[BOOK 6] 10 YEARS LATER...
Ten years ago, Aspen left Beacon Hills for good and never once looked back. The pack had mostly gone their separate ways over the years, living in all different parts of the country. But what brings them all back together...
The elevator doors finally opened, and she grabbed her key from her other pocket and headed into the apartment, closing the door behind her.
She turned on the big light as she set her handbag down on the counter. She headed to the bathroom first, slipping out of her trench coat and draping it over the couch.
As she opened the door to the bathroom, it was dark and lightless. Her hand reached for the light switch, but she hesitated, suddenly feeling fear again. Ever since she saw that blood-red message on her mirror last week, it had been engraved in her mind ever since. Every time she blinked, she saw it again— MURDERER.
She decided to go to the bathroom in the dark, there was enough light from the moonlight peeking in through the blurred windows, and she was frankly scared to turn the light on and see another message left on the mirror. She avoided even looking at it.
But then as she flushed the toilet, she needed to wash her hands, which meant she had to go to the sink— the mirror.
She had forgotten that their bathroom mirror had an automatic LED light that was motion-detected. So as she turned on the sink and started to wash her hands, she jumped slightly as she was slightly blinded by the bright light. She was so jumpy that it made her look up and into the mirror.
And it seemed it wasn't just paranoia— because there it was, another message written all over the mirror.
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Aspen jumped back, the tap still running being the only sound in the room other than the rapid thumping of her heartbeat inside her chest. She blinked rapidly over and over again, thinking maybe she was just hallucinating it, maybe she really was losing her mind and going crazy all over again, imagining things that weren't there.
But no matter how many times she blinked, every time she opened her eyes again, it was still there.
She wasn't imagining this. The feeling of her being watched? That wasn't her paranoia.
Stiles' words from last week kept replaying in her mind—"You. They want you dead, Aspen."
Running away was a powerful instinct. She hadn't been in touch with this part of herself in ten years—the part of her that wasn't like normal people like Jordan, the part of her that was hunted, the part of her that made enemies.
Aspen held back scared tears as she hurriedly opened the cabinet under the sink and grabbed a flannel, running it under the tap so she could scrub that message off the wall before Jordan got home and saw it.
She knew she couldn't keep this from him for much longer—it was the reason she'd been putting off setting a date for their wedding for so long. He didn't know that the woman he wanted to marry had enemies out there in the world, he didn't know about her past or who she was before she met him.
Marrying him might put him in danger—especially now.
Aspen quickly and panickedly began to scrub the writing off the mirror, shaking her head as she felt her throat begin to tighten up, not wanting to really process the words of the message.
