12. Noa #2
And that slices deeper than I’ve allowed myself to fully face.
Every declaration, every heartfelt vow Rennick utters to me is shadowed by Talis McNamara—by her standing there when he ripped his bond from me, by the venom she spit and the way he let her do it.
The idea he once imagined a life with her—wanted or not—that he’d been willing to take her mark, to let her carry his children, sinks like stone in my stomach and sours every breath I take.
“I’ll give you that one,” Seren concedes with a deep sigh I feel in my soul. “Another woman laying claim on your mate? That’s the kind of thing you choke one every time you think about it.”
My head snaps toward her, pain sparking down my spine at the sudden movement, but I barely register it. I’m too stunned by the slip of what she just revealed.
But Rhosyn’s arrival cuts me off before I get the chance to ask Seren to elaborate.
Completely unaware of the melancholy mood she’s stepped into, she drops down on my other side, huffing dramatically.
“Witches are so much cooler than us. I was just out on patrol, right? And one of the coven’s illusionists was out by the western border just casually sculpting booby traps out of moonbeams, glitter, and whatever the fuck else, and what do I have?
Fangs, claws, and a vigorous monthly waxing schedule.
Totally unfair. For the first time in my life, I want magic.
Just a little bit. Like, dip-my-pinkie-toe-in-the-cauldron little.
I don’t think I should be trusted with more than that. ”
This time when Seren and I laugh it’s real.
Rhosyn’s easy rambling is a welcome distraction. I exhale softly, sinking into the reprieve of easy and pointless conversation, letting the heaviness of the last few days ease for a moment as the three of us sit pressed together on the boulder, watching Elio and Hattie tumble through the yard.
“So,” Seren starts after we’ve watched Elio and Hattie chase each other for a long quiet moment.
Her light eyes dancing as she nudges me with her shoulder.
She’s lighter now than she was during our private conversation, but I can still see and feel the worry for me simmering beneath the surface.
“How was your visit to the lodge yesterday? Gareth still staring at Elio like he single-handedly painted the sunrise—or like how you lovingly look at your first cup of coffee of the day? Same difference, really.”
My lips twitch at this, but my stomach knots too.
Because yes, Gareth had still been looking at Elio with that same lovestruck expression when we went back yesterday.
The first time had been during Rennick’s little tour of the territory, when we stopped at the lodge to scavenge for shaving cream the day prior.
Gareth—the massive, bearded chef who looks like he could snap a tree trunk over his thigh—had gone red as a socially awkward teenager and stumbled over his words the second Elio walked into his kitchen.
It was like Cupid’s fucking arrow square to the dude’s forehead, I swear.
Poor Elio hadn’t noticed. Still too consumed with fighting his own fear and demons to register the way Gareth hovered and babbled, his big hands shaking as though fighting the innate urge to reach for the male omega.
I hadn’t acknowledged the pack chef’s behavior and neither had he, but the writing had been on the fucking wall.
At the time, I’d been grateful for Elio’s obliviousness and I still am. He’s still recovering, still piecing himself back together. The last thing he needs is to have to navigate this.
The gravity of Gareth’s intense reaction to Elio had been jarring and worrisome, but then came our second visit yesterday. Hattie and Elio wanted to go back so they could raid Gareth’s freezer for ice cream, only this time, the lumberjack of an alpha hadn’t been alone.
“Yeah, he was…” I mutter my confirmation to Seren, concern for Elio scraping against my sternum. “Big dopey smile and all.” Her own grin is bright but falters when I add, “Corbin was there this time too.”
Corbin. Another alpha male and Gareth’s chosen mate.
And therein lies the problem.
Rhosyn leans in from my other side, her fawn-colored curls lifting in the cool breeze. “And?” she prompts impatiently, like she’s waiting for me to drop more hot pack gossip. “How’d he react to Elio?”
“Same as Gareth,” I admit, rubbing my palm over my denim-covered knee. “Cartoon heart eyes. Ridiculous smile. The whole lovesick shebang.”
Silence hangs heavy between the three of us as we all silently digest what this means for Elio until Seren ruins it.
“Well, what the fuck does that mean?” she blurts, hands flying up.
“Elio has two scent-matched alphas? Since when is that a thing? Did the Goddess update the terms and conditions and forget to send out an email? Because damn, if I wasn’t already turned off by alphas for life, I might be jealous as hell.
Can you imagine being sandwiched between—”
“Ser,” I snap, cutting her off before she can get too graphic and risk Elio himself possibly overhearing. Though, the corner of my mouth curves, betraying the laugh swelling in my throat.
Her eyes go all wide and innocent. “What? I was being academic. Asking for science purposes.”
I wave her off with a limp flick of my hand and tired huff.
So tired. So achy. I don’t know how much longer I can ignore the clawing need to go find Rennick, to allow his nearness to refuel me and chase away the fog of pain.
I swear, if I stop fighting it for even a heartbeat, I think I could pass out right here and take a nap.
“We don’t even know if they’re his matches,” I say, forcing my voice to sound normal while also trying to steer this ship back toward reason.
“He hasn’t even looked either of them in the eye, let alone taken in a proper sniff of their scents.
He’s still too consumed by his trauma to see them as anything but alphas, and right now that terrifies him.
Until he heals more, and he feels more settled and less scared, there’s no way for us to know anything for sure. Elio just needs…time.”
“They’re good men, they’ll give him that,” Rhosyn offers, her voice steady, her faith in her packmates clear. “Whether he’s theirs or not, Corbin and Gareth won’t push him.”
I nod, deciding to do my best to take her word for it. I didn’t recognize either man when I met them. They must have joined the pack after my mother dragged me away, but Rhosyn’s word means something. If she trusts them, I’ll try to as well.
“We should ask Zora,” Seren says suddenly, glancing down at the baby monitor she’s clutching.
On the screen, little Ivey is taking her mid-morning nap in a pack-n-play in Rennick’s den.
“She might know if two alphas being scent-matched to one omega is a thing. I’d say we could ask Amara, but…
well, I think asking her about mates right now might be in poor taste. ”
Amara’s been scarce since the meeting.
The last glimpse I caught of her, she was striding out with Zora at her side, the healer talking a mile a minute about Goddess knows what.
They’d been quite the pair visually. Amara, with her commanding grace and impeccably tailored garments, walking beside Zora, who wore a skirt that looked like it had lost a fight with a sewing machine an unintentionally lopsided knitted sweater.
They looked like the kind of mismatched pairing that would walk off the page of a children’s book.
They are elegance and eccentricity in their purest forms, but I know in my gut they’ll end up being friends, and maybe that’s exactly the kind of companionship the High Priestess needs right now.
I keep reminding myself it’s about time I corner Amara and have a real conversation with her.
The High Priestess knows things my mother buried, truths she stole from me so effectively that even now, my memories of this place and Rennick from before we fled feel disjointed and hazy.
And the pieces I do remember, I don’t know if I can trust them to be real.
For all I know, they’ve been manipulated and planted there by Mom.
Seren told me, days before everything went to hell, that it was Amara who stopped her from warning me.
She wanted to tell me to reject Rennick back in that clearing, because she knew what a half-broken bond would do to me if he tore out his side.
But Amara stepped in, insisting it was all part of a plan my mother had shared with her. Whatever the fuck that means.
The time of secrets and half-truths needs to come to an end, but the answers I seek all circle back to the High Priestess.
Answers about Mom, about my fractured bond with Rennick, about my surfacing charmer powers.
Zora told me I was an oracle, but oracles can’t see, let alone manipulate the threads like I did with Malvina.
Oracles can’t render a powerful witch like that into a quivering lump on the forest floor.
But there hasn’t been a moment to breathe, let alone find the right time to have this chat. And even if there had been, I’ve been trying to give her the one thing she deserves most—time to grieve her loss.
“Still no sign of Juno, huh?” Rhosyn asks, her green eyes still watching Hattie and Elio dart between trees in the distance.
My heart stumbles at the thought of her.
Poor, broken Juno with her wild and feral eyes and trembling body.
I see her teeth flashing, the desperate act of a cornered creature, and guilt takes its pound of flesh.
I hadn’t been able to reach her. Couldn’t soothe her enough to make her believe she wasn’t caged again.
And maybe that’s why I knew I had to leave the door open for her.
Had to give her that choice. A choice no one has offered her for a long time.
“No,” I admit after a beat, and the word tastes like failure.
“But Rennick mentioned that patrols spotted signs of her. Remains from a kill. Paw prints a few miles from here. So, she’s staying close, which is a win, I guess.
We’ve left the door to her room cracked open and I’ve been taking food down to the room every day just in case.
Left some fresh clothes out for her, too.
But I’ve been checking in often just to be sure she hasn’t returned. ”
I can still see the look on Rennick’s face when I’d initially opened the door for Juno.
He’d looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
He wasn’t completely wrong. It was a gamble and maybe reckless inviting risk like that by letting her walk out into a world that’s already hurt her.
But locking her in would’ve only made things worse.
She’d never believe she was safe here if we acted as her new jailers.
I’d rather risk her running than force her to stay.
It’s Rhosyn who asks, “How do you know she’ll come back?”
“I don’t,” I admit as a sad, thin smile finds me.
“But things have been so terrible lately and I need to believe that the Goddess hasn’t abandoned us completely.
For my own sanity, I need to think she’ll let Juno have this one.
That girl deserves it after everything she’s been put through.
And the fact she’s still nearby, even when she could have run for the fucking hills, that tells me there’s still a chance.
She isn’t completely lost to us. Not yet, anyway. ”
Maybe it’s foolish. Maybe it’s just straight-up delusion. But I’ll cling to this hope like it’s a lifeline because if I let myself believe I choose wrong for Juno, if she never walks back through that waiting open door, then I don’t know how I’ll live with myself.
Seren’s arm loops around my shoulders, her hold loose but steady. “Your instincts with our Nightingales are rarely wrong, babe. I’d bet everything I own that you’ve done right by her. She’ll find her way back when she’s ready.”
The sharp edge of my guilt softens with her certainty. I open my mouth to thank her, but the words die when the familiar burn flares up in my lungs and throat. I don’t have time to brace before a cough tears violently out of me.
I jam the crook of my elbow against my mouth just as the coppery taste coats my tongue. The spray is warm and wet but contained and hidden by the sleeve of my deep plum-colored pullover sweatshirt.
“Shit, Noa, are you okay?” Rhosyn’s voice spikes, panicked.
Seren shifts closer, her hand finding my upper back and patting gently. It’s the same way she calms Ivey when she cries. Her pale blue gaze catches mine, and I see it all there. The fear, worry, and worse, recognition. She knows this isn’t just a cough. She knows it’s something darker. Scarier.
I force a jerky nod for Rhosyn, my chest constricting to the point of pain, my breaths nothing but gravelly gasps between violent spasms.
Clumsily, I disentangle myself from between them and ease down off the boulder we perch on. Words are beyond my reach entirely, so I give them a quick, awkward wave before turning and making my way back toward the house.
With every harried step, the coughing fit keeps its tight hold on me.
Each one sprays more blood onto my sleeve until the fabric feels wet against my chin and nose.
I’m lucky neither Rhosyn nor Seren caught the sharp tang of copper.
I need to change before someone else catches wind of it, but first, I need to rinse the fabric with cold water and get rid of the crimson evidence of my progressing decay.
Logic tells me I’m being foolish by keeping this a secret.
But I can’t bear the way they’ll look at me once they see how far the sickness has already spread.
How much the rejection has already deteriorated me.
Worse still, I can’t bear Rennick knowing.
Not yet. The thought of him claiming me out of pity, stitching our bond back together out of obligation, makes my stomach turn to ice.
My vision swims, the hot tears from the coughing and not from anything else—at least that’s what I tell myself—as the house comes into view. And then I see them. Two figures standing on the deck above, watching.
One of them is Rennick.
Dread coils deep.