Chapter 7 Moonlight Pools Like Water #2
“Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all.
“I'm surrounded by supernatural adults with back muscles that actually work.”
“I'm twenty-four,” Nate offered.
“Still basically a teenager to my decrepit self.” I pressed a hand to my lower back, played up the wince. “I think I pulled something.”
“You did not,” Evan said.
“I might have. These old bones aren't what they used to be.”
Nate snorted. “You ran a marathon last month.”
“That was different. That was running. This is lifting. Completely different muscle groups.”
“You're ridiculous,” Nate said, but his voice was warm. Fond.
I watched him work alongside Evan and Rafe, the three of them moving in that eerie synchronization, and felt something settle in my chest. Something that felt dangerously close to contentment.
“Alright,” I said. “Since you're all so supernaturally talented, who wants to tackle the bathroom tiles?”
“Those are cracked through,” Evan observed.
“I know. That's why I bought replacements.” I gestured to the pile by the door. “But they're heavy, and my ancient human back—“
“We get it,” Nate interrupted. “You're old and feeble and we're amazing.”
“Finally, you're learning.”
Rafe was smiling openly now, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. Just for a moment. Just enough.
“Michael?” Rafe's voice was quieter now. “Where do you want these tiles?”
I told him. Watched him carry the box like it weighed nothing. Watched Nate bump his shoulder companionably as they passed each other, watched Evan include him in the workflow like he'd always been there.
Strange, I thought. How quickly strange could start feeling like family.
“Hey Dad?” Nate called from across the room. “You should see this grout situation. It's genuinely impressive how bad it is.”
“The grout is fine.”
“The grout is a crime against bathrooms everywhere.”
“I'm disowning you.”
“You can't. I'm too helpful.” Nate grinned at me, bright and happy.
“Get back to work,” I said gruffly. “All of you. Those shelves aren't going to install themselves.”
“Yes sir,” Evan said, with a mock salute that made Rafe actually laugh out loud.
The sound surprised all of us, I think. Including Rafe himself. He looked almost startled by it, like he'd forgotten laughter was something his body could do.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn't mean—“
“Don't apologize for laughing,” I said. “There's not nearly enough of it around here.”
Rafe looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression, some wall coming down just a little.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For this. For letting me be here.”
“You're stuck with us. Including Michael's terrible construction skills.” Evan said, before I could respond.
“My construction skills are fine.”
“Your construction skills are a hazard to public safety,” Nate said cheerfully.
“I raised a traitor.”
“You raised an honest man.”
I threw a rag at his head. He caught it without looking, because of course he did, and threw it back with perfect accuracy.
I picked up my hammer, turned back to the work still waiting to be done.
“Alright,” I said. “Enough standing around. We've got a bathroom to fix and apparently my grout is a crime against humanity.”
“Crime against bathrooms,” Nate corrected.
“Same thing.”
“Not even close.”
I shook my head, fighting back a smile, and got back to work.
The house creaked around us, settling into its bones, and for the first time in a long time, the sound felt like promise instead of memory.
Like maybe this place could be home again.
Like maybe we all could.
The clearing was maybe fifty yards across, ringed by ancient trees that looked like they'd been standing since before humans learned to build cities.
Moonlight spilled across the open ground in ways that shouldn't have been possible given the cloud cover.
Pooling in the center like liquid silver, thick and viscous, present in ways that light had no right to be.
Ward stones marked the perimeter. Worn smooth by centuries of weather and ritual, humming with power I could feel even from inside the truck. This was sacred ground. The place where Hollow Pines buried its dead and honored its losses and drew lines that said no further.
The place where Anna had burned.
I got out. The air hit me like walking into water. Heavy. Resistant. Charged with something that made my skin prickle and my pulse slow. My boots crunched on gravel that shouldn't have been audible, each step echoing in the unnatural quiet.
The center of the clearing looked different than I remembered.
The pyre was gone, of course. They'd cleaned everything after the funeral, swept away the ash and the remnants and the physical evidence of loss.
But the ground was still scorched in places.
Still marked by fire that had burned too hot, too magical, too meaningful to leave no trace.
I walked to that spot. Stood where I'd stood six months ago, watching flames consume the woman I'd loved for twenty-five years. Watching sparks rise toward a moon that had watched back with the same patient attention it wore now.
“Hey, baby.”
My voice sounded wrong in the silence. Too small. Too human. But I kept talking anyway, because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling, and feeling meant drowning in grief I'd been trying to outrun since the night everything ended.
“House is coming along. Got the trim up in the living room.
Nate helped. He's got your eye for detail, you know. Keeps catching things I miss.” I pressed my palms against my thighs, grounding myself.
“He's happy, Anna. Really happy. Evan's good for him. Better than good. They fit together like they were made for it.”
The moonlight pulsed. Probably my imagination. Probably just clouds shifting, changing how the light fell. Probably nothing supernatural about the way the silver seemed to gather closer, thickening around me like a blanket.
“There's someone else.” The confession scraped out of me raw and bleeding. “Daniel. The Alpha. I told you about him before, but it's... it's different now. More. He looks at me like I matter, Anna. Like I'm not just some broken thing trying to put himself back together.”
My throat tightened. My eyes burned.
“I don't know if I'm allowed to want that.
Don't know if wanting him means losing you.
And I can't...” I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, tried to push back the tears that wanted to fall.
“I can't lose you again. Can't let go of what we had just because someone new makes me feel alive.”
Silence. Perfect, terrible silence. Just me and the moonlight and the ghost of a woman who'd been my whole world for longer than I'd been anyone else's.
“I miss you.” The words cracked. Shattered.
Fell apart in my mouth and came out as something closer to a sob.
“Every day. Every hour. I reach for you in the morning and you're not there.
I make coffee for two and then remember.
I hear something funny and turn to tell you before I remember there's no one to tell.”
I sank to my knees. The earth was cold through my jeans, packed hard from centuries of feet and magic and grief that had soaked too deep to wash away.
“I don't know how to do this without you.
Don't know how to be a person without you to come home to.” I pressed my forehead to the ground, felt tears slip free, felt them soak into soil that had already tasted my loss.
“Please. I need to know if it's okay. Need to know if wanting him is betrayal or just... being human.”
Nothing answered.
No voice from beyond. No sign from the universe. Just me, alone in sacred ground, crying into dirt that held all my grief and gave nothing back.
I stayed there until my knees ached. Until my hands went numb. Until the tears dried up because I'd run out. Then I sat back, wiped my face with hands that wouldn't stop shaking, and looked at the moon.
Full and silver and so bright it hurt.
And in that brightness, I felt something. Not words. Not sound. Just presence. Like Anna standing just beyond sight, watching with the kind of patient love that had defined our marriage.
Permission.
Not abandonment. Not forgetting. Just acknowledgment that moving forward didn't erase what had been. That loving again didn't diminish what we'd shared. That being alive meant allowing yourself to want things, even when grief made wanting feel like betrayal.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
The moonlight settled gentle on my skin.
I stayed there on my knees, letting the quiet soak in. Letting Anna's permission settle into the spaces grief had hollowed out. The night air was cool against my tear-stained face, carrying the scent of pine and earth and—
Wrong.
The shift happened so fast I almost missed it. One breath the forest hummed with nocturnal life, crickets and distant owls and wind through branches. The next, silence fell like a blade.
Not quiet. Silent. The difference was predators.
Cold crawled across my skin. Not the natural cold of autumn nights, but something deeper. Something that crept under skin and settled into bone with intention. My breath came out in visible puffs, crystallizing in air that had been comfortable moments ago.
I moved without thinking. Training taking over, muscle memory born of weeks spent learning to survive in a world where monsters wore fur and teeth and hunger.
My hand found the silver dagger at my hip, drew it smooth and fast, settling into a defensive stance that Gideon had drilled into me until it felt natural.
The first rogue came out of the trees like smoke given form.
Massive. Wrong. Moving with the jerky, too-fast momentum of something that had forgotten how bodies were supposed to work. Its eyes reflected moonlight in shades of nothing, empty pits where intelligence should live.
I didn't hesitate.