Side By Side » Theo Raeken

Lies of Omission

Edited.

My nightmares were back. Every single night, all night long, they would play and replay in my head. I couldn't sleep anymore. The pain was too much. The dead baby body on my arms each night made me feel even worse than I felt the moment before, the way I attacked and then was attacked back and killed, had never hurt more, but it was all just a dream, and I couldn't get it out of my head. I'm not sure why, but I simply couldn't.

It had been five days.

Kira left.

Somehow we still hadn't seen any chimeras and we hadn't seen the Dread Doctors, which made me feel even more threatened. It was weird. We were all in school, pretending like nothing had or was happening, I couldn't know how they felt about it, living this way for so long, when I – someone who had just found out about it – could barely walk around alone without being afraid.

But I wasn't the only one. Looking around, I could see everyone knew something was coming, something bad, just didn't know what it was or how bad it could be. They couldn't know why, but nobody seemed to smile anymore, no one's laughing.

Every time I realized that fact I felt a darkness around me, what was really happening? I didn't know, and wasn't sure anyone did; maybe that was why no one was really talking to each other. Sometimes we wouldn't even notice each other. But I still thought some of us were ok with that, because somehow I knew we all kept big secrets that were haunting every single one of us.

I couldn't bear to think about Donovan's death lately.

I really didn't know if I was the only one noticing it, but maybe nobody was actually lying. It was more like lies of omission.

My uncle still didn't know about Parrish, and how he was the one who was taking the bodies, because nobody had told him yet. But nobody had told Parrish either, who apparently couldn't remember taking the bodies. So that was why Lydia and Stiles were out in the woods trying to find them, meaning they had to find the Nemeton, which I've learned to be some kind of magic old tree, that can't be seen when it doesn't want to. They kept driving around trying to find it; last time they had to almost die to do it, which led to enormous consequences. That couldn't happen again.

"I don't know, Alice." Theo said as we walked out of class.

"Come on, Theo, you know it's gonna be fine."

He shook his head. "Fine." He answered as he quickly touched his lips with mine. I grinned. "But if Stiles finds me there, he's going to kill me."

"He won't. He can't. You're a werewolf." I shrugged.

"Skirt, Theo!"

We both looked around to see Stiles coming in our direction. For a moment I almost laughed, seeing the panicked face Theo made for a second.

"Stiles."

"We need to talk about something." He said as we made our way to the library. "Lydia and I still couldn't find the Nemeton."

I simply nodded, already knowing the fact. "Are you guys sure it's Parrish who's been taking the bodies?" Theo asked as we walked in the library.

"Yes."

"You know if Lydia finds the Nemeton she'll also gonna find Donovan." I stopped in my tracks shocked and Stiles looked back at him, not with a surprised look on his face but an angry one. "Sorry."

How did Theo know about Donovan? And how come haven't we talked about it? I frowned and look at both of them. "How'd you know that?"

"She's also gonna find Josh." Stiles said, bringing a worried look to Theo's face.