"Why are you staying?"
"Because I choose you. Because I choose this mess of a town that's finally ready to stop lying to itself." Her smile carries an edge of challenge. "Because I choose the work of figuring out what comes next."
The weight of that settles between us—not the inevitability of fate, but the deliberate acceptance of something difficult and worthwhile.
"The pack elders are going to want answers about what happens now," I tell her.
"Then we'll give them answers. Together."
31
ELLIE
The suitcase sits open on my bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. I've folded my sweaters twice, rolled and unrolled my jeans, arranged my notebooks in neat stacks beside the worn leather case. Everything fits exactly as it did when I arrived—compact, efficient, ready for another escape.
My hands hover over the zipper pull.
"Just close it," I murmur to the empty room. "Close it and go."
But my fingers won't cooperate. They trace the metal teeth instead, following their path around the case's perimeter like I'm mapping the borders of a decision I'm not ready to make.
The urge is so familiar it feels like muscle memory. Pack light, leave quietly, disappear before anyone notices you were substantial enough to miss. Before expectations can form around your presence. Before you become a problem that needs solving.
I sink onto the bed's edge, the mattress dipping under my weight. Through the window, Moonhaven spreads below me in the late afternoon light—the sheriff's office where I demanded truth and received it, the library where Thomas Reed tried towarn me with worried eyes, the café where strangers smiled without calculation.
The town where I was seen completely and wasn't asked to apologize for taking up space.
"This is different," I say aloud, testing the words against the silence.
Different because when Caleb looked at me in that forest clearing, blood on my hands and dirt in my hair, he didn't see someone who needed to be managed or contained. He saw someone who belonged exactly where she was, messy and present and unashamed.
Different because when the pack gathered in the aftermath, no one suggested I should leave for my own safety or theirs. They made room. They asked what I needed instead of deciding what I should want.
I reach for my phone, thumb hovering over Emma’s number. One call, and I could let her know I’m on my way back. That my so-called get-away is over. I never told her I had no intention of returning. She and I have been trading texts for weeks, and I’ve pretended nothing is amiss and I’d see her soon this whole time.
I could simply tell her that the mysterious disappearances have been solved, small-town secrets have been exposed, and the journalist will be returning to real life with a gripping story in hand.
The phone screen goes dark under my hesitation.
Real life. As if what happened here was somehow less authentic than hiding behind bylines in a city that never saw past my discomfort to the person underneath.
"Safety," I whisper, turning the word over like a stone I'm examining for cracks.
I spent years believing safety meant being forgettable. Blending into backgrounds, speaking just quietly enough to avoid drawing attention, choosing clothes that wouldn'tphotograph well if someone decided to make me a spectacle again.
But that wasn't safety. That was a slow suffocation dressed up as strategy.
Safety in Moonhaven looks different. It looks like Caleb's hand steady on my back when I faced down something that could have killed me. It looks like a pack that closes ranks around its own without asking them to disappear first. It looks like being known completely and chosen anyway.
I stand, walking to the window. Below, someone waves from the sidewalk—Mrs. Hanson, who knows I take my coffee with extra cream and sugar and never made me feel like I was taking up too much counter space when I lingered over morning pastries.
I wave back.
The suitcase waits behind me, patient as a held breath. But somehow, leaving feels like the dangerous choice.
Staying feels like coming home.
I sitat the small desk in my temporary room, laptop open, cursor blinking against a document that will reshape everything. The story spreads across my screen—not sensationalized, not sanitized, but precise. Each word carries weight I can feel in my fingertips.