"Young love tends to be based on nothing but feelings. The couple has not yet faced and overcome a challenge or difficulty together. They are passionate about each other. They think about each other constantly and want to spend all their time"
Isaac...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
┗━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┛
༻❁༺New Orleans༻❁༺
"I think we should slow down," Ava said quietly, just as they were walking up to the cemetery gates, her voice halting the group in their tracks. Everyone turned to look back at her and Derek.
Ava hadn't set foot in this place since the fight with James — the argument that had ended everything. She'd been terrified even then that people would hear them, that word would spread, and they'd take his side. Beacon Hills was like that. But standing here now, she realized something she'd spent years avoiding: that argument, that one night, was what started all of this.
Back then, she would've given anything to undo it. She would've stayed. She would've kept her head down for Angie's sake. She'd have said yes if someone had offered to turn back time. Because all she had back then was Angie — and risking her daughter's safety wasn't a price she was willing to pay.
But now... now it was different.
Now she had this family Angie built. These people who, despite everything, stood with her. And every time Ava regretted moving back to Beacon Hills, she'd only have to look at Angie — see how light she was here, how alive in a way New Orleans never gave her — and it made it worth it. Every last bit of it.
"We're not gonna let any of them hurt you. Or us." Derek's voice pulled her back, steady and certain in a way she hadn't heard in a while. "I promise, Ava. I know this is hard. But we're just gonna get Angie, and go."
Ava nodded, swallowing thickly and blinking back the sting behind her eyes. "Okay..." she whispered, though the ache in her chest wouldn't ease. "Last time we lost one of us. This time... this time we won't. We'll all make it out okay, right?"
The others gave her small, reassuring nods. Not dramatic, not overdone — but enough. And with that, they moved forward again.
The second their feet crossed onto the cemetery grounds, a different kind of quiet fell. The kind that hummed under your skin and made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. The wolves felt it first — that thick, unnerving pressure in the air — but Ava felt it worse. It clung to her like cold water, seeping through her clothes, chilling her to the bone.
She hadn't felt that kind of chill in a long time.
"This is an awful feeling..." Lydia muttered under her breath, arms crossed over her chest as though it might ward it off.
"This place... it's our power source," Ava explained, glancing around the tombs and crooked headstones. "Every grave here holds the power of the witches buried in it. It feels like this because of the new regent — the ancestors are still... adjusting."
