Lily looked away first. Croft's eyes were a piercing blue, a bright sky after a severe storm. He held too many things in those eyes - like accusation and doubt.
The doubt she understood. How could she have defeated those rogues if she didn't know what she was? The accusatory glare however made her jaw clench. She had nothing against werewolves, but the bags under Croft's sky blue eyes made her reconsider her foul retort.
"How is she?" Lily whispered, swallowing her fear but her stomach was still churning.
Croft raised an eyebrow, still staring at her while she looked at her notebook. She was trying to listen to Mr Booth's lecture, but her mind was on the werewolf next to her.
"She's fine, alive..." Croft didn't need to say the other half of that sentence. Thanks to you.
Lily fiddled with her pen. "I'm glad she's okay."
Croft nodded. "So is the pack, mainly her brother."
Alpha Andrew. Lily's stomach was a whirlpool of anxiety. "How... How is the Alpha?"
"He has a lot of questions."
Lily wet her lips, staring briefly at Croft. He hadn't looked away yet. "He's not the only one."
He ran his hands through his damp hair and adjusted the white shirt slightly sticking to his slender frame. "Are you going to tell me what happened?" He whispered, jumping straight to the point.
Lily almost choked. "I..." She looked around the room. Who knew who was listening? Was Isaac waiting with a nasty joke, or Jack with magic still wrapped around her hand?
Croft frowned as Lily hesitated. "There's a lot of people." She admitted, scribbling some small notes as Mr Booth kept talking - no doubt assuming their hushed chatter was because she was catching him up on the lesson.
"And?"
"I don't want them to know, Croft." Lily whispered so quietly she barely heard herself, but he seemed to hear what he needed.
"Know what?"
"Anything." Lily held his gaze. "I don't want them to know anything."
Croft narrowed his eyes but held his tongue. "Okay, you know where the packhouse is? How to get there?"
"No, why would I?" Lily raised an eyebrow.
His cheeks suddenly flushed. "Right, um, are you doing anything this afternoon?"
Lily drew back, looking at the weather outside. "I have to check with my aunt before I do anything, I'll tell you tomorrow."
Croft nodded, shifting in his seat, before he stared at the front. He seemed genuinely interested in whatever Mr Booth was talking about, practically writing everything he said down. Lily caught herself surprised that he wasn't the stereotypical popular guy that bypassed school completely, and was academic in his own right.
Before Lily knew it, the low-pitched bell sounded. She picked up her stuff from under her chair, subtly taking her waterproof jacket as well. Croft motioned to her jacket.
"If you didn't want anyone to know, then why did you help her?" He asked.
Lily glared at him. "Would you have walked away if someone needed help?"
Croft gathered his stuff, pondering her question for a moment, but left the class without answering. The werewolves seemed to quickly follow him out, desperate to chat to him about their alpha and the rogues who attacked the pack.
The class all filed out, besides Jack, who after a moment's hesitation walked over to Lily's desk.
"Hey," she said, shrugging her bag over her shoulder.
Lily's eyes were wide in shock. "Hey?"
"Just wanted to say thanks. It's not every day that, you know, someone stands up for me."
"It's nothing, he was just being a dick." Lily shrugged nervously.
Jack grinned. "Nothing out of the normal, hey?"
She picked up her notebook from her desk, smiling softly. "Definitely not."
Jack stepped aside as Lily walked past. "See you around, Jack." Lily said to the witch before walking out of the classroom. She didn't look back.
Lily knew Jack would forget all about how she defended her by tomorrow. She couldn't remember the last time someone talked to her out of the blue. Lily wasn't suddenly going to be friends with her despite her hope.
She just stood up for her in class, that was all. They weren't going to suddenly rule the world together.
Lily sighed, trying to forget the way she just walked out on Jack, or how her voice squeaked when she first said 'hey', or whether the bit of food at the corner of her mouth had been there all lesson when Croft had sat down.
By the time she was home, Lily was a red-faced rambling mess. Her aunt wasn't home from her shift yet but Lily welcomed the silence as she recalled her day.
She stood up to a vampire and survived, caught the attention of Croft and hadn't fainted, and almost made a friend without humiliating herself too much.
Lily was exhausted.
~
On the other side of town down a sparse road through the forest, was the three-story timber townhouse of the alpha, with the rest of the pack scattered along the road in tiny houses with lines of laundry tethered in between. The house had scaffolding all over it from the rogue attack a few days ago to rebuild the broken walls, but the scarring wouldn't be as easy to heal.
Alpha Andrew, his son, was in his father's study and staring at the large amount of paperwork that had been unintentionally left behind. He was ready to shred all of it when a knock on the oak doors halted his progress.
Croft walked in on his best friend holding a stack of papers above a shredder, and raised an eyebrow.
"It's not what it looks like Ryan." Andrew put the papers down, scratching his neck nervously.
He chuckled. "Oh no, you weren't going to shred anything at all."
"Precisely."
"You were going to tell me how brilliant I was instead."
Andrew flipped him off. "How was school, nerd?"
Ryan stood at the front of the desk, faced Andrew and sighed. "Everyone's asking about you."
Andrew's face dropped, his blue eyes frozen. "I know. They keep coming to the door."
"You need to be their alpha, Andrew." Ryan advised, watching his best friend scratch at his thick, black hair that probably hadn't been washed in a week.
"I need to mourn my dad." He choked out, staring at the desk beneath him. Andrew wouldn't sit in his father's place, he wasn't worthy of doing that yet, not now.
Ryan didn't push him, instead placing his school bag down by a chair. Andrew followed his motion before he realised something.
"You don't have the jacket anymore?" Andrew asked, looking between Ryan and his bag.
Ryan smiled. "This is where you tell me how brilliant I am."
Andrew ignored Ryan, rounding the desk instead. "You found Lily?"
"I found her." Ryan grinned, thinking about the red-head in history he encountered only hours before. "She might come by tomorrow to meet Alice and you properly, but she has to check with her aunt first."
Andrew smiled for the first time in days. "You're brilliant!" He admitted, Ryan bowed jokingly. "She'll be honoured in front of the whole pack for saving Alice, I'll make sure of it!"
Ryan opened his mouth, holding up a finger. "That's...you can't do that."
Andrew narrowed his eyes. "Why not? She saved my sister Ryan, I'm not going to not honour a fellow wolf?"
"She's not a werewolf though." Ryan said.
"Oh, what is she, a witch?"
"She doesn't know, no one does."
"What do you mean she doesn't know?" Andrew crossed his arms, listening to whatever Ryan was going to say. He watched him sit down, arms on his knees, and sigh.
"Her name is Lily, as in the Lily Morgan." Ryan saw the realisation in Andrew's eyes. "She keeps to herself from what I heard, mainly because of Isaac and his friends. She's only in one or two of our classes, probably why no one knows her."
Andrew was still in shock. "Lily Morgan saved Alice?"
Ryan frowned. "What are you thinking? I see steam coming out your ears."
"What kind of creature is Lily if she can take on a bunch of werewolves and still walk the next day?" Andrew mused, looking to the largest wall in the study littered with books great and small, old and new - his father's proudest collection of local supernatural history.
Ryan shrugged. "I don't know but her scent...it's different, I never noticed until I sat next to her today."
Andrew choked out a laugh. "Let me guess, like a warm summer's day?"
"Shut up." Ryan laughed, waving it off. "She's not werewolf, vampire, witch, or fairy that much I know."
"Yeah you've got with enough of them to know." Andrew teased, laughing when Ryan flipped him off.
As the laughter died down Andrew paused, thinking over what he could do with Lily. While no one knew what her creature was, she could fend off three rogues and still turn up to school the next day - regardless of her being a werewolf or not, he knew it was best to always keep your cards close to your chest. To have friends close, enemies closer, and people in between always in your sights.
"We need to keep an eye on Lily, can you stay close to her? If she defeated those rogues she's definitely someone worth keeping on our side - the rogues might attack again and she'll need us. She has our support for saving Alice." Andrew tapped his chin in thought. "Make sure the pack knows Lily is with us in this fight."
Ryan nodded, remembering Lily's want for no attention but shoved it aside. He would always obey by his alpha's orders, and hoped if the time came, she would help them fight against the rogues once again.