Freedom of Flight Ch. 07

He looked at her for a moment. "Let her go."

"Let her live, Wolfgang. If your father had tried to control your life, what would you have done? What did Isaiah do?"

He snorted; his brother had left the pack and went to another to train for his cooking degree. He could see that if he tried to control her life, she would come here and never come home.

"Get to know Tarval... he is a good man. Alanna never would have let him close if he had a bad bone in his body." She sat in his lap. "Be glad, Wolfgang, for after everything she's been through, she still spent the night with a man and mated him. You succeeded in restoring her faith in men... you. Not me."

"Great. Next you'll be taking me into Dave..."

She snorted in amusement. She wondered why men are usually so dense in such situations. "Electra is far more interested in the fairer sex."

He blinked in surprise. "How do you know that?"

"I know many things. And I know Electra is gay not because of what happened to her but because that is her natural tendency."

He pressed his face to her neck, taking a deep breath letting her scent was over him, calming the anger he still felt towards Tarval. Sage knocked, then immediately popped her head in.

"Are the rumours true? Is Alanna sleeping with Tarval?" She asked, excited as she bounced into the room.

Amy smiled. "Who have you been listening to?"

Sage beamed innocently at her and shrugged, "Servant gossip. Is it true?"

"You have a brother-in-law." Wolfgang clarified.

Sage grinned, pleased for her sister and her newfound happiness.

*

Alanna had on one of Tarval's shirts. He had rolled up the sleeves so that she could use her hands but the shirt swam around her much smaller frame and covered her to her knees but flapped at her back where his wings went. She hovered near the door, waiting. Jewel had tracked her down, to ask if she needed anything and Alanna quickly blurted out clothes, red in embarrassment. She didn't feel confident enough to leave in her nightgown and even less confident to leave in Tarval's clothes. After waiting for a while, she finally heard the knock on the door. She opened the door and Jewel rushed in with an armful of clothes, the door slammed close behind her. Jewel smirked as Tarval walked out wrapped in a towel, water still dripping down his body.

"Morning, my lord." She said as she put the clothes on the bed, not in the least bit surprised or bothered by the scene.

He smiled and opened a drawer to pull out clothes. Then he suddenly left his clothes and grabbed Alanna around the hips, bringing his chin to rest on her shoulder. "My room or your room, which one do you like better?" He asked before he nuzzled at her throat, thinking that it would be some time before he was able to keep his hands off her for any prolonged periods of time... if ever.

"I don't... understand." She squirmed in his arms, as he was still a little wet.

"I never want to sleep without you again. So pick a room." He invited as he nibbled at her ear.

She took a moment before answering, distracted by his nibbling. "I... prefer my room. It gets morning light so it's cool in the evenings."

He grinned; pleased that she was accepting everything that was happening to her so well. He spun her around and kissed her deeply. "Then your room becomes our room." He declared as he released her and went to get dressed.

Jewel smiled at the exchange and left to get help to move Tarval's things into Alanna's... their room. Alanna dressed quickly, knowing that she had to face her parents and she'd rather do it sooner rather than later as she knew her father's anger would simmer until it boiled over. She wanted to get to her father before he had a chance to hurt Tarval. He brushed her hair for her, running his fingers through the dark silky smooth strands before he turned it all into a plait.

"Come on, we have to face your parents." He told her with a hint of nervousness in his voice, he explained that her parents had walked in on them but had left without making a big fuss. She had been slightly on edge ever since and wouldn't be calm until she had spoken to her father. "I just hope your ma doesn't use the sword she got from Gabrielle."

She smirked. "She would never. She likes you." She told him honestly, before she went grim, "Da, you have to be careful of."

He nodded in agreement at the last sentence. There was something about Wolfgang that was easily read: I will break you if you piss me off. He wrapped his arms around his love.

"Will you come to earth to be with me?" She asked, curiously.

"I will follow you to the ends of the universe." He answered with no hesitation.

She smiled happily and took his hand as they left the room and walked together down the hall. Sage intercepted them and turned them around to warn, "I wouldn't if I were you two. Da is still a little aggressive... but ma is trying to calm him down."

They let Sage steer them away, not relishing the confrontation that would take place soon... but later is better then sooner in this case. She took them to Dominic's study where Michelle and Dominic were waiting. Dominic smiled and shook Tarval's hand. He then moved Tarval's collar to expose the bite mark. "That will scar well," he commented approvingly.

Tarval nodded, proud of his scar, "Scared the crap out of me when she bit me." He pulled her closer, wrapping an arm around her waist. She smiled but she wasn't ashamed. She couldn't remember hurting him or biting him so she didn't care that she had scared him. On the other hand, there was a sense of elation and pride at Dominic's comment about her bite and Tarval's reaction to it.

Dominic smirked, "But by the looks of it, she stayed human. Bianca shifted beneath me into her hybrid form then took a chunk out of my shoulder." He moved his shirt to expose the recessed scar that was there.

Michelle approached and hugged the new couple, "When are you going to make it official?"

"Alanna talked of a binding ceremony, so when we go to earth." He turned to her in confirmation and she nodded.

Michelle smiled, "Okay. When you do this binding ceremony, you had better invite me. Then I will perform our wedding ceremony, and you'll be bound by both our laws."

Alanna nodded, not really caring about being bound by mere laws: she was his and he was hers and nothing was going to change that. No law or piece of paper would stop them from being together. Although she knew that she wanted their relationship to be acknowledged as being mates, she also knew that her mother and father would feel put out if they didn't do the binding ceremony.

****

Tarval grabbed Alanna around the waist and nuzzled at her throat. She paused in the middle of the hallway and smiled as his lips ran up her neck to nibble on her left an ear lobe. He removed his lips from her skin when he remembered why he had hunted her down and smiled, "Hey, I want to show you something."

She turned and returned his smile. They had been mates for a week now and she could barely remember what it was like not to have his scent all around her. "What?"

"Come with me," he took her hand and tugged her after him. She frowned but followed him anyway. She didn't recognise where they were going but when the temperature dropped she dug her heals in and tried to go back the way she had come from.

She released his hand in her panic state. The walls seemed to be moving towards her so she got on the ground to keep the closing walls from her. Tarval wrapped his arms around her and walked her a few steps back; the walls moved back to where they had always been. He sat and held her to him, offering her comfort.

"Calm..." he said soothingly into her ear, all the while stroking her back.

She breathed deeply and tried to fight back her fear. She pressed her face to his chest as she quivered. When she finally calmed down, she hit him. "Don't ever do that again!"

He pulled her tightly to his chest and kissed her forehead, "Can't make that promise."

"You will..."

He interrupted her with a shake of his head, "No... I'm trying to help you just like you helped me. When Michelle learnt of my fear, she told me this: you can let your fear rule you, or you can rule your fear. I let mine rule me until you walked into my life... I will not let yours rule you any longer."

Tears forced their way out of her eyes as she pressed her face to his chest and cried. She couldn't stop the tears, as his determination to get her over her fear was in its own way the nicest thing anyone had tried to do for her.

"Shh..." he continued as he tilted her head up and rubbed the tears away with his thumbs. "I don't want to hurt you but I see you hurting and I want it to stop." Then he stood, pulling her to her feet. "Close your eyes." With glittering eyes, she did as he asked and felt him stretching out her arms, "What do your hands feel?" he asked softly into her ear.

"Nothing."

"Open your eyes and take ten steps forward." He wrapped an arm around her waist, silently telling her that he would be with her every step of the way.

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, quivered then shook her head while looking up at him; she couldn't take those steps.

He understood her reluctance but persistently went on, looking deep into those green eyes. "Close your eyes keep your arms out and trust me."

She closed her eyes again and he slowly forced her to walk forward. When they had taken those ten steps, he stopped her. "Okay, open your eyes."

She took several slow deep breaths before she opened her eyes. The walls started to move in on her, she tried to back away but he held her tightly. "Close your eyes and tell me what your hands feel." He told her whilst remaining calm as he could feel her panic through their bond, hoping that his calmness would rub off on her.

She panted gently and waiting for the encroaching walls to touch her hands and she realised something; they never did. "Nothing." She opened her eyes in wonder and glanced around.

He kissed her neck in praise, "your ma told me that she believed your fear wasn't a true phobia. She told me of a great battle you all fought, and you in tunnels narrower than this one. You didn't freak out then."

"I was in a battle situation..."

"You lived in a room smaller than our bathing room when you first went to live with her yet you didn't freak out." He reminded her.

"I was catatonic; I had not long been released from a life style that would have killed me if I was mortal." She turned to him.

Knowing that she needed more convincing, he nudged her forward and went to Plan B. "Okay then, let's go." She walked a few paces then stopped and turned to him. She was not going to be tricked a second time. Once was quiet enough!

"Where are you dragging me?"

He smiled because she looked like a disgruntled little wolf...HISlittle wolf, "I want to show you something." He turned her around and kept pushing her forward before deciding to answer her question. "You're going deep into the Keep."

She turned back again to glare at him. "I get that... please stop reminding me!"

"But you asked?" He told her innocently.

"I wanted to know our destination, not the route of how we get there. I'm trying not to think about what we are doing." She told him starting to get frustrated.

He grinned, pleased that she wasn't going to fight him too much. "Your mother was right then. You don't have a true phobia, only a fear of being caged again."

She pulled a face as he took her hand and dragged her to where he wanted to go. He stopped at the first of many wall tiles. He pulled her into his arms and nuzzled at her neck as she looked at the scene before them. "This is the creation of the Da'Vaila."

"What is?" She asked in awe of what was before her.

He smiled, pleased that his plan is working. "We call this hall the Hall of Renderings. These are Renders, a representation of our history. Every important event in our history is on these walls. This hall goes on for almost a mile. The tiles alternate and start here."

He looped his arm through hers and spent the next two hours summing up almost all of the tiles. They got to the last four where a man was working on the last one. He turned and smiled, "My lord, I am just completing the last tile."

Tarval smiled and turned her to one of the recently completed tiles. She jerked in surprise as she came face to face with a rendering of her own back, torn and bloody with scraps of her skin hanging free; her image took up a large part of the tile. Twelve sets of bloody footprints marked the bottom edge of the tile. In the background of the picture, there was a burry scene of her and Tarval fencing in the right hand side and in the left was a beautiful black wolf with one eye green and one golden. The wolf was muzzled, chained and locked in a cage but there was something in the way she stood, something that made the chains, the cage even the muzzle look like it wasn't enough to hold her.

"We paint the past of the person in the top left hand corner. It is left behind but still is on that persons' mind. In the right, an event that defines them; in the middle, the bridge that brings the two events together." Tarval said softly into her ear.

"But... I didn't do anything." She argued with a hint of tears in her eyes. This was all just a little too much for her at the moment, what with Tarval trying to get her over her fear and now this. She felt as if her world was being set on its head. He had been telling her of the battles and peace treaties that had been Rendered but she didn't feel worthy of having a render, she had done nothing to warrant it. Sage's birth was on these walls but she was the warlord's daughter... a female Nephalim. Of course, her birth would be marked on these walls. But she had done nothing except walk from a cell, nothing grand or worthy of being worked into their history.

He kissed her neck again, soothingly this time, "You would be surprised at what you have done. They seem insignificant to you but to us they are significant. YouAREspecial and what you didISworthy of a place on these walls. You were just treated so badly as a child that whenever someone tells you that you don't believe them." He gently turned her to the next tile.

It was a render of her standing protectively before a shackled Santaur, a dagger in her hand, her breastplate gleaming and a deadly look coming from her eyes. "Mather asked to have this one done and Dominic agreed. See, most would have done nothing; they would have let him be de-crowned, the ultimate insult for a Santaur. Most treat Santuars as nothing more than intelligent animals, unworthy of rank or consideration in our world."

"Why?" She asked. Granted she had little experience with Santaurs but they seemed decent enough people that didn't warrant that kind of discrimination.

"Call it arrogance," he answered, "call it fear, I don't truly know why. All I know is that it has been that way since our creation. Some, like Dominic, Michelle and I, don't treat them like that: they are not merely intelligent animals: they are a race of creatures with a history and culture as complex as you Were."

"Okay... but you don't consider us Were as animals... Why?" She asked.

He thought for several moments then shrugged, "I'm not too sure but I think it might have something to do with how our people met. When we met, it was a small war band of Nephalim and Weres didn't turn and run; you attacked and we fought and when we called a stop to the fighting so we could tend our injured, you changed and we learnt to respect you. You spoke a language we could understand; you were fighters. When we met Santaurs, they ran."

"But that is a survival instinct bred into them, to run from something they don't understand. Centaurs run but they are evil warriors." She argued.

He nodded, "I know but that is the closest reason I have as to why Santaurs have no rank here, because when we met them they didn't fight us, they refused to. We are a race of Warriors, even the S'ephalim and those who do not fight... back when man was young and we were at out busiest, were considered weak by us, unworthy. Sadly as the times have moved on we as a people have yet to evolve from that mind set but maybe one day we will, and it will right the wrong we have done to them." He turned his head back to the tile bringing her attention back to it. "You had never met one before, had no treaties to defend and you had no knowledge of him or his kind but you stopped him from being de-crowned... you treated him with respect that most refuse to do and you freed him. You wagered your breastplate so that he could have the mate he desired... breastplates are like badges of honour, you wagered your honour for him for no other reason then because it was the right thing to do."

"But..." She said as she digested his words. "I was just acting as I was raised, as Amy raised me. To not judge a person by their race but by the person they are and that no one deserved to be treated like that simply because they are different."

He sighed deciding to change tracts. "Okay... so you standing up for him meant little to you, it was just something you would have done no matter what. But it was big for us as a people, WILL be big for us as a people. That's why it's there, that's why it was Rendered, because on your world what you did is common place but here... here, what you did may just change us for the better. You... an outsider showed us our ways were wrong by standing before him. Common for you but radical for us." He finished. He watched her frown as she thought, he didn't know if he had gotten through to her about just how much of a shockwave had rippled through the markets after what she had done. That people were beginning to talk about what had previously been something that was ignored; they were beginning to question the old ways and only by questioning those ways will there be changes.

He turned her to the second last tile. This one was a family portrait, Amy and Wolfgang next to Dominic and a ghostly version of Bianca. He stood in the picture with an arm wrapped possessively around her waist. Sage stood in the picture also, standing as close to her ghostly mother as possible; all were dressed in full house clothes. At their feet was a massive black and grey wolf with white boots on each of her feet, sun glasses covered her eyes, which made her look comical, as well as three cubs sitting next to her: two Sabre cubs and one wolf.

"Our strange family has had a profound effect on both our worlds."

"I'm afraid to look at the last one." She told him with just a tinge of humour, having a better reign on her emotions.

He smiled and turned her as the man stepped back uttering the last spell to make the tile indestructible. It was a very simple rendering: it was them caught in a passionate embrace. He smirked and hugged her tighter while he made his confession. "I think Dominic asked for this one to be done. I've been searching for you since I was created. Finding you is truly a highlight in my history. It might only be matched by two events: our binding ceremony, and maybe holding our first child."

Alanna looked at him with joy, and then made a little confession of her own. "Thais... he can see the future... the statue I was given for my birthday... he carved it... it's me... close to my body is a cub, on her back were wings..."

****

Tarval blinked for a moment, trying to figure out why he was jolted awake. Alanna popped into his field of vision. He quickly wrapped his arms around her. One month they had been together and he still couldn't get over the fact that she was his. He pulled her down and kissed her. She smiled. "Guess what?"

"What?" He asked.

"The portal is open. Dominic says we have to go home, if we don't we won't be able to leave."