Ayn's Healing

Chapter 39 - Ayn

I am sitting cross–legged on Kari's desk, because this is what I do when I am angry - I finds a high place to perch myself, like a tree branch or a cliff and, in their absence, a table or the edge of a kitchen cupboard, forgetting that this is exactly the time when I should seek contact with the ground.

He enters the room and, for a fleeting moment, I lose myself in his beauty. His dark brown mane is freshly washed and neatly braided, no rebel strand falling softly over his forehead, over the eyebrows that guard his emerald green eyes. He's wearing the blue tight t-shirt that I like so much, because it allows me to see every crunchy detail of his ripped torso. And he smells heavenly, like young cedar wood after rain.

As he steps towards me, and I sense from his demeanor that he intends to hug me, I put my hand up and raise the wall. Regardless of how god-like he is looking, today I am not here to lean back in an armchair and order him to his knees, to love me with his mouth and tongue only - no fingers allowed - until I instruct him otherwise, as I did once when this room had just become his office.

Today I am here to save our bond and my tree, the latter of which has been dropping golden flowers since yesterday, when he issued his Alpha order and slammed my door on his way out.

I see him frowning when he hits the wall, but before he has a chance to say something I bare my shoulder, so that he can see my mark.

"A Lycan mark is truly a magnificent thing, Alpha... It's a sign of commitment, it opens a path to the pack mind and to a mate's soul."

He wants to speak, but I shake my head to indicate that it is not his turn yet.

"For me it's also a gateway to the Wolves' Way. When you marked me, I understood what pack stability and pack continuity require from you. It scared me, I won't lie, but I internalized those teachings as deep as the borders of my Healer core allowed it.

Maybe some of my recent mind power use has misled you into thinking those borders can be easily crossed. Sadly, they cannot, Alpha.

I am only ready to shield my core and participate in inflicting harm on another living being only when it's truly worth it. Like when one of my pack is in immediate danger...But last night's raid was for a marginal political gain, not because one of ours was in immediate danger."

I stop to let my words sink in and I see from how he slightly closes his eyes, letting those long eyelashes of his draw dancing shadows on his cheekbones, that he understood. My tree sprouts a fresh load of flowers between my shoulderblades.

When he looks again at me, I put down the wall. I take his right arm and press my index and middle fingers on the mark I have branded him with when we celebrated our bond.

"Now Kari, you will get me a raid ring. You will be the one braiding it in my hair, and you will do that very slowly and mindfully. It will be your reminder that I walked the Wolves' Way with you, and that I trust you to choose wisely the missions you ask me to join.

It will also be your reminder of this precise moment, the last time in our lives when one of us is touching the other's mark without kindness."

Kari blinks again in acknowledgement, and asks me with his eyes if he can hold me. I answer him with my eyes that he can, and we hug for a while and then I whisper in his ear that, if he's not too busy this morning, I would like to be carried upstairs so that I can lay on his bed while he takes off that blue shirt that I like so much, and maybe also his pants, ok, he should get naked so that I can look at all his gorgeous body and then, maybe he can join me under the covers so that we can fix our bond, and, because this was our first serious fight, I think we should fix it two or maybe three times, or as many times as we can manage until lunch.

Two days after that rainy fall morning, as Kari's fingers are threading a thin steel ring on a braid behind my left ear, I close my eyes and I see inside me what I had almost lost hope I would see.

At the base of my tree the tiniest and most delicate of shoots has sprouted.