THE FIVE PEOPLE WAITED IN the room for the appearance of their new werewolf friend, who was stuck in her maths lesson. While Scott rolled his shoulders backwards, whilst one very fed up Stiles walked up to Derek, "What is up with her? What is it about you Hales and trust?" He crossed his arms lightly over his chest, ready to fall at any given second.

Derek turned to him, when before he was looking at the door, hoping for her to enter. "She's been through a lot worst than me, Stiles." Sliding in next to his best friend, Scott stopped him from saying anything that may annoy him any more. His eyes widened at his friend, almost as if to say that he didn't need protecting. Soon he realised he wasn't there to protect him.

Giving a look that begged the Hale to elaborate, he asked, "What happened to her?" Allison lifted herself from the table, beginning to find an interest in what they were talking about. Running his tongue around the roof of his mouth, he thought about how much his cousin may hate him for doing this, but it's Scott.

"Valentina's side of the family went back for thousands of years," He began as he sat himself down on the nearest table to him, everyone else doing the same. "They were so traditional that by the age that she is now, she would have been married. Born Alphas are rare, they run in her side of the family and they made it that they would never stop, but would always be Hales."

Stiles looked carefully around the room at everyones' emotions. Scott and Allison were shocked, Lydia was intrigued with a hint of sympathy, while Stiles was way past any of those emotions and had no idea how he would react to seeing her if she walked through the door. "My mother may have hated them but she didn't hate Val. She made me hang around with her when she was six just to make sure she was okay. That she was surviving."

He took a deep breath before continuing, "You can't imagine what that girl has been through, she thought that she was meeting her Prince Charming when her parents told her vaguely about it. But when she ran, she learnt more about who they really were and so that's why she never talks about them. That's why she's closed off, because that girl has been through hell and back."

The room was left speechless, which caused Derek to shift uncomfortably where he stood. He began to instantly regret what he had done, as he heard a heartbeat waiting around the door. Valentina had been listening in, but from the look on Scott's face, he hadn't figured it out. "Hey, sorry I'm late."

The small werewolf told them as she slammed her bag down onto a desk, which meant that Stiles was forced to face what he had previously dreading. "Miss Berry thought she'd give us the honour of telling us why to use ABC instead of BCA." Looking around the room to see everyone's nervous faces, she then added, "Continue from where you were."

A small part of her wanted to scream at Derek for telling people about what she may have considered her darkest secret, but she knew it was likely they were going to find out anyway. The Hale knew what she was there to do, and her cousin telling people about her past wasn't going to stop her.

"Look at this," Scott broke the visible tension that was in the room, gesturing to Allison and Lydia who had raised their wrists and placed them together. On both wrists was a visible pattern to the other, and when they were placed together seemed like a symbol. Valentina looked to Derek in the hopes of learning his opinion on the matter, even though she knew exactly what, or rather who, that sign led to.

"I don't see anything." The oldest Hale turned to Scott to say, beginning to get annoyed with the teenagers that they were wasting his time when he could be doing much better things to help him find the rest of his pack. "How is a bruise gonna' tell me where Boyd and Erica are?"

"It's the same on both sides. Exactly the same." Derek continued to disagree with his statement, and could see how everyone else was reacting to what he was doing, yet he decided quickly that he didn't care. Carefully glancing over to his cousin, not wanting to trigger any bottled up anger, she shrugged in a way that she suggested to give it a go.

Despite decoding his cousin's advice on the matter, he ignored it and continued to do what he was doing before he made the stupid decision that might come back and bite him in the ass later. "They're trying to help." Scott told him, making him turn to towards the girl, his annoyance of the situation seeming to amplify.

"These two." He began, lifting his fingers up to point them towards Lydia and Allison, both of their faces turning into a more neutral expression. "This one, who used me to resurrect my psychotic uncle. Thank you. And this one, who shot about thirty arrows into me and my pack." Valentina furred her eyebrows at the two, familiar with what had happened, even though she hadn't talked to either of them about it.

A familiar voice came from behind all of them, which hope to diffuse the situation from becoming something that could get anyone hurt. "Okay, all right, now, come on. No one died, all right? Look, there may have been a little maiming, okay, a little mangling, but no death. That's what I call an important distinction."

"My mother died."

His snapped towards the young hunter, not at all surprised by her speaking up about her death. From the youngest Hale's understanding of the situation, she had attack Scott while her cousin was simply doing what he could to protect him. "Your family's little honour code killed your mother. Not me."

The disagreement made Allison shocked, but not enough that she wouldn't be able to convey a calm expression on her face with difficulty. "That girl was looking for Scott. I'm here to help him, not you." Valentina found that putting little input was useful, instead she could study how everyone reacted to the different things that had been said.

This was when she found her use of chemo-signals the most helpful. She could sense that sadness that Allison was hiding, the anger that Derek was failing to hide, Lydia's want for it to be the fourth period already, Scott's need for everything to be okay again and Stiles' curiosity. "You wanna help? Find something real."

The bell rang breaking everybody out of the separate conversation groups that they had formed, as they began to walk to class. Allison and Lydia began to walk to History, while Scott, Stiles and Valentina walked to Economics. In every single class that she had attended, the Stilinski boy was always right next to her side, of which she knew was no coincidence.

That didn't stop her from feeling as if he were babysitting her, a feeling that she certainly did not enjoy at all. It felt like he was watching her every second, waiting for her to screw up but really, Stiles was trying to make sure she was okay. Of course he had different ways of expressing it, slight stalking, sarcastic jokes, but he was beginning to think he cared about the Hale, not that he'd ever tell her that though.

"Was she hot?" A high schooler's words stuck out to the small brunette whilst she used her werewolf hearing to figure what everyone was finding so interesting about waiting for class. She didn't know if how she found her hearing was like that for every other werewolf, but she thought that hearing conversations through that was like flipping pages of a book. Different page, different conversation.

"What the hell! My mom's literally drowning in medical bills for a girl who had been attacked by some animal and was bleeding out on the side of the road." Valentina recognised the story, the girl obviously being herself and she continued to listen while Evelyn gave in to his long-term best friend. "I have no idea whether she was hot or not."

"Just checking, you're the lesbian in this situation."

"Shut up, she's obviously still injured. We followed her to the hospital to check that she was okay but before she could have any surgeries, they were saying that she was gone and my mom was going to have to pay for they which they had already done. Which was basically sticking a few plasters onto her." After a few seconds of staring at them, Evelyn's friend noticed her, but the werewolf was quick to move so that Evelyn couldn't.

"Holy sh—" Valentina didn't finish her sentence, but instead moved to stand behind the nearest person she knew, and that just so happened to be Stiles Stilinski. Holding his shoulder with a grip that other people would find extremely uncomfortable, she peered behind him to see them now looking to where she was previously standing.

"Um, hey? Nice to see you too." He chuckled out, which made the girl hiding behind him harder to control her anger. In the hopes of suppressing what she was feeling, she slapped lightly on the arm but didn't manage to quick catch his reaction. "What happened?" Just as he spoke, they all began to walk into their next lesson's classroom.

Feeling a breath of relief fall from the small brunette's lips, Evelyn and her friend walked into the lesson next door so with that, she removed her hand from his shoulder. He tried to look as neutral as he could when she did, but it was like he was addict, yearning for her touch so he could relapse again. No matter what.

Instead, he was stuck with Valentina explaining her reasoning for attempting to hide behind him. It was the pleasing sort of explanation that he was hoping for, but it was type of it and he knew that what he got was all he was going to get from her.

"Everybody shut up." Coach shouted, breaking Scott and Stiles apart from the conversation that they were having in their seats. "The stock market is based on two principles. What are they? Yes, McCall, you can go to the bathroom. Anybody else?" A confused emotion fell over Scott, yet he was slightly disappointed how he was so quickly dismissed.

"No, Coach, I know the answer." What sounded to Stiles like the laugh that you would hear from evil characters in Disney stories, Coach waited for an answer after he realised that the young McCall boy wasn't joking about knowing the answer to his question. "It's risk and reward.

With a large grin on his face, the teacher moved close towards his student which in a normal sense would sound strange, and it was. Valentina also found it rather it uncomfortable because she sat right in front of Stiles, who sat beside him. "Wow! Who are you? And what have you done to McCall? Don't answer that, I like you better. I like you better."

"Does anybody have a quarter?"

A small 'yep' left Stiles' lips before something flung out of his pocket and onto the ground, directly next to Valentina. While a wave small chuckles went around the classroom, the young alpha looked down to the ground to see a xxl condom packet lying there. Quickly after she saw it, she threw it towards to the blushing boy without making another comment towards the subject.

Coach stared awkwardly between Valentina and Stiles, under the impression that they were supposed to have sex but something happened. His stare lingered on the girl, while she tapped her finger onto the desk which, to Coach, only proved his suspicion to be correct and he mentally fist bumped himself.

"Risk and reward. Put the quarter in the mug, win the reward. Okay, watch coach." The teacher said, bringing the room's attention back to himself and once he did, he carefully blowed on the coin, managing to get it into the mug. "Huh? Huh! That's how you do it." The clapping that came from his students only helped to boost his ego, Valentina realising this and feeling the need to knock him down a peg or two.

He walked over to the small brunette's desk, showing his palm out which showed the quarter which he must have gained from another student in the class. Before he could ask the question that would have subdued any un-supernatural creature, not including Stiles, "What's the reward?"

Slightly surprised that she had the audacity to speak before he could, he gathered his surprised emotions or any other that related to vulnerability and answered, "You don't have to take the pop quiz tomorrow." She could smell the intimidation rolling off of his skin like sweat, and she enjoyed how much she was able to get out of him.

"It's not a pop quiz if you tell us about it." The Hale objected, most of the students surprised by her behaviour, only having seen such behaviour like it from the Stilinski boy that say behind her. "Sir." Once she added that onto the end of her sentence, a small smirk grew onto the boy behind her's face, but not so obvious that coach would be able to see it.

"To think I was going to enjoy your company. What's your name?" Beginning to tread lightly from there on, she answered his question with a slight piece of sincerity laced in and out of every syllable of the name.

"Right, Valentina. You now have no option." He said, before moving onto the next boy but she happened to hear a small chuckle come from the boy behind her which made wiped her smirk right off of her face. Why would he be so smug? A little part of her tugged at the rest of her to calm down, that she was being affected but the simplest things that didn't mean anything. But it meant something.

"McCall. Risk, reward? The risk: if you don't put that quarter in the mug, you have to take the pop-- the quiz. And-and you have to write an essay. Risk, more work. Reward, no work at all. Or choose not to play." The look on Scott's face showed that he was not thinking of what he was doing present moment, but as a parallel to what might possibly happen to him in the future.

"But isn't this just chance?"

"No. you know your abilities, your coordination, your focus, past experience. all factors affecting the outcome. so what's it gonna be, McCall? more, no work, or choose not to play?" His best friend watched intensively as he fiddled with the coin in his palm, levelling his options before he let the coin drop onto his textbook.

"No play. Okay, who's next? Who wants the quarter?" Loud banging came from Stiles' table, standing up from his desk and taking the quarter giddily from the teacher's hand. "There you go! There's a gambling man! Come on! Step up, step up. All right, Stilinski." The human positioned himself, his legs far apart to give him a better balance, and the coin right in front of his right eye.

The Sheriff entered the room, saying his son's name while he simply replied with, "Yeah, Coach, I got it." But when he repeated his name once again, Stiles looked up to see his father standing near the door with another deputy, before walking out of the room with him. Letting slip of a small glance towards Valentina, she watched him leave the room.

"I couldn't find her. I just figured she'd hooked up with her other friends. has no one really seen her since last night?

"No... we put out an APB but, Stiles, all her friends say you were the last person who saw her.

"Me?"

"We hope that it's just a series of bad decisions based on too much to drink. but if you remember anything else, you call me. all right?" A loud voice broke Valentina's concentration on what they were talking about as she looked up to see the coin laying perfectly inside of the mug, staring right back at her.

"Reward!"

well i do wonder what i mean when i
say,

"the hale knew what she was there to do,
and nothing like her cousin telling people
about her past was going to stop her."

oh well guess i'm just a clown 🤡

also can you notice how i just gave up
the whole haters to lovers thing because
i'm so in love with mr stilinski? because
i sure as hell can. this took a while to
write my head now hurts. eeeeeeeesh.