“My father used to tell me that being Alpha meant making the hard decisions. That one day, I’d understand what that meant.” He pauses, eyes sweeping the crowd but not really seeing. He’s stuck somewhere else—somewhere dark. “But ending his life…that wasn’t a hard decision. Not in that moment.”
I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until my vision starts to blur at the edges.
“He wasn’t my father anymore. Not there at the end.” His voice tightens. “Moon Madness had already taken him. It had eaten through everything he was, until all that was left was fury and delusion. By the time I stopped him, he’d already killed his brother—his second-in-command, his most loyal man.” His fingers twitch at his side, a small betrayal of the storm still coursing through him. “If I hadn’t…If I hadn’t done what I did, the body count wouldn’t have ended there.”
My hand lifts to my chest. My heartbeat hammers against my palm like it wants out. Like it wants me to cross the distance between us and ease the guilt that will probably live in him forever.
I’d heard the stories about Moon Madness from my mom but hearing them isn’t the same as watching your own father succumb to it. In that tone she used when she wanted to prepare me for something awful, Mom told me how the disease makes them stronger, that pain can’t touch them anymore or slow themdown. They fight until there’s nothing left and then keep going—they never go quietly.
The scars Rennick will carry for the rest of his life are proof ofhow hard Merritt fought until the end.
My heart aches for him—for what he’s done, for what it’s cost—but none of this makes sense. These aren’t the words of a man celebrating his future union. Then again, when I saw the look on Rennick’s face and heard his echoing plea for me to stay, I knew this wasn’t an ordinary engagement celebration. I just haven’t figured out what his end goal is here.
Yes, you do, my wolf debates conspiratorially,trust our mate.
Beside him, Talis shifts, a ripple of unease breaking through her polished veneer as her eyes dart toward her father. Cathal stands off to the side of the stage, surrounded by his men and a few unfamiliar she-wolves—her friends, probably. His fury hums through the air like a live wire, but it doesn’t dissuade Rennick.
He keeps going.
“My first act as your Alpha was executing my father,” he tells the room, his tone taking on a powerful edge. “And I would do it again. Not just for him, because no one should live like that, but for all of you. Because protecting this pack, keeping you safe, is what I swore to do.” He pauses, letting the words settle. “But that kind of shadow doesn’t leave easily. The water may run clear, but your hands aren’t clean. Blood lingers, no matter how justified the kill was, and it changes you. It makes you start weighing options you never fucking would have entertained before.”
The room as a whole holds its breath, still waiting to see where he’s taking us.
“I wasn’t ready to lead,” he admits, and to me, that kind of honesty is more powerful than any growl or show of dominance could ever be. Standing before a room and naming your flaws isn’t easy, but Rennick is doing it anyway. “I thought I had moretime. More time to grow into the kind of man I wanted to be before I had to become the Alpha this pack needed. But when my father fell, I no longer had the luxury of time. Suddenly, every life in this territory depended on me doing the right thing, even when I was still trying to figure out what that looked like. I was surrounded by people who wanted me to rule as my dad had, to follow in his blueprint. And worse, some were in my ear—my own council members—implying I would fail if I didn’t.”
Oh fuck, he’s calling out his own people now, too.
His admission lands heavy, the truth of it seeping into the cement floors beneath our feet. People watch him, their confusion about the reason and direction of his speech still clearly written across their faces, but still they hang on to every word he says.
He draws in a slow breath as he scans the crowd. “I let their expectations influence me. The fear of failing this pack, of not living up to what they thought I should be, it weakened me. Made me become an Alpha I didn’t recognize or respect—made me choose wrong, again and again, and I can never take some of those decisions back.”
His eyes find mine across the room. The weight of his gaze hits like a blow to the sternum and a slow, deliberate caress down my spine all at once. He holds me there, long enough for my pulse to falter and my wolf to stir, before turning away to Cathal—whose face has turned the color of a raw chuck roast—and then flicks briefly to Talis. Ren doesn’t even bother attempting to hide the repulsion on his face when he looks at her this time.
To her credit, she doesn’t bolt, though I can see the tremor in her body from here. Her fingers twist the hem of her pale blue dress, knuckles whitening. Her posture screams that she’s caught between dismay and denial. She has to realize by now that this isn’t going to be the fairytale ending she’s beendreaming about since puberty or scribbling about in her color-coded manifesto—oops, I meandiary.
Rennick continues. “Our omegas began to vanish—your daughters, your sisters, your friends— and suddenly I wasn’t just afraid of failing you. I had proof of it, written in blood. I was then offered a solution. And even when every part of me warned against it, I agreed to the bargain. I thought I was being noble. Thought I was sacrificing only myself—myfuture,myhappiness—for the safety of my people. And I probably would have kept forcing myself to believe that lie.” He hesitates, gaze cutting back to me and staying there. Something raw flickering in the space between us. “But then Noa Alderwood came back.”
The shift in the room is instant.
As if choreographed, they turn as one. A hundred or so pairs of eyes land on me. My stomach drops so fast I’m pretty sure it leaves my body behind completely in its hasty escape. I start to shake, my bones rattling.
The hands gripping my upper arms slide down until Seren and Siggy each take one of mine, fingers tightening in grounding solidarity as the world around me starts to tilt.
Holy shit, this can’t… Is this really happening?
People have started to murmur to each other, words coming fast and low as they split their attention between Rennick and me.
He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t stumble. His commanding voice just cuts clean through the whispered speculations and outward astonishment.
“My first mistake was fighting and then denying the pull I felt toward her from the start, the pull that told me she was meant to be mine. But my greatest sin was letting something sacred, something the Goddess herself entrusted me with, be turned into a bargaining chip by Cathal McNamara. The thing I should’ve guarded with my dying breath became currency in hisgame of manipulation, and I let it happen because I convinced myself that rejecting my fated mate was a loss I could bear to live with.” Rennick doesn’t hide the remorse the etches across his face or the subtle full-body wince. He allows them all to see the way he’s frayed at the edges. “But I was wrong.”
The rest of the room might think he’s speaking to them, but I know better. The conviction in his voice is the same one he used in those private moments when he tried to stitch us back together, when I was still too scared to believe in it. In him. But hearing it again, spoken into the open before witnesses, makes something deep inside me buckle.
It’s different this time, the way the defenses I built to survive him begin to break. It’s not a crack I can seal, but a shattering that’s beyond repair. Each word he speaks loosens another stone, and in the quiet ruin they leave behind, something fragile stirs to life. Trust. Faint, but alive.
Talis’s practiced composure finally cracks. The color drains from her face, leaving only two angry blotches high on her cheeks—a trait bestowed on her by her father’s genes. She turns like she means to stomp down off the stage, but Rennick’s hand snaps out, catching her by the wrist. His grip is visibly tight and unyielding.
Talis spins, copper hair flaring as she snaps her teeth at him, but Rennick doesn’t blink. He bares his own once, the low rumble that follows shaking through the room and straight into my bones. Talis stops cold, her neck bending in instinctive submission. The sight is glorious and has a shiver racing down my spine.
