Claimed by the reaper

Chapter 7

The dream came uninvited, the way it always did. It was not a memory exactly, more like her mind's cruel, efficient way of reassembling three years of fragments into something sharper than any single moment had actually been.

Marcus's hand around her wrist, tighter than necessary. His voice, low and reasonable, the particular register he used right before something in the house broke, whether it was a plate or her own careful composure.

You don't get to just leave, Wren. You don't get to decide that's how this ends.

She woke gasping, tangled in unfamiliar sheets, her heart hammering against her ribs with the particular, disorienting violence of a nightmare that had not fully released its grip on the waking world yet. It took her several long seconds to place herself. The clubhouse, the narrow bed, Reaper's steady weight beside her, already stirring at the sound of her ragged breathing.

"Wren." His voice was low and careful, entirely awake despite the hour. "You're safe. Whatever it was, you're safe."

"I know," she managed, though her voice came out thin and unconvincing even to her own ears. "I know. Just a dream."

"Tell me," he said, not quite a request, sitting up enough to look at her properly in the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains. "You don't have to. But I think it might help, saying it out loud instead of carrying it alone."

She was quiet for a long moment, old instinct warring with the strange, unfamiliar safety of his presence beside her.

"He used to do this thing," she said finally, her voice unsteady. "Right before things got bad. He'd get very calm. Very reasonable sounding. It was somehow worse than if he'd just been angry, because the calm meant he'd already decided exactly what was going to happen next, and nothing I said was going to change it."

She pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them, old vulnerability surfacing despite her best efforts.

"I dreamed he found me. Here. That calm voice, telling me I didn't get to just leave."

Something shifted in Reaper's expression. He remained controlled and careful, though she could see the effort it cost him to keep whatever he was actually feeling from spilling into something less measured.

"He's not here," he said, his voice low and absolutely certain. "And if he ever does find his way here, Wren, I promise you, he will not be calm for very long."

Despite everything, a small, unsteady laugh escaped her.

"That's not exactly comforting, in a conventional sense."

"I'm not a conventional man," he said, something almost gentle beneath the dry observation. "But I understand comfort isn't really about promising nothing bad will ever happen. It's about promising you won't have to face it alone if it does."

She studied him in the dim light, something in his steady, unguarded presence loosening a knot in her chest that had been tightly wound since she'd startled awake.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Reaper isn't your actual name," she said carefully. "Is it?"

Something flickered across his expression. Surprise, maybe, or simple recognition that she'd finally asked the question he'd apparently been waiting for.

"No," he admitted. "It's not."

"What is it? Your real name."

He was quiet for a long moment, and she wondered if she'd overstepped, asking for something he wasn't ready to hand over even after everything they'd already shared.

Then, quietly and carefully, like he was handing her something fragile, he said, "Gideon. Gideon Cole."

"Gideon," she repeated softly, testing the shape of it, entirely unlike the hard, clipped syllables of his road name. "I like it. It suits you better than Reaper does, honestly."

"Nobody's called me that in years," he admitted, something rare and unguarded in his voice. "Not since my mother passed. Everyone in this world knows me as Reaper. It's simpler that way. Keeps some distance between the man and the reputation."

"Do you want distance from me?" she asked, her voice quiet and genuine.

"No," he said, immediate and certain, something in his voice cracking open in a way she had not heard from him before. "I don't think I've wanted anything less, actually, since you walked through that door soaked and furious and completely unwilling to be intimidated."

"Then I'll call you Gideon," she said softly, testing the small, quiet permission of it. "If that's alright. Not in front of the club, if that complicates things. But when it's just us."

Something in his expression settled, warm and unguarded, entirely unlike the careful composure he wore for the rest of the world.

"I'd like that," he said quietly. "More than I think I can properly explain."

They lay together for a long while after that, the nightmare's sharp edges slowly softening into something more distant. Reaper's steady presence beside her did more to settle her nerves than any reassurance he could have offered in words alone.

"Gideon," she said again, quieter this time, simply enjoying the sound of it in the dark.

"Yes?"

Something in his voice carried open, unguarded warmth at hearing his own name in her mouth.

"Thank you. For staying. For all of it, honestly. The room, the coffee, standing between me and whatever Marcus is planning. I don't think I properly said that yet."

"You don't need to thank me," he said, pulling her carefully closer, still careful of the space between them. "This isn't a debt, Wren. It's simply what I want to do. What I choose to do, every single day since you walked into my bar."

She let herself settle against him fully for the first time, old caution finally, cautiously giving way to something warmer and considerably more dangerous than simple gratitude.

"I think I'm starting to understand that," she murmured, already feeling exhaustion pulling at her again, safer now than she'd felt in the immediate aftermath of the nightmare. "Choosing, I mean. I don't think I've had much practice at it these last few years."

"Then we'll practice together," Gideon said quietly, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head. "For as long as it takes."

She drifted back toward sleep slowly, the dream's earlier terror fading into something more distant, replaced instead by the steady, unfamiliar comfort of a name only she used now, and the quiet, dangerous certainty that whatever came next, Marcus, the Vultures, the slow unraveling of a three year old lie, she wasn't going to be facing any of it alone.