The sound she makes on impact barely has time to form before his fingers thread into her hair and wrench her head back. His claws have never left her neck, scoring skin with ever rough jostle, and now he holds her in a way that bares every vulnerable inch of her throat to him.
He bends low, peering up at my mother through his brows. “Did you hear the sounds she just made?” he asks softly, speaking close to the other Noa’s ear. Taunting. “Sweet. Pained. Alphas will pay a premium to force those sounds out of an omega.” His grin turns vicious. “They’ll pay extra if they can do it by shoving their knot into an unwilling, unprepared body. Tanith has a special list of clientele with that particular…kink. Your precious Noa would be in high demand. Popular.”
Both versions of my mother move together, past and present stepping forward as one. Their wolves answer in unison too, twin snarls tearing free as fury ignites across their faces.
“Enough,” she bites out, the single word heavy with the ferocity of a mother defending her child.
his mouth pulls into something wrong, and the look in his eyes makes me question whether I’m seeing him unfiltered, stripped of pack optics, or if the Moon Madness has already started to fracture his mind, twisting him into something disturbed and untamed.
“Do we have a deal, weaver?” he growls, claws flexing at my past self’s throat. “You give me my years and ensure my son never goes looking for what he lost, and I’ll let you walk away unharmed with your daughter. And I swear to never personally come searching for you two.”
Mom’s eyes narrow, picking up on the loophole carefully woven into his words. “You will never send Tanith, or anyone else, after us either, Fallamhain.”
He looks at her as if she’s just challenged the solution he thought was airtight
“You’re not seeming to grasp what binding our life forces means,” Mom tells him, the practiced calm in her tone fraying for the first time. “If one of our hearts stops, the other follows. My life will sustain you, delay the madness, but if I’m hurtbefore that, even by accident, and I die? You will too.” She steps closer, steady and sure. “So, if you ever decide sending Tanith or anyone else after us is a good idea, keep this in mind: I will die protecting my daughter.” She pauses a beat and then adds, voice unwavering with her conviction, “And I will take you with me.”
Too many emotions cross Merritt’s face at once to pin each down. For a fleeting second, I swear I catch one that resembles respect, but he smooths it away too fast, leaving me wondering if I imagined it.
“Well, aren’t you clever?”
I know I don’t imagine the lift of Mom’s lip as she answers cooly. “You have no idea, Alpha.”
They regard each other like predators circling the same kill, neither willing to look away. They're hunting for the smallest weakness. One last opening. One final leverage point that might free them from this.
Then it happens again, exactly as it did in my nightmare—Rennick’s voice cuts through the clearing.
“Noa!”
He breaks through the tree line at a sprint, panic carved across his face as he takes in the scene. His eyes widen and then harden when he sees the way his father restrained me, pain and fear written into every line of my younger body. And just like that, something in him snaps and I sense the familiar energy.
The Alpha I’m mated to now is already there, visible in the young man he was eight years ago.
Low, warning sounds rumble from Merritt’s throat. A silent command to not challenge his pack Alpha. To not interfere.
The order rolls off Rennick like it’s nothing, he keeps moving closer. “What the hell is happening here?” he snarls.
It’s like a gunshot. Everything comes apart at the seams.
The clearing. The night. And my mind.
Just like before, images detonate behind my eyes, coming too fast to track and bursting like strobe lights. I can’t keep up with it all. At one point, the pressure mounts until I’m half convinced my skull will fracture from the force. Time loses all meaning. It could be hours. It could be seconds. Somehow it feels like both at the same time.
The final memories finally force their way back into place.
First, I watch as Mom’s power snaps outward, threads lashing around Rennick’s wrists and ankles, and drag him down to the mud on his knees—mirroring the position my past self is still in while Merritt’s hold remains firm. My young mate fights the restraints with the same frantic fury he did in the nightmare we’d already lived through together. Seeing it play out a second time hurts just as much.
He begs just as hard as I remember. Pleading with my mother to stop. To let him go. I hear the way he shouts my name, desperation cracking through his voice, breaking my heart all over again.
The world shifts, the haunting way he screams for me going with it.
This time it’s me who is begging, pleading with Mom to not take everything from me. My memories. My wolf. My magic. My mate. She’s preparing to strip me of it all.
And just like in the dream, she meets my eyes, and whispers, “One day, when you repair what I broke, I hope you can find a way to forgive me, my girl.”
Then she releases the spell on us.
Everything shifts sideways again, the scene resetting once more. Rennick and I are unconscious, sprawled in the mud, the aftershocks of Mom’s spell work having knocked us both out cold. She’s moved on, already weaving a new spell, glowing threads twisting and knotting in her hands. It’s the magic she will use to bind her life to Merritt’s—sealing their fates togetherin a way that rivals the permanence and intimacy of a mate bond.
