Ghost Towns

Epilogue

The wind blew harsher up the hilltops than it ever did in the valley below. Ellie pushed her hair back for the millionth time, knowing it would only slither its way across her face with the next gust. And it was cold. Was the valley ever this cold? She couldn't remember.

As a young wolf, barely five years old, she had sat in the tiny handmade rocking chair next to the packhouse's hearth. She used to sway in time with the flames, focused for ten minutes before she'd be up and running to and fro again. Ellie had always been a little bit wild as a child. She felt very little of that reckless joy now.

The sky was overcast, which did not improve her mood. She looked down over the hillside, her eyes roaming over the bare tree branches and the dark shadows of evergreens. Her gaze sailed over the fields and traced the barely-visible glint of the stream curling its way between hills and groves of birches.

I want to go home, she thought, abruptly, as she turned subconsciously to the southeast.

Closing her eyes and tucking her hair back once again, she whirled around and set off for the trampled mud path that led down into the tiny bowl between the hilltops. In it lay Whitegrove, the temporary home of her friends and Pack.

What a foolish thought. Home is nothing but ashes in the dirt now, and the graves will be buried by snow soon.

When her mother was still alive, she used to tell Ellie stories in the dark. Some mothers sang their children to sleep, but Ellie always wanted something more...intense. More imaginative, more vivid, more melancholy. So her mother told her stories in the dark, when the packhouse was blowing its lamps out for the night.

Stories now were still being made. Jax had taken up the Alpha's seat, and Crescent Creek had been established again. Established as it was, it was not the same as before. She felt the urge to turn around and look one last time over the hillside. She resisted that urge. It would be the one to betray her eventually: the sick, strong, yearning for a home that had not existed for a very long time. This was a story with an ending she didn't yet know.

When Jax had re-built the pack, he knew it was a move that the Onyx could never ignore. They would never allow this banding together of outlaws they had isolated, and they would never let Jax, the heir of their defeated enemies, live much longer too. So, Jax's crew had relocated. For now. That was what Jax had said to placate them all, for now.

The path into Whitegrove was winding, and Ellie was glad. In a few minutes, it would surely begin to snow, and with the ground still warm with the memory of summer, snowflakes would all melt into a slick, wet, coating as they touched down. Though Whitegrove was not so low in a valley as the ancestral Crescent Creek and Onyx lands, the fall would still be steep enough to hurt.

The wind blew again, rushing past Ellie's ears and sending the dead branches of the trees into a clamor. She remembered the way it used to whistle in the rafters of the old Packhouse, the wood creaking with every gust of air. It had been an old building, with a century of history, and with centuries of stories to tell.

Mama's favourite story was not the one about the first wolf, nor the ones about war heroes and strong Alphas. Ellie's mother's favourite story was not one of the popular ones among young wolves, for all its lack of fighting and heroism and drama. Still, Ellie thought of it now as she walked, the silence of the woods making Mama's voice in her head all the more real.

Stray branches and the last of autumns leaves snapped under her feet, echoing the sound of the wood crackling in the fire all those years ago. Ellie could smell the same wood too, and she could just barely pick out the scent of smoke rising from the homes ahead.

So much had gone wrong since that day beside Mama. Seasons had come and gone, and Ellie had become someone her mother probably would not recognize. What else was waiting in the future? More loneliness? Homesickness? Heartbreak.

The first of the few houses in Whitegrove came into view between the evergreens, just as a gust stronger than any others of the evening shook the air. Her eyes watered, wind stung and dry from the cold. She blinked away the spots, squinting upwards, suddenly compelled to look at the sky...

Drifting from the malicious, dark clouds was a single spot of white. She held out her hand, transfixed by it, unable to look at anything else for that moment.

A single, perfect snowflake fell against her palm. For a moment it was crystalline, a spiderweb of patterned ice, intricate and delicate and very, very precise. And then it melted to a drop of water sitting in Ellie's palm.

She stared at her open hand for a long minute, even once the snowflake had gone. And then she turned in the direction of home once more, though it was obscured behind the hills, and her heart clenched like a fist inside her chest.

Her fingers folded one by one over the drop of cold water.

In the story, to catch the first snowflake of winter meant to find love before spring. Or heartbreak. Depending on who told the story, it was one or the other.

The safer option, Ellie thought, her fist balling up and falling to her side, is to believe in both. 

***

A/N: AND WE MADE IT TO THE END!!! 

I can't believe I actually finished this and it took me 2 years 😂😂 a win is a win though I will take that considering my commitment issues to writing projects. One day I may come back to edit and polish Ghost Towns but for now the goal is to just continue writing and practicing. 

ALSO: Stay tuned and check back for Territory Lines, the upcoming sequel to Ghost Towns. It will be duel POV and will follow Alex and Ellie (🤯). As with anything, practice improves skill, so you should expect Territory Lines to be much more intense plot-wise and better written. See you guys there 😎