Chapter 26 Dawn Of Dread #2
She didn’t flinch. Just shifted her gaze up to meet mine, steady as a mountain.
For the briefest moment, her expression softened, like she’d spotted something familiar in my face she wasn’t expecting.
Then the mask slid back into place. “Didn’t say otherwise, darling. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
She opened her bag and began pulling out a collection of implements that would’ve made a medieval apothecary proud: stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, vials stoppered with wax, dried herbs tied with black twine, a silver pendulum, and what looked suspiciously like a sacrificial dagger.
She set each item on the coffee table with a deliberate clatter.
Florence placed the back of her hand on Mateo’s forehead, then gently took his wrist in her hand. Mateo only grimaced when he felt her touch; other than that, he remained mostly asleep.
For a moment, the ordinary tools of human medicine took over: stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, the gentle pressing of fingertips against the pulse point on his neck.
Then, just as gracefully, she transitioned to the other implements: silver pendulum, sprigs of dried something-or-other, a bottle of clear liquid that shimmered like mercury.
“She’s here because she’s the best we’ve got, Josie,” Aiden murmured, as if reading my mind.
Florence’s lips quirked in a half-smile, a flash of warmth quickly buried. “You’ve got fire, girl. That’ll help you. But fire burns both ways.” Her voice had a rolling cadence.
I drew a steadying breath. “Fine. Alpha Grandma, do your thing. Just don’t start reciting wolfy riddles or sacrificing chickens in my kitchen.”
She snorted. “Please. Chickens are for amateurs.” She swept the room with a glance. “Anyone here allergic to sage?”
Cody raised his hand tentatively, then lowered it when she shot him a look. “Nope. All good, ma’am.”
“Didn’t think so.” She cracked her knuckles, then began arranging the dried herbs in a small, spiral pattern around Mateo’s head.
I watched as she uncorked a vial and held it under Mateo’s nose. He flinched at the smell, squinting at her.
“Smells gross,” he mumbled.
The scent hit me at once: peppermint, licorice, and something metallic. Florence nodded, pleased, then dabbed a drop on her thumb and pressed it gently to the center of his brow.
“What are you doing?” I asked, half-fascinated, half-terrified.
Florence didn’t look up. “Testing for resonance,” she said, as if that explained everything. When she saw my blank look, she clarified: “Some magic leaves a frequency, like a radio signal. Just checking which station your boy’s tuned to.”
Aiden hovered behind her, arms crossed. He kept glancing at me but seemed genuinely cowed by his grandmother’s presence. I wondered how many times he’d been on the receiving end of that stare, how much of his authority he’d had to earn the hard way.
Cody shuffled awkwardly near the entryway, hands shoved deep in his pockets, eyes flicking between Aiden and me.
I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
Florence bent closer to Mateo, murmuring in a language I didn’t recognize. Mateo stirred but didn’t wake. She ran the pendulum in slow circles above his chest, watching the sway with hawk-like intensity.
After a minute, she nodded to herself, then looked up at me. “You ever see him do this before?”
I shook my head, unwilling to break the spell with words.
She grunted, then set the pendulum aside and reached for her stethoscope. The gesture was oddly humanizing.
“May I?” she asked, nodding at Mateo’s chest. The politeness of it surprised me.
“Go ahead,” I said, stepping back towards the kitchen counter. My hands hovered uselessly near my own stomach.
She lifted Mateo’s shirt, pressed the cold disc to his ribs, and listened. Her brow furrowed in concentration.
Finally, she sat back, mouth pressed into a thin line. “He’s not dying,” she announced, and for a moment, I nearly collapsed with relief. “But whatever’s in him, it’s fighting to get out.”
Aiden looked at me like I should know what that meant, but I was already a thousand miles away, hurtling through every memory of my son.
“Josie, is there any chance Mateo has supernatural genes?” Aiden asked, his voice low, cautious.
His words hung between us like a blade suspended by a single hair. I wanted to laugh, to brush it off as a dumb question, but couldn’t.
“No,” I said, too fast, too loud.
For a heartbeat, I hoped denial would be enough to cauterize the question and send it limping away. But Aiden noticed my hesitation.
I swallowed hard. Years of self-imposed silence and pretending couldn’t stop the flicker behind my eyes that saw him as a threat, then comfort, then threat again.
Aiden moved closer, his features softening with something that looked like dread. He said nothing. Just stood there and let me decide whether to drown or fight.
I stared at my son and wondered if every mother felt this, the fear that your child was just a record of your own scars.
A hollow breath escaped me. “At least, I don’t think so…” The words hung there, heavy and uncertain. “Unless werewolves had a habit of raping teenagers,” I muttered, my voice hard and flat.
The words slipped out before I could stop them. As soon as they were out, I regretted them. Not because it wasn’t true, but because saying it made it real again.
The air thickened.
Florence’s hands stilled mid-ritual, her gaze locking onto mine. The pity in her eyes was palpable.
Cody shifted uneasily from foot to foot, his wide eyes darting between Aiden and me.
Aiden’s face blanched, then darkened. He stepped forward, but not with the predatory sway I’d come to expect. Instead, he looked like a man trying to hold himself together so as not to shatter everything in his path.
“Josie,” he said carefully. “Are you saying… someone hurt you?” His voice was lower than I’d ever heard, in register and volume.
I swallowed hard and turned away, pretending to fuss with the coffee mug. My fingers trembled around the ceramic handle.
I shrugged, tried to make it casual. “It was a long time ago,” I said. “Doesn’t matter now.”
He braced his palms on the counter, bracketing me without touching. “That doesn’t make it okay. Who was it?” His eyes went cold and predatory again, but the anger wasn’t at me.
“You gonna go full wolf and track him down?” I said, aiming for humor but overshooting and hitting venom instead.
“If that’s what it takes. Yeah.” His voice was flat and serious.
There was violence simmering behind his eyes, but not the kind I feared. The kind I understood. The kind I’d wished for, back when I was sixteen and still believed in rescue.
I shook my head, the smallest of motions. “Don’t. I survived. That’s all that counts.”
Aiden’s hands curled into fists. “No, Josie. You surviving doesn’t make what happened any less wrong. Or any less real.” The words sat in the air like a benediction and a curse.
I looked at him, really looked. There was nothing soft in his face, no feigned gentleness.
He was pissed, yes, but more than that, he was raw, flayed open, unashamed of it.
I felt the old reflex to cringe away, to shrink from the heat of someone’s anger on my behalf, but instead I found myself leaning toward it, letting it warm the places inside me I’d thought long dead.
He must’ve seen that, because his expression shifted.
The tension in his jaw faded. He leaned in, forearm brushing mine, close enough I could count every freckle on his cheekbone.
The silence between us stretched. When he finally spoke, it was almost a whisper.
“You’re safe now. With me, you’re safe.”
I’d heard those words before, and they’d always been a lie. But this time, I wanted so badly to believe them. I let my fingers unclench, let the vibration in my body slow. Mateo stirred on the couch, his head lolling to one side. The moment cracked.
“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to… unload.”
He shook his head. “Don’t apologize. Not to me.”
I shot him a quick nod, then shifted my focus back to Mateo and Florence. The warmth in her eyes held a blend of compassion and something deeper, a flicker of empathy that made my heart ache.
“So, could it be the wolf gene?” My voice barely rose above a whisper, as if saying it too loudly would summon the very truth I feared.
Florence shook her head. “No. Wolves don’t run fevers like this. He’s got the blood, but it’s tangled with something else. Something old. I haven’t smelled magic like this since…” She stopped herself, lips pressed tight.
I tried to keep my tone steady. “Since what?”
She met my eyes, then Aiden’s. “Since the War. The Old One’s War. Before the covens and the packs.”
Aiden paled. “You mean…”
“I mean,” she interrupted, “that Mateo’s not just a shifter. Or not only a shifter. Someone’s been playing with his bloodline. Maybe Josie’s too. But this kind of spellwork doesn’t happen by accident.”
For a moment, we all just stood there, the implications ricocheting around the room. Cody whistled, low and reverent, as if he’d just witnessed a minor miracle or the opening of a tomb.
“Can you help him?” Aiden asked, his voice half-choked.
Florence didn’t answer right away. She studied us, first me, then Mateo, with a steadiness that suggested she was measuring not just the moment but every moment that had ever led us here.
Her eyes were not unkind, but there was a depth behind them that made me feel like a child pretending at adulthood.
She folded her hands, knuckles blanching.
“I can try,” she said quietly. “But it’s no simple flu.
Whatever’s in him, it’s tied to old things, old places.
There’s only so much I can do here.” She let out a breath, slow and measured, then turned to me as if delivering a verdict.
“He needs to see my sisters. The Guild. If anyone can untangle this, it’s them. But we shouldn’t wait.”
“The Guild?” I echoed. “What, like a coven of magical grannies?”