"What the fuck is going on?"
Voniya's anger burned under her skin like all consuming fire.
The second they'd heard the scream of a boy, they'd known something was wrong.
Voniya, Keera and Ashling had all rushed outside like mad women but they had not been the only ones.
Every patron of the inn had made it outside and stood in stark terror as a massive wolf curled itself around the limp body of the boy they had come to collect.
How had this happened?
"Lybell!" Voniya practically screamed.
Her skin, so pale it almost looked white, was now ruby red with her anger. Her Familiar slithered on her skin as it fed off her strong and violet emotion.
"What the fuck happed here!" She was no longer asking, she was demanding.
Voniya drew closer to Lybell, but the man seemed stuned and dazed.
She saw the man's Familiar circling in the sky above, screeching and twitching in its own agitation, and she felt for the thing. Can't be easy being paired with Lybell Thunder, no matter how much the man changed. It was always in small increments.
"I-I didn't mean to...I-I just."
He was muttering to himself and Voniya was too tired for this.
Rearing her hand back, she put all her meager strength into an open palmed slap right on Lybell's cheek.
The man head jerked to the side and he lost all semblance of balance, falling to the ground hard.
"What the fuck happened here!" She tried again. Yelling despite the crowd of people that now watched them from the front of the inn. Everyone had come outside to see what had happened. Whatever had happened, there is no hiding this from the Counsel. The boy they were meant to fetch is obviously hurt, if not unconscious by the way that wolf keeps whining and licking at his body. Voniya couldn't even see the boy past the wolf.
"He's a bloody liar Voniya!" Lybell shouted, bringer her attention from the wolf and the boy to her student.
"What do you mean." She demanded.
"He said that his mut of a Familiar can talk! He said it speaks to him! Calls him 'charge'! Says I should call them Guardians! He's a bloody fucking liar!" Anger and pain swirled together in Lybell's eyes. Desperation coated his voice and the high noble that Lybell had once been was not present anywhere on his face.
"What do you mean, Lybell. What happened." She tried again, voice hard and unyielding, despite her sympathy for this broken noble man's son. She'd chosen him as a student when she'd earned her title as Master. She'd seen potential in him. Yet he'd fought her every step of the way.
"He lied to me! You've got to see that! That's why I did it! He lied I need to stop his lies from running away with him!"
Ice replaced the fire that ran in Voniya's veins at Lybell's words.
"What did you do?" She asked, her voice soft and cautions. Surely this man wouldn't attack an apprentice. He knew better, he was almost a Master himself, he'd studied for five years, he wouldn't do something so stupid.
"It was just a fire ball, just to scare him, just to make him shut up! He was lying Voniya."
And there it was.
Lybell had tied the noose and given Voniya the rope.
Oh what a stupid boy she'd chosen.
"Voniya!"
Ashling's call snapped Voniya's attention back to the wolf and the boy.
Ashling was trying to approach. Cautious and careful, but the wolf wasn't having it.
Snarling and growling, looming over the unconscious body of the boy.
That wolf was not going to let anyone get to Lian, even if it killed the boy.
"Back off and leave him be." Voniya called out. "Get everyone else back inside. Shows fucking over."
She didn't bother to see if Ashling and Keera would follow orders, her attention was on the wolf.
Slowly she made her way closer.
Instantly the beast's eyes were on her, the menace clear on every inch of him.
"Fenrir, right. Lian called you Fenrir. Listen, we gotta get him off the ground, somewhere he can lay down and rest. It doesn't have to be me, but we've got to move him. Do you understand?"
Instantly the wolf stopped growling. The menace she'd seen earlier replaced with suspicion.
The wolf understood her?
"Can you get him into the stables? You can sleep with him in there if you can manage to keep the horses calm."
The wolf's eyes fell to the boy on the ground and a soft whine bleed into the air. Sorrow and fear plain as day in the sound.
What shocked Voniya the most, was when the wolf gently nosed the boy's side until the boy was on his stomach. That's when Voniya saw it.
Ugly scars marked every exposed part of the boy's back. The tunic was ripped in the front and when the wolf moved the boy, Voniya was able to see some of the damage.
As carefully as he could, the wolf nosed his way under the boy, working carefully so as to not hurt him.
Such care and understanding. This wasn't normal for a Familiar.
Voniya felt the black cobra slithering on her skin. Flickers of images passed into her mind and she instinctually understood.
Her Familiar was communicating with the wolf.
Kin. Pack. Family. Purpose. The boy was all of those things to that wolf. But not Mage. The wolf did not think of the boy as merely his Mage.
That was impossible, these two had met only three or so days before.
Her Cobra had been with Voniya for seven years.
She watched as the wolf settled the boy on his back as best he could, and then carefully made his way to the stables.
Voniya walked forward to pull the big wooden doors open, leaving it wide for the wolf to make his way in.
The horses whinnied at the presence of such a predator in their domain, but one horse was bucking and huffing in its stall.
The boy's warhorse.
It bucked and kicked against the stall door that restrained it, but the damn horse seemed to calm as the wolf carried the boy closer.
Voniya was done.
She didn't want to see this; she didn't want to understand this.
Familiars were animals. Vessels. Nothing more.
Closing her eyes against the thoughts running through her head and trying to ignore the images flashing through her mind from her own Familiar. Voniya turned and walked away from the strange boy and his even stranger Familiar.
"Guardian." A feminine voice called into her mind.
Voniya's steps only faltered once as she closed her eyes for a moment, then continued on her way to bed. It was much too late for this.
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