She stares at me, and I can see it happening—the reordering, the reevaluation, the way every moment we’ve shared is being dragged into new light.
“You knew I was investigating disappearances,” she says. “You knew what I might find.”
“Yes.”
No defense. No explanation. I don’t deserve either.
The truth has teeth now.
Later,I sit alone, replaying it all whether I want to or not.
Ellie in her room, surrounded by notes and timelines I should have burned years ago. Ellie seeing patterns the town has spent generations learningnotto see.
The lunar cycles. The territories. The way we close ranks without ever announcing it. The way conversations die when the wrong questions are asked.
I picture her spreading it all out, watching decades of silence line up with mathematical precision. Every disappearance at the new moon. Every report carefully neutered. Every explanation just plausible enough to stop scrutiny.
I think about the way I move through the woods—how natural it feels, how wrong it must have looked to her in hindsight. Too fast. Too sure. Like the dark belonged to me.
Because it does.
Thomas Reed’s warning comes back to me then, the way he’d looked past Ellie’s shoulder when he spoke, as if the walls themselves might be listening. He wasn’t afraid of corruption.
He was afraid for us.
Ellie will find the folklore next. I know she will. She won’t be able to stop herself. Pins on a map. Old stories dismissed as entertainment because the alternative is unbearable.
Werewolves.
A word that sounds ridiculous until it doesn’t.
Moonhaven’s politeness was never about friendliness. It was discipline. The careful choreography of people who know exactly what’s at stake if the truth gets loose.
Families who lead without titles. Others who defer without being told why.
And Ellie—brilliant, relentless Ellie—walked straight into it with a notebook and a camera, shining light on things that survive only in shadow.
I told myself I was protecting her.
The truth is, I was protectingus.
And now the moon has seen her too.
And nothing here will ever be the same.
21
ELLIE
I’m still sitting in the chair across from his desk when he finally comes back.
The sheriff’s office feels different after hours—too quiet, too charged. Like the air right before a storm breaks. I don’t pace. I don’t touch anything. I wait.
He stops short when he sees me.
“You figured it out,” he says. Not a question.
“Werewolves.” I set the word between us like evidence. “An entire pack living in plain sight. With you as both sheriff and alpha. Very efficient.”