73

73
Aiden's POV

My heart actually burns like molten metal in my chest, I am so filled with a fiercer pride in Haylee as she takes control of the ritual. This is the woman I fell in love with — not the shattered, broken mate who left me five years ago, but the true Alpha who will emerge from the Legion and whose powers I can already feel waking up to protect what is most important to her.” She strides around like I haven’t seen in years, every gesture has purpose and power.

The metamorphosis is stunning. Where she once catered to others, now she commands as if by natural right. What she once wavered over, she now has full confidence in going for it. This is who she was meant to be all along, and I hate myself for ever making her think she had to be anything less than that.

But when I see Xavier step out of that nightmare rift in his warped state, I almost lose it completely. Every Alpha impulse in me is telling me to bust up the circle, shift into my wolf and rip the bastard to shreds with my fetlocks. The anger welling up inside me is all-consuming, white-hot, and very nearly blinding.

“Hold the line,” I growl to myself, turning the boys’ hands into fists in my own even as my wolf scratches to get out from the inside. "Hold the goddamn line."

Kael and Lior stare up at me with those impossibly old eyes, and I see the same stubbornness looking at me. For all they’ve endured, for all the cosmic horrors that would break most adults, they are steady, focused.

“We’re gonna get this, Dad,” says Kael softly, a kid with absolutely no doubt in his voice. More than any battle cry can, his simple conviction in his tone grounds me.

“Come on,” Lior says, giving my hand a hard squeeze. "We're stronger together."

The army of Shadow unfurls like some twisted Dali-esque nightmare behind Xavier, and I feel my chest turning to ice as I start to see faces in the changed. What they are not, of course, are random creatures — they’re werewolves from different packs, their bodies grotesquely warped but still recognizable.

Beside me, Marcus sucks in a breath and pales with recognition and horror. That's Beta Collins from the Territory. I fought alongside him during the territorial conflicts three years ago.” And Sarah Martinez of the Coastal Pack—she's been gone six months."

“Years, sometimes,” the Elder Patricia adds morosely, her ancient voice laden with regret. “We assumed they were just victims of inter-pack disputes. Random vanishing that sometimes occurs in our world.”
,
The truth registers with me as a physical blow. These were not, in any sense, random disappearances. They were the product of calculated abductions, planned and executed over years. Xavier has been assembling his army longer than any of us knew.

“Oh, my God,” I breathe, looking at the altered faces, and I recognize a good many more. ‘That’s David Chen —he had to call me for advice two years ago when he was battling with his pack. And Maria Santos of the Eastern Territories. How many of them are there?"

Xavier’s laughter slices through our discussion like broken glass scraped over the stone. “Oh, but they were casualties, my dear Aiden—casualties of my own ambition. "Why does a dog sleep in fly dirt?" "Because it can take eight flies at a time." If I did save your precious Haylee, did it ever occur to you that it was just pure luck? Everything I’ve done, every life I’ve touched, has led to this moment.”

I feel Haylee’s shock and outrage wash over our bond like a tsunami but she doesn’t break stride. She maintains control even after this discovery. She’s stronger than I ever gave her credit for, stronger than I deserved when I shattered her trust all those years ago.

“For you see I’ve been planning this reunion for such a long time,” Xavier goes on, starting to pace around our circle like a predator circling the prey. His motion is liquid and unnatural in the way shadows are compared with flesh. "The shadow world is fertile ground for recruiting. So many strays, so many werewolves who had died with business unfinished.”

One of the creatures transformed steps forward, and I feel a chill in my heart as I see that it is him. David Chen, the new Alpha, who had sought me out for mentoring, being transformed into some grotesque semblance of his former self. His wolf traits are exaggerated and distorted—his silver fur has turned to midnight black, his body stretched inhumanly, his eyes glowing with an unnatural light.

‘Alpha Fenrir,’ he mutters, a hollow reverberation from the man he once was. "You remember me, don't you? You told me to be patient with my enemies, to seek diplomatic solutions. You said that violence should never be a first resort.

The guilt, it comes on like a sledgehammer to my chest. "David, I—"

“Where was that wisdom when it mattered most?” he goes on, his alien face contorting into something that might have passed as a smile. “When you ruined everything good in your life in one moment of weakness? When you let your pack fall apart while you rolled in your own self-pity?

Every word is a dagger, that cuts deep, and if it does #ItsTrue. How many of those things are here because of me? How many nice werewolves fell under Xavier's finish while my head was too far up my own ass to make this connection?

“This has nothing to do with the past,” I try to say, but my voice is trembling. “This is about the future. It’s about ensuring that nobody else has to suffer for my mistakes.”

“Fine words,” sneers Xavier, his bestial face twisted in scorn. "But we all know you're just protecting your favorite family. “And tell me, Aiden—how does it feel, to know that your failures forged the same army that will annihilate them?”

The circle wobbles as doubt attempts to enter my brain like a tumour. Maybe he's right. Perhaps all of this was my fault. Perhaps I don’t deserve to be redeemed, for Haylee to love me, for the boys to trust me.

But then I sense it—Haylee's power racing through our connection, constant and strong. She’s not just hanging on to the ritual now; she’s using it on me, and our connection, to keep me present, to keep me who I am now instead of who I was.

“You have no more failure in me,” I say, each syllable becoming louder than the one before. "For whatever I've done wrong, for whatever lives I've taken with my own mistakes—I make it right now. Today."

Inflatting on my determination, the boys' power rises, and I come to a revelation. It’s not a question of fighting the shadow army or going after Xavier himself. This is about not repeating this cycle of betrayal and abandonment that has defined my life for way too long. It is about deciding to be the man my family deserves — no matter the cost to me.

“It’s working,” an awestruck Elder Patricia calls out the crushing disbelief inching in her ancient voice. The dimension barrier is reacting to both of your combined will. The parting is starting to heal.”

The flicker of hope flutters in my chest. Maybe we really can do this. Perhaps we can shut that tear and return these things to their place of origin. Maybe we can save everyone.

But Xavier is not done with his revelations. He raises one pawed hand and the lambs part like a curtain to expose a sight that stops my heart altogether transformed werewolves and standing right there between them as if they are the most ordinary thing in the world is a figure I cannot believe.

The man stepping out from the shadow army is hefty even as far as Alphas go, his bloated form evoking significance despite how twisted he appears. He has the effortless stride of a leader, each step oozing power and authority. Tendrils of shadow streak silver hair that might once have framed a face which would have been noble were it not for that unnatural hunger burning in his eyes.

I recognize him instantly from the one and only photo Haylee kept tucked away in the secret compartment of my old house—the one she thought I didn't know about. The one that she would just stare at sometimes when she thought no one was looking, that look on her face with all sorts of things I didn’t get.

"Haylee," the new Alpha says, his voice that stretches across the battlefield in painful tenderness. Even when infected with shadow magic, it’s still clear that he loves his offspring. "My little moon. Daddy’s here to bring you home.”

The endearment lands like a punch. I experience Haylee’s surprise, then despair, shatter through our connection, her facade crumbling at last from the time she’d first started the ritual. Her hands are shaking so hard that I start to worry that she might drop the boys.

“No,” she whispers, the word ripped from her throat as though it is a gash in her flesh. “Papa, no, no — please not papa, is this not real?

Xavier's grin is victorious and devilish, his changed features positively glowing with glee. “Save the best for last, my dear. Do you honestly believe that your father would simply let his beloved daughter disappear without making an attempt to locate you? The mighty Alpha Marcus Blackwood, scouring the continent for his missing kid?”

My blood runs cold at the name. Marcus Blackwood-one of the strongest and most respected Alphas in America. I had heard about him, legends, actually. They would say he could follow a lone wolf through three states, that he was totally loyal to his pack, that he never lost a soldier to enemy action.

“I have had him for a long time already in my guest room in the shadow realm,” Xavier says, his voice oozing with fake sympathy. "From the moment he got too close to finding you. I couldn’t let him get in the way of what I had planned, you see.”

Our circle.” His eyes narrow, and transformed into the Alpha—Haylee’s father, the man she’d fought hard to leave behind when she chose me—he advances on the rest of us. His gaze fastens on his daughter with an unmistakable glint of longing that foretells the ugliest form of emotional torment.

“I never stopped searching for you, little moon,” he says, and his voice remains a pall of paternal tenderness. “From every lead, every dead end, every sleepless night. I knew you were out there somewhere, and I knew you needed your father.

The cracking of Haylee's cry tears through the air. “You were supposed to forget about me. And you were supposed to let me go.”

"Forget my only child? My greatest treasure?" He shakes his head, tendrils of shadow-stuff dripping from his silver hair. "Never. The love from a father never dies, Haylee. It rises above even death. And now, we can be a family once more. Forever."

Forever dangles in the air like a promise and a threat, and it hits me with increasing dread that this is Xavier’s final play. He’s not just making threats to Haylee — he’s giving her the one thing she’s always wanted, her father’s approval and love. That it’s wrapped in corruption and shadow magic may not be of concern to a heart long since broken decades ago by abandonment.