𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄

𝘙𝘌𝘔𝘌𝘔𝘉𝘌𝘙 𝘐 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌 𝘠𝘖𝘜

Red and blue police lights shined in the faces of Meilani McCall, Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall and Isaac Lahey. The four members from the McCall pack all shifted awkwardly as the police milled about the scene that the four — or rather, Meilani and Isaac — had just created for the police department. A getaway car had been speeding through the highway and Meilani being the true alpha that she was wanted to help Noah Stilinski, the sheriff and father of her boyfriend, catch him like she always had done. Her hero complex only seemed to grow as time went on it seemed and Meilani didn't even think twice when she leapt up onto the hood of the getaway truck, slashing at it with her claws to get the guy to slow down.

In Meilani's defense, the guy did slow down. However . . . not in the way that she'd hoped. Upon seeing Meilani's glowing red eyes and elongated claws, the guy swerved off to the side of the highway and onto the side of the road nearby the side of the Beacon Hills Preserve. An area of the woods that Meilani and her pack had spent more than their fair share of time inside thanks to all of the supernatural drama that had been popping up ever since Meilani had been turned when she was in sophomore year.

Meilani expected the disappointed expression on Noah's face when he arrived with multiple cop cars that had been in pursuit of the truck for a good while before Meilani stepped in. She bit the inside of her lip as she smiled sheepishly at the frowning sheriff, his hands on his hips as his eyes assessed Meilani and her three boys. Every last one of them shifted under his gaze and they all tried to act as innocently as possible, even though that tactic never worked with Noah nor Meilani and Scott's mom, Melissa.

"What in the hell were you four thinking?" Noah asked after a long beat of tense silence between him and the four teens before him.

Meilani grimaced as she awkwardly scratched the back of her neck and smiled sheepishly still at him. "Um . . . the boys and I were just . . . trying to help?"

Noah exhaled heavily and shook his head, running a hand over his semi damp hair from the light rain that fell down from the sky upon them like a thin mist. "Why don't you try and help me understand . . . what the hell happened here?"

"Right, well, we were trying to gently persuade him to pull over . . . " Stiles trailed off, scrunching up his nose as his father merely scowled at him.

"He was gonna get away?" Scott supplied lamely, trying to help his friends and sister out the best he could. Even though all four of them knew that there was no getting out of this one.

"He got away," Noah countered with narrowed eyes and walked around the back of the van, exhaling in annoyance. "You four wanna guess what the stolen merchandise is?"

Isaac balked when Noah opened the double back doors to the white van and revealed the back had been stacked up with multiple tanks of helium. His blue eyes bounced between the tanks and the very annoyed sheriff who looked like he was two seconds away from throttling all four of the teens. "Um . . . is that — is that, like, tanks disguised to hide pounds of drugs?"

"Nope."

"Poisonous gas that could take out half the town of Beacon Hills?" Stiles tried next, though he flinched right after he said it as even he knew that was a stretch.

"Helium," Noah said flatly, crossing his arms across his chest. "Now, the four of you get out of here before I throttle you."

Without a single argument, the four teens took their window of freedom and rushed away before Noah could lecture them any further.

"Maybe this could be a good thing guys."

Stiles scoffed softly from his space in the passenger seat of Roscoe while Meilani sat in the driver's seat and Isaac and Scott sat in the back. His head lolled along the headrest and he raised his eyebrows at his girlfriend. "What? That we saved helium? Babe, you've saved half the town of Beacon Hills and you consider this good?"

Meilani licked her lips as a chuckle escaped past her lips, shaking her head as her brown curls swished gently with the movement. "No. I mean that . . . they don't need us anymore, Stiles"

"No, no, they need us. They just don't know it," Stiles instantly corrected his girlfriend, sounding offended that she would even suggest that Noah and Melissa wouldn't need them any longer to help them out with their cases.

"Sti, we're all going off to college soon, right? So Beacon Hills is gonna have to survive without us."

"Beacon Hills will burn to the ground with us in it," Isaac cut in, poking his head in between the two seats and frowned up at Meilani who spared him a small glance. "Especially without you in it."

Meilani puffed out her cheeks, smelling the sudden scent of sadness that seemed to now surround the car. It wasn't like Meilani particularly enjoyed the thought of her mother and Noah not needing to call her for things anymore. As tired as she was and no matter how many times Meilani cried in her head for one day of a break, Meilani still enjoyed being able to help Melissa and Noah with their supernatural issues that came into the sheriff's station of hospital. However, now it was getting to a point where they really didn't need them as much. Nothing supernatural had hit the town in months and Meilani was beginning to learn that maybe, just maybe, Noah and Melissa would be able to hold down the town with the pack gone off to their own respective colleges.

"Guys, they don't need us anymore. It sucks, I know and I hate it just as much as you guys, but . . . "

Meilani's words were cut off by Stiles' phone going off on the seat where he'd tossed it in between his legs. A loud hoot was blown from Stiles' lips and he waved his phone excitedly around in Meilani's field of vision.

"THEY NEED US, BABY!"

Now Meilani had seen her fair share of weird since she'd been bitten. She'd seen druids, werewolves, kanimas, two alphas that could merge into one megatron of an alpha, and plenty of other things that could give you nightmares for months. None of that could compare to the weird that Meilani experienced when she arrived to the sheriff's station and had to poke through the memories of a twelve-year-old kid. In the kid's memories, he'd seen both of his parents get taken by some kind of gun on a horse that, honestly, reminded Meilani of the Headless Horseman and left the boy behind in the car with the broken shield.

Meilani gasped and stumbled back towards her boys once the memory had finished and she blinked through the slight blur to her vision that always accompanied any memory she poked around in while the boys all tried to get her to answer them on what she'd seen. "It — I saw a guy on a horse. He had a gun."

"Okay, a guy with a gun. That sounds like my department, not yours," Noah responded, placing a hand on Meilani's shoulder and squeezing it gently in thanks for her help.

"Well, what about his parents? What happened to them?" Scott inquired, eyes bouncing from the little boy that sat in the chair in front of Noah's desk and his sister.

"I — I don't know. That's all I remember, but . . . " Meilani shuddered slightly as she trailed off, a cold, icy feeling spiking down her spine as her eyes flickered over to the visibly shaken little boy. "I got this feeling."

"What kind of feeling?"

"They're coming back," the little boy's voice trembled, cutting off whatever response Meilani would have had for the sheriff. His head slowly raised as his brown eyes were wide with fear as his raven hair continued to fall in front of them. "They're coming for me."

The car that the boy and his parents had been in was hauled off towards the police lot where Noah allowed Meilani, the boys and Lydia Martin — who had come when Meilani called for her Banshee help — to go and check it out. The boy hadn't said anything after the statement of the man coming back for him so Noah thought it'd be a good idea for the pack to check out the car, see if any sort of supernatural residue was left behind so they could officially rule it out.

Lydia sat in the front seat of the car, her hands running delicately over the wheel with her eyes closed while Meilani and Isaac both stood outside the car, trailing their fingers along the jagged breaks of the windshield glass. Neither one of them could come up with a scent of feeling that could give off what could have taken the boy's parents in the first place. Not even Lydia could get anything from where sat, causing the strawberry blonde to huff and collapse back against the seat.

The sound of a coyote howl alerted the pack and Meilani glanced over her shoulder to see a familiar coyote leaping over the pile of tires of spare car parts and run right over to them. Malia Tate rubbed her nose gently against the fabric of Meilani's jeans and stood back to her full human height again, all the members quickly glancing away from her naked form. Lydia rolled her eyes and grabbed the clothes that she had on her and handed them off to Malia for her to change into.

"They're dead. Probably torn apart," Malia announced, pulling her shirt over her head after having gone on a run around to see if anything could come up for the parents of the little boy. However, much to their usual luck, it was apparent that Malia had come up empty on that. "I just don't get why there's no blood."

"They're not dead. If they were dead then I'd be able to sense it," Lydia countered, shaking her head as Malia finally finished getting dressed and allowing the three boys in their company to remove their hands from their eyes and turn back around. "They can't be dead."

Malia offered Lydia a small, sad smile and shrugged lamely. "If they were alive then I'd be able to smell it."

Meilani exhaled heavily and dropped her hand from the broken windshield and ran it through her hair instead. "Yeah, I'm not getting anything either."

"What are you talking about? You were in the kid's head for four minutes. I timed it," Stiles spoke up, shooting his girlfriend an odd look.

"It isn't an exact science, Stiles," Meilani sighed, stepping around the car to stand in the small circle that her pack had made next to the vehicle. "Besides, he's a kind and was probably way too freaked out to remember."

"Why does it matter if they're dead?" Malia inquired next, slipping her feet into her boots and standing back to her normal height again. "Dead is dead."

Stiles and the rest of the pack all shot Malia a stern look to which the werecoyote raised her hands in defense. "Okay, if it's just a robbery then we can't help them. If it's something supernatural, my dad can't help them."

Lydia furrowed her eyebrows and tilted her head at Stiles who got a bit jumpy over the possibility of the entire situation being a supernatural one. A situation that the pack were all lowkey dreading as they enjoyed the three months of supernatural silence. "It almost sounds like you want it to be supernatural."

"It's been like three months since anything's happened," Stiles argued, waving his hands in the air spastically. "The last time we went so long without any supernatural happenings, my girlfriend almost died!"

"Yeah, and once a week you drag all of us out of bed like we're some sort of supernatural metal detectors," Lydia quipped back, clearly annoyed with Stiles' constant need to make sure there was nothing supernatural in Beacon Hills. It was almost like he wanted something to pop up so they could have something to do, have a reason for Melissa and Noah to call on them and get their help. 

Stiles huffed and slapped his hands to his sides as he looked around at the pack that all appeared to share the same annoyed sentiment from Lydia. "Okay, you guys can't tell me that you think this is just some series of impossible coincidences!"

Isaac rolled his eyes at the spastic teen and crossed his arms across his chest. "Stilinski, can't it just be a coincidence for once? It would be kind of nice it was this once."

Stiles's jaw ticked and he stormed over to the car again when Lydia and Malia took their leave when they realized nothing else was going on. Lydia shouted to Meilani to remember her outfit choice for tomorrow since it was picture day for the school yearbook and the true alpha rolled her eyes fondly at the girl. However, Meilani got that Lydia wanted all their final pictures to be nice so Meilani didn't argue with her . . . for once.

Upon noticing that Stiles locked himself in the car, Meilani dropped her hands back to her sides and walked over to the vehicle and leant her arms on the roof of the car. She peered in through the opened driver side window to see Stiles just staring out the broken windshield almost like he was lost in thought. "You're just staring out a broken windshield, babe."

"There is something wrong with it," Stiles claimed, his eyes scaling along the jagged pieces of the windshield.

"It's broken," Meilani deadpanned, frowning softly when Stiles glared at her for not taking him seriously. She wanted to go along with Stiles more than anything to make him happy, but she couldn't give him false hope. Not with this. "Babe, it wasn't a magical bullet that shot out of that guy's gun. It was an ordinary bullet that blew out an ordinary windshield." She turned to motion to the other windshields that had bullets in their windshields. "Like those over . . ."

Meilani trailed off when her eyes really took in the other windshields with bullet holes in them. They each had an impact point which then spread out across the glass, creating different shapes and lines along the broken windshield. Not a single one had the whole windshield blown out with only a few jagged pieces left behind on the edges. She slowly turned her head back around to Stiles as Scott and Isaac moved closer to the couple and Stiles gingerly picked up a shard of glass as he inspected it.

"A magic bullet."

The next morning, Meilani showed up to school in light wash jeans, a cream knit sweater, brown booties and her hair had fallen down her back in its natural, brown curls. Lydia had made a point of making sure that everyone in the pack were dressed nice enough for their photos and Meilani would be lying if she said she didn't feel a bit out of place with her booties. Usually she wore her Converses or an old pair of Vans that used to be Scott's that she'd stolen one day when she realized they fit her. It had gotten her smirks from her three boys that morning and Meilani had felt satisfaction when Scott, Isaac and Stiles all scrambled backwards from her when she flashed her red alpha eyes at them in warning.

Sometimes being the true alpha of Beacon Hills had its perks.

Everyone in the pack had been ready for their pictures . . . or at least almost everyone. Malia sat on the stool in front of the camera that had been placed in the outside eating area. A line of students had been at the camera since the first bell that day and it was finally Malia's turn after Scott, Lydia, Isaac, Kira and Meilani had gone. She had perched herself on the stool and tried to smile as casually as she could, but it kept coming out forced. It got to the point where Stiles had finally walked over to try and get the girl to smile like a " normal human being " and that failed epically when he kept getting in the shot. Meilani snorted to herself from next to Isaac when Malia finally stormed off the stool after getting one good picture in and glared daggers at Stiles as he followed after her.

"You ruined it!" Malia snapped at Stiles in annoyance, climbing up onto the table and plopping her ass down onto it.

"Why would I want to ruin your yearbook picture?" Stiles asked Malia in offense, eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"Maybe because you haven't signed up for your own photo yet?" Malia retorted, flashing him a fake smile to which he balked at.

"Yes I did!" Stiles argued, pulling out the folded up sign up sheet from his pocket and showing it off to the table that held his friends. "See?"

Isaac barked out a laugh and he placed his chin on his hands as he fluttered his eyelashes at the Stilinski boy. It only earned him a narrowed eye glance from Stiles as if that'd stop Isaac from what he was about to say. "Ah, yes. I really love the invisible ink you used on it, Stilinski. It'll be a trend soon, just you wait."

Meilani folded her arms on the table, leaning forward on them as she fixated a look on her boyfriend that made him cower back slightly at the intensity of it. "Or maybe you're sublimating the stress of graduating by avoiding key milestones." She slowly sat back when all eyes of her pack turned to her and she picked up her pen again, avoiding their eyes. "What? I helped Scott with his psych paper last night, shut up."

Stiles hummed and stuffed the sign up sheet back into the front pocket of his jeans, suddenly perking up again as a thought flashed across his eyes. "Oh, by the way, deputies checked out the car. No slugs, no exit hole. The address Alex gave my dad . . . it's an abandoned house. I mean, come on! Missing parents, suspicious guy on horseback, magic bullet. Who's comin' with?"

"I'm going to retake my photo that you deliberately ruined," Malia denied instantly.

"Yeah, not interested," Lydia agreed.

Meilani's shoulders slumped when Stiles looked to her expectantly since Meilani usually was the one that would jump up for him no matter what. "Stiles, I can't miss anymore classes, you know that. I missed thirty-eight last semester. Lydia's mom is the only reason I'm still in school and even have the GPA that I do. I can go with you after school, though."

"You know what? Forget it. I'll take Isaac and Liam," Stiles huffed at the pack, turning his direction to the other side of the campus. Though, it seemed like Liam wouldn't be of much help either as he and Hayden were currently in the middle of a make out session on one of the benches.  "Okay, fine . . . I'm only dragging Isaac?"

"Um, no you will not be exploiting my beta or Isaac, thank you very much," Meilani scolded Stiles who shot Meilani a desperate look for a bone.

Before Stiles could open his mouth and argue to let him drag Isaac along against his will, the photographer girl bounded over with her camera and a smile. "Hey, guys. Do you mind if I get a candid?"

Meilani beamed at the girl and hauled herself over to the other side of the table, pulling Stiles down right in between her and Lydia with Scott on her right, Malia on Lydia's other side and Isaac knelt on the table behind them with his hands rested on Meilani and Lydia's shoulders. "Of course you can!"

"Fine, if you can explain to me why this is blue, then I will let this go," Stiles said to his girlfriend lowly, pulling something from his flannel pocket. When the item was handed over to Meilani, she realized it was the shard of glass from the windshield and it had a light blue tint to the glass that usually didn't happen with windshield glass. It almost reminded her of what sea glass would look like but in a blue tint color rather than bluish-green.

"Everyone smile!" the photographer said in a cheery tone, snapping Meilani's attention from the shard of glass that she quickly tucked into the back pocket of her jeans for the time being. 

Meilani leant closer to her boyfriend, leaning her arm on his shoulder as their heads tilted closer to teach other and a beaming smile took over her face. That same cold, icy feeling shooting down her spine once again, but this time . . . she ignored it.

Against Meilani's better judgement, she went to Ms. Finch for answers about the blue tint to the shard of glass that Stiles handed off to her. She knew it would be the only way to get Stiles to shut up and get him to listen to her. So . . . in between her classes, Meilani decided to be a good girlfriend and find out what the blue tint could mean for Stiles while he, Isaac and Scott lounged around in the outside tables still. Scott had even jokingly promised her he'd make sure that Stiles and Isaac didn't kill each other while she was gone.

"A chemical interaction could cause a tint," Ms. Finch explained to Meilani, twisting the glass shard this way and that in the light that filtered in through the window of the classroom they stood in.

"What about flash on the muzzle of a gun? Could be blue or green?" Meilani asked, shifting her bag over her shoulder when it began to slip down her arm. 

"Well, a muzzle flash is usually created by superheated gases leaving a gun. It is possible that the gas could include copper, barium, cesium. Those can burn blue and green."

Ms. Finch's eyebrows cinched together as her eyes flickered over to a sheepishly smiling Meilani. It was an action that Meilani realized she did a lot nowadays. "You think a gun did this?"

Meilani shrugged and tugged absentmindedly at her sweater. "Um, maybe?"

Needless to say that Ms. Finch had handed off the shard of glass to Meilani once again with a strange look, telling Meilani that it could possibly be from the bullet but she wasn't sure. It was definitely strange and not exactly something you'd see every day, which only made Meilani realize that Stiles was, once again, right. 

She really needed to start listening to him.

Once three-thirty hit, Stiles had never been more excited to leave school in his life. With Meilani's hand clutched in his, he dragged her staggering body after him towards the Jeep with a beaming smile on his face. He was right ( as if he'd actually thought he was wrong in the first place ) and he was excited to see what he was truly right about. Scott and Isaac were headed off to hang out with Lydia, Malia and Kira while the couple ran off to inspect whatever suspicions Stiles had.

The duo had pulled up in front of the little boy's house from the night before and they both stared up at the looming brick building, the swing set behind them creaking ominously as the swing chairs moved in the breeze. Meilani felt like she had been transported into a horror film and her thoughts were only shared with Stiles when he had voiced the same thought out loud. She tried to catch a scent of anything, but all she got was the mildewy scent of the grass behind her and the stronger scent of Stiles' cologne that she'd gotten him for Valentine's Day. 

"Come on," Stiles' voice broke Meilani out of her concentration, a flashlight held out in front of her face.

Even though Meilani didn't necessarily need the flashlight thanks to her alpha eyes, she still took it to appease her boyfriend and followed after him inside the empty house. What Meilani didn't expect when the two entered the house was for it to be sparse of any furniture at all and massive cobwebs to be hung from the ceilings like Halloween decorations. Meilani's brown eyes swept around what she assumed was the living room, a fireplace attached to the wall to her right. Even the table in the dining room connected to the room she stood in was dusty, old and empty dishes and glass cups placed on top. 

Meilani slowly turned back to Stiles who eyed the whole place like it would swallow him up in thirty seconds if he tore his eyes away from it. "Babe, you wanna split up?"

"Uh, absolutely fucking not," Stiles instantly replied, his hazel eyes snapping to his girlfriend's face. "I would really rather not die in this house like those stereotypical dumbasses in horror films."

Meilani smiled in amusement at her boyfriend's commentary and jerked her chin in the direction of the stairs at the other end of the room that lead to a second floor. The couple's flashlights that they had switched on ( Meilani's more so for Stiles' benefit ) illuminated the dark stairwell when they approached it, even more cobwebs roped around the dark brown wood of the banister. Their footsteps creaked on the olden stairs as they ascended to the second floor that was just as clear of furniture as the downstairs had.

"Huh, maybe Alex got the address wrong?" Meilani suggested to her boyfriend, her eyes continuing to sweep around the second floor that looked more and more empty as they went. It was almost like no one had ever lived there and was just waiting for someone to buy it off the market.

"Or he lied."

"Yeah, but . . . what reason would Alex have to lie?" Meilani questioned, stopping in the middle of the hall when her flashlight landed on the door at the end of the hall. What once was a white door, was now black and gray from all the dirt and grime that had caked into the old wood, a brass doorknob being the only brightness on the thing. 

The couple shared a wary look with each other before Stiles took the initiative to move forward and push open the door. Once the creaky, old door swung open, Stiles and Meilani were surprised to see that the room had been furnished. A small bed was placed to the left with two small wooden cubby holes drilled into the wall above it. A nightstand rested to the left of the bed with a ball perched in a baseball glove and scatterings of mini figures covering the rest of the nightstand. The room looked like a room that a typical twelve year old boy would have and Meilani furrowed her eyebrows as she stepped further into the room. 

Why was this room fully furnished and bright but none of the others?

"Why didn't the cops say anything about this?" Meilani whispered, dragging her fingers lightly over the desk pressed up against the wall across from the bed. No layers of dust covered the furniture as if the boy had just previously used it the day before. Meilani could still even catch the boy's scent in the room like he'd just been in it.  

"They don't know it's here," Stiles realized, stopping near the window next to the bed and turning to face his girlfriend again. A thoughtful look graced his features and Meilani tilted her head at him, waiting for him to continue. "My dad and the deputies can't come here without a warrant and there is no owner of record to serve a warrant to. Just the kid. Unless there's some kind of imminent danger, they wouldn't dare to come inside."

A rattling sound from somewhere in the house alerted Meilani and her head instantly whipped in the direction of the sound. Her hand gripped tighter in the flashlight in her hand and she gestured for Stiles to follow her. She followed where she'd heard the sound back down to the first floor, the floorboards creaking eerily beneath her feet. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary in the living room, but when she entered the dining room on the other side she blanched at the fact that the dishes and cups had suddenly disappeared as if they'd never even been there in the first place. 

"I swear to God, if ghosts are real . . . I am seriously quitting and taking that early admission," Meilani grumbled to herself, wondering how the hell the Winchester boys ever dealt with this crap on a daily basis for years. She'd only been dealing with it for three years and she had half a mind to slam her head against a wall. 

When another creak was heard in the house, Meilani moved in that direction and whipped around the corner, only spooking the other intruders. She jumped back when two shouts came from the new company and she lowered her flashlight to see it was Liam and Mason. A stern look crossed her features when the two boys shifted on their feet at the sight of Meilani. Clearly, neither of the boys expected her to be here. "What in the hell are you two doing here?"

Liam waved a small, golden compass in his hand for Meilani to see. "This . . . um . . . this is where the compass lead us."

"What compass?" Meilani asked, taking the small pocket compass from Liam's hand and noticed the way the hands of the compass kept spinning around it. Almost like it still tried to find where true North was, which was odd. "Why it doing that?"

"We have no idea," Mason answered, pulling up his phone to show that the compass on his phone did the same thing. "Every compass we tried is doing this."

Suddenly, the glass around the compass in Liam's cracked like someone had taken a tiny hammer to it. It was followed by the sound of a crash and Meilani realized her boyfriend wasn't anywhere in her sight. A curse flew from her lips before she rushed her way back up the stairs and towards Stiles that just scrambled back to his feet. 

"Baby, hey! What happened? What's wrong?" Meilani frantically questioned, twisting Stiles this way and that to check him over for any injuries he might have gotten. 

"He — he was here. He shot at me," Stiles' voice shook with his response, sending another cold, icy feeling down Meilani's spine. His hand latched onto Meilani's tightly, though Meilani barely felt it as her worried gaze lifted up to Stiles' pale as all hell face. "It was one of the guys you saw in Alex's memory, Lani. Alex's parents weren't just taken. They were . . . they were made to disappear. That's — that's why there's no furniture besides Alex's room, that's why they weren't in any of the photos. They were erased."

Without waiting for Meilani to respond, Stiles pushed his way back into Alex's room that had suddenly been cleaned out. The bed, the nightstand, the desk —all of it was gone. Almost like Meilani and Stiles had dreamt the furniture there. Almost like it had never even existed in the first place. 

Like Alex and his parents never existed in the first place.

Later that night, the pack had all ended up at the school. Meilani had promised to help Bobby Finstock with coaching the next practice as she'd be helping him continue to coach during the summer until she left for college. It was a promise she'd made to him when he officially came back to the school to coach and teach when it had dawned on him that his star player would be leaving the team soon. He'd had a whole freak out over it until Meilani finally broke him off and told him she'd help him coach the team so they could stand a chance next year when her, Isaac, Scott, Stiles and Kira left. Granted, Scott never played but Meilani still liked to include him because he was part of the team rather he sat on the bench or not.

Stiles had taken the opportunity to find Lydia with Scott and Isaac to see if her Banshee powers could kick in and help them figure out what was going on. He'd found a book in the library when the pack had first arrived at the school and his head had been in it ever since as he spoke with Lydia, Scott and Isaac. His energy had only kicked up into gear more than ever when Lydia had cracked what could have taken Alex and his parents, causing the boy to barrel over to Meilani who had finally finished with practice. 

"Baby, baby, baby!" Stiles shouted, skidding to a stop in front of his girlfriend as Isaac and Scott jogged after him. Scott's inhale from his asthma pump could be heard as he approached from behind Isaac and Meilani shot him a questioning look to which he merely held up a thumbs up to show he was fine. "Okay, so we figured out that it's called the Wild Hunt."

"Lydia figured it out," Isaac corrected, smirking at Stiles when the Stilinski boy growled at him to shut up.

"Anyways, it's a myth. Only, apparently it's real," Stiles continued when Isaac didn't open his mouth again. "Like every other stinkin' myth in this town that should just really remain a nightmare. That guy on the horse? They call them Ghost Riders." He cut off suddenly when the boys from the lacrosse team passed by, one of them sporting his twenty-four jersey and he blanched at the sight. "HEY! Hey, dude! That's my jersey. Where did you get it?!"

The freshman glanced over his shoulder and shrugged, clearly not caring that he wore Stiles' jersey. "Coach gave it to me at practice."

Stiles' eyes flared as he turned to Meilani who grimaced at the angered face on her boyfriend's face. "Meilani, you let that little gremlin wear my jersey?!"

"That's not important right now! Stiles, why would the Ghost Riders want to take Alex's parents?" Meilani asked, trying to keep Stiles focused on the true situation at hand here. This was slightly more important than someone stealing Stiles' jersey for one practice.

"Because that's what they do. They take people, okay? They run around collecting souls and once they take you, you're gone," Scott responded while Stiles continued to stare after the freshman in disbelief that he actually wore his jersey.

"But it's not just you, it's everything about you," Isaac added in, remembering how Meilani and Stiles mentioned to the pack about what happened back at Alex's place earlier that day.

Meilani nodded at Isaac's words. "Yeah, like how they took Alex's room after the Ghost Rider shot at you. Does — does that mean Alex is next?"

When Meilani, Stiles, Scott and Isaac made it to the sheriff's station to check on Alex, they had been too late. Alex was already gone from the cell when they arrived and the four could only assume that he'd been taken by the Ghost Riders much like his parents had. Even weirder was that Hayden's sister didn't even know who the four teens spoke about. Like Alex had been wiped from her memory and he'd never even existed in the first place. She had claimed that no one had been in the lock up cell where Alex had been kept for safety all day. His name wasn't even on the list of people in lock up.

The four had sped their way back to the high school when Meilani realized that Liam and Hayden might be next as they had found a dead body that Noah had just left to go check out himself. At the high school, there were already a swarm of police inside, but no sight of Liam or Hayden anywhere. Isaac and Scott took off in one direction to go find them and Meilani went to turn to go look for them in an opposite direction when Stiles suddenly latched onto her arm.

"Baby, hey . . . " Stiles weakly called, earning Meilani's full attention as his hands clammed up and she could smell the instant scent of anxiety around him. More so than usual. "Just um . . . you have to listen to me, okay? Baby, you have to listen to me. Just . . . just remember that I love you. You have to remember that for me, okay? That — that we're soulmates. Don't forget it."

Meilani opened her mouth to ask him why he was acting so weird when his lips pressed down onto hers, cutting off whatever her response would have been. She melted into the kiss momentarily, the same heat that flooded her system every time they kissed filling her up from head to toe. Her heart pounded unhealthily fast in her chest and it was like the world around them stopped for a moment, Meilani's hands gripping to the front of Stiles' purple and black flannel. 

"I love you, Lani. I will always love you," Stiles breathed when he eventually pulled away, hazel eyes boring into Meilani's brown ones. "You'll always be the prettiest girl in the world and I will always love you. Just remember me, baby. You have to remember that."

Meilani pulled away slowly from Stiles, eyebrows furrowed in confusion over Stiles' sudden weird behavior. She squeezed his hand and placed another chaste kiss to his lips and smiled softly at him. "Yeah . . . I'll always love you too, Sti. I'm gonna go check the quad, okay? Just tell me when you find Liam and Hayden. We'll meet back up wherever you are. I'll come find you."

Stiles clutched to Meilani like he didn't want to let her go, but his grip eventually loosened as he nodded jerkily at her. His hazel eyes watched Meilani turn and run off in the opposite direction, taking in the sight of her as if it'd be the last time he'd ever see his girlfriend again.

word count: ( 6.3k )

— welcome to REMEMBERING US, babies !!! it is the beginning of the end and i am so freakin' sad cause there legit nineteen chapters left for meilani and it's making me hella emo and sad just thinking about it. writing that last bit between meilani & stiles HURT THE FUCK OUT OF ME but it was necessary and, no, the bit between Stiles and Lydia at the end didn't happen. he was taken alone rather than with Lydia in the Jeep. that " i'll come find you " from Meilani was a line that hit me different because . . . *incoherent screams*

— next chapter just know there will not be any stiles since he was taken in this chapter at the end right after his talk with meilani. he might mentioned randomly depending on how it goes, but he will not be making appearance cause, you know, PLOT! don't worry, he will, obviously, be back but not just yet. just wanted to give ya'll a heads up before i get comments asking bout him. he will be mentioned in chapters, but he won't physically be back for a bit unless there's a flashback/memory scene. just bare with me but Stilani will be back. i swear it.

— also, not sure if any of you know, but i did start a crossover fic for Meilani with my VIP wife's ( roscoeobrien ) oc Adrian Martin. it's called NOWHERE TO TURN and it starts in season 3 so we get to see meilani three seasons back again YEY !!! some stuff will be altered in that fic with Adrian added into the mix so just be aware of that. but i just wanted to let ya'll know that meilani is still vibing ( actually, that's a lie she's never vibing i'm sory ) in another fic in case anyone was interested! there's three chapters up for it already.

ALSO IN HONOR OF THE LAST CHAPTERS OF MEILANI, I WILL BE DOING A FACT EACH CHAPTER ABOUT OUR FAVORITE TRUE ALPHA! IF THERE'S A RANDOM FACT YA'LL WANNA KNOW, LEAVE IT IN A COMMENT AND I'LL DO A FACT ABOUT IT IN THE NEXT CHAPTERS!

THIS CHAPTER'S MEILANI FACT: Meilani's favorite TV show is, ironically, Supernatural. It's a reason why I'll randomly make jokes about Dean and Sam Winchester or she'll randomly wonder how in the HELL these two boys dealt with the supernatural for as long as they did.

( beginning banner by hellstarshipper / ending banner by murdersongs )