Filed to story: Cara Nelson The Guardian: Werewolf Book PDF Free
“I need to get her home. She needs to see Sirona and find out what’s going on with her. I know she’s alive, but barely. Can any of you feel your wolves yet?”
Cara and Angel nod yes. Rik and Liam shake their heads, no.
I have Thomas find Carlos and put him in charge of helping our pack get back and making arrangements for those that need extra assistance before I begin running as fast as I can, carrying Grace back to our pack.
It’s slower than I’d like it to be. Between my own weakness, my lack of Louis’s presence and carrying Grace, I’ve just hit our pack lands, when Sirona pulls up in a car looking for us.
“How? How did she do it? I felt Noah die.” She says, helping me get Grace in the car before tearing up the bumpy ground toward the pack hospital. I’m sitting in the back, holding Grace on my lap so she doesn’t bounce around in the car.
“We don’t know. We think she pulled from Angel’s healing power. I’m not sure what’s going on with her. She’s alive but her tether feels very faint. We can’t let her die Sirona.” I tell her, my heart in my throat. I was okay being the one to die. I don’t know that I could live without my mate.
“We’ll check the baby first. My guess is Maia is protecting the child and therefore isn’t healing
Grace.”
My whole world stops. “Baby?”
Sirona’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. Hers are wide. “She didn’t tell you?” When I shake my head, she continues. “She said she wanted it to be special. I just assumed.”
“It’s not your fault. She knew what she was doing. She knew I’d never let her fight if I knew she was pregnant. And if she hadn’t been there, we’d all be dead.”
I see Sirona shiver at the thought of not having Noah. Too many people in my pack know exactly how that feels right now.
As we pull up to the hospital, Sirona asks, “What happened to the hunters?”
She opens the door and I carefully step out, holding my mate and my child close against me.
“None of us are sure. It looks like a massacre. We know it was Grace that killed them, but we know exactly how she did it. It will take days to clean it up. We need to burn what’s left of the bodies. There were so many of them, there’s no way their presence will go unnoticed by the humans.”
Liam and Rik will have to take care of that. Thanks to my mate, their mates are fine. My only focus is on getting my mate strong again.
One month later
“Anything?” I ask as Sirona comes back into the hospital room. It’s been a month and Grace is still unconscious.
She shakes her head. “There’s nothing physically wrong with her that I can find. Is your bond getting any stronger?”
“Barely. And now I don’t know if it’s my bond to her, or to our child.” Sirona had asked if I wanted to learn the gender of our baby, but I didn’t want to know without Grace. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I already know. Grace smells like cherry blossoms, but her stomach has taken on a decidedly masculine scent. She told me once that I smelled like sandlewood and cedar to her. Sandlewood is the scent that I’m getting from her stomach.
Grace is hooked up to so many machines. We’re having to feed her intravenously, so the baby stays healthy. She’s getting IV fluids, so she and the baby don’t dehydrate. There’s a monitor attached to her stomach so we can monitor the baby’s heartbeat and there’s one for Grace as well. Since her breathing has been shallow, she has an oxygen hose going into her nose.
Everyday, I get as close to her as I can. I want to sleep in the bed with her, but there are too many wires, and I won’t risk her or the baby. So, I sit in a chair, my head laying beside her stomach and
I talk to our child. Then, when I need to stand, I’ll move up to Grace’s head and I’ll lay my head beside hers and talk to her for a while.
In the beginning, Sirona tried to get me to leave to eat, or to go back to the packhouse to sleep, saying she’d stay with her. But I can’t leave them. So, I shower here at the hospital. Either Noah or Carlos brings me food and updates me on what’s going on with the pack.
The hunter bodies were burned. The authorities came around a couple of times, wanting to search the forest around our packs. We explained that we would have known if that many people had been in the forest. They tracked their movements to the edge of our property, but they didn’t have enough to get a search warrant and Liam and Rik refused to give them access to our lands. There would have been no way to hide the war, and since we would never tell them we are shifters, they would have arrested some or all of us for murder.
I got Louis back a couple of days after the battle. Everyone that had silver in their system took several days and up to a week to get their wolves back. When he came back, I had him search for
Maia. He said she was there, but unresponsive to his prodding.
Benny, Cara and Angel come to see Grace nearly every day. Cara and Angel feel guilty that Grace saved everyone and is in this state while they are fine. Angel is even pregnant again. I usually use their time with her to go shower or I’ll just lay in the bed I had brought into Grace’s room and try to get a little sleep while others are there talking to her.
The baby boom in our pack has continued. Tula, Lelani and Lolana all had their babies while Grace has been unconscious. Sirona is due any day and thankfully two of her aides have gotten their medical degrees and can deliver her baby and look after Grace while she’s recovering.
One evening, it’s just the two of us. I can’t take it anymore and I move her wires and crawl into. bed with her, laying my arm over her body, my hand on her stomach, feeling my little one moving. around inside her.
“Grace, please baby. It’s been long enough. I’m going to lose my mind if you don’t wake up. Baby. you promised me that you would be okay. This is not okay. I am not okay. Our baby needs you, I need you. You have to wake up now. I need to hear your voice. I want to hear you laugh, I want to yell at you for what you did and tell you how amazing you are for saving everyone. Please Grace. The only good thing in my life has been you. You have made everything I went through before I met you worth it. I would do it all over again if it meant I had you in my life. I can’t do this without. you. I don’t want to raise our son alone. He needs his mother.”
By the time I’m done, there are tears streaking down my face, I lean my forehead against the side of her head, just letting the tears come.
“How do you know it’s a boy?”
My head jerks up and I see the exhausted eyes of my mate.
“Grace!” Her hand comes to my face and I kiss her palm before kissing her on every part of her face I can reach.
“Oh Grace.” I say before I completely break down, sobbing at finally having my mate back.
Cooper Author
Grace is back!
Chaos. That’s all I can feel. Utter chaos. There are sounds and voices all around me. I can’t make out what they are saying, there are so many of them and they are talking over each other. I try to tell them I can’t understand them, but my voice is drowned out by theirs.
I try to find Maia in my mind, but if she is there, I can’t hear her voice over the cacophony in my head. It’s overwhelming and it never stops. I bend down, covering my ears with my hands, trying to lessen the sounds, but it doesn’t help.
Initially, I felt like I was going to go crazy. But eventually, the noise becomes almost background noise in my head, making it easier for me to think. I remember what happened, how I tapped into nearly 1000 wolves that were still alive and pulled their energy and strength into my aura before pushing it out to kill the hunters and save our packs. And that’s when I realize what the noise is. I connected to every pack member from three packs, and now I don’t know how to disconnect myself from them.
Maia is watching over our child, so I’m on my own to untangle this web of voices. If what I did worked, I’ll have to untangle over 1500 voices in my head before I’ll be able to get out of this mess.
The first couple of times I try, it’s too overwhelming and I shut it down again. Then, one day, I see one strand light up. I can see the thread of the voice as it weaves in and around others. I pull on it and untangle it from all the others. Eli. It’s his voice that is now separated. I keep it close so I can listen when he talks to me.
Cara, Angel, Sirona and Benny are next. I’m not sure if I have a stronger connection to them, or if they are actually somewhere close to me talking so I can hear them, or in this case, see their voices more clearly.
Once I figure out how to untangle a voice, I start with my pack. I focus on one voice. Amber, Noah, Carlos, until I find their voice and I untangle them from the others. It’s slow going and exhausting work. When I can’t do it anymore, I pull on the thread of Eli’s voice, laying my head beside it and listening to him. I hear him as he talks to our child and then as he talks to me. I hear him tell me to come back to him. Soon, my love. As soon as possible, I will be there.
I have no idea how much time is passing. There is no day and night here in my mind. Only an intricate web of voices. I finally untangle my pack’s voices from the others then start working on the ones from the other packs that are more familiar to me, Liam, Rik, and their ranked members. One by one, I unravel the massive ball of knots that is in my head..
Eli has begun to sound desperate. I’ve been away too long and he needs me to come back. I can only imagine how he is suffering. If our roles were reversed, I’m not sure I would be holding up as well as he is. I’ve also realized that when Cara and Angel are talking to me, it helps me to decipher their pack members, making it easier for me to pull their voices out of the mess.