Healing His Mate

Chapter 16

Aaliyah POV

I pace for hours as I wait for Aaron to return. I feel anxious as different scenarios run around my mind.

What if he doesn't come back? What if he's hurt or worse? What if the hunters took him?

"Oh, honey. You can't think about worse case scenarios."

I turn to the door of the bedroom to see Zea standing in the entryway. She gives me a knowing look as her lips lift up in a smile.

"Aaron will be fine," she reassures me, "He is the strongest warrior in our pack and he isn't alone. Trust me."

I rub the inside of my wrist again as my nerves continue. Strong or not, he could still get hurt.

"Come with me, angel. I'll help you take your mind off of it."

She walks over to me and wraps her arm around me. Her embrace reminds me of my mom as she guides me out of the room and down the stairs. When we get to the living room, she tells me to sit and goes over to the bookshelf.

She sits down next to me with a giant book in her hands, "Aaron will probably want to kill me when he finds out I showed you this, but as a mom, it is my job to embarrass him as much as possible."

I laugh quietly at her statement before opening the cover. Looking at the first page, I immediately recognize the book as a childhood scrapbook.

She jumps into telling me story after story about Aaron growing up. I know she's just telling me these stories to distract me from thinking about Aaron and the hunters. But as she explains a picture of Aaron in the bottom half of a horse costume, my worry lessons with the distraction.

After about an hour, Zea gets up to make us some hot chocolate. I sit quietly on the couch, curled up under a blanket with a different one of Zea's photo albums on my lap.

She'd mentioned earlier that she's hoping that I will open up to Aaron and finally talk. She has no idea that I want to talk to Aaron. I want to tell him everything that I've gone through in the last few years. I want to show him that I trust him.

She has no idea that as much as I want to talk, I physically can't.

I'm so wrapped in the thought, I don't hear the door open. I feel a spark as someone places their hands onto my shoulders and leans forward.

"I'm back, angel," he whispers in my ear.

I get up and run around the couch until I can throw myself into his arms. I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. He keeps his hands under my legs as I bury my head into his throat. I calm as I breathe in his scent.

He chuckles at my reaction but lets me continue to hold on.

"I'm okay," he reassures me, "We're safe."

He moves us back to sit on the couch. I keep myself wrapped around him even when he sits on the cushion, so he just lifts the blanket I had been using and throws it over both of us.

I lift my face up and look into his eyes as I wait for him to tell me what happened.

"We found our trackers. There were some injuries, but they are going to be fine," he says, "We were able to capture one of the hunters."

I'm shocked as he says that. They captured a hunter. A hunter is here.

I feel my heartbeat speed up as fear rises in me.

"Shh, angel. It's alright," he kisses my cheek and then my jaw to calm me down, "The hunter is in the pack cells. I promise he will not be leaving there alive."