Chapter 71
“You think I don’t see it?” I growled. “You want everything that’s mine. The pack, the title…” My voice dropped. “… even her.”
His smug smile vanished. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb with me.” I took a step closer until I could feel the heat radiating off him. “You think I don’t notice the way you look at her when you think I’m not watching?”
His jaw worked, but he didn’t answer. Just that damn silence.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally said, too calm.
Too rehearsed.
That broke something in me.
Before I could think, I grabbed him by the collar and slammed him back against the wall of the old storage hut. The sound cracked through the evening air.
“Don’t you lie to me!” I snarled, breath harsh. “You think you can walk back into this pack and take what you want? You think because I let you breathe my air again, you can reach for her too?”
His hands came up, gripping my wrists but not fighting back… his eyes locked on mine, sharp and bright. “You’re losing your mind, Tristan.”
“I know what I’ve seen!” My claws grazed his shirt as I shoved him harder. “She’s my mate, Kieran. Mine. You’ll never have her.”
Something flickered in his gaze then….hurt, guilt, or maybe pity.
I didn’t want to know which and quite honestly, I didn't care.
“If you're so convinced that she's your maye then maybe….” he said quietly, “....you should spend less time trying to convince yourself of that.”
The words hit harder than a punch, rocking me back slightly.
I barely registered the sound of footsteps until I heard her voice, too caught up in the rage simmering in my body.
“Tristan?”
I froze.
Kieran’s eyes darted over my shoulder, and I turned to see her standing a few feet away, shock carved into her face. Her hair caught the dying light, her hands trembling slightly.
“Isla-” My voice broke as I try to untangle my hands from Kieran's shirt. “It’s not-”
She looked between us, between my grip on his shirt and his clenched jaw, realization dawning.
I let go, stepping back as the silence thickened, the three of us suspended in that awful stillness.
Her eyes found mine again, wide and xinfused. “What are you doing?”
I didn’t have an answer because how exactly can I articulate what I was feeling.
The words refused to come.
Kieran straightened his clothes without looking at me.
The sound of fabric brushing against stone was the only thing between us until the night swallowed it whole.
Isla POV
“Tristan? What's going on? I heard voices….”
My voice was small in the darkness as my eyes bounced between them, as if the name itself might be the last polite thing left in the world.
I had barely time to register the way his chest rose and fell, the way Kieran’s hands went still against the shirt he’d been smoothing, before everything rushed back into how it was before.
Tristan didn’t look at me when he spoke.
His eyes were firmly fixed on the floor, avoiding my gaze. “Isla! You came at the right time… I’ve just decided that…” he said, slow and hard as stone. “Kieran is no longer welcome here. I’m exiling him.”
For a second the words hung in the cold like a proclamation and I didn’t understand how his mouth could make them.
It felt like someone had just dropped a bomb in front of me…
Wait, what?!
My hands curled at my sides as I took one step forward. “Wait, you can’t-” I started, and then stopped because I could already hear the argument forming in my chest but then I continued anyways.
“Tristan, ge fought for this pack. He bled for this pack and he stood between us and the rogues with hands that never asked for thanks. You can’t just send him away!”
Tristan’s face didn’t soften. If anything, it set deeper, like carved wood. “Yes, I can and I will. I have my reasons,” he said. There were no reasons in the shape of that sentence, only claim and consequence.
To my surprise, Kieran threw his head back to let out a peel of laughter…. a sound that I knew to be encased with warmth… was low and rough. “You exile me because you’re afraid.” he said. “Afraid of the thought that I might want the same things you want. Afraid of what you see when Isla looks at me, you're suxh a damn coward.”
The words struck somewhere under my ribs, but not like grief.
Like a splinter. I wanted to deny it, sweep it away, but his sentence was a sharp knives coming closer by some sort of machine that you couldn't stop.
“Enough!” Tristan snapped, and for a moment, I thought he would walk away. Instead he moved toward Kieran with a speed that was all predator and private fury. His hand rose…. a quick, sharp movement meant to intimidate or meant to puncture Kieran’s calm.
I didn’t think, my body carried me across the space and I launched myself between them.
The world shrank to a bubble, thick with the smell of iron and sweat.
Tristan’s hand clipped my shoulder as he passed; Kieran’s fingers brushed my elbow. For a second I was the sum of tugs and pulls… two powerful men fighting for me, one familiar and warm, one dangerous and electric.
It was weird at first until we became scary and I had to put an end to it.
“Stop!” I shouted, because I had to say something louder than the pain that had begun to climb my spine.
Wow I knew Alpha's were powerful but I had no idea the kind of power contained in their bodies.
Nevertheless, I trudged through the pain and pressed my palms against Tristan’s chest, feeling his muscle, the rapid thrum of his heart beneath my fingers. He didn’t pull away.
He simply looked at me, and in that look was an accusation and a question and a surrender all braided together.
“Why are you defending him?” Tristan demanded, his voice raw. “He probably brought the rouges into the pack and after everything that he's done he did, after the way he struts around here like he owns the moon… why would you be supporting him?”
I tasted my own guilt.