Chapter 42

~Grace~

What was he doing here? I thought I’d never see him again. Especially after our last encounter, where I woke up in the middle of the night with him trying to mark me, I really didn’t want to see him again.

I stood very still, the soft breeze blowing strands of my hair across my face. He stared back at me, his large blue eyes gazing into my very soul. There was a still moment of recognition between us, but not a word was spoken.

Anxious, I kept my distance. I didn’t know what his intentions were, and I was afraid they weren’t good.

The last time I saw him, he ran away without answering any of my questions, but I had a feeling that he knew far more than he let on.

And now that I received the letter from him… What did he truly want with me?

Finally, the man stepped forward, a twig under his foot snapping loudly through the night.

I stayed where I stood, letting him come to me. I stood up tall, letting him know I wasn’t afraid of him, although I very much was.

Without Nola, I was powerless.

He stood only a few feet away from me now, and I tilted my head at him, silently asking him why he had brought me here.

Pulling out a notepad, he scribbled something down on a piece of paper, ripping the page from the book once he was done.

He handed me the paper, an intense fire in his gaze.

I took it, my eyes lingering on him for a moment before I looked down at the page.

“You saved my life. I am indebted to you.”

I read the words, my brows lowering. I read and reread the words, again trying to pull some sort of hidden meaning or intention behind the ink.

It definitely looked like the same handwriting from the note I got off of the rock, so there was no doubt it was him who truly called me here.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice firm. I still wasn’t going to let my guard down.

The man looked down at the notepad again, and wrote something on the page. He turned the book towards me, showing me the page.

“Christopher,” it read.

I nodded, letting him know I understood. He flipped the book back around to him, and he wrote something else.

“I know how much it pains you to not be able to bear children,” he wrote.

Pressing my lips together, I felt my chest tighten with the sore reminder. It really did break my heart that I couldn’t bear children, but how did he know that?

Even the media couldn’t report my feelings about the situation; it was never something I told the public.

Unless Liam had told him…? But I had never seen Christopher before, and he definitely didn’t look like someone Liam would have done business with.

I narrowed my eyes at him, suspicious. He always seemed to know too much.

Christopher watched my expression and shook his head, as if he were disapproving of my reaction.

“I know how to fix it,” he wrote, staring at me intensely as he showed me the words on the page.

I could feel his longing for me to believe him, as if he were pleading with me to trust him.

It was hard to look into his eyes for too long, so I reread the words on the page again.

“Fix it.” How do you fix a wound that’s already done irreparable damage? The best doctors in the area couldn’t fix it. What could be done now?

I sighed. I wanted to believe him, I really did. But it all just seemed so impossible.

“Okay,” I said, exasperated. “How do you plan on fixing it?”

I wasn’t about to throw myself into something until I really knew what was going on.

At my question, Christopher smiled. He seemed to appreciate that I was going along with his plan. Which I was… for now.

Christopher motioned for me to follow him deeper into the woods, and after quickly scanning the area around us, looking for shapes or shadows of more people, I hesitantly followed.

We silently trampled through underbrush and thick trees, until we reached what seemed to be a small, manmade structure made out of wood, bark, and leaves.

It looked like a small house, for a bunny or some other small animal. It was held up on long wooden poles, reaching chest level.

Christopher stopped in front of it, and smiled at me, a mysterious glint in his eye. I recalled the same way he grinned at me just before he leaped out of my window and disappeared off into the night the time I rescued him.

What a mysterious man…

He reached forward at the tiny house, and pressed into the wooden panels on the side. A click could be heard, and the top lifted up a little, bits of moss and dust sprinkling into the air.

Carefully, he took a hold of the roof and lifted it off of the top. I tried to discreetly peer inside as he stuck his hands inside the top, but I couldn’t see anything.

I watched him with curiosity as he pulled out something large and heavy. As he held it against his chest, I looked at it closer. It was a deep, leathery red, and it looked cracked as if plants had grown through where dirt had fallen into it.

It looked… like a book?

Christopher set it flat against his forearm and used his other arm to flip through the thick, ragged pages, dust spraying into the air with each flip.

I had to close my eyes and mouth to stop the spores from getting in.

Finally, he stopped on a page and pointed to it enthusiastically. I leaned closer, looking at the page.

There was some sort of writing in a language I had never seen, and some drawings of symbols that all looked very foreign to me.

I furrowed my brows. This all meant nothing to me, other than I could piece together it was likely some sort of magic book? Why Christopher knew about this book was beyond me.

Perhaps that’s what made him so mysterious, maybe he was involved with magic, which was rarely seen among the werewolves.

I shook my head at Christopher as he looked at me with excited, expectant eyes.

“I’m sorry, I can’t read it,” I told him.

Christopher’s smile fell, and he looked a little confused, but he quickly pulled out his notebook and began scribbling again, holding the book under his arm.

“This tome holds spells that can cure your infertility,” he wrote.

I nodded, and he opened the book again, pointing at the page, as if I could somehow understand the symbols on the page now.

I shrugged, getting frustrated at my inability to understand.

“This spell here provides a ritual that will bring you fertility and good luck,” Christopher wrote excitedly. “I can translate for you, but you must perform the ritual.”

I stared at his words, and my heart beat quickly in my chest.

Was that really all there was to it? I do this ritual, and I could bear children again?

I bit my lip, weighing my pros and cons. This could all still work out to be a trick, or the spell could just not work…

But I may never get an opportunity like this again. Did I want to give up my desired future just because I was being too cautious?