Chapter 63
Aiden
What do you do when a figment of your imagination draws breath?
There’s nothing you can do—because it’s not supposed to be real. It’s not supposed to exist. But it does. He exists. I watched him speak, and interact with other ghosts.
It wasn’t real—that’s the only explanation.
But if it wasn’t, why is Julian vomiting? Why is Katerina looking at me like that?
Her mouth moves, but I can’t hear a thing beyond the ringing in my ears.
She pushes past me to get to Julian, and I turn, following the movement. Numb.
It wasn’t real. But then why does every breath come faster, and why is fear wrapping cold fingers around my throat?
Black eyes stare at me. I stare back. Only this time, I’m not strapped to a table. And he didn’t know I was watching him. Reon.
Reon was real, and alive.
“Aiden?”
I lift my head towards Kat’s voice, and this too doesn’t feel any more real than the last few minutes because I’ve never seen her look scared before.
I feel myself frown, trying to understand why. She doesn’t even know what she’s done—how she’s just dragged us to hell and back.
She stands beside Julian, where I should be, rubbing his back as he dry-heaves. I want to take her place, but the inch I manage forward makes my knees buckle.
“What’s going on?” she asks, frantic now, eyes darting between us. “What the hell just happened?”
Do I explain to her who those rogue-shaped ghosts were supposed to be? Do I tell her about the turmoil crushing Julian and I’s bond from both ends? Do I talk about the table and the knives? Or do I just break a finger and hope that explains it all?
There has to be a right answer—some right set of words or actions after what I just saw—but I can’t figure out what it is. I don’t know how to explain that I just witnessed my greatest nightmare walk the Earth, and his name is Reon.
My lips part, but nothing comes out.
I look to Julian, hoping he can make this better like he always does, but he’s panting over a small pile of his vomit. He’s staring at the floor, and tears stream down his broken face.
I’ve only seen him look like this once before, and that was the day of Oliver’s funeral. A fake funeral.
“At what point does it stop?” I whisper, staring at him. He doesn’t hear me. He just keeps crying.
My throat burns as I try to swallow my own tears. “At what point does Goddess decide it’s enough?”
There has to be a limit—a breaking point. A moment when she looks down and says, that’s enough for one lifetime. So why hasn’t this stopped when I’m already long past mine?
I bring a hand to my throat, hoping to claw away the noose around my neck, but it’s as invisible as the permanently damaged bones under my skin.
“When does it stop?” I rasp, looking at Katerina.
She’s powerful. Maybe she could make this all go away. But when we look at each other, all I see is the girl who cried in my arms a week ago.
The elevator doors open with an eerie ding that makes us all turn with a start, like the pair haunting us might step out. But it’s not them. It’s only Emitt, and he stops short when he sees us.
His expression flickers—confusion then alarm—as his eyes slide over each of us. The vomit. Julian’s shaking. Katerina pale and still.
He takes a hesitant step towards Julian, then glances at me, and he’s at my side a moment later.
“What happened?” he demands, reaching out before thinking better of it and stopping short.
“Aiden!”
I startle, realising belatedly that he’s been calling me. Emitt frowns at me, and now he’s scared, too. “What. Happened?”
“Reon,” I whisper, and it’s strange how the numbness remains even after I do.
“Reon?” Emitt echoes, and his eyebrows dip even lower. He glances at Katerina, then back at me when she offers nothing. “Who’s Reon?”
Right. Nobody but Julian even knows who that is or where we’ve been. To everyone else, we slipped up here for a few minutes after a Council warrior arrived. They’re still waiting for us to come down and tell them everything’s fine. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
But it doesn’t matter. The pack needs its alphas. Needs us … but I can’t stop my fingers from shaking, and Julian’s tears won’t stop.
What happens when fear meets heartbreak?
Our bond tries to make sense of it, short-circuits instead.
I’m running on terror—the kind that feels like cold steel and memory—while Julian …
Julian’s drowning. I’d just seen the man responsible for every fucked up thing about me. Julian just saw his dead brother.
“Aiden,” Katerina’s voice cuts through, more insistent this time, and I can hear her panic.
“You saw them too, right?” I ask.
She blinks, frowning before she shakes her head a little. My heart lurches, so stupidly hopeful, but then she speaks.
“Who? The rogues? Yeah, I saw them. We all saw them. Do you mean them, or that one guy who looked like—”
Her eyes flick to Julian, and I’m more grateful than she can ever know that she doesn’t say it aloud.
So it was real then. He was real. Not a nightmare. Reon was real, and he was behind all of this.
I nod. I keep nodding, and I’m not sure why, except that now that I’m moving, I’m too scared to stop. If I stop moving, I’ll crash, and I can’t crash. Not now. Not when he’s still out there.
“Do you know why we’re doing this to you?”
“The meeting,” I rasp, shaking my head to oust the version of the boy who heard those words, and replace him with the man he’s supposed to be. “We have the meeting to prepare for, and the warriors arriving.” And then the fight itself.
Ten minutes ago, I’d been worried about what that would look like with the news Katerina dumped at our feet. Now I’d trade anything to go back to being that ignorant version of myself, who still half-believed Reon was just something I made up.
Moving past Emitt, I take Kat’s place beside Julian.
I crouch down, slide a hand under his shoulder, help him sit up straighter.
He needed to look presentable, strong … composed.
Like always. But he doesn’t even notice as I wipe his lips clean.
Doesn’t react, almost as if I’m not even touching him. He just keeps crying.
I stare at him, and for a second, he’s the small boy walking behind his brother’s empty casket.
Julian looks just like he did then. Pale. Hollowed out by grief. His eyes glassed over. Afraid and small, and miserable, like he wished he could disappear.
Would I have to do this alone?
“Do you know why we’re doing this?”
I don’t care about the why. I just need to know when it ends.
“We need to prepare,” I say, turning my mate towards the elevators. Moving. We have to keep moving. “The pack needs us.”
“Wait. No,” Katerina cuts in, appearing right in our path. “Nobody needs to see the two of you like this.”
“Agreed,” Emitt says as he joins her side. “You guys are …”
“In shock,” Kat finishes before turning to him. “We went to scope out the rogues. They saw someone they seemed to know. Now they’re both in shock.”
They stare at me like they want me to confirm or deny that, but if this is what shock feels like, then it’s the first time Goddess has ever done me the favour. Usually, I dived straight into the blaze.
“By the Plains,” Emitt curses, shaking his head. “I’m calling Beckett for Julian, and we’re staying right here until you’re both better.”
Better? I almost laugh at that.
Life doesn’t get better. It just kept shovelling shit into your path.
The only time my life had ever gotten better was when it offered me Julian as my mate. I should’ve known even that came with strings.
The person he’d always loved the most colluded with the one I hated the most.
Reon.
When Oliver had shouted the name, it’d felt like a dual punch to the gut. There was Julian’s dead brother, alive and in the flesh, and he was calling his name.
Time hadn’t changed him much. He looked almost the exact same. Longer hair, but that was it. It was him.
I’d considered him being behind the rogues, but I hadn’t really believed it. I thought acknowledging the chance would get ahead of the fear. Saying it made it smaller. Containable. Something I could laugh off as absurd. I hadn’t actually believed it.
We will be okay, Aiden, Maximus promises, conviction solid as stone. We will kill this devil and every one of his followers.
Max sounds so sure, but then again, he hadn’t been there when I met this devil. I’d done that alone, and while I wanted him dead, how could we kill every one of his followers if one of those demons is our mate’s brother?
Emitt and Katerina speak in hushed whispers, or maybe that’s just what they sound like to my bleeding ears. I glance at Julian. He’s still staring at the ground.
I squeeze his arm, silently begging him to make this better, but when he finally looks up, I wish I’d left him alone.
His eyes look brighter when he’s so pale, the blue shines and splinters like layers of shattered glass.
“He’s alive?” he whispers, and even though we both know it’s true, he still says it like he’s unsure.
I want to lie. Tell him that it was just a dream. That it’ll be fine. That I can fix this. But I don’t know how to tell either of us any more lies.
“I saw him,” he mumbles, and I nod. I’d seen him too.
“He’s dead,” he states, and we both know he means supposed to be. “I saw him. I—I found him.”
That’s the story. So why the hell did we just see him alive and well?
Julian asks me the same thing with his eyes right before the elevator dings, and the tears start again. I hold onto him—because that’s all I can do—and brace myself for whatever Goddess wants to throw at us next.
Beckett steps out first, just like Emitt promised. He’s at Julian’s side in a heartbeat. But he’s not alone. Behind him comes the person I very quickly realise I want to see the least right now.