Chapter 11 - Alex
Harper’s attention being snagged by the demon broke me from my stupor. Watching was not an unfamiliar thing to me. Despite the vacation, and call to stand down, I couldn’t. Over the last few days, I only shifted into my human form long enough to easily scrap snatches of rumors about demon sightings, give the intel back to the guys, and then return to my watchful post over Harper’s house.
Another scent surrounded her house—something usually associated with my own shifter kin, but I couldn’t work out what it was without getting closer. And I had promised myself I wouldn’t get close enough for Harper to turn me away. It was like a silent agreement: I remained far away enough from her house, and she wouldn’t chase me away. I got to protect her, and she got… I didn’t know why she let me stay.
I stayed in my wolf form for hours, long enough to start losing my thoughts in favor of base animal instincts.
But as I’d watched her, silhouetted against the moon, atop her cottage roof, I scented the demon. It rose from the waves, the glimmering blue striking beneath the surface, as it emerged from the pit it lived in.
I snarled, glancing back at Harper, whose eyes were wide and fearful.
She wants my protection. She needs me.
I didn’t waste a second as I pounded the ground, crossing the expanse of the beach in moments just as the demon launched itself out of the waves. I leaped up and caught its spindly body in my mouth, tearing it in half. The demon’s cries pierced the silent night, felled quickly in one swipe. I turned to check on Harper, but her eyes were wide, still, on the horizon, past me. I whirled a second too late. A burning slice cut through my flank, and I roared, coming face to face with a group of demons—not just two others this time. At least five of them. I would never win if they disappeared beneath the waves and toyed with me like they had done last time.
Tipping my head back, ignoring how hot the wound burned, I howled into the night, calling out for the rest of my team. Two howls responded, closely followed by two more. Where the water touched the demons, magic sparked. It surrounded them, followed by that telltale scent. It was mere minutes before the wolves arrived, all flanking me. Only Zephyr remained in human form, wielding two knives of his own. He had the rest strapped to his body. I heard a gasp, and turned to look at Harper, who remained crouched on her roof.
Frazer, a wolf physically smaller than me in height but wider in build, launched forward, snarling, his teeth snapping. As I had done, he grabbed a demon in one go, smashing the spindly body between his teeth. The demons paused for a second, raising knives.
But the pause was enough for us to make headway. I kept an eye on Harper, who gripped something white. Losing my human recognition to the wolf instinct, I couldn’t place the item, but she grabbed it like a lifeline. My attention was taken away from her by a demon launching for me. Its knife glowed with that ghostly blue color, half mesmerizing, half daunting.
Zephyr swiped and arched his blades, catching each demon in the gut, wounding them enough for one of us to leap forward and complete the dispatch. But the demons kept pouring from the portal that remained open in the water. I needed to close it—but how?
I snarled a warning to Zephyr, jerking my head at the portal. He nodded before diving into the waves. I wanted to call out, to warn him, but he dived under the surface and returned dragging a demon’s limp body. It was only half dead, black ink sliding from a wound, into the ocean.
I saw Zephyr drip the blood directly onto the portal, which must have been the thing to close it. He dropped the demon’s body back into the portal the second before it zapped closed again.
Now, we were left with six creatures to dispatch. One lunged for Zephyr, finding a knife going right through its gut, and coming out the other end. Sweeney and Johnson snagged one demon's arms and yanked, tearing the thing into pieces. Hector took one, and Frazer had two, one under each paw, his claws embedded in their chests. His muzzle was black with blood.
Zeph and I both took one each, back and back, swiping with claws and blades.
“On your right,” Zeph said through gritted teeth. I looked in time to see a demon leaping for me. I punched my claws right through it. It was eradicated immediately, and the demon’s shrieks finally subsided. Zephyr got the other one across the throat. By the time we stepped back, the sand was wet with the demon’s blood, and the wolves stood back, spacing out.
“All good?” Zephyr asked.
I nodded. He glanced behind me, at Harper, but she had disappeared. It was only when the silence settled that I heard a cry.
A baby’s cry.
Not a newborn but the cry of a confused child.
It came from the cottage.
I growled and launched into the trees, shifting between one step and the next. I yanked on my clothes and stormed over to the cottage’s door. I now knew what the white item in her hand had been. A baby monitor. My mind went very quiet. The shifter scent, the murmuring, the monitor…
No.
Could it be true?
I panted, still catching my breath from the fight, when I pounded on the door.
“Mommy! Make it stop.” The child’s cry came from inside, the need to find out what
waited inside roared. A pounding demand.
“Harper!” I shouted. “Harper, open the door.”
“Go away!” Her voice cracked, tears thickening her voice.
“Let me in. I won’t leave until you open this damn door.”
“Alex, leave .”
“No.”
I pounded my fist against the door again. Another wail went up, and that was all I could hear. My body and mind stilled, and I didn’t realize the door had been opened until Harper snapped fingers in my face. I walked past her, into her cottage, but she cried out, grabbing onto my arm.
I was so startled by the hand on my skin for a moment that I truly did pause. A closed door was up ahead, and I turned, backing Harper into the wall.
“When I say open the door because I just saved your life, I need you to open the door,” I told her quietly. “Do not ignore me.”
“I don’t need—”
“Protecting? Are you sure about that? If it wasn’t for me and my team just now, you would have been flayed alive in five seconds. Give in, Harper. Stop fucking insisting that you don’t need me or my protection.” I braced my hands either side of her head, closing her in like she had once said she loved because she felt surrounded by my presence.
“I can smell the fear on you,” I told her. “It's like a sea of its own, Harper. What are you being so stubborn for? Do you want to count on yourself? Sometimes, you need to accept help.”
I leaned into her, wiping the tears from her face with my thumb. I couldn’t help but lick them off my skin. Harper’s breath hitched as I pulled my thumb over her lower lip.
“Let me claim you, Harper,” I murmured. “You always know what title I never dared to say years ago. Let me say it now. Let me claim you and offer my full protection. That fear you have? It’ll go away. You won’t ever have to feel powerless or helpless.”
Her mouth opened and closed, her chest rising and falling in a way that almost had me distracted.
“I—I can’t. Alex, I need you to leave.”
Her voice was tight, hurried. Not angry, but… Almost desperate.
“Let me claim you.” I shifted closer to her. “I want you, Harper. And if any part of you still wants me, tell me.”
Her mouth tightened, her fist balling against my chest. “The problem is that I never stopped wanting you, Alex. The problem is that I hate you, but I want you. I despise you, but I need you and can’t let myself give into that.”
“You can—”
“I can’t ,” she cried. “I can’t. But I want and need your protection, if you are willing to give me it. I will let you claim me in name only. But that’s all , Alex. None of this is real. If that’s what it means to secure your protection, then I’ll do it, but not officially. I can’t—I can’t let myself be that close to you again.”
In name only . The laughable concept rang through me, and I fought back a laugh.
“You can’t keep denying me,” I told her. “You know what you are to me.”
“I thought I did,” she answered, her words clipped. “I thought I did once, but you ruined that because if we were m—if we were… that then… How could you have done what you did?”
I didn’t get to answer her. The door ahead swung open, and three sets of footprints thundered into the living space.
Children.
Young children.
I froze, turning to look at them.
They rushed past me, crowding Harper’s legs, clinging onto her. Red eyes and running noses, they all tugged on her sweatpants.
“Mommy, we heard noises!”
“Mommy, I’m scared.”
All three spoke at once, their eyes wide with fear as they looked around, spotting me, but still tugging on Harper’s clothes.
The shifter scent I had noticed only grew stronger, overwhelming me, and filling the space. Harper’s eyes met mine, terrified, desperate, and everything fell sickeningly into place. Sickening only because I hadn’t known. I hadn’t known .
“Alex…” she whispered. Her hands shook, her head shaking. “Please, please don’t do anything—”
“Stop,” I told her. “Just—just stop talking.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the redheaded identical triplets at her feet. Two girls, one boy. One of the girls, slightly taller than her siblings, turned to me. And it hit me. It hit me like an avalanche, so much so that I staggered back.
“Harper,” I said quietly. “Harper, how—”
How could you keep this from me ?
Those eyes…
The children may have had Harper’s hair color and complexion, but those eyes… They were Garson eyes. My eyes. Wide and inquisitive, the tallest girl peered at me and didn’t look away. It is as if, by example, the other two also turned to look.
“Hi,” the boy asked, his voice tiny and word hesitant as if he still tried to remember the proper way to greet.
I didn’t know what to say. Never before in my life had I ever been this lost for words. There had been times when my silence was a weapon that I wielded pointedly, but never before had this happened.
My tongue was heavy in my mouth as I gazed at the three children who smelled like my own DNA, shifters, with my eyes. Triplets. A summer fling, ending in triplets. Triplets I had walked away from.
A thousand questions entered my mind, but all I could focus on, as my knees weakened and I fell to them, was that she may have known she was pregnant when I left and that I had not known I was walking away from a much bigger future than I realized.
Leaving Harper had almost killed me. This twisted the knife.
But then the reality set in: demons had threatened both my mate and my children. My children. No. I flicked my gaze back up to Harper.
“Our children,” I murmured.
Her eyes turned hard. “ My children.”
“They have the eyes of a shifter, Harper. They’re ours .”
“Alex—”
“I don’t care what you say,” I told her. “I’m not leaving this house.”
“Your vaca—”
“ Damn the vacation! I don’t care about that. I will claim you—in name only, if that’s what you’ll give me, but either way, I’m staying right here for you and our children. I will protect you.”
“No,” she snapped. Her hands clasped both of the girls. “You can’t do that to us. You can’t just stay here and pretend like… Like…”
“Like we’re a family?” I asked. “I never knew what I was walking away from.”
“Hallie, take your brother and sister into your room, okay? Mommy will come check on you in a moment. It's okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
The one she spoke to was the tallest, and she had looked at me first. She took the hands of the two others, and as they passed, all I wanted to do was hold them, but I couldn’t. Not yet. The thought that demons had come so close to my mate sent me furious, but the thought of them coming near my own children?
As soon as the door to their room closed, I glared at Harper, only to find her own sharp-eyed gaze on me.
“You walked away from me ,” she snapped. “Was that enough? That part was okay to do so, was it?”
“Harper, don’t.”
“No, you don’t, Alex. You walked away from me, away from any life we could have had together.”
“Did you know?” I asked desperately, my chest caving. “When I left Haystock, did you know?”
She shook her head. “I suspected. I had symptoms, but I didn’t know for sure. I—Alex, you walked away in the middle of the night. I didn’t have a number; there was no address. I could never find you, but you caused that.”
No, you don’t know what happened. You don’t know the whole story. I did it to save you.
But the words didn’t come, and I could only gaze at her. Finally, I got to my feet.
“I’m staying,” I told her.
“But your team—”
“They’re okay in the villa. They can come here, and I can check on them. But if you think for a minute that I’m walking away from this cottage—from you or those children—then you’re mistaken.”
She glared at me. I watched her resolve slowly crumble. It took time for her to work through whatever decision she made—or let me make.
“You won’t give up, will you?”
“Never,” I answered. “Especially not now.”
“Does your presence here bring more danger?”
“I’ve sat outside your house for nights, Harper—”
“I know, but…”
“If I had brought the danger with me, then the demons would have attacked sooner. They’re not clever enough to be calculating. They only ever wait to attack the most vulnerable people, but they don’t plan their attacks. They’re not smart enough. They would have if they wanted to attack you when I first showed up here.”
She hesitated, but then her shoulders slumped. “You’re sleeping on the sofa.”
“No—”
“I mean it, Alex,” she snapped. “That’s the only way I’m agreeing to any of this.”
In silence, we glared at one another. But I broke away first, hating to do it. I wanted to be closer to her, but I understood why I was being kept at a distance. I only rationalized the agreeance by remembering that I would be closer to the triplets that way, closer to protect if they needed me.
Closer to my children.
***
After Harper had checked on the children—doing it cleverly while I helped myself to her bathroom to shower off the wolf stink from the last few days and the demon blood—I was assigned to the sofa with a pillow and a blanket thrown at me. I caught it all and got set up.
“Here,” she said. “For you to change into. Just another thing you left behind.”
Before I could turn and catch another thing, a white t-shirt was hauled at me. I recognized it immediately as the t-shirt she’d slept in the night I left.
Harper walked back into her own room and slammed her door.
The minute the door was shut, I thought about her. I let my thoughts roam freely, thinking of her sliding off those sweatpants, slipping on some small shorts the way she had once yanked on a fresh pair of my boxer shorts for comfort. How much had she worn my t-shirt in these past years?
Hours passed, and I couldn’t sleep, trying to tune everything out so I could pick out the sounds of my children through their door and discern their presence from everything else that my keen senses picked up. So Harper didn’t have another partner. That much was evident. There was one of everything that an adult would use. I wandered around her cottage, eyeing up the single mug, the one plate, and set of cutlery. There were three of everything else: plastic cups, spoons, and plates.
Harper was minimal, raised that way by her parents, but the cottage held pictures of her life here.
I noticed one of her and her friends from the bar. But then most of them were of the triplets and Harper, growing up. Three babies nestled in her arms in the hospital. An elderly woman rocked all three babies in a rocking chair. Harper and Addie lying among the triplets in the grass, all of them wearing matching yellow and white checkered bucket hats.
With each new picture, the absence of me grew. I should have been there. There were so many things I had missed.
I found one of the triplets staring, mouth agape, at a large birthday cake with the number four atop it.
My babies. My children.
It was a pipe dream for someone like me. I had never thought I could be a father, never thought I would be present enough. And I still didn’t know if I could be. My job demanded my availability; it was one of the reasons I had even let myself walk away from Harper in the first place, to save her that life of endlessly waiting for me.
How could I make my children wait, too?
Their eyes were so vivid, a strange mixture of Harper and me in their faces. Pale eyelashes and freckles but brown eyes like mine. Redheads but with the Garson nose. I smiled when I found a picture where they all grinned at the camera, holding up a piece of paper, each with their names written on.
The tallest was Hallie. The boy was called Joseph, and the second girl was called Marie.
I stood back, smiling, my heart aching for the life I had missed.
And still would have if we’d never ventured to Azure Cove.
My children would have grown up never knowing me. What had Harper told people, told the children, about their father? Were they old enough to ask? I didn’t know the first thing about children or development, but knowing they were mine rooted me to this house.
I would stay, I vowed. This time, no matter what, I would stay.
***
The following day, I went to the villa and packed up all my belongings to take back to Harper’s cottage.
Zephyr stopped me, a hand on my shoulder, at the door. “Alex, man, what the hell is going on? We’re on vacation and not on active duty. If you get yourself killed—if you get us killed—we’re not covered by the military right now. They do not support us, nor can we call for backup. We don’t have gear, we don’t have proper weapons.”
“I know,” I told him. “But you all need to stay safe, and I have to do what I need to do.” I met his eyes. “Harper was pregnant when I left her, and I never knew.”
Zephyr paused, his eyes blinking. “You’re a father?”
The words sank into me, and I could only laugh. “I’m a father.” I sobered up when it barely even sounded real to me. “I can’t leave them unprotected. Please, Zeph, just… Let me do what I need to do. Stand down, okay? Stay on guard, but you’re right. You’re on vacation. Enjoy it. See the sights. But let me do what I need to do.”
Even just standing there made me feel wrong—away from my children. My children . The weight of it rocked through me, and all I could think about was returning to them and holding them. Maybe even raising them alongside Harper.
“What happens now?” Zephyr asked. “I mean—we’re on vacation, man. What, are you going to stay here and raise your kids? I’m happy for you, but I just want to know where we all stand.”
He gestured behind him, to where the other four were inside.
“I haven’t figured everything out yet,” I said to him. “Give me some time, okay? Right now, I can’t bear the thought of being away from them now that I know they’re there. I need to be with them and ensure their safety.”
“ Them ?”
I grinned. “Triplets.”
Zephyr laughed, a wide smile on his face. “Damn.”
“I know.”
“Okay,” he said. “But keep checking in, yeah? Oh, and here.” He brandished a knife, offering it to me. “For Harper.”
“Thank you,” I said, embracing him. “I’ll check in soon.”