Vulnerable: Book 1 of the Magic Mutations Series | ✓

1: Once Upon a Time

August, 2017

"You're in my seat," were the first words I ever said to him. The day I met Benjamin Cross, my life hadn't strayed far from normal... until he showed up. Though, looking back and knowing everything I know now, it could have gone so many different ways.

Long legs stretched out under the table, lanky frame supported by the wall, he briefly glanced up from his book to meet my tired gaze.

"Excuse me?" he replied, voice laced with animosity. Curly brown locks extended past his chin, only accentuating his porcelain skin and iridescent blue eyes.

"I said... you're in my seat," I repeated.

Yet he merely furrowed his brows and narrowed his eyes at me, like I was being the unreasonable one.

And, sure, you might be inclined to side with him. He was there first... this time. But this was normally my spot. Every single morning of a weekday I'd forward up the steps of the library at 9:30am sharp and take this very seat right at the back corner by the mythology section. And every single time I have done so, it has been empty.

Perhaps most days, I would have just let this slide. I should have. But after all the encounters I had to face with other human beings this morning, I was desperate for my sense of normalcy to return... even if it meant arguing with this blue-eyed stranger.

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Earlier that Day

A brisk chill clung to the air as I forwarded onto the 8am bus at Highgate Station. Even to this day, I can still recall that, while other travellers whispered about rumours of a hotspell on its way, I huddled into my jacket as I took a free seat on the bottom level of the double decker, shaking my head at their nonsense about the concept of 'warmth' ever making its way to the United Kingdom.

Because, in some way I relished in the coldness of the place—in the weather and in the people. And my steady constant was unlikely to change. It hadn't in the over half-a-year I had been here. Drizzly, overcast, and gloomy was the way things always went around here.

As my gaze turned out the window of the half-full bus, I relaxed in my free seat. No one ever afforded me attention in London; it's miserable inhabitants too selfishly focussed on their busy—though empty—lives.

But as stop after stop came, so did the inevitable. The spaces ahead filled until a nondescript man took the seat next to me, legs splaying wide as he claimed more than his fair share of the bench and my personal bubble.

Instinctively, I hid behind the curtain of my hair as he continued to whip his head around, looking here and there and everywhere that wasn't really me... but I still felt watched in some way. As always, I felt the knotted pit growing in my stomach as I began to wonder whether my foundation this morning really had concealed my pigmentation scars, or if perhaps the person next to me was turning up their nose at my copper hair. My teenage days of being teased for being a "ranga" still returned in harrowing echoes.

Just like every morning that some person took the space next to me, the walls of the bus began to feel like they were closing. The desire to run to someone, anyone, for safety and comfort began to grow... if only I had someone to run to.

But instead, as the telltale signs of a panic attack began to set in, I merely slipped in my headphones, blasted my favourite song, and clamped my eyes shut as I counted my breaths... until the dread subsided. Until the sweat claiming my whole body dried up. And until my racing heart lulled back to a gentle rhythm.

Only opening my eyes every now and then to glance at the moving cityscape to ascertain where we were, I stayed in my happy place until about an hour later when my stop finally arrived.