Chapter 7
Noa
Chaos erupts.
My living room fractures into noise. Questions and theories are hurled into the air all at once. A few people stand, restless and pacing, like motion is the only thing holding them together. Others stay seated, rooted in place by the weight of the revelation.
Somewhere out there, a coven of dark witches is actively kidnapping and trafficking omegas.
Wielding abilities many of us have never seen in person or even heard of, they’ve curated a team of perfect mercenaries.
Weapons. And I think it hits all at once that what we’ve already seen of them is only the beginning.
A fraction of their power. Nothing more than a warning shot.
Then comes Rennick’s full proposal. The idea of relocating to his land and forming a united stronghold between his pack, the Craddock wolves, and the Ashvale Coven. All under one fortified roof.
Some people agree instantly, recognizing the logic in his plan.
Others argue back just as fast, voices overlapping again until the room feels like it might split at the seams. They say they can’t just pack up and abandon Ashvale.
Their home. Even if it isn’t for forever.
And on top of that, they aren’t willing to put their safety in the hands of foreign Alpha.
Especially not one who’s already hurt one of their own.
What Rennick has done to me, how he damaged our bond, is brought up and used as weaponized proof that he can’t be trusted. It’s a low blow, but no one, including him, can argue the validity of their concern.
Worse still are the quiet murmurings from a few of Amara’s coven.
They openly question if this fight even has anything to do with them.
The stance is cold, but not entirely untrue.
Witches haven’t been the target, omegas have.
I truly understand the drive to protect their own.
They’ve lost members—friends and sisters—and are grieving, but that doesn’t make it easier to hear that some of the people who’ve stood by my sanctuaries side, helping build it into what it is today, are done.
It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth I can’t swallow down.
They make their positions painfully clear. They will leave Ashvale, stay with relatives or friends in nearby towns until the danger passes. They say they’ll return when it is safe again, but they won’t be part of the fight. Whether it takes place here or in Fallamhain territory.
Eldrith and I both look to Amara when they announce this, hoping for something. A blink. A shake of her head. A signal of her approval or disapproval of this plan. But we get nothing. She stares out at the window into the darkness that has long since blanketed the world outside.
Lena is the most vocal of the Craddock wolves, spitting her rejection of Rennick’s idea with more spite than political tact.
She isn’t willing to live under another pack Alpha’s rule.
Especially not a man’s. I catch Edie watching her as she speaks, big brown eyes flicking between her scent-matched mate and me.
Torn down the middle, she doesn’t speak, but she doesn’t have to.
Edie’s silence says enough, and I know my Nightingale is going to fly the nest. No pun intended.
But some of Lowri’s wolves—many of whom have come up through the Nightingale program, or who’ve known me longer—argue back.
Their Alpha is dead. The strongest of them, taken in the bright of day, compelled by a force none of them have the strength to resist. If Lowri didn’t stand a chance against the dark witches, then who will?
The compeller is still alive, still out there possibly waiting for the right time to come back.
And we all know she won’t come back alone.
That stomach-curdling reality seems to be what turns the tide in Rennick’s favor. Slowly, a few of them start to nod, adding quiet murmurs of agreement.
But apparently they have a condition.
The shift in the room is immediate as heads swing in my direction all at once. Their gazes hold a weight I don’t know I can bear. It is like suddenly being summoned to testify at a trial I wasn’t aware I was a witness at.
All the blood flees from my face, my lips going basically numb.
It is Cerys who speaks up. The tall alpha she-wolf stands by the hearth, her arms folded over her chest, and her signature lilac-colored faux-hawk still mused from battle.
Lowri never had an official second-in-command, the size of her pack didn’t require one, but if she had, it would have been Cerys.
“We’re willing to go to your territory, Fallamhain,” she announces, speaking for the group of Craddock wolves who are already leaning toward Rennick’s plan.
“But we don’t know you. And we sure as hell don’t trust you.
Noa, though—” She turns to me then, eyes steady.
“—we trust her. We know what she’s endured because of you.
If she’s still willing to leave this place and go to your home despite it, we’ll follow her. But if she stays, so do we.”
I’ve felt hollow since I woke up, but against all odds, my stomach finds a way to sink further at Cerys’s resolute declaration.
“I’m not…” I try to talk, but the words catch.
“I’m not even—” A wolf. Not really. Not in the ways that count.
I can’t shift. My instincts are fractured, buried deep.
The only reason they’ve started stirring again is because of Rennick.
Because of whatever his presence has done to loosen the bindings my own mother wrapped around that half of me.
“I’m not a member of your pack, Cerys,” I settle on instead. “You can’t base your decision on me.”
She isn’t swayed.
“Maybe you’re not a member of the pack—not officially, anyway,” she says.
“But you’re one of the reasons so many of us are still standing.
You helped build this place. Every omega who’s come through these doors, you’ve played a part in their healing.
You’re an anchor for so many in this town, Noa.
And that makes you someone worth following.
So, if you trust this Alpha and believe his plan will protect us, and our omegas, then we’re behind you.
If not, we’ll stay here with you and find a way to protect our own. Just as we always have.”
The pressure hits me all at once, the crushing weight of responsibility like a sandbag on my shoulders. It takes everything not to collapse under the strain right then and there.
I’m already moving toward the exit when I hastily excuse myself over my shoulder.
Someone calls out for me—I don’t know who—and I don’t stop.
I end up in a room I’ve been avoiding for eight months. My mom’s office.
The door clicks shut behind me and I turn the lock before I can talk myself out of it.
The air is stale from disuse, only the faintest trace of Mom’s familiar sage scent lingers.
Everything inside the dark room is still untouched, just as she left it.
Books are left open on her antique desk, her favorite sweater over the back of her thrifted desk chair.
It is comforting as much as it is heartbreaking.
I curl up on the tufted salmon-colored sofa pushed up against the far wall. I always think it is ugly as sin, but she loves the damn thing.
Silence stretches over me as I stare at nothing.
At some point, too wrung out emotionally and physically, I fall asleep. I remember waking a few times to movement outside the room. A creak of the floorboards, shadows moving under the crack in the door.
His scent slips through the frame.
Earth and leather.
Rennick.
Even half asleep, my wolf stirs, ears perk up and tail wagging knowing he is close. Watching over us. Keeping us safe.
And me? I hate how easily I rest knowing he is out there.
In the morning light—albeit very early and pale light—the new day doesn’t offer clarity. But at least I’m upright and no longer locked inside a room. So, you know, progress.
I now stare out my bedroom window like the familiar view will bring me answers. About anything—the status of the sanctuary, the impossible choices stacked at my feet, and lastly, my conflicting feelings for Rennick.
The warm protection I feel when I’m near him clashes violently with the part of my heart that hasn’t forgotten.
The part that still screams that he’s not safe.
That he’s heartbreak wrapped in a slick-inducing, handsome package.
That believing him when he promises he’s going to put me back together will be the literal nail in my coffin.
Zora, his pack’s healer, told me what would halt the rejected mate syndrome currently eating me away from the inside out: Rennick’s claiming bite.
It’s the only thing strong enough to stop the progression of this fatal rot but also get me through my looming heat.
A heat that is years’ worth of suppressed heats built up.
She called it a “super heat”. Lovely, right? It will rack my body so hard, my weakened state won’t be able to withstand it. It will overwhelm me before it consumes me whole. Its arrival is the clock I’m now racing against.
But Rennick…Rennick could make sure I make it through to the other side. That could keep me here. I just have to put my faith in him and his willingness to claim me. I would have to first trust him with that tidbit of information, though, and that’s hard to do given our…history.
Arms crossing tighter over aching chest, I watch as a member of Ashvale Coven walks out their front door and to their little hybrid car.
They stuff yet another suitcase into the full trunk.
They were one of the ones who claimed this wasn’t their fight.
Seems they’re getting on the road as early as possible.
I have no idea how many—coven and pack—have decided to leave town.