"Is there a word for the moment you win tug-of-war? When the weight gives and all that extra rope comes hurtling towards you. How even though you've won, you still end up with muddy knees and burns on your hands. Is there a word for that?"

From a young age, Salem Sterling was convinced that the universe despised her.

Ever since she was a girl she dreamed of a knight in shining armor who would sweep her off her feet and ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. Yet it would seem fate had different plans. She woke up on her 16th birthday to the feeling of slight burning across her chest, she blinked away her grogginess and confusion before realization set in that it was her Mark, her Soulmark that she had been waiting for since she was a child. With a start, she stumbled out of her bed with her long, tangled platinum hair hanging around her face as she hurried to flip the light switch on and shoved on her thick framed glasses to examine her new Soulmark from her dresser mirror. As the full name of her Soulmate began to appear, the young girl stared with wide light amber eyes in wonder as the sharp jagged cursive began to form. The burning increased before suddenly fading into a slight feeling of irritation. Salem marveled at her pale skin and the new black words that were scrawled under the curve of her collarbone and in a rush of excitement she scurried to her laptop, tripping over her bunched up blankets that fell to the floor in her haste, and plopped down on her desk chair before booting up the computer. She tucked a strand of curly hair behind her ear anxiously as she waited to begin her search.

Once the computer was loaded she quickly pulled up the browser, noticing that her slender hands were trembling with nerves as quickly typed in the name that had just appeared moments earlier. Waiting for results to pop up, she felt a grin curl her bee stung lips at being one of the few rare people to have their Soulmates appear early; she began chewing on her bottom lip watching the little circle spin round and round until it suddenly stopped and pages after pages filled her screen.

The blonde blinked in surprise.

Newspaper articles and pictures littered the screen and she clicked on the first one and read it quickly. Then read it again and then once more. Confusion filled her as her smile slowly slid off her face.

'This has to be a mistake; is this even possible?' she thought numbly but knew deep down that this person was her Soulmate.

As she began reading through every single article, looking at every single picture, and anything else she could find and re-read everything again and again until her parents knocked on her door when the sun had risen with smiling faces. Their expressions quickly fell when the small girl looked up with tears streaming down her delicate freckled face. She spent the rest of the day alternating between sobbing quietly and research, determined to get answers.

'It can't be true, my Mark isn't faded,' she would argue with herself.

There were no other cases like hers to be found, and at the risk of being interrogated by doctors, her parents convinced her to stop her search much to Salem's distress. She was inconsolable for months afterward; She made sure to keep her Mark hidden and didn't speak one word of it to anybody. She still tried to find answers, but no one had any information and she lost hope that she would have a Soulmate. Despite everything though she grew extremely protective of her Mark and she found herself staring longingly at the pictures she found. Late at night when she would have bad days she would lay under her blankets and trace it with her fingers and letting it soothe her while letting her imagination run wild over the name that was on her skin.

'James Buchanan Barnes'

Fate had to hate her; why else would it give her the name of a dead man?

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