The Alpha Bond She Ran From

Exposure

POV: Maya

He asked where his son was again and I could not answer.

I stood there with my back against the counter and my hands shaking and heart beating fast.

Kael was watching me with those silver gray eyes that saw through me.

I opened my mouth to lie.

“He’s not here,” I said.

Kael did not move, he just looked at me and lifted an eyebrow like he didn’t just believe those words that came from my mouth.

“He is with a baby sitter,” I said.

“He is not here. You need to leave.”

He tilted his head.

“You are lying,” he said. “I heard a child’s voice now and I saw a little boy just now.”

“And I can smell that that is my child. I can smell him on you.”

I pressed my hands on the counter behind me. My palms were getting all sweaty, the diner started to feel too hot.

“He is not your son.” I said.

Say that again," he said with his voice low and quiet but there was a growl underneath it. Something that made the hair on my arms stand up.

I should have stopped.

I should have kept my mouth shut but I was scared and had to speak up.

"He is my son," I said.

"Mine. You have no claim to him. You have no claim to me. That night was a contract.

A transaction and it did not mean anything."

Kael stood up from the stool.

I flinched again.

I could not help it. He was so tall and so big he filled up my whole vision.

"It meant nothing," he said. His voice was still quiet. But there was something in it that made my chest tighten. Something that sounded like pain.

"It meant nothing to you."

That was not what I said.

That was not what I meant but I could not take it back now, the words were out there hanging between us.

He stared at me for a long moment. He was breathing faster now.

His hands were pressed flat on the counter. I could see the veins in his forearms, I could see the tension running through him like electricity.

"You left before dawn," he said. "Before I woke up. I reached for you and you were gone. I thought maybe you went to get food or maybe you went to the bathroom.

I waited. I laid in that bed and I waited for you to come back."

His voice was getting rougher.

His control was slipping.

"I waited for three days. I did not eat, did not sleep. I just waited because I thought you would come back.

I thought you had to come back because I felt you in my chest, in my bones.

I felt you leave and I felt you get farther and farther away and I did not understand why it felt like I was dying."

He leaned forward with his face close to mine now. Close enough that I could see the gold in his eyes, close enough that I could see the way his hands were shaking on the counter.

"You were my mate," he said. "You were mine. And you left. And I spent five years wondering what I did wrong. What I said. What I did not say. What I could have done differently to make you stay."

I could not breathe.

The weight of his words pressed down on me. Five years.

He had been carrying this for five years.

"I did it to protect myself," I whispered. "I was an omega. You were the Alpha King. I was nothing to you."

His face changed. The anger drained away and something else took its place. Something that looked like devastation.

"Nothing," he said. "You think you were nothing."

I did not answer because if I did I would be telling him the truth.

That I left because I loved him and losing him would break me and one night of being held by him was better than a lifetime of watching him realize I was not good enough.

He opened his mouth to say something but did not get the chance to say it.

Because Theo that I hid behind me, behind the counter sensed something was wrong and ran out.

“Mama,” Theo said. His voice was confused now. Scared.

“Mama what’s wrong?”

I could not answer, I could not look at him.

I could only look at Kael.

Kael had not moved.

He was still standing at the counter but his focus was not on my anymore they were on Theo.

The little boy with my dark hair, the little boy with his eyes.

His face went pale and his hands dropped from the counter. His whole body went still.

Theo peeked around my leg and squeezed his way through.

He did not understand why I was holding him so tight.

He looked at the man behind the counter, the stranger, the person he had never seen before.

And something passed between them.

His eyes met Kael’s eyes.

And then Theo’s eyes started to glow gold.

The gold I had been hiding for four years.

The gold that marked him as something other than normal. Something dangerous.

The gold spread through his eyes like fire.

His little hands curled into fists and I felt his body go hot against my leg.

I felt the shift coming.

"No no no," I whispered. I dropped to my knees in front of him. I grabbed his face in my hands. "Theo look at me. Look at me baby. Count with me. One. Two. Three."

But he was not looking at me. He was looking at Kael.

And Kael was looking at him.

The diner was silent. Dead silent. The truckers at the booth. The old man with his coffee. Maggie standing in the kitchen doorway with her mouth open. Frank behind her with a spatula in his hand.

Everyone saw.

Everyone saw the four year old boy with glowing gold eyes. With claws starting to push through his tiny fingernails. With heat rolling off his skin like a furnace.

Everyone saw what I had spent four years trying to hide.

Theo's breathing was getting faster. His chest was heaving. His hands were shaking. He was scared. He was so scared and he did not understand and he was shifting right there in the middle of the diner where everyone could see.

I pulled him against my chest. I wrapped my arms around him and held him as tight as I could. I put my mouth against his ear and whispered the words I always whispered.

"You are okay. You are safe. I have you. I have you. Just breathe. Just breathe with me."

But he was not listening. He was staring at Kael over my shoulder. His gold eyes fixed on the man he did not know.

Kael moved.

He came around the counter slow and stopped a few feet’s away from us.

He dropped to his knees so he could be in the same level as Theo.

He looked at Theo, at his golden eyes and the heat coming off his skin.

Then he gave a small smile.

"There you are," he said. His voice was soft. Gentle. Nothing like the voice he used with me. "I have been looking for you for a very long time."

Theo stopped shaking.

I felt it happen. The heat faded. The tension drained out of his little body and the gold in his eyes were gone.

He looked at Kael with his face pressed against my shoulder and his little hands wrapped in my shirt.

He asked the question I had been avoiding for four years.

"Mama," he said. "Who is that man?"

I looked at Kael. At the Alpha King on his knees in a dirty diner, the man who had searched for us for five years, the father of my child.

He was looking at me now. Waiting. His eyes were not demanding.

They were asking.

I opened my mouth to lie, to say anything that would push him away and keep my son safe and keep my secret buried for one more day.

But I looked at Theo. At his face. At his eyes. At the way he was looking at Kael like he already knew something I had not told him.

And I could not lie.

Not this time.

"That," I said, "is your father."

Theo's eyes went wide. His mouth opened. He looked at Kael. Then at me. Then at Kael again.

"My daddy," he said. His voice was small. Wondering. "I have a daddy?”