WREN WAS IN DESPERATE NEED FOR NEW FRIENDS. Stiles had shown up at her window in the middle of the night with a bottle of something from his dad's liquor cabinet, and he brought her and Scott out to the Beacon Hills Preserve where he proceeded to drink a good amount of the contents in the bottle while his best friends rolled their eyes at him. He claimed that it was to help Scott get over Allison, but the McCall boy seemed unaffected by the alcohol and continued wallowing. And Wren didn't drink.

"Dude, you know... she's just one... one girl," Stiles rambled on, practically cuddling with the bottle at that point while Scott and Wren just stared up at the sky. One thing that Scott loved about Wren was that she knew and understood when he didn't want to talk. She had had times where she went days without talking to him and Stiles just because she didn't feel like it. Then, there were also times when she wouldn't leave them alone. "You know, there are so many — there are so many other girls in the sea."

"Fish in the sea," Scott corrected, not amused in the slightest.

Stiles just continued to yammer, and Wren was pretty close to throwing a rock at him. She still had not completely forgiven him for everything he said that night when they were trapped in the school, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he got to her. But she also wanted him to feel bad. He said, "Fish? Why you talking about fish? I'm talking about girls. I love girls. I love 'em. I love especially ones with strawberry blonde hair, green eyes, five-foot-three..."

"Like Lydia?" Wren guessed, although it wasn't exactly difficult. She was the only girl that Stiles had ever talked about. The blonde was pretty sure that he would ditch them for her in a heartbeat.

"Yeah, exactly!Hey, how did you know I was talking about... about... What was I talking about?" he giggled out, and he was awfully close to making out with the bottle when he realized that his friends were not having fun at all. "Hey, you're not happy! Take a drink."

The Carter woman was getting more and more annoyed by the second. She loved Stiles, but she really could not stand him a lot of the time. "Stiles, if you stick that bottle in my face again, I'm going to smash it and use the shattered glass to stab you in the eye."

"I don't want any more," Scott added.

Stiles looked up at the werewolf incredulously because he had drinken a fair amount that night, so it was strange that he had no reaction. Then again, Stiles had nothing on his bones to soak up the alcohol whereas Scott had required a bit of muscle. "You're not drunk?"

"I'm not anything," the McCall boy replied, and Wren wondered when they stepped into a depressing 90s movie. She would have never been able to say that with a straight face.

"Hey, maybe it's like... maybe it's like not needing your inhaler anymore, you know? Maybe you can't get drunk as a wolf," Stiles suggested, and it was a surprisingly thoughtful conclusion for the state that he was in. "Am I drunk?"

Wren desperately wanted him to shut up. Her head hurt, and they had school the next day. It was arguable the worst night to get drunk because he was going to be so hungover. So, instead of answering directly, the Carter girl replied with, "Am I about to kick you?"

"I don't kn— Ow!"

Scott confirmed, "You're wasted." This kind of rebellious behavior was an interesting look on Stiles, but it kind of just felt like he was trying to be cool and not succeeding.

"Yeah! Come on, dude. I know it feels bad. I know it hurts. I know," the Stilinski boy told him, trying to empathize. "Well, I don't know, but I know this. I know that as much as being broken up hurts, being alone is way worse. That didn't make any sense. I need a drink."

"Well, look at the two little bitches and little lady getting their drink on," said a voice, and they all shot to their feet to see two men approaching them. Well, all except Stiles, who just kind of climbed up slowly, not totally sure what was happening.

The man who spoke then snatched the bottle from the boy's hands. Scott was already angry, and he had apparently gained some kind of confidence because he just glared at the man and ordered, "Give it back."

"What's that, little man?" the guy teased, glancing back at his friend with a grin. However, he seemed a little surprised that a teenage boy was standing up to him like that. "I think he wants a drink."

"I want the bottle," Scott demanded.

Wren reached forward and grabbed the boy's sleeve, trying to tell him that she wanted to leave. The last thing she wanted was him getting in a fight with someone and outing himself to the world. "Scott, maybe we should just go..."

"Stiles brought me here to get drunk. I'm not drunk yet," he continued, and he pulled out of Wren's grip to stand right in front of the taller man, who was smirking until a growl came out of the boy's mouth. "Give me the bottle."

"Scott?" the blonde girl called when she noticed that his claws were coming out as well. The man finally just handed it over, but instead of taking it and handing it back to Stiles, the werewolf chucked it at a tree about forty yards away. It shattered upon impact, and the men looked terrified. They backed up and then ran, and Wren was almost positive that if they had tails, they would be tucked in between their legs.

Stiles and Wren ran after their friend as he stormed out of the forest and back toward the car. Stiles said, "Okay, please tell me that was because of the breakup... or 'cause tomorrow's the full moon."

"Let's just go home," the Carter girl suggested, and she waited for him to hand her the keys because neither him nor Scott were in the right state of mind to drive. Scott did not speak for the rest of the way home. Whatever was happening was bringing something out of him, and Wren was scared.

《❀》

THE NEXT DAY, WREN WAS TALKING TO DANNY BEFORE LACROSSE. She was supposed to sit and hang out at their practice that day, but neither Scott nor Stiles had shown up on the field yet. So, she was more than happy to keep the Mahealani boy company if he was lonely. He had insisted that he wasn't, but she sat with him on the bleachers nonetheless.

"So, quick question," she said whilst sitting upside down with her feet resting on the seats above her and her head hanging off the edge. Danny seemed to be trying to pretend that he didn't know her, but it was kind of hard when he was talking to her. "How is your best friend Jackson? I mean, there's so many other people, and you chose Jackson."

"Are you drunk?" he questioned with furrowed eyebrows. She looked like she wasn't all there, especially when she started pulling the little black beads out of the turf and seeing how far she could flick them.

She replied, "I feel like you avoiding the question was you saying that you don't know why you're best friends with him and that he's a dick that no one likes and that you hate him."

"Sure," he told her sarcastically. As she started just making random noises, he began to fear for her sanity. She had spent a lot of their chemistry class swinging her legs dramatically and trying to teach him morse code, only it wasn't morse code. It was just her tapping.

Finally, Scott and Stiles showed up, and she said goodbye to Danny before running over to them. She jumped on Stiles' back, which caused him to fall right over. Once they both stood up again, he asked Scott, "Hey! What happened?"

"What?" the other boy questioned. Wren knew that Stiles was talking about. Earlier that day, he had requested that Scott find out if Lydia wants the Stilinski boy, as if they didn't already know the answer to that.

"What do you mean, 'what'?" he scoffed because it was apparently the most important moment of his life, and he was going to die if he didn't know the answer right then and there. "Did you ask her? Did she say anything? Did she say she liked me? Did she imply she liked me?"

The next words that came out of Scott's mouth were the most outrageous things Wren had heard in her life. "Yeah. Yeah, she likes you." Stiles' jaw dropped as the blonde girl looked like her head was about to explode. Then, the werewolf smiled darkly, adding, "In fact, she's totally into you."

"Let's go! Next! Carter, get the hell off my field!" Coach Finstock shouted.

"One second, Coach!" she responded, ignoring whatever he said in response to her. She turned back to the McCall boy because there was definitely something up with him. "Scott, you okay?"

Stiles took a moment to pause his celebration and dancing to agree and add, "Look, I know we just got good news and all, but there's still seven hours 'til the full moon, okay?"

"Carter, if you're gonna be on my field, you better start running some suicides," Coach ordered, and that was her cue to leave. There was no way that she was going to be caught running in her new outfit. She wasn't a bad runner. In fact, she was on cross country, if you could believe it.

She went to sit on the bleachers, and when Scott was up, there were quite a few people waiting to take him down. He quickly scooped up the ball and got ready while Coach cheered for his captain. "That's it, McCall! That's the spirit! You earn it! Earn it, McCall!"

He charged toward the goal, slamming into two boys on the way there. When he finally reached Danny in goal, he took his lacrosse stick and hit him across the face with it. Even with the helmet on, it sounded like it hurt, and the boy hit the ground.

Wren gasped, running onto the field with the rest of the players. She pushed her way in to check on Danny, who was still on the ground, and once she saw that he was okay, she ran over to Stiles, who was talking to a very angry Scott.

"Scott, you can't hit Danny! Everyone likes Danny!" she insisted with a sigh. Now everyone was going to hate him even more than they already did. She glanced behind her to see Jackson saying something to Lydia, and then the girl adjusted her lipgloss. It had been really smudged, which was strange because Scott had just been with her, and judging by Jackson's expression, it was not him who smudged it.

The werewolf just glared at her, and she took a step back when she saw that his eyes were yellow. The sight of her fear did not seem to phase him, and he just turned around and stormed off as Stiles told her, "That's what I said! He doesn't care."