The walk back to Millfield was a funeral procession for the old order. Lily moved between Sheriff Walker and Alex, her head bowed, the blanket Walker had produced pulled up to obscure her features. They entered through the station's back door, avoiding the main street. The "protective custody" cell was a stark, concrete room with a cot and a stainless-steel toilet. It felt like a betrayal, but Lily entered without complaint, sitting on the cot with the weary dignity of a deposed queen.
"I'll have Deputy Miller bring you food, clothes," Walker said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. "The doctor will be by later. He's… discreet."
Lily just nodded, pulling the blanket tighter.
Outside the cell, the station buzzed with a tense, confused energy. Deputy Miller kept shooting glances at the closed cell door, his face pale. The morning news on the small TV in the dispatch area was blathering about "unusual atmospheric pressure readings" and "animal distress calls" from the previous night, but no one had yet connected it to the sheriff's station.
Walker pulled Alex into her office and closed the blinds. "The first part is done. Now comes the hard part. Carver."
As if summoned, her desk phone rang. She put it on speaker. It was Mayor Vance, his voice a high-pitched warble of anxiety.
"Elena! What in God's name is going on? Jason Carver is in my office! He's saying there was a… an incident in the Blackwood last night! That you're harboring a… a contaminated individual! He's talking about federal agencies, quarantine zones!"
Walker's face hardened. "Richard, take a breath. Tell Mr. Carver that the individual in question is in my custody as part of an ongoing missing persons investigation. She is receiving medical attention. There is no 'contamination.' There was a tragic accident in the woods, which is under investigation. That is the official statement."
"He has pictures, Elena! Thermal images, sound recordings! He says it's a public health crisis!"
"Then he should submit his evidence through proper channels to the county health department and the state police," Walker said, her voice like iron. "Until then, this is a local law enforcement matter. Is that clear?"
There was a muffled argument on the other end, then Carver's smooth, cold voice came on the line. "Sheriff Walker. This obstruction is unwise. You are out of your depth. The being in your cell is not a girl. It is a biothreat. My foundation is prepared to provide every resource to safely contain and study it for the good of all."
"The person in my cell is Lily Greene, a missing citizen of Millfield," Walker stated, every word a brick in a wall. "Her health and legal rights are my concern. Your foundation's role, as I understand it, is geological survey. If you have evidence of a crime, present it. Otherwise, this conversation is over."
She hung up. The act was profoundly satisfying and utterly terrifying.
"He won't stop," Alex said. "He'll go over your head. To the state, to the Feds. He'll use the data he has, even if it's incomplete."
"I know," Walker sighed, rubbing her temples. "Which is why we don't have much time. We need to get ahead of his narrative. We need our own story. And it can't just be a cover-up. It has to be…" She struggled for the word.
"The truth," Alex finished. "Or a version of it people can survive. The Leaf-Speaker talked about healing the rift. That starts with the town. They've lived in fear of the Blackwood for centuries. They need to see that the fear is real, but the monster isn't what they think."
"You want me to hold a town hall and tell them werewolves are real and the trees are angry?" Walker asked, incredulous.
"No," Alex said, an idea forming, reckless and necessary. "I want them to tell you."
The Millfield Historical Society meeting was scheduled for that evening in the town hall basement—the same room adjacent to the archives. It was a mundane event, usually attended by a dozen elderly residents for stale cookies and presentations on local quilting patterns. Tonight, it was packed.
Word had spread. Not the truth, but a tremor of it. The strange night, the sheriff's sudden activity, the rumor of Lily Greene being found "changed." The air in the low-ceilinged room was thick with anxious curiosity and the smell of old wool and coffee.
Thomas Jenkins sat in the back, a silent, imposing presence. Sebastian Blackwood was notably absent. Sheriff Walker stood at the front, not in uniform, but in a plain jacket, her authority softened but present. Alex stood beside her, not as a speaker, but as a witness.
Walker didn't begin with charts or announcements. She simply said, "Many of you felt something last night. Many of you have heard rumors about Lily Greene. Many of you have lived in this town your whole lives and know there are… stories. About the Blackwood. I'm here tonight to listen to those stories."
A stunned silence followed. Then, old Mrs. Henderson from the general store stood up, her hands trembling. "My granddaddy… he said he saw a wolf walk on two legs back in '38. Near the old quarry. They found a missing trapper the next day… or parts of him."
Once the first stone was removed, the dam broke. A farmer spoke of cattle found drained of blood with wounds no bear or coyote made in the '70s. The librarian, Mrs. Gable, mentioned the odd gaps in the town records, the repeated "lost in the woods" notations for certain families. A middle-aged man, voice thick with shame, confessed that his brother had "gone strange" after a camping trip in '98 and was sent to a "special hospital" and never came back. Michael Greene's brother.
They weren't confessing to a secret they'd kept. They were confessing to a fear they'd individually swallowed, thinking they were alone in their madness. The "Safety Committee" had been so effective because it had made each incident feel like a private tragedy, not a pattern.
As the stories poured out—a cascade of half-remembered horrors and family secrets—the mood in the room shifted from anxiety to a raw, collective catharsis. These people weren't monsters; they were victims of the same silence.
Then, Jenkins stood up. The room went quiet. He was a known quantity, the town cynic, the keeper of odd lore.
"You all know me," he said, his voice gravelly but clear. "You know I don't sugarcoat. The stories are true. The Beast is real. The curse is real. It's in the Blackwood blood, and it can spread. But it ain't what you think." He took a deep breath. "My sister, Elara. She was taken by it. Not killed. Changed. The old Committee, the one your fathers and grandfathers were on, they 'treated' her. They put her in the ground to keep the secret safe." A ripple of shock went through the room. "But there's a new 'Committee' now. From outside. They don't want to hide it. They want to own it. To cut it open and sell the pieces. And they'll burn this town and everyone in it to ashes to get it."
He pointed a calloused finger at Alex. "This man came here running from his own ghosts. He found ours. And last night, at the Stone Circle, he didn't run. He stood between us and the thing in the woods, and he talked to it. And the thing… it listened."
All eyes turned to Alex. The outsider. The journalist.
"The forest isn't just a place," Alex said, stepping forward, finding the thread of the story he needed to tell. "It's… aware. It made a promise with the first settlers, with the Blackwood family. A promise to share this land, to contain the curse within its bloodline, in exchange for peace. We've all been living in the shadow of that promise, and we've all broken it. With our fear, our silence, our willingness to look the other way when people disappeared. The Covenant, Carver's people, they didn't create the problem. They're just the latest, most dangerous symptom of it."
He paused, letting the immensity of it sink in. "Lily Greene is in a cell downstairs. She's alive. But she's been touched by the curse. She's the proof. Not of a monster, but of a broken promise. The forest is angry, and scared, and it's finally said: 'Enough.' We can keep hiding, and let Carver come in with his lawyers and his soldiers and take everything—our land, our history, our neighbors—and turn it into a experiment. Or…"
He looked around the room, at the frightened, familiar faces of Millfield. "Or we can try to keep the promise. For real this time. Not a secret compact, but an open one. To face what's in the woods, not as a thing to be feared or owned, but as a part of this place we have to learn to live with. To help the Lilys, not hide them. To stand together, so no one from outside can ever again use our fear against us."
The silence that followed was different. It wasn't the silence of fear, but of profound, terrifying consideration. He was asking them to step out of the comfortable, familiar darkness of superstition and into the blinding, uncertain light of a terrible truth.
An elderly man stood up—Old Man Peters, who ran the hardware store. His voice was quavery but firm. "My boy… he went into those woods in '65. Never came out. We said it was a hunting accident." He looked at Sheriff Walker. "Is he… down there too? In one of them tunnels?"
Walker met his gaze, her professionalism the only anchor in the storm. "I don't know, Carl. But I promise you this: starting today, there will be no more secrets in the dark. We will find out. And we will face it. As a town."
It was not a unanimous decision. There were angry shouts, cries of "Preposterous!" and "Blasphemy!". But there were also nods, tears, the slow dawning of a grim, shared resolve. The unraveling had begun. The compromise of silence was torn beyond repair.
As the meeting broke up into hushed, frantic clusters, Walker pulled Alex aside. "That was either the bravest or stupidest thing I've ever seen."
"Probably both," Alex admitted, his hands still trembling. "What now?"
"Now," she said, watching the townspeople file out, their world forever altered, "we see if the truth really does set you free. Or if it just gets you eaten by a different kind of wolf."
The story was out. The town was awake. And the fragile alliance between a sheriff, a journalist, an old soldier, a cursed family, and an ancient forest now had to face its first real test: daylight, and the court of public opinion that Carver was doubtlessly already convening. The unraveling was complete. Now, they had to weave something new from the tangled threads, and they had to do it before the outside world descended to burn the whole loom.