So it looks like updates will be once a week if my schedule permits it. I'm super proud of how this chapter came out and I hope you guys enjoy it. I'd like to thank tablekorner, Guest and musicluver246 for the reviews, they really motivate me to update quickly. This chapter, Shiloh settles in, experiences her first shift and finally meets Hope.
Disclaimer: I don't own Legacies or any of its characters besides my OC, Shiloh.
Things were not smooth sailing.
Actually, they were far from it.
Not only did Shiloh find herself basically ostracized from the entire group of high school aged vampires at the school because she was a hybrid, but her unwillingness to be part of the 'pack dynamic' also caused her strife with the werewolves. It wasn't necessarily the entire pack that was her problem, it was more so Jed and his tyrannical ideals on how a pack should be. Sure, Shiloh had respect for alphas—even when she wasn't a triggered wolf, she respected Lupita—but the other fifteen-year-old was just like a child putting on their parents clothes and playing pretend.
Not all of the wolves were bad. Shiloh got along well with Chris and Mara, some of the werewolves who had been there longest, but their tendency to blindly submit to Jed's stupid rules made her keep her distance.
Within the first week, Shiloh had also found herself in the company of Josie, Lizzie and MG, one of the few vampires who didn't frown when she breathed the same air as them.
MG was funny and charismatic and the hybrid could immediately tell that he had major heart eyes for the blonde siphon. He didn't hide it well and pretty much everyone but the two twins could tell.
Lizzie was not someone that Shiloh would normally find herself in the company of, yet there were some parts of her personality that were redeeming. Shiloh could tell that she loved her sister and admired her tenacity to blatantly call another student out for doing something that her father would disapprove of.
And Josie, well, the new girl couldn't help but notice how butterflies exploded in her stomach and the way her chest tightened every time the witch so much as smiled at her. Shiloh had never been in a relationship before, or really had any kind of crush—unless she counted that one boy in the fifth grade—but she imagined this is what it would feel like.
The brunette twin was extremely kind, she had shown Shiloh where all of her classes were on her first day and invited her to sit with her sister and MG at meals. Josie immersed herself in her schoolwork, especially the magical coursework, and appeared to be calm for the most part, unless she was under the scrutiny of more than just her friends, which would then cause her to become slightly flustered at the attention.
In their shared math class, Shiloh had watched as Josie answered a question on the chalkboard, stuttering as she tried to explain how she got the answer.
"Ugh," Josie had groaned after sitting back down, hitting her head lightly on the desktop. "That was so bad."
Shiloh had waited until the girl turned to look at her to respond, gesturing to her paper that was covered in unintelligible scribbles.
"At least you found the answer," she said from her adjacent desk.
Her written nonsense caused Josie to crack a small smile. "Maybe you just need a tutor," she had suggested, pointing at herself and practically volunteering to help out her new friend.
"I think I need a life tutor," muttered Shiloh, as their teacher called her up to answer the next question, the mixture of letters and numbers causing her head to spin.
With her enhanced hearing, she heard Josie let out a giggle as she picked up a small piece of chalk, making her a little more determined to find the correct answer than she was seconds before.
So, her first several weeks at the Salvatore School weren't terrible, but that didn't mean that things were going great for her, more specifically her impending first shift, which would be the most painful as her uncle had told her before she'd left home. Of course, this was the one and only time she'd be forced to shift because of her being a hybrid, but that didn't mean she expected it to hurt less.
Dr. Saltzman had shown her the cells that they kept in the basement for werewolf transformations. He had explained that not all of the wolves at school used them, most preferred to change in the woods behind the school under the moonlight. The cells were mostly used for first transformations and those that proved to be more aggressive in wolf form.
Barrier spells were placed around the gates and the school itself during full moon nights, the wolves allowed to roam the woods in the only amount of freedom that the school could give them. The spells were powerful enough to keep the other students inside and the werewolves outside.
So far, their method had worked and no one had been injured, other than the occasional werewolf scuffle, which was to be expected.
The day of the full moon was nerve-wracking for Shiloh, who sat on the edge of her seat in every class and barely paid any attention to anything outside of her head, scared that any minute her bones would start breaking.
It was at lunch when Lizzie finally snapped, having had enough of the tension rolling off of the other girl in waves.
"Oh my god!" the blonde slapped the table, narrowing her eyes at Shiloh. "You're freaking everyone out, Fido. It's only one and you're not gonna grow fur until the moon rises, so chill out already!"
While she wasn't sure whether or not to be offended by Lizzie's blatant comparison of her and a dog, the siphon's bluntness actually settled some of her nerves. She was actually calm enough to eat some of her lunch.
This was the only time that Shiloh wished she was closer to the wolves, not having been told much about the process of the shift other than that all of the bones in her body would break and reform.
Twice.
"Do you think it'll hurt that badly?" it was a rhetorical question, one that she knew the other three teens couldn't answer definitively.
MG and Lizzie avoided her gaze, suddenly finding their lunch trays very interesting and leaving Josie to flounder for some sort of answer that might placate the hybrid.
"Um, I really don't know," Josie said softly, looking upset that she couldn't tell her what she wanted to hear because she knew from overhearing her parents conversations that the shift was apparently excruciatingly painful for first timers.
"Most of the other werewolves usually come back in good moods, if that helps," MG added.
Lizzie, seemingly done with the conversation, waved her hand dismissively. "You'll be fine, it's not like anybody's ever died from going full wolf-mode."
Her sister closed her eyes in exasperation, not-at-all surprised by her lack of empathy, but MG choked on his sandwich at Lizzie's words. Josie patted the teenage vampire on the back as he coughed, shooting her sister a reproving glance, one that went practically ignored as the blonde started prattling on about a fight between two witches that she was a witness to that morning.
Shiloh was fiddling with her napkin while she attempted to focus on what Lizzie was saying, tearing off small pieces of the white paper at the corner in anxiety.
Her meticulous shredding of the napkin was halted when a hand covered her own, causing her to look up into two soft brown eyes. Josie had reached across the table, placing her hand on top of the nervous hybrid's to give her the only reassurance that she could. Shiloh could feel her skin burning at the other girl's touch, but even so, the contact caused her muscles to relax.
Josie retracted her hand after a minute, but the calm she had given Shiloh remained with her.
Sn ap!
Her spine cracking and curving itself sent a white hot pain traveling throughout her entire body, a scream escaping her as she clawed at the concrete floor trying to find anything that would dull the excruciating feeling. The joints of her knees and ankles popped out of place and popped back into a different shape, her fingers shrinking and nails lengthening.
A little after classes ended and most students had retired to their free time, Dr. Saltzman had led a small group of wolves to the basement, Shiloh included. The youngest among them being only eleven, he had to be down there as a safety precaution as all the other werewolves were older and might get too aggressive with him. All the others were either too aggressive or opted to shift in the cells.
Each of them were locked into a very dungeon-type cell that was made to keep in those with supernatural strength. Shiloh was sandwiched between two boys that she had never met and was across from the eleven year old.
Shiloh's next scream turned into a whine as her nose and mouth expanded outwards, her eyes moving slightly further apart to compensate. It was the worst headache she had ever experienced. Fur sprouted out in patches across her skin and a pushing sensation at the end of her spine signaled the growth of her tail, her canines elongating into large fangs that could cut diamonds.
By the time the grueling transformation was over, Shiloh was a panting mess on the floor, struggling to catch her breath as the pain melted away due to her enhanced healing.
The first thing she registered as the pain cleared, were the sounds around her.
Most of the other wolves had already completed the shift, so the screams of pain had turned into guttural growls that reverberated off of the walls. The clang of metal hitting metal registered to her ears as others ramming themselves into the cell bars, mindlessly trying to escape their agreed-upon prisons at any cost.
Getting to her feet, Shiloh stood and watched as a small inky black wolf paced the cage across from her, remembering that it was the small boy who she had seen earlier. Though, now he was snarling and his eyes glowed a golden yellow.
Confusion washed over her when she didn't feel the need to act as the other werewolves were. Sure, her skin itched with an urge to run, but the fog Dr. Saltzman had described during their first meeting was almost completely absent otherwise. There was no bloodlust or blind rage that some of the other wolves told her to expect.
It was more of a freeing feeling, like her skin had been crawling since she triggered her curse and all of the sudden she had broken the lock holding a piece of her hostage, embracing this new side of herself.
Without the aggression of her fellow wolves, she felt no need to escape, and instead settled herself in the corner against a cool wall as far away from the loud noises that the others were making as possible.
A sliver of moonlight streaked across her particular cell, illuminating the long, silvery fur that covered Shiloh's new form. Other than that, the only thing a passerby could see in the dark was a pair of large green eyes.
Shiloh rested her head on her huge paws, letting out a sigh and closing her eyes in an attempt to sleep, trying to drown out the howls of the other students as much as possible and hoping the transition back would be easier.
As it turned out, the girl wasn't even awake when she shifted back. Her bones still broke, popped and reformed themselves as she slept, but the werewolf's pain threshold having increased with the first change allowed her to sleep through it. Since the bones had already been through it once, her body knew what to expect.
She awoke the next morning lying next to a freshly folded pile of her clothes, blushing when she looked down at her bare body. Shiloh could only hope whoever had left the clothes wasn't Dr. Saltzman or some perverted student.
The thought stuck with her as she ate breakfast with Josie, MG and Lizzie that morning, not giving the trio much information on the night, other than the fact that she had almost complete control over herself then entire time.
She left out the blood-curdling screams she had let out for the first ten minutes as she fought the change.
Shiloh's first meeting with Hope didn't go exactly how she would have liked it to, but least the tribrid hadn't set her on fire with her magic, which the green-eyed girl considered a win on its own.
It had happened around six months after Shiloh had started attending the boarding school, having settled in and made friends—mostly just Josie, MG and maybe Lizzie—and even the vampires were starting to tolerate her presence. Although, most of the werewolves still avoided her in the halls.
After her first full moon, she had taken to running in the woods almost every night. She wasn't sure if it was because of the feeling of the wind rushing through her fur or the simplicity of just letting the wolf take control. The pain of shifting had actually lessened the more she did it.
This particular night was one of the rare ones that Shiloh hadn't gone for a run. Instead, she was silently fuming in her room while trying to finish an essay on compulsion.
Josie had started dating a witch from one of her classes named Penelope. They had been partnered for a project and the siphon had quickly become enamored by the school's resident 'bad girl.'
Penelope Park was someone that Shiloh wasn't eager to become friends with. The brunette witch was sarcastic, used magic for mean practical jokes on the younger students and had a tendency to bully Josie into certain situations, especially if they resulted in a pissed off Lizzie.
So, if anyone asked, Shiloh would tell them that she was fuming because she disliked Penelope, but the real reason was the bitter jealousy that rushed through her every time the couple so much as held hands around her.
She wanted to be the one that Josie held hands with on the way to class, the one that the girl would seek out when she needed someone to talk to, or even the one that she exchanged stupid memes with.
But Josie only had eyes for Penelope.
That's why, when the door to the room was thrown open, Shiloh was too busy angrily scribbling in her notebook to notice. It was only when the intruder cleared their throat that the hybrid looked up and saw that it wasn't an intruder.
It was Hope Mikaelson.
Though, this girl looked different from the one in the pictures that littered her side of the room. This girl in front of her was older. Or, at least, she seemed older. Gone was the childlike smile that adorned the face in the photos, this version wore an annoyed frown. Her eyes had a tiredness in them, one that reminded her of her one and only encounter with Klaus. She was dressed in sweats and her hair was thrown up in a messy bun, a backpack dangling off of one shoulder.
It was weird, because the tugging sensation in her gut that Shiloh realized was due to the sire bond, completely dissolved when her mind caught up with her vision.
"Who are you and what are you doing in my room?" the tribrid narrowed her eyes at Shiloh, before depositing her bag onto her bed.
Shiloh felt the sudden urge to stand at attention in front of the other girl, but settled for just standing and offering her hand.
"I'm Shiloh," she introduced herself, "Shiloh Leroux."
If the French last name rang any bells, Hope didn't show it. She crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring Shiloh's outstretched hand and tapped her foot in quick succession on the carpet.
"So, now I know who you are, but that doesn't explain what you're doing here."
"I go here?" Shiloh's eyebrows drew together in confusion.
Hope let out an exasperated sigh, "No. I mean what are you doing here, in this room?"
"Um, Dr. Saltzman said this was the best room assignment considering the circumstances," the younger girl explained carefully, not really sure what other explanation the Mikaelson was looking for.
Her words caused Hope to pause from pulling crumpled up clothing out of her backpack. She turned to Shiloh and studied her closely for several moments, trying to put together where else she had heard those words before when it hit her.
"You're the hybrid," she remembered a conversation she overheard between her Uncle Kol and Aunt Davina. "The one that…" Hope trailed off, not able to say the word 'father,' yet Shiloh knew what she meant, so instead she said, "the one that's sire bonded to me."
This was a huge relief to Shiloh. Since Hope knew about her father's attempt at keeping her safe, she also had to know about the sire bond, which meant Shiloh wouldn't have to keep it a secret because she was a terrible liar.
She nodded. "That's me," not sure what else she could say to the other girl's statement.
Silence washed over them for what felt like hours to Shiloh before Hope cleared her throat.
"Let's just get a couple things straight," her tone had taken on a steely edge, "one, pretend that the sire bond is nonexistent. I don't need another stray hybrid following me around like a lost puppy. Got it?"
Shiloh nodded again, unsure if it was really her agreeing or if it was just the bond forcing her to.
"Two, stay on your side of the room and don't touch my stuff," Hope drew a line across the middle of the room with her arm. "Follow those two rules and we should be able to coexist without an issue."
Finished with unpacking the bare minimum she had taken with her, Hope settled on her bed and opened a sketch book, "Any questions?"
"Just one," Shiloh continued when the girl waved her arm in a 'go on' gesture, "do you have to take three times as many classes since you're a vampire, witch and a werewolf? Or, do you just go to whichever one you feel like most that day?"
Hope doesn't give her a verbal response, but Shiloh managed to catch a glimpse of the corner of an upturned smile before it was covered with the large sketchpad, the hybrid taking it as a small victory.
She went back to her essay, frowning at the measly two sentences that mocked her.