Chapter 368: Talisman Returned
Graeme and his Beta were out on the lawn with its crunchy, fallen leaves strewn about, staring up at the pack house where Violet’s now covered window was located.
"That is easily twenty feet. I don’t see how anyone could have been staring in. There is nowhere even to climb or mount..." Sam was saying with his arms akimbo, squinting against the morning sun.
Graeme sighed. "You are right. And Lucas and I did not sense anything unusual. There were no tracks, no scent out of the ordinary. We should make sure the guards are extra vigilant anyway—just in case. Perhaps we should move Violet..."
"To a more easily accessible location?" Greta strode out onto the lawn to join them, an annoyed expression playing on her face as she still had not eased in her anger toward Graeme.
Graeme grunted and looked down at his feet, silently praying to the Goddess for patience. His sister was wise and caring and a trusted healer in this pack. Her opinion was valid, and in truth, he knew he deserved her scorn. But she was also refusing to understand the predicament he had been placed in last night.
It was not something that he had anticipated—finding Violet that way, all torn up and completely broken the way she was—going on and on about someone coming for her. But that didn’t have anything to do with his loyalty to his mate. Why would Greta question his loyalty to his mate?
He was the Alpha of this pack, after all, should he not be concerned with every member who was injured as severely as Violet and had someone potentially pursuing them against their will? It had nothing to do with his and Violet’s history... at least not on his end. Perhaps from Violet’s perspective, it was different. That he could understand. Of course it was different for her... he should have given more thought to Violet’s potential motivations at the time.
"Use her for bait?" he asked with the coarse authoritative grain of his Alpha voice.
"If you are so concerned that someone is coming after her, it would certainly be the best way to know for sure," she shrugged with a smug smile. "And then you can trap him."
"Would my mate be so easily trapped?" he asked. "Assuming this male is like her... what do we know about August that would help us in making sure this mysterious lurker is caught without him harming anyone else?"
Greta winced at the ignorance he was so plainly displaying in regards to his own mate. Obviously it wasn’t his fault—whatever the vampire had done to him was to blame—but it was still painful to endure, even as a bystander.
Suddenly Graeme froze, ears perked at attention as a soft voice was carried on the wind to where he was.
’Graeme?’ the ethereal voice called to his ears alone, and his bottom lip dropped open in recognition. The voice on the wind belonged to his mate.
"August?" he replied to the air, searching for the physicality of her—to finally lay his eyes on her whom he could not recall ever seeing—because her scent was so strong and intoxicating, carrying her voice with it. It was the most beautiful voice and scent, surrounding him wholly as if the very specter of her were here, seeking to consume him and carry him off with her.
’Please tell me that you are all right,’ her voice continued without answering him. ’I will send the talisman to you, Bun Bun. Hold on.’
"Bun Bun?" he chuckled in surprise, a brilliant smile blooming on his face.
That was the name of the childhood stuffed toy that his mother had made for him. He hadn’t thought about that rabbit in such a long time. Obviously August had discovered it.
Greta and Sam were both staring at him in disbelief, happy tears glinting in Greta’s eyes. Somehow August had reached out to him, and it positively lit him up to recognize her.
"She is here," he breathed, his chest heaving with the sudden flood of warmth it received from her, "I hear her. I feel her. Somehow she is here."
"Thank the Goddess," Greta whimpered.
"She knows I need the talisman. How would she know that?" he asked, turning around to Sam and Greta in question.
Greta gasped softly. She had just said that aloud when she called to her outside Violet’s room. Had August seriously heard her? Was her connection to this pack somehow that strong... like a saint that could be prayed to for help?
Shortly after, a loud brazen black bird came gliding straight their way. It swooped down and alighted at Graeme’s feet, dropping the talisman it had been given to deliver before clucking and gliding away.
"Just like that?" Graeme whispered to himself, staring at the talisman in disbelief.
He bent down and picked it up, running his hand over the strange design that he had grown used to seeing hanging around his father’s neck. Greta and Sam walked up to him, flanking him on either side to stare at the silver medallion in his hand.
"How... how did that crow...?" Sam started, looking back up into the sky to see if he could catch another glimpse of it, but it was gone once again, already setting off on another cross-world trip.
"It’s funny," Greta said, giggling softly. "This medallion shows the myth of the raven and the box of daylight—a myth that says we have light because the raven stole it for us—and here this talisman is, delivered back to us by a crow. Stolen by a crow—a bird very much like a raven, wouldn’t you say?"
"I don’t think it was stolen," Graeme said softly. "She sent it. Somehow my mate sent it back to me."
"It is because she is extraordinary," Greta smiled, squeezing his arm in relief for him, for herself, and for the rest of the pack.
Finally, he would have his memory back. It was only a short night that had passed with the absence of it, but it felt so much longer than that. It felt like an eternity.
