Page 11 of Running with the Alpha’s Son (The Alpha’s Son #3)

“You have to go already?” I ask.

Jasper leans his back on the window of his car. We’re out front of my house the day after his birthday party.

“I didn’t know you had to go so soon.”

Jasper runs a hand through his hair. “I thought I had a few more days but Alpha Jackson of the South Ridge Pack suddenly became available and my father wants me to ensure our southern border is secured before the semester starts back up.”

“Right.” More pack business. Of course.

Jasper and I have been officially together for around three months and in that time we’ve seen each other, what, four times in person? With all the commotion and pack duties, last night hardly counts.

He reaches for my hand, slipping his fingers between mine. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not ideal.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say. “There’s a lot going on. I just wish…”

With his free hand he lifts my chin. “I know. I want that too.”

“You have to go right away?”

“If I want to hit the southern border in time for dinner with Alpha Jackson.”

With a huff, I roll my shoulders back and stare up at the fluffy clouds dotting the otherwise perfect sky. “We haven’t even debriefed about the party. Jasper, I need to tell you what Walter Bridgers said to me.”

Jasper’s eyes narrow, his lips pucker. “What did he say?”

“He said the alpha wasn’t the true power in the pack.”

A muscle twitches in Jasper’s forehead. “He said that?”

“Or—I guess, that’s what he implied.”

“He said or he implied?”

“Does it matter? It was a threat against your father. Believe me, he’s not happy about what happened with Clayton and he’s not happy about me being—you know, with you.”

Jasper glances sideways, staring at the spot where the grass meets the curb, his cogs spinning. “Tell me what he said exactly.”

“I don’t know—”

“Max.” He takes my other hand and stares into my eyes. “It’s important. Walter is too powerful, too entrenched in every aspect of pack life, too influential to accuse without enough evidence to take him out. If he threatened you, I’ll kill him myself. But we need to be a hundred percent sure, otherwise…”

“Otherwise, it could only tear us apart even more.”

He nods. “Exactly.”

I tell Jasper what Walter said as best as I can remember. That whole moment is a bit of a panicked blur. Adrenaline was thumping through me, not to mention the noise in my head and how distracted I was by what happened with Aisha.

When I’m done, Jasper leans forward so our foreheads are pressed together. “I’m sorry, Max. I’m sorry he said that to you.”

“Is it enough?” I ask. “To do something?”

He sighs, big and heavy, like the world on his shoulders is starting to wear him down. “Maybe. I—I don’t know. I’ll speak to my father.”

“Okay. And what about—” I’m hesitant to ask. If this is the last time I’ll see Jasper until the summer break I don’t want to taint it with awkward conversations, but sadly that’s all we seem capable of. “What about Aisha? Have you spoken to her?”

Jasper leans back onto the car once more. “I called her this morning before I left the city.”

“Is everything—okay?”

He scoffs. “She’s not so happy with me.”

I chew my bottom lip, wanting to console Jasper but also feeling like Aisha is completely in the right here.

“But I think—I know she’ll come around. Aisha knows how things work and she knows my hands are tied in a lot of ways.”

The thought of Jasper with his hands tied flashes into my mind and my cheeks heat up instantly. I need to force that thought out before I can refocus on the conversation.

“Sometimes, I wish—” Jasper starts saying something and then stops. I step a little closer and wrap my arms around him. “I wish I had more freedom to be the—the sort of friend, the sort of partner I want to be.”

It’s obvious from his clipped, forced way of speaking that this is a hard thing for him to talk about. To admit that he, even sometimes, wishes not to be burdened with the responsibility of being the future alpha is antithetical to everything he’s been taught and believed his entire life. To him it’s a betrayal. Something tells me that he wouldn’t say this sort of thing to anyone else on the planet, and my cheeks warm again as I focus on that thought instead.

“I know—we know you’re trying,” I say, holding his face in one palm. He leans his head into me and I run a finger over his ear.

“It’s only two more months then I’ll be back for the summer,” Jasper says.

“Manageable,” I say with a laugh. “I want to…try the mind-link again.”

“Max, no. It hurts you.”

“That’s just because I haven’t figured out how to control my abilities yet. If I work on it I can—figure it out. I know it.”

He exhales, blowing air through his lips, and I want so badly to kiss him, but I need his answer first.

“Okay,” he says. “We can try. But I want you to make sure it’s not too much.”

“Scout’s honor,” I say, making the appropriate hand signal.

He laughs a little, the tension that had built up during our conversation expelled, then he turns to look at the road. “I should get going.”

“You sure? My dad’s making steak sandwiches. First time he’s cracked out the barbecue since winter.”

Jasper eyes me like I’m the steak sandwich. “That does sound delicious.” Then his shoulders droop. “But I told Alpha Jackson I’d be there by midafternoon.”

“Baah, okay. I know you have to go.”

“We’ll speak soon.” Jasper rests his forehead on mine once more.

“Speak soon.”

He kisses me hard and long, imbuing his lips with all the words he can’t say, as if he’s trying to fill me up with enough passion to last until we see each other again.

When we break apart, Jasper moves swiftly to the driver’s side and ducks into the car, like he won’t be able to leave if he says one more word, if he doesn’t go this second.

I wave and wait until the car is gone.

I meet Aisha on Monday evening after school. She’s just come from rehearsal, so we grab a bubble tea and hit the High Line. We wander along the raised boardwalk, enjoying the lush gardens reaching for us on either side, passing the slatted recliner seats, and heading under the Standard Hotel. Our conversation remains casual, until we emerge on the other side, back into the evening light. We haven’t mentioned the party yet and I was worried Aisha would be cold off the bat, but she left the studios in a surprisingly good mood. Still, I know I need to get this off my chest.

“Hey,” I say, not really knowing how to begin but also knowing exactly where to start. “I need to apologize.”

She glances at me and sips her drink, the tapioca balls moving up her giant straw.

“For what happened at the party. That was—horrible. I did try to get through the crowd to you but I wasn’t fast enough. I can’t believe they did that.”

Surprisingly, Aisha grins, just a little, then sighs. “I can. But don’t worry, dude. That’s not on you.”

“But it is. And I should have been faster. The second I knew what was happening I should have stepped in or forced Jasper to.”

A laugh. “I think you know about as well as anyone that there’s no forcing Jasper to do anything.”

“Maybe.” I rub the back of my neck, unable to tell exactly how well this is going. “I’m still so, so sorry, Aisha. What happened…it’s—not okay.”

Tourists slip by us taking pictures, and a couple of kids nearly barge right into us. I feel like I’m constantly sidestepping and ducking so I don’t run into anyone. Aisha, on the other hand, glides through it all unbothered.

“The truth is,” she says, “I knew it was a big move. I’m actually sort of impressed we made it through the doors.”

“If you knew it was a long shot, why did you…?”

“Actually, it was because of you.”

I stop walking, nearly choking on a tapioca ball. “Me?”

“You and Jasper. What you did at New Year’s. I kept thinking it was so brave of the two of you to take a stand like that—to show everyone who you are without fear.”

“Trust me, there was a lot of fear.”

She shrugs. “That just makes you more brave.”

We start walking again, heading uptown with the buildings of Manhattan slipping by on our right and the Chelsea Piers on our left.

“For the longest time I’ve felt pulled in two directions: the wolf side of me and the human side of me, the pack and my life with Troy. I’m starting to feel, I don’t know, like whichever part of me I’m inhabiting is a lie.”

“I think I get it,” I say. “Like whatever you do you’re ignoring a whole chunk of who you are, so neither feels right.”

“Pretty much. And I’m tired of it—of feeling like I’m not myself anywhere I go. So I thought, If those boys can be brave, I can too .”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

We curve away from where we’re heading and come to rest against the metal balustrade, looking out toward the Hudson, where boats zip by.

“What happened at the party made one thing clear,” Aisha says, her voice level and self-assured. “The pack will never accept me for all that I am. Troy will never be welcome. He doesn’t belong.” She leans over the barrier, her elbows resting on the steel. “So neither do I.”

Aisha isn’t talking to me so much anymore as to herself. It’s as if she’s putting these thoughts she’s been sitting on into words for the first time, and as if by speaking them into reality she’s confirming something she’s known but hasn’t been able to accept…until now.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I’m done,” she says. “With the pack, with playing by their rules. It’s a losing game. And I’m not playing, not anymore.”

It’s hard to figure out what she means exactly. Is she going to reject the pack? Will she leave New York? Become a rogue?

“What will you do?” I ask.

She’s squeezing her hands together, rubbing one palm with the opposite thumb. “I haven’t decided yet. I’m not going anywhere.” She turns and leans her back against the balustrade, facing back toward Manhattan. “This is my home. But I’m not attending any more pack events. Or abiding by the alpha’s rules if I don’t want to.”

“Did you tell Jasper this?”

“No,” she says. “When he called to apologize I was still sort of cut up and hadn’t been able to make sense of what I wanted. Or maybe I had but I’m not ready to tell Jasper yet. He wouldn’t—I don’t think he’d get it.”

“You’d be surprised,” I say, remembering what he said to me yesterday, about wanting more freedom.

“All Jasper’s life he’s known what his future holds. He’s never really had to think about what that means for his life and his ability to choose his own path. Until you showed up.”

“Hey-o.”

“You really shook his tree, I hope you know that,” she says, making my mind race with questions.

What was she privy to during the last six months that I wasn’t? What insight does she have into Jasper and his struggle coming to terms with our connection? Even though everything has worked out for the best, I’m still curious to know.

“So I don’t begrudge him,” she continues. “Because he doesn’t know any better. I just hope one day he’ll understand.” She side-eyes me knowingly. “I think you’ll help him on that front.”

I turn around so we’re shoulder to shoulder. “Yeah, maybe.”

We stand like that for a good minute, not saying anything. It occurs to me that as my destiny seems to be pulling me further into the pack and the pack’s business, Aisha is moving away. Does being with Jasper mean accepting the distance growing between me and the people I care about? Does it mean compromising what I believe?

If that is that case, I don’t want it to. And I decide then and there that I won’t let it. Whatever my future with Jasper looks like, I won’t accept sacrificing the things and the people that mean the most to me—not in service of a pack who accepts people like Clayton and turns away people like Aisha and Troy. I just hope Jasper can understand that.

“You want Froyo?” Aisha says all of a sudden, pushing off the barrier and continuing to walk north.

“Um, always.”

Jasper calls me the Sunday after he’s gone back to college and I’ve gone back to school. The first week crawled at a painfully glacial pace. My teachers struggled to hold my attention. And while I had hoped we’d talk a little more often, Jasper has been weighed down with a backlog of essays and assignments, ones he’s been neglecting because of the situation with the bordering packs.

I happen to be on my way to my spot in the woods when he calls.

“Hey,” he says, his face large and gorgeous on my phone screen. “I’ve missed you.”

“Ohhrr, I’ve missed you too,” I say, a teasing hint in my voice.

“So I was thinking—”

“Uh-oh!”

“Shut up, I was thinking we could try mind-linking, if you feel up for it?”

I reach my spot and plonk down on the rock where I usually sit, dropping my sketchbook beside me on a mossy patch of ground. The stream is full and rushing by at a speedy pace, the spring air is fresh but warm, the afternoon sun is midway toward the horizon and shining warmly on my skin. Much like the trees and flowers coming back into bloom, I feel like I’m being reborn, my leaves sprouting, energy replenished.

“Yeah,” I say. “Definitely up for it.”

“Okay,” Jasper says. “You ready?”

“Ready.”

Jasper places his phone farther in front of him, probably leaning it on a pile of textbooks or the edge of his desk, and I notice he’s already sitting on the floor, a plump cushion beneath him. He’s ready to go. He closes his eyes first, palms facing upward on either knee, so I pull my feet up under me and try to get comfortable on my rock. I close my eyes, relax the walls of my mind, and reach out with my consciousness.

Part of me is scared of another stabbing pain, so I take things slowly this time, hoping I can head off any unwanted howling before it becomes too much to take.

I swim in a dark void as fizzing red streams of consciousness take shape around me. I pull them toward me in my mind and from all directions they come, looming closer, growing larger and more vivacious.

Up ahead I notice one that’s brighter than the others. Could that be? Jasper. I feel his essence like I know his scent. I lock onto the light of his life strand and move toward it.

His presence is like warmth, a hot bath, or my favorite sweater, enveloping me as I move toward it. It expands and spreads until I’m surrounded, bathing in his heat and light.

Jasper? I call out with my mind. Can you hear me?

Could this be it? Are we on the precipice of mind-linking?

Are you there?

In a flash I’m pulled downward. The light disappears and I’m sucked into darkness—free-falling. Then suddenly the light is back, only it’s white and blinding and I’m still falling. With a splash I land in a shallow body of water, then thrash my way to the surface and gasp for air. Once I’ve shaken the water from my eyes, I squint into the light.

I’m standing at the edge of a waterfall, forest on three sides and mist rising from the sheer edge over which the sky, a perfect blue, stretches on for eternity. The sun is a blazing ball of light. Across the water something catches my eye––a dark shape floats on the surface. A body.

Dread seizes my gut like a ravenous wolf and I sprint, lifting my knees and splashing my way across the basin.

I dive for the body, slipping an arm under Jasper’s back and cradling his limp head in the other. His face is blue and puffy, one eye swollen shut, his bare chest covered in angry cuts and livid bruises. His mouth is open ever so slightly and, no matter how much I shake him, he doesn’t move.

Madness flares in my abdomen, rage expands in my chest. I wipe the hair from his face, touch his battered skin. Still, he doesn’t respond. He’s gone. Dead.

With a guttural urgency I open my elongating jaws as fur sprouts all over my body and claws and fangs spear outward. With one mighty breath, I look to the moonless sky and release a bloodcurdling howl.