Page 10 of Scar Bonds: The Scars That Bind Us

Gods, Senan missed those days when he genuinely enjoyed listening in on the conversations around him in a random bar, feeling as though he was being sociable without being part of a conversation. He learned so much about life from the snippets of chat he heard around him, and for Senan that was fascinating.

Until a wolf shifter with delusions about his own sense of self-importance, wrecked everything for him in the space of less than thirty minutes.

After the shock of being arrested, not even being allowed to talk, and then being let go after being slammed with conditions that totally changed his life, Senan believed he had done a really good job of keeping himself together. He put the wolf out of his mind as best he could and turned his whole life around.

For one thing, he didn’t let anyone know he was a fae, or even paranormal. He wore a glamour every time he left the house. Part of that was pride. Yes, Senan hated the way his skin puckered and pulled around his scars down his face and across the left side of his chest. But it wasn’t as though he went outtopless. He could’ve used makeup to lessen the impact of the scars he had in his natural form, although it would be impossible to cover them completely.

But for Senan the glamour was also protection. He doubted any of his human friends would’ve cared if he’d met them au-natural so to speak. They might have been shocked, and perhaps asked him why he’d felt the need to lie about who he was, but paranormals were another issue entirely. They didn’t see scars the same way as non-paras did, and personally, Senan saved himself a lot of questions and grief, just by wearing his glamour every time he went outside.

Aside from that, Senan used his magic as little as possible, mostly because he only had so much supply and most of that went into maintaining the glamour he used. There was a common public misconception people seemed to have about magic users, that they could just draw on the energies from the earth and sky and have an unlimited tap of power at their disposal.

But that wasn’t the case for fae. Fae had a finite store of magic, and it needed to recharge like a battery. Thanks to the culmination of events that happened on Friday night, Senan’s battery hadn’t just run out of juice, it was as though it had completely exploded.

He didn’t dare leave the house. He called in an order for groceries, just a few bits and pieces, so he could at least survive, but he didn’t even greet the delivery driver at the door like he normally did. Senan waited until the man had been and gone, and then checked the small street where he lived, peeking out the door to make sure nobody could see him as he quickly whipped his bags and boxes inside. Just doing that wore him out and it took more than an hour to put his small haul away.

Senan was drained - completely and absolutely drained. And while he knew his magic was rejuvenating in its own way, it was more that he felt as if his soul was missing something. Senan couldn’t think of any way to describe the incredible sadness that had him crying over a commercial for puppy food. Or the complete lack of motivation to do anything beyond remembering to shower and change his underwear and sweatpants.

As Saturday morphed into Sunday, the soul ache increased. For some reason Senan’s magic seemed to think he needed to find the wolf shifter he saw for a brief five minutes on Friday night. Senan was totally confused by that. Why on earth would his magic be so supportive or encouraging - and indeed it was the only thing his magic had any motivation for - in finding that damn man. Finding another wolf shifter who’d pushed himself into Senan’s space and refused to listen to him.

In the meantime, snippets of the night he’d gotten his scars kept infecting his dreams. Random memories such as how he recoiled at the smell of his own blood which was all he’d been able to smell for three whole days because his prison guards wouldn’t let him wash.

How he’d clung to the tatters of his torn shirt, as if trying to cling onto any shred of decency left in a world that didn’t have any, frustration and despair increasing in equal measures as the council guards talked over him, never letting him explain any of his side at all.

And the pain battling with the sheer horror of how badly his life had changed with just one encounter.

But Senan survived, he put his life back together, working hard and keeping a low profile. Until wolf number two came along and showed him how fragile that illusion of normality was.

He felt as if he was being attacked all over again in his sleep. He couldn’t go to bed because if he did, his wings kept getting in the way and Senan didn’t have the energy to pull them back in. His wings clearly felt that they were necessary as some kind of attraction tool, working with his magic, pushing Senan to find the missing wolf shifter.

Senan was so tired he just sprawled out on his couch, lying on his front so his wings could flutter all they liked, idly watching rubbish on the television screen with no idea of what was on or what he was seeing. His mind just kept going back to two wolf shifter infested nights. If he wasn’t thinking about one of the damn wolves, he was thinking about the other one.

Neither one of them are doing me any favors,he thought as he reached for the television remote.I really need to be able to put all this behind me,and yet it was as though that part of his brain was completely fucked. He couldn’t stop thinking about the night his life was ruined, and if he wasn’t thinking about that, Senan was thinking about the wolf shifter who had intruded on him at the event.

It was quite strange in a way, because if the first event hadn’t happened, then Senan might have found the second wolf shifter attractive. Yes, the two men looked very similar, but their attitudes were totally different. Senan liked somebody with a bit of brawn. He appreciated men who had that look of someone who could handle themselves in a fight.

The man spoke with a hint of humor as well. “You can call me Felix the Cat,” like he was sharing a joke with Senan in some way. And yet Senan’s life wasn’t a joke. It was a fucking travesty.

Laying on the couch on Monday afternoon, Senan stroked over his scar. He had wondered, the way he had a million times before in the previous four years, if he did glamour away the scarcompletely, would anybody notice or care? Did the Fae Court keep a check on things like that?

Gods, Senan didn’t want to think about them, either. Nobody had come to his defense four years before. Nobody had suggested that Senan must have had a reason for what he’d done. No, no, they had bowed down to the Shifter Council and distanced themselves from him. And Senan knew why - he knew why they didn’t rush to his defense or help him in any way.

It was because the assault had happened on Earth. Fae preferred their own realm, a realm that Senan had now been banished from. They saw the attack on Senan as a reason why they should stay on their own realm.

And then there was the little matter of the scars on Senan’s face that would’ve horrified his ex-friends and family because they were ugly.

Senan knew that for a fact. He was just a regular fae, despite his prince title – something he’d gained purely from the circumstances of his birth. But he’d never been one of the truly beautiful ones – the type of fae others looked up to. And maybe that was why it was so easy for the Fae Court to throw him away.

That had hurt so badly back all those years ago. It had stung him hard that nobody - not his parents, nor his sister, nor anybody he’d known on the fae realm, had bothered to ask the Shifter Council to move the case to the Paranormal Court where his side of the story could be heard.

There was no legal advice offered. No one had tried to sue the Shifter Court for keeping him in anti-magic cuffs that completely cut off his ability to heal from the wounds. No one was there in Senan’s circle insisting that somebody question the Alpha who had physically hurt him, about what actually happened before Senan was attacked.

I didn’t do anything but get him to move his hand. And that was the thing that hit Senan harder than anything else. Being punished the way he had been, it was easy for him to believe that he didn’t have the right to his personal space, that he didn’t have the right to sit in a chair in a public space and be left alone. He thought he’d had those rights, but clearly, the Shifter Council thought differently, and so did the Fae Court.

Senan had always been the quiet one, even when he lived on the fae realm. It meant a lot to him to be able to observe all types of persons interact with each other without ever feeling he needed to be part of the action himself.

Friday night, after table service was done and before he got accosted by a wolf shifter, was an example of that. Senan was friends with the people he worked with, but he never dominated the conversation. He loved listening to them chatter among themselves in his vicinity.

And now I can’t even do that. Senan knew there was no point in even trying to go back to work until his magic stabilized. But with the overwhelming fatigue that was dragging on his limbs making him feel so weak, he wondered if that would ever happen again.

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