Page 63 of My Guardian Gryphon

Only mine.

And I would have to live with it, at least for now.

“Gretchen?”

I glanced up, meeting his pained expression. His shoulders were slumped forward, and his hands were clenched at his sides. The tendons in his neck strained, and his cheek twitched, stress showing in the muscles of his jaw.

“No.” I couldn’t explain past that, not without letting it all out, and I wasn’t ready to do that.

He sank into the chair at my desk and ran his hand over the worn fabric cover of Little Women. Without a word, he picked it up and turned to the first page. His voice rumbled softly. “ ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.’”

Anger surged through my chest, burning across my ribcage like a firestorm. I wanted to scream and tell him to put it away. That book was my safe place. It had been my favorite story since the very first year I’d met him in the library when I was eleven. He’d placed it in my hands after returning from a mission that had kept him from Sanctuary for over two weeks—a mission that had made him miss my birthday and our annual reading of the story. Now he was reading it while I was broken and angry and scared. He was ruining it.

“Stop.” My voice broke. I climbed from the bed and ripped the book from his hands. “You can’t fix this with a story.” I hugged the book to my chest, tears burning trails of fire down my cheeks.

“I don’t want to fix you. I just want you to feel safe. This book has so many good mem—”

“And I don’t want them tainted with this.” I waved my hands in the air. “I’m ruined, broken, dirty, and I won’t let you destroy the memory of this book by mixing it into…this.”

His cheek flexed, and I saw his arms move, but I couldn’t react. Not fast enough. Those big strong limbs of his wrapped around my shaking, angry body, and I screamed, terror overwhelming everything inside me that wanted him to touch me. That wanted his comfort. I couldn’t. Not yet, maybe not ever.

He released me instantly, and his voice shook as he spoke. “You are strong, and I love you, and you are mine.”

I backed away from him, shaking my head. “It hurts too much. I can’t live this way.”

“I will do anything to help you, Gretchen. I would die right here, right now to save you from another second of agony. Please don’t call yourself ruined or dirty. You aren’t those things. You are my beautiful mate with sunshine in her heart and a smile on her lips. You are everything to me and always will be. No matter what you choose to do, I support you.”

“You heard me.” I climbed to the center of my bed, wrapping myself in my blanket like the cocoon of fleece would somehow insulate me from anything outside of my bedroom.

“I did, and I want you to know it is your choice. I want you to feel safe and whole. I don’t want you to suffer a moment longer than you have to, and if what you want is to forget, then I’ll find someone who will do that for you, but if you make the choice to heal on your own, I am with you. You are brave, even if you don’t believe it. You are strong, even if you feel weak. Bailey was right about one thing.”

“What?”

“You are not alone.”

I curled into my bed, contemplating his words. Exhaustion claimed me a few minutes later, and I drifted to sleep, knowing he was watching over me from across the room.

When I woke again, my room was once again inhabited by a Protector. This time it was Javier.

His blue eyes glinted at me, cold and discerning. He had no affection for me. No affection for anyone. All the Sisters called him an asshole and a sadist. One of the Sisters was into that kind of masochism, but mostly, he played with a few of the unattached Lycan females in town. I’d seen a few of his scenes over the years. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if the pain of his lash would erase the pain in my heart. Maybe Bailey was right, maybe there was a way to heal without erasing anything.

“It won’t.” He crossed his arms and frowned. “Hiding from pain with more pain is like slapping a Band-Aid on a stab wound. It might cover the hole, but the wound beneath will rot and kill you all the same.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?”

“Everyone who goes through trauma thinks about it. I made the mistake of using a woman once who wanted to hide from emotional pain by burying herself in physical pain, but I’ll not be making it again.”

“What happened to her?”

“She had to face her shit.”

“You’re an ass.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them. I’d never been so purposefully ugly. I wanted to hurt him.

“So I’ve been told.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek and cocked his head toward the hallway. “Still doesn’t change the fact that you tried to talk Bailey into whitewashing your brain, which she can’t do, by the way.”

“I know. Will you do it?”

He nodded, and a strange fluttering of excitement made my hands tremble. “Alek sent me in here to talk to you. First, do you care about Alek at all?”

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