Alpha's mate is a male?!?-Chapter 156: What Am I Going to tell him?!

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"Kieran, you’ve got to pick up Ace’s call. Just talk to him." Rika’s voice is laced with concern. "You know how he is. Even if you don’t talk to him, he’ll still act on his own. The fact that he listened to you and stayed back without arguing about coming with us should show you how much he trusts you."

Kieran stares at the phone in his hand, the screen flashing Ace’s name for the fifth_ no, sixth time that night.

His thumb hovers over the answer button, but he can’t bring himself to press it.

What the hell is he supposed to say to him?

They had rushed back for Marsel. Before they could even return to the pack house, they didn’t want to leave him there, at the crawfords’ for long.

They had stormed the lab, ready to risk, to fight however it would take to get Marsel out of there, but it was too late.

The place was wrecked. Blood smeared the floors. The stench of death clung to the walls.

Equipment had been overturned, monitors shattered, chairs broken, as if something monstrous had ripped through the facility.

And at the center of it all, among the bodies of doctors and scientists.

There was no one alive there. "Oh moon goddess." Kieran had muttered. "Please don’t tell me Blake was affected with the pregnancy and now she is one of us!" He knew that’s exactly what it is.

Nothing else explains whatever they were seeing.

They searched Marsel around because they were very sure that he hadn’t left the place, because if he had, he would have told them.

Only to find Marsel’s lifeless body.

And now here they are, staring down at him with disbelief, remnants of silver flowing out of him through the mouth.

Lying there, still, empty. The man who had once been a legend, reduced to nothing but a corpse.

Kieran’s chest clenches.

The weight of it is suffocating.

"What am I going to tell him?" Kieran’s voice is hollow, barely a whisper. He doesn’t know if he’s speaking to Rika, to Max, to himself, or to the ghosts of his own failures. "How am I going to tell him that his father is dead? That I left him behind?"

The words taste like poison.

He had promised Ace he would bring Marsel back. He had sworn it. That he will protect both of them, including Max and Rika.

But instead, he’s bringing back a body, a lifeless body.

Kieran presses a hand to his face, his nails digging into his skin. His thoughts are spiraling, his breathing uneven.

Rika steps closer. "Kieran, this isn’t your faul..."

"Yes, it is!" His voice cracks, raw with grief. His hands shake at his sides. "It is!"

Rika flinches but doesn’t look away. "Yes it will hurt Ace to find this out, but it already happened, we didn’t let it happen, we were caught in the situation."

Max steps forward, "She is right. Kieran, that Blake girl is out there." His tone is firm, steady. "And we need to get her before it’s too late. Right now, no one knows what she really is, but they will once they trap her. And when that happens, we’re all in danger. Especially you and every other wolf. After everything she’s done, they’ll think that’s what you do. Destroy. Kill."

Kieran’s pulse thrums in his ears.

Max presses on. "If we don’t handle this now, there won’t be a way to handle it any other time."

His words are brutal, but Kieran knows he’s right. The city is already in chaos. The news stations are flooding with reports of a creature loose in the streets.

The videos- blurry and shaky, show glimpses of glowing eyes, of bodies tossed like rag dolls, of police bullets doing nothing.

If they don’t stop Blake before she’s captured, before she’s examined, then it’s over.

For all of them.

A sharp ding breaks the tense silence.

A message.

Kieran’s gaze flicks down to his phone. His stomach tightens as he reads the name on the screen.

Not knowing that there’s still the worst that happened the same night.

Marsel and Elira had been bound together, their souls intertwined across centuries. They weren’t just mates; they were one. And if Marsel’s heart had stopped...

~

Kieran hesitates, but his hands move on their own. He swipes the screen, and the words sent by Ace appear.

"Please tell me you’re fine. That all of you are okay. I just want you here with me, Kieran. Mom died suddenly. I don’t know what happened to her. She was just fine. Please stop worrying me more and tell me you’re fine."

Kieran’s breath catches.

His vision tunnels.

The words blur together, but one sentence burns into his mind.

"Mom died suddenly." fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

No.

No, no, no...

Why would this be happening?! Why would Elira die too on the same night Marsel dies?!

Kieran’s fingers go numb.

The phone slips from his grasp, hitting the floor with a dull clack.

Rika rushes forward, snatching it up before he even registers the movement. Her eyes scan the message, her breath hitching.

"Oh my god..."

Kieran doesn’t move.

Ace lost both his parents tonight.

And he doesn’t even know it yet. That it’s both of them.

"What now?!" Rika’s voice trembles, a sharp contrast to the deafening silence around them.

Kieran stands frozen, his hands clenched at his sides. He hasn’t said a word, hasn’t moved.

His breathing is uneven, his shoulders rigid. The only sign that he’s still here, still alive, is the way his fists tremble.

He can’t wrap his head around it.

Marsel is dead.

Elira is dead.

And it’s all his fault- or so he thinks.

The words keep repeating in his mind, looping over and over until they blur into something unbearable. His stomach twists painfully.

How is he supposed to tell Ace?

How is he supposed to say, I left your father behind, and now he’s gone?

He swallows hard, but the lump in his throat won’t go away. His chest aches, physically, painfully.

The reason that explains Elira’s death too is that Marsel and Elira’s souls were bound. They had lived centuries together. The moment Marsel’s heart stopped, Elira’s did too.

And now that means to him that he killed both of them.

Kieran doesn’t make a sound, but when Rika and Max look up, his entire body is shaking.

His head is tilted downward, his jaw clenched so tightly it looks painful. His hands covered in dried blood- are trembling.

His breath comes out in ragged, uneven gasps.

And then...

He moves.

Suddenly, violently.

His fist slams into the wall. Hard.