School slowly went back to normal and even some new teachers came in since some quit or were transferred out.
Practice started once again and the atmosphere around the school was back to normal, at least until another person died.
Allison was yet to find out where Derek was being kept and even when she tried asking about it in a roundabout way, all they said was that it had been taken care of and nothing else. But that gave her the clue that her parents, specifically her father and grandfather, had Derek chained up or dead.
She still felt conflicted about trying to free Derek, wondering if freeing him would lead to her grandfather's death.
Even if he was harsh and unfeeling sometimes, he still apologized to her and doted on her a lot.
There was a lot she was ignorant about and ironically, she was learning more about the supernatural world from Tristan and Malia more than she was from her family.
Other than training her and giving her weird surprise survival tests, they kept mum on every other thing.
On the other hand, Tristan and Malia had nothing to do except living their normal lives as everything went back to normal.
Other than trying out the extension of his abilities, he had nothing else to do so he just lazed around with Malia and gave into her wishes and whims. At least the ones that he felt weren't dangerous or involved killing or maiming someone.
The sunset saw them sitting on top of a rock at the edge of a cliff that oversaw all of Beacon County.
The fading golden glow from the setting sun and the different lights from the town below somehow looked mesmerizing as the lights below got brighter as the sun went down.
"Seeing this somehow brings back old memories, you know." Malia's voice filled with nostalgia broke the peaceful silence as the sun hid behind the clouds.
"Which one?"
"When we first met." She said.
Though she had been an animal then, growing up Satomi had helped her face her trauma of the accident some of the memories that came to her were of the times she first met Tristan.
In a way, none of them had a past when they met. Just two wandering souls who had nothing to call their own, not even their sense of self, yet they gravitated towards each other and became stuck together.
Unlike Malia whose memories were flashes and impressions, Tristan remembered every second of it. Those were his first meaningful memories.
"How so?" He asked as he flicked off the leaf that landed on Malia's head.
She shrugged and replied. "I have no idea. The view just made me remember those times." She let out a pearl of happy laughs as the memories came back.
"Then you were the stubborn one because I remember dragging you back to our cave whenever you tried walking off on your own."
Tristan smiled a little because he knew that to be true. He didn't understand a lot of things and with a nonexistent sense of danger, Malia was the one who looked after him as a coyote. Even resorting to injuring him if he tried to leave the cave on his own.
"I guess those were simpler times." He said but Malia shook her head not sharing the same sentiment.
"You could have died if you had stayed longer with me. You had no idea what to eat, and I wasn't of any help either. I doubt you would have survived the month, not to mention winter." That was a thought that scared Malia more than anything.
If not for Tristan leaving the cave that day after the boy and coyote fought and she had followed soon after, Satomi wouldn't have found them and she probably would still be trapped in a coyote's body.
Tristan hugged her tighter and tested his chin on her head and spoke softly for her to hear.
"We made it out alright, that's all that matters. I didn't die and you were freed." He whispered and rocked her slowly. "Nothing other than that matters."
"Hmm." She nodded softly and enjoyed herself as Tristan rocked her. It was a source of joy to her that Tristan would only show certain sides of him to her.
Coyotes were extremely territorial and for Malia that territory was Tristan.
Tristan on the other hand was no different. She was like a drug to him that he could do nothing but get willingly addicted to and now he was heavily dependent on her.
Satomi once called them flawed creatures so lonely that they needed the presence of the other for their continual survival.
"Tristan.."
"Mm?"
"It's just us, right? Me and you, and no one else?"
"Yes."
Tristan felt her grip on his hands wrapping over her waist tighten for a moment. "… What of Boyd?"
He chuckled lightly but answered her nonetheless. "You know he's just a friend."
She hummed and asked again. "And Allison?"
He understood why she asked this in such a roundabout way. Due to their unhealthy dependence on each other, he could see why she'd feel somewhat wary and all.
She showed the same reaction to Brett and the others whenever they tried getting too close to Tristan after Satomi brought them to the pack. It took a lot of patience and time for her to understand that nobody was talking Tristan away from her.
"She's our friend, Malia. I think she might have some kind of crush or attraction to me but you know her better than me that she would never act on those." Tristan said calmly.
He was a vampire and he could sense someone's emotions to a certain extent. He paid no attention to it because it was nothing more than a budding crush that had always been there a little after they became friends.
Malia let out a tired sigh and looked at the almost dark sky. "I know, Trist. She's my best friend and being an Argent doesn't help either. I'd hate to see a day where we have to fight her."
Despite her blunt exterior and the nonchalant behavior she showed everybody, Malia was fierce when she got attached.
"You worry too much, you know?" He said in exasperation.
"And you don't worry as much." She bit back. She was about to say something else but Tristan violently shook her and nudged her with his chin.
"Don't think too much. I heard Lori say it causes wrinkles to form." Malia snorted as he said that but she said nothing more.
She calmed down soon after and went back to enjoying Tristan slowly rocking her.
"You know I love you too much to let anything bad happen to you, right?" His words were like a silent murmur but to her it was like he said it loud enough for her to hear every syllable.
"You don't say that a lot." She whispered as darkness finally fell over them.
Tristan only chuckled and she joined him because she knew just why.
"It's because I don't need to say it for you to know."
Malia closed her eyes and wholly cherished another stolen moment with Tristan. They remained sitting on top of the rock for the next hour with Tristan slowly rocking Malia who was happily content in his embrace before they decided to leave.
They took their time walking home, well only Tristan walked since he carried Malia on his back, and hummed the tune of one of their favorite songs as they went.
Right now, there was nothing else apart from them. No Derek, no killings, no Argents – just them alone in this tiny moment.
Everything else could come later.
...
[Lydia Martin POV]
If she were to describe how she's been feeling of recent, she would say that she felt like she just escaped from Hell.
With the support of her mother and her friends(something she still surprisingly had), she had been able to retain a semblance of normalcy but she alone knew how fragile this normalcy was.
A single relapse was all it would take to plunge her straight back to that hell of voices.
She could remember their voices and no matter how it might sound, she knew what she heard was real.
"Jackson…" The dying voice of her ex-boyfriend was something she could ever forget and though they cleared her room of all the pictures her mom said she had drawn during her relapse, she still remembered glimpses and certain memories that stuck to her head and refused to leave.
"Kanima… Alpha… Bloodborn." She muttered as she gazed at her own reflection on the mirror.
Who knows, maybe something might run out of it and prove that she really is not going crazy.
Sometimes she has problems sleeping because she finds herself waking up in the middle of the night to something like a scream but she couldn't tell what it was since only the silence of her room comforted her every time she opened her eyes in the middle of the night.
She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep in a few minutes, hoping she wouldn't wake up in the middle of night again.
"…. They are going to die~"
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