Chapter 119: Her Awakening

(GRIFFIN)

The steady beep of medical equipment is the only sound in the room as I stand at the foot of Maya’s bed, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath. Her auburn hair fans across the pillow, her skin pale but flushed with life. It seems impossible after what I witnessed—the blood pooling beneath her, her heart stopping, the light fading from her eyes.

Yet here she is. Alive. Changed.

The doors to the healing chamber open, and Jerry enters, his face drawn with exhaustion. “She’s stable,” he says, his voice low. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Neither have I,” I admit, unable to take my eyes off her sleeping form. “How is this possible?”

Jerry shakes his head. “I don’t know. The tests confirm it, though. She’s changing on a cellular level. Human tissue is transforming into shifter tissue. It’s inexplicable.”

I nod, remembering the moment her eyes opened, the blue irises now ringed with an amber glow so similar to my own. The scent of her has changed, too, the familiar lavender now threaded with something wild and untamed. Something that calls to my wolf in a way I can’t explain.

“I want her under constant protection.”

Jerry hesitates. “Your Majesty, we still don’t know what else they might have done to her. Mathew remains at large, and we don’t know the full extent of their experimentation.”

The mention of Mathew’s name sends a fresh swell of rage through me. How he managed to escape in the chaos, I don’t know, but I will track him down. I will make him pay for what he did to Maya.

“I’ll find him,” I murmur. “In the meantime, I want you to focus on Maya.”

“When she’s awake, she’s normal,” Jerry says. “But when she sleeps, it’s for hours and hours. In the two weeks since you brought her back, though, her sleep cycles have been decreasing. I’m confident she will be more active in a few days.”

As Jerry leaves the room for a moment, I move to Maya’s side, taking her hand in mine. The bond between us pulses strongly, newly formed and yet somehow familiar, as if it were always meant to be. I brush a strand of hair from her face, marveling at the miracle of her survival.

“I love you,” I whisper, knowing she can’t hear me. “I’m never letting you go again.”

We haven’t had a proper conversation yet. When she’s awake, she huddles in her laboratory, working, researching. Part of me feels like she’s avoiding me, and another part is worried about this fanatical energy she’s displaying. She won’t even let Jerry inside the lab.

She lets me lie in this bed with her at night, though, and when I hold her, she wraps around me, restless in her sleep. And that’s not all. The mate bond that has snapped into place has helped me recover memories that I didn’t even know were missing, especially ones from my childhood.

As I watch her sleep, I run my fingers through her hair.

The Goddess had our fates intertwined from a very young age, it seems, but neither of us ever remembered. As a young boy, I wandered off and was kidnapped by humans. A few days later, they brought in a young girl with auburn hair, a little spitfire. Her father had sold her to them to pay off his gambling debts. She cried and screamed, wanting to go home with him, but our captors hit her. My wolf grew fiercely defensive, and I tried to shield her to the best of my abilities.

Maya murmurs in her sleep, leaning into my hand, and I smile softly.

My wolf must have recognized our fated mate back then, but I was too young to understand. I had always been warned never to shift forms in front of humans, but I found myself breaking that rule a few days later when a man came for the girl, his intentions clearly shady. She rode on my wolf’s back as we ran, chased by humans with guns.

The nightmares she has, when she cries out—I recall those moments now. Why did I forget? Or is it that my young mind simply wasn’t able to retain the memories?

Jerry enters the room again. “Commander Erik is looking for y—”

“Jerry, you were a mid-level healer when I was young, right?”

He blinks. “Yes.”

“I seem to have regained some memories from a time in my childhood when I went missing.” The healer stiffens, and I study him curiously. “You know what I’m talking about?”

Jerry looks uncomfortable. “Well, yes. You ran away from home after a fight with your father, and you were missing for two weeks. Your parents had turned the kingdom upside down looking for you when you suddenly came home, a mess, raving about your mate. You were quite young and emotionally charged back then. You wanted to go look for her, but we didn’t know what you were talking about. I think the whole ordeal became too much for you, and you blocked it out.”

“I blocked it out? I forgot about Maya?”

Jerry is quiet as his eyes swivel toward my sleeping mate. “Oh, so that’s who you were talking about.” He seems to understand now. “You met Maya, and your wolf recognized her as your fated mate, but you were too young. Fated mate pairs come together after a wolf reaches maturity. If you forgot about her, it was because your wolf was trying to protect its own mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if she, too, lost her memories of your time together.”

“She’s been having nightmares since she was a child about when she was kidnapped. She doesn’t remember me.”

“Children have fragile minds. I’m surprised she was able to retain the memory in the form of nightmares. But Maya is strong. If your parents had known that you truly had met your fated mate out there, they would have looked for her. It does make sense now why you rejected every match your parents and the elders put in front of you, you had already met your mate.”

It pleases me to know that the Goddess put us in each other’s paths earlier than we ever thought. But I do wonder how Maya will feel about it.

I stroke her cheek with the back of my hand, her skin soft and flushed in her sleep. Never again, I vow silently. Never again will we be parted.

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