1: Luna
Soulmates.
They were the same for everyone.
It always was the same.
Everyone was born with their soul mark, an undeniable marking that tying soulmates together.
Most people grew up listening to stories, fairy tales, all about how magical the love of a soulmate can be. How everything that ever seemed wrong with your life finally starts to make sense when you meet them, and you realize that your life wasn’t wrong. It was just missing the final piece of the puzzle that makes you... you.
On your twenty first birthday, a letter would arrive in the mail giving you information on your soulmate. Their birthdate, an image of their soul mark, and a list of their allergies. The mysterious envelope would never have any information printed on it except your full legal name. There would never be a return address or a postcode stamp, no indication of where the letter came from. It wouldn't even matter if you moved and didn't have an updated address yet. The letter would always find you. Always, as if it was some magical occurrence.
My parents worked in soulmate science, and I knew too much of the darker side of the field to be envious of those with marks. I had seen my parents’ work up close - the way soul marks tethered souls together, the way scientists were learning how to rip apart the threads of fate and reweave them.
Like everyone else, I’d received my letter on my twenty first birthday. I left it unopened, unread, because unlike everyone else I knew, I had no soul mark. The letter was likely empty anyway, I'd told myself. No reason to get worked up over a blank sheet of paper, or even a letter telling me what I'd already grown up believing.
So I'd decided long ago that if my soulmate was truly meant for me, they’d find their way into my life without any effort on my part. If I even had a soulmate at all.
I thought about it from time to time, what it’d be like to have a soulmate. Would we be so lost in each other that nothing else mattered? Or would cracks in our relationship form, burning us up like fire, reducing our love to nothing more than ashes and smoke?
Whatever the outcome, I knew deep down that I didn’t want any part of that. I didn’t want to cause that sort of pain, I didn’t want to feel that joy. I just wanted to exist, to live my life freely. No worries of a soulmate, no fear or trepidation over what kind of person they were.
Until one day, my entire world seemed to crash down around me. Even though I stayed away, my soulmates found me, crashing into my life like a tidal wave.
And even worse, they refused to reject me.
Even if rejection would mean saving their lives.
