Chapter 7: My Lost Mate
Arisara
Something wasn’t right with me. Maybe it was the trauma Prayut forced me to relive or maybe it was the reeking stench of rafflesia that had my body shuddering. The packhouse was nowhere near the jungle so where was this putrid sulfurous odor coming from?
My heart was drumming double its usual speed and my breaths were shorter and more desperate. I needed oxygen, yet I couldn’t endure the reeking fumigation surrounding me. Trying to breathe through my mouth only worsened my light-headedness, and abruptly my legs crippled.
...
“GET AWAY FROM HER!” Prayut exclaimed so fervently that it awakened me from my intermittent slumber.
I batted my eyelids trying to restore my vision. Oscillating my head in all directions, I felt a silk-like hand around my right tricep. As my husband was screaming obscenities incessantly in the background, I looked down to see five innocent fingers on my blanched skin. The touch ignited my capillaries sending all the blood from my heart to the spot on my arm. I felt Anurak’s tangled hair brush against the scar on my cheek, as he backed away in fear of my husband’s retaliation. As his fingers released their grip, all the blood dispersed throughout my body; I felt ordinary and cold.
“I was concerned by her fall,” Anurak expressed, anxiously.
The scene was clear: my husband was distantly standing down the white sandstone walkway near the packhouse’s main entrance, with no intention to help. With each step forward that Anurak took, my husband matched his steps in retreat. As much as I yearned for my friend’s touch, I knew it would only dangerously increase my appetite to leave Thonburi with him. If I left the capital, all h*ll would break lose under Prayut, so it was my duty as Luna to stand by my people to endure the h*ll before it reached them.
“YOU LEAVE HERE N-“
“Please, that’s enough!” I managed enough air to release a call for solace. I had enough of the monotone air sirens, the cicadas chirping in the oppressive heat, the raindrops battering the pavement, and most of all, my husband’s wretched squealing. Between my father dying, Anurak re-appearing, Prayut claiming the pack, and my body surrendering to my cursed fate, today was too overwhelming to withstand. I didn’t care that the abrasive pavement brush burned my tender skin; I wanted to sit here and never return to the d*mned h*ll pit inside the packhouse walls.
My plea appeared to work as nobody around me spoke a word.
“I hate to be a nuisance but I think it’s time you should know,” Manow uttered from the depths of my soul which had me fuming.
“You couldn’t give me five minutes of peace!” I cried hysterically, with my frustrated tears masked by the rain firing at the pavement.
“If you would’ve listened to me four years ago, then I wouldn’t have to interrupt now,” Manow said, tossing attitude into her snarky retort.
“You know I can’t change how things happened in the past!” I’ve spent innumerous sleepless nights pleading with the Moon Goddess to forgive my family for our treachery. I’ve atoned for the mistakes of others who created this barbaric ruthlessness. I’ve endured countless scars from my husband’s bedroom assaults. And, I’ve begged, praying on my knees, to my husband, to release me from this marriage. “Nothing you told me then could have prepared me for the life I was fated to suffer!” I whimpered, gasping for air between each sentence, as phlegm slid down my nostril.
At a time like this the person I missed most was my mother. Meh’s embrace served as a resistive barrier to all the wounds trying to penetrate my frail physique. She used her spunky charisma to make me chuckle, and commended me for even the smallest accomplishments. In an effort to distract me from my father’s wrath, Meh sacrificed her happiness for mine.
For nine months, I wrestled around in my mother’s belly, impatiently sending her a signal to let me out. Days went by, and I was stuck in the moist chasm of darkness. It was like my mother was sending me a message: the world outside was too dangerous for me. Restless, I kicked some more, and my mother conceded. Out into the world I came, two weeks late, against Meh’s forewarning. Regrettably, I should have listened and never crawled out.
As she did best, Manow interrupted my thoughts. “I know we can’t change the past, but we can choose a brighter future.”
“I appreciate the inspirational quotes, I scoffed.” Where did you hear that one from?” I was annoyed, and unfairly took my impatience out on my she-wolf, the only one who supported me during these isolating years of hardship. “I’m sorry, I didn’t m-“
“I’m not so easily offended, Ari,” Manow reassured, using the nickname she gave to me years ago, without my consent as it should be noted.
“You have a way out of this nightmare, and it begins with the young man standing next to you,” Manow cajoled.
“I can’t leave my people behind for him. The citizens of Thonburi count on me to protect them,” I responded sharply. She, of all wolves, should know this!
“You shall rule this kingdom together.”
Her words painted an optimistic abstract canvas that was too blurred to imagine. Besides an occurrence of death, I was beholden to this contract marriage for the rest of my life.
“Anurak is your mate.”
ANURAK...MY MATE?!
...
“So you really think killing your ma-“
It all made sense now. Amongst the haste I hadn’t realized, Manow was trying to tell me four years ago about my mate bond, but I didn’t listen.
Riddled in guilt, I dismissed the thought that knowing Anurak was my mate would have changed anything. At that point, I was already contracted to marriage with Prayut, Anurak wasn’t a shifter which my father would never have accepted as my suitor, and he was the son of the pack’s traitors. It made for a great love story, but he wasn’t a solution to my painful reality then, or now.
“Your petulance is immature for someone your age,” Manow patronized. “You were dealt a bad hand, I get it. But you occupy the position millions of little girls dreamed of. Use it to change your fate. Don’t just sulk in it. If the most powerful woman in Siam can’t create a better future for herself, then how do you expect the oppressed, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the powerless mass that support Thonburi, to do so? They don’t have the opportunity to choose which path to take. They harvest rice, they sell veggies, they brew tea, unwaveringly just to survive until their next meal. They tend to a single leaf of pandan for months, which yields only enough syrup to bake one dessert, uncertain if another crop will ever grow. All they have is hope; hope that something good will come their way, and they look to you to transmit that good fortune.”
After my she-wolf’s reprimanding concluded, the world around me resumed its frenzied nature. Anurak was surrounded by a dozen death pack wolves, all starved from the exhaustive events behind us. He wielded the same knife in defense that scarred my face four years prior. Prayut gave the order to kill, and amidst my sulking, Anurak was staring into the eyes of death.
I shifted, my black gown a remnant from today’s disastrous coronation. A few scraps hanging from my platinum fur, made me look like a black-widow. My childhood friend’s eyes were frozen, unable to see through the hazy sky and clouds of mist. He didn’t stand a chance.
His life had been the cruelest yet, losing his parents, wrongly accused, and left to watch them die. Anurak’s pain would never end; his cycle of loss and grief would continue in this warring kingdom. Just as I should have stayed in my mother’s womb, Anurak should have stayed in Pattani.
I’m sorry, you left me no choice.