Whether he’s seeing it himself or hearing it whispered back to him by traitors in our ranks, the result is the same. He’s learned something that should never have left this pack. Knows that Rennick and I are officially mated.
Rennick goes rigid beneath me, his body winding tight as he sits up straighter in the chair, every line of him bracing like he’s expecting a fight. His knot, still lodged deep, tugs at the sensitiveflesh of my core, and it reminds us both of just how vulnerable this position makes us.
As if we needed the fucking reminder.
“McNamara,” Ren grits.
The name spoken aloud has me fighting an instinctive flinch.
Cathal grunts. “I really did try to make this easy for you. I gave you every opportunity to stay blissfully ignorant, but you couldn’t resist. Even when I placed a perfectly good alternative in front of you, one that came without the risk of fraying old magic and the past coming to bite you in the ass, you couldn’t stay away from her.”
Her. He doesn’t use my name. But he doesn’t have to.
But that’s not the point. The part that matters is how casually he confirms he’s known about the magic by mom wove around us. Knew Rennick had been made to forget his mate and leveraged that knowledge to steer him toward Talis.
“I even returned that omega to you—well, enough of her that she could be identified—thought that would force you to stay on track. To stick to the plan. When you rejected that runt on my orders, I thought you’d come around. But that didn’t last long at all, did it? You just went running after her.”
My stomach roils. Beneath me, Rennick reacts instantly, his body locking down so hard I don’t know how there’s any tension left for him to summon, and yet he finds it. I feel it pressed everywhere against me. Carly. The way the young omega had been discarded will always be a wound for him. I wasn’t here, but I’ve heard fragments of what it’d been like and that’s enough. Zora had told me it was Rennick who carried what was left of Carly all those miles home
“You were even there to save the day when I’d sent Tanith’s Terrors to take care of the problem once and for all. But no, you were too weak and couldn’t stay away.”
Another answer clicks into place at this.
The triplets.
Tanith’s Terrors—I’ll give Cathal credit where it’s due, it’s a terrifyingly appropriate name.
They had told me that day in Ashvale that I wouldn’t be joining the rest at auction. That I was a private sale and already spoken for.
At the time, it hadn't made sense. Not fully.
Now it does.
Cathal McNamara.
Another attempt to wipe me from the board so he could fill my space with his daughter.
The look on Rennick’s face tells me he’s connected the same dots. His gray eyes have gone dark, edged with something dangerous, his jaw ticking as he glares at the phone like it’s something he’d enjoy crushing in his bare hand.
“You’re the idiot who thought I’d pick someone else,” Rennick bites out, teeth snapping, “when my wolf never forgot his mate was still out there.”
Cathal laughs, and Goddess, it’s an ugly sound.
I register, distantly, how intimidating this man is through the phone, all confidence and control layered into his voice. It’s hard to reconcile this voice with the version of him I saw last. The one where his chubby, ruddy body had been in the dirt, submitting to Rennick. He’d crumbled that day, folding under the pressure of true Alpha dominance. Whatever bravado he’s projecting now is something he’d rebuilt since then. Or is something he’s borrowing.
The latter feels more likely to me. Having the full weight of the dark coven at your back would inflate anyone’s sense of power. And while I don’t remember much of Merritt and Cathal’s dynamic from when I was growing up here, I clearly remember Merritt. He would never have allied with someonewho could challenge him and win. He would have chosen a weaker alpha. Someone he could flatten if he needed to.
“That soft heart of yours,” Cathal goes on. “That’s exactly why Merritt knew we could never bring you into the fold. Sentiment. Morals. All that inconvenient nonsense. Still, I had hope. With the right guidance. With the right influence. I thought maybe I could shape you into the Alpha your father always wanted you to be.”
At the mention of his father, Rennick’s heart rate picks up against my back.
“Strong,” he says. “Practical. Willing to see opportunity where others only see discomfort. But the moment you started reacting to the missing omegas the way you did, it was obvious your father had been right. You’d never join us. You’d try to stop it. You always were predictable that way.”
None of this is new.
I already came to this answer, said as much while sitting in that conference room with Rennick and the others. Ren’s stronger moral code was never going to make him an asset to men like this. It made him a problem. One they were always going to try to evade or eventually eliminate rather than recruit.
But sitting here listening to this asshole speak, something else snaps into place.
