Chapter 3
Rennick
We’re just shy of thirty minutes away of my territory’s iron gates—from the place that raised me, but with each passing minute it feels less like a return and more like a retreat.
Because I know when I pull up to that house that looms over the lake she won’t be there, and where Noa is…
that’s my home now. She’s my home, my very reason the earth is steady beneath my feet, and each mile I put between us feels like it’s being marked on my skin by a dull blade. One jagged bloody tally mark at a time.
My wolf paces under my skin, snapping at the cage of my bones, begging me to turn the fuck around and go back to her.
I grip the steering wheel until the leather creaks.
The image of her is burned into my skull.
The way she looked this morning, curled beneath that soft comforter of her bed, that damn hoodie of mine draped over the pillow her delicate face rested on.
Her skin was still too pale from the sickness I’ve forced upon her, but for those quiet moments, she was peaceful.
I’d sat in the chair in her attic bedroom, fighting off my own exhaustion for as long as I could.
Just watching her breathe. Committing every detail of my mate to memory.
Sleep had stolen me eventually. And with it, came the dreams. Each one different, but every single one ended the same.
I lost her every time. Sometimes I walked away, just like I had in that clearing.
Other times, forces—shadowed and faceless—tore her from my arms. No matter how hard I fought, I couldn’t change the outcome.
I was left alone with nothing but the soul-deep devastation of her absence.
Her touch pulled me out of it. Soft fingertips on my face, tracing the raised lines that marked the beginning of my reign as pack Alpha, cutting through the devastating nightmare with something gentler than I could ever deserve.
But still, the fear didn’t lift. Because awake, I could still lose her.
To the sickness born from my thoughtless rejection or to the stone walls she’s had to build to keep me out. To protect herself from me.
But I won’t let her slip away again. Even if losing her is the punishment I’ve earned after everything I’ve done to my sweet Noa, I won’t accept it. I’ll fight with everything I have and whatever’s left after that until she’s safe. Until we’re whole.
I had said as much before I left her in the safety of the Victorian manor she calls home. I’d cradled her face in my hands and spoken my promise out loud, clear enough to be heard over every lie I’d ever made her believe.
“One day, you’ll believe that I’m not walking away from you. Not again.”
I’d seen the doubt flash in her eyes, but there was something else. Hidden beneath the hesitation and fractured trust I’d put there, there was a flicker of light I’ll do everything in my power to never destroy again.
Hope.
Her tender and cautious hope gave life to my own.
I’d also made this vow, silently, with each pass of my lips against hers when she’d kissed me earlier in her room, and again when I’d descended between her thighs, devouring her with my mouth.
Each kiss, each caress of my tongue, each tremble I pulled from her body was that same unspoken promise. I. Will. Fix. This.
My cock stirs at the memory, thick and aching in these damn borrowed sweatpants.
The second pair I’d needed to borrow since I’d ruined the first pair when Noa had come apart in my hands, soaking my tongue with her sugared slick.
The taste of her coupled with the soft whimpers she’d made as she came triggered my own release.
A growl tears from my throat before I can stop it, my wolf slipping through my tenuous control.
Canaan shifts in the passenger seat beside me, running a hand through his mess of light brown hair. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks, just stares ahead at the winding mountain road. “You’re gonna have to learn how to be apart from her, man.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” I mutter, jaw tight. “How you can be away from Rhosyn and not lose your fucking mind.”
His exhale is quiet but heavy. “It’s different for us. Don’t get me wrong, I hate it. I want to be with her every second, but we’ve been bonded for years. Our connection’s steady. Yours and Noa’s? You two are hanging on by a thread.”
Not just a thread. The thread. The one my wolf has been guarding with his life since the moment I walked away from her. It’s frayed and tattered, but it still hums with life in my chest, just waiting for me to right my wrongs.
“It’s never been that intense for us,” Canaan admits. “We want to be together and being apart sucks, but it’s not like a primal, the-world-is-ending kind of need to never be out of reach. Or out of each other’s sights. I think that’s a scent match thing. A curse of an alpha-omega bond.”
A curse?
No. A gift. Because this agony means my bond to my mate still lives and that…that is the biggest blessing there is.
I drag a hand across my sternum, trying to breathe through the unrelenting pressure constricting my rib cage. “I feel like my skin’s too tight. I can’t…I can’t fucking breathe knowing she’s so far away.”
Something shifted between us last night.
I’d been fighting the need to go to her for days, but my wolf made the decision for us by forcibly taking over.
Without hesitation, he ran over state lines to get to her and then spent the night wrapped around her.
And in the quiet of night, with the steady rise and fall of her breath against my chest, something changed in the very fibers of my soul.
With each inhale, she wove herself deeper into me, and being apart from her now feels like I’m being torn apart at a cellular level.
“You need to handle things at home. Fast. Because you won’t last long like this,” he warns. “We haven’t been gone that long, and you already look like shit, Nick.”
I glance at the rearview mirror, catching my reflection for the first time since we climbed into the Escalade.
My second is right. I’m not okay. Before Noa came back, I was a man who prided himself on control, but these days, there’s a wild, feral edge in my gaze.
And right now, it’s all but swallowed up by my gray irises.
My skin’s also gone ashen, a thin sheen of sweat clings to my brow. I look exactly how I feel.
A fucking mess.
Canaan doesn’t need to spell out what has to happen next.
We both know. Step one is ending the farce of a betrothal with Talis—severing the tie to Cathal McNamara and the political noose he’s wrapped around my neck.
Only then can I take back control of my future and hand every bit of it to Noa.
It was always hers anyway, whether I knew it or not.
“I know,” I manage to grit out.
Through the mirrors, I stare at the empty road behind us. The road that will lead me back to her if I’d just listen to this all-consuming need I have and turn the hell around.
But still, I push on.
The closer we get to my territory, the more unbearable it all becomes.
The numbers on the odometer blur as I glance down.
Every mile logged makes it harder to force oxygen into my lungs.
It’s like the air in the car is too thin.
Ever since I kissed Noa’s forehead and forced myself to turn away, my wolf has been making his disapproval clear.
Pacing, snapping his jaw, testing the limits of my control.
But now, something has shifted. He’s no longer just pissed we’ve left her.
He’s panicked. Desperate in that soul-deep, life-or-death kind of way that overrides all logic.
The instinct to go back to her isn’t just a pull anymore. It’s a fucking command.
My breathing’s gone ragged. Each inhale sounds like a war being fought in my lungs.
I don’t need to uncurl my fingers from the steering wheel to know my claws have broken through and I don’t have to look to know my eyes have shifted. I can feel it. The heavy presence of my wolf in them, the way the world sharpens and narrows into a single point.
Her.
She’s not here, but still, she’s all I can see.
“Nick?” The voice cuts through, distant and hazy, like it’s coming from underwater.
Canaan.
But it hardly breaks the surface. My ears are full of the rushing sound of my own blood, of the frantic pulse that drowns out everything else.
My vision blurs at the edges, all thought eclipsed by the ache to be near her.
To put my hands on her skin. To make sure she’s still breathing, still safe. Still mine.
“Rennick!” The command snaps through the haze like a whip.
My hands jerk on the wheel. The SUV swerves hard to the right, tires screaming as I tear us off the road and slam the brakes.
Gravel sprays and dust is kicked up around us in a cloud.
The whole frame groans from the sudden stop, the front of the SUV coming to a halt just inches from the jagged granite wall that hugs the winding road.
“What the fu—”
“I’m going back.” The words tear out of me, my voice shredded. “I can’t fucking do this. I thought I could. I was wrong. Something is wrong.”
Every single one of my instincts is on fire, demanding that I listen.
Canaan’s expression shifts, alarm sharpening into something serious. “What do you mean something’s wrong? Back in Ashvale? With the girls?”
The thought of Rhosyn in danger has his own protective instincts kicking in fast.
“I don’t…I don’t know, all right? I can’t explain it.
But every part of me is screaming that I need to get to her.
I need to find her.” I wrench one hand from the wheel and jab the unlock button on my door.
The soft clunk of the locks disengaging fills the confined space.
“If you want to go home, I get it. You can shift here and run the rest of the way, but I’m turning this car around and going back to her. ”