The Lycademy - Victor's Year

7. Cousinfucker

I opened the doors to Rafael and my apartment with a heavy heart, preparing myself for another touching and rubbing from a certain sister. But to my surprise I found only the brother inside lazily sitting on a couch and flipping through the channels of our flat screen. Wide and as far as I could tell a very fake smile spread on his lips.

"Victor, join me my friend, I have a little icebreaker." - he said, lifting a bottle of golden liquid.

Well, why the hell not. I'll be living with him for the next three years, I should at least try to make it work.

"Sure. What is it, Scotch?"

"Oh no my friend, it's a drink for real men." - I gave him a questioning look - "It's a rum, we make it ourselves."

To those words my imagination got wild and I started thinking about people wearing a grass skirt preparing some beverage deep in the jungle. Was I ready to test it on myself?! Hell yes! Let's call it getting to know other cultures.

Rafael handed me a glass of it, and I must admit it was nice, burning in all the right places and as strong as I like my drink to be.

"Very nice. Your Pack surely knows how to make good liquor."

"It's not our Pack, it's made by my father's distillery. It's one of our family's businesses."

"Well, good job then. However my heart is set on whisky, no offense." - he started chuckling.

"None taken." - there was a moment of silence between us, neither of us knew what to say next, but then his expression changed from his forced friendly smile to a more serious one and Rafael spoke again - "Victor, I wanted to apologize for my sister's behavior."

"Don't, I have a sister myself, and if I would apologise for every time she misbehaves I wouldn't have time for anything else." - both of us started laughing wholeheartedly.

"So tell me more about your Pack. I already know you make excellent beverages, what else?"

"Not much, we aren't as big as your Pack, and we lived in seclusion till my Mother came along. She made my father open our borders and join a few alliances." - the way he said it made me think he wasn't a fan of that change.

"What's wrong about that? New alliances make you stronger. That's a good thing, right?"

"New alliances expose you. No one knew about us before, we were never attacked. But with that change more threats came our way." - he admitted.

"But think about the new possibilities. In my case, alliances with my siblings' new Packs made us the strongest family in the US, even though we can be overpowered when it's just one of us, no one attacks neither of the three Packs knowing we all would stand together."

"A yes, but it won't go that way in our case. I disagree with my father's decision. And I'm planning on changing that when my time comes." - Rafael admitted firmly.

"You want to lock your borders again?" - he nodded - "So why come here in the first place?"

"That's my father's way of changing my mind, and Lena wanted to see the outside world." - he admitted with a deep sigh.

"She has never been outside of your territory? Wow, that explains a lot." - we started chuckling again, but something didn't add up here.

"But isn't closing borders equal to slowly dying? How will you find your Mates, have pups, grow and prosper?"

He gave me the look like I would have said the most bizarre thing possible.

"Things would go back to the way they've been for hundreds of years, and we did fine back then."

"Which is? Cause as far as I know you need your Mate to have offspring and in just one Pack it's extremely rare to find that one wolf."

"It's not the only way, and I saw what having a Mate did to my father. He becomes weak, he can't make the simplest decision by himself."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. My brother and his Mate are more like two-headed monster than wolves, always attached by the hip. But what did you mean by 'it's not the only way'?"

"Inbreeding." - when that one word registered in my head I choked on my drink.

What the f**k?! Is he… how to say it nicely? No, there's no nice word for that. The guy is planning of f*****g his sister. Disgusting!

My shocked expression must be all over my face because Rafael started explaining what he meant exactly.

"We mate with our cousins. This way we can have pups." - that was… No! Still f****d up! I did my best to hide my opinion on this. Now I get Lena more, she probably doesn't want to be forced into a relationship with her cousin and she's doing everything she can to escape it. I start to actually pity her.

"But you said your parents are destined Mates, didn't their example prove to you that it's worth a shot?" - I asked him, doing my best to not call him 'Cousinfucker'.

"My father shouldn't be anyone's example. He didn't achieve anything important. His ancestors were great wolves, but he was too busy making puppy eyes for my Mother to follow in their footsteps. I want to be like my great grandfather Stephano Aguilar, who chased away werecats from our lands, not like my father. He thinks he's so progressive, but I think he's just stupid and blinded." - there was so much venom in his words that I saw he really believed this. I didn't think that anything I said would change his mind, so I let that one go, but there was something else that I wanted to ask.

" What if one of you finds a Mate here?"

" I will reject that person on the spot." - he said shrugging, like it was the most obvious thing ever.

"And what about Lena?"

"She's already engaged, although she often forgets about this." - he said with anger.

"But what if she finds her Mate?" - I pressured

"She will reject him too." - again the same casual tone like he was talking about weather.

"And if she won't? You probably don't know it, but it's almost impossible to fight the mate pull."

"If she won't I will kill her Mate." - for some reason I believed that he would. That guy is clearly f****d up.

I wonder now if our Headmaster knew about their 'heritage'? One thing is certain, I feel bad for whoever will be paired up with those twins.

After we emptied the bottle it was time to head to my bedroom. I felt an unbearable urge to call my sister now, and tell her I really appreciate she isn't that messed up.