted with the times like witches and warlocks, but wizards…” she trailed off, frowning as she considered her words carefully. “They’ve always been a divisive lot, and no matter how enchanting books might make them seem, the reality remains they hold on to some of the most elitist, stereotypical views in all of magickind.”
Though most of his semester supported every word his mother said, William found his mind shifting to Petra, Tilly, and Ælfweard. “They aren’t all like that.”
“Of course not, sweetie.”
With a sigh, William deflated. “I don’t know what to do, Mom. I love him, but there was so much going on. What if we’re not really mates? What if he’s the one that got it wrong?”
“Then you’ll deal with that when it comes along,” his mother told him. “You can plan and plan for the future, but you can’t foresee everything. If you love him and want to be with him, then you’ve got to tell him.”
“But I did.”
“And what did he say?”
Glaring at the fire, the warlock huffed, “He said we were mates.”
“So he didn’t reject you?”
Sitting up, William stared at his mother as the gears in his head slowly started turning. “Ælfweard said he couldn’t be my ‘right now’ because I was his forever, but I don’t want him to be just for now. What am I supposed to do? I can’t promise him that.”
“No one can promise anyone forever, mate or not,” his mother replied.
William ran his hand through his hair, tugging at the dark strands. “There’s a guy at school who has glasses that can see the string. I think that might be the only way, but...but if we aren’t…”
“Then you’re right back to where you are, which means you have nothing to lose.” Pushing away from the desk, she crossed, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “You’re an incredibly intelligent and determined young man. If you think this Ælfweard is worth fighting for, don’t let the what-ifs get the better of you this time.” Taking his face in her hands, she waited until he met her gaze to ask, “Do you need me to stay?”
Shaking his head, William told her, “Nah. Casey made me get a stupid number of pastries, and Agatha cued up every TV show I’ve missed. I promised to order pizza, so I think I’ve got a perfect mopey evening.”
“If you change your mind, I’ve got my cell.” His mother pressed another kiss to his forehead, pulling him into a quick hug. “It’s great to have you home.” With a mischievous smirk, she added, “Even better, you lasting through the first semester just won me a weekend in Iceland with your father!”
William’s brow furrowed. “I thought you were betting on me getting kicked out?”
“Oh, honey, I’m always betting on you being as amazing as I know you are,” she told him before she waved goodbye and teleported away.
Chapter Seventeen
Returning to Aelion, William teleported into the main hall and ran up the stairs to the alchemy tower. His heart raced, and as Wizard Workneh had told him, his single room was prepared and unlocked for him with ease. A simple note sat on the desk, forewarning him from further misch
ief, but as he tossed his bag on the bed, he ran up the stairs to Gilroy’s room. He knocked on the door, drumming against it in a quickening tempo in hopes the copper-haired warlock had returned as well.
“Come on — come on,” he chanted.
When the door finally opened, he pushed inside, barely taking the time to notice Wulfric sprawled on Gilroy’s couch in pants and nothing else.
“I need the string glass,” William informed the other warlock, searching around the room as if the other would have such a rare item on display.
Gilroy sighed. “Oh, hello, William. Lovely to see you too.”
“Gil,” Wulfric said, drawing out his mate’s name. “Play nicely with the panicking American warlock.”
“Really? You’re coming to his defense?” the copper-haired man demanded. Running his hands through his hair as his mate gave him a simple shrug, Gilroy shook his head. “It’s in the display next to my necromancy texts. Top shelf, third bookshelf to the left of the dining table.”
“Thank you!”
William raced over, opening the case and plucking the glasses. He slipped them on, and the world alighted with strings before narrowing as his eyes adjusted. His heart thundered. As he slowly raised his hands, the warlock found himself questioning if he would even find a red string about his left ring finger. Sure enough, the red delicate tendril looped about his finger and stretched into distance.
“You won’t be able to touch it, but you should be able to follow it. When you’re in front of your mate, it shrinks, so the connection should be easy to see,” Gilroy instructed as he sat down upon Wulfric’s lap.
The taller magic user shifted, settling his large hands on either side of his mate. The red string upon his left — which rested on the curve of Gilroy’s belly and revealed what his loose robes had hidden — connected neatly with Gilroy’s which came to rest upon it.
