2018 plus seven equals 2025. This year.
"Jesus." The word escapes again.
This time it comes out more like a diagnosis than a prayer.
I lean back, staring at the evidence. Not random violence. Not even a sporadic serial killer. Something else entirely—organized, cyclical, predictable.
I pull up news archives, searching recent missing persons reports in surrounding counties. Nothing in Moonhaven itself, but two counties over—a hiker who never returned in August. Another county north—a college student who vanished in September. Both cases open, both assumed accidents.
Both fitting the demographic profile I've identified.
The pattern extends beyond Moonhaven's borders. Whatever's happening here radiates outward like ripples, touching multiple communities but always anchored here, in this place Sheriff Hart protects.
I cross-reference dates with local events. October features prominently. Late October, specifically. When leaves turn brilliant and air carries winter's first bite.
The same time I arrived.
If the pattern holds, someone else will disappear before Halloween. Someone young, transient, unlikely to be missed immediately.
Someone, potentially, like me.
18
CALEB
Rowan's voice manages to carry the weight of generations through the phone when he says, "We need to talk."
Fifteen minutes later, I stand in the Hale family's kitchen while three pack elders arrange themselves like a tribunal. Rowan pours coffee nobody wants. Mara spreads documents across the worn oak table. Thomas Reed—the librarian who tried to warn Ellie—sits with his hands folded, looking like a man who's carried secrets too long.
"She knows about the cycles." Mara's words cut through morning stillness. "Seven-year intervals. She's mapped them back to the 1940s."
My chest tightens. "How do you know what she's found?"
"Because she asked Thomas about historical weather patterns." Rowan settles into his chair, every movement deliberate. "Specifically, October weather patterns. For the past seventy years."
Thomas clears his throat. "I tried to redirect her toward general seasonal trends. She thanked me politely and requested access to the meteorological archives."
"Weather patterns." The pieces click together with sickening clarity. "She's looking for environmental triggers."
"She's looking for causation." Mara slides a photocopy across the table—Ellie's handwriting, notes visible through the library's carbon paper. "Population density fluctuations. Migration patterns. Territorial boundaries that shift every seven years."
The mate bond thrums with unwanted pride. Ellie's mind works like precision machinery, connecting variables others miss entirely. She's not chasing folklore or conspiracy theories—she's building a scientific framework for something that defies science.
"This is no longer about managing curiosity," Rowan says quietly. "She's triangulating our existence from observable data."
"The disappearances aren't random." I read Ellie's notes upside down, recognizing her methodical approach. "She knows they're territorial disputes. Border adjustments."
"She doesn't knowwhatadjusts the borders," Thomas corrects. "But she's identified the mechanism. Seven years of territorial expansion followed by consolidation events."
Consolidation events. Clinical terminology for what happens when neighboring packs encroach during our vulnerable periods. When young wolves challenge boundaries and humans pay the price for proximity to conflicts they can't comprehend.
"The October timing correlates with lunar cycles," Mara continues. "She's noted that the peak incidents occur during new moons. When our kind are…"
"Most unstable." I finish the thought. "When territorial instincts override rational control."
The silence stretches until Rowan breaks it. "She's three logical steps away from identifying us directly."
“And what happens when she does?” I ask. “Because we’ve been pretending that silence keeps people safe, but it hasn’t. It’s just made the damage quieter.”