It isn’t a revelation that knocks the air from my lungs or sends me reeling. If anything, it feels like confirmation. The answers have been lining up for longer than I want to admit. I think I just kept stepping around them, pretending I couldn’t see where they led.
I know, somewhere deep and unspoken, that Rennick has been drawing close to the same end point.
For me, it always came back to the eyes. Dark as pitch. Lifeless. A detail my mind has refused to let go of. So much was stolen from me, but not that detail. Merritt’s eyes always remained. The same empty darkness stared at me from the shadow wolf in my dreams.
And I’ve always known whatever drove my mother from this land nearly eight years ago had to be a force in its own right. Something strong enough to stand against Thalassa Alderwood and make her question whether she’d be the one to make it out alive.
I glance at my mom, just long enough to make sure she’s still with me before refocusing on the memory playing out.
“Did no one ever warn you what happens to curious little wolves?” Merritt tuts, almost mockingly gentle, before his hand shoots out and wraps around past Noa’s throat.
I know it’s not really my body he’s touching and yet my skin prickles, my breath hitching as if his choking grip has crossed time and memory to find me. Phantom pressure is applied tomy windpipe and there’s the faint drag of his claws grazing my flesh. It’s just enough to remind me how close this came to ending right then.
He jerks the younger version of me forward by her throat, lifting her slightly until only the tips of her boots touch the muddy clearing floor. She struggles, her air dwindling, but he doesn’t release her.
Merritt dips his head, teeth flashing in the moonlight, and snaps, “Why did you come here?”
“The…women,” she just manages to choke out, her fingernails clawing at the back of his hand and wrist, desperately trying to get him to release her. He acts as though he can’t feel a thing.
“How do you know about them?”
Even if she were capable of answering him, I know she never would. Just as I know deep in my gut that no version of me would have ever given him that information willingly. There’s something instinctively ingrained in me that knows just how dangerous it would be to let someone like Merritt know the full scope of what I’m capable of.
Instead, the younger version of me lifts her chin and narrows her eyes in defiance. It amuses him. Enough that his grip loosens, just enough to let her drag in a painful breath before she rasps, “You’re…a monster.”
Merritt exhales through his nose, almost a laugh.
“I’m a businessman,” he corrects, unbothered. There’s no shame in it. No regret. “There was a role that needed to be filled. I saw it for what it was—a lucrative opportunity—and I took it.”
“You’re kidnapping…omegas.”
He inclines his head in confirmation, still not a single glimmer of remorse. “They’re a product that’s high in demand.”
The word makes past me choke. Product. She swallows hard before forcing out, “You’re selling them?”
“Technically, our role is procurement and transport,” he says evenly. “The selling is handled by the people who pay us per head to deliver fresh blood.”
The word ‘us’ lodges itself between my ribs. ‘Our role’, too.
The rest clicks into place with surgical precision. The ones paying per head, the ones who need a steady supply of omegas to keep their customers satisfied… It all leads back to the witches who attacked us in Ashvale. The dark coven behind the sex clubs and auction houses so many of my Nightingale’s have been forced to survive and then escape. Like Siggy. And at the center of it all was Merritt. He was the one supplying them with what they needed—feeding their machine.
But in the real waking world, the senior Alpha Fallamhain is dead. He can no longer fulfill his end of the deal…but that word, ‘us’, sticks out for a reason. It means his partner could still be active. Could still be working with the witches.
I glance at my mom. “He gave up all that information too easily.” If anything, he seems to enjoy sharing it, like getting to feed off the fear he stirs in my younger self was his reward. “He never planned on letting me walk away from this night alive, did he?”
Mom’s expression tightens as she shakes her head. “No,” she says, distant. “But there are fates far worse than death for a young, unmated omega, Noa. You know this.”
She’s right. I know this too well. I’ve seen the damage up close, helped those who made it out whole—physically, at least—claw their way through the slow, unforgiving process of healing. I’ve walked hand in hand with them when continuing on felt impossible, urged them toward life when they didn’t have the strength to keep choosing it for themselves.
The clearing floods with light as a familiar beat-up station wagon barrels through, moving far too fast for this rugged terrain. The car shudders, frame and suspension protesting, its undersized wheels making every dip feel larger than it really is. The brakes scream as it lurches to a stop, and then Mom is climbing out. The version of her from almost eight years ago. She looks wild, fear and concern for her daughter giving her an edge that veers toward feral.
“Noa!” she calls the second she rounds the front of the car and locks her sharp eyes on the scene before her. The one where the pack Alpha who she’s been loyal to for over two decades is holding her young daughter by the neck, his claws dangerously close to digging too deep—to creating damage a wolf who hasn’t shifted yet and doesn’t have access to their advanced healing could never recover from.
This hindrance being my reality even today in the real world.
Mom, the one standing at my side acting as a witness to the past with me, explains barely a note above a murmur. “I came home from my patient’s cabin, and you weren’t there. Back before you ever learned how to walk, I wove a locator spell into you, that way I could always find you. I followed it out here.” She pauses, throat moving as she swallows thickly. “Call it a mother’s intuition or a witch’s, but I knew whatever I found wouldn’t be something we’d ever fully walk away from.”
Merritt’s deep voice cuts through the open space before I can respond. Or question her about the magical tracker she apparently tagged me with. What the hell?
