Forbidden Fruit

Chapter 8: Check-Ins & Doubts

Alpha James

Alex's POV

We finally made it back to the pack just before sunrise, storing the beaten shadow whatever thing in the Academy cells located in the basement, guarded twenty four hours a day.

While I would love to just go home and roll into bed after a nice hot shower, I make do with grabbing a five minutes like warm shower in the Warrior locker rooms, all the hot water gone already, though I'm not surprised. Johnathan decided to head to his parents house for a shower, the lucky bastard, the place only a five minute walk from the Village.

I wash myself in the bit so hot water, and cringe when I feel Tobias shift, my stomach churning with shame as I find myself at a lose for words.

'Good, we're hone. I don't need any excitement in my life, this is just fine.' He yawns, oblivious for the sweetest of moments before he starts to notice the tension in my muscles. I consider ,for a moment, blocking out Tobias from my memories, wanting to keep my shame hidden and keep the pain away from him as well, but the idea gets pushed away before it can fully form. As much as I would love to be parent that the worst night of my life didn't, in fact, happen, it did, and as a Beta expected to produce an heir and Lune, I have to take responsibility for my failure.

For my inability to keep people around, one way or other.

I pretend that my tears are just water that fell into my eyes, the shower's water not even passive as warm anymore.

But I'm paralyzed on the spot as Tobias takes notice and curiously asks, 'Whatd wrong with you. Did we get possessed?' He snorts, but I don't have a response, and honestly I'm not much in the mood for jokes.

In fact, I think what I need most is just a nice long nap.

That would be heaven right now.

But instead, I force myself to turn off the now cold water and reach for one of the many free towels folded along the wall, the laundry basket across the opposite wall. When he's met with silence, I can feel my wolf shifting through my memories going backwards through time, he stops when he realized that we took down a group of shadows and captured one for interrogation.

'Fuck you for not waking me up. That's petty.' He informs me stiffly, as I expected he would've but I still say nothing, the silence settling down harshly on my shoulders.

I finish drying myself off before opening my locker nestled between the other members of James' circle, the metal storage lockers marked only by pack position, passed on from parent to child through the generations. I throw on my spare shirt and shorts I have stored here for back up times like this as Tobias searches deeper into my memory, going through the fight more than once offering tips on what he would have done if he was there instead.

He flips through the night aimlessly, not bothering to pause on anything with the fight out of the way, passing through the darkness of night to the flashing lights of the bar.

That is, until he goes back far enough that he understands why we left in the first place. He sees him.

I close my locker with a heavy sigh  and make my way out of the locker rooms, making my way out of the main exit and towards the packhouse. Faintly I hear people calling me but I don't turn, my eyes on the ground as my heart breaks all over again as I witness last night through Tobias.

The moment when I saw him as he emerged through the crowd, eyes alight and glistening with mischief. I see the moment Tobias falls in love, so many thoughts and questions filling him at once. My heart squeezes at the memories, but I can't turn away, even with the pain it brings, his grace, his beauty, his fiery red hair and clear attitude to match. All at once it's like he's the most familiar and most foreign being I've ever met. He was breathtaking. And then it happens, when I go to him, when he realizes, and the moment my heart shattered and the life I was so ready to seize and finally live was taken away once more. Surprisingly no anger has come yet, only sorrow and pain, and some misguided hope that I hate myself for having as I experienced the pure hatred snd disgust my Mate felt when he realized who and what I was to him. What he was to me.