He was having that dream again.

The old apartment, cramped and dirty and cluttered with all the remnants of things that William Leipold once thought were the signatures of a good time. Empty beer and liquor bottles. A bag of weed on the table next to a resin-stained bong. An ashtray full of cigarette butts. It was a fine place to party, but no place to raise a little boy.

"I'll take care of you," Eddie had said, when William had found out he was pregnant with Eddie's son. "Don't even worry about a thing. We'll live together. We don't need your parents’ money, we don't need shit as long as we've got each other."

William had believed every word Eddie'd said. Of course he had. He was in love with him, and in the end that was all that mattered, wasn't it? Love could triumph over everything. So, of course all the red flags had gone unnoticed. He went along with Eddie. William was eighteen, and it was fine that his parents had disowned him. Eddie would take care of him.

He was in the old apartment. That feeling of being trapped. The doors were shut and locked, the windows barred and draped. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray, the room thick with the acrid smoke. He had to leave. He had to get Nate out of here. Where was his son?

Suddenly, Eddie was there. He was shouting at William, demanding that he stay.

"I'm leaving," William said. "I'm taking Nate. We're finished."

He saw the ashtray hurtling towards his head. He closed his eyes as hot embers peppered his face. He felt the ceramic tray graze his hair and heard it explode against the wall behind him. Then he heard Nate start to cry.

"Dad! Dad!"

William's eyes snapped open, and he felt a surge of panic and disorientation. He looked around. He wasn't in the old apartment, he was in the condo he was renting from his older brother, Parker. Safe. Nate was standing at his bedside, shaking his shoulder. An eight-year-old boy and not the baby from his dream. Scared, but not because of a violent father.

"Dad," Nate said, again. "I had a bad dream."

"Mm," William murmured, sleepily. He reached over to the side table and turned on the light. Nate tugged at William's shirt and rocked nervously from foot to foot. William pushed back the covers and slid out of bed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm "That's okay, bud. C'mon."

They walked through the condo to Nate's bedroom. It was a nice, big place. They each had their own room and their own bathroom. It was a place that he could never have imagined having just a few years ago, and it was all thanks to Parker. His brother had taken him and Nate in to live with him after William had left Eddie, and at first the three of them had shared their family's spare luxury condo, until their parents had found out. They weren't happy to learn that Parker was supporting William against their wishes using family resources, and so they'd cut their eldest son off too.

They'd shared a tiny, one-bedroom place for several years until Parker and his mate started a design firm and began to pull in enough money to buy a condo that William could rent from them. He worked for their firm as an office manager and secretary, and for the first time in his life, felt stable. Both of them were finally independent and free from the shackles of family money that their parents had tried to place on them.

Their parents were part of the Los Angeles elite, their father a Hollywood producer and their mother a famous jewelry designer, and they were so concerned with preserving spotless family values that they were willing to abandon William just because he'd gotten pregnant before being mated. Of course, he knew it wasn't just that. They'd always had a problem with his life choices and the alphas he chose to keep company with, and now that he was older and wiser, William was beginning to see that there were patterns in the type of men who were drawn to him. But age and wisdom didn't do much to help him—he was attracted to them just as much as they were to him, and they always ended up being assholes.

It'd come to a point where it just wasn't worth it anymore. William didn't want to risk the good situation he and his son finally had. He'd had two failed relationships since Eddie, and now he was beginning to come to terms with the idea that he would remain single—at least until Nate was old enough to care for himself. For now, William didn't need an alpha. He didn't want an alpha.

He sat down on the edge of Nate's bed and patted the center of the mattress. "C'mon, get on up." Nate climbed into bed, and William pulled the sheets up to his chin. "Do you want to talk about your bad dream?" he asked.

"There was a monster," he said. "It was trying to get us. It was chasing us, and we couldn't stop it."

"Well," William said, gently stroking Nate's hair, "If a monster really did come, I could stop it. I would give a punch right to the face." William flexed his bicep. "See? Your dad's strong. And you have your lightsaber, right? You can cut it right up."

Nate nodded. "It'd be a lot easier to beat a monster if I had an alpha dad. Like how Lianne has Uncle Kell and Uncle Parker."

William disguised the conflict he felt with a smile. The little boy thankfully had no fondness for Eddie, but he obviously was craving the type of influence that only an alpha could give. "I know. But right now, it's just the two of us. You do agree that things are way better now than they used to be, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, then." He kissed Nate's forehead. "C'mon, you. Get back to sleep. It's a school night."

"Can I have my lightsaber? Just in case."

"Sure." William got Nate's blue lightsaber toy from his toy box and gave it to him. The little boy held on to it like it was a stuffed animal and closed his eyes.

"Night, Dad," he said. "Love you."

"Love you, too," William said.

He got back into his own bed and wondered if he would be able to fall asleep. He was wide awake, now. He hated that the memories of five years ago were still coming to his dreams. And he hated how alone he felt whenever he woke up from these nightmares.