Ayn's Healing

Chapter 47 - Kari

I am walking home next to Timo, dragging my spoils of war on a long silver chain. The pack is behind me and two witches are flying above.

***

Our long night started yesterday, when Sibylle landed in front of our door, holding my mate and my son under her arm.

I wanted to cry like a pup, shamelessly, howling, snorting, soaking the seam of her dress with  my tears. I had been slowly losing hope that I would see them again alive. But then I got a glimpse of my mate's neck and ankles which displayed parallel deep lash marks, equally spaced one inch apart, and I slowly lifted her sleeves to peek underneath and I saw the same cuts on her arms. I didn't look further. I also didn't cry, because my blood turned to liquid fire and my wolf went feral.

We had been searching for them for days. In the beginning "we" meant my dad, Timo and the scouts, because I was half dead. I would have been completely dead, if it wouldn't have been for Zero, Ayn's resident lynx.  He was relatively unphased by the dark shield, because he is not dependent on the pack mind, he managed to outrun the rogues with his crazy cat speed, and then insistently annoyed a lambda until this later followed him into the woods.

My mom figured out that Storm will not manage to heal me, so she asked Sibylle to come help us. Sybille responded and also recruited Ina and Lex to help with the search.

After I described to them the attack - the silent mindlinks, Ayn's inability to fly or defend herself -, they were quite certain that my mate and the pup were held somewhere under a dark magic shield.

Sibylle was furious about this, because dark magic use was still forbidden under the Witches Council laws. Ina was a bit disheartened, but confident she could find them, by identifying what she called a "crack" in the shield. Her plan involved however hours of flight and careful scanning, and she didn't know how long it would take for her small coven. Plus she needed to have a ton of permissions for her flyover.

When I was able to stand, after a week, I informed the Shifter's Council that my mate and my son were kidnapped on my territory, and that in order to look for them, I will raid all packs with which I did not have an alliance, starting with those in the Eastern Hills.

I asked Astrid and her girlfriend Selma, as well as Albert, to join us with their warriors. I also called Aidan, because he owed me one, and he actually also got Henry on board. Rio offered to join, without me even asking him, because this was about the godmother of his Beta's spawn, so basically personal.

They were at the ready on the night when the Teaching Clan Leader brought my mate and my pup back into my arms. When Sibylle mentioned that she knows where Ayn and Lars had been held captive, and that Ina, Lex and some friends will go take a look, I sensed in her voice that the witches had planned to do a bit more than that. I offered Ina and Lex to join the wolf army I had put together so that they could use the implicit punishment raid permission granted to me by the Wolves' Way, and they happily accepted.

My mother tried to stop me, she told me to stay there with my mate and pup, she reminded me that only some days before I had been almost dead. I heard her and there was a part of me that would have really liked to take her advice and just enjoy my returned family. But there was also Storm, who was insane with revenge lust.

We arrived at the location Ayn had indicated after midnight, after traveling east. We reached an old house surrounded by a well kept lawn, next to a birch forest. The witches scanned around for a while and suddenly Ina pulled her fingers through the air as if she would have pulled apart a curtain and her witches joined in the motion. If you didn't look carefully, you would have thought they are just doing some sort of weird pantomime and that the small shift in the light around their bodies was an optical illusion. But we did look carefully and we knew what they did. The ones in the house also knew, because we immediately saw the place buzzing with wolves.