Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left Chapter 07
The Northcrest escort picked us up and took every route that bypassed Ironridge patrol points. The whole way I braced for my father’s anger. He had opposed Kael for six years. He had not seen me in six years.
When we pulled up to the estate gates he didn’t say anything. He crouched down and opened his arms to Asher. Asher startled and hid behind my legs. My father stayed crouched on the step. Almost a minute.
My mother was the one who finally moved. She fished half a butter cookie out of her coat pocket and held it out to Asher. He looked at it. He looked at me. I nodded. He put his small hand into hers. My mother’s tears came down at once. She said, “She’s too thin.”
She meant me, not the child.
My father stood and pulled me in without a word. The familiar cedar-and-old-library smell on his collar. Six years and he was still wearing the same cologne. He brushed the back of my neck. “Kael. We’ll talk about him later.”
A group of pack children Asher’s age was on the lawn. They saw him and waved.
Asher didn’t move. He looked back at me.
“Go on.”
He hesitated. He unbuttoned the small suit, folded it carefully, set it on the step, and ran.
I sat down on the step to watch. He couldn’t catch the group. They left him behind. He didn’t stop. Head down, he kept running. He caught up. A boy a head taller knocked him down. He got up and kept running.
He didn’t cry once.
My father came out behind me and sat down on the step beside me. He looked at the lawn for a while.
“When you climbed over the wall back then, I thought you were/sulking. Later I understood. You meant it. So I waited for you to walk yourself back out. I didn’t go in after you.”
He paused.
“But this child. You shouldn’t have made him pay for it.”
Out on the grass the whole group of children tackled Asher and flattened him at the bottom of the pile. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.
I watched him laugh and thought of six years in Ironridge. Falling and getting back up alone. Never crying in front of anyone. Forcing the color out of his eyes on his own.
A five-year-old understood more than I’d ever realized.
That night Asher came out of the bath in a pair of pajamas my mother had dug up from a box. My own pajamas trom when I was five. He climbed onto the huge bed beside me and stared at the ceiling for half a minute.
Then he rolled onto his side.
“Mommy. This bed is so big. I’m going to sleep next to you every night. Nobody gets to push you around
The next morning I started shadowing my father through Northcrest affairs. Patrol rotation. Resource allocation Diplomacy Asher sat on the small wooden stool beside the desk every day and listened. He was very quiet.
My father brought in tea and looked at his grandson’s too-quiet face.
“How much did this child go through, to come out this composed.”
He crouched and put his hand on Asher’s shoulder.
“Everything here is yours and your mother’s. Nobody is taking it from you.”
+25 BONUS
Asher looked up. Something flickered in his eyes. He told me later that nobody had ever said anything like that to him.
On the eleventh day at Northcrest, our border post caught an Ironridge scout. The interrogation went three hours before he broke. My father broke him with one line.
“What did your Alpha lose that you’ll die before you tell us.”
The scout cracked.
“Alpha Kael did not complete the Marking with Vivienne. He has every patrol Ironridge has, searching north. For a missing
mother and son.”
In the council hall a few of the younger Northcrest patrol kids were whispering. “Ironridge’s Alpha got played by his own woman, and now he’s tearing the woods up looking for a runaway Rogue. What a joke.”
They thought no one but their own group could hear.
They didn’t see Asher in the corridor behind them.
Asher stopped. He looked at each of their faces, one by one.
“Ironridge is no business of ours,” he said. “You should get back to patrol.”
The young patrollers froze. They turned and saw Asher, then saw me behind him, and saw that I had said nothing. They bowed and backed out.
Later, in the study, my father told me.
“Kael does not know you are the heir of Northcrest. He does not know Asher is the son of the heir of the largest territory in the north. He thinks he is out there looking for a Rogue mother and child with nowhere to go.”
He sipped his tea.
“We’ll keep that for one more year. Then, at the succession ceremony, you’ll let Ironridge come to you. As the new Alpha King.”
That was when I understood. My father had opposed Kael for six years. He had never once meant to lose me.