: Part 3 – Chapter 31

HECTOR HAD GONE MISSING.

It was a good thing or Alpha would have sliced him up and strung his insides around the city. The rage he felt simmered inside him, tempered only by the pang of loss as he looked down at Zenith’s body in the morgue. Though he’d known her briefly, his sister-in-law had been a light, and he could feel the loss left by her absence.

“It’s her,” he identified her for official purposes, his voice gruff, and walked out of the room. His eye burned, the itch behind his eye patch intensifying. He fisted his hands and inhaled deeply.

He fucking hated hospitals. They brought back ugly, ugly memories of his childhood, of the time he’d spent trying to save his mother. But he couldn’t be anywhere else at the moment, not with Zephyr inside sedated, not with Morana in trauma recovery from blood loss, not with Zenith, beautiful Zenith, gray in a freezer.

In a single day, his world had tilted upside down. His closest friend had been his biggest enemy, his family had gone missing, and this loss…

Morana had somehow, even injured and losing blood, managed to call Tristan long enough to tell him what had happened while on her way to the hospital. Alpha had seen the usually aloof man completely go feral on his way to the hospital, while he himself had turned the city upside down trying to find his wife and her sister. And then he’d gotten a call from an unknown number, an accented voice telling him they were at the hospital too.

One day she’d been at the hospital, and he’d killed more of his men in that duration than he had in years. Anyone who’d been found associated with Hector’s crimes had been eradicated. Victor had been found knocked out in his car, completely oblivious to what his brother had done. He was perhaps the only one more enraged than Alpha was.

A car screeched to a stop. Alpha breathed out through his nose, watching as his in-laws rushed out of the vehicle he’d sent for them, both their faces confused and horrified and disbelieving of the storm that had swept their lives.

“The police said,” Zephyr’s father swallowed. “Is it true?”

He wished he didn’t have to do this. Alpha nodded.

A palm struck his face, the slap heating his cheek. Her mother. He took it quietly.

“It’s all because of you,” she slapped him again, crying. “You destroyed our lives. I’ll never forgive you. All because of you!”

Zephyr’s father held her mother back, and she turned to him, sobbing uncontrollably.

Alpha couldn’t even imagine the pain she must have been going through, losing a child she’d loved so much, the other in the hospital. It was one of the reasons he stayed silent, and didn’t tell her that The Syndicate would’ve come for Zenith, with or without him. She had been marked from the moment she escaped them. It was still hard for him to wrap his head around the fact that she had been one of the missing girls, had been the real daughter of Gabriel Vitalio.

Fuck, it was a mess.

His in-laws went upstairs to where Zephyr was being kept, and he leaned against the wall outside, looking up at the stars, trying to understand where everything had gone wrong. Was her mother right? Could Zenith have been alive had she not come under Hector’s radar due to his proximity or would he have found her regardless through SLF? How many other people were hiding through the organization that he didn’t know about? Was running it worth the cost of innocent life?

“Hector has gone underground.” The voice from his side startled him slightly.

Shadow Man.

Fucking moved like a shadow. But Alpha owed him now. “Thanks for bringing my wife back.”

There was a pause. “Will she live?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help her sister.”

“Me too.”

Another pause. “You should’ve sought me out sooner. I would’ve led you to him.”

Something in his tone made Alpha’s eye twitch. “Why were you following him in the first place? What’s your interest?”

A lighter flickered, showing just the line of the hand holding it. He didn’t think the guy would answer.

“He broke my toy.”

Vague.

‘Go to your wife, Finisher,’ the man said. ‘And brace yourself. It’s just begun.’

With that ominous warning, before Alpha could say anything else, the presence from his side was gone.

Rubbing his chest, Alpha went inside to the private room corridor.

Zephyr was in one of the rooms, and since her parents were visiting, he stayed outside in the corridor. Dante sat there too, on one of the hospital chairs, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his face somber. Amara was at the compound with the kids, not wanting to leave them alone for too long in a new place or bring them to the hospital. Tristan stood against another room’s door, his eyes never straying from the glass that let him look at Morana inside.

Alpha had seen her, strung up with tubes going into her body, not looking good. But the doctor had reassured them that she’d make a recovery.

His wife, on the other hand, would never recover. He had seen first hand how close the two sisters had been, and just remembering Zenith’s warmth made his throat tighten with emotion. The world was a darker place without her.

‘You okay?’ Dante asked him. Alpha didn’t know. He was still in a rage, juggling with both betrayal and loss, and knowing he’d have to push it all aside to be there for Zephyr when she woke up.

He shrugged, folding his arms across his chest, looking to Tristan. ‘I’m sorry Morana got hurt in my city.’

He saw the other man’s jaw clench but he didn’t say anything, just stared inside where the girl lay.

Zephyr’s parents came out of the other room. Her mother looked at him with such hatred he felt it in her bones, and he didn’t blame her for it. Her father stopped at his side. ‘Send Zephyr home with us to recover. We have one daughter left, and we don’t want to lose her too.’

Alpha tamped down the urge to refuse immediately. He didn’t want her to leave. He never wanted her to leave. Tasting the fear of the last day, tasting what a life without her could be like… she gave him meaning. She was his lifeblood.

‘If she wants to come to you, I will bring her. You have my word.’ It cost him to say that, but he did, not knowing what she would need, if she too would blame him for the loss.

Her father gave a nod, his face moving with emotions, and took her mother with him.

Dante slapped him on the shoulder, his eyes serious. ‘Men in our world don’t find love, brother. Don’t let it go. Whatever you need, I’m here.’

It moved him, Dante offering that. And he would need help, with his second gone.

He inhaled deeply and entered his wife’s room. She was asleep on the bed, after having been sedated, her face tensed even in her unconscious state.

Alpha sat down beside her, taking her small, soft hand in his, and felt his eye burning, wet sliding down his face into his beard.

He let everything crash down on him, everything that had been building and building in the last day, last month, last decade, being in the hospital and the memories it brought, losing his friend to betrayal, realizing he had been the one to blind him, forgetting Zephyr and still not getting those memories, losing Zenith and almost losing his wife, everything crashed on him and there, holding her hand while she slept, he cried in a hospital after twenty years.