This has my eyes widening and heat climbing up my cheeks.
My first instinct is embarrassment, but it disappears when Rennick groans, the sound torn between pain and arousal.
“It was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, baby,” he assures me. “Nearly sent me into a rut. I can’t wait to make you do it again.”
At that promise—or threat, depending on how you look at it—Rennick shifts us with care, his knot allowing just enough movement for him to lift me against him. He eases into his desk chair, settling me into his lap and making sure I’m supported. My head rests heavily against his shoulder.
I’m spent, wrung out in the best way, with nothing left to give, and he seems perfectly content to hold what’s left of me until I’m fully present in my body again.
All I can manage is a small humming sound of acknowledgment when he presses his lips to my slightly damp temple.
“When’s your call?” I ask once my breathing isn’t so labored.
He keeps gathering the loose strands of hair around my face and neck, twirling the dark lengths absently between his fingers. When he leans forward to check the time, he draws me with him, and the knot shifts, settling deeper. It brushes a spot that’s still raw and sensitive.
The sound I make is low, barely there, my eyes sliding shut as I let myself sink into it.
I give myself this moment. This quiet, stolen pocket where it’s just the two of us and everything is…good. Almost normal. Asnapshot of what our life could be once the threat hanging over us is finally gone.
I want to believe we’ll reach that place, but it’s hard when we’ve been stumbling from one hurdle to the next, never given the chance to fucking breathe.
Mom said our bond was so strong, she believed the Goddess herself laid her hand on it and blessed it. I want this to be true. Some days, though, it’s hard not to wonder if it’s the opposite. That we were cursed, not blessed.
Rennick swipes up on his phone, double-checking an email thread where I’m guessing the date and time for this call were set. “Should be any minute.”
“Who’s it with?”
“An Alpha from a nearby territory. Rhosyn sent the email out yesterday to every pack we could get contact info for. His pack had missing omegas too, same as us, and he wanted to talk to me directly about what’s going on.”
I frown, worry rising fast. “How honest were you about Merritt? About Cathal?”
Guilt by association is a vicious thing, and once public opinion settles in, it rarely shifts. I don’t want people to look at Rennick sideways, searching for his father in him, or deciding he’s guilty by blood relation alone.
He doesn’t answer. His phone starts buzzing in his hand, the vibration cutting through the quiet, and when he tilts the screen, I catch theUnknown Numberacross the top.
His left arm bands securely around my waist, making sure I’m still comfortable in his lap, then he flashes me a wicked grin and gives a quick signal for me to stay quiet.
I don’t have the chance to say anything or stop him before he’s answering.
“Fallamhain,” he says, his voice even but not unkind, as he puts the call on speaker and holds the phone a little away from his face.
I’m still reeling, stuck on the fact that he actually did that, that he answered a call while he’s still knotted inside me, when a voice comes through the line. Shock hits hard, snapping my spine straight, and cold flooding my veins.
“You shouldn’t have mated her.”
He doesn’t bother easing into it. Just gets straight to the point, all cold certainty, stripped of anything that might resemble feeling.
I go very still. Not because I choose to, but because my body doesn’t know how to react to hearing that voice—and those words—while I’m in my current…state. It’s invasive in a way that has nothing to do with how exposed I physically am.
Less than two minutes ago, I was basking in how right this felt with Rennick. My mate. And now that moment has been defiled byhim.
It feels deliberate. Like he timed the call for maximum damage, chose a moment that would disturb us the most.
My skin crawls with the sensation of being watched, of too many hidden eyes scanning my body, even though logic tells me we’re alone and I’m still technically dressed from the waist up.
It’s what his words reveal.
That he knows.
