Page 62 of The Enforcers: NOAH

Chapter 24

Mina huddled into Noah’s arms, unable to take the story any further. It was still too raw, the newly recovered memories too fresh.

Noah held her to him, supporting her with his warmth and strength and caring. She knew what a struggle it was for him, and it meant even more to her because of that.

“I don’t get it,” he said now to Tristan. “What made you show up in Alaska? How did you know the pack was going to be attacked?”

Tristan sighed and sank down into the couch cushions, picking at the torn leather on the edges of the giant claw marks.

“It’s kind of a long story,” he said, his voice low. “But maybe it’s time I told somebody.”

Tank gave a low rumble in his chest, a sound of sympathy and encouragement. Tristan gave him a tired half-smile.

“My family was originally from that Alaska pack. The wolves there are unique, like Mina said. We can do things…” he trailed off, his gaze far away.

“Things other wolves, other shifters, can’t. Those powers caused us to be hunted down, not just by humans, but other shifters. The pack ended up in isolation, but that caused its own problems. Too small a gene pool, too much interbreeding, made some of them mentally unstable. Others had compromised immune systems, weakened healing ability…”

He said to Mina, “That must have been what Justin was trying to fix.”

She nodded.

“About forty years ago,” he went on, “there was a division in the pack. Some wanted to stay isolated, keep the bloodlines pure so the old powers wouldn’t be lost. Others wanted to mix with other wolves, believing that keeping the bloodlines pure wouldn’t do anyone any good if they all died out.

“Finally, the fighting got so bad that about a third of the pack left, and settled in different places in the Lower 48. My family was part of that group. My parents went to Montana and joined a small pack in the mountains. My sister and I were born there.”

Mina saw Noah exchange a look with Flynn that she didn’t understand.

Tristan went on, “Everything was fine until I was twenty. Then, someone started hunting down the former members of the Alaska pack.”

He sighed, sinking further down into the huge couch. “We never knew how they found out who we were or where we lived. But one by one, the families we knew started dropping out of touch, disappearing. I remember hearing my parents talking late into the night, trying to decide if we were safer where we were, or if we should move on, maybe change our names and start over.”

Tristan looked as though the couch were swallowing him up, as if he’d shrunk in on himself, his very essence worn away.

Mina held her breath, knowing the story wasn’t going to have a happy ending, but knowing that, like her, he had to tell it. He needed it to be heard.

“They came for us in the middle of the night. The Beckenham brothers, and Jake Carson, and a couple of hired guns. Somehow they got through our pack boundaries, past our sentries. No one knew—no one came to help us.

“We fought with everything we had. My dad and mom—when they saw we weren’t going to make it, they told me to get my sister out. She was only sixteen,” he said, his voice catching.

He stayed quiet a moment, just breathing, clearly gathering the courage to go on. “My parents stayed behind to cover our escape.”

Mina caught her breath, tears gathering in her eyes at the thought of Tristan losing his family in such a brutal way.

He went on, his voice low. “The Beckenhams tracked us through three states. I kept changing our route, going in different directions to throw them off the trail, but they always found us again. Finally, in Idaho, they caught up with us. Terin—my sister—was hurt, and they were tracking us through the woods. I knew it was only a matter of time before they’d catch us.”

He looked at Mina. “One of the abilities our pack had was to heal people’s minds and recover lost memories. The darker side of that is that we can also blur memories, or erase them.”

Mina froze. Was that what had happened to her? Had someone made her not remember? Tristan? Or someone else?

Could it possibly be that it wasn’t her fault?

He looked down at his hands, picking at a scab on his wrist. “I hid Terin in a cave and I—I took her memories. Everything. I knew I had to draw the Beckenhams away from her, and I hoped that if she didn’t remember me, she wouldn’t come looking, and the Beckenhams would never find her.”

The scab ripped, and blood began to trickle down his arm. “It was a crazy thing to do. I didn’t even know if she would survive it, but…I was desperate. I knew what they would do to her… Anyway, I left her there and led the hunters in the opposite direction, all the way back to Montana. Finally, they caught me. I killed Neil Beckenham, the younger brother, but in the end they took me down.”

He caught the trickle of blood with his finger and drew lines up his arm, one after the other. Bloody lines like razor cuts.

“They had me for over six years,” Tristan said. “Carson liked experimenting on me, and Beckenham just wanted to see me suffer. I wished to hell he’d just kill me, but he knew that would end it, so he didn’t.”