Chapter 15
Abigail Monroe.
Mary’s real name, though it didn’t seem right somehow.
But what did feel damned near perfect was the man holding her.
She’d woken when the guy claiming to be her father mentioned needing the Thornes and a goddess, but remained unmoving.
Over the last two years, she’d found playing possum gained her a lot of knowledge others were disinclined to share.
The door closed behind Castor and Draven with a soft click, leaving her alone with Wilder.
His voice rumbled in his chest when he said, “You can stop pretending you’re asleep. Everyone’s gone.”
Her first instinct was to lie, but she checked it. Not only would it have been too difficult to protest aloud, but he’d likely detected the tensing of her body.
Rolling a quarter turn, she angled to see him.
His handsomeness was breath-stealing, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen gorgeous men before.
The one they called the Aether came to mind.
Although she’d been told they’d met, she didn’t remember him prior to the shooting.
But he certainly made an impression during their second meeting.
Damian Dethridge, undeniably the most attractive man on earth, possessed a quality able to chill her to the bone marrow, and she feared him.
Wilder watched her in silence, and she appreciated his allowing her to set the pace. The compulsion to touch him was hard to ignore, and Mary traced his lips. They were surprisingly full for a man, but she wasn’t complaining.
“Will you… tell… about her?”
His brows met. “Who?”
“Ab-bee.”
His expression cleared, and he shook his head with a slight smile. “You mean you.”
“Not… same.”
“You are. She’s in here,” he said, stroking her forehead with gentle fingers. “We just need to wake her up.”
Her throat grew thick.
He seemed to understand her predicament, and instead of pressing, he lifted her hand from his chest and wove their fingers together.
“Abbie was the light of my life,” he said.
His words were rough, as if torn from a throat as tight as hers.
“We never spent an entire day apart since our first date. Some friends called us co-dependent, but we didn’t care.
We enjoyed each other’s company and didn’t give a shit about the outside world. ”
Her fingers tightened on his, and he transferred his gaze from their joined hand to meet her steady stare. “It’s not to say we didn’t have our arguments. We’re both pig-headed.” Wilder smiled, and Mary was immediately warmer.
“You,” she whispered. “She… nice.”
He chuckled, causing pleasurable friction between their bodies. She was swamped with the ridiculous desire to strip him bare and rub her breasts against him.
His mouth quirked, giving the sneaking suspicion he knew. Heat crept up her neck, but she didn’t duck her head as she might’ve if she’d embarrassed herself in front of Draven, Jonas, or Roxanne.
Wilder’s grin widened.
“Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart. My Abbie—that’s you—is as stubborn as they come. A fighter.”
Other than his touch, the laid-back personality was familiar, too.
“They say”—she swallowed the pain from speaking—“I…”
Wilder placed a finger on her lips, silencing her. “Do you remember how to write?”
Did she? No one had asked her to before. Was their assumption that she couldn’t?
“You haven’t tried,” he concluded, watching her closely.
How was he able to read her mind? The Aether-man, she understood, because they told her he possessed unlimited talents, but Wilder?
Although his aura was as bright as she’d ever seen, he didn’t possess the same commanding presence as Damian Dethridge, nor were his eyes as penetrating.
For which she was grateful. Mary doubted she could stand it if someone knew every damned thought in her brain.
Realizing he was waiting for her answer, she shook her head, confirming his suspicion.
“We’ll rectify it right away,” he assured her.
He shifted, as if to sit up, and an instinctive denial arose within her. She clutched his cotton shirt.
“I’m not leaving you, Abbie. Never again.” The promise in his amber eyes sparked a need in her.
Nodding, she eased away, freeing him.
“Lock the door behind me, and let no one in but those you already know,” he warned. “I won’t be but five minutes, okay?”
Letting him go was the hardest thing she’d done since arriving in this godforsaken place, but she nodded, turning the key behind him and sliding down onto the floor. Her tears came then. Healthy-sized sobs that wracked her body.
Somebody loved her.
He’d mourned her absence and promised never to abandon her again.
Behind her, a tap broke through her self-pitying meltdown, and she twisted around.
“It’s me, Marie.”
She expelled a breath, silently scolding herself for not expecting Draven’s teleport. The Guardian didn’t miss a trick, and would undoubtedly have known the instant Wilder stepped outside.
As he crouched beside her, his warm whiskey eyes missed nothing on their tour of her tear-stained face.
“Do I kill him?”
With a watery smile, she shook her head. “Heart… knows.”
“Oui. It always does.” His lips twisted, and the image he presented was bittersweet. “Why did he go?”
“Paper… pen.”
“But of course!” He tapped the heel of his palm to his forehead. “We never asked you if you could read or write. Fools.”
“Safe,” she whispered.
“I believe you are, ma chère, but I will hang around until you are home where you belong, oui?”
Mary cupped his jaw, letting her gratitude and affection flow through to him. He would understand her action far better than her stilted words, anyway.
Turning his head, he kissed her palm. His voice held an aching quality when he said, “If I could remove your pain, I would.”
They both knew if it came down to it, he would sacrifice his life for hers. She didn’t want him to. Yet, when it boiled down to removing her scars and healing her mind completely, Draven wouldn’t. Couldn’t. If he were to, he must accept full Guardian status, and that he flatly refused to do.
When she was in stasis, she’d heard him apologize to her, saying he wasn’t willing to cave to the Authority and the Fates’ demands.
And she didn’t blame him.
No one should be forced to be a slave to the whims of gods or enslaved to an organization for their skills.
“It’s ok,” she assured him.
The knock separated them, and he pressed a finger to his lips before voicing the spell to cloak himself.
Would she ever grow used to the effortless magic he commanded?
Climbing to her feet, she touched the key, then paused. How was she to know who was on the other side without asking?
“Abbie, it’s Wilder.”
His confident voice filled her with hope and warmth.
She unlocked the door and swung it wide, halting mid-smile when the gesture stretched her scarred skin.
He held up the paper in triumph. “Communication is ours!”
His happy energy was contagious, and she giggled.
“We’ll start with the basics in case you for—” His gaze sharpened, and he slowly scanned the room. “Abbie, get behind me,” he said in a low voice. “I feel a magical presence.”
“Draven,” she said.
“What?”
Her Guardian’s invisibility shield fell away, and he shot her a sardonic glance. “You are terrible at keepin’ a secret, ma chère.”
“You’re gonna want to stop calling her yours, Masters,” Wilder replied in a steely tone.
“Because she est yours?” Draven taunted.
“She’s no man’s. Never was. Never will be. Abbie is her own person.” He met her curious gaze. “But she gave her heart to me years ago, and I’m keeping it.”
And hers melted.
Mary may not remember him, nor did she feel the name matched her, but she loved him for his sentiment alone.
Although her protectors had always treated her with respect—and here she was as lucky as could be—they hadn’t understood her need to make her own decisions, however screwed up those might be.
But Wilder did.
She tore her adoring gaze from the back of his tense shoulders to meet Draven’s searching look.
“Yes,” she said, hoping he got what she was trying to relay.
He surprised her when he winked. “I said I would see you safely home, Marie, and I will.”
What she viewed as protection, Wilder took as an affront. His body tightened, vibrating with what she suspected was the desire to strike. Pressing her palm to his back, she said, “No… Wild Man.”
He froze.
His hopeful expression was painful to witness.
“You remember?”
Although she hated disappointing him, she shook her head and snatched the writing materials from his hands. Crossing to the vanity by the window, she scribbled: Draven is no threat. He protects me.
Wilder eyes skimmed the note, and for the longest moment, he was silent, as if processing. Finally, he placed the paper in front of her and nodded.
“Returning to our earlier conversation. What did you intend to say?”
They told me the Guide, Stands-in-Shadow, said that I came through the rock. Is this true?
“The best Castor and I can tell, yes.”
What happened?
He inhaled deeply, exhaling heavily as he sat down on the bed.
“You and I work together. We teach inexperienced people how to mountain climb. It consists of rope techniques, cam placement, and other safety measures for equipment.” Looking out the window, Wilder shook his head.
“We were on our own that day, pushing the limit to reach the peak. The adrenaline rush was what we lived for.”
Pain contorted his face, and the sheer agony displayed on his visage tightened her chest, feeding her anxiety.
“The weather turned ugly and dangerous. I asked you about going back, but you wanted to continue. I knew it was a bad idea,” he said gruffly.
“Felt it in my soul. Then the rock you were on broke loose, tearing the cam from its mooring. I braced for impact, but the granite cut right through the rope.”
“Merde!”
Mary jumped. Enthralled by Wilder’s tale, she’d forgotten all about Draven.
“What happened next?” he asked, seeming as invested as she was.
“Abbie fell.”
Two words, weighing as heavy as a death knell.
Is that how I ended up in the rock? She held up the paper.
“The best we can figure is that you possessed latent Traveler magic. It activated due to the high-stress situation, transporting you through time.”
“You claim you didn’t know Marie—”
“Abbie,” Wilder stressed.
“Abbie,” Draven allowed. “You claim you didn’t know she was alive until you met her father.”
“That’s right.” Ignoring him, Wilder looked straight at her. “My family and I searched for months, but we never found your body. If I’d thought for one second you were alive, I’d have come for you immediately.”
Gripping the pen tighter, she wrote, Why didn’t you ask my father sooner?
“I had never met Castor before he showed up to save my brother’s girlfriend.
The instant I saw him, I guessed who he was and explained the situation.
” He shrugged. “My brother and I tossed around the idea that you might be alive, based on something his girlfriend once said. When we got to the base of the mountain, a portal appeared. It wasn’t there before.
If it had been, I’d have stepped through. ”
“The Traveler, he triggered it?” Draven asked the question on Mary’s mind.
“If he did, it wasn’t on purpose. But it closed immediately, and we had to call in reinforcements to hold it open.”
What reinforcements? Can they do it again? she scribbled, with Wilder looking over her shoulder.
“Your brother, Quentin, and his daughter. You haven’t met them. You didn’t know Castor was your father, either.”
It made sense why there was no familiarity with him like she had with Wilder.
An overwhelming sense of loss struck her and, with it, the need to escape. Her cells fired as they had earlier, and she curled into a ball against the burning sensation.
“She’s attempting to teleport,” Draven said sharply, hurrying to her side.
Wilder waved him away and knelt in front of her. “Fight the urge, Abbie. Stay with me and focus on my voice, sweetheart.”
Part of the urgency to get away eased, but her body refused to cool down.
Mary shrank back as he reached for her. “Don’t touch me!”