10. Noa
Noa
Everything around me stretches thin, bent out of proportion like I’m wondering through warped glass.
If I hold my gaze too long, shapes ripple and slither away, dissolving before my eyes.
Walking, taking a single step, is a pointless endeavor too.
Each time my bare foot lifts from the damp earth, the ground seems to lengthen beneath me, dragging everything farther out of reach instead of drawing it closer.
It’s night, but the sky is restless. Clouds race across the moon, casting shadows between the towering pines.
The relentless wind has branches bending and bowing in protest. I know I should be cold, arms and legs exposed, but there’s nothing.
No bite of the chill, no shiver in my bones, no sensation at all. Just silence where touch should be.
I glance down at myself. My stomach jolts.
I’m wearing a plaid pajama set I haven’t seen since I was a teenager.
Since before the night Mom rushed us out of the house, fear etched into every worried line of her face, and into her waiting car.
We’d left in such a hurry that most of our belongings were casualties of that night.
I thought these pajamas were lost with the rest.
But here they are. And here I am.
Back on Fallamhain territory.
The trees part in a wide rectangle clearing.
Across the open, distorted space a structure sits in the shadows.
I try to make it out, to see any recognizable details, but the harder I focus on it, the blurrier it becomes.
I’m left blinking through a haze that seems to refuse to lift until my burning eyes force me to look away.
I search for other clues for why I may have been brought here, because I know this isn’t just a dream.
My gut tells me it’s much more than that.
It’s another memory. One buried by my mother’s own hand when she bound my wolf and meddled with my mind. It’s a thread tied into the spell to ensure I’d find my way back to what she took.
Something whispers in the back of my mind—it could be my wolf, it could be my mother, hell, it could be both—telling me this is important. It urges me to pay attention, to not look away.
I try again, but this time, I let the building linger only in my periphery. The image is clearer there, and recognition begins to crawl in.
Weather-worn wood, sagging frame.
It’s the storage shack.
The one tucked near the helicopter pad Merritt Fallamhain had carved into the land when I was a pup.
This act had been a game changer for the pack.
The territory is tucked deep into the granite mountains and going into the closest town, Silverthorne, to get food and basic necessities was a whole ordeal.
Having biweekly supply drops by helicopter had been revolutionary at the time.
I only remember coming out here once. It’s far from the heart of the community, where the cabins, schoolhouse, and pack lodge all sit.
I’d been in high school and someone had stolen a bottle of cheap whiskey from their dad.
We snuck out here, sprawled across the sun-warmed concrete of the landing pad, and pretended the liquor didn’t burn the shit out of our throats.
The small rebellion had fed our angsty, teenage souls for weeks after, but I never went back.
So, why am I standing here now?
It’s not an answer that comes. It’s a shrill, agonizing cry.
My heart skips a beat, and I bolt forward before I can think better of it. But I don’t get far. If anywhere at all. The harder I push, the farther the shack slides away, the ground stretching like elastic beneath me. My lungs burn, my chest heaves, and I stumble to a defeated halt.
It’s just like the other dream my mom left me. The one where she told me Rennick was the key. The one where she admitted she couldn’t break our bond, only delay it. Her meaning is still as much a mystery to me now as it was then.
Another scream slices the dark. High-pitched, desperate. Young.
I lunge again, my instinct to help overriding logic, but the building doesn’t move. It stays maddeningly stagnant while the distance between us yawns wider.
A twig snaps behind me, the sharp noise stilling my efforts.
I go to pivot, but I don’t make it.
A shadow looms across my back. Hot breath ghosts over my ear, damp and too close. “You shouldn’t have come here…”
And then the dream spits me out.
I shoot upright in bed with a strangled gasp that twists quickly into a groan. For thirty heart-pounding seconds I don’t know where I am. My eyes dart around the room taking in the light walls and décor I don’t recognize, panic tears at me until reality settles back in my bones.
Rennick’s house. A guest room. The one he’d shown me to last night.
The one that also just so happens to be directly across the hall from his own.
I sag back into the white linens, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes as my head pounds.
My body feels as if it’s been gnawed on all night and then spit out when all the good bits had been consumed.
I’m aching and hollow once more, and I know why.
The deterioration of rejection has me firmly in its grasp, its claws sinking deeper into my flesh in his absence.
And I’ve been parted from him for hours, locked behind the door he’d led me to after we got everyone else settled.
He’d lingered at the threshold, but I’d closed the door in his face.
I told myself I needed space, that it would do me good to be able to think clearly and reground myself. Instead, without my remedy within reach, I’ve been reset to zero. Below zero, if my current state is anything to go on.
The cold that reaches my soul also returned. I’m shivering so hard, my jaw aches from my teeth chattering, and my stiff legs shake with argument when I stand from the king-sized bed.
The sheets are clean and soft, the mattress comfortable enough, and yet it doesn’t feel right.
It smells wrong, the weight and feel of the comforter isn’t right.
It just isn’t…mine. If exhaustion hadn’t dragged me under the moment my head touched the pillow last night, sleep may have been something that evaded me entirely because of it.
I pad across the cold hardwood floor and into the private connecting bathroom.
Flicking on the lights, I stumble toward the vanity and freeze when I make eye contact with myself in the mirror.
Aside for the puffy purple circles under my eyes that resemble bruises more than anything, all the color has been stolen from my skin.
Six hours of sleep, and I look like I’ve been forced to stay awake for days.
I physically reflect how I feel inside.
I steady myself on the cool white quartz countertop, but before I can draw a full breath, the cough ambushes me.
It tears through my chest, raw and guttural, forcing me to double over the sink.
My diaphragm spasms, body jerking with each violent convulsion.
I clap a palm over my mouth, but the sound still ribs free until my eyes sting with involuntary tears.
When I finally catch a breath, it drowns me. Thick and wet. My hand tremors as I peel it away from my mouth.
Red.
Blood splatters my palm, slides between my fingers, drips warm against my skin.
For a moment, the room tilts. I blink until my vision centers itself.
My eyes jerk back up to the mirror, and the sight makes my stomach plummet further.
Crimson stains my mouth and chin, smeared across the pale skin around my chapped lips.
“Shit…” My whisper is nothing more than a horrified croak.
The sound of muffled voices and clanking dishes draws me to the wide hallway that branches off from the grand entryway.
It takes me down to a part of the house I haven’t stepped foot in yet, taking me past the closed French doors of the den I’d woken up in after accidently claiming Rennick as my mate during our reunion—you know, just the innocent foot-in-mouth incident that lit the fuse for everything that’s followed. The spiral that landed me here.
My knit sock-covered feet are silent on the pale wood floors and the thickest sweater I packed is wrapped around me like armor. It shields me from the morning draft but not from the chill still rattling my bones. I’m finding it’s hard to keep out the cold when it’s bleeding from within you.
I pause at the large open entrance of the wing that is essentially just an open-floor-plan kitchen and living room. The space is already bustling with familiar faces and my stomach drops, guilt eating away at me for not getting down here sooner.
Elio and Hattie sit tucked into the breakfast nook with Siggy, strips of sunlight streaking over them from the row of windows above their bench seat.
They’re still unsteady, still finding their feet after being dragged out of that hellscape of a club.
New house. New people. New everything. I should’ve remembered to set an alarm and made sure I was here to help ease them in.
But if I’m honest, I’m also off-balance being here.
This isn’t my home, no matter how much my wolf relaxes in the comforting way his scent clings to the walls—to every ounce of air in every room.
And the events in Ashvale still gnaw at me.
The fact it happened at all is something I’m still trying to wrap my muddled mind around, but the knowledge that it could have ended so much worse if Rennick hadn’t arrived in time is also hard to reconcile.