Aiden’s P.O.V

I could feel his pain.

It was raw, explosive with so much sadness and frustration that made my skin crawl, my soul desperate to escape the weight of it. His agony overwhelmed our link, stretching it to its very limits as emotional torment, as I’d never felt it before, poured through.

I’d never felt Damon’s emotions like this, so open and exposed in a manner I knew he wouldn’t allow usually. His misery crippled my own that was fueled by remorse and shame, Damon’s was raw and soul-deep, making the fragments of my already shattered heart erode within my chest.

As William’s words echoed through my mind alongside Damon’s pain, I knew that every word he spoke was true… and that’s what hurt the most.

“What are we going to do?” Julian asks in a fragile whisper that made my chest tighten.

“I don’t know,” I reply honestly because I truly had no clue how any of us were going to get through this.

There was so much pain, so much regret and shame that imprisoned all of us, making it impossible to even approach the brighter side of all this. I was coming to accept that there may never be one for any of us, for the family as a whole.

And it was all my fault.

“We can’t just leave him like this Aiden,” Julian protests weakly, his fingers squeezing mine anxiously as he leans further into me. “He needs to know that it wasn’t only that, that we d-”

“If we tell him that we stopped him from being alpha because of all the problems he had, problems he still has…. it’ll only hurt him more, even if he does need to know,” I reply gently, trying to soften my words for my mate as he fliches slightly. “William is right, it won’t help him, not right now.”

The young human had surprised me with his unshakeable confidence as he stood before us and spoke his mind without an apparent thought of what the consequences may be. He must’ve known that we were alphas, two of the strongest wolves in the pack and yet he didn’t even stutter or falter as he defended our son with nothing but love and pure intentions radiating off of him.

It was somewhat comforting, even through the pain.

No response or argument comes from Julian as my words settle over the stagnant space we were seated in under the moon’s shine, but his sadness grows quickly, bleaching our blink and making me hold him a little tighter.

We hadn’t made it very far after we’d watch the familiar door close in our faces, locking us away from our son in one swift and final motion I had no right to stop. Only managing to make it out of the building before we found an empty clearing to gather ourselves in before we went home.

At home, the kids waited anxiously for us to return with their brother or hopefully some good news. Neither Julian or I were quite ready to face them and deliver news that would abolish the hope they carried.

Damon needed space, from us and possibly from them as well.

Breathing became a strained, difficult task with that acknowledgement, one that went against my instincts in every way. The need to fix, to heal and love until all the pain was gone rode me high, placing an insufferable pressure on my heart that wouldn’t ease until I fixed things. It had been there since the night Damon left and now that he was finally back, knowing I couldn’t do just that sucked the very life out of my withered veins.

I couldn’t make it better when just talking to my son right now would only hurt him more. Any explanation would bring pain, no matter how true or false, it would only make things worse for him. Apologies had been made and were accepted, but the pain was still there.

His agony and torment ran rampant through my spirit, filling my senses in a wrecking reminder that I was the cause of that pain.

I’d wanted to make Damon strong, stronger than any of us were when we’d faced the brutal hand of life.

Life wasn’t fair, this world was full of twisted, sick people that broke others for no reason. It was cruel and unmerciful to the weak, I didn’t want Damon to be weak when it came time for him to face its worst inhabitants. I didn’t want him to suffer as Levi and I had, to wear the mental and physicals scars every day as Emitt did, or struggle to face the world again when it was all over as Julian had.

I wanted him to be better, to have a better life.

I’d thought making him strong was the answer, the only way, because every time someone I loved suffered, it was because they’d fallen victim to some vile thing who was stronger than them.

So I’d thought to eliminate that possibility from Damon’s world, if he were the strongest, nobody would lay a hand on him and in turn, the pack when he came of age. But it wouldn’t stop there, he’d be able to protect his mate when he found them, his family when he started one, all he ever came to cherish and trust.

He wouldn’t have to see any he cared for in pain, he wouldn’t have to endure that hell.

I’d thought I was doing good by him, by our family and the pack, but I’d done the complete opposite.

In the end, my actions, the way I’d raised Damon, morphed into that brutal hand of life that caused his suffering now.

…I’d been the one… to give him scars.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a plea, my voice cracking as the weight of what I’d done presses itself against my soul once more. Julian looks up at me then, his beautiful blue eyes, wet with his emotions but soften when they meet my own. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done to our son, our f-family… I’m sorry Julian. I know it’s my fault, I did this, I did this to our boy. I-I’m so sorry.”

Julian shifts until he can pull me into him, electricity sparks through my entire body as it always did as he holds me so close to him that the lines between where we started and ended blurred together. All the while, he begins to pour his endless love into our bond, letting it fill my straining heart and soul so I could breathe a little easier. It pulls a silent sob from to know that he still loved me, to know that he didn’t hate me for what I’d done to our family.

I circle my arms around his waist and hold on for dear life, using him as the anchor I’d desperately needed in this whirlwind of terrifying additions and suffocating emotions. Julian presses a kiss to my head, whispering words of love that kept me from shattering completely.

I thank Goddess for a mate like Julian, thank Goddess for making him strong where I was weak.

These past few months I’d lost my footing, everything I thought I knew coming apart before me until it was barely dust at my feet and I… I’d crumbled with it.

“It’s not all your fault Aiden,” Julian whispers, his words thick with tears as he runs a comforting hand down my back. “You didn’t raise him alone, you didn’t make the decisions that have led us here by yourself. We’ve always been a unit, one, so this was both of us.”

“But I was the one who trained him,” I protest weakly against his chest, his heart thumping sadly in its confines. “I was the one who took him out, gave him weapons and showed him things he shouldn’t have seen at his age. It was me, not you.”

“Yes, but I trained him as well,” Julian combats, his voice straining as he continues. “When he shifted, I took him out and I trained him to be a wolf when he was too young for that side of what we are. I see now, that I should’ve shown him the childish delights of being a wolf, not all of it at once. But like you, I wanted him to be the strongest alpha this world has ever seen, and I didn’t hold back… when I should’ve.”

I open my mouth to argue but Julian rests a finger to my lips to shush me, I raise my eyes to him and he shakes his head as he looks down at me. He knew where I was going and stopped me before I could even utter the words, making it clear he didn’t want to hear me say them.

The thoughts that reminded me that some of this agony could’ve been avoided if we’d told Damon sooner about the way things were to be. Thoughts that made sure that I knew, that if I’d only listened to Julian when he told me that I was only prolonging the inevitable that everything may have played out very differently.

But he stopped me not only to spear my feelings, but because he knew, the way I did on some subconscious level, that even if that were the case, this ran so much deeper than these past few years, we’d failed Damon as parents.

“Goddess, we failed him so badly Jewels,” I say and Julian bites his lip to stomach his tears before he nods weakly.

“We’ll make it better,” Julian replies with a weak smile that wobbled slightly. “When he’s ready to let us, we’ll make it up to him. Fix what we broke and make sure he never feels pain like this from our hands again. Okay?”

“Okay,” I reply, choosing to put all my hope into those words as I lock them deep inside my heart where they’d rest until we lived up to them.

———————-

The second we walk through the doors of our home, the kids are on us with eyes full of worry and unspoken questions they were barely managing to keep back. Each of their gazes desperately searching for answers as they look between the two of us.

Any hope they carried of things going well falls away, their shoulders slumping as they stood silently before us, catching something either from our appearances or link that told them things we hadn’t yet.

Peter was already crying, his face wet with tears as he keeps a distance he normally never would, especially when he was so distressed that his body trembled slightly as if he’d shift out of stress any moment.

As if seeing that, Hagen and Josey both take one of his hands and bring themselves closer to their older brother so he’d relax with their scents, the scents of family. Levi follows and rests a gentle hand on Peter’s shoulder, their combined efforts easing his galloping heart some.

It warmed my heart to see them come together but also worked to break it apart knowing that Damon wasn’t here to add to it.

“What happened?” Levi asks, the bags under his eyes testifying to the worry riding his words.

“He was sleeping when we got there,” I start as I hold his troubled gaze, “William spoke to us instead.”

As if he completely understood what those words alone implied, Levi slumped from his spot behind Peter, distress quickly contorting his features into a frown.

That was another source of my regret, putting Levi in a position that led to the dismantling of his relationship with Damon. A relationship that was strong and unyielding before I’d disturbed the once still waters between them.

“We’ve got some things to talk about,” Julian fills in when a few, tensioned filled minutes pass with only silence.

“Without Damon?” Josey asks pointedly.

I bring Julian a little closer when he winces at the lash that came with Josey’s words, she couldn’t know how much they hurt right now, not with how things had gone at the old suite.

Taking in a deep breath, Julian nods slowly before he releases it slowly and looks at our daughter, “without Damon.” He confirms.

We lead them into the living room, letting them all settle into the available seats while we stood aimlessly in front of them all. Innocent eyes full with fear look us at with a longing for answers and direction that had my voice choking in my throat.

It’d become hard to face the kids after Damon had sobbed before me, telling me all the ways I hurt him. He’d exposed faults I’d never seen and it made me wonder about other faults that may lay silently with the others, it made just looking at them challenging.

It’d captured my voice quickly, fear of leading them so astray as I’d done with their brother haunting me through every second of the day. I couldn’t help but wait for them to do the same as Damon and show me all my mistakes when it was too late.

The thought of facing that all over again with my other children absolutely terrified me.

“We went to speak to Damon, to try and explain things so he’d understand the situation better,” I explain, my voice shaking in a way it usually didn’t. “But it would seem that we were too late, not only for this situation tonight but for other things as well.”

“He left?” Hagen asks, a look of dread dragging his features down.

“No,” Julian answers quickly before panic could spread amongst us. “He’s in our old suite still with William, he hasn’t left.”

I could hear the fear in Julian’s words even as he tried to reassure the kids. Over the years, I’d managed to slowly heal the parts of my mate that feared me leaving him again when things were twisted between us. The trauma I’d caused him when we were young, our bond still fresh, was one that would never leave Jewels, but one that was healing with time.

But when Damon left, it’d unravelled all that as he faced the same situation once again but with our child this time. It worsened his anxiety, making it hard for him to sleep at night as he often woke up thinking Damon left again or suddenly panicked during the day convinced he was gone. It couldn’t settle until he went and checked for himself that Damon was still in the suite, I went with him every time and held him until he was breathing easy.

I’d found myself often at his feet, begging for his forgiveness and every time Julian brought me up again.

“Then what do you mean?” Josey asks carefully, her eyebrows pulled together. “I thought you guys talked things through with him.”

“We did, but that was only the first step to a…,” I pause as I try to steel myself against the wave of emotions that washed over me while speaking this words out loud, “a very long road. What’s happened with Damon, it’s going to take a lot of time and patience to fix.”

Each of them freezes at that moment, slow understanding creeping in as their eyes grew wide.

“When we spoke to William, he made it quite clear that Damon as he is right now, is in a lot of pain,” Julian continues, wiping away his tears before they could coat his cheeks. “More pain that we thought he was, not only from tonight or this situation we’re in, but from things that have stemmed throughout the years. He suggested, in his own words, that w-we stepped away from Damon, until he’s ready.”

William held a rare grace to him that found its way to the surface rarely, I’d only sensed it briefly in lingering moments that went before I could properly examine them, but tonight I’d properly glimpsed it. When he spoke of Damon, his frustration and anger was palpable and yet his words were controlled and calculated.

The human was smart, considerate for Damon and in love with him in a way that could only warm my heart as a father, it warmed me inside out to know that Damon’s mate was just as ferocious as him when he wanted to be and loved him so clearly.

I could already tell that when Damon was ready to be alpha, he’d have the perfect person for him to help him flourish in the role.

Releasing Julian’s hand, I wrap an arm around his shoulders and pull him against me so that they wouldn’t see him shake so much and so he’d know he was safe and loved with me. The kids had been quite hostile with us before Damon’s return and I knew he feared they’d return to that behaviour with this new information.

Julian was a good father, a caring father and I knew this was tearing him apart, just as it was me.

“Will said that?” Hagen asks sadly and I swallow the lump in my throat as I nod slowly.

“Though he spoke to us, I got the impression he meant the family,” I say honestly. “You can wait for yourselves to see if that was what he meant, but giving Damon space seems like the best option.”

“But haven’t we been doing that?” Levi asks speaking up for the first time since we’d entered the living room. “We’ve been letting him set the pace, well until I went and talked to him and made things worse.”

“Levi, you are not in the wrong here,” Julian says firmly, the alpha in him rising a little. “You have a pack, a mate and a new home you need to go back to. It was good that you tried to mend things before leaving, very sweet that you’ve waited this long to leave. But as your father mentioned, it’s going to a lot of time before things can start to get better.”

“I don’t want to leave with how things ended between us,” Levi says honestly as he rubs a nervous hand over his mark.

As much as I disliked Jayson, it was clear that the amount of distance that had been put between them after only just finding one another again was putting a massive strain on their bond. It wasn’t fair to them or their pack for them to be apart for so long.

“With the way things are right now, I think you’ll have to Levi,” I reply tightly. “Staying won’t help things, not now. You should go back to your mate, your pack, they need you more right now than Damon does.”

His eyes fill with tears as my words sink in and he nods a little as he tightens his arms around his knees, sinking further into himself. A make a mental note to get Kat to get him to Jayson at the end of this conversation, he needed him now.

“We can take things one day at a time,” Julian carries on looking to our three youngest. “We can be there for Damon whenever he needs us and of course, the doors will always be open for him and Will. But until he asks us for more, we’ll need to keep our distance.”

“B-But we a-are his f-f-family,” Peter manages after several attempts from his place on the floor. “H-He n-n-needs us.”

My soul turns itself inside out at Peter’s words that stung like silver on my skin. Family was important to all of us, what made us who we were and made us whole. We’d always been a tight-knit family, we ate almost every meal together, played the most ridiculous games and never hid how much we loved each other, even with the new stones that were turned with Damon, we did love him and that would never change.

But we weren’t used to this, being so splintered and unsure of how things would end between us all. It was scary I knew, to imagine not being able to laugh with Damon how we once used to or see the parts of him Will spoke of being hidden, it terrified me. It all terrified me.

“We are a family,” I say with a nod, blinking away the tears that began to blur my vision. “That’s something that will never change, no matter what happens in the future, we will always be a family. Damon does need us, but right now, he needs us to give him space so he can mend with Willam’s help. Your father and I wanted to be the ones to help him, but we lost that right with the way we handled things. So for now, we’ll help him this way, by loving him from afar.”

Hagen and Josey shared tearful glances before nodding their understanding while Peter stared reluctantly at us, as if he couldn’t imagine doing what we were suggesting. I could see he saw it as abandoning Damon, giving up on him but that wasn’t the case at all.

“We’re not giving up on him Peter,” I say clearly and he flinches a little confirming I’d guessed correctly. “We’re trying to do what we can, if he wants more from us, we will give it to him without a second thought. We are not giving up on him.”

Slowly Peter nods, not uttering a single word but accepting with reluctance that this was all we could do for his brother at the time. Silence lingers between us with no more words needing to be shared as we looked at one another.

This was going to be hard, the next few weeks or months would be some of the toughest for our family, and we’d only be able to get through it together. I wouldn’t let them all crumble as I did, I’d be there for them the way Damon needed me to be and when he was ready, I’d do the same for him.

I’d live by my promise to be better, not just for my mate, but for my family and my pack.

It would be hard pushing on when the lack of Damon’s presence in the house was impossible to live with or operate around, but I’d have to find a way because even though I was hurting, I had to atone for my sins as a father, a mate and alpha.

I had to make sure this never happened again.

Eventually, when Damon did come back to us, I would be better for him, the type of father he deserved. We would show him how much we love him, care for him… need him. I could only pray to Goddess that he’d allow us the chance to help him find his way back home one day.

If he did, we’d fix it all.

—————–

Yeah, no matter what he does, he’ll always be my #1.

Thoughts?????????????

I actually enjoyed this chapter, I mostly smiled through it tbh lol. I didn’t plan for it to be sad or take that turn so I don’t expect anyone to cry, if you did, I promise this is the last time for a little while.

I saw last update that a lot of people were asking how long this book will be, I got no clue people. I had no clue when I started writing it that it’d go this deep, I didn’t know how fucked Damon was on the inside, I’m sorry. But it would be unfair to his character and this storyline, to try and reign it in, I’m just gonna let my fingers do what the want to do.

Hate the fingers, not the Tippy.

For those curious about where the book is going – Since we’ve kind of combed through Damon’s emotions and such, the next step is really back to focusing on him and Will adjusting to the pack and building their bond. We’ll be stepping into Will’s character arc more now, though I warn it won’t be as in-depth as Damon’s since it was a past event, not a current as Damon’s issues are.

But who knows, as we learn more about their bond, some interesting things may come to the surface ….

Anyways, if you enjoyed this chapter/extra, please vote and comment. I read them all and try to reply to them all as well.

Until next time,

Byeeeeeeeeee Humansssssssssssssss