Chapter 42
Aiden
My fingers jerk at my sides, itching to dig into something and tear it apart.
I’ve been fighting that ache all day, all month really, but now it’s a pounding jackhammer in the back of my skull, loud enough to drown out thought.
“Aiden?” Emitt calls, but he shuts up when I lift a hand.
I need to think. I need a fucking second to think.
I stare past the borders, chest heaving with each breath.
The scouts had spotted three rogues, which is nothing in theory—except they’d been closer than usual.
Too close. And they’d been watching us. That didn’t happen—wasn’t supposed to happen—only it did, and it isn’t the first strange thing the mutts had been doing lately.
Since August, we’ve taken down three of their ragtag groups. Shifted, clothed, and not crazed. And here we’d found another set. Only three this time, but still too many.
A pattern is forming, and I hate the picture it’s making. My skin crawls.
I should be out there already, ripping them apart before they vanish. I would be, if not for the anchor of my soul that is somewhere I don’t know.
Goddess, what was Julian thinking going outside of the pack without me? And why had he chosen today of all days to be rebellious and leave the pack without telling anyone where he was going?
My instincts bellow at me to find him first. But the bloodlust curdling in my veins snarls back to end the rogues first.
If they’re gone, then they’re no threat to Julian. and the world would be one step closer to being free of them. I’ll be one step closer to being free of them. But there are threats beyond rogues—hunters, witches, lone supernatural creatures with territories Julian doesn’t know how to identify yet.
I have to find Julian. I have to kill the rogues.
I snarl as red eyes flicker through my head. Above me and in the mirror.
Rogues. It’s always fucking rogues.
They’re why Julian’s angry right now. They weren’t the ones to pull away from him this morning. They hadn’t been in the room when I left him, and they hadn’t shown up this whole month while we’d grown further and further apart, but they’re there. Always there in places he couldn’t see.
The hands that overshadow his when he touches me. Red eyes in the dark, in my dreams, in the daylight. Haunting me. Always fucking haunting me.
If not for them, Julian and I wouldn’t even be fighting. He’d be home in the pack, safe.
If not for them, I’d be normal. I wouldn’t be carrying all this shit with me.
If not for them—
“Aiden.” Emitt’s voice drags me back to the present.
I blink and turn to find wolves staring at me, waiting for my word. Dean and Mads stand among the four, never mind that they aren’t scouts. They were the first to get here the second I said the word “rogue” through the link.
“Send Beckett to find Julian. I’ll take Madison and Dean after the rogues. You stay here and protect the pack,” I order, quick and clipped, ignoring the concern Emitt aims my way.
He wants to say something, but wisely keeps quiet.
He knows what month this is. He knows not to push.
“Which way?” I ask as Dean and Mads strip to shift.
“A few miles east,” the wolf beside Emitt answers with a pointed finger.
I nod and follow after the pair. Wordlessly, I call on my shift, leaving the packlands behind in a blur as I follow the stench of rogues still clawing at the unmarked earth.
My paws hammer the dirt as I run, faster than usual. I need the motion, need to burn off the restlessness that’s plunged my mind into chaos for weeks.
I learnt how to function, and how to do it well, from the moment I first saw the glow of my eyes, irises changed red.
My mind built compartments—slots carved out of stone—and shoved the worst of it behind an immovable wall. Like how terrifying it was to see the very eyes that haunted me in my own reflection. It dumped other things there too.
The memories. The phantom agony. The changes. All of it bricked over, sealed tight, never to be acknowledged or touched. Night terrors and an ever-present temper were nothing compared to everything lingering behind that wall.
It was fine. I was fine.
Until every year when the anniversary rolls around, the wall crumbled. I try to keep it standing. Goddess knows I try. But like some twisted joke, it falls like clockwork.
I usually cope well with that too, just keep to myself. Even without knowing why, my pack knows to give me a wide berth, and I eventually resurface, back as the Aiden they know.
But that had been before Julian.
Before I fell in love, before he’d taught me how to trust again, how to share a soul.
I couldn’t pull away from Julian. You can’t hide from a piece of yourself. I tried, but Julian knew something was wrong before I even felt the bloodlust, and I pushed him away. Now he’s out there, angry and hurt, and I’m still chasing after my demons.
I want to go to him. I want to apologise, to make sure he’s okay, to tell him nothing’s changed, but I can’t. Not like this.
I’m bad enough on any given day, but these days? I barely get through them. Words twist wrong in my mouth, actions worse.
We worked on talking to each other, but how do you talk about this?
My own parents refused to. Julian would be different.
I know that. He would understand, somehow, because he’s better than the rest of us, kinder and smarter too.
He’d get it. He would never look at me the way they did. He wouldn’t pull away.
He’d still love me. I just have to tell him.
But now isn’t the time. It’s the worst fucking time, but once it all slithers back behind its wall, I’ll tell him. I’ll explain it and he’ll understand—Julian always understands. But not now.
Now there’s only the rage and the hurt and the pain, and at least I know what to do with those.
We find the rogues hiding in the canopy of a red cedar tree. Dean and Mads shift without prompt and scale the tree with trained agility. At their ascent, the rogues scramble to climb higher, risking branches too small and too far to get away.
One branch gives, and the biggest of the three drops. Something in its body breaks when it hits the ground, and its cries fill the woods, growing louder when I lurch forward and clamp my teeth around its neck.
Blood spurts into my jaws, coating them with a familiar metallic taste, and the hunger answers. I tear through flesh and bone before I sink my claws into its chest, dragging them down the centre and taking with them bits of muscle, cartilage, organ.
The rogue dies with a gurgled cry just as the second falls from the tree. It already has a ragged wound on its left thigh; I add one across its throat, killing it mid-shift.
Mads and Dean descend with the third between them. A small, weeping thing whose features blur at the edge of my sight. To me, it’s only prey, squirming and pleading and still dangerous in its cowardice.
They’re all the same. Rogues. And rogues are wicked.
“We saved this one to question—” Mads starts, but her words die when I lunge. I end it before she can finish. This rogue dies faster than the others, my jaws barely sinking into its neck before it goes limp, dying before I have a chance to sate my hunger.
It isn’t enough. Three is nothing, especially when they’re this weak. Rogues are supposed to be weak, but some aren’t—he wasn’t.
“This will hurt, but it’ll be over soon.”
A snarl tears from my lips as I drop the sagging body in search of more, but there are no more. None but him in my fucking head, in my blood, in my life. Leaving his marks as if they don’t live beneath my ink.
“Alpha?”
I turn at the call, ready to maim, until Dean’s startled grey gaze meets mine. He stills, not daring to move a muscle as he watches me with slight apprehension.
I don’t need to look through his eyes to know what he sees—a black wolf with red eyes and blood dripping from its jaws. I look like them.
“You’re helping us do something great, Aiden.”
Let’s head home, I command through the link, moving first so they have no choice but to follow. Leave the bodies.
They would be a warning to the rest of them.
“What do you mean he’s not here?”
Emitt’s eyes stay on my hands instead of my face. I follow his line of sight—my thumb bears down on my index finger, a twitch away from snapping the bone.
“Emitt!” I snap as I shake the digits out.
“Beckett found him. And Isabel,” he answers once he’s forced his gaze back to mine. “They went to a bar.”
Jealousy prickles under my skin, but I shove it down. It’s my own fault I’m not there with them. Still, he should’ve been home by now.
“Tell Beckett to bring him home,” I say.
Emitt’s brows dip.
“What?” I demand.
“You think Beckett can make Julian do anything?” he retorts. “Especially when he’s ‘blowing off steam’.”
“Then tell him to send me their location,” I veer off, heading for my car.
I’d been heading home to look for Julian until Emitt broke the news, and there was no way in hell I was going home to wait.
Even if we were fighting, just having him close makes it easier to breathe.
And after that hunt—after Dean’s grey eyes blurring and overlapping with the red ones in my nightmares—I need him.
I need to get away from everyone before I snap.
But I can’t do that while Julian is still out there, angry, and apparently drinking too.
Why today of all fucking days? Why did this shit have to happen today?
“Should I come too?” Emitt asks as he chases after me.
I shake my head. I can barely stand being around other wolves as it is, and I know any little thing has the potential to send me over the edge.
“Just tell Beckett I’m coming,” I bite out. “And to send their fucking location.”
Out of the pack and on familiar roads, I speed down the highway, my foot heavy on the gas. I’ll get Julian in the car. Somehow. Once he’s home, we can fight, shout, whatever the hell he wants. At least he’ll be safe. And when this shit passes, I’d tell him everything.