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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐄𝐍

𝘸𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥

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Meilani's life quickly became more and more of a cluster fuck as time passed. She barely can have one day of peace without one of her friends calling her up in hysterics and making her rush out of Stiles' house - while in the middle of something much more relaxing - and over to the high school where Allison and Lydia were. Meilani had called Scott on the way, figuring he would want to be there for whatever Lydia was freaking out about.

The pack had met up in the front of campus and Lydia looked completely freaked out over whatever she had seen. That was never a good sign when she looked nervous.

"It's the same thing as the pool. I got into the car heading somewhere totally different and ended up here," Lydia explained, her heart hammering loudly in her chest and Meilani could smell the anxiety washing off Lydia. It was the same scent that Stiles gave off sometimes before he went into a panic attack. "And you told me to call if you there's a dead body."

"You found a dead body?" Stiles pressed, eyes bouncing around the pack. 

"Not yet."

"What do you mean not yet? Lydia, you're supposed to call us after you find the dead body," Stiles sighed, slapping his hands to his sides.

Lydia wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head. "Oh, no, I am not doing that again. You find the dead body from now on."

Stiles scoffed quietly and threw his hands out to the sides. "How are we supposed to find the dead body? You're always the one finding the dead body."

While Stiles went off on a tangent that Lydia should have at least started with there being no dead body, Meilani's wolf senses suddenly kicked in and the smell of blood hit her like a freight train. How she didn't notice it when they first arrived was beyond Meilani. Maybe it was her own constant nerves jamming up her senses and numbing her to pretty much everything. 

Some true alpha she was, huh?

A quick scan of the area finally proved why Meilani smelt the blood. On the brick and cement sign that read BEACON HILLS HIGH SCHOOL laid a very dead deputy, her blood dripping the side of the sign in dark red pools of blood. Her eyes stared lifelessly at Meilani and if she wasn't already so used to finding bodies like this, she probably would have been freaked out by the sight before her. 

 "Guys, I found the dead body."

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The next morning, Meilani had woken up feeling groggy and not very well rested. She and the pack had to stay back at the high school until well over midnight to wait for Noah to show up and answer questions that they didn't really have the best answers for. Not when Noah didn't know about the supernatural yet and they couldn't just outright say that the supernatural was apart of it. That the alpha pack was quite literally ruining Meilani's life and she'd sooner die from the lack of sleep and anxiety than Deucalion.

"Isaac," Meilani said, tapping on his door and pushing into the room. Thankfully, the curly haired and blue eyed wolf was already dressed. "I need a favor."

Isaac fixed the end of his shirt and turned to face Meilani from where he stood by the full length mirror in the corner of the room. He had stayed up a little later with Meilani as she rambled to him about what happened back at the high school while Scott took Allison home on his bike. He listened to her rant and just about cry about everything just piling up on her. She didn't tell him about the true alpha part just yet, not knowing how he'd react to it all. However, Isaac did sit on Meilani's bed with her until she finally passed out around three AM. 

"Can you just check on Allison for me? Lydia said that Allison wasn't coming to school today and if I miss another day of school my mom might kill me before Deucalion does," Meilani teased, but the joke landed kind of flat because the actual threat of Deucalion loomed over her head again. "I just want to make sure she's okay. Last night really messed with her, I think."

"Yeah, sure. I can afford a day," Isaac replied, eyeing Meilani worriedly. 

It was no secret that Isaac and Meilani had grown rather close ever since he became a werewolf. They had a rough start, but after everything they went through together last year, it only made them closer. Isaac saw Meilani as a sister at this point and he would do anything for her, especially after she took him in when Derek kicked him. He owed Meilani his life and he'd do whatever it took to make sure she was safe and protected. Even though he knew fully well Meilani was more than capable of taking care of herself.

Meilani furrowed her eyebrows when she noticed Isaac's analyzing expression, almost becoming self-conscious under his scrutinizing gaze. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Just worried about you is all," Isaac said, slipping his leather jacket on and stuffing his phone into his back pocket. "Can you promise you'll just try to relax? At least for the eight hours you'll be at school? For me? And if you do get to Ethan, don't kill him."

Meilani snorted and a small smile tug at her lips. "I'm not Derek."

Isaac chuckled and bowed his head for a moment before he lifted his head back up again, stepping closer to Meilani. "No, you're definitely better than Derek. Just promise me that you will at least try."

Meilani playfully rolled her eyes and heard the sound of Stiles' Jeep tires on the pavement outside. She knew Isaac wouldn't let her leave the room until she gave him an answer. He'd make Stiles wait outside until she verbally promised to try. Try not to have a panic attack in the middle of school. Try to forget the fact that there was a massive target on her back, worse than before now that she earned her true alpha power. Try to forget she's not a normal teenager anymore and would never be one again.

"Fine, yes, okay? I'll try not to spontaneously combust in the high school today," Meilani eventually relented when Isaac merely stared her down, fixing her to her spot with his pretty blue eyes. 

Isaac beamed in satisfaction and pressed a platonic kiss to the side of her head as he passed her on his way out of the room. 

"Betas," Meilani mumbled jokingly and giggled when Isaac said he still heard that as he exited the house.

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"Idioms, analogies, metaphors, and similes, all tools the writer uses to tell their story," Miss Blake said to the class, walking up and down the aisles until she stopped next to Lydia's desk who had been doodling since class began. Meilani could hear the scratching of Lydia's pen the whole class and usually it bothered her, but the sound of the pen and the smell of the overused ink was oddly keeping her calm. "Lydia, I wasn't aware you had so many hidden talents."

"You and every guy I've ever dated," Lydia replied, smiling brightly up at Miss. Blake.

"Oh, um, well, that was an idiom, by the way," Miss Blake slowly informed, the awkwardness being heard perfectly in her tone. "Idioms are something of a secret to the people who know the language or the culture." She stopped in between Stiles and Meilani's desks and stared between the two for a moment, making Meilani momentarily wonder if she did something. "They're phrases that only make sense if you know key words. Saying jump the gun is meaningful only if you know about the starting gun in a race, or a phrase like seeing the whole board."

Stiles was quiet for a moment as something that Meilani couldn't read flashed across his face. It was too quick for her to really grasp on what went through his head and one look at Scott told her that he didn't know what Stiles was thinking either. "Like chess."

Miss Blake smiled in what seemed to be relief that one of the kids actually kept up with her and she was just talking to a bunch of zombies. "Very good, Stiles. Do you play?"

Stiles fiddled with the pencil in his hands and lowered himself a bit more in his chair. "Oh, um, no. My dad does."

"Now when does an idiom become a cliche?"

Meilani waited for Miss Blake to move further up the aisle and continue with the lesson before she turned to Stiles and Scott. "I think I can get to Ethan. I'm pretty sure I can make him talk."

Scott chewed on his lower lip nervously, clearly not liking the fact his twin would have to deal with one of the alphas that wanted her dead. "What do you want to do that for?"

"The druids are emissaries, right? So what if the Darach was an emissary to the alphas?"

"Okay, first of all, I cannot believe that we've gotten to the point where a sentence like what if the Darach was an emissary to the alphas actually makes sense to me," Stiles whined, tapping his pencil on his open notebook out of nerves. It was a nervous tick that Stiles had besides fiddling with his hands. "Second of all, we're gonna have a huge problem getting to Ethan."

"What's that?"

"Getting through Aiden," Scott realized and was only confirmed when Stiles nodded in response. "Yeah, ever since Aiden came back to school they're always together. How would you separate them again?"

Meilani smirked and turned in her chair to look at Lydia, her elbow leaning on the side of her desk and placing her chin into her palm with an innocent smile. "Hey, Lydia. Have I ever told you how pretty you look today?"

Lydia looked up from her doodle of a leafless tree and shot Meilani a look that showed she wasn't amused. "What is it this time?"

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"Why are you even talking to me? I helped kill your friend. How do you know I'm not gonna kill another one?" Ethan challenged, eyes flickering between Meilani and the two boys that flanked either side of her.

The small group stood in the darkened stairwell while the rest of the school was off in class or hiding out during a free period. Lydia had whisked Aiden away for a hook up in Coach's office with him being in class for the rest of the day.

Stiles straightened up when he noticed Ethan look at him and the smell of annoyance wafted into the air off Stiles. "Why is he looking at me? Are you threatening me? You know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to break off an extra large branch of mountain ash, wrap into wolfsbane, roll it in mistletoe, and shove it in your freaking - "

Meilani rolled her eyes and pushed Stiles back effortlessly when he pushed himself off the wall to walk towards Ethan. As if he really thought anything he had just said was anything at all threatening to an alpha. Even then, Stiles didn't necessarily scream big and scary. If anything, he screamed small and puppy like Scott did. "We are talking to you because I know that you didn't want to kill Boyd. I think that if something like that happened now, you wouldn't do it again."

"You don't know what we owe them, especially Deucalion. We weren't like Kali and Ennis when we met him. We weren't alphas."

"What were you?"

Ethan shifted uncomfortably on his feet, clearly uncomfortable with the path this conversation had gone down. "Omegas. In actual wolf packs, omegas are the scapegoat, the last to eat, the one who has to take the abuse from the rest of the pack."

"So you and Aiden were, like, the bitches of the pack?" Stiles quipped and grumbled when Scott slid closer to him, wrapping a hand around his mouth to keep him from talking with an innocent smile.

"Something like that," Ethan said, crossing his arms as he leant back against the walls as his heart rate had raised just the tiniest bit to indicate the memories weren't anything pretty. "They were killers. I mean, people talk about us as monsters. Well, they were the ones who gave us the reputation. Our alpha was the worst of them."

"Why didn't you guys just fight back?" Scott inquired softly and dropped his hand from Stiles' mouth when he felt the wetness of Stiles' tongue on his palm. "You could have formed your... super wolf or whatever it is... and kicked everyone's ass."

"We couldn't. We didn't know how to control it back then. Deucalion taught us and then we took down the whole pack, one by one. By the time we got to our alpha, he was begging for his life. We tore him apart. Literally," Ethan shakily answered, the raw emotion of anger and fear for life in his tone.

Meilani shifted her bag strap on her shoulder and chewed on the inside of her lip as she thought about what Ethan had said. Deucalion seemed to be the connection for just about everything having to do with the alpha pack. Something Meilani really should have figured out to begin with since he was their leader after all. "What about your emissary? They're all dead? Kali and Ennis' too?"

Ethan sighed and nodded his head slowly. "All of them except for Deucalion."

"You mean Morrell?" Stiles asked.

Before Ethan could give anything else to the trio, he suddenly groaned in pain and clutched at his chest. He was in a daze for a long moment until the feeling eventually passed and looked back up at the trio when they asked if he was hurt. "Not me. Aiden."

It didn't take a rocket scientist for Meilani and the boys to follow after Ethan who started to rush off in the direction of Coach Finstock's office. The closer they got to the boys' locker room where Coach's office was, the louder the sounds of a fight happening was heard along with Lydia screaming for Aiden to stop. When Ethan and Meilani burst into the locker room, they saw Cora curled up on the floor all bloodied with Lydia crouching behind her worriedly. Aiden stood in front of them with a circular weight held above his head. Blood coated his chest with a massive rip in his black t-shirt and his wolf fangs and red eyes were on full display.

"You can't do this!" Ethan barked at his twin as Meilani and Ethan grabbed Aiden's arms to stop him from chucking the weight at Cora. The weight dropped from Aiden's hands but the fangs and red alpha eyes didn't fade as he glared darkly at the wounded Hale.

"She came at me!"

"It doesn't matter! Kali gave Derek until the next full moon. You can't touch him or her," Ethan chastised, watching as Scott and Stiles dropped to either side of Lydia to check on her and Cora who continued to breathe heavily from the fight she got into with Aiden.

Meilani slowly released her iron grip on Aiden's bicep when Ethan motioned that he had his twin and allowed Ethan to drag Aiden - who had finally put away the fangs and red eyes - out of the locker room and away from the pack. Her eyes remained on the doorway of the boys' locker room until Stiles announced that Cora was pretty hurt and he'd run to get her a rag to clean the blood of her face.

Lydia and Scott hooked their arms underneath Cora's armpits and helped her to her feet. Meilani had turned on the sink and took the rag that Stiles handed to her when he walked out of Coach's office, wetting the rag so Cora could clean her wound properly now that she was on her own two feet. Cora had taken the rag gratefully from Meilani and stood in front of the mirror to clean the blood that continued to drip from the wound on the side of her forehead.

"You okay, Cora?" Meilani asked, listening to Cora's heart that thankfully now sounded stronger and healthy.

"I'll heal," Cora assured the pack quietly, tossing the bloodied rag into the sink and took a step back from the sink. However, she stumbled as if dizzy and Stiles and Scott went to grab her but she held her hands out before they could touch her. "I said I'm fine."

"Do you realize how suicidally crazy that was?" Stiles scolded as if Cora had been a naughty child with her hand in the cookie jar before dinner. "What were you thinking going after them?"

Cora scoffed and her eyes narrowed at Meilani, Scott, Stiles and Lydia who stood in front of her. "I did it for Boyd because none of you were doing anything."

Meilani frowned and felt the dull ache in her chest at the reminder of Boyd's death. She barely even had any time to mourn his death after her talk with Gerard and everything else that transpired after that. It was like one thing happened after the other and pretty soon Meilani felt like she was gonna drown from it all. "We're trying, Cora."

"And you're failing," Cora snapped, her eyes darkening with anger and pain. "You are just a bunch of stupid teenagers running around, thinking that you can stop people from getting killed. All you do is show up late. All you really do is find the bodies."

Without waiting for a response from the pack, Cora left the room in a huff and practically steaming from the ears.

"Well, she's definitely a Hale," Stiles commented and placed a soft kiss to Meilani's cheek before he began to make his way out after Cora. "I'll make sure she gets home safe."

Meilani puffed out her cheeks as the bell for next period rang. However, she had no intentions of going to her next class. Instead she had a certain guidance counselor on her radar that she needed to talk to. Thankfully, Scott would be in her next class and he could make an excuse up for her that she had to go to the nurse for not feeling well while she snuck off to Morrell's office.

When Meilani arrived at Morrell's office, she was alone and she walked in without a word to emissary who stood at the filing cabinet next to the door to her office. She faked a smile up at the dark haired guidance counselor who seemed annoyed by Meilani's presence. She walked around her desk and took a seat, crossing one leg over the other as she eyed Meilani.

"Why are you bothering me, Meilani, when you know the clock is ticking? When you know someone else is about to be taken?"

"By you," Meilani accused breezily.

"Come on, Meilani. Shouldn't you leave the interrogations to someone like Stilinski?" Morrell teased, rolling her eyes at the thought of both Noah and Stiles.

Meilani leaned forward in her seat, trying to appear as threatening as possible. She wouldn't leave the office until she got the answers she wanted, even if that took all day. "Are you the one killing people?"

"Are you listening to my heartbeat?" Morrell said and leant forward in her own seat, heartbeat steady as anything. "No. I'm not the one killing people." She smirked at Meilani when Meilani bowed her head in defeat, knowing now that Morrell was telling the truth. Then who the hell was killing all of these people? "Truth is, I'm all that stands between Deucalion and the lives of your friends. I've been the one pulling the leash taut when they're salivating for a bite. He wants a true alpha in his pack. He thinks it's you and a little distraction like a few human sacrifices isn't gonna dissuade from the prize."

Meilani clenched her fists in her lap while the warning that Deaton had given to her the other night played around in her head. Deucalion was truly onto the fact that she was the true alpha, but the way Morrell worded it, Deucalion wasn't exactly sure just yet. It was just a hunch and not set in stone since Meilani had only even found out what she was just a few nights ago. That meant she could easily lie her way out of this one... right? "But I'm not an alpha."

"But you're well on your way, aren't you?"

"Then what is he waiting for?" Meilani slammed her hands on the desk and stood up from her chair, forcing her emotions to stay in check so she wouldn't shift in front of Morrell. One look at Meilani's red eyes would give Morrell all the information she needed to send Deucalion right for her. "What does he want me to do?"

Morrell slammed her hands on the desk and stood up, leaning across the desk so her and Meilani were a few inches apart. "He wants to make a killer out of you, Meilani. That's what he does."

"If I kill someone, I can't be a true alpha, right?"

"Exactly. You want the psychologist's perspective? He's an obsessive who both desires you and is threatened by you. If the obsessive can't have the object of his desire, he'll choose to destroy it instead. You will either willingly become part of his pack or he will make a killer out of you, destroying your potential to be a true alpha," Morrell explained, lowly and quietly but loud enough to make Meilani really listen.

It could go down one of two ways: Meilani either gives her over to Deucalion and becomes apart of the alphas or she winds up killing someone and loses her true alpha status. Though, Meilani was not one to give up so easily and was the definition of stubborn. She wouldn't be going down without a fight and there was no way she would be letting Deucalion take what was rightfully hers from her.

"Neither of those is ever going to happen."

"Don't be so sure," Morrell countered and sat back down in her chair, crossing one leg over the other again. "You're playing his game and while you are trying to figure out what to do next, he's thinking ten moves ahead, with checkmate already in sight."

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The craziness of Meilani's life only continued to spiral as Lydia was found in Mr. Westover's classroom with a five knot Celtic symbol drawn onto the board and a number 2 written in the right hand circle. Only adding to the never ending confusion on what the patterns of the sacrifices truly are. Lydia had screamed about her being a psychic or something to Miss Blake who tried to calm her down and Ethan had even turned to Meilani for answers. Answers she still didn't have.

Then, on top of that, later that night Allison had called Meilani to tell her that she and Isaac had gone off to find Mr. Westover before he was sacrificed and the attacker had gotten away as Chris shot bullets at it from two guns in his hands. Stiles was also at the hospital with Cora who had collapsed at his house, who she had to call to let him know it's not the law enforcement they should have worried about... it was the teachers who were the philosophers.

"That makes sense. Tara, she wasn't always a cop. She used to teach middle school," Stiles said after Meilani's fifteen minute long rant of everything that happened after he left the school with Cora. 

"Then the last one's gonna be another teacher," Meilani noted, tugging a hand through her already unruly curls. She paced back and forth outside the high school while Scott's concerned gaze followed her the whole time. They had both gone back for the recital that Miss Blake had set up for all the losses the town had taken so far when they got Allison's call.

"There's dozens of them, babe, and they're all headed home."

Meilani glanced over her shoulder to Miss Blake who welcomed every single teacher into the building. Well...shit. "No, no they're not! They're all going to the recital." She quickly hung up the phone with Stiles and whirled around to face Scott with wide eyes, her chest heaving as everything finally caught up to her. "Scotty..."

Scott rushed up to his twin and grabbed her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs soothingly. He could see the panic and fear clear as day in her face and the weight of the world quite literally sitting on her shoulders at this point. This being the final thing to tip the scale and suffocate Meilani. "Mei, listen to me, okay? We will figure this out. We always do, right? We need to get into that school and make sure we protect all those teachers inside."

Meilani closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath, the soothing circles that Scott rubbed into her cheeks helping the tiniest bit. She knew she wouldn't fully relax until Stiles was there, needing both of her anchors there to really make her feel secure. However, Scott had helped to calm her down enough to have a clear head when entering the high school and seeing Lydia stood in the back of the crowded auditorium, the stage already filled with all the kids who would be playing in the concert that night.

"Lyd? What are you doing here?" Scott asked when he and Meilani stopped on either side of her. "I thought you were gonna go home."

"I can't. I don't know why I am the one that keeps finding the bodies, but maybe if I just stopped trying to fight it, I'd find them before it happens. Maybe with enough time for someone like Meilani to do something about it," Lydia explained, still looking a bit shaken up from what happened in the high school earlier that day.

"You get me time and I'll do something about it," Meilani told Lydia confidently, taking Lydia's hand into hers with the best smile she could muster. "I swear to God, I will."

The concert had started not that long after, the two girls clutching onto each other's hands. Meilani would have never guessed that she'd be friends with the strawberry blonde next to her or that she'd be clutching to the girl's hand for comfort and reassurance at a concert to honor the dead that had been killed by the supernatural. Her life truly was a movie and Meilani was just waiting on the credits to roll already so she could breathe.

Part way through the first song, Lydia's phone buzzed a few times in her hand and the strawberry blonde dropped Meilani's hand to see who had texted. Not wanting to pry, Meilani didn't ask Lydia who texted her not even when Lydia let out a heavy exhale and stalked away from the twins.

Just as Lydia walked away, the doors to the auditorium opened up and Chris, Allison and Isaac rushed their way inside the room. She furrowed her eyebrows at Isaac who gave her an apologetic look for not telling her about going after Mr. Westover with Allison before he ran after the raven haired girl and her father.

Stiles had came back to the school not long after Chris, Allison and Isaac entered. He tried to tell his father about the supernatural, but Noah didn't believe a single word that Stiles said. Meilani didn't really blame him either because she wouldn't have believed any of it either if she wasn't a werewolf herself. Her life literally became that of a horror film and Meilani had the feeling she'd be reaching the climax of the film sooner or later.

And that climax apparently was sooner because Lydia hadn't returned from wherever she ran off to after her text message and she didn't respond to any of Stiles or Scott's calls and texts. Both of their phones showing at least thirty calls each to the strawberry blonde and nearly the same in texts each. It wasn't like Lydia to ignore that many texts or calls, especially not from the boys now that they were all friends and she'd answer on the second ring or text back after at least a minute since she was constantly on it.

Meilani had rushed her way out of the school to scan the area with heightened senses, but she couldn't see, hear or smell Lydia anywhere. The boys stood on either side of her as they continued to try and get in contact with Lydia, but they were still hitting her voicemails or unanswered text messages. Almost as if Lydia disappeared into thin air.

"What do we do? She's not answering texts or phone calls," Stiles panicked, his own eyes surveying the area even though he wouldn't have seen much in the darkness of the night. He turned his head towards Meilani who frantically continued to try and search out Lydia. "Babe?"

An ear shattering scream erupted in Meilani's ears and she whimpered, gripping at her ears and collapsing to her knees at the boys' feet. Scott and Stiles quickly dropped down beside her, Stiles brushing the hair of out his girlfriend's face as he desperately tried to get her to tell him what was happening to her. Why she suddenly dropped to her knees in pain.

"Lydia," Meilani breathed and, before either Scott or Stiles could ask her anything, she scrambled to her feet and followed the sounds of the screams. 

Once in the hallways of the school, Meilani was able to smell Lydia's scent once again, mixed with the fear that mixed with her usual perfume and vanilla shampoo. She barreled her way through the darkened hallways, that loomed shadows eerily along the walls and Meilani's face. Only adding to the already scary and suspenseful aura in the air that seemed to have taken over the high school. 

Lydia's scent led Meilani to the english classroom where Miss Blake was stood behind Lydia who was tied to the chair with tape. She didn't even think twice as she shifted and stopped in the classroom to see Noah on the floor, a knife in his shoulder. His eyes lifted to meet hers and she didn't have much time to offer him any sort of indication that what Stiles had just told him hours before was true. She rushed at Miss Blake and swiped a clawed hand in her face which Miss Blake effortlessly dodged.

Miss Blake thrusted her hand forward and sent Meilani flying into the pile of desks and chairs across the room. Meilani grunted at the collision and dropped the tiled floor of the classroom, blood pooling from her mouth. She blacked out for a moment - how long, she wasn't sure - but the sound of glass breaking snapped her back to Earth and two sounds of feet rushing over to the now broken window.

Meilani stumbled to her feet, pressing a hand to her injured side and there was no sight of Miss Blake or Noah anywhere in the room. It was now just Lydia, Scott, Stiles and Meilani, which only meant one thing.

Miss Blake took Noah.

AUTHORS NOTE

Hi hey hello

ME @ THE MEILANI&ISACC AND MEILANI&SCOTT SCENES IN THIS CHAPTER

Well, this chapter was kind of dark, huh? Noah finally was taught about the supernatural even though he didn't believe Stiles. Though, now that he's seen Meilani, we can add another person to the list of people Meilani needs to keep an eye on. If he knows about the supernatural, who knows what would go after him to get to Meilani?

JUST THREE CHAPTERS LEFT IN PART ONE!