Page 364 of Alpha Mates

I shake my head as the realisation takes root—its barbed edges tearing skin as it sinks deeper.

“Aiden,” my father tries, but I ignore the misery in his eyes, closing mine to escape it. “Aiden, listen to us.”

“Listen to you,” I breathe with another laugh, but this one withers as my throat tightens. “Listen to you? You want me to listen so you can tell me you did this for me?” I open my eyes and blink quickly when my vision blurs. “What? You saved me from hell just to make me live in another version of it by myself, so that I could be alpha?”

“We didn’t mean to,” Ma protests as she pushes to her feet, but I do the same and step away before she can get anywhere near me.

Her outstretched hands retract quickly as one rises to hover near her mouth, the other clutches her elbow. Her tears run freely now.

“We didn’t mean to, Aiden,” she mutters again, softly, like she’s afraid of scaring me off. “We … we didn’t realise how bad it got until it was already too late.”

“At the start, it was about keeping anyone from knowing,” Dad continues for her. “We put all our time into that when we should’ve been spending it with you.”

Days and nights alone, in an empty house.

“Then you started acting out, and we didn’t know how to deal with it,” Ma rushes out, the truth pouring out like a bottled confession now that the lid is gone. “We couldn’t ask anyone—we couldn’t trust anyone, and we didn’t know what to do.”

They keep saying that.We didn’t know what to do.It makes them sound like children, but they’re not. They’re adults—they’re my parents. Theyshould’veknown what to do; they should’vetriedto do something.

“We thought talking about it would make it worse,” she rambles over sobs that force her to slow. “So, we never talked about it at all.” Her hands clench tighter as she shakes her head, over and over, “So we never asked … we never … we never knew his name.”

My mother completely falls apart.

The sobs crest now that the truths out, and her body shudders with them. Dad catches her, and she curls against him, crying heavily in his arms.

I watch my mother break next.

It’s like watching a scared child cry—real in a way I don’t want it to be. It doesn’t feel right.

I didn’t think anything could be worse than watching my parents pull away from me after I came home. But here, eleven years later, I discover that there is something worse—knowing that everything they’d done since had been for me.

Out of some fucked-up desperation to preserve the one thing I always wanted after they failed to protect me, they’d abandoned me when I needed them most. That had always been the difference between Julian’s parents and mine. Mine were absent.

“So, you’re sorry now,” I manage, voice breaking as my tears finally spill. “Now? When I’ve already learnt to live with it?”

My heart seizes in my chest, and no matter how many times I swallow, the lump in my throat refuses to move.

“When did this happen? After that day on the roof?” I say, looking at my father. “Was that when you finally realised how badly you fucked me up?”

He looks at me—and it’s him. The man I used to know—the father who I thought had long passed. But he’s not gone. He’s here and so is she. Peering at me with all the love they used to, love I thought dried out with them. I thought they died—had to, because those parents, the ones I used to know, could never stop loving me. Death was all that made sense.

But here they are with all that love, again.

“We don’t expect forgiveness, Aiden,” he whispers from trembling lips. “We don’t expect anything. We don’t deserve it.”

I make a sound that’s as deranged as I feel.

My world is fraying around me, and I don’t have Julian, don’t have a fucking lifeboat in this shitstorm they’re forcing me into. My thumb slides over my knuckle, and I almost sob when I have to force it away.

“If you want us to leave this pack, Aiden, we will,” he says while I bury my face in my hands.

“Shut up,” I beg.

“We will go,” he promises, voice shattering. “We’ll leave.”

“Shut up,” I groan as I squat down before my shaking legs can give. The carpet beneath me is a swirl of greens and reds that mock my already-tinted vision. “Just shut up. Shut up. Shut up.Shut. Up.”

For once, they listen.