I know I should call out to Nathaniel but as soon as I knew it was him and not some crazy mountain forest killer - even though technically he is a vampire - my thoughts instantly cleared and I knew I had to find Aislynn even if she lives in these forests I know for a fact how easy it is to get lost and she might get hurt.

With that, I turn on my heel heading away from Nathaniel's crystal clear voice and further into the forest where I can only hope Aislynn had run through.

The underbrush gets worse and the trail that I think I was following falls into disuse and then disappears entirely and as much as it annoys me and excites me at the same time Nathaniel's following doesn't stop. Neither does his calling for my name.

"Morgan." I let out a loud sigh before turning back to where the sound had come from. He's closer this time and I'm sick of looking.

"Aislynn I don't know if you can hear me but don't worry I won't tell anyone about you." Nathaniel's feet crunch some leaves close by. "You can trust me."

A second later Nathaniel rounds a large oak tree with a frown. When he sees me standing there he glares at me.

"Seriously firefly. Running off into the forest is never the right answer." I roll my eyes at him, making a note to ask about the nickname later. I frown back at him for now instead.

"I'm not running off into the forest, I'm taking a calming walk through the forest. At least I was until someone disturbs me."

He rolls his eyes at me.

"So this has nothing to do with what happened when you were meant to be in class today?" His words shock me, a deep blush covering my cheeks.

"How do you know about that?"

He doesn't smile at me as he looks away towards the forest and trees.

"There's not really any secrets at Westtown Peaks Academy." I groan as I take a step on a log beside me, my head in my hands and embarrassment slouching my shoulders over.

"Oh, God. Does Annie know?" He doesn't answer me right now, not until I send my best glare up at him.

"Probably." His voice is low and he looks away from me. "Look Morgan this isn't something you should be embarrassed about -" I cut him off.

"Embarrassed, why would I be embarrassed? It's them that should be embarrassed, not me."

He doesn't say anything for a second then he takes a deep breath, still not meeting my eyes as he starts talking.

"All I'm saying is that this is nothing to stress about or worry about." He ends his sentence as if it's more like a question and my glare worsens on him.

"You think like them don't you? That they shouldn't be punished or anything because it wasn't them but their wolves?"

The silence is long and drags out and I have to roll my eyes at him or else I might actually hit him.

"God. As if all of this isn't terrifying enough now I have to watch out for when a wolf might lose control. This time it was ... well it was whatever that was but what about next time? What if there's no one there to stop one of them? What happens then?" 

My heart hammers inside my chest and the fear that was building before I saw Aislynn comes back in full force. My hands shaking on my lap I quickly put them underneath me so Nathaniel can't see the fear inside of me.

He's looking at me, watching me in a way I feel like I'm being seen for the first time in my life.

"I can see your scared Morgan but there's nothing to really worry about. Just like there are no secrets in the Academy there are also eyes everywhere. Nothing can happen to you before someone like Annie or myself can step in to stop it."

"No one stopped it this morning, I mean almost nobody."

He looks away before coming closer, taking a seat beside me.

"We hadn't expected it to happen, but now we know we will keep a better eye on the situation and make sure you're safe. We won't let anything happen to you Firefly."

His words soothe me a little bit, mostly because they send something else zinging through my veins. I try to ignore the excitement and swallow it back down.

"Your words don't really soothe my fear." My voice is low and he nods his head thoughtfully.

"I know but you shouldn't let it stop you from trying." I sigh.

"You don't understand."

He scoffs in reply, turning serious in an instant.

"I know fear, Morgan." He sighs, placing his hands on his head and breathing deeply for a second like that statement had taken a part of him away. "I was eleven when I was brought to Westtown Peaks, a vampire with no knowledge about this other world and an orphan at that. I had no one, I felt like no one was on my side and then I found out that I'm the thing many kids feared."

He doesn't look at me, his eyes searching the leaves above us, he doesn't even seem to notice the small drops of rain falling slowly through the leaves.

He's silent for so long that I open my mouth to talk to him, not that I even know what to say to make this better but then his voice is rumbling again.

"In the orphanage, the older kids hated the young ones, because if someone was to be adopted it was the cute little kids. So if they found out about a prospective adoptee coming they would do anything to stop the young ones from being chosen." He's completely in another world now, he might be looking at the leaves but I know that he's not really seeing them, instead, he's back in the orphanage.

"The favorite was making the kids have nightmares so they couldn't sleep. They were amazing at it, I think most of the stories were the stories they were told, passed down the line of the orphanage. I wonder now if I had stayed would I have told those horrible stories to some small little kid?" He shakes the thought from his mind.

"Anyway, news had traveled through the orphanage that Annie was coming - I didn't know at the time it was Annie and that she didn't want to adopt. The big kids started instantly, one of them coming for me in particular.

"He told a story of the orphanage of a young boy around 8 or 9 who had died suddenly in the middle of winter. It was too cold to dig a hole in the frozen dirt so they put him in a room, near the back of the house until the dirt thawed. At least that was the plan. That night, however, a knocking came from the room the boy's body was stored in. When one of the caretakers went to look the whole orphanage heard her scream, when they finally got into the room, she was killed, her body completely drawn of blood and the body of the boy was missing."

A sudden chill took over me as I listened, one not entirely from the rain still dripping itself underneath the collar of my shirt and racing icy cold down my spine. Nathaniel didn't notice my shaking, his eyes still closed to this world open only in his memories.

"The next five weeks went the same, knocking, screaming, and bodies drained of blood." He chuckles an unamused sound that sends a shiver down my spine again. "Then his friend knocked on the wall behind me and I ran screaming to my own bedroom, like they wanted I didn't sleep that night, fear making every noise of the house into the knocking of the dead boy. It didn't matter anyway Annie wanted me whether or not I had slept that night. 24 hours difference, one minute I'm scared of vampires the next I am one."

Like a person coming out of a trance Nathaniel's eyes catch my own and he smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes. I can't seem to look away from them in the secluded forest, with rain falling gently into his hair. I can't look away from the open rawness of his eyes. They tell me more than his story does. This man still has fear of some sort running through his veins.

"I guess that's where my love for myths really came from, being told a story of vampires and being so afraid of them finding out the truth and having to live with a different kind of fear."

He shrugs his shoulders, finally looking away from me. He seems to notice the rain now and then looks down at my only slightly shivering form beside him.

"We should go to the cottages."

He doesn't wait for my answer, instead of standing up instantly and putting space between us. I follow behind him a second later and feeling like my bones and muscles have frozen together in the rainwater. He continues talking as we walk, like normal he knows exactly where we're going. He doesn't stop talking either, as we walk. His words almost bleed together but then he turns to me as if knowing I hadn't been listening.

I look up at him feeling the raindrops hitting my face but not really paying attention to it. He's close, I can smell his calming scent and I have to tilt my head back to look him in the face. My eyes caught on a lone raindrop dripping from his cheek onto his lips, my eyes sticking to the plump rosy color there.

I want to kiss him so suddenly that I almost step forward and into him. My eyes never once leaving those lips, as if seeing where my eyes are focused his tongue comes out and licks the raindrop away.

My breathing stops in an instant. My heartbeat picking up as well.

He clears his throat after a moment and I force myself to look back into his eyes.

"Look Morgan, the whole reason I am even telling you this is because I know fear and I know that right now you might feel like all you can do is be afraid and worried. That the world is so much worse than you thought and that's okay. You can think those things and you can live in fear but you have to know that fear is the most useless emotion we can feel. You know why?"

I shake my head, not trusting my voice as I look up at this man.

"Because fear doesn't stop the truth, it doesn't stop the fact that the world is filled with evil people and things. It doesn't stop the fact that even if you're scared you're not alone and you still have to push through and live your life. Because what's scary than the things that go bump in the night? Is being nothing."

"To be forgotten." My voice is tiny but I know Nathaniel heard, his head tilting as if seeing something in my eyes. I look away, my eyes looking for anything but his. I see we're at the edge of the forest, just outside the rain is coming down harder, faster but still, in the grey world I can see the light of Annie's cottage, the warmth and color it brings to me filling me.

"Fear is useless because even though it wants to drag me down I can't let it. I have to fight, I have to live, and most importantly I have to try but not for myself. For that amazing woman who only wants her family safe and with her." I smile up at Nathaniel who is looking towards Annie's porch now, I see the outline of Annie's body looking out into the rain. "Everyone here at this school is her family and I might not trust them but I trust her and Annie's judgment."

"It's a good start." He says his eyes are not looking over at me but the shadows around us.

"I never asked but who were you talking to in the woods before?" I feel something slide into my stomach, I don't want to lie to him but then Aislynns face is back in my mind, and the way she had said almost sadly that she wasn't allowed on the school grounds. I don't want the girl to get into trouble.

I smile, knowing that it's a little unconvincing but Nathaniel's eyes don't look at me anyway.

"No one, I guess I was trying to talk to the birds and animals. Is that a witch power?" My voice shakes at the beginning but by the end, I am genuinely curious. Talking to animals would be a pretty cool thing.

The hope crushes a second later when Nathaniel shakes his head, looking down at me with a wide grin.

"Not one that I know of anyway."

"Hmmm. I guess it's just something I have to work to find out because talking to animals would be awesome."

"Yeah, like a Disney princess." He winks at me and my heart jumps into my throat for a second, shock taking over my features in an instant. Nathaniel looks away, rubbing his hand onto the back of his neck. "Um. Never mind. We should go, it's getting pretty late and Annie looks a bit stressed."

I look towards the shadow of Annie, my cheek flaming red like my hair but I try to ignore it.

"How can you see how Annie looks? All I see is shadow."

He laughs at me but it's awkward and bubbles away quickly.

"Vampires have really good eyesight. I can see her quite well even with the rain and distance." I look up at him shocked and he smirks down at me. "Don't worry it's just one of the many things you will learn in Vampire 101."

He laughs again and instantly I know that the class might not be called Vampire 101. I laugh sarcastically back at him.

"Whatever."

Then with that, I leave him with just a small wave as I walk into the heavy rain, drenched in a second as I run to Annie's porch. I see that Nathaniel was right and Annie had been stressfully looking towards the forest but the instant I come into view her face melts into a smile that I return.

She pulls me inside quickly, fussing around me in a way only my Grandmother has ever been able to, I fall into her letting her dry me and warm me up. Eating the food she places in front of me without really tasting. Letting someone else take over my body while my mind tries to work out all the things I have learned today.

As soon as Annie puts him into my warm bed I fall asleep, a dreamless and deep sleep.

AUTHOR NOTE

I loved exploring Nathaniel's past a little more. What do you guys think of the scary stories the older kids would tell at the orphanage?

Honestly, it would have scared the hell out of me if I was eleven.

Remember this chapter is unedited and I'm happy for any comments if you see a spelling error, grammar error, or plot hole.

Thank you for reading.

LAURA