Death was something no person could ever escape from. The reality of people who constantly fight to survive, to get a mission done, or to sacrifice their own for a greater purpose was harsher than the truth of life itself. Options were not even given, and nobody on the list could dodge death freely as they would’ve wished to.
Naya was the leader of the Midnight Seven. Naturally, her mission was greater than the rest of her group. In fact, she left without explaining her next plan to them. It was her own way of saving the people who didn’t have to do what she should and had to. Her feet were constantly a few steps away from death's door, but that didn't mean she would stop. It was similar to signing a deal with, of pledging your own life on the line - you couldn't really do anything about it but accept it when it came.
“I am prepared to die,” she always told herself whenever fear crept into her heart in some moments.
Yet, in those moments, she would feel her knees tremble. With clenched teeth, she would fight relentlessly, with all her heart and soul, breaking her way through to keep surviving, until her final breath came and there was no way of stopping it.
***
“Naya!”
Until she heard that voice, that was.
The muffled sound of someone shouting, drowned by the harsh wind that the unforgiving water turbulent followed quickly. Then even amidst the darkness of the underwater, she saw the owner of that voice swimming towards her.
He pulled Naya to his embrace and their lips touched. In her final breath, she was in his arms, and she thought it didn’t feel as bad as she expected.
***
The moon was up in the starry sky, round and full as it ever had been.
Kael lay Naya on the ground, the sound of the waterfalls behind him paired with the beating of his own heart.
He stared down at Naya with a face full of concentration. Then slowly, her eyes opened.
Naya coughed multiple times before her vision returned, gasping as she looked around. She saw Kael and was stunned. Yet, before she could even speak, Kael leaned down, his hand touching her cheek.
Seemingly out of breath, he glanced down at Naya’s bleeding stomach, before his gaze went up to her eyes once more.
Naya saw the intensity of his gaze, an incredible sensation beginning to stir inside her chest.
Their lips parted and, in a heartbeat, Kael leaned down, his lips claiming Naya’s.
There were no words spoken between them. Naya kissed Kael back instantly – as though she was destined to return that kiss even if it meant she would die again.
Kael pulled her closer, his rough, calloused hands rubbing the sides of Naya, his fingers brushing past her wounds.
Naya winced at the touch, but her heart ached even more whenever she pulled away. There was an intense desire – a craving she had never felt before, that coursed through her body. She would’ve been a fool to consider herself having heat. Betas don’t go to heat.
But when Kael bit her neck, Naya was sure she almost saw the end of her life.
“Mine,” Kael breathed against her skin, making her tremble even more.
Naya panted, hand on the back of Kael’s head as his mouth expertly sucked and licked Naya’s sensitive spots.
Ragged, shallow breaths that made her own skin itch came out of Naya’s lips. Her body moved subconsciously, her arms pulling Kael’s neck as he returned to her, his lips finding Naya’s to kiss for the thousandth time.
In a daze, Naya released a shallow, shaky breath, “...My wound…” She looked up at Kael who also stopped, his eyes full of lust and affection while staring at her.
“It won’t hurt,” Kael uttered in a low voice. As he said so, he traveled down her body, removing Naya’s clothes as he kissed her skin with feathery kisses.
It must have been a dream, Naya thought to herself. There was no way Kael – the Kael she knew – would be this gentle.
The tender kisses reached her wounds. Naya bit her lower lip, anticipating the excruciating pain. However, nothing of what she imagined came. Instead, a cool sensation slowly spread throughout her body.
Blinking slowly with her vision in a haze, Naya looked down. But before she could utter any word, Kael reached her once more, hands pressed on her body.
“Don’t move,” he said.
Their gazes met once more and without restraint, Kael dove back in Naya’s lips.
This time, the gentleness left, and he kissed her like a hungry wolf.
Naya’s mind turned numb, her heart in a frenzy, and her consciousness slowly developed into something else, of something in between control and desire, of her own wolf quivering, desiring the person before her amidst the darkness that loomed in and wanting to stop because she knew if it happened, there was no turning back.
But fate always had a way to make everything disappear, even the most controlled thought of a person.
Before Naya released an exhausted sigh and drifted to sleep, she looked up, seeing the full moon. The arms that held her pulled her to a certain part of her mind, remembering how he didn’t let go even for a second, how he had their bodies connected again and again near the waterfalls, and how the world around them seemed to have quieted down as they claimed each other, and as fate brought upon and let them course through – their hearts, for the first time, beating as one.