Her final request—to have her ashes spread over my dad’s grave in the Fallamhain Pack cemetery—is one I see for what it was. It wasn’t a final wish at all. It was a calculated ploy. She knew her death would coincide with Merritt’s, knew once he was gone that it would be safe for me to come home. That Rennick would be there waiting.
From there, all it took was one touch to start the unravelling of her spell.
I let my hand fall away, but he rejects the loss of contact. His fingers slide through my hair, tucking loose strands behind my ear before skimming along my cheek. I tilt into his palm on instinct, asking for more. My wolf—no longer caged by my mom’s magic, closer than she’s ever been but still just out of reach—purrs. Her purr hums through me, resonating inside my skull.
“The dreams I started having of you started right after she died—the ones that told me it was time to start remembering. She truly thought of everything,” Rennick notes softly as his expression turns tender, the last of the storm clouds he’d been battling lifting and giving him a reprieve. “I love looking at you and knowing this isn’t new. I’ve known you, sweet Noa. Every version of you. Every stage. I grew up with you and when you were gone, I kept growing for you. Trying to become a man worthy of your claim.”
His words settle low in my chest, slipping into places that already know them to be true. I understand the feeling completely. With our memories whole again, the pull between us has deepened, fed by everything we were before the mate bond took its first breath. It’s our history. The years we spent growing side by side, learning each other in small, unremarkable ways that mattered more than we could have ever realized. The quiet moments from our childhood that now stand as evidence that we were always circling, drawn in close by each other’s orbits, without understanding the reason.
We weren’t raised in proximity. We were raised together, laying the foundation for who we’d become when we were finally ready to choose each other fully.
My fingers lift to wrap around the wrist of the hand that still cups my face, pressing my cheek fully into the warmth of his palm. Holding him close. The connection anchors me.
“You are,” I tell him softly. “You are worthy, Rennick. Of my claim. Of my love. You always have been.” I take a slow breath and wait a beat longer than necessary. Not because I’m afraid of the words, but because I’mnot. They’re the purest truth I’ve ever held. Rennick’s watching me closely, something vulnerable in his expression, like he knows this moment matters and refuses to rush me through it. “I love you.”
Simple.
Three little words.
But they meaneverything.
His reaction is immediate. His fingers press more firmly into my face, not hard, just enough to be sure that I’m real. That this is happening. For a second, he’s suspended there, looking too stunned to dare move. Like I’ve handed him something sacred and fragile, and he doesn’t want to risk shattering it.
Rennick hasn’t been paying attention if he thinks my love is delicate. It’s not. It’s survived far too much to break that easily.
My love is indestructible and it’s his.
Then, in a move too fast for my eyes to track, he’s lifting me off the ground, pulling me close until I have no choice but to wrap my legs around his waist. He holds me there, chest to chest, like this is the only space left in the world for me, and letting go means risking the world trying to steal me again.
His lips trail slowly down my cheek, along my jaw, before his nose brushes along me. The bond between us hums, flaring bright and happy. Whole.
“You know,” he rasps, a hint of something lighter breaking through the emotion. “I technically beat you to it.”
“Beat me where?”
His lips brush mine and I can feel the smile there. “I said it first. You just weren’t in any condition to hear me.”
My chest tightens, understanding sliding into place with cruel clarity.
When my heart stopped, when he was fighting to bring me back…Oh, Rennick.
“Then tell me again,” I whisper. “I want to hear it.” I need to hear it
Hands holding steady on my hips as he pulls back, his gunmetal eyes search my face before fixing on mine. He waits there, silently, waiting to make sure that I’m listening. That I’m there with him.
“Noa Fallamhain,” he starts, using the name that only became mine the moment his claiming bite pierced my throat. The possessive edge of it sends a shiver down my spine. “You are my heart living and beating outside of my chest. Every path in my life has led me back to you. My North Star, guiding me home. I will put myself between you and the world every time and protect you from every threat because I already know what it’s like to lose you.” His voice tightens. “For less than three minutes, I lived without you, and it confirmed what I already knew. I have no interest in suffering through an existence without you. I love you, sweet one. Everything I am belongs to you.”
And then he’s kissing me, his mouth a steady, reverent claim. It’s his way sealing the vow he just spoke. He presses the truth of the words into me and makes me taste them on his tongue until they’re impossible to doubt.
Chapter 42
Noa
The snow that fell overnight has left the sky flat and gray. It’s the kind of cold that makes the air in your lungs feel heavy and turns your nose pink almost immediately. Every exhale ghosts visibly in front of my face, curling upward and then vanishing. Once, this kind of cold would have sliced clean through me, would have deepened the chill that already lived in my bones—my soul—when the bond was gone. Rennick’s nearness used to be my only source of heat.
But not anymore.
The emptiness is gone and I’m finally warm.
