The dream was more vivid than usual. She sensed the man's anger, his paranoia, his need for power and control, but mostly she sensed his overwhelming feeling of loneliness. It was a feeling that she was completely familiar with. She didn't know how or why she was dreaming of a man that she had never met. But she felt connected to him. And with each passing night, the recurring dream somehow strengthened their connection.

"I found a place for the full moon." Mason told her quietly as she stood at the stove, flipping her pancakes.

"Where?"

"The old Lockwood Estate. The cellars." She just nodded with a sigh. "Look, I know that this isn't ideal, but we need to be here. For Tyler. And we need to make sure we're locked up tonight... especially if there are vampires around, okay?"

"Yeah."

"Tyler's having friends over at the swim hole. Why don't you go... have some fun. Then when it gets dark, I'll come get you and we'll lock up tight. Nothing is gonna happen. I'm gonna make sure you're okay, Ayla."

"Okay."

Ayla was looking around at all of the people at the swimming hole, once again feeling like an outsider as people walked past her and whispered, scrutinizing her with their judgmental looks. She rolled her eyes and leaned up against a tree with a cup of beer in her hand. She didn't think it was possible to have a good time today. Not only were people staring at her, but she was worried about the full moon tonight.

She tried to focus on other feelings, but all she could feel was her anxiety for tonight and the lingering loneliness drifting over her. She watched from afar as Caroline and Matt argued for a moment.

"Caroline." Ayla spoke up, the blonde looked upset but Ayla missed her friend and wanted to comfort her. For the first time since she came back to Mystic Falls, she felt welcome as Caroline wrapped her arms around her.

"Ayla, oh my God. How are you? What are you doing here?"

"Dead dad." She said nonchalantly. Caroline's face immediately dropped and her eyes widened like she hadn't been expecting such a blunt and unemotional statement. "Right, that was morbid, sorry. And I'm okay. Just trying to get used to being back here."

"How long are you here for?"

"I-I'm not sure, honestly." She gave a sad smile. "Hey, I heard about your accident. I'm really sorry I didn't visit you when you were in the hospital."

"I get it... dead dad and all."

"Yeah." Ayla looked at her. "Thank you... for being the only person to continue to reach out to me after I left. For caring."

"You're my friend, why wouldn't I care?" It was quiet for a second before Ayla tried to fill the silence with small talk.

"So, you and Matt?" She spoke, nodding to the man at the keg. "I wasn't expecting that. But you guys are cute."

"Yeah, he's pissed at me now, though." Ayla looked at the sky, noticing the sun was going down. "Have you talked to Elena since you've been back?"

"No, not yet. I don't think I'm ready to just yet and I don't think she's exactly jumping with excitement to see me." She sighed before clearing her throat and looking at the time on her phone. "You should talk to Matt, Care. Work whatever it is out. But I have to go... I uh, I hope we see each other soon. I've really missed you."

"I missed you, too." Caroline hugged her, and once again Ayla felt only warmth and sincerity coming from her friend.

"Figure it out with Matt, okay?" Caroline just smiled and nodded. Ayla rushed out of the swim hole and over to the old cellars that Mason had showed her earlier that morning. She heard Mason rustling the chains from in the cellar as she walked down the steps nervously.

"Mase..." She whispered, feeling the full moon starting to get to her. She hated full moons. She always felt everything. Every rush of emotion running through her. Every painful slither of bone cracking in her body. Every thought and fear flooding over her and drowning her.

"Breathe, Ayla."

"I know." She spoke, through clenched teeth. He immediately started putting the chains on her as she gasped for air, trying to calm herself down. She took a sip of the wolfsbane, feeling the burning down her throat and almost immediately wanted to throw up, just like the past full moons she had to go through. She bit her lip, trying to calm herself down. "It hurts."

"I know, just... breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Don't fight it." She nodded, breathing with him. As she focused on her breathing, she heard footsteps from above.

"What is that?" She looked at him worriedly, hearing the noise before he had. At the sound of a voice from above, Ayla nearly burst into tears. She didn't want to hurt anyone. She knew that she could hurt someone. Kill someone. His eyes widened as he started letting her out of the chains while she shook her head in terror. "Mason..."

"We need to go, quickly." They started running out of the cellars and further into the woods where he had parked his truck. He wrapped the chains on her first, chaining her to the tree as she fell to the ground.

"It hurts! Make it stop!" She screamed out, begging as she felt her bones start to break. "No, no! Ahh, it hurts."

The transitioning went on for a while before she emerged in her wolf form. She eagerly launched at the vampires in front of her, breaking the chains as she followed after Mason's wolf form.

She didn't have control over herself as she launched at Stefan and then Caroline. Stefan fought her off, and Ayla tried to control it. To fight it. As she went to lunge towards them again, she saw her brother standing there, fear radiating off of him.

"No!" Tyler screamed at the wolf in front of him. She whined slightly before finally getting control over her mind and running off to find her Uncle.

Ayla found her way back to the truck first, immediately putting on a change of clothing and leaning against the truck while waiting for her uncle to return back to their meeting spot.

"What are you doing out here?" She jumped at the sound of Tyler's voice. She didn't get a chance to respond before Mason spoke up, she quickly turned away from him, while Tyler was holding up the older man's shorts.

"Wanna toss me those?" Tyler threw them back to him, seeing both of them completely covered in dirt.

"It was you." Tyler said to them. She just nodded before looking away sadly. She jumped into the front seat of the truck, put her head against the window and wiped the tears that came out of her eyes. She almost killed Caroline. She could have killed Matt or Tyler. She felt an immense amount of guilt when she realized that although she could have hurt someone, she had never felt more free than she had last night.

Ayla had tried her hardest to stay away from her brother for the next few days. She didn't want to have to explain herself. She didn't want to explain what she was or how she was. She didn't want to even think about it. So she would wake up early to leave the Lockwood mansion and come home late, all in an attempt to keep his questions at bay. But as the days dredged on, Tyler continuously attempted to get answers.

Today as she was running out the door, Tyler stopped her with a pointed look while Mason was walking right behind them to get out of the house.

"Mason, Ayla... you got a second?" Tyler asked, Ayla couldn't contain the annoyed sigh that fell from her lips.

"Nah, barbecue at Jenna Sommers house." Mason told him, picking up his keys.

"Come on, give me two minutes alright? You can't keep dodging me. I'm freaking out here."

"Tyler, what do you want me to say, man?" He raised his hands up in defeat. "Yes, we turned into wolves. No, it's not gonna happen to you."

"Mason!" She tried to speak up, to not get him to brush it off like it was some party trick.

"How do you know that?" Tyler asked, looking at his little sister. "She's my sister... we're blood. How do you know it won't happen to me to?"

"Because you're not gonna trigger the curse."

"I won't let you, Ty." She spoke up, wanting to protect him from the torture and the pain of being bound by the moon.

"Your dad didn't know anything about any of this. Neither did I. Until it happened to me. Ayla didn't know about it either."

"How does it get triggered?"

"Ignorance is bliss. Trust me." Mason told him with a stern tone.

"You two blow back into town with some supernatural family secret and you expect me not to ask questions?"

"You don't want to know, Tyler." She started, knowing that if he knew how the curse was triggered, he would never stop thinking about it. "Please, just drop it."

"It's just better for you if we don't tell you anything more." Mason was starting to walk out of the house when Tyler spoke up again.

"You ever find that moonstone?"

"Do you know where it is?"

"What's so special about it?" Tyler asked him, Ayla wondered the same exact thing.

"I told you. It was my mom's. It's sentimental." He tried to convince them. "Look, don't worry about it. Forget I even brought it up, all right."

"You're hiding things from me."

"I'm trying to protect you, Tyler."

"No, you're just lying to me." He snapped at her and walked out the front door, leaving her to stew in her guilt once again.

Ayla was sitting at the Mystic Grill by herself, eating her dinner when she got a text message from Mason. And as she read the words she sighed, knowing that this was going to end badly. She had warned her uncle that it would end bad, she just wished he would have listened to her.

Damon's here. Making it very obvious he knows the truth about me. Watch ur back.

So she waited and waited for her uncle to arrive to the Mystic Grill like he promised hours earlier, and as he was going on fifteen minutes late, she felt a rush of nervousness overwhelm her, she stood up and walked outside.

She wasn't expecting to be met with her uncle pulling a knife out of his stomach.

"Mason!" She yelled, running over to him as he groaned and pulled the weapon out of him.

"You know, I think it was werewolves who started the whole silver myth." Mason yelled at Damon, walking closer to the vampire that had attacked him.

"Probably for moments like this." Ayla spat at Damon, who she was learning that she really did not like at all.

"Duly noted." His eyes were wide and he had a fake grin on his face.

"I was really looking forward to last call." Mason chuckled. Ayla looked over at her uncle seeing that he been almost completely healed already. She just stared at the man who tried to kill her uncle. "Now you made an enemy."

"Two of them." She snarled at the raven haired vampire, who looked at her with an annoyed glance as she stood against the truck. Damon just nodded slightly, his mouth twitching and began walking away. She watched him in the rearview mirror as he moved further away from the two wolves.

"I told you, we need to leave Mystic Falls, Mason." She demanded as he started driving off. "Without the full moon, we can't protect ourselves against vampires. And I really don't want to kill people."

"We can't leave." He looked over to her, stopping the truck in the driveway of the Lockwood Estate. "If we leave and something happens to Tyler, neither of us will ever forgive ourselves."

"And I will never forgive myself if I hurt another person, Mason!" She cried out. "Back in Florida, we... we had protection. Others like us. We were safe."

"You're my niece... my family. I'm gonna keep you safe."

"Yeah, until you can't." Ayla knew she sounded like a petulant teenager as she slammed the door of the truck and ran towards the front door of the house. But her life was at stake and that brought out the worst emotions in her.

Just as she was about to run up the steps to get to the safety of her bedroom, Tyler stopped her. Mason groaned as Tyler looked at them with an insistent expression.

"How was that barbecue?" He asked Mason, ignoring Ayla who was very obviously distressed.

"Not great." Mason told his nephew. "You still pissed?"

"You still keeping secrets?"

"Yep."

"Then I'm still pissed." Ayla rolled her eyes at her brother and inched closer to the steps, but Tyler stopped her in her tracks. "Hey, you know, I was thinking about that stone you're looking for. I might know a couple places it could be."

"Do you think this is a joke?" Mason started getting upset. "If you know where it is then tell me."

"Tell me how the curse is triggered."

"If I tell you, you won't be able to think about anything else. I don't want that for you."

"I think I can handle knowing." Ayla's irritation got the best of her as she pushed her brother roughly, trying to knock a little bit of sense into him, even though she knew that would be nearly impossible.

"You think you can handle it? You have no idea, Tyler!" She spat angrily in her brother's face. "You want to become one of us? You want to break every single bone in your body every month on a full moon? Have to tie yourself up in chains so you don't hurt anyone? You have no idea what we have to go through!"

"Do you want your stupid rock or not?!" Mason picked him up by the collar of his shirt, pushing him into the wall.

"Tell me where it is!"

"Tell me what triggers the curse!"

"You have to kill somebody!" Ayla screamed at him. "Human blood! You think you can still handle it?"

"You take a person's life away from them, then the curse is yours forever." Mason snapped and Tyler looked at both of them with fear evident on his face.

"A-Ayla..." He shook his head. "You killed somebody? You two killed someone together?"

"No." She cried, wondering how he could think that low of her.

"It was self-defense for me." Mason told him. "My friend was drunk and attacked me. Kept coming at me. I had no choice. Self-defense."

"And it triggered the curse?"

"On every full moon, we lose control. If we don't sedate ourselves and chain ourselves down, we will kill anything in our path. You have to be careful. All it takes is an accident, a car wreck." Tyler looked to her with wide eyes, like it was all beginning to make sense.

"The accident with the Gilberts?" He looked at her in confirmation and she just nodded, sadly.

"One slippery bridge, Tyler." She told him with tears in her eyes. "That's all it took for my entire life to be turned upside down."

"Any death at your hands, and you'll have a lifetime of this."

"That's why you came for her after the accident?" Tyler looked at Mason, who just nodded with a solemn look on his face. "To help her through this?"

"You do not want this, Tyler. Trust me." Ayla spoke up. "We are trying to protect you. That is why we're here. You need to be careful."

"Alright, so where's the moonstone?" Mason asked him. "Deal's a deal. I answered your questions."

"Um... yeah, I'm not sure. But I'm guessing it's in here." Tyler stood up and they followed him to their father's office. Ayla watched as he moved one of the chairs and began putting the combination into a locked safe that was hidden in the ground. "My dad was very kooky about his hiding spots. But I've figured most of them out over the years." He lifted up the rug and opened the safe. "It's all yours."

"What is so important about this rock, Mason?"

"I told you both. It's just something I want. Sentimental value."

"Okay, and how about the truth this time?" She looked at him and grabbed his hand before he pushed her away quickly. "I can always tell when you're lying, remember?"

"Do you know where it is or not, Tyler?" He completely avoided Ayla's accusation, not seeing the object in the safe.

"No, I figured it'd be in here, man."

Mason sighed as he stood up and left the office. Ayla just watched as he walked away, knowing that something was off with her uncle and that he was obviously hiding something from her.