In a Heartbeat (MxM)

Chapter 43

Looking at Simon standing there, I let my drunken thoughts wonder what it'd be like next to him. If I hadn't been the alpha's son, would we be able to be like Michael and David were before my father went apeshit on them? Could I have been happy to be a part of his family, celebrating our birthdays, or his sibling's birthdays like this? Where we could make home-cooked meals, have fun, and not expect me to be training or learning how to manage a pack all the time.

Even throughout the drunken haze, I knew the answer. But the longer we stood out there, one thing became clear.

I wanted that. I wanted that happiness too. To feel that warmth wash over me, the laughter and smiles that would carry on into the night. I wanted that too. When all my father did was argue, yell, and threaten, I longed for that same happiness that was plastered on Simon's face permanently like a tattoo.

I wanted a home, not the pathetic house I lived in. Where love flourished, not expectations. Where I wasn't expected to be this stern, stone-cold alpha, like my father, and instead I could celebrate my own birthday without anyone telling me what I needed to be. I wanted to have fun, celebrate with my siblings, smear cake on our faces.

I wanted that lively home, instead of our sterile and hostile one.

But, that vibrant home was gone now, a mere skeleton that only harbored bad memories and the horrible truth that I had to live with whenever I saw it. I single-handedly destroyed it, diminished the warm, and sprightly glow of a home that was overflowing with happiness.

Staring at it now stirred up so many emotions and feelings I had tried to hide all these years.

That, and the bond had resurfaced.

Not in its entirety, but I could feel the pull, the emotions Simon was feeling washing over me. I had tried to tell him that night we fought about my dosage and Michael, but my head was a jumbled mess from the sudden onslaught of his emotions that I couldn't get the words out. Sure, I probably shouldn't have decreased my dose that dramatically, but it had worked, the bond we thought was gone was back. My wolf still was silent as ever, but it had been a start.

I had felt the bond then, and again this morning when he delivered breakfast and I feigned sleep.

Don't forget to eat, the note had read. It was silly, but it almost made me smile. Despite the argument and cold shoulders, Simon was still worried about my eating habits. It amazed me that he was willing to do that, and yet I couldn't even say the words I tried to write down last night. He would wear his emotions on his sleeve and so earnestly, while I struggled to write a mere apology.

And now, standing outside his childhood home where I made the biggest mistake of my life, I could feel the effects of the bond hitting me like a tidal wave, so powerful that it felt like gravity had increased tenfold. It was as if all those years of silencing the culmination of feelings I've hidden, all returned at once.

Every tear, every sob, every pain-staking wail could be felt as I stood in the same spot outside the fence. I could tell he was here, and like that drunken night, I knew I didn't belong here. It was wrong, but knowing he was here, alone in that house, was enough for me to seek him out.

He shouldn't be here alone, not when this place held his darkest memories, held the pack's darkest memories. I knew better than to approach him - to even set foot in that house seemed insolent, but I needed to make sure that he'd be alright. At least in the physical sense, given how much turmoil he was in mentally.

But I wondered why, of all people, Xavier had walked away from him. I had passed him on my way here, and I had tried to stop him, but he brushed past me, almost in a trance.