Hello! Sorry for the delayed update, the holidays messed up my update schedule, but I hope everyone had a great time if you celebrate and even if you don't! Thanks to tablekorner, Guest 1, KaraSkie, Guest 2, Jamie and cateeter1 for the reviews!
Disclaimer: I don't own Legacies or any of the characters in this story besides my OC, Shiloh.
After Hope returned, time started moving just a little bit faster for Shiloh. She wouldn't call them best friends—Hope claimed she didn't do friends—but her presence was tolerated more often than not, which the hybrid figured was because the Mikaelson girl was more lonely than she let on.
Sure, they had gotten to a point where they could exchange pleasantries and occasional jokes, but Hope still kept her at arm's length and refused to acknowledge the sire bond at all. The only mention of it was when she informed Shiloh that as soon as possible, they were going to break it as Tyler Lockwood had.
Almost a year and a half of everything being almost relatively normal—besides the occasional spell gone wrong or werewolf tantrum—passed by before trouble reared it's ugly head once again.
The only good thing that happened around this time was the breakup between Josie and Penelope.
Shiloh didn't know much about the reason behind the split, but there were whispers that it was Penelope who dumped Josie, leaving the siphon an emotional wreck with a bad taste in her mouth. Josie refused to talk about it with anyone besides Lizzie, only referring to her ex as Satan.
Having been crushing on the Saltzman twin for almost her entire time at the Salvatore School, Shiloh was hopeful that this could finally result in her chance to do something about it.
That is until Hope reminded her that she was too scared to make the first move and almost fell apart every time Josie so much as smiled at her.
But, back to the beginning of what might have been the craziest/best year of her life.
It all started with a standard recruitment mission.
Dr. Saltzman had pulled Hope and Shiloh aside after class on the day of a full moon to ask that they come with him to pick up a new werewolf that Sheriff Donovan had gotten a tip about. He claimed that since they were the only two wolves not influenced by the moon, they would be the best back up since Caroline was on another one of her many top secret trips.
For whatever reason, they were headed full speed towards a church, which Shiloh found incredibly ironic.
"This is a joke, right?" she asked, leaning over the center console to stick her head between Hope and Dr. Saltzman. "We're basically the definition of demons and we're about to go into the holiest place in Mystic Falls."
Hope rolled her eyes, holding back a smile when Dr. Saltzman sent Shiloh a warning look.
"This is serious, Shiloh. We have no idea what we're about to walk in on, so please do exactly what I tell you."
"Sorry, sir," Shiloh held her hands up, falling back into her seat, but was immediately propelled forward when Dr. Saltzman slammed on the breaks, bringing the car to a screeching halt in front of the church.
Three doors shut loudly as they power walked towards the building, Hope in the lead. Sitting on the steps out front was a pale and lanky teen, who could have been on the cover of an alternative mixtape being sold out of a van with his curly hair that fell in his eyes. Shiloh could tell from his scent that he was human, not carrying the musky smell of a werewolf, the hint of blood that clung to a vampire or the spark of magic only a supernatural being could detect.
Hope came to an abrupt stop when her eyes fell on him, causing Shiloh the almost crash into her back. "Landon,"
"Hope?" the boy, Landon, looked up in surprise at the tribrid.
"You two know each other?" Dr. Saltzman asked as he joined the group.
"Long story," Hope replied as she stared with a wistful look in her eye.
Shiloh exhaled a snarky, "I'll bet," ignoring the glare that the other girl threw her way until a loud yell and a crash sounded from inside of the church.
"Dr. Saltzman," the two students chorused as the noises continued, Landon looking behind him in a mix of fear and concern.
Pulling his favored crossbow from an inconspicuous-looking gym bag, their teacher responded, "Yeah I'm on it," running up to the doors as their new companion widened his eyes in shock as the man pulled on the locked doors.
He announced it to the only witch in their group, who chanted a quick spell that opened the doors, breaking the chains in the process. Hope warned Landon to stay outside, while the trio quickly marched inside.
The scene was something straight out of a thriller. A priest was standing over their shifting werewolf target holding a wooden cross and repeating the same words over and over again as he tried to purge him of his so-called demons. Two other adults stood off to either side.
"Shut down the exorcist would you," Dr. Saltzman told Hope and nodded at Shiloh to handle the other humans.
She speedily silenced the priest and with another spell, knocked them all out. Shiloh was tasked with moving them a safer distance away until they could compel or spell them to forget everything that happened that night. Although, she wasn't the most careful while performing her job, smacking one man's head on the side of the pew as she dragged him.
She, Hope and Dr. Saltzman made quick work of chaining the wolf up as he struggled on the ground writhing in pain. It was easy to remember the place that she, herself had been in during the first full moon.
Without her enhanced hearing, she would have missed Landon's quiet exclamation when he entered.
"Oh my god."
When there was nothing left to do but wait, they stood back as the boy completed his change, a black wolf left in his place. The beast snarling and lunging as far as the chains would allow him at what he saw as prey to be slaughtered.
Hours of silence passed as they waited for dawn, only filled with the occasional hushed question from Landon and the period of time where Shiloh compelled the three other humans to forget everything that happened that night. She enjoyed the opportunity to work on her compulsion skills. The rest of the time was spent working on homework for several of her classes, causing their headmaster to raise an eyebrow.
"Really?"
"Yes, really," Shiloh replied while finishing an algebra problem, "it would have been done earlier, but someone pulled me out of school and fringed upon my education to pick up a stray werewolf."
Down the pew, several spaces from her, Hope, who had been mostly quiet in contemplation of the shit storm that was going to take place when Landon finally cracked, snorted in amusement.
Eventually, dawn came and the teen, Rafael, Landon had told them, was back in his human form. The girls had waited outside while he shifted back, knowing that clothes didn't transfer between forms and had no interest in seeing Rafael's naked body.
"What's between you and Green Day?" Shiloh questioned while they waited, the chilly morning air making her breath come out in a fog.
"Nothing," Hope lied, not offended by the hybrid's jab at Landon's looks. However, the longer Shiloh stared at her, unimpressed, the more the typically stone-faced girl squirmed. "We danced or whatever at a festival one time, that's all."
"Oh, cool," the younger girl stated, knowing full well not to press Hope for more answers.
They may have progressed from tentative friendship to a more solid relationship, but Shiloh had come to find out when Hope was pushed too far, she tended to close off entirely, so she dropped the subject.
Moments later, the three guys had emerged from the church. Dr. Saltzman led the exhausted werewolf and the jittery human boy to where the girls had been waiting by the car.
Hope had an infinite dibs on shot-gun, so Shiloh was sandwiched in the back seat between the boys, while the other girl got the passenger seat. Rafael fell asleep minutes into the drive, his head leaning against the window as he snored away. On the other hand, Landon bounced his leg up and down, mind running seemingly a mile a minute.
He lasted an impressive hour-and-a-half before breaking the silence when the only adult in the vehicle asked how he and Hope knew each other. Hope gave him slightly more context than her conversation with Shiloh, probably due to the effect Landon had on her. They flirted until his questions couldn't wait any longer.
Dr. Saltzman assured him that they would answer all his questions when they got somewhere safe, but Shiloh knew that he wouldn't remember them when he left.
Shiloh remained quiet as the car made it's way up the curvy driveway that led to the school, awkwardly avoiding eye-contact with Landon and leaning closer to the dozing boy on her right.
They parked under an overhang that was closest Dr. Saltzman's office, Rafael lifting his head up as he became aware that they weren't moving anymore.
"We don't have to go to class, right?" Shiloh asked as they all got out, remembering that it was a school day when she saw other students walking around in their uniforms, the school's crest plastered over the right chest of every one of them.
"I guess not," Dr. Saltzman agreed, the more pressing matter of the human boy with them distracting him. "Only if you finish all the homework that you missed on time."
Biting the side of her lip in thought, Shiloh shrugged, "I'll take it. If anyone needs me, I'll be in bed until tomorrow morning at the earliest."
She said a quick goodbye to Hope, welcomed Rafael to the Salvatore School and waved to Landon, who surely wouldn't remember her in a couple of hours. On her walk into the building, she passed the twins, which could only mean that they were playing 'welcome committee.'
"Josie, Lizzie," she greeted, her eyes lingering on the brunette.
The girls smiled at her, simultaneously saying her name in that creepy way of theirs.
"Hi, Shiloh."
Shiloh figured that it must have somehow made it to the girls that their newest student was a boy and they wanted to make good first impressions. It was definitely an idea that Lizzie would have come up with.
She just hoped that Josie was just going along with her sister like usual and not because she was interested in more than just meeting Rafael.
The dorms were mostly quiet, so the hybrid made it to her room with no more interactions and dropped her backpack on her desk before curling up under her comforter to get some much-needed rest.
Hours later, the slamming of the door echoed in Shiloh's ears, drawing her out of her much-needed slumber and back into the waking world. She kept her eyes shut for a beat before turning over and pulling down the fabric covering her head to keep out the bright sunlight streaming through the window.
Hope was pacing the middle of the room, probably wearing out a path in the carpet the covered the floor.
"Whaz goin' on?" the half-asleep teen wondered, blinking until her eyes became used to the blinding light.
"MG couldn't compel Landon," Hope answered, not pausing in her quick steps back and forth. "He must have ingested vervain, probably from that gas station coffee this morning."
That got Shiloh's attention.
Propping herself up on her elbow, she informed Hope, "I had some of that coffee, too, so we can rule that out. Where is he now?"
"In the werewolf dungeons," the answer intrigued the blonde, her eyebrows raising slightly.
"Way to give him the five-star treatment." Shiloh laughed, "The Best Western has nothing on us," a thought suddenly struck her, "what if he's not on vervain?"
Finally, Hope sat on her bed with a scoff, "There's no other explanation for his inability to be compelled. You know MG is the best student at the school when it comes to compulsion."
Shiloh could see her point, it was extremely valid and everyone knew that humans could be compelled unless they had ingested vervain or were wearing the herb on them. Still, she couldn't help but remember their car ride that morning.
"It's just that I sat next to him for a long time in the car like squished next to him and there was not a hint of vervain coming from him," she explained. There was a certain smell that clung faintly to those who had taken or were wearing vervain, but she hadn't smelt anything off with the teen.
Hope shut her suggestion down immediately, "It's just not possible," shaking her head, she continued, "sometimes you just can't tell if someone's taken it or not, so you probably just couldn't smell it."
"Maybe," Shiloh mused, trying not to take offense to her roommate's disguised insult to her abilities. Hope just had a straight-forward way of stating things sometimes that could be seen as rude to those who didn't know her.
The light-haired girl opened one of her drawers and pulled out some workout clothes. Before she entered their connecting bathroom, she announced, "I'm training with Saltzman, so don't wait up for dinner."
With a nod, Shiloh let her head fall back against the pillow and closed her eyes once more. She wasn't planning on sitting down for dinner, instead deciding to sneak down for cereal or something later.
It was dark when she rejoined the conscious world, the only light coming from the crack under the door. The teen rolled out of bed and landed deftly on her feet, stretching her arms out and groaning as her several cracks sounded.
As she was turning to pick up her cell phone, something through the window caught her gaze.
A dark shape was quickly moving across the lawn, the lights on the outside of the school illuminating enough for Shiloh to tell it was a person. But, they weren't running, it looked like they were being dragged by an invisible force and that was what caused her enough concern to further investigate.
Quickly, she pulled on a pair of sneakers and slipped her arms through one of her many hoodies. She didn't have time to take notice of the lack of students in the dorms and instead made her way down to where she saw the person last.
She inhaled and was met with the scent of burgers and hair gel, a combination that she could link back to one borderline emo teenage boy that she had sat next to in an enclosed space earlier that day.
Thanks to the strong smell of fear left behind, she was easily able to follow the trail through the woods that surrounded the campus and to the old mill.
Where it was immediately clear that the high school students were holding a rager.
The first person she ran into was MG, who had absolutely no idea what she was talking about when she interrupted one of his thrilling stories to ask if he had seen Landon anywhere. He paused for a moment and then told her he hadn't
Next, she found Rafael with a group of the wolves, taking turns racing to the top of the crumbling structure with their enhanced speed and strength.
"Hey," she pulled him aside, not missing the icy looks that the others gave her as she did so. "Is Landon here somewhere?"
Rafael eyed her up, checking to see whether or not her she would rat his friend out to an adult.
"Yeah," he pointed over in the general direction of the bonfire, deeming her trustworthy enough. "Josie used a summoning spell to get him here and he went to get a drink."
Shiloh looked over to where the boy gestured and turned back to shoot him a small smile, "Cool, thanks."
He stepped back in the direction where the climbing was taking place but halted and looked at Shiloh. "You want to give it a go?" he asked, using his thumb to point to the wall.
"Another time," Shiloh promised, knowing the others wouldn't take kindly to her presence and not wanting to explain that to the newbie. He'd learn the pack dynamic soon enough and she wasn't going to spoil his fun.
With a wider smile, Rafael nodded and went back to the wolves, who slapped him on the back and pushed him towards the climbing wall.
Shiloh watched for a second, then continued her search for Landon, knowing it wasn't a good idea for an unaccompanied human teenager to be wandering around the party alone.
Accidents happen.
So, she decided to be the responsible one for once and circled the entire party twice, coming up empty-handed. No one could remember seeing the teen she described and most of them were too intoxicated to remember.
Which left Shiloh to double back and find another scent trail, one that mingled with a very familiar one that she couldn't forget if she tried. It was one that made her feel complete in a way that could only come from one of two things.
Love and the Sire Bond.
Obviously, it was the second option because Josie smelled of the coffee that she drank every morning and the sweet pea shampoo and conditioner that she used.
No, this was Hope's scent, which she could only compare to rain in the fall, the crisp smell tinged with a hint of sadness that she always carried with her. It may have not been visible, but it was there.
Hope and Landon must have crossed paths here, Shiloh thought to herself as she walked in the direction her senses were telling her to, taking her on a trail back to the school, where it ended at the library.
She could hear muted voices coming from inside, so she knew that this was where both of them had ended up. Their conversation sounded personal and Shiloh gave them their privacy, her rumbling stomach taking her on a trip towards the kitchens.
She never got there, though.
At the bottom of the stairs, she collided with another solid body, sending the other person tumbling backward. Instinctually, her arms shot out to steady them, gripping their shoulders as she finally looked up to apologize.
Only for her eyes to meet a pair of very well known ones.
"Josie," she breathed, dropping her arms quickly when she realized she was still holding the siphon, blushing profusely. "I'm so sorry."
"Oh, Shiloh," it took Josie a beat to comprehend who she bumped into, seemingly lost in her own thoughts, but when she did, she wiped at her eyes rapidly. "It's all right, it was my fault."
Shiloh studied the taller girl, taking notice of the red that rimmed her eyes and the frown that tugged at her lips, "What's wrong?"
The question caused Josie's eyes to gloss over once more, but she shook her head and visibly reeled in her emotions, forcing a smile that seemed more frightening than reassuring.
"I'm fine."
"You sure?" Shiloh pressed, worried about what would have caused that usually level-headed twin to become upset.
"Hey, Shiloh I'm pretty tired," the blatant change of subjects wasn't lost on Shiloh. "I'm going to go to bed, but I'll see you at breakfast, yeah?"
Josie stepped around the hybrid without waiting for an answer, waiting until she was halfway up the steps to take them two at a time, in a hurry to get back to her room as fast as possible.
"I'll see you," Shiloh whispered, concern and confusion swirling around in her head.
Her belly reminded her of her previous mission with a gurgle, but she wasn't hungry anymore. She just wanted to go back to her room and crawl under her covers for the rest of the night and worry about what was going on with Josie.
So, that's what she did.
Shiloh was right.
Landon had pretended to be compelled and had walked off of school grounds with a knife in his possession that could very well be the most dangerous weapon in the world.
No one was sure exactly what it did.
Dr. Saltzman had called a mandatory assembly to announce the event, but Shiloh became aware when Hope had found her on her way to breakfast, dragging her into a nearby classroom to fill her in.
Although she didn't want to believe he had lied to her, Shiloh could see that Hope was just trying not to acknowledge that she had been tricked. Hurt by the one person she had opened up to the most outside of her family.
"I'm not that stupid, right?" she had asked, facing away from Shiloh and pulling at her hair.
Shiloh had assured her that, no, she wasn't stupid, because the younger girl had thought Landon to be an innocent human and she was a pretty good judge of character.
After sitting through the meeting that explained less than what Hope had told her, Shiloh decided to get a shower, mostly to relax the tension that coursed through her body and partly to give her the space to think.
She took her time in the shower, relishing in the way the hot water worked the stiffness out of her shoulders and washed it down the drain. It felt like she had been in the bathroom for ages, but it was only a mere fifteen minutes.
Which is why she was surprised to see Hope was not alone in their room when she emerged from the shower, her wet hair dripping down the back of her shirt.
Hope was sitting cross-legged on the carpet with a paper placed in front of her and sitting directly across from her was Josie.
"Um, hi," Shiloh said in befuddlement as she surveyed the scene. "What's going on?"
"We're doing a locating spell," informed Josie, seeming to be in better spirits than the previous night. "To find Landon."
"This doesn't look like the kind of spell they teach you in class," she observed, not recognizing the pages from anything she'd read on magic, which was something that interested her.
Hope sighed, "We don't have time for this. Landon could be in another state by now."
"But—"
"Shiloh, please be quiet!" her roommate hissed, "We can talk about it after."
Her words silenced Shiloh, but not because the girl was done talking. The command sent a jolt down her spine, her mouth clamping shut on its own accord and keeping her from asking any more questions.
The lack of noise caused Hope to glance over, an apologetic look on her face as she realized what had happened.
"I'm sorry, Shiloh, I forgot," the remorse was clear in her tone, her usual snark absent. "This is just really important and I have to find him."
"It's ok, I know finding Landon is a priority," Shiloh spoke softly, knowing that the other girl hated doing anything that triggered the sire bond and that she hadn't meant to do it.
Both girls didn't notice Josie watching the entire interaction in confusion. No one at school besides Dr. Saltzman, Caroline, Hope, and Shiloh knew about the sire bond. The less that knew the better. No one could abuse it if it was kept quiet.
Shiloh sat back as the two got to work, wincing when Hope broke the rat's neck and eyes widening at the red glow that surrounded their hands as they chanted words that meant nothing to her.
They were telling each other what they were seeing, most of the conversation made no sense to Shiloh as she wasn't privy to what they were watching, besides road signs and the knife.
Then, they were silent.
It only lasted seconds before they opened their eyes, breaking their linked hands and staring at each other with pale faces.
"Oh no."