Chapter 3
932 Words
Aurora's POV
The second day,
The morning goes the way mornings are supposed to.
Noah ate his breakfast and even negotiated for an extra piece of toast, but he never brought it up. It was as if nothing had happened. But I knew better. He was only staying quiet because he was mature beyond his years.
I dropped him off at the pack daycare at the usual time and headed out. Yet an uneasy feeling lingered in the pit of my stomach, heavy and inescapable, as though something was about to happen.
I spend the day at Luna's office. Logistics, supply orders, a border report, two inter-pack correspondence letters. Work has always been something I can disappear into, and today I let it take everything. By late afternoon, the hours have done what I needed them to do—for a little while, I haven't had to think about last night at all.
I walk across the grounds to the daycare at pickup time. The other children are already filing out, collecting their parents, heading toward the gate in ones and twos. I stand at the entrance and wait.
Noah doesn't come out.
I watch two more kids leave. Then three. I check the time.
Nothing.
I walk in.
The front room is empty—chairs stacked, cubbyholes cleared out—with an afternoon quiet that feels slightly too still. I stand in the doorway and listen.
And then I hear it, carrying from the back of the building.
Noah. Crying.
I'm already moving.
Through the glass panel at the end of the corridor I can already see them—Noah at the base of the slide, Eileen crouching in front of him, spine rigid, one hand extended toward him with a sporty bottle in it.
I push the door open.
"Go down the slide." Eileen's voice carries the flat certainty of someone who does not expect children to have opinions.
Noah's arms are crossed tight over his chest, his jaw set, his eyes already red. "No."
"You have to." Something drains out of her tone—whatever warmth she'd been performing, gone. "You're so useless."
The word lands and Noah's face hardens. "I won't."
Eileen straightens. She holds out the bottle. "Fine. Then drink this. I made it for you."
"I don't want it." Noah takes a step back. "I only eat what my mom gives me."
"I am your mom."
The yard goes very quiet. Noah looks at her for one long moment, and then the five-year-old falls away and something fiercer takes his place—his chin lifting, his eyes clear and certain.
"No you're not," he says. "You're a bad woman."
Eileen's expression snaps.
Her hand shoots out and grabs his arm. He twists against her grip—"You're a bad woman, you're a bad woman—"—and she yanks him sharply toward her, then shoves him with both hands.
Noah goes down on one knee.
No, I can't stand it anymore.
I cross the yard in three steps.
I shove Eileen as hard as I can and pull Noah behind me before she's finished falling, my arm going around him, pressing him into my side. He grabs two fistfuls of my shirt and doesn't let go.
Eileen hits the ground. It's more of a collapse than a fall—controlled, deliberate—and the cry she lets out carries across the whole yard.
"How could you push me?"
Her voice has changed entirely. Where it was sharp before, it's soft now—small and fragile, precisely calibrated. She stays on the ground, one hand pressed to her wrist, her expression rearranged into something that reads as shock and pain.
Her eyes drift past my shoulder.
The tears arrive immediately, like someone turned a switch.
"She pushed me down." Her voice breaks on cue. "Logan—I was just trying to spend time with Noah—I wasn't doing anything—and she just—" A shallow breath. "She shoved me onto the ground."
I turn.
Logan is standing at the yard entrance. Eileen reaches toward him and he steps in without hesitating, catching her—arm around her, her face pressing into his chest, her hand gripping his shirt.
"I'm so scared," she says into him. "It hurts so much."
"Logan." I keep my voice steady. "Things are not as they seem.—"
His eyes find mine over the top of her head, and I stop talking.
They've become red.
Not the blue I've known for most of my life. Red—the blood, the color of a danger lurking beneath the flat. His jaw is locked, the muscles in his neck standing out, every line of his body drawn to a point of controlled violence. The hand not holding Eileen has curled at his side, knuckles white.
The Alpha aura rolls off him before I can brace for it. A low hum fills my ears. Every instinct I have fires the same message in the same instant—step back, look down, don't hold his gaze.
"Logan, listen—"
He moves before I finish.
The slap catches the side of my face. The sound of it—sharp, flat, loud—cracks across the yard and then everything goes quiet.
I don't fall.
My ears ring. The side of my face burns. Behind me, Noah has gone completely still.
I'm still standing.
Something warm and sticky streamed down my face.
The force of the slap threw my head to the side, and tears sprang to my eyes, blurring everything around me......
- Writer
