A Table Full of Wolves
RONAN
One month later…
I'd watched Gideon heal over the weeks. Watched color return to his face.
The curse was gone. Completely and I hadn't asked when he'd be ready to help me unlock my memories.
Hadn't pushed. Hadn't hinted. Just existed beside him while he recovered and tried not to think about the fact that thirty years of memories were still locked behind a wall only he could break. That my parents' faces were still blank. That the life I'd lived before Silas was still missing.
The memories would come back or they wouldn't. Gideon's life mattered more than my past.
But he'd noticed me not asking. Had seen the careful way I avoided the topic. Had understood what I was doing and why, and one morning he'd looked at me across the breakfast table in his apartment and said three words that made my heart stop.
“I'm ready now.”
That was two days ago.
Now we stood in the moon clearing with the pack gathered around us like witnesses to a thing that mattered. Daniel and Michael flanking one side. Evan and Nate on the other. Jonah, Luke, Sienna, and others forming a loose circle that felt like protection rather than observation.
Gideon had explained what he needed.
Old magic. The kind that required ritual and witnesses and the pack's collective presence to anchor the working.
Memory locks woven by someone as powerful as Silas couldn't be broken with simple spells.
They required structure. Intent. The certainty that came from being surrounded by people who'd lend their strength if the working required more than one witch could provide alone.
I knelt in the center of the clearing with my hands resting on my knees.
Vulnerable. Exposed. Every instinct screaming that this was dangerous, that opening my mind meant letting something in that could hurt me, that trust was a weapon people used against you.
But I looked at Gideon and the fear settled.
He'd broken into my mind once before without permission because there'd been no time for gentleness.
Had torn down the compulsion's walls while I was being used as a weapon.
Had woven our souls together tighter to keep Silas from taking control again.
Had proven through action that he'd never use access against me, never exploit vulnerability for power, never make me regret choosing to trust him.
If anyone was going to crack my skull open and pull out thirty years of locked memories, it was him.
“This is going to hurt,” Gideon said quietly.
He stood in front of me with his hands already glowing faintly with gathered power.
“The memories aren't gone. They're compressed.
Locked behind structure that's woven into your mind so deeply that removing it means tearing through barriers your consciousness built to protect itself from the gaps.”
“I know,” I said.
“You'll feel everything at once. Thirty years flooding back simultaneously. It's going to be overwhelming. Disorienting. Your mind might try to shut down to protect itself from the overload.”
“I trust you.”
His expression softened. “If it gets too much, if you need me to stop...”
“I won't need you to stop.” I met his eyes. “I've been living with holes in my head for thirty years. Whatever this costs, it's worth it to be whole again.”
Gideon nodded slowly. Then he looked at Daniel. “I'll need you close. He's going to try to bolt when the memories hit. Wolf instinct. His mind won't know how to process everything at once and running will feel like the only option.”
“I've got him,” Daniel said. His voice carried the weight of a brother who'd spent decades searching for me and wasn't about to lose me now.
“Nate.” Gideon's attention shifted. “If I start pulling too much from my own reserves, if you feel me burning through soul-structure I can't afford to lose, I need you to ground me. Pull me back before I hurt myself trying to finish this.”
“Understood,” Nate said.
Gideon turned to Evan. “If this goes wrong, if Ronan's mind fractures instead of healing, you'll need to make the call. Keep trying or stop before we do permanent damage.”
Evan's expression went hard. “It won't come to that.”
“But if it does...”
“Then I'll make the call. But it won't. You've got this.”
Gideon took a breath. Let it out slow. Then he raised his hands and began.
The spell started in a language I didn't recognize.
Old words. Syllables that felt like they'd been carved from stone rather than spoken from throats. The kind of magic that predated modern practice, that came from a time when witches shaped reality through will and sacrifice rather than careful technique.
“Memoriarum claustra disrumpam,” Gideon said, and his voice carried harmonics that weren't entirely his. Like speaking with the forest's permission, with the clearing's ancient weight behind him. “Seras quas tempus posuit frangam.”
Light gathered between his palms.
Not the clean white magic I'd seen him use in battle. This was older. Deeper. Colored with green and gold and silver, threaded with darkness that wasn't corruption but was absence, was the space between stars, was the particular void that existed before creation decided to fill it.
He pressed his hands to my temples.
The contact sent lightning through my skull.
I gasped and my body tried to jerk backward but Daniel's hands were already on my shoulders, holding me steady, keeping me grounded while Gideon's magic poured into my mind like water through cracks.
“Per sanguinem et animam,” Gideon continued, and I felt him diving deeper. Not into thoughts. Into structure. Into the architecture Silas had built to keep memories locked away. “Per vinculum quod nos ligat.”
The tether flared.
Bright and present and absolutely certain. Gideon using our bond as a rope, as a guide, as the thing that would let him navigate my consciousness without getting lost in the labyrinth Silas had created.
I felt him find the first wall.
Smooth. Black. The same barrier he'd shattered when breaking the compulsion. But this one was deeper. Older. Woven not just into my mind but into my sense of self, into the fundamental understanding of who I was and what I remembered.
“Quod occulatum est manifestum fiat,” Gideon said, and his magic hit the wall like a battering ram.
The structure cracked.
It created hairline splits that light could seep through. Through those splits I saw flashes. Fragments. A woman's face laughing. A man's voice saying my name. The smell of pine and woodsmoke. The sensation of being small and safe and loved.
My mother. My father. Home.
The memories tried to surface and the wall slammed back down, protecting me from the overload, keeping the structure intact even as Gideon tore at it.
“It's fighting back,” Gideon said through gritted teeth. Sweat ran down his face despite the cool air. “The lock recognizes me as a threat. It's reinforcing itself.”
“Can you break it?” Evan's voice.
“Yes. But it's going to cost him.”
“I can take it,” I managed through the pain building behind my eyes.
He pulled harder.
“Vincula rumpo, claustra frango, tenebras in lucem verto,” he said, and the old words carried power that made the air shimmer.
The magic between his hands intensified, became almost solid, became a thing with weight and presence that pressed down on my skull like hands trying to crack it open from the outside.
The wall fractured wider.
More cracks. More light. More memories bleeding through in fragments that my mind couldn't process fast enough. My mother's hands braiding my hair. My father teaching me to track. Daniel laughing at a joke I'd forgotten. Pack hunts under full moons. The weight of belonging. The certainty of family.
Pain spiked through my temples.
White-hot and immediate, like my brain was being torn in half. I heard myself scream but the sound felt distant, like it belonged to someone else, like I was drowning in memories that had been compressed for thirty years and were suddenly expanding to fill space they'd been denied.
“Hold him!” Gideon's voice cut through the chaos.
Daniel's grip tightened on my shoulders. Michael appeared on my other side, his hands joining Daniel's, keeping me anchored to the physical world while my mind tried to fracture under the weight of too much sensation.
Gideon's magic built to a crescendo.
“Impero tibi, murus nefandus—dissolve! Per potestatem quam mihi concesserunt terra et luna et sanguis—DISSOLVE!”
The wall shattered completely, dissolving back into nothing, and thirty years of memories hit me like a flood breaking through a dam.
My mother's face. Clear. Complete. Not fragments. Her eyes were grey like mine, her smile was warm, her laugh was thunder. I remembered her teaching me to shift, remembered the patience in her voice when I couldn't get it right, remembered the way she smelled like sage and pine and home.
My father. His quiet strength, his careful lessons, the way he'd ruffle my hair when I did something that made him proud. His voice saying son with affection that made my chest tight. The particular safety that came from being his, from being claimed and protected and loved.
Daniel. Younger. Before grief had carved lines into his face. Laughing and wrestling and arguing about pack politics like it mattered. My brother. My best friend. The person I'd trusted most in the world.
The pack. Hunts under full moons. Territory runs through forests I'd forgotten. The weight of belonging, of being pack, of knowing that these people were mine and I was theirs and nothing could change that.
The memories kept coming.
Faster than I could process them. Layering over each other. Creating context for feelings I'd carried without understanding their source. Filling in blanks that had defined my existence for thirty years.
I remembered being taken.