It doesn’t need saying. We both know how everyone in this pack remembers the great Thalassa Alderwood. They think of her as the wild charmer who lost her mind and bound her own daughter’s wolf before vanishing into the night.Rhosyn’s hand gives my arm a gentle but grounding squeeze. “Even when you weren’t here, what your mom gave this pack stayed. Youbothdid. That kind of impact doesn’t wash away, Noa. It’s woven into the bones of who we are as a pack.”
I want to believe this so bad it hurts, because despite everything—her secrets, her manipulation—my mother is still the best person I’ve ever known. She gathered broken people the way others gathered flowers, tended to them like they were her own flesh and blood. But the thought of her tampering with my memories, with my bond, circles me endlessly.It’s twisted my view of her, left it tainted and unsure. And I hate that she’s made me doubt her, even for a second.
“When Rennick stepped up as pack Alpha, I tried to help him where I could. Keeping things organized and important traditions like this alive,” Rhosyn tells me as we restart our slow journey down the dirt road. “But you’re here now. You can help shape them again, or maybe even create new ones.”
Something at the edge of my mind stirs—a faint tug that tells me Rhosyn isn’t just making easy conversation. There’s underlying purpose threading through her words, careful and deliberate.She’s guiding this somewhere, I just don’t know where yet.
I shake my head, a faint smile tugging at my mouth. One that’s not quite humor, not quite happiness, still edged with a trace of bitterness. “Yeah, that was probably her plan all along. That I’d come back and step into the shoes she abandoned, picking up right where she left off.”
It feels good, being able to talk about my mom like this. Openly, without flinching. I owe part of that to Seren and Rhosyn. I’ve been leaning on them more lately, finally letting them in on the mess of questions that still lace around my mom’s choices. It started after that day at the creek with Rennick. I came home and told them everything—the dreams, the truths Rennick and I laid out between us, what we did to each other after.It was the right call, letting them shoulder some of it with me. I feel lighter now, like the weight of it all isn’t solely mine to carry anymore.
“I think she thought it’d be simple,” I add as we come to a familiar bend in the road. I know every curve, every tree by heart, that mark the way to the healer’s cabin. “That once I found Rennick again all the pieces she left behind would fall into place—that I’d easily fall into my place being back here.” The huffed laugh that escapes my sore throat touches the air and becomes a curl of smoke. “For all her foresight and immaculate planning, even the mighty Thalassa couldn’t have seen all…this…coming.”
Rhosyn’s fawn curls whip across her face as the wind picks up. She pushes them back, frowning at me. “But youareback, right? For good?”
The question has my insides stuttering and I hesitate.
She narrows her eyes in my direction. “You and Nick seem to be working things out. I mean, Ismelledhim on?—”
“Stop!” I blurt, cutting her off before she can finish the sentence. Mortification hits me so hard I nearly trip over my own boots. My face floods with heat, and I swear even the frost on the ground melts in sympathy.
“What?” she says, wide-eyed and far too innocent to be remotely convincing.“You want me to pretend I didn’t scent him all over you? Or that Siggy didn’t see him walking out of your bedroom the other morning?”
“Rhosyn,” I warn, but it only makes her grin wider.
The ground might as well swallow me whole. My wolf, of course, has no shame about any of it. She’s practically glowing inside me, smug as sin, still stretching and purring over what happened between us and the Alpha the day before last.
That morning had been a haze of overwhelming sensation. The warm press of his body against mine, the quiet safety of it, I’d soaked it in like it was mine to keep.For a stolen stretch of time, I’d felt whole again, sated in ways that had been left aching and needy for too long. But when he kissed me goodbye and leftfor morning patrol, the warmth went with him. So did the sense of peace.
The cold came creeping back in and accompanying it was remorse. Not for him, but for me. For the promise I’d made to myself and promptly broke.
I’d told myself I wouldn’t cross that line until his engagement was officially dead. Until there was nothing tying him to Talis McNamara. But I let him touch me, let him leave proof of it on my skin, while he still technically belonged to someone else—if only on paper.
You don’t owe her a fucking thing, my wolf snarls, her fury curling low and possessive in my chest.
She’s right. I know she’s right. But that doesn’t stop the guilt. It doesn’t silence the piece of me that holds fast to the knowledge that I deserve more than to exist in the shadow of a promise he gave to someone else.
A promise brought on by necessity or not.
And yet, two days later—two days of replaying every moment, of feeling the ghost of his mouth on mine, his body movingwith mine until we both came apart—I find the remorse that held me so tightly at first has gentled its grip. What remains in its place is something steady, something verging on right. I think I might actually be okay with what we did. Or maybe it’s just me finally surrendering and giving up my fight against it.
“We still have a lot to figure out,” I say quietly, the words tasting heavier than I mean them to. “Ihave a lot to figure out. My head’s kind of a mess.”
Rhosyn loops her arm over my shoulders, pulling me close enough that her warmth steadies me.
“Anyone’s head would be after what you’ve been put through,” she tells me gently. “But don’t forget to give yourself some grace, all right? You and Rennick…it’s complicated, sure, but what you two are, your bond, it’s also the most natural thingin the world. Even if it’s a little cracked right now.” Her thumb traces slow circles over my arm. “You’re allowed to still want it, Noa. Wanting him, wanting to forgive him—none of that makes you weak. It means you’re still brave enough to try. Forgiveness takes a kind of strength most people never find.”
My throat aches as I breathe out shakily.The way my eyes also start to sting catches me off guard. I push through it. “I never stopped wanting him.” My quiet admission nearly gets lost in the wind. “I just didn’t know if I could trust him when he said he wanted me back. Not after everything that’s happened.”
Rhosyn nods, the look in her eyes seeped in understanding. “Yeah. No one can blame you for feeling that way.” She hesitates. “But what about now? Do you trust him?”
The question hangs between us, fragile in the cold. I think about Rennick—about all the ways he’s not only shown up for me but shown me that he can. That he wants to. Not just through declarations or promises, but in the small things. The quiet moments that shouldn’t matter but somehow do. The morning coffees. The fleeting touches in crowded rooms where no one else exists for him but me. And the one that nearly undoes me, the fact he’s been sleeping on the floor outside my bedroom as my silent guardian.
The answer I have for Rhosyn isn’t simple, but neither is what exists between him and me. Like I told her, we still have a lot to figure out.
“I want to.”
Rhosyn exhales, a puff of white mist curling from her lips. “Well,” she says, relief threading through her voice. “It’s a start. I’ll take it.” Her arm squeezes around my shoulders before she lets go, rubbing her hands together for warmth. “I already warned Nick that if you decide to dump his stubborn Alpha ass for good that you get custody of me in the breakup. We’ll have to work out a visitation schedule for poor Canaan, though, whichmight get tricky. Oh well, one weekend a month to myself might be good for me. I can finally catch up on all the terrible reality TV I pretend to hate.”
