My head snaps toward her, pain sparking down my spine at the sudden movement, but I barely register it. I’m too stunned by the slip of what she just revealed.
But Rhosyn’s arrival cuts me off before I get the chance to ask Seren to elaborate.
Completely unaware of the melancholy mood she’s stepped into, she drops down on my other side, huffing dramatically. “Witches are so much cooler than us. I was just out on patrol, right? And one of the coven’s illusionists was out by the western border just casually sculpting booby traps out of moonbeams, glitter, and whatever the fuck else, and what do I have? Fangs, claws, and a vigorous monthly waxing schedule. Totally unfair. For the first time in my life, I want magic. Just a little bit. Like,dip-my-pinkie-toe-in-the-cauldron little. I don’t think I should be trusted with more than that.”
This time when Seren and I laugh it’s real.
Rhosyn’s easy rambling is a welcome distraction. I exhale softly, sinking into the reprieve of easy and pointless conversation, letting the heaviness of the last few days ease for a moment as the three of us sit pressed together on the boulder, watching Elio and Hattie tumble through the yard.
“So,” Seren starts after we’ve watched Elio and Hattie chase each other for a long quiet moment. Her light eyes dancing as she nudges me with her shoulder. She’s lighter now than she was during our private conversation, but I can still see and feel the worry for me simmering beneath the surface. “How was your visit to the lodge yesterday? Gareth still staring at Elio like he single-handedly painted the sunrise—or like how you lovingly look at your first cup of coffee of the day? Same difference, really.”
My lips twitch at this, but my stomach knots too.
Because yes, Gareth had still been looking at Elio with that same lovestruck expression when we went back yesterday. The first time had been during Rennick’s little tour of the territory, when we stopped at the lodge to scavenge for shaving cream the day prior. Gareth—the massive, bearded chef who looks like he could snap a tree trunk over his thigh—had gone red as a socially awkward teenager and stumbled over his words the second Elio walked into his kitchen. It was like Cupid’s fucking arrow square to the dude’s forehead, I swear.
Poor Elio hadn’t noticed. Still too consumed with fighting his own fear and demons to register the way Gareth hovered and babbled, his big hands shaking as though fighting the innate urge to reach for the male omega. I hadn’t acknowledged the pack chef’s behavior and neither had he, but the writing had been on the fucking wall.
At the time, I’d been grateful for Elio’s obliviousness and I still am. He’s still recovering, still piecing himself back together. The last thing he needs is to have to navigate this.
The gravity of Gareth’s intense reaction to Elio had been jarring and worrisome, but then came our second visit yesterday. Hattie and Elio wanted to go back so they could raid Gareth’s freezer for ice cream, only this time, the lumberjack of an alpha hadn’t been alone.
“Yeah, he was…” I mutter my confirmation to Seren, concern for Elio scraping against my sternum. “Big dopey smile and all.” Her own grin is bright but falters when I add, “Corbin was there this time too.”
Corbin. Another alpha male and Gareth’s chosen mate.
And therein lies the problem.
Rhosyn leans in from my other side, her fawn-colored curls lifting in the cool breeze. “And?” she prompts impatiently, like she’s waiting for me to drop more hot pack gossip. “How’d he react to Elio?”
“Same as Gareth,” I admit, rubbing my palm over my denim-covered knee. “Cartoon heart eyes. Ridiculous smile. The whole lovesick shebang.”
Silence hangs heavy between the three of us as we all silently digest what this means for Elio until Seren ruins it.
“Well, what the fuck does that mean?” she blurts, hands flying up. “Elio has two scent-matched alphas? Since when is that a thing? Did the Goddess update the terms and conditions and forget to send out an email? Because damn, if I wasn’t already turned off by alphas for life, I might be jealous as hell. Can you imagine being sandwiched between?—”
“Ser,” I snap, cutting her off before she can get too graphic and risk Elio himself possibly overhearing. Though, the corner of my mouth curves, betraying the laugh swelling in my throat.
Her eyes go all wide and innocent. “What? I was being academic. Asking for science purposes.”
I wave her off with a limp flick of my hand and tired huff.So tired.So achy. I don’t know how much longer I can ignore the clawing need to go find Rennick, to allow his nearness to refuel me and chase away the fog of pain. I swear, if I stop fighting it for even a heartbeat, I think I could pass out right here and take a nap.
“We don’t even know if they’re his matches,” I say, forcing my voice to sound normal while also trying to steer this ship back toward reason. “He hasn’t even looked either of them in the eye, let alone taken in a proper sniff of their scents. He’s still too consumed by his trauma to see them as anything but alphas, and right now that terrifies him. Until he heals more, and he feels more settled and less scared, there’s no way for us to know anything for sure. Elio just needs…time.”
“They’re good men, they’ll give him that,” Rhosyn offers, her voice steady, her faith in her packmates clear. “Whether he’s theirs or not, Corbin and Gareth won’t push him.”
I nod, deciding to do my best to take her word for it. I didn’t recognize either man when I met them. They must have joined the pack after my mother dragged me away, but Rhosyn’s word means something. If she trusts them, I’ll try to as well.
“We should ask Zora,” Seren says suddenly, glancing down at the baby monitor she’s clutching. On the screen, little Ivey is taking her mid-morning nap in a pack-n-play in Rennick’s den. “She might know if two alphas being scent-matched to one omega is a thing. I’d say we could ask Amara, but…well, I think asking her about mates right now might be in poor taste.”
Amara’s been scarce since the meeting.
The last glimpse I caught of her, she was striding out with Zora at her side, the healer talking a mile a minute about Goddess knows what. They’d been quite the pair visually.Amara, with her commanding grace and impeccably tailored garments, walking beside Zora, who wore a skirt that looked like it had lost a fight with a sewing machine an unintentionally lopsided knitted sweater. They looked like the kind of mismatched pairing that would walk off the page of a children’s book. They are elegance and eccentricity in their purest forms, but I know in my gut they’ll end up being friends, and maybe that’s exactly the kind of companionship the High Priestess needs right now.
I keep reminding myself it’s about time I corner Amara and have a real conversation with her. The High Priestess knows things my mother buried, truths she stole from me so effectively that even now, my memories of this place and Rennick from before we fled feel disjointed and hazy. And the pieces I do remember, I don’t know if I can trust them to be real. For all I know, they’ve been manipulated and planted there by Mom.
Seren told me, days before everything went to hell, that it was Amara who stopped her from warning me. She wanted to tell me to reject Rennick back in that clearing, because she knew what a half-broken bond would do to me if he tore out his side. But Amara stepped in, insisting it was all part of a plan my mother had shared with her. Whatever the fuck that means.
The time of secrets and half-truths needs to come to an end, but the answers I seek all circle back to the High Priestess. Answers about Mom, about my fractured bond with Rennick, about my surfacing charmer powers. Zora told me I was an oracle, but oracles can’t see, let alone manipulate the threads like I did with Malvina. Oracles can’t render a powerful witch like that into a quivering lump on the forest floor.
