Chapter 371: Simplest Truth
"You saved me, didn’t you?" August asked him weakly, soft morning light illuminating her pale hair like a halo.
She was tucked underneath that healing quilt Greta had draped over her the previous night once they finally got her fever to come down. Graeme believed it was the ice bath and medication his sister gave her that finally did the trick, but Greta insisted that it was simply him—his healing touch, his mysterious connection with her. He scoffed at the time and rolled his eyes. How was that possible? It wasn’t.
But now she was awake. And she was... beautiful. He had to remember to breathe and not stare.
Graeme wanted her to keep asking questions just so he could hear her voice—the way its unique, lovely cadence played on his ears, addressing him—but he didn’t know how he would answer any more questions from her. She obviously wasn’t a lycan, so he would need to tread carefully. She had already been through so much. He didn’t want to scare her with more than she could handle. And it was unlikely she felt... this. Whatever this was.
"I found you in the woods," he answered simply.
It was the simplest form of truth. No need to explain he was a wolf when he found her... or that he was the very thing she had gotten a glimpse of and darted away from before her fall.
And then her eyes were on him, caressing his face like a soft hand—curious to know him. It was thrilling to be the object of her gaze. He felt his heart speed up, galloping like his paws against the earth, seeking to meet her heart and claim it.
Graeme remembered this—his mate’s breathtaking face, seeing her eyes for the first time, the way the gold in them glistened with emotion and burned deeply, seemingly thrumming with a life of their own. He remembered the spike of panic that shot through him when he learned Marius was coming to investigate the female Graeme had brought onto pack land.
"Marius," Graeme fisted the bedsheets he was now sitting on in his parents’ bedroom.
What Marius did to her... the way he touched her and spoke to her and threatened her not only with his vile words but also somehow with his mind, with his thoughts—August looked so traumatized after everything she had already been through.
She was the most precious of females. She was his mate. The deep fiery realization burned him deliciously from the inside out, and then he saw her fierce Alpha side reveal itself, tearing into Marius just like she fended him off the second time he came after her in the treehouse—just like she survived the bear attack and healed his sister and healed him... saving him from the vampire before she was taken.
"She convinced me to let her go," he choked on the memory of the final moments they shared together in that healing spring of hers, secluded away from the threats of the world.
Everything that occurred in the interim between when he found her running like a terrified prey animal through the Grimm and then when she, his Luna, convinced him to let her take on a vampire alone finally fell into place. Every beautiful, extraordinary memory streamed in to the hollow part of his mind, filling him back up with her presence—with the gift of her arrival into his life.
Her fiery, compassionate spirit. The challenges she had faced before she even met him. The people who had hurt her, disappointed her, let her down. The way she lit up when she was around the pups, so eager to feed their hungry minds with her own passion for art.
The sunflowers. The photography. The cannoli donuts.
The laughter and the arguments. The way she trembled in his arms... the feel of her skin, the taste of her lips, the way their souls threaded through, embracing and enfolding one another.
Their unborn pup. The way she glowed with an unspoken promise, a beacon of truth for the role that was rightfully hers in this pack. His chest puffed out, filling his lungs with the warmth and pride of everything she had brought to him in just a few month’s time.
Hot tears slid down his cheeks, forced out by the memories. How could he have forgotten all of this? How could anything or anyone—any magic or curse—have taken her away from him in that most intimate place where she should have been safe to exist untouched, unthreatened in his thoughts and emotions?
"Fucking vampire," he snarled, tearing the sheets beneath where he was sitting into shreds that then hung limply in his hands.
The tears didn’t stop falling. He roared the deep guttural roar of his Alpha, letting all of his fury and frustration at losing her for even the briefest of time—for having her plucked from his mind—consume him. How could he have let her down this way? How could he have let her be taken from that place in him that no one should have been able to touch? Was he that weak-minded?
He tore the rest of the sheets from the bed, throwing them limply against the wall, his vision clouded by the tears that were spilling with fury. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted to kill that fucking vampire.
Graeme paced around the room, chest heaving with the talisman that now hung against it as his mind ran over the late night and early morning hours. He had wasted so much time already just trying to be brought up to speed about all of the details that he should have already known. He had been chasing his own tail, spinning around in circles trying to get a grasp on all that had occurred, left to trust everyone else’s memories and descriptions of his mate and the circumstance they were now in.
And then his thoughts turned to Violet.
His eyes grew wide at the realization of what had transpired. Violet had beckoned him in, realizing that his memory was gone. And he had followed her. He had listened to her. He had given her his time, considered—if even briefly—her petition that this male she was terrified of may be connected to his mate. And then he had even comforted her.
He grimaced, his stomach turning. Violet may be horribly injured. She may even believe that Graeme’s mate was somehow involved, but that was all the more reason for him to have stayed far away from her while she was in that state. He had arranged for others to take care of her. She didn’t need him there. What was he thinking? She had even curled up next to him, finding comfort in his warmth and familiarity during her nightmare.
Graeme groaned and leaned against the doorframe to the bathroom, seeing nothing but his mate’s beautiful face and feeling how sick she would be to know of it. How could he have done something that stupid? Memories or not—Violet injured or not—Greta was right. He deserved all of that fury and more.
But now was not the time to dwell on it. Now was time to figure out a way to help his mate kill that vampire so she could safely return to them.
