Page 59 of The Alpha's Stolen Mate

My first instinct was to jump into the water, but I resisted the urge, knowing that Gabriel would be able to pull him out, and I needed to be ready to administer CPR if my son needed it. Instead, I kneeled down and thrust my arms forward, ready to help Grayson out of the pool.

Grayson's arms were still wildly swinging, not realizing that his dad was trying to save him. One of his elbows smashed into Gabriel's nose, and it immediately began to bleed. But Gabriel didn’t even flinch. Bright red blood flowed down Gabriel's face as he handed me Grayson, who had just now realized we were trying to help, and had stopped struggling.

When Gabriel handed me our son, I cried with relief. Adrenaline made my son weightless as I pulled him out of the pool and onto the concrete.

Grayson began to cough up water, his face red, his hazel eyes wide.

I scanned his face, checking to see if I needed to do CPR.

My shoulders sank with relief when I realized he was breathing.

Aunt Mia rushed up to us, Goose tried to lick Grayson’s face, and Gabriel came out of the pool dripping water and blood.

But the only thing I could focus on was my son.

“Grayson, sweetheart, can you speak?” I asked, rubbing his back. “Are you all right?”

“I…think so,” my son said and coughed again.

Gabriel kneeled down and put a protective arm around Grayson’s shoulder.

“Son? Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah…I think…I am, Dad.” Grayson cleared his throat and tucked himself closer to his father.

For a moment, the three of us sat there, catching our breath.

***

“If we watch him sleep all night, would that be creepy?” Gabriel asked from behind me.

“No, not at all. But I’m probably biased,” I answered.

We were in the doorway of Grayson’s room, looking in on our son peacefully asleep. Goose was stretched out on the foot of his bed. It was hours after Grayson had fallen into the pool, and after a quick trip to the compound hospital, he was deemed perfectly healthy. Gabriel was told that his nose might be broken, but he waved off the healers and set it back in place himself after he cleaned himself up.

A clean bill of health for our son didn’t stop Gabriel and me from standing outside his doorway for nearly an hour after he fell asleep, watching over him.

“How did he fall into the pool?” Gabriel muttered.

“He said he was running around chasing after Goose and wasn’t looking where he was going. He didn’t know he had been close to the pool,” I replied.

Gabriel sighed.

“Tonight could have been so much worse. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened if he tripped and hit his head on the concrete…” His voice was thick with worry.

“You’ll drive yourself insane if you think about everything that could go wrong,” I warned him. “It makes you never want to let him leave the house.”

“When I think about the possible dangers, it makes me want to never let him leave this room.”

“Welcome to being a parent,” I said dryly.

Without even thinking about it, I leaned back and rested against him, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Gabriel froze for a moment, then hugged me from behind.

“We should, um, let him get some sleep,” I said and softly closed Grayson’s door.

When I stepped out of his embrace, my body screamed at me in protest. I still didn’t know if I wanted to pursue anything with him. My issues with trusting him hadn’t changed overnight. And it also seemed silly to think about these things when our son could have been seriously injured tonight, my father was in a life-threatening coma, and we still had Axel and the Rogue threat to worry about.

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