Winter Wolf

Chapter 9

She looked deeply troubled, but she gave him a slight nod.

It was silent for a moment. The air felt tense.

"Now... if you could all leave us, I need a word with my son," Ada said with a firm tone Tristan knew all too well. He felt the eyes of all his siblings, but no one lingered. They all left.

As the door clanged shut, another tense silence followed. It felt like almost a minute had passed before his mother finally spoke.

"You insult me," Ada said with a hard tone. Tristan expected this.

"I raised you better than this. You really would choose to scoff at all my teachings?" Ada growled.

"It's not like that-" He began.

"Then explain." Ada interrupted with that hard tone he knew all too well. He felt the fury of his mother in the look she was giving him, and the wolf inside him flinched slightly reacting to hers.

She was both his mother and his Alpha. His wolf would always recognize her authority.

"I'm sure dad already told you everything," Tristan said with an even tone.

"I want to hear it from you." Ada said harshly. Tristan stared at her for a moment, before he had to look away to gather his thoughts. He was expecting this interrogation, and yet he still somehow felt unprepared.

His mother had a way of doing that to him.

"I don't think I can ever look at her without seeing her father." Tristan began; it was the first of many things. Ada stared at him judgmentally hard.

"And that's it?" Ada growled. Tristan couldn't help the annoyance that was building.

"No. You have not met her... you have not seen her. She's... damaged. I don't know if she can ever recover from everything she's gone through. She's far from Alpha worthy and father can't even look at her without hatred. How am I to fix her and run a pack?" Tristan growled.

A brief moment of tense silence followed. His mother's hard gaze stayed on him the entire time.

"You do it with patience.... and love. She is your gifted. Fate has chosen this course for you for a reason. Ten of those females you sent home to us had mates in our pack. And unlike you, the acceptance they received from their males has already done wonders for their healing in just these past two weeks. We hope the ones we are sending back to their birth packs may be so lucky." Ada said.

Tristan glanced away from her. A dash of guilt spiked through him, and the image of the distress on Lo's face surfaced in his memory.

But in that same moment the thought of those females... and of Alik purposely taking marked wolves and keeping from their gifted... how many lives he had ruined, spiked his anger.

"You are stubborn my son, I know because you got it from both of us, but your mate is a gift, something incredibly special you will never get again... and Tris, it will be devastating to you as well if you don't leave your chosen and accept her. It will kill you inside, slowly." Ada said.

Tristan had already decided on not staying with Emma long term... he couldn't. It just wasn't possible. His wolf would never let him. If this last week had shown him anything that had been made blatantly clear to him. So he didn't understand why her words were agitating him so much.

He felt restless. Angry.

"What about the treaty? We can't break it now." Tristan said firmly.

"You can barely stand Emma now, can't you? Don't deny it, I saw it." Ada said. Tristan grit his teeth and looked out the window.