Chapter 370: She Is Mine
Rather than a flood of memories all at once, Graeme felt the tingling arrival of one small piece blinking back to life in the hollow part of his mind. It was where his last memory left off, previously careening over a cliff into a black void of nothingness.
Now, a missing piece of ground rose to meet his paws that were pounding through the Grimm on his way to visit Greta. Suddenly he scented someone—a female he didn’t recognize and yet wholly recognized with ever fiber of his being that now prickled to life like a blazing wildfire.
’She is mine. She is mine. She is mine.’
These three words padded through his wolf’s mind in rhythm with his gait as he sped up in pursuit of her. She was fleeing someone, terrified and panicked and bleeding as she ran blindly through the woods. She was lost. She was alone. All of these realizations plucked at his chest, making it ache in a way he had never felt before.
The strongest protective instincts he had ever known roared to the surface of his wolf form, and he followed her, concerned about that injury he could scent on her wrist. His ears were twitching, hearing her panicked sobs and scanning the forest for the threat. She instantly became the center of his attention, of his whole world, and anyone threatening even the vicinity of her orbit would be put down.
And then she turned too sharply, she fell, and when she hit a tree so hard on the way down that cursed ravine that it took the wind from her lungs, he felt the pain shatter him as if it was his own—whining as he heard the impact echo in his mind.
He skidded down the ravine to her side in a panic. Was she dead? Had he found the most brilliant thing to ever exist only to have it taken away so abruptly?
No, she was alive. Thank the Goddess, she was alive, but her back must be injured... and the object in her wrist needed to be removed, which he did as gingerly as he could with his teeth. It was a gps unit, which could only mean she was from Eliade. She was running from Eliade.
When she lost consciousness, her head lolling to the side as he carried her as carefully and as quickly as he could, he thought it was probably for the best. He needed a healer. He needed Greta.
Then she was on the couch in the outpost, Finn and Lucas’ shocked and outraged expressions forming a hazy backdrop to the only clear thing he could see now: her. He wanted to protect her, cage her from the others with his body to keep the other males in the room from even looking at her, but they couldn’t know this vulnerability of his. They couldn’t know this weakness that had suddenly exposed itself.
He was back on pack land. He was as good as an outsider here. What if they took advantage of this weakness and used it against him? What if they hurt her to get to him? What if... what if... what if...
The incessant thoughts and scenarios kept running through his mind while Lucas was nipping at the edge of his consciousness with disdain-filled comments. If the male didn’t shut up, Graeme was going to do something truly unforgivable in the eyes of his pack that required digging a hole for one of its prematurely expired members. And then Finn touched her and made her wince in pain, and suddenly Graeme was imagining digging a second hole.
Greta was here. Greta was going to fix it. Greta wanted him to carry her? No. He couldn’t touch her again. If he did, he might never let her go. It was hard enough lying her down on the couch, allowing her form to part from his that felt entirely too much like home in his arms. She felt like home. She smelled like home.
His stomach was in knots. Why did she feel like home? Why did she smell like home? Why did he want to rip Finn’s arms off for holding a rag to her head?
Greta knew that she was special to him, she must have sensed it. Greta always knew, and then she was urging him to help the girl who called herself August. August. August. Why was that the best name he had ever heard spoken? And her voice... her voice was so familiar.
When he approached the tub, heeding his sister’s demand for help, his stomach trilled at the proximity to her. But she was in so much pain—it was terrifying. Her weakness was terrifying.
He slid an arm around her, propping her arm for Greta to do an injection, and he felt the way she eased into him, relaxing instantly at his touch. He was what she needed. He helped take that pain away before Greta even pricked her with the needle.
All night he sat in the corner of that room—watching how her brow furrowed adorably in sleep, how her chest rose and fell reliably despite how weak she seemed before. She was a fighter. She got away from her pursuer and survived long enough for Graeme to find her. Maybe this could work. Somehow... he didn’t know how, but somehow maybe this could actually work.
He wanted to approach her—walk to her bedside and hold her hand to encourage her to heal in whatever way she needed with that simple contact—but he didn’t. His terror won out. Instead, he stayed in that corner, running his hands through his hair and beard, watching over this mysterious female who had unknowingly claimed something deep and essential within him—his heart.
In the morning, she awoke—beautiful and blinding in the morning sun that was filtering in around the room. And his heart pricked with every flutter of her eyelashes, every nervous twitch of her fingers, every soft word that she spoke. He had to get out of this room that was saturated with a growing joy he couldn’t understand and didn’t know how to contain or foster or return.
Greta could take over from here. Greta could take care of her while he supervised from afar. At least, that was his initial plan. But once he exited the room to go find his sister, hearing the soft click of the door behind him, he instantly missed her—an ache that grew the further away from her that he got. And before he knew it, he was returning to allow his heart another chance to sing and his stomach another chance to trill at her presence.
