by Olivia Myers
Drake wouldn’t describe himself as an empty shell yet, but there was something wrong with him. Something had completely shattered inside of him.
Over the next three days, Drake had indulged his inner beast. He had completely destroyed the area around him. This room had once been the bedroom that Drake put too much planning into. His most intimate area. The one place that he truly considered home. The place where he had taken Isaac as his mate.
There was nothing left to remind Drake of what this room had meant to him. There was nothing.
A few hours after Isaac had left, Drake stopped being numb. The beast consumed him and lifted him to his feet. He was a whirlwind of destruction until there was nothing left to break. The windows were shattered. The piano demolished. All of the furniture had been torn into unrecognizable shreds. Even priceless books that Drake could never replace were demolished. He had thrown the tv around the room a couple of times before he threw it out the window.
Drake didn’t recognize himself and he didn’t recognize the damage that he’d caused. The beast had taken over Drake completely. Drake didn’t have the will to take his mind and body back over. So Drake sat in the corner of his mind, numb, while he watched the chaos around him.
It took days for the beast to tire. Once he finally did, they were on the floor where they had started. He wasn’t sure how long he lay on the floor this time around. The only thing that made him come back into reality was a knock on the door. Drake was surprised anyone was knocking at all.
Drake picked himself up off the ground and opened the door. Rivers stood on the other side.
“Hi,” Rivers said.
Drake didn’t say anything back to him.
Rivers wrung his hands together. “I think I figured out where the email came from, and it doesn’t make any sense.”
It felt as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped over Drake’s head. He had completely forgotten about the email that he had received earlier this week. The only thing he had been able to think about in days was Isaac.
The startling reality was that Isaac had been in trouble this whole time, and Drake had been doing nothing to protect him.
“Well, where did it come from?” Drake asked. His voice was strained and it was hard to speak at all.
“Here,” Rivers sighed.
“Go check again,” Drake growled. “I’ll come to find you in an hour.”
Rivers nodded and left Drake’s destroyed room without another word.
Drake walked into his bathroom that was relatively untouched from the rest of his room. There were a few holes in the walls, but it wasn’t that bad.
Drake needed a shower before he did anything else. He had been so blind, the beast should’ve never have been in control for so long. Now he was behind and hazy. Vulnerable. He needed the shower to wake him up and force his senses to be his once more.
It was hard to find clothes in the aftermath, but after fifteen minutes Drake finally found something to wear. He threw on the clothes and headed downstairs to check in with Rivers.
All four men had a separate office on the bottom floor of the house. They all had their own duties and responsibilities. Rivers was the most tech savvy out of the four men, and he handed all their electronic business.
Out of all the men that lived in the compound, Rivers was the most open and friendly. Never had there been a moment before now when Drake had seen Rivers's office door closed. Normally it was open, inviting in anyone who wanted. It was surreal to see the door against its frame.
Drake approached the office door and gave a sharp knock. He could hear Rivers go still inside the room. The man was worried and anxious.
A few seconds later, the door was barely cracked open enough for Rivers to see out into the hallway. When he saw Drake standing on the other side he opened the door and quickly waved Drake in.
“What’s going on, Rivers?” Drake asked. This behavior was not normal from Rivers at all.
Rivers nervously made his way back to his desk. When he sat down, it was as if he was too scared to look directly into Drake’s face.
“I traced the email again,” he said.
Drake sat across the desk from him and waited for him to say something else. When Rivers didn’t say anything, Drake prompted, “And?”
Rivers looked as if we wanted to melt into a puddle and not have to be in this situation at all. Drake couldn’t blame him; he felt as if whatever news was coming wasn’t going to be good.
“It definitely came from here,” Rivers said. “I don’t know how or from who, but it definitely came from here.”
Drake had expected himself to have another fit of rage, and by the look on Rivers’s face that’s obviously what he expected, too. But Drake didn’t do that. Instead, he did nothing for a moment.
If anyone would’ve walked into the room they would’ve been greeted with a strange sight. The two men sat across from one another. Not looking at each other. Not talking. Not even moving. They were completely still and silent.
Drake could see Rivers peek at him from the corner of his eye. It was obvious that the man had expected Drake to react in some kind of way, but Drake honestly didn’t know how.
Had one of the triplets betrayed him?
Simply the thought of the occurrence hurt Drake more deeply than he would’ve originally guessed. These were the only people he had ever let close to him. For one of them to betray him would crumble his world.
“It wasn’t me, Drake,” Rivers whispered.
Drake looked up into the man’s face. He seemed sincere enough. But was he telling the truth? It was possible that Rivers would reveal this information just to try and lead Drake away from the conclusion of it being Rivers.
The paranoid thoughts ran through his mind, but he knew the truth. Something about the man’s face made Drake confident in the fact that it definitely wasn’t him. Out of the triplets, Rivers was the least likely to do something such as this.
“I know,” Drake said with a sigh.
And it was the truth.
Undeniably there was a voice in Drake’s head screaming at him not to accept Rivers’s innocence so easily. He shouldn’t be able to trust any of the triplets at this point. There was still a possibility that they were all in on it.
However, he didn’t believe that. Drake believed that Rivers was innocent and he needed someone on his side in a time like this.
Rivers relaxed into his seat slightly at Drake’s confession, then continued, “And I don’t know who it was.”
This wasn’t as easy for Drake to accept. He stared into Rivers’s face, trying to decide if this information was true. The man seemed as if he was telling the truth and not hiding anything. If Drake was going to trust him then he needed to trust him fully.
“I know.”
The question was who would do this? And more importantly to Drake, why? The triplets and himself were a pack. They were all that each other had. What would cause one of them to want to turn on Drake? To play games with him? To cause him bodily harm? It just didn’t make any sense.
“I don’t know who it was, either,” Drake admitted. “I would hate to think it was one of your brothers, but who else could it have been?”
Rivers quickly shifted his eyes away from Drake’s face. “Could it have been Isaac?”
There were plenty of emotions that came along with hearing his mate’s name. There was the despair he was becoming too familiar with. But Drake was also angry at Rivers for accusing his mate of anything close to this.
“Isaac didn’t get here until after this mess. He didn’t know anything about our world or me until after I got stabbed. There was no way that he would’ve been able to send the email from inside the house,” Drake calmly said, no matter the emotions that were raging inside of him.
Rivers had the decency to look embarrassed. “You’re right, Drake. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I guess it’s just hard for me to think that it would be one of my brothers.”
Dr
ake scowled down at the dark wood of the desk. “Yes, it’s the same for me.”
“Well, do you think it was Raider or Rowan?” Rivers asked in a small voice.
Drake shrugged. “It could’ve been both of them for all I know.”
“I just still don’t believe this.”
Drake couldn’t, either. This felt like a betrayal from his own family. He had been very young when he’d lost every single person that he knew. He was alone after that. Shifters weren’t mean to be alone. They were meant to be a part of a community, a pack.
It was a few years before Drake had found the triplets. They were on the run just as he had been, with a similar story and no one left. So he’d taken them in.
He couldn’t believe what he was doing at the time. Drake didn’t like people very much. But there was something about those three boys, and he couldn't leave them to go through what he had gone through. Plus, if he was being honest with himself, there was a part of him that wanted a pack of his own again.
They had traveled around for a while, as Drake was trying to hunt down the one who had taken everything with them. The four men worked together and built their own fortune. They had finally decided they wanted to settle down. They had planned and built the whole compound themselves.
The triplets were his brothers.
Who had betrayed him?
Rivers said, “I just have a hard time believing that either one of my brothers would do something like this.”
“Yeah.” Drake was lost in thought, his chest hurting at the betrayal.
“But I don’t know who else could’ve done it,” Rivers said.
“Me either.”
The two men sat across each other in silence until a knock on the door captured their attention. Drake looked at Rivers with an eyebrow raised and the man just shrugged. Rivers got out of his seat and went to answer the door. He looked just as nervous as he had when he’d opened the door for Drake. It was possible that whoever was on the other side of the door was the one who’d sent the email.
Drake sat as still as possible without trying to seem suspicious. He honestly didn’t want to talk to anyone other than Rivers until they figured everything about.
When the door opened, Drake could hear Raider on the other side.
“I need to speak with Drake,” he said.
Rivers looked over his shoulder for confirmation, to which Drake nodded his head. He had to act like everything was normal, because this was a delicate situation.
Rivers stepped to the side and allowed Raider to come into the office.
“Drake,” Raider said.
“What is it?”
“Isaac’s here.”
Drake didn’t stick around for anyone to say anything else. He’d heard the words that he longed for but never thought would be spoken.
Isaac was back? He was here? Why had he come back?
The why of it honestly didn’t matter to Drake, but he couldn’t stop his mind from racing. He ran out of Rivers’s office and made his way outside. There was a car that he didn’t recognize. It must have been Isaac’s, but there was no one inside of it.
Drake quickly ran through the rooms on the bottom floor to see that Isaac was nowhere. He made his way up to the top floor; he hoped that Isaac hadn’t been inside of the room yet. Drake didn’t want Isaac to see the mess he had made after Isaac had left. There was no one in the hallway. He must already be in the room.
As soon as he made the move to open the door, it opened and Isaac came out.
The moment their eyes connected, Drake was frozen. He was slightly convinced that he had actually gone completely insane after Isaac had left. There was no way the man was standing in front of him. There was no way that his mate had come back for him.
This was all Drake’s imagination. His mind couldn’t cope with Isaac leaving him, so he’d created his own reality instead. One he was happy to live in.
Drake made his way toward Isaac and wrapped him in his arms as tight as he could. He burrowed his face in Isaac’s neck and whispered, “Please never leave me again.”
“I won’t.”
Was this actually real and not a part of Drake’s twisted mind? There seemed like there was only going to be one way to figure it out. Before he could think about not doing it, his lips were on Isaac’s. Their lips entered a dance of desperation and longing.
Drake knew that his imagination wouldn’t have done this perfect of a job in recreating their kisses. Maybe this was real. Maybe Drake wasn’t crazy and he had actually come back to him.
Drake was undoubtedly overjoyed that Isaac had come back to see him. The only problem was that if Isaac was here, he was where the danger was. There was someone in this house who wanted to hurt Drake, which meant hurting his mate as well. Isaac was finally back, but he was in danger.
The beast inside of him roared in a completely different way than he had in the past couple of days. The beast wanted to break free and take Isaac far away from anything that could hurt him. Just like he had when Drake had taken Isaac from the hospital.
The only problem was that Isaac had been through that once and had not handled it well. There was no way he was going to let Drake do it again. Drake had to figure out a way to reason with Isaac and get him out of here and quick.
“What happened to your room?” Isaac asked.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
Chapter Ten
Deciding to leave Ashley to go and be with Drake had been one of the hardest decisions Isaac had ever had to make. He still wasn’t sure if it was the right one. Part of him was convinced that Ashley wouldn’t be bothered by Isaac’s absence. He would still come back whenever she needed him. She would still have an apartment paid for, plus more freedom. Isaac had to keep reminding himself that she was a grown woman, not a little girl.
Isaac took a lot more to Drake’s than he had the time before. He’d brought his own clothes and valuables. He also took his phone and his own car this time.
His foot was heavy against the petal as he drove as fast as traffic would allow him back to Drake’s place. At first, he had been worried that he wouldn’t remember how to get to the compound. After all, the first time he had arrived, Isaac had traveled on the back of a dragon. When he had left, he and been distracted by Rowan and the fact that he was leaving. Yet somehow the drive ended up being like second nature and it wasn’t difficult to find the hidden mansion.
Isaac pulled up to the gates and he wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to get inside. There was a callbox, which was normal but unexpected in Isaac’s opinion. He pressed the button, not sure what was about to happen but hoping for the best.
“Who is it and what do you want?”
The triplets were hard to tell apart, but Isaac was almost positive that he was talking to Raider.
“It’s Isaac. I want to see Drake.”
The line was silent and Isaac was almost sure that he was going to be denied entrance. Right before Isaac was going to cut his losses and drive back home, the gates slowly opened. Isaac drove into the compound and parked in the massive driveway. In one swift movement, he was parked, turned off his car, and was practically running toward the front door.
The gigantic door was already unlocked and Isaac threw it open, sprinting inside. He didn’t stop for one second until he was standing outside of Drake’s bedroom.
Should Isaac knock?
Should he just go inside?
He decided to throw open the door and push inside before he could second guess his actions. When he opened the door, though, he was completely shocked at the state of Drake’s room. When Isaac had left a few days ago, the room had been pristine. Now Isaac didn’t recognize the space. It was completely torn apart and destroyed. Nearly nothing was salvageable.
Isaac’s heart dropped; it was obvious that Drake had been hurting after Isaac left. There was something else he wondered about. Had Drake caused this mess, or had someone else?
Isaac turned out of the room to go and
find someone, anyone. He needed answers.
As soon as he stepped back into the hallway, he saw Drake. His heart pounded with excitement and relief at the sight of the man. The two men froze at the immediate sight of one another. A beat passed before they were both flying into each other’s arms.
Drake’s strong arms wrapped around Isaac and lifted him off of the ground. Isaac clung to the man who somehow provided him with the first sense of peace that he’d had in days.
“Please never leave me again,” Drake whispered against Isaac’s neck, sending shivers down Isaac’s spine.
Isaac choked back the tears that were threatening to well up in his eyes. “I won’t.”
Drake pulled back slightly so he could trap Isaac’s lips within his own. Their kiss was desperate and slightly wet from tears. Their hands pulled at each other’s clothing and hair with complete desperation.
Isaac didn’t understand what was happening between Drake and him, but it wasn’t something he could let go of.
It turned out that Drake did have a guest bedroom on his floor and he took Isaac into the room and out of the hallway. There was something off about Drake, though.
“What happened to your room?” Isaac asked.
Drake turned away from Isaac. “The beast took over.”
“The beast?” Isaac asked, hoping that Drake would explain, but of course, he didn’t. “I’m sorry for leaving, Drake.”
The apology caught Drake’s interest. He turned back to face Isaac before he answered, “Why did you?”
Isaac shook his head and he couldn’t stop the tears this time. “I don’t know. I was scared, maybe. It was a drastic change that I haven’t been expecting or prepared for.”
Drake sighed. “I guess I can understand that. You aren’t from my world, and I’m not sure how I expected you to adapt so quickly.”
“I do agree that we could’ve gone about it differently.”
Drake shook his head. “That wouldn’t have been possible. You were in danger. In fact, you still are.”
