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EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED

CHAPTER FIVE

(WOLFS)BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

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Meilani pedaled her brother's bike faster through the woods as she got closer to Derek's place. Once she was in the front yard, she hopped off the bike and pushed it to the ground, ripping her helmet off. She looked up at the house that was falling apart and peeling still from the fire that had taken over the house. On the side of the house she noticed a patch of dirt. It looked as if something was dug and then buried there. Giving it a confused look for a second, she turned her attention back to her task at hand.

"DEREK!" Meilani called out, hoping the guy was here so she could give him a piece of her mind.

After a few seconds, Derek randomly appeared on the porch, leant against the column next to him. He looked at her as if knowing she was going to voice what she wanted right away, not giving him a chance to say something first. It sucked how well he knew her already without actually being around her much.

"Stay away from my brother. He doesn't know anything!" Meilani snapped, glaring fiercely at Derek. There was no way she would let Derek ever get near Scott again. Scott knew nothing of what was happening to her and, even though she hated lying to him, she wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. Stiles was probably in a lot of danger already with how much he knew so far. She couldn't let two people she loved have targets on their backs at the same time.

"What if he does? You think just because your precious little boyfriend can google 'werewolves' and you'll suddenly know everything? You don't get it yet, Meilani, but think about what could happen. You're out on the field, the aggression takes over and you shift in front of everyone," Derek shot back. Glancing down to Meilani's backpack on the floor, her lacrosse stick tied to the side of it, he bent down and picked the lacrosse stick up. Growing out his wolf claws, he slashed three long holes into the netting on the stick.

"Your mom, your friends, if they see you, it'll all fall apart," Derek continued, showing the now torn up net of the stick. He tossed the stick in the air, which Meilani swiftly caught, and was out of sight before Meilani could blink.

Okay where is he getting this vampire power from because there's no way a wolf could move this fast, Meilani thought to herself as she sighed and stared down at her now ruined stick which she would have to fix when she got home. She knew it was a metaphor for what could happen if people found out she was wolf but it didn't help to make things any better. If anything, it made everything worse.

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Meilani sat in her room, finishing up the final touches on her netting of the lacrosse stick when Stiles burst through the door full of energy. "What did you find? Where did you find it? How did you find it?" He spewed questions at her at a mile a minute, making her wonder what he was on. "Yes, I've had a lot of Adderall so..."

"I found something at Derek Hale's. Something's buried there because I could smell blood," Meilani replied, referring to the patch of dirt she saw when she went to confront Derek.

"That's awesome!" Stiles exclaimed but immediately realized what he said and shook his head. "I mean that's terrible. Whose blood?"

Meilani stood, tossing her lacrosse stick onto her bed. "I'm not sure but when we find out, you're going to have your dad arrest Derek for murder. Then you're going to help me play lacrosse without going psycho werewolf and killing everyone. There is no way I'm missing out on that game."

With a silent agreement between them, Stiles and Meilani headed off to the hospital that Melissa worked at. As Stiles pulled into a spot that was far enough away from the front that Melissa wouldn't see the Jeep and wonder why the two were there. Getting out of the car, Meilani stared at the hospital for a minute preparing herself for what she was about to do. She never broke into anywhere before, so it was a little nerve wracking to be here at the hospital to break into a morgue.

Stiles stood next to Meilani and squeezed her hand reassuringly. "You can do this, Lani. Just remember what will happen when we figure it all out."

Taking a deep breath, Meilani nodded and made her way into the hospital with Stiles by her side. A little bit down the hall from the front doors, was a sign that read MORGUE next to a wooden door leading to a flight of stairs going up. Stiles pointed it out to Meilani and she snuck into the doorway and up the stairs.

As she walked along the hallway, Meilani tried to make herself look as discreet as possible. She knew some of the nurses that had passed by her and she tried to hide her face as much as she could in her hood so they wouldn't go to her mom asking if she knew her daughter was here.

Once she reached the door of the morgue, Meilani checked both ways and when she saw no nurses passing by, she slid into the room and closed the door behind her. She didn't realize how dark and cold morgues really were until being inside of one. Anytime she came to work with her mom, she tried to stay as far away from the morgue as possible. Her mom would go in and she would either sit outside the door until Melissa came back out or she sat at the desk.

Due to her newly heightened senses, she could smell all of the dead bodies at once which made her want to vomit. She tried to hold down the bile that was rising up her throat and walked toward the drawer that had the label JANE DOE - PARTIAL on it. Preparing herself, she slowly slid open the drawer and the smell from this body compared to the blood she had smelt at Derek's place.

Quickly closing the drawer and rushing out of the morgue, Meilani made her way back to Stiles who was hiding his face not so subtly with a brochure on the bones. She snatched it from in front of his face, startling Stiles. "The scents are the same."

Stiles' eyes widened as he stopped. "Babe, are you sure?"

"Yeah I'm sure. There were bite marks on her legs, Stiles. Wolf bites."

Stiles scoffed and slapped his hands to his sides. "So, he did bury the other half of the body beside the house."

"Which means we have proof he killed the girl," Meilani added.

"I say we use it," Stiles suggested before starting to make his way out of the hospital. He didn't want to be there longer than they had to, not with Melissa working right now.

Meilani ran to keep up with Stiles who was speed walking to his Jeep. "How?"

Stiles stopped by the Jeep and turned to face Meilani. "Tell me something first. Are you doing this because you want to stop Derek or because you're all upset he told you not to play in the lacrosse game?"

"Stiles, there were bite marks okay? I wasn't kidding. He clearly had something to do with it and I won't let him get away with murder," Meilani replied, crossing her arms.

"We're going to need a shovel then."

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Later that night, Meilani and Stiles hopped out of Stiles' Jeep and made their way to the patch of dirt that Meilani had told Stiles about. However, as they walked closer to the patch Meilani started to get an odd and different feeling than she did when she was there earlier in the day. "Wait, something's different."

"Different how?" Stiles asked as he followed Meilani.

"I don't know..." Meilani responded, looking around her. She couldn't quite put her finger on what was different, but she also didn't want to delay them by figuring it out. Derek could be back from wherever he drove off to any moment, so she wanted to get out of there quickly. "Let's just get this over with."

The two began to dig, which took a lot longer than Meilani had anticipated. They had been shoveling for almost five minutes now and they were about six feet deep already and no body was found. "This is taking way too long."

"Just keep digging," Stiles told her, out of breath but trying to push through as best as he could. He had started to get frustrated as well but he didn't want to take it out on Meilani. It wasn't her fault that Derek had buried this body all the way in China.

"What if he comes back?" Meilani asked, panic slowly setting in.

"Then we run," Stiles said in a duh kind of voice.

Meilani stopped digging and gave Stiles a look. "Yeah and what if he catches us? He's faster than you and even me. I don't have his freaky vampire speed."

"I have a perfectly good plan for that," Stiles said, continuing his digging.

"Which is?" Meilani questioned, crossing her arms and watching as Stiles continued to dig the hole.

"You run one way and I run the other. Whoever he catches first, then sucks for that person," Stiles explained, causing Meilani to roll her eyes at the plan.

Meilani went to give a remark when Stiles' shovel hit something. "Wait! I got something," he said before dropping to his knees, Meilani following suit.

There was a rope wrapped around a bag so the two began to start untying the knots that were wrapped around the bag. Meilani and Stiles tried to work as fast as they could considering how many knots there were in the rope around the bag. Eventually, they got all the knots out and pulled the bag away to see the head of a dead wolf, its tongue sticking out and its eyes staring blankly ahead.

Meilani and Stiles screamed as they scrambled out of the hole, their chests heaving up and down from fright. "What the hell is that?"

Meilani stared down at the head, completely confused and frightened at the same time. "That's a wolf."

"Yeah, I can see that, Meilani! I thought you said you smelled blood. You know, human blood," Stiles argued, looking at his girlfriend for an explanation.

"I told you something was different!" Meilani fired back, not understanding what was going on either.

Stiles ran a hand over his head, sighing as his mind ran over a million possibilities. "This makes absolutely no sense."

"We should probably get out of here," Meilani suggested and Stiles nodded in agreement. "Let's cover it up."

Stiles started to get up to help Meilani when he noticed a single purple flower planted a few feet away. His eyes widened as he realized what it was. "Hey, do you see that flower?"

"Yes, it's very pretty, Stiles. What's so important about a flower?" Meilani sarcastically remarked. She wanted to get out of here as soon as possible and Stiles was getting all excited over a flower?

"I think it's wolfsbane," Stiles explained as he continued to stare at the flower in awe.

"Wolfs-what?" Meilani questioned, never hearing of the flower before in her life.

Stiles looked to Meilani, a questioning expression on his face. "Have you never seen any werewolf movie before in your life?" He asked, earning a shake of the head from his girlfriend. "You are so unprepared for this, babe." Stiles got up and walked over to the flower, pulling it up by its stem. The dirt fell away to reveal it tied to a rope, the same rope that was used to tie up the bag they had dug up. Starting to walk, the rope began to pull up out of the ground as Stiles made his way in a circle. A flash of red appeared in the dirt where the rope was and was gone as soon as it had come.

Meilani looked down into the hole and gasped, standing up. She slapped Stiles' arm until he looked where she was. "Stiles, look."

There in the hole was the other half of the body they had found in the woods. They could finally pin this on Derek and get him arrested. Meilani's heart soared at this thought and she thought it was actually going to fly out of her chest at how happy she was.

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The next morning, Stiles and Meilani watched as Sheriff Stilinski and his deputies led a handcuffed Derek to the squad car that was parked outside the house. Derek gave a pointed glare to the couple before he shoved into the car, the door closing behind him. Meilani watched as Stiles scrambled over to the car and got into the front. She rolled her eyes as Stiles tried to look macho in front of Derek. When she saw Sheriff Stilinski reach in and drag Stiles out of the car, she rushed over to where they stood.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Sheriff Stilinski asked his son.

"I'm just trying to help!" Stiles defended, placing his hands on his hips.

Meilani stood next to him, trying to look as innocent as possible.

"Okay well you can start with telling me how exactly you came across the body in the first place," Sheriff Stilinski demanded, looking between the two teens in front of him.

Meilani chewed her lip as she tried to help Stiles think of something to tell his dad. "Um, we were looking for my brother's inhaler. His asthma has been acting up and we need to find it for him before it gets worse."

"Oh, you mean the one he dropped when you two were in the woods with Stiles?" Sheriff Stilinski asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," Stiles responded, not even realizing what he was admitting to.

"The night you told me you were alone, and your girlfriend and Scott were home in bed," Mr. Stilinski added.

"Yes," Stiles' eyes widened as he realized he admitted to lying to his dad the other night. He groaned quietly and bowed his head. "Aw, fuck."

Sheriff Stilinski crossed his arms and gave Stiles a disapproving look. "So, you lied to me."

"That depends on how you define lying," Stiles replied, looking nervous.

"I define it as not telling the truth. How do you define it?"

Stiles cleared his throat as he thought of a response quickly. "Reclining your body in a horizontal position?"

"Get out of here," Sheriff Stilinski ordered and the two quickly nodded before making their way over to Stiles' Jeep and taking off.

Stiles was making his way through the woods as Meilani googled wolfsbane on her phone. "Ugh I can't find anything about wolfsbane online."

"So, we'll keep looking, babe. Maybe it's like a ritual or something, like they bury you as a wolf," Stiles offered, his mind trying to come up with the most logical explanation. "Or maybe it's a special skill that you have to learn."

Meilani sighed and shoved her phone into her back pocket. "I don't know, but I'll add it to my list of things to do. Right underneath how I'm going to play in this game tonight."

"Maybe it's different for girl werewolves," Stiles continued.

"Stiles, just stop okay? Stop enjoying this so much!" Meilani snapped, starting to get annoyed with Stiles' constant talking. She just wanted him to be quiet for five seconds.

"Are you okay?" Stiles asked, knowing something must be wrong for her to snap at him like that.

"NO! No, I am so, so far from ever being okay, Stiles!"

Stiles sighed, trying not to snap back at Meilani. Not when he knew something was bothering her and causing her to be extra irritated. No way he wanted to make that worse and cause a fight between them. Neither one of them needed that right now. "You're going to have to get used to this, Lani."

Meilani was gripping onto the seat beneath her, her eyes squeezed tight. She felt like her lungs were shrinking, causing both pain and making it hard for her to breathe. "I can't breathe," she managed to choke out, trying to take deep breaths.

Stiles swerved in surprise but settled the car back straight before glancing at his girlfriend. "What's happening? What's wrong?" he asked, just as his bag tipped over under Meilani's feet and the wolfsbane tumbled out of it.

Meilani glared down at the flower before turning her burning gaze onto Stiles. "YOU KEPT THE WOLFSBANE?!" she yelled at him, wondering why her boyfriend was so stupid.

"What else did you want me to do with it?" Stiles shot back at her.

Meilani's eyes flashed yellow as she yelled at Stiles to pull over. Seeing Meilani start to go through her transformation, he panicked and pulled over to the side of the road. Meilani stumbled out of the car while Stiles was distracted with climbing out. When Stiles turned around Meilani was gone from sight, which only raised Stiles' anxiety. "LANI!" he called but received no answer.

They were officially screwed.

EDITED: JULY 17TH, 2019