I like having you in my head, sweet one.
My heart squeezes in a good way at that. My lips curve even though no one’s here to see it.
Me too,I admit softly, face warming. I would’ve texted but figured your ‘no pockets’ situation probably meant your phone didn’t make the cut.
I’m still adjusting to this ease between us—surprised by howsimpleit is to speak to him now. How natural. Before, it felt like balancing a blade against my own throat and one unguarded thought would lead to me bleeding feelings faster than I could hide them.
His chuckle rolls through my mind, a slow sweep of warmth that settles along my spine. It’s ridiculous how quickly I could become addicted to this. I’m pretty sure the thought brushes his mind, because he murmurs,Baby, we’re never using phones again. Not when I can have your sweet voice filling my head instead.
More heat unspools through me, thick and aching with a need I didn’t summon. This belongs to him. Rennick’s desire bleeds through the open connection I’ve forged between us, sparked just by the simple act of our thoughts touching. I push gently, curious, trying to stretch my gift far enough to glimpse whatever he’s thinking that has his arousal trickling through to me. The resistance is immediate. My magic’s strength wavers, the connection stuttering like a light about to go out. I back off right away, not wanting to break the link now.
Are you almost finished with your run?I ask, focusing once more on why I reached out to him to begin with.
Rook and I are just about done running the northwest corner’s perimeter.He pauses, his worry creeping back in.Are you not feeling well? Do you need me to come back to you?
Always, I think instantly, this time only to myself.
I feel fine.Or fine adjacent. That familiar ache has started to trickle back into my joints and the cold, creeping edge of the illness is once again threading through me despite the heat blasting in the Jeep. Which basically means the countdown’s started and I’m going to need him sooner than I thought. Seems my time between‘battery charges’is dwindling.But I do need you to come back—well, actually, I need you to meet me somewhere. I’m already headed there now.
Headed there? Where are you, Noa?
For the first time since this idea whispered itself in my ear—telling me I needed to see that place with my own eyes, that if I went, maybe the memories would shake loose—I start to think this might not have been my most brilliant decision to date. But I’m already halfway there, so like…fuck it?
Out to the clearing—the helicopter pad?Not sure why I’ve phrased this as a question when it’s certainly not.Meet me there on your way back from the northern border.
The easy warmth drains out of his thoughts so fast it almost startles me. A cold fissure forms in the connection.
You’re doing what?The snap of worry crackles along our minds’ link.Noa, absolutely not. I don’t want you out there alone.
His protest barely has time to breathe before it’s overtaken by something else.
For a split second, the world fractures and my vision isn’t mine anymore. And I’m not in my own body.
I’m inhis.
I’m sprinting through trees, not just seeing it butfeelingit. My paws digging into damp earth, the cold bite of air in my lungs. The comforting scent of evergreens is layered with the unmistakable presence of another wolf. Dark rum and smoked clove. Rook. I sense him before my focus locks on the dark, sleek fur flashing ahead in the forest brush. But then Rennick turns away from him, pivoting hard as his body launches in the opposite direction.
Toward me.
Like a rubber band snapping, I’m suddenly yanked back into my familiar bones. My hands clamp around the steering while as the Jeep swerves, tires scraping against the loose rocks at the roads edge. Holding my breath and my knuckles white, I correct my course.
“Oops!” I chirp into the empty car. Naturally the first time I manage to see through my mate’s eyes would be while I’m driving. But I’m going to count not crashing as a small win.
Zora told me that day on her porch that most oracles start by just hearing things. Seeing comes later once their magic has had time to mature and settle into itself. She’d been vague about what this“seeing’” might end up looking like, but I never anticipated it being this. Never imagined being able to slip sodeeply into someone else’s mine that it feels like riding shotgun in their body.
I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a little thrilled that I was able to share that with Rennick. If it had to happen first with anyone, I’m grateful it was him. But the thought of it happening with anyone else makes my stomach knot. The possibility of stumbling into someone’s mind uninvited and learning something I’m not meant to, or seeing something I shouldn’t, not only feels invasive in a way that already has a film of guilt forming, but it also feels dangerous. Some secrets only remain secrets because their witnesses don’t live long enough to share them.
I don’t want that to be my fate.
That piece of my magic is going to require supervision as it develops so I don’t find myself skipping into someone else’s head accidentally.
But it could be a powerful tool, a conspiratorial voicefloats from somewhere deep.
I standbeside the Jeep and take in the clearing I’ve been dreaming about, my body tense despite the stillness pressing in around me. It doesn’t look the way it did in my dreams, and it definitely doesn’t look the way it did when I was here as a teenager.
The helicopter pad is gone. Not repurposed, but completely erased.
In its place sits a full landing strip. I don’t mean just scraped earth or packed dirt. It’s a real one—long, clean, meticulously maintained concrete. It’s far too small for commercial planes,but more than suitable for smaller cargo planes to land and take off without trouble.
