Page 90 of The Seducer
Finn
I sat for a small eternity inside Magni’s drone with Athena’s unconscious body in my lap. Her complexion was getting healthier, but her pulse was still dangerously low.
I kept checking to see if she was breathing, while caressing her, and calling her back from wherever she was.
“Athena, come on baby. Wake up.”
The tiny flicker of her eyelashes made me raise my voice and cup her face with my right hand. “That’s it, you can do it, just open your eyes for me.”
Her eyelids remained closed but moved with her eyeballs rolling from side to side.
“That’s right, open your eyes, and look at me,” I instructed in an eager voice, and drew a huge sigh of relief when she finally did.
As if I were a homesick toddler, my eyes wouldn’t stop leaking as I squeezed Athena’s body tight against my own.
She mumbled something inaudible against my chest, and I released her a bit. “What was that?” I asked her.
“You love me,” she whispered before her eyelids flickered and closed again.
“No, no, no, you stay right here,” I ordered, using my thumb to open her eyelids again. “You’re damn right I love you,” I exclaimed with my nose itching from all the crying.
Athena was struggling to come back to the surface, her eyes rolling back and her body still limp. I kept coaxing her until she was fully conscious.
“You’re my spiritual teacher,” she muttered.
“Your spiritual teacher?” I repeated as my hands flew to her head again. I had already searched her scalp for bumps but there was nothing. “Did you hit your head?” I asked with great concern.
“You’re my spiritual teacher and you’ll make me a better person,” she mumbled in a raspy voice.
“You’re confused.” I smiled a little. “You’re already the best person I know. There’s nothing spiritual about me. I’m just a big brute, remember?”
“Uhmm.” She nodded a little.
“I’m the guy who can’t take anything seriously, and who you send outside in the snow because I say the wrong things.”
Athena squeezed my hand and locked eyes with me. “Was it an earthquake?”
“Yes, a big one. I came as soon as I could, but it took a while because I was up at the border. Thank God I had Magni’s hybrid or you would have bled to death before I got here.”
Athena moved her head carefully to look around. “I remember this drone,” she said, and it made sense because Magni had used his drone for some of the journey when he kidnapped her.
“What’s that?” she asked, her eyes looking down at the donor unit.
“You had a bad cut on your leg and you lost a lot of blood,” I explained and carefully removed the needles from our arms. “You should be fine now.”
“I can’t believe that you are here.” Athena whispered and licked her dry lips. “I thought you were going home.”
“I was. Hans and I were at the border when the earthquake happened and everything turned into chao–”
“Wait,” she cut me off, eyes wide open. “Is Hans okay?”
“Yes, don’t worry about him. No one had any severe injuries. It was mostly structural damage to the border.”
She tilted her head. “What do you mean structural damage?”
“I mean I could see through to the Northlands. There were literally pieces of the border missing.”
She widened her eyes and exhaled through her nose. “That’s not good.”
