When You Were My Mate (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 69

Chapter 69

The last time Slade Pride called Emris Covenant a friend, they were fourteen years old. Maybe Fifteen. Everyone in Georgia knew Emris was the kid who got snatched.

No one ever understood why a rogue would dare take the heir of Alpha Kael. It was the kind of act that didn’t just break rules but challenged the entire order of power. Rumors spread quickly twisting into different versions of the same question, but no one ever found a real answer.

What they did understand was fear. Families began keeping the kids close, locking doors earlier than usual because if Alpha Kael’s child could be taken, then no one else was out of reach. Weeks turned to months and the favourite son of Alpha Kael Covenant was still nowhere to be found.

Slade remembers the nights more clearly than the days. He woul wake up to low voices in the hallway and sometimes step out just enough to see his father standing with Alpha Kael at strange hours…three in the morning, sometimes just before dawn, sometimes the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.

“We’re going to find him, Kael. We’re not stopping. We’re not giving up.” And the most powerful Alpha in the state would be crying. Not the controlled tears of a man mourning in private, but the ugly, desperate sobs of a father who had no idea what his son was going through. He had to go back to his pack, sit in his chair, act like he was still an Alpha when all he wanted was to tear the world apart with his bare hands until he found his bo

Years passed and no one found Emris.

Until something changed. Slade was twelve when his father got the call. A gamma team from the Lion Pride Pack who were sent overseas to chase leads that had gone cold months ago had picked up a trail. They followed it through three countries, through territories that didn’t answer to any pack, through place wolves weren’t supposed to go. And when they finally found him, he was in a dungeon.

The reports said there were barghests there. Demonic hounds bred for torture, circling him, screaming at him, feeding off his distress. The gammas used whistles to communicate with each other and it triggered Emris into instability because he thought they were his captors.

By the time they brought him home, he wasn’t the same boy who had been taken.

That was how Slade learned what Emris’s weaknesses truly were. They were playing hide and seek in the Covenant pack house months after Emris returned…just kids being kids and someone whistled to signal where they were hiding. Emris dropped. Collapsed right there in with his body seizing, eyes rolling back, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth.

Alpha Kael would come running from a meeting, scooping his son up, and holding him until the trauma passed.

At first, it showed up in small, confusing ways. The boys would play games together, trying to return to something normal, and whistles were part of it-used to signal teams, to call

It became clear, even to children, that Emris had not returned whole,

Being Emris friend was not easy. He didn’t speak much, and when he did, it was brief, like words were something he no longer trusted. Most of the time he stayed quiet, watching, distant in a way that made the other boys uneasy. Slade might have kept his distance too, but his father had told him not to.

“That boy needs someone,” he said. “Just be there.” So Slade did. He sat with Emiris but didn’t push nor ask questions. He just existed in the same space, letting Emris decide if he wanted company.

It didn’t last.

One afternoon, the older boys cornered Emris in the training yard to play and thought it was funny to rip the patch off his eye whose color was abnormal.

Slade tried to stop it until Emris stop it until Emris

1/3

rabbed the closest boy and drove his fist into his face.

MO

17:05 Sat, Apr 11 M

Chapter 69

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The boy screamed as his flattened nose with a crunch. Other kid grabbed at him, tried to pull him off, but Emris was a magnet locked onto his target. He punched through them like they were paper. One boy took a hit to the temple and got unconscious before he hit the ground. Another caught a blow to the throat. The third tried to run and Emris caught him by the collar, spun him around, drove his knee into his stomach so hard the boy doubled over and vomited on the grass.

By the time he was done, three boys were on the ground bleeding, shouting, crying and yelling for help.

Emris stood in the middle of it all and turned to Slade who was the only one left.

He said something Slade never forgot.

“I’ll get back at you when we grow up.”

Slade knew that bastard had hybrid blood in him, so that threat was big, wicked, evil in all its edges. Eventually, they grew apart. Slade left to study at a werewolf academy abroad, and while he was gone, he heard Emris’s father died. Tragically. And surprisingly, in their pack too. His father grieved about it.

Alpha Ronin was the kind of father who didn’t like to tell his kids the dark sides of things. The last time Slade had seen his father shaken like that was when his mom died. So this was a sad event in their pack too.

Fast forward. They both became new adults.

Slade found his mate during the mate carnival the whole country showed up for because doing it in private between packs was getting too limited for people to find their bonds. People needed space to breathe, to bump into each other and let fate do its work.

So packs gathered in a whole city-wide carnival that stretched on for days, and somewhere between the chaos and the cheap lights, Slade found Riley. She was gorgeous, funny, and they clicked like puzzle pieces the universe had been holding onto for the right moment. They started as friends. Amazing, electric friends. The kind you stay up all night talking to. The kind you don’t realize you’re falling for until you’re already in too deep. Then their wolves took over and they melted into the deep calling of their wolves.

But somewhere around the nightlife of being an Alpha’s son, Slade came in contact with Emris. It was at a lounge downtown, the kind with velvet ropes and bass that vibrates in your chest. Eris had a bottle dangling from his fingers, looking like trouble in designer clothes. It had been years since they last saw each other.

Emris stood in his path, blocking him just to be sure he was looking at the same boy who he promised to punish when they grew up. And there, tucked under Slade’s arm, was a pretty girl with a mate bond fresh on her neck.

Emris was petty.

Being the unruly bad boy son of the Covenant Pack, he took whatever he wanted. Eye patch or not, the girls craved him wherever they went. In school, he had girls on their knees with his length in their mouths. When he wasn’t at school, grown- up models, girls his age, even married women were attracted to his dangerous scent. And unfortunately, that scent was not limited to Riley.

At first, she told Slade how much she disliked Emris and his group of fuck boys. She couldn’t stand them. Next thing she knew, it was summer and she was shopping for a soda in a convenience store where Emris paid for her drink.

A conversation started.

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