Alpha Tristan ✓ [Republishing]

Triantaena [ 31 ]

The next time I saw my mother was early into the next afternoon.

Tristan had gone on a meeting with his beta, Christian, which meant I was home alone. I had been deciding how to add a bit of life to the house. While the dark colours he had decorated with had a certain appeal, I noticed that he had no pictures up, not even of his parents. It made the house appear one dimensional with no emotional depth or warmth.

I was in the middle of purchasing picture frames when a knock reverberated through the room. I placed my phone down on the coffee table and jumped up to pull open the door. Two pairs of eyes settled on me and my heart almost dropped to the floor when I caught sight of Matthijs' frown.

"Are you okay?" I could barely finish my sentence before my mother brushed passed me with a stiff smile.

"I-I had to tell him who your father was." The sadness was back in her deep brown eyes. "I'm pretty sure that's a huge dealbreaker for him."

Matthijs' frown deepened. "Dahliah, stop. I just wanted to get a good look at her." His gaze turned to me and there was a heavy silence in the air as his grey eyes seemed to zero in on every inch of my face. He stepped forward and I held my breath at the suddenness of it all.

I knew it would have happened sooner or later, but I was expecting it to be later—much later. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours and they seemed on the verge of their first argument.

"I grew up with your father." Matthijs' voice was deep and quiet. "I witnessed the horrible change in him and all his cruelty. You don't look like you have a bad bone in you, Luna." His eyes were soft and he quickly glanced at my mother. "It isn't a dealbreaker for me. I don't see him in her."

There was a sense of relief that crossed my mother's face. But I watched her closely to see if she would defend him like she always did. I hoped she wouldn't because the last thing Matthijs needed to witness was her fierce loyalty to such a cruel man.

"You grew up with Sam?" there was a wistful undercurrent in her tone and I stilled. "He was a sweet man when I met him. Before I was pregnant with Kara. He loved me—I'm sure of that."

Even if Matthijs said it wasn't a dealbreaker for him, I could tell he was having a hard time coming to terms with it all. I watched him sympathetically.

"I know what kind of man he was. We were friends once. But that was before he turned into a monster. Before he murdered my parents."

I gasped at Matthijs' confession and glanced at my mother to see her expression. Her eyes were wide in shock and she seemed frozen in her spot. Matthijs' eyes held the same haunted look that Tristan's did. He too had lost loved ones at the hands of the cruel alphas.

At that moment, my Luna instincts kicked in and I wrapped my arms around him. He seemed taken aback by the sudden show of affection but after a few long moments, he patted my back.