Grae sighed miserably, raking a hand down his face. There were few who he would allow to see the tornt he was in. It would be unsettling for the pack if they were aware of it. He was their leader—he was the strongest among them, and to see how internally he felt like he was crumbling would be alarming for sure. But Maggie and Sylvia were like mothers to him.
"You have not been sleeping," Maggie said softly.
She was staying in the Hallowell ho in Grae’s old room, and she was aware that most nights Grae did not co back to the house at all. He remained in his office in the pack house. One of them—Samuel or Greta or Maggie herself—would inevitably find him slumped over in his chair in the morning after spending most of the night awake, worrying for his mate.
"You are right. I haven’t been sleeping," he chuckled miserably, raking a hand through his hair this ti before settling his hands on his hips with another heavy sigh. He was exhausted—emotionally and physically.
Each night, the weight of his exhaustion would finally win soti around dawn, and then he would give in to it—allowing a few hours of sleep to take him. And he always dread of August. It was like an endless loop—the days and the nights without her. He was holding on, trying to maintain his trust in her and in the Goddess that his mate was fine without him and that she would return. It should be any day now. She should co walking through that door.
Every day when the sun sank below the horizon once again without her returning, he would feel the looming dread of another night without his mate and he would go back and forth about whether he should try to go after her. He could easily ask Selah to take him there. She knew the way to Zagan’s portal. She could get him in. And after he felt that massive new power that August released as if she were fighting sothing, he nearly gave in and asked Selah to.
He had left his office in a panic that night knowing that August had fought sothing. He felt it. She had used an ability and a strength that she had never tapped into before. He felt it bloom inside of him like a swell of warmth—his chest inflating proudly as he realized once again how gifted his mate was. But then that pride was quickly doused with a panic that threatened to undo him.
His mate had fought sothing without him. She was threatened, and he wasn’t there to help her. His pregnant mate was in harm’s way. What kind of male was he to allow this to go on? What kind of mate was he to allow his partner to be out there fighting Goddess knows what—so kind of undead creature, surely—while he was sitting around in his office overseeing renovations and security details?
That night he had decided that it could not continue. He was going to ask Selah to take him to Zagan’s—just him. There was no need to endanger anyone else. He would go alone. But when he was halfway to the cottage where Selah and Sage stayed, he ran into Neoma who seed to know exactly what was troubling him.
"I will go with you," Neoma told him at the ti. "But you know that she is okay, don’t you? You can feel it. We all can."
Neoma had been offered a place in the pack, and since then she could feel the union that threaded through all of them and connected them with their Alpha and Luna. And she was right. Sohow they all knew, just by tapping into that connection, that the heads of their leadership were secure.
"Maybe just give her a little more ti," Neoma suggested, her eyes dancing in the moonlight with a certainty that sohow reassured him.
And he had turned around, abandoning the determination to follow after his mate. But it was a battle he fought every night.
"The ti is near when our Luna will return," Maggie spoke now, bringing him back to the room he was standing in. Just like that night when Neoma had reassured him and changed his mind about chasing after August, there was sothing deeper to Maggie’s words—a greater knowing that she spoke from as if she were tapping into the universe or the Goddess or so kind of clairvoyant assurance that he did not have access to.
"How do you know?" He asked, eyebrows arched with the desperate hope that her reassurance instilled.
A gentle smile blood on Maggie’s face—so kind and calming. It was just as he rembered her from when he was a pup. She would tell him and Greta fantastic things that she couldn’t possibly know—about the emotions and movents of butterflies or the way the stars sang lullabies to the universe at night—and whenever they would question her, she gave them that sa smile. It was a smile that communicated so much without saying anything.
"I just know," Maggie said now, squeezing his arm. "We will not have to wait much longer. But you need your rest. If there is another threat that we must face in the anti, you will not be as prepared for it without rest."
Grae’s eyebrows pinched together, and he felt Sylvia go rigid next to them. Sylvia felt it as he did—the echo of a prophesy in Maggie’s words.
"What threat are we going to face, Maggie?" He asked, his attention diverted away from the ache for his mate now. Was his pack going to be in danger?
Maggie’s smile fell. She should not have said anything, because she did not know what the threat was. She only felt that sothing was coming... like a storm hovering off shore. And now that she had ntioned it, their Alpha would be even less likely to get the rest he needed.
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