The Bond that never dies
1365 Words
Leon
Present Timeline – December 2025
Aurora.
The name slipped out of me again before I could stop it. My voice was low and torn straight out of the place in my chest that had been aching for a full year.
My eyes narrowed at the sight of her standing there, her eyes wide open and frozen, her breath trembling as if seeing me had shaken the ground beneath her feet.
But it wasn’t her shock that hit me the hardest. It was the small weight against my chest.
I felt it before I saw it—the tiny pull on my shirt, the soft fingers curling into the fabric as if holding onto me was the most natural thing in the world.
I looked down slowly and met a pair of crystal blue eyes staring up at me. Blue eyes that mirrored mine.
My heart stopped, and for a moment, I couldn’t move. I just stared at him, at this tiny boy with golden hair and clear blue eyes with a face that somehow felt familiar. And then, something inside me shifted and snapped open like a force I had never felt in my life.
My wolf, Rhaziel, surged forward inside of me so fast. He screamed with excitement inside me, his voice shaking with emotion as he spoke. “That’s our pup. Our blood. Our mate comes back to us!”
My throat tightened so sharply I couldn’t speak because this tiny life clinging to me was mine, not another man’s.
Mine.
All the lies I had been fed, all the assumptions I had forced myself to accept, shattered in a single heartbeat.
My wolf felt the connection instantly, as my eyes met the baby’s and the bond that I shared with Aurora, which had disappeared after being apart from her for a long time, thrummed between us like a thread pulled tight.
My son, whose voice I had heard as I headed towards, suddenly stopped. The baby was no longer crying.
Aurora suddenly made a slight strangled sound, and I turned my attention back to her. She looked at me, then at our son, and her lips trembled.
For a moment, I thought she might run again, and my entire body tensed at that thought, but my pup tightened his hold on me and made a soft sound, melting the fire inside of me.
“I know,” I whispered to him without meaning to. “I know. “
Rhaziel's voice sounded again in my head, growling with satisfaction. “We found them again. Our pup, our mate, all came back to us. “
“Yes, they are here,” I responded slowly.
And for the first time in a year, I felt whole.
My gaze drifted from the tiny boy resting against Aurora to the smooth curve of her neck, and that was when I saw it—the bright, clear, undeniable, and exposed mark on her neck.
My mark. The mark I had left on her that night.
She didn’t hide it beneath makeup or her clothes like most humans would. She wasn’t pretending it never happened.
The imprint sat openly on her skin, darker than before, and the edges sharpened into the shape of an alpha’s claim. It had matured over the months into a symbol any wolf in this city would recognize immediately.
Good. Any werewolf who sees wouldn’t dare to woo her because they would know she belonged to an Alpha and would stay away from her.
And she had kept it.
Aurora had carried my mark for a year without knowing what it meant, without knowing what it made her, without knowing what it made us.
The swell of pride that rose in my chest was so powerful it nearly stole the breath from my lungs.
Her eyes flicked up, and she caught me staring at her neck. I knew she felt the Charge, the recognition, the memory between us. For a long second, neither of us moved. Neither of us blinked.
We just continued staring as if we were the only ones in the room.
Then Rina, the head of coordinators and my Beta’s mate, cleared her throat loudly, snapping the room back into place.
“Your Highness, will you be joining us?” she asked, trying to sound composed. “You were scheduled for tomorrow.”
I blinked, caught back into reality, and looked away from Aurora for a moment. “I… yes. I mean—” I actually stuttered, which was crazy because I never stutter.
My eyes drifted to Aurora again, but she was already looking away, her shoulders tight. Of course, she couldn’t meet my eyes.
The shock on her face was evident enough to show that she knew nothing about me, probably never bothered to reach out to me. If we hadn’t met here, she would have hidden the truth about our son from me, but that was the end of it, because I was never letting her go again.
“Yes,” I said finally, responding to Rina.“I will join today.”
Rina nodded and turned toward Aurora. “Aurora—”
“Aurora,” I muttered her name, and she tensed at that, her arms tightening around the baby.
She whispered a stiff word in response. “If you’ll excuse me,” and stepped past us, clearly overwhelmed and needing space. She tried to walk toward the door, but the child suddenly erupted into loud cries, wailing as if something inside him had broken.
Then I heard the grumbling from those in the meeting room.
“Aurora,” Rina said, already sighing, “please calm the baby. We need silence for the briefing.”
Aurora tried. She rocked him softly, whispered to him, but the cries grew louder each time she stepped out of the door.
Unable to watch her struggle, I stepped closer, and suddenly the baby stopped crying. He turned towards me, hiccuped, and reached his small hand out, making tiny sounds as if he had been calling for me all along
He recognized me.
“His wolf’s instinct probably recognized you,” Rhaziel told me, and I nodded in agreement.
“May I carry him?”
Aurora stiffened at my words, then she blinked and shook her head in response. “It’s fine, you don’t have to. I can manage.”
“No,” I said quietly, unable to tear my gaze away from the child’s bright blue eyes that mirrored my own. “The meeting needs to continue, and he clearly wants this. Also, you must have been tired from the long journey. I’ll help you.”
She hesitated for a moment, confusion etched on her face, and then nodded in response as she unstrapped him from her chest. She held him for a moment, looking down at him with a tenderness that warmed something in me I didn’t know had grown cold in my absence.
Then she lifted him toward me.
I extended my arms, and she placed the baby into them as if she were handing over her entire heart. The moment his small body settled against my shoulder, he sighed and relaxed completely, burrowing into me like he had been doing this his whole life.
A whole room of staff watched us in stunned silence, but I didn’t care. To them, this was probably me offering to help a woman in need.
“That’s better,” I whispered to the baby, rubbing his back gently.
Handling babies was easy for me since my sister already had three children, and they had spent most of their time with me.
“I hope you are alright?” I asked Aurora, smiling brightly.
Aurora didn’t smile back. In fact, she looked like the ground had opened beneath her feet and nodded in response.
Rina cleared her throat again. “Your Highness… shall we proceed?”
“Yes,” I said, steadying the tiny boy in my arms with one hand. “Let’s all take our seats.”
We walked together back into the meeting room in silence, the baby now sleeping in my arms, and in that moment, I felt genuine happiness.
- Writer
