Being hand delivered to my Gran in a police car might have been the highlight of my life.
Bloodied, a little bruised and almost black out exhausted, Gran accepted me gratefully from the nice policeman. She listened whilst he told her the whole, sordid PG 13 version of tonight's events- like how I was chased around my new high school by a crazed murderer. She even thanked him with a gracious smile, giving him a little 'God bless you' as he tipped his hat to her, called her ma'am, and then got in his cruiser and left.
Once the door was closed however, well, that was really when all hell broke loose. The screaming, the shouting, the scolding, the prayers to a God who seemed to always have a cheeky bit of selective hearing when it came to her eternal inferno destined granddaughter.
Unsure of whether she could believe my version of events (wrong place, wrong time, I'm innocent Granny), Gran eventually talked herself in circles. It was hard to tell who she was angry at to be totally honest; me for being chased by a crazed murderer, said crazed murderer for chasing me, or herself for not sending me away to catholic boarding school when she had the chance.
Sometime after the old grandfather clock struck two, she finally gave in and tabled the discussion for the morning. There was a bit of an odd moment where, for a split second as we stared at each other, the fight having completely left us, I thought that she might hug me.
She sort of, advanced in a way which I instinctively perceived as a threat, so dodged round her and we settled for an awkward pat on the shoulder as I passed her on the way out of the living room.
I took the stairs like a woman fresh out of a hip replacement and staggered into my room a different person from when I'd left earlier this evening. Despite my exhausted body, my mind was racing, trying to collate everything that I had witnessed tonight.
The second that we had left the school threshold, I had been whisked away to be seen to by a paramedic, as a worrying amount of blood had stained my white t-shirt. I was pretty confident that most of it was mine but had a grim suspicion that at least a little was Derek's.
I tried to keep Scott and Stiles in sight as they talked to the Sheriff, but I was quickly approached by another police officer to give a statement. I thought that I had maybe seen the Vet at one point, but I couldn't be sure that my tired mind wasn't playing tricks on me. I had barely had time to wave goodbye to the boys before I was bundled into a cruiser and shipped home.
I collapsed onto my bed, groaning as my body finally stopped moving for the first time all night and I was able to feel every little ache and pain. I shifted slightly and dug around in my jeans pocket, eventually pulling out my phone.
Whilst everyone had been at the window, calling out to the police, I had quickly broken into Harris' drawers and snatched my phone back. I figured under the circumstances, he wouldn't mind the early release.
The time on my phone was 02:36, which meant that I had twenty-four minutes until my call with Maggs. The witching hour gag had seemed really funny hours ago, before I had spent the evening running for my life and being thrown into rooms. Now, I had to desperately find a way to keep myself awake until then.
I noticed the little message icon was flashing at me and I clicked into it. There was a text from an unsaved number and my heart began to quicken as I opened it.
'Are you safe?'
I stared at the message on the screen, willing it to give me something more than just three words. Who the hell would-
I gasped quietly as it dawned on me. The only other person than Stiles in Beacon Hills who had my phone number was Derek Hale.
'Derek?' I texted back and waited with bated breath for a reply.
'Are you safe?' popped up on my screen again and it took me a second to work out that it wasn't the same message. That was as good as any confirmation for me that it was Derek. Come to think of it, it was probably incredibly wise that he wasn't being specific over text. He was currently the most wanted man in the county.
'All safe. Ring if you need anything.' I typed back. As an afterthought, I added 'sorry' onto the end of the text. It was after all, our fault that he was in this situation.
When my phone didn't ping again for a few minutes, I checked the time and groaned when I realised I still had twenty minutes to kill.
So, I rang Stiles. He picked up instantly.
"Are you alone?" I asked in lieu of a hello. It felt like a waste of time after tonight.
"Yeah," he answered. "Are you?"
"Yes." I exhaled deeply. "Okay, fill me in. What did I miss?"
Stiles chuckled. "Always right to business with you."
"Business first, pleasure later," I answered flippantly and then balked when I realised what I had said. My cheeks burned red, and I rolled over so that I could bury my face in my pillow.
Kill me.
I heard Stiles clear his throat and then continue, his voice a little uneven. "We told dad about the janitor, but they haven't been able to find his body yet. It's hurting our credibility a little."
"Our credibility will be restored when he just magically never turns up for work again," I dismissed. The janitor ranked incredibly low on my list of concerns right now. "What about Derek- do they have any leads?"
Stiles sighed. "No, no leads yet. His car was gone from out the front but that could mean anything. The Alpha might have used it as a getaway car."
I stayed silent, unsure as to why I wasn't immediately offering up the information that Derek had texted me. That he was alive.
"Speaking of the Alpha," Stiles said, sounding off. I shifted into a more comfortable position and frowned, curious as to what had him spooked.
"Go on," I pressed when he didn't immediately continue.
"Scott thinks he's worked out what the Alpha is really after," he said slowly.
"Oh, so you mean this entire thing wasn't as cut and dry as everyone thought, and Winona was right about there being ulterior motives?" I teased.
"You're going to wish you weren't," he replied humourlessly.
The smile slipped off my face.
"The Alpha wants Scott in his pack. He wants him to join him."
"Okay," I said. "That's not far off what we all thought was going on though, is it?"
"No," Stiles conceded. "But him wanting Scott to kill off his old pack first was a little out of left field."
My heart dropped into my stomach.
"What?" I said quietly, my hands beginning to tremble slightly.
"Yeah, it's not ideal," Stiles replied. "But you know, I think we can work through it as a group."
"We can work through Scott being pushed into killing us all?" I repeated and Stiles snorted.
"I'm sure counsellors have seen worse," he said lightly.
Despite the circumstances, I struggled not to laugh as well. This entire thing was absolutely absurd. But maybe it wasn't all bad. Maybe we would be okay.
"Nice punch by the way," I commented, a small smile on my lips as I replayed the decking of the century.
Stiles groaned. "I'm gonna be toast for that on Monday, I just know it. God only knows why Jackson didn't kill me there and then."
"He was scared," I said. "Of more than just the elusive Derek Hale apparently."
"The scratches." Stiles sighed.
"The scratches." I said.
We were quiet for a moment, both pondering the circumstances under which Jackson could have obtained the grisly wounds. They were so deep- and obviously affecting him. It was just what I needed honestly, another unruly were-teen to look after.
"I didn't peg you for a Buffy fan, you know," Stiles said after a minute.
I laughed, feeling a little embarrassed as I relived my heroic final line in the cafeteria.
"What can I say, I'm an absolute sucker for dramatics."
"Is that where you picked up the martyr act?"
My laughter stilled. "Martyr act?"
Something crackled on the other end, and I shifted slightly, pressing my phone closer to my ear.
"I counted three times that you risked your life for us tonight, at least." He was uncharacteristically stern.
I bristled at the accusing tone, my cheeks beginning to flush.
"Well, I don't like to half arse things." I said defensively.
"Are you all in with us, then? Because I don't think you can risk your life for a group of people who you're not all in with."
"All in?" I repeated exasperatedly. "What does that even mean?"
"That you're- that we're not… this isn't a one foot in, one foot out situation," Stiles argued.
I closed my eyes wearily. If I were to read in between the lines, what did this mean? Was he looking for a declaration of loyalty? Was this just about the Alpha?
"You're a very intense person you know," I said finally, conceding in a way.
"Yeah, well me and a lot of people I care about almost died a bunch of times tonight," Stiles retorted.
I took a deep breath. "I've got to go," I said brusquely, wanting this to be done.
I cringed at my tone and immediately felt the need to soften.
"But uh, I just wanted to say- thanks. You know, for all the times you probably saved my life tonight."
The line went silent for a second.
"You too," Stiles said eventually. I felt my heart hammering away against my ribs as I held the phone tight against my ear. "You know, I'm starting to not be able to remember what life was like before you. Good luck with the coven stuff, let us know how it goes."
"Thanks," I whispered, feeling too paralysed to come up with anything else. I just ended the call instead and shifted onto my back again, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
Eventually I was going to have to unpack all of this. The intense conversations, loaded glances, the fluttering in my stomach that wasn't entirely magical. But most importantly, the feeling of home I got with those two boys. Of instant family.
I had been just as much at risk tonight as anyone else. That meant that despite my best efforts to stay under the radar, someone somewhere, thought that I was part of a pack. Tears pricked my eyes as I mulled that over. Part of a pack.
When I couldn't delay any longer, I got up gingerly and lightly padded over to my window. I opened it, as wide as it would go, relishing as the cool air hit my warm face. I grabbed my packet of cigarettes from my bag and lit one, holding it to my lips with weak hands. I perched myself on the windowsill and took a deep breath in.
My phone vibrated in my other hand, pulling me out of my thoughts. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I counted to five and then answered it. I sat up straighter as well, ready to have a very different conversation.
"Hello councillor," I said.
The next few days passed in something of a haze. It was odd, having spent all of Tuesday night anxiously living every bloody second of it, to feeling as if I had blinked and it was Sunday morning.
I couldn't help it though; I was so checked out that even Gran had begun to notice that something was wrong. She was under the impression that I was still in shock, and it was the crippling fear that Derek would come back for me, which had me drifting through the house like a ghost. I let her believe what she wanted- she was half right after all.
I was in shock, and it had everything to do with Tuesday's events. But more specifically, it was my conversation with Maggs which had been ringing in my ears for the last few days. Her words echoed dully in my mind as I brushed my teeth, ate cereal, watched television, and went to sleep. A brutal cycle of rinse and repeat, the same warnings over and over again.
My phone buzzed beside me, and I realised that I had been staring at my blank computer screen for several minutes. I glanced at my phone and saw the same name flash up, which had also been haunting me since Tuesday.
With a heavy sigh, I turned my phone face down and switched my computer on. A lot had changed since my conversation with Maggs, and I wasn't in the mood to take calls from anyone.
Once my screen flickered to life, I clicked onto Facebook and scrolled through my notifications to find a specific invite. I had done this same routine exactly fourteen thousand times since the alert had popped up yesterday.
The Flight of the Indigo Swan invites you to like their band page.
I scrolled down the page a little until I found what I was looking for.
WANTED: LEAD SINGER! MUST BE COOL & MUST BE FREE FOR SUNDAY AUDITIONS.
EDIT: CHRISTIANS AND PEOPLE WITH WARRANTS OUT FOR CLASS A FELONIES NEED NOT APPLY.
I bit my lip as I hovered over the post. I hadn't sung in well, ages. Years even. Before everything had gone horribly wrong and my life had taken it's Blair Witch Project-esque turn, I loved music. I loved singing.
Gran had said that I needed to get out more. Maybe find some different, non-Allison friends (you know, ones which didn't supposedly lead me into schools to play find the killer). But did I really have time to be in a band? A good deal of hours in my day did seem to be taken up with all things supernatural: stopping murderous werewolves and keeping a family of hunters at bay, to name a few.
Magg's voice echoed in my head.
"You have no idea how lucky you are to be alive."
I swallowed thickly, the seriousness in her voice still making my hair stand on end, days later. If I was to take what I had generously labelled as 'her advice' (her direct orders, actually) on board, then one of those supernatural activities wasn't necessarily such an issue anymore.
The guilt and anxiety which had made themselves at home in my chest since I started screening calls, tightened uncomfortably. Reminding me that they were there. And that if I went ahead with Maggs' instructions, everything else would be fleeting but that cold, cruel guilt in my chest.
In a desperate bid to banish the fears threatening to keep me in a chokehold, I got up abruptly and decided to stop wasting time. I might not be able to save the world, but today I was going to join a fucking band.
Things had taken a weird turn.
After spending an embarrassing amount of time in front of the mirror, I finally felt punk enough to leave. Looking like Lily Allen and Noel Gallagher's love child, I had set off with high hopes. I could be in a band; I could absolutely be a lead singer.
I had walked through a million idyllic, suburban streets with this almost positive mentality. Past Gran's church, a woman selling flowers from her front garden and a familiar blue jeep on the corner. I ignored the pangs of my conscience and finally rocked up to the most normal looking house on the planet. A very normal house, on a very normal road, thank you very much indeed.
After a tentative knock on the front door, I had been warmly greeted by a woman wearing a 'kiss the cook' apron and escorted round to the garage.
Which lead me to my current situation.
I had spent the last God knew how long, in the dip of an old sofa, sandwiched in between two guys dressed straight out of a nineties rom-com. Spiked and oddly dyed hair, baggy cargo pants, ironic t-shirts -chains looping from every available surface. One of them had a nose ring, the other studs at the end of his eyebrow.
I was half waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind the band set-up behind us and yell "PUNK'D!" at me. I really couldn't tell if this was a carefully curated display or whether they were just a couple of dudes really into a certain aesthetic. Either way, it was jarring.
"So, you're like, actually from England?" Laurence asked, the boy on my left with the nose ring.
I nodded slowly, for what must have been the fiftieth time.
"London as well?" Mike added, eyebrow stud on the right.
"Yessir," I replied, attempting to shrink in on myself to avoid contact with either of them.
They seemed like very nice boys, but I still wasn't entirely convinced that they weren't going to murder me in this dingy little garage.
It was a bit cool, I begrudgingly conceded, as I glanced around. The set-up behind us looked decent, boasting a drum kit, keyboard and what I thought might have been a bass guitar. Cords flowed from every direction, connecting to an impressive looking sound system.
There was a little seating area, with the cursed green sofa I was currently inhabiting and an overstuffed armchair, opposite. A Union Jack mini fridge sat in the corner. Every inch of wall space was covered in band posters, some of which I recognised but others I had never heard of. The most interesting part of the room, however, was the boys' CD collection. Countless albums lined shelf upon shelf, all around us, framing a stereo and record player in the middle.
That was pretty magical, I had to admit.
With an embarrassing amount of effort, I managed to free myself from the sofa and I wandered over to the shelves, as the two boys chattered away excitedly behind me.
My fingers trailed over the CD covers as I took in as many of the names as possible. The boys seemed to have a particular affinity for Brit-Pop, with a little bit of post Brit-Pop intermingled with some garage rock. All heavily centred on English musicians- it definitely screamed 'cool Britannia'.
I nodded approvingly at some of their selections, feeling more at home in this weird little garage than I had anywhere else in Beacon Hills so far.
Maybe they were my kind of people? Even if they were super weird.
"See anything you like?"
I turned at the new voice, my hand resting on a Blur album.
A third guy, shorter than the other two but in similar dress, had arrived at some point when my back was turned. I looked over him and thought maybe his red hair was a dye job, but he was definitely fair enough for me to be wrong. He watched me appraisingly.
"I like most of it," I admitted. "You've got some really great stuff here."
"British?" he asked, with a quirked eyebrow. I inwardly groaned. I was starting to feel a little fetishized.
"Yeah," I responded glumly, ready for another line of oddly intrusive questioning.
"Cool," he nodded. "Top three favourite bands- go."
I blinked at him, taken aback. "Uh-"
"There are no wrong answers," Laurence said kindly from the couch.
"There are definitely some wrong answers." Mike informed me with a stern expression.
I faced down a giant werewolf this past week, I could absolutely tango with a couple of music nerds.
"Okay," I said, moving over to settle on the arm of the sofa. "Die-hard, could not live without favourites would have to be Oasis, The Kooks and the Arctic Monkeys."
The boy opened his mouth to speak, and I cut him off.
"But-" I interrupted boldly. "Honourable mentions include Catfish and the Bottlemen, Two Door Cinema Club and Kaiser Chiefs. Also, the more I hear of Bastille, the more I think I like them too."
The guy smiled broadly and something shiny flashed in his mouth.
"I'm Gus," he said warmly, approaching me with his hand outstretched.
I shook it, with a tentative smile of my own. "Winona."
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I released Gus' hand, pulling it out to check who was calling.
Stiles. Again.
"You got anywhere you need to be?" Gus asked, walking over to the gear. "You passed the music taste test, but we should probably still hear you sing."
My eyes flitted back down to my screen, Stiles' eager face in my head.
"You have no idea how lucky you are to be alive."
"Nope," I said with a crushing finality. I switched my phone off and slipped it back into my pocket.
The icy grip of my guilt tightened around my heart as I banished all things supernatural from my head.
"Where have you been?"
I stopped abruptly, one foot over the threshold of my front door, my key still in the lock. I grimaced and then took a deep breath. Bloody supersonic hearing.
"At the library Gran," I called back, wincing as I did so. I was starting to run out of semi-decent lies.
"Dinner's almost ready," she replied, and I understood immediately what that meant. There was going to be no sneaking off to my bedroom for the foreseeable future.
I grumbled quietly to myself, pocketing my housekey and pulling off my boots in the hallway. I hung my jacket up and then begrudgingly dragged myself into the kitchen for an audience with Her Holiness.
Gran was at the stove, stirring what smelled like Bolognese sauce in one of her ancient looking pots and she barely acknowledged me as I entered.
I beelined for the sink and ran the tap to wash my hands. God forbid my grubby little mitts came into contact with her Asda's finest cutlery.
"How was your day?" I asked dutifully, taking extra care to scrub the specs of dirt from under my fingernails.
"It's interesting you ask," she said languidly, her dangerously casual tone immediately grabbing my attention.
Church may have been frighteningly dull but at the very least, Gran always came home with some decent drama. It was the closest she would get to salacious. Although I had to be careful to not be too reactive, otherwise I'd be scolded for gossiping (which was exactly what we would be doing).
"I bumped into Mrs Whittemore at morning service, her boy was involved in that awful episode last week with you." Gran's voice was measured, almost sly- as if she were waiting for a reaction to try to catch me out at something.
"Oh," I said, feigning indifference. I dried my hands painstakingly slowly. "Jackson's mum?"
"Yes, that's the one," Gran answered, our backs still to each other. "Well, she's very involved in the community you know. So, she knows everyone."
"Is that so?" I murmured, moving over to the cutlery drawer.
"Well," Gran said dramatically, her voice becoming a little hushed despite it just being the two of us. It was almost downright conspiratorial.
"She was telling me all about it- the incident." Gran's voice strained over the word 'incident'. I wandered briefly if she was going to launch into a diatribe about Derek Hale. She'd certainly have a lot of material.
"That – goodness, what was his name? Stilinky lad, he's the Sheriff's son." She announced this as if it had previously been top secret information and I was supposed to be completely floored by the revelation.
"I had heard that," I said under my breath. I moved towards the little kitchen table with fistfuls of cutlery and set about busily laying them neatly.
"But, Mrs Whittemore said that despite his father being in law enforcement, he's supposedly quite the troublemaker. Him and the other one, McCall. They get up to all sorts apparently."
"Do they now?" I responded quietly, my attention mostly on my own quickening heartbeat at the mere mention of Stiles' name. Even an incredibly butchered rendition of it had my pulse flitting wildly like a caged butterfly. I straightened a fork.
"And that McCall!" Gran prattled on obnoxiously, completely ignorant to the fact that I was acting determinedly uninterested. "Failing most of his classes apparently. But the most interesting bit is that everyone is quite under the impression that he locked you in that classroom to run off by himself."
My arm jerked of its own accord and knocked the cutlery to the ground, the sharp clang as it hit the tiled floor making both of us jump.
"For goodness' sake Winona!" Gran scolded from right behind me. I shot out of my skin again, not realising that she had left the stove.
"What did you say?" I asked breathlessly, staring at her intently.
She frowned at me, her blue eyes narrowing. "I said for goodness' sake-"
"No, not that." I interrupted. "The bit before, about Scott."
"Oh," she said, her long, slender fingers finding the gold cross around her neck. Her voice was hard and unforgiving. "That he locked you in that classroom to run off like a coward-"
"Don't call him that!" I said sharply, surprising the both of us.
Gran's face creased angrily.
"Excuse me? You need to watch who you're talking to-"
"Scott's not a coward!" I repeated forcefully, unable to take anything else in.
Gran's mounting rage felt positively inconsequential when held up against the idea that Scott had abandoned us in a locked classroom to save himself. Worse yet, that the people of Beacon Hills were all under that same impression.
What Scott had done that night, how he had behaved, was nothing short of heroic. Stupid but heroic. Again and again, he had put his own life at risk to save ours and no one but Stiles and I even knew.
I felt sick.
I dropped the cutlery that I had bent to pick up off the ground, on the table and abruptly turned on my heel.
"I'm not hungry."
"Winona, come back here!" Gran demanded in vain at my retreating back.
Without pausing, I hurried up to my room and closed the door clumsily behind me, my heart in my throat. Scott was many things, but he certainly wasn't a coward. How could people think he was a coward?
Gran was a coward, I thought to myself angrily. She hid behind an entity she didn't really know and a religion that didn't really mean anything in the grand scheme of things, allowing their made-up rules to bolster her own prejudices.
If I had continued the conversation, she would have eventually arrived at the conclusion that I needed to steer clear of people like that. Boys of that calibre. That if I really wanted a fresh start, I should spend my time with people like Jackson fucking Whittemore.
God, the absolute audacity of her.
I stalked around my room, fuming silently. It was probably a bit closer to pacing actually- really, really angry pacing. My hands shook and I wrung them needlessly, for something to do. Something -anything to take my mind off of the awful human being I lived with. Of her baffling snobbery. The gossips at her church… and my own fucking uselessness.
My- my what?
I stopped suddenly, struck by my all-encompassing feeling of complete and utter uselessness. Tears pricked my eyes, and I curled my still trembling hands into fists, rubbing my eyes raw with them.
I was so fucking useless.
A frustrated sob escaped me, as I stood in the middle of my bedroom and thought about all of the ways that I was a massive let down. That I was a failure- failing everyone who dared to depend on me for the slightest thing.
I thought about my phone call with Councillor Maggs, the phone call which had singlehandedly managed to upend my entire future here in Beacon Hills. My place, my purpose- my worth.
"It's come to my attention that there's been an incident," she said straightforwardly, her voice leaving no room to argue. I had barely managed to utter a hello before she had effectively, stunned me into silence.
"An incident?" I repeated dumbly, my mind racing with a thousand different possibilities. Was she referring to tonight? She couldn't possibly know about tonight. The introduction to the hunters in the woods? Scott's near slip on the lacrosse field?
"Were you or were you not, chased around a high school tonight by an Alpha werewolf called Derek Hale?" she asked, her crystal cut English accent slicing through any lie I could have possibly come up with to deflect.
Instead, all I could manage was a meek- "It wasn't Derek."
There was a brief silence and then- "Excuse me?"
I cleared my throat, desperate to grab onto any of my previous and usual contempt for authority. Tonight, it evaded me mercilessly.
"Derek. He's not the Alpha. I think technically he's a Beta, although I'm not a hundred percent on werewolf hierarchy."
"He wasn't the wolf who attempted to attack you tonight?"
"No," I answered, managing to claw a little bit of confidence back into my voice.
There was another pause. "Do you know who the Alpha is?" Maggs asked, her voice curt and her words clipped. Ruthlessly efficient.
I swallowed. "No," I said hoarsely. "That's sort of the reason for the call. I was hoping you might have some-"
"You were hoping I might have some answers for you," she interrupted coldly.
"Uh-" Her cool brevity was throwing me off my game, I could barely even remember my own name let alone try to sound vaguely like I had an admittedly pretty untenable situation, under control.
"So that you could what? Take him down with a group of humans and two barely competent werewolves?"
I found myself bristling on behalf of Derek. I would give her Scott, there was no mistaking his competency, but Derek was a dynasty wolf. He had a slightly better grip on his abilities than what was essentially a sixteen-year-old new-born.
"Well," I said, trying hard not to do so arrogantly. "I am the youngest witch in my generation and therefore-"
"-and therefore, you are perfectly qualified to neutralise an Alpha?" Maggs said disdainfully. Almost mockingly. Her tone stung.
I was taken aback by her openly hostile attitude.
"I-"
"-your entire 12 months of work with the French coven has fully prepared you to take down one of the most powerful creatures in the magical world?"
"If you would just let me finish-" I attempted, beginning to feel that familiar rage turning my blood to molten lava.
"There's no need." Maggs said resolutely. "We're quite done here."
My hands were beginning to sweat, and I clutched my phone in a death grip.
"We are not done." I said through gritted teeth. I felt sure that if I caught sight of myself in a mirror right now, my eyes would have been blood red.
"You have no idea what's going on here, so you do not get to sit on your high horse, halfway around the fucking world and tell me that I am not doing a good enough job. I'm doing my best!"
The line fell silent, save for the hum of the Atlantic between us.
"What you don't understand Winona, being young and wilful and stubborn, is that your best will never be good enough. No one but Nyx herself has ever been able to restrain an alpha. This isn't an insult to you, it's a fact."
I thought back to the cafeteria. Had I not restrained him then? Forced him back through the double doors and kept him at bay long enough for the others to hide?
"I have," I said stubbornly. Maybe even a little petulantly. "I held him off. Tonight, I mean."
Maggs' voice was cool and collected. "And how did you feel after?"
My breath caught in my throat and my whole body stilled as I relived the crushing come down after I had summoned air. Two minutes of magic at the most and it had felt like I would be dragged back with it.
"Winona?"
"I felt like I was going to die," I ground out, my jaw begging me to unclench it.
"Exactly," Maggs said. She at least had the decency to keep any sort of condescension out of her tone. "If you had been allowed to continue your studies, you would have discovered the fail-safe."
"Fail-safe?" I repeated, my heart in my throat.
"It was designed to prevent over zealous witches from interfering with the natural order of things. Werewolf packs have food chains- hierarchies. It has never been our place to police them."
"Even when they're killing people?" I demanded. "Innocent people?"
"Our allegiance is to the wolves. Not humans."
"That's- that's so fucked." I stuttered, completely uncaring that I was swearing at a bloody councillor.
"It's just the way things are," she replied despondently. Like it was a fucking party line. "You physically don't have enough magic to compete with a werewolf, let alone an alpha."
"I could," I argued. "Maybe if I used it in short bursts or-"
"You have no idea how lucky you are to be alive. Do not get yourself killed trying to prove your power."
I swallowed thickly. "Is that an order?"
Maggs paused. "Yes. You are to await further instructions whilst we investigate the hunter threat. You are absolutely not to involve yourself any further with pack politics in the meantime. Am I understood?"
I gripped my windowsill to avoid launching my phone into the neighbour's garden.
"You understand the price you'll pay if you disobey us?"
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair.
"I understand."
"Good. And Winona?"
"Yes?"
Magg's voice softened ever so slightly. "Stop looking for trouble. Make the most of your fresh start. There's no version of this that ends with you winning."
That had been the end of it. The end of all of it really.
Maggs' warning made me question what it was I was actually doing. Was I really prepared to die for people I didn't know?
There was a difference between making a split-second decision in the heat of battle and premeditatedly deciding to offer yourself up for a cause you didn't know if you believed in.
I thought about Scott- how he was going to save the world. I thought about Stiles' face. His bottomless brown eyes and his bare-faced hope.
He had asked me if I was all in and the truth was- I didn't know. I didn't know anything.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, startling me. I was still stood in the middle of my bedroom, feeling like I was at a crossroads I couldn't quite explain.
Stiles' name lit up my screen and I watched it ring, unable to bring myself to answer it. I had been dodging his calls for a week, I couldn't believe he was still trying.
Why was he still trying? There was nothing of me left to salvage, nothing left to shape into a person to be proud of. All that remained of me was a pile of ashes. I wasn't worth saving.
The buzzing stopped and a notification popped up. I had a voicemail.
I hesitated for a second and then clicked the notification and held my phone to my ear.
"Hey Winnieeeeeeeeee," Stiles slurred into the speaker. I jerked the phone away, his voice obscenely loud.
Was Stiles drunk?
"It's me, ya boy Stiles, just phoning to check in." I cringed. It was seeming more likely that he was actually having some sort of stroke.
"You know, since you've been ignoring my calls for a week, I thought maybe the alpha had murdered you- or you dropped your phone in your tea or something."
"Stiles, get off the phone, you're supposed to be finding your keys." That sounded like Scott. A sober and pissed off Scott.
"Shhhhh!" Stiles said, losing all meaning of the word at the end there. "I'm talking to Win- uh Winana."
My eyebrows were somewhere near my hairline at this point. How long was this voicemail?
"Fine! I'm going back to check for them at the clearing," Scott called from the background.
"Anyway," Stiles said importantly. "What was I saying?" There was silence. "Ah! Pretty girls! We were talking about pretty girls and eyes so obviously I had to phone you to ask if you could swim. I can swim okay but I'm not, you know, on the swim team or anything."
My head was spinning. Had I missed something? Why on earth was he muttering about swimming?
"Jackson's on the swim team so maybe I'll ask him to teach me to swim better. Because sometimes, I look at you and think, I'm going to fall right in and drown. And I think you'd let me too."
My heart hammered in my chest as his voice grew more serious. Still slurred but urgent.
"That's why you have to be all in Winnie. Because if you're not, if you're not all in with us- we'll sink. I'll sink-"
The voicemail abruptly cut off and I left was standing in the middle of my bedroom, clutching my phone as silent tears tracked down my cheeks.
A/N: Hey gang! I just wanted to thank everyone for reviewing so far, they honestly make my absolute day (and make me write faster)! I hope you're all still enjoying this, let me know if you are! Hearing about your thoughts so far is my favourite thing.