Savior of the Wolves
Chapter 37

Jess’s POV

I woke up to a sensation that I’d never felt before. It was absolute belonging. It was like peace washed over me. Like I bathed in it, and I was cleansed by it forever.

I know it’s cliché to say, “Time heals all wounds,” but I felt healed as my eyes opened. I felt like I had been deathly sick my entire life and Aiden had spent his life holding the only antidote, unsure of who to give it to, who it belonged to...unsure of who exactly needed it.

It was me.

I felt his warmth under my cheek, and I knew his lips were somewhere just above my own. My body was melted against the top of him like a blanket. I hesitated to open my eyes. My senses were heightened, and I could smell him. It matched what I still tasted of him. He lingered in my mouth. I’ve never tasted anything so heavenly. I could already feel my heartbeat increase just remembering last night.

The rise and fall of his chest were euphoric. I could hear the air enter and leave and I remembered the same breath entering my mouth.

“Are you okay?” Aiden asked with a gruff, partially asleep tone, as his head tilted slightly to look down at me.

That question was so broad. Did he mean after last night? Right now? Mentally? Physically? After my first change? After my deathly encounter with a scourge?

I dissected those three words until apparently, I concerned him.

“Jess?” he said with worry, beginning to lean up. My head began to slide off.

“Please don’t move,” I begged. I only realized how desperately I needed him to hold me after he began to let me go.

“Okay,” he said softly with so much care as he laid completely back down.

His arms surrounded me, and he waited.

I thought long and hard about his question again. I thought about everything I learned in such a short amount of time here. Memories flooded in, one after another. They began to infect the older, cruel memories as if they had the power to erase my hell and replace every morbid memory with a beautiful one. He did this for me.

The old me tried to manifest an old way of thinking, “This is too good to be true” was the thought that conflicted with so many others. A second of fear tried to creep in and I took a deep breath to soften the pressure it caused in my heart.

He instantly knew.

“Jess, I can feel you. You have nothing to fear with me.”

I had to fight the tears back and I sniffled.

“Hey, hey...what’s going on?” he asked leaning onto his side to look at me.

I wrestled with the fear that was trying to paralyze me. I buried my head into his chest.

“Listen to your wolf, Soteira. Even when you don’t understand, she’s connected to mine. What is she telling you?” he asked caringly.

There were feelings she was trying to share with me. I didn’t know enough to fully understand what I was feeling. But I could make out one word, “Mine.”

I linked it without meaning to and he repeated it back to me, “Mine.”

The word was so beautiful coming from his lips. “Exactly. I am yours. Is that what you’re afraid of.”

A soft “yes” escaped my lips.

“You can’t trust what you used to know. That was all a lie. Everything before me was a lie,” he said staring at me. His eyes appeared to have an even softer blue to them this morning.

His fingers were cascading up and down my arm. It was such a gentle touch, but my body began to relax.

“See?” he questioned. “Don’t you feel our bodies talk to one another? Our words aren’t the most important way to communicate anymore. Our minds...our touch...you can trust what you feel.”

How do you forget a lifetime in a day or a few days? My life was turned upside down… or right side up. I supposed that was the better way to reconcile it. But it happened so fast that my mind felt like it watched the most beautiful movie, and these euphoric feelings were residuals from the movie. The beautiful make-believe life that I watched on a screen. It gave me the feelings, the hope, the passion for a love that I watched play out. But it wasn’t mine. The movie ended and left a feeling hovering over my subconscious. ...but it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t my movie...my feelings...my love story.

But I could still feel his warmth on my skin. My brain was screaming at me, “You’re awake. This is your story!”

“I don’t know how to trust it,” I confessed sadly.

“Trust what Jess?”

I leaned back to look at him and looked around the room. I was only now noticing the much bigger room that we were in now. Another new place.

“All of this,” I said, waving my hand lightly around the room...staring at him.

His face grew softer than I ever remembered seeing it before. He smiled and leaned into me and kissed my forehead as he said, “Well, I’ve never had a mate before. A lot of this is new to me too. Let’s just take it slow. I’ll fill in the blanks as we go through this...together.”

He paused and his head tilted slightly to the right as he said, “When it’s hard to know what to trust, just trust me. Start there.”

My mind was racing a mile a minute. Fear, confusion, love…they were all so powerful and all consuming me at once. Then my brain’s warp speed slowed and settled on a word, “Soteira.”

The word almost manifested in front of me. It was beautiful the way it came off his lips as though it were my name. It was soft and sweet.

“You called me Soteira.”

His smile was as warm as an evening sun. He looked boyish with an almost embarrassed expression as though the word were used subconsciously. He leaned closer to me and said, “It means savior.”

“Savior,” I thought. The word contained so much power. My heart filled in such a way that fear no longer had a place within a hundred miles of me. I was reborn by the way he loved me. Then suddenly my wolf softly howled, and I could feel her feelings, she was certain of Aiden. She was certain of his wolf.

I suddenly knew I didn’t have to understand why, but I knew I could trust him. Because he already trusted me.

As I made the conscious decision to let the fear go, my wolf seemed to grow with an enormous energy. I felt like I could explode. I had been denying her. I’m not sure I knew who I really was until that very moment.

Suddenly, in her acceptance, my listening to her, connecting with her, she wanted her turn.

Out!

Aiden began to smile mischievously.

I sat up in the bed and scooted back against the headboard, trying to figure out what was going on. I felt like I could rip my shirt off.

“Not yet! Not yet!” he pleaded.

“What?”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Don’t change yet.”

“I’m not trying to,” I huffed, staring at him with wide eyes.

He grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me in the eyes, “Put on your least favorite clothes. Breathe slowly. We’re going to walk calmly outside. Just hold my hand.”

As I got dressed, I could tell that Aiden was talking to someone. He wasn’t letting me in on the link, but I could hear. Almost like it was a whisper or a voice from someone else’s phone a few feet away. “A detail is waiting to accompany us. You need to run!” he said with a smile.

“I do?” I asked.

“That feeling you’re having. I can sense her too. She’s just been awakened. You don’t have enough experience to control the change yet. She’s going to transition soon whether you like it or not. Let’s get outside before she does. She might tear a few doors down if you don’t,” he laughed.

I felt too explosive to respond. I only nodded my head.

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