𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑, paul lahote ✓

𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐘 𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

MEET ME AT THE CREEK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. THE CLOCK STARTS NOW.

YOU KNOW ME."

It was written in some sort of chicken scratch, and whoever it was knew her real surname instead of her Forks-affiliated one. They knew her middle name too, and the significance of the creek, and everything in her was telling her to burn the damn letter.

Don't be stupid.

Yet, she found herself pausing. She'd survived too much just for her family to be ripped from her, and if the truth could set her free, she needed to meet this person.

After all, she knew them.

⋆☾ ﾟ｡⋆

"You've gotta be shitting me."

When she arrived at the creek, just a few mere seconds before her fifteen minutes was up, she found herself face to face with a figure she never thought she'd see outside of school.

"Connor?"

The boy simply smiled at her kindly, offering up a wave of his hand in greeting. Augustine was positively dumbfounded; Connor from fucking AP Lang was stood before her in a much more causal way than his letter implied.

He nodded eagerly in her direction, taking a couple steps forward. "You got my letter," he observed, almost happily, and the ravenette realized that this was the longest conversation they'd ever shared. "That's good."

"I'm so confused right now," she mumbled out, and her nails instinctually dig into her palms. "How do you know me?" The real me?

The brunet gave her a shrug. "I know everything about you," he told her with a certain nonchalance that had her heckles raised, "everything from your birth in dreary little Prudhoe Bay to the Volturi coming for your new family."

"Okay, but how?"

He reached up towards his eyes, peeling back what appeared to be brown contact lenses. Beneath them were a stark red, and she stumbled away in shock.

"What do you know about a man named Janvier?" he questioned her, matching her movements by taking a stumble forward himself.

"Next to nothing," she responded, now feeling incredibly uneasy at the fact that there was another vampire hiding in plain sight at school, "but he's the one who came before me."

Once again he nodded, almost gleefully. "Yes! Well done, cherie," he mused, throwing his hands out in a mock of making jazz hands, "and now, you're looking at him!"

"Liar," Augustine immediately fired back, vehemently shaking her head, "Janvier's been missing for centuries, and he's old— I've seen a drawing."

Connor's head reared back, a hand placed over his heart. "You wound me, seriously," he replied with a soft scoff. "I've watched over our bloodline for years, dude, meaning I've had to... shift appearances every one and a while."

A singular, heated pause. "Our bloodline?"

"My last name is Dubois, after all," he revealed, and had Augustine's heart still been beating, it would've immediately stopped. "Just like my mother's, and her mother's before her, and her mother's before her, and—"

"My mother's," the ravenette breathed out, staring up at the boy from school who was, in actuality, her ancestor. Her blood.

Ernest Dubois took his wife's surname. She was the French one, not him.

"I've been watching over every generation of Dubois children, just to ensure they never faced the same wretched fate as I," he told her, gesturing to the crimson of his irises with nothing but distaste. "But I failed you... and I will not fail you again."

Her eyebrows furrowed as he stepped even closer. "What do you mean?" she asked desperately, hands curling into fists at his sudden silence. "Tell me, Janvier!"

"I was never going to intervene, I was going to make an exception because you just seemed so happy, but the Volturi want you to join them. And when you say no, they will kill you along with the rest of your new family," he elaborated, almost in a rushed tone. "So, I must reverse what has been done to you, to stop that from happening."

Before she could even blink, his hands were outstretched and gripping her own. They locked eyes when she felt a tingly sensation form in her palms. She was frightened, this was all a mistake. "What are you doing?"

"Matter manipulation is a funny thing," came his cryptic response, before a solemn smile phased onto his face that seemed somehow paler now. "Know that I am not heartless... but it was just never meant to be this way."

Augustine suddenly couldn't hear him over the sound of her own screaming, she tried thrashing out of his grip, but he was stronger. She felt weakened by him, anxiously trying to rip her hands away from his when the tingly feeling shot into her chest.

Her breath caught in her throat— no, no that couldn't be right. She started to choke, something angry bubbling up in her lungs. Her vision dimmed, and she was unable to see anything more than five feet before her, and she suddenly felt something wet sticking to her shirt.

Blood. Her blood.

And it was coming from the wound her mother gave her the night of her sixteenth birthday.

"You were never meant to be this way."

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

[ wyn's note ]

... i give you guys comfort just to rip it away, time and time again... sorry not sorry HAHA but in turn this was a super long one!

i've decided that chapter 55 will be our final one, PLUS an epilogue that i'm positive y'all will like !! wink wink extra spicy nudge nudge

also, paul pov next chap!! be ready!!