The Alpha's and Their Assassin Mate

Chapter 2

Jason's POV

I jolted upright with a ragged gasp, heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to break free. For a moment, the world was nothing but darkness and the echo of Max’s scream ricocheting through my skull. The kind of sound that didn’t fade — it clung, sharp and metallic, like blood on steel.

The hospital room slowly bled into focus. Monitors glowed soft green. Shadows stretched long across the floor.

But none of it mattered.

Max’s bed was empty.

Cold fear punched through me so hard my knees nearly buckled. For one terrible heartbeat, the nightmare overlapped reality, and I couldn’t tell which one I’d woken into.

I shot to my feet, breath tearing in and out of my lungs. My gaze swept the room, searching, hunting. Then warm cinnamon and soft florals wrapped around me like a hand on my chest. Max.

Her scent drifted from the attached bathroom, threading through the air with steady reassurance. A moment later, the sound of running water reached me. She was filling the bath.

Ajax exhaled inside me, low and steady. “It was just a dream. She is alive and safe.”

My shoulders sagged, tension bleeding out in slow, uneven waves. I listened to my surroundings to ground myself. My body began to release the built up tension as I listened to the hum of the vents, the patient snoring down the hall, and the early morning light creeping through the blinds in thin, pale stripes.

I dragged in a deep breath. Then another. Until my heartbeat finally slowed.

My gaze drifted to the bassinet. It was empty. A smaller jolt of fear shot through me until I saw the note on the tray.

Taking the twins for newborn tests. Be back soon. — D

Dean’s familiar handwriting had me relaxing again and I let out a long breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

“Twins,” Ajax murmured, quieter now. “I still can’t believe we didn’t sense it.”

“Me too,” I thought. “Although if we’d known she was still delivering our daughter, we would’ve torn this hospital apart.”

Ajax agreed. We both knew what we were capable of when it came to protecting our mate and pups — and how close we’d come to losing control last night.

My gaze drifted to the door. The same one the nurses had shoved us through while Max bled out. If we’d known our daughter was in danger too… Beast would’ve come out hard and fast. Ajax and I would’ve had to meet him head‑on, because once Beast takes over, Zane is gone. Luke and Dean are only good as a distraction. Beast never hurts them but he would never slow his destruction. Ajax is the only one who’s ever managed to overpower Beast enough to bring him back, and even then, it’s a great struggle.

Between the hemorrhage, the anemia, the crash in blood pressure — we’d nearly lost her. Doc acted fast, but the memory of his grim expression still haunted me. Max had bled out faster than they could stabilize her.

And still — she fought.

Relief had never hit me as hard as when Doc finally stepped into the hallway, voice steady and sure. “Luna is stable. You may go see her.” My knees nearly gave out.

He led us back inside. We were expecting one pup. Instead, there were two — a pink bundle beside a blue one. For a heartbeat, time stopped. The world narrowed to those tiny perfect babies.

Ajax froze with me, stunned into silence. Then, in a voice I’d never heard from him — soft, reverent, trembling — he whispered, “Our daughter…”

The words rippled through me. Even through the fear, the blood, the chaos… she’d given us joy. A second miracle we hadn’t dared to imagine.

Ajax steadied me. “She is alive. Nothing will take her from us again.”

Luke’s voice cut down the hallway, tight with irritation, the tone he used when someone on the other end of the line was testing his last nerve. Even after everything that happened, duty still clawed at all of us, reminding us that the world didn’t stop just because ours had almost shattered.

He stepped through the doorway a moment later, followed by Dean and a nurse pushing the bassinet. A faint draft of cooler hallway air slipped in behind them, brushing against the warm, dim quiet of the room without disturbing it — just enough to remind me the world outside our little bubble was still moving.

I stood as instinct pulled me forward. The nurse guided the bassinet toward me, and I took it from her hands, rolling it beside Max’s bed. The twins were sound asleep — tiny chests rising and falling in perfect rhythm, soft little snores escaping them like they were already dreaming of mischief.

A smile tugged at my mouth. Mischief was practically a family tradition and I’d be the one teaching them half of it.

I expected it to feel strange, not knowing which of us fathered them. But looking at them now — their tiny fists curled, their noses scrunched, their scents a perfect blend of all five of us — it didn’t matter. It felt right. Natural. Like all four of us had somehow woven ourselves into their creation.

The nurse slipped out quietly, closing the door with a soft click.

From the bathroom, classical music drifted through the cracked door. It was Max’s favorite playlist that she used when she needed to unwind. After everything she’d endured, she deserved every second of peace she could carve out.

“Where’s Zane?” I asked, realizing for the first time he hadn’t come in with the others.

“There was a border patrol alarm,” Luke said, dropping onto the couch. “He went to deal with it.”

“Why isn’t Jackson handling it?” The question came out sharper than I intended. Jackson was our Gamma and border issues were his job.

Dean exhaled through his nose, a quiet sound of understanding. “Zane told him to rest while Max is in the hospital.”

That tracked. Jackson had been assigned to Max during the last stretch of her pregnancy. Doc had put her on bed rest and Max had treated that order like a suggestion. Jackson, Marcus, and even Charlie had taken turns shadowing her whenever we weren’t around. Jackson deserved a break.

Ajax huffed a laugh. “Hell, he deserves a month off.”

“What was the call about?” I asked, settling into my chair. I opened the mindlink, letting the connection stretch outward so Zane could hear us if he needed to.

“It was just a contract oversight causing issues,” Luke said, dragging a hand through his hair. “I resolved it with the client, but Claire wasn’t happy about the change. Her team has to redo everything.”

Dean leaned forward and spoke only through the mindlink. “Anything new on the missing funds?”

Luke’s shoulders sagged. “No. And I’ve been digging since before sunrise.”

Luke pulled out the stack of financial reports we’d been combing through for weeks. In the morning light, the pages looked worse — red post‑its marking every place the numbers didn’t line up. Someone had buried false entries deep enough that the totals still balanced, hiding the theft behind clean end‑of‑month numbers. Half a million dollars gone without a trace. Luke only caught it during one of his secret, routine accounting audits — the ones where he compares the original budget, the spending logs, and the current accounting numbers side‑by‑side. Without that three‑way check, the embezzler would’ve slipped right past us.

Dean rubbed his jaw. “Who could it be? Everyone goes through a thorough background check. And our security has fail‑safes on top of fail‑safes.”

We kept the conversation in the mindlink — Max didn’t need this stress, not after everything she’d endured.

Luke let out a long breath. “It shouldn’t be possible. QuadraCore’s systems don’t just… miss things. If money is disappearing, someone is slipping it past safeguards that aren’t supposed to have gaps. And that means whoever it is knows exactly where to hide.”

Dean nodded slowly. “So, possibly an IT employee. They’d know how to cover their tracks.”

I shook my head before he finished. My mind was already mapping out access levels, departmental permissions, and the system architecture. “No. This isn’t something a basic employee could pull off. Whoever’s doing this would need access to both our financial systems and our security architecture — enough to move through them without raising flags. That kind of clearance only comes from someone who’s worked across multiple departments… or someone high enough to manipulate the system outright.”

The words tasted bitter. The idea that someone we trusted — someone we’d mentored, promoted, laughed with — could be behind this made my stomach twist.

Luke’s expression tightened. “I agree with Jason. It would have to be someone with higher clearance. While it shortens the list, it doesn’t make finding them any easier. Anyone with that level of protocol knowledge would’ve been with us for a decade.”

Something in Luke’s eyes unsettled me more than the missing money. He wasn’t angry or cold or calculating — the versions of him I knew how to handle. This was different. This was Luke carrying a burden big enough to bend him.

“Honestly,” he admitted quietly, “I don’t know where to start.”

Zane’s voice entered the mindlink then — calm, controlled, steady. “Why don’t we bring in Max? We’ve been wanting to get her involved with the company. I know we wanted to wait, but we can use her skill set to track down the suspect. No one would expect that.”

Of course he’d say that, she is a valuable asset. Max had been an assassin when we first met — sharp, instinctive, and able to see patterns the rest of us missed. But I didn’t know how comfortable she’d be leaving our children so soon.

“That might work,” I said, “but let’s give her a few weeks to settle. Then we can talk to her about it.”

Luke’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know if we can wait that long.”

“What other choice do we have?” Zane replied.

Silence settled over us — heavy, unresolved.

From the bathroom, water sloshed softly. Max was still soaking in her too‑hot bath, blissfully unaware of the conversation we were having.

“Can someone get me some warm blankets?” she called, voice muffled through the door.

Blankets. Of course. Max liked her water melt‑your‑skin‑off hot, so she always ran cold afterward.

I pushed to my feet as my brothers began cleaning up the mess we’d made. I slipped out of the room, letting the door click softly behind me.