Chapter 46 #2
I’m closing the distance between us at a dead run when my body simply lets go.
Mid-stride, it surrenders completely and allows what was always meant to be mine roll through me in one steady and relentless tide of power.
Everything I’ve ever been told says the first shift hurts, that you feel every bone splinter and slide into a new alignment, every muscle tears as it reshapes, the burn of skin as it yields to fur, but none of that finds me now.
It happens fast, mere seconds. There’s no pain waiting on the other side of this, no struggle or resistance, only an overwhelming sense of rightness, like something vital has finally been restored after years of being kept just beyond my reach.
It feels less like becoming something new and more like remembering who I’ve always been, two halves finally turning toward each other instead of being ripped apart.
But I don’t linger in the rightness of it. I can’t.
My wolf takes the lead and I welcome it, yielding control to her fully as she drives us forward.
On four paws, I cross the distance and crush into the alpha pinning Siggy, knocking him sideways across the road.
He’s bigger, built heavier, stronger in every way that matters, but he’s slower.
My wolf takes the opening the moment it appears.
My teeth dig into his throat. Blood floods my mouth as I clamp down and hold, shaking him once, then again, feeling the resistance fade until the weight beneath me finally goes slack and whatever fight he has left drains out of him entirely. Only then do I release him.
I turn to Siggy, needing to see with my own eyes that she’s okay.
She’s trying to get to her feet, careful to keep weight off her front paw as she does, but her legs tremble uncontrollably.
Not just from the injury but from the fear clawing back in, old memories stirred by the combination of alphas and violence.
I press in close, nudging her to move with my snout.
The fight is still raging around us, and with Siggy unable to run or fight back, she’s an easy target. A sitting duck.
I’m sorry, Sig, we have to move. We can’t stay out here in the open. It’s not safe.
She manages to find her balance on three shaking legs, and once she’s standing, she bumps her head against mine. She’s free. You’re a wolf. Welcome to the pack, Luna.
I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t soar hearing this.
I’m a wolf, I confirm, It doesn’t feel real—
“Noa!”
Amara’s voice, commanding and urgent, cuts through the frenzy. But why does she also sound…scared?
I turn toward her, and what follows takes only seconds, yet somehow feels endless, because the universe is cruel enough to allow both at once.
It’s always the moments you wish you could forget that time stretches thin for, making certain they harden into memories you’re forced to revisit with ruthless clarity.
Amara goes still, her attention sharpening so fast it’s unmistakable, and I follow her line of sight without prompting.
A witch from Tanith’s coven stands just past the heart of all the fighting, an elementalist, her hands raised around a spear of ice that gleams under the sickening green glow of the ward.
She holds it steady, clearly aiming to kill with a single strike.
It’s pointed at me.
Or Siggy.
Amara’s fire strikes the witch half a heartbeat later, the force of it wrenching an agonized scream from her, but it’s too late to stop what’s already been set in motion.
The spear launches free, pushed by witch wind that sends it screaming through the air at an impossible speed.
I pivot without thinking, putting myself between it and Siggy, preparing for a hit I know I can’t outrun.
Something flashes through the corner of my vision.
Fawn-colored fur, moving too fast to follow.
The sound lands before meaning does, a wrongness that bypasses my ears and sinks straight into my bones. Something hits the ground with enough force to knock the air from my lungs, even though I’m still standing.
I look down and freeze.
An ice spear is driven clean through a chest, and it takes a second too long for my mind to register the way it still rises and falls around it.
For a moment, everything else recedes. The noise becomes dull.
The battle blurs, moving too slow and too fast all at once in my periphery.
It’s as if the world has paused to give me time to process what I’m looking at, time I don’t want or need because no amount of it will make this settle gently.
When horror finally reaches me, it comes in a rush so sudden it leaves me lightheaded, my skin itching, my heart slamming against my ribs as if it’s trying to escape what I already know is coming.
Then sound snaps back into place and I’m moving, instinct taking over.
My wolf slips away without resistance as I fall back into my human body, the shift complete before I even realize it’s begun.
I hit my knees hard, the cold ground biting into my skin, but the sensation barely breaks through.
My hands lift and hover helplessly around the spear and the damage it’s inflicted.
Fear roots me in place. I’m afraid to touch, afraid I’ll only cause more harm, or worse, that I won’t be able to make it better.
The fawn-colored fur melts, giving way to smooth skin.
There isn’t much blood.
Which looks deceptively like a blessing. It’s not. The ice is doing its job too well, sealing the wound even as it kills her from the inside. I know what that means. I know it in the same quiet place where all the worst truths live.
No,” I gasp, her name breaking out of me on a choked breath. “Rhosyn.”
She turns as far as the spear will let her, breath hitching with the effort, and her eyes find mine. The rich green in them is fading already, slipping away, and still, she manages a smile, small and barely holding its shape. It feels like an apology she doesn’t owe.
I don’t hesitate this time, my hand finds her chest, careful around the ice, and the other cups her face. Her skin already feels too cold.
“Why…” The word falls apart before I can finish it. Why would you do this? Why would you jump in front of that? Why would you choose me?
I already know the answer to all of it because I tried to do the same for Siggy.
“I’m going to fix this,” I tell her instead, forcing steadiness into my voice even as panic claws up my throat. “Okay? I can fix it.”
The lie tastes bitter, but I cling to it anyway.
Somewhere behind me, I register movement.
Siggy shifts back, sobbing quietly, and Amara’s coven closes ranks with the Fallamhain wolves forming a protective ring around us.
In the corner of my eyes, I see Juno’s lithe frame join them.
The sounds—claws, magic, screams—fade into something muffled and far away, like they’re echoes from another world entirely.
“It’s…okay,” Rhosyn tries to say, but her assurance splits apart as she coughs. Blood spills over her lips and chin, dark against skin already going too pale beneath the green light.
I barely manage to smother my gasp before wiping it away with trembling fingers, smearing red over skin that’s already gone far too pale.
“Hey. Hey. You’re right. It’s going to be okay,” I insist, the words coming faster now because the alternative is unthinkable. “I’ve got you, Rhosyn. I’ve got you.”
Siggy takes a position on the other side. She’s crying silently, shoulders shaking with her broken arm cradled protectively against her chest.
“Sig,” I choke out. “The first aid kits. The ones we placed around the territory. Are there any close by?”
She blinks hard, trying to think through the shock. “I think…I think there’s one up the road,” she manages, but her face crumbles a moment later. “But, Noa, it’s on the other side of the ward. I can’t get to it. Maybe I can get to another one, it’s just farther away.”
My heart slams against my ribs as the sense of helplessness settles deeper with every beat. The copper smell in the air is getting stronger. Rhosyn’s breathing is shallower now, each breath more effort than the last.
If we have any hope of helping her, we need—
“No,” Rhosyn croaks. “You can’t go. It’s not…safe.”
Guilt cuts straight through me. I shouldn’t have asked Siggy to go—not now, not with everything still breaking apart around us—but my mind isn’t on the fight or battle tactics anymore.
I’m clinging hard to every scrap of medical knowledge I have, searching it for an answer, for anything that might still change the outcome of this.
The kits…the kits with the hemostatic bandages I packed myself, infused with kaolin clay. They could slow the bleeding. Maybe slow it long enough to get Rhosyn back to the healer cabin, and after that… Fuck, I don’t know! I don’t have an after that. This is all I have right now.
“I’ll go,” I say decidedly, already shifting my hands from her shivering body, already searching for the fastest path through the mess of fighting bodies. It won’t be enough, a quiet voice whispers in the back of my mind. I shove it down hard. “Siggy, come here. Put your hands right here and—”
Rhosyn coughs again, harsher this time. Blood spills freely now, darker against her lips and chin. “No,” she breathes, but it’s a wet sound now, fingers twitching weakly. “I need you…to stay.”
“I’ll be right back,” I promise desperately, rising onto my knees.
Her hand shoots out and clamps around my wrist. The grip is weak, but it’s determined. “I’ll already be gone…before you’re back,” she pants. “Stay. Please.”
More blood, spilling freely from the corner of her mouth now. Too much. Her skin looks almost translucent under the unforgiving green light from the corrupted ward, the contrast making everything look worse than it already is. Hell, maybe it’s appropriately bad.
“Can’t you just pull it out?” Siggy cries, reaching for Rhosyn’s free hand with her unbroken arm. “We can help her once it’s out, right? Her healing will kick in.”
I’m shaking my head before she finishes speaking. “No.” The rest of the sentence lodges in my throat—that would only succeed in killing her faster. “It’s slowing the internal bleeding,” I say instead, focusing on Rhosyn because I can’t look at anyone or anything else right now.
Meeting Rhosyn carried the same quiet certainty I’ve always known with Seren, the sense that she belonged in my life because fate had intended it that way.
She was never a choice I had to make, she was just a presence that settled in naturally as if she’d always been meant to stand there.
My life is better for knowing her, for the loyalty she gave me before I’d earned it, for the way she walked away from her own pack Alpha without hesitation for me.
Coming back to this territory felt like stepping into a life that had moved on without me, and she was the one who bridged that gap, guiding my reentry into the pack and its traditions with a quiet assurance that told me I still had a place here.
Her eyelids flutter.
The hand I have on her face, the one her fingers still cling to at my wrist, pats her cheek gently. “Hey, stay with us. Keep your eyes open, just a little while longer. We need to find a way to get Canaan here.”
Canaan.
Oh, Goddess.
The pain waiting for him isn’t something I’d wish on anyone. Losing a mate—fated or not—means a vital piece has been torn from the tapestry of your soul, and you’re expected to keep going while the damage remains. You’ll never be quite whole again, that absence is something you’ll always carry.
“I need you to…tell Cane something,” she whispers.
I drag my shoulder across my face, wiping at tears I can’t stop, my hands never leaving her.
They’re slick with her blood now, warm where it seeps from the wound in her chest and trails from the side of her mouth.
When she speaks, her teeth are stained, even the small gap in front I’ve always noticed, always loved, now marked by crimson.
“No,” Siggy argues softly, but fiercely. “You tell him yourself.”
“Tell me,” I say louder, knowing how important this is. I lean in closer. “I’ll make sure he knows.”
Rhosyn’s smile is barely there, tears slipping slowly from her fading eyes. They track down her face and disappear into the wild mess of her curls.
“Tell him…I may have chosen him, but he—he was always my fate.” Her breath stutters, her chest beginning to rattle. “One way or another…I would have found him. This was always meant to be my story. I’m just…thankful I got to be a chapter in his.”
A sob breaks loose despite everything I’m doing to hold it back. I nod, throat burning. “Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll tell him. I promise.”
Her mouth twitches into the ghost of a smile, one I swear is almost conspiratory.
“I took care of your mate… before he found you again.” She swallows hard and when she inhales, it’s a wet gurgle that she has to force words through.
“Return the favor. Watch out for Canaan. Please. He’s going to… take this hard.”
“I will. We all will. He won’t be alone.”
“He’ll try,” she warns faintly. “You can’t…let him.”
“I won’t.”
Her body grows heavier beneath my hands. The heartbeat I’ve been tracking under my palm slows, each beat stretching further apart than the last. Her eyes close, and for a horrifying second, I think it’s over. That we’ve lost her.
Then they open again.
But she isn’t really seeing this side of the veil anymore, she’s already peering past it. Into whatever is waiting for her beyond it.
I can only hope whatever Rhosyn finds there is kind to her.
Her lips part again, curving ever so slightly, the movement small and deliberate, like she’s choosing her words with care. What comes out is barely more than an exhale, but I hear her.
“A bird. Tell him…next time I think I’ll be a bird.”
And then Rhosyn Roarke-Davies is gone.
For a moment, the noise of the fight dulls, not disappearing so much as losing meaning.
It’s like the world is taking a moment to bow its head in our shared grief.
And in that pocket of silence, a wolf’s howl rips through the night, long and fractured, carrying a sorrow so deep it settles into my bones.
I don’t know if it’s real.
I only know the chest beneath my hand is still now.