Chapter 50
Julian
“Aiden, slow down.” I reach for his shoulder, but he shrugs past my hand and throws his duffle onto the couch. “Aiden.”
“We need to head back, Julian.” His tone is clipped as he grabs whatever’s within reach and stuffs it into the bag. “There’s no time to slow down. We need to leave. Now.”
I just stare at him, but he won’t even look at me. If he did, that would require stopping to breathe—and I don’t think he’s taken a proper breath since I told him I was losing Alex.
Guilt stirs in my chest, but even if I’d told him sooner, not much would’ve changed. It’s not like there’s a fix for this, and I just wanted to hold on to something good after all the bad. More than that, I didn’t want to believe it myself.
But it’s too late to hide. Aiden knows now, and he’s in full panic mode.
Crossing the length of the room, I catch his arm.
“Julian,” he groans, trying to shake me off.
I don’t let him. I take his face in my hands, forcing him to settle and just… look at me. His frantic energy doesn’t fade, but his movements still. There’s a tightness around his eyes that I hate to be the cause of.
“Aiden, breathe,” I instruct. “For one second, just breathe.”
He does, only because I ask him to. But when his shoulders drop, it’s not from relief.
“We need to get home,” he croaks, examining me from beneath his dark lashes. Reaching up, he envelops my hands with his, pressing, holding on to me. “We need to get you to the healers before this gets any worse.”
My heart pinches as I smooth my thumb over his cheek. “Aiden—”
“They’ll know what to do,” he objects before I can finish. “And if they don’t, then the elders will know something.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
It’s the truth, and we both know it. If anyone in our pack knew how to stop someone from losing their wolf, it wouldn’t be knowledge hoarded by healers and elders alone. Everyone would know—and if they didn’t, we as alphas would.
My silence tells him that much, and it only makes his eyes darken as he pulls away.
“Well, it has to,” he mutters, voice stiff, jaw set as he goes back to packing. “It has to.”
My arms hang limply at my sides as I watch him. “You’re not ready to go home.”
“I’m fine,” he snaps. “I just need to make sure you are too.”
I curl my fingers into my palm. “I don’t want you getting worse because of me.”
“Julian,” he whispers my name with care. He sets the bag down. slides his hands over my shoulders, and presses his forehead to mine. He releases a shaky breath as his eyes squeeze shut. “Anything happening to you will make me worse. I’ll be fine once you are.”
My heart wilts, seizing terribly at such a proclamation when I didn’t know if I would be fine again.
Max had come out to try and coax Alex to the forefront, but other than a dull ache in my chest, nothing happened.
“Aiden—”
“Baby, please,” he rasps the plea, but I hear it plainly. “Please. Don’t fight me on this.”
My eyes fall shut and I force myself to nod, for his sake. Then he’s kissing me gently, his arms slipping around my waist to bring me closer, as though holding me might fix everything.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” he promises. “I just have to get us home, and everything will be fine.”
I nod again. This time, when Aiden lets me go, I let him.
The journey home isn’t nearly as precarious as the one I made here.
We travel down wide highways in Aiden’s car, crossing from one state to another. The landscapes I’d run through are nothing more than a blur past the window. I lean my head against the glass, watching the colours and tones shift as the hours pass.
“What ever happened to Jessica?”
Glancing back, I meet Aiden’s faint smirk as he peeks between me and the road.
“I don’t want to play,” I mumble, turning back toward the window.
“Come on,” Aiden coaxes, patting my thigh. I shift, trying to curl into my seat. “So, you’re telling me Ramon died for nothing then?”
I watch my frown dissolve in my reflection, replaced by a small smile. Still, I can’t muster up the energy to play along.
“What’s my favourite colour?”
I want to tell him to stop—because I know what he’s doing—but I don’t have the heart to. I can feel his fear through the bond, and it hurts.
“Black,” I answer quietly.
“Correct. And what colour are my eyes?”
“Brownish-black. With a little gold,” I mumble. When Aiden stays silent, I peek over my shoulder and I catch him smiling, eyes still fixed on the road ahead.
“Why’d you ask me that?”
“No reason,” he says with a casual shrug that doesn’t match the delight in his eyes.
Sinking back against the window, I try to get comfortable again. “I’m going to sleep—”
“Wait! What’s your earliest memory of me? Or just … any memory?” he pushes despite my rising groan. “Indulge me, please?”
Recounting a childhood memory now sounds as exhausting as early-morning patrols, but with everything Aiden’s doing for me, I try to indulge him.
“We were five or six,” I start after a moment, straining to remember the finer details. “Our parents took us to the zoo for our birthday. When we fought and they made us hold hands, you dragged me to the giraffes.”
A small, gap-toothed version of Aiden flickers behind my eyelids. “I told you we had to stay close to them, but you wouldn’t listen. I wanted to see the penguins, but you said giraffes were cooler. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever saw you so happy.”
I chuckle softly. “You looked at them like they were magical, and when I asked you why you liked them so much, you said it was because they’re so tall—and if you were that tall, you’d be able to see trouble coming from far away. I told you that was stupid, and you pushed me down some stairs.”
“I don’t remember that,” he replies.
“Of course you do.”
He laughs as he lifts his shoulder in a shrug. “I mean, it sounds like me because giraffes are fucking amazing, but I don’t remember that day.”
I want to call bullshit, but when I look at him—really look—there’s nothing but blank amusement in his dark eyes.
Briefly glancing my way, Aiden raises a questioning brow at me. He really doesn’t remember it.
“How can you not …” The words wither on my lips as the realisation hits. He doesn’t remember the trip, the one we’d taken just before the summer he disappeared.
I knew something had happened, but precisely what was still a mystery. I just knew that it’d happened back when we were kids, before I lost Oliver, before I had to take his place.
Whatever it was, it was the root of his insatiable hunger for vengeance. It had taken things from him, too. His memories. His eyes. And Goddess knew what else.
“What?” he asks, his smile fading.
I waver for a moment. “It was the summer you went on that trip with your family,” I murmur, “but … you weren’t with your family, were you?”
A heavy murk settles over our bond like a solid weight. His knuckles tighten around the wheel.
“No.”
He breathes deep, but I can scent his discomfort and dread filling the car.
I keep my eyes on him as I slide my palm over his hand, gently prying his fingers from the wheel until I can rest it in my lap. I squeeze it gently, but don’t say anything else. He doesn’t need words right now.
Aiden’s relief is palpable as his heart begins to slow, and the quivering in his fingers eases.
I keep my eyes on him until they’re too heavy to stay open, but even when they flutter shut, I keep his hand in mine—holding on, making sure I don’t lose him as I drift away.
The scene before me isn’t a surprising one. I expected it, but that doesn’t make witnessing it any easier.
Aiden’s voice fills the room as he ushers the healers and elders into our largest meeting room. He directs them to find a seat inside as quickly as they can, all while pretending not to hear his parents badgering him.
He’s doing a great job of ignoring them, but I can see his patience fraying with every added minute in their presence.
All things considered, our homecoming had been nice, even if short-lived.
We’d barely crossed back into our territory before our wolves came running to greet us, their relief echoing through the link—that we were together, and in one piece.
Emitt and Beckett had met us at the healer’s complex, their relief just as palpable as they tried to gauge what had happened without getting in Aiden’s way.
They’d just narrowly managed to report that all was well within the pack before Aiden’s parents showed up, a split mirror of his worry, except it was clear where their concerns lay.
“How could you leave the pack like that? With no warning.”
“You’re the alpha, Aiden. You can’t just disappear because you have a fight with your mate.”
Not once had they asked if he was okay.
Aiden refused to engage, and their frustration built by the second. At first, they focused their glares at me, but at my raised brow, they seemed to remember our last conversation and thought better of it.
Sadly, that trick doesn’t work as well with my own parents.
“What happened, Julian?” my mother asks in a hushed whisper. “What is this meeting about?”
I hadn’t spoken to them properly since they pulled me out of school without my permission, and now here they were. Trying to pry information out of me and convince me to let them into the meeting, all while reminding me what a disappointment I was.
I guess all my avoidance, and my time away, stripped them of that temporary bout of repentance. If they wanted to rebuild our relationship, they’d seemed to forget that berating me wasn’t the best way to go about it. But old habits and all of that.
“Do you know what state you left the pack in? How you failed them?” my father hisses. “Uncoordinated, and without explanation, you just left when the pack needed you most.”
“Michael,” my mother shushes, though her blue eyes still search mine with a hint of frustration.
I stare past her, mentally willing them to go away. I’m too tired for this right now.