Page 212 of Alpha Mates

“Which way?” I ask as Dean and Mads strip to shift.

“A few miles east,” the wolf beside Emitt answers with a pointed finger.

I nod and follow after the pair. Wordlessly, I call on my shift, leaving the packlands behind in a blur as I follow the stench of rogues still clawing at the unmarked earth.

My paws hammer the dirt as I run, faster than usual. I need the motion, need to burn off the restlessness that’s plunged my mind into chaos for weeks.

I learnt how to function, and how to do it well, from the moment I first saw the glow of my eyes, irises changed red.

My mind built compartments—slots carved out of stone—and shoved the worst of it behind an immovable wall. Like how terrifying it was to seethe very eyes that haunted me in my own reflection. It dumped other things there too.

The memories. The phantom agony. The changes. All of it bricked over, sealed tight, never to be acknowledged or touched. Night terrors and an ever-present temper were nothing compared to everything lingering behind that wall.

It was fine. I was fine.

Until every year when the anniversary rolls around, the wall crumbled. I try to keep it standing. Goddess knows I try. But like some twisted joke, it falls like clockwork.

I usually cope well with that too, just keep to myself. Even without knowing why, my pack knows to give me a wide berth, and I eventually resurface, back as the Aiden they know.

But that had been before Julian.

Before I fell in love, before he’d taught me how to trust again, how to share a soul.

I couldn’t pull away from Julian. You can’t hide from a piece of yourself. I tried, but Julian knew something was wrong before I even felt the bloodlust, and I pushed him away. Now he’s out there, angry and hurt, and I’m still chasing after my demons.

I want to go to him. I want to apologise, to make sure he’s okay, to tell him nothing’s changed, but I can’t. Not like this.

I’m bad enough on any given day, but these days? I barely get through them. Words twist wrong in my mouth, actions worse.

We worked on talking to each other, but how do you talk about this? My own parents refused to. Julian would be different. I know that. He would understand, somehow, because he’s better than the rest of us, kinder and smarter too. He’d get it. He would never look at me the way they did. He wouldn’t pull away.

He’d still love me. I just have to tell him.

But now isn’t the time. It’s the worst fucking time, but once it all slithers back behind its wall, I’ll tell him. I’ll explain it and he’ll understand—Julian always understands. But not now.

Now there’s only the rage and the hurt and the pain, and at least I know what to do with those.

We find the rogues hiding in the canopy of a red cedar tree. Dean and Mads shift without prompt and scale the tree with trained agility. At their ascent, the rogues scramble to climb higher, risking branches too small and too far to get away.

One branch gives, and the biggest of the three drops. Something in its body breaks when it hits the ground, and its cries fill the woods, growing louder when I lurch forward and clamp my teeth around its neck.

Blood spurts into my jaws, coating them with a familiar metallic taste, and the hunger answers. I tear through flesh and bone before I sink my claws into its chest, dragging them down the centre and taking with them bits of muscle, cartilage, organ.

The rogue dies with a gurgled cry just as the second falls from the tree. It already has a ragged wound on its left thigh; I add one across its throat, killing it mid-shift.

Mads and Dean descend with the third between them. A small, weeping thing whose features blur at the edge of my sight. To me, it’s only prey, squirming and pleading and still dangerous in its cowardice.

They’re all the same. Rogues. And rogues are wicked.

“We saved this one to question—” Mads starts, but her words die when I lunge. I end it before she can finish. This rogue dies faster than the others, my jaws barely sinking into its neck before it goes limp, dying before I have a chance to sate my hunger.

It isn’t enough. Three is nothing, especially when they’re this weak. Rogues are supposed to be weak, but some aren’t—hewasn’t.

“This will hurt, but it’ll be over soon.”

A snarl tears from my lips as I drop the sagging body in search of more, but there are no more. None but him in my fucking head, in my blood, in my life. Leaving his marks as if they don’t live beneath my ink.

“Alpha?”