The mate finding spell business - book 1

OKSANA’S POV

Kaavy and Axton found some clothes for Dima to wear after he ripped the ones Oksana’s father gave him when he shifted, and once Zainab and Angus finally emerged from the kids’ room, they found everyone in the kitchen eating sandwiches and bacon.

“Hey! I hope you saved some for me.” Her father playfully scolded and, with an arm wrapped around Zainab’s waist, he entered the kitchen and made his way around the table towards Oksana. He bent down and tenderly kissed Oksana’s forehead while at the same time he stole a sandwich from the plate on the table. Oksana smiled at her father’s antics and, Zainab rolled her eyes. The woman was so used to her husband’s childish ways that she, now, got amused by them.

The family ate and drank the afternoon away, happiness and acceptance blooming in everyone’s hearts, but would Dima accept her condition? This question kept on wandering inside Oksana’s mind, keeping her from truly enjoying this joyous evening with her family and newly discovered mate. She could see from Dima’s always wandering eyes that he could feel her inner turmoil, but she didn’t let her face give away any of her worries, and for such, Dima didn’t push her for answers, even though he kept a watchful eye on her the whole evening.

It wasn’t until two hours later, in the middle of a fit of laughter, that Oksana started coughing. She coughed and coughed until she started sneezing, but, with each violent sneeze, she turned paler than before. With each sneeze, Dima and everyone else in the room could feel her life force leaving her body, and this scared the living soul out of Oksana.

Her head started getting fuzzy and dizzy with everything moving in circles around her, Oksana felt water dripping down her nose at a fast pace, and soon a horrendous metallic taste entered her mouth. The strength left her, making her body slump backward, and her head fell to the side while her eyes stayed wide open.

She could see Dima panicking, her mom and sister crying, her dad and brother Axton started working on getting her stable, while her brother Kaavy shot out of his seat like a bat out of hell. Chaos was all around her, and guilt overwhelmed Oksana. Silent tears started falling from her eyes, panic over the guilt took over her, and she couldn’t get in enough air, making her gasp loudly for it. Her blood pressure sky-rocketed, and the blood filling her mouth doubled, if not tripled, in quantity, making her even more desperate for somebody to wipe it for her.

Somebody, please, wipe it away! She desperately pleaded in her mind before Axton did as she so miserably wanted and used a kitchen rag to keep the blood away from her mouth.

Dima fell on his knees, feeling truly anguished and hopeless in the situation occurring before his eyes. The sign in front of him was one he wished to never have to witness in his life. Zainab joined Angus and Axton in working on keeping his mate grounded to the world of the living and, in one last attempt of keeping his fear under control, Dima grabbed Oksana’s wrist and laid his head on her lap. The feeling of her spiked pulse gave him some relief, but the sound of her painful gasps for air was getting on Dima’s bear’s head. The animal was ready to come out and battle the whole world for her, but Dima decided on a, hopefully, more helpful tactic and started exaggerating his breathing. Taking slow, deep breaths for Oksana to imitate, he kept his calm.

Oksana’s crazed mind registered Dima’s body contact the millisecond he touched her. His exaggerated breathing was slowly noticed by her hazy mind, and once she understood what he was trying to do, Oksana did her best to copy him. Having Dima near her was helping her calm down a lot faster than her parents and brother’s magic could. But she would never admit that out loud. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful after all the trouble she had given them.

*BAM!*

*WHOOSH*

“I’M HERE!” A tall elder lady flew in on her broom at high speed and immediately got to work. She involved Oksana’s body in a light yellow bubble and carefully took her from everybody’s hold.

Dima went crazy at the loss of contact with Oksana. He started growling aggressively and shifting into his bear. No one knew what to do, except for the old witch, who, without missing a bit, pointed a finger at Dima, and instantaneously a dart embedded itself on his arm and knocked him out unconscious.

“Stupid shifter! Take him out of here. And let me get back to work in peace. Only Axton stays.” The witch ordered and went back to healing Oksana while at the same time preparing some kind of elixir and teaching Axton how to do it.

Oksana held on to consciousness and freaked out at what she saw happening around her. Her grandmother was not a fan of shifters, but the way she treated Dima scared her. If she hadn’t seen his chest moving, she would have thought her grandmother had killed him with that dart.

“Come on, my little sugar cookie. You can calm down now. Grandma is here. Grandma is here, and that horrible shifter is gone. What were they thinking? Letting a shifter put his paws on you...” Her grandmother’s rambling was getting on Oksana’s nerves. She loved her grandmother to death, but the hate the woman harbors for the shifters is so deep that it leaves her blind and unable to see the whole picture.

Feeling his sister’s feelings, Axton sent a quick, painless zap inside his grandma’s healing bubble to knock her unconscious and give her the little mercy of not having to hear their grandma’s rattling.

~ Five hours later ~

And in all with this in-between life or death situation with Oksana, Dima was so alarmed, scared, anxious, and caught off guard that he ended up shifting involuntarily, again. His strong emotions messed with his bear the most, and the animal ended up having to be locked in the family’s basement.

Dinner time has come and gone, Dania and Akir woke up from their nap one hour after their grandma’s arrival, but they were back to bed again since it was more than past their bedtime.

Elspeth, the old witch, was still at the house. She, once more, managed to save her granddaughter, but everyone feared the day in which she wouldn’t manage to do it again. Elspeth was still annoyed with Dima’s presence, though she now knew about the matter between him and her granddaughter, she let him be. Even if he was in the basement of the house, the sole prospect of him being in the same building as Oksana was helping her stay stable and heal slowly.

The whole town of Nebrura heard of what happened to Oksana, and various people had gone up to the family’s home in the last few hours to know about her condition. Oksana was very dear to everyone in that small town, and everyone knew of her fragile immune system but, scares like this always terrorized the population. Children of all ages sent Oksana get-well cards and drawings, but the waiting game was still on. The longer the clock ticked, the worse everyone’s anxiety got. Even Zainab’s mother, Ivy, was there waiting for Oksana to wake up. She baked cookies and puddings to keep everyone’s mode up, but the times were dark, and the mood-lifting was hard.

“You know, you still haven’t told me why you have a bear locked up in your basement.” Ivy started to say while pilling up a dish with cookies and a pudding. “But whatever reason it is, I’m still going to take down cookies for him.” Elspeth huffed loudly and rolled her eyes at Ivy.

“Stop being so nice, Ivy. The bear doesn’t need candies. He’s already fat!”

“OH! Are you claiming that MY COOKIES fatten people up!?”

“No, I said they give you diabetes!” Elspeth sarcastically proclaimed and trowed her hands in the air. “I meant exactly what I said. Every time I eat your cookies, I leave your house with five extra kilos!”

“Then don’t eat them, you old knucklehead!” Ivy screamed back, offended by such accusations. She turned on her heels with the cookies dish in her hands and started leaving the living room, going towards the basement.

“Fuck no! They’re too good not to eat.” Elspeth rebutted, and with a flick of her wrist, she made some cookies levitate out of the dish Ivy was carrying and made them land on her lap, quickly devouring them before Ivy took them back.

Ivy smiled at her old friend’s antics feeling warmth fill her chest. The two women were separated for centuries, but fate wanted for them to be reunited again, and so it happened. Eighteen years ago, fate decided to bring them back together again, and the two best friends picked up their friendship where they left it. Always bantering like fools, but forever happy fools.

Without paying attention, Ivy reached the basement door and started unlocking it. “Hey, I brought you som-” Before she could finish, Dima shifted back to his human skin and pushed past her, running up the stairs at top speed. Ivy yelped and let the plate of cookies slip from her hands. She caught sight of white buttocks running up the stairs, and without thinking, she snapped her fingers and made clothes appear on the shifter’s body. No one else needed to get blinded by the man’s nudity, she decided.

While upstairs, everyone awaited for Oksana to wake up, however, the sound of Ivy’s yelp alarmed them, especially her husband, Amos. When he heard the plate crashing to the floor, he felt his whole world slip beneath his feet, and when he heard the thundering footsteps coming up the stairs, he irrationally attacked the running bear shifter and zapped him with enough energy to knock out a normal man. But Dima was no normal man, and no stupid wizard would stop him from reaching his awaking mate.

Pushing past the pain, Dima forced his body to keep moving forward, and while still with Amos’s painful grey tendrils wrapped around him, Dima propelled forward and reached Oksana before anyone else.

The moment Angus and everyone else who knew about Dima and Oksana’s situation noticed where Dima was running to, they all got up and ran up the stairs after him.

Dima exploded inside Oksana’s room in a hurry and dropped down on his knees beside her bedside, just as her eyelids started fluttering open.

Silent tears streamed down Dima’s face as he tenderly caressed her face, the grey tendrils of energy electrocuting him disintegrated into tin air but all of Dima’s focus was on Oksana’s amber fluttering eyes. The instant her eyes fully opened, and before she could comprehend what was going on, Dima carefully wrapped her in his arms and buried his face in her neck, freely sobbing like a child and feeling no shame in showing her and everyone else just how vulnerable he could get.