Wolf Queen - Book 1 of The Nightfall Series

Six

"The male."

Adelaide continued to move swiftly through the forest at a fast walk as her father strolled behind her. She let her eyes wander over various trees and plants as she looked for the signs that pointed them into the right direction. Her breathing deep as her mind thought internally to lock away the beast that had almost slipped.

"What about him?" She asked as she came to a stop.

She picked some bark from a nearby tree, rubbing the coarse material between her fingers. She took a deep lungful of breath as she brought it to her nose, taking in the scent she was searching for.

"You spared him."

Her father had stopped to lean against a tree as he regarded her, chewing on a stem of grass that rested between his lips. She stopped in her search, letting the bark drop to the forest floor with a soft crunch, before turning to her father with a sigh.

All would find it questionable that she had spared the young were. She was known for her ruthlessness. Feral wolves were overruled by instinct, they weren't known for their control. But she was no feral wolf as all liked to believe.

She gave her father a knowing look before letting her body drop to the floor. Her arm resting on her raised knee as she lounged back against the vast trunk of a tree. Her father's talks were never quick.

"I do not kill the innocent." She told him hauntingly with a shrug of her shoulders.

To many innocent lives had already been lost in the past and now the time seemed to be passing again.

She looked away from his eyes and into the forest, letting its depth overtake her ever changing emotions, it brought a calm that not much else could. Her father's emotions overwhelmed her senses as she breathed in. Anger and Sympathy, two emotions so difficult to experience at the same time. He had seen so much and still didn't let his emotions overtake him.

"No, but you have never left a challenger alive." His tone was curious as his eyes also wandered around the world that surrounded them.

"His coward of a father deserved my claws, not him." She bit back, gums aching.

She didn't like speaking of the male, his mind had unsettled her. She had felt the power he held locked up tight, Alpha Heir's always held the power of their father's. Some even sometimes held more. And she had felt far more than she had ever felt before, his dominance was enough to challenge her own. It was something she had never seen before, and it was locked up tightly behind a wall. She didn't understand how or why.

The moon had chosen well, indeed.

"You pulled him into the Tides without permission. He could have lost his mind if you did not have such strong control." He expressed with concern.

She huffed in annoyance at his words. Her mind had never been as controlled as she had led him to believe. Whenever the ritual was performed it chipped away at the wall between herself and her beast, it took sheer will power to keep the swirl of her mind at bay.

The dangers of the Tides had always been made clear to her but her claws ached just thinking about the male. It was as if the action wasn't even her own, a feeling that she was all too familiar with. It was weak however, like a niggle in the back of her mind, a persuasive voice.

"It wasn't me." She told him, ashamed.

Adelaide had always prided herself on the guise of being the perfect warrior, controlled and bloodthirsty. But she wasn't perfect, her father knew well of the struggles she had faced in the past. Her mind wasn't her own.

Her eyes became downcast at her own words as they fell upon silent air. Her father had stood from where he leant against a tree, and she felt the worry come off of him in waves. She didn't like to worry him when he tried to live a peaceful life, she didn't want him to believe he was losing her like he had already lost everyone else.