Two Halves of a Whole

Chapter 26

They started with the warm up Lugos had help show her on the training field before her sparring match with Julie. They chatting as they warmed up and Sattira took the opportunity to fill her friends in on what happened since they had gone swimming together, only leaving out her meeting with Selene as she slept.

“Wow, nothing near that exciting happened to us,” Nina said when Sattira was finished filling them in.

“So you can do magic,” Kim asked in awe of the idea.

“I have trained a little with my mother,” Sattira told them. She had always referred to Tilly and Fred as her parents and was sure her birth parents understood. They had said they were watching her so they must have known and didn’t seem bothered by it.

“Can you show us something you can do?” Emma’s eyes were lit up with excitement at the prospect of seeing her use her magic.

“Ok, but I am still new at it so I need to concentrate,” she warned them.

Everyone looked on with excitement as she closed her eyes and held out her hand. She concentrated on the object she wanted to create and visualized every detail as she imagined it in her hand. She heard gasps and opened her eyes to see the fancy baby rattle she was now holding in her hand. She offered it to Cara who seemed shocked to receive the gift.

“Is it permanent or will it disappear,” Cara asked as she inspected the gift, shocked at how Sattira had managed to create something so real from thin air.

“It will outlast the real thing as even though it looks like a man made rattle it is not actually made of metal, although no one without magical powers or abilities would ever realize it,” she smiled.

It made Sattira happy to know that all these werewolves were willing to except every part of her without prejudice. She knew some would not be so quick to except her but as long as she had those who supported her she could face the challenges ahead of her.

“Thank you, it will be our child’s first rattle.” Cara smiled as Brad took the fancy rattle with engraved wolves on both of the orb shaped ends.

“It looks like a family heirloom. I am sure our pups will share it with their pups. Thank you, Sattira,” Brad gave her the respectful tilt of the head usually given to one’s higher ranked wolves.

“Your welcome,” she answered back, feeling slightly uncomfortable with the display even though she realized he was acknowledging her future as their Luna.

“So, is my cousin ready for my challenge?” Emma changed the subject taking some of the focus of Sattira, much to her relief.

Lugos joined her in one of the circles marked on the training mats and they started their sparring match. Kim and Nina stood with Sattira and they chatted as they watched the match. They were making plans for a party before they left for Paris.

Sattira could tell from watching the match that Lugos was being easy on his cousin, though he tried not to be so obvious that she would realize it and feel insulted. Sean was cheering his mate on with words of encouragement. By the end of the match Emma was on her back with her cousin staring down at her with a look of victory.

“Getting better, maybe by your next visit you will have honed your skills enough to win,” he said as he helped her up.

Sean squared off against Brad for a close match, though in the end Sean was triumphant. Jacob paired off against Danny with both of them breaking down in laughter part way through the match when the mat material made a weird fart noise and decided to call it a tie. Nina and Kim went after and the two girls were better than Sattira had remembered them being during the martial arts classes she had talked them into taking with her when they were younger.

After Nina’s win Emma looked to Sattira, “since we have an odd number did you want me to go again so you can spar?”

“If you don’t mind,” Sattira answered her. She was both grateful and nervous.

These people had been sparring like this for most of their lives on a daily basis. She had seen the evening training for the younger pups and was shocked to see five year olds learning basic techniques. She wasn’t sure if she was good enough now that she realized her friends were holding back in the classes they took together.

She faced off against Emma and they both circled each other as each tried to size the other. When Emma finally made her move it was fast. Sattira barely dodged her first swing and saw another one backing it up that she barely managed to block. Her wolf was getting frustrated with the speed of the attacks coming at her as she wasn’t getting the chance to counter with her own attacks. Emma managed to land a hit to her ribs and pain exploded through her as she held back a moan.

Suddenly it was as if everything around her moved in slow motion. She was finally able to make her own attacks and block or dodge every attack coming at her. She was shocked at how much easier it was as she managed to get Emma in a winning hold from behind stopped just short of breaking the other girls neck.

“That was awesome, how did you move so fast?” Emma clasped hands with her as a sign of no hard feelings.

“I am not quite sure what you mean,” Sattira told her.

“After I landed that hit it was like you cast a speed spell but I didn’t smell any magic. I could barely keep track of you,” Emma told her.

She noticed those who were watching seemed to mirror Emma’s reaction. She truly didn’t know how to answer but everyone must have noticed her look of confusion because they didn’t push her for an answer.

“Whatever it was, it was awesome. We probably should not tell anyone about this until we understand what it is.” Lugos was looking at each person in the room to make sure they realized her was asking this not just as a friend. “Nothing we find out during these training exercises needs to be shared with anyone not in this room.”

“What about the security cameras,” Danny asked, concerned that the guards watching the feed would see what Sattira had done.

“We already changed the feed so it has been rerouted to our personal computer because we knew Sattira was going to be working with abilities we didn’t want others to know about,” Lugos’ Beta told them. Everyone else seemed to relax with hearing this.

“Speaking of special abilities,” Lugos spoke up, “now is probably a good time to try out that one you used to freeze Julie and her friends.”

Shocked faces turned to look at Sattira waiting to hear an explanation. She took a moment to fill everyone in.

“And you are sure this wasn’t an Alpha aura? Or some kind of magic?” Sean was curious. He had never known of such an ability before not being one or the other.

“I was there, as was Matilda Graves,” Lugos said making sure to give her adoptive mother’s full name, which led to looks of awe as everyone recognized the name of one of the most powerful mages to ever exist. “We felt no aura and no magic. It didn’t work on the mage though so we don’t know if it is a werewolf only ability or if it is relative to how powerful someone is.”

“I have to see this,” Emma said excitedly. She was a ball of positive energy and Sattira couldn’t help but like Lugos’ cousin.

Over the next hour they had Sattira practice and hone her skill. It definitely worked on all the people in the room. She practiced with focusing on just those she wanted effected by her command so she could give commands to just one of them or any number of combinations of people in the room and they were compelled to do whatever she had imagined them doing.

“I wonder if there is a limit to the number of people it will work on,” Danny wondered aloud.

“Alpha orders are only limited by how many pack members you have,” Sean says. “If this works on werewolves would it be limited by how many actual werewolves are alive?”

“Maybe, guess we will find out when we find out,” Lugos told him. “Unless we just randomly start gathering groups of werewolves together and trying her powers on them we have no way of knowing.”

“We probably should all go get cleaned up and changed before dinner time,” Emma told them once she checked the time on her phone.

“Yeah, it is definitely getting to be that time. Do you want to regroup here tomorrow for training?” Lugos looked at everyone nodding excitedly.

They all left the room and as they walked through the training area Sattira noticed that a few of the members giving them curious looks. They weren’t the vicious looks she got when Rob sent the nasty memo, this was just open curiosity. It made her realize that being with Lugos so much of the time kind of sheltered her from the other pack members and really didn’t know them really well. It kind of made her sad to think she could have grown up in a pack like this and experienced the closeness a lot of these members seemed to have.

Lugos and Sattira reached their rooms on the Alpha floor and Lugos didn’t want to part ways with his beautiful mate.

“Move into my room with me,” he asked her, his voice holding a low wishful tone.

The question caught her off guard as they had been talking about his life growing up in the pack.

“I sleep in your bed at night. My parents already know we are mates. Why wait?” He tried to convince her, misinterpreting her shocked look.

“Yes,” she said once she recovered from her shock.

His lips were on hers before she could finish. He had been so afraid that because of the differences in the way they were raised she would say no.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his room, only setting her down when he reached the bed.

“I need my things, silly.” She pushed his chest playfully.

“I have someone coming to move everything for you,” he told her as he sat on the bed next to her.

“Oh, let me get up. I don’t want them to see me in your bed,” she tried to push past him to get out of the bed.

“I want everyone to know you are mine and that you sleep in my bed,” he told her.

Mate wants us, her wolf whimpered excitedly in her head.

“What about school?” Sattira thought of the conversation she had with Cara when they had first met and how she had thought Cara foolish for giving up going away to school to be with her mate. Now here she was, not even marked or pregnant and she was dreading leaving when classes started.

Lugos felt guilty. He had known that she wanted to go to college in the fall and that he had gone behind her back when he had enrolled her in school. He was just about to confess when there was a knock on the door.

He mind linked the omega at the door and gave her permission to enter. The door opened and an group of omegas entered with Sattira’s things. She blushed furiously as they walked past the bed to put her clothes in the closet. When they were done moving her things Lugos stopped one of the omegas and asked her to bring up a couple of trays for dinner.

“I figured we could eat in our room and talk,” he told her. “You can shower first if you want.”

“Thank you.” She went to the bathroom to shower while she waited for her food.