Chapter 43
Julian
I ruined everything.
It only took one day. One moment filled with too much hurt and too much anger, and that was it. Us, ruined. I spoke the words I swore I wouldn’t, and they’d torn us apart. Aiden had hurt me too—spoke about Oliver when he knew I barely could—but I … what I said …
My heart cramps at the memories of Aiden’s face, shattered, eyes framed in red. I’d gone too far. He hadn’t rejected me outright, but the state of our bond conveyed enough. Things would never be the same.
That first night, when I still thought he might come home, I stayed where he’d left me. I didn’t move—couldn’t really. I was pinned there by shame and hope, thinking that if I stayed where I was, I’d be right there to fix everything when he got back.
But Aiden didn’t come home. He didn’t even stay in the pack.
When he left me, he left everything. That wasn’t a reality I realised I was living in until morning came, and I found myself standing on the edge of the pack border, my mate’s scent trailing off into open territory.
I froze there, lost and still clinging to the minute hope that it wasn’t true, until the guards confirmed it. Aiden had driven out the day prior, and nobody had seen him since.
I imagined the worst in that moment.
What if one of the horrors I’d always feared caught up to him? What if the humans had him after what happened last night? What if he just didn’t want to come home?
I didn’t need to think after that. Alone, I crossed the borders and ran after my mate.
On all fours, I pushed faster than I ever had. I followed his waning scent far past any lands I knew or recognised. Recalling it now produced a blur that ended at the edge of a lone gas station, where all the traces of his scent stopped.
I searched the area. Once. Twice. Again.
Nothing. No car. No tracks. No blood either, no signs of a struggle or proof of someone trying to erase one.
Still, I searched because if I didn’t—if I allowed myself to stop for even a moment, then that awful dread gathering in the pit of my stomach would grow, and I couldn’t let that happen.
Aiden was gone. My Aiden, gone … because of me. And I didn’t know when or if he’d come back.
Dread swelled, morphed into misery and then fear. A kind of fear that slithers into you when you realise your mate is gone and there’s no way to find them. Only I had to, because all I had was Aiden. There’s no me without him anymore, and I can’t survive a reality that tries to tell me otherwise.
I shifted and trudged forward, intent on questioning everyone present for some sign of my mate, but sense in the form of Beckett stopped me before I could risk exposing us all.
I hadn’t even realised he was following me until he was standing in my path, demanding I wait at least until another wolf I hadn’t noticed found clothes for us.
Whether or not I would’ve torn through Beckett if the clothing hadn’t arrived when it did was something I would never know.
“Yeah, a guy like that passed through here early this morning. He was in pretty-bad shape,” was what one of the station’s attendants said after hearing my description.
Pretty-bad shape. The phrase, paired with the headline on the television above about a “maniac’s bar attack,” had made Alex howl in anguish.
Aiden had demons I’d never glimpsed, but they’d come out that day in the bar.
I’d been too surprised to see his fear, too angry to notice that shaken look in his eyes, but when I thought back to it now, I could recall how startled he’d been when I tore him off the human and he realised what had happened.
Aiden had been terrified, and not of the situation, but of himself.
Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed. Maybe I should’ve waited like he’d asked, but waiting was all I’d been doing for weeks, and his request—another request asserted with no explanation—pushed me past the brink of my patience.
Before I knew it, I was saying things I didn’t mean.
Things I was supposed to pretend didn’t exist. And it was too late to take them back.
The man said Aiden headed north, so that’s where I went. Never mind what was out there, I needed to find my mate. That was all that mattered. But no matter how far I searched, how many sleepless nights I spent on my paws, how many paths I scoured, there was no Aiden at the end of any of them.
Aiden was gone. Just … gone.
I kept nudging our link, hoping that if I was near, I could reach him, but either he blocked me out entirely, or was too far away to feel me.
The state of our bond didn’t help. It felt blighted, like a physical infection spreading to the most vulnerable parts.
Doused with pain from both sides, it frayed, tore, and hung tattered between us.
Days bled together. By the time my steps slowed and my strength waned, somehow a week had already passed.
I’d heard that if you were ever unfortunate enough to be separated from your mate, the first days without them were the worst, but in hindsight those were the easiest. There was hope to cling to back then, and the reality of the situation wasn’t something I’d fully yet comprehended: my mate had left me.
Aiden left me.
That’s when I began to splinter. Without that hope to keep me upright, I was no match for Beckett when he’d decided it was time to drag me back to the pack.
Two weeks have passed since then, since Aiden left me and the pack, and he still hasn’t come back home.
Plodding through fallen leaves, I keep my eyes up rather than let them drag on the ground like my feet. I’ve searched these woods three times over, enough that my scent lingers even without these being our marked lands.
Aiden isn’t out here. But I still need to look—need to do something, or I really will go mad.
Returning to the pack was the sensible choice, but being back where he left me just poured salt on the wound.
But I’m still an alpha, and my pack needs at least one of us. I need to be strong, to look it, even if I don’t feel it, but I don’t know how to show up without Aiden. I’m barely showing up for myself as it is.
I pick up my pace, filtering out the sound of the scouts Beckett sent to follow me.
They’re supposed to make sure I don’t go too far.
Orders that would be useless if I were strong enough to stop them, but he knows I’m not.
I barely sleep these days, and eat even less.
I can’t without him. Can’t do much of anything without him, so I look for him instead.
Day and night, I fucking look for him, because somehow that’s all I can do.
An hour passes before my ears prick, catching the distant sound of some rustling, something too distinct to be the wind. It doesn’t come again, but it’s enough for me to dart forward.
Legs lifting high with each step, I race ahead, outrunning the wolves behind me with the wild hope that maybe this is it. Maybe he finally came back for me.
Only, when I break past the unnaturally thick shrubbery and stumble into an open pasture, it’s not Aiden standing on the other side—it’s a girl.
A woman, really, even if just barely. She stills mid-step, leaving one pointed foot on the ground while her shrewd eyes rove over me.
She’s my height, maybe a little shorter, dressed in strange black and red leathers that contrast with the beads and tokens in her hair.
It’s those very trinkets that alert me to what she is before my senses confirm it.
A witch.
Not good.
If there are two supernatural species that do not bode well together, it’s witches and werewolves. Even more so than the age-old feud between the witches and vampires, their hatred runs in a tireless loop, its origins shifting on every storyteller’s tongue.
I don’t care why others don’t like them. I started hating the vile species the night one of them tried to kill me as a pup. It had been a pride-fuelled retaliation after a coven tried to settle on our pack’s edges, only to be driven away by my father.
I didn’t like witches then, when they hexed me out of spite, and I certainly don’t like them now.
My lip curls, a snarl already gathering at the base of my throat as I prepare to shift. Never mind the pulse hammering in my chest, or the way my instincts scream that this fight isn’t tilted in my favour.
Even weakened, I should be able to take on a single witch. But I can sense the power radiating from her where I stand, and this is no ordinary witch.
Magic breathes around her, enough to draw a hush from the surrounding woodlands. I can feel it pressing against my skin, trying to stir the kind of fear that makes you run. I ignore it and ready for a fight.
The witch doesn’t move. She watches me warily, waiting for the moment I will attack. But I’m not that stupid, so I stay still—and so does she.
We stare at each other for a long moment before she takes a careful step back.
I stay perfectly still, as does she, before she takes another.
Mirroring her movements, I retrace my steps, watching closely as she edges closer towards the meadow’s edge before, with one last look, she darts past it and disappears.
A moment later, the thick foliage I hadn’t even realised had risen around us collapses, revealing me to scouts scampering in the distance.
“Alpha!” the first calls, already rushing over while I scan the tree line, but there’s no trace of her.
“Let’s head home,” I say, backing away slowly.
I have no clue why the witch didn’t attack, or what she’s doing in these woods, but I have no intention of us sticking around to find out.
Beckett waits for me at the border, his green eyes teeming with concern.
“They said they smelled a witch,” he says as I approach. I shrug, and he frowns. “Julian.”
“We’re back in one piece,” I mutter as I walk past him. “Everyone’s fine.”
Only I’m not fine. Nothing is.
“I’ll walk you home,” he says, falling into step beside me. “Make sure you get something to eat.”
I don’t bother replying. As I pass my watchful pack, I struggle to keep my head up.
They murmur words of encouragement as I walk by, paired with mournful looks that I don’t deserve. They worry for me, for Aiden too, but their support just reminds me how deeply I failed not just Aiden, but them as well.
I don’t know if Beckett is still behind me when I stumble into our home, but I don’t care. I grab the shirt I left on the couch this morning, bringing it to my nose and keeping it there as I gather the courage to face our room.
It’s horribly empty without him. Too quiet. Too still. I hate it.
I hate all of this, and not knowing how to end it makes my eyes well with fresh tears. I hide them in Aiden’s pillow along with the sobs that crawl up my throat as I climb into our bed. The stuffing muffles the sound, but it’s not so efficient in handling my pain.
I’m alone, and I no longer know how to live life alone.
After I lost Oliver, I was forced to figure it out.
It was the most miserable I’ve ever been, but I learnt how to do it.
I convinced myself I could keep doing it, even while I’d hoped and prayed for a mate who might end the loneliness.
Someone who’d love me the way my parents never did, to make it easier to bear all this suffering.
When that someone appeared in the form of Aiden Calderon, I thought I was cursed.
Another punishment for daring to hope. But then I actually got to know him.
Not the loud, obnoxious Aiden who made my life a living hell for sport.
Not the Aiden who somehow bit me before we even had teeth, or strutted around with a patronising smile and a penchant for trouble.
I got to know the Aiden who couldn’t start the day without a hug and a kiss. The Aiden who thought the bloodier his burgers, the better. The Aiden who made stupid faces whenever you caught his eye in the mirror.
The one who made it easier to push through all this. The one who held me like no one else ever had—the one who loved me the way no one else ever would.
I fell in love with that Aiden. I couldn’t help it, didn’t stop it. I loved every second of it.
Aiden wasn’t just my mate, he’d become my person—my rock—and now he’s gone and I can’t do this. I don’t care how weak that makes me. I just can’t.
I can’t do this without him.