*Maddox*
He looks like her. He has her blonde hair, even if it’s only a fine, silken dusting of it so far. I run my fingertips over his eyes, closed tight against the light flickering in the quiet corridor. They’re the same shape as her eyes, and I know as he starts to open them and see the world for the first time, they will eventually be the same heartbreaking blue as the mother he will never know.
I will see Isla in him. I will see her every time this unnamed boy looks into my eyes. I don’t know if that's a mercy from the Goddess, or a haunting reminder of every past wrong I’ve committed.
I prayed and prayed to the Goddess as they cut my mate open to save the child I’d so desperately and selfishly wanted. I prayed she’d spare Isla, that she’d see past my sins and doubts and save the one thing that had ever truly mattered to me.
Fuck my title. Fuck my territory. Save my mate. Save my mate. Save her.
I didn’t take my eyes off Isla’s face the entire time. Mystica had given her something to make it painless, but it was obvious by the time the male healer began the surgery that Isla was already gone. It was a miracle in itself that the child was still alive, screaming with his tiny, perfect fists clenched as two maids cleaned and swaddled him.
They placed him in my arms, but I wasn’t the one he wanted. He was screaming for his mother.
“He’s healthy,” Mystica said to me as the maids hurriedly placed sheets over Isla’s body. I only nodded my head, not even looking down at the boy until I’d found the strength to tear my gaze from Isla’s face and left the room entirely.
And now I was standing in the corridor holding the only piece of Isla I had left, the child she desperately loved and was so excited to meet.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to him. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know what else I could possibly say in this moment to anyone, let alone him.
Dark, total quiet envelops the corridor. I know Poppy is waiting somewhere down the hall, likely having been prevented from trying to stop the surgery altogether by Antony, and Ben.
She’d screamed for me to stop it, going as far as clutching my shirt as she fell to her knees to beg me to wait. Antony had to drag her out of the room, and her screams had echoed down the corridor. I can still hear them as I take a shaky step forward.
Outside the castle walls the battle is still taking place. It’s raining again, thunder booming as I take step after step, unsure of my destination.
My son is settled in my arms, tucked in a blanket, sleeping. He doesn’t make a sound as I pass the only open door in the corridor.
I don’t look at Poppy as I pass. I hate myself for it. I hate myself for not being man enough to show her the fucking miracle Isla has given me and telling Poppy, Ben, and Antony that Isla is dead. If I would’ve let her have the baby in the pool of water on the island that brought her back the first time, like she wanted to, would it have made a difference? I can’t say, and now, it’s too late.
I’m in shock, I realize as I stumbled on the short steps leading down into the foyer, which is still full of the hurt, the healing, and the resting warriors who have been brought out of the chaos and ceaseless rain.
I don’t notice the silence and shock stares as I pass through the foyer, I just walk forward, straight towards the door, tucking my son in the crook of my arm and draping my jacket over him to shelter him from the rain.
I keep walking, and walking, and walking until I am standing behind the gates, the only thing keeping my enemies from tearing my castle and those that live inside apart from the inside.
Before my son had been born, before I’d been summoned back to the castle when the labor took a fatal turn… I’d killed an entire encampment of enemy warriors. I’d left one alive, knowing he’d run back to his commanders to tell the tale.
One of those warriors had been the son of the Alpha of Mountain Pass Run, and that fury had spurred my enemies into action again. They’d stormed the gates, pushing my forces back inside the sanctuary of the castle walls.
But their forces are small now, so many of their allied warriors are injured or dead. But as I look up at the wolves snapping and clawing at the gate, I see that only a few packs remain, some having taken that message I sent by killing the son of an Alpha to heart.
I will kill them all, one by one. I won’t hesitate.
I have only one card left to play, and once that is done, I will bring my child inside and unleash hell on every wolf still lingering outside the castle walls, even if I lost my life in the process.
I watch the wolves wordlessly, my warriors flanking me on either side and behind as I wait, and wait, and wait.
The Alpha of Swollen Creek walks through the fray, clutching the iron bars of the gate, his face dripping with rain and clothes sodden.
“Are you done?” I ask, my voice gravelly from lack of use.
“You killed the son of the Alpha of Mountain Run Pass,” The Alpha of Swollen Creek shouts, his teeth bared.
“He won’t be the last,” I reply flatly, sounding just as unimpressed and heartless as I feel.
“This isn’t over, Maddox!” screams the Alpha. “We will not bend the knee to an heirless Alpha King. You’re refusal to unite the packs with a Luna and produce an heir has–”
I open my jacket, revealing the bundle within. My son, who has been sleeping against my shirt, stirs, wincing and screwing up his tiny face in frustration as a raindrop lands on his forehead.
His powerful cry cuts through the sound of the rain and snarling of the wolves outside the gate, and a hush falls over the crowds on either side of the walls separating my forces and the enemy.
I look at the Alpha of Swollen River, whose eyes are wide with shock.
“My son,” I say, then cover the baby with the jacket once again before turning on my heel. But I pause mid-step, watching as my warriors drop to their knees, one by one.
Everyone is bowing, and not only to me, but to the child nestled against my chest. The very heir they’ve been waiting for.
Behind me I can hear the shouts of confusion echoing through the rain. There’s a skirmish just outside the gate, voices lifted in an argument about enemy warriors who’d bowed as well and were now being audibly punished for it.
But the sounds of battle have ceased, replaced by a hush only broken by the ceaseless rain.
I look down at my warriors, watching as they drop to their knees one by one, their heads bowed and hair dripping onto the grass and stone beneath.
“Prince Isaac,” I say boldly, trying in vain to keep my voice steady. “My son, my heir. The next Alpha King.”
* * *
“They’ve retreated,” Vember says quietly from the threshold to the foyer, his arms crossed over his chest. Exhaustion lines every inch of his face, his eyes shadowed by dark circles that days of deep sleep can’t erase. “Far from the territory, in fact.”
“Send scouts out at dusk,” I command, my eyes fixed on the gate, “and keep the gate heavily guarded until I give the command.”
Vember only nods, his eyes fixed on my profile.
“The Luna?” he asks after a moment. “She is well?”
“Yes,” I say, only because I’m unable to say that she is dead. She is well, and safe, sheltered in the embrace of the moon and stars somewhere far from here. I know that to be true.
“Congratulations, my King, on your son,” Vember adds before slowly stepping into the gray midday light, sprinkles of rain falling onto his shoulders. I don’t say anything in return, I can’t.
Isaac is somewhere in the castle being doted on by the maids, I’m sure. He will be fed, comforted, laid down in the nursery and watched like a hawk by the nurse maid I’d hired months ago.
And I will wait for nightfall, when I mean to make it very clear that this rebellion will not go unpunished.
All I have left in me is fury and pain as I walk away from the castle. I walk along the wall within the perimeter of the front garden, where the flowers are weighed down and limp from the heavy rain. I walk around the castle completely, keeping my eyes downcast on the grass squelching beneath my boots so I’m not tempted to look up into my bedroom window where my mate is lying lifeless in my bed.
I pass a rose bush that’s been flattened nearly to the ground and pause to inspect it. This is probably where Ben and Isla fell over the wall in a last ditch attempt to reach the castle before the enemy forces caught up to them.
I walk forward, mindlessly moving through the sprawling back garden which is overgrown and wild. I’m alone.
I find a bench, sit down, and take the first breath I feel like I’ve taken all day.
“Oh, Goddess,” I whisper, my voice breaking around each word as I hang my head and grip my knees so brutally I know I’m leaving bruises. “Why her?”
I feel the tears begin to slip from my eyes despite my best efforts to keep it together.
“Why not me?” I ask bitterly. “You had the opportunity to claim by life several times over today and you took her instead–”
A choked sob cuts through my words. I run my hands over my face, tangling my fingers in my hair and pulling.
Oh, Goddess, if I could go back. If I could go back to the very fucking beginning I would, and I would do everything differently.
A vision of her poking her head out of the bathroom that first day she arrived at my castle forced itself forward, sending another wave of pure agony ripping through my body. Her eyes had shown like sapphires, her cheeks dappled with pink as she’d slowly looked me up and down.
She hadn’t known I’d been pacing her fucking room like an idiot, wondering what the hell I was going to say to her, wondering how the hell I was going to tell her I was sending her back to wherever hell she came from.
But then I saw her for the first time and I knew at that moment… I knew, without a shadow of a fucking doubt that she was it for me. It. Endgame. Mate.
I’d put her through hell because of my own cowardice.
Now she is dead.
Footsteps break the vision, sending it shattering around my feet as I open my eyes but don’t look up at whoever is approaching.
“Go away,” I growl, teeth bared as I run my hands over my tear stained face and slowly look up, then pause, unsure of what I’m seeing standing before me.
“You’re going to freeze to death out here, Maddox.”
Her name falls from my lips, a question, a prayer. “Isla?”