The Pact Of Five

The Counting

Chapter 4

I locked the door.

Then I unlocked it, because the click sounded too much like a coffin lid closing. Then I locked it again. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

The house had gone quiet in that predatory way old houses do when they're holding their breath. I pressed my ear to the wood—nothing from the hallway. Nothing from downstairs. Just the thud of my own pulse, loud as a drum, counting down seconds I couldn't see.

Twenty-eight days. Twenty-eight days. Twenty-eight days.

I pushed away from the door and paced. Three steps to my dresser. Three steps back. The mirror caught my reflection and I barely recognized myself—cheeks flushed, lips bitten red, eyes too bright, too wild. The white bikini peeked through the gap in my linen shirt. I looked like a girl who'd been touched by fire and hadn't decided if she wanted to burn.

I needed a shower. I needed to scrub Jax's handprint from my hip, Zane's grief from my chest, Knox's shadow from my spine.

I grabbed clean clothes from my drawer—soft cotton, loose, armor that wouldn't work—and headed for the bathroom across the hall. The hallway stretched long and dim, morning light filtering through curtains that hadn't been opened. I moved fast, hugging the wall, every shadow a potential shape.

The bathroom was empty. White tile. Steam still clinging to the mirror from someone else's shower. I turned the water as hot as I could stand and stepped under the spray, letting it pound against my shoulders, my neck, the back of my skull.

It didn't help.

I saw Jax's grin behind my closed eyes. Felt Zane's trembling hand in the air between us. Heard Knox's whisper from the night before—You're not a kid anymore—echoing in the hollow places of my ribs.

I stayed under the water until my fingers wrinkled and my skin turned pink. Until the water ran cold and I was shivering for a different reason.

When I stepped out, the bathroom felt different. Smaller. I wrapped myself in a towel and opened the door to the hallway, and the scent hit me immediately.

Cedar. Smoke. Knox.

He'd been here. Recently. The air still held his warmth, his weight. I stood frozen in the hallway, dripping on the hardwood, my heart a trapped bird.

My bedroom door was open.

I knew I'd closed it. I'd heard the latch click. But now it stood ajar, just an inch, just enough to see the darkness inside and something pale on my pillow.

I didn't want to go in.

I went in anyway.

The room was exactly as I'd left it—bed unmade, black dress crumpled on the floor, window cracked open to let in the humid morning air. But on my pillow, placed dead center like an offering or a warning, lay a folded square of paper.

My name was on the front.

Not my full name. Just Mouse. In handwriting I didn't recognize—sharp, slanted, aggressive. The ink had bled slightly into the paper's fibers, like whoever wrote it had pressed too hard.

I picked it up with two fingers. The paper was thick, expensive. The kind you didn't find in Damon's desk drawer. I unfolded it slowly, each crease a whisper.

Inside, five words.

We're counting down. All of us.

Below them, five tally marks. Four straight lines, one diagonal s***h through them. Then a second group of five. Then a third, incomplete—three lines, waiting for the fourth and fifth.

Eighteen marks total.

I counted them twice. Then a third time, my stomach sinking with each pass.

Eighteen.

But the pact was twenty-nine days yesterday. Twenty-eight this morning. That meant—

Someone had started counting before last night.

Someone had been marking days long before I came home.

The paper fell from my fingers. It drifted to the floor, landing face-up, the tally marks staring at me like wounds. I backed away until my calves hit the bed, and I sat down hard, the towel slipping from my grip.

They'd been watching me. Not just since dinner. Not just since I walked into the dining room in my black dress. For weeks. Months. Maybe longer.

The window creaked.

I spun around, clutching the towel to my chest. The curtain moved, stirred by a breeze I hadn't felt before. And on the windowsill, placed with deliberate care, sat a single red rose.

The thorns hadn't been removed.

I didn't touch it. I couldn't. My blood felt too thin, my bones too fragile. The rose was deep crimson, almost black in the shadows, and it smelled like nothing. Like wax. Like a promise of blood.

A sound from downstairs. The front door opening, then closing. Voices—Damon's, then Cole's, low and serious. Then footsteps on the stairs. Multiple pairs. Coming closer.

I grabbed the note from the floor and shoved it into my dresser drawer. I kicked the rose behind my curtain, out of sight. I pulled on my clothes—cotton shorts, oversized T-shirt—so fast I nearly tore the fabric.

The footsteps stopped outside my door.

A knock. Three sharp raps.

"Mouse?" Micah's voice. Warm. Deceptively gentle. "You in there?"

I didn't answer. I stood in the center of my room, the note burning in my drawer, the rose hidden behind velvet, my heart trying to escape through my throat.

"Mouse." Again. Closer. "Damon wants us all downstairs. Family meeting."

Family. The word felt obscene now. We weren't family. We were five wolves and a lamb, and the fence was coming down.

"I'll be down in a minute," I called. My voice sounded strange. Too high. Too thin.

Silence from the other side. Then: "You okay? You sound... off."

Off. Yes. I was off. I was floating in a space between terror and something darker, something that felt dangerously like want.

"I'm fine," I lied. "Just getting dressed."

Another pause. I could picture him there, broad shoulders filling the doorframe, dimples hiding the darkness in his eyes. I could picture his hand on the knob, deciding whether to trust me.

"Five minutes," he said finally. "Don't make me come get you."

I heard him walk away. Waited until his footsteps faded. Then I crossed to the window and grabbed the rose.

The thorns bit into my palm. I welcomed the pain—it was clean, honest, something I could understand. I held the flower up to the light. Deep inside the petals, tucked almost invisibly, I found a second note. Smaller. Folded into a tight square.

I unfolded it with shaking, bleeding fingers.

One word this time.

Soon.

No signature. No tally marks. Just soon, written in the same sharp, slanted hand.

I knew the handwriting. I'd seen it before. On birthday cards when I was thirteen. On the label of a book he'd lent me once. On the corner of a photograph Damon kept in his wallet—Knox at seventeen, scowling at the camera, looking like he already knew every secret in the world.

I dropped the rose into my wastebasket. The thorns left thin red lines across my palm. I pressed my bleeding hand to my chest and stared at the closed door, listening to the house breathe around me.

They were counting.

All of them.

And the worst part—the part that made my knees weak and my vision blur—was that I was starting to count too.

Downstairs, the voices rose and fell like a tide. Damon's, commanding. Cole's, clipped. Jax's, laughing at something that wasn't funny. Zane's, quiet as a held breath. Knox's—

Knox wasn't speaking.

But I knew he was there. I could feel him the way you feel a storm before it breaks. The way prey feels the wolf.

I looked at my palm. The blood had slowed to a thin smear. I wiped it on my shorts and walked to the door.

Twenty-seven marks on a hidden tally. A rose with teeth. A whisper in the dark.

I opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

The countdown had begun.