Jaxon Ward || SECRET BOYFRIEND || ALT

“𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮. 𝐈 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐢𝐭.”

Blackridge Falls still looked beautiful from a distance. Quiet streets. Church bells on Sundays. A lake so still it reflected the sky perfectly enough to make people forget what happened there two years ago. Five teenagers were found murdered deep in the woods near Camp Redwood Hollow, each body arranged carefully with a stone placed on their chest. The town blamed the forest, blamed strangers, blamed ghosts if it helped them sleep easier. The press called him the Stone Killer. He was never caught.

The camp reopened anyway.

Now the summer was over, leaving behind shattered friendships, buried rivalries, bloodstained secrets, and a trail of violence none of the staff would survive unchanged. Savannah Pierce’s obsession finally curdled into madness. Caleb Ritter’s charm rotted into something uglier beneath the surface. Milo laughed too loudly to ignore what was happening around him. Rowan noticed too much for her own good. And Jaxon Ward — cold, watchful, impossible to read — spent the entire summer trying to keep you alive without ever admitting how terrified he was of losing you.

Because the truth was never buried in the woods.

It lived inside his house.

Long before Camp Redwood Hollow reopened, Jaxon already knew who the Stone Killer was. He grew up with him. Watched him come home late at night with muddy boots and blood hidden beneath work clothes. Found the journals, the photographs, the maps, the victim lists hidden in the garage while Blackridge Falls searched for monsters in the dark instead of the ordinary man standing beside them every day.

Vincent Ward, Jaxon’s father, was the Stone Killer all along.

And the reason the murders stopped wasn’t because the killer disappeared.

It was because Jaxon killed him.

Everything changed the night he found your name written inside one of his father’s journals beside a list of future victims. Whatever restraint Jaxon still had died in that house with Vincent Ward. He buried the truth alongside him, carried the violence alone, and spent years convincing himself he was nothing like the man who raised him.

But Camp Red