I am in a hospital.

I know this long before I open my eyes because of the sharp chemical smell of hand sanitiser that tickles my nostrils.

I am not on a bed, nor stationary, but rather feel as if I am a buoy on water, bopping up and down. My pain is still substantial, but has gone from sharp stabbing pains to more of a dull ache. My hands feel normal and I flex my fingers slowly, grasping onto reality through each bend of the joints.

The horror that was in place of my nails seems to have left, but I am still scared to open my eyes for what I imagine would greet me. There is a smear of dried blood on my cheek, and I shrink away from what I could be in the form of. Hallucinations, the word slices through the veil shielding my mind from any clear and formed thinking. I tell myself it over and over again, until it becomes repetitive, a steady a tune. It was a hallucination. It was a hallucination. It was a hallucination.

And then my mind jolts awake and I feel as if I'm breaking through the surface of water. My eyes flutter open into the painful light overhead. I am gasping for the air which my body had so little of, and reaching out for something, anything to anchor me from the spinning which my head is doing.

"She's alive," someone says above me. Too close, too loud. My head can't formulate where I am. It is as if every sense is separated and the jigsaw pieces won't come together to form a complete setting.

A boy stands over me. No-not over me. He's holding me. He doesn't look very strong but he is there, keeping me up, steady arms beneath me. He has blood on his shirt. I have blood on my shirt. I know him, but not his name. His face is familiar and kind but I have never spoken to him.

"Come with me," she says. Who is she? My mind is spinning and I'm too tired to even turn my head to look at her.

As the boy walks, I know definitely that this is a hospital, the foul stench of plague and illness masked by alcohol and chemicals. The ceiling is too white and too bright and I shut my eyes and let the light paint red spots all over my eyelids. I feel myself drifting off and snap open my eyes again.

"Am I dying?" I ask to no-one in particular. My voice gets lost among the sounds of the hospital: the rain beating down on the roof, the wheeling of beds, the banter of doctors on their break.

But the boy still answers. "No," he says. But he doesn't seem sure. He sounds as if he is convincing himself that he's not holding a dead girl. "You're not dead." I almost believe him, until my wound sends a wave of pain up my body. I groan.

This part of the hospital is quieter, and we have left behind the flurry of activity in the main hall. The woman walks confidently, purposefully, and I admire her steady nature as my brain feels like it's bouncing around in my skull.

"Is Scott alright?" she asks. She must be close to Scott. Does she know what Scott is?

The boy answers with a confirmation of Scott's wellbeing. Something pushes through the haze of my thoughts and I know who the boy is. Something about his voice brings his name to materialise in my mind.

"Liam?" I croak out.

He nods absentmindedly as if my words never really reached his brain. The woman is opening one of the doors that branch off the hall. The room looks white and too clean. Liam sets me down on the bed and a sharp pain stretches all through my body, down to the tips of my toes. I groan and close my eyes to stop the tears rolling down my cheeks.

The woman picks up a large syringe filled with clear liquid. "Now, we're going to need to put you under local anaesthetic. I want you to relax and try not move too much." She jabs the needle into the hollow above my collarbone and I slowly feel the muscles tightening and numbing. I can feel my heart pounding in my ears to a rapid pace. The woman tears open my shirt with a blade and I shiver from the cold.

"You're going to be okay," Liam says and puffs a huge breath out of his cheeks. "I'm gonna go call the others. Tell them she's not dead."

The woman nods. I can't feel my chest area as the woman pours rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball. Although it's irrational since one side of my chest is numb, I flinch away when the alcohol touches my wound.

The woman's hands are steady in the presence of so much blood and I have to admire the heroic and wise air about her. My breathing is steady and slow and my muscles are calm and loose.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" her motherly instinct puts me at ease and even as she picks up a scalpel with a blade that glints under the light, I don't find myself distressed as much as before.

It's only when the blade comes in contact with the deep claw marks that screams erupt out of my mouth. The pain is unlike anything I've ever felt. An intense searing tears up through my chest and through my neck. I writhe around while the woman screams for Liam.

Liam bursts through the door, confusion and distress painted across his face. The woman yells at him to hold me down and he hesitates for a second before shoving my shaking upper body down with a strong forearm laid right across my chest.

"I need you to keep her still!" she tells Liam. He looks at her worriedly, his eyebrows furrowed. He throws down his other arm across my stomach, pressing down so hard that it hurts. His eyes flicker golden and he secures me under his arms so I can't move.

I release my pain through a series of shrieks and groans. As the scalpel opens up my wound, I let out a colourful string of swear words. Liam flinches back briefly and I almost laugh at the irony of how, even though he'd just been involved in fighting a glowing blue monster, he gets uncomfortable at bad words.

Upon closer notice, I realise he isn't looking away from my eyes. "What are you looking at?" I rasp from behind my clenched teeth.

"Your eyes," he says. "They're glowing green."

The woman is now stitching the wound shut. It doesn't hurt almost as much as the opening of the wound. "You can let go," I tell Liam.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I tell him and flash him my best encouraging smile. "It doesn't hurt."

He steps back as the woman finishes up the stitching. She bandages me up tightly and asks me to sit up.

I push myself up and apart from a small sting of pain, the pain has noticeably subsided.

"Does it hurt?"

I shake my head. "Thank you...um..."

Her lips turn up into a warm smile. "Ms McCall," she says.

"Oh!" I say. "You're Scott's mom!" She smiles and nods.

"The others are waiting at the front desk," Liam interjects suddenly, his phone in hand.

"I'll go," Ms McCall decides. "If anything happens, you need to be here to keep her from getting hurt."

Ms McCall leaves and all noise ceases apart from the humming buzz of machinery behind the walls. Liam is looking down at his hands, firmly clasped in his lap.

Finally, I say, "My eyes are brown."

He looks up from his current occupation of twiddling his thumbs. "I know," he says.

"You said they were green."

"They were. They were glowing."

"That's not possible," I protest. "My eyes are brown, always have, always will be."

He hops down from his seat on the bench and closes the vast floor space between us. "You're. Not. Human."

The door swings open and in rushes a wave of people. Scott leads a group compiled of Stiles, Malia, Kira and Lydia.

I shrink away from their stares as they crowd around me. No one knew what to say and the air was too thick and too tense.

I inappropriately grin. "How was Senior Scribe?"

Scott talks first. "We got your friend - Lex, I think - to sign your name."

The thick, heavy silence falls hard on us again until Liam tells them about my immunity to anaesthesia. "I'm telling you, it wore off halfway through the procedure. She started screaming and I had to come and hold her down so your mom could finish."

"That anaesthetic is for humans. From the looks of things, something she's not," Stiles says.

"Ha. Ha. Real funny, you know you really fooled me there, guys. You can stop joking now. I totally fell for it," I laugh. But they don't. In fact, they look more confused than anything.

"This is real," Liam says. "This is all real."

I am still laughing. "I get it, okay? Hilarious. Fucking hilarious, now bring the cameras out, and also that hot human from before. Really good execution, by the way. I actually believed it."

Half of me is hellbent on knowing this is fake but the other half is hesitant to write it off as just a joke. Scott flicks his hand out, brown claws shooting out where nails should be. "These are real," he says bluntly.

"No, this is not happening." I shake my head until I feel the liquid sloshing around in my brain.

Scott sounds about a thousand years old when he says this. "It's always hard at the start, but you'll learn to control it, we've all gone through it."

I think about it for a while, my eyes boring into a damp stain on the ceiling. "Do you have any idea what I am then?"

Scott sighs. "We can find out."

And that is the story is how, after a night of passing out, fighting the supernatural and going under surgery, I ended up crammed in the back of an overcrowded Jeep with a fifteen year old werewolf on my lap, heading to a vet which was not actually a vet.

"You mean I left my cat Misty with a supernatural doctor?" I ask.

Liam nods. "But he's still technically a vet," he says.

"To werewolves!"

There are about seven of us in the car and five cramped in the backseat. Liam is perched comfortably on my lap but my side hurts from being squashed into the door. I would have never practiced driving an overcrowded car, but I seem not to have much of a say in it, being the newbie of the group.

It's the morning after the fight but, surprisingly, I'm not tired. The Jeep rolls along until finally it pulls in to the vet clinic's parking lot. I jump out of the car after Liam and the others trickle out one by one.

The front desk of the clinic is vacant. We wait there for a few minutes and, upon realising that nobody is going to open the door to see where Dr Deaton is, I reach to push it open myself. This was a bad idea, because as soon as my fingers graze the door, I am shocked with a sensation that resembles being electroshocked.

I curse and jump back. "What was that?" I ask, cradling my hand to my chest.

"Mountain ash," Stiles says. "No supernatural creature can pass through it."

Hearing the commotion, Dr Deaton finally decides to haul his ass out of the back of the clinic. He looks me up and down. "Who is this?" His voice sounds calm and knowledgeable.

"My name is Arden. Arden Caraway," I say.

Scott interjects. "We don't know what she is," he says. "She says she was drawn to the fight. Like it was a magnet, I think is what she means. When the monster clawed at her, it triggered some sort of supernatural element deep inside of her. She had talons when we went to check on her, probably her body reacting to the pain.

"When my mom put her under anaesthetic, it wore off just minutes later. Liam says her eyes glowed green in the face of pain as well. We don't know what she is and she doesn't either. Up until hours ago, she hadn't even heard of the supernatural world."

"When you put it like that, I don't sound as human as I first thought," I say and bite my lip, distressed.

"I see," Dr Deaton says. "Come through." He opens the door and the others pour through. I hesitate just a second before entering, expecting it to throw me back out again.

I am told to sit on the metal bed and the cold metal sends shivers up my body.

"Now, Arden, I'm about to perform a few basic tests. They won't be painful, but maybe a little uncomfortable." He proceeds to do the normal procedures performed at general doctor's check ups. Checking my temperature, my ears, breathing and heart rate. It's a bit of a let down, really. I thought as a supernatural creature they would use some sort of potion or telekinesis to carry these tests out.

"Nothing unusual?" I ask hopefully.

"Nothing unusual," he confirms. "Has your mother ever mentioned anything to you in relation to this, or even ancestry with unusual legends?"

I shake my head. "My father was killed in a car crash when I was four. The police couldn't find anything unusual about the circumstances, though."

"Interesting," he says. He sighs. "I know it's hard, but can you try and trigger your physical supernatural attributes?"

"I...I don't know how," I say quietly.

"Just focus. Really, really hard," he says. "Focus on it happening. Picture it in your mind."

I exhale and picture it, talons growing in place of nails, eyes glowing. I try to imagine how it would feel, changing into something else, a fierce creature, not a weak teenage girl.

I can feel it on the tips of my fingers. I'm almost there, my mind almost touching that locked part of me. That monster inside of me. The mental elastic breaks suddenly and I crack open my eyes suddenly.

I am still human.

My nails are still nails and painted in chipped red polish and as I look into the chrome surface of the bed, see that my eyes are the same dull dark brown as usual.

I exhale. "I can't do it."

"Try again."

So I try again. And again. And again. But to no avail, I am still human.

"I can't do it," I say again.

The doctor thinks for a few moments before coming up with an idea. "I have an idea, but it may be painful."

I bite my lip. "I'll do it. I want to know."

"Okay," he says. "In every instance of your transforming, it's been triggered by pain. If I cut your arm, a shallow wound might even be enough, it could be enough to turn you."

"Okay, I'm ready," I say shifting around in my seat.

"I need someone to hold her still," he says. Scott volunteers and secures my arm with a hand gripping my wrist and elbow, my bones feeling like cracking under his crazy strength. "Ready?"

I nod. The shallow cut is enough to make me gasp, but not much else. The doctor cuts deeper until tears run down my cheeks. It's still not enough to make me turn though. The doctor's face is pulled into a pained grimace and I know he's not enjoying this any more than I am.

All of a sudden, something in me breaks and the monster in me is let out of its cage. I throw my head back and scream. I feel the talons breaking through the skin above my nails. Scott slams me down onto the floor and my back lets out a sickening crunch. Kira rushes forward and lays a hand on Scott's arm.

I let out an argh sound. "What was that for?" I asked him and then groaned again.

"Let's just say we've dealt with a lot of dangerous creatures before," Kira says. She sounds nervous and jittery. "He was worried, that's all."

"Why are you consoling him when there's blood pooling beneath me?" I shift and immediately regret it. "And my back may be broken."

"Someone help her up," Lydia says pointedly. "She's still recovering from the scratches."

Scott looks too shaken to do anything other than look guilty, which leaves Liam to guide me up to the bed again. A crack my neck and stretch my back. A towel is pressed onto my cut, but the mess is already evident. Drops of blood dot the floor and bed, and my shirt is yet again decorated with a smear of blood.

"Any idea, doc?" I ask him.

"I'm not sure," he says. "I've personally never seen anything like it, but I may have to talk to others to find out what she is." He unfolds my good hand. "The talons were black, which hints that her form is a bird. Something similar to a harpy, perhaps, but her eyes glow green which lead me to believe otherwise. Regardless, I've seen nothing like it before."

"When can I expect to find out?" I ask.

"Days, weeks, months, I can't tell you for sure," he says remorsefully.

I nod slowly. "Well, thank you anyway," I say. "I appreciate it."

After my cut is bandaged, I am packed tightly back into the noisy Jeep. Everyone is bustling and noisy, but I keep to myself. Liam talks to me occasionally, but I answer with short questions that end the conversation. It's not until he asks me if I'm worried about what I am that I answer honestly.

"I'm confused. But scared, mostly scared," I murmur. It doesn't matter that I speak quietly, because he is close enough to hear me. "How am I going tell my mom? Will it be easy? What can I do? Can I heal? Can I kill? It's eating me alive."

"It's okay," he says and pats my knee. "If it makes you feel any better, I ran through the town naked in wolf form during the last full moon."

"Ohh! You were the naked boy running through the streets that everybody was talking about!" I grin at him as he turns red. "I heard parents had to lock their children inside because of that little impromptu streaking display you put on."

"What's your address?" Stiles cuts in. I take a moment before releasing he's asking me. I tell him where my house in and continue teasing Liam about his nude run through the town some more. By the end of the car trip, I have him redder than a tomato.

I bid them goodbye when we get to my house. Scott tells me to be careful and tell him at school tomorrow if anything strange happens. I nod, but I'm more scared of my mother's reaction to me disappearing for the night.

I walk in the door clad in my grey blood-stained tee and bandaged arm and wonder what my mother would think.

"Mom?" I call out. "Mo-" I stop suddenly as she comes through into the hall. "I'm sorry, mom."

She doesn't look disappointed-just worried. I run up to hug her and feel immediately at ease. After everything that's happened tonight, this is what I need-to be in my mother's arms, feeling safe and relaxed.

"What did you do to yourself?"

My mom and my relationship was always based on trust, and we'd always been closer than mother and daughter-she was my best friend. So I decided to be honest with her. "Would you believe me even if the story I told sounded like absolute crap?"

"You know I'd always believe you, sweetheart," she says.

"Okay. Well, I was on the way to Senior Scribe and then there was this guy-well, not really a guy, more like some sort of creature and he was attacking some people in my class who are also werewolves." I pause to look at her confused face. "Crazy, right? Anyway, then I had talons because the pain triggered something supernatural in me but then I passed out. But all was good because then Scott's mom stitched me up." I lifted my shirt to show her my bandages. "After that, we went to the vet who is not really a vet and he tried to trigger my other form in the way of pain, which is how I got this." I slide up my jacket sleeve and show her my second wound. I take a deep exhale because, during that awesome story, I forgot to breathe between my sentences.

She smiles and puts a hand on my shoulder. I can see right through her smile into the disappointment and fear and her hand is tense, but I let it go. "You've had a tiring night, sweetheart. You might benefit from a good lie down." She looks like she's thinking carefully about how to word the next sentence. "Maybe then your head will be clear enough to make sense of last night."

Even though my mom doesn't believe me for once (I don't blame her; I wouldn't believe me, either), as I go upstairs to my room, I feel more excited and filled with adrenaline than I have been in a while.