Michael went limp in my arms, breathing hard. When I looked down I saw clean wounds. Raw, bleeding, but clean. No black veins. No corruption eating toward his heart.
“He'll live,” Gideon said, slumping with exhaustion. “But Daniel, that was close. Another hour and I don't think even your Alpha healing would have been enough.”
I couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. Just held Michael and felt his heartbeat against my chest. Rapid but steady. Alive. Mine.
Alaric stood quietly, moved toward the door. His own wounds were still seeping through hastily applied bandages, but he hadn't said a word about them. Hadn't asked for help.
“Alaric.” My voice came out rough. “Thank you. For finding him. For getting him here.”
Something flickered across his face. Grief and relief and the kind of exhaustion that came from carrying someone you loved through hell. “He saved my life first. Threw himself in front of a corrupted wolf that was going for my throat.” His voice cracked. “I just returned the favor.”
“Still. Thank you.”
Alaric nodded once. “That's what pack does. We don't let go.”
Then he was gone, and it was just me and Michael and Gideon in a garage that smelled like blood and magic and survival.
“What happened?” I asked finally. “Gideon, what the fuck happened?”
Gideon's eyes tracked to Michael, and I saw something close to awe in his expression. “He killed them, Daniel. All of them.”
“The rogues? How? He's human?—”
“Not anymore.” Gideon's voice went quiet.
I stared at Michael, at the man in my arms who looked like he'd been through hell and barely made it back.
“He awakened,” Gideon continued. “Violently. All at once instead of gradually. The moon magic came through with enough force to destroy those corrupted wolves, but it nearly killed him in the process. Would have killed him if the moonlight hadn't intervened, if Alaric hadn't gotten him here when he did.”
“The moonlight?”
“I saw it when Alaric carried him in. Pooling in his hands like liquid silver, holding him together through sheer stubborn refusal to let go.” Gideon met my eyes. “The moon marked him, Daniel. Chose him for something. And whatever that something is, it wasn't ready to let him die.”
Michael shifted in my arms, pulled away slightly so he could sit up on his own. I wanted to pull him back, to keep him pressed against me where I could feel every breath. But I let him go, helped him sit upright, handed him water that he drank like he'd been lost in a desert for days.
“I'm fine,” he said, voice rough but steady. “Or I will be. Just need a minute.”
“You nearly died,” I said flatly. “That's not fine.”
“But I didn't.” He met my eyes, and I saw steel underneath the exhaustion. “I'm here. I'm alive. And I killed those things before they could hurt anyone else.”
Pride surged through my chest, sharp and fierce. This man. This impossible, stubborn, human man who'd fought corrupted wolves and triggered ward magic and survived when he shouldn't have.
Mine.
“Gideon,” I said, not looking away from Michael. “You said he awakened. What does that mean exactly?”
Gideon was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of knowledge he'd been holding back.
“Michael's bloodline. The Harringtons. They're not just human.” He moved to his desk, pulled out a worn leather journal filled with notes and diagrams. “They're descended from hedge witches. Nature workers. The kind of magic practitioners who lived at the edges of settlements and kept the old ways alive.”
“That's not possible,” Michael said. “My family. We're just normal people. My parents never mentioned magic?—”
“Because they probably didn't know.” Gideon flipped through pages covered in genealogical charts, old census records, newspaper clippings. “I've been researching since Nate's awakening. Since the forest chose him. I needed to understand why a human boy could survive death and transformation when that should have been impossible.”
He spread the pages across his workbench. “The Harrington name goes back centuries in New England. But it wasn't always Harrington. Three hundred years ago, they were the Harroway line. Hedge witches who changed their name during the trials, suppressed their magic, married into human families until the gift diluted enough that most descendants never knew what they carried.”
“Harroway,” Michael repeated, like the word tasted strange in his mouth.
