'Mum!' cried Rhydian in his shock and despair of her impending reaction. He didn't know what to say. He was puzzled as to why he didn't sense her approaching him.
'So, this is where you are! You've come back to your tame friend! You left your own mother to find one of her cubs missing! You wanted me to go through all of that distress because of one of those disgraces to our species!' Each word she spat out like it was a bad taste in her mouth, especially the word tame, and every word got louder than the last, causing Rhydian to fear one of the Smiths noticing.
Rhydian leapt from the tree to the ground in front of his mother below, the leaves muffling the sound of his landing. At the same level as Ceri, he could see the anger in her face, her teeth were gritted, and he could see her eyes threatening to change from their hard, grey pools, to raging gold circles. Finally, after staring into his mother's eyes in the deafening silence of his thoughts, he calmly replied, whilst taking deep breaths in order to keep his face neutral and indifferent, 'Maddy is not tame, or a disgra-'
'WHY ARE YOU HERE!?' She cut him off. She couldn't bear to hear her firstborn and heir defend one of those cowards who is afraid of living the wild life that she believed all wolfbloods were born to live. ' YOU WALKED AWAY FROM THIS LIFE MONTHS AGO! YOU ARE HAPPY IN OUR PACK, WITH YOUR MOTHER AND YOUR BROTHER! AND –'
'BUT I'M NOT! DON'T YOU SEE THAT? I'M NOT HAPPY WITH YOU! I THOUGHT I WOULD BE WHEN I CAME WITH YOU BUT I'M JUST NOT! I NEVER HAVE BEEN AND I KNOW NOW THAT I CAN BE!' Rhydian was throwing caution to the wind now, raising his voice so that it could be heard above hers. He had completely forgotten about where he was, whose house he was stood in the forest next to, and not to mention that the people who own that house are wolfbloods with the ability to hear things that no ordinary human being could ever dream of being able to hear.
Maddy suddenly exited her deep contemplation at the sound of the dispute. Her Mum and Dad were away for the night, so it was left to her to investigate the disturbance. Even with her wolfblood hearing, it was hard to make out the voices due to the wind. She got up from her bed to look through the window and examine the area of woods surrounding her garden. That's when she saw him. Him. Rhydian. She didn't believe it. She couldn't believe it. She had been convinced that he would never return, and even if he did, she was so sure that he had never cared enough about her to come back and be in the forest at the end of her garden! 'It makes no sense!' was Maddy's concluding thought as she left her room in a muddle of emotions. She headed downstairs and out of the door into her back garden, without so much as stopping to put on her shoes, determined to get to the bottom of the sight and see if he was really there, or if she was going mad.
The argument in the trees was continuing with Ceri screaming, 'HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO YOUR MOTHER LIKE THAT! AFTER I SAVED YOU FROM THE TAMES!' But this was all just background noise to Maddy. She entered the trees and neither Rhydian nor Ceri noticed, they were too consumed in their anger to notice anything around them. Both the mother's, and her son's, eyes were yellow now, and their veins on their bodies were hard to ignore, they were darker than death itself. However, Rhydian did notice one thing, the same thing as Maddy, that the part of his chest, which normally burned due to the pain of its emptiness, felt slightly less uncomfortable. This distracted him from replying to his mother leaving them in silence. Ceri was glaring at him, anticipating his reply.
Maddy had been standing there observing Rhydian without uttering a word due to the shock of seeing him. She hadn't even noticed that it was him who had been making the noise. The noise was forgotten. She hadn't even noticed Ceri. She saw only him and was finally able to utter his name. 'Rhydian.' It would have been hardly audible to a normal human, but it was enough for the other wolfbloods present to hear the intruder.
'Maddy,' whispered Rhydian in disbelief at her petite frame being stood in front of him.
'You,' was all that escaped Ceri's lips before she snapped.