A/N Here is chapter three of Shadowed Paths, and as you may have guessed Shadow will be extremely upset with the information that was told to her by her love, David, and she will, of course, ask for more information and delve into the factor of where… whoops, whole plot almost out the window with simple words. I also don't own Maximum Ride, Twilight or any Twilight/Max Ride characters that are in the story... maybe there'll be people from other books that I read… keep your eyes open and reply if you noticed. Ha-ha, I'll actually start the chapter and stop rambling now.

The room was completely silent, so silent that I could almost believe I was hearing a soft chirping noise.

"What do you mean she betrayed us?" I asked David wondering Was there even an us?

"Your sister, Carlie, told your fiancée that there was something between us when there shouldn't have been," David replied as he opened the door. "We'll talk on our way to the Hall."

"Before we go, who was my fiancée?" I asked, suddenly curious about my past life, not that I wasn't all for the wings and other things that came with them.

"Not me," David muttered to himself before saying louder, "his name was Seth Clearwater. Now let's get out of here."

I followed him out the door and walked beside him, holding his hand. We walked down a long hallway with doors every few yards. I looked through the window of one of the doors and saw a boy with black hair. He had a small yellow puppy on his bed and a bow in his hand as he walked over to a target at the other side of the room, where an arrow lay on the floor in front of it.

"Who's that?" I asked David, pointing to the 5 foot 8 inch tall boy in the room, "I've never seen him before,"

David looked through the window before looking back at me, "His name is Stark; he must be practicing for a competition." David opened the door and gestured for me to go in. The puppy looked up from its nap and wagged its tail at me. "Stark!" David hollered.

The boy looked up and I saw blood red markings on his face; a filled in crescent moon was in the center of his forehead with broken arrows on either side. He walked towards us smiling.

"David," he said gruffly, "what can I do for you and…"

"Shadow," I spoke up, "It's nice to meet you Stark. Do you mind telling me what you're doing?"

"I'm practicing for an archery competition. Would you like to watch?" he asked, looking me up and down carefully.

I opened my mouth to speak, but David beat me to the punch. "Shadow was just curious; we really need to get to the cafeteria. I'll see you later Stark."

"If you wait a moment Duchess and I will come with you," Stark said, staring steely at David.

"Of course we'll wait for you two. I wouldn't want to be caught in these hallways alone, even if you have a dog," I shivered involuntarily and whispered to David as Stark walked over to his bed, "Why does he have those marks on his face? I didn't know you could have a dog here."

"You're not allowed a dog because of On- the Constitution. He doesn't like to talk too much about the marks or his past life, so don't bug him."

Stark walked back up to us, Duchess in tow. He opened the door and held it open for us and as I passed him he smiled and winked, I couldn't resist giggling for a moment. The hallway was pretty much the same the rest of the way to the Hall; I looked through the windows in doors and some of the things I saw scared the cracker jacks out of me.

In one room was something that slightly resembled a turtle but it had the face of a boy. In a larger room than mine was a girl that shifted from the form of a girl to the shape of an extremely large black panther as she paced the room.

Then out of nowhere two large wooden doors appeared to the left of us. David stepped ahead of us and held one of the sturdy doors open. I stepped inside the room and automatically walked towards the half of the room designated for experiments when a strong hand snagged my arm and pulled me in the opposite direction.

"What were you doing?" David asked, but breezed on before I could reply, "You're not an experiment anymore; you have a Name."

"Oh," was all I could mutter as we walked towards a table with three open seats.

The first thing that I noticed about the table was how normal everyone there looked. None of them were contorted or gross-looking, they looked like normal high-schoolers eating lunch.

As we settled down, me between David and Stark, one of the boys asked, "Hey David, who's the new chic?"

I blushed slightly, and looked down, while David explained that I was Shadow and that I had just been given a Name by Onyx. Ohs echoed around the table.

I looked up and observed the people sitting at the table. There was a boy with blue eyes and blonde hair, muscular looking but cute; the girl next to him was slight and also had blonde hair, but her eyes were like midnight blue in color. On the other side of the boy was another girl, her skin was the color of a mocha-latte, her hair was brown with lighter brown highlights and her eyes were a stunning shade of gold. Next to Stark was a boy with ash blonde hair and eyes that changed from green to blue to brown and every shade in between in seconds. On the other side of David was a female with black hair tipped scarlet and a shocking jade green eye color.

"Is that your sister David?" I whispered to him pointing to the girl next to him.

He looked at the girl and laughed loudly. "No, Shadow. She's not my sister; that's Sage."

The girl looked at me, started laughing with David and waved.

David slowly stopped laughing and said, "She's good at looking like you; she can change the way she looks without buying stuff to do it with. The guy next to Stark, he's Ash. He can-"

"I, Shadow, can make you see things that aren't there. But this place," he made a sweeping gesture, "only wanted me because of that talent; not to change me physically."

I nodded politely and waited for someone else to introduce themselves. The boy across the table from me smiled and said, "I'm Matt. I'm supernaturally strong and fast. Ha, kinda like that guy Emmett from that Twilight series."

I looked at David confused. He whispered in my ear, "I'll get you the book."

"I'm Catherine," the blonde girl next to Matt said quietly, "I can hypnotize people into doing what I want them to do… it works best on men though."

"I am not being forgotten," the other girl next to Matt said, "my name is Shaunee. I have an extremely good Fashion sense and can change into any animal I touch… unfortunately, the only animal DNA here is contaminated with human DNA. Hey, Shadow, what is it that you can do?"

I looked around shyly before standing up. "Well… I- I can fly," I said, unfurling my wings.

"Oh. Oh, wow," Sage whispered after a moment. "I don't think I could grow wings that pretty if I tried."

"Sage, you wouldn't be able to grow wings if you tried," Stark spoke up for the first time since we arrived.

"Those are beautiful wings, Shadow." A voice behind me said.

I turned around really fast and knocked things over with my wings.

"Seth?" I said carefully.