Chapter 9: The Truth Starts To Come Out

Your life will never be normal again.

Those words, spoken with brutal, quiet certainty by the man who had been dead for two years, echoed in the hollow space of my mind. They weren't a warning; they were a statement of fact, already proven true the moment I saw him standing in my living room.

I worked quickly, mechanically. My large suitcase—the one usually reserved for weeks-long photography assignments—lay open on the bed. My movements were a blur of efficiency as I filled it: first, my essential camera equipment, nestled safely in protective foam; then a small, tightly rolled stack of my most comfortable, durable clothes; finally, a dozen or so reference books—the ones on ancient rituals, local folklore, and criminal profiling that had become my lonely companions over the last twenty-four months.

What could he possibly mean? And why was I so unnervingly calm in accepting the absolute impossibility staring me in the face? Alex, my Alex, was back. Not only had he returned, but he had never actually been dead. The funeral, the identified body, the two years of soul-crushing grief—all of it had been a calculated lie. But by whom?

A terrifying sense of clarity had descended after the initial shock. The emotional dam had broken, but instead of the flood of tears or hysteria I should have felt, I was filled with a cold, singular focus. Anger. Anger at the unknown forces that had stolen him, anger at the lie, and a fierce, possessive joy that he was real.

So, where had he been all this time?

Two years. Two years of silence, two years of searching for a killer who didn't exist, two years of battling Detective Ote and the shadows of my parents' unsolved case. Alex had been somewhere—learning secrets, acquiring danger, and becoming the altered, charged man who smelled of cedar and ozone.

I slammed the suitcase shut, the heavy click of the latches sounding like a final break with my old life. I wasn't just following Alex into danger; I was running toward the answers only he could provide. The fact that he was alive and standing downstairs meant that everything I thought I knew about death, love, and reality was wrong. And if my life was no longer normal, then perhaps the rules of the world no longer applied to me either. I was ready to embrace the abnormal if it meant keeping him close.

I grabbed the handle of the heavy suitcase, the weight grounding me, and walked out the door. The fight was about to begin.

I turned around and headed for the door, my focus absolute, the heavy suitcase rolling obediently behind me. We needed to move, and every second we spent inside this house was a risk. But as soon as I reached the archway and pulled the door open, I was stopped dead in my tracks by Alex.

He was standing right there, blocking the exit, his body leaning against the frame. He shifted his weight nervously, the intensity in his eyes flickering with an unfamiliar anxiety.

"I... erm..." He started, rubbing the back of his jet-black hair awkwardly, a gesture from his past that looked completely out of place on the man he had become.

"Thought we were in a rush," I muttered, my voice tight with forced calm. I tried to push past him, attempting to wedge my suitcase through the narrow opening, but his once flexible, easygoing body had been replaced with a chiselled, hardened barrier that refused to budge. The firmness of his arm, which he held up to stop the door, was shocking.

"We are," he said, his voice low, "but I also feel like we need to talk. Alone." He glanced back toward the living room where my uncle was no doubt gathering supplies or watching the street.

I dropped the handle of the suitcase. All the frantic efficiency drained out of me, replaced by the white-hot surge of two years' worth of suppressed pain and betrayal.

"Now?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet, trembling on the edge of a shout. "You had two years to come find me and talk to me. Two years while I was fighting Ote, trying to clear your name, visiting your grave—a faked grave, Alex! So tell me, why rush it now? Why is this the moment for a heart-to-heart?"

"Because I feel that once we get where I am taking you, you may not feel the desire to talk to me."

"Like right now?"

"Please.. look, these last two years haven't been hard on just you, you know. My wolf and I have been pinning after you, too."

My head whipped up, "wolf? What wolf?" I ask

Before Alex could formulate an answer, we both heard the unmistakable sound of a car door slamming shut outside, followed by the rapid thud of heavy boots on the front lawn.

"They're here," Alex spat, the darkness flaring in his eyes once more. His hesitation—the need to talk—had just cost us precious seconds. He abandoned the door frame instantly, grabbing my arm with a grip of steel. "No more questions, Danny. We move now."

He didn't wait for my response. The moment his fingers closed around my forearm, he hauled me and the suitcase backward with a brute, unnatural strength. My uncle, appearing instantly from the living room doorway with a small, worn leather bag slung over his shoulder, didn't hesitate.

"Go! Get the car running!" Uncle shouted, already covering our retreat.

Alex didn't head for the back door; he shoved me toward the kitchen window, wrenching the old sash up in a single, loud scrape that drew a sharp curse from my uncle.

"The driveway is exposed!" Alex barked, his voice stripped of all emotion except tactical command. "They'll be watching the street entrance. We go through the yard!"

He kicked out the remaining glass pane, sending the curtain flapping wildly, and vaulted through the narrow opening with impossible speed and grace. The metallic scent of ozone spiked as he disappeared.

"Move, Danny!" Uncle urged, giving me a hard push.

I scrambled through the window, landing clumsily on the soft earth of the garden bed. Alex was already at the edge of the tall privacy fence, his shoulders bunched. Without a word, he hoisted the heavy suitcase over the six-foot barrier as if it were a feather, then braced himself.

"Climb!" he ordered.

I threw my leg over the top, and before I could gain purchase, Alex grabbed my ankle, effectively launching me over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. I landed hard, gasping for breath. Uncle landed beside me a second later, having used the wooden railing of the fence like a horizontal ladder.

"Your car keys, now!" Alex demanded, his hand outstretched.

I fumbled for the keys in my jacket pocket, tossing them to him. He caught them mid-air and sprinted toward the back corner of the complex, where my car was parked in the shared, unlit overflow lot. We reached it seconds later.

Alex didn't use the key fob; he was already yanking the driver-side door open. He threw the suitcase into the back seat without looking and slid behind the wheel. Uncle and I piled into the passenger seats just as the beam of a high-powered flashlight swept across the facade of my house.

"Buckle up," Alex muttered, jamming the key into the ignition.

He wrenched the steering wheel hard, sending my car screeching backward out of the space and into the dark alley, missing the neighbor’s trash cans by inches. We drove in absolute silence for the first five minutes—a high-speed, heart-pounding blur through winding residential streets and red lights.

"Where are we going?" I managed, my voice shaking.

"Somewhere they can't track us. Somewhere that doesn't show up on a map," Alex said, his eyes scanning the rear-view mirror for headlights. "An old place. Isolated. It's built for... for people like me. A place called The Hidden Hearth."

He veered sharply off the main highway, taking a road that immediately degraded into rough gravel, forcing us deep into an ancient-looking forest. Soon, the trees closed in, swallowing the last vestiges of city light. The darkness was absolute, save for the twin beams of my headlights bouncing wildly off gnarled, moss-covered trunks. The air changed, growing cold and carrying the distinct, familiar scent of old earth and deep cedar—a scent that now felt both dangerous and profoundly right.

After what felt like an hour of jarring, relentless driving, the trees parted. A small, unpaved track opened up, leading toward a collection of low, rustic stone and timber buildings clustered beneath the canopy—a village seemingly untouched by the modern world.

Alex slowed the car, finally allowing himself a quick, assessing glance at me in the mirror. "Welcome, Danny," he said, the ghost of his old smile briefly touching his lips. "Welcome to the real fight."