The Alpha’s Mute Mate
Episode 23

HUDSON

Everyone leaves us, and we walk further into the forest, all three of us silent.

Both of us men know each other, but Brooke can’t talk, so it’s hard to converse with her.

I wish I could hear her voice.

I could hear Asher sigh in my head, and he felt the same.

We came closer to a boulder, but Jackson had other ideas. “Brooke, did you go to school?” asks Jackson but soon regrets asking that question because the face Brooke gave us was heart-wrenching. Brooke stopped suddenly, which made us both stop in our tracks.

She shook her head and mouthed, “No, never allowed.”

Both Jackson and I looked at her stunned, but it didn’t surprise us, especially with everything that b***h had done to her.

“What do you like doing?” He asked.

“Sketching,” she mouths and looks at me with a smile. “What about you?” she mouths, pointing to both of us.

“I love training,” he says, “your mother loved sketching and painting too.”

Her face lights up at the mention of her mother.

She turns to me. “I like sports, I do a lot of them, but I do like to play the guitar,” I say.

She looks at me stunned and mouths, “What can you play?”

“I can play anything, but I mainly play on my own as I am nervous about what other people will think,” I said to her. “But I can play for you, maybe some time.”

She nodded and smiled.

“Brooke, can I ask a personal question?” Jackson asks. “Where and who did most of the scars come from?”

She looks at him, but her eyes go straight to the ground.

Jackson hands her the notebook and pen.

She opens it and starts to write. We watch her as she starts to scribble down something.

“Why did you ask her that question?” I asked him through the mind link.

He looked at me. “Hear me out; Willow mentioned that she was being held in a house with five men. I wanted to know if any of them hurt her. Not only that, I think the rogue that killed her mother might have been one of them.”

I looked back at him but turned to see Brooke staring at us with the notebook facing us to read. “Most of the scars were done by a belt by Aubrey, but the thick one on my arm was done by one of the men. He entered the basement and tried to take advantage of me, but Austin hurt him. He left him a nasty scar under his eye. That one incident made Aubrey throw Austin out that night, and I didn’t see Austin till we moved into a new house.”

Some man tried to take advantage of my mate. When I read that, Jackson and I growled. Asher was up on all fours, growling loudly in my head.

“Did you see him again? I mean the men,” asks Jackson. She looked at him for a moment, trying to remember, but she shrugged and wrote in the notebook, “I can’t remember when Aubrey did that to me.” She pointed to her head, “I think I lost most memories of being with them too, but I do remember the house we stayed in.”

We looked at her; she looked around till her eyes landed on the boulder to our side. Brooke walked over, sat with her notebook on her lap and pen, and began to move the pen over the notebook.

Both Jackson and I looked at each other.

“What is she doing?” I asked.

“Brooke is sketching the man and the house that she can remember,” came a voice from Brooke; black orbs looked straight at us for a moment.

Willow.

“She remembers some things but not a lot,” she says, and Brooke closes her eyes, and when she opens them, her blue eyes look at us.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Brooke.

“I will go and make sure everything is set up for food,” blurts Jackson.

I looked at him, confused. “She will be here for a little while if she is anything like her mother when she sketches. But you both need to be with each other too,” he said.

I smiled at him and nodded.

Jackson took off, and I turned to face my mate, who was looking at me. She smiles and points to the boulder next to her. I walked over and sat next to her. My arm accidentally touches hers and tingles adventure up my arms and down my spine.

Brooke looks up at me, shocked. Did she feel them too, I wonder.

I sat on the side and looked over her shoulder to see a man’s face; the scar is deep like hers on her arm was featured under his eye as she told us.

Her plaster on her arm looked like it’s seen better days. I guess it will be ready to come off now.

I wondered if Austin knew anything about this. I opened a mind link to him. “Austin, do you remember a house with five men when you first left with Brooke?” I asked.

“Yeah, I do. It was a shabby house. They put Madison and me in the big house but stored Brooke in an outhouse, and it had a basement of some kind. We were never allowed to go there. Does Brooke remember them?” He asked.

“Yeah, she is sketching one of the men now. He took advantage of her, but you stopped it,” I said.

“I went into the house as most of them were out except for him, I found him down in the basement with Brooke, and he was on top of her. She was struggling to get him off her,” he says as I hear a snarl come through. “I grabbed him and sliced him with a silver blade. I got him deep too, under the eye,” sounding satisfied with himself. “Hudson, the man that did that, was Madison’s father.”

“What do you mean Madison’s father? Isn’t he yours as well” I asked, but he returned with a growl. “NO, that monster is Aubrey’s mate, the rogue. He killed my father when I was young. I found out about him and everything when I left for college. Aubrey was happy to tell me about my father and what happened,” he said. “I think we should meet in my father’s office and talk about it,” I said. “You can see the sketch of the man that Brooke has drawn and make sure it is the rogue. I think it might be a bit of a shock for her to know she has met him before. He was the one that gave her that scar on her neck.”

“Hudson, that man knew who Brooke was; I remembered something when you just mentioned her scar. That scar was his masterpiece. I remember sneaking to the outside of Aubrey and his bedroom; they talked about the night he attacked her mother and Brooke. They were horrible people, Hudson, and I want to kill them,” he says.

“What about Madison?” I asked, as I knew she was his sister, but I wondered if it had changed.

He laughs through the mind link. “She will be the first to die. I discovered that night we were rescuing Brooke that Madison was mated to another werewolf, but she rejected him as she didn’t want him. He was more than happy to accept her rejection as he thought she was too high maintenance for him.”

I chuckled, which earned a look from Brooke, who had been looking at me for a while, but she quickly turned the page over and carried on with the sketch of the man.

“Hudson, we need to replace out who that mate was?” He said suddenly, which confused me. “Why would we want to?”

“I think he might be able to tell us something. The rogue and Aubrey were always planning schemes. They might have done something against him. He might help us,” he says.

I feel like he is not telling me something.

“Austin, what aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

The mind link goes quiet for a few moments. “Hudson, while you have been dealing with Kelsey and looking after Brooke, everything basically. I found someone on Facebook who had been looking for Madison. She contacted me through messenger, and we have been talking. I have just picked her up now,” he says. “I thought at first it might be Madison or even the rogue or Aubrey trying to reach out to me, but it was her. She’s human. Her name is Amy, I’m bringing her back to the pack house, and Hudson, she knows about our kind, but she also knows you.”

I stared out; I didn’t know a Amy.

I search my mind till something clicks in my head.

Wait.

It can’t be her, surely.

“Austin is her full name Amy Harrison,” I asked him.

“Yeah, you definitely know her,” he asked. “Don’t bring her here; I will meet you at the pack gates?” I said. “In 20 minutes.”

I looked at Brooke, who had now closed her notebook, looking back at me.

“Let’s go back; someone’s mind link me saying food is almost ready, and I have to meet someone,” I told her.

She smiles and nods, jumping off the boulder. We walked next to each other.

The packhouse wasn’t far from us.

I opened a mind link to Rex. “Rex, Can you meet me by steps and tell Jackson to meet Brooke,” I said.

“Yeah, sure, what’s going on?” he asked.

We went to the clearing, and I spotted him outside with Jackson.

“Amy Harrison,” I said.

He turned and looked in my direction; I could tell by the look on his face he was not happy to hear that name.

As we get to the packhouse, Jackson is waiting, smiling at his daughter.

“Brooke, I will be back soon; I have to do something with Rex,” I said, turning to her as she walked towards Jackson.

She smiles and nods, and she waves at me.

I turned in the direction of the pack gates.