twenty two

"Can I touch you more than this?" Jeremiah asked Ivan softly within his ear. His hand was already gripping his thigh, but his thumb caressed him slightly.

He looked within Jeremiah's eyes, leaning towards him as he kissed him deeply. Their bodies pressing to one another's, Ivan pulled back for only a moment to answer.

"Yes, I want you to touch me however you want to. I'm telling you...to touch me the way you want, as my Alpha." Ivan said those words, watching the way Jeremiah almost seemed shocked by him saying such a thing. "Don't look so shocked. You still don't realize that your mark is on my body now, forever - until the day we die?"

Jeremiah felt his head become fuzzy with warm things, smiling softly at him.

"I guess I'm not used to it just yet." Jeremiah admits awkwardly, but his hand softly caressed the back of Ivan's nape. "It's not an easy thing...I still feel like sometimes that I'm dreaming."

Ivan smiled at his admission, his hand going behind the back of Jeremiah's head. Running his fingers along his own nape, he grinned.

"I remember when I dreamt of the day that I'd bite yours. I am now...forever grateful that it didn't go the way I wanted. Because this is what I want," Ivan leaned himself into Jeremiah, hugging him closely as he breathed him in, "You to protect me, to hold me... I want to be the one to have the honor of holding your child."

"Oh..." Jeremiah smiled, caressing his back until he gasped. "Oh!"

He began to feel a mixture of embarrassment and arousal at the remembrance that he was still inside of Ivan. The sex had only taken a pause because he had knotted him, and there wasn't much they could do.

Now he remembered in the first place what was taking place.

"We might be able to give Luka a sibling." Ivan began to smirk just watching Jeremiah's expression. "Are you happy, sad?"

"No matter what happens, any child that I create with you, is the best outcome. But..."

"But?"

"It doesn't end just yet. There's others I have to handle too. The way they perceive you...I can't continue to have them think that you are getting what you don't deserve. I want...to help you."

Ivan smiled at him, pressing his lips against his. The both of them kissed tenderly while Jeremiah's hands caressed his back yet again.

"How are you going to help me? What happened to owing nobody a single thing?"

"Yes, that is true. We don't owe them anything in terms of our relationship and how we choose to live. I just mean...in terms of how they look at you. I don't want them to continue to look down on you, to hate you... I want them to see what I see." Jeremiah breathed against his lips, leaning forward until Ivan's back laid on the bed. "Am I wrong for...wanting people to see you as perfectly as I see you? To stop their incessant hatred and just...be just as enthralled in you as I am?"

Ivan was at a loss for words as he could feel how deeply Jeremiah felt for this. He wrapped his arms around his neck, drawing him closer in.

"I've done things to other people as well, you know? They don't just...hate me because of what I've done to you. It's what I've done plus that. I'm fine if they hate me."

"I'm not." Jeremiah responds back firmly, causing Ivan to snicker. "People have no filter and spout whatever they want about you to me, and it infuriates me. They don't know you like I do, they don't know...what we've been through with each other. All they see - and will continue to see - is a person who 'won'. When there was nothing to be won in the first place-."

"But that is also my doing as well." Ivan grinned up at Jeremiah as he began to look at him in displeasure. "I know you don't want to hear this, but hear me out. I purposely pushed the limits all the time and embarrassed you to prove a point. To prove that no matter what I did, you'd come back to me. That was wrong of me, I should've never...tried to ruin you in the way that I did. In trying to prove my power over you, it only added fuel to the fire. It prove to everyone else...I proved to everyone else that I'm not worthy of someone who continues to put up with my nonsense because he loves me so much."

Ivan saw Jeremiah's eyes soften on him, feeling how sad he felt. Not sad because of the truth, but because he could feel that Ivan still had yet to forgive himself for the past.

"I forgave you...you have changed. Just because no one else sees the change doesn't mean it hasn't happened. You have to forgive yourself too...don't forget."

"I...I can't right now." Ivan shook his head, and he felt Jeremiah pull back from him.

He sat some ways away, looking at him sadly.

"Why not? We are now Mates. I feel what you feel, and you feel what I feel now. I feel...you right now, and your heart still hurts. It doesn't need to-."

"It's just self-hatred." Ivan interrupts him softly.

Before Jeremiah could say anything else, there was a knock on their bedroom door. They both looked in shock because there wasn't supposed to be anyone in the house.

Their parents were supposed to take Luka home with them...so they didn't know who it could be.

Jeremiah covered Ivan with the sheets, pulling some pants on as he went to his door. When he opened it, he looked down to see Luka staring up at him.

Except this Luka was different. This was the one unaware of the history and the mind of an actual toddler, and he wanted one thing.

"Food..." Luka mumbled.

Jeremiah looked on in shock to still seeing him, only to pick him up quickly.

"He's still here?" Ivan got up in a rush, pulling his own pants on as Jeremiah looked at him in concern. They've been in that room for a couple days now.

Just when he got up, he could feel how weak his legs were and quickly sat back on the bed. Jeremiah watching the whole time as he smiled.

"I will give him something, I will be back to help you with whatever you need or want." He promises, pressing a kiss to Ivan's lips.

Once he left the room, Ivan sat there and felt like he was on cloud nine. His hand went to the back of his neck...a smile slowly growing to his lips to feel such a thing.

He could feel the differences. Now being with someone he truly loved, he was feeling all of what he felt. He could truly feel that Jeremiah had forgiven him and that made his heart race.

Race with happiness, while at the same time...he felt bad because he had yet to forgive himself. It didn't feel right just yet.

"It feels nice, right?"

Ivan looked up, seeing the Luna smiling down at him. He found himself smiling back at her as he nodded.

"It does. I feel...like a weight was just lifted off of me. I feel more free and like nothing could come against what him and I have. Accepting what we are to each other is...the best feeling." Ivan confessed to her.

In the process of saying that, he began to hear a voice in his own head. A voice that grew in volume and it seemed the Luna already knew what it was.

He looked around for a moment to try to make sure he wasn't crazy, until he felt her hand touch his shoulder. When he looked back at her, she grinned.

"Mother?"

Ivan frowned, only to suddenly feel himself no longer be in control of himself. He found himself still watching...seeing things the way he always has. Except in this moment, it was like someone else had taken over.

Because he did.

The Luna saw the look within Ivan's eyes as he began to recognize his own mother's stare. The way it went from Ivan to Luv, she found herself ecstatic.

"They really did it...they really broke the curse," She breathed excitedly, gripping Ivan's shoulders only to look at Luv who had completely taken over at that moment, "Mother, if you are there, please say-."

"Where is Primus?"

Instantly, Luna exclaimed excitedly as she hugged Luv. Hugging her mother once again and could feel him hug her back.

"What is this? How is this fair? I still have my life-!"

"Don't worry," Luv interrupts Ivan aloud, Luna continuing to smile at him as he looked around, "I don't intend on staying long. I will go back to rest in your feeble body until you die and I'm reborn. Where I can be the Omega I once was with my Alpha... Primus, I want to see him."

Luna moved aside and right when Luv stood, his legs were still relatively weak. His hands steadying his weight as he snorts.

"Don't tell me, I had sex with him?" Luv chuckles.

"I had sex with my Jeremiah. We mated, like we always were meant to do."

"Yes, of course." Luv wasn't really paying attention to his words as he just wanted to see Primus after so long. "I just want to see him too. What's his name?"

"Mother," Luna spoke first, watching Luv look at her softly, "Jeremiah...isn't aware of everything. I told Ivan to help make this situation easier to handle. To end the curse after so many years. So if you speak to him and want to see Primus, he won't know what you're talking about. He still thinks you're Ivan."

Luv understood what she said, but also didn't understand how they couldn't just tell him.

"Then we can just tell him the truth in all of this."

"Don't!" Ivan exclaims in his head. "The way things are for him and me, they are perfect. Telling him something as unnecessary as that-."

"It isn't unnecessary, it's my history - our history. I will see my Primus no matter what you say. You're still another version of me either way-."

"It doesn't matter, I'm still me."

"Sure." Luv walks towards the door, just trying to follow his instinct.

Except when he got to the door, Jeremiah was rounding the corner too. He looked down at Ivan softly, unaware of Luv who had taken over for a moment.

Luv, on the other hand, was at a loss for words. He was seeing Primus again...in all of his glory.

The physical aspect, that is.

"Are you able to walk a little better? I just sat Luka down and he's eating. I told him we'd come back down-."

"Primus," Luv just said outright, and in that moment, Jeremiah frowned. He could tell by the way that Ivan looked at him that there was something wrong.

When he looked behind him, that's when he saw the Luna once again.

"I haven't seen you since..." Jeremiah stopped, and in that moment, he pulled Ivan into his arms. Holding onto him tightly, the Luna smiled.

"Don't worry, I won't do anything to him. That's not Ivan you're speaking to anyway," She informs him, sighing, "I have something to explain to you, and it's something Ivan already knows well enough. He can hear me too, just so that you're aware that he's not gone."

And in that moment, all of their happy and intimate moments for the day, left. As he began to learn about the truth of the matter to all of this.

That he was a product of a curse that they have just broken after so many years. Thousands upon thousands of years, and only a couple days ago was it truly broken.

"Except what I don't understand is why I don't see him." Luna looked at Jeremiah's chest, waiting to see the glowing center that would house Primus' soul.

In Ivan, you could see it so vividly as it captured her eyes and left her stunned. It was proof that Luv still lived within him and was going to be reborn again with her.

While Jeremiah's center was cold...dim, and she couldn't see her father clearly at all. Even before the curse was broken, Ivan and Jeremiah's center holding her parents, were dim.

Except once he was bitten, Ivan's lit up to reveal Luv.

"If the curse is truly broken, that means we'd be able to see Primus. You told me that the curse was broken, but clearly not." Luv says firmly, looking back at a confused and almost...frustrated Jeremiah. "What is your problem? What? The you right now doesn't feel like an Alpha, still?"

On the inside, Ivan was beginning to feel upset because he didn't want him talking to Jeremiah that way. He didn't know their particular situation.

"He isn't Primus, don't talk to him that way- saying still. Still nothing." Ivan snapped.

"Oh my. You're so defensive for your Alpha, huh? So cute." Luv mocks Ivan as he saw Jeremiah begin to glare at him. "I just have two questions for you."

"What?"

Luv pursed his lips for a moment, hearing Ivan angrily mumble in his head. The things he said and the way he worded things, it was similar yet not similar to Luv himself.

"Aren't you my Alpha?"

"Of course I am!" Jeremiah exclaimed desperately. "I'm Ivan's Alpha."

Luv rolled his eyes, since they were still the same person. "Do you feel like an Alpha?"

Jeremiah looked at him, wondering why someone who wasn't Ivan cared so much about this. "Yes, I do."

"No you don't, I can tell. And that's the problem right there." Luv said outright.

As he walked around Jeremiah, he quickly ran in front of him.

"I feel like an Alpha, I do!" Jeremiah exclaimed with the most certainty. "I don't know what more you want from me-."

"It's somewhere inside of you," Luv dug his finger into Jeremiah's chest, glaring into his eyes, "somewhere inside of you - the you now, has not accepted that you're an Alpha, truly. While Ivan...I have accepted my placement, I'm an Omega. Somewhere within you, you still aren't fully accepting what you are."

Luv cradled Jeremiah's face, looking into the eyes that were exactly like Primus'. Same face, same eyes, same lips, same everything.

"You feel just like him..." Luv breathes, letting his hands run down his neck and shoulders. "You are him...yet not him. He's still within you somewhere. The you right now is keeping him from me-."

"Don't speak to him that way, please?" Ivan begged Luv, causing him to roll his eyes. "He may not be your Primus from your time, but he's mine in this one. Instead of talking down on him and telling him what he's not, let's show him what he is."

Luv remained silent, looking up at Jeremiah's pathetic gaze. He stepped back as he looked over at Luna.

"What do you think I should do? I won't be able to rest peacefully until I am reborn until I can hear...and see that Primus is still within him."

"Well, he has to be because if he was not, Jeremiah wouldn't be-."

"I'm fine!" Jeremiah exclaims, shocking Luv, Luna, and Ivan all at the same time. "I respected you."

Jeremiah pointed at the Luna sternly, her hands raising in defense as she's been trying to fix this all along.

"Except now you're having someone else do whatever they're doing to Ivan. I don't care about what our past selves did, this is us - now. And right now, I feel more like an Alpha than I ever have in my entire life!"

"Well feel more." Luv says sharply.

Jeremiah looked down at him as he found himself put off by Luv. And the fact that someone who put him off so much was residing in Ivan's body as well was conflicting.

"I'm not obligated to feel more for someone who isn't Ivan."

Luv felt a pang in his chest, forcing past the irritation to hearing him say that. "You do know that Ivan is a part of me. Without me, there wouldn't be such a-."

"I don't care."

Ivan was at a loss for words for Jeremiah, wanting to hug him and hold onto him so badly. Except Luv still had full control of everything in his body.

"Give him back to me." Jeremiah says firmly.

"Give him," Luv shoved his finger into his chest again, but more harshly, "back to me."

"Mother...I think we should take a break for now." The Luna interrupts as she could easily sense the tension. "They still have their child, and a promise was made-."

"I don't give a fuck about that. I want my Primus...now."

"You can come back like this and we can still talk about how to fix things in my head," Ivan reminds Luv despite his growing frustration, "But you can't interfere with our lives...even if you believe what you believe. We are still living our lives right now. Because before, it's never gotten this far."

Luv didn't say a word as he let himself fall back, Ivan getting full control of his body again. And Jeremiah didn't have to hear him say a word as his body already rushed to his embrace.

Holding onto him tightly, the Luna still looked on.

At Primus' soul.

The soul within Jeremiah's body that was still dim. She could've sworn the curse was broken...or maybe not.

Now she wasn't sure at all anymore.

__________________🥴

♡˗ˏ✎*ೃ˚🍌:;

↳ ❝ [ i will be updating this once a week (all depends, but at least, every five days). i want to keep people wanting more- 🙇🏽‍♀️. did i succeed? ] ¡! ❞

what do you think that is?

why is he still hiding (dim)?

nothing? nice. 😟

vote, comment, follow~✨

- yolo🍖