We’ve already had the conversations. The hard but necessary ones. The ones where I told them I love them, that I know their hearts, but that I also won’t accept lies, secrets, or meddling between us again. Not even when their interference is well-meaning and comes dressed up as concern. Not even when it’s framed as keeping me safe.
I told them that wasn’t the kind of friendship I wanted for us. They’d agreed and apologized afterward—Rhosyn without hesitation; Seren in her own very Seren way.
Which she promptly demonstrates now when she huffs, “Well, you should stop doing shit that makes me feel like I need to interfere and go behind your back, you stubborn, selfless-to-a-fault, beautiful bitch.”
Rhosyn laughs and offers me a half shrug. “Hey, at least she called you pretty.”
I’m just about to answer Seren’s comment with my own sarcastic jab, the kind we’ve always used as shorthand for affection, when Rhosyn’s green eyes fix on something over my shoulder.
“I was wondering when he’d appear. The man’s basically been glued to your side since that shit show party, so I knew he couldn’t be far.”
My stomach is doing a little flip before I even turn.
Rennick emerges from the office in the far corner of the lodge, the one he disappeared into shortly after we got here to speak to one of the guys on Gareth’s crew. The beta male’s name escapes me, but I know he’s the one who coordinates the airdrop deliveries at the airstrip, placing orders and keeping the lodge stocked with whatever it needs. I also know that Rennick is asking him about the supply building out there and the small, locked room inside of it. The one that reeked of bleach.
That place has been sitting under my skin since we left it.
Neither of us has been able to shake the feeling that there’s more to it.
When I’d told Rennick I was bringing Elio to the lodge for his day date and cooking lesson with Gareth and Corbin, he let me know he would be coming too. He hadn’t been fishing for an invite. He had simply been informing me of his plans, which is something I’ve come to expect from my ever-present shadow. Where I go, he’s right there at my back, guarding me from my own festering pain.
Rennick says something over his shoulder to the beta as he steps away. The man’s eyes flick briefly in my direction where I sit halfway across the lodge before he answers. Whatever he says earns a curt nod from Rennick, and then he turns fully and starts toward us.
He moves across the room with that easy certainty that still trips my pulseup. When his eyes lift to mine, my heart does that fluttering thing that almost feels like something has gone wrong with it. Like it’s forgotten how to function normally. I know better by now. It’s not malfunctioning. It’s simply responding.
The tension slips out of him as he looks at me, shoulders easing, jaw unclenching.I offer a small smile in return, still a little shy about being openly affectionate with the pack Alpha outside of the safety of the house, even if I know no one here would dare say anything about it.
He doesn’t share this hesitation.
When he reaches our table, he bends and presses a kiss to the top of my head before settling on the bench beside me. Then, as if he’s decided the distance still between us is unacceptable, he hooks an arm around my waist and drags me closer until I’m pressed into his side as much as physically possible without being in his actual lap.
My body sinks into him. Relief pours through me in a steady wave, quieting the ache that slips through when he gives it the slightest opening.
“Hello, ladies,” he greets Seren and Rhosyn easily, warmth threaded through his voice. As he does, his hand lifts to the back of my neck, fingers sliding beneath my thick hair. He cups me there, his thumb brushing slowly over the spot he’s already told me he’d claimed as his. The place he’s deemed perfect of his mark. The sensation rolls through me hard enough to nearly make me sway into him. It feels good. Too good. Possessive and gentle all at once.
I force myself to shake off the haze, grounding myself back in my body before I lose track of where we are. I angle my head toward him, and ask quietly, “Did he tell you anything about that room?””
Rennick looks between my friends and then back to me, his expression narrowing slightly in silent question.
I wave him off. “We promised no more secrets. I told them about the dream and our trip to the airstrip.”
I kept some of the pieces of the dreamlike memory to myself—not ready or willing to give them life by shaping them into words. I’m still too haunted by the way Rennick had sounded as he screamed for me and how he fought against the threads of my mother’s magic to drag it out into the open.
Rennick clears his throat and shakes his head. “He didn’t say anything other than what we’ve already suspected. Said they store magnesium chloride for the ice plus other chemicals they don’t want anyone messing with in there.”
“What about the bleach?”
“Apparently they had a crew out there at the end of last week cleaning the place up and getting it ready so they can get it restocked with everything they’ll need for winter.”
It makes sense, even if cleaning a storage shed with bleach seems like overkill to me.
Snow is already in the forecast for the coming days, and the temperature dropped hard today. The wind outside is brutal, harsh enough to cut through layers of clothes like it’s nothing.
Still, the seed of doubt plants itself deeper into my gut.
Mom wouldn’t have threaded these memories into my subconscious if they weren’t important.
A thought Seren echoes aloud without missing a beat. “Those dreams are a message from Thalassa—she left them for a reason.”
