Cursed Obsession

“Selene! Stop running!” a beautiful lady screamed as she chased a little girl down a hill.

The little girl looked back and saw the woman chasing her. This got her excited, and she burst into a fit of cute giggles.

“Catch me, Mama.” She loved the game they were playing. Her little legs ran faster. She missed a step and stumbled down the hill.

The woman screamed and rushed to her daughter, who lay on the ground crying and gripping her right knee.

“Aww, my poor baby.” The woman crouched beside her daughter, pulling her onto her lap. “Did you get hurt, Selene?”

Selene looked at her mom with blue eyes filled with tears. She asked her mom to kiss her knee to make it okay. Her mom smiled lovingly and kissed her knee.

“Do you feel better now, love?” she asked the four-year-old. Selene nodded and hugged her mom.

“Let’s go back to the pack house, Pumpkin. Michael is waiting for you,” the woman told her daughter, knowing it would make her happy. It worked as Selene jumped off her mother’s lap and bounced around in excitement to meet her best friend.

Selene was the daughter of Alpha Bennet and Luna Margot. She was a ray of sunshine. With her hair as black as a raven and eyes a bright blue, she had a fair complexion with cute freckles across her nose and cheeks. She was considered a very beautiful child and already had fathers trying to create a marriage arrangement between her and their sons.

Her parents were not in a hurry to have her betrothed to anyone, though; they wanted their daughter to be the one to pick her mate. They wished for her to have a beautiful marriage like theirs.

Margot saw how excited her daughter got at the mention of her best friend and shook her head in amusement. Michael was an orphan. He was dumped at the pack’s border at two years old. Margot felt sorry for the little boy and convinced her husband to let him into the pack. He was given to a sweet elderly lady in the pack to raise.

Selene was born a year after Michael joined the pack, and he immediately appointed himself as her guardian. The little boy believed Selene was his sister, and Margot was happy to finally see him happy. Selene also grew up loving Michael, and now the two were two peas in a pod, even with the three-year gap between them.

“Mama, why is my name Selene?” Selene asked as she walked beside her mother back to the pack house.

Her mom smiled down at her. “Because on the day you were born, the moon shined so bright as if the goddess herself was looking down at you with a smile.”

The little girl scrunched her face in confusion. “So, am I a goddess, Mama?” she asked her mother.

Margot chuckled. She lifted little Selene in her arms and gave her a forehead kiss. “Yes, you are, honey. You’re a beautiful goddess. Mama’s beautiful goddess.”

Satisfied with her mother’s response, the little girl held on tight to her mom and smiled.

***

“Soon, we’ll be together, Selene.”

“Soon, I’ll be yours, and you’ll be mine. We are fated to be together.”

“Soon, my love.”

Selene jerked awake, panting heavily. She was covered in sweat. She looked at the digital clock beside her bed and saw it was midnight. It was her birthday. Today, she turned sixteen.

Her mind wandered to the dream she’d been having for as long as she could remember. Every midnight on her birthday, she had the same dream and heard the same voice whispering the same words, but there was something different about this one.

This time, she felt the whisper of a caress while dreaming. A touch that spoke of love or intimacy, the kind of touch one would feel from a lover. She touched her face. She could still feel the caress like it was real, but no one was in her room. She sniffed the air and could not pick up any other scent apart from hers.

Unable to sleep, she got up from her bed and made her way to her bathroom. Her bathroom was sparklingly clean and well-arranged, like her room. Decorated in tones of pastel green and earthy brown, her room and bathroom described her.

She was a lover of the earth. She loved watching nature. She believed nature to be a beautiful mother who created beauty all around her. The way the wind blows, the sprouting of a plant, the moving of birds in the sky, and how everything seemed to have a role in nature to play marveled her.

After she finished in the bathroom, she walked to her balcony to take in the pack’s beauty at night. She could feel her heart finally calming as she stared into the night sky. The dream always left her confused with a plethora of feelings.

The first time she had the dream, she had just turned five. After she told her mother, her mother blamed it on the discussion of mates, they had the night before, and since she did not have the dream again the next day, she believed her mother.

But it occurred again at midnight on her sixth birthday and has been occurring every birthday since. The voice was not one she knew, so she was sure she had never met the person. At first, her father thought it might be one of the people trying to get her betrothed to their sons playing a trick on her, but after much investigation, that option was ruled out.

At fourteen, her mother commented that maybe she had a fated mate, and they were looking hard for her. Selene loved this idea. Fated mates were rare to find, and most werewolves have chosen mates instead.

Selene was a romantic at heart, and the idea that someone somewhere was made just for her made her hold on to the belief that maybe, just maybe, she had a mate out there searching for her and communicating with her through dreams.

Selene sighed deeply and looked up to the full moon that shone brightly in the sky with her hands together.

“Goddess, if it really is my mate in my dreams, please help me find him. Keep him safe and bring him to me so I can love him.”

She closed her eyes as she sent her wish to the moon goddess. The first wish for her sixteenth birthday.