Page 12 of No Potions Needed

“They have and did you just read my mind?” I blinked at him as I took up the chair I sat in before.

“No, but I would’ve asked where’s mine if I were you. I’m two for two as far as you know,” Dern said and flashed me a sad smile. “I still need to talk to Teddy. There are things he needs to hear. Not all of the story, but some of it. Hell, I don’t even think I’ll tell any of you the whole thing. We’d be here for the rest of your natural life, and I’d have to finish it up with you as a spirit too and you have a company to start and run. Don’t worry. Othoni is still coming along. Now you’ll just have draconic muscle to back you up. My story will help you too when you turn it into a book. I know, I know. Someone else writes stuff like this but here’s the thing, I chose you, because you see what I’ve spent too long seeing. We fortune tellers don’t get enough of a break. We’re always running around helping everyone else. One more thing before you launch into your next round of questions – remember, it’s like I told Astral and Marsin and everyone who would ever listen, meeting your true-mate is a headache. Sure, lots of good stuff comes after, if you’re lucky, but it’s always a headache.”

“Was it a headache for you and Ormund?” I asked, getting ready to record his answer if he actually gave it to me.

“You actually want to hear it, don’t you?” Dern grinned.

“One day, Baby Raylin will be old enough to hear how her parents met and Teddy and Ni’s eventual kids too. They should know about the man who helped bring their parents together,” I nodded.

“Plus, you want to know where I was born,” Dern laughed, and I didn’t deny it. Lots of folks wanted to know where he was born and how he ended up here.

“I want to know many things that are yet mysteries to me,” I nodded.

“Get comfortable. I’m not going to tell you everything today, but I will tell you how I met Ormund. Only I have to start years before that. See, I wasn’t born on a world that had a wide knowledge of the alpha/omega gene yet and that made my life a living hell.”

I leaned in, listening closely as Dern began to tell his story. Ormund moved back to the bed from his perch at the window. Dern took his hand and entwined his fingers as his eyes glossed over with a faraway look.

“You don’t have to tell him anything you don’t want to,” Ormund said. “Tell him my promise and be done with it, mate. You don’t owe him or anyone else anything. You’ve done your part.”

“They need to know. If they’re going to travel around there to worlds unknown, they may stumble upon worlds like Pharenos. He needs to be ready. He needs to know he’s not special and what protections he has here won’t extend to other worlds.”

“If you insist, mate,” Ormund sighed, and his feathers ruffled behind him.

“And I do,” Dern nodded.

“Then I shall fill in the parts where you were unconscious.”

Chapter Seven

Dern

Many years ago on Pharenos

“The good news is it’s not cancer,” the doctor announced as me and my parents sat squished in his little office. The whole place smelled like beans as if he scarfed them down in between all his patients. It wasn’t an appetizing smell but one that made me wonder if he had some secret obsession. I knew whatever was wrong with me wasn’t cancer. I saw far enough ahead into the future to know all the scans and tests were more for the sake of my parents. I was twenty-five now, but it wasn’t cancer. I’d have seen that coming a mile away. I also knew enough not to open my mouth and blab that information to my parents or my doctor. I had enough problems without ending up in some asylum for the insane. I wasn’t crazy. I just saw the future and apparently, I was built a bit differently too. Built differently enough that it caused everyone around me problems.

“Because they can’t sniff their own butts leave ours alone,”my wolf chimed off in my thoughts.

The fits that led my parents to begging me to see this specialist, Doctor Jenkins, started about five years ago. They started with one big fit that left me defenseless, sniveling, and burning up with a fever that reached over 110 F. It was as if all my atoms were on fire and longing for someone or something that I couldn’t name. My flesh craved touch and my tail stayed swung low and to one side. I trembled whenever my parents had over any unmarried male company. It was as if I was coming apart at the seams and only found short reprieves in the iciest of showers. The doctors couldn’t find any cause for my fever but issued two courses of their bacteria killers anyway. You know, just to be on the safe side.

Now every three to six months I sweated like I was going to bleed out through my pores, my appetite waned to nothingness, and all I wanted to do was howl and cry because there was a fire inside me that nothing quenched. Not even the long line of one nightstand that I tried to put out the fire with. The more of them I had, the more of them I craved. It was as if my wolf turned into an insatiable sex-demanding deity and no one lived up to his expectations.

My pack was worried about me. Our leader even compared the ‘fits’ to how the females in our pack acted whenever it was mating season.

Heat.

Heat was the word they used for the gals whenever they hit their bellies, whining with their tails up.

Heat.

Heat was the word that set off my dear ol’ dad.

My father nearly knocked the leader’s head off his too big shoulders and almost lost his life for it. That’s when I finally agreed to see Doctor Jenkins. I didn’t think heat was all that much of an insult. There was nothing embarrassing about being a woman. I wasn’t a woman but likening my symptoms to theirs seemed like a fair comparison to me. I was pretty damn sure that despite the condoms I used to practice safe sex, if I could be pregnant, I’d have been full bellied by now. Only my parents didn’t know what I got up to in my free time.

“What is it then?” my father asked, his voice controlled but his annoyance with how the doctor beat around the bush clear in his scent. He pushed his glasses up high on his nose and frowned at the doctor. The old bastard of a wolf looked so passive but at his sides his fingers clenched into tight fists like he might punch the doctor next.

“I think I need to speak with Dern alone. He’s all grown up now. That’s the most important thing to remember,” Doctor Jenkins said.

“Is it a sex thing?” my mother whispered. “Did he pick up a sex thing?”

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