The memory melts away before I get the chance to witness it happen.
I’m dropped into the middle of the healer’s cabin. It’s hours later. Nearly four in the morning. Mom’s ordering a slightly dazed version of me to pack only the things I can’t live without, the air of my childhood home filled with a suffocating urgency. She tells me we have to leave the territory. That we’re being exiled because my wolf is latent.
I only know now how untrue that was.
When she altered my memories, she erased how close I’d been to my wolf in the months leading up to my eighteenth birthday. I’d shown every sign of being able to shift. She bound my wolf before I ever got the chance to truly meet her, wiping away the memory of our growing connection entirely. I was left to believe my wolf had only ever been this distant echo, trapped in her glass cage, and far out of my reach.
I watch us load the station wagon with hastily packed bags and containers, then follow the glow of its red taillights until they’re swallowed up by the dark.
Then the images change and start to come faster.
Too many to count, but all of them good. All of them happy.
Seven years’ worth of memories shared in seconds. The day she bought the manor in Ashvale. The day I met Amara and her coven. Crossing paths with Lowri and her pack of she-wolves for the first time. The grand opening of Potion & Petal. The creation of the Nightingale program—a program I finally see for what it was. A counterstrike against the dark coven and Merritt Fallamhain. A way of balancing the cosmic scales. Mom knew she couldn’t fight them head-on, so she fought from the shadows instead, building a sanctuary and gathering a network of people willing to stand for her and her cause.
The rest are made up of the small, easily overlooked moments that never seem significant when you’re living them, but they’re the pockets of joy you end up looking back on with the most fondness. They’re evidence of the life we managed to build in the wreckage of that night. And despite everything, it was a good life.
The memories glow softly as they pass, and I recognize their meaning.
A gift. A final goodbye from Mom.
The snapshots of my life flicker in and out of focus, and then I’m falling into whatever comes next.
This one splits into two, flashing back and forth in my mind’s eye, in rapid, brutal bursts. I understand what I’m being shown instantly. Air catches in my throat as I’m helpless to do anything but stand still and watch it unfold.
It shows Rennick first. He looks like the man I know now, the man I took as my mate. In his human form, he braces for something out of my view, but he’s half a heartbeat too slow. A massive silver wolf lunges at him, claws slashing four deep lines into his temple and back into his hairline. There’s no mistaking the silver wolf or the wielder of such violence. Merritt.
It switches, and I’m watching Mom climb into her station wagon. She smiles brightly as she waves at someone through the windshield, her multitude of bracelets clinking and catching the sunlight. Sitting on the porch of the Victorian manor, having our morning coffee, is Seren and me. My best friend’s belly is round with Ivey and we’re waving back at Mom as she drives away.
I’m then thrown back to Rennick. He’s shifting, his body yielding to the change with a fluidity that few are blessed with. He’s barely on his four paws before he’s throwing himself between Merritt, completely lost to the madness, and thepack members he attacks without prompting. Rennick’s wolf intercepts and slams his father to the ground. The older Alpha goes down hard, but he’s up just as fast, his mouth foaming and his blood-red eyes are devoid of humanity or recognition. He lowers his head and with a snarl harsh enough to rattle the forest floor, he attacks his son next.
Rennick doesn’t dare retreat. He meets him head-on.
Back in Mom’s car, I’m sitting like a real passenger in the back middle seat, watching the familiar winding roads to the bee farm roll by. She always insists on making the drive herself out to the boonies for Potion & Petal’s monthly fresh honey order. She claims to like the scenic drive, but I know it’s because she enjoys the joints the old, crotchety beekeeper rolls. She hums along with the radio, fingers tapping the beat on the steering wheel, as the road stretches out in front of her.
Then the two moments collide, switching so fast they overlap, bleeding into each other, until I can watch them both at once.
Rennick takes the opening, his powerful maw closing around Merritt’s throat. At the same time, Mom’s hands slip off the wheel and her head lolls at her shoulders. The madness-induced fight drains out of the silver wolf’s body, dark red blood staining his fur. I see the moment Merritt goes completely still, and the station wagon breaks through the guardrail and disappears into the ravine below.
Merritt’s borrowed years expire in that moment.
And my mother’s sacrifice is paid in full.
I can’t see her anymore—can’t see much of anything anymore. There’s only blurry shapes in the staticky darkness closing in around me.
But I can hear her.
She speaks close enough I can feel the brush of air against my ear, and yet Mom sounds like she’s a hundred feet away, her voice echoing to cover the inconceivable distance.
“I left this world knowing you would never be alone—he was out there the whole time, waiting for you to return to him. That’s why your bond was the final key. Once it was made whole, I knew he would place himself between you and every shadow.” A warmth brushes my cheek, the faintest ghost of a kiss, achingly real. “I love you, my daughter, but it’s time I gave you back to him. I’ve kept you apart long enough.”
I come back to my body all at once, gasping, lungs burning, my head screaming like everything inside it has been violently rearranged and my insides were used as a fucking jump rope. I feel wrong, forced back into my skin without warning. My dry eyes are open—I think—but the nest is a haze. The fairy lights I’d strung up the other day just a mess of bright blurs above me. There’s a heavy, steady warmth at my back, an arm possibly banded around my middle too. Any attempt to investigate the presence is stolen when my stomach revolts violently, and I barely turn on my side in time before I start retching.
Distantly, I’m aware of my omega nature weeping a mournful tune as I soil the nest, but I can’t bring myself to care.
“Noa.”
Hands are on my back. One of them sweeps up the long, tangled strands of my hair, keeping them out of the danger zone and the other begins to rub slow circles into my spine, grounding me while I dry heave until I have nothing left. And then keep going anyway.
