The Biker Alpha Who Became My Second Chance Mate Chapter 11

Tristan's POV

Five years. Five long, torturous years since I'd last seen her face.

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.

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.

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."

All three of us – Orion, Athena, and I – took that advice to heart. We didn't rush into anything, didn't let the pack's whispers and expectations pressure us into making hasty decisions.

Orion was the first to actually let himself feel a real mate bond when he met Sarah, but even that took time.

When that piece of shit started stalking Athena, showing up at her school, following her around town and telling everyone she was his intended mate, she came to me in tears.

"Tris," she'd sobbed, using that special name she only called me when she was really scared. "He won't leave me alone. He says the Moon Goddess told him I'm his mate, but I don't feel anything for him. I don't want him. Please help me."

I'd seen red. Orion and I both did. We found that bastard at his favorite bar, surrounded by his buddies, bragging about how he was going to "claim" Athena whether she wanted it or not.

The beating we gave him put him in the hospital for three weeks. After that, whenever he so much as caught a glimpse of Athena across town, he'd run in the opposite direction.

She was like a little sister to me, or at least that's what I kept telling myself. That's what I was supposed to feel. Seven years older, practically raised together after our parents became inseparable.

I was supposed to be her protector, her big brother figure. No one had the right to treat her like property, like something to be claimed and owned.

But feeling her here now, so close I could reach out and touch her, it's clear this isn't the same Athena who left five years ago. This isn't the girl who used to laugh until she cried, who used to steal cookies from the kitchen when she thought no one was looking, who used to fall asleep on the couch between Orion and me during movie nights.

This isn't the girl who looked at me with such trust and love on the night of our parents' funeral, when grief and loneliness and too much whiskey made us both forget who we were supposed to be to each other.

The memory hits me like a physical blow. Her soft hands on my face, wiping away tears I didn't even know I was crying. The way she whispered my name like it was her best album. How right it felt to hold her, to kiss her, to pretend for just that moment that she wasn't off-limits.

And then we came, and reality crashed down on both of us. The guilt, the confusion, the knowledge that I'd crossed a line I could never uncross.

So I did what I do best. I ran. I told her it was a mistake, that I could only see her as a little sister, that what happened between us could never happen again.

I still don't know if that's why she left. Was it because of what I said, or because losing our parents was too much to bear? The not knowing has been eating me alive for five years.

Is this broken version of her because of our parents' death? Is that why she's like this? Or is there something else, something that happened during those five years she was gone, something that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with whoever put that haunted look in her eyes?

The questions burn in my throat, but I swallow them down. She's not ready for questions. Hell, I'm not ready for the answers.

When we get home, I walk behind her, watching the careful way she moves. Like she's afraid the ground might give way beneath her feet at any moment. Like she's expecting something terrible to happen with every step she takes.

It's painful to watch, this shell of the person who used to bound up her parents stairs three at a time, always in a hurry to get somewhere, to do something, to live.

I want to ask her what happened. I want to demand answers, to find whoever did this to her and make them pay. But I know that's not what she needs right now. She needs time. She needs to learn to trust me again, and when she's ready, she'll open up. At least, I hope she will.

The next day, when she asks to come with me to the repair store, not sure I can call it that anymore, since Orion and I had made it huge...... every instinct I have screams at me to say no.

She looks exhausted, like she hasn't had a good night's sleep in months. The dark circles under her eyes tell a story I'm not sure I want to hear. She needs rest, needs to feel safe enough to let her guard down.

But then I look into those empty eyes and realize that rest isn't what she needs. Not really. She's been away for five years, five years too long. She needs to be surrounded by love again. She needs to know that her family still wants her, that Orion and I still care about her like we always have.

So I nod and tell her she could come along, ignoring the way my wolf whimpers with worry.

The ride to town is tense. She sits behind me on the bike, her hands gripping my jacket like a lifeline, but I can feel how rigid she is, how her whole body seems braced for impact.

Every time I lean into a turn, her grip tightens, and I can practically feel her fear radiating through her touch.

At the company, I try to keep things normal, casual. I took her to the office we'd kept for her since we built this place.

We always hoped she'd find her way back to us. And we're glad she decided to come back.

The next few days goes like a blur, Ath was going back to the woman she was before five years ago.