Chapter 36

Chapter 36
AIDEN
I’d been the Alpha of White Claw pack for eight years, but today I was the greediest and most self-centered I’d ever been. The thought of this morning with Yara had me practically shaking, and every instinct demanded I get back to her as soon as possible. The fact that I could still taste her did not help either. Of all days for me to behave like a lunatic too…
My nails dug into my palm as how slick she’d been came to mind and I sucked in a breath.
“Is there a problem, Hendrix?” a voice broke through my thoughts, and I shifted my gaze back to the laptop’s screen, raising my brows.
“Huh?” I muttered before my mind finally caught up, reminding me that I was on a fucking call with the werewolf committee. Shit. I quickly sat upright, clearing my throat. “No. None at all.”
The main purpose of the call had been to address the deaths caused by cosmic, and what steps Alphas must take because the deaths caused by werewolves overdosing on it and attacking others—including humans—while high on it were getting out of hand. They were also introducing harsher sanctions for packs that failed to control its spread, because beyond the deaths, users going rabid outside pack territory risked exposing our kind to the general populace.
Thankfully, the crackdown conducted this morning had gone well. All but one of the pack members in possession of cosmic no longer had it, and though some people weren’t happy with me—those who refused to hand it over and got aggressive had been introduced to my fist… repeatedly—I didn’t have to worry about any pack member adding to the drug’s unsavory statistics. For now, at least.
The one pack member still in possession of it was in the pack—he’d been seen entering his apartment this morning, but he wasn’t there when we finally got there. No one had seen him leave the pack though, so he was most likely in the woods, and I had enforcers and sentinels keeping an eye out for him. They’d alert Damien the moment they spotted him.
“Okay then. So that’ll be all for today,” the committee member—Ariana Lawson—said, and I took another deep breath, this time in relief.
Oh, thank God!
“Have a good day, everyone!”
With that, she dropped off the call, and I did the same without hesitation. Then I swiveled my chair to face the door and stood up to finally go back home. Back to Yara.
I couldn’t stop the stupid smile that crawled onto my face.
She was back in the pack. She’d gone to her university, and I hadn’t been able to text her all day because I’d left my phone in her room. I realized it the moment I stepped out of the house this morning, but going back for it would’ve definitely meant not leaving again. I knew she was back anyway because about two hours ago, I’d seen Julian goofing around with his friends on my way to the hospital with Damien to drop off the confiscated drugs.
The plan had been to drop them off and hurry home, but unfortunately, I was still in the hospital. Shortly after handing the drugs over to Gina—Georgia’s mother—the werewolf committee contacted Damien because I hadn’t replied to any of their messages, and I’d used Gina’s laptop to join a call with them and other Alphas who were also dealing with issues related to the drug.
That call was the last thing on the list of things I needed to do today—a list that had somehow grown during the crackdown, because seeing me apparently made every pack member suddenly remember they needed the Alpha for something or other—and now there was nothing left to steal my attention from Yara when I got home.
Gina was nowhere in sight after I stepped out of her office, and I practically jogged down the hallway, heading for the stairs. Just before I got there, the slightly opened door of Olivia’s room caught my attention, and I stopped.
For a moment, I just stood there, staring at the door—not because it was opened, but because it had been months since the last time I visited my sister. Checking on her hadn’t even crossed my mind when I stepped into the hospital today and it hadn’t when I was here last night too.
Finding her unresponsive in the woods the day Moon Valley attacked our pack flashed through my mind, and I shut my eyes, gritting my teeth, because it was closely followed by the memory of finding my parents and older brother’s bodies.
…Fuck.
I took a deep breath to steady myself before opening my eyes and moving towards the room, opening the door wider to see Vernon at her bedside. My brows shot up. If I wasn’t seeing him here myself, and someone told me he came over to see Olivia, I would not have believed them. My mother had taught all of her children to despise him and his twin brother, and Olivia and my older brother—Dallas—followed her lessons to the T. Olivia, especially, had gone out of her way to show it. So when I told him she was comatose after he came back, it was more of a formality than anything else—I didn’t actually expect him to visit her.
“How long are you going to stand there for?”
It took me a moment to realize his question had to be directed at me, and I pressed my lips before walking into the room. “Hey.”
“I thought you were at the Leadership Joint,” he muttered before shifting his attention from Olivia to me. “I told Yara she’d find you there.”
“Oh.” The corner of my mouth turned up at the fact that she was looking for me before my gaze fell on the table beside the bed. There was a bouquet of lilies there—clearly brought by Vernon—and it struck me that they could be her favorite flowers and I wouldn’t even know.
The only connection that had been between my sister and I before she fell into this state was our blood.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Vernon.
We’d been really close before he disappeared during the Moon Valley attack, but ever since he came back, not knowing how to treat him led to me keeping him at arm’s length like our father had done to him.
Vernon raised a brow and after a couple of seconds, he snorted and got to his feet. “You’re silly.”
“Will you have breakfast with me and Yara tomorrow?” I asked when he began to head towards me, and he paused.
“...I can’t cook.”
“I will.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not doing the dishes.”
“I will.”
“Will you feed me too?”
“...I did mention Yara will be at the table, right?” I replied, my brows slightly furrowed, and he cackled. It ended as fast as it started, but my eyes still widened because he’d only ever laughed with Yara since he came back, and I didn’t see myself being on the receiving end of one.
“She’s funny. I like her,” he said, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.
“I’m glad.” I truly was.
He heaved a sigh and walked past me as he said, “I’m going to get some sleep.”
“Not in the woods, hopefully.”
“Sleeping under the stars is wonderful, little brother,” he answered and my smile widened a fraction. “But no, I’ll be in the house.”
He left the room after that and I shifted my attention from the doorway to my older sister, taking in her unnaturally still and pale face, before leaving the room.