Reincarnated into a Snow Griffin-Chapter 160

He goes straight to the point, no chitchat or anything, and I appreciate the bluntness like never before.

"You clearly wouldn’t be here if something had not happened to her, and if you did not really really needed my help." He says, and I dark part of me is glad that I had made the way I feel about him so clear, and yet him saying things like this is almost as if I am in the wrong here though, like I’m bullying him or something, and that thought hardness my heart to any of this silly father attitude, especially for what I am to say next as it reminds me of why I hated him so much in the first place.

"She was kidnapped. All the High Land was, stolen from us by a despicable lion griffin named Heavenclaw, and not only he took mother for himself but did this to me." I say, pushing my hair aside and showing the now faint scar on the side of my head where he took my guiding crystal without ceremony. "So I cannot find my way back there all these years."

A single short line that resumes so much to so little, all the anger, the fear and sadness put together in a small sentence that almost made it all feel so unreal, like a bad joke even.

And as much as I did not care nor wanted anything to do with this father of mine I still find myself waiting, watching for a reaction, and I think I would be satisfied to see surprise, horror, even anger, but the lack of any sort of response set ablaze my so far contained anger towards him with renew strength and fuel.

"What...? That’s it? No surprise, nothing? Did you even ever worry about her, about us at all?" My anger escalates with my voice, and fighting it back only makes me grit my teeth and almost growl back.

"I trust she will be alright, she is a strong woman." He says, going back to that poker neutral face that blocks my outburst against him, which only makes me cool down into a burning freezing point, but what he says next is as sharp as it is thoughtless: "I did not think you would have such little faith in her."

I would like to have, at that moment, been able to keep my cool and behave like the adult that I am, so proud of my ability to rationally the situation and keep an even head even in the worst case scenarios, but mother has always been a sensitive subject for me and to hear the man I despised talk about her in such a way, to brush off her suffering and mine like it was nothing, to talk like that to me, the son he abandoned... Is what it takes to make any man lose their cool.

And I realize how much of flesh and bones I was truly made at that point, of fangs and claws.

"Who are you to talk to me like that? To talk about mother like that?" The fact that I should not cross him as I still need his help flowed from my mind at that moment as he seemed to have a gift for getting on my nerves in a bad way, his mere presence making me fume even if so akin to my normal self. "Mother is strong, she is, the strongest person I have ever known, but even her has her weakness, even her can be hurt and feel sad and in the end she almost lost me right in front of her because you were not there, you rather stay away from your family and when they needed you, when we needed you all was lost and you still think you can come and question my fucking believe in her?! Do you think I would have spent all these years searching for a way back there to save her if I did not believe she is still alive and fighting to survive alone there?! How dare you!"

After that my own words simply fail as all becomes a blur as we start screaming at each other, fighting for simply fighting, with no more reason as all the tension and anger that I felt all over these years overflows and, with a clear target, aim for the throat as we trash each other out, beak and claws and furs and blood and it all just stops when our ruckus is enough wake up the people up above as other magical creatures put themselves in our way to avoid any further damage, but the stares and the growls and the raised fur continue until Ethan finally appears and stands in front of me, blocking my view of my target and breaking my focus with it.

"Seraph, calm down, you are not like this! Listen to me damn it!" And I hate to admit it but his presence soothes me enough that I stop trying to sidestep the crowd to get to my father, but watch with satisfaction all the wounds I inflicted on him as he passes, swollen and bleeding, ignoring my own. "Come, let’s go clean these wounds up and get some fresh air." Ethan says, quite bossy I may add, passing his hand on my neck and gently guiding me away, but not before that tiger shows his teeth in a grin and roars over the complaining crowd:

"Fierce like her I see. I will help you find the islands, but nothing more." I stop tall and narrow my eyes at him, long flush tail flickering in the air behind me as I answer in a snarl:

"Wouldn’t ask for anything more."

Funny enough that after that fight I feel lighter, sore and painful, but much less tense, showing what I came for and that I would take it no matter what.

And somehow I managed to do just that, to have him compromise in helping while keep us both alive, because having kept it civilized is questionable at best.

Ethan, who had been serious for a while, suddenly gives a straight up laugh and a shake of the head as he says: "Never thought the day where I get to scold you would ever come." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

I roll my eyes. "Don’t even."

He smirks, looking at me while we keep walking, already away from the crowd.

But the smile goes away when he looks around us and pulls me to the side where there is no torch and the magic does not reach to spy on us and murmurs.

"That door... we need to talk about that."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because I think it was my father’s doing."

My eyes widen, and I guess I’m not the only one with dad problems in here.