There’s a faraway voice of reason telling me I should keep him alive to question. It’s too late for that. I’ve slipped past restraint and into something darker, and my wolf is in control. He won’t allow someone who attacked him unprovoked—and delayed him from reaching his mate—to keep breathing.
I strike.
My jaw closes around his jugular, the metallic taste of his blood sprays across my tongue, and I give one last violent twist.
The finality of the sound of his neck snapping is one I’ll carry for a while. His body goes slack beneath mine as his heart stutters and stops.
I release him and stand to my full height, as my chest heaves, each inhale causing the wound at my side to protest. I’m still looming over my kill when Amara and the others burst through the trees.
Everyone but the High Priestess stares on with wide eyes.
Hers turn calculating. Assessing.
She wasn’t certain if two or three had slipped through her wards, a doubt that shouldn’t exist for someone like her with her magical skillset. It’s something that’s been bothering her since the breach happened. I don’t need words to understand the question turning behind her dark eyes. She’s already wondering how Randolf managed to confuse her magic.
Her gaze snaps to mine. I jerk my head in the direction of Noa, where she’s still suffering without me, more so now since this attack has delayed my return further.
She nods once. “Go.”
I’m already moving before the word finishes leaving her mouth.
Chapter 38
Rennick
Before I reach the front of my house, I’m already shifting back. My wolf is still wired, still pacing just beneath my skin, but he doesn’t fight me. He relinquishes control of our shared existence without protest because he understands he can’t be the one to help her through this. It has to be me. My touch. My body.
I stumble up the stone steps, my bare feet slipping on the remaining patches of half-melted ice, and shove the front door open hard enough that it slams into the wall. I leave it hanging like this, yawning open behind me, cold air pouring in. I don’t waste time closing it.
A single step over the threshold is all it takes.
Her scent slams into me, overpowering in its sweetness, strong enough to steal my balance. Her need hangs in the air, winding straight through my instincts and settling low in my gut. I’m hard in seconds, my cock aching with a force that borders on painful. It’s the unmistakable pull of an omega in heat. No, not just any omega. Mine.
I know I’ll never smell something as good as this.
Biting back a sound, I tear across the entryway, the stairs blurring beneath my feet as I take them two at a time.
I hit the top step and skid to a halt when I find Seren in front of my bedroom door, pacing like a sentry. Relief breaks across her features at the sight of me, but it doesn’t erase the fear underneath it. She looks hollowed out, strung too tight, and I don’t have to ask—I just know she’s been standing guard here since the heat began, listening to Noa suffer through the firstbrutal wave alone. Unable to do anything but lend her silent support from here, two sets of doors separating them.
Even if Seren had something that could help, Noa’s rising omega nature would never tolerate another unmated omega crossing into what is, for all intents and purposes, our den. The risk of Seren leaving her scent behind, of accidentally contaminating Noa’s new territory in an way, is something Seren is smart enough not to gamble with.
“Finally. Took you long enough,” she exhales, her pale blue gaze careful as it skims only my bare upper half. Then it catches on the blood caked along my right side where Randolf’s bite is still knitting itself together. She goes rigid. “Are we under attack?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her, because it’s the only answer I have. I don’t know if more exiled pack members are lurking in the shadows of this territory, or if others have found a way to confuse Amara’s magic and slip past the wards. And I can’t be the one to investigate further. “Check in with Canaan. He’s in charge while I’m with Noa.”
And we’re still not sure how long it will last. Average heats run two to five days, spaced out every other month. But this heat is expected to defy all the norms. Nearly eight years of suppressed heats are expected to break free all at once. A fucking super heat. An awful name, but an accurate one.
Seren absorbs that silently, then her gaze drifts to the closed door of my room. She tilts her pale head toward it. “Go on,” she orders, not bothering to soften the command despite the fact that she’s an omega addressing a very dominant alpha. “She needs you. We’ll take care of everything else, you just focus on Noa.”
I step past her, fingers wrapping around the doorknob, when her voice stops me again. It’s softer now. Terrified.
“Please take care of her.” She doesn’t say the rest. She doesn’t have to.Please don’t let my friend die.
All I can respond with is a gruff sound. Half grunt, half huff. Not bothering to speak my response aloud either, hoping at this point Noa’s best friend understands the lengths I’m willing to go for my mate—that I’d sooner die myself than let anything happen to Noa.
I step through the door and close them quickly behind me, turning the lock.
The air inside is so saturated with her scent it feels almost viscous, thick enough to fight my lungs. The sweetness cloying, but the closer I get to the nest, the more the bitter edge of her distress bleeds through it. Pain. Need. Fear.
