Chapter 52
Noa
The full moon bleaches the snow into a pale blue wash, pulling long shadows from the trees as I run with my head low and my lungs on fire.
My paws tear through powder and ice, slipping between trunks, clearing narrow creeks skinned over with brittle frost. Every breath hurts. I don’t slow. I don’t dare.
I’m being hunted.
The sound reaches me seconds later. Heavy. Too close. Paws chewing up ground behind me, closing distance faster than I can keep it. Awareness crawls up my spine, a tightening pressure that locks my muscles and wrings more speed from a body already near its limit.
My wolf doesn’t back down.
She surges forward, all sleek momentum and reckless joy, built for this kind of flight rather than brute force.
This is where she shines. The world narrows to movement and the burn in my legs.
Trees and snow smear into colorless streaks at the edge of my vision, the chase winding everything inside me tight until I hum with it.
This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go.
It was meant to be simple. A pack run. The first official one in a long time, I’ve been told.
The last scheduled one happened before the rejection and so much fractured and changed since then.
But people are healing now. The pack is finding its rhythm again, and that means returning to old traditions like this.
This is my first pack run ever, and my first as their Luna, a title that once felt so far out of my reach it’s hard to believe it’s really mine now.
Before we started, while we waited for stragglers to arrive, I stood beside Rennick and braced for that familiar drop in my stomach. The quiet certainty that I didn’t belong, but it never came.
I was welcomed into the pack ritual without hesitation, their excitement bright and open.
The years I spent with my wolf caged, I taught myself to stop longing for nights like this, to stop imagining what it would be like to belong so easily within a pack, instead of being without one completely or hovering on the edges of something I was never fully part of.
Somewhere along the way, pack runs joined the quiet list of things I convinced myself I would never get to have.
Tonight proved me wrong in ways that will stick with me for years to come.
I keep running, holding to the brutal pace, and faces start to surface anyway. The people who showed up tonight. Some of them surprised me, in the best way.
Elio, tucked between his two alphas, newly mated and practically glowing, his shy smile catching mine. Hattie at the edge of the group with her friends, laughter spilling free. Zora and Yrsa standing apart from the pack, heads bent together in quiet conversation.
Rook surprised me too. I thought he’d left for Seattle that morning, that his pack Alpha—his dad—had summoned him home.
And then there were the absences. Seren, with her aversion to packs and pack activities, staying home with Ivey and Siggy.
And then there’s Canaan. His absence sits wrong, a hollow in the ranks that hasn’t just been there tonight.
He’s been pulling away for weeks now, and I still haven’t figured out how to reach him without pushing him away.
We’d taken off as one, noise and motion braided into a single living thing. Howls and yips cut through the cold, playful and wild, echoing through the thunder of paws. For the first time in eight years, I felt it settle deep in my bones. I was part of a pack. This was my pack.
Rennick crossed my path a heartbeat later, too close to ignore, and I nipped at his flank without thinking.
That growl wasn’t a real warning. It carried teeth and sound, but underneath it was something else entirely. A challenge. Enough to spark a restless hunger in my wolf, something eager to push, to provoke, to see how long it would take for him to turn on me again
So, I did the only logical thing. I caught the scruff of his neck between my teeth, my snarl a taunt in its own right, and then I broke away. Veering hard for the tree line, I cut in the adjacent direction from the rest of the pack and just…ran.
I didn’t look back, because I didn’t have to. I knew he’d follow. Knew he’d catch me. And I knew exactly how much I’d enjoy it when he did.
Now, through the bond, his presence presses closer, a steady heat at my back that sends my pulse skidding. Satisfaction rolls through him, rich and unchecked, and it bleeds into me before I can brace for it. My stride falters for half a beat as anticipation sparks hot in my chest.
He’s enjoying this. So am I.
I hook around a group of firs and leap over a downed log half buried in snow. The landing rattles my shoulder but I drive forward anyway, angling for tighter turns and narrower paths to trip Rennick up. I hear the sudden change in his stride when his restraint disappears and truly commits.
The forest goes still then, like it knows what comes next.
I whip around a thick trunk, knowing his larger frame won’t clear it as cleanly. It buys me seconds. Not many, but enough. His irritation streaks through the bond, and my wolf delights in it, taunting him to close the distance again.
He does.
Impact steals the world. His body hits mine and we tumble through the snow, limbs tangling as everything spins. I’m still searching for my new north but he’s already there, weight pressing down, trying to pin me. Trying to make me yield.
I have no chance of winning this, but I fight him anyway. My claws swipe, but don’t make any real contact, and I twist my body beneath his, pushing back just to feel his power used against me. Just to make him earn it.
I open the link between our minds and his growl hits me full force instantly.
Submit.
The word settles in my chest and stays there, warm pleasure rising in my veins in response.
It coaxes me toward complete and willing surrender even as I make myself wait a few heartbeats longer.
Just long enough for his jaw to close around my throat in a final show of dominance.
He applies enough pressure to still me, to stop the thrashing, but not enough to break skin.
His dominance surges through the bond, stronger now, and impossible to ignore.
Submit, little mate.
I let myself go slack beneath him, my head tipping to the side as much as I can with his teeth still pressed there in silent warning.
His praise washes through me next, sinking under my skin until my limbs go loose and heavy one by one.
Good girl.
It’s followed by a command, his voice in my head dripping with his calm authority.
Shift back.
His teeth release my neck, and my body reshapes beneath him. Bones snap and shift, muscle and tendon pulling back into familiar feminine lines. My canines dull, straightening into human ones as rich brown fur recedes and pale skin takes its place.
The cold hits immediately, snow biting against the bare skin of my back and legs, and then his heat follows, settling over me as he shifts and braces his frame across my hips.
He’s careful with his weight, mindful not to crush me, but it’s enough to keep me pinned in the snow.
Thank the Goddess I’m more resilient to the cold these days.
I would not be having a good time otherwise.
His skin blazes where it presses against mine.
One hand moves up my chest, fingers trailing lazily, before closing at my throat, his grip settling there like a collar meant to be shown off.
It’s a claim he makes without a word and my legs press together to help relieve the ache that’s now pulsing between my thighs.
When his eyes meet mine, they still hold a wolfish gleam, and his mouth curves into something familiar and dangerous.
“Is this what you wanted, sweet Noa?” His voice rumbles low. “Did you want your alpha to chase you just so he could catch you?”
My throat moves against his palm as I swallow, fighting the urge to squirm as the need in me keeps climbing.
“Yes.”
Rennick snarls, more animal than man, and bends to take my mouth in a kiss that’s all teeth and want.
Heat floods my pussy instantly, my slick dripping into the snow beneath me.
I don’t retreat. I meet him head-on, dragging my tongue along his lower lip before catching it between my teeth, a deliberate baiting that earns me a low, warning sound from his chest.
“Biting me is what got you into this mess,” he murmurs against my mouth.
I smile into the kiss, utterly unapologetic. “And I’d do it again.”
That’s all it takes.
Whatever restraint he’s been feigning at finally gives way.
One moment he’s over me, the next he’s moving, but his hands never leave my body.
I’m yanked up from the snow, weightless, and held against his chest so fast the world tilts.
We’re moving and then my spine is colliding with the trunk of a nearby tree.
The bark scrapes my skin, rough and unforgiving, but it barely registers.
Not with his body pressed so close. Not with his hands sliding down, lifting my legs and locking them around his waist, holding me exactly where he wants me so the thick head of his cock can drag through the wet mess of my pussy.
We hiss together at the contact, everything burning hot and ice cold all at once.
His forehead drops briefly to mine, his breath heavy, as his hips roll forward in another slow, deliberate drag that coats his length. My hands climb to his shoulders, searching for purpose, when he angles himself just right. The friction of his pelvis against my clit pulls a cry from my throat.
Rennick pulls back so he can look me in the eye, the full moon above highlighting every handsome line of his face.
The scars at his temple glow pale, his eyes flickering between human and that ghostly wolf shade.
My wolf surges in answer, so close now I know she’s looking out through my eyes too.
He adjusts, lines himself up, and presses forward, letting the thick head of his dick stretch me open.
My breathing fractures into short, shallow pants, my inner muscles fluttering, silently begging to be fed more.
He never looks away from my face.
“You don’t run from me unless you want to be caught, sweet one,” he warns, voice dark with the strain of holding himself back.
My hands slide up the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair as I pull myself closer, our breaths mingling like pale ghosts in the cold.
“Why do you think I ran?”
His lips twitch, his eyes flaring with something I can’t read, then he rumbles, “I want you to scream my name, omega.”
And then with one punch of his hips, he thrusts deep, and I have no choice but to follow his demand.
His name leaves my lips on a cry, my ruin and salvation all at once.