Page 218 of Alpha Mates

“No.” He rushes forward and grabs my shirt, voice breaking. “No. No. Please don’t do this.” His fingers twist in the fabric as he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I—I’m so sorry.” His tears spill down his cheeks as he stares at me pleadingly. “I didn’t mean for it to get this bad.”

I pry his hands off my shirt with stiff fingers, trying to create some distance, but it only makes him cry harder.

“I can’t be around you right now,” I say as calmly as I can manage as his tear-stained face crumples, and it breaks my already ruptured heart.

“Please,” he says, trying to come closer, but I just step back. “Aiden,” he whimpers, begging. “I shouldn’t have said that, I know, but I wouldn’t care—Aiden, I wouldn’t.”

“You honestly think I’m a rogue.” I laugh, but there’s nothing funny about this. Maybe there is, but I’m too aware of the irony to enjoy it. “You think I’m one of them because of my eyes.”

Julian shakes his head hard, but he doesn’t say no.

“And if you don’t, then you said that to hurt me,” I growl through my teeth as my eyes glow with rage. “I didn’t do anything to hurt you on purpose—I’dneverdo anything to hurt you on purpose, but you did.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he says, clutching his shirt in both fists. His tears flow unchecked. “I didn’t mean any of it. I just wanted you to talk to me!”

“And I just wanted you to be there for me!” I shout back, my voice breaking on the childish want.

I know I’m fucked up. I don’t need to look in a mirror to know that. But for once, I wanted someone to get through it long enough to understand why.

“Aiden,” he tries again, voice trembling from the pain and hurt he can feel coming through my side of the bond. I lock it off and the sound he makes, like he feels it somehow, is worse.

“I need to go,” I say, now desperate to get away from him before my own tears fall.

“No. No. Please don’t go. I’m so sorry,” he cries, reaching for me as I shoulder past his hands. He sinks to his knees with a sob. “Don’t leave!” he begs as I reach for the door. “I love you!”

I almost laugh at the three words he dangles in the air.

The ones I hadn’t spoken in years, not since it’d happened, not to anyone other than him, and I’d meant them.

In every fucking way, I’d meant them, and look where it’d gotten me.

“You love me?” I sneer. “You expect me to believe that? You know how I feel about it, and you still—” The anger chokes me. I shake my head with a deep breath. “I love you. I tried to put my shit aside today for you,becauseI love you.” Tears blur my vision, but I refuse to let them fall. “I came to find you,becauseI love you. I allowed myself to love you like a fool! You decided to hurt me because of a stupid argument, and I’m supposed to believe that you love me?” I ask with a chuckle as I turn from him, “If this is love, then I don’t want it.”

“Aiden—no. I’m sorry. I do! I do lo—”

The door slams shut behind me, cutting him short. My heart shatters in the process as the tears I’ve been holding back stream down my face.

Chapter 43

Julian

I ruined everything.

It only took one day. One moment filled with too much hurt and too much anger, and that was it. Us, ruined. I spoke the words I swore I wouldn’t, and they’d torn us apart. Aiden had hurt me too—spoke about Oliver when he knew I barely could—but I … what I said …

My heart cramps at the memories of Aiden’s face, shattered, eyes framed in red. I’d gone too far. He hadn’t rejected me outright, but the state of our bond conveyed enough. Things would never be the same.

That first night, when I still thought he might come home, I stayed where he’d left me. I didn’t move—couldn’t really. I was pinned there by shame and hope, thinking that if I stayed where I was, I’d be right there to fix everything when he got back.

But Aiden didn’t come home. He didn’t even stay in the pack.

When he left me, he lefteverything. That wasn’t a reality I realised I was living in until morning came, and I found myself standing on the edge of the pack border, my mate’s scent trailing off into open territory.

I froze there, lost and still clinging to the minute hope that it wasn’t true, until the guards confirmed it. Aiden had driven out the day prior, and nobody had seen him since.

I imagined the worst in that moment.

What if one of the horrors I’d always feared caught up to him? What if the humans had him after what happened last night? What if he just didn’t want to come home?