Chapter 411: Not Again
"Graeme?" August cried, running headlong into the water of the hot spring where she saw her mate floating on his back. "Oh Goddess, Graeme! No, no, no. What happened?!"
They were here once again and so soon? And how had they arrived here?
She last recalled struggling with the debilitating pain she felt everywhere like shards of glass were ripping her into a million pieces and Nedra’s male lifting her from the ground. Then she was here—she was here, squinting against the sun that shone through the peaceful, swaying trees of this healing world.
When she finally rose from the soft mossy ground, the mist above the water slowly dissipated and she saw her beautiful mate floating on his back—the still water gently buoying him up so that his muscular chest and legs were just above the surface, his clothes clinging to those perfect curves and angles of him. Her whole body launched her forward to join him, recognizing his proximity like a magnetic north pulling her very soul along to be with his.
When she arrived next to him, she saw the ripped, bloodied shirt that clung to his chest and she whimpered. Who could have done something like this to him?
A series of names and faces from the pack flitted through her mind, but she couldn’t imagine anyone who would have been able to do this to her mate. Andreas was hardly capable of this. He may be the one most likely to want Graeme dead, but he was not a powerful male. Maybe it was someone who was aligned with him.
But everyone had been so unified the night of Samhain. They all felt it—that bright unifying strength and hope that threaded through the whole pack, weaving them together into one. She would have noticed if someone rejected that tie. It would have been apparent, wouldn’t it have? Like the shadow of a looming threat from within?
August pulled him from the center of the hot spring and toward the shore where she could kneel next to him, allowing him to still gain the benefits of whatever this magical water did. The birds and insects that occupied this world continued their chirping and buzzing, blissfully unaware that her entire universe was hanging in the balance with this male in her arms.
"Goddess, please help him. Please let him be okay," she whimpered, tears welling that she pushed back, shaking her head in frustration. She couldn’t be weak or overwhelmed right now. He needed her. She didn’t know what she could do, but he needed her to be strong.
"Graeme, I’m here," she whispered, swallowing back the emotion and cradling his head in her arms.
His wet hair was clinging to his forehead, and she smoothed it back, running her hand over his face—over the natural scowl that rested on his forehead and the thick dark eyebrows that seemed to soften it, reminding her of a bear with his matching bristly beard.
When she first saw him that morning after awaking at the outpost in a strange bed, he was a stranger. He seemed dark and brooding and unfamiliar, but now she knew what he must have been going through—struggling to deal with the warring emotions of discovering he had a mate at the same time that she seemed badly injured. It was the most helpless feeling, like there was no ground--like the ground had been pulled out from under your feet. And now that dark and brooding stranger was putting her through the same thing, and she was helpless at his side.
She ran her hand down his face and then felt his chest for any obvious injuries, pulling the bloodied shirt up to check his skin. Goddess, was this perfect male truly hers? It was the first thought whenever she had his body exposed to her.
There were no wounds, and she sighed, clutching him closer and bowing her head over him so that their foreheads kissed. This could not keep happening. They were both in danger over and over again—getting hurt in ways that any average person would never have to face.
"This is enough for a lifetime," she whispered against him, her breath fanning over his serene face as she shook her head gently, the water licking her hair and pulling it into wet strands that framed them both like a curtain, shielding them from the outside world so that it was just the two of them here—resting against each other in the healing warmth of the spring water.
"No more injuries. I don’t care if you are lycan or not. I don’t care how fast you heal or what abilities I might have to help you. You can’t keep getting hurt like this. It’s not okay. I did not meet you to bring this much danger into your life. What will our child face if his parents can’t even get through the first four months of knowing each other without escaping death multiple times?" she chuckled, finding the humor in this vicious circle they seemed trapped in.
"I don’t want to spend our lives in this hot spring, healing from injuries," she chuckled again before the thoughts of all that they had been through turned the quiet laughter into tears that finally won, streaming down her cheeks as her eyes squeezed shut against them.
"At least we are alone," his gruff voice answered, and her eyes shot open, tears falling on his face where his eyes were still shut. She giggled and bent to kiss him—his forehead and his temples and his eyelids and his cheeks and then finally his lips that had curved up on one side into a gentle smile.
"Thank you," she said, running a wet hand down the side of his face again in reverence of all that he was. "Thank you, thank you, thank you for being okay."
He groaned and pushed himself up into a sitting position next to her, the water sluicing down the broad curve of his neck and chest. "I am not sure I had much to do with it."
"Did Sage help you?" she asked, remembering Sage’s reassurance that he and Maggie would return to do just that.
Graeme squinted, trying to remember. There wasn’t much he could recall after the male who attacked them finally fell and he was able to stop fighting, his body giving in to the injuries that it had sustained.
"Neoma," he said. She had appeared in the doorway and somehow brought Cassian down.
"Neoma?" August frowned. "Who is Neoma?"
