Chapter 42 #2
Ten minutes later, my tyres shriek to a stop across two spaces in front of some half-dead bar off the side of the highway. I get out of the car and head inside.
My steps are gated by the stiffness in my shoulders. The sooner I got Julian home, the sooner the hand around my throat would ease up, and I’d remember how to breathe again.
Cool air hits my heated skin as I step inside the bar. A few heads swerve my way, but I pass over them, scanning for blonde hair and blue eyes. I find them near the back of the room, and it’s like all the shit just goes away.
Julian’s laughing with Isabel while Beckett looks to be fighting his own smile. I can hear it from here, his laugh, and its sweet and free. His eyes are bright as he and Isabel talk.
They’re animated with it like they haven’t seen each other in years, and he looks happy. Genuinely fucking happy. And it guts me to know the only reason I haven’t seen him like that lately is because of me.
Julian deserves better. He deserves a whole lot better than me.
Max whines, wanting to deny that truth as I cross the room. I’m not loud, but Julian’s eyes lift, finding me quickly, and watching the joy seep from them has my heart clenching painfully around itself.
By the time I reach his side, Julian’s face is the plain, cold mask I’d seen for most of my life, and I hate having it aimed at me.
“You snitched?” he accuses, glare on Beckett.
Beckett lifts a hand in surrender. “I have two alphas, and only one told me to do something.”
“Get your car ready,” I instruct Beckett. “We’re leaving.”
“We are not,” Julian snaps, but they’re already on their feet and moving. “Guys! Get back here!”
On any other day, they’d side with him, but they can feel how volatile I am through the bond. Right now, they’re more afraid of pissing me off than they are of him.
Julian’s glare bores into their backs, then deepens into something venomous when he redirects it at me.
“What are you doing?” he hisses.
“Taking you home,” I reply with as much composure as I can. “You shouldn’t be out here. None of you should be out here.”
“So it’s okay when you take us out, but we can’t come out on our own?” he assesses with a feigned nod.
“That’s not what I said,” I start, but Julian carries on.
“And now you want me home after telling me all month to ‘have fun’,” he quotes with his fingers. “Which do you want me to do, Aiden? It’s getting confusing.”
He stares at me, waiting for a response, but it’s hard to muster one when he looks at me like that. There’s so much anger in his eyes, and under it, the hurt I put there.
“You’re right, okay?” I say, my voice soft because my heart bleeds for him. “But you can be right and angry at home. Let’s go home.”
I reach for his hand, but Julian tears it away before I can touch him.
“I don’t want to go home,” he sneers. “I’m good right here.”
He isn’t drunk, not nearly—a little tipsy, sure, but not enough to slur his words or blur his thoughts. But he’s tipsy and mad and that’s not a good mix.
“Julian—”
“No,” he snaps, his voice dropping a note. “I’m. Good. Right. Here.”
The tension builds between us, fuelled by his hurt and the restlessness coiling under my skin. This isn’t the time or place to fight, but I can tell that’s exactly what Julian intends to do if it gets him what he wants.
“Hey, is everything good here?” someone asks, stepping into our space.
My eyes stay on Julian, trying to will him to get up since he blocked my path to his mind, but he still ignores me.
Instead, he turns to bestow the man with a bright smile.
“We’re all good. Don’t worry,” he replies casually—friendly—and it has my hackles rising in a heartbeat.
I look at the guy for the first time, finding him watching me as if I am the intruder, and he isn’t the random man my mate is smiling at.
“All’s well,” I grind out.
The fucker doesn’t take the hint to beat it. Instead, he fixes his stance and frowns at me. “It doesn’t look it.”
My fingers spasm, desperate to wrap around flesh, but I clench them instead as I breathe through my rising annoyance.
“We’re good,” Julian says more seriously now, nodding to the man. “Thanks, CJ.”
CJ stays where he is, like some protective guardian, and I can tell why. I can fucking smell it.
The twinge of lust in the air coming from him, the look in his eyes when he glances at my mate.
He wants to fuck my mate.
“You need to leave,” I say as calmly as I can manage, but it comes out closer to a growl. “Now.”
In the calamity of my mind, I reach for the serenity I had learnt to look for when I felt like I was going to lose it. It’s been years since I’ve been so close to the edge, but I teeter on it now.
“Aiden,” Julian whispers, but I can’t tear my gaze from the bastard who looks at my mate as if he’s something he can have, as if he’s not mine.
Maybe he reaches for Julian, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he just keeps looking at him. Maybe it’s all in my head, and I’m just looking for a reason to snap. I don’t know and I don’t care. In my mind, he reaches for my mate, and that’s it.
Rage blinds me, ripping free, and I don’t bother trying to rein it in.
I grab the guy by his collar and yank him across the table. Bottles and glasses fall to the floor, their shatter covering the sound of my fists hitting flesh, but then it stops, and that’s all you can hear.
“Aiden!” Julian pulls me back with enough strength to separate me from the bleeding man, but my rage spurs me on. “Aiden, stop!”
He’s nothing but a pompous little shit of a human who thought he had a chance with my mate—but that’s not who I see bleeding on the table.
I see red eyes. I see a crooked smile. I see all their fucking faces.
“You’re helping us do something great, Aiden.”
Shoving Julian off, I grab the closest glass bottle, cracking it on the table before I shove its jagged edges into the man’s palm. He lurches up with a blood-curdling scream that echoes in my ears—the only sound I want from them, the only sound they ever forced out of me.
“Goddess! Aiden!” Julian yanks my shoulder, forcing my eyes away from my prize.
I snarl at him, but my rage sputters and bleeds from me when our eyes meet. Familiar blue, wide with shock, frantic with concern, and filled with so much horror it shatters something inside me. It’s like a knife to the heart, so cold and so brutal it quiets the rage almost entirely.
But it wasn’t my fault. It was him—them. He’d understand if I told him, then he’d see that this fucker was—
I blink at the body curled on the table, shaking and sobbing as strangers edge forward to try and pull him back while keeping their distance from me.
He’s not them, he’s not even him. He’s just some human and I … I’d …
My fists loosen, freeing my limp fingers as the realisation hits. Everyone’s staring. Frightened.
“Something great.”
On shaking legs, I tear myself from the scene, bolting out the way I’d came. I need to get out. I need out. I need fucking out.
Julian’s voice echoes in my muddled head. I push it out, ignoring his calls as I break past the doors, past Beckett and Isabel’s waiting figures.
I lost it. Only I never lost it, not like that, not in years, but …
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Aiden!” Julian shouts as he gains on me. “Aiden!” He grabs my arm and I wrench free, backing away.
“Don’t!” I snap, clutching my arm to my chest. It burns this time, really fucking hurts. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you fucking dare.”
Julian’s face crumples with hurt, but he doesn’t let it linger for long.
“We need to get out of here,” he says, steady where I’m not.
I nod stiffly, glancing back at the bar. No one dared to follow us out, but I can feel their eyes on us and hear sirens in the distance.
I get in my car, and Julian comes with me. We take off, and Beckett and Isabel are close behind us in his car. It’s silent except for the frantic thud of our hearts and our rushed breaths, both too loud in this tense, cramped space.
“What the hell was that?”
Julian’s voice is a whisper, but the words come out jagged.
My mouth dries and I feel his eyes boring holes into the side of my face.
“Do you know what you did in there?” he asks, voice rising with his worry.
I stare at the blood drying around my nails, the grooves I’ve cut into the steering wheel. I wanted blood and found it, twice over, and still that tiny voice in the back of my head whispers to go back and finish the job. I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them before I send us off the fucking road.
Years spent working around the anger, the needless urge to kill, and here it is again, front and centre, ’cause I lost it for one stupid second.
“Aiden,” Julian’s voice cuts sharper now. “Do you really understand what you’ve just done—losing it like that in a room full of humans?”
“I know!” I bark, trying to breathe. Fuck, I need out of here. “That’s why I’m trying to get us home!”
I should be heading the other way, out of town, out to my safe haven for when things got bad, ’cause things are very bad right now. But Julian’s here, and I need to get him home first.
I check the rearview mirror, making sure Beckett and Isabel are still on our asses before I press harder on the gas.
Julian sinks back into his seat, and he’s fucking fuming, but stays quiet so I can focus.
The drive home isn’t long, but it drags—eyes flicking to the mirrors, horror claiming each breath. By the time we cross the pack’s borders, I’m sick to my stomach and I can’t slow myself down until I’m parked outside our packhouse.
I pull the handbrake with shaking fingers and try to funnel oxygen into my lungs, but my head pounds. I can feel myself unravelling at the seams.
“Aiden. What the hell was that?”
I sigh. I don’t mean to, but Goddess … I’m exhausted and keyed up, and the very last thing I want to do right now is explain that shit—my shit—to Julian.
“Not tonight,” I beg, resting my forehead on the steering wheel. Still trembling. “Please, not tonight.”