Chapter 9 Blood Recognition #2
I stood too, because sitting suddenly felt impossible. “What’s the harm? She’s already dead.”
The moment the words left my mouth I wanted to shove them back in.
Gideon’s face didn’t change much.
But his eyes did.
His eyes went sharp, bright, angry in a way I rarely saw.
“That’s what you think,” he said, low. “That death is done. Finished. Closed.”
He took a step toward me.
Not threatening.
Just… close enough that I felt the weight of him.
“The dead don’t belong to us,” Gideon said. “They don’t exist for our comfort. They don’t exist to sign off on our choices because we can’t bear to make them.”
I clenched my fists. “I’m not asking for comfort. I’m asking for her.”
“And what happens,” Gideon asked, voice shaking now, just barely, “when she doesn’t sound like her?”
I froze.
Gideon’s gaze held mine. Relentless.
“What happens when you call and something answers that wears her voice like a mask?” he said. “Or when she answers and she’s… changed. Distant. Confused. Hurt by being pulled toward you when she’s finally at rest.”
My lungs felt too tight. “You’re trying to scare me.”
“I’m trying to save you,” he snapped, and the heat of it shocked me.
The garage noise outside blurred. My pulse roared in my ears.
Gideon dragged a hand over his mouth, like he was trying to hold himself together. When he spoke again, it was quieter. Worse.
“You think you want to hear her,” he said. “But what you really want is to undo the moment she left. You want to rewrite the ending so you don’t have to live with it.”
My eyes burned.
“That’s not—”
“It is,” Gideon said, softer. “It’s human. It’s grief. It’s what grief does. It makes smart men stupid. It makes good men reckless. It makes you willing to set your own house on fire just to feel warm again.”
My breath hitched. I hated him for being right.
I hated him for seeing me.
I sank back into the chair like my legs forgot how to hold me. “So you’re just going to let me drown,” I whispered.
Gideon stared at me for a long moment.
Then he crossed the room and sat down too, slower than before, like he was choosing it. Like he was putting himself in the line of it.
“No,” he said. “I’m refusing to hand you an anchor made of stone.”
My throat worked around nothing. “I don’t want stone.”
“You do,” he said, and there was no judgment in it now. Just sadness. “Because stone feels certain. Heavy. Permanent. You think if you can talk to her, even once, you’ll feel permission settle in your bones and the pain will stop clawing at you.”
He leaned forward, forearms on the desk.
“But it won’t,” Gideon said. “It’ll just change shape.”
I stared at the floor. The edges of my vision blurred.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted, and the words came out small. Humiliating. “I don’t know how to wake up and not reach for her and remember she’s not there. I don’t know how to go home to that house and not—” My voice broke. I swallowed hard. “Not lose my mind.”
Gideon’s expression shifted. Not softened, exactly—he wasn’t built for softness. But something in him eased.
“You don’t have to do it alone,” he said.
I laughed, shaky. “I’m alone anyway.”
“No,” Gideon said firmly. “You’re isolating.”
My chest ached so hard it felt physical.
I looked up at him. “Why won’t you just give me what I want?”
Gideon held my gaze. And for the first time, he let some of the truth show.
“Because I did it once,” he said quietly.
My blood went cold.
His eyes didn’t leave mine.
“I called someone back,” Gideon said, voice almost flat. “I told myself it would be brief. I told myself it would be controlled. I told myself I was strong enough to handle the cost.”
He swallowed.
Just once. The smallest crack in the armor.
“And it changed me,” he said. “It changed what I am. It changed what follows me.”
The air in the office felt heavier.
“And it didn’t give me peace,” Gideon finished. “It gave me hunger. Because once you cross that line, you start thinking the next time will be better. Cleaner. Safer. And it never is.”
I stared at him, heart beating too fast.
“You’re afraid,” I said.
Gideon’s mouth tightened. “I’m careful.”
“Same thing,” I muttered, bitter.
To my surprise, Gideon’s lips twitched. Not quite a smile. But something.
“Could and should,” he said again, quieter. “Different words.”
I wiped at my face without realizing tears had spilled. “So what do I do?” I whispered. “If I don’t get to ask her. If I don’t get… permission.”
Gideon looked at me for a long time.
Then he said, simply, “You remember her.”
I swallowed hard.
“You remember her as she was,” Gideon continued. “Not as a ghost you can summon to make your pain behave. You remember her in the living world. In your son. In the way you still flinch when someone says her name like it might shatter you.”
My throat tightened so hard it hurt.
I looked away.
Gideon leaned back, studying me. “You want to honor Anna?” he asked.
My throat tightened. I nodded.
“Then stop using her memory as a cage,” Gideon said quietly.
My eyes burned again. I nodded once, stiff.
“Supplies are behind you,” Gideon said. “And Michael?”
I stood slowly, the world still tilted but… maybe less.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Next time you feel like visiting the clearing alone at night,” Gideon said, voice back to gruff, “tell someone first.”
I wiped my face again, more embarrassed than I wanted to admit. “Is that more cryptic advice?”
“It’s common sense dressed up in spooky language,” he said dryly. Then, after a beat, he added, quieter, “You got lucky once.”
My chest tightened. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” Gideon muttered, eyes dropping to his paperwork like it could save him. “I’m protecting myself as much as you.”
I grabbed the box of supplies—heavier than I expected, or maybe my arms were just tired from carrying too much for too long.
I paused at the door. “Gideon.”
He didn’t look up. “What.”
“You said you did it once,” I said, voice low.
His hand stilled on the page.
For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then, without looking at me, he said, “Death magic has a way of circling back.”
My skin prickled.
“The last thing this town needs,” Gideon added, voice like stone, “is more ghosts.”
I stepped back into the garage, letting the door close behind me.
The noise hit me like warmth—tools, laughter, music, life.
Cal appeared at my elbow as if he’d been conjured. “Everything okay? You were in there a while. Gideon do his whole mysterious sage routine?”
“Something like that,” I said, and my voice sounded different. Thinner. Realer.
“Yeah, he loves that.” Cal clapped my shoulder and then immediately winced like he’d forgotten I was made of grief and glass. “Okay, no—sorry—too much shoulder. You know what you need? Breakfast.”
Mason called from across the garage, “He’s not buying.”
Cal shouted back, “He’s definitely buying.”
“It’s been your turn for three weeks,” Mason said.
“That’s a vicious lie and I won’t stand for it.”
Cal steered me toward the bay doors, still talking like his mouth was powered by caffeine alone.
“Come on. You look like you need approximately seventeen cups of coffee and some aggressive carbohydrates. We’ll tell you embarrassing pack stories.
Did you know Jonah once got his head stuck in a fence? It was art.”
I let myself be led.
Let the banter wash over me like warm water.
The training ring sat at the center of the pack grounds, reinforced posts marking boundaries, the ground stained dark in places where blood had soaked too deep to wash away.
Wolves gathered in loose formation, and I recognized most of them now. Jonah with his easy grin and fighter's stance. Sienna, all controlled violence and sharp eyes. Theo, solid and dependable. Alaric, watching everything with the kind of attention that missed nothing.
And at the center—Evan and Nate.
My son moved through a drill I didn't recognize, hands weaving patterns in the air that left faint traces of green-gold light.
Druid magic, the kind Gideon had been teaching him, pulling power from the earth itself and shaping it into something that could protect or destroy.
His face was set with concentration, sweat beading on his forehead despite the morning chill.
Gideon stood off to the side, calling corrections, guiding Nate through the movements with patient precision. “Feel the roots beneath you. They're connected to everything—trees, earth, the network that holds this territory together. Pull from that. Don't force it.”
Nate adjusted his stance, tried again. This time the light came stronger, more controlled, forming shapes that looked almost like vines before dissipating into air.
“Better,” Gideon said. “Again.”
I watched my son work magic that shouldn't exist, command power that had chosen him for reasons I still didn't understand, and felt pride and fear tangled so tightly I couldn't separate them.
“He's getting good.”
I turned. Daniel stood beside me, close enough that I could feel heat radiating off him, could smell pine and leather and something distinctly wolf.
He'd appeared without sound, the way predators did, and I hated how my body responded—pulse kicking up, awareness sharpening, every nerve suddenly focused on his proximity.
“Yeah,” I managed. “Gideon's a good teacher.”
“Best there is.” Daniel's eyes tracked Nate's movements with the assessing gaze of someone who evaluated threats and assets simultaneously. “Your son's powerful. More than he realizes. The forest doesn't choose weak vessels.”
“That supposed to be comforting?”
“No. Just truth.” He glanced at me, and something in his expression shifted. Warmed slightly. “Gideon said you might join us today. You serious about learning to fight proper?”
“Figured I should. Last time I just swung silver and hoped for the best.” I tried for casual, but my voice came out rougher than intended. “Rather not rely on luck next time something tries to kill people I care about.”