Chapter 13
Greylen
It was her.
There was no mistaking it. She was different, but still startlingly the same. Same wild mane of blonde waves. Same stubborn look in her eyes.
Emmeline was alive. Or, at least, this version of her was.
When Orsen had told us, I was sure he was playing a sick prank. Except, he wasn’t one to joke, so why would he say something so devastatingly cruel?
Moments from starting a rare fight between us, I’d stopped, taking a good look at him. His face had gone white, and there was a thousand-yard stare there that he couldn’t fake.
It was real.
Bastian had demanded to see her right away, but I’d held back. Retreating to my office, I’d used the cameras to watch her. I wasn’t proud of it. But I had to see Emmy again, and I didn’t want her to see me—not yet.
Now, she was in the garden, and I could see her, plain as day, inspecting the herbs growing there.
She was nowhere near a healer when I knew her, but this Emmy—this Rowan—seemed to know her way around plants.
It was the way she touched them that was the most familiar; the light caress of her fingers on the petals, the way she was so very gentle, delicate, and graceful. I remembered that.
I’d missed it.
The call in my veins was too hard to ignore.
Every cell in my body wanted to go to her, and I was halfway down the hallway before I even realized I’d left my office.
By the time I got to the door, stepping out into the fresh air, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but there was no stopping me.
Rowan was crouched in the herb garden, analyzing the plants.
It was a pretty rudimentary garden mainly used for cooking, but in the back of my mind, I was already plotting how to expand it to make it exactly what she needed.
When her hair fell in front of her face, she roughly tucked it back in a move that felt very Emmeline.
My chest squeezed, an indescribable, familiar pain flaring.
My mate was in front of me. The woman I’d loved more than anything and anyone, who I’d spent nights cuddled up with in front of a campfire. I had watched her dare Bastian to jump off the old dock, despite the darkness, watched her laugh and sleep, watched her fall in love with each of us.
“They told me your new name, but I forgot it in all the excitement,” I blurted as a greeting, even though it was a complete lie.
I just needed something to break the ice.
Everything in me wanted to call her Emmeline, but I knew she didn’t remember that life.
And maybe she would see that I was trying.
After all, I needed to be smarter than my clanmates. I wasn’t going to demand she remember or call her a name that felt wrong or strange. I was going to meet her where she was.
Her head popped up, those green eyes meeting mine, making my heart pound at their familiarity.
“I’m Greylen,” I introduced, holding my hand out to shake hers, even though I knew her intimately. From her perspective, this was our first meeting, and I needed to treat it as such.
She stared at my hand for a moment, slowly rising from her crouch. “Rowan,” she said softly, reaching out and placing her soft hand in mine. God, the way it felt. I nearly crumbled. “Nix is around here somewhere, but he wanted to go grab a snack.” She giggled.
“It’s… it’s really nice to meet you.”
Rowan glanced away, and I ducked my chin, realizing I was staring. “You’re… you’re one of them, right?”
I nodded. I wasn’t going to lie to her. What good would that do? “I am.”
“Your clan has been…”
“A lot?” I supplied, pleased when a small laugh escaped her.
“To say the least.”
“I’m sorry about them. I’ll admit that all this… It’s been a shock for us too.”
“Trust me, I’m well aware how much of a surprise this whole situation is.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I keep having to resist the urge to run for the hills.”
“Please don’t.” The words were out before I could stop them—a quiet plea.
My dragon needed her near, and the thought of Rowan disappearing again made it wail in desperation. It felt so wrong to ask this of her. Rowan had no clue what’d happened, who we were. But I couldn’t stop the urge to make sure she didn’t leave.
She bobbed her head, eyes tracking down. “I’m here for a while. I have to heal Rory.”
I nodded, too, my jaw tight. “How did you become a healer?”
Rowan tilted her head to the side, brows pinching together as she narrowed her eyes. Several seconds passed, and I didn’t press. I waited, hoping it was clear that I was genuinely curious, that I wasn’t going to rush her into anything.
“I was healed,” she said finally. “I don’t know what the others told you…”
“Griff gave us the basics. He’s very loyal to you. Wanted you to tell your own story.”
A smile broke out across Rowan’s face. “Loyal to a fault, I always say, but he’s my family. We’ve been through a lot together. I trained with Kiki. You’ll know of her—”
“Everyone does. Most Alphas would sell their left nut to get her to visit their hordes, even for a week, with her healing skills. When she died last year… we all mourned.”
“She was a hundred and twenty years old and had lived a good life. She was ready,” Rowan said, even as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “I miss her. She saved my life and spent months healing me in her hut. When I took an interest in learning, she took me under her wing.”
“So, is it because of Kiki you know about dragons?”
“Oh yeah, she explained it pretty early. I think she was trying to jog my memory. It was obvious my injuries were caused by a dragon, so she assumed I was part of this world.”
I shrugged one shoulder, turning down the corners of my lips, fighting the urge to wipe the tear from under her eye as I said, “It’s a fair assumption to make, I suppose.”
“After a few years working with her”—Rowan gazed down as she began to walk, not a conscious choice, it appeared, more of an urge to move— “I got the itch to explore, to help more. Unlike Kiki, I was young and could go to hordes that didn’t have their own healer or were too isolated.
It worked out well. I got a reputation as a damn good healer, and I’ve been treated wonderfully everywhere I’ve gone. ”
I watched as something shifted behind her eyes, Rowan leaning back as she folded her arms. A stretch of silence haunted us until she sighed and looked at me again.
“What about you?”
Furrowing my brow, I chuckled. “What about me?”
Rowan chuckled, rolling her eyes. “Well, I know nothing about any of you, so tell me something. Granted, you have many more years to cover. I only have memories of six years, but I’m not in a rush. Spill.”
I suddenly felt very put on the spot. I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t upset her or seem like I was overstepping. All I wanted to tell her was that I had loved her from the moment I saw her, and when she disappeared, she took a chunk of me with her. But this was not the time.
"Not much to say, really. I was born and raised right here in the horde. I grew up close to Bastian; he was the Alpha's son at the time.” I shrugged again, trying to keep everything informal. “I tend to work on the technology side of things, tracking finances, computers. I was the one who installed security cameras. Bastian’s dad, the old Alpha, thought it was pointless with our senses, but they’ve come in handy. ”
“You can never be too safe,” Rowan agreed.
We’d been wandering around the garden aimlessly, but I didn’t mind.
It gave me the chance to see her in the bright daylight, to soak in the sight of her after years in the darkness of her absence.
Our steps were slow, and we stood nearly shoulder to shoulder as we walked along the narrow stone paths.
“That’s why I pushed for it—I wanted to be useful to the horde.
I was young and had no idea what my future role would hold.
Given my friendship with Bash, I knew I would be a member of the Alpha’s inner circle, sure.
But it felt important to prove myself. Orsen was clearly going to be his second.
And then, when we were in our late teens and early twenties, our lives suddenly changed when we realized there were going to be four leaders of the horde. ”
“Which is weird, right? I’ve never seen that before.” Rowan cocked her head to the side. “I’ve seen a pair of Alphas with the same mate, but never four.”
“Neither have I. But since we all had the same mate, it was best for the whole clan to work together. It really seemed like it would work, until it didn’t.
Nix had only been in our lives for three years—his upbringing was very different from ours, and there were some growing pains.
Only, right when we thought we had the future all laid out… well, disaster struck.”
“Because your mate went missing,” Rowan said softly.
“Because you went missing. We used to go to this cabin in the middle of nowhere to blow off steam, away from the prying eyes of the horde. Bastian in particular was under a lot of scrutiny as the Alpha’s son.
The year we turned nineteen, we went into the local town to grab a coffee… and there you were.”
“What was she like?” Rowan asked, her brows raised. It was strange to talk about Emmy like she wasn’t standing right next to me. But then again, she wasn’t, was she? This was a different person.
Looking at her, I sighed, letting the strangeness just be. “She was wonderful and bright. We met her for a second time because her piece-of-crap truck had broken down near the lake, and Nix decided he had to be her knight in shining armor.”
“That does sound like a very Nix thing to do.” Rowan chuckled.
I nodded, laughing as well. Nix was a bit of a puppy dog, but we fucking loved him, no matter how much he irritated us at times.