ILLUSION, ELI HALE

seventeen | those eight letters

"What the hell? You can't just say that!"

After Eli dropped the bombshell of his love for Nadia, he thought he heard a car moving down the road, so he hopped up and walked away. This obviously made Nadia annoyed so the girl scrambled to her feet as quickly as she could to catch up to the boy.

"I'm not allowed to tell you that I'm in love with you?" Eli raised his eyebrows at the girl. "How rude."

There hadn't been a car coming down the street, so there was a part of Nadia's mind that believed the boy was beginning to get nervous after he admitted it to her. Granted, the girl had been staring at the boy for a good minute without blinking after his confession. Anyone sane would have thought she was losing it.

Nadia's jaw dropped. He'd said it again! The audacity of this boy. "You can't say it like that. Not just out of the blue."

"What? It's true. I love you."

"Stop saying that."

"I can't. I'm stuck on a loop." A stupid smirk filled the boy's features. He repeated the same eight letters over and over again, purposefully doing it to annoy the girl. "I love you, I love you, I love you. Shall I go on?"

And just in an instant, that intense conversation they'd just had morphed into something else. And Nadia was finding Eli to be just as aggravating as he normally could be. They were back to themselves, the bickering lovable duo.

Nadia was shocked. Her best friend had just told her that he was in love with her. What did she say to that? Did she respond back? Did she say that she felt the same way? Did she feel the same way? Now her mind was spinning a mile a minute trying to contain all this new information she's been learning.

Eli Hale, her werewolf best friend, was in love with her.

Eli was in love with her.

Nadia didn't know if she should be screaming in horror or excitement.

"Do you remember Halloween?" Eli questioned the girl. They were standing in the middle of the empty road. Just trees and the stars in the sky were listening in to their conversation. "When I took you to the Nemeton?"

"Yeah." Nadia nodded. How could she forget? She'd never seen a more beautiful view of the night sky before that day.

"I was gonna tell you then. But, I chickened out. I'm not asking for a response, Nadia. You don't need to feel pressured to tell me how you feel. In fact, please don't tell me how you feel until you're not on the brink of death. I just needed you to know. I love you. I promise I will never, ever, hurt you like that again. And I will do everything in my power to keep you safe."

Was his confession out of the blue? Definitely not. There were times when Nadia had a feeling that Eli's friendly glances meant more. Such as recently today with the necklace. Or the holding hands. She wasn't completely unaware. If anything, she fed into it. She liked the way he would look at her—like she was the only girl in the world. But, still, hearing it out loud? Nadia was more shocked at this than the werewolf announcement.

"Well, that was..." Nadia began to stumble on her words. It seemed as if time was moving incredibly slowly. She was beginning to feel lightheaded and her skin felt like she was burning up. Standing in the middle of the road, she had nothing to use to hold her body upright. "I think that, um—gonna pass out..."

At the moment that Nadia began to fall to the ground, passing out, Eli raced to get the girl to her feet. Almost like they'd answered his prayers, a car had been speeding down the road and just narrowly missed hitting the teenagers in the middle of the road. The driver of the car stopped on the side of the road and got out. Eli was so happy that the driver was Sheriff Stilinski and not some random person he had to explain this odd situation to.

"Eli? What the hell happened?" Stilinski got out of the car and met the boy halfway to the Sheriff's car. He helped grab the girl's limp body and gently lay her on the backseat of the truck. "Is she alright?"

Eli said a mouthful of sentences at once, already beginning to hop into the back of the seat so that he could sit next to Nadia's unconscious body. "No, she's not alright, Allison stabbed her. She's bleeding out pretty bad and we don't have time to get to the hospital. Can you take me to Deaton's?"

The Sheriff questioned the Hale boy's words. "Allison? Allison Argent?"

"Yeah, Scott and his friends brought her back from the dead and then she tried to kill us." Eli nodded, hurrying the man up. "Come on, let's go. We need to see Deaton now."

"Did you say Allison? Kid, are you sure I'm hearing this right?"

"Yes, we'll talk more. We need to go."

"Deaton's at your house." Stilinski notified the kid. "I just got a call on the radio. Derek's worried sick about you."

Eli felt a sense of relief overcome him as he realized his father was alright. But right now, his only priority was with the girl whose head was lying on his lap. He placed his pointer finger under his nose. The girl was breathing but very softly. They needed to get her checked out right now. "Does Deaton have a surgery kit with him?"

"Knowing him, he probably does."

"Well, let's go."

Nadia was in and out of consciousness the entire ride to the Hale house. When she looked up, there was Eli's nervous expression hovering over her. In the corner of her eyes, she could see the shadows of the red and blue lights coming from the top of Stilinski's vehicle. He was driving incredibly quickly, passing stop lights and traffic signals with ease.

One moment Nadia opened her eyes because of a weird sensation happening in her body. It was like all the pain she was feeling had lifted for a few seconds. She felt like she was floating in the air, relieved of all the tension in her body. All the confusion she felt, all the exhaustion, simply evaporated Her head lazily lolled to the side, and through blurred vision, she could see that Eli's hand was clasped in hers. The veins in his hands were turning black and a look of pain was evident on his face as he tightened the grip on her hand.

Somehow, he'd managed to take her pain away.

Taking pain was something he'd only seen his father do to him. Pain from a scrape on the knee after he'd learned how to ride his bike, or when he had a terrible headache. Eli hadn't been taught how to do it, the power just came to him naturally.

The moment of relief was short-lived. The pain—though much less intense than it had been before, all came rushing back after the boy let out a cry of pain of his own and had to loosen the tight grip on her hand. Nadia released a gasp of her own before the pain overwhelmed the girl and she fell back into a dazed state; half-awake, and half-unconscious.

When they reached the Hale household, it was all a blur.

Nadia barely remembered getting out of the car, just one moment laying in Eli's lap, the next being placed on the couch with bright lights shining in her face. Voices sounded muffled in the background. Nadia could hear Eli saying something about someone being careful with her, while another voice, Derek maybe, was on the side of her telling her that she would be okay.

Bloodied cardigan thrown aside to the floor somewhere, something gripped the girl's arm tightly, and in her foggy state, she could hear herself shouting a boatload of curse words to her medic, Deaton, the poor man who was just trying to do his job of patching the young girl up. That went on for a few minutes until Nadia felt her eyes drooping once again in intense pain.

For the girl, everything went black.

Quite traumatic for a teenage girl who assumed she was just simply going to a lacrosse playoff game that evening. Werewolves, hunters, love confessions, and near-death experiences all wrapped into one long evening.

And there was much more to come.