I barely register the gravity of her promise before the fog on the far side of the clearing splits open again, peeling apart in a violent rush.A silhouette surges through the breach, sprinting toward me with frantic, desperate speed.
Rennick.
But not the man I know now. The younger version I left behind years ago. He has the same gray irises that undo me, but this version of him is leaner, his beard little more than a dark shadow. It’s who he was before he grew into the pack Alpha I fell asleep with in my nest.
“Noa!” He calls for me, but his voice is muffled, like he’s shouting through water.Even with the world rippling and warping around us, his eyes snap straight to mine and his relief is immediate. It dies the second his attention shifts to the shadowed wolf at my back. Horror that twists into fury scorches through his expression.
“What the hell is going on?” Rennick snarls, and there’s nothing timid about his approach. No hesitation. No fear. He’s ready to draw blood. His body coiled tight like he’s prepared to step between me and the creature looming like a wraith.
He doesn’t get the chance.
The memory whiplashes again, ripping the world out from under us.
And then I’m on my knees.
The earth beneath me feels damp, but these dreamscapes are always devoid of temperature. My palms sink into the dirt as tears spill down my cheeks, but even their warmth is gone. I occupy this place, but sensation no longer belongs to me.
I’m begging for something. For what? I don’t know yet, but the desperation in me is real. It belongs to me. It’s older than this moment, stamped into my bones like a scar.
“Please, Mom.” My voice cracks. My fingernails dig at the soil as I try to anchor myself to anything that won’t slip away. “Don’t do this. Don’t take this from me.”
My mother stands above me, her hands moving in a fluid pattern as luminous threads wind from her fingers. She’s weaving, the movement familiar down to its smallest shift. Her eyes are closed tight and her face flinches with every sound I cry out. She’s hurting, but she’s choosing the hurt. And she isn’t stopping.
A roar shatters the air.
My head jerks toward it instinctively, and there he is.
Rennick thrashes against the glowing threads anchoring him to the ground, every muscle shaking as he fights a battle he has no hope of winning. The magic forces him to kneel in the dirt across the way from me, but he won’t back down. He strains for even an inch of freedom.
The beast made of smoke and simmering hate stands at his flank, those lifeless eyes brightening with an eerie glint as Rennick struggles. There’s something hungry in that gaze, as if the sight of Rennick forced to kneel pleases it.
“Noa!” my alpha roars my name, and it fractures the mist around us. Piercing streaks of light break through the inky fog as if the memory itself is cracking under the force of his terror. “No! Thalassa,please. She’s mine!”
The agony in his voice slices clean through me.
More tears fall uselessly down my face.
I look up at my mother.
Her eyes are already on me. Full of sorrow. Full of love. Full of something heavier than both.
“One day,” she whispers, just loud enough for me to hear. “When you repair what I broke, I hope you can find a way to forgive me, my girl.” The threads in her hands glow brighter and she steps closer, wincing from her own magic as it twists and tightens in her palms. “Don’t fight it, Noa. Resisting my magic will only make it harder on you.”
Before I can move—before I can even choke out another plea—the threads lash out, serpentine and swift, curling around meand locking me in place. They cinch tight, shredding the air in my lungs, and my body convulses as the spell tears through me, rewriting every part of me it brushes against.
Blackness spills over the world, spreading like ink bleeding across wet paper
The last thing I hear as I’m swallowed whole by the dark is Rennick’s voice, broken with agony and visceral panic.
“Noa!”
I’m ripped free from the dream, surfacing from the darkness like I’ve been shoved.
I lurch upright, breath strangled, my lungs locked tight and burning from phantom pressure. For several panicked seconds, I can’t breathe at all. The echo of those damn threads clings to my ribs, squeezing, refusing to relax their grip. I claw at my sternum on instinct, nails raking against exposed skin, half expecting to find those glowing restraints still biting intomy skin. Instead, there’s only my heart hammering violently beneath my palm.
It takes me a minute to remember where I am.
Closet. Nest. Rennick’s house. Not the clearing. Not the shack. Not trapped in a dream.
