I shove my hands deeper into the sleeves of Rennick’s sweatshirt—another treasure conveniently left for me to find—and try to fight the chill crawling up my spine.
My mouth opens to ask Amara more about Mom, if she knew anything of her past,something, but movement on the ridge above us catches my eye.
A tall, muscular shape moves between the sparse trees.
A shape I know well.
Rennick.
He doesn’t bother with caution, half sliding, half falling down the jagged slope. Loose stone skitters out from under him, he catches himself on branches, but he doesn’t slow. The control he wears like armor has cracked wide open, replaced by urgency that borders on panic. When he reaches the bottom and lifts his head, the look on his face stops me cold. Fear. Raw and unguarded.
And beneath lies something worse. Guilt.
That’s how I know.
He knows I found out.
About the betrothal party.
Toher.
He looks like he dressed in a rush, grabbing whatever his hands hit first. His faded jeans hang low on his hips, boots half-done and laces dragging through the dirt, and his sleeveless T-shirt has been sliced down the sides, showing flashes of the sun-tanned skin of his torso.
He closes the distance between us.
His chest rises and falls too fast, like he’s been chasing me since I slipped out of the healer’s cabin. For a second, I think I might ask him what exactly he’s so afraid of—what danger he thought I’d fallen into—but then he turns toward Amara, and everything about him changes.
The air shifts, heavy and charged, alive with the crackle of dominance as he transforms before my eyes. The man who stands before me isn’t just Rennick anymore. He’s the Alpha of Pack Fallamhain, and every inch of him radiates the kind of authority deserving of such a title.
The sound he makes is deep enough to vibrate through the soles of my boots. “If you ever use your magic to cloak my mate from me again…” The sentence trails off, unfinished, but the danger doesn’t. His meaning is clear enough to chill the air around us—he doesn’t make empty threats.
Cloak?The word rattles through me before its meaning hits. He’s talking about Amara’s power, how she bends the elements to her will. How she can still the sound of her steps with earth and send her scent scattering on the wind. I just hadn’t realized she’d been concealing us both as we walked. Hiding us from him until she was ready for him to find me.
Amara’s dark brow lifts, utterly unimpressed. “You don’t frighten me, Alpha,” she drawls, her tone cool enough to cut through his anger. “I needed time to speak with Noa. Alone.” She glances my way, then back at him. “But I presume it’s your turn now. I’ve been told there’s a few things you need to clear up.”
I can’t tell if she’s warning him or giving him permission. Either way, the tension between them thrums like a pulled bowstring waiting for release.
Rennick’s chest is still heaving, still rumbling with a snarl threaded with unspoken warning, his jaw locked tight, the muscle there jumping.
Then his eyes lift and find mine.
That’s all it takes.
The numbness I’ve been holding on to like a lifeline shatters apart like thin glass. The pain and hurt doesn’t just return in a trickle. It surges, flooding each hollow crevice inside me until I can barely stand beneath the weight of it. Every honest word I’vebitten back, every bruise he’s left on my heart, every wound I told myself I could nurse back—they all reawaken at once. Sharp and screaming for attention.
The world narrows.
The steady murmur of the creek dissolves, Amara’s quiet retreat fades to nothing, even the wind seems to be holding its breath. All that’s left is the roar inside my head, the pounding in my veins, the storm beating its fists on the inside of my ribs. It builds and builds, pressing harder with every heartbeat, until I swear the next breath might be the one that ruins me.
He’s talking—rushed and unraveling—like if he can just get the words out fast enough he can rewrite what he’s done. But I can’t hear a thing he says. His voice can’t make it past the whirlwind I’ve found myself trapped in. Still, Ifeelit. The desperation. The ache for me to understand. The pleas for my forgiveness.
It’s always me who has to be the merciful one. Always me who has to bleed grace.
The space around us distorts, the air itself is rippling as if mirroring a lake’s surface. Something inside me pulls tighter, winding in on itself like a snake eating its own tail, endless and consuming, until there’s nothing left but the spiral.
My wolf starts to thrash inside her cage, wild with something I can’t name. The rhythmic relentlessness creates a beat with the hum that’s been building between my ears. It’s a symphony made of chaos that keeps growing, working its way toward a fever pitch.
I feel more than hear the crack, reminding me of an icicle splitting in two, and it takes a second to realize the faint warmth trickling from my nose, trailing over my lips, is real. The sensation feels too far away, like it doesn’t belong to me or my body. I try to lift my hand, but the limb acts as if it’s not connected and ignores the order.
