Page 14 of No Potions Needed

“MINE!”my bird squawked again.

The deeper I walked into the building the dimmer the lights grew. Were the furry ones trying to hide in the dark? I was the candle flame that chased away the midnight hour. How could these simple beasts ever think that the dark could drive me away or hide my mate from me? Was he frightened of me too? He didn’t smell frightened. He didn’t smell like much of anything except ---

Fire erupted from my skin and feathers slid out of the inside line of my arms.

Blood.

The smell of wolf blood filled the corridor.

My wolf’s blood was being let in this butcher shop. I growled and stomped, and my wings caught fire from the sparks bouncing around my flesh. For a long second, I thought I might lose control of my bird. Back home, in the mountains, that wouldn’t have been a huge problem. Sure, some trees might’ve burnt down but the ash was damned good fertilizer. Here I could burn down the whole packland and the wolves with it.

“And I will if one more drop of his blood is spilled by these foul fingered pricks!”My bird hissed out the words.

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” a wolf growled when I pushed open one of the doors.

A wolfman lay on the table unconscious. Other wolves in their weird costumes and masks stood around him. They’d split open the bottom of his belly just above his groin. My bird screeched and the fire inside me burnt hotter.

“YOU STOP RIGHT THERE! YOU BIRDS ARE NOT ALLOWED HERE! YOU WILL MAKE THIS HOPSITAL ROOM UNSANITARY! THIS IS STERILE SPACE AND YOU ARE ENDANGERING MY PATIENT!”

Patience? I was all out of those. I had been out of those for so long. I had spent long centuries waiting for the one’s who scent smelled like home. The wolf on the table was my mate and they were mangling him.

They. Were. Mangling. Him.

The words played out one by one in my thoughts over and over until I was more phoenix than man. On the last world we lived on we couldn’t stay out of wars. They were everywhere and we were born to burn, rip, and shred. We protected our young, our peck, and our mates until ever last one of our feathers burnt up.

I felt the muscles of my face contort into a grin. My bird was at home again on a battle field and all the world was a battlefield when your mate was a prisoner being mangled and hacked on. The wolves kept talking but I didn’t hear anything they said. There was no use in listening to them. Their time had run out. They had planned to sink their foul fingers into my mate’s belly and pull out his womb. What barbarians! What foul souls to rip away organs.

“WE ARE UNDER ORDERS OF ELKE!” The wolf in charge howled.

I’d remember that name to rip him apart later for now I had to get my mate out of here. I had to get him home to the healers before the damage these wolf’s wrought lasted forever. First, I had to be the incinerator I was born to be. The great thing about a phoenix’s fire was that it would never burn their true-mate. The fire never harmed those we loved but I had no love for the wolves with the knives. I had no love for the wolves who had cut down the couple in the hall shouting about abominations and about men with wombs. What else did they expect omegas to have inside them? Honey rolls?

Uneducated!

Ignorant!

Bigots!

The words rolled over my flames as they cleansed the butchery around my mate.

Forget their sterile field. This room didn’t need scrubbed free of germs. It needed its very soul cleansed and that’s exactly what I did.

Soon all that was left were the walls, the charred bones of the wolves who dared to touch him, and of course, him and the table he lay on. He stirred in his sleep now that the wolf who pumped him full of drugs had disappeared.

“All will be well,” I promised him as I ripped off my shirt and wrapped him as best as I could. The blood flow was slow but steady. Later, he could have my own blood if need be or I’d steal a wolf to take blood from. I’d do whatever the healers said needed to be done.

“All will be well, mate,” I promised him again as I moved away long enough to kick out one of the windows in the corridor. I wasn’t going to drag my wounded mate through the whole butcher’s shop again.

Chapter Nine

Mori

“You can’t stop there!” I said before I could swallow the words down. I turned off the recorder before I captured myself sounding like a desperate ass. My Dern’s smell he was done for now. I knew the scent of a tired old shifter when I smelled it.

“I can and I did,” Ormund said. “That is where Dern said to stop. He only agreed that we would tell you how we met and that has been done. Besides my mate is too tired for anymore of this nonsense.”

“Sheesh,” I sighed, saving the file where I typed my notes before shutting my laptop. “Everyone is accusing me of trying to emotionally scar their mates today.”

“Eh, you’re too late to emotionally scar me, pup,” Dern chuckled. “I’m sure you have lots of questions, though. Let’s see if I can answer them before you ask. Yes, they were really going to carve out my goodies without giving me any say in it. Yes, it had been done before and probably after me too. I don’t think omegas were as rare as we believed back then. I think mostly they were women and thus blended into the culture the packs wanted to build. I think alphas were probably around too, but they didn’t have anything extra to show up on scans. I think most guys would’ve been smart enough not to go to a doctor like I did but I wanted to do right by my parents.”

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