Charlotte
I listened to Isabella footsteps run down the stairs, she had the now empty tray under one arm.
"What took you so long?" I asked her. I didn't want my children to know about Victoria. I couldn't tell them what she was. It was already bad enough that she was human.
She nervously plays with her fingers not meeting my eyes. "S-she as-asked me where the bathroom was." Rowan stutters
"What did I say about talking to her?" I snapped.
"Mother, why can't we try to be nice to her?" Isabella asked me.
I fought off the growl I wanted to let out, we all knew how dangerous it was to have a human living with us, I know she didn’t know but she was also a Hunter.
“You know the rules,” is all I tell her.
Isabella just looks at me. “Mom, why are we keeping her here?”
“Sweetie, she is your sister, but she’s human.” I tell her.I can't deal with this."If we start being nice and friendly with her, she'll want me to hang out and if she learns our secret it'll lead to her death."
Isabella sighs, she had just met her twin sister and was told now that she wasn't allowed to talk to her. I understood, I was once so happy for Maureen and Isabella but that was before I was attacked. Isabella must never learn about her father, I don't know if Maureen even knows about her father's past or what he did for a living before she was born.
"There will be a full moon in three days. We must keep Maureen here away from people of the pack. At least until after the full moon.”
"Mother?" Noah begins, "why can't we just kill her, it'd be easy to do and our secret will stay safe."
I hadn’t heard him come down the stairs. I didn’t know if he heard me tell Isabella that Maureen was her sister, that made Noah her half brother. I gave him a dark look, it might be easy, it might be safer, and less dangerous but she was still my daughter.
I say "she hasn't learned our secret yet it's against the rules to kill a human without reason."
Noah doesn't say much after that, we all knew the risk. This time I don't hold back the growl of frustration, why after all these years does she have to come? Why so close to her seventeenth birthday? I don't know how I'm going to explain all this to Noah and Isabella, they didn’t know I was a Hunter before I turned wolf. They just thought I had been a human in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Noah and Isabella go up stairs to bed but I stay downstairs pacing, I might have just put my family in danger my pack as well the Alpha not going to like this. Not with the ball coming but by the next full moon his son will be 18 and be looking for a mate.
By next full moon Isabella and Maureen will be 17 and that’s usually when Hunters start to notice the powers they get. They’ll get speed, and super hearing, strength as if they were wolves themselves but they weren’t it was only to make them a better hunter.
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Maureen
I pushed my ear against the door listening for any sound the door didn't give much away, but I could hear low chatter from downstairs, I heard mothers' loud stomps walk back and forth for a while. After that I heard the scratching of chairs before footsteps on the wooden stairs then silence.
My stomach growls.
I looked at the soup Isabella brought me. I was afraid to eat it, I didn't want to be poisoned. I start moving things around. I have no idea what I'm going to do with all of this stuff. I start by moving all the boxes from the tiny window I had, it was big enough for me to slip out of but if I get any bigger I won't be able to.
In the backyard, I can see a little grey shed that looks like a wooden port-a-potty. She wasn't joking when she said that there was a bathroom outside. I sighed, I went to text Taylor but still no service, plus my phone was going to die. I find somewhere to plug it in anyways just in case it finds anything.
I knew nothing about living in the woods. I wonder if the fact that it's a winter day or with bare trees, a signal can't get through or something like that. Dad was a professor at some college, we only had one tree in our yard. We also didn't live somewhere where it snowed. I returned to the window, the glass is streaked with white but when I scratch it I find that it's some kind of stain. I was about to turn around only to be looking at the room of dust and boxes I didn't feel like cleaning up today.
Moment catches my eyes: Noah standing in the woods breaking up sticks and dropping them into a box, a tree branch is slowly creeping down closer and closer. It moves more like a snake than a tree. I yanked at the window, but it didn't come open, so much for that escape plan. I try pounding on the glass, but I don't think he can hear me.
He turns around so fast he's almost a blur, he hits the snake with a knife I didn't see him holding before. My heart hammers in my chest, but Noah simply drops the knife and goes back to breaking sticks.
I'm losing my mind first: the wolf is now a tree? I'm sitting on the floor fighting to catch my breath when mother walks in with a chamber pot. It's a white kettle lid.
Sighing she sits down on the couch, "I know it's hard but um you'll grow to like it." she says awkwardly like she doesn't know what to say to me.
"I just saw Noah get attacked by a tree," I tell her.
"Don't be ridiculous," she snaps. I joined her on the couch, rethinking my choice to hate her, just because she's not dead doesn't mean I had to treat her like an evil witch. "Just because you didn't grow up in a forest doesn't mean it's out to get you."
She had taken off her boots and I could see her toe through a hole in the black wool socks. She sighs and rubs her head, like something was bothering her. "We understand that you just lost your father and that you have to meet people you never even knew you had, just give it some time and you'll adjust, try to be flexible."
"What about school?" I asked if I knew school was out for Christmas break, but I still needed to know.
"Everyone's homeschool, you'll have to go into town once a year to take the test, I'll bring you some books. Don't worry, we'll take care of everything." Mother said to me.