Reclaimed and Restored

An Interloper

“What do you think, birthday girl?” Molly asked.

“They’re stunning,” Ava said as she twisted her foot to get a better look at the three delicate golden chains wrapped around her ankle. Tiny crystal stars dangled from the middle chain, while the top one had a single sparkling crescent moon charm and the other a small wolf charm.

“It looks great,” her friend agreed with a wide grin.

“You’re the best, Molly.”

The ankle bracelets were so unlike anything that Molly, with her leather jackets, ripped jeans, diamond nose stud, and turquoise-dyed hair, would wear that Ava knew her friend had put a lot of effort into picking it out. Honestly, sometimes Ava wondered why Molly was friends with someone like her―someone whose wardrobe consisted primarily of mom jeans, dungarees, baggy cardigans, and a multitude of different colored sneakers.

“It was just something small,” Molly replied with a dismissive shrug while checking her phone.

“Time for training?” Ava asked when her friend let out a loud groan.

Molly had turned eighteen two months earlier, and she’d jumped into training as soon as she could and had taken to it naturally.

“Yeah, I need to get upstairs and warm up before class. But I’ll see you later, okay?” Molly said as she stood from the dining hall table. “We can grab some coffee. On me, of course.”

“Sounds great,” Ava agreed. “Go kick some ass.”

“You know I will.” The turquoise-haired woman winked and grinned wickedly before rushing out of the room.

Ava was about to turn her attention back to her unfinished breakfast, but her gaze caught on the man who walked into the room seconds after Molly had left it. Her breath caught in her throat, and she watched as Marcus paused in the doorway and ran his eyes over the mostly full tables in the dining hall. Her breakfast was forgotten as she observed him, and though Ava knew she needed to stop staring, her gaze refused to leave him, and her eyes took their fill.

The short sleeves of his navy shirt gave way to ebony skin and defined muscles, and, not for the first time, she thought he looked like a young Idris Elba. Her eyes traced his broad shoulders and the sharp line of his jaw before taking in the soft curls of his eyelashes.

Those lashes were the only part of him that wasn’t hard, that didn’t look as though they had been carved from steel―it was something that Ava had noticed about him as soon as she was old enough to look at boys, or in this case, a man, in that manner.

Even his dark brown eyes held no softness when they took in his surroundings. He was looking for danger, no doubt, as he always seemed to do when he walked into a room. Those intelligent and emotionless eyes never seemed to miss anything, yet they simultaneously looked right through people, classifying her and everybody else in the room as unimportant.

It was infuriating, but most of all, Ava found it disappointing. Though his gaze almost seemed to linger on her table for a second longer than the others, she knew it was just wishful thinking on her part. Even when she had literally plowed into him a week earlier, he had barely spared her a glance before he had walked right past her.

She had watched him from afar for three years, but nothing could have prepared her for how it had felt to finally stand in front of him and have his eyes on her. Her heart had practically leaped out of her chest, it had been racing so fast, and it was pathetic how her knees had weakened when he had grabbed her waist to keep her upright.

She just wished he would have looked at her for more than two seconds before dismissing her entirely. But she supposed it was unreasonable of her to have expected differently when she was a senior in high school, and he was the most well-known and promising member in the Council, over a decade older than her, and pined over by most of the single female population in the Council building.

When Ava thought of it like that, it was clear that she needed to get a life and stop obsessing over a man who was decidedly out of her league. She was being creepy, and it needed to stop before she crossed the line from Crush Town into Stakerville.

Seemingly satisfied that there was no threat in the Council building’s dining hall, Marcus took a seat at his usual table with a few other Council members. Ava was sure he considered them colleagues rather than friends despite the fact that he sat with them every morning.

For reasons Ava could only guess at, the man who was rumored to be the best fighter in the entire Council building didn’t seem to have any real friends. It was bizarre and somewhat intriguing and one of the many reasons she was fascinated by him.

He was much older than her, but Ava preferred the hard and brutal man over the boys her age, and it wasn’t difficult to reason why when he looked the way he did. But Molly, who had been quick to notice Ava’s crush and was thankfully the only one who knew about it, struggled to understand why her friend was drawn to someone so stoic and severe when she was entirely the opposite.

It was embarrassing, really, the crush Ava had on him, and she would be mortified if anyone else, especially Marcus, ever found out about her inappropriate fascination. So, sighing heavily, she dragged her eyes away from him and returned her attention to the plate of food in front of her.

She had finished her last piece of deliciously crispy bacon and was starting on her cup of sub-par coffee when her brothers made an embarrassingly noisy and dramatic appearance.

“Happy birthday, baby sister,” Thomas cheered loudly before he leaned down and wrapped his arms around her in a near-bruising hug.

“Happy birthday, Ava,” Daniel added, waiting for his twin to move before he gave her his own overenthusiastic hug.

“Thanks,” she replied with an embarrassed grin, her cheeks burning with how much attention they had drawn.

Not many werewolves used the communal dining hall seeing as every apartment was fitted with a kitchen, so there weren’t that many witnesses to their antics. Still, a few tables away, Marcus’s attention had briefly landed on her.

“I was hoping we’d catch you before you came down to eat,” Daniel said as he dropped into a chair across from her.

His brother sat next to him, and the near-identical men smiled at her. If Ava weren’t three years younger than them, the three of them could have been mistaken as triplets with their matching raven hair and golden skin. The only thing that marked Ava as different were her hazel eyes, which she had inherited from her mother, while her brothers had gotten their father’s caramel brown eyes.

“Yeah, brat,” Thomas mock-scolded her. “We went to mom and dad’s after training, all excited and pumped up to give you your gift, and you weren’t even there.”

As Council members, the twins had had an early morning training session, something that Ava would have to start soon now that she had turned eighteen and was eligible to become a trainee. Though she had no real interest in becoming a Council member, her father was adamant that while she was still in high school and living under his roof―or rather the Council’s roof―she would begin the classes.

Under their father’s orders, her brothers had already started to teach her how to defend herself, and she had no problem with that per se. It was her father’s expectation that she would follow in his footsteps and become a Council member when she had no desire to do so that was the problem.

Policing werewolf packs and being sent out to investigate individuals who had reportedly broken werewolf law was not something she had ever dreamed of doing, not when her sketchbooks and her outdated camera were what brought her joy. Not to mention the fact that the Council was essentially a boy’s club that had only recently and very unenthusiastically started including women into the fold.

The werewolves her age would treat her alright, but females were picked last for any assignments, and the Masters still had not promoted even one woman to Medial. Ava wondered if they would ever let it happen, especially when it could lead to a woman becoming a Master down the line.

Ava doubted they would give that much of their power over to those they probably viewed as the weaker s*x. It was one of the reasons her brothers would rather she follow her dream of photography―if she were good at what she did, she would get hired, end of story. Though she’d earn a more stable and probably higher income as a Council member, photography would mean pursuing her passion while leaving the Council Master’s sexism behind.

“It’s like you only think about yourself,” Thomas continued.

Ava rolled her eyes and chuckled. “You’re right. I’m so sorry I let my hunger overrule your needs.”

“We’ll forgive you, but only because it’s your birthday,” Thomas replied with a wink.

“Wow, thanks, Tommy,” Ava scoffed. “So, where’s my gift?” she asked before taking a sip of her coffee and grimacing. If she hadn’t been saving up for a new camera, she would have already been out the door and walking to the nearest coffee shop to get her daily caffeine fix in the form of an iced mocha.

“Right here,” Daniel said as he placed a blue polka dot gift bag on the table.

Ava attacked the gift, knowing that whatever they had gotten her would be better than the bright neon pink yoga pants, childish Micky Mouse pajamas, and outrageously girly sketchbook her parents had given her. She loved her mom and dad, but they had never been the best at picking out gifts for their children. But hey, at least they had been close to a winner with the sketchbook―it was just a pity that it was covered in rhinestones and glitter.

“No way,” Ava squealed, her eyes wide as they took in what her brothers had gotten her.

“Is it okay?” Daniel asked. “We had to ask the guy at the shop, and he said this was the best one available.”

Ava nodded slowly before raising her gaze to the twins. “This is… it’s too much.”

“Well, if you’re going to be a photographer, you need the best of the best,” Daniel explained.

Ava smiled. Their gift was more than just a camera―it was their way of telling her to follow her dreams. Even more, it had the bonus of saving her from countless more mornings of stale dining hall coffee because the money she’d saved up didn’t need to be used on a new camera anymore. She could practically taste the iced mocha perfection on her tongue already.

“This must have cost a fortune.” It was at least twice the price of the camera she’d been saving up to buy.

Thomas shrugged. “We could afford it with how much the Council is paying us now. It’s nothing.”

As trainees, they’d earned nothing, but as soon as they’d been promoted to Council members, they were given a small monthly salary as well as a two-bedroom apartment that they shared. The Council had been around since Boston was a colony in the early eighteenth century, and compound interest over hundreds of years had obviously done them wonders considering their ability to house and pay every member, Medial, and Master within the organization.

“It’s not nothing,” Ava argued, standing up and rushing around the table to envelop them both in a hug. “It’s everything,” she told them.

“Don’t get all emotional on us now,” Thomas whined. “People might start to think we’re not as tough as we look.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ava laughed, squeezing her arms around them harder before releasing them. “I can’t believe you guys did this,” she said once she’d returned to her seat and had started opening the box so she could play around with her new favorite possession.

“Only the best for our favorite sister,” Daniel said.

“I’m your only sister, Dan,” Ava pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re still our favorite,” Thomas replied before his eyes moved above her head and narrowed.

“What do we have here?”

Ava tensed at the words and looked over her shoulder, pursing her lips when her eyes landed on Ben, one of the werewolves who shared the same training classes as Daniel and Thomas. The twins hated him, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why after spending more than a few seconds in Ben’s presence. Though their dislike of Ben probably had less to do with his disgusting personality in general and more to do with the fact that the man had made a habit of bothering Ava and, occasionally, Molly.

According to Ben, Ava was an artsy freak who needed to update her wardrobe or risk looking like a twelve-year-old for the rest of her life. But in her opinion, any twenty-year-old that picked on high school girls wasn’t someone whose thoughts should be paid much attention to.

Ben might have grown bored and moved on to a new victim had Ava just ignored him. But, unfortunately, her temper sometimes got the better of her, and she’d made the mistake of responding to one of his first barbs with an out-of-character slap that had been hard enough to turn his cheekbone red. Her intense reaction to his verbal abuse had only seemed to spur him on.

“Aw, is it your birthday, Ava?” he asked.

“Don’t talk to her,” Daniel snapped.

“Why not?” Ben asked as he leaned over Ava and placed his hands on the table in front of her, his arms caging her in. “She’s eighteen now, right? No reason I can’t talk to a fellow adult.”