A blinding headache reminds me that I have cried myself to sleep. Cleansing as it was, it left me with terrible puffy eyes and I will have to lie, pretexting an inexistent allergy to justify my looks. I cannot tell people that I had a pleasurable and intimate exchange with Kari, only for him to suddenly stop in the middle of it.
It had been very confusing. I was lying there, in the arms of a handsome and good-smelling male. The outstanding amount of actives in my system had done a very good job to make me forget about his wolf and Alpha status. I let myself go into my first-ever kiss, which was so much better than I had ever imagined it would be.
I thought that, even if my tree turned out to be glitching and Kari wasn't my soulmate, maybe I wasn't going to have a year of solitude after all. Maybe we could exchange some more of those satisfying kisses, and make my time here somehow interesting.
When the male insisted that we need to stop the interaction he had initiated, I didn't ask why. I didn't want to hear any of the reasonable answers that would have probably highlighted the inadequacy of an us.
I settled on pursuing my initial goal for the evening, which was to find a way to sleep through, and asked for his hoodie, which I was planning to use as a security blanket. When the shifter complied with my request, my tree immediately forgot the very recent rejection and, much to my horror, had the audacity to offer him some flowery presents.
***
Luckily for me, the clinic is empty when I arrive. As the morning progresses I only see a few tiny patients this morning that I send away with herbal remedies because none of them is terribly sick. The mothers' comprehension integrates much easier the use of potions and creams than the power of my healing touch.
When James joins me, dirty and exhausted, telling me that the ranked members made up for their absence and destroyed their wolves in training, I am thinking that it is time for me to graduate to healing warriors. That should be hard enough work to strengthen my core. I cannot develop it only by preparing medicine and hoping that I will meet enough forest creatures in need of healing.
I start my walk uphill, composing in my head the arguments I plan to present to Xander this evening, while also looking around for raspberry leaves. I need some fresh ones for the remedy I promised I would prepare for Mia because the dry ones I have are not strong enough for shifters.
When I reach the pine forest I stop to breathe in deeply. I step on the thick carpet of needles and realize I look forward to summer when the sun will warm up the resin on the trees and dry further the ground, and it will smell like heaven.
The path is narrowing between the towering trees and pleasant cool darkness surrounds me. I see young fern plants spiraling their tips some meters away from the path, so I stray a little to gather some. I thank the plant for allowing me to harvest it and I keep walking in a more or less straight line until I reach a clearing. I look around for raspberry bushes, but first my eyes stop on some young wild thyme that could come in handy, and then I walk further to pick up some crocus and, as I am about to return to the path, I am pushed to the ground by a huge black wolf.
He's showing two rows of sharp fangs, as he sniffs and claws angrily at my shoulder blade. I cannot speak to wolves is my first thought, before my brain and the rest of my body freeze in panic.
A scream forms somewhere at the base of my throat, only to get stuck there and impair my meager air supply even more.
Were my mother's eyes open or closed when she died, is the question that absurdly forms in my consciousness. Mine are open but blind.
A loud hair-raising growl forces the black wolf away from me. My blurred vision makes out the shape of a much larger, silver wolf who is posturing angrily at the one that attacked me.
The shaky voice of my instincts is telling me to take advantage of this moment and run, but I cannot do so on jelly legs, and so I get to see both beasts shifting smoothly in front of me.
When I see that the silver wolf is Kari, I am relieved and scared at the same time. The other animal morphs into a beautiful young man with night-black eyes. He is slightly smaller than Kari but nicely built, and he is also having a man bun day, with some rebel hair strands falling along his chiseled cheeks.
"I am sorry, Jordi. This is Ayn, our guest. She is still finding her way up here and probably got lost. I will make sure it won't happen again."
I can sense from the way Kari is looking at me, with eyes filled with green lightning, that he is not pleased.
"No worries, Kari, I am happy I didn't neutralize her. Say hi at home."
They do a quick fist bump and, when the handsome Jordi leaves the perimeter, Kari grabs my shoulder and starts barking at me:
"And you...what do you think YOU are doing? Have you not been told not to come down here without permission?"
My fear turns to anger, as I have never been addressed in this tone by a male before.
When he exchanged pleasantries with the Jordi person, I managed to stand and dust off my clothes, thus I feel that I have regained a bit of dignity. Definitely a bit more than him, because he is standing in front of me, butt-naked. In order not to be distracted by all the strong bits he is displaying, I choose to look him in the eyes. This needs quite some head tilting from my side.
"No, shifter, I was not formally told by your Alpha I need permission to go into the forest."
Anger and sadness cloud his eyes like a summer storm.
"It's not about going into the forest... you have crossed the territory border and you are on Rio's ground. You are not of our pack and so you are not covered by the standing agreement.
The other thing is that this valley is full of rogues looking for humans to turn. Do you know what turning is?" He mutters the last words through clenched teeth.
I do know what it is. Turning is the process through which werewolves or shapeshifters turn other beings into one of theirs. I know it involves biting the neck of their victim. I also know that, in an overwhelming majority of cases, the transformation doesn't work and the victim dies. I now somehow understand his anxiety-induced rage outburst, but I still feel the need to continue defensively:
"But this wasn't a rogue..."
"Luckily for you, it was just Jordi, Rio's Beta, and I have it good with him. What the hell are you doing down here anyway?'' He keeps questioning me.
"I...need some plants...for...Ummm...tea. Yes, I need plants for tea!" I raise my index finger, to underline my eureka moment.
"What plants? What tea? My mom has like a full box of tea for you to choose from, just ask her."
"Yeah, I looked there...but I didn't find the one I like....." Ridiculous lies are pouring out of me because I know Mia hasn't told her brother about her troubles. "I need raspberry leaves."
"But we have raspberries all around the house." There is irritation in his voice, he cannot follow my broken logic.
"I need leaves, not buds. I was hoping I would find some here."
He shakes his head.
"So you are not even lost. Did you tell anybody that you planned to walk home this way?"
I stop talking because I don't really have a clever answer to his question that wouldn't betray Mia's secret and, as my body is starting to process the scare from earlier, I feel weak.
"Come on, let's go home", Kari says, softly grabbing my arm.
"I need that plant," I say, bracing myself for another barking round. After a second when his grip tightens in frustration, he sighs and, surprisingly, says:
"Fine, I will wait here and explain myself if any of Rio's guards sense us again. You have two minutes."
--------------------
A/N: Tick-tock, Ayn.
YOU ARE READING
Ayn's Healing
ParanormalAyn is a witch with healing powers. Shapeshifters have killed her parents and the only animals she cannot speak with are wolves. When she graduates from the Teaching Clan and finds out that she has to cross the River and live in the Wolves' Mountai...
