Chapter 31 Ellie
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 to warn 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't photograph 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 sit at 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.
"The disappearances in Moonhaven weren't accidents," I type, then pause. Delete. Try again.
"For more than a century, a small mountain town kept its secrets through silence. This is how that silence broke."
Better. Truth without spectacle.
My phone buzzes—a text from Dick.
He finally shows lukewarm interest now that I’ve been zombie wolf chow more than once.
He wants to know when I’ll send in my piece.
Network interest is high.
Interest is high. Interest is high not based on my work speaking for itself. It’s high because he thinks readers wants another chance to gawk at a big girl who somehow manages to employ skill and talent despite her size.
I stare at the message, remembering how quickly my body-positivity panel became a viral moment, how my discomfort transformed into entertainment. Not this time.
Still writing. Publication timeline TBD.
The response comes immediately.
Ellie, strike while iron is hot. This supernatural angle…
I turn the phone face down. This story belongs to Moonhaven first, to the families who lost people, to the pack members who've lived with the weight of protection and secrecy. It doesn't belong to a news cycle hungry for the next strange thing to devour.
A knock interrupts my thoughts. I open the door to find Janet from the diner, holding a covered plate.
"Thought you might be hungry." Her eyes don't quite meet mine. "Been seeing you at that computer all hours. Thought I’d drop this on my way home."
I accept the plate, steam rising from beneath the checkered cloth. "Thank you. That's very kind."
She lingers in the doorway, fidgeting with her apron strings. "The story you're writing... about what happened here..."
"What about it?"
"Will it make us sound crazy? Like one of those tabloid towns?"
I study her face—the worry lines, the genuine concern. A month ago, I would have rushed to reassure her, to minimize my own presence in her discomfort.
"I'm writing about what happened," I say instead. "Nothing more, nothing less."
She nods slowly. "That's all we can ask, I suppose."
After she leaves, I work a while before walking to the diner for coffee. The conversations don't stop when I enter anymore, but they shift—curious glances, careful nods. I order at the counter without apologizing for the space I take up.
"The usual?" asks Jack, the day-shift cook.
"Please."
A woman at the corner table leans toward her companion. "That's her. The reporter."
I don't shrink. Don't pretend I can't hear. I meet her eyes, offering a small nod. She looks away first, not hostile, just uncertain.
The silence stretches. In the past, I would have filled it with nervous chatter, self-deprecating jokes, anything to ease the tension I assumed was my fault. Instead, I wait. Let them adjust to my presence rather than contorting myself to fit their comfort.
"Coffee's ready," Jack announces.
"Thank you."
I carry my cup to a table by the window, pull out my notebook. The story continues to unfold across the pages—not just the supernatural elements, but the human cost of secrets. The way fear can masquerade as protection. How silence can become its own kind of harm.
The coffee shop buzzes with morning energy, conversations weaving around me like a familiar blanket. I sit near the window, laptop open, pretending to review notes while actually watching Moonhaven wake up. A week since the forest. A week since the truth split the town open like a ripe fruit.
A group of teenagers clusters near the counter, their voices carrying that particular pitch of excitement mixed with nervous energy. One of them glances my way—not the furtive look I've grown used to, but something closer to curiosity. Maybe even respect.
"You're the reporter, right?" The girl can't be more than sixteen, all elbows and earnestness. "The one who figured out what happened to those people?"
My chest tightens, that old familiar squeeze. The attention, the visibility, the way conversations pause when recognition dawns. For a heartbeat, I feel the pull to deflect, to minimize, to make myself smaller in the space.
But the fear doesn't command me anymore. It whispers its warnings—they're looking, they're judging, they remember how you looked that day—and I listen without obeying. Fear has become weather: notable, sometimes uncomfortable, but not determinative.
"I am." I close the laptop, giving her my full attention. "Though I had a lot of help."
"That's so cool. Like, you actually saved people." She bounces slightly on her toes. "My mom says you're staying in town. Are you writing about us?"
The question doesn't feel invasive, just interested. "I'm figuring that out as I go."
She grins and returns to her friends, who immediately pepper her with questions. I catch fragments—really her, so brave, can't believe she stayed. The words settle around me without sticking. Praise doesn't own me any more than fear does.
The bell chimes as someone enters. I don't need to look to know it's Caleb—my body recognizes him before my mind does, a settling that happens below conscious thought.
He orders his usual black coffee, exchanges easy greetings with the barista, scans the room with that careful attention that never quite looks like surveillance.
Our eyes meet across the space. He nods, a small acknowledgment that feels both public and private. Nothing more. No claim, no declaration, no signal to the watching room that we're anything beyond sheriff and visiting journalist who happened to work together.
Once he exits, his absence registers like a missing chord in a familiar song. Not painful, exactly, but noticeable. Unfinished.
Three weeks ago, that absence would have confirmed every fear I carried about being temporary, forgettable, safely dismissible. Now it simply exists as fact requiring attention. Caleb hasn't hidden me, hasn't asked me to be smaller or quieter or less present. But he hasn't claimed me either.
The realization doesn't sting. Instead, it settles as information—data to be processed rather than evidence of inadequacy. This is the first time I’m trusting myself enough to wait without shrinking, knowing that whatever comes next will be chosen rather than assumed.