Chapter 51
Rennick
Ifeel her confusion before she even puts a voice to it.
It’s a low, persistent drum pacing the bond the whole drive.
It tightens when I park the Jeep and grows insistent when I come around to her side and take her hand.
By the time I lead her across the snow-covered open space without offering an explanation, it’s settled deep.
In typical Noa fashion, it’s wary but wholly patient.
As we walk, she glances up at me again and again, trying to get a read on what I’m holding back. I don’t blame her. Our recent history has taught us that secrets rarely come without teeth.
Her nervous system has been trained to expect the worst.
The field opens up around us, wide and bright white, the recently fallen snow untouched apart from our tracks.
Above the treetops, the lodge’s roofline can be seen peeking over in the distance.
It’s close enough to remind us that we aren’t far from the heart of the territory, but just far enough that this place feels set apart. Private.
She knows this place, which is probably why her confusion has only started to pulse harder the longer we’re here.
I stop in the dead center and keep hold of her hand while she turns slowly, scanning for answers she still won’t find conveniently laying around.
When she finds nothing but snow, trees, and the cloud-filled sky, she tips her head toward me and scrunches up her nose.
“Please tell me you didn’t bring me out here to practice combat training,” she pleads. “In the snow.”
I laugh despite the sudden onset of nerves starting to twist tight in my chest and then squeeze her hand. “No. We’re not training today.”
It’s true, even if I have been easing her into training these past few weeks, moving at her pace but applying enough pressure to keep her going.
The part of me that keeps bracing for the next disaster refuses to stand down.
It pushes me to make sure Noa can defend herself without relying solely on her newly awakened wolf.
More than that, she needs to know it too.
It’s by no means her favorite activity. She complains the entire time; her commentary gets progressively more colorful as the lesson goes on, enough so that it’s a chore to keep my face straight.
But she never backs down or quiets. No matter how many times she threatens to.
I take in the clearing again. Its flat ground has made it the perfect place to become the pack’s unofficial training ground.
Enforcers have run their drills here for years.
As of more recently, the pack has started training here together—everyone included, everyone given the same instruction, regardless of designation.
But now I can see the potential for it to serve a new purpose entirely.
“You told me once that I’d find a way to right the wrongs Merritt made,” I start, the name still bitter and awkward in my mouth.
I still can’t bring myself to use words like father or dad.
Our relationship was strained before I knew the truth, and now that I know everything, the very idea that Merritt Fallamhain’s blood runs through my veins makes my skin crawl.
The shame of it is a constant weight across my shoulders—one I will have to eventually learn to carry with a little bit more forgiveness. For myself. Not him. Never him.
Her expression softens as understanding settles in, though she still casts a doubtful glance at our surroundings. “You thought of something?”
I nod, my fingers tightening around hers as my jaw flexes.
“I’ve been trying to make peace with what we’ll never know,” I tell her, forcing myself to stay steady and not let that familiar spark of anger to surface.
“How many omegas were moved through here, or how many were sent on to places they didn’t survive?
Their suffering filled pockets and funded advancements in this territory, and that’s a debt I will never be able to settle because we don’t know who it's owned to. We don’t know their faces or names.
We can’t honor them or find their families to give them answers. ”
Noa listens without interrupting, her presence alone a source of calm I latch on to.
“I know money wouldn’t bring anyone back,” I continue, “but if I could have found their families, it would’ve been at least something.”
I explain the first idea I landed on—the obvious one.
Writing checks. Choosing numbers that felt meaning and spreading them to organizations across the country.
Noa’s included. It would help. Money usually always does.
But the longer I sat with it, the more hollow it felt.
Too cold and disjointed. Like picking this solution would let me off too easy.
She’s frowning, her full lips tugging down at the corners and her eyes sad when I finish explaining.
“Ren, You can’t think of it that way. The point of this was to do some good to counteract the bad.
It was never meant to be a punishment. Least of all for yourself.
” She steps closer, her body pressing to my arm.
“Donating money would help a lot of people.”
“It would,” I say, nodding once before shaking my head. “But it’s not enough and it’s not what we’re going to do.”
“So what do you think we should do?”
I let go of her hand just long enough to gesture around us, to the open field lying quiet and waiting beneath a blanket of snow. “I think we take a page out of Thalassa’s book,” I tell her. “I think we should build another Nightingale sanctuary. On this territory. Right here.”
Her eyes go wide, lips parting on a noiseless gasp. “Ren—”
“No,” I say gently, before she can finish.
“Just listen. Please. This land has profited off the suffering of omegas for too long. Building this—opening our gates to those who need a safe place to heal and rebuild—is how we start to balance the scales. This territory can become a refuge, the same way the manor is in Ashvale.”
I know I’m getting ahead of myself. I can feel it even as I stand here.
Still, I’ve already started asking questions, already put feelers out.
There’s an architect ready to start sketches next week.
Conversations with contractors have already been had, ones where I asked about timelines once we break ground.
But none of that is set in stone, and it all stops at Noa.
It has to. This isn’t something I can decide alone.
Not when what I’m proposing is an extension of her family’s legacy, and that isn’t something I can touch without her blessing.
“If we build a sanctuary here,” she asks, careful in a way that makes my heart drop. “What happens to the manor?”
The fear woven into the question strikes home because I hear what she’s really asking. She thinks I’m going to ask her to choose—the manor or something new here.
“This wouldn’t replace anything,” I tell her immediately.
“What you built with your mom in Ashvale will stay exactly as it is. This would be an expansion. A partnership.” I keep talking before she can say anything, needing to get it all out.
“Seren plans to go back there once it’s safe enough and run the day-to-day.
If we build here too, you’d oversee both.
Make sure they’re run the way you believe they should be. ”
Walking away completely from what she and Thalassa built in Ashvale was never going to be an option to Noa. And it was never going to be something I’d want for her. I didn’t fight to win her back—to win her love—just to shrink her world or cage her in mine.
“This is your calling, baby, and I want to give back to the omegas, but I also want to give you back everything you set aside when you came here. I was thinking if we build here, that we should add a greenhouse and an attached healer’s room to the plans.
We can make sure it’s big enough that you have space to work on online orders for Potion & Petal during those periods we don’t or still can’t go back to Ashvale as much as we’d like.
” I quickly add, “And don’y tell Zora, but I think our pack healer would actually appreciate the extra support. ”
She falls silent, teeth catching at her bottom lip as her gaze drifts over the clearing. She isn’t looking at the snow anymore, or the open field. She’s looking past it, toward what might stand here instead.
I give her the time she needs.
“You really thought of everything,” she says quietly after a minute of letting her imagination run wild.
Needing her closer, I pull her into my chest and bend to kiss the top of her head. “I tried.”
Her arms slide around my middle and she stays there, breathing me in while the frozen wind whips softly around us. When she finally looks up, her chin resting against the middle of my chest, her eyes are bright with something that makes my pulse skip.
“I knew you’d find a way to tip the scales,” she tells me, smiling now. “It’s perfect, Rennick.”
Relief hits hard, followed by a quiet disbelief I don’t bother hiding. “You think so?”
“I really do.”
Standing here with my mate—the love of my life—held against my chest, the future we’re building laid out before us, I feel the weight of everything we survived to reach this place.
I lost her once. Came terrifyingly close to losing her again.
And it only confirms what I’ve always known.
There was never a fire I wouldn’t have crossed to find my way back to her.