Page 222 of Alpha Mates

My parents always said to just play the part, and I failed.

Sinking to my knees, I clutch Aiden’s shirt against my chest, the same way I’d grasp onto him if I could. But he’s gone, and each day without him feels like another rejection. It’s too much, and I don’t know how much longer I can withstand it.

“Julian,” Beckett lulls as he descends with me. He raises his arms but stops when I flinch away. “I—” he takes a deep breath. “I don’t know where Aiden is, but I think his parents might.”

I still. Somehow, all the pain inside of me stops. It’s as if my brain shoves it aside, sectioning it away so I can function. I look up, locking onto Beckett, and his scent turns sour with fear as he carefully inches back.

“Emitt’s been making comments, nothing I really noticed at first, but when I put them together …” Beckett swallows. “It sounds like this isn’t the first time Aiden’s just disappeared.”

My chest tightens. “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember when we first joined school with them? When Aiden missed all his exams that first year?”

I nod slowly. “Yeah. That was after I destroyed his art room.”

“Right, but remember how we waited for him to get back at you, but weeks passed before he did?” His eyes flicker with unease. “Before that point, it was like he’d just disappeared.”

My brows pull together. I remember. At the time, I’d thought that was part of the torment—to make me dread when he’d finally strike back—but maybe Beckett’s right. Maybe he just hadn’t been there.

“Emitt brought up this other time,” he continues. “He said when they were kids he just disappeared like that for months. The whole pack was tense and there were all these searches. And it made me remember a summer like that for us too when we were young. It was the only summer I ever spent at home with my parents ’cause they refused to let me leave.”

I remembered that summer too, when our pack was on high alert and I wasn’t allowed to leave my house either. I also remember thinking it was the best summer ever because I hadn’t had to deal with Aiden Calderon.

“Emitt said he didn’t see Aiden once, and when it was over and he finally did, Aiden was … different.”

“What are you saying, Beckett?” My patience thins by the second.

I’d ask Emitt myself, but the last time I saw him, he made it abundantly clear that he blamed me for Aiden’s leaving.

“I think something happened to Aiden, Julian,” Beckett concludes as he looks me square in the face. “When we were kids. I think it happened then. If there’s anyone who knows what, then it’s his parents. If they know that, then maybe they—”

“Know where he is,” I finish, and I’m already up, moving with whatever strength is left in my body with the sole purpose of finding Aiden’s parents. But I’m not going to look for them. They’re in my lands, and I’m their alpha.

Honing in through the pack’s link, I send my command out.

Come. Now.

I always thought Aiden resembled his father more closely, with the same dark hair and sharp features, but as his mother glares at me now, gaze incensed, all I see is her son.

“Where’s Aiden?”

I ask the question from the highest step of the packhouse’s entrance. I stopped here, not needing to go any further after I summoned them. They’d come quickly—if against their will, then driven by their instinctual need to appease my rage.

“We already told you, we don’t know,” his father answers, his head bowed but his eyes still lifted.

They know. I hadn’t seen that when I first questioned them, too crazed and desperate then to see what I do now.

“You’re lying,” I say evenly as a sliver of my anger escapes me, and it’s enough to make him lower his gaze. “And if you aren’t lying, then you’re purposefully omitting what youdoknow. Which, in my eyes, is the same thing.”

The pair remains silent.

“I am past the point of patience, so let me put this simply.” I step down, one stair at a time, while Beckett remains stationed above. “If you do not tell me what you know, I will exile you from this pack.”

Their eyes snap up, shock prompting the disrespect.

“Julian—” his mother starts with a forced laugh. “You cannot—”

Her words stick on her tongue the moment I meet her gaze.