“Dear God, I was terribly lost

When the galaxies crossed

And the Sun went dark

But dear God, You're the only North Star

I would follow this far.”

“Andy,” I whispered when he came in front of us, with a warm smile on his face.

I was surprised that he was here, willingly. Because after he stopped replying to my messages, and stopped answering my calls— which I tried after I came back to this pack, I was convinced that he— like everyone else— has given up on me too. I was convinced that he no longer wants to be associated to me and wants me to leave him alone.

And so seeing him here with nothing but warmth on his face, was surprising.

But it was a pleasant surprise.

“Olivia,” he said. And directly went for a hug.

Just like the Andrew I knew and remembered. He always liked greeting everybody with hugs.

“Where have you been?” I asked him, as he pulled away.

I know that this question coming out of my mouth is weird. Simply because I am the reason why this school was closed for a month and the reason why we probably didn't meet.

But I still asked him because I had to pretend in front of him like nothing had happened to me.

“These have been the longest few weeks of my life,” he said, sulking as he took a seat on the table.

I got seated on my previous seat and Ryder sat on the opposite to the twins while our Filipino guests threw confused looks at me.

“After the day the school was...you remember, attacked.” He did sound comfortable saying that as if the memory disturbed him. “I went running back home. As you had told me to. As soon as I reached there, I called the police. But till the time we came to school, the attackers were gone. When I went back home, I wanted to contact you and ask you if you were okay. But my before I could, my parents got an emergency call from my grandparents, saying that my grandpa— who got a heart attack, was hospitalized.

“It was such a chaos. I tried to call you but you never picked up. I would have come to Katherine's house to check up on you, but we had no time, I had to leave.”

“Where do your grandparents live?” Ryder asked.

“Peru.” He replied. “Close to the forests.”

“Then a few days passed and I gave up trying to call you. You never picked up. So I called Katherine and she told me you were okay. I had promised myself to meet you as soon as we come back, but little did I know it will take an entire month! On the top of that, my phone broke when I came back so I couldn't even contact you.”

Oh, so that's why he wasn't replying to my texts.

“Is your grandpa okay now?” Maria asked, surprising me. The fact that she was not only listening, but also concerned about a stranger's grandparents was nice.

“Urm, not exactly. But he's doing better now.” He replied, giving me a sideways glance which screamed 'who is she?’.

“The best part is, however, that I found out after coming back that the school was infact closed for an entire month because of the attack we suffered. Can you believe this! I didn't have to miss any work. Otherwise covering up would have been a struggle.”

I laughed at that and nodded. “Yup. You miss school for a day and it seems like the teacher taught the most important chapter that day, you missed the best fight and the canteen actually served decent food that day.”

“Seriously.” Ryder murmured.

From the corner of my eye I saw Rosalita giggle at my comment.

“Oh, how rude of me. I forgot to introduce you guys to some of my oldest friends, Andrew and Ryder.” I said, pointing at them respectively.

“We know Ryder.” Aiden said, for the first time since we all met. “He is one who picked us up from the airport and escorted us to the pack house.”

Aiden gave Ryder a fist bump and it seemed to me like they were friends already. I had interpreted Aiden to be a quiet person, but maybe he just didn't like our company.

“Pack house?” Andrew asked, perplexed and my eyes widened.

“Oh... he means Katherine's house. I guess he called it that because a lot of people live there.” I sent everybody panicked looks and their eyes widened as they realised that there was a human with us.

“Urm yeah.” Aiden said awkwardly and Andrew nodded, half convinced.

After that, I introduced everyone to each other and soon everyone was comfortable with each other.

Then conversations flew by and after a long time, I felt like life was normal.

<><><>

The bell rang soon. Too soon for my liking. I sighed, wishing it was longer. I honestly had fun, talking to these people and getting to know about them.

“I don't wanna go to chemistry,” Rosalita whined as we got up.

“Seriously it's the worst.” Maria grumbled too.

“Why are you complaining! You have fine arts.”

“But still! I'll have chemistry in my next period.” Maria reasoned.

“Don't you hate it too?” Rosalita turned around as she was walking down the corridor and asked me.

“Urm…” I began.

I don't hate chemistry at all. Infact I love it. It's my favourite subject and my strong point. But I didn't want to say that to them because then it felt like I was flaunting my knowledge or something.

“Are you kidding me? It's her favourite.” Ryder said as he casually dropping his arm over my shoulder, making me frown at him.

“Really?” Rosalita said, her eyes widening dramatically and she looked at me as if I had suddenly popped a second head.

I sighed. “Don't worry, you'll love it too in a day or two. Our teacher teaches very nicely.”

“Can't relate.” Ryder and Andrew both said at the same time shaking their head, making me glare at them.

“Don't you have classes too?” I said in a chastising tone as we reached outside where the chemistry class is. “Shoo!”

Chuckling at me, they both backed off with their hands in surrender and then walked away.

I shook my head in amusement and I was about to walk inside the class when I heard Rosalita take a sharp breathe beside me.

“What happened?” I asked, suddenly alarmed. These days every small stimuli seemed to do that to me.

“Oh nothing,” she replied, shyly. A small blush appearing on her cheeks.

She was obviously lying.

“You can tell me,” I insisted

She bit her lip in embarassmen, “No...I just…you might think I'm lame.”

“No it's okay.”

“You see, I have been homeschooled for most of my life, and coming to an actual school has me really hyped about things that might be normal to you.”

She pointed her finger at something in front of us, “Like 'The Populars'.”

I looked at where she was pointing to see Reece and his group of 'friends’ standing by the lockers a little far away.

There was just Reece, a girl I remembered to be Cindy's friend, another guy who was a complete douche by the way. If I remembered correctly, he had been accused of assaulting a girl in the past, and lastly, there was another girl I didn't know of.

My mouth automatically turned down in a frown and I felt hate fill my veins. Oh how I hate this person.

“What about them?” I asked, my eyes narrowing slightly.

“Oh nothing...just the fact that I have read about such popular students in so many books that I'm intrigued to know how they're in real.” Her eyes held excitement as she looked at them.

“They are shitty and horrible, forgiving and the worst people on earth.” I blurted out. Not thinking before I said.

I know that was wrong. Not every popular kid is like that. But in my mind, I was thinking about Reece and Cindy and kids like those who thought that they owned the world and could play with other people's lives.

It was my hate and venom speaking, not me. And I couldn't even stop myself.

“Seriously, stay away from them, they're not cool. They'll destroy you.” I said, as I started getting into the class.

Rosalita was kind of rooted onto her place, with a frown and a confused expression on her face.

But after a few seconds, she got in too and came to sit next to me on our desk which was at the corner end of the class.

The teacher wasn't here yet.

“Have they done something to you?” She asked me.

I sighed internally, I didn't want the conversation to go on.

“It doesn't matter if they did something to me or not. But all I want to say is that, they don't respect people they don't think are worthy enough. They play with people's feelings and love to manipulate everyone for their joy. They think that they own the world and they can do as they wish— and most importantly, none of them, respects or cares about their mate or even for that matter, their parents. How can you expect something decent to come out of such people?”

I know my speech might have come to sound biased and mean, but it was all true. None of the people in Reece's group had the record of being nice children or mates.

“That's really bad…” Rosalita murmured, her eyes slightly widened in shock and horror as she looked downwards.

I was quiet at first. Not sure what to say. Did it matter anyway? What good will my bad mouthing about them do?

But then again, she seemed like a nice girl and her innocent aura reminded me a lot of what I used to me.

And somehow, that fact alone made me want to protect her from all the toxic people out there.

“Listen, I can't speak about all the popular people out there. But Reece's group of friends in general, is horrendous.”

“Who's Reece?” She asked, with a curious expression on.

“You don't know Reece?” I was extremely confused to hear that. I thought she'd know him since he's the future alpha of the pack she's staying in.

“Reec—” I started saying, but then a little bulb switched on in my brain and I was reminded of when I had heard the alpha warn Reece. Reece wasn't supposed to meet the guests— and he had seemed to keep his promise.

“Reece is the worst of them all, the one who was the tallest and with hair.” I concluded. Not mentioning the part about him being the alpha.

Something in me told me that I should keep it a secret. For now.

“Oh,” she said, “Anyway, will you be able to come to nearby Taco Bells tomorrow?”

“Why?” I asked.

“It's my birthday!” She said, with a huge grin on her face. “Well, technically, it's Maria's birthday too, but I came out of the womb first and I'm elder.”

She seemed very proud about the little fact and that made me giggle a bit.

I could bet on the fact that if Maria was here, she would have been offended and would have fought on this fact.

Funny how I just knew these people for a few hours, and it started to feel like we've been friends...for so long.