KADEN’S P.O.V

I felt like shit and what was worse is that I had spent the entire night seated in the living room trying to figure out why my wolf had acted the way that he did but I couldn’t. He had completely shut me out after I tried to glean an answer from him. He was out of control and nothing I did could bring him back to order.


I kept replaying the incident over and over again in my head but it still didn’t make any sense. My wolf wasn’t violent, it was one of his defining traits. He was a delegator and he knew how to compartmentalize. He didn’t just attack people much less Amelia who he was meant to be obsessed with. Something was wrong and I needed to figure it out. I should have noticed it since the moment he started compelling me to spend more time at the hospital. I took it as him being worried, I didn’t realize that it could escalate this badly.

I was at risk of losing Amelia. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me and if I lost her… I couldn’t even think about it. I was going to lose my mind. I couldn’t imagine her leaving me.

“Kaden,” Nadine’s voice was soft. I was so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed her walk in. She was still in my shirt and something rubbed me the wrong way but I couldn’t tell her to take it off so I just stayed silent. “Are you alright?”


“Yes, you can go back to the room,” she didn’t move, she just remained standing there staring at me. “I am fine, Nadine, I just need to think and you’re not letting me.”

At my dismissive tone, I felt my wolf rise to the surface. It was beginning to become irritating how he always wanted to defend Nadine but had no issues attacking Amelia. I put up a firm wall between us to prevent him from having any influence in our current conversation.


“I have the feeling that you are mad at me,” she began as she made slow steps towards me. “Did I do something wrong? Is this about the argument from yesterday? I didn’t-”

“Do not talk about Amelia,” I cut her off and she flinched. “We need to find somewhere for you to stay. I cannot have you here.”

“What?” she took a step back as if she had been hit. It pained me to do so but I needed to set boundaries in place. I stood to my feet and started to walk away but she grabbed my arm. I wanted to shrug it off but I didn’t want to hurt her any further. “I don’t know anyone here. You can’t leave me out there. Tell me what I did, I will make it better, please.”

“I cannot keep fighting with my mate because of you. It isn’t worth it.”

She scoffed. “I’m not worth it is what you mean. We were mates before you met her, Kaden. I am your mate. It was meant to be us. You chose to forget us and now you are doing it again. I am not asking you to choose me but I am asking that you don’t just toss me aside like a used rag.”

“Nadine-”

“No,” she cut me off, her voice cracking on the end. She opened her mouth to speak but instead of words, a sob broke free. She buried her face into her hands and leaned against me. I felt my wolf begin to stir from behind the wall and needless to say, he was not pleased. “I came looking for you, Kaden. I came for you and this is what I get.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” she sniffled pulling back to wipe at her cheeks. “I know you will choose her but can I just have this morning? Can I have one morning where I can pretend like we are mates?” I started to refuse but she cut me off. “Please, I have nothing to return to. Just let me have this.”

“Okay,” it felt like I was signing my name off in blood but I figured there wasn’t much that one morning would do.

I felt different when I made my way into the office building around noon. On paper, everything seemed normal but something felt different, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Nadine was out shopping for some things that she could take when leaving while my wolf was quiet. After the morning with Nadine, he said nothing. He just curled up into his corner of my mind.

The first thing I did was go looking for Caleb. Clara hadn’t answered any of my messages and neither had Amelia. I badly wanted to know how my mate was doing and Caleb was the only one who could tell me. I couldn’t find him so I asked the guards to ask him to find me once he returned. I waited an agonizing half an hour before he finally arrived.

It went without saying that he was pissed at me. He ignored me and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “You sent for me, Alpha.”

“Since when do you call me Alpha?” I joked but he didn’t say a word. I knew I wasn’t going to get back in his good graces so easily so I sighed. “I just want to know how Amelia is doing.”

“I am not discussing her with you. I don’t care what you do or say but I will not tell you a damn thing. If she doesn’t want to talk to you then it is for good reason too.”

“I know I messed up but-”

“She had your hand prints on her fucking neck!” he all but screamed. “Do you know how badly she was crying when she got into the house? She looked worse than she did the day we found her. She was broken. You broke her over some cheap fucking-”

“Stop,” I warned already feeling my wolf rising to the surface. “This isn’t about me defending Nadine. This is about my wolf wanting to defend her. Do not say a thing against her.”

He scoffed. “Of course you would blame this on your wolf. I don’t care who is defending her. You are the one doing that. You are the one who choked your mate for her and she might forgive you for that but I swear, I will not. What you did to her was unspeakable. I can’t even look at you.”

His tone was rude and condescending and I felt my annoyance rise by the second. He was in no position to judge me. He had no idea what was going on and until he was in my shoes, he had no right to judge me.

“I didn’t come here to be lectured by you, Caleb,” I said as I got increasingly annoyed by the second. “I called you here so that you could give me updates about a member of my pack. You are obliged to do so. You swore an oath as my Beta.”

“I did, you are right about that, but I also swore an oath to the people of this pack. I swore to protect them from injustice and unfair treatment. As the Beta, it is my job to make sure that Amelia is never abused again. You will never see her, you will never speak to her and I don’t care what I have to do to make sure that happens. I hope you enjoy your time with Nadine because she is all you have now.”

He turned to leave and I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that he turned his back to me but something snapped and before I could figure out what was going on, I was shifting.

CALEB’S P.O.V

I was pissed off at Kaden and I mouthed off to him like I had done a million times over but nothing prepared me for his shift. It was so fast and in a flash, he was standing in his wolf form snarling at me. I should have been scared, any man in his right mind would have because I knew a rage shift when I saw one and that was exactly what had happened but it didn’t make sense. Kaden was not the kind of person who was easily moved by rage.

He snarled at me but I refused to turn my back to him. He had already destroyed his table, he was going to hurt me as well if he had the chance.

“What are you so pissed about?” I asked never taking my eyes off him. “Is it because of what I said? I’m not going to take it back. You fucked up.”

He growled again and took one step towards me. I stood my ground. I wasn’t going to run from him. I knew how to handle angry wolves. I had an entire career in it. I was in charge of training the new recruits and they were mostly hormonal teenagers.

“If you want to talk to me then shift back and talk to me like an adult. If you stay like that, I am not going to shift. You might be pissed but your pride is stronger and you are not going to attack an unarmed man. That would make you weak and although putting your hands on a woman already makes you weak, you wouldn’t go lower.”

He snarled but I watched as he took a slow step backwards. He shifted back but I could tell it took a lot of struggle to do so. He stood in the middle of his office and I rolled my eyes as I reached for clean clothes from one of the drawers. He always kept a pair and I never understood why until today. I tossed it to him and turned my back while he got dressed.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell that was about?” I asked with my eyes still on the door. “Was that meant to scare me or some shit? I have seen my fair share of terrifying men, Kaden and you are not one of them.”

“I couldn’t control myself,” he whispered and I stilled.

“What are you talking about?”

I felt him move towards me so I turned to him. He had shifted back but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still wary. He had shifted in anger and he could still be harboring some of that anger. He looked normal but there was an edge in his eyes that I had never seen before. Even on his worst days, I had never seen him look like that. It was dangerous and it smelled of trouble.

“When I shifted, it was like I was thrust into the back of my mind and my wolf took control,” he spoke slowly, almost unsure. That was something I had never heard from Kaden. “That is what I was trying to explain to you. When I attacked Amelia, I couldn’t control myself. Something is wrong with my wolf. I think he is out of control. I didn’t want to hurt Amelia, I want her back but I need to fix what is wrong with my wolf first.”