Page 77 of The Alpha's Broken Oath

“Goddess' sake, what happened here?” Deacon leaps from behind me, kneels where Isabel is, and helps her up.

I can only stumble back against the wall, gasping desperately for breath as Isabel sits on one of my kitchen stools.

“Winter…,” Isabel mumbles weakly.

“Goddess,” panic and Jacob's words have completely left me flustered, but that doesn't excuse my behavior for not getting concerned for Isabel, who's still bleeding.

“I'm so sorry, Isabel. Are you alright? W-what happened?”

In my gut, I know what happened. The truth is in the pudding, and I refuse to see it. I refuse to admit what my mind is telling me.

Isabel takes a minute to form a coherent sentence, and I walk to the fridge to get her a glass of water even though my knees are shaking like my hands.

Deacon, who's now looking around, the realization hitting him that Isabel was attacked, pulls his phone looking at me with a worried gaze,

“I'll call a healer for her.”

I watch as Deacon walks out of the room to call a healer.

Isabel drinks half of the water in the glass, and then, looking at me dejectedly, she whispers the truth weakly, “Your brother…he hit me then…he took them, Winter. I'm so sorry.”

Her words almost knock me down.

I repeat her words in my mind like I haven't heard what she's just said or like I heard her wrong.

I shake my head a couple of times.

“Jake wouldn't…he would never take my boys. He would never…”

I hate the feeling that settles inside me as I connect the dots of what Jacob meant when he said he would take my boys.

I hate it when Deacon comes back to the kitchen and asks, “The healer is on her way. What's wrong? What did Isabel say?”

My brother attacked her. That's what she said.

Jake… my brother attacked her, and he now has Addie and Ash.

“I have to find Jake. I have to find my boys. I have to find them.”

“Jake?” Deacon asks.

“He took them, Deacon. Jake took Ash and Addie. He did this to Isabel. We have to leave Deacon. We have to find him right now!”

“Okay, let's just take a second to figure everything out before we take any action, Winter. For all we know, Jake could have made a mistake and—”

I'm on the verge of collapsing from the horror unfurling right in front of me.

And when Deacon tells me to take a second while my children are, Goddess knows where, betrayal, rage, guilt, and everything bottled inside me combusts.

“Take a second? Taking a second means, Addie and Ash are out there scared and getting hurt! Our children are in danger, Deacon. Jake…Jake took your sons away, and you want to take a fucking second? Adrian and Asher are your sons, and my brother took them away. Don't you understand that? Jake attacked Isabel! He's not…the same Jake we knew. He's changed. What if he…hurts our children?”

I'm sobbing so much that my throat throbs with pain.

I sob even harder when Deacon's hands land on my shoulders.

“I'm sorry. If I…If I told you sooner about them being your…sons, maybe this would never have happened. If I stayed in your mansion with Ash and Addie and heard your side of the story about Crystal that day, maybe…maybe our children wouldn't be with Jake. I'm sorry. This is…all my fault. Our babies are—gone because of me.”

I expect Deacon to get angry at me. To throw words at me for being a neglectful mother.

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