Chapter 20 #2
He looks like he dressed in a rush, grabbing whatever his hands hit first. His faded jeans hang low on his hips, boots half-done and laces dragging through the dirt, and his sleeveless T-shirt has been sliced down the sides, showing flashes of the sun-tanned skin of his torso.
He closes the distance between us.
His chest rises and falls too fast, like he’s been chasing me since I slipped out of the healer’s cabin. For a second, I think I might ask him what exactly he’s so afraid of—what danger he thought I’d fallen into—but then he turns toward Amara, and everything about him changes.
The air shifts, heavy and charged, alive with the crackle of dominance as he transforms before my eyes. The man who stands before me isn’t just Rennick anymore. He’s the Alpha of Pack Fallamhain, and every inch of him radiates the kind of authority deserving of such a title.
The sound he makes is deep enough to vibrate through the soles of my boots. “If you ever use your magic to cloak my mate from me again…” The sentence trails off, unfinished, but the danger doesn’t. His meaning is clear enough to chill the air around us—he doesn’t make empty threats.
Cloak? The word rattles through me before its meaning hits.
He’s talking about Amara’s power, how she bends the elements to her will.
How she can still the sound of her steps with earth and send her scent scattering on the wind.
I just hadn’t realized she’d been concealing us both as we walked.
Hiding us from him until she was ready for him to find me.
Amara’s dark brow lifts, utterly unimpressed.
“You don’t frighten me, Alpha,” she drawls, her tone cool enough to cut through his anger.
“I needed time to speak with Noa. Alone.” She glances my way, then back at him.
“But I presume it’s your turn now. I’ve been told there’s a few things you need to clear up. ”
I can’t tell if she’s warning him or giving him permission. Either way, the tension between them thrums like a pulled bowstring waiting for release.
Rennick’s chest is still heaving, still rumbling with a snarl threaded with unspoken warning, his jaw locked tight, the muscle there jumping.
Then his eyes lift and find mine.
That’s all it takes.
The numbness I’ve been holding on to like a lifeline shatters apart like thin glass.
The pain and hurt doesn’t just return in a trickle.
It surges, flooding each hollow crevice inside me until I can barely stand beneath the weight of it.
Every honest word I’ve bitten back, every bruise he’s left on my heart, every wound I told myself I could nurse back—they all reawaken at once. Sharp and screaming for attention.
The world narrows.
The steady murmur of the creek dissolves, Amara’s quiet retreat fades to nothing, even the wind seems to be holding its breath.
All that’s left is the roar inside my head, the pounding in my veins, the storm beating its fists on the inside of my ribs.
It builds and builds, pressing harder with every heartbeat, until I swear the next breath might be the one that ruins me.
He’s talking—rushed and unraveling—like if he can just get the words out fast enough he can rewrite what he’s done.
But I can’t hear a thing he says. His voice can’t make it past the whirlwind I’ve found myself trapped in.
Still, I feel it. The desperation. The ache for me to understand. The pleas for my forgiveness.
It’s always me who has to be the merciful one. Always me who has to bleed grace.
The space around us distorts, the air itself is rippling as if mirroring a lake’s surface. Something inside me pulls tighter, winding in on itself like a snake eating its own tail, endless and consuming, until there’s nothing left but the spiral.
My wolf starts to thrash inside her cage, wild with something I can’t name. The rhythmic relentlessness creates a beat with the hum that’s been building between my ears. It’s a symphony made of chaos that keeps growing, working its way toward a fever pitch.
I feel more than hear the crack, reminding me of an icicle splitting in two, and it takes a second to realize the faint warmth trickling from my nose, trailing over my lips, is real.
The sensation feels too far away, like it doesn’t belong to me or my body.
I try to lift my hand, but the limb acts as if it’s not connected and ignores the order.
Rennick stops mid-sentence, mid-plea, the moment the warmth drips from my chin. Fear reclaims him in one clean strike. His eyes go wide and searching like he’s trying to make sense of what he’s seeing.
“Noa.” His lips shape my name, soundless, but I feel the strain of it all the same.
He’s reaching for me before I can react. His big hand finds my forearm, steady and burning hot against my icy skin. The moment he touches me, the world splits at the seams.
Threads unravel through the air. Delicate, shining filaments that dance around me like spun sugar.
They vibrate softly, resonating with a frequency I can feel in my teeth.
It’s both foreign and familiar. I’ve touched this power before, but time hasn’t gifted me understanding of it.
They’re still beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
Every cord burns its own unique color; some shades I don’t even have names for. All of them weave through the air as if made of veins of pure light, but it’s the ones stemming from him that hold me still.
They wind from his strong body like ribbons of a restless storm, all grays and shades of blues.
They form something whole, something that is unquietly…
him. Every memory, every scar, every piece of the man he’s fought to become.
But one stands apart. Darker. Deeper. The color of a thunder cloud that bleeds lightning.
It beckons me in with a power I can’t label or resist. I try to fight it, because I know what happens when I tamper with these threads.
I’ve seen the ruin they can cause. My wolf cries for me to stop, to spare him from it, but I can’t seem to listen.
I’m caught in something I don’t understand, powerless to break free.
In my mind's eyes, I imagine a hand—my hand—reaching for the thread. I can feel my fingers brush against it, fragile but so cold in my palm as I wrap it in my grasp.
I watch him, taking in every flicker of emotion that shifts across his face. The worry. The ache. The devotion that refuses to fade, no matter how hard he’s made it for us to find peace.
He says my name again, the sound lost to me, but the thread stirs, trembling in answer.
I tighten my hold on the thread and before I can make myself stop, I pull.
The power that surges through me feels wrong, like it shouldn't have been used in this way. Not against him. But it's too late to take it back.
I can only watch as white clouds flood his irises, swallowing the gray until nothing remains but two glass marbles staring at nothing.
His knees hit the ground hard, mud splattering his jeans, but his grip on me doesn’t falter.
If anything, it tightens, like he’s trying to hold me here, to anchor us both, even as he’s being dragged away by terror’s serrated claws.
Then he’s gone.
Not physically, but wherever he’s been taken, I can’t follow.
His skin turns a deathly pale, his lips part around a soundless gasp, and the fear that crosses his face makes my heart seize. I’ve seen that look before, once, when Malvina fell into her own nightmare, and it was horrific to bear witness to then.
But this? Watching it happen to him? It’s agonizing.
He’s living through some horrific invisible reality, something I’ve unleashed upon him.
He’s on his knees before me, one hand clutching his chest, the other still gripping my arm so tight I’m certain it’ll bruise as if he’s terrified of what will happen if he lets me go.
The hum in my body rises until it’s everything.
Sound and pressure and pain at once. My muscles tremble until they vibrate, my vision tunnels into pinpoints.
the world starts to close in. Darkness creeps from the corners, the drone splitting into a high, aching wail that feels like it’s tearing me apart. My body gives way beneath it.
And just before the dark pulls me under, the nightmare Rennick’s found himself in bleeds into my mind. His disjointed voice cuts through the chaos. Broken and pleading.
No, baby, please…stay with me. You have to keep breathing. Please don’t leave me, Noa!
Then there’s nothing.