Chapter 19 #3
I turn away from the table and start toward the dim hallway that leads to the healer room. There’s a side exit there. If I take it, I can slip out without drawing the attention of the women on the porch. I understand Zora well enough now to know she’ll never let me leave quietly.
Noa? Wait! Siggy’s panicked voice cuts through my mind, making my head snap in her direction. Let me come with you.
I shake my head hard, my refusal resolute. “Don’t follow me, Siggy.”
The bite in my tone lands harder than I mean it to, and the hurt that flashes across her face guts me.
She doesn’t deserve that. Not from me. Never from me.
I’ll get on my knees and beg her forgiveness later—once I can breathe again.
Once I can feel something other than this hollow ache eating through me.
I find the side exit on muscle memory alone and push through the door, stumbling into the cold. This time when the cold breeze slams into me, I don’t feel it.
I don’t really know where I’m going when I leave the healer’s cabin.
My feet just start moving, and I let them.
I weave between trees, my boots scuffing through layers of brittle leaves.
Small streams cut between rocks like old scars, the water catching the gray light of frigid afternoon, as I step over them clumsily.
Somewhere deep in the back of my mind an old map unfurls.
I’ve walked this route before—years ago, when I was smaller.
Unbroken. That faint echo of memory steers me now, because the rest of me is still offline and hollow.
The numbness has set in fully, thick and heavy.
It sits where feeling should be, a dull pressure in my chest that neither burns nor reduces its hold.
It’s not a new sensation. It’s the same wound Rennick gave me when he rejected me, but learning about this celebration for his betrothal has torn it open again.
I’d started to believe we were finding our way forward, that maybe there was a version of us that could exist where it didn’t cause me pain.
Now, it feels like the ground’s been pulled out from under me all over again.
The toe of my leather boot catches on a downed log, and I stumble, hands jerking out, looking for something resembling balance.
I just barely manage to find some. The near fall sends a dull jolt up my legs, and for a second, that flicker of physical discomfort is almost welcome.
Then it fades. I lower myself onto the log, elbows braced on my knees, fingers threaded in my hair.
Each breath comes out as a thin cloud of white, vanishing into the cold air before me.
I lose track of time sitting there, running every look, every touch, every promise through my head until they blur together.
The part of me that still believes in him—the part that hears my wolf howling that he’d never mean to hurt us again—wages a battle against the rest of me.
The part whose skepticism was carved from survival.
Rhosyn’s faith in him should comfort me, but it doesn’t.
Giving my blind trust feels like voluntarily walking barefoot through broken glass and expecting it to not cut me.
A soft sound pulls me out of my spiral. The crack of a branch. My head jerks up, my pulse stumbling as I search my surroundings.
Then I see her.
She stands between two trees, her body half-swallowed by shadow.
Dark-brown-and-black fur clings to her in rough patches, and her eyes—Goddess, her eyes—gleam with a metallic sheen that’s unnatural.
It’s the kind of glow that comes when the mind starts to slip, when instinct replaces humanity. She’s close to losing herself. Feral.
“Juno,” I breathe.
Her ears flick at her name, her head tipping slightly as she watches me.
She doesn’t come closer, but she doesn’t run either.
Progress. Her ribs are still too visible, her coat dull, but compared to the half-dead creature sedated in that transport cage, she’s something closer to whole—physically at least. That has to count for something.
Her gaze follows every movement, golden eyes catching the faint sunrays as I drag a shaky hand across my cheek. The tear I catch surprises me. I hadn’t felt it fall. Maybe it slipped free somewhere between thinking of Rennick and her arrival.
I sniff once and offer Juno a brittle, watery smile. “You might’ve been onto something,” I murmur. “Sometimes it’s just too hard to be human.”
Juno lowers herself onto the frost-bitten earth, chin to her paws, eyes locked on me with the unblinking patience of a hunter. Or a friend. I can’t tell which when it comes to her.
I reach inward, searching for that strange thread that had connected us once before.
A faint vibration hums at the edge of my mind.
Unsure of what I’m doing, I latch on to it anyway.
For a long moment, there’s nothing but silence and the rush of blood in my ears.
I’m starting to give up hope when her head snaps up.
Juno? I try, tentative and hopeful at the same time.
Her reply comes like it’s nothing more than a whisper carried to me by the cool wind. If the Goddess had mercy, she wouldn’t let it hurt this much. Her voice trembles through my head, each syllable frayed and hopeless. Finding your mate isn’t supposed to bring pain, but that’s all I feel.
Her pain settles in me like it belongs there. Because I know it. I’ve lived it. I still am.
My heart splinters. “It’s not supposed to,” I murmur my sad agreement, the rest of the words spilling silently between us. But somehow, nothing has ever hurt more.
Her head dips as if in agreement, her grief mirroring mine.
For a while we just stay like that. Still and silent.
We sit there like two fractured halves in the cold woods, bound by the same invisible wound.
I don’t know her story, not fully, but I at least now understand the source of her suffering.
The ache left by a bond. A mate. An alpha who isn’t here with her.
Time passes and her ears start to twitch. She rises, body tense, eyes scanning the dense trees. When she turns to leave, I don’t stop her. I can’t force her to stay with me when she’s not ready to face the painful reality she’s fallen into.
Her voice brushes against my mind once more as she disappears into the shadows. I’ve watched you both, from afar. The way your alpha looks at you, the pain he causes…it isn’t on purpose. It breaks him every time it breaks you, Noa.
And then she’s gone.
I’m still staring at the spot where she disappeared when the air shifts again.
It’s heavier this time, threaded with something older, more powerful.
When I turn to my left, Amara steps through the thicket like she’s made from the forest itself.
Her black shawl wraps around her elegant shoulders, the edge of it drawn over her head like a hood to guard against the cold.
“I felt you cross the boundary of my ward,” she says before I can speak.
Her tone is even, but there’s an edge beneath it that makes me feel small, like a child caught somewhere I shouldn’t be.
I crossed the boundary? That’s news to me.
Whoops. Her obsidian eyes sweep over me, steady, precise, taking in more than I want her to see. “What are you doing out here, Noa?”
I lift a shoulder in a small, half-hearted shrug, my attempt at a smile collapsing before it has a chance to form. “I don’t know,” I murmur, the words rough as gravel. “I couldn’t breathe. I just needed to get away. I didn’t realize how far I’d gone.”
She studies me for a few long seconds before something subtle softens in her face. It’s not pity, exactly, but it’s close enough to sting. Then she extends a pale hand toward me.
“Come along now.” There’s no command in her tone, but we both know my refusal isn’t an option. I slip my hand into hers, her grip warm and steady as she draws me up from the moss-covered log. “Walk back with me. I think it’s time we discuss some things.”