Winter Wolf

Chapter 19

Tristan lay on the flat rock in the rain, staring up at the dark sky. Even though it was obscured by the clouds, he could feel the mating moon. The restless energy of his wolf.

He'd ran himself hard. All the way up to that cliff where he'd last seen her. It seemed fitting, ending up there. Where his mind was constantly at these days.

It was cold, but not winter cold. Having spent the majority of the winter camping in the freezing rain as they hunted down the Vargas with Rafe, Byron's beta, and Cecil's Gamma, this felt like nothing. It was spring rain. It was warmer than what he'd got used to.

The land was warming as winter retreated, the nights weren't as biting.

... and these past few months felt like years. For so many reasons.

The Varga's were frustratingly hard to find. It was slow going, hunting them and slowly chipping away at their numbers. They managed to kill a fair amount of their own too. It was almost a seesaw for a while, until finally, the pack wolves got wise of a lot of their tricks. It was the break they needed to catching more of them.

They had rescued some females the week before. Six in total from two different camp raids. Rafe took them in. Tris had managed to talk to them before they were transported two days earlier.

He learned from the youngest one what had happened. Everything.

Lo did escape. Injured. She was stronger than he ever gave her credit for.

Tristan immediately turned his thoughts away lest the anger return. He had been furious for days after everything she told him... and the week of the mating moon just made that anger feel deeper, down to his bones.

Tristan's thoughts inevitably went to home. He was trying to concentrate on anything else than the one thing that had made him run in the first place.

They had gone with almost no contact for the majority of the last four months, aside from letters here and there. Mostly from his mother, a few from his brothers. And one from Emma in the early days. Not a single thing from his father.

Emma had said the same things she had before. At this point... he was truly starting to wonder if she was delusional.

But the thought of his mother's recent letter that he had left in his tent, had him feeling even more frustrated and angry. It hadn't been what snapped him to finally just abandon camp and run, but it had been a factor.

The weight of it all was getting to him.

... and he had no idea where she was.

Regret was hitting him hard now that he hadn't just gone after her the moment he found her on that cliff. Or in the very least, tried to talk to her, found out where she was going...

None of this had occurred to him at the time. The clarity of distance sometimes felt cruel.

His regret ebbed and waned though, like all his other emotions, because wherever she was, she seemed happy. He rarely felt fear, anger or sadness from her anymore.

Feeling her happy made all the discomfort of the hunt bearable. It enabled him to concentrate fully.

Every once in a while he'd feel a spike of sadness from her, or frustration, but it was nothing like the emotions he felt from her when she was with his pack.

It gave him the painful realization that maybe she was better off, far away from there. Away from him.

But the beast inside him didn't want to accept that. Especially not now. Not what he was feeling from her.