The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 327

Chapter 327: I Would Find You Every Time

Two years in two minutes. That was how the vision moved.

Gav watched a boy who had his eyes and his instincts and his complete inability to leave things alone grow up beside a girl with white hair, and every year the distance between "I’m keeping her" and "I have a crush on her" got shorter, and the boy still hadn’t noticed.

Tristan at twelve. River at nine.

"Give it back."

"Come and get it, Short Stack."

"Tristan Aelindor, give me my scroll or I will tell your father about the frog."

"Which frog? There have been several frogs. You will need to be specific."

"The frog in Seraphina’s bath."

"That frog was there of its own free will. I had nothing to do with it."

"I watched you put it there."

"You witnessed a frog exercise its freedom. That is a very different thing."

She chased him through three corridors, around two columns, and into the training yard where Lucian was sparring with a wooden sword. Tristan held her scroll above his head, which at twelve was high enough that her nine-year-old arms had zero chance of reaching it.

She punched him in the stomach instead.

He doubled over, wheezing, and she took the scroll from his hand while he was busy remembering how to breathe.

"Thank you," she said, and walked away.

Lucian, still holding his practice sword, looked at Tristan on the ground. "She is getting stronger."

"She is a menace," Tristan wheezed. "I am so proud."

✦✦✦

Thirteen and ten. The garden behind the library.

Tristan was teaching her to climb the wall that separated the formal gardens from the wild gardens, which was forbidden, which was why he was teaching her.

"Foot there. Hand there. Pull."

"I cannot reach."

"You can reach. You are choosing to doubt your arms. Your arms are offended."

"My arms are tired."

"Your arms are warriors. Tell them that."

She made it to the top and sat on the stone ledge with her legs dangling, looking out over the wild garden where the flowers grew without permission and the trees did whatever they wanted.

Tristan climbed up beside her. They sat in silence for a long moment, the kind of silence that belonged to two people who had been in each other’s lives long enough that words were optional equipment.

"Tristan?"

"Mm."

"Thank you for finding me."

He looked at her. She was looking at the garden. The afternoon light caught her white hair and turned it gold at the edges, the way it always did, and his twelve-year-old heart did something it had never done before, a single, hard thump that landed in the center of his chest and stayed there.

"I would find you every time," he said.

✦✦✦

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