Page 110 of Alpha Mates

I hold his silence a beat longer before shifting my focus back to the others. Dean catches my eye. “Numbers?” I prompt.

“Scented four, heard six, I think,” he replies, and my brows pull tight.

One rogue was bad enough, and any more than three was a pest problem, but six? That many rogues together shouldn’t even been possible. They turn on each other after three, so a group of six was unnatural, stranger still that they were sticking together.

“One each then,” I decide with a nod. “We run the same play as always. If something is off, call it. You do not engage.” I let that one sit. “I don’t want to lose a single one of you, got that?”

“Yes, Alpha.”

I nod, then gesture to the waiting woodlands beyond. “You guys know what to do.”

With my permission, they shift and scatter into the unclaimed woods until the only heartbeats I can hear are mine and the man’s standing in front ofme.

Cold night air skitters over my skin as I take a breath and face him again. It’s worse with him than Ma, because unlike her, he’s not blind to his faults. He just thinks I have more of them than him.

“So now that you’re alpha, you plan to ignore your mother and me forever?” he asks, pretending at calm, and cracking the moment he begins speaking.

I choke out a laugh, rubbing my brow. “I thought we had an understanding. I do things how I want, make sure I keep the pack on top, and you leave me alone as long as I keep pretending that I wasn’t taken by—”

“Enough!” he hisses, eyes blazing with horror. And maybe shame. Maybe I imagine that part. “We are trying to help you, Aiden,” he breathes hoarsely. “We have only tried to help you!”

“Yes, because you love me so.”

The strangest thing is, I’m pretty sure my parents do love me. It wasn’t always so twisted or wrapped in thorns, not before everything. They were just never very good at it—you know, the whole parent thing. I had memories of when they were, but those were as blurry as everything else before the red.

“You’re still upset with your mother,” he states impassively, and it’s enough to make Max bristle again.

I am, but I wasn’t thinking about her before. Now, I am.

“I think any mate would be,” I reply, but his eyes hold no remorse.

“Does he know you’re here?”

It’s like a slap to the face.

“What?” I sputter.

“Does he know that you’re here?” he repeats, slower this time, but I can’t reply. I physically can’t say a word; the truth is too much. He nods, eyeing me with something like understanding, before he turns. “Let’s go.”

I watch him leave, following the others, but it takes me longer to get moving.

That look in his eyes—quiet relief, as if I’d proven him right by keeping Julian in the dark—it’s too close to what my mother had been trying to say.

Shifting, I cross the border in pursuit of the others, but my thoughts remain as murky as the foreign woodlands as I run. I usually liked to drag the kills out, but it’s late, and the last thing I want is Julian heading out to look for me. If he found out I’d lied to him …

My chest tightens around my heart, but I use the upset to let old habits fall into place. I run hard and fast, letting instincts be my compass until finally, I smell them. A rogue’s scent is distinctly bitter—the pungent smell of arotting soul that sticks to them all. It rises into the air like smoke, only as I get closer, I realise … it actuallyissmoke.

Steps slowing, I ease myself into the sounds of nature, soundless as I follow the strange glow of light in the otherwise dark woods.

When I get close enough, the sight incapacitates me. What thefuck.

Instead of wolves curled into their matted fur, men and women sit huddled around a small fire. Their arms wrap around themselves as they shiver. Rogues. Shifted and trying to keep warm?

I blink, but the scene doesn’t change.

Most rogues lose themselves so deeply, that they can’t claw themselves out of their own minds. That’s where the madness stems from. They don’t shift and talk quietly. The only ones who do, hold scalpels too.

My vision darkens, and the red haze returns as I scan the warped hoard one by one. He’s not here. Of course he’s not here.