Isabel's Choice

Chapter 15 - Lars

Place and time: Kari's pack, one week later

Life has been awkward since we returned from our respective Council investigations.

Eino had a very strong alibi for the night of the murder. It was supported by the daughter of a Beta from the Northern territories. And her best friend. 

Both girls were called to testify in front of the Shifter's Council. Their fathers were also present. As was their Alpha. None of those males were happy to hear how their offspring were spitting on the bond, which in their pack was considered sacred.

Eino and those females had to listen to the longest lecture condemning their debauchery, and he got slammed with a series of personal travel bans. A life-long one to that Northern pack, and a temporary one, until the resolution of the murder case, throughout the whole Shifter's territory.

Confined to our pack, whose offers in terms of both climbing and mating-happy females he had all but exhausted, the little one was in the foulest of moods.

Sven and I may have been formally cleared by the Witches' Council, but my father, as most Alphas, still had his standing agreements on temporary hold.

This meant that Sven, who had crossed Rio's - and later Javi's border - with no papers for as long as he could remember, had to ask my uncle Timo or me every morning for a permission card so that he can go kiss his girlfriend.

He had also been in the foulest of moods.

***

Sven seems to feel better this morning, because he throws a pillow at me, chirping:

"Wake up, bro!"

I am thinking it is high time that I start locking my door. As I rake the floor to find a shoe or a heavy book to retaliate, I remember that it's his birthday today.

"Good morning, bro. And happy birthday!! Did your beast wake up?"

"He did!!" My brother shouts excitedly. "His name is Thunder!" He laughs and I also laugh at the Goddess' sense of humor. What could come out of Storm if not Lightning, Thunder, and Hail?

The last element also joins us, half asleep, but already wearing his shift suit.

"Come on, witch boy, let him out. I won't believe it until I see it," Eino mumbles, rubbing his eyes.

"No shifting in the house," my mom speaks kindly behind him, and she moves on to hug her middle son. 

She also sprinkles him with a gratuitous healing wave that has him sighing with contentment, and then she adds: 

 "And also, not until we get up to Eagle Rock, as planned. There is a small birthday feast waiting up there, but only for those who get there in human form."

"You cannot be serious, mom, do you want us to walk there?" I protest.

"Shall I fly you over, pup?" Ayn asks ironically, before giving us twenty minutes to meet her and my dad at the base of the peak that guards our pack.

We race uphill on our two human legs, noticing that we had trained Eino well by chasing him around, and he is now as fast as Sven and myself.

The three of us tease each other mercilessly, but I would die without blinking for any of them.

This is also why I am more happy than jealous now when I see Sven transforming flawlessly as if he would have done this for years, into a beautiful wolf, silver-colored like his father Storm.

Eino and I also shift, and we play roughly, as we are seldom allowed to do outside of training. Not even my mother intervenes, although I know she's silently scanning us for injuries and she would bring us to order if things were to get truly dangerous.