When his palm collars my throat, I still. He squeezes. His grip isn’t suffocating, it’s just hard enough for me to feel owned. Possessed. I swallow against his palm but don’t try to break free.
“You look so pretty with my cum all over you, sweet Noa,” he rasps, voice thick with satisfaction. His hold on my throat tightens just enough to make me shiver and his thumb swipes over the spot on my pulse point he’dfixated on earlier. “I like my scent clinging to your skin. Myclaim.” He snarls the word, his wolf pushing through.
Dipping his chin, he uses his control on my jugular to hold me right where he wants and kisses me breathless.
“Keep me on you,” he growls against my lips. “All day. Don’t wash me off.”
To anyone else, it would sound like an Alpha’s command. Unyielding. Final. But that’s not what this is. I hear the edge beneath it, the strain.
It isn’t authority. It’s a plea. Mate to mate.
His face is still close, breath mingling with mine, when I find myself nodding.
Chapter 18
Noa
The cold’s got teeth this morning, and last night’s freeze left its fingerprints everywhere.The grass along the dirt road wears a thin coat of frost that sparkles in the weak late-morning light like it’s trying to pass for something delicate instead of frigid.
My breath curls white in the air, vanishing as quickly as it comes, as Rhosyn and I walk.
She keeps her pace matched to mine, though we both know she’s slowing down for my sake. Her stride’s steady and sure, while mine drags a little, weighted by the stiffness that’s worked its way back into my muscles—and not just from the chill. She’d offered to drive us to Zora’s cabin, but I’d fed her some easy lie about how the walk and fresh air would do me good. The bullshit slid from my tongue without thought. Out of habit or desperation to keep up the façade, I can’t be sure. I do, however, know that I’d trade my left tit for heated car seats right about now. The air cuts like glass through me, my throat burning, lungs tight enough that I half expect to start coughing blood again.
The ice in my veins that has nothing to do with the weather has also settled in deep since I left the warmth and protection of Rennick’s house. Every inch of that stone and wooden architectural dream smells of him—leather, vetiver, mint—and breathing it in, saturating myself in it, helps take a little of the edge off when he’s not close to me. And he’s been out all day today with Canaan, mumbling something about pack meetingskeeping him busy when he left me in the kitchen alone with my latte earlier.
If it weren’t for Seren and my Nightingales still staying there, the house would feel too big, too empty when he leaves.
Maybe that’s why when Rhosyn appeared not long ago, armed with an agenda and that familiar glint in her eye, I didn’t fight her on it the way my gut told me to. Maybe a change of pace and scenery will do me good—a distraction from the quiet disaster of my body trying to decay in Rennick’s absence. Hattie, Elio, and Siggy had already headed to Zora’s cabin, but Rhosyn waited, giving me time to change and collect the supplies she claimed we’d need.
My canvas pack, stuffed with whatever I managed to grab from my Potion & Petal stock before we left, hangs heavy on my shoulders as we follow a very familiar route. Rhosyn’s woven basket hangs over her forearm. It’s filled with glass jars that clink with each step, ribbons, sweets, and Goddess knows what else since I didn’t get a good look before we headed out the door.
“I know I’m not an omega,” she notes after a stretch of comfortable silence, slowing when I veer off the designated path again. “But I’ve always liked this tradition.”
I listen as I crouch beside a fallen fir branch, its needles slick with melting frost. Laced through them are threads of Usnea—old man’s beard—gray-green and soft against the bark. I work the lichen loose with clumsy, half-numb fingers.This is old medicine, known for its antimicrobial properties but also its immune support. It’s the kind of thing my mother swore by, and it’s her teachings that make it feel wrong to leave it behind, even if I have nowhere to store it properly. I’ll see if Zora can use it. And if she can’t, I’ll find a way to. Maybe I’ll steal Rennick’s kitchen for an afternoon and make a syrup or salve.
It’s been too long since I’ve tinkered in the apothecary. The familiar itch to create, to heal, to work with what grows fromthe soil picks at me. I miss the steady rhythm of it, how growing something and then turning it into medicine always made the ground feel a little more solid beneath my feet.
“It’s sweet, in a nauseatingly wholesome kind of way, you know?” Rhosyn goes on as I drop my hoard of lichen into her open basket. “Seeing everyone pitch in to make these kits—women and omegas banding together to craft things to make sure the pack’s omegas about to present don’tliterallymelt during their first heats. If you really think about it, it’s basically a big, horny crafting circle. Only instead of friendship bracelets and ugly embroidered tea towels, we’re brewing cramp-reducing tea and tying ribbons around dildos with inflatable knots.Also, there are sweets. Because while we can’t shove a real-life alpha in a heat aid kit, wecanprovide chocolate, and that’s a pretty solid runner-up, if you ask me.”
She grins and bumps my shoulder when I snort.
“For the record, I’m banned from touching knitting needles or an oven. Been there, tried that, and was asked to never attempt again. But Iamthe official dildo wrapper. Turns out, I tie one hell of a bow. We’ve all got our specials skills and evidently this is mine. I once asked Canaan to be my living model so I could show off my technique—he said it was inappropriate while I argued I was doing community service. What a fucking buzzkill.” She winks at me. “Anway, I’m just glad you’re finally around to join the chaos.”
I’m glad one of us feels that way, because I’m still not sure how I feel about this. I don’t think Rhosyn realizes how deep this cuts for me, how much it drags up. Fuck, just stepping foot inside Zora’s home—the healer’s cabin—is going to feel like peeling open old wounds that haven’t healed right. I lived there for the first eighteen years of my life before I was forced to leave, and walking back in now will be like stepping into a tomb of memories. The good and the bad alike.
All I can offer Rhosyn is a stiff nod in answer, but she doesn’t seem put off by my lack of enthusiasm.
“I can’t imagine how scary it must be for the young omegas to go through their first heats,” she notes with a grimace. “Most of them haven’t chosen mates yet, so it’s just them locked away somewhere, riding it out alone with a heating pad and a prayer. That’s why we do this. The kits, the tea, the little comforts—it’s just our way of saying,‘Hey, you’re not alone. We got you…and also, here’s a vibrator’.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly, watching a bird fly from the tree we pass. “I’m familiar with the kits.”
She glances over, her brows knitting with curiosity. “You are?”
“Mmhmm,” I hum. “We do something similar at the sanctuary. Mom kept changing what went into them, always finding some new way to make them better. She just wanted the Nightingales to feel like they were cared for. Like they were safe.”
Rhosyn stops walking altogether and grips my arm, halting me too. “That’s where this came from, isn’t it? This pack tradition. It started with your mom.”
My heart aches at that, but I force my shoulders to lift, casual, like it doesn’t hurt me to speak of her legacy. “I’m just glad the pack remembers some of the good she did here. And not just the…rest.”
