Chapter 22
Merric
I wake up to the sound of birdsong and the weight of a woman’s leg thrown across my thigh.
For three seconds, I don’t know where I am. The ceiling is wrong—lower, older, water-stained in the corner. The mattress is softer than my cot. The light comes from the east instead of the south.
Then the rest of it arrives. All of it. The kitchen, the hallway, the wall, the bed. Her name in my mouth and hers in my ear. The sensation of the mate bond locking into place.
Brenna.
She’s sleeping on her stomach with one arm tucked under the pillow, and her face turned toward me.
Her hair is a dark mess against the white pillowcase.
The sheet has slipped to the small of her back, and in the morning light I can see the terrain of her—the hard muscle, the scars, the ridge of her spine.
The new scar along her ribs that I traced with my tongue last night.
She looks younger when she sleeps. Not young—that’s gone, and I wouldn’t want it back. But the armor is down. The assessment, the constant scanning, the suppression of emotions that has become a habit. In sleep, she’s just Brenna. The one I remember underneath the one she built.
I don’t move. Don’t want to wake her. She needs the sleep more than anyone I’ve ever met, and if I can give her another ten minutes of it by lying still and breathing softly, that’s what I’ll do.
I watch her instead. The way her ribs expand with each breath. The faint twitch of her fingers against the pillow—dreaming. The mark on her throat where my mouth was last night. Not a bite. Not quite. The ghost of one. My wolf rumbles with satisfaction at the sight, and I tell him to keep it down.
Her eyes open.
Not the slow, confused surfacing of someone waking naturally. One moment closed, the next open—alert, focused. She’s spent too long sleeping in hostile territory. You don’t unlearn that in a night.
She sees me. The alertness softens by a degree. Not much. Enough.
“You’re staring,” she says. Her voice is rough with sleep.
“I’ve got a lot to stare at.”
“That’s either romantic or creepy. I haven’t decided.”
“Take your time.”
She smiles, then shifts, turning onto her side to face me.
The sheet slips further. She doesn’t reach for it.
The morning light falls across her shoulder, her breast, the flat plane of her stomach.
She lets me look because something changed last night.
Permission. She gave me permission to see her, and she hasn’t taken it back.
“How long have you been awake?” she asks.
“Few minutes.”
“And you’ve been lying there watching me sleep.”
“Seemed like the best use of my time.”
“You could have made coffee.”
“Coffee means getting out of this bed. That’s not happening yet.”
She studies me, her eyes moving over my face with a directness that used to make me nervous when I was twenty and now makes something warm expand in my chest. She reaches out and traces the scar on my jaw with her fingertip.
Light. The same gesture she used to make when we were young.
The fact that her hand remembers makes my throat tight.
“I forgot about this,” she says. “How it feels. Waking up next to someone.”
“I know.”
She pinches her lips together, as if debating whether to say something. Then decides to speak. “I haven’t shared a bed since before Cameron was born. Even when things were stable, I couldn’t… The wolf never settled. Not with anyone else.”
The mate bond. Dormant, damaged, supposedly broken, but still working beneath the surface. Keeping her solitary. Keeping us both solitary.
“You too?” I say.
She nods. “Nobody in eighteen years,” she says. Remembering what I told her in the kitchen. “Not for either of us.”
“Nobody.”
“You’re telling me Merric Rourke—six-five, alpha, a face like that, and a body like—” She runs a hand down my chest to my abs and below, to grasp my cock. She grins when I groan. “Like this, went so long without—”
“I’m telling you my wolf made a choice when we found you, and that was it.
” My breath hisses out as she releases me.
“I tried early on. Once. A woman in a town north of Frostbourne. Pretty. Willing.” I hold Brenna’s eyes.
“My wolf shut it down so hard I couldn’t shift for three days. After that, I stopped trying.”
Her features are doing something I haven’t seen before. Not the compressed control. Something open and hurting and tender.
“I need to ask you something,” she says. “And I need the real answer. Not the version you gave me in the bunkhouse, not the short version. The real one.”
“Ask.”
“Why did you leave? Not the Elder Council, not political pressure. Those are reasons for someone else. I want yours.”
The morning light moves across the ceiling. Outside, I can hear the ranch waking. A door closing, Greta’s voice, the distant ring of metal on metal that means Dane is already working.
“Bern came to me two days before I was supposed to claim you publicly,” I say. “He came alone. Late at night. And he didn’t talk about politics or tradition or what the other alphas would think. He talked about war.”
Brenna grows motionless.
“He told me that three neighboring packs had formed an alliance. That their alphas had agreed: if Frostbourne mated with a Ravenclaw witch, they’d treat it as an act of aggression against the traditional order. A formal declaration of war.”
“Three packs against Frostbourne.”
“We were completely outnumbered.” I nod.
“And Bern laid it out… not threatening, not angry. Calm. Factual. The way he does everything. He showed me the communication transcripts. The alliance terms. The operational plans they’d drawn up.
Where they’d hit first—the families on our eastern border. The settlement with the school.”
I stop. Breathe. The memory of that conversation is nearly two decades old, and it still has edges.
“He told me I had a choice. Claim Brenna Corvus and watch my pack torn apart by a war I couldn’t win. Or walk away, and the alliance dissolves. No blood. No casualties. My wolves stay safe.”
“And you believed him.”
“I verified it. Called the other alphas myself. They confirmed the alliance was real. Told me straight: if I bonded with a magic-blooded wolf, they would ride for Frostbourne and take us out.”
Brenna is looking at me intently. She’s holding something back. Processing.
“You chose your pack,” she says.
“I chose countless lives over one love. And I told myself it was noble. That it was sacrifice, not cowardice. That a real alpha puts his people first.” I press my hand over hers.
Hold it there. “I told myself that for about six hours. Then I knew it was a lie. Not the threat; the threat was real. But the answer. Because there were other answers. I could have fought. Could have called allies. Could have taken you and run, built something new, let Frostbourne find a different alpha. I had options I didn’t explore because Bern made the one option seem like the only one, and I was a kid and terrified.
I took the easy path because it looked like the hard one. ”
Brenna’s eyes are bright. She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t look away.
“The easy path,” she repeats.
“Leaving you was the easiest hard thing I’ve ever done.
Because all I had to do was walk away, and the problem disappeared.
The war didn’t happen. The alliance dissolved.
Frostbourne was safe. And all it cost was you and me and a son I didn’t know existed.
” I let out a breath that’s been sitting in my chest for too damn long.
“That’s not sacrifice. That’s surrender.
And I’ve known the difference for a long time. ”
She doesn’t speak for a while. Her hand is warm under mine. Without saying a word, I know what’s there: her grief, her anger, the old wound being reopened and examined in daylight for the first time.
“Bern orchestrated the whole thing,” she says finally.
“I didn’t see it then. I do now. The alliance, the timing, the late-night visit—he manufactured a crisis and handed me a solution that happened to be the one he wanted.
Get rid of the magic-blooded mate. Keep the traditional order intact.
Turn me into a pawn so he could manipulate one of the most powerful packs in the territory. And I played my part perfectly.”
“We both did. I played the abandoned woman perfectly, too. Ran home, raised our son in isolation, never once tried to reach you because my pride was bigger than my pain.” She closes her eyes. Opens them. “We were children, Merric. We were children, and a powerful man used us.”
“We’re not children now.”
“No. We’re not.”
I roll toward her. She rolls toward me. We meet in the middle of the bed, face to face, her breath warm on my mouth. Her hand moves from my jaw to my chest, palm flat, feeling my heartbeat.
“Don’t ever leave again,” she says. Soft. Without any of her armor. Just the raw request of a woman who’s been abandoned once and knows she won’t survive it twice.
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise you. On the bond, on our son, on every year I wasted. I’m not going anywhere.”
She kisses me. Slow. The morning version of last night. Tender where that was desperate, searching where that was consuming. Her mouth is soft and unhurried. My hand traces the curve of her waist, her hip, the dip of her lower back.
She presses against me, and I’m ready for her. Hard, throbbing. Have been since I woke up. She feels it and makes a low sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.
This time there’s no urgency. No dam breaking. This is the morning after, and the morning after is for learning each other again. For the slow discovery of what’s changed and what hasn’t.
I roll her onto her back. She lets me. Her hair fans across the pillow, and her eyes stay on mine.
I lower myself over her with a care that’s the opposite of last night’s wall.
I want to feel every inch of this. Want to memorize the way her breath changes when my weight settles between her thighs.
The way her hands slide up my arms and grip my shoulders.
The way her back arches when I enter her slowly, so slowly, and her lips part on a breath that’s almost a word but not quite.
I hold still inside her. She wraps her legs around me. We stay there, connected, breathing, looking at each other with the raw attention of people who’ve been given a second chance and know what it cost.
“Move,” she whispers. “Please.”
I slide into her. Slow, deep strokes that draw sounds from both of us. Every sensation is doubled, every touch echoing through the connection. I feel what she feels. She feels what I feel. The pleasure builds in both directions, a conversation without words.
Her nails trace lines down my back. Her hips rise to meet mine.
The rhythm finds itself—unhurried, inevitable, two bodies speaking a language they once learned and never forgot.
I lower my mouth to hers, and she kisses me while we move together.
The kiss is its own act of love; slow, thorough, and full of things neither of us has the words for yet.
She comes first. Silent this time; a long, shuddering wave that runs through her body and vibrates into mine. She says my name against my mouth. Not loud. Not desperate. Just my name, spoken like she’s finally ready to accept that there could be something for us.
I follow her over. It builds from the base of my spine and rolls through me with a force that’s gentle and devastating at once, and I bury my face in her neck and breathe her in and let it take me.
We lie tangled together for a long time after. Her head on my chest, my arms around her, both of us watching the morning light move across the water-stained ceiling.
“What happens now?” she asks.
“Now I need to go home. To Frostbourne. I’ve been gone too long. Jonas is holding things together, but there are decisions that need an alpha, and the longer I’m absent, the more room Bern has to maneuver.”
“Oh,” she says, her voice subdued.
“I want you to come with me.” I tilt her chin up with my fingertip. “I want to introduce you as my mate. To my pack. Publicly.”
“Merric—”
“I know it’s a lot. I know the timing is—”
“It’s not the timing.” She pushes up on her elbow.
Looks down at me. “Your pack is traditional. Half of them grew up being told magic-blooded wolves are a threat. You want to walk in with a Ravenclaw witch on your arm and a son nobody knew about. Then announce that everything they believed was wrong?”
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s overdue.”
She searches my face. I feel her fear—not of the wolves, not of the politics. Of being rejected again. Of walking into Frostbourne and being told she’s not welcome in the life of the man she loves.
“This time is different,” I say. “I’m different. I’m not asking permission. I’m not negotiating. I’m telling them.”
“And if they don’t accept it?”
“Then they don’t. And I’ll deal with that. But I won’t hide you, Brenna. Not from my pack, not from the council, not from anyone. I did that once, and I lost everything. I’m done putting you last.”
She lies back down. Her hand finds mine on the mattress. Our fingers lace together.
“Cameron must come,” she says. “They need to see him. See what he is. Not a threat, not an anomaly. A boy.”
“Agreed.”
“And I need to talk to Willow. The ranch needs to be covered while we’re gone.”
“Sienna can help with that. And Dane. He’s not going to leave until that barn is finished anyway. I think a nuclear strike couldn’t move him from that project.”
She almost smiles. “The man does love his carpentry.”
We lie there for another minute. The morning is getting late. Through the floor, I can hear movement. Greta in the kitchen, wolves starting the day’s work. The ranch doesn’t stop for romance. It doesn’t stop for anything.
“Okay,” Brenna says. “We face Frostbourne.”
“We face Frostbourne.”
She squeezes my hand. I squeeze back. And we stay in the bed for five more minutes because five more minutes is what we can steal, and stealing time with her is something I plan to do for the rest of my life.
Then we get up, get dressed, and go downstairs to face whatever comes next.