AN
Guess what book won a Watty? I'll give you a hint, it's a story about a quirky Alpha falling in love with an independent feminist. SPOILER: SKIN WON GUYS. SKIN WON.

"What the hell?" Schuyler Bradshaw is standing on her mattress, not particularly wary about the fact that she's in wrinkly boxers and a stained sweatshirt. Her hair is reaching out in every direction, each copper string curled and knotted. She looks like a mad woman, which is synonymous for a teenage girl woken up in the night hours.

Giles is staring wide-eyed, those two big brown irises she never thought she'd see again were gaping at her.

"What- why, why the hell are you here?!" Schuyler wants to scream, but she doesn't want to risk waking up her fathers. The teenager twitches, her first are fighting to stay at her side as she battles with the internal conflict of either hugging the fuck out of Giles or slapping his face until her both of her hands hurts.

"Giles!" She snaps her fingers in front of the man who has gone silent. When he disappeared, dropped out of her life as if he was never there, he had been a senior. He only had ten more weeks until his semester would be over and he could've graduated. She could've rode with him to graduation, could've taken stupid cheesy photos with his graduation cap on her head while he hugged her tightly. Schuyler could've given him a tall latte from Starbucks, the same one he ordered the first time they met. She could've kissed his cheek, congratulated him, and then ask him to dinner back in Bishop.

"Giles, Earth to friggin' Giles," Schuyler's hands grabbed onto his face, the scruff of dark hair tickled her finger pads and his warm skin felt ungodly hot.

"You... Schuy," his eyes are still saucers, his own hand darts out and reaches out to her arm, trapping her like a vise to the werewolf. She isn't scared of him, even if his grasp is turning his knuckles white and her own skin an angry red. "Schuyler, you reek."

*

"Wow, asshole. Thanks, thank you for that," Schuyler rolls her blue eyes as she tugs back at her arm to fight his hold. "I haven't seen you in like three months, and the first thing that comes out of your mouth is a hundred percent... Giles."

He shakes his head; Giles blinks with thick eyebrows furrowed in concentration, his nose flaring in act of scenting the room. She internally cringes. The room doesn't exactly smell like a teenage girl's bedroom. Instead of Bath and Body Works lotion and perfume sinking into the walls along with Scentsy's waxes mixing with Febreze, it smells like the old pizza box she meant to throw away yesterday and her cheap candle she hasn't lit in more than a week.

"Not that way," Giles whispers. One of his hands suddenly wrap behind her neck and his nose dives right above where her battle scar from Lennox lays. She wants to push him away at the sudden contact, but it isn't threatening. She doesn't feel a prick of canines, there is nothing more than the light, warm breath of her friend lingering over her exposed jugular.

"You smell...you smell like," Giles's nose twitches on her skin, which sends a shot of laughs from the pit of her belly to her throat. "You smell like a wolf."

"Wolf?" Her voice cracks. It doesn't sound good, the way he whispers it into the air sounds more like a paradox instead of sure, strong words Giles usually possesses.

"No, no," he sniffs again, his mind reeling over the scent. "Lycan."

*

Schuyler is still standing on her bed. One of her hands has shot out to grab Giles's ebony wrist to keep herself steady, and the other is laid limp on her side as she turns over the word Giles's has given to her.

They're both quiet for what feels like hours, but in reality is only a few short seconds until both of them explode into whispering and high pitched noises that were echoes of questions to both parties.

"What the hell are Lycans?! You make it sound like I just got a freaking death sentence, man."

"There's Lycans in your town? Lennox let you live in a town infested with freaking Lycans?!"

"Giles- Giles," Schuyler tries to vainly speak over her friend as he yanks away from her to pace around the room. Everything is unsettled now, she had thought she had felt calm for just a few seconds, but now it feels like the weight that has been on her shoulder- which had been easing off of her for the past weeks is suddenly piling itself back onto her.

"That asshole- that freaking- I'm going to murder him. I was already close to killing him," Giles shakes his head, half talking to himself, half speaking to her- or maybe the wall, she can't actually tell because he's moving around the room in a blur.

"Lycans, Giles- we need to discuss this topic," she clicks her fingers above her head; her voice is a harsh whisper in her moonlit bedroom.

"What? Lycans? Yeah, yeah," he nods before he takes another scent of the room. "You know werewolves?"

"Like you, like Lennox," Schuyler tells him, rolling her eyes because she wasn't born yesterday.

Giles voice almost trembles, his eyes are casted to the floor as he trips over his words. "We have a sister species, but they don't... I thought most of them were..."

"Dead, you thought they were dead?" She supplied him with words, watching as Giles's eyes kept snapping from her to anything that wasn't Schuyler.

He nods, thankful for the words that Schuyler had given to him. "Yeah, Aunt Quin said the last Lycan was Othello- I met him when I was twelve, and he looked like he was a thousand and one years old, so please- try to understand how freaking surprised I am that you aren't just smelling like a Lycan, but bathing in it."

"And, and no-- what? Am I in trouble? Do I need to like... carry silver around or something?" Schuyler doesn't feel scared, but her interest is peaked and she wonders about something other than Lennox for the first time in a long time.

Giles grasps one of his hands to the back of his neck, massaging his finger pads into his nape as he tries to make it clear- how can he explain a beast when it's almost identical to himself, to his own species. "No... yes... I mean- they're old school werewolves, Schuyler. They're like straight out of some old monster movie, where do you think the legends began?"

"If they're old school, I don't understand the danger," she had watched every film from Frankenstein to Dracula, real monsters- but bad effects that made her laugh into her dad's chest on movie nights more than scream.

Giles chews on his lip, eyebrows pulling down into a concentrated look as the werewolf begins to slowly piece his words together. He feels like this is the first time in months he's actually been able to think, as if for once he isn't just thinking about his pack- but for himself independently. And it feels weird, not that he had to become accustom to temporary Alpha. "I could bite you as many times as I wanted, Schuyler. You wouldn't turn into a werewolf because you're body isn't actually capable of developing into a wolf, now... you could be bitten on the full moon- and you'd most likely just bleed out or half-wig into a wolf, but that isn't what a Lycan can do."

"What can... Lycans do?" She asks, she sits down onto her mattress, her eyes fall to the pattern of her blankets. Her fingers trail the embroidered quilt that sits at the end of her mattress, tangled between her hands.

He swallows. "One bite from them, Schuyler- you're either dead, or you are wishing you are."

"That bad?"

"For the bitten ones, yeah," he watches Schuyler. She isn't scared- at least she doesn't look like it, and her pheromone is leaking with curiosity instead of calamitous fear. "They shift into the original big bad wolf- stand on two legs, get all howly and scary and have a tendency of staying alive until you cut their stomach open and place rocks into their belly."

"They sound harmless," she replies. "Compared to you, at least."

"To me? Mostly," Giles shakes his head, staring at his feet- his soaking feet that are in taped-up converse- because those were the first shoes he could grab before he ran to his truck to travel to Bishop in less than five hours. "But you? Schuyler, Lennox must've been brain dead if he let you walk back in this town."

"So, these Lycans- or Lycan, or whatever- what, I don't understand what would make me a target of a Lycan?" Her tone is confused, he's lacking something in his words.

"You're marked by an Alpha," he admits, his voice stern but trembling. "A true Alpha- Lennox was literally born to be rule, and you know... the old school traditions tend to be kind of old school..."

"Meaning?" She doesn't let him have a breath of air as she questions him, eager for the answer.

He grimaces."You're a virgin, Schuyler. What's better than an Alpha's marked virgin sacrifice? You're a fucking beacon to Lycans."

"So, what?" She doesn't sound intimidated, instead- she seems more amused, and if he's judging the long stares she's giving to her mattress, she's probably dead-tired. 'They're going to use my blood as potion and raise the dead up from the grave?"

"No, Schuy. They're going to use your blood to make Lennox their puppet."

*

"I'm going to be honest with you, Giles," Schuyler stares at the werewolf as she walks to her window and shuts it completely, pushing out the rain to turn and level her gaze to Giles with a yawn. "It's five in the morning, I honestly don't want to talk about seven thousand different ways I could die by Lycans. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, some crazy guy could come to my house, gun's a'blazin, to shoot me dead. I want to sleep."

He wants to laugh and scream at the same time- he forgot how freaking insane Schuyler could be. "You're literally telling me sleep is more important to you, than learning about the fact that a dead species of werewolf could possibly be slowly slipping into your life and trying to murder you and then become the puppeteers to Lennox."

"No," her words are precise, her hands smooth back over her bed when she settles herself next to Giles. 'I'm telling you that I'm going to need a lot of sleep. Because when I wake up, I'm driving to Lennox, and I'm going to kick his ass."

AN
Longer chapters coming very soon. ;-;
Honestly, I hate how this chapter came out because I can't get into their minds right now. Sorry for such a long time since updating- but school has literally been so stressful and I just want to write all day and read all night.

Lycans were mentioned before, and don't freak out about them yet because I'll go into more of it later.

This book literally has so many mini-climaxes, I don't know if I'll be able to survive it. Because Lycans are only a minor part- big part tho: Lennox. This book is still about our baby beau, so don't worry.