Page 175

He goes back to his computer and taps the keys.

The minutes drag as the pressure keeps building in my brain.

“Nothing I see,” he says, turning back from the screen.

I pull my field notebook in front of me and flip backward through weeks of handwriting. Pages of Theo, Ezra, and my questions until I reach the inside cover. I run my thumb beneath Theo’s inscription once, then I turn to a clean page.

Before the failed ritual: functioning release road.

During it: rules broken, tooth heats, impossible water movement.

After it: grief spreads, people hear voices, bonds hurt without cause, the route shifts.

I stare at the three lines. It’s a map, but I’ve been thinking about it wrong. It’s not a map of where to go. It shows what changed. “Oh.”

Ezra swivels toward me. “Pepper?”

“Not yet.” I wave him off as I grab the public Everlasting Pack story. It says their love could never be broken. It uses phrases like “Nothing could separate them,” and “the beloved always finds the road home.”

The town has repeated that story for generations. We made a romance festival and created an entire identity around love that never lets go.

I place the folklore beside the keeper warning. The wound spreads through water, root, promise, and story. “Damn!”

Theo comes closer. “What did you find?”

“The story changed too.” I point between the accounts. “The original story wasn’t a love story at all. It was a warning from the town keepers about the failed release.”

Ezra watches the pages move beneath my hands.

“All the weird bond troubles started after the ritual,” I say. “Susannah lived but there was a cost. Afterward, her alpha heard her calling from the water, her beta dreamed the road while awake, and other packs near the old channel began feeling grief that wasn’t theirs. Their failed release changed the road.” I drag Scarlet’s notes and Ezra’s logs beside the open notebook. “And the same pattern is still happening.”

I list them off in my head. Scarlet sees memories that are not hers. Ezra dreams a ritual he never witnessed. Bonds distort near the route. The cemetery bell rings without wind. GatorX damage becomes worse along old water and ritual paths.

“Pepper,” Ezra says, more urgently this time, “mind sharing with the class?”

“Almost. I need one more minute.” I move the dates again.

The old path. Then the failed ritual. Next the first impossible reports. Modern bond failures. The conclusion rises so fast I nearly laugh.

“Oh, oh, oh. I think I get it.”

“Pepper,” Theo says.

“The ritual didn’t just fail.” I turn to face them. “It damaged something.”

Ezra’s brows draw together. “What?”

“The route. The land around it. Maybe the water system carrying it through town. I’m not sure how far it spreads.” I point at the later keeper account. “The impossible effects begin after Susannah’s failed release. Their grief and fear don’t stay with just the three of them. They seep into the water, the land, and everyone living near the swamp.”

Theo looks toward the dark window facing the channel. “The land carried the holding,” he says, remembering the line.

“Yes.” I grab the page. “I think the land absorbed what happened.” My words race faster. “Susannah’s bond is already full of pain. She uses the lily compound to soften it. Her alpha brings a carved protective object into a place built for release. Then he crosses the boundary line and her beta calls. Susannah turns around, and they hold her, terrified.”

“And all that leaks into the ritual they started,” Ezra says.

“Yes, and I think the land absorbed the pain.”

The house knocks inside the wall. The bell tolls somewhere beyond the windows. Everything in Sweetheart Haven suddenly looks like one enormous answer.