To her very own surprise, Aries smelled different to her. She knew her senses had changed once she had become a werewolf, but she didn't expect their first meeting to smell this intense -- but then again, she hadn't expected to meet him again at all. She thought he would be buried away beneath the waves, and a part of her wished it was, given her heart started churning the second she realized that he truly was here at this beach, talking to her like no time had passed, even though he certainly looked like it did. Abbie had to admit that he grew from being a boy, into a dangerously handsome man, with eyes like the ocean that captivated her just like the first day they met.
A carbon copy of Leo, except for the curls he had inherited from her. The same eyes, the same boyish expression, the same exact face. Frustration started seeping into her bones, morphing into serious distress. "You broke contact with your parents." The woman's eyebrows are still furrowed and in an attempt to keep her voice neutral, a tint of hope manages to sink through. "And you moved back here." For me?, the question lingers in the air, but she knows it's stupid to think like that, given years had passed and he had likely moved on. He didn't have a carbon copy of her running around his apartment all day, one that bugged him with random questions such as why is the sky blue? and when can i see my uncles again?
In some moments, she can deny the changes her body went through. In this moment, she cannot. Because when he pulls her into his arms and tells her he missed her, a flips switches inside of her, and Abbie pushes him away with a surprising amount of force. "Oh you missed me?", she snarls, "You miss me now, when it's convenient?" She knew that was not the truth. That he had been influenced by his family, but Abbie hadn't forgotten about the hurt that had put her through. "It's been almost seven years, in case you haven't noticed. Seven years without a single word from you, and you think you can just come up to me and say you miss me?"
What's incredibly frustrating is the fact that she did miss him too, in the end, and that her body longs for him like it has never before. Breaking apart the hug must have been the hardest decision of her life. "I missed you for seven years and did not hear a single word from you."
Aries flinched as the full force of her anger hit him, a wave of palpable frustration and hurt that felt like a physical blow. Her fury was a sharp, cold wind, and he knew, with a certainty that shamed him to his core, that it was entirely deserved. He looked like a kicked puppy, his shoulders slumping, his gaze dropping to the floor and then to his own clasped hands. He had always done this when he was being scolded, an ingrained reflex of self-preservation from a past he could never fully escape.
He swallowed hard, the words catching in his throat. "I always missed you. Every single day." His voice was a bare whisper, raw with a vulnerability he hadn't allowed himself to show in years. "It wasn't just out of convenience. You were... no, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me. You were the only light in the suffocating darkness, and it's why I came back. I returned in the desperate hope that I'd get to see you again, to make things right. I've never been able to move on."
He fell silent for a moment, the weight of his admission hanging in the air. The words felt hollow, a flimsy explanation for the chasm he'd created between them. He took a ragged breath and looked up, the shame in his eyes now giving way to a deeper, more profound pain. "You want to know why I left? My parents... they locked me in a cave. Threw me in there and sealed the entrance. I was just a boy, and I was in there for weeks. I almost starved to death before they finally let me go, just because I wasn't worth the effort of a final, swift death to them. They were done with me." The words tumbled out, cold and unvarnished, a truth he had kept buried for years.
"They made me feel like I was nothing, and for a long time, I believed them. But even then, I never forgot you. You were the memory that haunted me, the single good thing I clung to. The thought of you was the only thing that kept me from giving up in that black, silent hole. It’s why I couldn’t just live a normal life without you. You were my home, and I’ve been lost ever since."













