Yrsa is the one who snaps back first. “You’re right about one thing, Mercer. It isn’t your place to question your Alpha.”
Once again, I’m left amazed by her support. For months she’s been one of my toughest critics and was one of the loudest in favor of me abandoning my bond with Noa and binding myself to Talis McNamara in an effort to retain the alliance. But her daughter came home because of the woman sitting beside me.And Yrsa, for all her jagged edges, doesn’t turn her back when loyalty has been earned.
She’s another name added to the tally of those who’ve fallen under Noa’s spell.
I could leave it at that—let Yrsa’s bite stand—but I won’t. These are stillmybattles to fight. My wolf surges, pressing against the confines of my skin, demanding I meet the challenge head-on. The shift in my eyes is immediate as I let him peer out just enough to choke the room with the intensity of my dominance. Heads turn and spines snap straight as one. Even the wolves who’ve objected the loudest bow now, staring at the floor rather than facing me.
I let it linger, let them sit in the discomfort until I’m sure the reminder of who the fuck I am has seeped into the marrow of their bones.
But then I catch the Craddock omegas along the wall shrinking back, their spines flush with the drywall. And worse, at my side, Noa—myNoa—is folding in on herself, her chin dipped to her chest as though she’s part of this.
I snap it all back at once, reeling my wolf in hard.
My hand is already reaching for her, brushing beneath her chin, coaxing her head up. She flinches at my touch but doesn’t pull away. The moment her eyes catch the gentleness I reserve only for her, she softens. My thumb ghosts over her one, twice, telling her what I can’t voice in front of them all.Never you, sweet one.
Then I let her go and turn back to Mercer, every line of me hardening again. “I will handle McNamara and his people,” I say, my tone made of unmovable iron. “With or without them, with the Ashvale Coven and Craddock wolves at our side, we’ll keep this territory and the people within it safe.”
I let the reassurance hang, let it sink into the tense air. Heads nod back at me, not all, but enough for now.
Amara sits forward, completely unbothered. “My witches will also be doing additional spell work. Protective illusions, traps, safeguards. We’ll mark their locations for your patrols. We’d hate for one of your wolves to poke their snout where it doesn’t belong.”
At her back, her coven smirks, laughter muffled and conspiring.
I tip my chin at Canaan.
He rises, bracing himself on the table as he points to our territory’s map that’s spread across the glass. “Then let’s lay it out. Get precise. Patrol schedules. Where these safeguards will be be. Where our biggest weaknesses are.”
For the next half hour, voices overlap, suggestions are weighed, plans are drawn. Somewhere in that rhythm, the room begins to settle. It isn’t harmony, not yet, but it’s the start of something that could be. By the time I call it, pleased with what we have in order, the tautness in the air has loosened. With their new assignments in hand, they file out one by one.
I turn, and she’s there. Noa. Already watching me, expression soft in a way I haven’t earned before now. The small smile she offers is genuine. No bitter edges, void of any wary caution. For the first time since I spoke those fucking words in that clearing, she gives me a smile that isn’t laced with anything guarded or pained.
The impact is enough to shake me, enough to bend me if I let it.My knees threaten to give, but I lock them tight, forcing myself to stand tall.
They need me steady.Sheneeds me steady. Even if every part of me wants nothing more than to fall at her feet and beg for the right to keep that smile.
Chapter 12
Noa
Two days.
That’s how long it’s been since the Ashvale witches, the Craddock wolves, and Pack Fallamhain in Rennick’s conference room to decide what this alliance could look like. Everyone laid out what they could offer, where their strengths lie, how we might use them to better cover each other’s backs. It was like forcing mismatched pieces into a single shape.
But we managed it.
Three factions, who only came together because of tragedy and a common enemy, left that room with something resembling a real plan. With these new protocols and strategies in place, we’re all working to set into the fragile rhythm of living together in this territory.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how the hell to exist in a place I thought I’d never return to. My mother’s lie about our exile still circles in my head, but it’s eclipsed by the bigger problem—living under the same roof as the man who rejected me. The tug-of-war inside me is constant. I tell myself to hold the lines I’ve drawn, to keep my heart barricaded. I repeat my reasons like a mantra, but when Rennick moves from my line of sight, the cold bleeds into my marrow and the ache settles until every breath hurts. All I want in those moments and every moment between is to lean into him and let the heat of his presence feed me a little while longer. Desire and defiance wage war within me, and I’m now bone-tired from both the fighting and the longing that pulses through my veins.
Late morning sunlight filters through thinning autumn leaves as I sit on a flat rock at the top of the hill behind Rennick’s sprawling home. A narrow trail starts next to me and winds toward the lake, the water’s surface below glinting silver through the trees.
I’m watching Hattie and Elio tumble through the drying tall grass in their wolf forms.
One ruddy brown, the other sable, they’re nothing but fast blurs and happy barks as they chase one another. It’s the first time either of them has shifted since they were freed from their cages, the first time their wolves have been able to stretch their legs and also enjoy their newfound freedom. Every moment I spend around the new Nightingales, the more they trust and the more they open up. Though the information is still slow going and only given in fragments, I know with certainty it’s been far too long since either of these omegas have been able to connect properly with their wolf halves.
My eyes sting at the bittersweet sight.
And beneath the joy and sympathy I feel for the frolicking wolves, ugly envy simmers. My own wolf presses against the bars of her cage, her keen eyes also observing with yearning so sharp, I have to brace against it. She wants the freedom to run like this. I want that for her—forme—but I swallow it down. I won’t let my own grief for my broken wolf taint this moment.
