Ayn's Healing

Chapter 33 - Ayn

My initial excitement about the mind power glitch turned relatively fast into mild anxiety. On one hand, mind power was an amazing defense skill to have, particularly for a witch person living in a territory where everybody can morph at will into a four-feet tall wolf. Plus, I was connected to my mom through all my core strengths. Wielding mind power would allow me to keep also a link to my dad. But I wasn't sure how investing energy into training the random glitch would affect my core craft proficiency that I needed to have, in order to get my wings.

The mild anxiety turned into overwhelming anxiety and, after the fourth day when I - shockingly- woke up before him and curled up in a ball on the floor, Kari countersigned a stack of permissions he had gotten for me and sent me to talk it through with Sybille or any other witch that could help me make a decision.

***

On this overcast spring morning I tell my very tall soulmate to bend a little bit so that I can kiss his soft pepperminty lips properly, because this is the first time I am going to be one night away from him and I don't know how I will survive. He tells me we can use Storm to have a good night chat, Storm growls at us and lets us know he won't be relaying any sex talk, we can use our damn phones for that, like regular humans, and we exchange a laugh before I get in the car with Teresa.

We have a four hour drive, including the River crossing with the ferry, but Sybille asked me to stay the night and so the plan is to sleep at a little hotel close to the school and drive back the next day.

I haven't yet turned the first curve and I try to start a conversation to prevent THE question I know Teresa wants to ask me and which I have been dreading and dodging multiple times in the last months.

"Teresa, I have been living at Eagle Rock for almost a year now and I never got to ask you - how did you meet my parents?"

"Oh, it's a perfect story for this long trip" she answers with a smile in her voice. "I was a young Luna, Kari must have been five. Dean, Timo's father was Xander's Beta and Deea, his mate, was mine. Deea was heavily pregnant with Timo when Xander and Dean had a very ugly encounter with rogues on Pass Street One. Xander was in bad shape but Rock was slowly healing him. Dean's wolf - Bolt - was however weakened to the point where everybody was convinced they would both die. Deea told me that she heard people talking about a green witch on this side of the River, who was under contract with a pack up North. She asked me if there was any way we could get her help.

Xander was still recovering so I contacted their Alpha, a certain Chris son of Michael and Joan, who I had never met in my life."

"Chris - you mean Finn's father ?"

"Yes, exactly. We didn't have an alliance with him at the time. I asked if I could come to his pack healer with our Beta, who was losing his wolf. I told him I was ready to pay whatever he asked, or have my Alpha grant him a standing agreement. I don't know if it was the despair in my voice, the shock that he got a call from a Luna, or that he was interested in a relationship with a Land Core pack that swayed him, but he agreed. I organized a transport for Dean and, since Deea was really in no condition to travel, I took two lambdas as escort and went with him.

Chris' territory spanned over a thousand square miles of hills, covered with orchards and wild forest. Their living arrangement was slightly different, because their pack was much larger. They had an Alpha mansion which was an enormous villa with a rooftop pool, surrounded by the individual villas of the ranked members. The rest of the pack lived in two storey houses and taller buildings."

Teresa laughs and I briefly think the Shifter's territory is as diverse as the Land itself. Rooftop pools and high buildings were such a regular human thing. I am looking forward to our politics tour later this month and seeing the Northern Hills with my own eyes. Maybe Finn can show me where my mom lived when she was his father's pack witch.