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Prapai wakes up to thunderous flapping wings.
He is up in an instant. He rolls out of bed and rushes over to the perch his soulmate’s soul animal rests on. The gilded perch is a hand-me down given to him as soon as his soulmate’s soul animal revealed himself as a bird. His father’s Imperial Eagle rested on the same perch years before, and now Prapai’s Eastern Grass Owl rests on it too. The owl, with narrow slits for eyes and a judgmental stare, aggressively flaps his massive wings with his feathers outstretched.
This was Prapai’s reality ever since the bird showed up years ago. The owl is in constant fight or flight mode, something Prapai’s arms carries the burden of. His skin is covered in scars from the owl’s talons and beak. It is the reason Prapai named him Tornado, constantly turning and raging and lashing out in a whirlwind of tawny feathers.
“Tornado,” Prapai calls as he arrives at the perch. “Nado. Hey, Nado it is just me! It is okay.”
Tornado doesn’t hear him as he keeps flapping his wings. He is contorting his entire body until his talons go straight through the drywall. Prapai winces as he mentally calculates the cost, making a note to allocate more money to the Tornado Damage Fund, before he dodges a swing of Tornado’s beak and another swipe of his talons.
“How do you live like this?” Phayu, his cousin, asked him one day.
Phayu is lucky. All he got was a blue Rose-ringed Parakeet named Hurricane who screeches if there is no K-Pop in the auto-shop to dance to. Hurricane hates Prapai, but the parakeet might be the only living being alive who can calm down Tornado as the owl always puffs his feathers protectively around the smaller bird.
“I have adjusted,” Prapai responded as he finishes the touches on the owl’s corner.
“Tornado, I don’t know what is going on with you,” Prapai says out of desperation. “I wish I knew why my soulmate keeps soul surging like this, but I don’t. I don’t know how to help you.”
It stings Prapai that somewhere in the world his soulmate is in pain every single day and there is nothing he can do. All he wants is to go to his soulmate and protect him, but he can’t. He feels anger rush through him. How dare fate give him a soul animal to take care of but without giving him the one piece of information he needs in order to do so?
Prapai doesn’t notice the way his eyes gleam a light blue.
With gasping breaths, Sky slowly gets his underdeveloped body on his knees gripping his hands on the rumpled ripped sheets beneath him. There is no noise but the sound of the air conditioning in the studio apartment. He slowly brings his hands to his upper arms, shuddering in the chill air as he exposes more of his naked body. His eyes are screw tight as he feels nothing other than phantom grips and ghostly touches. With hesitation he slowly blinks only to have his vision fill with a crimson red. He stumbles back on the bed as he takes in the carnage before him.
The apartment floor is now nothing more than a massive sea of bodies and blood. Sky’s ex-boyfriend Gun and his friends are lifeless on the floor skin growing cold and pale. In the center of them all is a tiger licking its crotch. The tiger removes his head from his ass, revealing eyes fading from an eerie light blue glow into a normal amber. Sky risks a look at his bare chest and notices his heart is fading from a matching light blue glow.
Sky knows about Soul Animals, everyone knows about Soul Animals, and he knows when he turns eighteen he will have one emerge from his chest. He is a couple of months shy of his birthday, something Gun constantly reminded him of, but the tiger before him doesn’t belong to one of Gun’s friends. He certainly didn’t belong to Gun.
Sky takes a deep breath as he reacquaints himself with the feeling of boxers on his hips and cloth on his skin. He climbs out of the bed, careful to not step in any blood puddles, before he approaches the tiger with caution.
The tiger perks up instantly and quickly nuzzles Sky’s outstretched hand.
“Good boy,” Sky says with shaky breath through his hoarse throat. “You did a good job.”
He kneels down but nearly falls onto his bottom when the tiger lightly headbutts his chest.
“I have to name you, don’t I?” Sky questions.
The tiger moves his head back and tilts it.
“Um, what would be a good name for you?” Sky’s eyes shoot around the apartment. He tries to remember anything about the tiger’s emergence, but all he gets is flashes of hands touching him and the heartbreaking sting of betrayal.
Killer. Survivor. Savior.
Sky shakes his head, “Beaufort? Like the Beaufort wind force scale?”
The tiger snorts.
Sky manages to crack a smile, “Oh, is it too fancy for you?”
The tiger paws at him smearing blood on his pale leg.
“How about Earthquake?” Sky tries again. “Quake for short?”
The tiger purrs as he rubs his back against Sky’s chest. Once he shows his content, he pads over to Gun’s corpse. He nudges it a couple of times before he opens his mouth. For a horrifying second, Sky believes Earthquake is about to take a bite of the body. Instead, the tiger grabs something and returns with it in his mouth before dropping it at Sky’s feet.
“Thank you?” Sky questions as he shakes the blood off the item.
He fiddles with it until he finds Gun’s face staring back at him from man’s driver license photograph. Sky shudders before he winces upon realizing the tiger gave him a wallet.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” Sky asks.
Earthquake nudges the wallet.
Sky frowns before he dips his fingers in and pulls out all the baht inside. “What? This?”
The tiger perks up and disappears towards the other corpses. Sky watches as the creature deposits wallet after wallet in front of him, even shaking some to get the baht free.
“I am not robbing dead bodies!” Sky protests.
The tiger snorts again.
“I don’t care if they aren’t going to be using it anymore,” Sky huffs as he crosses his arms.
The two engage in a staring contest for what feels like forever.
Sky, eventually, concedes. “Fine, but only because we need to get out of here.” He hopes he has enough luck for law enforcement to not try to pin this on him.
He looks around the apartment once more before he grabs Gun’s suitcase from the closet and quickly packs everything that belongs to himself. For a second he dwells on whether or not to take any of the jewelry before Earthquake makes the decision for him by ripping a finger off a body in an attempt to get the ring. Sky barely prevents him from dropping the dismembered limb into the suitcase. Sky doesn’t plan on keeping any of it, but he needs the extra baht. He is about to leave when he looks at the bloody form of the Soul Animal before him.
“Bath,” Sky says.
Earthquake yowls in protest.
“It is either in here or with a hose somewhere,” Sky states.
With a huff, the tiger walks off to the bathroom.
After the impromptu bathing session, Sky considers it admirable he got all the way onto a train before he breaks down in one of the private train cabins. Earthquake leaps up onto the bed and presses his entire weight down on Sky’s chest as he cries and cries about the awful night.
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” Sky repeats like it is a personal mantra.
Earthquake licks his face.
Sky will kill Rain if Phayu doesn’t first.
The architecture student doesn’t know why he helped his friend sneak into the illegal races. This might be the most stupid idea Sky’s had since he gave dating Gun a go. He wasn’t going to initially, but Rain was so despondent about Phayu being his soulmate Sky couldn’t help but take pity on him. After all, he needs to make sure Phayu is good to his friend.
Sky reaches down to where Earthquake is standing in his service animal vest. The tiger reaches Sky’s hand first and purrs as his owner stress pets him.
“Please stay close,” Sky begs the wild cat.
Earthquake swipes his paw at his head which Sky takes as a salute.
Sky takes a deep breath before he joins the crowd in search of Rain.
Something Sky’s discovered through his life is crowds part naturally when there is a giant big cat walking beside you. It is great when he is trying to get somewhere in a rush, or having a day where he can’t commit to foreign contact. A tiger also is a large moving target, so the wrong people notice him quickly.
“Stop!” A man in a suit shouts out.
Earthquake steps out in front of Sky and growls at them. The two bodyguards flinch back at the hostile nearly two hundred pound creature, but the sound draws attention from other people including more bodyguards who are rapidly approaching with their own animals.
Sky glances around in a panic before he sees something land on Earthquake’s head.
There is a flap of massive wings and a massive screech which sends the bodyguards into a frozen state. Sky manages a clearer look and he sees a tawny brown barn owl.
“Khun Tornado!” One of the bodyguards says as he bows. It takes Sky a moment for him to realize the bodyguards are addressing the owl. “We were unaware-”
Tornado screeches once again, fully puffing up his feathers.
An arm lands around Sky’s waist so his eyes trail over a black, white, and red motorcycle jacket to a handsome man with youthful features. The man doesn’t spare a glance back but Sky gets the sense the owl on his tiger belongs to the mystery man.
“He’s my boy,” the mystery man declares to the bodyguards.
“Yes Khun Prapai,” the two bodyguards say before they bow and walk away.
“Let’s talk shall we?” Prapai says before he guides Sky away from the crowd.
Sky doesn’t hear the growl of his tiger so he figures the man is safe enough.
Prapai hums as he feels the weight of the car keys in his jacket pocket. He found them when Phayu’s soulmate dropped them as he ran through the grounds. He plans to give them back, honest, but he would rather give them to someone who came with the boy instead of interrupting whatever is going on between his cousin and his soulmate.
It is only a boon Tornado guided him to that someone.
Prapai chuckles to himself, “Don’t you know it’s bad to sneak-”
His words die when his eyes meet the other man’s for the first time. Their hearts pump light blue magic through their veins until it reaches their eyes which are overtaken with a full glow. They don’t notice as the color makes wispy wind like shapes on their chest and over their arms. Prapai promptly throws his plans out the window; except for the sex part. He is even more into the idea of sleeping with the man before him now.
The glow fades as they slowly move their eyes away.
Prapai feels a heat in his cheeks as he pushes back his hair faltering for the first time in a long time as he reconsiders his approach. He turns back to his soulmate only to find him crouching on the ground with the tiger (wow, Prapai can’t wait to brag about his soul being a tiger). It takes a second for Prapai to take in the vest on the tiger, and quickly puts together this whole situation is probably more overwhelming for his soulmate than it is for him.
“My trailer is nearby if you need a quieter spot,” Prapai softly offers.
“I am fine,” his soulmate says. “I didn’t expect this.”
“I didn’t either,” Prapai admits. “I am Prapai.”
A smile twitches on his soulmate’s lips but he keeps them still. “I’m Sky.”
“Sky,” Prapai repeats. He crouches down before the tiger, “Who is this handsome boy?”
“Earthquake,” Sky mutters.
“Earthquake and Tornado,” Prapai says. “They match.”
The owl, who sat above them the whole time preening, chirps at the news.
Prapai gets back to his feet, “I am going to be honest, I am way too interested in taking you home and getting to know you more to stay here.”
“Interested in me or my body?” Sky asks with a raised eyebrow.
“How stubborn,” Prapai grins. “Can’t it be both?”
Sky appraises him with his gaze sending a pleasant tingling sensation along Prapai’s skin. “I suppose it can be both.” He brings his hands up to fist Prapai’s jacket before cocking his head in a delightfully sassy manner. “Why don’t you take what you want?”
Prapai can’t help the hoot of victory he lets out.
Sky’s fears for the night bleed away as he collapses in Prapai’s arms.
The two are panting heavily from their amorous nightly activities. Sky’s thighs ache from riding his soulmate into the mattress. He looks up and fondly sees Prapai’s pupils are blown open from sheer pleasure. He gets the sense others haven’t taken control quite like he has before.
It makes Sky want to preen.
He feels warm and safe as Prapai’s arms cage him from the rest of the world. As Sky’s brain comes down from the pleasure he decides spending time with his soulmate is comfortably consuming as Prapai’s eyes flash through a variety of intense emotions in milliseconds.
Sky nestles further into Prapai’s chest as he hides his giddy expression.
“I’m glad I found you,” Prapai says as they languish in silence for a while.
Sky hums as Prapai starts playing with his hand. “Why?”
“There was a time where Tornado kept soul surging. He calmed down months ago but it was so bad he made holes in the wall.” Prapai presses a kiss to each of Sky’s knuckles before he beams at his soulmate. “I’m glad you’re here so I can take care of you.”
Sky tenses up at the knowledge. “Months ago?”
Prapai blinks at Sky’s mood shift. “Yes. Are you okay?”
Sky’s hand in Prapai’s grasp curls and uncurls around Prapai’s mingling fingers. “I was in a bad situation for a while until it escalated one night. Earthquake emerged early to protect me.”
Prapai senses there is more to the story but he won’t push right now. He has the rest of their lives to learn about Sky. He hopes to personally deal with whoever hurt him one day though.
“Emerged early?” Prapai echoes with a tilt of his head.
“He appeared before I turned eighteen,” Sky softly reveals. “I tried to look up information about it but there is very little scientific study.”
Prapai rubs Sky’s back as he speaks. “The last night Tornado had a soul surge was his worst one. He was destroying everything and unlike other times I couldn’t even get close enough to pet him as he kept flapping his wings in a rush. I remember being so desperate to calm him down, and so angry I couldn’t protect the person he was connected to.”
“I wonder if your emotions were strong enough to cause a soul surge,” Sky ponders. “Your instincts must’ve been extremely strong to force Earthquake to emerge early.”
“I’m glad he did,” Prapai murmurs.
“I wonder what other ways you two are similar.”
As if on cue, a long pathetic whine slips under the bedroom door as Earthquake scratches the piece of wood with his paw. There is a screech on the other side as a grumpy Tornado must be scolding the tiger from waking him up from his nap. It does little to curb Earthquake’s scratching.
“It seems we both want to be near you all the time,” Prapai teases.
Sky hides his smile in Prapai’s chest. “Hmm. I can deal with that.”