Chapter 14
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Tristan’s POV
Five years. Five long, torturous years since I’d last seen her face.
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Standing in that crowded airport, I scan the sea of passengers flooding through the arrival gates. My palms are sweating, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this nervous. Not even during my first shift had my heart hammered this hard against my ribs.
I’ll to be thirty five next month but, I’m acting like a nervous teenager.
What if she doesn’t want to see me? What if the moment our eyes meet, all she remembers is that night? The night I destroyed everything between us with my stupidity and selfishness.
The night I told her I could only see her as a little sister, right after we’d crossed a line that changed everything. A line we shouldn’t have crossed because I couldn’t control my animalistic desire.
Orion should be here instead of me. He’s her actual brother, the one who has every right to welcome her home. But I’d insisted on coming myself, told him to go with Sarah and the kids, that I’d handle picking Athena up from the airport.
What I didn’t tell him was that I needed to see her first, needed to know if she could stand being in the same space as me before subjecting the whole family to potential awkwardness.
I’ve rehearsed this moment a thousand times in my head. What I’ll say, how I’ll act, whether I should hug her or keep my distance. But now that it’s actually happening, my mind goes completely blank.
Then I see her. All my carefully planned words, all my rehearsed speeches, everything disappears the moment our eyes lock across
that busy terminal.
She stood among the crowd, a small suitcase behind her, and for a moment, I don’t recognize her. This can’t be the vibrant girl who left five years ago. Not this fragile, hollow version of someone I once knew better than myself.
But it’s her eyes that kill me. Those beautiful eyes that used to look at me with such trust, such affection, are now staring at me with confusion and something that might be disappointment.
She was expecting Orion. Of course she was. Her brother, not her brother’s best friend who broke her heart.
The confusion on her face shifts to something unreadable, and I can see her body tense like she’s preparing to bolt.
She’s thin. Too thin. Her clothes hang loose on her frame like they belong to someone else, someone who actually eats regular meals.
Her dark hair, once glossy and full of life, now looks dull and brittle. But it’s the emptiness in those eyes that breaks my heart
completely.
18:25 Fri, Jan 2
Chapter 14
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Those eyes that once sparkled when she looked at me now seem haunted, like she’s seen things no one should ever have to see.
She looks broken, my wolf whispers in my head, his voice filled with an anguish that mirrors my own. Just as we are. Maybe even more.
Yes, she does.
I walk toward her, my feet moving of their own accord, driven by the same protective instinct that’s been there since she was four and I was eleven, since the day our parents first brought us together and told us we were family now.
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Not by blood, but by choice. By love.
When I reach out to take her suitcase, she actually flinches away from my touch.
That single movement, that involuntary recoil from someone who used to seek comfort in my presence, shatters something inside me. She used to run to me whenever she needed someone. Before everything went wrong, before I ruined it all, she trusted me completely.
Our parents had been best friends since childhood. When they died together in that car accident five years ago, it felt like losing two sets of parents. Her mom and dad had been like second parents to me, and my parents had loved Athena like she was their own daughter.
I remember when some asshole from a neighboring pack decided he wanted to force a mating bond on her. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, still figuring out who she was, what she wanted from life.
Unlike other families who rushed their children into mate bonds before they were ready, both our sets of parents always told us to
take our time.
“Find someone who loves your soul, not just your wolf,” her dad used to say. “Find someone who makes you better, not someone who completes you. You should already be complete on your own.”
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will there closeness survive to create a love bond.
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The Biker Alpha Who Became My Second Chance Mate
Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
