Chapter 28
Rennick
“Shit, baby!”
The words rip out of me the second the cold water slams into my head and pours down my chest in icy rivulets.
It soaks straight through the gray sweats I dragged on when I shifted back—after watching the McNamara SUV roll through my gates and then keeping my eyes on their taillights until they were gone.
As soon as I could, I turned and ran. I ran like my lungs belonged to her and my legs were only worth a damn so long as they could carry me to Noa. I told her I’d return to her soon as I could, and I don’t break promises to her. Not anymore.
I didn’t stop long enough to think about what state I’d find her in, only that I needed to get to her.
The moment I stepped through the front doors, I knew something was wrong.
Her scent wrapped around me like a silk sheet of sugar and fig, decadent enough to make my teeth ache, but there was an edge to it that put me on alert. Too sweet. Too sharp.
Omega perfume always carries sweeter notes, but when those notes spike to a dizzying level it means one of two things. Distress or arousal.
And hers had teeth in it.
My omega was upset.
Pulse in my throat, I took the stairs two a time looking for her.
I wasn’t prepared to find her curled in my closet, wrapped up in a nest of my clothes and bedding looking dazed, small, and heartbreakingly soft. The sight of her in there was also so painfully natural and intimate that it gutted me in the best way.
My mate. My omega. My girl.
Building her first nest in my space, wrapped in my scent, using my things because she trusted, finally, that she had a place here.
I’m so fucking gone for her.
Hearing her say she believed me on that stage was one thing, but this unguarded display of trust—letting herself be vulnerable and claiming a piece of my room as hers—has made it all real in a way I can really accept.
I’d really done it. I’d found my way back to Noa.
But when I’d cross farther into the closet to get to her, I was reminded of another hard lesson.
Surfacing omega instincts come with a storm behind them. Volatile emotions, sharp needs, a body fighting to find a center of gravity again. Noa’s new to all of it. She’s trying to learn how to exist in something she never had the chance to feel before.
And now I’ve only made it worse by showing up smelling like another woman.
It doesn’t matter that all I did was catch Talis’s arm before she bolted. It doesn’t matter that it meant nothing and never did. It was still a mistake. One that belongs entirely to me.
Poor Noa. One moment she’s trying to settle into a nest she didn’t know she needed. The next, she’s flooded with jealousy and panic that rises so fast she can’t contain it.
I hate that I’m the reason she’s in this state, but the part of me that’s always greedy for her? Yeah, it’s fucking delighted that she cares enough to react like this.
I’m, admittedly, less tickled pink by the whole thing since her reaction has led to her dragging me into the shower and dousing us with water cold enough it could have come straight from a glacier for all I know.
Keeping my hand on her side to hold her close, I reach with the other to crank the shower warmer.
The handle squeaks under my harsh grip as I turn it.
Not willing to wait for the arctic punishment to transition into something a little more hospitable, I twist out front under the direct stream and bring her with me.
While this may have been her play, I’m less willing to let her freeze.
The move puts my back against the far wall, our bodies tucked in the corner. Noa’s pressed tight to my chest, and I expect her to settle into it, to let me anchor her for a second.
I quickly learn how wrong I am.
She fights, pushing against me with that small, stubborn strength of hers.
Chin dipped to her chest, Noa’s dark hair sticks to her cheeks, hiding most of her expression, but I hear the low, unhappy noises starting in her throat.
Not human. Not fully. Her wolf is right there under her skin, rattling the bars.
I loosen my grip just enough for her to move.
She wastes no time reaching for my right hand, her delicate fingers digging into the skin of my wrist as she yanks it toward her face.
I go still. And my breath catches so hard it hurts when she drags her cheek across my palm.
Then she’s turning her head, doing the same with the other side.
Slow and deliberate. It’s as if she’s trying to scrub away anything that doesn’t belong there until all that’s left is the sugared spice of her own perfume.
Understanding slams into me.
My mate is scent marking me.
For the first time.
A mix of bliss and relief flood through my veins, my knees nearly buckling from the sudden, warm rush of it.
Needing to see her face, I adjust my hand until my fingers can cradle beneath her jaw. Her skin is burning despite the remnants of cold water still soaking her, and when I lift her chin, something yanks violently in my chest. No, not something…the bond.
I’ve always known her eyes were going to be the death of me.
They haunted my dreams long before she returned to me—the right one divided in two, light blue and gilded brown.
They were always set in a face I could never quite see.
I’d wake up from those visions with a hollow ache, feeling like I lost something vital.
And I never understood where they came from.
Why my own mind insisted on showing me what I couldn’t recognize.
I do now. Thalassa. Those dreams were her doing, small messages she tucked into dark corners for me to find when the time was right.
Recently, Noa’s eyes have been my undoing and salvation more times than I can count.
But this…I’ve never seen this before.
Her pupils are blown. The blue half of her right one has stayed the same—glacial on the surface, but with that quiet heat that speaks to the warmth in Noa’s gentle soul.
The brown in both irises has vanished completely, though.
In its place molten gold spreads through her gaze like liquid sunshine.
Both orbs gleam in a way that has nothing to do with the bathroom lighting.
Wolf.
For the first time, her wolf—caged, silenced, unreachable for years—is the one peering back at me.
I breathe out slowly, not daring to move too fast, or at all. It feels like I’m standing in front of something sacred, and if I blink wrong, it’ll disappear before I can claim it.
I let go of her jaw, but I don’t fully sever the contact because every part of me rebukes the idea of letting her go entirely.
Tracing her face, I find the center of her forehead and I drag my fingertip down in a soft, careful line.
I follow along the bridge of her nose, stopping only when I reach the delicate tip.
“Hello, little mate,” I murmur to the part of Noa I’ve ached to meet but never had the privilege of touching until now. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
The instant the words leave me, my own wolf presses forward, a hard surge against my bones. Every inch of space he’d kept between us since yesterday—his way of punishing me for what I put her through—dissolves like it was never there. He’s present now, keyed in, determined to greet his mate.
Who am I to keep him from her?
I let him through.
One blink, and my vision sharpens, his sight replacing my own.
Noa’s wolf quiets instantly, disgruntled sounds silencing, as if she registers the shift in me and falls still to watch.
I bow my head and touch my mouth to the crown of hers, lips and nose pressed to the part in her hair as I breathe her deep into my lungs.
Sweet. Grounding. Unmistakably mine. The acrid note from earlier still clings, muted but there.
Proof that something inside her still hasn’t fully settled.
The clawing need to sooth it pulls at me. I slide my jaw across her temple, marking her as she marked me. Claiming her in turn.
Mine.
Our scents braid together, familiar and right, filing the now steam-thick shower stall.
The moment they settle, a purr rises from my chest. I don’t try to stop it.
It moves up from beneath my sternum in a slow, even rumble that shakes through my ribs.
It revibrates through the space around us until it feels like the air itself is carrying the sound.
She softens against me, turning her face into where my palm now cradles her cheek. My other hand curls at her side, fitting her against me, chest to chest.
Her body held to mine, it all becomes so painful clear. All those years without her, I wasn’t living. I was enduring, and I hadn’t even known the difference.
When I pull back, her eyes are still molten gold and ice, her wolf still riding her. My thumb swipes back and forth beneath her perfectly imperfect eye, and I ask, “Tell me what you need, sweet one.”
Her lips open like the words are ready, but they catch. She gives a tiny, helpless shake of her head. “I…I’m not sure,” she whispers.
“Close your eyes,” My voice drops without me meaning it to. She follows the instruction immediately. “Listen to your wolf—to your omega instincts. What are they reaching for?”
She wrinkles her nose as she concentrates, and it takes everything in me not to bend down and kiss that spot.
Her eyes snap back open before I can.
There’s nothing gentle about the change in her—it’s like she’s been yanked back into her body by claws and something carnal. The glint in her irises burns brighter than before, and the soft lines of her face tighten.
Suddenly she isn’t just looking at me. She’s hunting me.
And fuck if I don't want her to.