After the execution of Lily, Ashton along with Hava and the baby surrounded the young man who had tried saving Lily in a room.
“I have never seen you before, who the hell are you?” Ashton asked, he was surprised to see a total stranger struggling to save Lily making him wonder who he really was.
“You caused this, I could have saved my mate from dying” the man replied and they were startled to find out that the stranger was Lily’s mate.
“You are Lily’s mate?” Hava asked again to confirm if what she heard was really true.
“Her name is Lily” the man answered taking his dead mate’s name as such a beautiful name, too bad he wasn’t able to save her but he knew why he couldn’t.
“You haven’t answered my question?” Hava raised her voice at him.
“Yes, I knew it from the moment I saw her” he said. The young man may not feel any emotional pain from watching his mate get killed because he was meeting her for the first time but he was still hurt to watch such a scene happen in front of him and he couldn’t do anything to save her.
“You let me watch my mate die, I could have saved her” he yelled at Ashton blaming him for what happened.
“I saved your life, do you think you would have been able to reach her if I hadn’t stopped you. You would have been killed before you even got to her” Ashton stated. He considered what he did as an act of the saving the man’s life, he was certain that Alpha Reid wouldn’t have spared his life if he tried to free Lily claiming she was his mate.
“Lily committed a grievous offense, as the mistress of the Alpha she was supposed to stay loyal to him but she had an affair with the chief guard and got pregnant.
They even went as far as deceiving the Alpha that the child was his and when the Alpha found out, he had the chief guard beheaded and she executed as you had seen earlier. There is no way you could have been able to save her” Ashton added but he felt like he was telling a story more about himself because he had also committed the same crime Richard and Lily committed by making Hava pregnant.
Hearing the crime of his mate, the man calmed down and realized that he couldn’t have done much for his mate anyways and would have only gotten himself killed just as Ashton had told him.
“Luckily Lily was able to give birth before she was brutally executed” Hava informed him and he cast his eyes on the baby in her arms.
“Is that the child?” He asked with a soft gaze.
“Yes, his name is Richard” she answered. The man stood up and moved towards her, he stared at the child with an affectionate gaze.
“He is beautiful” he remarked.
“I think it is time for you to return to where you came from and hope that the moon goddess gives you a second mate” Ashton instructed him.
Since he had witnessed the death of his mate maybe he might be lucky to have another mate.
“I don’t believe in second chance mate, I believe Lily was the only woman meant for me and I will cherish her death by staying alone” he said much to the surprise. Ashton had never heard such nonsense before but he applauded the man for his bravery within him.
“As you wish” he said and turned to leave with Hava.
“Can I?” The man asked interrupting them as they paused to hear what he had to say.
“Can I keep the child?” The man asked.
“Why?” Ashton asked back.
“Since my mate is dead, the child is all that I have to cherish her and remember her” he said.
“No” Ashton immediately rejected the offer.
The man moved closer to them and went on his knees, he grabbed Ashton’s right hand and placed it in his head.
“I swear on my life that I would never harm the child and I will always be a good father to him.
Please give me this opportunity, I may not have been there for my mate but please let me be there for her child. I will treat him as my own until the day I breath my last breath” he swore to them.
Ashton turned to Hava to hear what she had to say and she nodded her head to give the child to him. He had initially thought of keeping the child in an orphanage since he had his own troubles to worry about.
“Fine then but if I find out that you harm this child in any ways then I will kill you and take him back” he strictly warned him.
“So be it” the man replied.
Hava gave little Richard to him as they watched him carry the child in his arms, his gaze on the baby was so tender that they believed he had no ill intentions towards the child.
“There is curfew this night because the guards are searching for the baby, if you can keep him hidden until the next morning then you can escape safely from this pack” Ashton instructed him.
“Thank you very much, I will never forget your kindness towards me” the man replied and then left.
Ashton watched him walk away for a while before he heard sobs beside him, he turned to Hava and saw her crying, he wondered what was wrong.
“Are you crying because you don’t want the child to go?” He asked her. He thought she had gotten attached to the child because she was also pregnant too.
“No, I am scared. Am I going to suffer the same fate as Lily. Am I going to watch you die and my child be taken away from me.
I don’t want what happened to them to happen to us” she cried out to him her fears. She may not have showed it before but all that was happening to Lily had taken a toll on her and she felt she would experience the same fate.
“I wouldn’t let such a thing happen to you Hava, I had promised you that we will escape from here safely and trust me we will do just that” he assured her still having the plan of escaping from the pack and Alpha Reid always in his mind. He was also scared too that he might get caught and be treated the same way Richard was treated.
“Maybe when we run away we can go to my father’s pack, he will protect us” she said.
“Your father can’t save us, remember what happened when he came to visit you. He was kicked out of the pack without being given the chance to take you with him and till now he hasn’t been able to come back.
The crescent moon pack would be the first place Alpha Reid would go in search of us” Ashton reminded her, he knew that her father couldn’t save them and their pack couldn’t protect them. It was pointless going there because they would get caught, he could remember how Alpha Nathan had begged him to save Hava and that only showed him how superior Alpha Reid was to him.
“Then where do we go?” She asked him.
“You leave that to me okay, I will worry about taking us out of here” he hugged her tightly kissing her head. His dear mate was in so much fear because of the predicament they were in and he hated that fact.
“And Alpha Reid, he still thinks the child is his” she reminded him.
“I know, please try to stay away from him as much as possible while I make a plan to get us out of here and please by all means do not provoke Rebecca. She is already pissed off with us thinking we stabbed her in the back” he warned her and she took his to his advice.
He gently wiped her tears making her know that he would always be there for her.