Sam made it to her first class with only a minute to spare as she sat down in her desk and tried to -but was unable to wipe the smile from her face.
As happy as she was that she was with Derek now, a part of her was even happier that she'd gone after something she wanted.
"You're awfully happy." Isaac observed as he walked past her desk towards his seat a few rows up.
"It's a good day." Sam responded smiling even wider.
"Yeah, it is." Isaac agreed, happy to finally be out of hiding.
She looked up as Scott walked in and a shocked expression fell over his face.
It was bad enough having a few members of Derek's pack at school, but now that Isaac was back, it made things even worse.
Isaac shot him a cocky smile, before adjusting his leather jacket and turning around in his seat.
Scott sat down in his seat and looked around the room, not sure what had even happened. The last he'd heard, Isaac was a fugitive.
Hearing the scuffing of shoes on the polished floor, Sam looked over as Stiles nearly fell into his seat at his desk one row over from her and leaned forward to tell Scott, "Dude, I just talked to my dad, who talked to Jackson, and I've got really terrible, horrible, very, very, bad news."
Turning around Scott motioned to where Isaac was sitting in the front of the room he said, "I think I already know."
It was only seconds later that both Scott and Stiles were looking at Sam, as if they were waiting on an explanation.
She hated the way they always did that.
It was like because they had talked a few times, she was going to tell them everything about her pack.
Maybe she just came off as weaker than the rest of her pack because she was more friendly. But just because she was on friendly terms with Scott and Stiles didn't mean she was any less loyal to her pack.
A few classes later, Sam had found out that their chemistry classes were being combined into a large class to run a group-lab experiment.
She texted Derek to let him know that's when she would test Lydia, and she'd also sent out a text to Erica, Isaac and Boyd so they'd know the plan.
Boyd wasn't in one of the classes that would be combined, but Erica and Isaac were.
~()~
Samantha walked into chemistry and looked around, her palms were sweaty and she was terrified.
What if she gave Lydia the venom and she didn't have a reaction? Then Derek would for sure kill her.
And in a roundabout way that would be on her.
She'd gotten to know Lydia. And after so many years of thinking she didn't have a heart, Sam now knew she did indeed have a heart and that Jackson had broken it.
Not to mention Lydia had opened up to her about the nightmares and hallucinations she'd been having.
It couldn't be Lydia.
Sam had to believe that to follow through the plan. It just couldn't be her.
Taking a seat at a table next to the one Lydia was at, she looked over and smiled at Lydia who returned the friendly gesture along with a small wave.
When she finally looked back up she saw Isaac and Erica heading towards the table Lydia was sitting at, while Scott slid in the seat beside her.
Her fellow pack members sat down at another empty table, and Stiles looked around before taking the empty seat next to Sam.
She avoided his eyes as he stared at her, wondering if she was in on the plan to kill Lydia too.
Jackson had alerted them after he'd overheard Isaac and Erica talking about testing her with kanima venom in the hallway.
"Einstein once said, Two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe. I myself have encountered infinite stupidity. So... to combat the plague of ignorance in my class, you're going to combine efforts through a round of group experiments. Let's see if two heads are indeed better than one." Mr. Harris opened before he moved on to explaining the rules of the experiment.
Once the experiment started, Stiles leaned in, "What are you planning?"
"Stay out of this, Stiles." Sam breathed out, as she measured a blue liquid in a glass beaker before adding it to a larger beaker.
"Are you going to hurt her?" Stiles questioned, as he glanced back to where Lydia was at her new lab station with Allison.
"No, I'm not going to hurt her."
Stiles' jaw tensed at the way she'd placed emphasis on the word; I'm.
"So then someone else is? Who? Isaac? Erica? Derek?" He pushed, with an irritated sigh as she reached past him for the next ingredient and took her time to respond.
"I like Lydia... she's my friend and I don't want to see her get hurt any more than you do." Sam evaded answering him.
Rubbing a hand over his short hair Stiles exclaimed, "It's not her."
"I really hope not." Sam called after him as Harris instructed everyone to switch stations.
After a few more station switches, Scott slid into the seat beside Sam.
"Sam, you have to tell me what's going on. Are they going to test her in class?" He asked, looking back to where Erica was at a table with Allison and Isaac was sitting with stiles.
A brief look of confusion spread over her face and then it dawned on her.
Scott actually thought Sam wasn't involved in this plan.
"The important thing is that Derek won't do anything until he knows for sure it's her." She sounded confident in her answer.
"You have to stop them." Scott pleaded.
"I can't."
"Do you have any idea how wrong this is? She's a teenage girl, your friend and you're really going to let your pack kill her?" He questioned.
With a small shrug she said, "Maybe it's for the greater good... end one life to save many lives."
Scoffing he responded, "You don't actually believe that."
Sam's eyes locked with his.
"I have to." She answered quietly.
Looking around the room again Scott said, "You're not like them. Sam, I know you've got a good heart, I can tell. And Lydia is your friend, I've seen you guys talking a lot more lately."
He was hoping he could sway her to help them protect Lydia from the rest of her pack.
Sam looked back to Isaac and Erica, both of them in their black leather jackets and then down to the light blue dress she was wearing.
"Maybe you're wrong, maybe I'm exactly like them." She said as their teacher said to switch stations for a final time.
"You're not. This is wrong, you know that... and you have to do something. Just stop Isaac and Erica, buy me some time to talk to Derek. Please." He pleaded, before moving to his final station beside Stiles.
Sam watched their worried expressions soften some as Lydia sat down beside her.
Both of them really believed she wasn't a threat to anyone, including Lydia.
Little did they know she'd had her purse sitting on the lab table instead of the floor all class because she was waiting to somehow sneak Lydia some of the venom.
"God, everyone is acting so weird today." Lydia breathed out as she glanced over her shoulder to where Allison was sitting a few rows back.
"Weird, how?" Sam wondered.
"I don't know. Allison told me to stay away from Isaac, Erica and you." She admitted with a shrug.
"What? Why?" Sam asked, managing a small laugh trying to appear innocent.
"I don't know, but I did see Erica sliding her hand up Scott's thigh. So maybe that has something to do with it?" Lydia responded simply with a small shrug as she checked her phone and glanced around the room.
"Maybe." Sam agreed as she reached out and took the bottle from her purse.
When Lydia looked the other way again, Sam put a few drops of the venom onto the now hardened crystal form in the beaker.
"If you catalyzed the reaction correctly, you should now be looking at a crystal." Mr. Harris said as he glanced around the room.
"Now for the part of the experiment I'm sure you'll all enjoy. You can eat it." He said.
Sam used the lab tongs to pull the crystal out of the beaker and show it to Lydia.
"Go ahead." Sam urged, nodding as Lydia looked at her.
Taking the crystal from the tongs Lydia looked at it, before raising it to her mouth.
Sam watched as the venom glistened on the crystal and she held her breath.
Hopefully within a few seconds of touching it to her tongue, Lydia would have a reaction to it. Sam would catch her before her head hit the floor and everything would be fine again.
Just as she touched it to her tongue, Scott jumped up and yelled "Lydia!"
But she had no reaction to the venom and asked, "What?"
"Uh-nothing." He mumbled nervously as he sat back down.
Sam's heart sank as Lydia continued to eat the rest of the crystal.
Even with the proof right in front of her, she still couldn't believe it. There was just no way that Lydia was the kanima.
But as she looked out of the window she saw Derek in the parking lot against his car, he'd seen the entire thing and now after school he was going to kill Lydia.
~()~
"Any sign of her?"
Sam listened to Erica on her phone, as she rounded the corner into another hallway after her last class.
She came to an abrupt stop as she stared at Lydia, Allison, Stiles and Jackson.
Everyone but Lydia all stared back at her with the same shocked expression as they came to a stop and Stiles extended an arm in front of Lydia to keep her back and protect her.
"Sam? Have you seen Lydia? Isaac and I are headed to the library." Erica's voice poured through the small phone speaker.
Sam glanced over to see the group had just left the library.
"No, don't bother checking the library... she's not there." Sam lied, hoping to buy them some more time.
Shrugging Stiles' arm away from her Lydia started to call out, "Sam!"
In a moment of panic, afraid Erica would hear Lydia's voice over the phone, Sam threw her new phone down hard on the floor.
It's screen busted and the phone went black.
Nervously letting out a laugh, she picked up her busted phone and said, "Oops."
"We're apparently going to do a study group. I was going to ask if you'd come too, since everyone else is acting weird..." Her voice trailed off as she shot Sam a confused expression.
"Uh, no... sorry. I have to work tonight, but you guys better get going." She said, as she turned and headed back in the direction that she'd come from.
Once she was out of sight she leaned up against a row of lockers.
She'd just lied to Erica, lied to her pack. But then again, all she'd agreed to do was test Lydia. Derek assured her she wouldn't have to be involved in anything else.
~()~
The next few hours passed in a blur, she'd gone to work only to turn around and tell them she didn't feel well enough to stay for her shift.
Then she'd drove around trying to decide what she should do.
It pretty much came down to two options.
Work with or against her pack.
If she helped save Lydia, then she was more than sure her pack would be angry, possibly enough to throw her out which also meant she'd lose Derek in the same day she got him; shortest relationship ever.
But if she helped her pack and they killed Lydia, she wasn't sure she could live with herself knowing she'd helped them.
Now she was sitting in a large tree at the back of Scott's house, staring at an open window on the second floor. She'd been listening to Lydia and Jackson talk and also eavesdropping on Stiles and Allison downstairs.
What if Lydia really was the kanima? What if Sam helped save her and then she shifted and killed everyone?
But the even scarier thought was what if Lydia was innocent and they unjustly killed her?
Letting out a small sigh she ran her fingers through her hair, trying to figure out what she should do.
For once, things were going okay in her life.
She was with Derek, had several friends plus a new found sense of confidence.
She cared about Derek and had connected with him in a way she never had with anyone else before. Was she really willing to throw that all away on trying to save a girl who only just recently thought Sam was good enough to talk too?
When she saw Isaac sneak in a back door and then heard sounds of a fight she knew it was now or never. She had to pick a side, because sitting back and doing nothing wasn't an option anymore.
Making her way into the open window she looked around the upstairs hallway, when she heard a loud sound of glass shattering.
"What's happening?" She heard Lydia whine as she walked out into the hallway.
"Sam?" Lydia asked, as she noticed her friend.
With a hand behind her back, Sam extended her claws. Maybe the most humane thing to do was to kill her, before she could hurt anyone else.
Erica and Isaac wanted to not only kill her, but they wanted to torment her after how she'd treated them both at school.
But Sam could make it quick and painless, she trusted her so she'd never even see it coming.
A few tears slid down her face as she stared back at her friend, knowing what she needed to do, but unable to move.
"I think someone broke in..." Lydia whispered, walking closer. Having no idea what Sam was planning.
Closing her eyes and sighing Sam retracted her claws as she nodded and said, "You need to hide."
She followed Lydia into Scott's bedroom.
"Jackson?" Lydia called out, wondering where he'd gone.
Seeing the bathroom, Sam pulled her into the room and pulled the door shut locking it behind them.
Tears burned Lydia's eyes and her hands were shaking from fear as she tried to pull her phone from her pocket to call the police.
Hearing the door to the room bust open, Lydia reached past Sam and turned the light off. Maybe if no lights were on, no one would know anyone was in the bathroom.
"Stiles... it's here!" Allison yelled as she saw venom dripping from the window ledge.
Sam backed away from the door until she bumped into Lydia who grabbed onto her arm and clutched it tightly against herself.
Sam made a small pained noise as Lydia dug her fingertips and nails into her arm when they heard more movement in the next room.
It didn't matter that she'd lose Derek for this, or even if her pack turned against her.
She wasn't the kind of person who would stand by and let a friend get hurt, or possibly killed.
It didn't really matter what she'd lose, as long as she didn't lose herself along the way.
Sam listened as Erica taunted Allison about Scott, and then Sam could only guess that Allison had found a way to subdue Erica from what she could hear.
After a few minutes of hearing things crashing on the first floor, the house fell silent.
"Should we go?" Lydia whispered, still clutching on Sam's arm.
"I don't know." She admitted.
When several more minutes passed Sam said, "I think it's okay for you to go on out."
The girls unlocked and slowly opened the door.
Sam focused and used her werewolf hearing to listen to what was being said, she could hear Derek outside of the house saying, "I think I get why you keep refusing me, Scott. You're already an alpha of your own pack."
"I need you to listen to me, okay?" Sam said, her voice quiet as she hoped the rest of her pack wouldn't be able to hear her.
Lydia's eyes were still watery as she looked at her and nodded for her to go on.
"Scott should be on the porch, stay close to him and you'll be okay." She continued.
"Let's go then." Lydia pleaded, but Sam stood her ground.
"I can't go out there with you. I'm not supposed to be here." She tried to explain without giving too much away.
"I don't care if you're not supposed to be. Do you have any idea what I've been through today? All of my friends are acting completely nuts, including you. Jackson pretty much broke my heart and kissed me in the same breath and someone broke into this house! I'm completely freaked out of my mind and I'm not letting go of you until I feel better!" Lydia yelled, still panicked and terrified from the events of the day.
Pulling her arm away Sam apologized, "Lydia, I am so sorry. But if I go outside and Derek sees me..."
"Derek... Derek Hale?" Lydia asked, remembering all the news coverage and reports on him from months ago.
Sam nodded.
"Why does it matter if he sees you?" She pushed, refusing to let go of her arm, "What is he even doing here?"
"It's a long story." She excused.
"None of this makes sense!" Lydia hissed at her.
"You know what else doesn't make sense? The fact that up until a few months ago you didn't think I was good enough to even speak too. And now I literally just put my life on the line to save you." Sam said without even thinking.
A hurt and confused look flashed over Lydia's face as she breathed out, "What are you talking about?"
Sam frowned there wasn't any more she could say without outing herself and the other werewolves.
Lydia glanced down as a few mascara laced tears ran down her cheeks
"I'm sorry for whatever I did to make you hate me so much. But I don't know what's waiting for me down stairs or even out in the hallway. Something is so wrong... I can feel it in my bones. I don't know how to explain it, but something bad is going to happen and I have never been this scared before. So please, don't leave me here alone." She pleaded, as more tears slid down her face.
"I don't hate you, Lydia." Sam said swallowing hard as she fought back a few tears of her own.
It wasn't just her new relationship with Derek on the line.
It was being a part of her pack, they'd all be mad at her and in a way she couldn't blame them. She'd gone behind their backs to work against them.
"Let's find Scott and everyone... together." Lydia urged hugging Sam's arm even closer to herself and making it clear she wasn't about to let go of her.
After a small pause Sam breathed out, "Okay."
She could feel her friend breath out a sigh of relief, and together the pair made their way downstairs.
Sam let out a gasp as she heard a skittering sound on the roof followed by a familiar hiss, it was the kanima.
She stared over at Lydia with wide eyes, and from outside she heard Scott say, "It's Jackson..."
Samantha held her breath as she walked outside with Lydia still holding on her arm and physically shaking from fear.
As she looked up her eyes locked with Derek's from across the street, she quickly looked away.
Stiles, Scott and Allison were all looking at her with shocked expressions and all she could do was bite down on the inside of her cheek and glance back to Lydia.
~()~
A/N- I hope you all liked the chapter. ^_^
Thanks so much for reading. Your guys' support means the world to me!