Chapter 16

Josie woke up with a start, gasping and breathless. She could almost feel the ache in her muscles. She could almost still smell the rich earth beneath her paws.

Her brow creased as she stared off unfocused into space.

Paws?

She sat up in her bed and slowly lifted her hands in front of her as if to make sure that she was, indeed, human. She turned them over and over again, struggling to comprehend the very tangible experience she had had during the night.

She could remember it all – stalking through the woods until she found the most beautiful clearing. Then she saw her – she saw her twin flame – and her heart felt like it could burst from joy. She remembered the bonding moment between them and marking Hope in the same way Hope had marked her. She remembered them running and being free together, then curling up into a hot mess of fur and limbs to sleep off their exhaustion.

It was the best night of her life.

Yet here she was, unaltered, and no indication that it had really happened. Could it all just have been a dream? Or was there more to it?

All Josie knew was that it didn't feel like it was just some fleeting fantasy. It was all just far too intense to have been a mere flight of fancy.

(…)

It was only first period and Hope was already over it.

No matter how much she tried she just simply could not focus on her schoolwork. Who cared about Shakespeare when you felt like you had spent the whole night before entangling yourself in the most significant relationship that could ever exist? The flashes of her and Josie running together as if nothing else mattered were still fresh in the tribrid's mind. The memory of the moment Josie had marked her and claimed her in such a corporeal way still caused her heart to flutter and her stomach to do loops.

"Miss Mikaelson?" Hope's eyes snapped to the front of the class. Mr. Crane, the English teacher, was asking her some sort of question about thematic jealousy in Othello, but she honestly had no idea what he had even said.

"What was that, sir?" She gulped and tried not to notice all the curious eyes cast her way from the rest of the class.

"Pardon me, miss Mikaelson, but is there somewhere else you desperately need to be at the current moment?" Mr. Crane cocked his head to the one side in that annoying habitual way he did when he was about to make some snarky comment. Hope simply shook her head, demurely, and waited for it.

"Then could I perhaps suggest being more present during my lesson? I don't much enjoy teaching inanimate objects." He huffed and turned back to the board, then started a discourse on how unfounded jealousy bred a sort of monstrous paranoia that would continue to feed the growth of the jealous feeling itself. In other words, Iago was a dick and Othello was an idiot. She already knew that.

From the corner of her eye, Hope could spy Jade and Wendy sitting on the other side of the classroom. How annoying that Mr. Crane would embarrass her for being distracted when the other two girls were having a full-blown gossip session in their corner of the room with no reproach from the teacher. Hope narrowed her eyes as she watched Jade's steely pair sparkle like someone had shattered the stars and sprinkled their dust within those orbs.

Wendy spoke a few words and Jade grinned like the cat that got cream.

Hope raked her nails down her desk. Hard.

She had to know what they were talking about.

If only she had her vamp hearing. Unfortunately, her hearing was only as keen as the average wolf's. It did help, however, having a vampire friend nearby.

Hope discreetly leaned forward onto her desk and tapped at Kaleb's shoulder. By the looks of it, Kaleb was nearly put asleep by the current lesson himself, as he slowly craned his neck around to look at her with foggy eyes. "What?" He mouthed, a little irritably.

It would be difficult to talk and relay messages back and forth as Mr. Crane was still droning on about the "green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on". So, Hope opted for note writing – the witchy way.

She softly muttered an incantation beneath her breath as she held her pen in hand, then as Kaleb watched her, she wrote the word 'Hi' on the page in front of her. She motioned for him to turn back around to his desk, and when he did, he found that her writing had transferred to his page. Kaleb, suddenly curious, quickly drew a hand pointing its middle finger at the onlooker onto his page and grinned as he looked back to see that it had transferred to Hope's page.

'Don't be an ass. I need your help.' Hope quickly wrote to him and he simply replied with a question mark, encouraging her to explain.

'I need to know what Jade and Wendy are talking about. Can you vamp for me? Please!' When Kaleb glanced back at Hope after reading her message, he could clearly see the hint of sadness and desperation in her baby blues. He wasn't fond of the idea of eavesdropping on a fellow vampire, but he did share a certain camaraderie with the tribrid that could not be overlooked.

He gave Hope an expression that would inform her that he didn't like the idea, but that he would comply. He then casually angled his head and stilled the room around him, allowing his hearing to hone in on the two girls. As they spoke, Kaleb would scribble their words down on the page in front of him as best he could, allowing Hope to read their conversation on her own paper.

'So you kissed her?'

'It was so close. I will next time.'

'When's the next date?'

'Hopefully soon. I'll ask her at lunch.'

'Then it won't be long till Saltzman is putty in your hands.'

'Oh she'll be in my hands alright.'

'All night long?' *giggles*

Kaleb stopped scribbling notes abruptly when he heard Hope snap her pencil in half behind him. He glanced back to see her eyes glowing, his own going wide at the display.

"Hope! Wolfy eyes! Calm down!" He whisper-shouted at her to try and get her to take it down a notch before anyone else noticed.

Too late.

Hope heard the whispers around her from two or three students who had noticed and they spoke in concern. No one here has seen it before, but just about everyone could image what a raging and very powerful tribrid would look like. It was understandable that a lot of kids would be afraid of her.

"Oh god, the tribrid is malfunctioning again." Clearly Jade wasn't one of them, even though she was the vey one that had the most to be worried about.

Hope immediately jumped to her feet and locked her glowing eyes with the vampire. The quick movement sent her chair scraping over the floor and slamming into the desk behind her before tipping over. "Do you have a problem with me, Ripper?"

"What did you just call me, Mikaelson?" Jade gritted her teeth and stepped forward, seemingly ready to lunge at Hope any second. "You have already tried to kill me. TWICE, I might add. And you want to call ME the ripper?" The vampire sneered dangerously at Hope.

Hope faltered.

Twice? Goddamn her wolf!

"Well it would seem a certain side of me has a bad feeling about all of you!" Hope knew she couldn't back down now, even though she honestly, deep down, felt like she should.

"It seems like a 'certain side' of you needs a fucking muzzle!" Jade spat, not in the least bit concerned that Hope's eyes still had that unholy glow to them.

"Oh yeah?" Hope snapped at that, her wolf starting to claw its way out of her chest. Or at least that's how it felt to her, and it was taking every ounce of her willpower to not let it burst forth. "Why don't you come over here and say that to my face!" She growled loudly with her incisors starting to protrude and shoved a desk aside that was lingering between her and the vampire, causing it to crash loudly into the other furniture beside it.

At this point the whole class was up and on edge as they watched the exchange. Some of them were nervous at the carnage that could come from an actual physical altercation, while others eagerly whispered their bets to each other on who would walk away the victor. Somewhere in the background Mr. Crane's croaky voice could be heard, but no one cared.

"The only reason I won't destroy that face you're talking about right now, is because I simply don't want to upset my girlfriend by ripping out her best friend's eyes!" Jade chuckled in some sort of cheeky display of a challenge.

Of course, as soon as she heard the word 'girlfriend', Hope lost it. She jumped at Jade with her claws out and ready to go for the Vampire's jugular, while Jade herself was ready to rip a hole straight through Hope's chest and remove her heart.

Neither of them came even close to accomplishing their goals as within seconds they were both slumped over on the floor, then passed out immediately afterwards. At the door stood a wide-eyed Dorian with a dart gun in either hand. "At least I still got good aim."

"At least you shot the right creature with the right poison." Emma was next to him, patting him on the shoulder before squeezing past him and into the classroom. She surveyed the mess and sighed. Her instinct was right when it was nagging at her for the two of them to return.