Chapter 44
Julian
“Julian!”
My name comes from some distance. Someone’s voice. But it’s not him.
“Julian!”
I close my eyes and let misery drown the voice out until it muddles in with everything else. Tugging the worn fabric up, I bury my nose in Aiden’s shirt and inhale until I find the faint traces of pine that make a small kindling of warmth flicker in my chest.
It doesn’t last. It never lasted long enough.
Glass breaks, or splinters, loud enough to make my ears twitch, but none of the approaching footsteps are the sure, heavy steps of my mate, so I stay where I am.
“Dear Goddess,” Beckett curses as he crouches in front of me, filling my vision with narrowed eyes and a too-tightly clenched jaw. “Julian, when was the last time you ate?”
Ate? Do we even have food in the house? Food that hadn’t already rotted over the last three weeks?
Beckett’s sigh fills the silence as he straightens and reaches for me, but when his knee threatens to sink into Aiden’s side of the bed, I block him with an outstretched hand.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says, drawing back while I try to cover the empty space myself. “I didn’t know.”
Of course he didn’t. It’s not his fault that my mate left, disappearing without a trace. No, that’s on me.
Three weeks. Aiden has been gone for three weeks, and I … I can’t even look for him anymore.
There’s nothing out there to track, nowhere left to look, and realising that snuffed my hope out. When that went, it took my resolve to do anything with it. I can’t remember the last time I left the apartment, let alone this bed.
Alex whines, but it’s a soft, weak sound. He rarely speaks now. He’s lost hope too.
“Julian, you need to eat,” Beckett insists, reminding me of his presence. “I know you’re strong, but no wolf is that strong.”
He’s right, of course. I’m not sleeping or eating, and this is the first time I’ve talked to anyone since, well, I don’t even know. I’m weak, growing weaker every day, but the pain of my body shutting down still doesn’t touch the pain of not having him here.
“Aiden wouldn’t want you to become this,” he tries, but my mate’s name spoken makes fresh grief slice through me. I try to breathe past it, to find comfort in his scent, but with Beckett so close, his overpowers Aiden’s weak one.
I force myself to sit up and take a breath before I risk rising to my feet. The world sways, twisting itself on its head, but I remain conscious, and that’s enough.
I stumble towards Aiden’s wardrobe, taking advantage of the way my body sways as I do. I brace against its edge when I finally reach it and force a drawer open. I rummage inside, pulling out one of Aiden’s black shirts.
My mind conjures him wearing it, standing across from me with his lips slanted upwards and a glimmer in his eyes while he teases me about being too devoted to my homework.
I miss his smirks. I miss his stupid shades and his laugh that always found a way to echo within any space he was in. I miss waking up to his smiles. I miss his comforting scent that makes me feel strong and safe in the same breath. I miss waking up in his arms.
Tears stream down my face as I attempt to linger in the warmth of the memory, even if it comes laced with agony. I miss Aiden so much.
“Julian,” Beckett says, standing beside me now. I wipe the tears away as I try to move away from him. “Julian, I know it’s hard, but the pack needs you. You’re the only one left, and we—we need you, Julian.”
“And I need my mate,” I whine on the edge of a sob. “I can’t be there for anyone if I don’t have him.” I look up at Beckett, my vision of him blurring. “I—I’m nothing without him.”
“That’s not true, Julian,” he tries, but I shake my head.
“It is. He’s my entire world, Beckett. My world … and I drove him away because I couldn’t just …” I close my eyes, but there’s no stopping the wave of emotion that pulls a wail from my throat.
I couldn’t just play the part. Be quiet. Do what you’re supposed to. Be a good alpha, be a great alpha, and pretend the rest is inconsequential.
I couldn’t play the part anymore because I’d given it up a long time ago. I wish I hadn’t—could’ve used it now—but no, instead, I had to feel. Had to want more. Had to be greedy for more when I’d already been blessed beyond measure with a mate.
My parents always said to just play the part, and I failed.
Sinking to my knees, I clutch Aiden’s shirt against my chest, the same way I’d grasp onto him if I could. But he’s gone, and each day without him feels like another rejection. It’s too much, and I don’t know how much longer I can withstand it.
“Julian,” Beckett lulls as he descends with me. He raises his arms but stops when I flinch away. “I—” he takes a deep breath. “I don’t know where Aiden is, but I think his parents might.”
I still. Somehow, all the pain inside of me stops. It’s as if my brain shoves it aside, sectioning it away so I can function. I look up, locking onto Beckett, and his scent turns sour with fear as he carefully inches back.
“Emitt’s been making comments, nothing I really noticed at first, but when I put them together …” Beckett swallows. “It sounds like this isn’t the first time Aiden’s just disappeared.”
My chest tightens. “What do you mean?”
“Do you remember when we first joined school with them? When Aiden missed all his exams that first year?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. That was after I destroyed his art room.”
“Right, but remember how we waited for him to get back at you, but weeks passed before he did?” His eyes flicker with unease. “Before that point, it was like he’d just disappeared.”
My brows pull together. I remember. At the time, I’d thought that was part of the torment—to make me dread when he’d finally strike back—but maybe Beckett’s right. Maybe he just hadn’t been there.
“Emitt brought up this other time,” he continues.
“He said when they were kids he just disappeared like that for months. The whole pack was tense and there were all these searches. And it made me remember a summer like that for us too when we were young. It was the only summer I ever spent at home with my parents ’cause they refused to let me leave. ”
I remembered that summer too, when our pack was on high alert and I wasn’t allowed to leave my house either. I also remember thinking it was the best summer ever because I hadn’t had to deal with Aiden Calderon.
“Emitt said he didn’t see Aiden once, and when it was over and he finally did, Aiden was … different.”
“What are you saying, Beckett?” My patience thins by the second.
I’d ask Emitt myself, but the last time I saw him, he made it abundantly clear that he blamed me for Aiden’s leaving.
“I think something happened to Aiden, Julian,” Beckett concludes as he looks me square in the face. “When we were kids. I think it happened then. If there’s anyone who knows what, then it’s his parents. If they know that, then maybe they—”
“Know where he is,” I finish, and I’m already up, moving with whatever strength is left in my body with the sole purpose of finding Aiden’s parents. But I’m not going to look for them. They’re in my lands, and I’m their alpha.
Honing in through the pack’s link, I send my command out.
Come. Now.
I always thought Aiden resembled his father more closely, with the same dark hair and sharp features, but as his mother glares at me now, gaze incensed, all I see is her son.
“Where’s Aiden?”
I ask the question from the highest step of the packhouse’s entrance. I stopped here, not needing to go any further after I summoned them. They’d come quickly—if against their will, then driven by their instinctual need to appease my rage.
“We already told you, we don’t know,” his father answers, his head bowed but his eyes still lifted.
They know. I hadn’t seen that when I first questioned them, too crazed and desperate then to see what I do now.
“You’re lying,” I say evenly as a sliver of my anger escapes me, and it’s enough to make him lower his gaze. “And if you aren’t lying, then you’re purposefully omitting what you do know. Which, in my eyes, is the same thing.”
The pair remains silent.
“I am past the point of patience, so let me put this simply.” I step down, one stair at a time, while Beckett remains stationed above. “If you do not tell me what you know, I will exile you from this pack.”
Their eyes snap up, shock prompting the disrespect.
“Julian—” his mother starts with a forced laugh. “You cannot—”
Her words stick on her tongue the moment I meet her gaze.
I’m not just angry. I’m sad. I’m hurt. I’m terrified. I’m desperate enough to do anything to find my mate, and she sees that.
“You will become the very thing you hate. Rogues,” I promise as I stalk closer. “You will have no pack, no home, and that will haunt you for the rest of your days, if you don’t go mad first.”
Fear rolls off them as I stalk closer, propelling all my hysteria and mania onto them. It rides the tides of our pack bonds, rattling it like a train off course. The air fills with my pheromones, and I watch as beads of sweat collect above their brows.
“Julian—”
“Alpha,” I correct sharply. “I am your alpha, and if you wish for it to remain that way, you will tell me right now. Where. Is. My. Mate?”
A second passes, and that’s already too much. I take a step forward, fingers twitching.
“We really don’t know!” his father blurts out as he cranes his head even lower. “We don’t know if he’s there for sure. We can’t imagine why he’d want to be there—”
“Where is there?” I snap. This is a location, finally something.
“It was an old mill,” he prattles quickly.
“Samson!” Aiden’s mother curses, but her mate continues.
“Out of state—fifty miles east. In the direction of the Ambersy Pack’s territory,” he finishes with a heaving chest.
That’s all I need.
I turn, already heading towards the closest pack gates.