Chapter 19 #2
The corner of my lips tug. It’s moments like these when a hint of that southern drawl slips through her words that I remember my favorite beta female hails from a pack deep in the swamps of Mississippi. And damn if it isn’t endearing as hell.
I open my mouth to defend Yrsa, because someone should—even if her brand of affection usually comes wrapped in barbed wire—but I never get the chance.
Fiona bounces back toward where we sit, a wide grin splitting her freckled face.
“Okay!” she starts, her excitement bleeding into the single word.
“There’s three more of us who want to come!
We were thinking we could go early next week?
If that works for you, Noa? I wish we could go this weekend, but with the Alpha’s betrothal party happening, I don’t think we’ll have enough time to slip away. ”
The information slides between my ribs like a blade made of ice.
Everything inside me freezes. The laughter and busy chatter around the cabin dulls into something muffled and far away. My hands still, the wooden spoon slipping from my fingers and clanging against the glass side of my mixing bowl.
It’s like frost spreading beneath my skin.
Cold, hard, ruthless. I stare at Fiona but can’t quite see her.
My breath catches, trapping itself somewhere between my chest and throat.
I can feel Siggy’s gaze on me from across the wooden tabletop.
Rhosyn’s, too. But I can’t bring myself to look at either of them. Can’t bring myself to so much as move.
Fiona’s bright expression falters, confusion creasing her brow before realization drains the color from her face.
“Oh, Goddess,” she whispers, hands wringing together in front of her chest. “I’m so sorry, that was so inconsiderate of me to bring up.
I know—well, everyone knows—how rough your history is with our Alpha.
” Her eyes, wide with worry and regret, dart around my face, cataloging whatever horrified expression must reside there now.
“I can’t image how hard this must be for you.
I don’t think I could attend a celebration for my ex-mate’s engagement to someone else, either… ”
The word engagement lands heavier than the rest.
My heart’s still pounding, but I can’t feel the beat anymore.
Fiona’s face blurs more as she takes a nervous step back. “Again, I’m so sorry, Noa. I shouldn’t have said anything.” And then, like her ass is on fire, she spins and hurries off toward her friends by the hearth.
The silence that follows feels deafening.
Then, somewhere, a chair scrapes softly across the worn hardwood, and Rhosyn shifts into the space beside me. She leans a hip against the bench, her movement slow and cautious. Like she’s approaching a timid animal.
“Noa…”
Her careful voice accompanies a gentle hand pressed between my shoulder blades. She drags her palm down my spine, a small steady gesture that’s meant to anchor me, I think. Whether in her support or sympathy, I can’t tell which.
The numbness creeps in all the same. It moves slow and methodical, plummeting until it reaches my marrow and settles deep in my stomach. And when I notice the pain is gone—the ache that’s been shadowing me all day—it doesn’t feel like relief. It feels like loss. Like something vital has gone still.
“It’s not what you think—” she starts, but I cut her off before she can finish.
“The party he’s been getting ready for all week,” I manage, but it sounds brittle. “It’s for his betrothal to Ta—” I can’t finish her name. The syllables choke up halfway, my body refusing to dare utter them aloud, like speaking them might make her appear in front of me in some cruel conjuring.
“Yes,” she says finally, and the guilt settles over her face like a shadow. I can see her wishing she wasn’t the one to tell me, wishing she could shield me from it instead.
Her confirmation fractures something small and delicate within me—the piece of me that was just starting to trust him if I had to make a guess.
The numbness creeps deeper, cooling everything from the inside out.
It fills my chest, pools behind my ribs until there’s nothing left but the hollow weight of it.
He’d said it couldn’t be canceled, that it had been planned long before Ashvale burned and before we became whatever this fragile thing between us is. He’d said it so calmly, so casually, that I hadn’t thought to question it. A celebration, he’d called it. The word had sounded harmless then.
Now I know better.
His betrothal party. For her. Talis.
And he’d kept that truth tucked carefully behind his teeth.
The worst part is that I gave him room to do it. I stayed hidden in his house all week, surrounded by his scent and the illusion of safety it built.
Everyone outside those walls knew what was coming. Everyone but me.
The only time I’ve been near his pack members—outside of the ones I already know—was that big meeting with the coven.
I didn’t talk to anyone then. And the few times I’ve left the house without Rennick it’s been with Hattie and Elio in tow.
We’ve planned our trips out carefully, picking hours when the lodge will be quiet, when there’ll be fewer people around to possibly trigger my Nightingales.
Of course, I was ignorant to the truth. This is the first time I’ve stood anywhere that the truth could reach me.
His pack must know about me—about us. They must see what we’ve been tentatively rebuilding between us.
But when I really think about it, how could they?
Almost everything that’s happened between us since we’ve been here has been hidden within the walls of his house.
Every look full of unsaid words, the way his hands find me like he’s promising something every time he touches me, all hidden from the prying eyes of his packmates.
At least the ones outside of our immediate circle, like Rhosyn, Canaan, and Siggy.
The only mistake, the only time we forgot ourselves, was by the creek that day.
Danny saw, but clearly, he hasn’t said a word.
He couldn’t have. Not if a betrothal party is being planned for tomorrow.
To them, I’m still the omega he ruthlessly rejected. Nothing more than a stray dog he pitied and brought back to his territory when my home became a war zone.
And maybe that’s all I am to him, too. The part of me still bleeding from old wounds whispers it like a confession I don’t want to hear.
But my wolf won’t accept it, won’t believe that Rennick would betray me again in such a monumental way. Not without reason.
He promised! she howls, her defiance echoing through me until my skull rattles. Our mate promised he’d never hurt us again.
Rhosyn must sense the conflicting battle happening in my head, because her touch moves to my arm and tightens.
“Hey,” she says softly, releasing me, but her tone is firm enough to make me hold her green gaze.
“Listen to me, okay? I don’t know the plan, not fully, but I know there is one.
Rennick and Canaan both promised me that.
And even if my faith in Nick is a little wobbly right now, I trust Cane.
With everything in me, I trust my mate to not allow any fuckery to happen.
And if there was even one second where I thought Nick was going through with this out of some kind of loyalty to that vapid, redheaded cunt, you know I’d be the first one in line to go scorched earth on his ass.
Like tie him to a tree, coat him in honey, and let the raccoons host a midnight buffet. ”
The picture is ridiculous, but my laugh won’t come. I’m too numb.
Rhosyn keeps going, her conviction unwavering.
“But I’ve seen him, Noa. The way he looks at you, the way he is when you’re in the same room as him.
You are the center of that man’s world, his heart beats because yours does.
And that is why I know whatever’s happening tomorrow, it’s not what it looks like. ”
Her words hang between us, meant to reassure, but the air in the cabin has grown too thick to breathe. The edges of the room seem to close in until I feel like I’m being pressed in from all sides. Trapped.
I stand up, my chair scratching against the rough wood floors.
The numbness shifts. Tightens. Becomes something else entirely.
I take a step back, and Rhosyn’s hand catches my arm before I can turn away. Her hold is light, meant to slow me, not keep me.
I can’t stay here.
“I just—” My throat burns. “I need air.”
She starts to say something, but I don’t have it in me to hear anything else.
He should have told me. I shouldn’t have had to find out this way.
My boots scrape against the warped floorboards as I take another step back. The pattern in the wood tilts, swims. I look at Rhosyn, my head jerking in a small, stiff shake. “Why didn’t you tell me? I thought…” My breath catches. “I thought we were friends.”
If I could still feel my body, I think this might hurt as much as Rennick’s deception—or omission. Whatever you want to call it. But my mind’s too far gone to tell the difference anymore.
“Noa,” she pleads, her green eyes turning glossy. “I am your friend. But Canaan and Rennick said—”
My hand lifts, not to silence her, but to beg her to stop.
I can’t listen to her talk about this so-called plan again.
Not when I’m realizing I’ve already heard it before.
From both of them. First it was Canaan, standing in my bedroom back in Ashvale, hinting at some secret plan for Talis.
He’d used it to convince me to go home with them.
Then Rennick, when I argued about staying under his roof—about sharing a house with a man still promised to another woman—he’d told me Talis was handled.
But now I’m wondering if it was all nothing more than promises meant to pacify me, to keep me compliant.
Were those just more pretty words?