Chapter 10. Fractured Control. Bays POV.
1624 Words
The truck was thick with silence when I slid behind the wheel.
River sat beside me, shoulders rigid, fists clenched so tightly his claws had pierced his palms. Blood gathered in the creases of his fingers, dark and gleaming under the soft dashboard light.
The scent hit me instantly; feral, metallic, threaded with the warning edge of a wolf losing control.
My stomach dropped.
This wasn’t just anger.
This was despair.
I turned the key and pulled out of the parking lot faster than I should have. I needed him moving, needed distance between him and her, before the last thread of control inside him snapped.
As soon as the tires hit the open road, I risked a glance.
“You’re bleeding.”
He didn’t answer. His jaw flexed hard enough I thought the bone might c***k. His breaths came in shaking bursts, each one edged with a flicker of gold and silver burning beneath his blue eyes.
“You were too long. What happened?”
His voice sounded raw, shredded and laced with an Alpha command he didn’t mean to use.
It slammed into me like a physical strike.
Kade dropped instantly, belly-flat inside me, whining. My own lungs seized under the weight of it.
“Riv..” I rasped, fighting to stay upright. “Ease off.”
It took him a few seconds but the pressure lifted. I inhaled sharply, like breaking water.
He swore, dragging both blood slick hands through his hair, staring out of the window like the night had betrayed him.
I hoped the slip of power distracted him from his question.
It didn’t.
“Bay.”
Not a request. A command.
I sighed.
“She’s not safe,” I said quietly. “Something’s off. Her boys know it too. They watch her like bodyguards. There’s more going on.. I just haven’t figured out what yet.”
River’s head snapped toward me; too fast, too sharp.
“Not safe. Is it Matteo? What did he do?”
Still Alpha edged. Barely leashed.
“He didn’t touch her.”
It wasn’t a lie exactly but it wasn’t the whole truth. left out what I suspected. I needed to build to it, otherwise goddess knows how River could react.
He barely heard me. He turned back to the window, muscles coiled, jaw locked.
“He parades her,” River whispered.
His hands trembled. Blood dripped onto his jeans.
“He holds her like she’s a trophy. A prize. Like he won her.”
The word won broke apart in his mouth.
“He didn’t win anything.” His voice dropped to a snarl, deep and inhuman. “She is mine. My mate. Not his.”
The air vibrated with the truth of it, ownership, agony, destiny, despair; all twisted so tight it strangled him.
He swallowed hard. “Fifteen years, Bay. Fifteen f*****g years of searching. Wondering if she was dead. Wondering if I imagined her. And the first thing I see when I find her again?”
His voice cracked open.
“She’s on his arm. Wearing his ring. Carrying his name.”
He hesitated. Then, quieter, broken;
“Having his children.”
He turned just enough for me to see the devastation in his eyes.
“It should’ve been me.”
“But she.. she chose him.. Bay.. What if she loves him..”
Silence drowned the truck.
I wasn’t prepared for this conversation, not now, when he was unraveling in front of me. But I cleared my throat.
“Riv… there’s more you should know...”
The air stopped moving.
“She flinched from him,” I said. “She takes his orders. She hates it, I can see that, I can see she’s going against her nature but.. ”
“But what?” he snarled through his teeth.
“I think he might put hands on her.”
His breathing stuttered, short, sharp, violent.
Then the truck shuddered.
River moved so fast the whole frame jerked. His fist slammed into the dashboard with a c***k that split the plastic clean down the middle. Buttons flew. The radio sparked weakly.
A snarling sound ripped out of him, primal, of ancient Alpha rage that never should’ve been contained.. let alone contained in the confines of a truck.
“If he laid a hand on her.. if he has even hurt one hair on her head” River roared, “I’ll.. ”
His voice fractured into a growl that scraped the air raw. Another wave of commanding pressure slammed into me.
He was violence carved into flesh, all claws and fury but when it came to her, every instinct shifted. Even enraged, his wolf softened for her. He could break the world.. but he’d die before he risked breaking her. The mate bond had been festering for fifteen years.. boiling under the surface and one look at her was all it had taken to erupt.
He looked wrecked.
Destroyed.
But I couldn’t let him spiral.
“River.”
Nothing.
“Riv.”
Still nothing.
“Alpha.”
His head snapped to me, eyes blazing molten gold and sparkling silver. Shade.
“Stop.. I need to go to her.” He growled as he reached for the handle.
“Alpha.. Shade.. Riv.. I know it’s hard..”
“Now, Bay.” Alpha command starting to slip out.
“Not yet.” I kept my voice steady, fighting the small control he was unleashing. “Right now you cannot be an Alpha. You need to be her mate. Think about her.”
His chest heaved, breath broken. Alpha control withdrawing.
“If you storm in like this, you’ll terrify her. She’s scared Shade, she needs you and River but as her mate. If you don’t you’ll lose her before you even get the chance to have her.”
He flinched, actually flinched, like the words cut him open. Blue began draining back into his eyes. River.
“She’s scared,” I continued. “Not just of Matteo. Of everything. And for some reason, one I don’t understand yet, she’s chosen to stay.”
He growled warningly.
“I’m not saying it’s right,” I said quickly. “I’m saying you have to understand the space she’s in before you push in with Alpha sized rage.”
He looked like he might break the windshield next.
“What am I supposed to do?” he whispered. “How do I breathe knowing she’s his? Knowing he treats her like this? Knowing she’s scared and I wasn’t there.. that I can’t be there now? I’ve failed her.”
“You didn’t fail her,” I said firmly. “Fate did. Time did. But you found her again. That means it’s not over. It means the moon goddess is on your side. It means we do this right.”
He swallowed hard.
“And her sons…” I began.
River growled low, eyes narrowing. “What about them?”
“Well.. I know you said you’d accept them. But the truth is.. they might be Matteo’s. And given what we think is happening.. is that going to be a problem for you?”
He stared blankly at me for a moment, as if he was trying to understand a foreign language.
“What do you mean might be Matteo’s?” He growled lowly.
“They move like protectors of her. Not like his sons. There’s tension there. They react to him like they see what he really is, not like they belong to him.”
“They sound like they have morals, like they are protecting their mother.” River muttered. “Despite having his blood.”
“You didn’t answer.”
He looked at me, and his expression was devastation, fury and love all tangled together.
“They’re an extension of her, despite being of him. The truth is many good wolves we know have needed to protect their mother from their father. It’s something closer to home than I’d care to admit.” he whispered. “If she accepted me, I would treat them as my own.”
Relief eased through me. “Then we need a plan; not an attack. Not a k********g under Alpha delusions or a misguided mate bond. A plan.”
His claws slowly retracted. His breathing evened barely.
“She needs to trust you, Riv. Right now? You’re a stranger. Not her mate.”
He trembled, the strongest Alpha I’d ever known shaking like a boy lost in the dark.
“Bay…” his voice was barely there. “If he hurts her again..”
“We won’t let him,” I promised. “But tonight? You have to hold the Shade back.”
He closed his eyes. “She recognised me. I know she did. And she ignored it. Rejected it. What if.. what if she doesn’t want me? What if I wasn’t enough? What if she thinks I failed her?”
I took a long, reckless glance at him.
“She’s afraid,” I said softly. “I don’t know of what. But she’s hiding. And you’re exactly what she needs, you’re her mate; you just have to give her the time to see that.”
River leaned his head against the window, jaw tight, eyes glowing with grief and fury and something more dangerous.
Hope.
I kept driving. Repeating a mantra in my head.
I Kept him alive.
I Kept him grounded.
I Kept him from turning back and tearing the town apart.
Tonight, right now, I could do that much for my friend, my Alpha and the Luna he hadn’t yet earned.
I only prayed she’d accept him.
Because if she didn’t..
I didn’t know what the strongest Alpha I’d ever known would become.
- Writer
