Okay. Just to avoid any confusion later about the meeting between them. Even though they have homeroom together, Anna didn’t look at anyone. So she didn’t look at Jar. She might have noticed him from the corner of her eye, but she didn’t look at him full on, which is what she did when you read on. Jar, for his part, even though he’s seen her before, hasn’t really been close enough to get a full impact.

Just remember that.

Chapter 2

But it was only fantasy.
The wall was too high,
As you can see.
No matter how he tried,
He could not break free.
And the worms ate into his brain.

Hey You – Pink Floyd

By English last period, Bradley seemed back to normal.

“Hey asshole,” he greeted Jar, dropping into his usual seat next to him and sprawling his legs out across the aisle. As apologies went, it was far from the best, but Jar smiled faintly anyway and responded in kind.

They both looked away when Corinne and two of her girls entered the room, as unerringly graceful as always, and slunk into their normal seats. The rest of the class had grown quiet.

“So have you been in any of her class’s yet?” Bradley asked, his voice low. Jar didn’t care to tell him not to bother, that it was useless because Corinne would hear them no matter how quietly they talked. He knew. If speaking like this made Bradley feel less uncomfortable about Corinne so be it. But he watched her, and noticed her shoulders tense slightly at Bradley’s words.

“No,” Jar said, speaking in his normal voice. “Just home-room.” He glanced at Corinne. “She seems to be fitting in just fine.”

Bradley flushed a little, and then he too, looked over at Corinne. “I noticed.” He dropped the subject when Mr Magath walked in.

Corinne only glanced back once during the lesson, and when she did, Jar caught her eyes and felt cold at the expression in them. Satisfaction. Smug, cruel, satisfaction. Then she turned back to the front and whispered something to her cronies, and they all giggled.

Jar watched her the rest of the lesson, wondering, despite himself, what Anna had managed to get herself involved in.

5 shifters on her first day, he thought. 6 including him. And Bradley hating her.

He smiled dryly. Poor kid.

Win, Gabe and Andy were waiting for them in the hallway after English, and they fell into formation - Win, Bradley and himself infront, Gabe and Andy a step behind - as they made their way silently through the school halls.

“Come over tonight,” Bradley said suddenly, swerving to avoid a tiny blonde junior girl. “Mums making salad and vege pie.”

Win glanced at his brother, but said nothing.

Jar looked back at Gabe and Andy, both of them shrugged. “Can they come too?”

For a moment, Bradley hesitated, and then his eyed hardened with something like determination. “Why not?”

This time, Winston glared at Bradley, and opened his mouth to speak.

Bradley cut him off before he could say anything. “They’re our friends aren’t they?” he snapped at Win, who closed his mouth with a snap. “They’re allowed to come over to our house aren’t they?”

All 4 of them looked at Brad. There was something intense and vicious about him, though it looked like he was trying to rein it in. Andy and Gabe were both watching him with narrowed eyes, automatically moving closer to Jar, hands fisting.

“Sure, Brad,” Win said finally, talking for of them. “They’re our friends.”

At his words, Bradley breathed out quickly, and nodded. Andy and Gabe were still looking at him suspiciously though, and Jar raised his eyebrows at them pointly. Scowling, they stepped back a little, letting their hands uncurl.

Jar turned his gaze to Bradley, wary and curious all at once. He’d never seen Bradley like this. He was always intense, but never so much that energy seemed to spit off his shoulders. He’d seen him angry before, but never at Win. And never, ever, risking the tempers of both Andy and Gabe twice in one day.

“Maybe its better Andy and Gabe don’t come,” Jar said finally, taking back his earlier suggestion. He would have liked their opinions on the Anna girl, especially now that Corinne had seemed to take a liking to her. But if it was Anna that had made Bradley this vicious so suddenly, and he didn’t doubt it was, he knew that he didn’t want his pack anywhere near Bradley if he snapped.

Bradley hardly spared him a glance, pushing his way through a bunch of year 10’s and ignoring their angry protests. “Fine.”

Both Gabe and Andy growled low at his tone, but broke off when Jar looked at them warningly. Scowling again, they subsided and shifted uneasily instead. Bradley’s viciousness must be affecting their moods, Jar thought. Both of them knew that there was no possibly Bradley could hurt him, even in temper. But they’d been snapping at him all day.

He fell back from Win and Bradley and walked between Gabe and Andy instead.

“Tell me,” Jar said tightly when the twins had moved ahead a little, broken off from them by a crowd of juniors. “What the fucks the matter with you two?”

Gabe shrugged. “He’s being weird.”

“So?”

“So,” said Andy, shaking his dull brown curls back from his face and fixing him with amber eyes almost identical to Jar’s, “We don’t like it.”

“Normally,” added Gabe, “we wouldn’t mind. He’s no match for you.”

“Thanks,” Jar said dryly. Gabe ignored him.

“But today…it’s like he’s lost control. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“Something’s got him worked up,” Andy agreed. “So much so that he’s on the edge.”

Jar sighed. “That would be Anna.”

Both of them looked at him, and Jar sighed again as he pushed through another crowd of juniors. “Since she came…he came to visit me Friday night, I’d never seen him so aggravated. Normally I wouldn’t tell you this but…”

“We should know these things,” said Gabe. His voice strange, almost formal. His dark gold eyes stared straight at him. “We’re you’re pack.”

“Yeah well, do me a favour, and don’t kill Bradley. He’s my pack too.”

“He’s a human.”

“And you’re a shifter,” Jar snapped at Andy, “and we all go to the same fucking school, so lay off okay?”

Andy and Gabe looked at each other, then at him, and Jar growled in exasperation. “I’m serious,” he said, forcing his words to deadly calm. “Or are you going to disobey me?”

They’d left the halls, were emerging into the sunlit car-park. Next to a black Sudan, Win and Bradley waited for him.

Both Gabe and Andy blanched a little at his words, and shrunk back. “No,” they muttered together.

“Good,” Jar started to walk away from them. “Go home. Get some sleep. Be in better moods tomorrow.” Then he turned his back, not waiting for their reply, and walked over to the twins.

“So vege pie huh?” Jar asked Win, who was sitting in the drivers seat with the door open.

His friend nodded, his usually serene face pinched tight. Jar glanced over at the passenger seat and saw Bradley sitting there, his forehead resting against his window, unmoving.

He sighed and straightened. “Drive safe,” he said, walking around the front of the car and patting the bonnet. “I’ll see you at home.” Then he turned and walked over to his own ride.

Before he drove away he looked back once, and saw a thin, dark-haired girl open the back door of the twin’s car and move slowly to sit inside. He grinned ruefully to himself. He didn’t much envy the drive home for any of them.

If it wasn’t for Winston, Anna thought when she was finally in the safety of her own, bare bedroom; Bradley would probably already have lost control and strangled her to death.

He hadn’t seemed so volatile at dinner on Friday night, only cold and suspicious. But obviously his anger had increased with time, and she hadn’t missed the way his hands had clenched together when she’d hopped in the car this afternoon. They’d clenched around each other the same way she’d been holding her glass bottle. For dear life.

Win acted as if he hadn’t noticed anything. He was the same warm, polite boy he had been all weekend. Talking to her even though she rarely talked back, never questioning about what she kept in her pocket, or why she always wore her long, black coat. She wouldn’t have told him even if she had asked. She wasn’t stupid. But she appreciated that he seemed to make an effort to control his curiosity. Around him, she almost felt…safe.

So when he called her downstairs a few minutes later, she didn’t stop to question why the house suddenly felt so silent and tense, she just stood up and went downstairs.

And cursed herself for being so trusting when, a few minutes later, she was confronted by the most dangerous looking man she’d ever seen in her entire life. And Richard being who he was, she had definitely seen a few.

She froze in the kitchen doorway, feeling like a deer caught in headlights, as the man turned towards her. Or rather, boy, since he looked about the same age as Bradley and Win. But that was where the resemblance ended. She’d never seen someone so obviously human that managed to look so intensely and obviously not-human.

And still, she couldn’t move, couldn’t lift her feet to run back to the safety of her white-walled room, or even lift her hand to plunge into her jacket pocket and crush her bones around the glass bottle she knew was inside. She couldn’t move at all, couldn’t even breathe, and as she stood there, her outer body frozen, she felt that horrible thing rise up in her, rearing its head in victory, tearing through her mind, destroying all her careful defences, crumbling the walls around her mind the pills had created, turning them to thick mush as a tide of emotion and something other swept through her, from head to toe, and left her shaking and broken and frightened inside, while still, her outer was body was caught, frozen beyond help.

“Anna,” said the boy, stepping towards her suddenly. She had a sudden glimpse of glowing gold eyes, brighter than any sun she’d ever seen, and then suddenly she was moving, and her breath fell out of her in a ragged gasp, and she ran.

As if her very life depended on it, she ran, pounding up the stairs and into her room, slamming her door against him, even though she thought that he hadn’t moved from the kitchen. She slammed it against everything he had brought with him, and then fell on her bed, sobbing, her hand scrambling in the folds of her coat for the glass bottle, and then choking, she swallowed down one after the other, coughing and spluttering and whimpering in pain, but refusing to let them up.

She swallowed down four of the little red pills before she finally collapsed, numb, onto her bed. All around her, the world went black.

“Well,” said Winston finally, breaking the horrified silence that had settled over the kitchen, “that was interesting.” He looked over at his twin. “And effective. Nice one Brad, want to scare the poor girl to death?”

Bradley was still staring at the place Anna had been only a few minutes ago, his face a little pale. Despite how much he hated her, he didn’t think he’d ever seen so much horrified fear in one person before.

But…why?

He looked over at Jar, who had sank silently onto a kitchen chair, and waited for an answer.

“Well,” his best friend joked finally, sounding anything but amused. “I’ve never had that reaction to my tattoos before.” His voice sounded hoarse, and something flickered in his amber eyes.

Jar knew, Brad thought then. Jar knew what was wrong with Anna.

“Tell me,” Brad said, sitting opposite Jar and leaning forward. “Tell me what it is.”

Jar met his eyes, and whatever had been there a moment ago was suddenly gone, replaced by a blank coolness that was almost as unsettling as Anna’s pale, broken face had been. Brad paused as the memory washed through him again, and then shook it free viciously.

Ann might have looked terrified for a moment there, but there was still something wrong with her.

“I’m going to check on Anna,” Win said suddenly, as if he had sensed the direction of Brad’s thoughts, and didn’t like them.

Neither Jar nor Brad looked over when Win left the kitchen.

“Jar,” Brad said finally.

His friend just looked at him.

“You know.”

“No,” Jar said after a moment. “I don’t.” the blankness had faded a little, and he forced a smile. “I’m just surprised. Have you ever seen anyone that frightened before?” Again, that something flickered in his eyes, and Brad almost growled in frustration.

“Don’t lie to me,” he hissed.

Goddamit, didn’t he deserve to know after what…No. he wouldn’t think that either. Brad looked at Jar and forced himself to only think of the matter at hand.

Jar’s mouth tightened. It was warning, Brad knew, that only a few people received. A warning that someone was walking on thin ice, and if they kept going, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. Brad only received that warning because they’d been friends for so long.

“I’m not lying to you,” Jar said, his voice like brittle ice. “I don’t know whats wrong with her.”

There was something to that sentence that Brad couldn’t figure out. Some hidden meaning he didn’t have the key to unravel. He stared at his best friend, hating that he wasn’t trusted with what he was thinking, but Jar only looked back, blank. He’d never been so evasive before. Only Gabe and Andy held his loyalties to his extent.

Dammit. There must be something really wrong with Anna.

He was about to open his mouth again, about to risk the ice, when Win walked into the kitchen again; slicing the tension between them as if his very presence was a knife. Jar looked away instantly, his attention suddenly riveted on the red-haired twin.

“She’s asleep,” Win said to Jar, as if he’d sensed the question before it was asked. “Dead to the world. I walked inside and everything.”

Brad glared at his twin for breaking the moment, and then looked back at Jar, willing his attention back to him. “Jar, if she endangers my family in any way…”

Something like amusement drifted across his lips as Jar’s eyes snapped back to Bradley’s.

“She wont. Of everyone, you’re family is probably the safest.”

“Excuse me?”

But Jar stood up, his gaze looking anywhere but at his best friend, resting finally on Win, who only looked politely curious, none of his twin’s intensity and viciousness showing on his face.

“I forgot, mum wanted me home for dinner,” he said, forcing his expression to resemble something akin to an apology. “Sorry. Maybe another night.”

“Maybe tomorrow night,” Brad suggested, staring at him. Maybe if Jar saw Anna again, he’s get more answers.

Jar looked evasive. “Maybe.”

And then, before they could exchange another word, he was gone, racing through the door as Anna had only a minute ago, leaving the Grey twins in identical states of shock, fading quickly in Win’s case to confusion.

“Must be a special dinner,” Win said finally, taking Jar’s seat across the table from him.

Brad raised an eyebrow sceptically. “Right.”

Both of them raised their eyes to the ceiling, to who they knew lay asleep upstairs, and in their sudden silence the house was eerily quiet.

“Well,” Win said finally, “that was really something.”

Brad just looked at him in disgust. “You’re so hopeless.”

“What?”

His twin scowled. “Forget it.” Then he got up and stalked out of the room, leaving Winston alone, bemused, at the kitchen table. When he raised his eyes to the ceiling, his expression was filled with pity.

He had a feeling that Brad’s attitude towards his cousin had taken a turn for the worse.

An hour ago, he hadn’t even thought that was possible.

When Anna finally woke 4 hours later, Win was sitting on the floor, leaning his back against the bed.

“Hey,” he said, glancing up when she sat up quickly, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Sorry.” He shrugged. “But Bradley’s not very good company right now, and Jar went home just after you came upstairs.”

Anna struggled for clarity. It was difficult, like the world was blurred somehow, hazy through her eyes. She blinked a few times, then screwed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, everything was a bit clearer. Not by much. But she could almost make out Win’s face now.

God, she thought. What had she done? How many had she taken?

She couldn’t even remember.

“Hey, are you okay?” Win’s voice was sharp with concern, and Anna opened her eyes quickly and smiled a smile that she hoped looked calm and collected.

“Jar?” she asked, avoiding Win’s question.

“The boy that was…” he cleared his throat uncomfortably, “…in the kitchen. When you came downstairs.”

“Oh,” she said softly, and before she could stop it, the memory slammed into her again. The blazing eyes, the sudden, instant intensity of him when he’d stepped towards her, the shuddering, blazing feeling of relief and victory that had destroyed everything she’d built in her mind for almost 18 years. She took a deep, shuddering breath, her hand automatically reaching for the glass pill bottle. Somehow, it had found its way back into her coat pocket after she’d taken them in her fit of rage and fear.

God. She was lucky. Imagine if she hadn’t woken up…Imagine if Win had taken her to the hospital…if she’d over-dosed….she shuddered. She could hardly explain why she had them. Richard had warned her never to tell anyone. He’s always made her take them in secret, hidden in her dark room. Fuck, but she was careless now.

She clamped her hand around the pill bottle tighter and took a deep breath. Calm, she chanted in her head. Calm calm calm calm calm. Be calm.

“Oh,” she said again, this time firmly. “Who is he?”

Win looked vaguely amused, but he just shrugged. “He’s been our best friend practically since we were born. Jared Travien.” He smiled. “He goes to school with us.”

Anna closed her eyes. Of course he did.

“I hadn’t seen him before.” She strived for normal conversation, tried to get the memory of him out of her mind. His eyes. Christ. Had she ever seen eyes like that? She gripped the pill bottle tighter, felt it almost crack beneath her hand.

“No,” Win said, definitely amused now. “I think we all would have noticed if you had.”

Anna closed her eyes again.

“Want to explain what that was about?” His voice was still light, she thought. Unthreatening and just politely curious. Like he cared, but about her, not about why she’d been frightened.

Anna made her voice calm. “I just haven’t…seen anyone like him before.”

Win chuckled. “No, I don’t suppose you have.”

“So…a lot of people get shocked by him?” But that feeling of victory? That…thing…rising within her? That was all her, she thought. Its couldn’t have been him. It was her that was wrong. Her that bred the wrongness, let it loose more than was safe.

Win laughed outright then. “I can’t say I’ve seen anything like what happened in the kitchen,” he told her honestly. “But I have to say, you scared him half to death too.”

“He looks dangerous,” Anna said, trying to keep her voice light, thinking that if she made Win chuckle again he wouldn’t take her reaction so seriously. He might think it was just because she’d had a quick fright. Not expecting him.

“Yes,” Win said, “he does. But usually its old women with walking sticks who take fright. Not teenage girls. I’ve told him a hundred times that he needs to stop with the black.”

Wrong, Anna thought. She hadn’t even noticed what he’d worn. She hadn’t noticed anything about him really, except his eyes. It was his eyes that had done the trick, had cut down her defences, destroyed everything. She bit back a sob. Felt in her mind for the walls. They were back, she realised with relief. A little soft. But the four pills had rebuilt them quickly. Separated her from everything she had felt downstairs. If she met him again, she didn’t know how she’d hold up. Would it be better or worse than before?

Maybe take one extra pill before school now, Anna thought. One extra couldn’t hurt.

“Anyway,” Win said, standing up, “he’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night anyway. So you can meet him properly.” He smiled at her gently. “He’s really not a bad guy. “

Oh, thought Anna numbly. Great.

“Listen, we’ve all already had dinner, but mum left some food in the fridge if you wanted it? I can warm it up for you and bring it up if you like.”

Anna shook her head slowly, blinking again and wishing the hazy feeling would go away. It went away when she thought of his eyes, though. But she didn’t want to think about him. “That’s okay,” she told Win. “I’m not hungry. I might just go back to sleep.”

Her cousin shrugged. “Sure thing. Just don’t forget to change before you sleep. That coat can’t be all too comfortable in bed.”

When he left the room a moment later, Anna changed quickly and got back into bed. She kept her pill bottle with her thought, hidden under the pillow, and she gripped it tight as she felt herself drift off to sleep.

Don’t think of those eyes, she told herself again and again. Donthinkofthoseyes.

Jar lay on the roof of his house, staring up at the stairs.

He couldn’t sleep.

All he could think about was Anna Grey, standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at him with milky gold eyes, him watching helplessly as fear had flooded her face.

And then, as he’d stepped forward towards her, he’d seen those eyes blaze suddenly with a brilliance that had left him stunned, and urged a roar of vicious approval from his beast, which had rise unbidden from his heart.

But it was over before it had begun, and he’d been left drained, and something had slammed into her and left her looking like a kicked dog, broken, looking at him hopelessly through eyes that were the same milky amber he’d first noticed

And then, of course, she’d run.

It had all been surreal enough to be a dream.

But he wasn’t dreaming his thudding heart, the ache in his groin, the strange tingling that was spreading all along his fingers and up his arms and neck.

He couldn’t dream that look of intense victory that had swept through her gaze, parted her lips, brought her to life.

And he certainly couldn’t have dreamt the moment when he’d seen her die, draw that ragged breath, and slump forward like a doll. No dream could instill the despair that had eaten away at him when he’d seen that.

No, Brad had been right along. Something was definitely wrong with her. More wrong than any of them realised.

But he hadn’t been lying to his friend when he’d told him he had no idea what was wrong. He didn’t. He wanted to find out, but he didn’t know.

The only thing he knew was that there was also something about her that was achingly, heart-breakingly right.

Something that had broken free tonight, and then withered.

She couldn’t hide it from him though, he thought, not now. Not anymore. And she wouldn’t be able to hide it from Andy or Gabe either.

There was one simple truth about Anna Grey, he thought, that he knew now. A truth he would take with him to the grave, held close to his heart. She had his loyalty now. She had everything he could give her. One simple truth, he thought wryly.

So fucking simple.

She was one of them.