This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,90
pack.
As soon as we exit the building onto the busy street outside, I reach for Tristan’s arm and level my gaze with his. “Should you be with your pack right now?”
“I’m right where I need to be,” he replies, breaking my gaze to survey the sidewalk and the oncoming traffic. He ignores the traffic lights and the crosswalk to our left, drawing me across the road when the traffic eases. “My pack will be fine. Sometimes they don’t appreciate what’s best for them.”
I tug him to a stop beside one of the white pillars at the side of the square. “Jace is worried about you. I don’t know what it’s like to have a pack that cares for me, but don’t underestimate his loyalty to you.”
Tristan’s glare is fiercer than I was expecting, his eyebrows drawing down. I sense his inner turmoil, his darkness, before he closes himself off. Even though we’re connected now, we can’t sense each other’s innermost thoughts or the parts of ourselves that we choose to keep secret. For some reason, my comment has ignited a conflict inside him that is deep enough that he’s put up a wall.
“Tristan?”
“That’s close enough, Tessa,” he says.
I sigh. He means I’ve got as close to him as he’s going to let me.
“There are some things you don’t want to know about me.” He raises his gaze from my hand on his arm to my eyes. His own are partially shifted, so suddenly aggressive that I carefully uncurl my fingers.
If he’d looked at me like this yesterday, I would have thought he was about to end me. Today… the faintest sense of anticipation rises inside me. Tristan’s aggression is a weapon that I can use.
“Okay,” I murmur, reminding myself that I’m here for a purpose: to end Baxter Griffin, Peter Nash, and my half-brother. If I take out Cody Griffin at the same time, all the better. “Show me your city.”
We spend most of the morning and early afternoon walking the streets. Tristan takes me to the northernmost bridge first, pointing out all of the weak spots, explaining how difficult it is to protect the border of his territory because of the ease with which vehicles can pass across the bridges. We walk along the wide tree-lined park beside the river, all the way to the South Waterfront before we head farther west, then up through Goose Hill toward the Northwest District.
Tristan tells me that his pack used to be so large that they once lived in both Southwest Portland and up through Cedar Mill, but he had to pull everyone in a year ago because they didn’t have the numbers to defend the bridges anymore.
“My pack would be safer farther west,” he says. “But then we’d leave the bridges vulnerable and Baxter would take control of them. After that, it would only be a matter of time before he backed me into a corner.”
“How many wolves are in your pack now?” I ask.
“We used to be a pack of a thousand wolves,” he says. “Now I have one hundred.”
One thousand wolves is a lot. One hundred is not. The Highland packs have around five hundred wolves each and Baxter Griffin has close to a thousand. Tristan is severely outnumbered.
Every now and then, I glance upward, knowing that Danika is following high above us, even if I can’t see her. I also keep alert for any sign of the white wolf. I haven’t been outside the tower since I saw him, but I’m wary of another surprise encounter—especially when I’m with Tristan. I don’t have any hard and fast answers about whether or not the white wolf is the three-headed wolf that Tristan said is coming for him, but for now, that’s my best theory.
I also don’t know how the white wolf is connected to me. It’s a question that burns at the back of my mind, but I have to put it aside. Right now, all of my energy and attention needs to be focused on where I stand with Tristan.
We grab some food along the way before we stop at the edge of Forest Park. The lush forest calls to me, begging me to explore its secret places. I rise onto the balls of my feet, itching to run, but Tristan takes hold of my arm.
“The forests are out of bounds,” he says, disappointing me. “The most powerful coven was led by a witch named Mother Serena. She and her entire coven were wiped out several years ago.