Page 344 of Alpha Mates

Julian nods quickly before he looks at me, really looks at me. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I say with a dry laugh, “but we can deal with that at home. Right now, the kid needs us.”

His brow creases when he glances at the pup again. “Why is he sleeping?”

“I knocked him out—oh, don’t give me that look. He was coming at me with a knife. Besides, he’s fine.”

Julian rolls his eyes, but exhaustion weighs them down.

“Emitt said they’re all dead.”

“Every single one,” he confirms. “I checked myself.”

“Good,” I mumble with a nod, and finally, the unrelenting itch beneath my skin eases.

“Let’s go home,” he whispers, threading his fingers through mine. “We’ve got a long journey home, and apparently,” he glances at the pup, “some special cargo, too.”

I follow his gaze, and my hold on the boy tightens—the same way it does on my mate.

“Yeah,” I say. “We do.”

Chapter 68

Julian

Celebrations sweep the packlands as if it’s the Harvest Moon. Songs, cheers, and howls sail through the night sky as the pack celebrates our victory—but not without paying homage to the lives lost to win it. The wolves we lost hadn’t had an end as tragic as the Blood Stone’s Pack members, but we mourned their losses all the same.

That’s another thing we’ll have to do after a full casualty report is given—pay our respects to their families. We already had to the pack as a whole, but personal visits would be needed, perhaps in the morning.

For now, Aiden and I stand side by side in the lone, silent room in the pack’s healing ward. Outside, chaos floods the halls as our injured are tended to, but in here, there is only us and the still-sleeping child.

I stare at the pup while he breathes softly, blissfully unaware of everything that happened around him.

Once Idris laid eyes on the child, she’d been prepared to take him back to the Council’s stronghold, where they could care for him until they figured out which pack he was taken from. That was fine with me, but then Aiden refused to let him go.

Arms wrapped around the small child, he’d glared at Idris as if she was a new enemy. To her surprise, and mine, he refused to let anyone other than me near the boy before proclaiming that our pack would take care of him until his origins were uncovered.

He reasoned that after all the pup had endured, he shouldn’t be put through a strenuous journey across the country, and that at least in our pack, he could be around other pups while we waited. The logic was sound, but Iknew, having lived through it himself, Aiden just wanted to be the familiar face the child saw when he eventually woke.

So here we stood.

We don’t have to. There’s surely someone else who can tend to him and call us when he wakes, but then there would be nothing else for us to do. We were in no mood for celebrations, which meant we could only go home and sit in the aftermath of everything we just survived.

I can’t do that. Maybe Aiden can, but I can’t. So, watching the child it is.

Strong fingers tighten around mine and my shoulders drop automatically as the tension slips away, helping me take a deeper breath than the short gasps I’ve been filtering through.

He doesn’t say anything, and I’m grateful for it.

I know eventually I’ll have to talk about it, but I’m barely standing as it is. It’s exhaustion in my weary bones and a pileup in my mind that’s about to break, and I don’t think there’s much more that I can take.

What Icando is this one simple thing—be here for this pup.

A twitch of a finger focuses our attention on the boy as his steady breaths stutter for the first time. I straighten, and so does Aiden, but we don’t approach the bed that’s too big for his tiny frame. He’s too small, with bones pressing against his pale, bruised skin, and overgrown, shaggy, jet-black hair. He shifts as he stirs, and as his small face crumples, I hold my breath.

“He’s dangerous,” Aiden warns under his breath.

“He’s a child, Aiden,” I retort dryly.