Chapter Text
“Where were you? It’s way past after dark and I was going out of my wits with worry”.
“Sorry. I got lost while picking the herbs you asked for”.
“Just how far did you go? You should have found them just behind the stone wall”.
“Those weren’t enough so I went a just a bit further”.
“Just how much further?” his mother asks with fear trembling in her voice, worry on her face, “you shouldn’t have gone that deep into the woods, Alec. I told you, don’t pass the barrier”.
Alec places the herbs on the counter and sits around the table, the night lamp ablaze in his eyes as he ponders.
“It’s not like anything had happened”, he replies.
His mother looks at him with concern in her eyes, placing the evening’s supper in front of him.
“You almost sound disappointed”.
Alec swallows the porridge without answering.
She then sits across the chair from him in the tiny room. The fire sticks crackling to keep them warm. It’s a small village in which they live, and by that time of the night, the villagers have long retired to their own huts in fear of the great beast that legend speaks of to be living deep in the woods.
“Have you ever seen him, Mum?”.
“No”, but for centuries our ancestors have been on guard. It’s just not safe. That’s why there’s a barrier”.
“But if you haven’t seen him, then how can you be so sure?”
“Alec I---“
“Don’t worry. I won’t cross the barrier again so you don’t have to worry about me getting captured by the ‘big bad’ cat loving whatever it is”.
“Alec, dear---“
“It’s my bedtime. Good night”.
“Alec”, she calls after him as he packs his plates away, “promise me that---”, she stops, looking him over and Alec isn’t sure what she sees, but it’s almost like she knows. “Good night, hun. I’ll see you tomorrow”.
“Good night, Mum”.
It’s a silver night and Alec’s chest begins to tighten with fear and excitement all at once as he steps out from the foliage. The wind blows chilly when he sets foot on the path that leads to the so called mysterious den.
The full moon guides his steps across the barrier, and it was when he could no longer see the lit lamp from his bedroom that he hears the sound of howling drawing nigh.
Alec gasps, his heart throbbing madly in his chest and he spins on his feet to run on back home deciding it’s best he heeds his mother’s warning. But even if that’s what he truly wants, it would do him no good when a pair of glowing sallow eyes like a cat’s and lips seemingly painted red by ripen berries are pulled back into a smile that’s just as beautiful as much as it sends chills down Alec’s spine - a boy of late teenage years with midnight black hair and who’s naked from the waist up and with a tiny cat on his shoulders, both leer at the timid Alec.
In a menacing voice the strange boys asks, “a lost mouse, are you?”.
Alec takes one step backward, the high moon bright in his eyes as he tries to remember what Little Red Riding Hood had done. But the strange creature whose name he did not yet know takes one step closer while smiling with a sort of conniving gesture - and Alec finds himself spellbound, and whether out of fear or some sort of sheer genuineness of wanting to know more about this fantastical mystery before him, Alec hears his own voice saying, “Yes. I heard you were looking for a cook”.
Magnus’s eyes glow all the more gold as though his interest in the human had suddenly piqued, and so he wolfishly grins at Alec and tells him, "Follow me. Eating suddenly sounds interesting".
And so, be it fear or genuine inquisitiveness, little Alec follows Magnus whose eyes seem to summon warm colours of baltic amber.
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magnus x alec 