The first fractures formed this morning when I woke to find him in my bedroom—a shared moment between us that already feels like a lifetime ago—the next ones came as he crashed through the trees and saved me when I was sure I was out of time.
After everything, he managed to be my literal white knight today.
Letting him tend to me upstairs like I had was probably a mistake because I don’t have the bandwidth to keep patching up the damage each small, reverent touch leaves behind. I don’tknow how many more soft looks or quiet promises I can take before I fold. Before I let myself believe him when he says he’s not giving up on me. On us.
The only thing keeping me from collapsing into him is the cold empty space where our bond used to be. It’s a cruel memento of what he did to me and a bitter reminder that he’s still betrothed to someone else. Whether he wants to be or not.
I ignore the pull to look up even though I can feel the constant, heavy heat of his eyes on me now. My skin prickles from the unblinking attention.
I didn’t miss the way his jaw clenched, his hands flexing at his sides as Seren and Siggy, now back in her human form, had claimed the seats next to me on the sofa before he could. Stiff and reluctant, he’d settled for sitting directly across from me on the opposite couch. Rhosyn and Canaan flank him like sentinels.
Instead, I look to Eldrith.
The older woman seated in the dark-red wingback chair near the fireplace looks nothing like her usual self. Her typical rocker flair is gone. There’s no ripped concert T-shirt or smudged eyeliner tonight. In their place is a shapeless white dress and a haunted look.
Most of the room is dressed the same. Expressions included.
Wearing white is tradition. It’s meant to resemble the cloth we use to wrap our dead before they’re placed on the pyre.I should’ve remembered that, but after my shower I hadn’t been thinking that far ahead and had chosen a thick knitted charcoal-gray sweater and leggings instead of mourning garb.
I don’t even know where Lowri’s body is.
Or how much of it they were able to save from the fire.The unwanted and morbid thought makes my stomach lurch.
I force it down. I’m not ready to face that.
I find Amara by the bay window, her body braced against the sill like the wood is the only thing keeping her from collapsing.The aura of authority that usually clings to her is gone, leaving her looking hollow, stripped bare. Seren whispered to me earlier that Amara herself had doused the flames in the sanctuary. Her gift as an elementalist giving her the ability to bend fire to her will. I just hope it hadn’t been her who’d recovered Lowri. She didn’t need to see the love of her life like that.
An all-too-familiar wave of grief swells in my chest. Grief for her, for all of us. We didn’t just lose a leader today. We lost a cornerstone.
“What is a void?” Canaan asks, bringing me back to the present and focusing on what Eldrith had told us.
The Fallamhain wolf looks around the room waiting for someone to elaborate, and I silently echo his question. I’ve spent a good portion of my life surrounded by witches, and I’ve never heard that classification mentioned before.
“A void is a rare power…rarer than weavers,” Eldrith begins to explain, hands folded limply in her lap. For the first time since I’ve known the crone, she looks her age. “A void can absorb magic with a single touch. Strip it down to nothing. It’s not like unraveling a spell, it’s making it so it was never there to begin with.” Her attention lifts to her High Priestess, then she adds, “That witch?—”
“Malvina,” I supply, but I don’t really know why I bother. Calling that bitch by name is a courtesy she sure as shit doesn’t deserve.
“Malvina,” Eldrith repeats with a single stiff nod. “She touched the boundary’s spell, and it vanished. Amara wouldn’t have sensed a thing because the spell wasn’t simply broken or disrupted. It was erased at the root. That’s how they got in undetected.”
Lena, the Craddock wolf with the bleached mullet and Edie’s newly discovered scent match, speaks up next. “Between her and the illusionist cloaking their approach, and Lowri beingmanipulated to lead them straight through your front door, Noa, we had no idea we were under attack until the sisters’ coven members descended on the town.” Beside her, Edie’s hand trembles as she clings to Lena’s forearm. “Everything about it was strategic and timed out. They created chaos in seconds.”
“Which was the point,” Rhosyn pipes in, sitting straighter in her seat next to her pack Alpha. Rennick was right, the beta female is livid. While everyone else looks crushed beneath sorrow, Rhosyn’s green eyes are lit up with fury. “It was a distraction to keep eyes off what was happening here at Noa’s.”
“I still don’t understand what they wanted,” one of the coven members admits meekly, voice frayed. A sling cradles her arm to her chest, and a line of neat butterfly stitches keep her temple held together.
Like fog, a thick silence settles over the room.
It’s Siggy who breaks it. “Omegas.” Her cracked whisper just barley moves through the space. “They wanted omegas.”
I reach for her without thinking, my arm curling around her hunched shoulders. When she doesn’t flinch from my touch, and instead leans into it, I almost tear up again. Even after everything, she trusts me to help hold her together. She can still find comfort in my presence.
The guilt comes back. Like every Nightingale before Siggy, I’d made her a promise. I told her she’d be safe here, that this was a place she could heal and reclaim what was stolen from her. This coven of unknown witches broke that vow tenfold today and made me a liar in the process.
I wouldn’t blame her if she never trusted me again.
The room tenses at Siggy’s words, but it’s the two alpha males across from me who go still in that unmistakable way. This is how it’s meant to be—how nature designed it. Alphas are wired to protect omegas, but too many have forgotten this. They’ve twisted that drive into something else entirely.
Canaan’s brow tightens, his nostrils flaring with a silent exhale. But it’s Rennick who turns to stone. His bare shoulders pull tight, spine ramrod straight, gunmetal irises melting into liquid rage. His wolf is close to the surface. I can feel the subtle crackle in the air as his beast rises inside him, testing the strength of Rennick’s leash.
