Chapter 11: The Door Between Us
1218 Words
Layla – POV
For a second, all I could hear was my heartbeat—thunderous, unrelenting, like a war drum echoing in a canyon. It pounded against my ribs like it knew something I didn’t.
Like it was warning me.
The hallway was too still. Too silent.
The floorboards creaked faintly beneath my bare feet, even though I hadn’t moved in minutes.
I stood pinned to the wall like a shadow, trying not to exist, the wallpaper cool and peeling behind my back.
The air smelled like old candlewax and dust, heavy with something unspoken.
Then his voice came through the door—smooth, calm, but wrapped around something ancient and sharp, like silk pulled tight over broken glass.
“You don't have to answer. I don't expect you to. But I know you're there.”
My breath caught. I hadn’t made a sound. Not a shift. Not a whisper.
How the hell did he know?
“You’ve probably been told to fear me. That I’m dangerous. That I’m not to be trusted.”
No. I hadn’t been told anything.
No whispered warnings. No forbidden letters hidden in books.
No dramatic kitchen-table confessions over tea.
Nothing...
Gran never sat me down.
She never said I was different.
She barely spoke of the past.
As long as I could remember, it was just the two of us.
But somehow, despite the warm meals and hand-stitched quilts,
I grew up in a house full of ghosts.
I grew up in the quiet gaps between half-truths.
In the way she clutched her rosary until the beads left bruises.
In how her voice always faltered when I asked about my mother.
Or where we came from. Or why I sometimes woke up crying from dreams I didn’t understand.
“...They’re right. About all of that,” he said, almost lightly. “But they left a few things out.”
I stared at the doorknob.
My hand trembled inches from it.
The brass was cold, almost too cold—as if it had been touched by winter.
Sweat trickled down my spine.
Don’t open it, my gut hissed.
Don’t engage. Don’t listen.
But curiosity pressed against my ribs like a second heartbeat.
The kind you obey without knowing why.
“Do you know the name Thalia?”
I blinked. That name—
I’d seen it once.
Faded ink.
Torn envelope.
Forgotten.
Shoved into a dusty box in the shed.
I’d almost thrown it away.
Almost.
But something made me keep it.
I slid it between the pages of my sketchbook like a pressed flower.
“Of course you do. You dream of her sometimes, don’t you? A woman in grey. Eyes full of fire. Eerily similar to yours…”
A breath hitched in my chest.
How did he know that?
How did he know about the dreams I never told anyone about?
Waves crashing against jagged cliffs. A woman cloaked in stormlight. Her voice—familiar, aching—gone when I woke.
How did he know about my eyes?
I couldn’t see him.
But has he seen me?
Was he watching me?
“She was your twelfth great-grandmother. The first Keeper of the Pact that was made with the wolves.”
Pact. Wolves.
What was this?
A prank?
“Your lineage,” he added, and this time, his voice dipped—quieter, reverent.
Like someone remembering a prayer they no longer believed in.
Like someone mourning a name they used to carry.
“My lineage…” I whispered, though the words barely escaped. “My lineage is…”
I never finished...
Because my family tree wasn’t a tree.
It was a burned field.
No roots. No branches.
Just ash and silence.
“I'm sure you know the story.
She ran. South Africa. Wolves. Secrets. The blood oath. —at least, the one side of the story they allowed you to know.”
I wanted to scream.
To tell him he had the wrong girl.
That I was just Layla.
Ordinary. Unremarkable. Bad at math. Allergic to dairy. Uncomfortable with eye contact.
“I don’t blame her. Running is a kind of courage, too. But it’s not yours, is it?”
I clenched my jaw.
Fingernails digging into palm. The metallic tang of blood in my mouth.
I'm not some heir to ancient pacts or blood-soaked legacies.
I'm not who he thinks I am...
But I didn’t say anything.
Because some bone-deep part of me knew he didn’t have the wrong girl.
“They never told you about Alina, did they?”
The name hit differently.
Alina.
It unraveled something under my skin.
“She was Thalia’s sister. She stayed behind. She watched the others burn. She made a different kind of pact. And she paid for it.”
Burn. Pact. Sisters.
This wasn’t real.
“I am what remains of her line,” the voice said. “Of the witches who stayed.”
Witches.
The word scratched across my ears like broken glass.
Made me flinch. Like it might set the air around me on fire.
“This is madness,” I said aloud. “Magic isn’t real.”
Not in my world.
Magic was fiction.
Filters.
Pinterest boards.
Storybooks.
Not in my blood.
“I am the last Keeper of the Old Pact. And you—you, Layla—are the end of the new one.”
My legs gave out.
I slid down the wall, knees to chest, floor cold against my skin.
"The end of what?" My voice was barely a whisper.
“The blood in you is old. Woven. Torn between wolves and witches. And you’ve felt it, haven’t you? The pull. The knowing. The dreams. The hunger.”
I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to slow the pounding.
But he wasn’t wrong.
The dreams. The way animals stared at me.
The instinct to run under moonlight.
The sick certainty when someone was lying.
The moments where I just… knew.
I buried those things.
Labeled them weird.
Hormones.
Anxiety.
But now he was naming them. Dragging them into the light.
“It’s not your imagination,” he said, gently now. “That’s your inheritance.”
Tears stung. My chest felt tight. Small. Fragile.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he added. “That would be wasteful.”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
Was that supposed to make me feel better?
“I’m here to wake you up.”
My fingers brushed the rug beneath me—soft, worn, familiar.
“Sooner or later, you’ll open that door,” he said, his voice like a lullaby wrapped in knives.
“Maybe not tonight. Maybe not next week. But you will.”
I didn’t move.
“And when you do… We’ll talk. About Thalia. About the blood oath. About the Pact.”
He posed for just a moment before continuing.
“About what you really are.”
And then, softer than breath:
“Sleep well, Layla.”
His footsteps retreated.
Measured. Unhurried. Like he had all the time in the world.
The silence he left behind was suffocating.
I sat there until the candle on the windowsill guttered out.
Only melted wax remained, the scent of lavender clinging to the dark.
I didn’t move.
Even when the sun rose.
Even then—
I didn’t open the door.
- Writer
