Page 19 of Running with the Alpha’s Son (The Alpha’s Son #3)

We head out early, just as the sun is peeking above the horizon. The morning air is dry and cool, but the day is already warming up—in no time it’ll be sweltering. I shrug my heavy backpack over my shoulder and wait for Jasper to finish locking up the house. Before bed last night we made snacks and sandwiches to take, and packed our camping gear, a small gas burner, a few changes of clothes, our sleeping bags, our new pop-up tent, the lantern, and the satellite phone.

Even though it was still dark when I dressed, I’m pretty impressed with my camping outfit: a blue tee, cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a red neckerchief that adds a little flair and will—I hope—catch the sweat that’s sure to be pouring down the back of my neck in no time.

“You ready?” Jasper asks, reaching for my hand. I take it and we leave the house behind, heading off into the desert.

“I thought we’d have to drive somewhere,” I say, stepping over a rock that could be a camouflaged lizard.

“This property backs onto the national park,” Jasper says. “I know the way.”

“How come we still got a map?”

“In case I forget. I used to know the trails like the back of my paw. But I haven’t been here in a long time.”

Jasper’s eyes glaze over and he picks up the pace a little. I drop the subject.

As we approach the first large boulder formation I glance back at the way we came. The house is already a dot on the horizon; two more black dots just beside it must be the SUVs belonging to our security team. We’re leaving them behind, along with the rest of civilization and all of wolfkind. Maybe I should be more apprehensive or worried, but the satellite phone is strapped to the side of Jasper’s bag. And it’s not as if we’re doing anything too crazy or out of the ordinary. People camp around here all the time. I take a deep breath. Already my head feels clearer. We’re finally going to be alone, away from wolves and stress and distractions.

I take a second to let the walls I’ve built up around my mind drop slowly, bracing for the impact of some pinlike presence stabbing at my brain, but nothing comes. I exhale and let my guard down completely. My shoulders drop. In fact, my whole body feels like it lets go of some tension it’s been holding. My limbs feel light as I swing my free arm—the one Jasper isn’t holding the hand of—back and forth, my legs feel springy, my stomach is unclenched, and my lungs are full.

“Excited?” Jasper asks, potentially sensing my whole-body exhalation.

“I am.”

For the next three hours we hike and hike and hike. As the sun rises and the heat increases, I wipe the constant beads of sweat from my brow. My springy legs are starting to feel the burn as we navigate our way down dusty trails, and into the rocky hills. But I don’t hate it. Traversing the large rock formations feels like walking along the back of some giant dinosaur skeleton. It’s exciting and feels good.

My blood is pumping, the toxins are leaving my system, my muscles are earning their keep. And the landscape is ridiculous. I’ve never seen rocks like these, so smooth and undulating, sticking up out of the ground like fingers. Between rock formations the earth is littered with grassy shrubs, sharp and lopsided Joshua trees, and a whole host of cactus varieties. It’s dry and hot, but it’s such a nice change from the city and the lush greenery of the woods near where I live. I could be on an alien planet for how different it all seems. And I like that idea—the idea of being as far away from real life as possible.

Jasper stops at the top of a rise and pulls out his water bottle. “Here,” he says, offering it to me first.

I take it and gulp down the refreshing liquid, letting it water my insides like a desert rain.

“Thanks,” I say, handing it back.

“We should stop for lunch soon.” Jasper surveys the surroundings like he’s trying to get his bearings. “I think I know a good spot.”

For almost another hour we continue our trek, heading into more mountainous territory. Climbing an ascent after this much walking is hard, and I’m huffing by the time we reach a plateau. Jasper stops and turns to take in the view.

“This is perfect,” he says.

I turn as well and my breath catches in my throat. Before us the desert rolls out as if it goes on forever. The sky is a clear, deep blue overhead, the cool tone contrasting with the warm yellows of the earth.

“It’s gorgeous,” I say.

Jasper leaps up a couple of boulders until he’s reached the highest spot and sits, his legs dangling over the edge. He dips into his pack and pulls out our premade lunch. I follow him up, although less gracefully, and pull out my sketchbook.

“Do you mind if I draw this?” I ask.

“Take your time,” he says, handing me a sandwich then leaning back to chomp on his.

I sip water and take a hunking bite out of my sandwich and put pencil to paper. Quickly I mark out a few of the defining features of the landscape, cutting the page in half where the sky and land meet, then I go about adding details. We eat quietly while I draw, until drops of sweat are falling from my nose onto the page, in an extremely gross fashion. I glance beside me to find Jasper in his meditation pose, legs crossed, eyes closed, hands on his knees with his palms facing up. For what feels like a solid hour I sketch, adding shading where the trees and boulders cast shadows across the desert.

“Can I see?” Jasper says finally, peering over with one eye.

“Sure.” I hold up the book so he can look.

He shakes his head, laughing a little to himself. “It’s beautiful. You’re stupidly talented, you know that?”

I didn’t think it would be possible for my face to get any hotter out here but somehow it does. Suddenly feeling shy, I flip the book closed. “Should we keep going?”

“If you want.” Jasper goes about getting his things together, standing and slipping on his backpack.

“Actually,” I say, looking over the landscape once more. “Where are we going? Do you have, like, a spot in mind?”

“Oh yeah,” he says, grinning smugly.

“Holy moly.”

I can’t believe my eyes. After walking for another few hours, until my feet feel about ready to fall off, my shoulders are aching from carrying my pack, and all the moisture in my body has evacuated through my pores, we’ve arrived at the most stunning lake.

“How is this even possible? I didn’t think there were lakes in the desert.”

Jasper simply shrugs, then smiles like he’s pleased with himself. “Pretty special isn’t it.”

“Uh, yah-huh.”

The trail winds down a hill toward the body of glistening water. Boulders rise like mountains on the far side and dot the water like lily pads. On the shore, green vegetation sprouts in bursts of emerald. The whole place is alive and magical and so freaking serene.

“Is this where we’re camping?”

Jasper doesn’t answer right away. He takes in the scenery with a wistful expression, then finally turns to me. “This is the spot.”

We make our way down to the water, dropping our packs by some rocks and heading straight for the edge. Immediately I drop to my knees and splash the cooling liquid on my face and my neck.

“We should set up camp, then we can explore,” Jasper says a few steps behind me.

After investigating the shore we find a spot to pitch our tent at the base of a boulder, near a patch of trees. We set up the tent and unload our sleeping gear and some of our supplies. I’m halfway through rolling out a sleeping bag when I notice Jasper pulling off his tank top.

His body glistens like the water in the sunlight, his muscles seeming even more defined than normal. He kicks off his shoes and pulls off his socks, draping them over a low-hanging branch of a nearby yucca tree, and catches me looking. He grins mischievously.

“Fancy a swim?”

Before I know it he’s dropped his shorts and is running to the water, throwing up splashes as he enters, then diving under. He stays underwater long enough for the surface to return to its placid state, then emerging like a dolphin a moment later. Only it isn’t Jasper who’s emerged—well, it is, just not in his human form. His wolf dog-paddles its way back toward the shore until he’s standing ankle-deep, then shakes his fur, releasing a firework of water. With a yelp in my direction, Jasper takes off around the edge of the lake, and as swiftly as I can I leap up, undress, and shift.

I chase him around the edge of the lake, hopping from boulder to boulder, splashing in the shallows, until we begin to ascend one of the more mountainous rocks on the far side. Jasper wastes no time when he reaches the top, turning sharply, leaping into the air, and plunging toward the water below. His wolf body breaks the surface in a graceful, streamlined dive. I hesitate, pawing at the edge of the rock. It’s farther down than I thought. Jasper is already swimming in little circles, barking up at me.

I huff and growl— Come on, Max, you’ve faced worse than this— then propel myself from the ledge. Much less gracefully than Jasper, I flail about in the air as the water nears, and I do my absolute best to enter in a way that doesn’t shatter all my bones. Cool water envelops me as I break the surface.

For a moment I linger underwater, suspended somewhere between the bed of the lake and the air above. Jasper dives under to meet me and paddles until we’re face-to-face. Two wolves maybe shouldn’t be hanging out underwater like this, but there’s something so calm about the silence, the cool tones, the refracted light squiggling on the sand below. We hover like this for a moment, until my lungs start to burn.

Breaking the surface, I rise gulping for breath, kicking all four of my legs to stay afloat. Jasper pops up beside me and swims around me like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He nips at me and barks, then dives back under like a seal, and I follow. We spend the next half hour or so diving and seeing how far down we can go. The lake is surprisingly deep—I guess it’d want to be in this heat, otherwise it would evaporate away.

When my legs are tired I paddle myself back toward our campsite, wandering out onto the sand and shaking my fur. For a second my ears perk up at a distant sound…a coyote maybe. But it’s so faint it must be miles and miles away. It’s amazing what wolf ears are able to pick up. Jasper follows me out of the water, shaking out his fur and spraying me in the face. I growl playfully and tackle him back into the water.

Later that night, as the sun sets, we build a ring of stones and a fire inside it. It’s totally Survivor vibes as we sit and eat burgers with the firelight bouncing off the rocks and bathing our campsite in a warm glow.

“The stars are ridiculous,” I say, wiping ketchup from the corner of my mouth.

“They are,” Jasper says, turning his attention skyward. “You want to take a walk?”

“Uh, sure. You finished?”

Jasper still has a couple of decent bites left of his burger. He smiles and shoves the whole thing in his mouth. “Finished,” he says, although with his mouth full the sound is muffled.

“Classy.”

We head out from the campsite in a straight line away from the lake so that we can keep an eye on the fire. Wouldn’t want to be responsible for starting a wildfire. Jasper’s hands are shoved deep in his pockets, his head tilted back as he stargazes.

“This place means a lot to you,” I say.

“It does.”

“How come you haven’t been back in so long?”

Jasper stops walking but keeps his eyes on the heavens. “After my mother was killed things changed in my family. We used to come here every year. My father would always complain about coming—too hot and dry for him. But my mother loved it and even though I was so young, I could tell he didn’t mind coming, not actually, as long as she was happy. He was different around her. When she died it was like part of him died too. He shut off, focused all his energy on the pack and being the alpha. Nothing else seemed to matter, not even his kids. He stopped being the father we knew and became something else…an army general or the boss of some big corporation, and we were his interns. I remember the year after she left us I asked him if we could come here.”

“He said no?” I ask, my voice catching.

“He threw a chair through a glass door.”

“For the longest time I thought, This is the real him . With Mom gone there’s no one to stop him from treating us this way, acting like this. I’m starting to realize that maybe wasn’t the case. His behavior didn’t change because she wasn’t there to hold him back. He changed because he was hurting, because despite their mating being arranged, he loved her.”

“I’m sorry,” I say because I don’t know what else to do.

He shrugs and faces me. “It’s okay. I just—being out here makes me wonder if there was more I could have done to help him. If I’d been more aware, maybe I could have stopped him from losing that part of himself.”

“Jasper, you were only a kid. You can’t blame yourself for his actions.” I step to him and take his hands. “You blame yourself for everything. But…” I trail off, not sure if I’m about to say the right thing or start a different kind of wildfire. “But you shouldn’t. Do you remember the vision I had, back in the mountains? Where I saw the crash that took your mother and how I knew you were there?”

His head quirks to one side. “Yes?”

“It wasn’t just like seeing a memory it was more like living it, like I was you, I could see what you saw and––feel what you felt.”

He takes a step back, letting my hand fall to my side. His narrow eyes are boring into mine and I can’t tell if he’s furious that I kept this from him, that I saw this in the first place, or if he’s just trying to understand what’s going on.

“You were just a kid, really, so young and you were terrified. But when you looked at your mother, and saw how much she wanted to protect you, how much she loved you, you felt it. You felt her protection and it calmed you. She did what she had to do, by swerving to protect you. And that doesn’t make what happened your fault. It makes her your parent, who loves you and wants to take care of you.”

Jasper’s expression softens. “It’s funny, I can’t actually remember much from the crash.”

“That makes sense, it must have been extremely traumatic. Maybe I was able to tap into your subconscious in a way you won’t let yourself,” I suggest. “Because, you know, blood wolf and all that.”

“Maybe.” He sits quietly for a moment. “Maybe part of me wanted you to see that.”

I shrug gently. “Yeah, maybe.”

“What did she…what did she look like, at the end?”

“She was beautiful and determined and fearless. And she loved you. She did what she needed to. I don’t think she would want you to blame yourself. She sacrificed herself so you could live. You should.”

Tentatively, I slip my index finger around his and thankfully he doesn’t pull away.

“And you shouldn’t blame yourself for your father’s actions either. He was the adult, the parent, he should have stepped up and taken care of you and Jodie, not shut himself off. I’m sorry that happened.”

He drops his head backward and exhales all the air in his chest.

“Are you okay?”

With one hand he touches my cheek, running a thumb over my skin. “I think perhaps I’ve acted too much like my father with you.”

“You Apollo men, you’re all kinds of messed up.”

“I’m serious, Max. I treated you poorly and for that I am responsible, there’s no way around it.”

I cup the hand that’s holding my face and kiss his palm. “You’re making it right. That’s all that matters.”

“Thank you for telling me about the vision. Maybe we can talk more about her. I would like to––I would like to remember more of her.”

“I’d love that. To be honest I was a little terrified just now.” We both laugh a little, then he pulls me closer and rests his forehead against mine.

“I never want you to be terrified of me.”

“But I’m terrified of everything.” I’m only half joking, but either way he makes a face like I’ve said something really dumb.

“No you’re not. You’re one of the bravest wolves I know.”

He kisses me under the stars. When we pull back he looks up at the blanket of twinkling lights once more. “It’s funny,” he says. “I can feel her. I feel more connected to her here than anywhere else. I wish I hadn’t stayed away so long.”

“We can come back,” I say. “Every year.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, this place is freaking paradise. Of course we can come back.”

“I’d like that.”

I wrap my arms around his and hug him tightly, resting my head on his shoulder.

“Max, do you want to try the mind-link again?”