Rennick stops mid-sentence, mid-plea, the moment the warmth drips from my chin. Fear reclaims him in one clean strike. His eyes go wide and searching like he’s trying to make sense of what he’s seeing.
“Noa.” His lips shape my name, soundless, but I feel the strain of it all the same.
He’s reaching for me before I can react. His big hand finds my forearm, steady and burning hot against my icy skin. The moment he touches me, the world splits at the seams.
Threads unravel through the air. Delicate, shining filaments that dance around me like spun sugar. They vibrate softly, resonating with a frequency I can feel in my teeth. It’s both foreign and familiar. I’ve touched this power before, but time hasn’t gifted me understanding of it. They’re still beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
Every cord burns its own unique color; some shades I don’t even have names for. All of them weave through the air as if made of veins of pure light, but it’s the ones stemming from him that hold me still.
They wind from his strong body like ribbons of a restless storm, all grays and shades of blues. They form something whole, something thatis unquietly…him. Every memory, every scar, every piece of the man he’s fought to become. But one stands apart. Darker. Deeper.The color of a thunder cloud that bleeds lightning.
It beckons me in with a power I can’t label or resist. I try to fight it, because I know what happens when I tamper with these threads.I’ve seen the ruin they can cause. My wolf cries for me to stop, to spare him from it, but I can’t seem to listen. I’m caught in something I don’t understand, powerless to break free.
In my mind's eyes, I imagine a hand—myhand—reaching for the thread. I can feel my fingers brush against it, fragile but so cold in my palm as I wrap it in my grasp.
I watch him, taking in every flicker of emotion that shifts across his face. The worry. The ache. The devotion that refuses to fade, no matter how hard he’s made it for us to find peace.
He says my name again, the sound lost to me, but the thread stirs, trembling in answer.
I tighten my hold on the thread and before I can make myself stop, I pull.
The power that surges through me feels wrong, like it shouldn't have been used in this way. Not against him. But it's too late to take it back.
I can only watch as white clouds flood his irises, swallowing the gray until nothing remains but two glass marbles staring at nothing. His knees hit the ground hard, mud splattering his jeans, but his grip on me doesn’t falter. If anything, it tightens, like he’s trying to hold me here, to anchor us both, even as he’s being dragged away by terror’s serrated claws.
Then he’s gone.
Not physically, but wherever he’s been taken, I can’t follow.
His skin turns a deathly pale, his lips part around a soundless gasp, and the fear that crosses his face makes my heart seize. I’ve seen that look before, once, when Malvina fell into her own nightmare, and it was horrific to bear witness to then.
But this? Watching it happen tohim? It’s agonizing.
He’s living through some horrific invisible reality, something I’ve unleashed upon him.
He’s on his knees before me, one hand clutching his chest, the other still gripping my arm so tight I’m certain it’ll bruise as if he’s terrified of what will happen if he lets me go.
The hum in my body rises until it’s everything. Sound and pressure and pain at once. My muscles tremble until they vibrate, my vision tunnels into pinpoints. the world starts to close in. Darkness creeps from the corners, the drone splittinginto a high, aching wail that feels like it’s tearing me apart. My body gives way beneath it.
And just before the dark pulls me under, the nightmare Rennick’s found himself in bleeds into my mind. His disjointed voice cuts through the chaos. Broken and pleading.
No, baby, please…stay with me. You have to keep breathing. Please don’t leave me, Noa!
Then there’s nothing.
Chapter 21
Rennick
It’s the hour when night gives up its hold, when the world hangs in that quiet in-between. Through the tall windows, the sky is bruising purple into blue, light crawling slowly over the granite mountain peaks.
I haven’t left this chair since I dragged it to her bedside. My back’s a wreck, my legs half numb, but I don’t give a shit. I just watch her.
Noa. Still, silent, but breathing. The soft lift of her chest keeps me sane, keeps mehere. I’ve spent all night counting each breath like prayer beads, terrified one might be her last. Because I saw it—her last breath. I’ve felt her fight for one last jagged lungful, felt it then slip lifelessly past her pale lips.
My stomach twists, cutting the thought off before it can finish forming. I can’t go there again. Not yet. The edges of that nightmare still cling to me like wet ash. My muscles haven’t stopped shaking since I clawed my way out of that hellscape. Even carrying her home yesterday, I could barely feel my own body. But my mate needed me. That thought alone kept me upright.
The tremors are smaller now, ghosting under my skin instead of rattling through me, but the memory of what she made me see—what she made melive—won’t let go.
