"𝙔𝙚𝙨, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙠𝙚𝙚𝙥 𝙖𝙣 𝙚𝙮𝙚 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙚𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙝𝙤𝙢𝙞𝙘𝙞𝙙𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙝𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙨"

"So, basically, we're looking for abnormal behavior?"

Meilani glanced up from her printed out copy of the Dread Doctor book and over to Theo. The two had met up early that morning that keep an eye out for anything weird that could be going on. Thankfully, all of Meilani's burns and aches had healed over night from the night before at Eichen House. She wouldn't have to answer questions she didn't even have the slightest bit of knowledge for. "Um, anyone acting a little off or a little weird."

Theo snorted as his eyes scanned the campus below where they stood on the balcony of the second floor outside classrooms. His eyes bounced around the multiple students that either walked towards their next classes or sat out in the bright sun, a warmth finally taking over Beacon Hills as the sun beamed down on the world below. "Isn't everyone a little weird in high school?"

Meilani opened her mouth to argue but laughed along with him, nodding her head as her tongue poked into cheek. "Yeah, okay, I get it. You got me there." She pushed away from the railing she stood by with Theo and turned to make her way back down to the campus floor.

"You remember Tracy went on a killing spree after reading that?" Theo reminded Meilani, rushing after her down the steps and motioning to the printed pages in Meilani's hand. "Or that Malia nearly got run over by a car last night after reading it through? That's why you guys haven't finished it, right?"

Meilani exhaled heavily and tapped the printed pages against her hand, jaw moving as she was lost in thought for a moment. She knew that something was linked to reading the book and the massive killing sprees or sudden delusions like Tracy and Malia. However, Meilani also knew that they needed to read through the whole thing in order to try and save Beacon Hills . . . again. "We're going to finish it."

"Mei, I came here hoping to find a pack. I wasn't planning on watching one fall apart," Theo grabbed Meilani's bicep and stopped her from walking, the two stopping in the middle of the campus walk way. "But if you really need to read this book, then I'll read it with you."

"Wait, really?" Meilani questioned in shock, her eyes widening slightly at the offer. "You'd do it, even after Tracy and Malia?"

Theo nodded in response, taking Meilani's printed out pages from her and waving them for her to see. "I told you I was going to help you, remember? Let me help you."

Meilani was quiet for a long moment, eyes scanning Theo's face for any hint of a lie or joke. Even when his heart rate didn't spike up, Meilani relaxed and offered Theo a thankful smile with a small nod. "Okay, yeah. Thanks, Theo. Right now, we could really use all the help we could get."

Later that night, Meilani stood in the kitchen with Stiles, working on making the pack coffee while they all sat around in the living room reading through the Dread Doctor book the best they could. Even Theo had showed up as promised and surprised just about everyone, while only annoying Stiles. Though, the Stilinski boy hadn't said a word and just read through his own printed out copy of the book, following after Meilani a bit later when she asked him to help her with the coffee she'd started to brew for everyone as it got later and the pack grew more and more restless with reading, on the brink of giving up. She noticed Stiles flinch slightly and try to rotate his arm to remove whatever ache currently bothered him.

"Seriously, what did you do to your shoulder?" Meilani huffed, pouring the pack their coffee that had finally finished brewing. She placed the coffee pot back onto it's warmer, shutting it off and moved to place the coffees on the small try she'd found. "I can smell the blood, too, Stiles."

Stiles sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair with his good arm. "Okay, okay. Jeep died on me the other night and the hood fell on it when I was checking the engine. I didn't want to tell you because it was stupid and I didn't properly prop up the hood. It's not a big deal, really."

Meilani set her jaw and listened to Stiles' heartbeat for a long moment, waiting for it to spike in any way but it didn't. It had remained its usual slightly irregular beat any time he was around her, his eyes soft and pleading for her to believe him as he didn't want to fight. Not right now and not ever, if Stiles were honest. The last thing he wanted was to fight and argue with Meilani. "Okay . . . as long as you're okay. I wish you would have told me. I could have came and helped you."

Stiles smiled softly at Meilani and reached across the small wooden bar in the middle of the kitchen to squeeze her hand. "I'm fine, baby. Okay? Stop worrying about me for once and worry about what's happening right now. We need to figure out what's happening with the doctors and what happened to Kira last night. Me being hit Roscoe is the least of our worries. He just got mad at me for trying to fix him with duct tape again."

That got Meilani to finally crack a smile and she relaxed at the warm feeling of his hand over hers. She scooted around the small bar to stand in between Stiles' legs that were propped open a bit where he sat on the bar stool. Her arms wrapped around his neck while his wrapped around her waist lightly. "I can't help that I worry about you, Sti. Not after everything that we've been through. I worry about the whole pack constantly."

"And that's why you're the best alpha any pack could have, baby," Stiles said softly, his hands rubbing back and forth along her back soothingly. "You care about everyone no matter what. However, for once, I'm asking you to just focus on the current problem: the doctors. We'll figure the rest out later, okay?"

Meilani nodded silently, smiling softly when Stiles leant in to kiss her sweetly on the lips. She sighed in content and let herself enjoy the brief moment with Stiles, knowing they probably wouldn't have too many more of them with all the drama that kept popping up. She allowed herself that one moment of relaxation and normalcy.

"What if we need some kind of trigger?" Meilani suggested to Isaac, Scott, Stiles and Kira the next morning as they all walked through the double side doors of Beacon Hills High. She gripped onto the straps of her backpack as she walked between Isaac and Stiles with Scott and Kira hand in hand to Stiles' right. Nothing had happened the night before as they read through the book and it was worrying to Meilani because she felt like something should have happened by then, but nothing had. "Malia was driving when she remembered the crash."

"Yeah, but how are we supposed to trigger a memory that we don't remember?" Isaac intoned, shifting his own bag over his shoulder. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Meilani groaned and threw her head back, her head pounding with the various options that it could be. If any of them at all. "I don't know! What if we have to wait a couple of hours to see what happens?"

Suddenly, the lights above them began to flicker and surge, much like it had in the halls of Eichen House. Meilani gripped onto Stiles and Isaac's sleeves as they glanced up to the flickering light bulbs above their heads and they didn't move until the lights righted themselves and stayed on, a low hum in its wake afterwards. The trio's eyes landed on Kira whose eyes bounced between the members of the pack.

"What? It's not me, I swear." Kira held up hers and Scott's intertwined hands and gestured to it wildly. "Scott would be barbecued by now if it was me."

"She's right," Meilani exhaled heavily and tugged a frustrated hand through her hair, her head still pounding with endless possibilities and endings. "Okay, look, we keep an eye on each other today, okay?"

"Yes, and keep an eye out for eight other potentially homicidal Chimeras," Stiles remarked with a huff.

"Way to be positive, Stilinski," Isaac commented with a sarcastic smile aimed at Stiles to which Meilani rolled her eyes at the two glowered at each other over her head.

"And we have to keep an eye out for the Dread Doctors," Scott piped up, putting a stop to whatever stare down had begun between Stiles and Isaac. "Make sure they don't show up here and take someone else while we're here."

Meilani offered Scott a thankful smile for at least staying on course and nodded. "Scott's right. We need to keep an eye out for them and whoever else they might have targeted. Make sure nothing else happens."

"And to think school was our one sanctuary," Stiles grumbled, wrapping his arm around Meilani's shoulders and pulling her in the direction of their first class.

As if Meilani's never ending problems couldn't get any worse, she'd officially settled on dropping AP Biology from her list of class. No matter how much it pained her to do so, she knew she needed to do it. Add less stress to her already stressful list of things she needed to focus on. She could always get into her dream college another way . . . right?

"How come you're dropping this class?" Mrs. Finch called to Meilani before the true alpha could sneak her way out of the room after the class was over. She folded her hands on the desk as Meilani sheepishly turned around slowly to face her. "You have excellent grades, Meilani. You've even been helping Scott keep his own up."

Meilani walked back over to Mrs. Finch's desk and chewed the inside of her lip, her own heart aching at the thought of getting rid of her class. Sure, Mrs. Finch was a rough grader, but Meilani still enjoyed her class and she hated that she had to drop it. She'd turned it over in her head so many times the night before that she was pretty sure Isaac was up half the night, too, cause of her never ending thoughts on it. Not that Isaac had said anything ever because he knew the pressure that Meilani was under at the moment. "It's just scheduling reasons, really."

Mrs. Finch stared up at Meilani for a long moment, tilting her head as if analyzing Meilani herself. "Don't you need this class for your dream college? To be a nurse like your mom?"

Meilani opened her mouth to respond when a tightening happened around her lungs, causing her breath to come out in short, panting wheezes. She gripped the side of Mrs. Finch's desk as the room spun and her air came out shorter and shorter as if she were in the middle of an asthma attack. Something she'd never had, only Scott and she screwed her eyes shut as images flashed past of her mind of younger her and Scott. Scott had been rushed to the hospital after his first asthma attack and Meilani sat cross legged on the side of the bed as the doctors rushed Scott through the hospital corridors, Meilani's hand gripped tightly to Scott's as her eight year old voice whispered to him that it was going to be okay. That he'll be breathing normally again in just a few minutes.

Time seemed to slow down around her as she collapsed to her knees, not that she felt it as she felt like she'd actually been transported back to that day. Back to the day that her eight year old little mind thought she'd be losing yet another person from her life. The first time she'd ever felt pure anxiety and devastation as Scott wheezed next to her, gripping her hand for deal life as if she were the only thing keeping him anchored. She could still hear the way that Scott gasped out that he loved her, shakily taking off his string bracelet and wrapping it around her own wrist. He claimed it'd give her strength to hold on like he needed to. That so long as the string stayed around her wrist, he would be okay. To this day, it stayed wrapped around her right wrist, the purple and black string fraying around the edges and becoming discolored due to the aging of it.

"LAN!" 

Meilani's eyes flew open and the first thing she saw was Liam's yellow eyes as he held up her hand in his, Scott's inhaler clutched tightly in her own grip. She didn't even know when he came into the room or when her butt came into contact with the gray tiled floor of the classroom, but she raised her arm took a long puff from Scott's inhaler. She coughed weakly as the medicine lingered in her lungs and spread through to bring the circulation of oxygen back into her. Her eyes flickered to her other side, noticing Isaac had been the one to come in with Liam; more than likely feeling her battle for air. He offered her an encouraging smile and squeezed her knee gently to let her know he and Liam were there.

"Thanks," Meilani wheezed quietly, gripping onto Scott's inhaler.

"Always got your back, Lan."

Meilani nodded silently and pushed to her feet, squeezing Liam and Isaac's shoulders fondly before she ran off to be on her own for a moment. Where she didn't have prying eyes of other students or the prying eyes of her best friend and beta. She pushed into the locker room and dropped down onto the bench in the back, hidden away so she could try and collect her thoughts. That being easier said than done when too many clouded her head and made it hard to grasp onto just one. Not that she was alone long to really think things over as she caught Theo's scent and she realized she'd stumbled into the boy's locker room instead of the girl's.

"You okay?" Theo asked, sounding genuinely concerned for the spiraling true alpha.

Meilani raised Scott's inhaler for her to see and gave him a tight lipped smile. "Just a memory hitting me, I guess. Never had asthma before, but I felt what Scott was feeling the first time he ever had an attack." Her eyes flickered up to meet his face properly and she frowned at the tense state he appeared to be in, regardless of his own worries over Meilani. "Hey, you okay? You got something you wanna talk about?"

Theo shook his head and opened his locker, finding whatever was inside suddenly interesting. "Uh . . . no. It can wait."

Meilani pushed her back off the wall she'd been leant against and wrapped her arms around her knees that were tucked into her chest, making room for Theo on the bench with her. "No, it's okay. Seriously. What's up?"

Theo exhaled heavily, but relented and walked over to Meilani and dropped himself down onto the bench with her, holding up his phone. "Last night when we were all reading, you guys all fell asleep. I went upstairs to check on Kira and Scott where they'd fallen asleep and Kira was muttering in Japanese in her sleep. I didn't just hear it, either." He unlocked his phone, pressing the play button on the voice recording he'd taken of Kira, her voice speaking in Japanese coming out of the speakers of Theo's phone. "I found a website that can translate it. It means roughly . . . I am the messenger of death. Does it get worse than that?"

Meilani squeezed her eyes shut at the new information, dragging her hands down her face as she realized Kira's issues were just piling up as well. "Yeah, something . . . something is happening to her. She's got this weird aura around her. It's hard to explain, really. Um . . . it's supposed to be part of her, but now it looks different. Almost like it's starting to take over her. I don't know, but something is happening. I haven't told her or Scott about it because I'm not really sure what it is and I don't want them to freak out if it's really nothing but  . . . I'm worried about trusting her. Which is so awful to say or think because she's one of my best girl friends and dating my brother."

Before Theo can make a comment on Meilani's confession that she'd only told him about - not even Isaac or Stiles - the lights above them flickered, much like they had in the hallway earlier that morning. Both wolves slowly rose to their feet as they stared up at the flickering lights with furrowed eyebrows. Even more electric shocks could be heard even though the lights suddenly stopped flickering, along with the sound of running water.

"I hear it, too," Theo whispered, eyes scanning around them for where it could be coming from.

Meilani's eyes instantly snapped to the floor, directly beneath them being the basement. "It's coming from the basement."

Without a word exchanged between the two, Meilani and Theo both ran through the hallway and down the steps towards the basement. It was dim below and the flickering lights didn't much help the situation as they sizzled and cracked from above, the multicolored wires from a broken light hung from the ceiling. "Okay, this definitely isn't Kira."

"It's a Chimera."

Meilani puffed out her cheeks with an agreeing nod, turning on her heel to rush back up the steps in search of any one of her pack with Theo close behind her. The hallways themselves were even dim, the low hum of the electricity being heard there as well as Meilani ran into Malia who had been rushing down the steps when Meilani and Theo showed up. "Hey, Mal, where's Kira?"

"Still at the library with Scott and Stiles and Lydia are at the hospital."

"Doing what?" Meilani questioned in confusion.

"Lydia is trying to figure out what happened during her surgery. They said they're just waiting for the power to come back on," Malia explained, glancing between the two wolves when they exchanged a look with each other. "What? What did I miss?"

"A lot."

Arriving at the hospital with Malia on the back of her bike and Theo taking his truck, the trio paced into the hospital with Meilani walking backwards as she spoke to Malia and Theo, telling them to find Stiles and Lydia while she ran off to find Melissa. She took the elevator up to the floor that her mother frequented the most and stepped, the lights above her head flickering much like they had at the high school. Her eyes scanned this way and that as she walked along the corridor until she was grabbed by the throat and slammed up against the wall. The clicking sound from the Dread Doctor was heard and Meilani grunted, clawing at the hand around her throat as she tried to fight her way out of the hold. 

The Dread Doctor held up its gloved hand, light blue sparks of electricity sizzling out of the ends of the fingers and hovering near Meilani's chest. He slammed his hand to her chest, causing her to gasp out harshly for air as the electric shocks waved through her body. Her hand gripped at the Dread Doctor's hand, trying desperately to get him to let her go even though she was too weak to get far. Her body was suddenly flung across the hallway, her body sliding roughly along the tiled floor as she gasped and croaked for the air that she didn't have. Her vision tilted and spun as she tried to blink and get her vision back to working order.

Meilani tried to army crawl away from the Dread Doctor, get herself towards the elevator but she was instantly lifted again. She cried out weakly when her back was slammed into the wall once again, her hands trying to pry at the Dread Doctor's hand once again. The elevators to their right suddenly ding open before Dread Doctor's gloves could shove into Meilani's chest again. Malia's familiar guttural growl was heard before Meilani went flying again, the doctor's focus solely on Malia now.

"Mei, baby, come on," Melissa whispered, ushering her daughter up and half carrying, half helping her into the elevator. She grabbed a needle from the pocket of her pink scrubs and jammed it into Meilani's thigh, pressing the needle into her and giving her the oxygen she needed as her lungs suddenly filled with air.

Meilani choked on the sudden rush of air as Melissa screamed for Malia to run, who had been fighting off the Dread Doctor alone. She gasped as she pushed herself to sit up against the wall fo the elevator wall as Malia turned on her heel and bolted for the elevator, Melissa's hand hovering over the close doors button while shouting encouragement for Malia to push harder and faster. The second Malia's booted foot stepped into the elevator, Melissa was slamming on the button and the doors slid closed just before the Dread Doctor could stop them from closing, the elevator shaking the tiniest bit before it began its decent back down to the main floor.

Meilani panted, a small groan leaving her lips as tilted her head back to look up at Malia. "Mal?"

"Yeah, Mei?"

"We should have never read that book."

AUTHORS NOTE

Hi hey hello

So, double update because I haven't posted in forever? Hell to the yeah! We are on the brink of the angst between everyone's favorite couple and I am high key not ready for it, but I also am. So buckle up, folks, because this ride is about to begin.