𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟓

"𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 "

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𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥'𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐯

╰┈˚ · ° .  IT WAS WEIRD FEELING. Being human, then a wolf and then human once again. I didn't know what to think or do other than simmering in my rage. It was still there, like always, but now, I could almost touch it. It felt too real.

"Where are we going?" I asked out loud with a grumble.

The morning was just starting to begin, the sun was still low in the sky after dawn. I was in the backseat of a car, wearing only some cropped pants like the other two. Jared was driving his jeep, Sam in the passenger seat next to him.

"Somewhere safe." Sam replied.

He had explained to me in some way what had happened. The legends, the spirit warriors that turned in wolves... He said that there was a part of the story that it wasn't his place to explain but I would know soon.

"Somewhere safe, where?" I insisted with my question, not liking not knowing.

"We are here." Jared said then, parking the car in the driveway of a house. One that belonged to the Uley family.

"The safe place is your house?" I asked with a snarl.

Almost growling the words out, Sam replied curtly. "Yes."

Jared shrugged his shoulders when I looked at him, and quickly jogged to the door, entering like it was his own home. I followed after Sam inside, taking in what I could see. The aroma of coffee, tea and food invading my nostrils with other four scents and heartbeats.

"Kim." Jared almost shouted the name, running to a girl that was sitting on the couch with Amelia Black nearby. I had seen the two together at school recently, and we all thought that she was the new addition to the weird friend group that they had created. "How are you feeling?"

"Jared?" The name left her lips with a whisper, eyes shining with unshed tears before she launched herself in the arms of the pack's beta.

I was confused. Why was she here? Why was Amelia Black here?

"Wait." I said looking from each person present in the living room. "Are they..." I left my question trailing off knowing that at least the other two boys could understand me. But it wasn't one of them that answered my question. But the girl with the dying fire in her eyes.

"No, we are something else." She replied walking past me without glancing my way.

The girl she was with, Maddison Swan, trailed after her, only giving me a nod to acknowledge my presence.

"What does that mean?" I asked, letting out a sigh of anger.

She gave the girl that Jared still had in his arms a fuming mug offering her a half smile.

"Did you explain it to him?" Amelia Black spoke for the first time since I had entered. Tone sharp and cold like I knew she always had.

Maddison Swan gave her a mug, and for the first time, I saw the girl give someone a smile that was not filled with sarcasm or a flirty one.

"Only the shifter part, like with Jared." Sam replied to the girl simply.

"What is the other part?" with my tone demanding the answer. All of this was definitely not good for my anger.

Turning around towards me, Beatrice's eyes met mine and what she said passed completely over me because I was not there anymore. I was in the past, present and future. I saw her, smiling and laughing. My arms wrapped around her. The way her eyes lightened up as she saw me or how my lips were crushing against hers. The millions of imagines passed behind my eyes, hundreds of moments and possibilities. They floored me, completely stealing my breath away. Because something had shifted inside of me revealing the missing piece that had held me down for all my life. She was what I was missing. My soul danced, yearning for her. My heart, my mind... Nothing else mattered other than her. Because she was anchoring me down, keeping my feet on the ground and not making me float away.

I don't know what had happened, but when I returned to the present, everyone was staring at me.

"Did I break him?" She spoke, her voice like the melody of flickering embers.

"Oh shit." It had been Amelia that had spoken, eyes wide going between Beatrice and I.

Too much, everything was too much. Overwhelming anger filled me, my body trembling and shaking. Arms pushed me away until I could feel the morning breeze on my skin. And I was a wolf, again.

══════ 🜂🜁🜃🜄 ══════

𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞'𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐯

╰┈˚ · ° .  "Wow, he really hates me." I commented watching the two shifters trying to calm down Paul that had just lost it and phased into his wolf.

Kim was watching the three with wide eyes, taking in her new world. We had already explained everything to her, well minus the imprint, and fortunately, she had taken everything in a good way, if not feeling just a bit overwhelmed by the fact that only hours ago she was coughing soil.

Pushing me by my shoulder, Mia motioned to the three guys with her head. "Maybe you should try and help them."

"Didn't you just see that he phased just from me talking to him?" I asked her with a raised eyebrow. "Why don't you try?"

"Girls, yes, we could use some help." Jared yelled over the sound of a growling wolf.

I looked at Mia, who shrugged her shoulders and turned around and walked to the other two.

"Do I have to remind you who that is?" I yelled after my friend. "Traitor." I mumbled under my breath as the air witch just looked at me emotionless, like she couldn't care less about what I was saying.

I walked towards the trio, with not much enthusiasm. "I'm not going to pet him to calm himself down." I stated to my brother and best friend.

"Just do the thing, Tris." My brother replied through gritted teeth.

I stepped closer to the wolf, his head tilting as he looked at me. He had gray fur, a much lighter shade than Jared's one around his eyes, and some places on his face and the underbelly were covered in white insted. And his eyes, his eyes were the same as when he was human. Dark brown that were almost black, but with some of the rays of the sun hitting them, they showed a slightly mahogany hue.

They were beautiful, and I hated it.

I stared at him until I felt the anger once again. I was in front of him, enough that the distance could be covered by me extending my arm. I snapped my fingers together until sparks appeared, and still he stared at me almost unmoving.

I titled my head slightly, definitely expecting much more of a fight from him.

The urge to run my fingers to the white patched of his fur between his eyes was almost too much that I had to swallow down the impulse and take a step back. Deciding that I had enough of whatever this was, I willed my element to come forward into creating a circle of fire caging the wolf in it. Spelling it with the intention of calmness, I rolled my eyes not needing to fake my annoyance. But this time, the difference was that it wasn't aimed at him but at the weird situation.

"Shift back." I said softer than I intended, really hoping that the spelled fire would do its job for once.

We had tried this technique before, spelling our elements with intention, like happiness, calmness, even anger. It would put the people glancing at it in a trance absorbing the properties of the spell. The only problem was that it had never worked before or at least until now, because where seconds before there was a too big wolf, now kneeled down onto the floor was a naked man.

His tanned skin glistened from sweat and shining from the sun. He had his head down, shoulders heaving as he regained his breath. He almost looked like a statue, carved directly from marble. A fallen angel with cutted wings surrounded by heavenly fire.

As he looked up, his eyes collided with mine and once again he started to shake.

"Okay this is getting ridiculous." I said while massaging my temples. "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and you are not the only one who is not happy to see the other. So get your shit together, Lahote." With this last inspirational quote I left the two shifters with their new pack mate.

══════ 🜂🜁🜃🜄 ══════

╰┈˚ · ° .  "Did he shift back?" Mia asked as soon as I entered the kitchen.

"Yes." I grumbled as I sat down on a chair at the table still a bit angry at my friend for leaving me in that situation. The room, well more like the entire house, smelled divine from Maddi's cooking.

As soon as we had arrived back at my house with the unconscious new witch, we had called the human girl, who drove back here in the span of only twenty minutes. She too definitely broke the speed limit to get here.

"Drink this." Softly the Swan girl said, sliding me the second cup of coffee of the day before returning to the stove and continuing to make pancakes.

"Are they okay?" Kim asked. She was deep in thought, standing next to an almost dead flower pot that was on the seal of one of the windows. Her fingers traced the decaying petals with soft touches and unconsciously, by using her magic, the flower bloomed back to life. Too much. "Oh."

"They are fine, Kim. Don't worry." I smiled at her. "And in the beginning your elemental power can get easily triggered. It takes a bit before you'll be able to master it. It's normal."

"So I'm going to create a garden whenever I touch a plant or something?" She asked, a bit of amusement lacing her tone.

"Probably without even touching, actually." I replied, with the beginning of a grin.

"But I'm pretty sure the earthquakes will be much more of a problem." Mia said with a chuckle.

"Earthquakes?" Almost in a squeak, Kim asked.

"Amelia, stop scaring her." Maddison reprimed, making me snort. That made the human glare at me. "Come and help me, you two."

Seeing our faces, Kim laughed. "Come one, I'll help too."

The flow of our friendship dynamic, even with an added person, never changed. It was easy to talk and easier to smile.

The table was stacked with food and the room filled with laughter when the three shifters re-entered the kitchen.

"Let's eat. I'm sure you'll be starving." With her signature smile, Maddison rushed Paul to one of the empty seats as we all sat down at the table at our designated places.

We had to add a chair to one of the sides to make place for all of us. Amelia was at one end of the table, me sitting on her right with my back towards the wall. Then there was Jared, and in the added space next to him, Kim. On the other end of the table, there was Maddi, Paul on her right, and Sam next to him.

Silently we all started to dig in the food, filling our plates as only the sounds of cutlery to be heard. It wasn't the most comfortable silence. It was heavy and filled with tension.

Probably sensing that, it was Jared that broke it off with one of his inappropriate jokes. "This is starting to feel like those awkward family dinners."

"Oh my god, shut up." I kicked him in his shin, to which he did a very drammatic show of faking his hurt. "You for sure would be the annoying little cousin."

"Little? I'm older than you."

"You have the mental capacity of a six year old, Jared." At my reply he kicked me under the table the same way I had done.

"What the-"

"Don't." Sam said out loud with a stern tone narrowing his eyes at me already knowing what I wanted to do.

"He kicked me."

"You started!" Jared replied almost shouting

"Children." The alpha shook his head, ignoring us and deciding that it wasn't worth it.

It was a laugh, coming directly from the earth witch that made the glaring contest between Jared and I come to a stop. "No, I'm sorry. Please continue. This is like a free show."

I could help the way my lips twitched. Kim's laugh was contagious.

"This is normal." I turned towards Mia who apparently had told that to Paul, who had watched the entire thing with wide eyes. "She was wrong, Jared is not the annoying little cousin. They both are the annoying little siblings that fight for everything."

"Exactly." Sam nodded his head in Mia's direction.

"I'm taking offense to that." I mumbled shooting my brother a glare.

After that, the silence was much more comfortable, which finished when Kim broke it as the shifters helped themselves to the third plate of food.

"Is it weird that I don't find this, you know, weird?" She asked. Her nose scrunching up at the question. A movement that made Jared stare at her with a soft loving smile.

Gross.

"No. It makes much more sense now. The unhealthy obsession with standing on the edge of a cliff or outside when the wind blows so hard that could actually eradicate trees never really made much sense to me." Mia answered,letting out a scoff through her smirk.

"Wait, is this why you are in love with your lighter?" Paul asked, his forehead was furrowed and he had one of his eyebrows was raised in my direction.

"Yes." I answered with a clipped tone.

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh." I replied bitterly. "And I'm not in love with my lighter."

"You are not?" He asked with a smirk. "Could've fooled me, but I'm still pretty sure you are, little arsonist."

"You didn't just call me that." I scoffed. "Do I have to remind you that it was you the one that almost blew the chemistry lab and then gave me the blame?" I asked rhetorically. I couldn't help but glare at him.

"Are you sure? Because I don't remember it being that way." It was the cocky grin that was on his face that made me snap.

I rose from my chair abruptly, my hand slammed down on the table, fire erupting from my palm. The flame traveled down until they reached their target, not burning anything as they passed. But as soon as they stopped in front of Paul, the fire flared up until it reached his face.

Everyone at the table sat up quickly too at the sight of the fire.

"Oh shit." I heard Jared mumble, but I was too focused on Paul, who smirked like he had won a prize, still sat down in the chair almost lazily.

"So you do get angry." He chuckled. "I'm going to love getting on your nerves."

His words were like a bucket of ice cold water, they made me quickly sober up. "You can act all mighty and shit, but I know you, Paul. And under all that cocky attitude there is just rage, a lot of it. But it's not only that, is it? Because you are just using it to cover how much of a coward and pathetic asshole you really are."

He jumped up, taking a step back, almost as if my words had pierced him like an arrow. And then, he became angry. Very angry.

"Stop!" Sam used his alpha voice. Even if I could not follow his command, I still respected him. Not only as an alpha, but as a person.

I sat back down in my seat, a smirk this time on my lips. "You can still eat. My fire did not burn anything."

As always, with his comedic relief came Jared. He chuckled before with a grin he said

"Buckle up guys, this is going to be a wild ride."

✎

˗ˏˋ 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 ˊˎ˗

Hello everyone!

And Paul imprinted!!!! I hope you liked my twist on the imprinting monologue. I wanted him to have his own version of it, not just Jacob's words.

These two are going to make everyone sweat, I swear. But I can say that I loved writing them together and all their interactions (Even of the future chapters). It's never boring.

Anyways, thank you for reading this chapter, I'll see you on Thursday!

˚ · ° . 𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐞 . ° · ˚

𝐓𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲

𝐓𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞!

– 𝐋𝐨𝐥𝐚 ☾