Page 21 of Love in the Wild

“Please, we won’t tell anyone. My son’s only three. I need to take care of him.”Choking fear knifed Thorne’s heart as he failed to escape the memories of the past.

“Please don’t. Not my baby!”

He remembered now. Remembered holding on to the female—hismother—with all his might, but he hadn’t understood how to save her or to protect her.

“A mother’s love—how touching.”The cold voice cut through the memory. That voice. The monster who had killed his mother and father.

Thorne threw his head back and roared. The tree he leaned against vibrated down to its very roots, and the birds above him scattered. Hundreds of wings flapped wildly as they fled from the white ghost and disappeared into the sky far above him.

Thorne sank to his knees, one arm still clutching the tree, and the other hit the earth and he clawed at the dark soil as he started gasping.

A pain he hadn’t experienced in many seasons gripped his chest, squeezing the breath from his body. He tried to suck it back again, making a strange sound in his throat. Moisture gathered in his eyes. Tears, like the ones he had wiped from Eden’s cheeks when she’d greeted Tembo.

The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt before. He had battled leopards, poachers, and even silverbacks from rival bands to protect his family. He had fought crocodiles, hippopotamuses, and even deadly snakes. Scars covered his body from his battles, yet all of that paled compared to the scar ripping open inside him now.

“Mummy, wake up.”Thorne remembered trying to wake his mother, and the dark-skinned man who held out a crown of leaves to him to stem his crying.

Thorne had visited this place only once before as a child, daring to step foot inside, where he had found the golden circlet on the ground. He had examined the strange thing as he’d backed away from the white rock and returned to the forest. Something about the white rock had left him uneasy all those years ago. Now he remembered why.

This place was a tomb. A grave. A place of ended lives. Tembo and his herd visited their fallen loved ones once a year, at the same place within the jungle. That place was one of peace. This white rock was a place of horrific tragedy. Thorne had not wanted to remember his past—or perhaps he couldn’t, until now. But it was still only bits and pieces. Sharp fragments that sliced him deeply.

“Thorne!” Eden’s distant shout broke through his rush of painful thoughts. “Thorne! Please come back!”

He got to his feet and, filling his lungs with air, made his way back to his future mate. Eden stood near the plane, still holding the picture book. When she saw him, she dropped the book and ran to him. He opened his arms to catch her, and she wrapped herself around him.

“I’m so sorry—I didn’t know. I didn’t know,” she said and pressed her cheek to his chest.

He put his arms around her slowly, embracing her the way he had embraced Keza as a child, but this was different. With Eden, everything was different. A fierce need to protect her, even stronger than the first moment he saw her, took hold of him now. Deep down, he knew that it was his job to protect this female, to care for her, to cherish her as a mate should be cherished. She raised her head, and he saw tears coating her lashes. The sight tore at him. A mate was sacred, and he’d made her cry, which meant she was in great pain.

He brushed her tears away. “Eden cries ...”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that was your family who ...” She swallowed thickly before continuing. “I didn’t know your family was in there.”

“Family ...” He thought of Keza and Akika, and the others who had raised him.Keza ...Her face came back to him in a new—or rather, very old—memory. She had rescued him when he’d been all alone. She had carried him to safety and made him her son. She was his mother, but not hisonlymother.

“Do you remember what happened?” she asked him. “I found a journal in the cockpit. I only skimmed it, but it looks like your family crashed here and survived two weeks before ...”

“What is journal?” he asked her.

“It’s a book, sort of like a story, but it was written by your father. It tells people about what happened in the past.”

Father ...Memories of a handsome face, much like his own, and strong arms holding him close.Safe. Always.Until he wasn’t.

“Do you want to know who they were?” Eden asked. Her gaze softened the tension inside him.

“Yes.”

She relaxed and stepped out of his arms, but she took one of his hands, leading him back toward the white rock. No ...airplane. More words, words that Bwanbale hadn’t taught him, were coming back. He remembered.

Eden did not go back inside the plane. She retrieved the child’s book from the ground and opened it up, removing something small tucked inside.

“This is your family.” She handed him the flat object.

He looked down at it, and his heart quivered deep within him, sending reverberations straight to his soul as he saw the faces of his parents for the first time since they’d died. He dared not speak lest he cry again. He touched his mother’s face and his father’s, then stared at his own tiny self in the magical reflection.

“Amelia is your mother, and Jacob, that’s your dad.”

He repeated the names under his breath, vowing never to forget them again, just as he would never forget Keza’s face or name.

---