“You’re not fine,” I mutter, thumb tracing one of the other scratches I can reach despite myself. The desire to snarl at someone—anyone would do—claws at the back of my throat. “Who did this to you?”
He laughs then, a fond teasing sound that manages to stay sweet when it could easily turn mocking. He catches my wrist before I can pull back my hand and turns my palm up. Bringing it to his mouth, he presses a warm kiss there. Then another, lingering just long enough to make my pulse jump.
“I like seeing you like this,” he murmurs, mouth curved against my skin. “All protective and upset over me.”
I try to take my hand back again, irritation spiking hot when he refuses to release me and still doesn’t answer me. “Stopdeflecting the question,” I snap, pulling again, this time with more force than patience.
“Okay, okay,” he relents with a sigh and drops back into his waiting desk chair. He’s reaching for me again within seconds. His fingers hook into the waistband of my black leggings, and he pulls me forward by them. Still standing, I settle between his knees. With him sitting now, we’re nearly eye level. His big, steady hands capture my hips, fingertips remain buried beneath my clothes where he can reach skin. He centers himself with the simple touch and when he looks at me now, there’s only honesty. No sign of the teasing from a moment ago.
He exhales slowly, like he’s choosing where to start.
And then he explains where he went this morning.
Before sunrise, before the territory was even breathing yet, he says he, Rook, Canaan, Cerys, and witches from Amara’s coven split up and moved through the land. Quiet. Efficient. No warnings. Anyone tied to Merritt, and then by extension Cathal, was brought in.
The proof came around four in the morning. Rook’s pack member, an alpha who works a cyber security job during the day and is a skilled hacker at night, followed the money. Local bank records first. Offshore accounts next. He saw the deposits, saw how the number grew and grew through the years.
Enforcers, new and old. Council members who’d snuck through his first cull. Men who work with Gareth’s crew at the lodge. Twelve names in total. Confirmed guilty.
Rennick tells me he still doesn’t know what role each of them played. Who gave the orders. Who handled logistics. Who looked the other way and took the money anyway. It doesn’t seem to matter to him. In his eyes, involvement isn’t a spectrum. It’s a line, and each of them crossed it.
There’s no path back from it.
The chill doesn’t hit until he tells me where they put them.
Pulled from their cabins without warning so no one had time to brace or prepare their lies, they were taken straight to the reinforced holding cells under the lodge. Cells that exist for wolves on the edge of going feral and become a danger to themselves and the rest of the pack.
Some of them had fought back.
He mentions this like an afterthought, like he’s not actively wearing the proof on his skin. He lifts his hand toward his face and neck, almost carelessly, and says one of the councilwomen did it. An alpha female, nearly sixty. Old enough to know better.
Most of them didn’t resist, though. Not because they were afraid of their crimes against the pack coming to light, but because their arrogance at getting away with it for so long has left them feeling untouchable. The little sliver of power they’ve been able to wield against those weaker and more vulnerable has left them mistaking power for immunity.
And when he’s done, I find I only have one question. “Why today?”
His thumb shifts, moving along my hip bone. Slow and thoughtful. He doesn’t answer the question right away, but when he does, his voice is steady, sure. Not a blip of evidence that he feels remorseful for the steps he took this morning.
“I can’t go into a fight where I have to fight the enemy in front of me while worrying another might rise up from behind—from inside my ranks,” he explains, his eyes on mine, searching, as if he’s preparing himself for me to give him pushback on this. I don’t have any to give, he already has my full support. There’s no room in a pack for people who can look at this kind of harm and choose profit anyway. The greater danger, though, is the possibility of them acting as double agents, quietly feeding information back to Cathal or the dark coven from inside our own territory. “As it is, my focus is already divided. Half of it will always be yours. As it should be.”
The fingers he’s kept hooked in my waistband flex and for a second, I’m certain he’s going to rip them down my legs. He doesn’t. Rennick pulls me closer by the fabric instead, close enough that my breath slips. He holds my gaze, all focus and sharpening intent, before leaning forward to press his mouth to the center of my chest. Still over the fabric of my sweatshirt, but exactly where our bond thrives beneath my sternum
I swallow hard and try to refocus myself. “Do you need these cleaned?” I ask, fingers resting over the scratch marks on the side of his neck. Up close now, I can see how one of them carve through my bond mark, a visual my wolf does not appreciate. This time, when she snarls low, I can feel it vibrate behind my breastbone. “Any of them?”
His head shakes, “I don’t need that kind of tending.”
I lose the ability of thought when his touch trails upward and his mouth finds my throat. He nuzzles the mating mark that sits there. The contact draws a quiet shiver from me and awakens a deep, needy ache between my thighs. I’ve been told before that mating marks become a place of high sensitivity and pleasure and I don’t think I really believed them until now.
“What do you need then?” I just manage to force out.
His tongue swipes over the nearly healed mark on my throat, and the response is immediate. Not a shiver this time, but a sound I don’t mean to make. A whine, thin and breathless, that breaks apart into a gasp when warmth rushes out of me, soaking the crotch of my leggings instantly. Slick.
Rennick growls against my throat and inhales deep and greedily. “Fuck, baby, I can smell you getting wet for me already.” His blunt white teeth nip at the sensitive skin of my neck before he pulls back. “You asked what I need. You. I need you.”
Before I can gather myself, he stands and turns me without hesitation, the motion quick and sure. I stumble into the desk,palms slapping against the metal as I catch myself. A breath later, once my footing is solid again, he steps in close behind me, pressing himself against my ass and grinding his hardening cock there. The hollow pulsing ache in my pussy amplifies in response. I want his knot. I want the stretch of it until it borders on too much, until it overwhelms everything else and there’s nothing left but sensation.
The need driving this feels too big for my body to contain, extending past the confines of skin and bone until I swear it becomes its own force.
He thrusts his hips against me again, deliberate, making sure I feel exactly how much he wants me in return. Rennick pushes my hair off my throat, his head dipping so he can kiss my mating mark. Another sound slips out of me before I can stop it, thick with need, unmistakably omega.
