Lily woke up to the shrill sound of her alarm clock. She slammed her hand on the white button, rolling over as she groaned. It was strange that she'd dreamt of her childhood, of a memory that she hadn't even told her adoptive mother. Even as a nine year old, she knew how to lie. When the police found her sleeping on a bed of leaves clutching a silver necklace, she simply said that there was "no one out there". One of the officers fake-sympathised with her and told her she was sorry about the brutal way her parents died, but she knew it was all a lie. Adults didn't care. He hadn't cared. He had killed her parents. 

If only she could have seen his face.

Sometimes even to her, the wolf in that memory seemed like a dream. She'd gotten a therapist since then, and the therapist had said that that memory was probably due to the fact that she was nine, she was grieving, and her mind was desperate to conjure up any image of comfort. 

But there was one piece of evidence that suggested that she had not been dreaming. On that fateful day she'd come back with a silver streak in her hair, one reminiscent of the silver fur that had formed on the wolf's body as both of their lives had been saved by the necklace. Supposedly. Lily thought, looking back, that it had all seemed stupid, like a paranormal book written by an eleven year old.

Whatever.

It was the first day of senior year. She'd be leaving soon, and while she would miss her friends, she was fully prepared to leave the teachers behind. Lily slipped on her red backpack as she left the house, the same ratty one she'd had for the past three years, and set off on the journey to Birch High. The school name was kind of dumb, but it did echo the abundance of nature there was in the area, so the name wasn't completely unprecedented. 

It was in her English class, the first period of the day, that she realised that there was a new transfer student. "Hello, my name is Hunter." He shifted awkwardly on his feet, his face set with an anxiety she could relate to. Introductions were scary, Lily noted in sympathy, especially when a teacher was forcing only you to do one. His eyes seemed to reflect the light in a way that was unusual, reminding Lily vaguely of a cat. His hair was a deep brown, almost black, and he looked like he hadn't brushed it for a while. Hm. Maybe she shouldn't be thinking such unflattering things about strangers. It was none of her business.

Except for--- fuck. Except for the singular silver streak that ran through the side of his hair. She shot up straight in her seat, her chair shifting slightly forwards (fuck, these chairs were so bad) and Hunter reacted at the sound immediately, his gaze locking onto hers. 

A few faces turned around to look at Lily, while she blushed. They probably thought she knew him. The other kids had expressed numerous times that she thought she had dyed her hair, even though she told them multiple times that she hadn't, that it was natural. But it was alright, even she wouldn't believe herself if she was them. After all, she'd known some of them since she was five (before the incident), and her hair had looked completely natural back then.

Her previous thought about the fact that it was none of her business became clouded by the fact that this was now very much her business, whether she liked it or not. And--- ugh, even the only seat available was right next to Lily. Was she living in a romance novel or some shit?

Lily had chosen that seat because it meant that she could spread out all her things over both tables that had been squished together to form a desk, squished together in the same way as all of the other tables in the classroom. So she sighed as Hunter sat down, mentally waving goodbye to the freedom she had with two desks. 

"Hi," he whispered. Oh boy, was he anxious. She was supposed to be the anxious one here! His hesitation, weirdly enough, made her confidence boost up, but she simply said nothing in response. Not out of rudeness, but out of one simple thing: nope, I'm not dealing with that.

He didn't say anything about the fact that their hair was the same. It was almost as if he wasn't even surprised.

Halfway through first period she'd almost completely forgotten that Hunter existed (ah, bliss), making her way peacefully to second period, Biology, and realising throughout the day that he was in every single one of her classes! (unfortunately he had to do the stupid introduction in every single one of them). Who in their right mind would take biology, chemistry, and physics all in the same semester? Except Lily of course. Her friends had already accepted her to be a little crazy. Lily couldn't help but be interested in things, and her favourite subject was biology. This was the year that they were actually going to get more in depth about the human body, something which she had been craving to learn about for quite a while. She'd thought about being a vet, or a doctor, or maybe a research scientist. She was still trying to decide, but hey, at least she was getting good grades, unlike one of her friends, Alicia, who she was pretty sure was now retaking junior year due to her epic fail the first time around. Nonetheless, Lily loved her friend anyway. It was going to take a lot for her to drop a friend, and grades wasn't one of them. Somehow, Alicia was one of the sweetest people around, she was just working a lot, taking care of her siblings, and so inevitably, her attendance had dropped. 

It be like that sometimes.

Whatever, back to Hunter. Ugh. Hunter had been taking up too much of her brain space, all within one day. She didn't think she could stand seeing him for the next 179 days. Perhaps he was taking different classes next semester though? She hoped so...

He'd tried to talk to her a few more times, but as Lily began to respond more tersely, he backed off. Finally, a guy who got the message. 

In physics, he was seated in the row in front of her, which gave her a front row view to his neck tattoo. She related to the idea of wanting to get a tattoo basically as soon as you turned the right age, and to be fair, it was a real pretty one. A wolf in dark green ink, howling up to a moon against the backdrop of a forest.

She remembered her dream this morning, and wondered faintly why she was getting all this wolf messaging today. Come to think of it, the wolf's eyes were not that far off from Hunter's, but the coincidence was still unnerving to her. She shivered.

Who was Hunter?

As Lily walked to school the next day, she checked her notifications and saw a text from Becca, who was saved under her contacts as Yapper. Won't be coming to school today. Yeah, Lily wasn't surprised. She sighed slightly at the knowledge however, scraping her foot against the concrete in vague frustration that the only two friends she had really sucked at showing up to school. Alicia had a lot of issues at home, while Becca was simply just not bothered.

As she entered the gates and stepped out into the hallway, Lily slammed her locker door shut, eyes bleary in the 8am light. But just as she was about to walk away, she saw hair sporting a white streak approaching her in her peripheral vision. Hunter. She didn't have a lot of opinions on him yet, apart from the fact that he was slightly weird and slightly too much like her, with the hair and all. She watched him look down at the floor. God, for someone so shy, he is pretty confident when it comes to just walking up to people. 

"Hey!" he waved at her nervously, as if she was about to threaten him just for talking to her. While she wasn't that enthusiastic, she was dying to ask him something she hadn't gotten the chance to the day before.

 "Your hair," she whispered to him. "You dyed it, right?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Did you dye yours?" Lily was silent. 

"Yeah, I thought so."

"But..." she murmured. "How is that possible?" Lily clenched her fists, gritting her teeth. "Is this hair, like, a genetic condition? It happened when," she closed her mouth, remembering that she didn't want to tell a stranger it had appeared when she'd been close to dying. People didn't tend to like when you trauma dumped on them. And she hated their: I'm sorry, and I feel so bad when she told them about her family. Hunter frowned at her demeanour, pursing his lips but not responding. Why was she acting like she has no memory of what happened that day? Was it because of her parents' death? Possession of the necklace should enhance the memories, not deplete them. It had been hypothesized that her parents' murderer was still after the necklace, so it was a miracle she'd kept it safe all these years. But who knew what would happen when she turned eighteen. Eighteen was the age of the owner where the necklace's magic would became a beacon to everyone like them. She would be easily trackable. She would be much safer in the School Of The Immortals.

"You know," Hunter said. "Isn't it funny how silver hair is associated with old people? I heard that if silver hair presents in youth, you have the wisdom of someone who's already lived a lifetime." There. That was a big enough hint. Lily's mouth twitched.

"Or it means that we're die soon. Or we're just really stressed. There are a fucking number of reasons, Hunter."

"But it's like we have already met death." Fuck. Could he be any more clear? Lily was pretty slow on the uptake, but then again, it took some humans a long time to accept that the supernatural existed. He'd been swept up by the school at age ten, the starting age of the immortal school. It had been his father who was the wolf with Lily that day, and Hunter had inherited the immortal trait too, luckily without a brush with death. In history class, they said there was a time period where they called the silvers "Lost", until Hunter's father became the first silver immortal in a long time. The "Lost" time period was a time where the necklace was suspected to be in Lily's family's possession, as the necklace had last been seen with Lily. The counsel knew that someone else had been with Hunter's father that day he'd become an immortal, but as the necklace had chosen Lily as the Owner, no one was able to come touch it. Lily's family was honestly a mystery to the counsel, as they had died before they could be investigated for possession of the necklace. Hunter's father, as a respected member of the counsel, had insisted that they not disturb Lily's adolescence by forcing her to go to a non human school, a notion which the others on the counsel had reluctantly agreed to. But Lily was seventeen now, and the School wasn't wasting any more time, so they'd sent Hunter, at the age to take on missions, to go and get her. She needed to get to the School before she turned eighteen, otherwise she'd be completely defenceless. He'd get her out soon enough. Her adoptive parent, (parents?) Hunter wasn't sure how she was living, didn't have to agree, the School was close enough to Birch High that there was no need to move. The problem was, Lily needed to agree. There was a veil over the school that prevented regular people from being able to see it, but there was no way to put a veil over the hair of an immortal. It was the one thing that was the bane of the School's existence: sending immortals to take out other supernaturals would reveal who they were immediately.

Anyway. Lily started at the words he'd sent to her through the Connection, but he watched her shake her head in real time, as if that would rid her of the words running through her mind. He watched her mouth the word "death". Hunter hoped that that word struck a chord in her, that his implication that she'd already died would be enough for her to connect it with what his father had said all those years ago about immortality, a story Hunter had had recounted to him many times as a child, but given what he'd witnessed earlier, maybe she simply--- didn't remember. Either that or she was deeply stuck in denial.

He'd put on the facade of being shy for a little while longer as that was what was shown in her stats for compatibility. She was an anxious kid, no doubt from having seen death in front of her own eyes, and the only way she felt comfortable with people was if they treated her with the caution that one would if they were approaching a spooked cat. They needed to show her that they were harmless, that they wouldn't hurt her, that they wouldn't try to exert control over her. Lily hated that the most. Forced submission.

Lily's eyes moved slightly to the side of Hunter, and her eyes brightened, a stark contrast to her earlier confusion. Her expression smoothed out, furrowed brows disappearing and lips quirking upwards. 

"Alicia!" she exclaimed. Hunter looked behind him, accepting that she'd lost all attention to him now. Whatever. He'd figure out a way to get through to her. But the level of denial she was in meant that he'd have to show her something absolutely undeniable (without breaking the counsel rules, of course).

Lily placed her arm around Alicia's shoulder, smiling at her. "How were your classes? It must be hard being with totally different people this year..."

"Becca's not here again, huh?" sighed Alicia. Becca was so hit or miss with attendance, it was always a guess with her since there was a 50/50 chance she'd actually show up to class. She didn't have home issues or anything, she was just a bit lazy, preferring weed and socialising to calculus and Shakespeare. And to be honest, some people were just like that. School wasn't for everyone, although Lily did believe that everyone should get their GED at some point. 

Her friend group was exclusively made up of girls, Lily was honestly a little scared of boys given the first school she'd been to. They freaked her out, why couldn't they just act...normal? But the fact that they'd bullied her meant that they'd seen her as some kind of threat, something which she lowkey felt proud of. 

Earlier she felt like she was hallucinating, with the way her thoughts were shrouded in Hunter's voice, as if he was genuinely talking to her. He even looked at her as if he was saying it, but no words had come out of his mouth. That's why she was relieved to see Alicia--- she didn't need to deal with schizophrenia on a Tuesday. 

That night, Hunter's voice had even invaded her dreams. Was she developing a crush on him or something? There didn't seem to be any other reason for his weird invasion of her thoughts. 

Hunter was sitting in an open field, picking at grass absently. Behind him was a wolf. No, behind him was the same wolf as in her memory as a child. He didn't seem afraid, however. As the wolf rubbed his muzzle against his cheek, Hunter tilted back into the touch, staring straight back at Lily, as if trying to tell her something. 

Fuck, why was he confusing even in her dreams? Why couldn't this kid be normal? And then there was that word, that word that kept haunting her...

Immortal.