Austin

Despite what the doctors told me back in the infirmary, I ditched the sling the moment I could. My arm felt fine and I wasn't about to go do something that could injure it again - there was no need for it. I was more excited than I cared to admit about meeting up with this girl. I'm usually not the type to fall head over heels for a pretty face, but man was she gorgeous. To top it off, she was also one of the sweetest werewolves I had met so far. She didn't even give me a judging look like the others were doing.

It was actually kind of a funny story on how I met her. So there's me just taking a casual stroll throughout the park - enjoying the scenery and what not- when I may have accidentally tripped over her. In my defense, I wasn't really expecting anyone to be laying down on the grass. That, and I wasn't paying attention to where I was looking. My bad?

I was instantly afraid that she'd get mad at me for disturbing her, but she only smiled and laughed before asking if I was okay. We really just started talking from there and she invited me to come hang out with her and her friend later on. I was mostly joking with Izzy when I told her that I'd go for the friend I didn't hit it off with her. Mostly. Then again, I'd be happy with both if you know what I mean.

After finally reaching the park, I walked through the intricately designed gate arch and just stared at my surroundings. No matter how many times I came here, I didn't think I would ever grow tired of seeing it. This park made up for all the dirt roads in town with the abundance of healthy green grass and humongous trees. Towards the far side of it were the orchards where various different fruits were grown for the people of the Grove.

Most people stayed close to the entrance where adults sat and conversed with each other while children ran around playing games. In the center sat a large hill where I knew the beautiful girl would be. It was where I found her earlier and she already told me that it was her favorite spot. My heartbeat started rapidly increasing as I made my way up the hill. All jokes aside, I really wanted to make a memorable impression on her. One that didn't involve tripping over her like before.

As I reached the top, there she was laying on her back and staring up at the sky before you. Her long, dark brown hair was draped over her shoulders and the faint wind caused her bangs to brush back and forth against her forehead. I could've just stood there and watched her all day. She looked so at peace while looking up at the clouds it almost made me jealous. I wish I could easily escape all my worries like she could.

I silently took a seat beside her causing her to turn her head towards me with a warm smile on her face. I swear that smile of hers will be the death of me.

"Hey, Mary," I said, a wide grin making its way onto my face.

She sat up and captured me into a brief hug. "Hey, Austin. You came," she said in her timid voice with a smile on her face.

"Of course I did. How can I say no to one of the only werewolves who's been nice to me?"

A faint blush made its way across her face, but she seemed pleased with my comment nonetheless. "Everyone else will warm up eventually, I promise."

"Yeah, I'm sure of it."

I wasn't actually too sure. I mean, I couldn't blame them for hating humans in general. In the past, we were complete assholes to them. But the Rescuers have been trying to make up for that for the past few years. Can't they at least give us credit for that?

History aside, I was starting to wonder if that friend of Mary's was ever going to show up. It was quite a few minutes later than the time she wanted me to meet her at. Did the friend bail last minute? Or were they supposed to come at a later time? Before I could ask her about it, my questions were already answered.

"Oh, look! There's my friend now," she exclaimed.

Finally taking my gaze away from her, I turned my head in search of this new friend. I looked all around, but I never saw a girl walking up the hill. All I saw was a guy jogging up and after closer inspection, I could tell it was Chris. Wait, please don't tell me...

"Late as always, Chris," she teased after he got close enough.

"Sorry, sorry. Got held up," he told her before his eyes suddenly landed on me. "Oh, hey, Austin."

"Hey," I said with an awkward wave of my hand. Well, that certainly wasn't what I was expecting. I was hoping Mary's friend would be cute. And, you know, a girl.

"My bad, I forgot you guys already know each other. Chris brought all the humans here, of course he would know you," she said sheepishly.

"You know about that already?" he asked nervously.

"More than half the town knows by now."

"Dammit. I know I told them to warn a few people before we arrived in town, but I didn't think word would spread this quickly."

They started talking more about the Grove and its inhabitants. To be honest, I kind of felt left out. I really had no idea how to contribute to their conversation at all. I was the obvious odd man out and I wasn't really too happy about it considering that had been my role all throughout life. I was struggling to think of an excuse that would allow me to leave this little get together without seeming too rude when Mary finally asked me a question.

"So, Austin. What made you and your friends come here?"

Now don't get me wrong, I was extremely happy to finally be apart of the conversation, but this wasn't how I wanted it to happen. Even though I didn't mean to make it obvious, I must've shown that it was a sensitive topic for me.

"I'm sorry. It was none of my business to ask," she said quietly as she rested her hand on top of mine.

"No, it's okay," I said quickly. "Some group of people killed my brother and tried doing the same to all my friends and me."

Her hand immediately shot up to cover her mouth in horror. "Oh, my God. I'm so sorry."

"It's fine. I'm fine."

I was most certainly not fine, but this wasn't the impression I wanted to leave on her. I wouldn't be some kicked puppy that she'd have to pity. I refused to be that. Taking a quick glance over at Chris, I saw that his head hung low. He almost looked guilty. Why the hell was that? He couldn't really think that Liam's death was his fault, right?

"I should really go," he said suddenly. "Training starts in an hour and I need to get stuff ready."

"You're giving lessons to the humans? Do you need another teacher?" Mary asked.

"If you're offering your help, then yes. Meet me there twenty minutes before."

Without another word, he started running down the hill leaving Mary and I to ourselves. Under different circumstances, I would be ecstatic to be alone with her, but the last topic of conversation didn't sit too well with me. I could never change what happened and that didn't make talking about it any easier for me.

"Is he always that intense?" I asked, purposely trying to redirect the conversation.

"Yeah..." she trailed off, seeming upset talking about it. "He's had a tough life."

"What happened?"

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't say. It's not my place to be the one to talk about it."

My curiosity was trying to get the better of me, but I knew better than to push for more details. Perhaps I could get Chris to tell me himself some time. My curiosity quickly faded as she and I started talking more. I found it a little odd that no matter what she talked about, I could never get bored of hearing her voice. If there was one thing I loved more than her soft and timid voice, it was her laugh. It was the cutest giggle ever that made my heart pound.

After about a half an hour of talking with her, she eventually had to leave to meet up with Chris. I didn't mind, though. We made more plans to meet up again soon and to be quite honest, I was excited. What do you know? Maybe good things really can come out of a day filled with such sorrow like this one.

As I started making my way back towards the living quarters, I noticed Alyssa peeping her head around the corner of a house doing what looks to be eavesdropping on a couple of other girls in the group. I'm guessing Izzy already told her of our little plan.

"Hey, Alyssa!" I called, causing her jump in fright.

A terrified look was on her face until she looked over and saw me waving at her. She breathed out a sigh of relief and started jogging over to where I was standing. "You nearly scared the hell out of me," she said breathlessly. "One of the guys already caught me and I thought you were him."

I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow up at her. "You do realize that the whole idea in spying is to not get caught, right?"

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. He doesn't know the real reason why I was - I played it off that I was just trying to find out where Bryan was. Then we got into an argument and..."

She suddenly looked down, her eyes trained on her wrist that she was covering with her other hand. I grabbed her arm gently and lifted it up to reveal a bright red line that went around her wrist.

"Did one of the guys do that to you?!" I asked furiously. I wasn't known to get angry easily, but I couldn't just help it then. What the hell was going on?

"Yes. But don't worry about it!" she added quickly, taking a step back from me and covering her wrist again as if it would cause me to forget. "It was my fault. I started the argument with him and got him angry."

"Who was it?" I asked, clearly still angry.

"Austin-"

"Alyssa."

"Kevin," she sighed, finally giving me the name. Without saying a word, I turned away from her and started storming off. I had no idea where I was going, but I knew I needed to find him.

"Austin, wait! Please wait!" she called from behind me.

"Please. I know you just want to help me, but if you confront him about it, it might just make things worse."

Both her arms suddenly wrapped around one of mine in an attempt to hold be back. She was a small girl and there was no doubt I could've dragged her along if I wanted to, but I finally stopped after hearing her words. She was right. I wasn't thinking logically.

"Then what do you want me to do?" I asked more calmly.

She took a deep breath. "Nothing. At least not about that. Take out all your anger in training later."

Speaking of which, that actually reminded me that it would be time for that soon. I needed to find Izzy before heading to the training room or I'd never hear the end of that. I thought she would've been helping Alyssa, but apparently not.

"Do you know where Izzy is?" I asked.

"Yeah, she's back in our room. I think she might be sleeping; she looked pretty tired when I last saw her."

Yep, should've definitely seen that one coming. I swear, that girl can never get enough sleep. Motioning for Alyssa to follow me, her and I started making our way back to the living quarters. She started going on and on about some very personal information she found out about one of the girls during her little spying session. She's such a sweet girl, but she can chatter off someone's ear. And that's coming from me.

As we headed inside the building, we walked down the hall and into the bedroom to find Izzy indeed sleeping. With an over exaggerated sigh, I walked over to her and attempted to shake her awake. She was usually a heavy sleeper, but after a few shakes, she was usually on her feet trying to slap the shit out of me. This time wasn't like that.

"Come on, Sleeping Beauty, wake up," I told her, growing more impatient. "I ain't kissing you awake."

"Is she okay?" Alyssa asked worriedly.

I honestly had no idea how to respond to her. Izzy was definitely alive and her pulse felt fine, she just wouldn't wake up no matter how many times I tried shaking her. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

"Hold on, I have an idea."

"Oh, no," was all she said in reply.

Ignoring that comment of hers, I walked into the bathroom trying to find a cup of some sort. The first thing my eyes landed on was a vase with a bouquet of dead flowers inside. Dumping the flowers into the trash, I filled with the vase with water and started walking back to Izzy. The second Alyssa saw what I was carrying, her eyes went wide with realization of what I was doing.

"She's so going to kill you. You know that, right?"

"At least then she'll be awake."

Without thinking about what I was about to do, I dumped the water directly on her face. In an instant, she was sitting up and gasping for air, looking more pissed than I've ever seen her before.

"What the hell, Austin?!" she screamed before jumping out of the bed, shoving me out of the way and storming towards the bathroom in search of a towel. Okay, I knew she wouldn't be too happy, but that was a little uncalled for. How else was I supposed to wake her up?

"I'm sorry! You weren't waking up!" I screamed back in defense. Damn, I knew girls were moody, but nothing like this. I could tell something was bothering her. She refused to look me in the eye and I'm pretty sure it wasn't because she was angry at me.

"Was a simple shake too much for you?" she asked, her voice muffled by the towel she was using to wipe off her face and then her hair.

"I tried shaking you awake for nearly five minutes and it didn't work," I told her.

"He really did," Alyssa cut in.

She took a quick glance at me before averting her eyes again. It was brief, but the look in her eyes showed pure fear. "How do you know it was a nightmare?" she asked.

"Because I know you, Iz."

"It was nothing," she said quickly. "When does training start?"

"In about fifteen minutes," Alyssa told her.

"Come on, let's go." It was a general statement, but it was obvious that she was talking to Alyssa and not me. Honestly, what the hell did I do?

Izzy walked out of the room without waiting for a reply and Alyssa quickly followed after her, leaving me all alone in the room. Oh, so now I'm getting the cold shoulder from the both of them. Lucky me, huh?

With an irritated grumble, I followed after them and decided to keep my distance until we reached the training room which didn't take too long. Despite how large the building was, it was definitely packed with all of us in there. I felt kind of out of place just standing there and I didn't think trying to converse with Izzy would be my best option. Looking around, I noticed one other person who looked just as out of place as I did: Chris.

"Hey," I called over to him as I started walking closer.

"Oh, hey," he replied back, look grateful that someone was finally making conversation with him. "How'd it go with Mary?"

"It was really nice."

"Ah, that's good."

This conversation suddenly got awkward very quickly and I couldn't help but wonder why. I wasn't intruding on anything, right...? "Wait, do you like Mary?" I questioned.

"What? No! She's just a really good friend of mine," he replied sheepishly. "I just thought you liked Izzy."

I couldn't help but laugh at that. "Definitely not - that would make things so weird. She's like a sister to me."

"Oh, okay."

Hold on a minute... He couldn't... "Wait, do you-"

"Chris," a voice said, cutting me off mid-sentence. Him and I both turned around to see Charlie standing in the doorway of the training room looking anything but happy. Chris muttered a curse before sighing.

"I'll be right back," he told me before following his brother outside.

Okay, by now I assume it's obvious that I'm both a curious and mischievous person. I also get bored easily and standing awkwardly there among a ton of people wasn't my ideal plan for right then so I weighed my options; stand there doing nothing or eavesdrop on a conversation between two scary brothers. I'm going to go with the latter.

They didn't end up going far - just around the other side of the building. It was a little hard to overhear their conversation without having to get close enough that I'd be seen, but I was able to manage.

"I can't believe you brought the humans here!" Charlie said furiously.

"I didn't have a choice," Chris replied quietly, sounding calmer than I expected. From what I've seen so far, I almost expected him to yell back, but he didn't. It was almost as if he feared his brother. To be honest, I couldn't blame him.

"You did have a choice and you made it. You should've just left them in the woods like I did last year."

"The situation was different than last year, though. Liam died to protect me and the others were at risk. Say what you want, but I couldn't just turn my back on them and leave them to die."

Charlie sighed. "They aren't Caroline so stop acting like it's the same."

"I know they aren't her!" he screamed, finally losing control of his anger. "But the situation was close enough! I could've saved her back then and you wouldn't let me. You won't prevent me from saving any more lives again."

It was obvious that Charlie had struck a cord, but I had no idea who Caroline was. Why was she so important to him?

"You would've never been able to save her. The vampires-"

"Screw the vampires! They took my little sister! Our little sister, but you always seem to forget that part, now don't you?" he asked bitterly.

My heart nearly skipped a beat when I heard that. Chris knew the pain of losing a sibling - they both did - and they've lived with that pain for years. Was that a reason why he felt so bad about what happened?

Charlie was silent for several moments. I couldn't see his face, but no doubt there was guilt written all over it. "I had to grow up very quickly in order for you to keep your childhood. You're not a child anymore, Christopher, so stop acting like one. You need to learn to put our people over everything else, including the humans."

"So what do you want to do? Kick them out and leave them to die?"

My heart started racing in wait of Charlie's next answer. They wouldn't really kick us out, right? This was our only shelter from the Hunters. We were far from prepared to fight them if need be.

"What other choice do I have? What happens if our father finds out about them? He'll have them all killed in worse ways than you could ever imagine."

"You're the only one who would ever tell him, Charlie, so please don't say anything," he pleaded. "They're not dangerous, they're only humans."

"You'd be surprised how much trouble humans can cause even when doing nothing."

"Not these humans," Chris persisted.

Charlie hesitated for quite a few moments before finally sighing. "Fine, they can stay. Now go back before they start looking for you."

I dashed back inside before either of them could notice I was there. My heartbeat was finally starting to slow down at the realization of that conversation. It was official; we were safe.