Chapter 24 #2
Never pondered the possibilities beyond that initial jolt of hearing he was gone, that Rennick now stood in his place.
Call it self-preservation if you want, but after spending years believing the stern Alpha with the soulless eyes had exiled me from my home, I didn’t see the point in wondering what became of him.
Some wounds heal best when left untouched.
Or maybe, I’ve just had too much other shit to survive since reuniting with Rennick to dwell on the ghost of his father.
Probably a mix of both, if I’m being honest.
But now I’m thinking I should have asked.
Moon Madness.
The name sounds innocuous, almost gentle, but it isn’t.
It’s a death sentence for shifters—a slow, violent unraveling of the mind.
It strips away memory and reason until the person you love is nothing more than a vicious echo wearing their face.
Paranoia nips at their heels while hallucinations feed the world they think is real.
They grow volatile, mistaking family for foe, empathy bleeding out until there’s nothing human left.
It’s quick. Cruel. There’s no cure. No hope. Just the agonizing wait for the inevitable end.
And it always ends in blood. Whether by their own hand, or by someone else’s mercy.
I can see it now, as clearly as if I’d been here. Merritt losing himself piece by piece. The pack pretending to not notice or too scared to do anything about it. And Rennick, realizing too late, watching his father turn into a creature that has to be contained.
Rennick pauses. His jaw tightens, gaze distant and haunted. Then his hand lifts, fingers brushing the four pale slashes carved into his temple.
The sound that slips from me is barely a breath.
I understand what happened.
The truth lands slow, spreading like a bruise through my chest. The scars I’ve traced with my fingertips, the ones I thought were remnants of some old fight, aren’t that at all. The truth settles sharp and cold.
Renick didn’t just lose his father.
He ended him.
A mercy kill.
Rennick’s voice slices through the quiet that has swallowed the room. It’s calm and steady, but it carries the kind of weight that only comes from having done the unimaginable.
“My reign was never supposed to begin that way,” he says. “With my father’s blood staining my hands.”
The crowd absorbs the words, and it’s like a collective wound reopening. I can see it in the members of Pack Fallamhain’s faces—the ones who were there, who watched it happen—mirroring the heaviness pressing against my ribs.
From what I saw as a pup and learned today, there was nothing soft about Rennick’s relationship with Merritt.
No warm memories to fall back on, no parental gestures wrapped in affection.
It was structured, cold, a hierarchal battle more than a bond.
But he was Ren’s dad, and grief doesn’t care how complicated the relationship was.
“My father used to tell me that being Alpha meant making the hard decisions. That one day, I’d understand what that meant.” He pauses, eyes sweeping the crowd but not really seeing. He’s stuck somewhere else—somewhere dark. “But ending his life…that wasn’t a hard decision. Not in that moment.”
I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until my vision starts to blur at the edges.
“He wasn’t my father anymore. Not there at the end.
” His voice tightens. “Moon Madness had already taken him. It had eaten through everything he was, until all that was left was fury and delusion. By the time I stopped him, he’d already killed his brother—his second-in-command, his most loyal man.
” His fingers twitch at his side, a small betrayal of the storm still coursing through him.
“If I hadn’t…If I hadn’t done what I did, the body count wouldn’t have ended there. ”
My hand lifts to my chest. My heartbeat hammers against my palm like it wants out. Like it wants me to cross the distance between us and ease the guilt that will probably live in him forever.
I’d heard the stories about Moon Madness from my mom but hearing them isn’t the same as watching your own father succumb to it.
In that tone she used when she wanted to prepare me for something awful, Mom told me how the disease makes them stronger, that pain can’t touch them anymore or slow them down.
They fight until there’s nothing left and then keep going—they never go quietly.
The scars Rennick will carry for the rest of his life are proof of how hard Merritt fought until the end.
My heart aches for him—for what he’s done, for what it’s cost—but none of this makes sense.
These aren’t the words of a man celebrating his future union.
Then again, when I saw the look on Rennick’s face and heard his echoing plea for me to stay, I knew this wasn’t an ordinary engagement celebration.
I just haven’t figured out what his end goal is here.
Yes, you do, my wolf debates conspiratorially, trust our mate.
Beside him, Talis shifts, a ripple of unease breaking through her polished veneer as her eyes dart toward her father.
Cathal stands off to the side of the stage, surrounded by his men and a few unfamiliar she-wolves—her friends, probably.
His fury hums through the air like a live wire, but it doesn’t dissuade Rennick.
He keeps going.
“My first act as your Alpha was executing my father,” he tells the room, his tone taking on a powerful edge.
“And I would do it again. Not just for him, because no one should live like that, but for all of you. Because protecting this pack, keeping you safe, is what I swore to do.” He pauses, letting the words settle.
“But that kind of shadow doesn’t leave easily.
The water may run clear, but your hands aren’t clean.
Blood lingers, no matter how justified the kill was, and it changes you.
It makes you start weighing options you never fucking would have entertained before. ”
The room as a whole holds its breath, still waiting to see where he’s taking us.
“I wasn’t ready to lead,” he admits, and to me, that kind of honesty is more powerful than any growl or show of dominance could ever be.
Standing before a room and naming your flaws isn’t easy, but Rennick is doing it anyway.
“I thought I had more time. More time to grow into the kind of man I wanted to be before I had to become the Alpha this pack needed. But when my father fell, I no longer had the luxury of time. Suddenly, every life in this territory depended on me doing the right thing, even when I was still trying to figure out what that looked like. I was surrounded by people who wanted me to rule as my dad had, to follow in his blueprint. And worse, some were in my ear—my own council members—implying I would fail if I didn’t. ”
Oh fuck, he’s calling out his own people now, too.
His admission lands heavy, the truth of it seeping into the cement floors beneath our feet. People watch him, their confusion about the reason and direction of his speech still clearly written across their faces, but still they hang on to every word he says.
He draws in a slow breath as he scans the crowd.
“I let their expectations influence me. The fear of failing this pack, of not living up to what they thought I should be, it weakened me. Made me become an Alpha I didn’t recognize or respect—made me choose wrong, again and again, and I can never take some of those decisions back. ”
His eyes find mine across the room. The weight of his gaze hits like a blow to the sternum and a slow, deliberate caress down my spine all at once.
He holds me there, long enough for my pulse to falter and my wolf to stir, before turning away to Cathal—whose face has turned the color of a raw chuck roast—and then flicks briefly to Talis.
Ren doesn’t even bother attempting to hide the repulsion on his face when he looks at her this time.
To her credit, she doesn’t bolt, though I can see the tremor in her body from here.
Her fingers twist the hem of her pale blue dress, knuckles whitening.
Her posture screams that she’s caught between dismay and denial.
She has to realize by now that this isn’t going to be the fairytale ending she’s been dreaming about since puberty or scribbling about in her color-coded manifesto—oops, I mean diary.
Rennick continues. “Our omegas began to vanish—your daughters, your sisters, your friends— and suddenly I wasn’t just afraid of failing you.
I had proof of it, written in blood. I was then offered a solution.
And even when every part of me warned against it, I agreed to the bargain.
I thought I was being noble. Thought I was sacrificing only myself—my future, my happiness—for the safety of my people.
And I probably would have kept forcing myself to believe that lie.
” He hesitates, gaze cutting back to me and staying there.
Something raw flickering in the space between us. “But then Noa Alderwood came back.”
The shift in the room is instant.
As if choreographed, they turn as one. A hundred or so pairs of eyes land on me. My stomach drops so fast I’m pretty sure it leaves my body behind completely in its hasty escape. I start to shake, my bones rattling.
The hands gripping my upper arms slide down until Seren and Siggy each take one of mine, fingers tightening in grounding solidarity as the world around me starts to tilt.
Holy shit, this can’t… Is this really happening?
People have started to murmur to each other, words coming fast and low as they split their attention between Rennick and me.
He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t stumble. His commanding voice just cuts clean through the whispered speculations and outward astonishment.