Chapter 43 #4
At that promise—or threat, depending on how you look at it—Rennick shifts us with care, his knot allowing just enough movement for him to lift me against him. He eases into his desk chair, settling me into his lap and making sure I’m supported. My head rests heavily against his shoulder.
I’m spent, wrung out in the best way, with nothing left to give, and he seems perfectly content to hold what’s left of me until I’m fully present in my body again.
All I can manage is a small humming sound of acknowledgment when he presses his lips to my slightly damp temple.
“When’s your call?” I ask once my breathing isn’t so labored.
He keeps gathering the loose strands of hair around my face and neck, twirling the dark lengths absently between his fingers. When he leans forward to check the time, he draws me with him, and the knot shifts, settling deeper. It brushes a spot that’s still raw and sensitive.
The sound I make is low, barely there, my eyes sliding shut as I let myself sink into it.
I give myself this moment. This quiet, stolen pocket where it’s just the two of us and everything is…good. Almost normal. A snapshot of what our life could be once the threat hanging over us is finally gone.
I want to believe we’ll reach that place, but it’s hard when we’ve been stumbling from one hurdle to the next, never given the chance to fucking breathe.
Mom said our bond was so strong, she believed the Goddess herself laid her hand on it and blessed it. I want this to be true. Some days, though, it’s hard not to wonder if it’s the opposite. That we were cursed, not blessed.
Rennick swipes up on his phone, double-checking an email thread where I’m guessing the date and time for this call were set. “Should be any minute.”
“Who’s it with?”
“An Alpha from a nearby territory. Rhosyn sent the email out yesterday to every pack we could get contact info for. His pack had missing omegas too, same as us, and he wanted to talk to me directly about what’s going on.”
I frown, worry rising fast. “How honest were you about Merritt? About Cathal?”
Guilt by association is a vicious thing, and once public opinion settles in, it rarely shifts. I don’t want people to look at Rennick sideways, searching for his father in him, or deciding he’s guilty by blood relation alone.
He doesn’t answer. His phone starts buzzing in his hand, the vibration cutting through the quiet, and when he tilts the screen, I catch the Unknown Number across the top.
His left arm bands securely around my waist, making sure I’m still comfortable in his lap, then he flashes me a wicked grin and gives a quick signal for me to stay quiet.
I don’t have the chance to say anything or stop him before he’s answering.
“Fallamhain,” he says, his voice even but not unkind, as he puts the call on speaker and holds the phone a little away from his face.
I’m still reeling, stuck on the fact that he actually did that, that he answered a call while he’s still knotted inside me, when a voice comes through the line. Shock hits hard, snapping my spine straight, and cold flooding my veins.
“You shouldn’t have mated her.”
He doesn’t bother easing into it. Just gets straight to the point, all cold certainty, stripped of anything that might resemble feeling.
I go very still. Not because I choose to, but because my body doesn’t know how to react to hearing that voice—and those words—while I’m in my current…state. It’s invasive in a way that has nothing to do with how exposed I physically am.
Less than two minutes ago, I was basking in how right this felt with Rennick. My mate. And now that moment has been defiled by him.
It feels deliberate. Like he timed the call for maximum damage, chose a moment that would disturb us the most.
My skin crawls with the sensation of being watched, of too many hidden eyes scanning my body, even though logic tells me we’re alone and I’m still technically dressed from the waist up.
It’s what his words reveal.
That he knows.
Whether he’s seeing it himself or hearing it whispered back to him by traitors in our ranks, the result is the same. He’s learned something that should never have left this pack. Knows that Rennick and I are officially mated.
Rennick goes rigid beneath me, his body winding tight as he sits up straighter in the chair, every line of him bracing like he’s expecting a fight. His knot, still lodged deep, tugs at the sensitive flesh of my core, and it reminds us both of just how vulnerable this position makes us.
As if we needed the fucking reminder.
“McNamara,” Ren grits.
The name spoken aloud has me fighting an instinctive flinch.
Cathal grunts. “I really did try to make this easy for you. I gave you every opportunity to stay blissfully ignorant, but you couldn’t resist. Even when I placed a perfectly good alternative in front of you, one that came without the risk of fraying old magic and the past coming to bite you in the ass, you couldn’t stay away from her. ”
Her. He doesn’t use my name. But he doesn’t have to.
But that’s not the point. The part that matters is how casually he confirms he’s known about the magic by mom wove around us. Knew Rennick had been made to forget his mate and leveraged that knowledge to steer him toward Talis.
“I even returned that omega to you—well, enough of her that she could be identified—thought that would force you to stay on track. To stick to the plan. When you rejected that runt on my orders, I thought you’d come around. But that didn’t last long at all, did it? You just went running after her.”
My stomach roils. Beneath me, Rennick reacts instantly, his body locking down so hard I don’t know how there’s any tension left for him to summon, and yet he finds it.
I feel it pressed everywhere against me.
Carly. The way the young omega had been discarded will always be a wound for him.
I wasn’t here, but I’ve heard fragments of what it’d been like and that’s enough.
Zora had told me it was Rennick who carried what was left of Carly all those miles home
“You were even there to save the day when I’d sent Tanith’s Terrors to take care of the problem once and for all. But no, you were too weak and couldn’t stay away.”
Another answer clicks into place at this.
The triplets.
Tanith’s Terrors—I’ll give Cathal credit where it’s due, it’s a terrifyingly appropriate name.
They had told me that day in Ashvale that I wouldn’t be joining the rest at auction. That I was a private sale and already spoken for.
At the time, it hadn't made sense. Not fully.
Now it does.
Cathal McNamara.
Another attempt to wipe me from the board so he could fill my space with his daughter.
The look on Rennick’s face tells me he’s connected the same dots. His gray eyes have gone dark, edged with something dangerous, his jaw ticking as he glares at the phone like it’s something he’d enjoy crushing in his bare hand.
“You’re the idiot who thought I’d pick someone else,” Rennick bites out, teeth snapping, “when my wolf never forgot his mate was still out there.”
Cathal laughs, and Goddess, it’s an ugly sound.
I register, distantly, how intimidating this man is through the phone, all confidence and control layered into his voice.
It’s hard to reconcile this voice with the version of him I saw last. The one where his chubby, ruddy body had been in the dirt, submitting to Rennick.
He’d crumbled that day, folding under the pressure of true Alpha dominance.
Whatever bravado he’s projecting now is something he’d rebuilt since then. Or is something he’s borrowing.
The latter feels more likely to me. Having the full weight of the dark coven at your back would inflate anyone’s sense of power.
And while I don’t remember much of Merritt and Cathal’s dynamic from when I was growing up here, I clearly remember Merritt.
He would never have allied with someone who could challenge him and win.
He would have chosen a weaker alpha. Someone he could flatten if he needed to.
“That soft heart of yours,” Cathal goes on.
“That’s exactly why Merritt knew we could never bring you into the fold.
Sentiment. Morals. All that inconvenient nonsense.
Still, I had hope. With the right guidance.
With the right influence. I thought maybe I could shape you into the Alpha your father always wanted you to be. ”
At the mention of his father, Rennick’s heart rate picks up against my back.
“Strong,” he says. “Practical. Willing to see opportunity where others only see discomfort. But the moment you started reacting to the missing omegas the way you did, it was obvious your father had been right. You’d never join us. You’d try to stop it. You always were predictable that way.”
None of this is new.
I already came to this answer, said as much while sitting in that conference room with Rennick and the others.
Ren’s stronger moral code was never going to make him an asset to men like this.
It made him a problem. One they were always going to try to evade or eventually eliminate rather than recruit.
But sitting here listening to this asshole speak, something else snaps into place.
The influx of omegas missing from Pack Fallamhain.
The numbers started to rise around the time Merritt died.
It doesn’t make sense until it does. While he was alive, his pack’s losses were statistically controlled.
He sourced from other packs, dipping into his own ranks only for the sake of appearances.
With him gone, his pack became fair game like everyone else’s.
“And now.” Cathal’s voice brings me back. “Your interference is the reason you’ve landed where you have. A position you could have avoided entirely if you’d just done what you were told.”
If he’d kept away from me. If he’d kept the past buried. That’s what Cathal means by this.
That’s the bitter truth. Rennick would probably still be unaware of the atrocities happening in his territory, committed by his own people. His own father. If we hadn’t found our way back to each other, exactly as Mom intended.
Rennick exhales slowly through his nose. I can’t tell if the sound is irritation or anger. “Is there a point to this call, McNamara? And are we going to get there soon?”
There’s a pause. The kind meant to unsettle.
“Yes,” Cathal says finally. “I’m calling with an offer. The only one you’re going to get.”
My stomach drops and twists at once.
“I’ll give you one chance,” he continues.
“One opportunity to choose correctly. Surrender now, and you can stop the bloodshed before it starts. My pack and Tanith’s coven are already aligned.
You saw the aftermath of Ashvale, so you know how ruthless these witches can be.
They won’t hesitate to cut your people down. ”
Rennick lets out a humorless sound. “You expect me to believe you’ll just let my pack walk away if I hand you what you want? Control over the land. Access back to the runway.”
Cathal tsks.
“Of course I’m not offering to let your whole pack go,” he corrects with a casualness that feels malicious.
“We’ll round up all the omegas—snag a couple betas too if they catch the eye enough to put them in the auction.
” There’s a pause. Long enough I can picture it.
Call it a hunch, but I know he’s smirking.
“But you, the prodigal son? Tanith will never allow you to live. Not after you killed one of her daughters. And Talis,” he adds, “has already requested that she be the one to deal with the runt. Which I agree is fair. Your new mate owes my daughter a debt.”
Rennick’s chest begins to vibrate against my back, his wolf battling its way toward the surface. Lethal energy rolls off my alpha, thick and uncontained, and I don’t know how to help him carry it.
“Why,” he grits out, molars grinding so hard I can hear the faint squeak, “would I ever agree to this so-called offer of yours?”
Cathal sighs, the sound seeped in false sympathy.
“Because while it won’t save everyone—yourself included—it’s the only way to guarantee that some of your pack walks away alive.
And I know that’s something that will appeal to your tender heart.
” Silence stretches thin again, and then, “Think it over. But think fast. You’re running out of time, boy. ”
The line goes dead.
Rennick tosses his phone onto the desk. It hits the metal with a bang.
For a long moment, neither one of us moves. We can’t really, not with his knot still pulsing and stretching between my thighs. We don’t talk either.
Then his phone vibrates again. The sound snaps through the stillness like a gunshot, far too loud as it rattles against the desk.
I glance at the screen and grimace. It’s another Unknown Number.
Probably the other pack Alpha he’d actually scheduled a call with.
And still, Rennick glares at the device, and grumbles, “Let it go to fucking voicemail.”