“Noa,” he breathes into my hair, the sound crumbling apart as he says it. “Fuck, baby…when that ward went up and I couldn’t reach you?—”
I want us to have a moment. Just one. To breathe each other in. To let our bodies reassure each other that we’re safe, that we made it back to each other. And we will.
But there’s something he needs to know first, something I desperately need to tell him so he’s prepared for what’s headed our way.
“Ren,” I try, my voice catching as I speak against his throat. I try again, louder. “Ren, I need?—”
He doesn’t hear me.
His panic barrels right over me, spilling out unchecked as his hands begin to move over me, searching, verifying the best he can through my borrowed coat. He’s cataloging injuries I don’t have, his hands moving with a frantic precision that tells me he won’t believe I’m whole until he confirms it himself. He pulls back, easing my head away from his neck, his gaze flicking over my face and throat as I press my palm to his chest, feeling his heart race beneath it. His attention catches on the blood that stains my skin there, the blood that isn’t mine.
His breathing comes too fast, too shallow, his eyes going in and out of his wolf's.
“Are you hurt?” he demands. “What happened? How did they get you? Why did they bring you out here?”
My head shakes. “I’m not hurt.” It’s the truth. I made it through with a few cuts and bruises and a vicious, pounding headache, but otherwise I’m fine. So why are tears gathering as the words leave my mouth? “I need you to listen to me?—”
“And did you—did you shift?” he cuts in, his voice dropping, turning rough with disbelief twinged with awe. “Because I felt something through the bond. Something I couldn’t explain. Like another presence joining it. And then out there—” He swallows, his eyes flicking toward the woods, unfocused now as his mind is dragged back into the memory of what he saw. What he sawmedo. “Noa…that was you, wasn’t it? They just started dropping, one by one. Cathal. His pack. The witches fighting with them. The way they were screaming.” His gaze snaps back to mine. “That was you and your magic, wasn’t it?”
I shove down the clawing emotion rising in me and answer quickly, because it’s the only way to get him to slow down long enough for me to get to what really matters.
“I’m bruised,” I say first, because I can feel how desperately he needs that reassurance, how badly he needs it to be true. “But I’m not hurt. They chased us through the woods and caught us,” I continue. “Siggy was compelled. They brought us here to wait for the ward to fall so they could load all the omegas onto the plane they had coming in.” A plane I very much doubt will be landing now, not when there’s no one left on their side here to answer communications. “And yes. I shifted. They were hurting Juno and Siggy, and something snapped. She just…broke free and it was—it felt like getting the last stolen piece of myself back.”
Relief softens his expression, the kind meant for me rather than himself, as if something he’s wantedforme has finally come true. His thumb brushes beneath my eye, warm and steady.
“She’s free,” he says softly, wonder twining through each syllable. Pride, too. His gaze holds mine as he adds tenderly, “I can’t wait to meet her, baby.”
The words settle warm in my chest. He leans in then, unhurried, and brushes a soft kiss to my lips. It’s light andfleeting, hardly a kiss at all, yet the simple contact soothes the raw ache inside me that I haven’t had time to give proper attention to.
When he kisses me again, there’s more weight to it. His hand slides to the back of my neck, a touch I know by heart, and the world pulls inward until there’s only the contact between us and the quiet sense that this moment belongs to us.
Too bad it can’t last.
When he pulls back, his brow is furrowed again. “You used the power your mom left you. The weaver magic—the fear.”
He understands better than anyone how consuming this magic can be. How once you’re caught in it, you can’t guide what you’re shown. You can only endure it. Losing control with him like that wasn’t my finest moment but with how the bodies screamed and shattered beneath it today, I feel even worse for ever subjecting him to that.
“Yes,” I whisper. There’s no triumph in it, no satisfaction. There’s only exhaustion and acceptance for the roll I played tonight.
He pulls me into him again, forehead pressing to mine, breath shuddering out of him. “You’re incredible, but I wish I could have spared you from?—”
“Rennick,” I interrupt, louder now, my voice breaking as tears I managed to delay a moment ago spill over again. “I need you to listen to me.”
Something lands. I don’t know if it’s the words or the sound of them, but he lifts his head, drawing back enough to meet my eyes.
The sight of my tears spilling freely and the way my chest starts to quiver, those sobs I’ve been holding back pressing hard against my ribs, only reignites his barely calmed panic. He shifts his weight and adjusts his hold on me, lifting a hand. His thumbs brush at my cheeks, chasing each tear as it falls, like he believesthat if he can erase the evidence quickly enough, the pain might follow.
He asks it quietly, the words barely carrying, his gaze moving over my face as if the answer might be written there. “What’s happening? You said you weren’t hurt…”
I shake my head slowly, deliberately, and the words scrape on the way out, bitter and wrong. “No. I’m not the one who’s hurt.” I swallow something I know will be a choked sound and I search over his shoulder around the dark road. “Where’s Canaan?” But that question tastes worse.
“Canaan?” he repeats, sounding genuinely thrown, like my question has come out of nowhere and doesn’t belong here. “Why are you asking…?” He trails off, then exhales, deciding to give me what I need anyway. “He was fighting with us at first. After he took out Mercer, a couple of the young enforcers on his team—the ones that revealed themselves as traitors tonight too—decided they didn’t want to die like him. They ran. Canaan didn’t let that stand and he chased them north. If I had to guess, he met up with Rook and they should be on their way back now.” His brow creases. “Why?”
I don’t have time to process that Mercer is another name added to the ever-growing list of liars and spies within our ranks. Not when we’re running out of time to find Canaan, to bring him here so he doesn’t have to walk into this alone.
I don’t know why I’m so insistent on this, only that the need sits heavy and persistent in my chest. Walking with him here won’t make what waits any easier. It won’t soften it or change it. There’s no reason for Rennick to warn him, either. I know that in the quiet, certain way sad truths settle. Canaan already knows. He would have felt the bond between them tear, the tether snapping clean through him the moment her heart stopped.
The howl that followed her death echoes in my memory, distant and mournful, leaving the air hollow in its wake. At thetime, I couldn’t tell if it was real, my thoughts too scattered to know the difference. But now some deeper, instinctual part of me knows that it was.
