Chapter 67

In the weeks that followed, the attic had already become a habit. We met there during lunch, between classes, in stolen pockets of time that should not have existed but somehow did. Ethan knew which halls stayed empty longest, which teachers lingered over coffee, and which corridor on the old side of the building smelled so strongly of dust and mildew that nobody willingly used it. I had learned how long it took for the scent of him to settle into my skin, how cold the water in the bathroom needed to be to wash it away, and how to keep my face blank when I slipped back into class with my pulse still pounding.

It couldn't last. I knew that. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed, or smelled, or saw.

The other things, things that had begun with the drawing and broken pencils quietly continued, too. A textbook shoved to the back of my locker with its pages bent. A smear of mud across the bottom of my bag. Whispered laughter that stopped the moment I looked up. Once, someone had left a wad of chewed gum pressed on the inside of my coat sleeve, and I had spent ten minutes scraping it out with the edge of an old ruler before deciding it was too stupid to mention to anyone. Petty things. Small things. Things that felt almost childish compared to everything else, which was probably why I kept pretending they simply didn't count.

***

That day I was still at the sink when I nearly got caught.

I had just opened the tap, cupped the freezing water in both hands, and splashed my face and neck again, shivering as droplets ran down the collar of my sweater. The fluorescent lights made everything seem sickly pale, including my own skin. I turned off the tap and stood there for a moment, breathing. My pulse had finally settled. My lips still felt warm.

A second later, there was movement in front of the bathroom door. Voices spilled in with the sound. My heart launched itself straight into my throat. I didn't think. I barely even processed. I just moved.

The nearest stall door slammed shut behind me, and in one desperate motion I stepped onto the toilet seat, pressing myself awkwardly into the corner and pulling my feet up off the floor.

The bathroom door opened. The girls came in still talking, their voices bouncing too loudly off tile and mirrors and the old, half-broken hand dryer.

"...I'm just saying he has been way less weird lately."

"Right? Same with Noah. It was like they all had collective brain damage for a few months and then suddenly woke up."

A beat. Then another girl said, lower, "Speaking of the bloodkin, tell me if I'm insane, but do I smell her in here?"

Every muscle in my body locked.

The first girl laughed softly. "You probably smell the ghost of all this nonsense."

"No, seriously."

Then two others inhaled. I could hear it, that sharp, ugly little intake through the nose that had started sounding sinister to me months ago.

"...Maybe," one of them said.

"Yeah," another agreed. "A little."

I pressed one hand over my mouth.

Outside my stall, shoes clicked over tile. One pair stopped. Then another. I saw shadows move under the stall door. The girls were checking. The blood rushed so hard in my ears I could barely hear.

"Probably just leftover scent," someone said.

"Probably," another agreed. "Anyway, back to the point. What do you think happened? Do you really think the whole thing settled just because of what Ethan did to those two?"

The stall beside mine creaked as someone leaned against it.

"I don't know, and I don't care," a third girl said bluntly. "The only thing that matters is that things are finally calming down."

A pause. Then a fourth voice, more hesitant, "Honestly, though... Maybe I'm just imagining it, but does her scent seem a bit different to you? Like, I don't know, like it lost some of its edge?"

My heart stopped for one impossible second. The others were quiet.

Then someone snorted. "Oh, come on."

"I'm serious."

"It probably just seems that way because we've been smelling it for so long our noses have gotten used to it."

"Exactly. And does it even matter, really?"

That got a small chorus of agreement. "No, not really." "Not when you put it like that."

Another girl laughed quietly. "Whatever. How about we just appreciate that the boys are finally acting normal again. Even Ethan's back to being Ethan."

My hand clenched harder over my mouth.

"Yeah," someone else said. "I don't know how Lara tolerated all that for so long. Especially that whole circus with the formation. God, that would have been so humiliating. If I were her, I would have ripped that bloodkin's head off long ago."

A couple of them laughed. Then one of the others said, sharper, "And then the Blackwells would have ripped yours off right back, so don't be stupid. She's not some random human nobody who can just disappear in the woods."

The laughter died.

"Lara doesn’t have to do anything anyway," another girl said. "People around here know what loyalty looks like."

A small silence followed. Then one of them said quietly, "Yeah, but if, hypothetically, Ethan ever actually did mark her, Lara would have to answer it personally."

"He wouldn't," another replied. "We can't presume to know what his deal with the bloodkin was, but he certainly isn't stupid."

"Besides," the third voice added, "the alpha would shut that down before it got that far. Regardless of the veto he put on her."

That settled over the room too with weight. Someone made a little dismissive sound.

"Fine. Whatever. Point is, the circus looks over. For now, at least."

"Thank God."

Bags zipped. A tap ran for two seconds. The hand dryer whined briefly, then cut off. Their voices drifted back toward the door in a murmur. Then the door shut behind them.

Silence crashed down so hard it almost felt loud.

I stayed where I was for another minute, my knees already aching from crouching on the toilet seat, my lungs refusing to work properly.

Different.

The word echoed through me. Nell's face flashed through my mind. The way she had leaned in toward my throat and frowned.

I let out the breath I had been holding in small, uneven gasps, and finally stepped down onto the floor. If they were right and something in my scent had changed, maybe it happened the same way the pull did, in response to Ethan. The bond or whatever it was that had formed between us. But then again, Ethan didn't seem to notice. Neither did anyone at home. Maybe they were all imagining it. Maybe it didn't matter.

I washed my face again, just in case, and stared at the water running clear into the sink as if that meant anything.

Outside, the bell rang. I shut off the tap. Whatever had changed, the world had no intention of slowing down enough for me to stand there and understand it. So I dried my hands, lifted my chin at the mirror again, like that might qualify as bravery and walked out.

The corridor swallowed me back without ceremony. Outside the long windows, the snow kept melting, unhurried, indifferent to everything that had just happened in a locked bathroom stall.

***

Across town, the snow had turned to slush. The white had turned grey where boots and truck tires had pressed it. Water dripped steadily from awnings and eaves, and the earth pushed dark through the thaw.

Gabriel let time pass him by as he walked down the old, familiar street. He kept his gait slow, not because he needed to, but because speed would have defeated the point of coming at all. He was meant to be seen. He had spent too long hidden, first in the woods, then in the barn, then in the house trying to relearn how to be a man. If he was going to move through Cold Creek again, the town needed to look at him and understand that Gabriel Blackwell had not vanished into the dark for good, had not become another cautionary story whispered amongst the pack. That he had survived and walked among them steady.

Everyone stopped and looked at him as he passed. Some did it openly, others in stolen glances. Gabriel noticed and didn't mind them. His body still felt slightly unfamiliar inside his old clothes, but it held. His mind held. That was enough.

He passed the hardware store, the post office, and kept going until the diner came into view. Grace's Diner , its neon sign said, one letter forever threatening to go out but never quite doing so. He paused on the sidewalk before entering.

The place assaulted him with the smell of burnt coffee and old grease as he opened the door. The bell above gave its usual tired jingle. Several heads lifted at once. Conversations stopped, then carefully resumed.

Grace was behind the counter with a pot of coffee in one hand. She looked up, saw him, and for one brief instant forgot to hide her reaction. Her face fell, her eyes rounded. The pot in her hand trembled once. Then she recovered.

"Well," she said, setting the pot down and forcing her lips into a well-rehearsed smile as she watched him walk in. "Look who decided to finally rejoin civilization."

Gabriel gave her the smallest tilt of the head and took a stool at the counter. He didn't reply immediately, only observed her, wondering just how much she knew and not really wanting to know the answer.

"Civilization," he muttered after a while. "Flattering word for this town."

That got something almost like a laugh out of her. "Fair enough."

She poured him coffee without asking whether he wanted any. He didn't object.

"How are the girls?" she asked. He didn't hear calculation in her question, just curiosity.

"Fine," Gabriel said. "Thank you." The answer came out rougher than he intended.

Grace nodded once as if that was answer enough. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then she wiped down a section of already-clean counter and said, with the ease of someone who assumed all the relevant parties already knew, "I'm glad. Honestly, with how everything might have turned out that day in that forest..." She shook her head. "Anyway. The important thing is that your daughter is all right."

Gabriel went completely, utterly still. His fingers tightened around the cheap porcelain of the cup.

"My daughter." He paused. "You mean Kelsey?"

Grace gave him a strange look. "Yes. The older one. That's her name, right?"

Gabriel's throat worked. "Grace," he said in a voice so low that Grace leaned in. "Would you mind telling me what exactly you know?"

Grace frowned a little, not at the question itself but at the way he had asked it.

"Just what people talk about," she said slowly. "Nothing more."

Gabriel held her gaze. "And that would be what?"

Grace swallowed, leaning away a bit, as if she suddenly sensed a gap where none ought to exist. But she had already started, and seemed compelled to finish.

"You know. The whole thing with the Cole and Holden boys. Nails on the road. Everybody has heard some version of it by now." She lowered her voice. "That the whole thing was a ruse to bait and challenge Greystone's son."

Gabriel's eyes narrowed without a single blink. He said nothing.

Grace glanced at him once, more carefully now.

Gabriel stared at the dark surface of the coffee. The world around him shrank to that single counter, that single cup, as the pieces clicked into place. Nails. Dragged. Bait. Each word was a hammer to his chest, to his skull. So that was what they had been hiding. Because they feared he was so fragile the truth could break him.

Rage threatened to rise, but he gritted his teeth. He would not break. He was not going to lose himself. Not now.

Grace, mercifully unaware of how every sentence was landing, went on more softly. "People are saying Greystone's boy nearly tore those two apart." She hesitated. "Some say they deserved it."

Some say. As if there were room for variation there.

Gabriel lifted his eyes at last. "And what do you say?"

Grace met his gaze and, to her credit, didn't flinch. "I say boys who lay traps for a Blackwell girl and drag her bleeding into the woods are lucky if limping is all they carry away."

Something old and wild stretched inside him in response. Grace must have seen something in his face then, because her own expression shifted. She went completely still.

"Gabriel," she said carefully, "you did know all this, right?"

He didn't reply. Instead, he finally released the cup, gave one last glance at the black liquid, then set a few bills on the counter, more than the coffee cost.

"Thank you, Grace. For the coffee and the talk."

Grace's eyes flicked to the money, then back to him. "You heading home?"

Gabriel stood. "Have a nice day."

That was the only answer she got. Around them the diner continued in its low murmur. No one close enough to hear was pretending not to hear now. Gabriel noticed but didn't care.

Grace opened her mouth, then closed it. She didn't call after him.

The bell over the door rang again when he stepped back outside, letting the fresh air wash over him. He stood on the sidewalk for one second and looked down the length of the town.

They had lied to him. Not maliciously, perhaps, but enough to keep him calm. Enough to spare him and, maybe, to preserve what little of his mind had been coming back at the time. He understood why. He hated it anyway.

Kelsey had been hunted. Used. Dragged bleeding into the dark while he was falling apart in a barn. And the Greystone boy, of all people, had saved her life.

Gabriel's jaw clenched. Something under his skin moved once more, then stilled. He lifted his head and began to walk again, slower than anger wanted, steadier than instinct preferred. The snow kept melting around him, darkening the sidewalks, carrying winter away drop by drop.

By the time he turned back toward home, one thought had crystallized into intent. No more being handled. No more being protected from truth. And no more letting others decide what his daughters needed while he stood politely at the edge of their lives like a half-tamed beast.

Whatever came next, Gabriel Blackwell intended to meet it head on.