Lena Matthews

"Is she going to say anything?" Mrs. Pearce asked, irritation starting to creep into her usual diplomatic tone.

"Give her time," said Jessica. "She has a lot to process."

"I can get Makaya. Maybe she can help." Mrs. Pearce suggested.

"Makaya is on probation. She's not supposed to be doing things like that. I can't believe she was even scheduled to be watching her." Jessica pointed out.

"She's the only one in this town I trust," said Mrs. Pearce.

"You have a husband and daughter," said Jessica.

"Your point?" Mrs. Pearce asked.

"You know what? I don't care who you trust." Jessica snapped. "You need to be putting the town first, not your own self interest."

"I have done more for this town than you know," said Mrs. Pearce.

"Stop." My voice sounded weird and unnatural. If their goal was to annoy me into talking, it worked.

We were in the main office where I had had the checkup. I was even lying on the same couch, where I had been all night. When I reached my hand between the cushions, I could feel the cold metal of the fire poker that I had stashed there on my first day in Atalka. I wasn't sure whether to laugh at the fact that no one had found it, or to break down completely at the reminder that everything used to be so simple.

"Ivy? How do you feel?" Jessica asked.

"Where's Flora?" I asked. My gaze was focused on the wall in front of me, and I didn't trust myself to look anywhere else.

"We're going to focus on that later," said Jessica. "For right now, Mrs. Pearce has some questions for you."

I nodded.

"Okay." said Mrs. Pearce, clearing her throat. "How old are you?" she asked.

"Sixteen?" I answered. That didn't seem like a very important question, but I wasn't in the right mindset to handle anything else.

"Any birthmarks?" Mrs. Pearce asked. I shook my head again. "Near death experiences?"

"I..." I wasn't sure how to explain what had happened. "I think I got slammed really hard into a tree by a dryad." I glanced down at my right hand slowly, and turned it so that my palm faced up. My Forbidden brand was now visible to everyone. "Did I die?" I asked hollowly.

"Think of it like a second chance," said Jessica. "We're going to give you a little bit more time, but your family's worried."

"My family?" A chill clenched my heart. "They... I can't." I muttered incoherently. "I can't."

"It's okay," said Jessica sympathetically. She couldn't come close to understanding that my own house was about to become my worst nightmare. I stared at the Forbidden brand on my wrist, absolutely terrified.

"How did this happen?" I asked. I was mostly talking to myself, but Jessica took the question literally.

"When someone is killed by one of the Forbidden, there's always the chance that they could come back as the thing that killed them. We're not sure why she did it, but Flora Delaney took your life. Since she was a dryad, we think that you've become a dryad too." She explained.

I understood exactly how all of that worked, but I never expected to experience any of it firsthand. I had expected to feel different now that I was no longer human, but I didn't. Everything was exactly the same. I still needed my glasses on top of everything, which was the biggest ripoff of this whole situation.

"Ivy, I know that you're going through a lot, but I would really appreciate it if you could tell me anything about what you saw. We've been trying to figure out what's going on, but we're lost." said Mrs. Pearce.

"She was only there for a second." I explained. "There was so much snow, and I could barely see her. She did something to that tree. It just got worse and worse, and then Flora got worse and worse..."

"The way to kill a dryad is to kill the tree they share a connection with. Somehow, whoever did this knew exactly what to do. This isn't some outsider. She's one of us." said Jessica.

"While we have a comprehensive list of each Forbidden that takes up residence here, none of them match what we're dealing with." Mrs. Pearce confessed.

"That's impossible. You have to know. You have to be covering for someone." I accused.

"We're not," said Jessica.

"Why don't we move on?" Mrs. Pearce proposed. "Let's talk about getting you back home."

"I'm not ready yet." I said quietly. "Can I get some more time to figure this out?"

"Sure." said Jessica. She reached into her pocket and pulled out my phone. "I called your parents last night and told them you were sleeping over. Just say that you're staying with us a bit longer."

I grabbed my phone back from Jessica, but glanced back down at my Forbidden brand. It practically looked burnt into my skin. After I set my phone down, I tried to rub it off again.

"Why don't you text someone?" Jessica asked me gently. Something in her expression looked so melancholy that I instantly felt guilty.

The first thing I saw when I got my phone was a text from Finn, asking where I was. He was probably at school by now. I'm staying with the Reynolds for another day. Can you tell Mom? I texted quickly before setting the phone on the couch, the screen facing down. I hugged myself pathetically, dread settling in my chest.

Mrs. Pearce muttered something to Jessica before leaving. Jessica pulled a chair awkwardly close to the couch and sat down with her arms crossed. I shifted so that I was staring directly at the ceiling. "How old are you really?" I asked Jessica, my gaze focused on the light fixture above me.

"Two hundred and eighteen," said Jessica. Her voice sounded defeated, like she was the one who had just been murdered instead of me.

"That's a really long time." I mused, mostly to myself.

"There's a reason I don't like talking about it." said Jessica. She cleared her throat before talking again, a new energy in her voice. "Now, are you ready to go?"

"Go?" I asked, confused.

The outdoors hummed with an unfamiliar energy. Everything looked and felt unnaturally intense and alive. Despite everything, I felt a smile across my face as I took in my surroundings. I was appreciating everything for the first time.

"Do you feel it?" Jessica asked.

I nodded excitedly. I was floating on a high from the greenery around me. It was almost disappointing when I had to get in the car so we could drive to the woods by Atalka Academy. As soon as the door shut, I felt sealed off from everything. I ended up rolling the windows down, not caring when the breeze threw my strawberry blonde hair back in my face.

When the car rolled to a stop, I tried to untangle my hair. I halfway managed to do it, and impatiently exited the car like a dog that was trying to get to the park. I looked up at the gray clouds that were concealing the sun from me with disdain.

"Come on." Jessica instructed.

I nodded, then made the mistake at glancing back at Atalka Academy. My mood dropped instantly as I remembered that Finn and Aurelie were there, attending classes without knowing that their sister was never going to be the same again. I forced my eyes away from the Academy and followed Jessica into the woods. I already knew where she was going before she even told me, and ended up leading the way.

I could feel something in me buzz with warmth the closer we got, like someone had implanted an invisible compass in my heart. Without a single wrong turn, we were back in the same place I had died.

"Whoa." I murmured. What was once a large sprawling tree was a wooden corpse laced with poisonous frost that the sun had failed to melt away. It smelled like death, and the places where the frost had gotten intense were still blackened. It looked a lot more harrowing in the plain light of day.

I turned and kept walking, my heart tugging me to some unknown place. We walked through a small clearing in the forest before my eyes finally landed on a tall oak with a small Forbidden brand carved into its heart.

"So is that -" I held up a finger and Jessica instantly stopped talking. I didn't even think twice about basically telling a two-centuries-old vampire to shut up, but I was absolutely fascinated by the oak. It emanated an aura that resonated with me. My hand slowly moved to touch the tree.

Instantly, I felt overcome with nausea. My soul was suddenly thrown in a catapult, and I disassociated from everything. I couldn't feel where I was standing anymore. My senses expanded, taking up the entire forest. Somewhere, I could hear the river running furiously, and somewhere else I could feel a breeze picking up. I tried to gather everything into something cohesive, but my senses had been spread so thin that I couldn't find myself anymore.

"Ivy!" Cold hands gripped my shoulder blades tightly and pulled me away.

"Hm?" I asked casually. I was lost in a daze from feeling everything, and it took me a second to find my senses again.

"You need to be careful." Jessica warned. "You can lose yourself if you plunge into everything like that."

"Has that ever happened to you?" I asked. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the oak tree.

"No." said Jessica. "I've just heard things about it." I looked at Jessica, who was examining the tree with something bordering on apathy. To her, it was just some plant that happened to be made of the same material that could kill her.

My hands subconsciously wandered back to touch the tree again, only to be intercepted by Jessica's grasp. "Seriously?" she asked.

"I wasn't thinking." I confessed.

"Well, you need to start thinking. What do you know about an organization called the Agency?" Jessica asked.

My body tensed.

"I think Taylor mentioned them at some point. They sounded... ominous." I said.

"They're a lot more than ominous," said Jessica. "The Agency is a real threat at all times. They're a bunch of brainwashed warriors with only one goal: to wipe out everyone with this mark on their skin." Jessica tied up her dark hair so that I could see the Forbidden brand on her neck.

"They're brainwashed?" I asked. I thought back to just a couple of months ago, when Finn and I were ready to yell at dad for actually agreeing to speak with one of the Forbidden. We had been so shocked at the idea of a Forbidden with the ability to speak in full sentences. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that we were raised on nothing but lies. How many innocents has my father killed? How many lives would I have taken if I had never known?

"That's not the point," said Jessica. "A long time ago, this brand appeared on the skin of certain supernatural species, and we've been hunted ever since."

I turned back to stare at the tree again. If dryads were tied to a tree, then this one was mine. I couldn't explain exactly how I knew, but I did. I hadn't known about dryads being tied to a tree before, which was a relief. If I didn't know, that meant that the Agency didn't either. Probably. Maybe.

I could hear a faint whooshing sound before I caught a glimpse of a silver dagger gliding through the air, stabbing the fabric of my shirt and pinning me to my own tree. A shooting pain went through my entire body, causing me to involuntarily seize up. I looked back at Jessica, who was still in a throwing stance. I gritted my teeth in irritation and pulled the dagger out of the oak. Gingerly, I touched the scar it had left on its trunk.

As soon as my hand connected with the scar, the tree began to stitch itself together, providing some relief from the pain.

I was suddenly hyper aware of everything around me, and could feel the heartbeat of everything resonating with my own rage. A stinging nettle sprang from its hibernation in the ground and tried to wrap around Jessica's leg. She leaped out of the way at the perfect time. Using the distraction, I threw the dagger towards Jessica, my frustration only building. Jessica caught the dagger as it flew by her ear and twirled it in her fingers expertly.

"Showoff." I muttered as Jessica tucked the dagger into her coat.

"You mean survivor." Jessica corrected.

"I get your point. Be prepared at all times." I said. I was starting to calm down, but I was still annoyed. "Have you ever tried talking to the Agency? Maybe if they knew that you were good, they'd leave you alone."

"That's not what happened with Rosie."

"Sorry." I said, realizing how naïve and conceited I sounded. "It's just..." There was no easy way to explain everything. "Why me?" I asked, changing the subject completely.

"What do you mean?" Jessica asked.

"Why did I come back?" I clarified.

"No one knows why some come back and others don't. A lot of Forbidden think it's something called predispositions. If you were already descended from one of the Forbidden or your traits match the Forbidden that killed you, then you have the right predispositions to come back." Jessica explained.

I wondered how much Flora had known about me. She knew my real name, she knew about the Agency, so who's to say that she didn't know about my grandmother too? Maybe she had killed me knowing that I would come back. Was this what she wanted?

"I'm sorry it's happening again." said Jessica pensively.

"What do you mean?" I asked, but there was no response. Jessica was watching me silently, and I wondered if she saw me or Rosie this time.

A/N: I hoped you enjoyed our first chapter featuring Forbidden Lena. This is about to be a crazy adjustment, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Lena will cope with her new identity. This story is about to get a lot more complicated, so stick around for what comes next!

QOTD: Do you believe in the predispositions theory? If so, what do you think Lena's were?