I did die.
He had to fight for me to come back to him, and that knowledge still sits heavy between us.
It was Zora who threw out a theory about my vanishing super heat. Between the heat starting, my heart stopping, the bond locking into place, and my mother’s magic finally releasing its long hold, my body has no fucking idea which way is up, and which is down. Zora’s guess is that it’s a self-preservation measure of sorts. One that had my heat ending early. But only temporarily. Postponed.
Neither Zora nor Amara believe I’ve dodged this bullet. They were very clear on that part. This heat will be back, and it will be intense, long, and miserable.
But for the first time since I learned about the super heat, hearing doesn’t terrify me.
I’m nervous—I would be a fool if I wasn’t—but I’m not scared anymore. Not with Rennick’s mark on my throat and the bond humming steadily and complete between us.
And finally, the fourth thing I learned is maybe the most comforting of them all. The mate bond is more than just echoes and impressions of his emotions, or the faint thrum of his heart next to mine if I concentrate hard enough. It’s walking around with living proof he’shere. That he’s breathing. Uninjured. Safe. Feeling him so easily in my chest, knowing that with certainty, brings a comfort I didn’t realize just how desperate I’d been for until it settled into me. All I have to do is lean into the connection, follow the link that binds us, and I know.
It’s with that same steady pull in my chest, that constant need to be near him, I can also let it guide me straight to where he is. A kind of homing beacon. We haven’t had the chance—or the reason—to test whether distance weakens it or if it holds no matter what.
That’s what I’m doing now. Letting the bond guide my feet toward him and pretending it isn’t turning me into a stalker or stage five clinger. I can’t bring myself to feel bad about it. Not when Rennick’s emotions have been bleeding through the bond since we left the nest and at this point, they’re pigmented enough to leave a stain.
Guilt, heavier than anything I’ve seen from him before. Anger riding right alongside it, pulsing and growing by the minute, to the point I fear it will consume him.
As it is, I know he’s not sleeping. Every time I stir at night and reach for him, he’s already there, awake and alert. He pulls mecloser and holds me tight enough to leave me feeling safe enough to fall back under. But through the bond, I can feel the storm in his mind cycling, the way the weight of it refuses to ease its grip on him.
I follow the pull in my chest out the back door of the house and down the slope that leads to the lake below. The water gleams in the late morning sun, deceptively inviting and beautiful enough to draw you in. I know better, know just how unforgivingly cold it can be this time of year.
Rennick’s leaning against one of the large boulders decorating the shoreline when I find him. His boots are unlaced and planted in the damp dirt, and the faded jeans hang low on his hips with the button undone. He looks like he dressed without thought after his patrol shift, just pulled on whatever he’d left on the back steps before heading out, and didn’t bother to fasten them properly before wandering down here to…brood, apparently.
Or plot a murder.
I honestly can’t tell—could go either way.
His eyes are fixed on the big house above us with an expression that borders on accusatory and the muscles in his jaw are tense enough I worry for the health of his molars.
He sensed me coming minutes ago, through the bond and with his enhanced senses, so I don’t bother pretending I need to announce myself.
“You know,” I tell him casually as I step right up into his space. “Just because I can be apart from you now without it causing actual physical pain doesn’t mean I want to be.”
The tension in his face and body ease the moment I press myself against his bare chest and wrap my arms around his middle. He gathers me closer without hesitation, his arms closing around me and holding me in that desperate, almost too tight way he does that still makes my knees wobble. The angryhum that has been coming from his side of the bond quiets for a moment. Not because the storm inside him has passed, but because he’s stopped feeding it for a moment. Which still feels like a small victory.
His breath leaves him on a long exhale and, bit by bit, his muscles relax further beneath my palms.
“You need to stop glaring at the house like it’s the thing you’re mad at, Ren,” I murmur against his sternum after a minute of us just breathing each other in. I stay right where I am, letting our bond do what it was made to do, stripping away any illusion that I can’t feel how he’s allowing this to eat him alive from the inside out. “It’s not who you’re pissed at, and we both know it.”
“I’m mad at what it represents,” he admits after a drawn-out pause where I started to think he really might not answer.
I nod against him, even though he can’t see it. That much had been crystal clear to me since the moment we woke up with our memories restored and we were left standing in the wreckage the truth brought with it. I stay quiet, silently encouraging him to keep going, to let it out before it drags him deeper into this spiral.
He inhales a breath that sounds like it might hurt. “My fath—Merritt—is one of the reasons Thalassa saw the need to start the Nightingale program,” he says, each word bitter, each one clearly costing him something to say aloud. He keeps going anyway. Good. “He’s one of the reasons you’ve spent years holding broken omegas in your hands and helping put them back together. And he’s the reason there are so many who didn’t survive at all. Omegas who vanished, leaving their families to question and then to mourn. No bodies. No closure.”
His voice roughens, fury grinding through gravel. I tighten my arms around him, wordlessly reminding him that he isn’t alone in these emotions.
“Their pain paid for that house,” he goes on. “The remodel and expansion of it, at least. I’ve been living there for months, calling it mine—imagining a future with you where it becomes ours—never knowing its foundation is stained with innocent blood.”
A low, vibrating sound rolls through his chest as his wolf pushes closer to the surface. I rub my chin along his sternum, drawing my scent across his skin in a slow, deliberate motion. It steadies him enough to take full control of the reins and push his wolf down.
“And it’s not just the fucking house,” he adds, quieter now, more of the fight draining out of him. “It’s everywhere. Additions or upgrades made around the territory, paid for with money he earned by trafficking omegas for that coven. I don’t know how we’re supposed to keep living in a place built on that.” By the time he reaches the final sentence, he sounds lost more than anything else.
I turn my head, resting my chin against his chest and staring up at him. He dips his head so our eyes can meet.
“Then what do you want to do?” I ask gently, placing the choice where it belongs. “What’s a solution that you can live with?” I let the question sit between us for a beat before I continue. “Are you talking about leaving? About abandoning the land altogether?” I offer first, knowing he needs the options laid out where he can see them and weigh each one. “You could walk away. We can. If you truly think you can willingly leave this place, or this pack. But you have to know most of them—maybe all of them—would follow you. That means buying new land and building everything again from the ground up.” I exhale, a thin edge of humor threading through it. “That’s not a particularly logistical plan.”
