Supernatural Tales - Book II

Chapter 35

(Unedited)

Hunters were created for one purpose alone: to follow orders and to hound.

It was Itaria herself who first came up with the idea after she visited hell to get answers from one of her witches. The dark witch knew better than to demand Lucifer to lend her some of her hellhounds to find the one who could inherit the power hidden within the white scale so as soon as she returned home, she gathered her council to share with them her masterplan. Of course, they were all impressed with it but they could also not help but feel weary of it because they already had some of the strongest supernaturals working for them. When they told her so, Itaria grinned wickedly before proposing that she would conjure a ritual that would allow a single person to bear the abilities of several creatures and nobody dared to say a word against her when she volunteered her only child to be the first test subject, something that she never even thought to mention to Leyra.

So, as soon as they had all agreed with her plan, the witches got down to work and within a few years, they had come to a stable solution. The spell they concocted allowed the hunters to do things that were previously unheard of; they were stronger, faster, far more resilient than their peers, unstoppable, needed no rest, and almost impossible to kill. They were built to take and obey orders, their very nature demanded them to listen to and do whatever their master asked for. It only made the scales bow on the hunters' side when Ilayo himself offered some of his blood to make them far, far,  more potent than the dark witches could have ever imagined. In the end, they had the perfect spell to make what they wished come true and nobody could stop them. Although, there was one last thing that Itaria had to take care of.

The coven head was as brilliant as she was evil, she knew that no matter how substantial a supernatural gets or how potent the spell her coven had come up with was, there was that one single most influential power in the whole universe that nobody could ever escape, not even she, and that was the mate bond. Itaria would know, of course, for if Leyra was not her mate she would have killed her long, long, ago. She accepted that the only thing that could make a hunter go against their very nature and refuse to carry out her commands was the mate bond and so, she had to get rid of it. Of course, that caused a wave of sudden unrest to run through her followers because even beings of dark magic worshipped the sacred mate bond. That enraged Itaria to no end, causing her to do something that nobody could have been prepared for because she had to prove she could do it.

Orion was asleep when Itaria snatched them in the middle of the night, she had never really felt any attachment to the child her mate had given birth to, and they were so terrified of her that they could do nothing but follow her orders, barely fourteen in mortal years. Itaria had gathered a few of her closest people, Ilayo included, and she pushed Orion into the alter before commanding them to tie them down. Ilayo could hear Orion's heart racing, they all could smell their fear and pain, but nobody even cared about them and when everything was ready, Itaria began the ritual herself. Ilayo watched the scene with a maniacal glint in his eyes, Orion's blood-curling screams music to his ears, and he was nothing but eager when he gave his blood for the cause. This being the first trial run, a lot went wrong in the spell but even when Orion was on the verge of death, Itaria did not stop. 

Once the ritual was over, Itaria removed the barrier spells from around the altar and she was not surprised to find Leyra rushing inside only to rush to their child at once, yelling at them to call the healers when she could not feel their heart beating. Itaria felt frustration as she watched Leyra taking her test subject away, unable to do anything to stop her because her mate bond did not allow that and she felt all the more compelled to ensure that none of her hounds could ever be cursed with the mate bond. The next few days were futile because no matter how many healers Leyra gathered, they could not help Orion and Itaria tried to console her mate only to be rejected at every turn, causing her anger to increase a thousandfold. The coven head spent every waking moment of the next month ensuring that her hunters could never be mated to anyone and were the strongest, performing unsuccessful rituals every other day.