Chapter 27
Nova
Fragments surface through the dark.
Dane’s voice first, rough and distant: Stay with me.
Then arms—his arms—locked around me, carrying me through space that bent and twisted.
The slip coin shattering. Lyanna’s hands glowing gold against my chest while someone held me down.
Pain—magic tearing through my veins like molten wire, like my body was trying to turn itself inside out.
Someone saying my name. Over and over. An anchor in the chaos.
Nova. Nova. Stay.
Then nothing. Long stretches of nothing, dark and formless, like floating in a void without edges.
I drift toward consciousness like swimming through tar. Heavy. Slow. Fighting for every inch. Part of me wants to sink back down where it’s quiet, where nothing hurts. But something keeps pulling me up—a warmth at my wrist, a pressure that won’t let go.
The ceiling comes into focus first. Unfamiliar wooden beams, shadows dancing from a low fire. Not my cabin. The scent hits me next: pine and cedar and something distinctly him. Wood smoke. Clean sweat. Wolf.
Dane’s cabin. Dane’s bed.
I try to move my hand to my face, but something holds it in place. Not tight. Not painful. Just immovable.
My vision clears.
He sits in a chair pulled close to the bed, elbows on his knees, watching me with that unrelenting stare.
His face is drawn, exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes—deeper than I’ve ever seen them.
Dried blood still crusts along his jaw where a gash is half-healed.
His clothes are torn, stained with more blood than one person should lose and still be sitting upright.
He came after me. The evidence is written all over him.
His fingers circle my wrist. Thumb pressed directly over my pulse point. Like he’s been counting my heartbeats. Like he hasn’t stopped.
“How long?” My voice comes out wrecked, barely a rasp.
His eyes don’t leave mine. “Seventeen hours.”
The number lands like a physical blow. I try to sit up, and my body screams in protest—every muscle, every joint, every nerve ending lit up with pain. Magic pulses weakly beneath my skin, unstable, sparking in random surges like a downed power line in the rain.
“What happened?”
His jaw works, a muscle ticking beneath the skin. For a moment I think he won’t answer. Then: “You were phasing.”
“Phasing?”
“In and out of reality.” His voice is flat.
Clinical. The voice he uses when he’s holding something back.
“One second solid, the next... not. Your pulse would stop for seconds at a time. Then start again. Stop. Start.” He pauses, and something fractures in his expression before he locks it down.
“Like you were deciding which side to stay on.”
A chill races down my spine, settling deep in my bones. “How long did that last?”
“Four hours.”
Four hours. Four hours of my body caught between worlds. Four hours of him sitting here, watching, waiting, counting the seconds between my heartbeats, not knowing if the next one would come. Not knowing if I’d come back whole. Or at all.
“And now?” I force myself to ask.
Something flickers behind his eyes—too fast to catch. “You’ve been solid for six hours.”
I glance around the room, noticing for the first time the faint shimmer of protective magic woven into the walls, the ceiling, the window frame. Lyanna’s work. Complex. Layered. The kind of warding that takes hours to build.
“Your bed again,” I say quietly. Not a question.
“Lyanna worked on you here. The wards are stronger in this cabin.”
“And you’ve been in that chair the whole time.”
His jaw tightens. “Someone had to monitor the wards.”
“That’s not why you stayed.”
His eyes flash amber, wolf bleeding through. He doesn’t answer.
“Dane—“
“You almost didn’t come back.” The words are wrenched from him, each one dragged through something raw and broken.
“I watched you fade. Watched your body go translucent. Watched you stop breathing and start again and stop again and I couldn’t do a fucking thing about it except hold you down when the convulsions hit. ”
My chest tightens.
“And the whole time,” he continues, voice dropping lower, rougher, “I kept thinking—she’s choosing to leave. She’s choosing the Fade over this. Over the pack. Over—“
He cuts himself off.
“Over what?” I whisper.
He turns, and the rawness in his expression steals my breath. This isn’t the controlled Alpha. This isn’t the soldier who shows nothing. This is Dane cracked open, bleeding out emotions he’s kept locked down for weeks.
“You went into the Fade alone.” Each word lands like a blow. “No backup. No extraction plan. You told no one.”
“I had a plan.”
“A shit one.” He crosses back toward me, stops at the edge of the bed. Close enough that I can see the amber still flickering in his irises. “You walked into a death trap with a maybe and a prayer. What were you trying to prove?”
“Nothing.” I meet his glare head-on. “I was trying to end this before someone else gets hurt.”
“By sacrificing yourself?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
His laugh is harsh, humorless, sharp as broken glass. “That’s not how this works, Nova.”
“Then tell me how it works, Dane.” I shove the blankets aside, swing my legs over the edge of the bed.
My body protests violently, but I don’t care.
“Because from where I’m sitting, we’re all just waiting to die while Faelan tears holes in reality.
Someone has to do something. Someone has to take the risk. ”
“And it has to be you?” He’s in my space now, looming over me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him. “Always you? Running headfirst into fire while the rest of us watch?”
“You would have done the same thing.”
“That’s different.”
“How?” I push to my feet, ignoring the way my legs shake, the way the room tilts. “How is it different?”
“Because I’m the Alpha!” The words rip out of him. “Because it’s my job to protect this pack. To take the hits. To—“
“To die for them?” I step closer, close enough to see his pulse hammering in his throat. “That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it? It’s fine when you sacrifice yourself, but when I try—“
“You’re not pack.”
The words hit like a slap. I go still.
Something shifts in his expression—regret, maybe, or frustration at himself. He runs a hand through his hair, turning away.
“That came out wrong.”
“Did it?”
“Nova—“
“No, you’re right.” My voice is steadier than I feel. “I’m not pack. I’m the outsider who showed up with trouble on her heels. Why would you care if I—“
“Because I can’t lose you.”
The admission hangs in the air between us, raw and exposed. He’s still facing away, shoulders rising and falling with harsh breaths.
“I can’t protect you when you run headfirst into fire,” he says, quieter now.
“I can’t follow you into places I don’t understand.
I can’t—“ His hands clench at his sides. “I sat in that chair for six hours, Nova. Counting your heartbeats. Waiting for the next one to not come. And I couldn’t do anything except watch.”
The anger drains out of me, replaced by something softer. More dangerous.
“Dane.”
“You want to know why I brought you here instead of the infirmary?” He turns to face me, and the look in his eyes makes my breath catch.
“Because I needed you where I could see you. Where I could hear you breathing. Where I could—“ He breaks off, shaking his head. “It’s not rational. I know that. But I couldn’t let you out of my sight. Not after...”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
The space between us feels charged, electric. I should step back. Should rebuild the walls I’ve been hiding behind even when our bodies didn’t. Instead, I close the gap.
“I’m here,” I say softly. “I came back.”
“Barely.”
“But I did.” I reach up, my fingers hovering near his jaw. “I’m solid. I’m real. I’m not going anywhere.”
His eyes drop to my mouth, and the air between us shifts. Thickens.
The moment stretches, dangerous and full of possibility. Then he exhales slowly, stepping back. Creating space.
“You need sleep,” he says, voice rough.
“So do you.”
His mouth flattens. “I’m fine.”
“You’re a liar.” I study his face—the exhaustion he won’t admit, the tension he can’t release. “When did you last sleep? During the seventeen hours I was gone? The four hours I was phasing? Or have you been awake this whole time?”
He doesn’t answer. Which is answer enough.
“You don’t have to touch me,” I say quietly. “Just... lie down. Please. It’s worse when you’re far away.”
He goes very still, standing at the edge of the bed.
For a long moment, I think I’ve pushed too far, asked for too much.
Then he moves—careful, deliberate—lowering himself beside me on top of the covers.
His body is a line of heat next to mine, not touching but close enough that I can feel him breathing.
Close enough that his scent wraps around me.
He keeps his boots on. I almost smile at that. Dane, prepared for anything, even in bed.
“Better?” he asks, voice low.
The restless energy under my skin calms with him here. Like his presence grounds me in a way I don’t understand and don’t want to examine too closely.
“Yes,” I say. Because it’s true.
I close my eyes, letting the steady rhythm of his breathing anchor me. Sleep pulls at my edges, and this time, I let it take me.
Morning light filters through the window, pale and gray.
I surface slowly, awareness returning in layers.
Warmth first—so much warmth, surrounding me like a cocoon.
Then weight. An arm draped across my waist, heavy and possessive.
A chest pressed against my back, rising and falling in slow, even breaths.
The scratch of stubble against my shoulder where his face is tucked into the curve of my neck.
My heart stutters.