“There you go, baby, just let it out. You’ll feel better once you do.” Rennick, his voice low and steady over my shoulder. “I’ve got you, okay? I’m right here.”
My eyes sting as I wipe at my face. I’m not sure what is true emotion or my system still rebelling against me. Through athroat scraped thin, I manage, “Did you—did you see her too?” The question is a tremble that all but falls out of me. “Did you see my mom?”
Some innate part of me already knows the answer, but I just want to hear him say it.
The hand on my back falters for a beat before it resumes its steady pattern.
Behind me, Rennick clears his throat. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “I saw Thalassa. She showed me…I remember?—”
“Everything,” I finish. “We remember everything.”
Chapter 41
Noa
It’s been two days since everything came apart in my nest and then, impossibly, stitched itself back together into something truer—whole—but it’s a shape I’m still learning how to inhabit.
Two days since my heat came out of nowhere, igniting flames that burn with a ferocity that has you doubting they can ever be extinguished. Two days since Rennick’s bite tethered my soul back into my body and I returned the favor, healing the bond between us and opening the door for it to do the one thing it’s been patiently waiting nearly eight years to do. It shattered the spell work my mother embedded into us, the binding threads she’d woven the night she’d traded her life for mine. Two days since the truth came rushing in and we were guided throughout missing memories by my mom’s own gentle hand from the other side. As if she’d been waiting there, in the in-between, for the moment we were finally ready to see. To understand.
Rennick’s recounts told me what he was shown mirrored what I saw, only from his own vantage point. He got to be a spectator to those moments that were stolen from him and by doing that, he learned that everything that was taken from us was done in a desperate bid to protect me.
Along with the truth of that night being forced back into me, my head straining under the onslaught of memories and knowledge being crammed into every available space, I woke to even more revelations waiting for me.
The first is that being bonded to your fated mate really does bring a sense of rightness that’s hard to describe withoutsounding like some dramatic, lovesick ninetieth-century poet. It’s not loud or dramatic. There aren’t fireworks igniting in my chest every time his eyes find mine. It’s quieter than that. Deeper. Just the feeling of my soul finding what it’s been waiting a very long time to reunite with. Its other half.
I’m officially mated to Rennick Fallamhain.
Completely. Permanently. Irrevocably.His.
And I’m grateful for this in a way that nearly hurts. I can call him mine and know it’s true in every sense that matters.
The second thing I learned is that the lore was right. A healed, complete bond well and truly is the cure for rejected mate syndrome. I don’t just feel better, I feel strong. As if my body has remembered how it’s supposed to function instead of constantly fighting itself—and losing. And with my health returning, another feeling stirs beneath it. One I’m almost scared to fully claim when we now know the threat from the past and one we’re bracing for today all wear the same face. It all goes back to the missing omegas and the people behind their disappearance. Tanith. Her dark Coven. And their supporters who made it all possible to keep going. Men like Merritt and his partner.
But still knowing all of this, even feeling their breath on our necks as we wait for their next move, it doesn’t smother the feeling stirring underneath it all. Happy. I feel…happy.
Sometimes the guilt over that happiness sneaks up on me. I never let it linger long enough to take root. I shove it away and remind myself of what it cost to get to this point. The pain. The sacrifices. We didn’t survive all of that just to let the fear and looming threat steal it from us.
Our inner circle would never begrudge this happiness either. When we told them we were mated, their excitement was immediate. Siggy had been thrilled, hugging me tight and whispering in my ear about how this officially made me herpackmate. Rhosyn and Seren both cried. Rhosyn cried openly, smiling through the tears brought on by her joy. Seren’s tears were quieter, but her relief was palpable. They ran down her cheeks like they were the physical representation of her fear over losing me leave her body.
Thirdly, I learned that your heart stopping in the middle of your super heat is, apparently, a very effective way to end it early.
That discovery came when I surfaced from the fog and the relentless dry heaving finally stopped, allowing me to take stock of my shaking body. I’d been expecting to find that ruthless, all-consuming need still tearing through me. Instead, I found it quiet with only a faint ember left glowing. The lingering flames licking in my veins and the pulsing ache in my core were sated by Rennick when we were finally steady enough to make it to the shower.
He fucked me in long and punishing strokes, never rushing. It was like he was committing the feel of me to memory again after thinking he’d lost it forever. I wrapped myself around him, holding on, making sure he understood I was still here. That I wasn’t leaving him again. He knotted me against the marble shower wall, and while he stayed locked deep inside me, stretching all those dedicate and sensitive places, he tended to his mating bite on my throat. Soothing the last traces of the burning sting left by his teeth with his tongue.
I did the same for him.
My wolf had chosen the placement for her claim without hesitation or shame. High and nearly at the front of his neck, just slightly off-center. No shirt short of a turtleneck will be able to hide it. At first, when I finally saw it clearly, remorse had twisted in my gut. Most wolves place their marks neatly where the neck and shoulder meet. Where it can be tucked away and hidden if needed.
But if I’m being honest, the guilt didn’t last long, and when I tried to apologize, Rennick felt the truth through our bond. He cut me off and ordered me to stop saying sorry for something I so clearly feel a deep sense of satisfaction over.
I like knowing that anyone who looks at him will see it immediately and know. That he’s mated. That he’s mine. Rennick kissed me soundly then, murmuring against my lips that he liked it for the same reason.
Ren called Amara and Zora in later that day. The pack healer and the High Priestess will never not be a visually interesting pairing, their drastically different aesthetics clashing and painfully obvious when they’re standing side by side. At his near-panicked insistence, they gave me a complete workup and thoroughly checked me over. He stayed close the entire time, not even pretending to keep the residual fear off his face, and he kept his hands buried in his jeans pockets, like that was the only way he could think of to stop himself from snatching me back and holding me against his chest where he knew I was safe.
Something broke in him, something I don’t think will ever fully heal, when he felt me almost die in his arms.
No, not almost.
