13. Rennick #2
She’s my priority now, and I want her to see it.
To believe I’m worthy of being her mate, worthy of her forgiveness.
But I also need to keep proving I’m the kind of pack Alpha others—including her—can follow.
That’s why I left at dawn to run the eastern border.
I can’t send every hour shadowing her, no matter how much my wolf demands it.
Hovering at her side, breathing only her air, would be easy, but abandoning my duties would betray the people who’ve placed their trust in me.
Burdening my enforcers—or the she-wolves and witches who’ve taken shelter here—with responsibilities that are mine to bear isn’t fair.
It’s not what an Alpha deserving of Noa as my Luna does.
For a moment, I let myself picture it. Her at my side as Luna. Her quiet strength softening the edge of my authority, her empathy guiding in the places where my command alone cuts too deep.
Consumed in what feels like a distant fantasy, I don’t notice Amara until she’s at my side. She moves like silent mist. My wolf bristles, irritated that she’s slipped past our guard again with her muted scent and steps cloaked in whatever trick of power lets her stalk around like an apparition.
I haven’t yet found steady footing with the High Priestess, so I nod at her in greeting, but don’t dare speak yet.
We both stand and watch Noa for a time, the silence that hangs between us weighted until Amara’s voice cuts through it.
“Lowri could never take me as her mate,” she says suddenly, her tone controlled but cracked at the edges. “She wanted to. I wanted it. More than anything, to wear her mark. To have that bond. But I’m not a wolf.”
The words make me stiffen. I’m unsure of the best course of offering support to the witch.
Wolves are tactile, we comfort and provide support often through touch.
My gut urges me to reach out to her, to ground her the same way I would with a member of my pack, but something tells me she’d reject it.
So, I keep still and give her a look that says I’m listening.
“If I had a single drop of wolf blood in my veins,” she continues, eyes still on the sprawling land below.
“We could have forged something. Weak, maybe, but real. I would have been able to feel her. I would have known if she were in trouble. If she needed me.” For the first time since she’s been on my land, I see the grief rise and consume her, but just as fast as it appeared, she smothers it.
My brows lift before I can stop them. “I’ve never heard of a wolf bonding a witch.”
She hums, finally glancing my way with eyes black as obsidian.
“Charmers like Zora and Seren are wolves born with witch blood,” she says.
“But through the decades, there have also been stories of witches who carry wolf blood. Both lines tace back to the coven that took wolves as mates generations ago. But one is far rarer than the other, and from what I’ve read, reviled even more harshly by the purist covens.
The kind that spits words like crossborn.
” Her mouth twists, emotion rising before she reins it in again.
“I wouldn’t have cared. I would have done anything to be called a crossborn if it meant I could have what I wanted.
But no amount of power could give me that.
” She pauses, then tilts her head at me, remorse flickering across her sharp features.
“I think that’s part of why I stopped Noa from rejecting you.
I let my own longing poison my judgment. ”
Her admission hits like a strike.
I hadn’t known she was the one who intervened that day—the one who kept Noa from severing our bond completely.
And Noa hadn’t know either. She hadn’t known she needed to reject me in turn, or that by not doing so she’d be left vulnerable to rejected mate syndrome.
Neither of us saw it coming. Rejecting a fated mate is something wolves only whisper about, if they speak of it at all.
From the time we’re young, we’re taught that bond is sacred, something to be guarded with every beat of our hearts.
I underestimated that lesson, blind to the consequences.
And by doing so, I condemned Noa to pain she doesn’t deserve.
“You shouldn’t have stopped her,” I say, though it tastes bitter on my tongue, and my wolf rises, snarling and rebuking my declaration. “You should have let her cut me clean out of her so she could be spared from this…sickness.”
Sickness feels too small a word for what’s eating at Noa. She hides it well, shielding everyone else from the truth of her pain, but I see past the facade. I see how the fight in her falters, how the shadows creep deeper. She’s slipping and think I’m running out of time to save her.
“Perhaps,” Amara concedes, her impossibly dark gaze studying me like a puzzle. “But by leaving it half broken, you’ve been given something so few are offered: a second chance to mend what you destroyed.”
My memory drags me back to that clearing. To her wall of witch wind holding me back as they carried Noa’s body away from me. To Amara’s voice being carried to me through the air, uttering a warning I hadn’t understood at the time.
“Some choices bring reward, while others carry consequences too heavy to bear. So rarely are we given a means to repair the damage made by these consequences. If granted this kind of gift, I suggest you not be so thoughtless in your decision-making in the future.”
“This is what you meant that day?”
She gives a nod that’s barely more than a graceful dip of her chin. “I shouldn’t have interfered as I did, but I know the rarity and sanctity of a mating bond. Allowing you to throw away something as precious as that—as Noa—was something I couldn’t selfishly live with.”
“I’m trying to fix it, to use this second chance you’ve given me,” I rasp, lower than I intend. “But she doesn’t believe me, or trust me, and I can’t blame her for it.”
“Don’t give up,” Amara commands. If she were an alpha, it may be considered a bark.
“Don’t back down. She needs you to keep pushing, Rennick.
Noa needs you to make her whole again. Thalassa knew how important your bond to her daughter was, that’s why she warned me about this all those years ago.
I think she knew she wouldn’t be here to do it herself. ”
Her name straightens me before I even register moving, my spine locking like iron.
Thalassa. She’s already been circling the edges of my thoughts all morning.
My dream of her still fresh, her cryptic message echoing.
But now my mind runs feral, questions tumbling over each other.
Why she warned Amara about our bond. How she knew Noa was mine long before either of us did.
What “safeguards” she supposedly left behind. Why she fled with Noa at all.
“Thalassa,” I mutter, her name a summons and a curse in the same breath.
The sound seems to stir the air itself and sage blooms faintly in the breeze as though her ghost still lingers nearby.
My wolf tenses and hot emotion burns in my veins.
“Just how badly did that weaver fuck with my relationship with my mate?”
Amara’s words are careful. “I don’t have all the answers. Thalassa wasn’t forthcoming with her secrets. She only shared what I needed to know in case she wasn’t here to intervene herself. And what I was told was that your bond to Noa is vital and can’t be severed. That it needs to be protected.”
Her gaze drops to the yard.
I follow it and the rest of the world narrows.
Noa is pushing up the incline, one arm clamped over her mouth, her small body racked with coughs that look like they’re tearing her apart.
The breaths in my chest catch at the sight and my wolf whines.
My fingers dig into the rail hard enough that the wood complains.
Instinct rides me hard. It wants me to go down there, to gather her up, to take the hurt and carry it myself.
If only it were that easy.
Noa looks up. Those two-toned eyes find me, and she goes pale.
Beside me Amara says, almost gently, “I think it’s time you two have a real conversation.”
I don’t have to voice my agreement because I’m already moving, pushing away from the railing and going in search of my omega.