She lifts one shoulder unapologetically. “What? Don’t give me that look. She would have gone through my things too if she thought I was in trouble. And probably a lot sooner than I did.”
I can’t bring myself to care about the invasion of my mate’s privacy, not when it’s handed me a truth I somehow missed. My mate has been bleeding, and I didn’t see it. Didn’tknow. The knife in my gut twists deeper.
“Why would she hide that?”
I turn away from Seren and look back at the bed, grounding myself in the steady rise and fall of Noa’s chest. Proof that she’s still breathing, still here. My eyes trace over her features, searching for any hint of pain, but she looks peaceful now.Deceptively so. Like a slumbering storm that’s overdue to wake up and wipe out an entire city.
“She’s terrified, Rennick. Not just of what’s happening, but of saying it aloud, because once you give pain a name, it’s real, and you can’t take it back.And sometimes—healthy coping mechanism or not—it’s easier to just compartmentalize the hell out of everything. Call it denial or survival, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s the same thing at the end of the day. You don’t have to face your scars if you’re too busy pretending they’re just temporary decoration.” I’m not sure, but the raw edge in Seren’s tone tells me she’s talking about more than Noa now. “Then there’s the fact that Noa’s always been the one everyone leans on. To her, admitting she needs help rewrites who she is as a person. It’s not natural. And if I know her at all, there’s definitely some pride mixed in with that martyr complex she wears like her favorite accessory.” She lets out a humorless laugh. “Noa can handle people depending on her all day long, but being the one who has to ask for help? Yeah, that bitter pill is going down dry and she’s choking on it.”
I’ve watched her with her Nightingales. The gentleness, the patience, the way she carries their pain like it’s her own. What Seren’s saying fits my mate. It’s Noa through and through. She was made to hold others together, even if it means breaking herself to do it.
“But what scares her most about all of this isyoufinding out.”
I don’t flinch this time, but it still hits somewhere deep. I’ve earned Noa’s mistrust, and I know that. I know the ways I’ve broken her, the ways I’ve made her doubt me. This discomfort is something I’ve earned, and I don’t try to soothe it away.
“Why would me knowing she’s close to—” The word catches in my throat like it’s made of thorns.Dying.My mind whispers it anyway. I swallow hard and settle on an alternative thatdoesn’t make my world feel like it’s tearing at the seams. “That she’sgetting sicker. Why would that be worse than anyone else knowing?”
“Because she knew you’d try to fix it.”
“Of course I want to fix it!” The words rip out of me, louder than I mean to. ‘That’s all I want—to fix this. To fixher.”
“I know, but she wasn’t ready to let you.”
I freeze.
“She wasn’t ready to trust you with something that big—not after everything you put her through,” Seren says behind me from her spot at the door. “She knew that once you found out, you’d crawl through broken glass to save her. But letting you do that would mean admitting to herself that she really does believe you, that she knows you meant every promise you made her. She wasn’t ready to face that, Rennick. Not yet.”
Behind my ribs tightens like she’s reached in and twisted something important.
Confirmation that Noa holds even a flicker of belief in me, hits harder than any punch I’ve taken in a fight. For a heartbeat, it feels like light breaking through fog.
Seren finally steps from her post, the tension in her shoulders easing just enough for her to cross the room. She must see it, the way I’m now anchored to this spot. Any notion of leaving has abandoned me. I’m not thinking of anything but the quiet rise and fall of Noa’s chest. Whatever else I was planning for the day has slipped to the edges of my mind and the bottom of my priory list.
Nothing outside this room feels remotely important anymore.
“And that’s why,” Seren continues, moving to stand on the other side of Noa’s bed and her tone gentler now, “she couldn’t bring herself to admit to you that the pain from the broken bondonly stops when you’re near her.Youare the only relief she can get.”
Like puzzle pieces falling into place, the truth slams into me.
All of our stolen moments fill my mind. I think of the way she softens under my touch, the faint moan of relief that slips from her lips when my skin brushes hers, how she leans into me like she’s trying to steal my body heat. I remember the way she trembled in my hands by the creek when I’d thought‘fuck it’and kissed her senseless—the way her breath caught as though the smallest bit of contact steadied her.
She’d all but admitted this to me the night she found me stationed outside her bedroom, but all this time, I thought she was hurting the same way I was—the restless kind of need that makes my skin crawl when she’s too far away. But it isn’t the same at all.
Noa’s been carrying something far heavier. Feeling more. Needing more.
Unable to hold myself back, my hand finds her face just as it had before and my thumb sweeps along the curve of her cheekbone. The simple contact has the tension in her brow soothing, and her chin tilting instinctively toward my hand like she’s once again chasing my comfort in her sleep.
“This is why you said if I leave this room, I’ll be hurting her,” I murmur, still watching the way her face softens beneath my fingertips.
“Yes,” Seren confirms from the other side of the bed, her gaze fixed on Noa. “What happened yesterday down at the creek—what she put you through—she pushed herself too far. Magic like that takes from our bodies, and she doesn’t have anything to spare right now.”
I nod faintly. I’d told Seren what Noa had done to me once we had her settled in bed. She’d looked at her friend with disbeliefetched in her pale eyes after she learned what horrors I’d been forced to live through.
Noa may not have told me of her power, but she hadn’t told Seren either.
“I don’t want her to hurt anymore. Inever wantedto hurt her,” I say quietly, the thin and frayed quality of my voice startling me. “I don’t know how to heal her, how to stop this sickness from taking her from us.”From me.
My own begging haunts me, the words that were torn out of me in that nightmare she forced me to live clawing through my head.No, baby, please…stay with me. You have to keep breathing. Please don’t leave me, Noa!
