Connection - Golden Lycans Sequel 3/3 [in progress]

The Matters of Mating pt 1

***Ophelia***

"Oooh, this looks great!" I tell Ash as he puts a plate of toast and scrambled egg down in front of me.

"I keep thinking about how you were so sure that you'd spent at least half an hour in the butterfly enclosure when we went to the zoo the other week," he begins, leaning onto the breakfast bar on his elbows, "I wonder if Fae can manipulate time."

I snort with laughter at this idea and shake my head.

"I'm sorry. I really don’t think so. Neither my mother nor Sen, who is thousands of years old, have ever mentioned anything about time," I tell him, just before Ares and Maddy simultaneously exit their bedrooms.

“OH…” Ares says, looking at Maddy as she stops just in front of him, “sorry…er…you look very nice today, Madeleine.”

Ash and I exchange a smirk at Ares’ comment.

Maddy is wearing a thin, ribbed, and incredibly tight, light blue top with a deep scoop neck, which shows off maximum cleavage.

Touché, if I looked that good in something tight-fitting, I’d be wearing it too.

"I know, it’s a good fit, right? But I am glad you have noticed, Ares," she says happily, leaning up toward him and pecking him on the cheek while glancing over at Ash.

A subtle blush appears on Ares' cheeks at this act, and he promptly looks a little flustered as she skips away from him.

"I prefer a more subtle option," Ash replies to Maddy before taking a sip of his tea. She sighs and leans against the worktop right in front of Ash, squeezing her arms together a little to make her cleavage look even more incredible.

"What is it going to take, Ash?" she asks softly. He clears his throat and smiles pointedly up at her, making a point to avoid looking at her chest.

"Maybe that’s the problem, Mads. You shouldn't have to ask," he replies, sliding off his stool and taking his tea into the bathroom with him.

"I am intrigued by your behaviour; are you attempting to court Ash, Madeleine?" Ares suddenly asks.

Maddy laughs out loud at his question as she grabs a banana from the fruit bowl.

"Auditions need to be held before I court someone," she says with a wink, "it can't always be as simple as love at first sight."

Ares nods, looking contemplative.

"My mother once said to me, that for all the thousands of pairs of eyes your own will meet throughout your lifetime, only a few will just strike you differently, and one pair for eternity," Ares says, looking innocently at Maddy as she stares back at him, quite surprised by this comment.

She tilts her head to the side as she gets closer to Ares while she peels the banana.

"I do not believe in soul mates, Ares. What are the odds that out of almost nine billion on this planet, my one single soul mate would be right under my nose? He could be deep Tokyo, for all I know," she says candidly, taking a rather large bite of her banana and chewing it for a few moments, “there are probably hundreds of thousands of men out there who are as compatible with me as the next. The odds are just too huge for two destined souls to be living within a stone's throw from each other, do you not think?”

Ares chuckles lightly and shakes his head.

"But that is the beauty of it all, Madeleine. Just ask the lycans who were able to experience divine bonds," Ares says with a wry smile, his dark eyes looking wildly keen on the idea, “life...fate…it finds a way. Thousands of miles become one, through a series of circumstances. They just gravitate to each other. Your soul mate in deep Tokyo, only needs a holiday, and suddenly he's in front of you.”

Maddy laughs briefly before she reaches out and fondly cups his face for a moment. She then grabs her bag and heads out of the flat.

"You believe in soulmates?" I ask Ares with intrigue. He shrugs.

"The world is a mystery. For how much I can ground myself in science...there are things that I have experienced, even within the last few weeks, that I cannot quantify with known science," he explains.

"What things?" I ask, rather curious now as I lean towards him across the worktop. He seems to be considering his answer.

"...things," he says simply, his brow furrowing slightly, “I have even wondered if our souls have been around before, whether they have met in another life. The day we met…I still swear we have met before, Lia. I just don’t know how, where, or when. But we have.”

I lean back from him and say nothing, feeling a little odd at his choice of words, but I like the idea he has presented.

“You reckon?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him a little. He nods and looks so earnest.

“Yes. Becoming friends with you has felt so easy, it is like we have done it all before,” he replies with a smile.

“Well, soul-friend, we had better get going to biological principles,” I tell him, after a quick look at my watch.

..

Ares and I take our usual seats in the lecture theatre, ready for what was our final two-hour lecture on Lycan biology.

Thinking about his comment earlier, about how our friendship had been so easy, I cannot help but consider it, now.

There was a definite autonomy that we had all fallen into, now we were mid-way through November.

I had learned that Ares liked to lean on his fold out desk when he wasn't focussing well, and that he'd arrange his long legs in a particular fashion when he did so, therefore I now made sure I put my bag in a different spot than I used to, to give him room to do so. If I ever started zoning out, he would prod me, evidently having figured out the signs of me losing focus, too.

But, it was like he said; being around him was easy.

Within a few short moments of us being ready and prepared, Dean the lecturer is at the front, quickly getting our attention as he uses his clicker control to display the topic for today on the main screen. I feel my heart sink.

"Yep. You have read that right. You've proven yourself to be relatively mature adults," he looks pointedly at a blonde guy on the second row from the front, "it's time to cover Lycan mating, which is regrettably pertinent to you as future clinicians, and in the second part of the lecture, you will see why."

Whispering starts within the lecture hall at the title screen. I make an audible groan as I slump in my chair a little; this couldn't be further away from what I wanted a two-hour lecture on.

Ares shifts in his seat and leans his head on his hands, the pose he adopted when he was quite interested in the subject matter.

“You’ve all studied biology prior to coming here, so the act of humanoid mating is not a mystery to any of you. So, we will jump into marking,” Dean says, clicking to the next slide, “marking is an important part of the bonding process in Lycans. Bonding is both romanticised and criticised. Soul mates, eternal love, an unbreakable bond…it sounds perfect to the romantically inclined. But Marking is seen as possessive, as controlling. To be branded with the mark of another as if to declare ownership of a person, is another way people look at it.”

I hear some mutterings around the room at Dean’s comment, and I have to admit, I was firmly on the romantic side of things, but I could see how it might be construed another way.

“So, how does marking work?” Dean asks the class, receiving blank stares and silence in response, “it is reasonable that you don’t know, because actually, scientists have only studied this properly in the past twelve years or so.”

I sit forward in my seat now too, as Dean shows another slide, which outlines the marking process.

“It’s chemistry, ladies and gents. Pure, hormonal chemistry. You’ve all heard of oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin…the love hormones? Yes, of course you have. Well. These are potent both on their own, together, and as catalysts,” he explains, beginning to play an animated video which he narrates, “marking can only happen during some sort of s****l activity. We know this, and I am sure you all know the two go hand in hand too. So, during these activities, there is a hefty amount of these hormones floating around the body, having all sorts of interesting and pleasurable effects on the body as blood is pumped all over. The canines of the partner pierce the skin, deep enough to pierce the internal jugular vein that runs around eight millimetres below the surface of the skin of the neck. Functioning almost like an enzyme, catalytic DNA is released by the owner of those canines, which, when coming into contact with these love hormones, has several startling reactions.”

Dean clicks to the next slide, showing another animated video.

“First, the catalytic DNA binds to the oxytocin that is present in the blood, where it is quickly and very efficiently delivered all over the body once it has raced back to the heart. Oxytocin is also known as the bonding hormone, which, when added to this Lycan enzyme, makes it almost two hundred times more potent than pure oxytocin. The best thing? It proliferates too, which is how the bonds strengthen even further over time. The other very important effect that this catalytic DNA has, is that it helps the rapid healing process of the mark, when it encounters serotonin - our happiness hormone. How the mark heals is entirely dependent on the DNA from the mark giver and the person receiving the mark.”

I am finding this information to be absolutely fascinating, and as I glance over to Ares, he is just as enthralled by this as I am.

“It isn’t magic, guys…it’s pure biological science,” he says happily, before his expression turns a little sour.

“What if…those hormones weren’t present in the blood?” Dean then asks the class. I can see people looking around awkwardly.

"Shortly before the supernatural community decided to announce themselves to the human world around eighteen years ago, a fundamental aspect of the Lycan community was...withdrawn. The ability to feel intrinsically linked to someone, a soul mate, enough to draw you together across vast distances; a yin and yang. Like any deity in history, there are those who do not accept the existence of one. But the supernatural deity, whom the Lycans refer to as the 'Moon Goddess',or historically as 'Lunam Deam', is widely accepted to have removed this vital aspect of the lives of Lycans, as a kind of punishment, the reason being two-fold."

Dean wanders around the podium at the front as he talks.

"Lycans have been largely indifferent to humans, but many have sadly been rather disparaging," he says, earning a few mutters across the room, "the Lycans believed they never felt these bonds with humans, but they were wrong; the bonds were felt by a handful but always ignored. Ignored...until our Queen consort fell in love with the King, before she realised that she was in fact bonded to him. Once she came of age; she was in love with a human. I am sure you have all read their story, for it is well publicised...but there is a sad aspect of their story that is not well known at all."

I feel uncomfortable at Dean's mention of this, because I think I know what he is talking about, even if my parents weren't aware that I knew.

He glances up at me again, briefly.

"I won't go into the convoluted tale, but her bond with the prince was severed, almost replaced by an aggressor, acting under alpha command. An act that almost killed her from a widespread, systemic infection, along with high levels of radiation exposure. She was unable to shift, unable to heal. But recent events have shown that these circumstances prevent shifting, preventing healing," Dean announces to the class. I bow my head and grip my stylus tightly, having heard him confirm what my aunt Serena had only told me a little over a year ago. I feel my chest flush with anxiety over having a dear family member's trauma casually brought up in class.

"To understand why, you need to see. Unfortunately, the incidence of injury and regrettably, death, from these acts may be on the increase. You need to know how this act, which, prior to the last eighteen years, had almost never been a problem, is now causing increasing injury to Lycans…and it is all due to those missing love hormones. Without love, bonding doesn’t work. It chemically cannot work,” Dean says gravely, glancing at me yet again as he clicks to the next slide, which shows a paused video, "I want you to view this with a scientific mind, and with maturity, please. This is a video filmed around fifteen years ago, of a male and female Lycan, completing what is a biological, chemical bond to each other. These individuals had a genuine, real, bond; something your generation will never experience. It was filmed purely for this purpose; to educate. We will then explore how this process can go wrong, because you do need to know the science behind this."

Dean presses a few more buttons and the lights dim right down as the video begins.

Oh god.

A part of me prays I’ve misheard him—but the moment the impossibly perfect, dark-haired couple begin kissing with near-frantic intensity, it's obvious I haven’t. The screen fills with the sounds of breathy desperation, and I sit frozen, watching with a strange mix of horror, reluctant fascination, and mounting discomfort.

The kissing turns aggressive fast—clothes are yanked, growling erupts through the lecture hall’s frankly-too-good surround sound system. I watch, shrinking into my seat, as the couple fall into the kind of foreplay that feels less like intimacy and more like instinct given form—sharp, consuming, and raw. There’s no restraint. No hesitation. Just mouths and hands and teeth, each sound more guttural than the last.

A moan—loud and unfiltered—rings out as the moment of penetration occurs just off-screen, and I clamp my hands over the sides of my face, shielding my view, though I can’t look away.

In my peripheral vision, I see Ares turn his head slightly toward me.

Please don’t look at me. Not right now.

The scene shifts—mercifully. But not for long.

The woman, eyes glazed with bliss, tilts her head to the side, baring her throat in a silent, primal offer. Her partner growls, then presses his face against her skin, inhaling deeply before licking at the spot. When his canines sink into her flesh, the camera zooms in.

Of course it does.

Her back arches sharply, her cry one of pain-turned-pleasure. Then, we watch—watch—as the wound seals over with eerie precision, forming the unmistakable mark of a gamma and an omega.

My stomach twists.

Then comes her turn. She bites him back, and the cycle repeats. The bond sealed, they move again with renewed fervour, bodies moving in perfect sync, locked in something ancient and carnal. Her nails rake down his back, drawing blood in jagged lines, and neither of them flinch. They’re beyond pain. Beyond thought. Entirely consumed.

And all I can think is…I don’t understand this.

Not just the bond. The whole act. The hunger. The ease. The wildness of it. It’s so far from me, from my life, from what I am—or what I’m not. They’re so certain in their bodies. So sure of themselves. So complete.

And here I am.

An alpha she-wolf without a wolf.

I feel like an intruder. Like I’m watching something sacred from behind a glass wall, unable to reach it, unable to understand. My own experience ten months ago—with that forgettable Beta—was cold in comparison. Detached. A performance I could barely recall, except in how little it had meant.

This…what I’m seeing now…is something else entirely.

And worse—it's something I will likely never know.

For the first time, that thought truly hurts. Romance, bonding, the idea of a mate—these were things I’d shoved so far down inside me, I’d half-convinced myself they didn’t matter. I had studies. Ambition. Discipline. Things I could control.

But now?

Now I feel hollow. Disconnected. Like there’s a language everyone around me speaks that I was never taught.

My chest feels tight. My hands are still clamped to the sides of my face as the sounds of moaning and growling rise to their crescendo, the lovers on screen falling into rapture, their ecstasy laid bare in crystal clarity by the gleaming, expensive speakers.

I shut my eyes.

I don’t want to see any more.

I just want this to end.

"Well, I hope that was illuminating for everyone," Dean soon says at the front.

I open my eyes again as the lights get brighter, and I glance over to Ares, only to realise that he is looking right at me with a perplexed look on his face. I avoid his gaze and sit up in my seat, feeling more than a little flustered. I felt like what we'd just watched ought to have been viewed privately.

Looking around, quite a few people look uncomfortable. But then there are also quite a few more looking oddly thrilled with what we've just watched.

"Apologies to the Lycans among us in the room right now, but I think we can agree that all looked rather brutal at points, didn't it?" Dean asks rhetorically as he stares around the lecture hall at us all, "this was a gamma and an omega, not even the feistier ranks. Now...imagine if one of them, were not willing."

This comment earns some whispering and muttering. Dean nods gravely.

"Unfortunately, such occasions are on the rise, and so that forms part of our self-study this week..."

Deans voice fades into the background as my head goes over what I've just seen, in tandem with what my father had told me two months ago.

I hadn't heard anything else about it, aside from when Ash had to save me from being attacked outside the bowling alley.

..

Half an hour later, Ares and I exit the lecture theatre into light drizzle.

"Ohh, I hate rain," I mutter as I pull the hood of my hoodie up over my head. Ares laughs at me as I hurry along, heading to one of our normal post lecture hangouts; the one that wouldn't be wet.

"Are you okay?" Ares asks as I pull my hood down once we are inside the cafe. I shrug at him.

"Why wouldn't I be?" I ask back, feeling out of sorts.

"You looked deeply uncomfortable during the lecture, particularly during the video," he explains. I look back at him in surprise.

"Oh...were you not uncomfortable?" I ask defensively. He appears to consider my question for a moment before he shakes his head.

"No. The chemistry behind it all, particularly the marking. How the skin just went back together in an organised fashion depending on the rank of the Lycan giving it...biologically it's incredible. I looked over to you as I thought you'd find it interesting too, but you had your eyes tightly shut," Ares replies, sounding intrigued.

"Yes...well incredible or not, they're a deeply flawed species," I say hotly, folding my arms.

"Every species is flawed," he points out, simply.

I run my hand through my hair and shake my head.

"I er...I need to...go..." I tell him, turning around and pushing back through the doors into the drizzle. I stride purposefully toward the medical centre, wondering if my mother is in today.

I couldn't remember when she was meant to be here, and right now I could barely remember what day it was.

My mind is filled with visions of the video and the awkwardness I felt having seen it. But I couldn't escape another feeling I had felt, and I was embarrassed to admit it to myself.

I wanted to know what it felt like.

I wanted to know what it felt like to be Lycan, in that moment, to be desired so heavily someone wanted to claim me and mark me as their own. I wanted to feel the kind of passion and physical pleasure that could have me raking my nails down a lover’s back, too intensely engaged to care about anything other than what I was experiencing in that singular moment.

I enter the doors to the medical centre and take the route I had taken previously, finding my mother's office.

I knock and wait for only three seconds before I burst in.

"What the hell did I just watch?" I bark, spotting my mother looking totally zoned into her computer behind her desk. She turns to look at me in slight bewilderment as I hastily shut the door and drop into a chair in the room.

"Ophelia? What are you-" she begins to say, before she evidently remembers what I must be talking about, "-ohh...yes well, I had hoped my Lycan daughter would have been a bit more receptive to the educational aspect of the video. Why are you reacting like this?" I stare back at her in surprise.

"Stop being so scientific all the bloody time! And I am your barely Lycan daughter. It wasn't just the video, mum. He talked about Aunt Ser and what happened to her on that f**king island...AND our self-study?! To consider the methods of injury from the Lycan bonding process? What the HELL is going on?" I exclaim, feeling extreme sadness for my aunt. My mother's eyes widen a little and she sighs audibly.

"I did not realise he would talk about that...and how do you know that about Serena? It's in the public domain of course, but we didn't think—"

"—every time she comes into my room—her old bedroom—she stares out of the window and at that island? Every time. She is HAUNTED by it. All the life leaves her eyes and she just...stares. So... the other summer, I finally asked her, and she told me exactly what happened," I explain.

Mum nods in acknowledgement and rubs her eyes a little.

"I had no idea Serena had shared that with you. She rarely speaks of it. I suppose that makes telling you this a little easier," she says wearily. I look back at her, confused, "when your father warned you at the start of term to keep your identity safe...Ophelia, the problem is vastly bigger than he made out, and it is rapidly escalating."

My mind immediately replays the incident in the bowling alley car park, and I can see on her face that my mother can feel the abrupt shift in my emotions.

She looks sternly at me and raises her eyebrows.

"Umm...I know...mum, I know," I say quietly, fiddling with the zip on my hoodie. She crosses the room and kneels down in front of me, taking my hand as she searches within me, concern across her face.

"Ophelia?" she asks pointedly.

"There was umm...a moment in a car park of the local bowling alley several weeks ago," I admit, biting my lip a little, "some...auburn haired alpha heir...he grabbed me, and he smelt it on me...he licked me..."

I feel tears sting my eyes which I hastily blink away.

"What happened?" she asks sternly, looking intensely agitated.

"He demanded to know what I was, and then who I was. I felt so scared, mum, so...I told him. But then Ash...god, mum! He is the nicest guy...but he can be utterly terrifying and protective when he needs to be. Evidently with two of us there, it seemed like a bad idea, even though no one knows I’m defective…but he ran away. I was in a right state, after.”

Mum breathes a long sigh of relief, standing up and rapidly pulling me into a tight hug.

"I am very relieved to hear that," she says into my hair as she kisses the top of my head, “but I wish you had said something sooner.”

I feel tears rolling down my cheeks as I admit why, “I was too embarrassed to admit that I am so weak, that I needed a human to save me. Dad doesn’t need to know that.”

She pulls back and looks at me.

“Your dad worries about your safety every day, Ophelia,” she admits, “but he wanted you to have as normal a life here as possible.”

"Maybe I was foolish to think I could. Ash heard...he knows I'm your daughter," I admit as I lean my face against her shoulder.

"Well, I will feel vastly happier now, knowing that Ash is there to protect you-" she says happily as I scoff loudly.

"Protect me? I SHOULDN'T NEED PROTECTION!" I shout angrily into the room, "I am meant to be a f*****g alpha. A Landry no less! Do you realise how much of a JOKE I am? Hell, at this moment I should just hand the reigns over to Joshua and just accept the inevitable and save us all the next eight months. Do you know how disconnected I felt during that video? That should be ME, but it never will be. I am not even slightly the way that I should be. MADDY is more Lycan than I am, in that respect. How stupid is that? All that video did was show me exactly how human and pathetic I truly am," mum only looks at me sympathetically, the way she always does when I rant about this gaping hole in my life.

"I wish I had warned you about the lecture," she says simply, “and I wish Dean had thought to spare your class the details about Serena. Regardless of how on topic what happened to her, is.”

"Mhmm. Or maybe we could have just not had it at all!" I retort.

"Ophelia...I am sorry but it is a fact. Your father didn't want to worry you too much, but now you've been...well, it's like I said; it's getting worse. It is not just higher ranked Lycans. Powerful witches and warlocks, too. If someone is perceived to be an ideal mate, it is like the Lycans involved cannot reason with themselves, they cannot think logically, they can only think of what they need to elevate their position. In the words of one of the most recent offenders; 'it was like I was possessed'. I have been called to the emergency department to declare a supernatural death far more than I ever have in years gone by. People are dying, Lia. They're bleeding out. What saves someone from bleeding to death when their external jugular vein is pierced during the mating process, is a simple matter of hormones. It is chemistry. It is love, Ophelia. Lycans ignoring love for the sake of power…it is becoming a terrible thing."

I can only stare back at her, a little speechless. How much danger was I in?

How much danger was Natalie in?

"How many?" I ask quietly.

"Too many," she replies harshly, looking afraid, an expression I had rarely seen on her face, "and it's not just Lycans who are going off the rails. The vampires are getting a little more...brazen. Except they aren't turning people, they are just leaving people entirely drained of their blood. Augustus Katz is not happy. It is largely why he has agreed for his son to visit and lecture next week. To help dispel any fears. A bit of positive PR for the people who largely keep to themselves."

"What a wonderful time to be totally vulnerable," I say sarcastically with a shuddering sigh.

"I can imagine this is difficult to hear, Ophelia. I appreciate how you must be feeling about this. But trust me, your father will do everything in his power to keep you safe, and many others just like you," she says, somewhat reassuringly.

"What can he do? Why is this happening?" I ask, despite knowing the truth anyway.

It was the loss of the mate bonds.

A punishment, or a way to encourage the acceptance of the human bonds that they could have...it hadn't gone the way the Goddess had intended, that was for sure.

Did she not foresee the lust for power being stronger than the feeling of love?

"Ophelia, you know why, and I can feel your disappointment over it. I don't know how it went wrong either. But, I think...there is something else happening alongside," she mutters.

"Something else?" I query.

"Something no one can See, that's for sure," she replies.

"So—"

"So, you go back to your classes and you do what you do so well. Leave everything to us, Ophelia. Please do not worry yourself," she says, putting her hand out onto my face before she stands back up.

"How? There are beta females in my block, am I meant to just ignore this?" I exclaim. She shakes her head.

"You can be wary, Ophelia, but you need to continue with your life. Please."