“And just how long have you had it picked out?”
I sense his smirk more than see it. “A while.”
After that initial pulse of heat his words summon through me, a different emotion soars. Relief. Strong enough to have myeyes stinging again. I don’t know what I’m more relieved by. The fact he knows, and I don’t have to scrape together the right words to tell him his claim is the only thing strong enough to keep me from an early grave. Or how easily he understands me. How he sees the truth I haven’t had the chance to say out loud yet: I’m not ready to be bitten.
And he meets that truth with patience instead of pressure.
I just need more time. Time to learn who we are together without the pain of his rejection still looming over us like a guillotine blade. To see what we could be without the threat of Talis McNamara shadowing every moment we spend together. And we’ve already started, the nest around us its own proof of how things are shifting between us. The air is still thick with the heady scent of arousal and everything we’ve done. There’s a stickiness between my thighs, a mixture of my slick and his cum coating my skin, along with an unfamiliar pulsing ache in the muscles of my core. Every shift of my hips makes it twinge—a little reminder of the way Rennick had so thoroughly left his mark there.
I gulp against his palm as my mind slips back to the moment he first thrust into me. The initial burn, the stretch that bordered on too much as my pussy welcomed him, and then the way it shifted into something bright and consuming. Like my whole body was being lit up from the inside and might unravel if he dared to settle himself any deeper in me.
Letting him claim that part of me felt…right. Cosmically so, like some greater force exhaled in relief because we’d finally stopped resisting.
It was me finally lowering the final blade I’d kept pressed to his throat to hold him at arm’s length. He is my mate. My alpha. And Denying him is denying a part of myself I can’t live without.
Literally.
I shift my hand and place it over the center of his chest. It’s the same place in my own chest that’s felt cold and bitterly hollow since he stood before me and fractured our mate bond. But I know beneath my palm hums the sliver of life that refused to die and still keeps us bound to one another. It’s the reason we can fix any of this at all.
“What you did…why you rejected me,” I start, the words scraping off my tongue with the same old bitterness. “I’ve always understood your reasons—truly, I have—but hearing you speak about your dad and your people today, I understand even more. You believed you were doing the right thi?—”
“I was so fucking wrong,” he cuts in.
His fingers flex against my neck, the strain in his grip echoing the fracture in his voice. I watch him and offer a small, aching smile I know he can see even in the dark.
“It’s easy to make the wrong choice when you’re convinced there isn’t another.” I lean forward and press a small kiss to the edge of his jaw. It lingers for a second, my lips resting against the scratch of his beard, before I pull back. “I need you to hear me when I say this…I forgive you, Rennick. For all of it. Every mistake. Every hurt. Youareforgiven. I want us to find a way forward together. To figure out who we are without my fear holding us back, or the shadow of Talis fucking McNamara looming.” My voice dips. “But for us to build something new, you have to find a way to forgive yourself too. I can carry my part, but I can’t carry yours.”
He draws in a breath that falters halfway, and I feel the ripple of it beneath my palm.“I’m trying, sweet girl,” he finally answers, words dragging thickly through the guilt he’s still choking on.
“I know you are.” I lift my hand to his mouth and trace the shape of his bottom lip. He meets the touch with a featherlight kiss to my fingertips—in wordless acknowledgement or maybejust to steal a quick taste of my skin. I’m not sure, but either way I welcome the tender gesture. “But you’re right. I’m not ready to bond. Not yet. I think we both need a little time to work through everything and just be…us.”
His hand slides down from my throat to press against the center or my back. Before I can say anything else, my world tips. With strength that makes everything he does appear graceful, he rolls and takes me with him. I land on my back in the softness of the nest with him looming over me. He doesn’t drop his full weight, just offers me enough that I feel pinned in the best way. Held. Protected. Safe.My wolf hums within me, stretching into the warmth he offers.
Rennick’s fingers trail along my temple, tucking wild strands of hair behind my ear, before cradling my cheek. “I want to tell you I can be patient and give you all the time in the world,” he murmurs, sounding like he’s choosing his words carefully. “But this isn’t about what I want. It’s about what youneed—what will keep you here with me. And we both know you don’t have the luxury of waiting.” His muscles coil tight above me, tension curling through every sculpted line of him. “You’re sick, baby, and you’re only going to keep slipping further away from me. I can stitch myself to your side, be your shadow, drown you in my scent every hour of every day to quiet the pain…but that isn’t fixing anything. It isn’t a cure and we can’t use it as a lifeline forever.”
My heart lurches against my sternum. Seren untangled nearly the whole tapestry of my suffering for him, but there’s one thread she’s left untouched. A truth she left for me to handle, and it’s something I can’t keep from him any longer. My stomach sinks. The space around us seems to fold in tighter.
He feels the shift in me instantly.
His hold tightens on my face, thumb brushing along my cheek like he’s trying to soothe something he hasn’t identified yet.
“What just happened?” he asks, quiet but tense. “Your scent changed. Why do you suddenly smell afraid?”
That’s the thing about shifter senses. You can put on your bravest face and smile like a liar, but your scent will betray you every freaking time.
I lick my lips, throat desert dry as I force myself to give him this final dose of honesty. “I know I can’t wait much longer,” I say on an exhale. “But…I think the window is smaller than you’re thinking.”
His body turns to rigid, immovable steel. A low, wounded sound gathers deep in him, the wolf reacting before the man can catch up. “What do you mean?”
“My first heat…it’s coming,” I breathe. “And I won’t survive it with a broken bond.”
Chapter 30
Noa
Iknow immediately this isn’t a normal dream.
It has that same warped glass feeling as the rest of them, the same wrongness in the static-filled air, the same sense that something old and long-buried is fighting to the surface.
