Chapter 5

Chapter

Five

April 10 th

10:49 P.M.

The sound of a voice prodded him from outside the blackness that engulfed him.

There were no words, it was simply the distant hum of a sound that Axe knew unequivocally belonged to the woman he loved.

He didn't need to know what was wrong with him, where he was, or what she was saying to know that it was her.

She was ingrained in him, Axe would know Beth anywhere.

Focusing only on her voice, he allowed it to draw him slowly out of the darkness.

Over time, it grew louder and closer, no longer did it seem like an entire ocean was between them. As he became more aware, he realized someone was touching him. Stroking a hand over his hair. The repetitive motion soothed something inside him.

Beth.

Beth was with him.

Talking to him.

Touching him.

His Beth, his wife, the woman who had been afraid to come anywhere near him ever since he got her back, ruining what should have been a happy ending for their love story. She was here with him now, and the more he focused on the feel of her hand and the sound of her voice, the more he could make out her words.

"I wish I knew if you could hear me," Beth's voice whispered. It was so full of pain that he longed to do whatever it took to take that pain away.

How long had it been since he had seen her smile?

Not since the morning of the day she was taken from him.

Axe still remembered that day like it was yesterday. Remembered waking Beth up with slow, lazy kisses, making love to her like he had all the time in the world. He'd made her waffles for breakfast, they were Beth's favorite, and given the horrific life she had lived, he found he wanted to spoil her as often as he could. She'd taken a shower while he was in the kitchen cooking, and when she'd come downstairs in a pastel pink sundress, it had taken every ounce of his willpower not to strip it off her and make love to her all over again.

Instead, they'd laughed and talked as they sat at the kitchen table eating waffles, fresh berries from Beth's garden, and homemade ice cream. Everything in that moment had been perfect, and if he'd known when he kissed her before she climbed into the car to drive into town to do some shopping that it would be the last time he saw her in eight long, hellish months, he would never have let her go.

It wasn't until lunchtime he realized she'd never called or sent a single text.

Given the threat from Leonid Baranov, he always asked Beth to check in regularly if she was going to go out on her own, which wasn't often.

When he'd called, there had been no answer, and that's when the panic had really set in.

This was Beth they were talking about. She wasn't reckless, she'd twice lived through a hell no one could ever understand. She checked in because it helped her as much as it helped him. There was no way she wouldn't answer his calls .

No way.

So, when he'd driven into town and found her car sitting in a parking lot with no signs of Beth, he'd known.

She was gone.

And it wasn't until eight months later, when Tank's words had come over the comms unit announcing the intruder on the estate was none other than Beth, that he'd taken a full breath again. Only he hadn't known then that his nightmare was nowhere close to being over.

But now Beth was here, talking to him, touching him, and he wanted to savor every second of it.

"Even if you can't hear me, I'm going to keep talking to you," Beth continued. "Maybe if I do, eventually you will hear me and then you'll know how much I need you to come back to me."

Beth needed him?

For the last year, it had seemed like what she needed the most was for him to keep his distance.

"I messed everything up, Axel." There was so much misery in her voice that he did everything he could to fight through the blackness weighing him down.

He had to get to her.

Soothe her.

That was his job.

From the moment they had found Beth chained up with a rusty metal collar around her neck, attached with a metal chain to the door of the metal cage she was locked up in, he had known she was his. It was weird because, at the time, Beth had been so vulnerable, so traumatized that a future should have seemed impossible.

But it wasn't.

She was his, and he was hers. That knowledge had been unshakeable inside him as soon as he broke the lock on her cage and gently eased her out and into his arms.

That was why the last year, with her having amnesia, had been such a hellish journey. He knew she needed him, but with the distance between them, he didn't know how to be there for her.

"I wish I could go back and do it over. I just … got annoyed with you I guess. Scared too. You wouldn't tell me anything, and I needed to kn ow. I understand now why Dr. Jager didn't want you to tell me, but she was still wrong, and I guess part of me resented you putting her orders above me, above what I needed."

Fresh pain crashed down upon him.

All this time he'd known the doctor was wrong. He knew Beth, she didn't. Beth would need to know. She processed information in a logical way that completely belied the horrors she'd been through. It was because of those horrors that she'd found a way to shut down her emotions when processing a problem.

If he'd trusted his instincts, maybe eleven months of torment for them both could have been avoided.

Aching to touch and hold his wife, he focused every bit of his energy on moving just the hand closest to where he could feel her body.

"I wasn't just mad with you," Beth continued, oblivious to the fact that he was listening to her every word. "I was mad at me, too. I knew I had to tell you, but I was so afraid I couldn't make my memories come back, and without them, you would fall out of love with me and then I'd have no one."

Oh, baby .

While he was hungry to hear it, every word she spoke broke his heart a little more. There was absolutely nothing she could ever say or do that would make him stop loving her. She was amazing, so strong, so brave, and although damaged inside, she still looked for moments of joy, still saw beauty in the world, and still had a good and caring heart.

Axe could have sworn his fingers twitched, but Beth didn't seem to notice.

"I'm sorry I didn't trust you like I should have. I'm sorry I didn't trust us and our love like I should have. I should have known you would never leave me. Not ever. Not for anything. I need you to come back now, Axel."

I'm trying, wisp.

I'm trying to come back to you.

"I … I've been having memory flashes," Beth confessed softly like she was afraid of being overheard.

Beth was getting her memories back?

Knowing what he knew about her childhood and her time as Leonid Baranov's captive, Axe knew he had no choice but to force his body's cooperation.

There was no way the wife he loved was going through that alone while he lay uselessly in a bed. He hadn't been able to find her in the eight months she had been missing. If she hadn't escaped and found her way home, he would never have found her. He hadn't been any help to her while she had no memory of who she was or her life.

Failing her again was not an option.

Forcing his fingers to move, he reached for the hand that continued to stroke his hair, using it as a lighthouse to guide him through the darkness.

"They're only when I'm sleeping. Just flashes of moments in time from when I was a ch—" Beth broke off as his fingers brushed against her hand. "Axel? Can you hear me?" He felt her move and wanted to beg her to come back. "Axel, answer me right now." Her voice was becoming shrill, and he could hear the hope and fear warring inside it. "Please."

It was the whispered plea that was the final tug he needed to pull him out.

His eyes opened slowly, and he saw Beth perched on the side of a bed. Their bed, in their room, a bed he knew she crept into when he was away even though she thought she was hiding it.

One look at the dark circles under her eyes, the paleness of her face, the weight she'd lost, and he remembered everything. The warehouse, his impatience, the explosion, thinking he was going to die.

How long had he been unconscious?

Long enough for him to be brought back home.

Long enough to terrify Beth enough to bring her back to his side.

"I love you, wisp," he murmured, hating how weak his voice sounded and the effort it took to say the words.

With a sob, she carefully pressed her face into his neck, her tears wetting his skin, her breath warm as it puffed onto his collarbone. Then she spoke the words he had feared he would never hear again. "Oh, Axel, I love you, too."

April 11 th

8:06 P.M.

"Hey, you shouldn't be doing that," Beth said as she walked through the door of Axel's room to see him trying to sit up and reach for the glass of water on the nightstand. "You know you're supposed to call me if you need anything."

Not even twenty-four hours had passed since Axel first opened his eyes, yet it felt like it had been a hundred years or more.

To say she was exhausted would be the understatement of the century.

Although he was awake, Axel's body was weak and he kept passing out again, only able to remain conscious for short periods of time. Of course, in those brief periods, everyone wanted to come and see him to confirm for themselves that he was okay.

It wasn't that Beth begrudged them that at all. She loved that Bravo Team and Prey as a whole were such a close-knit family, it was just that she had so many people to care for. She was so busy ensuring the coffee pot was always filled, and a selection of other drinks and food were available. Then there was keeping the kids busy when various Prey people stopped by, washing dishes and tidying up. There were talks with the doctor and the nurse, trying to get a couple of minutes alone with Axel to make sure he wasn't overdoing things, and she was spent.

Completely spent.

There had been no time for her to sleep, and she'd barely eaten anything, but she was grateful that Axel was awake and he was going to be okay.

Frustration was rolling off him now though, she knew how annoyed he was with his body and his lack of control over it. He wanted to just jump out of bed and go back to the way things had been, but he had been in a coma for two weeks and it had taken a toll. It wasn't like it was going to take months to get his strength back, probably not even weeks, but it was going to take a few days at least.

"I don't like you running yourself ragged like this," he growled as she hurried over to get the glass and pass it to him .

That's what he was upset about?

She would have sworn it was his own inability to just jump out of bed and do things for himself.

Despite their exchanged I love yous, things were kind of awkward between them. It was because she had no idea what he'd heard her say while he was in a coma, if anything at all, and she wasn't sure how to broach the topic of what she needed. Right now, her focus had to be on him, on taking care of her husband and helping him rebuild his strength. Everything else they could sort out later.

"I don't mind taking care of you," Beth said honestly as she helped Axel steady the glass and hold it to his lips so he could drink.

"You at least need to sleep, and have you had anything to eat today?" Axel grumbled.

"Like you didn't miss sleep yourself when I first came home." The words burst out of her without conscious thought. It had taken months for her to feel comfortable enough—safe enough—in Axel's company to just say what she was thinking without fear of being punished for it.

But the last few months that fear had been back.

The distance had been back.

They'd felt like strangers instead of husband and wife, in many ways, they still did. Just because she remembered that she loved him didn't mean any of her memories of their lives had returned.

A small smile curled Axel's lips. "I at least took the time to sleep."

"Liar," she muttered. "You stayed up watching over me every night."

Axel blinked in surprise. "You knew I was there?"

"I always know when you're there. And when you're not. That night you were hurt, I felt this … distance from you. Different than the normal distance, this time it felt like you were too far away for me to reach. I didn't like it," she whispered as tears blurred her vision.

"Oh, wisp, come here." When he opened his arms, a clear invitation for her to curl up in them, Beth resisted the urge.

"Can't, I don't want to hurt you." Axel might be awake and talking to her, might be healing from his injuries, but he had still been almost killed and she wasn't going to do a single other thing to cause him pain. Not after everything she had put him through this last year.

The coma was her fault .

The head injury had contributed to it, sure. But the doctors themselves had told her that Axel wasn't waking up because his body had reached its limit and needed the time to rest and heal.

She was the reason Axel had reached his limit.

Her and her amnesia and inability to let him help her.

"Beth Lindon, you get yourself on this bed and into my arms this instance," Axel ordered, every bit the alpha male he was inside.

With a small sigh, she climbed onto the bed and very carefully stretched out so she was beside Axel but not really on him.

Apparently, that wasn't good enough for him. His arm curled around her waist, and he managed with one arm to move her so she was draped across his front.

Her protest died on her lips because the sigh that rolled through Axel's body was one of deep contentment. The arms that held her were like steel bands around her, and his face buried in her hair, and she felt him breathe in her scent. Beth would have sworn she felt teardrops drip onto the top of her head, but she had never seen her big, strong, tough, alpha husband cry before.

"Thought I was never going to get to hold you again," Axel whispered, his voice broken as he touched kiss after kiss to her head.

Guilt surged through her. "I'm sorry."

Axel stilled for a moment, then touched another kiss to her crown. "What are you sorry for, wisp?"

"For shutting you out." Although she hated that she'd done it, it felt good to say the words aloud. Freeing somehow. No more secrets, at least on her end, she just had to pray that Axel would believe her when she told him, hard as it was, that she needed to hear the truth about her past and who she was. Without it, she felt like a balloon floating into space with nothing to tether it and no way to come back down to earth.

Saying the last thing she expected, Axel asked, "Do you remember why I call you wisp?"

"No," she admitted, wishing that she did. She needed things to help her connect to her husband, otherwise, they would forever feel like strangers.

The arms around her tightened protectively. "The day I found you in Leonid Baranov's House of Horrors, you were this tiny, pale little thing trapped in a cage. At first, I almost thought I imagined you, you were so still and the room was so dark. You were like a little wisp of smoke, there one minute, gone the next. I knew in that second, I didn't ever want to let you be gone. You were mine. I knew it. Felt it. Prayed that maybe one day you would know it, too. But even if you were never ready for a romantic relationship, I would be there as your friend, your protector, whatever you needed me to be. I'm sorry I failed you, wisp."

Tears filled her eyes, and she didn't stop them from rolling down her cheeks. "You heard."

"Not everything you said while I was unconscious, just those last few minutes before I woke up. It's why I knew I had to come back to you. I failed you once and I wasn't going to fail you again. Not ever. Not for anything. I love you, wisp. More than anything on the face of this earth."

Turning her head a little, Beth placed a kiss on Axel's chest, right above his heart. A heart she knew brimmed with love for her. "I know, Axel. I never doubted that. I felt your love for me even if I didn't remember it."

His body relaxed, but his arms only tightened around her. "Good. I was afraid that you had lost our love along with your memories."

"Never. I don't even think that's possible. Our love exists whether or not we consciously remember it."

"And you don't remember it." The pain was still there in his voice, but there was no judgment.

"Not yet . But I will. I believe that." Especially now if Axel was willing to share their life with her rather than waiting for her to remember everything on her own.

"Have you had any more memory flashes?"

Beth shook her head. "I only get them when I'm asleep. Deep enough sleep to dream, and I haven't really taken more than a quick catnap since you woke up."

"You're exhausted, wisp." There was a small reprimand in his voice.

"Maybe, but here by your side, that's the only place I want to be."

"Visited me every day in the hospital, huh?" he teased.

But she straightened and frowned down at him. "I didn't visit , Axel. I stayed with you. "

"You stayed the whole time?"

"Of course I did. You're my husband, and you would have stayed with me no matter what. I wasn't leaving until you left."

A huge smile broke out on Axel's handsome face. "You didn't leave me. Even when you had no memories and were angry with me for not giving you what you needed, you stayed with me."

"I love you," she said as a way of explanation. The problem was that their love might be enough to reclaim their marriage, but it wasn't enough to eliminate the threat that still hovered over them and Bravo Team.

Leonid Baranov was still out there, he'd taken her from her husband once already, and Beth was terrified that if he took her again, there would be no third chance for her and Axel.