The last thing James "Jay" Hale ever imagined was to begrudgingly return to Beacon Hills, find out his older sister was murdered, and then be forced to go on a wild goose chase after an enigmatic Alpha that seemed to have a particular interest in ru...
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: All Around Me Are Familiar Faces
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If someone had told Jay six months ago that he'd be back in Beacon Hills, surrounded by a bunch of teenagers at night in a school cafeteria, with a raging Alpha outside and his ex-best friend sprawled out on the floor with a bruised jaw, he would have thought they were high out of there minds or something.
But here he was.
Just as strangely, Lydia wasn't the one running to help her boyfriend up from his pathetic sprawl across the tiles. It was Allison.
"Jackson!" Allison crouched down beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. "Are you okay?"
Meanwhile, Jay couldn't suppress the laughter bubbling up his throat. Everything happening was just too ridiculous. How had he ended up here in the first place? How was this his life? He turned to Stiles with a wide, eye-crinkling grin and raised a hand for a high five for doing what he probably should have done himself the moment Jackson opened his mouth to start spouting out unnecessary bullshit.
Stiles didn't reciprocate it, not when the hand he used to punch Jackson was throbbing and pulsating. Jay grabbed it anyway.
"That was amazing, Stilinski! I've never seen you look so sexy before," he teased between laughs, shaking Stiles' hand around like a limp noodle while an instant blush made the boy redden up like a tomato. "Next time, though, don't close your thumb in your fist. I bet it hurts like a bitch." Without thinking, he began to take Stiles' pain away on instinct, but the boy yanked his hand back and nearly topped over a table in his efforts.
"Do you really think you should be doing that in your current state?" Stiles scowled, eyes scanning the very dishevelled, pale, corpse-like, bloody mess that was James Hale up and down.
Jay just shrugged, and Stiles rolled his eyes at his friend's apparent preservation skills akin to a literal donut before reaching into his pocket to fish out his cell phone. As the others watched, he dialled. "Dad? Hey, it's me... and this is your voicemail." He sighed deeply in frustration, pacing the small area. "Look... I need you to call me back. Like now. Like right now—"
Something slammed against the doors, rattling them on its hinges and making everyone jump in surprise. Lydia screamed, and Allison retreated to her side.
Talking much more quickly now, Stiles continued. "We're at the school—Dad—we're at the school—"
The door slammed forward again, and the stack of chairs they'd used as a makeshift barricade tumbled down one by one in a big clatter of noise. Jay moved quickly to try and hold the doors in place when another loud bang sounded off, and the metal rattled against his side. Then, the rattling escalated to pounding, the Alpha trying and failing to hammer inside the room, held off by Jay's sheer waning strength alone.
