Chapter Text
I don’t know why I did it. I stuck out my tongue to taste a snowflake, the only luxury I could afford for my tongue. Marching in irons, I shivered as the frost nipped my skin through holes in my rags. I felt the distortion of time passing as a wake around me while my legs moved automatically. I wasn’t sure why I’d decided to taste a snowflake, but it had tasted hopeless and cold. Again, my thoughts turned to the release of death. I wondered if death was cold and hopeless like the snowflake that had melted into nothing on my tongue; or fiery and painful like the branding iron that had given me my number: 72. I felt my empty stomach churn over nothingness with a sharp pain and mistimed my step.
I could feel blooms of pain sprout from my ankle just seconds before the whip screamed into the scarred flesh of my back. A vicious boot connected with my rib cage. A tazing shock sent me sprawling helplessly. I shook violently and hacked blood into the freshly fallen snow, the bite of frigidity on my open palms the least of my worries. I braced myself as the whip bit off chunks of my flesh; two, three, four – but five never came. Instead, I heard a distinctly alpha warcry, primal and murderous, and immediately my instincts kicked in and had me attempt to rise to my feet. My legs wobbling, I inhaled the ice in the air, but the ground spun and my strength buckled. I immediately rolled my howling back into the cold snowbank, and bared my neck and stomach as much as I could manage.
My vision began to darken, and I decided to indulge in cursing the universe for my misery. I had long since abandoned such unnecessary efforts, but I wasn’t sure I would pull through this time. I heard a sickening, wet crunching noise on my periphery, and screaming alpha yowls. I gave up trying to hold my eyelids open and instead focused on my submission but felt everything fading to bitter frost as a powerful, masculine voice shouted. “Shit! Get Anabell! That omega is dying!”
Fuck. I wondered whether there was an afterlife, or if I was just going to melt away with the snow. I felt the last of my strength leave my body and my neck lolled to the side, but I hadn’t quite faded out yet. I felt tingles and a floating sensation envelop my body, but then something brought me back to reality - an ear-splitting, soul-wrenching howl, just as cold as the wind. “No! Fuck, no! Hang on,” the deep timbre broke on the words, like powerful emotions were coursing through them. “Listen to me! Just hang on to my voice! Please… Please,” the voice begged. I wondered what was going on, why this voice was so emotional. “I can’t lose you! I just found you!” Then, I felt something brand new to me. A tingle. I felt my lips buzzing with something that I never had dared allow myself to reserve even a modicum of hope for.
Matespark.