13. Rennick
Rennick
The dream settles over me like mist, thick and damp, clinging to my skin.
That part isn’t unusual. For over eight months, I’ve been sucked into dreams that are so real, so vivid, that it’s hard to differentiate them from the waking world.
They stick with me, every detail—the mist, the faceless woman, her haunting voice that begged me to remember her.
At the time, I hadn’t known who she was, hadn’t known the significance of her plea. I do now. It had been Noa.
But this dream is different.
I’m standing before a cabin I know well.
In the waking world, it’s a home that now belongs to Zora, her eccentric style marked across every board with the cheery yellow paint she’d chosen for the door, and the colorful mismatched chairs and flowerpots that clutter the porch.
It’s welcoming and eclectic, just like the woman who resides there.
But here, in this dream, the cabin has changed back to what it was when I was a pup.
Thick bright green moss matts the slanted roofline.
Bundles of herbs in various degrees of drying sway from a string of thin rope between two porch pillars.
The front door is made of plain, weathered oak.
Scarred and scratched from use. And the tree that leans over the roof hums with a dozen of windchimes, their hollow music cutting through the dense fog, stirring something in me that feels like a memory scraping against the inside of my skull.
The white mist surrounding me twists and turns like it’s a living organism. It carpets the damp dirt below my feet and snaking around my ankles. To my left, it swirls higher and thicker until it’s nearly as tall as me.
And, as if she’s made up of the same material, she walks out of the fog.
Thalassa Alderwood.
Her hair is the same rich brown as Noa’s, but it’s heavier with waves. Braids are threaded near her ears with silver charms that catch the minimal pale light of the moon above. I can’t remember a time she didn’t have them woven into the strands of her hair.
As though the years haven’t touched her, she looks just as she did the last time I saw her.
She moves to stand at my side, both of us facing the cabin that once belonged to her.
“You’re looking out for her, right?” Her voice carries like it’s traveling from miles away, even though she stands close enough I could reach out and touch her. Close enough that I can pick up on her sage scent that tickles my subconscious memory.
She doesn’t say her daughter’s name, but she doesn’t have to. Noa is at the center of everything in my life these days and everything circles back to her. Even here.
“I always knew my time with her would be short,” Thalassa continues, “but I knew she’d be okay. That she’d find her way back to you.”
Before the question has even fully formed in my head, I hear myself asking, “How did you know she’d come back to me?”
Her sharp eyes tilt toward me, narrowing in a way I remember all too well.
When I was young, she always looked at me like that, like she could strip me bare and see all my hidden truths.
Even the ones I’d yet to discover for myself.
She was my father’s closest advisor. The sharpest mind in any room.
Always two steps ahead of everyone. If she hadn’t been born an omega, she could have made one hell of a formidable Pack Alpha.
“Because I made sure of it,” she says, like it’s the simplest answer in the world. “I left safeguards in place.”
“How?”
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t flinch. It’s as if she didn’t hear me speak at all.
“Your bond revealed itself early,” she goes on, her voice softening, sounding almost wistful and still echoing like it’s coming from a mile away.
“Earlier than I’d ever seen or heard of.
You were only children. That’s when I knew it would be strong—stronger than most.” Her face twists then, grief and remorse pulling at features that closely mirror her daughter’s.
“That’s also how I knew it would be hard to keep you apart.
But I found a way. I had to make sure you didn’t come looking for us. For her.”
The growl that rips out of me isn’t fully mine.
Heat tears through my veins, sudden and violent.
My wolf presses hard against the inside of my skin and my vision sharpens when my eyes shift into his.
Even here in this dreamscape, my control frays as he pushes forward, demanding answers and blood for this ultimate betrayal.
“Why?” My voice cracks like a whip. “Why did you take her from me?”
“It wasn’t safe here.” Her gaze sweeps over the cabin.
The mournful longing in her eyes is too vivid to have been produced from my own unconscious imagination, further proving that this is so much more than an ordinary dream.
“I never wanted to do it—it broke me to have to—but I had to keep her away until the danger was gone.”
“I could have kept her safe.” My hand slams against my chest, the sound echoing in the empty space. “You never gave me the chance!”
Her face softens, the sharpness bleeding into something close to pity. “You weren’t ready, Nicky.” Nicky. She was the only one to ever call me that. “You needed time to discover who you could be without the shadow looming over you.”
My mind latches on to the word. Shadow.
But I don’t know what the hell she means by it.
“She’s my mate,” I bite out instead, my wolf snarling with me. “And you stole her before I had the chance to fully understand what she was to me!”
The dream suddenly twist around me.
The trees stretch and bend at odd angles, the cabin distorts, even the ground seems to shift beneath my boots. As if I’ve stepped into the hall of mirrors at a circus funhouse, my whole world tilts and becomes unstable.
Thalassa shifts with it.
One blink and she’s over twenty feet away, yet when she speaks the words brush directly against my ear. I can feel the breath of them on my skin. “An alpha’s loyalty to his omega can be his strength,” she whispers. “But a son’s faith in his father can just as easily damn him if he’s not careful.”
A son’s father? Does she mean my dad?
The questions burned in my throat, but I never got a chance to ask it because like a blanket being snatched off your body on a cold night, the dream was ripped away from me.
I’d jolted awake this morning, my lungs dragging in air as if I had just run miles. Burnt sage and other herbs were still sharp in my nose and lingered on my tongue. Her scent—Thalassa’s—haunted me in a way that hadn’t felt imagined.
Pain had needled every joint, every muscle, from where I’d spent the night folded against the wall outside Noa’s door. Three nights in a row now. My back ached, my neck was stiff as hell, but I embraced the discomfort gladly.
And I’ll do it again tonight since that spot on the floor is the closest I can get to her while she sleeps, the only way I know to guard her without forcing myself into her space.
Going into my bathroom, I’d tried to wash away the remaining echoes of the dream by splashing my face with cold water, but Thalassa’s words held tight.
I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the haze to clear completely.
I had a patrol shift I was scheduled for and while I recoiled as hard as my wolf had at the idea of leaving Noa, even if only for a few hours, I reminded myself that patrolling my territory’s borders was just another way of ensuring her safety.
I’d also hoped that the long run would help clear my head and make me better understand Thalassa’s words.
I made sure of it.
I had to keep her away until the danger was gone.
A son’s faith in his father can just as easily damn him.
But after running for miles, I’m no closer to clarity than when I woke.
The only thing I know is this wasn’t some random dream dredged up by my own unconscious imagination.
The depths of Thalassa’s powers were never fully revealed, but from what I do know, I don’t think it’d be a foregone conclusion to believe she was capable of planting a message deep inside my head with her mind weaving.
Though the idea of her reaching into me like that makes my skin tight and my wolf’s hackles rise.
After showering, I leave my room and track my girl down.
The traces of her scent run like veins through the house, faint but growing stronger as they infuse themselves into walls and fabrics. This home smells a little more like her every day. My wolf drinks it in, pleased by his omega’s unintentional claim, and I follow the trail out onto the deck.
I now brace my hands on the back deck rail and take in the slope of land behind my home.
Below, Noa sits on the big rock with Seren and Rhosyn flanking her, the three of them shoulder to shoulder while Elio and Hattie run loops in their wolf forms. They’re little more than dark flashes through tall grass and tree trunks.
Noa’s Nightingales have been changing before my eyes.
They’re beginning to breathe easier, stand taller, and I can see exactly why my mate has made this her life’s work.
Why she’s poured every bit of her soul into it.
To witness someone reclaim their strength is a privilege.
To be the one to help them get there is something even rarer.
And knowing that Noa has walked alongside so many before Elio and Hattie, before Siggy, makes my chest ache with something I don’t have words for.
My wolf paces beneath my skin as I watch her without shame.
He’s agitated at the distance I’ve forced him to endure, snarling because patrol stole the morning from us.
Since she came here, I’ve tried to shape something steady between us—a small ritual of sorts—putting a homemade latte in her hands.
It’s nothing compared to what I owe her, but she accepts it without protest, and that alone feels like a win I can hold on to.
Missing it today gnaws at me and has my wolf feeling bitter.