Vampirical -- Lauren Jauregui x Reader

Awkward

Man, he was intimidating.

"You can have Y/n back." Ally tried to bargain and the man's eyes found mine for a moment before flicking back to Ally.

"The truce has been broken and is therefore void-"

"No, you don't have to do that." Camila's voice came from somewhere and soon I saw her standing beside the man in the doorway, bowing her head.

"With all due respect, Alpha," she began, raising her head to look up at him as he towered about her, "the truce does not need to be made void. We can bring the girl back under our protection, Leia can wipe her memory and she won't have any knowledge of us."

He seemed to be considering it for a moment but then, with a gesture of his hand, two other people came to take Camila's arms. She struggled against them for a moment but was then pulled outside. The man she'd called 'Alpha' then entered the cottage fully, stood in the center of the room, and took a series of deep sniffs before turning to Normani seeing as she was the closest to him.

"Where is your Alpha?" He growled and the entire room went deadly silent. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath and that included me.

Then, in that absolute silence, a quiet knock seeped through the air and the man's attention snapped onto the cellar door.

"Oh, Lauren." Ally muttered quietly as the man stormed over to the door, took another deep inhale, and then tried to open it.

"It- it won't open!" Dinah informed him, making him snarl at her, "It's enchanted and you're not one of the people who can open it."

"Then open it!" He thundered and I cowered in my seat, curling my legs up and subconsciously hugging them to my chest as I watched the scene unfold.

"We can't." Ally spoke up.

"Can't or won't?"

"Won't." She corrected, "But that's because doing so would endanger the entire town, and then the surrounding area."

He growled, baring his teeth, and the people who'd grabbed Camila came back in with her struggling between their arms, growling and hissing at them both and when she switched from the boy with white hair to the girl with a sharp undercut, I saw a change in her eyes too. It wasn't like Lauren's, where they turned lighter and had deep red bruises around them; they seemed bigger and darker than before.

"Can she open the door?" He demanded, and I saw the tension in the girls' jaws.

He opened his mouth, likely to ask again but much louder when Dinah interrupted him.

"Yes! Yes, she can, but you don't understan-"

Camila was being carried across the floor towards the door, where she was all but thrown to her feet and she looked at it with her head tilted to the side.

"OPEN IT!" The man practically screamed, snarling and showing sharp teeth as Camila tensed up before reaching a hand to the door.

"Camila, you can't-" Ally tried but then the guy span around to glare at her and she put her hands up in surrender.

Everyone watched as Camila lifted her shaky hand. She nodded once, to herself, and then instead of opening the door, opened the slot instead. From this side, I was basically invisible, camouflage almost, so that you wouldn't even guess it was there unless you knew it was. I only knew it existed because it had saved my life.

On the other side was darkness. Just darkness, the pale glow of the lights in there. Everyone was still tense, like that moment you experience when you're watching a horror movie and you just know that something's about to jump out, and then it did.

All of a sudden, the gap in the door was filled with Lauren's face, her eyes light and bruises deep, almost purple, and her loud breath filled the room as those eyes flickered from Camila to the 'Alpha' guy, to the others, and finally to me. And I froze again, but I knew I could move if I wanted to. She wasn't paralysing me, but she was why I froze. And the rest of the room seemed to dim until we were just staring at each other, as cliche as that sounds.

And then she broke everything by rattling the door and roaring loudly, making me and everyone else flinch.

When she finally stopped, the man turned and laughed lowly, putting on a pitiful baby voice when he said, "Aww, is your leader sick?"

Normani's upper lip curled into a face of disgust as she looked the man up and down, almost as if deciding whether or not she could take him.

"Get her." The man then ordered and the two people from before as well as a few more who had crowded the house to see what was going on made their way to the cellar door.

"Wait!" I shouted, instantly wanting to clamp down on my tongue when everybody's gaze turned to me, "I- You didn't come for her, you came for me. Just do what Camila said, take me and wipe my memory or whatever. I- just leave her here." I didn't even know where those words came from, but I knew I'd stand by them.

"We can not do that." The man huffed and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as he continued, "She is a danger to your peopl-"

Oh, that really set something off inside of me.

"Yeah?" I challenged, standing from where I'd remained sat the whole time, "Cause everyone seems to fucking tell me that but you know what? Have any of you stopped to think that without me here, she'd be fine? She'd be over this addiction or whatever it is and she'd be just like Ally, or Normani, or Dinah, and if you're going to say that they're dangerous too, so are you. All of you are- are not even supposed to exist yet here I fucking am in a room full of werewolves and vampires and I'm the fucking dangerous one. I made her like that. I made her bring me here. I made this truce void. I made you all turn up here looking for something or other. And I'm making you leave. Whether you take me with you or not is up to you, but you are not going to take Lauren away from the only people who can help her get better."

And that's when Dinah place a reassuring hand on my shoulder and whispered, "They actually have a healer who would probably be able to speed up the process."

"Oh." I whispered back, my cheeks surely the deepest red they could be by now, "Well that's awkward."

The man turned back to Lauren who was still watching from the cellar, had stayed still to listen to my speech but was now rattling by the door again, and so did the pair who had detained Camila.

"This is really not a good idea." Normani sped over to his side and placed a warning hand on his shoulder. He glared at it, but she did not let go. Instead, she pushed her lips out sassily and cocked an eyebrow as if to say, 'What are you going to do about it?'.