𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟕

𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚

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╰┈˚ · ° .    THERE WERE 9 MEMBERS IN THE PACK, and currently, all of them—with the exception of Jacob—where sitting on the couch one next to the others as Amelia, Kim, Layla and I were watching them, scrutinize them as if they were under a microscope—Maddison and Emily just watched from the sidelines quite amused by how their afternoon had turned up.

"It's gotta be one of them, right?" Kim pointed at Seth, Quil and Cassian that we had purposefully made them sit next to each other.

"Well, are we really sure about that?" Annoyed, I thought out loud, "Can it even happen with more than one person?" As I said that I turned to glare at my boyfriend, jealousy burning in my veins mixing with anger.

"What did I do now?" Paul breathed out leaning back to rest against the couch pillows.

"Let's hope not because we really don't need that much drama. There is still a lot of it as of now." Ignoring him whatsoever, Amelia snarked through a bitter scoff, her foot thumping against the floorboards.

"What do we do?" Layla asked, "I mean, is it really any of our business?"

"Yes." The rest of us chorused at the same time.

"We need to know. One, it means that they are under our protection, two, we are not letting this one turn like..." I trailed off but we all knew what I was talking about."We waited three days, and nothing. It's enough time."

Layla cleared her throat, "Right."

"We could torture it out of them?" Amelia proposed seriously, which made few of the wolves lean away from her with a flinch.

"Or ask." Sam said, quickly, losing his patience now, "Why are we even here?"

"He knows," I narrowed my eyes to my brother, "He has to. He is the alpha."

"Or it's him."

"I'm what?!" Sam barked, standing up, only to be pushed back by Amelia's wind, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Okay, this is getting nowhere." I huffed out annoyedly, "Who among you 9 shitheads imprinted and decided that it was a good thing to keep it from us?" silence rang, and my tone turned sharp, "Come on? Anyone?"

"What are you even talking about?" Paul snapped, the only one between the rest of the pack—apart from my brother—that dared to meet my gaze head on. "No one fucking imprinted."

"Are you fucking lying to me?" My lips curled into a sneer.

"Why would I be lying to you, Beatrice?"

"I don't know, you tell me?" I rebuked with anger and narrowed eyes, oh it wasn't him, was it? I would fucking kill him.

"You know, in the last week I think I saw you two fight more than kissing." Cassian's voice snapped me out of my glaring.

I scrunched my face in confusion but it was Paul that replied, "When were we fighting?"

Now Cassian looked even more confused than we were, "Weren't you screaming her name this morning because she trapped you in a ring of fire? Or yesterday when she threatened to light your hair on fire, or–"

"Yeah, yeah I think we got it." Paul chuckled, his gaze turning thoughtful for an instant as he recalled those moments. "That was just her showing me how much she loves me, isn't it right, Little arsonist?" he turned towards me expectantly, his tongue poking his cheek as he smiled.

I stared at him hard, internally melting at how fucking hot he looked at that moment, before deadpanning. "I'm about to show you my love by lighting you one fire if you imprinted on someone else."

"Are you jealous?"

"Can we go back to the problem? Jesus. You can do your foreplay later." Amelia snapped, pushing space between myself and Paul, "Now... who imprinted? You have three seconds before I start to cast spells."

"Maybe threatening them is not the right thing, you know." Layla mumbled as she side eyed the air witch.

"We asked and they are not answering." Kim stated, tilting her chin up as she stared at her boyfriend, "Did you imprint on someone?"

Jared grinned up at her, "Jealous?"

"Okay, okay." Layla this time intervened, "We really need answers, please." She said to the pack.

"I didn't. It wasn't me." Embry quickly said looking entirely just at his girlfriend who blushed under his stare, "I swear."

"Yeah, alright prince charming, we got it. Stop with that stare and Layla, focus." Amelia sighed hard and looked at the ceiling as she could find a crumble of patience there.

"I don't understand why you are not telling us?" Kim complained, "It's us, how could you hide something like this from us!"

"Did you know that I was afraid of introducing you to those two?" Jared started, pointing at Amelia and I at the same time.

"You girls are not really, uh..." Quil trailed off, Seth starting from there.

"I really love you girls but,"

"You girls are fucking bitches." Leah said cutting off the rambling wolves.

"Excuse me?!" Kim exclaimed, quite offended—Cassian with her. Layla looked more inclined to disappear in the corner and Amelia took it as a compliment. For me it was just the truth. We weren't the kindest bunch—excluding Layla. The rest of us could work on it, even cheerful bubbly Kim.

"No offense, but if Layla hadn't been part of your coven I would have thought twice before introducing her to you." Embry cleared his throat.

"You can be a bit judgmental of everyone that is not you, let's be honest. You really have a pack mentality." Jared commented.

"That's rich coming from you, really." I deadpanned.

"We so are not." Kim gaped at him, "Look, Maddison is here, we are not a bitch to her." She pointed at the girl who was trying to hide her smile behind her hand.

"Isn't she part of your coven, though?" Quil asked, scratching anxiously at his scalp.

"Of course she is." The earth witch gasped.

"Then she doesn't count." Jared told her.

"What about me? They have never been bitches to me." Cassian asked walking to stand next to us with his hands on his hips.

"That's because the girls adopted you like a stray puppy." Leah rolled her eyes, looking quite done with this conversation.

No one could say anything to that because it was kinda true.

"Own it, babe, you girls are mean." Jared told his imprint with a smile, which made Paul snort in amusement.

I raised an eyebrow at him, "You have been quiet, too quiet. Do you want to add something?"

He chuckled with mirth, "We both know that that is one of the things that I love the most about you."

I nodded satisfied, "Good answer,"

"So who the fuck imprinted." Changing back the subject of the conversation to the original one, Amelia said steadily. "We need to know. If you don't want us around them-" She rolled her eyes at her own words, "They will not be forced. We just need to add spells on them to keep the vampires away from them like we did with Maddison and Emily."

"You added vampire repellent spells around Emily?" Sam looked quite taken by surprise by Amelia's confession.

"Of course we did." Kim said softly, "They were created by one of the previous covens to protect imprints that weren't witches. It only works with someone who has a connection to the pack or us."

The pack actually looked chastised by what they had said before—none of us had taken them to heart, we knew who we were, and we were alright with it. Amelia, Kim, Layla and I had something in common that only us could understand. It wasn't our magic, but the lack of it in the years before we unlocked it. We all grew up feeling like we were too different from everyone, like we were the odd one out. It was hard to make friends, to keep them when you had so much interest in something—an obsession to everyone's eyes— that was seen as abnormal. There was always the fear of judgment, of not being understood by your peers. If it wasn't for my obsession with fire—that as much I tried to conceal didn't really go unnoticed—Paul blaming me for the accident in the chemistry lab wouldn't have been believed as much as it did. All of us four girls had that in common, the fear of judgment that we grew up with. The coven was a safe space, for the first time in our life we could be who we were meant to be. As much as we loved the pack, not even them could ever understand that. Maybe we didn't let it show but it had affected us growing up alone and without friends even if we yearned for one. So yes, maybe we had a pack mentality or whatever, but we were safe, we were friends, sisters more so. We weren't alone.

"I get it okay." I sighed, "We are not easy to deal with sometimes, but this is something important. Like Amelia said, we will cast the spell and then leave them alone if that is what they wish."

"It wasn't me." Sam assured, "And whoever imprinted needs to tell us. They are right, this is not something light."

That fact was that everyone said that it wasn't them. "It's not possible." Amelia gritted out, "We know what the imprinting bond feels like, so we know that it happened."

"Are you sure that you didn't imprint?" Sam spoke using his alpha tone that made all his wolves low their heads and nod.

"It's impossible," Layla said.

"Can we cast a spell to see?" I asked the guys, which nodded again.

We clasped each other's hands until we formed a circle. The spell was simple, and it quickly showed us a golden wolf in our mind. When our eyes snapped open we quickly found the same eyes that the wolf had.

"Cassian." I said, "It was you?"

The boy snapped back, "I didn't imprint on anyone, what the hell are you talking about?"

"We saw your wolf, Cass. it was you." Kim told the boy.

The Raine boy laughed hard, "Impossible."

"Why do you look so sure? They literally did the spell." Quil said.

"Because from what I know from what you guys let pass through the pack-link," he motioned with his head towards the wolves who had imprinted, "there was no one that I felt that shift with, or whatever. I didn't suddenly see someone for the first time and fall in love." Then his eyes took a faraway look and his smile turned even bigger if possible, "I mean, I am in love, but that was from before. Three years actually. He is so pretty that I could honestly cry."

"Oh look at that, another gay." Amelia snorted amusedly.

"Did you see him after you shifted?" Sam asked after clearing his throat with a twitching smile.

"Oh yes. I didn't see him for a week and he turned even prettier."

"I know that look." Kim snorted, slapping the boy on the shoulder jokingly, "you imprinted on him."

"I did?"

"How the hell did you not notice?" The alpha asked confused, "It's quite hard not to. Impossible."

"Sure, I felt more, I guess, but I just attributed it to the heightened emotion of being a wolf. But it's just Spencer, it's normal for me to feel that way about him."

"You don't mean the same Spencer that you said hated your guts, right?" Layla asked.

"Oh yeah, him. Exactly him."

"I can't believe this." Paul suddenly laughed. All at one we turned towards him. "I mean I was pathetic enough, but you... oh you definitely surpassed me. You are so whipped that you didn't even realize that you imprinted on him."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Cassian beamed his best smile that only got wider when the phone in his pocket started to ring and he got to see who the caller ID was. "Oh, hi, Spence! Hello! I'm really really happy that you called, I was actually-"

"Shut the fuck up." Even though the call wasn't on speaker we could all hear the panicked and very much enraged voice of the boy on the other side with how silent the room had suddenly become. "Come here, now."

Cassian's eyes widened and panic dripped from his words, "What happened? Are you okay? Spencer, answer me! Where are you?" His hand was through his fluffy curls tugging anxiously at the roots.

"I'm good, sure. For now." Spencer's tone becomes breathy, "Rowan, though, he is not."

══════ 🜂🜁🜃🜄 ══════

╰┈˚ · ° .  Sam had literally put Cassian in the corner after the boy had explained his plan to make his best friend phase. Apparently it had worked to shut Cassian up for once since he was pouting, sitting with his arms around his knees in the corner of the kitchen.

"Fucking shit, you look like a kicked puppy." Rowan was taking pleasure in seeing his best friend suffer. The Grant boy had been quickly rescued by the pack and brought back to Emily's house—alongside Spencer who was glaring at the wall and ignoring all of Cassian attempts of talking with him—-and after the pack had pretty much explained quickly what had happened to him, it was time to officially join him with the spell-bound tattoo.

Rowan was the type of boy to pass unobserved in large crowds. He had always been the silent type who preferred reading to, well, anything else. His friendship with Cassian started when they were little, and even with the drastic personality difference, the two had always been as thick as thieves. As much as Rowan was silent, he also had an aura around him that could make you feel very comfortable, and when he spoke, I noticed, the boy used as many cuss words as he could, apparently. Which was a surprise.

The chest with witchcraft supplies was brought to the kitchen, and from it, Amelia took out the box with the tribal pattern of it of two wolves howling at the moon—-the same one that was tattooed on every shifter—and opened it. She passed the small bowl made of wood to Layla and Kim, who had already begun the process of creating the paste by grinding the needed herbs and mixing them with oils, and when that was done, they added the ink found in the pack box in the bowl before pouring the black liquid and mixture in it, leaving Layla to specifically blended it together to perfection with her power on liquids.

Amelia in the meantime had already cut a strand of Rowan's hair and sealed it in a jar to be added with the rest of the Uley's pack members.

I waited for them playing with the smoothed out needle with my eyes close to connect with the core of my magic. We all worked together in silence, the pack looking at us—even with the many times we had done this—they still looked mesmerized. Even when we did some simple spells their awe never faltered.

The bowl was put on the table in front of me signifying that the liquid was done preparing, and with a last breath, I opened my eyes again.

"Are you ready?" I asked Rowan one last time. This would seal his faith, he would be part of the pack.

Rowan waited a second before he nodded his head and I finally dipped the needle in the tincture before pressing it against the skin of his bicep. I was in a magic trance as I traced the pattern, the ink mixture seeping into his skin at every line and dot that I added. Nothing existed outside that. When that was finally completed, I called forth my fire. A small flame made of pure energy and magic detached from the core of my powers fusing directly with the tattoo. The little tornado made of air magic followed from Amelia, the blooming flower from Kim then and the drop of water from Layla to finally seal the spell completely.

My eyelids fluttered as I came back to reality and the fog of magic slipped from my mind.

I stepped back, standing besides the other witches as Sam walked to Rowan, extending his hands for the boy to shake. "Welcome to the pack."

══════ 🜂🜁🜃🜄 ══════

╰┈˚ · ° .  Imprinting. It was usually explained as a gravitational shift to simplifying it, but we all knew that it was much more than that. I had only to see Paul looking at me when he thought I wouldn't notice to have more insight of it—and I still wouldn't understand it fully. I was his world, his eyes would tell me. I knew I didn't need the imprint to feel that way about him, but for wolves with that type of bond, it felt like they couldn't breathe until we were safe in their arms, like their life stopped when their imprint was away and began again when they were around.

A gravitational shift was the easier way to let the new wolves or the one without that bond to understand it in some ways, but Cassian hadn't thought that it was the right way to describe it. And so he went on a five minute ramble about the imprinting bond. One that he had no knowledge of having until an hour prior but still could find words to describe it so well that even the other wolves looked impressed.

And then Rowan slapped a hand on his friend's mouth, "I get it, Cass. You can stop now." but his eyes were narrowed, as if he was searching the answer of his next question in Cassian's deep set of mocha brown eyes. "Do you have something else to tell me?"

Cassian didn't know how to lie, that we all get when he started to laugh uncomfortably and stutter out words of denials while backing away. "I don't know what you're talking about. I do not have secrets. No , of course- no. I, ah."

"Cassian."

And apparently Cassian wasn't good under pressure and he shouted a name before slapping a hand over his mouth, "Spencer."

"What?" Said boy raised an eyebrow as he heard his name being called but his older brother had understood quite well.

The rest of us were very much enjoying the show to the point where there was actual food involved to snack on that we took from the center of the table where usually something baked always was.

Rowan stood up in a second, the chair making a loud sound in the other whose silent room. "You imprinted on my fucking brother?!"

"You what?!"

"I can explain!" Cassian slowly stepped back and away from his best friend, hands in the air, "I didn't choose it! We really can't." but hearing his words Cassian gasped, "not like I would have chosen anyone else since I've been in love with him since I met him." Now he was the one who slapped his hand above his mouth to stop himself from rumbling, but we all had heard him, even Spencer who was stuck with a slack jaw and crimson cheeks.

No one had seen the punch coming, but it hit Cassian straight in the face, "My little brother? Cassian!"

"I deserve it alright." the Raine boy groaned, massaging his aching jaw. "But like, it's not that I choose to-you know."

"Fell in love with him the first time you saw him?" Amelia unhelpfully snorted.

"Three years?! My brother? Really Cassian?"

"Oh come on, look at him." The sun boy pointed at the moon boy, "How could I not."

Sam let out a heavy sight, clapping Rowan on the shoulder, "I get it alright. It's not easy. But at least he didn't bully him and then imprinted on him." He catswed as side glance towards Paul who now funded the ceiling far more interesting.

"Uh, thank you?" Cassian said, more asked as if he wasn't sure if he was defending him or not.

"I'm just saying." Sam started again after leveling the boy with a hard stare that shut him up, "He couldn't help the imprinting. We can't choose who it happens with, Rowan."

"It doesn't fucking mean that I should like it."

"You know what?" Spencer's stoic tone was heard as he stood up, "This was too much for one day. Goodbye."

"Wait, wait, Spence, please-"

"It's Spencer, Raine." The boy snapped tiredly as if he had reminded the boy too many times of it already.

"Sure darling, whatever you want."

"Oh hell." I snickered under my breath. When the drama wasn't yours definitely looked far more interesting.

"I'll see you at home." Spencer informed his brother, opening the front door and almost gasping when he saw the two women—-Maddison and Emily that had gone grocery shopping—-on the other side ready to get it.

"Oh hi, you must be Spencer. I'm Emily." The older woman introduced herself with her usual sweet tone.

Maddison smiled at the boy and looked around for the new wolf. The gasp coming from Rowan echoed in the kitchen as he met her eyes.

All hell broke loose after that when Jacob pushed the new member out of the door and phased mid jump.

✎

˗ˏˋ 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 ˊˎ˗

Hello everyone! 

Okay, this chapter is funny, ngl. I get that maybe from outside how the girls could look like, but I hoped that I showed you why they are like that. Sure they are bitches and they are a very close knit group, but they are the first friends they have ever had. They all grew up feeling like they could never be themselves with anyone because of fear of judgment because of their obsession with fire, water, earth and air, so when the coven formed, it was their safe space. I really hope that you can understand that! 

The guys in the pack LOVE the girls, don't misunderstand that. But they can acknowledge that they are not perfect! Cassian, I love you so much you ray of sunshine whipped man. 

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

˚ · ° . 𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐞 . ° · ˚

𝐓𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲 

𝐓𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲 

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞!

– 𝐋𝐨𝐥𝐚 ☾