Nate pushed open the double doors, making us fall into silence. There was something about him that made me shut up and listen every time he entered a room, like he was some kind of prophet. He watched Liam for a moment, picking a mug already filled with coffee, eyes never leaving his face.
“The others are in the living room. You might want to go see them,” he frowned, eyes passing over the rest of us. “Oh, and you probably want to call your parents, to justify your absence in school.” In response to that, Ben pulled out his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. He had a good point, and I had truly never thought about what my parents would be thinking. First, the call about my absence from art class, then my absence from the house all night long... My mom was probably flipping right now. I pinched my lips together, feeling guilty.
Liam got up, pulling on my brother’s sleeve to make him follow. They were out of the room in a matter of seconds, Ben’s voice trailing behind them.
“Hi mom... Yes, I know, but we’re fine.” A silence followed. “Liam’s here and another fifteen people...” His voice drifted off.
“Would you like to go take a walk outside? It’s such a beautiful day,” said Nate, smiling at us.
“Sure, I could use some clean air,” I said when I saw Rose nod. We both got up, following Nate through the glass back door. It lead to a big wooden deck, with a view of a huge space of grass slowly fading into the woods that were merely surrounding the house. Nate kept walking towards them, leaving us to follow without looking back.
“There’s a path leading to another house nearby. It’s been abandoned ever since we bought this house and I know the kids like to go there and hang out sometimes,” he turned then, somehow knowing we were uncomfortable.
“Don’t worry, we won’t go there today. I’ll leave that to Liam and the others if they want to show you,” he continued to walk, guiding us to the path he had been talking about.
“I just wanted to go away from the house so we can talk in private.” My heart stammered in my chest, skipping a beat.
Why would he want to talk to us in private? I caught Rose’s gaze, confused and panicked, a replica of mine.
Finally Nate stopped, turning to us. We were only a few minutes walk away from the house, and I could see its white panels through the not so dense forest.
“Relax, I’m not going to hurt you,” he laughed. He sat on a fallen tree. Rose was beside me and she was shivering. I could sense her muscles tense, ready to bolt. He’s not human, a voice in my head whispered. I shouldn’t have followed him so stupidly...
“I wanted to ask you to do something.” He waited for a reaction. “You said Cole was some friend of yours, and if you weren’t friendly with him anymore or ignored him, he would notice, right? I don’t want you guys to do anything like that.”
“What?” The question escaped my lips without me even noticing it.
“I want you guys to be friends, act like Liam’s been playing you and you hate him...” He stopped there, looking up at us. He knew that what he was asking us to do was unexpected. Rose’s eyes were wide open.
“Why...?” Again, one words question seemed to be the only things capable of escaping my mouth right at this moment.
“He’s going to hurt you. He knows what Liam’s doing. He wants you and he doesn’t care who goes in the process. If you just act stupid and innocent, he’s going to take it slower, take his time and play a little more just to make Liam suffer.” Besides me, Rose passed a hand in her hair.
“But Liam won’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Not with his pride and...” She stopped abruptly. She looked at me, her lips clamped shut.
“Liam doesn’t know I’m asking you this. This is why I didn’t want to talk in the house. He would have heard us.”
“What about the mind reading thing? And he’s gonna try to know what’s wrong with us. Change our minds...” My thoughts were scrambling in my head, a jumble of incomprehensible words.
“I’ll show you how to block your thoughts but he might see that there’s something wrong... You’ll probably have to think about something he wouldn’t want to see... I know it’s a lot to ask you, but while you do that, it makes time for us to train and do our work without Cole and his pack lurking around,” Nate drifted off, looking at me intently. He was waiting for my answer. I nodded, biting down my lip. I wasn't even sure how I was going to do that, but if it was what I had to do...
“Rose?” Nate asked. “You don’t have to do as much as Alicia, but we still need your help. You’ll probably need to be as stupid as you can so Cole trusts you?” His tone made it a question.
“Yeah I’ll do it. But you have to promise me that if something happens, you’ll come help us,” she said, locking eyes with Nate’s.
“Yes, we will. I wouldn’t be asking you this if I knew there were any dangers, but we’ll be looking at things closely. Some might even transfer to your school to make sure everything goes well. And we’ll be training and searching for information about them while you’re doing this. Ways to eliminate him...” He said that like it wasn’t a big deal. Kill someone... I shrugged off all of my uncertainty. It was what we needed to do.
We spent the next half hour trying to master blocking our thoughts. Nate was proving to be an excellent teacher, giving us tips to make it more believable.
“The thing is that when you block your thoughts, the person that’s trying to see them won’t see anything. They will instantly know that’s what you’re trying to do and they’ll suspect you have something to hide,” he explained.
“That’s when you block most of your thoughts but you can sing a song or visualize some photographs at the same time. The intruder will only hear the song, or see the pictures and nothing else. Therefore he’ll only think it’s what you’re thinking at the moment. Got it?” He made us try after, testing our barriers.
“Great, you girls are good. Just don’t forget to do it all day long; the guys can’t know what you’re really thinking,” we nodded in unison.
We got back to the house then, Nate informing us that we should start masking our thoughts now, even though it wasn’t necessary to think of something else on top of it.
“I doubt that Liam will read your minds here when you’re safe,” he laughed. “And don’t forget, you hate him from tomorrow on.” That wasn’t something I would like to remember.
“Hi, welcome back,” Ben’s voice was the first I heard before an explosion of hello’s surrounding us.
“It’s been a while since we saw you guys,” Liam said, eying us.
“It’s been an hour, Liam, chill.” Ben said, smiling.
“We just went to take a walk; you know it’s really beautiful outside,” Rose jumped in. She was smiling broadly, appearing sheepishly happy. Liam nodded, apparently thinking it was a good enough excuse.
“I talked to mom and she said she’ll call the school, but she wants to talk to us when we get home... With dad,” the smile on his face disappeared. “Oh, and she’s going to talk to your parents too,” beside me, Rose stood utterly still.
“Don’t worry, she’s going to explain that you were with us, you won’t be in any trouble. We’re going back after super, probably around seven or eight,” Liam said, looking around for Nate’s approval. He nodded, opening his mouth.
“You can take the car; I’ll come pick it up tomorrow morning.” At that, he left the room, pushing past the pack of teenagers standing there. Delia was close, next to the door, leaning against its frame. She smiled at us and waved slightly and I smiled back. I was about to jump into a conversation close to me when a sinking feeling distracted me. I’m supposed to cover my thoughts, I thought. I had almost forgotten about that. I did the same as Nate had said, taking big, relaxing, breaths and building a wall all around me. It was like a fortress, strong and unwavering.
“You have to let them go sometimes, dude. They’re here with a huge pack of werewolves and us. It’s the safest place for them. I’ll understand tomorrow when we’re in school, but right now you need to relax,” I heard my brother say. I turned to see him talking to Liam, his hand on his shoulder. Liam’s face was drawn tight with stress.
“Yeah, you’re right. I know, it’s just that he could be anywhere.”
“They were with Nate, they were safe,” Ben interrupted him. Liam sighed and rubbed his face with one hand.
“Okay,” he simply said. Beside them, Rose was talking to another group of people. More than half of them were guys. I approached them silently.
“So, how did you guys become...” She didn’t finish her sentence. It was still difficult to say the word even though we had had the proof werewolves really existed.
“Werewolves?” A guy beside her asked, smirking.
“Most of us got bitten out of nowhere. In my case, I was walking back home from a party and I got lost. You know how it is,” he laughed.
“Jay, here, really likes to drink, if you know what I mean,” another guy said. Jay punched him in the shoulder, still laughing. Delia, who was standing just across from me, rolled her eyes.
“We have these major parties once a year to celebrate the formation of the pack, you guys should come sometime. Actually it’s going to be soon,” the guy who had made the comment on Jay, said. I believe his name was Alec.
“Yeah, that would be great.”
“We normally invite other people from before, like friends and all, but they don’t know it’s really about the pack. They think it’s like a giant birthday party for everyone,” Delia explained. She laughed, looking up at a tall guy beside her.
Looking at him more closely, I realized it was the guy in the picture we had seen yesterday. The guy she was interested in. I was fighting the smile that was creeping on my lips.
---> 
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