~Author's Note~

Hey guys so it's seven am which means this note isn't going to be as long as I want it to be so bear with me lol. This is completely unexpected, I know, but the idea would not leave us be and here we have a, drumroll please, mutli-chap wyaddison fic!

This story is co-written with the amazing zombiedadjokes and rainfallingfromthesky (on tumblr) aka apocalyvse and Rainpath4 on here. They're amazing people and I wouldn't have wanted to start this crazy journey with anybody else. So here's chapter one guys, we seriously hope you like it, and a review would make our morning! :)

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chapter one

turn up, explain our history

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"How long until you're back in Seabrook?"

Addison glances at the sign on the side of the highway as she passes it, the list of destinations and the miles between her and them. Seabrook is second from the top, right under Sunyshore, 22 Miles Away. "About thirty minutes," she says, and hears him sigh down the line.

"About thirty?" he asks and then laughs, a long and low noise to let her know he's teasing. "You're not sure?"

She rolls her eyes, a smile tugging at her lips. "I don't know. I turned the GPS off as soon as I got on route nine." She settles back in her seat, staring down the highway she's currently speeding along as she talks. It's quiet for a Monday afternoon, only a few cars keeping up with her as she counts down the miles to home, the rest of the world unburdened by a summer vacation they don't get to share. "Don't ask me if I'm sure I won't get lost."

"Are you sure?" he teases, mirth in his voice.

"More sure than you were when you got lost between Zombietown and my parent's house last Christmas."

"Hey," he grumbles. "Seabrook looks different with snow, okay?"

"Sure, zombie, whatever you say." She can hear him grumbling in the background, a little bit of Zombietongue slipping into his English, but he's holding the phone too far away for her to make out the individual words, stomping up the stairs in his house as he mutters to himself. From somewhere far away she hears his sister's dog barking, and the shuffle and groan of a door opening and closing.

"How's Nessie holding up?" he asks when he's recovered from the embarrassment, his voice coming through loud and clear again.

"Nessie's a good car," she says, feigning hurt. "She'll make it further than your rustbucket ever will."

Nessie's been with her since late senior year of high school. It was Eliza who had come up with the nickname, unable to stifle a laugh at the ugly pastel green color the compact car had, even going as far to joke that if they painted on some blue scales they would have the loch ness monster on their hands. The name had stuck, to Addison's extreme dismay, even if, over the years, she had come to love it just as much as she had loved the car.

"Hey," he replies loudly, offended, his voice echoing through her car, and she finds herself laughing at him again. "I told you, I'm going to fix it over summer break. Nessie breaks down more than my car anyway, so you can't even talk."

"You said you'd fix it last summer," she points out. "And then you—"

There's a bang from his end of the phone, and then an 'oof' and the sound of barking right next to the phone. Zoey is somewhere in the distance, calling out to Puppy with no luck.

"Are you okay?" she asks, and sits and waits for a reply, listening as the sound of him laughing and shoving the dog away filters through the phone line. It sounds like fun — a lot more fun than she's had in the last two weeks without him, studying for a missed final, stressing about passing and final grades and making her way home alone (and maybe she had been a little worried about whether Nessie could make it the entire trip, but she's not going to tell Zed that).

"Hey, Ads," he says, returning breathless to his phone. "Zoey needs me to help her with something, I've gotta go. I'll meet you at your place in half an hour?"

Her lips twist unhappily, her hand finding her moonstone like it always does in times of stress. She'd hoped to talk to him longer; they'd barely talked since he'd gone back to Seabrook without her, and she's desperate for one long conversation with him after two weeks of nothing but study and quiet evenings with just the television to keep her company. "Of course," is all she says though, swallowing down her disappointment. It's only thirty more minutes. She can survive that long. "Tell your dad and Zoey I can't wait to see them again. Love you."

"Will do, cheerleader. Love you too." The line clicks as he hangs up, her phone beeping before disconnecting the call. Her music resumes, filling the silence of the cabin. She still couldn't believe she was actually coming back home, was almost there, almost back to a town that held so many...memories.

Back in Connecticut.

Back in Seabrook.

She hadn't missed it like she thought she would've, in fact following Zed and leaving was probably one of the best things she had done for herself in years. She missed some little things, some certain people, but that was to be expected when you and your boyfriend decided on a college two states away. It was nice, being so far away, away from everything she couldn't control to a place where there were things she could control.

Freshman year of high school was hard for them in a lot of different ways.

Werewolves — living, breathing werewolves with fangs and claws and moonstone necklaces — came to town about halfway through the year, and with them, Addison had finally found where she was supposed to belong. Or, according to an ages-old prophecy, anyway. She was the Great Alpha of the werewolves, their long lost leader, a leader of something greater, as Wyatt had put it, one of her hands clutched in his, a smile that meant more than it should've stretched across his lips.

Zed wasn't happy about it at the time. Their very first fight was over Wyatt, over the possibility turned reality, that she could've been the Great Alpha. It had boiled down to words that should've never been said, harsh words that should've always stayed hidden, and both found themselves in their first real hurdle since starting their relationship. Something they had to work through, no matter how messy it got. While working through that, Addison began training with the wolves, running with them at night, the full moon high in the sky, Wyatt by her side, a soft hand always guiding her to where she was supposed to be, a gentle push this way and that, a quick grab to her wrist to stop her from going off a ledge she wouldn't be able to leap across.

Something flutters in her stomach just thinking back to it, back to so many memories she had long buried.

Her and Zed were able to work through it, after everything. She had put her foot down, after two weeks of running with the wolves, after two weeks of feeling more at home in a pack than with her friends or at home. After two weeks of following and learning and being free. (Addison thinks that's what she misses most, being free. Werewolves were never held down, not by anything, and they came and went like the breeze, something she always secretly envied after being trapped for most of her life.)

After two weeks of feeling like she finally belonged somewhere, she wasn't going to go back to how her life had been. She was going to be free.

She sat Zed down and they talked about all of it, really talked about it.

He told her his fears, nagging and full of jealousy he didn't even know he had, and she had explained that she had her place, finally, something she could call her own. He wasn't happy with her decision in the end — she knew he never was, from the moment he had promised he'd stick with her, always, through it all, his hand squeezing hers a little too loosely, a little too half-heartedly — but she had kissed him, and accepted her necklace the next day. Once the moonstone was placed against her bare skin, she would become a werewolf, forever. Never able to go back, pack mentality or no mentality, an Alpha stands tall while others fall.

Zed didn't go.

As soon as the moonstone had transformed her, she had felt different. She felt like the same person, but little things were different, from the way she could hear the smallest insect, see the farthest tree branch and smell the roadkill miles down the road. Wyatt had hugged her after she had growled, her eyes glowing yellow, two arms wrapping around her waist and lifting her into the air out of pure joy and celebration. She still remembered what he had said to her, his lips by her ear, her feet hitting the ground far too quickly, his lips pulled into the biggest smile she had ever seen.

A car horn beeps from her right, and she readjusts her hold on the wheel as an impatient minivan races past a particularly slow Toyota. Her music clicks to the next song, drums filling the interior of Nessie, her foot pushing on the gas pedal as she sees another sign, bringing her closer to home.

The rest of her teenage years were spent as a werewolf of a pack that slowly, yet surely, became the home she had always searched for. She spent the days with her friends, in classes, after school, hanging out with Zed, kissing lazily over math textbooks spread across her bed, or doing make-overs with Bree in front of her parents' massive bedroom mirror. During the day, she was Addison Wells, human.

During the night, she was far from it.

Though she was the Great Alpha, Willa was keen about training her in everything she needed to be trained in before relinquishing her position as Alpha, which Addison and the rest of the pack agreed with, not that Willa would've taken any other answer.

Making the decision to leave Seabrook, to leave her pack, didn't come to her easily. It came to her over a series of weeks, months. Over countless conversations with Zed and Bree and Eliza, over s'mores with Wynter, hunting with Willa, and late nights on the cliff with Wyatt. Those late nights with Wyatt were the conversations she treasured most, their feet dangling off the edge of forever. He wasn't upset that she had wanted to leave. He understood why. The cliff was their spot, a spot no one else knew about, their escape from the rest of the world. She felt like she was ruining their spot, every time she talked about leaving — leaving this place, leaving her pack, leaving...him.

Her brain drifts to the text she had received from Wyatt earlier in the day, the text she hadn't told Zed about yet. Her eyes glance toward her phone, almost subconsciously.

I need to talk to you, next time you're in town.

Leaving Wyatt behind was the worst thing about leaving.

He was everything she was not, so polar opposite of Zed that sometimes she wondered how he came to be her best friend. She trusted him with her life, trusted him so much, so easily, and found herself missing him more than anyone else. She missed the way he would hug her, always warm where she was not, always an anchor she never knew she needed. She missed the way he would tap his claws across her arm to get her attention, or the way he would knock his shoulder into hers. She missed his smirks, his smiles, his looks, those looks he always gave her when he thought she wasn't looking, ducking his head by the time she lifted her own. She missed seeing him every night, running by him, being by him, being with him.

She missed everything about him. Three years still wasn't enough time to forget about him. No matter how hard she tried, he was always there, always in the back of her mind, and she would never forget—

No.

She wasn't ready to dig that up.

Instead, she pushes the thought from her mind and fixes her eyes on the road ahead, hands firm on the steering wheel, and home just down the road. She doesn't look at the forbidden forest as it looms on the right. She doesn't think about how well she knows its trees, its rivers and valleys and peaks.

She thinks of Zed. She keeps driving.

The first thing she sees when she pulls into her street is Zed, parked outside her parent's house.

He's waiting on the street for her, leaning against the hood of his car and scrolling through something on his phone. He only looks up as she pulls into the driveway ahead of him, the golden light of the late afternoon sun catching in his eyes as he grins at her and pockets his phone, stepping away from the car. She climbs out of her car and all but runs towards him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he picks her up and spins her around, his lips pressing everywhere they can reach.

When her feet touch the ground again, he's pressing his lips to hers before she can even say anything in greeting. She smiles into the kiss, her hands coming up to cup both his cheeks, his hands settling on her hips. He chuckles as they part, and her hands slide down to his chest, her heart happy.

She was home.

"Hey gorgeous," he whispers, laughing some more, Addison unable to keep herself from giggling as she steals another quick kiss.

"Hey zombie," she replies, and they stare at each other for a moment more before she lowers her arms and takes a step back. He clears his throat, running a hand through his hair. She had hoped things would be different back home. "How did things go with Zoey? Was everything okay?" He smiles, thankful for where the conversation is heading.

"Yeah, she just couldn't find the dog's leash, apparently there was no way she could wait to take him for a walk…" He runs a hand through his hair but he's laughing, carefree as he's ever been. She's always envied Zed and his ability to be so relaxed about everything, to get good grades and collect friends and solve problems without so much as raising a sweat. "Was the drive okay?"

"It was quiet." She shrugs. "I guess people don't have much to do on a Monday afternoon."

Zed's eyes shine with mischief suddenly, as he reaches out for her, his cold fingers grasping hers as he playfully tugs her toward him, his other hand coming to a rest on her waist. "Not like us," he says with a smile, his thumb and forefinger pinching the fabric of her shirt.

He leans forward and catches her lips with his own, teasing her, before pulling back a few seconds later, leaving her with a feeling she can't describe. She wants more, but there's something else there too. Something bubbling below the surface, something twisting and turning and knotting everytime they share a passionate kiss like this one, all fire and no warmth.

It's been building and building and growing more noticeable with each and every jump into territory she's known for years; now, however, it all feels like it's uncharted, a map without a destination, bare of spare coins and hidden treasures and oceans so deep and deserts so windy and jungles so filled. She feels different with Zed, different with herself, and sometimes wonders if she ever had anything truly mapped at all.

She shoves her feelings aside and instead focuses on here and now. She hasn't seen him or talked to him or kissed him or hugged him in two weeks. She's not going to let feelings she doesn't understand (or understands far too well) stop her from spending as much time with her boyfriend as she can.

"Zed," she scolds, nodding her head toward her front door, still as perfect as it was years ago. "Not here."

He chuckles, tugging gently at her shirt, "I'm just messing with you cheerleader," he replies, "though it is true. I know it's only been two weeks, but I've missed you." His eyes meet hers, and his hand holds hers a little tighter.

She bites back words that she wants to say, about how it's been seven days without a call and almost three without a text.

How it's just been microwavable dinners and endless textbooks and balls of crumpled up papers.

How it's just been her, on her own, because anytime she tried to reach out, he didn't reach back.

She bites her tongue and listens to the side of her heart that's been longing for him for weeks.

"I've missed you too," she says, and before she can doubt anymore, she's hugging him, her arms wrapping around his back. Her head finds his shoulder while she buries her face into his neck, just wanting him, but that feeling interrupts, stronger than it should be. He doesn't smell like him. He smells like Zombietown, like must and mold and mildew. He smells like Puppy's dog food and peanut butter. He smells like home, like Seabrook.

His arms settle around her, and Addison doesn't feel like she's home.

She feels out of place.

"What's this for?" he mumbles, smiling softly.

She tightens her grip. "Just because I needed it."

He smiles and does the same, holding her as long as she'll let him, his hold steady, and constant and unwavering. Just like he always is with her; steady, constant, unwavering.

Hers.

They stay locked in that hug for what feels like forever, the gentle stillness and silence hanging around them only broken by the sound of a door shutting and Addison's mom calling out her name. She hears Zed groan quietly as soon as her voice reaches their ears and she chuckles as they pull back from each other, Addison reaching up and smoothing back his hair as she goes, smiling at him.

"Do you wanna go for a walk after this?" she asks him, her parents already moving down the front step. "I wanted to talk to you about something and I figure we'll both need the fresh air after this."

Zed scoffs, but there's a knowing grin pulling at the corners of lips.

"If I can survive talking with your parents, then deal."

"You'll be fine—"

"Will I?"

"Shut up, Zed."

He laughs, a sound that reminds her of a summer morning, bright and cheerful, and turns to greet her parents with his most winning smile and the ghost of something reluctant in his eyes.

Surviving the meeting with her parents was just as difficult as Zed had expected it to be, so as soon as they're able to leave, they disappear into the forest behind Addison's house.

There's a small path made out of packed down dirt leading to a few picnic tables a little-ways in, only about a mile or so. Addison hasn't been on the trail since she was a little girl, her white hair pulled in a messy bun and hidden underneath one of the old baseball caps her father had an abundance of. Her uncle had shipped a baseball cap to her father every birthday until he had passed, and her father never had the heart to throw them away.

She remembers running and being too fast for her father to catch her, only stopping when her mom called out for her, honey where are you, her voice loud and worried sick against the summer trees.

"Hey," Zed says, intertwining his fingers with hers, "what're you thinking about?"

That feeling of confusion, of not knowing whether to go or stay, comes back, settling in her stomach with double the weight this time. Her stomach twists, knotting as it had when he had kissed her, full of a passion she hadn't found in herself in a while. Wyatt's text comes to mind, but so does Zed's hand, holding tightly to hers as they make their way down the beaten trail, the picnic tables close enough to see.

They've been here longer than she's been alive, beaten by harsh rain and heavy snow and relentless wind, tarnished and turning brown, almost matching the yellowed dirt below. There's holes in the benches and she's sure there'll be a whine if she dares to take a seat, but she doesn't think her time with Zed will last that long.

She doesn't know how he's going to react when she tells him about Wyatt, about what he said, and what she's going to do. Her decision is already made, but she still worries if something Zed says will sway her, or make her re-think something she thought she was so sure of.

"So," she starts, catching Zed's attention. "I got a text from Wyatt."

She sees his shoulders tense before anything else, the slight stiffening of his posture at the sound of Wyatt's name, spoken out loud. His hand clutches hers tighter but they keep walking, and he's acting as if nothing's wrong.

She knows him better than that.

"Oh yeah?" he replies, sounding too eager, too happy. Too nonchalant. "What's new with him?"

His eyes are on the path, on the benches, on the sky. They don't once turn to her.

She almost reaches up to touch her moonstone necklace out of habit, a nervous reflex she picked up after becoming a werewolf. But she doesn't want his eyes to find the necklace, to see it and stare at it in poorly disguised hate like he always does, so instead she stays silent as they finally reach the ages-old benches. They break apart, Zed going to the right while she goes to the left, her fingers dragging across the top of one of the tables.

"Nothing much," she replies, trying her best to just stay cool. She can almost feel how he's going to react already, from the way he's keeping his distance, lingering, far from where she stands. She blurts the rest of the words out, wanting them gone. "Just that he wanted to talk when I was in town next."

Zed's smile falters as he processes her response.

This was how it had been with them for weeks now. They were hot and cold, on and off, there and then not. Granted, she was the one who brought Wyatt into the conversation, but she wasn't going to hide it from him. She trusted him and he trusted her. There was never any doubt or—

"Are you going to go see him?" he questions, his voice slightly quiet. Addison looks up and over, finding him leaning back against a tree that's closer to the back table, a big oak thing that might even be older than the hunk of rusty, creaky metal placed below its overarching branches.

"It's been three years, Zed," she says, allowing her fingers to get tangled in a spot of metal that's shredded and barely held together.

"Damn, that long already?" He chuckles half-heartedly, running his free hand through his hair. "Time flies when you're having fun, I guess."

Addison nods, silent.

Zed looks down at his converse, kicking at the ground.

"I'm going to meet him. Tonight." She doesn't look up.

He does. His eyes zero in on her across the small space, his hands shoved into his pockets. "Why?" he asks. There's no malice behind the word; if anything there's just hurt and misunderstanding. Addison exhales, pulling her hand back from the table and wiping it on the side of her pants.

"You know why, Zed," she lifts her head then, meeting his eyes, "I miss the pack. I miss him. He was my best friend."

He's stiff when he nods, otherwise still.

"I know."

She wants to go back, back to how they were when she first got here, back to the hugs and the kisses and the pretending that everything was okay with them, would always be okay with them. She wants to go back and yet...

They don't say anything else.

It's almost dark when she escapes the house again, when Zed is gone and her parents are done asking questions about college that she doesn't want to answer and dinner is left bubbling quietly on the stove with a promise to her mother that she'll be back in time to eat with them. She walks alone to the forest, following the same path she'd walked night after night throughout high school, right up until she'd left. She's made it further already than she has in years, as she gets out on the old walking trail along the highway, the final part of the journey.

It's been a long time since she's been able to bring herself to go out into the forest, to feel like the pack might welcome the sight of her there, that they wouldn't run her straight out of the trees. It's hard to tell, in the years that have passed, if they are still willing to understand why she left after fighting so hard to become one of them, or if her memory has tarnished and turned bitter over time.

The gates to the forest still stand buckled and rusted through in the way of the old mill road, an old chain looped between them in the pretense of holding them closed. Its padlock lies on the ground, dented and beaten and twisted out of shape. She wonders which of the wolves did it, and what sort of statement they were trying to make. There's enough room between the warped metal of the gates for her to slide through the bottom and so she does, climbing slowly to her feet on the other side.

The wind hits her as she does, whipping her hair around her face and setting her moonstone alight. It brings with it all the scents of the wild; the sharp pine of the trees, the till of the earth, the musty hide of deer as they ghost through the valleys and up the mountain in their search for the sweetest feed the forest can offer. Her eyes grow sharper and her lungs deeper. The moonstone warms her such as she doesn't need the jacket she'd been huddled in anymore — she strips it from her body and leaves it under a tree out the front of the ruins, where it won't disappear while she is gone.

She rolls her shoulders, bares her fangs, and feels alive for the first time since she walked out of the forest.

There's a sound behind her, the whisper of a boot treading through undergrowth, the faintest rustle of leaf litter as it is disturbed. She whirls around to face the dark depths of the forest, her eyes searching, her ears straining for any other clue as to what is watching her. The trees around her rustle as a gust of wind picks up, shaking their leaves and throwing her hair around her face, locks of ghostly white shining silver in the last rays of the sun. When it's safely tucked behind her ear again, he's there, a shadow between two trees blown in by the settling wind.

"Wyatt?" she calls, not quite able to believe that it is really him, after all this time.

The sound of her voice draws him forward, out of the forest and into the light.

Her breath catches in her throat when she sees him, striding out to meet her with a deftness to his step and a quiet confidence in his eyes, far from the caution that had been captured in his every movement when she had last known him. He is not the boy she knew in high school anymore; he is older, stronger, freer, all hard edges where he used to be soft lines.

"Hi, Addison," he says.

The light catches on his cheek as he does, highlighting his pack mark; three little lines, drawn sharp and straight along his cheekbone.

His fangs shine in the moonlight as he smiles, and Addison finds herself unable to look away.