There is nothing I love more than when Elliot and I move in perfect, harmonious synchrony. After the blast had finished shaking the street, Elliot, mate or not in my room be damned, threw open my door, tossed me my magical umbrella, and we were off to the races. Katrina tried to help, but despite her good intentions, she mainly just got in the way: Elliot and I had several precautions in place for the inevitable existence of a home invader. Many of those revolved around thrown things with bad aim and looking impressive. We kept the serious magical juju to ourselves just incase something happened to really fuck us over.
Pumped up on magical stimulants and armed with the finest pair of weaponized googly-eyed earnings the world has ever seen, Elliot and I burst through the doors of the main house to our sanctum, looking through the glass at the assembled army of werewolves not quite close enough to trigger the protective enhancements. Instead, they'd blocked off the entirety of the street with West Side Story style cars, on top of which, the leadership had set up a large stage. And on top of that stage, the werewolf I'd stabbed with my epipen stomped around the edges with a megaphone clamped in his hand, occasionally stepping so hard a chunks of the stage fell right off.
In pure agreement, Elliot and I exchanged a look of disgust. I readied a tranquilizer crossbow I found in one of Marcell's many closets.
The werewolf began to talk. "Give us back our beta, and come with us, then we don't attack."
Elliot raised an eyebrow at me. "You want me to handle this? You're not so good at the diplomacy thing..."
"Eh." I waved his hand away, already bursting myself with the runes on my umbrella. "My mates, my screaming match." So that the werewolves could see me, I disassembled the invisibility charm around the sanctum and clambered up onto the table where just two nights ago, Elliot and I had been fighting over ravens and chocolate. Speaking of ravens, Bel swooped in and joined me on my shoulder, giving me what I thought was a very majestic elven Druid brand of badass. I raised the umbrella, already enchanted with a voice magnification. "You want him? You take him. He's hiding upstairs in a closet."
"I don't believe that," my second mate roared. "Xander would never hide from a fight." The werewolves around him shifted, their fur bristling. Underneath their muscle backed arms, I saw a few of them holding knives, and even one clutching some kind of very scary looking gun.
"Well, he's there, and I want my room back." I elbowed Elliot not so subtly in the ribs, who elbowed Katrina. To them I muttered, "Go give the guy six table spoons of St. John's wart, like seven kilos of Chamomile, and you know what, Elliot, you're better at exact quantities than I am, just make sure he's too stoned to cause any trouble."
"And none of those ingredients are going to blow me up?" Elliot asked me, eyes narrowed.
As subtly as I could, I shook my head. "Just give you a really large headache so don't snort any."
"I don't snort anything anyway." With that, Elliot slid down from the table and fumbled his way to the door, managing to knock over my phone, which was still balances on a bookshelf in the process. This time, I heard the shatter. One of the werewolves in the assembled ranks shifts uncomfortably, mouthing to me: "Is your phone ok?"
The pained smile I gave only portrayed a fraction of the untold agony sitting in my heart. Katrina patted my head like a puppy.
The werewolf holding the megaphone snarled again. "Get out here. Now."
"How about no?" I offered. "You can dispel the army, and then we can initiate this hostage transfer like civilized werebeasts."
"Or I could knock down that glass, and bring you kicking and screaming to where you need to go while I find my brother and burn your house to the ground."
An older woman that might be his mother put a hand on the megaphone guy's arm, whispering something—hopefully a warning—into his ear. He shrugged it off. Raised one hand.
I called out, "You really don't want to do that." While he might have been game to send his troops into a fully protected sanctum that would burn them up the second they touched the glass, my often absent moral compass drew the line at the slaughter of mostly innocents, even if they were trying to kidnap me. "Katrina."
She looked up. "I heard them."
"If all hell goes down, I need you to heal as many as possible."
"Are you going to lower the wards?"
"I don't think even he's that stupid."
Katrina rubbed the space above the piercing going through the center of her nose. "We'll see."
With Katrina warped, I focused my attention back on the murmuring army in front. "Do you know what this is?"
"Glass and spellwork." Blood filtered into megaphone werewolf's eyes, turning the bright, claret red. "Nothing I can't crush."
"A witch's sanctum."
Some of the army began to whisper, others turned to look at their leader, their apprehension written on their faces in downturned lips and wrinkled foreheads. But more unsheathed claws from their hands and readied their stances, looking at me with even more hatred then before.
"You'll be burned alive the second you touch the barrier."
A feral snarl grows on the werewolf's face. "And it's just like a witch to be a liar! Charge!"
A sea of werewolves tenses, then rushed towards the sanctum walls. The front lines bounded forward, their human forms left in the dust as skin changed to fur, nails changed to claws, and pursed lips melted to snouts and fangs. They closed in on the sanctum. All the while, I shouted for them to stop, but if I lowered the sanctum enchantments, the evil hag would have full access to my work, to me, to Marcell, to Elliot.
The front lines neared ten meters away. Katrina looked at me with plant feelers growing from her nails. On her face I saw the same kind of incredulity I felt: were they going to stop? What leader would send their troops to the death, knowing this was a battle they couldn't win?
Five meters.
Then three.
If I couldn't strip the sanctum spells—even if the hag was out of the picture, spells like those took hours of complex spell work with uninterrupted concentration and ingredients I didn't have on hand—could I give them what they wanted?
Because they wanted me. But if I gave myself up, I knew what the hag would do. There wouldn't be a point to stopping the bloodshed. I just felt it, as much as I felt that I had a mate upstairs and another outside.
The first line of soldiers met the sanctum. Their flesh started to dissolve, I smelled them burning. Beside me, Katrina sank to her knees wailing, the pain of thirty soldiers coursing through her at once as she tried to heal them, failed, and tried again. I couldn't take it. I couldn't.
There was a sigil tattooed on my wrist, one I promised myself I wouldn't ever use. I still wouldn't then. Not yet, not ever...or so I told myself.
And the sun light was waning. The woman at my mate's side pulled at his sleeve, screaming. Screaming. There was screaming everywhere...I couldn't take it...from Katrina, from the wolves, from Elliot, looking out the window, from my mate upstairs, over his mind link...
The mind link that I might share. In my head, I grabbed onto the life force pulsing from my mate, and Katrina's hand, using a rune on the back of my neck to link us together...with Katrina's power, slicing into the pack link was easier than moving my hand through air...their agony filled every inch of me...I burned with them...
With all my might, and all the magic I had, I reached deeper, for where the links met their minds, and from there to where their minds controlled their bodies.
Stop.
At my command, the world stilled. Every single werewolf connected to the pack froze. Katrina fell to the table, tears streaming from her eyes. Keeping control of the link had all my concentration, but there was enough in me to put a hand on her shoulder to tell her, "Katrina, I need you to move them. With the plants."
Even though part of her was still connected to me, she waved her hands at the over turned rose pots laying with their roots out by the front of Marcell's antique shop. She thrust the vines at the front row of soldiers, knocking them down. Then, her hand still in mine, me guiding her, we walked together through the sanctum glass. I left Katrina at the front lines, healing. No, my target lurked further away, the remnants of his bloodlust still frozen in the corners of his snarl. I faced my mate in his sea of frozen shoulders, my arms out stretched.
"Do you see what you've done? Are you happy now that you've got what you wanted?"
My concentration bucked. The soldiers squirmed, then stilled. From in the pack link, he fought my bond. I channeled more energy. Katrina cried out, then fainted. Now the only energy I drew ame from my reserves within myself, which has already taken one beating, and weren't ready for two. I used the last bits to break a telekinetic ring, sending Katrina hurling back into the sanctum.
Black curled around my vision.
I disappeared.