Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rosalind McCall sighed, stretching out her limbs and listening to the sounds of her brother moving around doing his nightly exercises. Scott had been working out and practising all school break to try and get to play on the field in Beacon Hills High School’s Lacrosse team. It wasn’t that her brother was bad, he was in fact quite good at the sport, but Rose occasionally got the impression that Coach Finstock didn’t want to have to deal with Scott’s asthma.

When Scott finished up for the night, Rose decided she had had enough of last-minute studying and would turn in. It was alright for her brother, only a sophomore, but she was convinced senior year was designed to kill off students before they could clog up the higher education system. It might have been that she had a job, nothing special, just stacking supermarket shelves, and had also taken on volunteering at the hospital, which would look good when applying for further study or a job, both of which took up a decent amount of her time. Rose wasn’t willing to give up either of those, despite the potential effect they could have on her studies. Although her mum assured her that her work as a nurse supported them just fine, both Rose and Scott had gotten jobs to help out.

The volunteering at the hospital was something she enjoyed. The location was convenient for transportation, as the family only had the one car, and her mum had put in a good word for her. Originally it had just been going around with the food and tea trolleys, but when another volunteer had moved town, Rose had been asked if she would take on their job. So for 8 months now, she had been spending a little time each week with the patients in the long term care facility of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital.

Some patients were easier than others. One elderly lady, Mrs Margaret ‘call me Peg, dear’ Goodall, liked the chance to just talk at someone and tell stories. Janice Dole was deaf as a post but loved doing puzzles with her. While twenty-two year old Tony White, who had been paralysed waist down in the same car accident that had killed his parents, was usually in an understandably bad mood, stuck there until arrangements could be made. And, as bad as it sounded, Peter Hale was probably her favourite visit. Almost completely catatonic, but according to doctors making very slow, minute improvements, she sometimes used the visits as an opportunity to purge. Just sit with him and rant about whatever was bothering her that week.

~{•.•}~

What was bothering right now however, was the yell of what sounded like Scott’s best friend, Stiles Stilinski. Rose sighed again, trudging down the stairs to see what the fuss was about, or at least tell the boys to pipe down a little so she could sleep. Stepping out the front door onto the veranda in her pyjamas, Rose heard the end of Stiles’ excited sentences,

“-a body in the woods.” What?!

“A dead body?” came the familiar sound of her brother.

“No, a body of water. Yes, dumbass! It's a dead body!” It was always fun to hear Stiles’ sarcasm when directed at someone else.

“You mean like murdered?”

“Nobody knows yet. It was a girl, probably in her twenties…”

“Hold on,” Scott said with a hint of confusion, “if they found the body, then what are they looking for?”

“That's the best part…” Stiles grinned excitedly. “They only found a half! We're going.”

“Whoa, hold up,” Rose cut in from where she was leaning against the wall of the house and making the oblivious pair jump. “I thought Scott was the idiot for asking what type of body it was, now I see it’s you”, she pointed at Stiles, “for this idiotic plan.”

“Oh, come on Rose,” Stiles whined. Rose shook her head.

“No. Going into the preserve looking for half a body when the one that did it might still be out there? Not a good idea.”

“But...” Stiles trailed off, not having yet come up with a reply to that. Rose stared at him, Scott watching his best friend argue with his sister. Rose sighed for the third time that night, pinching her nose.

“You’re going to go anyway,” she said to the younger teens, more statement than question.

“Yeeess,” came the sheepish and drawn out answer from Stiles, while Scott just shrugged.

“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands in dismay. “Fine. I’ll be back in a moment, just let me get changed.”

“You’re coming too?” Scott asked surprised. Usually, when he and Stiles were up to mischief, the older teen left them to it.

“Yep. You can look for the dead body, I’ll make sure you two don’t end up dead.” Rose turned back to the house. “I am so going to regret this” she muttered under her breath.

~{•.•}~

“We're seriously doing this?” Scott asked his friend as they all got out of Stiles’ beloved blue Jeep.

“Oh, now he asks the questions,” Rose muttered reading the small wooden sign in front of them that said ‘Beacon Hills Preserve: No Entry After Dark’. Lovely, those sorts of signs were usually there for a reason.

“You're the one who always bitches that nothing ever happens in this town!” Stiles pointed out, pulling out a torch and walking into the tree line.

“I was trying to get a good night sleep before practice tomorrow,” Scott explained in a half moan as the three teens moved further into the trees. Stiles scoffed.

“Right, because, sitting on the bench is such a gruelling effort!”

“No,” objected Scott. “because... I'm playing this year. In fact, I'm playing first line.”

“Hey, that's a spirit,” Stiles clapped him on the back. “Everyone should have a dream. Even if it's an unrealistic one,” he added. Scott, choosing to ignore him and just prove him wrong tomorrow, decided to change the subject.

“Just out of curiosity,” he said. “Which half of the body are we looking for?” There was a drawn out moment of silence before Stiles gave an answer.

“Huh... I didn't even think about that.” Rose pressed her palm to her forehead in exasperation, but her brother gave a half smile at his friend’s response.

“And er... What if whoever killed the body is still out here?” he asked.

“Also something I didn't think about,” Stiles replied blasé as they started up a slope in the forest.

“It's comforting to know that you planned this up with your usual attention to details.” Stiles happily agreed with Scott, ignoring the small insult insinuated by his sentence.

“I’m going to be killed” Rose despaired. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

Part way up the slope Scott stopped, leaning against a tree as he pulled out his inhaler, the damp forest air causing his asthma to start playing up.

“Maybe the asthmatic should be the one who holds the flashlight, huh?” he suggested breathily before taking a pull of the medicine.

Upon reaching the top of the slope, the three immediately dropped to the ground as they could see and heard ahead of them the flash of searching torches and the bark of the police dogs. Stiles quickly turned off the torch and got up running as quietly as he could along the top of the slope they had just ascended. Rose and Scott exchanged a glance before running after the boy who ignored their soft calls for him to wait, instead, calling for them to hurry up.

It shouldn’t really have come as a surprise to any of them that one of them soon got caught. In this instance, it was Stiles, who was a fair distance ahead of the siblings. Fortunately for them, the distance meant that when the police called out for Stiles to freeze, the two had time to hide themselves behind trees which were only just wide enough for the task. Luck was also on Stiles’ side, despite him having a barking police dog nearly in his face.

“Hang on,” a very familiar voice called out. “Hang on. This little delinquent belongs to me.” It was Noah Stilinski, local Sheriff, Stiles’ dad, and effectively a second father to Rose and Scott after their own had left them.

“Dad, how are you doing?” Stiles said out of breath and trying to act casual, as if they had only met in the shops or something. The Sheriff was not so impressed.

“So, you listening to all my phone calls?” he asked pointedly.

“No!” Stiles grinned. “Not the boring ones…"

“So, where is your usual partner in crime?”

“Who, Scott?” Stiles asked innocently. “Scott’s home. He said he wanted to get a good night sleep before the first day of school tomorrow. There's just me... In the woods... Alone…"

The Sheriff evidently did not fully believe Stiles, as he swung his torch out into the surrounding forest and called out for Scott. Rose and Scott stayed hidden behind trees, out of sight of the search party, and hoping the dogs wouldn’t sniff them out. When Sheriff Stilinski didn’t get a reply, he grabbed his son by the scruff of his neck and steering him away and ignoring Stiles’ ‘ow’s.

“Well young man,” he said sternly. “I'm gonna walk you back to your car, and you and I, we're gonna have a discussion about something called invasion of privacy.”

As the search team moved away from where the siblings were hiding, Scott thumped his hand against a tree in frustration, cursing under his breath. Rose quickly shushed him. She understood his reasoning, Stiles was both their way home and the one carrying the torch, but it would not do to be caught now.

“Come on,” she hissed, pulling her brother back the way they had come.

~{•.•}~

Rose and Scott stumbled back through the woods, not speaking in their concentration of trying not to injure themselves in the dark. Although the sky was reasonably clear, the moon was only half full, and the trees cast long shadows over the ground, further disguising fallen twigs and branches hidden amongst the leaf litter. The damp air was cooling faster now, and mist was starting to form in the stillness of the night, further adding to their difficulty.

Scott noticed the noise first and stopped in a small clearing to listen. Pausing as well, Rose could make out a growing rumbling sound chasing away the silence. The pair barely had time to consider what it could be before dozens of deer burst out the surrounding forest, their momentum carrying them between the two, forcing the siblings away from each other. Panicked, Rose pulled herself up against a tree, out of the path of the stampede, but Scott was knocked down and tumbled along the ground.

Rose stayed leaning against the rough bark of the tree, taking deep breaths to try and calm her racing heart. It was Scott’s startled yell and the rustling sound of leaves as he fell that made her scramble up. It quickly became apparent what the shout had been about. Her brother had found the missing half of the dead girl’s body, entrails and all, her eyes blank and staring, unseeing in death. Rose reached forward and gently shut the poor girl’s eyes. Knowing there was nothing she could do, Rose turned away from the body and crouched, looking down the incline Scott had fallen down.

“Scott?” she called, squinting in the dark to try and see him. “Are you alright?” An answering groan told her that he was at least conscious.

“That doesn’t tell me very much,” Rose huffed.

“I’m good,” Scott grunted, “just gimme a mo.”

“Okay. Nice scream by the way. Very high pitched.” Rose grinned to herself, but the smile soon faded from her mouth as she heard a low growling noise from behind her.

Rose turned slowly to see a huge, red-eyed creature staring across the clearing at her. Almost wolflike in nature, it stood at least shoulder high on all fours, it’s face pulled into a snarl, showing long pointed teeth that would have no difficulty ripping her to shreds. Rose could feel her heart thumping rapidly in her chest as she futilely tried to press herself into the ground. The beast sniffed the air and prowled steadily towards the terrified teen on silent paws. Rose scrambled backwards, not trying to be quiet as the thing had already seen her. She quickly hit a tree, which rather than providing shelter as the earlier tree had, instead formed a trap, a place from which she could not get away.

Rose closed her eyes, turning her face away, not wanting to see what was going to happen, just hoping it would be over quickly. She could hear its breathing drawing closer and soon felt a hot breath against her face as it sniffed at her. The creature nosed at her a couple of times before pulling back. Wondering what it was doing Rose opened her eyes, only to be met with the creature lunging towards her, sharp teeth clamping down painfully on her waist. As they pierced her side, Rose let out a gasping cry, and Scott, hearing his sister, called out to her, going up the slope as fast as he could.

By the time Scott had reached the top of the incline, the wolfish creature had let go of Rose, nosed her once again, and, seemingly satisfied, loped off to the other side of the clearing. Scott stared at the thing that had attacked his sister, flinching back when it growled at him warningly. The creature huffed at him, then turned away, running off into the night. Scott raced over to Rose, ignoring his own scratches and bruises. Pulling her up, he ushered her away, and out of the clearing, both of them hurrying out of the forest in case the animal came back.

The siblings slowed as they reached the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by a car, and nearly laughed in relief as their adrenaline wore off. Somewhere out in the preserve, a wolf howled, and while Scott shrugged it off, Rose stared off into the forest, captivated by the deep sound, until a tugging on her sleeve pulled her away towards home.

~{•.•}~

When Rose woke the next morning, what the night before she had assumed to be a bite was only pink lines on her skin, like she had scraped her side on something rather than been bitten by inch long teeth. Deciding that she had imagined the severity of her injury last night, Rose got ready for school. She cycled in behind Scott, mostly ignoring him and Stiles’ as they got into an argument about whether there was a wolf in the forest last night or not, Stiles’ expressing his affections to an oblivious Lydia Martin, and Stiles’ blaming Scott for being too nerdy and causing him girl troubles.

Even for the first day back from holidays, the day seemed to Rose to drag on. The tedium that was school did not seem to have miraculously changed over the break, and the general gossip was only broken by the news of the body found the previous day. The teachers each gave a generic ramble about the dead girl and reminded students that it was really none of their business, implying that a murder would have no impact on the teacher expectation for student work.

Worse for Rose was the headache she had by the end of first period. It was like someone had plugged in all the sound around her straight into her brain. By the end of second period, she knew from whispered conversations that her classmate Jessica had broken up with her boyfriend of eight months, that Christine from the class next door had hooked up with a guy from Beacon Hills Community College, and that Andrew from the year below had cheated on Michelle with William. Before lunch, she had found out that the door to the staff toilet creaked when opened, that the freezer in the cafeteria had a whine that no one else could hear, and that dripping pipes in the walls were all bordering on driving her insane.

At lunch, Rose discovered that there were far more smells around the place than she really wanted to know about. The slight burning smell from the school cafeteria she could put up with. The itch that strong perfumes, colognes, and deodorants caused, she could do without, but it was bearable. The male change rooms however, Rose vowed to try and avoid for the rest of her life, even if that meant taking a far longer route to her classes.

Discovering there was a new girl, Allison Argent, in her brother’s year was found out by just observing. The ever-popular Lydia Martin, a girl in the same year and girlfriend of the captain of the lacrosse team, had already approached her and was either fishing around for gossip or making her a new friend. That wasn’t really all that surprising, as the new girl was very pretty and dressed well too. What Rose did find amusing however, was the dopy look on Scott’s face when she saw him at the end of the day. Seeing him staring across the corridor at a girl she didn’t recognise, Rose decided that she would leave him to it. Either he wouldn’t get the girl, or Stiles would get sick of his mooning over her and force Scott to do something.

~{•.•}~

By Wednesday, Rose had gotten most of her senses under control by focusing only on what was immediately around her, although particularly strong sounds or smells would break her concentration. She hadn’t told anyone what was going on with her. Her Mum and brother would only get worried, Stiles would ask hundreds of questions, and her school friends would just think it was something weird. Besides, she hadn’t had any side effects since the headache on Monday, and it was useful in finding things out, like that her geography teacher was going to give them a pop quiz on Friday.

School was going well, her job was still dull, and everything, aside from half a missing body, was going normally for this time of year. Including the dismal weather, which was currently dropping water out of the sky in a manner that made Melissa McCall worry about her children on their bikes. So Rose had gone to get Scott at the end of his shift, thankful that she was inside a dry car, and not even noticing she didn’t have the lights on until she was halfway there.

Rose pulled up to the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic as another car left the lot and was met with the sight of a slightly damp Scott with a silly smile on his face. Rose laughed at the goofy expression on his face as he stared after the other car. He didn’t even notice her until she nudged him with her elbow.

“Rose! What are you doing here?” he asked, a touch nervous.

“Come to pick you up. Mum didn’t want you riding home in this weather. I offered to get you so she could go to bed” Rose explained in an amused tone. “Now why are you standing there looking like a lovesick puppy?”

“I think I might have a date,” Scott said, almost disbelievingly. Rose decided to refrain from teasing her brother, and instead simply said,

“Congrats. You ready to head off?”

“Nearly.” Scott turned back to the clinic. “I’ve got to feed the cats and put up the dog Allison brought in.”

“Allison being the date?” Rose asked, following the younger teen inside.

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Come on lover boy. Let’s get locked up for Deaton and then we’ll go home.”

The sound of barking met their ears as they entered the building, and Scott sighed. Rather than asking, Rose shooed her brother towards the cat cages, as he knew what each cat needed, and walked towards the examination room. It wasn’t the first time an animal had been brought in when Rose was picking up her brother, as rare as that was, and depending on the reason for their visit, the animals sometimes got a bit unsettled in the strange place.

Rose entered the exam room speaking softly to the white and grey dog that was lying on the metal table in the middle of the room. The dog let out a growling bark at her, not knowing where he was or who the strange people around him were. Rose felt something small shift within her as she looked at the dog, and if she had been able to see her reflection, she would have been startled to see golden eyes staring back at her where normally eyes of brown did. The sensation passed almost as quickly as the dog quietened down, now content to let her scratch behind the ears.

“Alright then, let’s get you settled in for the night,” Rose said softly, picking up the dog and carrying him out the exam room to the kennels, careful not to bang the leg wrapped in plaster. She quickly settled the dog and, after making sure he had water and a little food, left the kennels to go home, ignoring the soft whining the dog made as she left him.

~{•.•}~

Friday was when things for Rose started getting strange again. She had gone to sleep on Thursday evening in her bed but had woken up in the grey pre-dawn outside in the middle of the preserve on a very different bed made of leaves, several of which were caught in her riot of curly hair. It was not as uncomfortable as she might have expected it to be, nor was she as cold for being outside in winter in only her pyjamas. Rose didn’t recognise where she was, not that she really expected to, but she did know that she would need to go east to get back to the town.

It was as she was getting up, carefully avoiding the rocky overhang above her head, that Rose started to sense something else other than her nearby. Not seeing anything, but deciding that staying in one place was not going to get her anywhere, Rose set out through the misty forest back towards civilisation. Thankfully she was on the right side of the creek and so didn’t have to soak herself in the freezing water.

Rose was halfway back through the preserve, and all the way awake, when she started to hear a rustling following her out on her left. Peering through what was quickly becoming fog, Rose noticed a familiar outline of what seemed to be the same large wolflike creature as bit her less than a week ago. The teen froze, heart pounding in her chest as her mind automatically thought back to the last time she saw it. While the beast had not been aggressive, it had bitten her, and that was the start of all the strangeness of this week.

Rose started slowly moving away, guessing that running would set off a chase instinct in the animal, and she wanted to avoid being hurt again if she could. Rose didn’t even realise that she was letting out soft whimpers as she backed up, but did notice that the creature had stopped following her. She almost thought that she heard it let out a whine the further away she got, but ignored it in favour of getting home again before she was seen missing. It wasn’t far for her to go, but she was confused and tired, even so, she somehow felt fit to burst with energy.

~{•.•}~

The traditional start of term party, now usually held at Lydia Martin’s house, was when everything tipped over the edge for Rose. Scott went with his new date, and having been given the car keys by their mum, leading to a hilariously awkward conversation, Rose opted to hijack the lift that he was going to have been provided by Stiles. The party was a typical high school party; teens dancing, making out in corners, or not in some the case of some couples, drinking deliberately, drinking accidentally after someone spiked the punch, and the occasional drunken stumbling.

It was part way into the night when Rose started to feel uncomfortable, dizzy and restless and like she couldn’t get enough air. Knowing that she hadn’t had much to drink and that it was extremely unlikely that she had been drugged, Rose staggered her way through the house, partly ignoring and partly not hearing people asking if she was alright, and went out onto the front steps to get some air. Feeling cold and clammy, she fumbled for her phone as she sat on the bottom step, trying to message her ride and see if Stiles could take her home. She hadn’t even gotten to the contacts when a large leather jacket was draped over her.

“You alright?” a rough voice asked. Rose looked up from her phone and saw a dark-haired guy crouched in front of her. He looked to be in his early twenties, but that wasn’t too unusual, as there were often a couple of non-school aged people at these sorts of parties. He had a solid build, tall and well defined, and though his face was slightly sullen, his blue-green eyes were concerned. Rose nodded in response to his question, which she immediately regretted, as another wave of dizziness hit her.

Derek watched the dark haired teen closely as she groaned. He had initially thought that it was one of the boys that he could smell having been bitten, but seeing the longer haired boy earlier with no ill effects, and now seeing what smelled like his sister and who definitely smelled like a were, he changed his mind. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind about who the new wolf was. Now he just had to get her out of here before anything happened.

“My name is Derek Hale,” he said helping her up and receiving a murmured offering of her name in response. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Derek helped Rose into his black Camaro just in time. Her features were already shifting and changing into that of a werewolf in a partial or beta shift. Her eyes were flickering between a dark brown and bright gold, and her fingers were slowly sharpening into claws. She didn’t even notice when, instead of taking her to her house, he drove towards the preserve.

They reached the edge of town just as Rose settled into her first ever change under the full moon. The new wolf took off almost immediately, twitching with new instincts and without a pack or even an Alpha to guide her. Derek could tell he would have his hands full keeping her corralled, but the fact that she went towards the forest rather than back to the town was always a good sign. Derek sighed, setting off in a steady lope after Rose, relying on his own knowledge of the preserve, even if he had been away for many years, and the pack instinct of wolves to keep her within reach.

~{•.•}~

Unfortunately for both the wolves, the night did not go as smoothly as Derek had hoped it would. Sometime later, after Rose had burned off most of her energy and was instead wandering around in circles methodically investigating different smells, much to Derek’s internal amusement, he heard a sound that did not match the rest of the forest. Moving quickly over to the other wolf’s side, he hissed at her to be quiet, straining his ears to listen.

“Too late,” he swore. “They're already here. Run!” Derek cursed himself for not being more aware, even as he set off at a run himself. Of course there would be hunters out on the full moon. He did however notice the flash bomb that the hunters set off, and the pained yip that Rose released when the bright light swept through the surrounding forest, briefly illuminating the trees, wolves, and hunters. Mercifully, Rose had had enough time to settle into her new form and instincts, so when the second bolt came from the hunters, Rose’s instincts took over, and she dodged away, setting off at a fast pace away from the danger.

The pair of wolves ran until they felt safer, instinctively checking on each other as they ran, not as much as they would were they pack mates, but far more than most would expect from two lone wolves.

“Who were they?” Rose asked shakily after they finally stopped, her human form returning as her adrenaline wore off and she slumped against a tree.

“Hunters,” Derek said shortly. “The kind that have been hunting us for centuries.”

“Great” Rose groaned, banging her head back on the tree. “Just what I need on top of all the crazy that my life seems to be turning into. People want to kill me for something I can’t help.” Derek ignored her for the moment, keeping an ear out for the hunters. When he didn’t hear anything, Derek grabbed Rose’s arm and pulled her along, not wanting to stay in one place for too long, just in case the hunters did catch up.

“Is it really so bad, Rose?” he asked, continuing the conversation as they walked. “That you can see better, hear more clearly, move faster than any human could ever hope? You've been given something that most people would kill for. The bite is a gift.”

“One that I didn’t exactly ask for,” Rose huffed. Derek stopped, turning to face the new were.

“Asked for or not, you’re gonna need me if you want to learn how to control it,” he stated. “Come on,” he started moving again, “being in a familiar place will help you now you’ve settled. Keep your window open and you’ll be fine.”

“That’s it?” Rose asked uncertainly. Derek nodded.

“For now. Welcome to your new life, Rose McCall.”

Chapter Text

“Hey, I’m off to work, do we need anything from the store?” Rose asked her brother, catching him before she left school for the day.

The days after the full moon had been quiet. No waking up in strange places, and thankfully no headaches from sensory overload. Finding out that the hunter that shot at her was Scott’s new girlfriend’s father was momentarily heart-stopping. He didn’t seem to have recognised Rose at all, something which she was immensely thankful for, but she could still feel her heart race at the possibility every time she saw him. She hadn’t yet heard from Derek either, something which she was not sure how to feel about. He hadn’t been unkind to her when he helped her on Friday, and he was her only real source of information.

On the other hand, he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming either; something Rose had briefly complained about to who she had quickly worked out was his uncle in her visit for that week. The last name and the similar features being what had given her a clue that Derek and Peter were related. She had also asked one of the nurses, but that hardly counted.

“No, I’m good,” came Scott’s slightly distracted reply to her question. “I thought you didn’t have to work until later?”

“Yeah, it sucks,” Rose said, “But, I got a message from the manager saying everyone’s shifts have been changed around so that all students are home before curfew at 9:30.” She shrugged helplessly. “So until the Sheriff’s office decides to lift it, I get no break between school and work. Yay me.”

Scott, in typical brotherly fashion, smirked at her misery, then noticed the dark brown leather jacket that she was holding. “Hey, I thought you said you left that jacket at the party on Friday.”

“Yeah,” she frowned. “I thought I left it in a friend’s car, but it was in my locker this morning. Lydia must have found it and brought it back from the party.”

“Lydia brought it, or did someone give it to her?” Scott asked sharply.

“What are you going on about?”

“Stiles said you left the party pretty early with Derek Hale.” Rose was taken aback by the slight hostility in his tone.

“Yeah. So what? I wasn’t feeling well, and Derek offered to take me home.” Well, she thought, that was true, the fact that they went home the long way was not something her brother needed to know, especially as it involved being shot at.

“Something about him is just really,” Scott floundered for a moment, trying to find the right word, “off,” he ended lamely, not sure if he should mention the two times he had seen the man in question, in the preserve and at Lydia’s party, and the strange manner in which he acted on both occasions. Rose frowned at him.

“If there’s a problem, why didn’t you say something earlier. You didn’t say anything all week.” Scott shook his head helplessly at her. “Okay, whatever. Look, I have to go, or I’m going to be late.”

“Wait-“

“Bye Scott,” she cut off as she turned, walking away from him.

“Rose!”

~{•.•}~

Scott rode furiously towards the old Hale house, hoping that either Derek Hale was there or there would be some clue to where he was. Rose, and almost certainly Stiles, would tell him he was being an overprotective idiot and tell him to drop whatever issue he had with Derek, and Scott was man enough to admit that they would be partially right. He was protective of his older sister, but he had since their dad had abandoned them both several years ago. On the other hand, Scott also felt he had reasonable justification for not wanting Derek and Rose near each other, and it was exactly as he told Rose, something about the man was off, and if he could not convince Rose to stay away, then he would have to confront Derek.

At the top of the long uphill driveway, the sophomore stopped to take a pull of his inhaler and strode towards the house.

“Derek!” he yelled out. “Derek!” There was no answer but the echo of his own voice bouncing off the hollowed out shell of the old Hale house.

The upper floor was half collapsed onto the lower, sections of wall and roof having been burned away in the fire that had killed most of the family six years ago. Bits of broken glass and timber littered the veranda, and the wind whistled mournfully through the remaining structure. The only sign of life was the sleek black Camaro parked at one corner of the house. Not even birds flew nearby.

Scott couldn’t see anyone around and the eerie feeling the place gave him did not encourage him to go exploring. If the Camaro was Derek’s car, then the owner was not there. All that was there was a strange rectangle of overturned soil to one side of the house — a patch that was about the right size for the missing half of the dead girl’s body.

~{•.•}~

“What did you find? How did you find it? Where did you find it?” Stiles asked all in one go as he entered Scott’s room, Scott having sent him a text that just said I found something. “And, yes, I've had a lot of Adderall,” he quickly added. “So…?”

“I found something at Derek Hale’s,” Scott said, pacing his room. He had gotten back to his house only just before Stiles arrived, as he had sent him a message straight away.

“Are you kidding? What?” Stiles asked excitedly.

“There's something buried there,” Scott said seriously.

“That’s awesome!” Stiles exclaimed, then realised what he said and added, “I mean, that's terrible. What?”

“I don't know. But when we do, your dad nails Derek for the murder,” Scott said decisively.

“So he buried the other half of the body on his property?” Stiles was baffled. Why would Derek do something like that?

“Which means we have proof he killed the girl.” Scott came to a stop in front of Stiles as the other boy asked,

“Why do we think he killed the girl?” Scott looked at his friend in disbelief.

“He arrives back in town after having been gone for ages, a dead body turns up, and both the times we’ve seen him, he’s been in strange places!” Stiles held up his hands defensively.

“Tell me something first. Are you doing this because you genuinely think Derek killed someone, or because you want to him to stay away from your sister, who is, by the way, a legal adult and capable of making her own decisions?” he questioned.

“Stiles!” the other boy exclaimed. “What if Rose is the next body?”

“Okay,” Stiles gulped, face paling at the idea Scott had put in his mind. “Then we're gonna need a shovel.”

~{•.•}~

Scott looked around nervously.

“This is taking way too long,” he said. The two boys had driven carefully to the preserve and hiked to the burnt out shell of the old Hale house, waiting for Derek Hale to leave. When the older male had come out of the forest and left the property, it was dark, and the boys had to use torches to see. The pair had been digging where the overturned soil was for some time already.

“Just keep going,” Stiles said, wanting to know what was there, body or not.

“What if he comes back?” Scott said, ever the more prudent of the two.

“Then we get the hell out of here,” Stiles stated as though obvious. Scott wasn’t as reassured, knowing how their little ventures usually turned out.

“What if he catches us?” he suggested.

“I have a plan for that,” Stiles assured.

“Which is?” Scott asked cautiously.

“You run one way. I run the other,” Stiles shrugged. “Whoever he catches first, too bad.”

“I hate that plan,” Scott muttered, knowing that of the two, Stiles could easily outpace him.

Eventually, Stiles pushed his spade into the ground and hit something other than dirt and rocks. Gesturing at his partner in (solving) crime to stop digging, he bent over, using his hands to scrape the soil off the dirty canvas wrapped something they had found.

“Hurry,” Scott urged him as he tugged at uselessly at the knotted rope holding the canvas shut.

“I'm trying,” Stiles huffed. “Did he have to tie the thing in, like, 900 knots?”

“I'll do it,” Scott told him, moving the other boy out of the way as his nimbler fingers made quick work of the thick cord. As soon as the last section on knot was undone, the boys pulled back the canvas, revealing something they did not quite expect.

“What the hell is that?” Stiles exclaimed, pulling his hands out of the hole.

“It's a wolf,” Scott told him weakly. So much for finding the dead body.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Stiles told him, a hint of confusion in his voice. “This doesn't make sense,” he murmured. Why go to all that trouble for a dead bit of wildlife, especially one that shouldn’t even have been in the area.

“We gotta get out of here,” Scott pulled Stiles out of his thinking, reminding his friend that Derek could return at any moment.

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed, “okay, help me cover this up.” Before either boy could move very far, a speck of something purple caught Stiles’ eye. ‘It couldn’t be. Could it?’ the older boy thought as his brain went off a hundred miles an hour. ‘That would be impossible.’

“What's wrong?” Scott asked, seeing his friend’s hesitation.

“You see that flower?” Stiles asked, shining his torch over the tiny plant. Scott looked between him and it blankly.

“What about it?” he asked.

“I think it's Wolfsbane,” Stiles murmured, and seeing Scott’s still blank face asked, “haven't you ever seen the Wolf Man?”

“No.” Scott was used to the other boy’s convoluted way of explaining, and so answered the question, despite not seeing any relevance.

“Lon Chaney Jr.? Claude Rains? The original, classic werewolf movie?” Stiles continued.

“No. What?” The questions weren’t helping Scott in the slightest. Stiles sighed in exasperation at his curly-haired companion,

“You are so unprepared for this,” he commented, before darting over to the innocuous looking plant and carefully pulling it out of the ground. What he was not expecting was the thin rope that was attached. Now just as confused as Scott, Stiles pulled the flower-studded cord up out of the ground from where it was buried in a large spiral around the grave, winding in towards the wolf’s body.

“Stiles!” Scott yelped frantically, jumping away from the hole he thought he saw something move in, just as the last bit of rope came out of the ground. Stiles ran over to look down at the body.

“Holy-” Stiles cut himself off, not sure what to say. A sentiment Scott agreed with, only letting out a brief “Oh, God”. As the two boys stared down into the hole they had dug, the vacant eyes of half a dead girl stared back at them.

~{•.•}~

“Okay, just so you know, I'm not afraid of you,” Stiles stated from the front seat of the patrol car. A statement that was quickly amended when faced with the stony face of the cuffed occupant in the back seat. “Okay, maybe I am. Doesn't matter. I just wanna know something. The girl you killed, was she a werewolf? I mean, she went from being an actual wolf to being a girl. Well, half a girl. And dead. Anyway, normal people can’t do that. Is that why you killed her?”

Stiles and Scott had waited until Derek had returned to the house, and then called up the Sheriff’s Department to inform them that they had found the body. Neither of them mentioned to either the officers nor each other the wolf they had seen, but questions had been building in Stiles’ head, and his mouth seemed to have found an outlet in the form of the young Hale adult that had just been arrested for murder. Perhaps not the best source for information, but Stiles never claimed to be the best at self-preservation.

Unfortunately, or fortunately going by the silent glare Derek was giving Stiles, the Sheriff noticed Stiles’ legs sticking out the car door and interrupted his son before he got any form of response. Stiles’ semi frustration at the lack of answers was quickly brushed aside by his somewhat failed attempt at keeping himself and Scott out of trouble. One which almost got them into more trouble when it was revealed that they had both been in the forest the other night. Luckily for Stiles, his dad had other things to worry about and so instead ordered his son back home; an opportunity Stiles took without questioning.

~{•.•}~

“So when you said you heard a wolf, maybe you were half right,” Stiles said, as he and Scott entered the McCall house that evening, taking the opportunity that both McCall women being out gave them to talk. They had not had a chance during the day, Scott having been working in the morning, the Sheriff having kept half an eye on Stiles on his afternoon off, and both having been slightly too freaked out to talk in depth the previous night. “Maybe it was a werewolf.”

“You seriously think that werewolves are real?” Scott scoffed in disbelief.

“Well, how do you explain how a wolf changed into a girl?”

Scott shrugged, “I don’t know?”

“Well then,” Stiles said, as though that was that, leading Scott up to his own bedroom and floomphing on the other boy’s bed. “I’ve been doing some research. Like a lot of research, and everything fits. People becoming wolves, stray bodies showing up (or one so far), Wolfsbane. Only thing I can’t find is wolfsbane being used for burial, only for harm. Maybe it’s like a ritual or something. Like, maybe they bury you as a wolf. Wait, Rose said she got bitten by something didn’t she?”

“Yeah, but it was just scrapes the next day, she told me she must have imagined it being an actual bite.”

“Maybe she’s a werewolf.”

“That’s just crazy.” Scott looked incredulously at his friend, neither of them noticing the front door opening or shutting as the very person they were talking about entered the house.

“Well, we could always ask,” Stiles suggested innocently.

“What? No,” Scott protested. “You can’t just walk up to Rose and ask a question like that; she’ll think we’re nuts.”

“I already think that,” a voice said from the doorway, “I’m not sure there is much you could do to change my mind.”

“Oh, hey Rose,” Stiles said, not quite looking at the older girl. “How was the hospital?” Rose raised an eyebrow at him.

“Fine,” she said, a little suspicious. “Tony was as pleasant as ever, but I also got to spend half an afternoon listening to Mrs Goodall talk about her seventeenth child, also known as Lacy, the Siamese cat. It kind of balanced out.”

“Ugh, boring,” Stiles moaned as Rose sneezed.

“And that is why you have no people skills.”

“I so have people skills,” he protested.

“Only if you have your mouth duct taped shut.” Rose smiled sweetly at him, Scott in the background was laughing at the banter. Rose sneezed again. Something in the room was irritating her nose.

“What is that?” she asked, “and why do you both look so tired?”

“What’s what?” Scott asked, deliberately ignoring the second question.

“I don’t know, just… Oh never mind.” Rose shook her head, cricking it from side to side. “I’m going to go get changed, this bra has been sticking in me all afternoon,” she muttered turning away to her room.

Stiles watched her retreat, a contemplative look coming over his face.

“What?” Scott asked as the other teen looked between the bag he had brought with him and the now shut door to Rose’s room. Unhurriedly, Stiles wandered over to the backpack and reached inside, pulling out a slightly dirty rope. The splash of purple at one end told Scott exactly where it had come from, and he blinked disbelievingly at Stiles.

“You kept it?” Scott asked in incredulity, staring at the long rope Stiles now had bundled in his fist. Stiles shrugged at him.

“What was I supposed to do with it?” he asked, walking down the corridor towards Rose’s room.

“What are you doing?” Scott hissed. Stiles flailed his arms around the way he usually did when he thought someone asked a question with an obvious answer, the end of the rope swinging wildly as he did so, fortunately not hitting anything in the hallway. When Scott continued to stare blankly at him, Stiles sighed and said,

“I’m just gonna see if anything happens.”

“And if it does?” Scott asked, not entirely convinced his friend was correct.

“Well, let’s hope she doesn’t eat me” Stiles grinned, knocking on the cream door to the older teen’s room. The door opened readily, and Stiles immediately thrust the bundled up rope and wolfsbane in front of him, almost hitting Rose with the stray end. Reacting entirely on instinct, Rose leapt back snarling at the sharp, acrid scent that burned her nose and that every bit of her told her she needed to get away from.

Before the boy’s stunned eyes Rose changed, her hands becoming sharp claws, ears growing pointed and more animal-like, the ridge above her brows becoming more pronounced, and her normally warm brown eyes becoming a blazing gold. The pair backed up as she let out a rumbling growl at them, her mouth opening to reveal long pointed teeth that would have no trouble at all tearing into their throats.

Rose was lost to her more wolfish tendencies, not yet having enough control to recognise that she knew the people in front of her, only seeing a danger. Unknown to Scott and Stiles, the wolfsbane was the only thing that kept Rose from attacking; instead, she followed her flight instinct and jumping out of the fortunately open window, taking off into the night.

Stiles was the first to recover his senses, dropping the rope and turning to look at the other stunned teen.

“She’s a werewolf,” he whispered, “an actual werewolf. Oh my God, your sister is a werewolf.” He couldn’t seem to decide whether to be excited or terrified.

“Okay! Stop it!” Scott demanded, finally coming to himself.

“Stop what?”

“Stop saying ‘werewolf’! Stop enjoying this so much.” Scott was almost hyperventilating, his voice high pitched and shrill.

“Are you okay?” Stiles asked concerned at how his friend was taking the information.

“No! No, I'm not. I'm so far from being okay,” Scott snipped, retreating to his room.

“You know, you're gonna have to accept this, Scott, sooner or later,” Stiles stated firmly, somehow managing to sound a lot calmer than he felt.

“I can’t. My sister just…” Scott floundered, clueless to explain what he had just seen.

“Well, you're gonna have to,” Stiles half laughed. “Your sister is a werewolf.”

“How?” Scott asked utterly confused at the very idea; this was real life, not some movie or TV show. Stiles shrugged in reply, then thought of another thing.

“Better question,” he said. “Does she know?”

~{•.•}~

A dark streak ran through the town, and on into the preserve.

Running.

Running.

They had to get away.

Go somewhere safe.

Where.

Find Alpha.

Go somewhere safe.

The streak stopped, revealing it to be Rosalind, changed to beta shift by the self-preservation instincts of a new wolf she was entirely running off of, but still unmistakably her. A howl tore itself from her throat, the sound of a lost wolf trying to find its way to safety. Everything was quiet in the forest as the echoes of the howl faded. There was no response.

Keep moving.

Find somewhere safe.

Rose took off again moving at a more moderate pace, winding her way through the forest towards higher ground. A little later she howled again, sounding slightly more forlorn. This time, a deeper howl echoed back to her from somewhere to the south. The howl called to her, comforting in a way, warming her insides and gently tugging her in the direction it came from. Rose ran eagerly towards the sound, joy thrumming through her as she leapt over streams and fallen logs.

Alpha!

Safety!

Go!

In a clearing at the edge of a small lake, referred to by the people of Beacon Hills as the Woodland Pond, Rose and the Alpha who bit her met for the second time. The younger werewolf hesitated slightly, whimpering a little, anxious in her approach. Yes, this may technically be her Alpha, but he was still a stranger, and there was no telling what a strange wolf might do. The older wolf was patient though, and the massive beast chuffed at her, encouraging her to approach.

Rose moved forwards cautiously, the Alpha holding himself still while she inspected him, relaxed, but with an air of confidence and superiority. Rose circled him once, before approaching, keeping herself low as to not be seen as a challenge. She let out a soft questioning whine, breathing in the Alpha’s scent of thyme and cold mountain air. The large wolflike creature bent his head towards her, giving another of his reassuring chuffs. Tentatively Rose closed the distance between them, pressing her head up under the older male’s chin, allowing her to smell the nutmeg undertone to his scent. The Alpha rubbed his cheek over Rose, scenting her and encouraging her to do the same, mixing his scent with her vanilla and jasmine scent, and chasing away the last remnants of Wolfsbane from her mind.

~{•.•}~

“I kissed her,” Scott said dazedly to his best friend, referring to his girlfriend Allison who had just walked away from the two friends to head home.

“I saw,” Stiles said, rubbing the back of his neck, standing awkwardly in the doorway to the male change rooms. The first lacrosse match of the season was over, the Cyclones had won and Scott having shot the winning goal from his new position on the team. Rose hadn’t been there, and Stiles was not sure if that was a good thing or not.

“She kissed me,” Scott grinned happily.

“Saw that too. That's pretty good, huh?” Stiles half laughed at his friend, but he was genuinely happy for the other boy.

“Maybe I can do this,” Scott said optimistically. “Maybe this year won’t be that bad.”

“Yeah, heh. We'll talk later, then,” Stiles suggested, not wanting to spoil his best friend’s moment. Scott stopped him,

“What?” he demanded, coming out of his daze.

“The, uh, medical examiner looked at the other half of the body we found…” Stiles trailed off, not sure he wanted to say.

“And?”

“Well, I'll keep it simple,” Stiles decided. “Medical examiner determines killer of girl to be animal, not human. Derek's human, not animal. Derek not killer. Derek let out of jail.”

“Are you kidding?” Scott asked in disbelief.

“No, and here's a bigger kick in the ass. My dad I.D.'d the dead girl — both halves. Her name was Laura Hale.

“Hale?” Scott was surprised, and Stiles nodded solemnly, confirming what his friend was thinking.

“Derek's sister.”

~{•.•}~

Out in the forest, by the shore of a small lake, two werewolves relaxed into each other. One, content to take comfort in the presence of a strong Alpha. The other, relishing the peace of a pack mate after so long alone.

Chapter Text

Rose stirred slowly, warm and comfortable on a soft, dry surface that smelled of oak and pine needles. It was only the strange sense of loneliness that prompted her to sit up and look around her. She was at the back of a small cave, the same one she quickly realised, that she had woken up at the mouth of on the morning of the last full moon. The soil floor of the cave was covered over with soft pine needles, the greenness of them showing how recently they had been placed. Where she had been lying there was a faint depression in the ground, and next to it, on the side closest to the entrance, was a larger disturbance and a faint smell of someone or something that was almost familiar, but just outside the reach of her memories.

Rose frowned to herself, trying to remember how she had gotten there. The last time she had woken in the Preserve she had felt surprisingly calm for being in the middle of the forest rather than her bed where she had gone to sleep. But in that calmness, she had not questioned anything aside from generally wondering what was wrong with her. This time, she had faint recollections of panic and reassurance, and now she felt lonely like there had been someone else with her who had now left.

Her hand froze where it was rubbing her forehead as she remembered the only clear thing she could. The reactions of her brother and his best friend when they discovered what she was. It was this reaction, one of terrified horror, that Rose had been hoping to avoid.

What would they think of her now? Some monster to be gotten rid of or killed? It wouldn’t be difficult if Scott found out that his girlfriend’s father was a person who killed things like her for, well, probably not for fun, but certainly as a pastime. She didn’t even notice that she was building herself into a panic until she heard a low whine leave her throat, which cut off abruptly when upon realising the origin of the noise.

Deciding that if anything was going to happen, she was going to face it head on, rather than creeping around, avoiding people when she could and trying not to draw any attention to himself, Rose got up, walking back through the forested preserve towards home.

~{•.•}~

It was midmorning by the time Rose got home, and her panic had settled to form a nauseous, heavy weight in her gut. The lack of a car on the driveway of the house told Rose that her mother was at work, taking the shift that she had swapped for so she could see Scott play his first lacrosse game. Rose felt a brief stab of guilt that she had missed the match, but that was quickly smothered by the anxiousness she felt. It was fortunate that it was a Sunday and so she was not missing school, because then her mum would definitely know something was wrong, rather than only possibly having been told something by Scott and Stiles.

Rose was thankful that she was the pyjamas she had changed into the previous night consisted of a comfortable pair of sweatpants and a soft cotton shirt in the winter months, so she didn’t look too out of place walking up to the front door of her house. At least, as long as no one noticed she didn’t have anything on her feet or that her shirt was a little too thin to be worn without a jacket in this weather. She was also glad that a spare key was kept in one of the hanging plants, or she would have to start keeping a key around her neck in case she appeared in any more strange places.

“Scott? Stiles?” Rose entered the house warily, calling out to see if either boy was in. Not getting a response, the curly-haired were stopped to listen, picking up the sound of two heartbeats, soft breathing, and the swishing sound of someone waving for quiet in the front room. She sighed, thankful that it was only the two boys, who both smelled more of worry and curiosity than the sharp tang of fear, and trudged towards them, knowing that they would probably have questions.

Rose had barely gotten a foot in the room before Stiles opened his mouth to fire questions at her, but, expecting something from him, she interrupted,

“at least let me come in and sit down first,” she said. She only managed to get to the sofa before Stiles burst out with,

“You’re a werewolf.”

“Um, yes,” she hesitantly confirmed.

“And you didn’t tell us!” Stiles exclaimed, only partially feigning hurt.

“That’s your only problem with all of this!” Rose was a little shocked. This was in no way the response she had been expecting.

“Yes,” Stiles said, while Scott let out a mumbled “no” under his breath. Rose heard him anyway but chose to ignore him for now, too relieved their reaction was so mild.

“It’s not exactly the sort of thing you can just tell someone,” she protested.

“But I’m your brother,” Scott complained as the boys sat on the opposite sofa.

“And I am your sister, who has suddenly become a thing that shouldn’t exist and is completely confused about everything,” Rose countered.

“Is Derek trying to kill you?” Stiles asked, jumping in before the siblings could start bickering.

“What? No. Derek is also a werewolf.”

“So this all is Derek’s fault,” Scott said. Rose paused before shrugging,

“I don’t know. He said he could help me, or would if you two didn’t have him arrested.”

“He’s been released,” Stiles said.

“What? When?"

“Last night, while you were…” Stiles trailed off,

“Gone,” Scott suggested.

“Yeah,” it was as good a word to use as any Stiles supposed. “What happened?” he asked.

“I don’t really remember,” Rose admitted. “I came home, spoke to you, went in my room, you knocked on my door, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up in the Preserve.”

“That might have been our fault- my fault,” Stiles amended when Scott frowned at him. Taking a deep breath he explained, in his own slightly convoluted way, Scott adding bits and pieces as he went, what he and Scott had been doing Friday and Saturday evenings and his discovery of who the body was.

“You guys are idiots,” Rose sighed exasperatedly when they were done, “and I love you, but please tell me you got rid of the wolfsbane.”

“Yeah, last night,” Stiles said, not telling her that he kept part of the flower just in case.

“Oh good. You’re both alright?” The two boys were quick to assure her they were fine, even though Rose thought they looked a little wild around the eyes.

“Alright,” she finally conceded, not actually quite believing them. “You won’t tell anyone, right?” They nodded, easing her worries somewhat. “Okay. I’m going to shower, I’m covered in dirt. And, please Stiles, don’t bring the wolfsbane in again.” Rose wandered away, but remembering something turned back to them at the door,

“By the way,” she said, grinning at them, “if you’re going to wait to ambush someone, try making sure they can't hear you first.”

~{•.•}~

It was easy for them to stalk through Beacon Hills, running through the preserve, paved surfaces hard underfoot, the soft ground muffling her steps, the sounds of suburban living covering any noise they made. The night was clear, lit by tall street lights, the forest making patches of moonlight. They ducked from shadow to shadow, padding along the tracks her prey had recently made, following the streets to their destination. She found the old buck in a large clearing, the greying man trapped easily in the bus. Carefully creeping up on the deer, the man’s screams echoed in the enclosed space, a single cry fading into the night. Blood spurted and bones cracked, the buck dying quickly with a trickle of blood, the sickly sweet metallic scent filling the small space, the clearing smelling of a successful hunt.

In the night, a wolf howled its victory.

In a small bedroom, in a modest two-story house, Rosalind McCall woke from her dream, gasping for air.

~{•.•}~

Despite the dream having occurred well before she would usually wake, Rose reckoned she must still look spooked if the reaction Scott had to how she looked was anything to go by. After explaining to him her dream, he had barely let her finish breakfast before dragging her out the house to meet Stiles prior to the start of the school day, where Rose repeated her recollection to the other teen.

“I don't know what it was,” Rose sighed as she finished her story. “I just woke up really panicked, like one of those nightmares that you can’t wake up from. I've never had a dream like that before.” Rose ran her hands through her mess of dark curls, trying to think of a way to explain something that was so intangible. “It was like looking at an optical illusion, what you see and what you know is actually there is different.”

“Like you know the circles aren’t moving even though your eyes are insisting they are,” Stiles said.

“Yes,” Rose exclaimed, happy one of the two boys had understood. “Only I’ve only the image my eyes, or in this case, my senses are giving me, and not the original picture.”

“So, did you kill something?” Scott asked hesitantly. Rose shrugged, shaking her head,

“I don’t know,” she said worriedly as they turned down a corridor towards one of the doors that worked as a shortcut to her locker. The thing with old buildings that had been converted to schools was that they weren’t always connected, and they left plenty of places for students to walk around and use as alternative routes to places. This also allowed Rose to keep her promise not to go near the male change rooms.

“Hey, come on, it's gonna be fine, all right?” Stiles said, plonking a hand on a shoulder of both McCall siblings. “Personally,” he went on, “I think you're handling this pretty freakin' amazingly-” Yeah, a little too well, Rose thought. “-You know, it's not like there's a lycanthropy for beginners class you can take.”

“Yeah, not a class, but maybe a teacher,” Scott hinted.

“Who, Derek?” Stiles asked. “You forgetting the part where we got him tossed in jail?”

“And, I haven’t seen him since the full moon,” Rose added. “Something that you accusing him of murder hasn’t exactly helped.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like we have a better option,” Scott pointed out, ignoring the hint of accusation in his sister’s voice.

“Probably be a good idea if Scott and I didn’t go with you,” Stiles suggested. “In case he holds a grudge or something.” Rose missed her brother’s reply, distracted by the sound of her text tone going off.

“What? What is it? Is that Derek?” Stiles asked rapidly, noticing the older teens distraction. Rose shook her head, looking up from her phone,

“No, it’s just Jess from my history class,” she said. “The school bus didn’t show up, so she’s going to miss most of that class. She’s asking if she can have a copy of my notes.”

“Oh, okay,” Stiles said, sounding slightly disappointed as he opened the door at the end of the corridor; Scott making sure Rose didn’t walk into anything as she texted back an affirmative.

“Rose?” -She hummed an affirmative, not looking up- “what did you say you smelt in your dream?”

“Blood and metal,” she answered. “Why?”

“Something like a blood-covered bus?” Scott suggested in a weak voice.

“Yeah, maybe.” Rose put her phone in her bag.

“Like that bus?”

“Oh my God.”

~{•.•}~

“Attention, students, this is your principal. I know you're all wondering about the incident that occurred last night to one of our buses. While the Sheriff’s Department work to determine what happened, classes will proceed as scheduled in twenty minutes.”

Word of the bloody bus quickly spread through the school, and many of the students had started gossiping about what might have happened. The announcement that classes would continue as normal was a disappointment to most, but Rose was more concerned about what her involvement in the incident was, especially as she knew that something in her dream involved blood.

The three of them had gone back inside and were huddled off in one corner, keeping their conversation private.

“Maybe it was your blood on the door,” Scott suggested, trying to deny that his sister might have something to do with the state of the bus.

“Could have been animal blood,” Stiles offered as an alternative. “You know, maybe you caught a rabbit or something.” Scott frowned at the short haired teen,

“And did what?” he wondered, confused. Stiles shrugged.

“Ate it,” he said blandly.

“Raw?!” Scott exclaimed with a mixture of disgust and horror.

“No, she stopped to bake it in a little werewolf oven,” Stiles tone was heavily laden with sarcasm. Such a statement would normally have gotten a laugh out of Rose, which only showed Stiles how worried she was when she didn’t react. Before he could say anything to her, one of the seniors standing by the window yelled out, catching everyone’s attention.

“Hey, I think they found something,” he called, causing a mad scramble for the windows as everyone tried to catch a glimpse of what was happening. Escorted by a deputy, two paramedics were wheeling a stretcher across the yard to an ambulance. The man on the stretcher was ragged, covered in deep cuts and dark bruises, and Rose could see that his breathing was laboured.

“It’s like someone went at him with a knife,” Rose heard another student say softly. But, she knew, despite how it appeared, the cuts were from the claws of a werewolf, possibly even her own.

“That's not a rabbit,” Scott said slowly, and more than a little unhelpfully. Stiles was rather more optimistic,

“Okay. This is good, this is good,” he said. “His head isn’t covered up with a sheet, which means he's not dead, right. That’s good.”

“I think, I might have done that,” Rose whispered, so softly that the boys struggled to hear it.

“But dreams aren't memories,” Stiles objected as Scott pulled them away from the other students.

“Then it wasn't a dream,” Scott suggested.

“Something happened last night,” Rose said, worry clouding her features. “And I can't remember what. Scott’s right, Derek might know something.”

“What makes you so sure that Derek even has all the answers?” Stiles asked bluntly.

“Besides telling me he would help,” Rose quipped, “he didn’t even change on the full moon, while I have been doing all sorts of crazy running around, half of which I don’t remember. Which means he probably knows something about how I can control myself.”

“You don't know you did this,” Stiles reminded her.

“But, I don't know I didn’t either,” Rose said, not able to bring herself to look at either of the two.

“Look maybe you had nothing to do with this,” Stiles said, as Scott pulled her into a hug. “You just had a strange dream, and someone happened to be injured. Badly. Enough to spill a lot of blood. But, he isn’t dead.”

“Not yet.”

~{•.•}~

It wasn’t hard for Rose to convince the nurse to let her leave school; the advantage of having a nurse for a mother, you know all the things that will get students sent home. It wasn’t difficult to do, using the excuse that she was disturbed by the ‘bus incident’ as it was already being called by the students. After sending a text to Scott and Stiles telling them where she was going, Rose headed off towards the old Hale house, where her brother had told her Derek was staying.

“Derek, are you there?” Rose called out as soon as she rode her bike into the clearing around the burnt out shell of a house, desperately hoping she could get some answers.

“Derek?” she called again when she received no answer. Her voice must have given some of her distress and desperation away, for as soon as Derek appeared on the broken veranda of the house, he seemed to her to understand why she was there.

“You think you attacked the driver?” he asked bluntly, heart sinking slightly at the possibility that the other beta might already be connected to the Alpha that had killed his sister.

“Do you know what happened last night?” she queried, wondering if he might know anything.

Her hopes were dashed when he answered with a single, short, “No.”

“So, I may have hurt him.”

“Yes.”

“And, I might hurt more people.”

“Yes.”

“And, I might end up killing someone?”

“Yes.” Rose slumped onto the wooden steps leading up to the veranda, letting out a distressed whine. She didn’t want to hurt or even kill anyone, but the way that Derek answered each question with such finality ate away at her bit by bit. Behind her, Derek sighed quietly.

“Look,” he said, making Rose look up at him. “I can show you how to remember. I can show you how to control the shift, even on a full moon. But it's not going to come for free.”

“Putting a price on my survival?” Rose asked. “What will it cost me?”

“You'll find out,” Derek said vaguely but continued before Rose could object. “For now, I'm going to give you what you want. Go back to the bus. Go inside. See it, feel it. Let your senses - your sight, smell, touch - let them remember for you.”

“That's it?” Rose questioned, not quite believing it would be that simple.

“Do you want to know what happened?” Derek huffed.

“No… Yes…I - I just want to know if I hurt him. I don’t want to hurt anyone.” Rose buried her head in her hands. When a short time later she looked around at Derek’s lack of response, she found herself alone.

~{•.•}~

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” an only slightly stern voice interrupted as Rose signed the visitor log for the long-term care ward.

“Hey Uncle Benji,” Rose greeted, looking up at the older nurse. “I couldn’t stay, I… Did you hear what happened at school?” Benji nodded. “Well, I got a bit freaked, and the nurse sent me home, but I didn’t want to be home on my own, so…” Benji smiled sympathetically at her as she trailed off, noticing how tired she looked, and making a mental note to let Melissa know.

“Alright,” he said, “all the patients have had lunch. Just don’t make a habit of it.” Rose half grinned in thanks, giving him a quick hug, and headed off towards Peter Hale’s room.

Benji, who was in no way related to the McCall family, was a tall man who had gone grey early in life and ended up looking about forty-something for the next 30 years. Born in Los Angeles, he had been a medic in the army before retiring and coming to work in Beacon Hills. Rose had met the dark-skinned man at the end of her primary schooling when she had taken to following her mum around after her dad had stopped making any effort to see them. Benji had worked in the Emergency Department for a few years before transferring to long term care and had been amused by the little girl wandering around. He used to sneak her chocolate and eventually had been the one to convince her that Melissa was not going to leave her and Scott alone. The long friendship between the two left Rose feeling slightly guilty that she had partly lied to Benji, but she couldn’t exactly tell him that she just needed to speak to someone who knew about the supernatural, even if she didn’t get a response.

Rose didn’t knock when she went into Peter’s room, knowing now that she herself was a wolf, that if he cared, he would know who it was. Peter was sitting in bed today, propped up on several pillows and staring almost unblinkingly at the opposite wall. The right side of his face and down his body was horrifically scarred from the fire that had killed most of his family and left him in a state of catatonic stupor. The doctors said he was slowly improving, and there was evidence for that, as he was now able to eat soft meals if fed and could toilet if prompted, but he was still unresponsive to everything else.

Rose dropped her school bag to the ground by the door and went and sat heavily in the chair next to the hospital bed. It was one of the minimally padded kind found in hospitals all over the world, the ones that make the occupants think that the designers must be in league with chiropractors, as they are so uncomfortable. The rest of the room was bland, all painted in the same off-white colour as the rest of the hospital and had not decor of any sort. At least the curtains were open, letting a little natural light in, but the view was not much, just a small patch of pavement with a couple of raised garden beds that provided a bit of greenery.

The dark-haired teen pulled her legs up on the chair and propped her chin up on top, making her look far younger than her age. With one hand she hugged her knees to her chest and the other she latched on to Peter’s with.

“Well, I hope your day has been better than mine,” she said, her voice wobbling slightly as she made the pathetic joke. “Never, ever go to Derek for advice, he’s useless. I think I may have mentioned that already. He doesn’t talk much, and only explains things when he’s pushed, which, when you want answers, is not very helpful. Especially when something happens that you need explaining and you could really do with knowing that you haven’t done something horrible and all he can say is that I might have killed someone!”

Her voice rose in pitch as she rambled, trying to get everything out. Having used Peter as a sounding board for several months now, Rose found it much easier to talk to him than anyone else. There was no judgement from the older wolf in his catatonia; not like she might have received from others. She took a long, shaky breath before continuing.

“Peter, I don’t think I can do this,” Rose whispered into her knees, “pretend to be normal when I’m just scared. There is so much going on I don’t understand. Three weeks ago, I was just a normal kid trying to survive high school. Now, I find out werewolves are real; I am one!; there are people out there who would be happy to kill me for something I didn’t ask for; the only person who might give me answers can’t seem to; and, I think I might have killed or helped kill someone. Derek says that if I want to know, to go back to the bus and let my senses do the remembering for me. I don’t know if I want to remember.

“On top of all that,” she went on, “I have not reacted to anything until today, and I didn’t even notice. I should have been freaking out about all of this before today. Instead, it has taken someone nearly dying for me to feel anything. Is that normal? I mean, what the hell even is normal anymore?”

Rose’s monologue to Peter was interrupted by her phone pinging a text alert. Uncurling herself and going to fish her phone out of her bag revealed it to be a video link from Stiles. She opened it but knowing her cheap phone would take a while to load the clip, she returned to her uncomfortable sleep to continue talking.

“Stiles thinks I’m doing fine. Err, yeah… he and Scott kind of found out about werewolves the other day. They dug up your niece’s body, kept the wolfsbane rope used in the burial and, being the curious teenage idiots they are, decided to see what would happen if they put it near someone they thought might be a werewolf, with fairly predictable results. I don’t think they got hurt, but I don’t actually remember, and they aren’t telling me differently. Stiles is handling it surprisingly well, but my brother is a bit in denial.”

Rose’s thoughts were again cut off, this time by the phone playing the video. It was a media report on the incident from the bus: “The Sheriff's Department won't speculate on details of the incident but confirmed the victim, Garrison Meyers, did survive the attack. Meyers was taken to a local hospital where he remains in critical condition.”

Rose barely heard the end of the report, focused instead on the picture of the victim. An older man, with grey-brown hair and a friendly smile. It was a familiar smile, one that she had seen every school morning for several months. Rose’s hand flew to her mouth as her stomach rolled uncomfortably. Garrison Meyers was not just some random unknown person. He had driven the bus she and Scott had caught when they still lived with their dad.

“Oh God,” Rose choked out, throwing her phone back towards her bag. “Oh God,” she repeated and started to cry. Curling herself back up in the chair, the young wolf leaned over, resting her head near Peter’s lap, hands gripping his bedding.

“What if next time someone else I know gets hurt?” she eventually sniffled, voice muffled by the blankets. “What about mum, or Scott, or someone else? Is this what my life is going to be like now, never knowing who I’ll kill next? Well, I don’t definitely know that I did anything to Mr Meyers, and Derek says that if I want to remember, then I have to go back to where he was attacked. But, I don’t think I want to know.”

“I’m scared Peter,” Rose said in a small voice, pulling herself into a tighter ball, “and, I just want to feel safe.”

~{•.•}~

“What are you doing?!” a sharp female voice barked.

Rose had not meant to fall asleep, but the constant stress of the morning had exhausted her and, combined with the lack of decent sleep the night before, she was worn out. The sound of someone, who she guessed was a nurse, caused her to reluctantly stir from her slumber. It was difficult, as Rose felt the most content and rested she had for the last few weeks, but the sound of the door slamming jolted her awake.

Standing in front of the door was a young, plain-faced nurse. The only thing that stood out about her was the shock of red hair tied into a low ponytail. She was glowering at Rose, her arms folded over her chest and jaw clenched. Rose sat up, untangling her curls from Peter’s hand as she did so. The nurse seemed to glare even harder, if that was at all possible, but Rose ignored her. The hand would explain why she thought she had dreamed someone was running their hands through her hair. Jumping off the bed, which she seemed to have moved onto in her sleep, and folding up the blanket she assumed Uncle Benji had put on her, Rose stood to face the nurse.

“Is there a problem?” the werewolf asked mildly, still feeling quite relaxed from her sleep. She didn’t think the nurse, Jennifer according to her name tag, would find much, especially as Benji would have told her Rose was there when the shift change happened. But Rose could sense that Jennifer was irritated, almost jealous of her being in Peter’s room and, not wanting the nurse make up some excuse as to why she couldn’t visit again, Rose decided it was time leave.

Despite this, Rose was not above winding the other woman up: hugging Peter even though she would not get one back, smoothing out his blankets, kissing his scarred cheek (something she had never done before and had only been done then to frustrate Jennifer), and giving the nurse a cheery smile and wave as she collected her things and left. She wasn’t worried about the nurse at the moment. Right now, she had something more important to do; go to the bus and find out what really happened.

~{•.•}~

“Thanks for doing this,” Rose said as her companion drove them up to the fence around Beacon High. Stiles shrugged, he wanted to know what had happened the other night too, and if what Rose said Derek said she had to do was accurate, he’d soon know. He hoped Rose hadn’t been involved, not only for his own preservation but also because he knew how much this was eating away at Rose.

“Well, it’s better than waiting to see how badly Scott failed at bowling,” Stiles said to her, not letting the older girl know what he was thinking.

“Scott’s going bowling?” Rose asked in disbelief.

“Yep, double date with Allison, Jackson, and Lydia,” he sighed, getting out of the jeep.

“I knew he had a date, but… Stiles,” she scrambled out after him, “Scott can’t bowl.”

“I know, right. So painful,” he responded, moving to climb the fence.

“Hey, no, just me,” Rose said, a hand on his arm stopping Stiles. “Someone needs to keep watch, and just in case something goes badly, I’d rather you had a bit of a head start.”

“How come I'm always the guy keeping watch?” Stiles whined, attention diverted from one McCall sibling’s problems to the other’s, deliberately not commenting on the second part of her explanation.

“Stiles, there's only two of us,” Rose pointed out, “and I have to be the one to go in, so…”

“Okay, why's it starting to feel like you're Batman and I'm Robin? I don't want to be Robin all the time.”

“Stiles, this is the first time we,” she gestured between the two of them, “have done anything like this. How can that make you Robin all the time?”

“Well, it starts out as a onetime thing, then it’s just one time the next time, and then the next time, and the time after that, and you are trying to stall from doing this aren’t you?” Stiles said all in one breath, not even pausing before accusing the werewolf.

“A little bit.” Rose grinned half-heartedly at him. Stiles sighed and pulled his almost-sister into a hug that she happily leaned into.

“It’s not going to change what did happen,” he said around a faceful of hair, “and knowing is better than not knowing until one of us ends up dead or something.”

“I know. Doesn’t make it any easier though.”

“But, we want answers,” Stiles continued, turning Rose towards the fence and gently prodding her towards it. “So, over you go, Wonder Woman.”

“Wonder Woman?” Rose inquired, raising an eyebrow at him even as she started to climb. Stiles shrugged,

“well, you’re female, err… not quite human, um…” He trailed off, unable to come up with anything else that wouldn’t require giving them both brain bleach after he said it.

“Don’t strain yourself there, Batman,” Rose sniggered at the younger teen. “Now,” she went on, jumping down from the top of the fence, “if only I had the Lasso of Truth, this would be much easier.”

“I don’t think you can use it on yourself,” Stiles said.

“Oh. Well then, I’d better do this all with my own abilities,” Rose said, becoming serious again as she turned the conversation back to the reason they were at a crime scene in the middle of the night.

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed softly, adding a quick “good luck.”

“Thanks,” Rose responded, moving towards the blood covered bus. “I think.”

Rose walked forwards, taking deep breaths and trying to relax, which was difficult when she was a bundle of nerves. It took until she was on the bus, surrounded by the tangy smell of blood and metal, for her brain to start piecing things together. Making her way to the school, trapping Mr Meyers on the bus, his screams as he was mauled, and always, something large with gleaming red eyes.

The sound of Stiles blaring his horn snapped Rose out of her nightmarish reverie, alerting her to the patrol car making its way towards them. She bolted for the jeep, going much faster than she had ever before, leaping clean over the fence and diving onto the front seat. Stiles pulled away before she even had the door shut, absolutely not wanting to be caught, being in enough trouble with his father for the stunt with Laura Hale’s body.

“Did it work? Did you remember?” Stiles asked once they had gotten away from the school.

“Yeah, it worked” Rose breathed out. “I remembered what happened.”

“Well?...” Stiles prompted.

“The bus driver was attacked, but not by me. There was someone… something else there.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I think… there were red eyes… something large. Everything happened so quickly I didn’t get a chance to see, I was focused on Mr Meyers.”

“But, if you didn’t attack him, why were you watching him?” Stiles questioned, half to himself, his mind already trying to solve the puzzle. Rose drew a shaky breath, avoiding looking at the younger teen.

“I didn’t attack him, I remember that I didn’t want to, I had no reason to,” Rose explained quietly. “But I didn’t let him get away either. He wouldn’t have gotten very far if he had, but knowing that I actively stopped him… Why didn’t I help? What if next time it’s one of you?”

“Were you meant to attack him?”

“What?”

“You said you didn’t want to attack the driver. Does that mean you were meant to?”

“I think I was, but I didn’t…” Rose trailed off looking at Stiles, so hopefully looking for some sort of validation, that he reached over, pulling her into a side hug. Stiles felt for her; she did not ask for any of this, and the fact that she had only become a werewolf because she was looking out for him and Scott did not make him feel particularly good.

“Look,” he said, deciding to drop that line of questioning for now. “You could have hurt the driver, but you didn’t. Now that you know that, I think that maybe if it happens again, you will be able to help the victim.”

“But why couldn’t I do that this time?” Rose said dejectedly.

“Maybe it had something to do with whoever attacked him,” Stiles speculated.

“I think I need to talk to Derek again.”

“Now?”

“No. I think I want to go home now,” Rose decided, pulling out of the hug to sit up straight. “You’ll tell Scott for me?”

“I’ll tell him tomorrow,” Stiles promised, as he pulled his jeep up to the McCall house.

~{•.•}~

Despite wanting to skip, Rose went to school next day. She had missed more lessons of her senior year than she wanted to already, having been sick at the end of the previous term, but not wanting to be in class just made the day drag on. Work, being directly after school due to the curfew still in place, also seemed to last forever. When she finally had the chance to go back to the Hale house to tell Derek what she had found out, it was nearly dark.

It was easier for Rose to tell everything to Derek than it was to Scott and Stiles. Being a werewolf himself, there were things he understood better or could infer that the others could not. Some of the tenseness he carried with him drained out of Derek when Rose told him she did not harm the bus driver, and as the air cooled, he invited her inside to one of the less draughty rooms upstairs.

“Sorry I left you alone so suddenly yesterday,” Derek said as they settled on the floor along one wall. “You reminded me of someone from before…” he trailed of making a vague gesture at the remains of the house surrounding them.

“Who?” Rose asked gently.

“No one important, it doesn’t matter,” he said vaguely, not feeling up to mentioning it was his own younger self he spoke of. Rose didn’t press, sensing his discomfort and sadness, instead, leaning her shoulder into his.

“I went to visit the driver earlier,” he said finally, changing the topic.

“Did you manage to find anything out?” Rose asked curiously.

“Not exactly, he went unconscious quickly,” Derek frowned, “he knew I was a Hale though. He kept just kept repeating ‘Hale’ and ‘I’m sorry’.”

“Strange,” Rose commented, also frowning, “why would he do that.” Derek shrugged, but did not get to answer before there came the bang of the front door opening and the familiar voice of her brother yelling from downstairs,

“Derek! I know you're here! I know what you did!”

“I didn't do anything,” Derek called back, not revealing himself to the younger boy. His voice echoed eerily through the house, and if she hadn’t been sitting next to Derek, Rose was not sure she would have been able to tell where he was, even with her enhanced senses.

“You killed him!” Scott shouted, unable to stay still in his righteous anger. It was easy to figure out who he was talking about; Garrison Meyers.

“He died.” Derek’s tone was flat, but Rose could feel his frustration that his only lead to finding the one who killed Laura was gone.

“Like your sister died?”

“My sister was missing. I came here looking for her.”

“You found her.”

“I found her in pieces, being used as bait to catch me,” Derek snarled out, fists clenching. Rose reached out, holding one of his hands in her own smaller ones. The larger werewolf relaxed slightly, but nothing Rose could have done would have prevented Derek’s reaction to her brother’s next statement.

“I think you killed them both. I'm going to tell everyone, starting with the sheriff.” Leaping down the full flight of stairs, Derek grabbed Scott by his shirt and slammed him against the wall, raising a cloud of ash and dust as he did so. Getting right in Scott’s face, the wolf growled out,

“I didn't kill him. Neither of us did. It's not Rose’s fault, and it's not mine.” Rose scrambled after the two, concern for her brother and wolfish understanding of Derek’s right to defend himself warring with each other, causing her to remain silent through their heated exchange.

“This is all your fault! You ruined my sister’s life!” Scott yelled, ignoring the dangerous position he was in.

“No, I didn’t.” Derek could barely even begin to defend his honour before Scott continued on.

“You're the one who bit her.”

“No, I'm not.”

“What?” To Rose, it seemed like Scott was startled as if the possibility of there being anyone other than Derek to blame was an impossibility.

“I'm not the one that bit her,” Derek ground out, pressing Scott into the wall.

“There's another?” Rose asked, though it was more of a statement than a question. Derek nodded, easing up on her brother slightly.

“It's called an Alpha. It's the most dangerous of our kind. You and I, we're betas. This thing is more powerful, more animal than either of us,” he explained. “My sister came here looking for him. Now I'm trying to find him. But I don't think I can do it without you.”

“Why Rose?” Scott asked, still unhappy with the Hale werewolf.

“Derek?” Rose questioned. Derek sighed, letting Scott up and walking over to the other were.

“Because he's the one that bit you,” He said. “You're part of his pack. It's you, Rose. You're the one he wants.”

Chapter Text

“If Derek isn't the Alpha,” Stiles started almost as soon as the three of them were in the school corridors, “if he's not the one who bit you, then who did?”

Rose sighed. Sometime she would like to make it through an entire week without spending the morning conversing about her new status as a werewolf.

“I don't know,” she said instead of voicing her opinion, “Derek doesn’t either, but he has been following the Alpha when he can, trying to find out who it is. He went out last night, but I haven’t heard anything back yet.”

“Did the Alpha kill the bus driver?” Scott asked, still upset over the deaths of the people and not entirely convinced that Derek was completely innocent.

“We think so, we just don’t know why.”

“‘We’ meaning you and Derek,” Scott said a touch grumpily.

“Yes,” she said flatly, rolling her eyes at his tone. Rose knew his objection was entirely about the two werewolves still interacting with each other, even though he, personally, seemed to have something against the older man. She had decided to ignore Scott’s opinion unless he did something like have Derek arrested again.

“Do those hunters you mentioned know about the Alpha?” Stiles asked.

“They probably know there is an alpha, but not who he is. They wouldn’t be very good hunters if they didn’t know something was happening, and Derek says that they are very good at killing werewolves.”

“So the Alpha is going to die?” Stiles asked.

“Most likely.”

“And, what about you and Derek?”

“Dunno. Depends on what the hunters think.”

“So you could die too…”

“Yes Stiles,” Rose finally snapped, frustrated with all the questions. “If the Alpha doesn’t decide to kill us for whatever reason, the hunters might.” Scott and Stiles stared at her. Rose was not typically the sort of person to lash out at others, even when Stiles was being his most annoying.

“Sorry,” Rose said, deflating a little. “Derek was following the Alpha last night, but so were the hunters. I don’t know what happened, but there were several gunshots. I haven’t heard from Derek since. I’m just a little on edge.”

“Okay,” Scott said, wrapping an arm around his sister. “Maybe stop with the questions, man,” he said to Stiles.

“Done,” the other boy agreed. “No more questions. No more talk about the Alpha or the hunters or Derek. Especially Derek - who still scares me,” added, making Rose laugh at him.

~{•.•}~

The familiar rhythms of the school day settled Rose’s nerves slightly, but if she had known that Derek was wandering the school looking for her, she would probably have felt differently.

The problem with any public place is that the high number of people using the space mixes the scents together, fo Derek was having little luck finding either of the three people who could help him. He had been shot less than 24 hours ago by a hunter with a wolfsbane bullet, and the lack of a pack was having an adverse effect on the rate of poisoning. He was having difficulty walking, and he could feel the blood running down his arm, the wound not closing as it should. Derek’s senses were fluctuating all over the place, and by the time he got them under control, most of the students had cleared the corridor.

“Where's McCall?” he asked managed to say to the only person left.

“Why should I tell you?” Jackson Whittemore asked in return, eyeing the stranger up as he turned from his locker.

“Because I asked you politely, and I only do that once,” the older male ground out, his poisoned injury agitating him enough that he was a little more reckless than normal. Jackson raised an eyebrow, unimpressed,

“Okay, tough guy. You know, how about I help you find him if you tell me what you're selling him? What is it? Is it, uh, Dianabol? Hmm? HGH?”

“Steroids,” Derek remarked flatly, his thought processing slowed as he tried to focus on staying upright and conscious.

“No, girl scout cookies. What the hell do you think I'm talking about?” Jackson snarked. “Oh, and, uh, by the way, whatever it is you're out selling, I'd probably stop sampling the merchandise. You look wrecked.” Despite his sluggish thinking, Derek could tell that he was going to get nothing out of the jock in front of him. The boy was too hung up on wanting to be the best that he found it inconceivable that a once weak, asthmatic teen could improve himself to the same level.

“I'll find him myself,” the werewolf almost growled out, stepping around Jackson.

“No, we're not done-” the teen started, grabbing Derek by the shoulder. It was lucky for Jackson that it was not near the full moon as the wolfsbane moving though Derek’s system had pulled his more animalistic tendencies to the surface and he reacted with those instincts.

Derek’s fangs dropped and his claws came out as he slammed the younger male against the lockers, sharpened nails digging into the venerable skin of his neck. Jackson’s pained grunt snapped Derek back to reality, and he pulled back, stalking off, and before Jackson could turn around, he had disappeared from the corridor.

The jock stood there, dazed from being slammed into the lockers, and touched his hand to the back of his neck. Feeling a sharp stinging along with a tacky wetness, he looked down at his red-covered hand. Blood. Jackson glared down the corridor at the dark-haired stranger that had just injured him completely unprovoked, neither he nor Derek, knowing that the blood and wolfsbane from the werewolf’s own wound was mixing with Jackson’s blood.

~{•.•}~

“Oh, no no - no - no, not here!” Rose heard Scott mutter frustratedly as she unlocked her bike chain.

Looking up to see what her brother was talking about, Rose followed his gaze and saw the last person she expected to see in the school parking lot. Derek was standing right in the middle of the road in front of Stiles’ jeep, but he was swaying on his feet, and Rose could see his knees starting to buckle. Whatever had happened to him last night, he did not look well, but the last thing either of them needed was Derek collapsing in front of the entire school when the students just wanted to leave. Rose ran over to him, pulling the other werewolf over to one side where he promptly slumped, pale-faced, to the floor.

“You've got to be kidding me. This guy's everywhere…” Stiles muttered as he spun his jeep round to an empty parking spot.

“What the hell?” Scott half yelled as he ran over to them.

“What are you doing here?” Rose asked the other werewolf, who grumbled to her,

“I was shot.”

“He's not looking so good,” Stiles said to the McCall siblings as he came over from re-parking the jeep.

“Why aren't you healing?” Scott asked, remembering that Rose had healed almost instantly when she had accidentally sliced her finger while cooking last week.

“I can’t,” Derek snapped. “It was - it was a different kind of bullet.”

“A silver bullet?” Stiles asked with far more excitement than the situation called for. Derek just glared at him,

“No, you idiot.”

“That's what she meant when she said you had 48 hours,” Rose said.

“What? Who - who said 48 hours?” Derek asked urgently, grabbing Rose’s arm.

“The hunter who shot you,” Rose told him. “I heard her talking to someone else, and she said that you only had 48 hours, at most. The other one wasn’t pleased with her, they are under the impression that there are only two werewolves and he seemed to have hoped that one would lead them to the other. Actually, he looked a bit pissed off that she was there at all.”

Derek groaned suddenly, his whole body tensing as his eyes flashed blue. Scott looked around worried that someone would see something, but there were only a few stragglers left, all of them absorbed in their own goings-on.

“What are you doing?” Scott panicked. “Stop that!”

“I'm trying to tell you, I can’t!” Derek growled at him.

“Derek, get up,” Rose ordered, “Scott, get the door open.” She put one arm around Derek, hauling him up with his good arm. This was not the easiest thing to do, as he was almost a dead weight, and adding the fact that werewolves are more densely muscled that humans, an area Derek was not lacking in, he was quite heavy to lift.

“I need you to find out what kind of bullet they used,” he groaned as Rose flopped him into the jeep and Stiles clambered back in the driver’s seat.

“How the hell is she supposed to do that?” Scott asked disbelievingly. ‘How was anyone meant to know what kind of bullet a random stranger had shot him with?’

“The only difficulty would be breaking in,” Rose said, ignoring her brother, who in turn ignored her and demanded,

“Why should we help you?”

“Because your sister needs me,” Derek stated, then huffed out, “look, if she doesn't find the bullet, then I'm dead, all right?”

“I'm starting to think that wouldn't be such a bad thing,” Scott muttered under his breath, but of course the two werewolves heard him.

“Scott…” Rose said exasperated, but Derek jumped in before she could say more.

“Then think about this,” he said through gritted teeth. “The Alpha called Rose out against her will. He's going to do it again. Next time she either kills with him, or she gets killed. So, if you want her to stay alive, then you need me.” Rose looked at Derek, slightly startled, but decided that now was not the time to be having that conversation. Derek’s possible death being more imminent than her own.

“Fine,” Scott bit out, not really wanting to help Derek, but not wanting his sister to be floundering through things with the possibility of being killed looming over her head.

“I’ll try” Rose assured the other wolf, then turned to Stiles. “Hey, get him out of here,” she told him.

“Where?” Stiles asked.

“Somewhere private, text me,” Rose instructed.

”I hate you for this so much,” he grumbled to Rose who just grinned back at him,

“love you too, Stiles.”

~{•.•}~

Work seemed to drag on, making her agitated, but Rose didn’t want to miss the pay despite her mum’s insistence that they would be fine without the extra money. It was only made worse by Chris Argent having chosen to go shopping that afternoon, putting her more on edge than she already was.

By the time she got to the Argent house, having decided to walk so that a strange bicycle wasn’t seen lying around, it was almost dark. There were lights on in most of the rooms, but most of the blinds or curtains were drawn, making it practically impossible to see where people were. However, Rose had already thought of that while she was on shift, and she quickly rang the home phone number she had copied out from the phone book at work.

“Chris Argent,” came the deep male voice over the line.
 
“Hi, I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Argent, this is Rosalind McCall, I’m Scott’s sister,” Rose said carefully polite. “He’s meant to be home by now, but I haven’t heard from him at all. He’s not answering his phone and the last I knew he was meeting with Allison to study. I’m just wondering if you had seen him at all.”
 
“Yes, I have,” Argent replied, “my sister invited Scott to join us all for dinner, he hasn’t left yet.” That was the information she had called to find out. At least he had told her, rather than her having to try and steer the conversation onto finding out where the family was.
 
“Oh, thank god,” Rose said, only partly in the context of the conversation. “I was worried something had happened to him, what with the recent animal attacks. He probably forgot my work hours changed for the curfew too, so he isn’t entirely at fault, as usually there wouldn’t be anyone home.”
 
“I’m sorry to have worried you,” the older male said.
 
“Oh no, it’s alright,” Rose quickly reassured, “so long as he is safe it’s fine. I’ll let you get back to your evening. Um, could you ask Scott to let me know when he is leaving.”
 
“I can do that.”

“Thank you. Goodnight, Mr Argent.” 

“Goodnight.”

There was a click as he put the phone down, and Rose let out a sigh of relief. Argent had told her what she needed to know; that the family were eating dinner together, and so would all be occupied. Rose didn’t know how long she had and though the idea of entering a hunter’s home unsettled her, she didn’t have much of a choice if she wanted to help Derek.

Steeling herself, she looked up at the imposing house in front of her. It was not any different from any other home on that street, in fact, they all looked the same, but knowing that the occupants would be quite happy to kill her if she was caught made Rose more than a little nervous.

Taking a deep breath, Rose slipped through the garden, cautiously waiting for a trap to be sprung, and slightly surprised that nothing did. Although, she supposed, a house and garden in the middle of an urban area would not exactly be a sensible place to trap anything that might look human to those who are unaware of the supernatural. Reaching the house, Rose aimed for the open upstairs window, climbing silently up the side of the building.

Slipping inside the empty bedroom, Rose stopped, listening to the sounds of the house around her. There were the usual noises that every household had; the hum of various electrical appliances, the soft buzz of switched on lights, and the highly muffled plinking of water in a pipe, but Rose ignored all of these. She was listening for less mechanical sounds than those; the clatter of cutlery on plates, the murmur of voices, the soft thump of human hearts.

Keeping an ear focused on the six heartbeats gathered in the dining room, she crept through the house, stopping at each door and breathing in the scents. The bedroom she had entered the house through had been saturated with Allison’s scent, like peach and a lavender that matched her furnishings, but there were hints of other scents too. A rich blend of pine and cedar trailed towards one of the doors, where it mingled with a harsher fenugreek and cumin mix. Making the assumption that this was Allison’s parent’s room, Rose slinked along the trail of the last scent in the house, a burnt sugar and fig combination that was not ingrained into the dwelling as the other three were.

Rose silently slid into the guest bedroom and went straight for the bags shoved under one half of the bed. The suitcase was empty, but the black duffle bag was heavy, and something inside clinked slightly when she moved it. Yanking the zip open revealed a few scraps of clothing that covered a small selection of weaponry and a black bullet case. It smelled sharply of wolfsbane, and opening the case showed an array of bullets of various sizes all covered in the same acrid scent. Rose frowned, it was not quite the same smell as had been under the blood from Derek’s wound, and none of those bullets seemed to be missing.

There was, however, a small, battered wooden box in the centre, that was decorated with a pyrograph of a wolfsbane leaf and flowers. Rose grabbed the latched container, swiftly flipping the lid, her nose wrinkling at the new scent that was released, one that matched the smell from Derek’s wound. There was a hole for the bullet that had buried itself in Derek’s arm which was swiftly joined by another hole as the werewolf stole a bullet for herself. Rose shut the box revealing a burnt engraving that read ‘Aconit Napel Bleu Nordique’, Northern Blue Monkshood.

Her elation at finding the bullet was quickly dimmed by the sound of footsteps moving through the house towards the room. Quickly shoving the box back in the case, the case back in the bag, and the bag back under the bed Rose vaulted over the bed, landing on silent feet to hide under the bed, heart pounding in her throat. Listening, she heard voices accompanying the steps. One voice, which belonged to her brother, was asking about using a toilet, while the other, an unfamiliar female voice, directed him towards the guest bedroom.

Logic would suggest that this was Kate speaking and that her brother was headed for the room she was hiding in. The problem was that Rose hadn’t told Scott that the Argents were hunters and if he found out now, there was the chance that he could end up blurting something out to the family, revealing that he knew something that could get the pair of them into trouble. Deciding to stay put until her brother left again, Rose remained under the bed, gripping the bullet in her now sweaty palm and hoping that his having left the table did not mean that dinner was over. It would make leaving the house again much harder.

Fortunately, it was only a few tense minutes before Rose heard everyone move back to the table for dessert, and she deemed it safe enough to scramble out from under the bed, through the house and clamber back out of Allison’s window.

~{•.•}~

The McCall siblings arrived at the Animal Clinic at the same time. While Rose had left the Argent house earlier than her brother, Scott knew already where to go, and he was not on foot.

“Stiles?” Scott called out as they went in the unlocked front door.

“Scott?” Stiles responded from the surgery. They followed the sound of his voice to find Stiles holding a bone saw over Derek’s arm. Rose decided not to ask questions she wasn’t sure she wanted the answers to and so, as Stiles complained to Scott, she went over to check on Derek.

“Did you get it?” Derek asked, his voice rough. He was half on the steel table, his arm laying uselessly to one side, a tourniquet tied around his upper arm above blackened veins. He looked terrible. His skin was pale under his tan, and he was shaking and sweating as though he had a fever.

“Yes, The bullet was in a box labelled Northern Blue Monkshood,” Rose told him, frowning with concern as she handed the bullet over. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“It’s a rare form of wolfsbane, and means I need it from the inside of the bullet.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I’ll die without it.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Stiles asked, he and Scott rejoining the conversation.

“I'm going to,” Derek started, “I'm going to-“ and his eyes rolled back and he fainted.

“No. No, no, no, no,” Scott repeated as the bullet clunked to the floor and started to roll away. Rose leapt for it, trapping the bullet under her foot before it could go under the cabinets, sliding slightly on the round object.

“Derek. Derek, come on, wake up.” Stiles started slapping Derek on the face but got no response. “Rose, what the hell are we going to do?” he said to the older teen in a panic.

“Get him up,” Rose told the boys, picking up the bullet from under her foot.

“He's not waking up!” Stiles told her as she examined the tip of the bullet. There was an almost invisible line which she pried at before carefully ripping the cap off with her teeth.

“I think he's dying!” Stiles exclaimed, his voice high pitched. “I think he's dead!”

“His heart is still beating,” Rose reassured, though she too had a hint of panic in her voice as she tipped out the powered wolfsbane from the bullet onto the table.

“He’s not breathing,” Scott said.

“Please don't kill me for this,” Stiles pleaded, before promptly punching Derek in the face. “Ugh! Ow! God!” he exclaimed afterwards. Hitting the werewolf was like hitting a brick wall, but it worked, Derek lurching forwards as he attempted to get up.

“Give me-“ he started, as Scott helped pull him to his feet, as Stiles continued to whine in the background.

“Ow! God-”

“Stiles shut up,” Rose demanded, watching anxiously Derek drew a lighter out of his pocket and burned the pile of wolfsbane in a shower of sparks, shoving the still smoking ash into the open wound with one finger. The bright purple of the wolfsbane poison was burned out of Derek’s blood while he writhed on the floor in pain.

It was over quickly, though it felt like far longer to Rose who could do nothing to help except assist him to his feet once he had healed.

“That - Was - Awesome! Yes!” Stiles was quick to celebrate, but Rose was not so sure.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Well, except for the agonising pain,” Derek snaked back, having recovered surprisingly quickly now the wolfsbane was gone from his body. Stiles grinned,

“I’m guessing the ability to use sarcasm is a good sign of health.” At the glare from Derek, Stiles decided to change the subject.

“How did you know where to find the bullet?” he asked Rose, who shifted awkwardly before starting to clean up. This was not a conversation she was looking forward to.

“As you know, we ran into some hunters my first full moon-”

“Then you know who the hunters are?” Stiles interrupted. Rose hesitated, looking between her brother and Derek.

“What?” Scott asked, confused. Derek shrugged,

“he has to know eventually,” he said bluntly.

“Yes, there’s a few,” Rose sighed, then rushed out, “the lead family is the Argents.”

“No,” Scott denied. “Allison couldn’t, she…”

“Her father tried to shoot me with a crossbow,” Rose asserted. “Her aunt tried to kill Derek with a poisoned bullet. Does that sound like a family that wants to be friends with werewolves?”

“But we saved your life, which means you’re going to leave us alone, you got that?” Scott said to Derek, as though that would make all the difference. “And if you don't, I'm going to go back to Allison's dad, and I'm going to tell him everything-”

“You're going to trust them?” Derek asked unbelievingly. “You think they can help your sister?”

“Well, why not? They're a lot freaking nicer than you are.”

“I can show you exactly how nice they are.” Scott glanced at Stiles, not quite so sure of himself.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Come with me.”

~{•.•}~

The older were directed the three teens to Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, cluing Rose into what he was going to show them straight away. Stiles opted to stay behind, not liking to go into the hospital unless absolutely necessary ever since his mum had died when he was younger, relying on the McCall siblings to tell him everything later.

Derek led the pair through the building to the long term care ward, past the empty nurses' station and into his uncle’s room. Rose found it strange to be there with other people, but it was a happy kind of strange like something good was starting to come together. Scott’s voice pulled Rose out of her thoughts.

“Who is he?” he asked staring at the back of Peter’s head. The catatonic werewolf was still in his wheelchair, facing out the window, despite it being dark outside and well after when he would usually be put to bed.

“My uncle,” Derek said softly, “Peter Hale.”

“Is he - like you, a werewolf?” Scott asked tentatively, glancing at Derek. Rose raised an eyebrow behind his back. It didn’t escape her notice that her brother didn’t include her in being a were.

“He was. Now he's barely even human,” Derek told him, his eyes remaining on his last remaining family member like a starving man at a feast. “Six years ago, my sister and I were at school, and our house caught fire. 11 people were trapped inside. He was the only survivor.”

“So - What makes you so sure that they set the fire?” Scott asked, trying to deny any connection between the Argents and the Hales.

“'Cause they're the only ones that knew about us.”

“Well, then they had a reason,” Scott said.

There was a silence, which seemed to drag on, but lasted only a second before the crack of a loud slap echoed through the room. Scott’s face was flung to one side as red bloomed across his cheek. Rose’s eyes had flared golden as she let out a low growl, only just able to stop her claws from raking across her brother’s face. A warning hand on her shoulder helped to settle her, but she was still angry at how easy it was for him to dismiss the death of so many people. Derek was surprised by how aggressively Rose reacted, and as much as he would have like to respond to Scott similarly, he instead berated him verbally.

“Like what?” Derek snapped, “you tell me what justifies this.” Keeping one hand on the younger werewolf’s shoulder, Derek reached for his uncle’s wheelchair, spinning him around to face them. Scott reeled back in shock at the damage revealed.

Peter’s head had flopped to one side, exposing his injuries to the young teen. The lack of decent light in the room deepened the shadows caused by the unevenness of burned and scarred flesh. His eyes stared blankly ahead of him, not even blinking at the change in light. Rose, ducked under Derek’s arm, crouched down in front of the catatonic man and gently tilted his head back into an upright position, murmuring a quick hello as she did so. Even if he were unresponsive, the crick Peter would get in his neck from staying in that position would still cause discomfort.

“This is the Peter from the hospital you’ve mentioned?” Scott asked his sister, his eyes never leaving said man’s face.

“Yeah.” Rose was now crouched down next to the wheelchair, cradling one of Peter’s hands in her own. “He’s been like this all the time I have known him. The doctors say it’s a miracle he’s even alive, let alone recovering in any way.” Watching her interact with his uncle, Derek continued,

“Hunters say they'll only kill an adult, and only with absolute proof, but there were people in my family that were perfectly ordinary in that fire. This is what they do. And it's what Allison will do.”

“What are you doing?” a rather familiar voice hissed out, interrupting Scott before he could object to Derek’s convictions. “How did you get in here?” It was the red-haired nurse who had tried to scold her only the other day, and who was once again glaring at her, eyes occasionally flickering to the others in the room.

Still slightly riled up from the rest of the evening, Rose let out a low growl of irritation. It was too low for either of the humans in the room to hear, but Derek’s eyebrow twitched in surprise. It was the second unusual reaction he had seen from Rose that evening, out of character with what he had seen of her personality so far. Deciding to head things off before they got out of hand, Derek pulled Rose up and out of the room, muttering to the nurse as he left,

“We were just leaving.”

~{•.•}~

“What was that all about?” Derek asked Rose as they left the hospital, pulling her aside.

“What was what about?” Rose responded, waving Scott on when he went to stop for them.

“Slapping your brother. Whatever that was with the nurse.”

“I would have slapped Scott for that comment no matter who it was about” Rose defended, “and that nurse doesn’t like the fact that I visit people, or possibly only that I visit Peter. She just kinda irritates me,” Rose huffed, then glanced sharply at Derek’s left hand.

“Speaking of aggression,” Rose continued, “why do you have Jackson Whittemore’s blood on your hand?”

“How do you know whose blood it is?” Derek asked, with only a hint of suspicion.

“Lacrosse isn’t exactly a non-contact sport,” Rose replied. “Stop avoiding the question.” Derek looked around, avoiding her gaze and obviously embarrassed.

“I nicked him with my claws when I was looking for you,” he muttered. “I might not have had the best control at the time.” Rose grinned at his admission.

I don’t think anyone has much control when talking to Whittemore,” she said. Rose paused, taking a deep breath. “Derek?” she asked quietly, “is what you said about me killing or being killed true?”

“No, Derek quickly reassured. “I had to convince your brother to help somehow.”

“And how do I know you’re telling the truth?” Rose asked pointedly.

“Can’t you just trust me?” Derek hissed back. Rose huffed with irritation, leaning into Derek’s space. To almost anyone else it would look like they wanted to keep their conversation private, but anyone who was a little more wolfish in nature would recognise the hint of frustrated challenge Rose was giving the taller werewolf.

“There is a difference between trust and knowing information that will keep me alive,” she bit out. “You said you would help me, but you have told me almost nothing. The little you have told me is only after I have begged you for information.” Derek sighed, backing up slightly and acknowledging that she was right.

“When a person lies there are minute changes, the most obvious being their heart rate changing,” he told her.

“Which we can hear.”

“Yes, so concentrate. Listen to my heartbeat. Joining a pack is not about 'kill or be killed'.” Rose could hear the steadiness in the organ's rhythm, but she could also sense his uncertainty.

“But you’re not sure about this Alpha,” she stated softly.

“No. I don’t know what the Alpha is doing, or why.”

“Great,” Rose grumbled, heavy with sarcasm. “If I don’t kill someone, I might end up dead. If I do kill someone, I end up dead because the hunters will kill me. I think I prefer option one.”

“If the hunters don’t decide to kill you anyway,” Derek muttered darkly, as he wandered off.

Rose sighed, watching him walk away. Having heard what had happened to his family, and now having lost his sister, so his only remaining family was a catatonic uncle she understood his frustration and anger with both hunters and the Alpha. She just hoped that Derek wasn’t going to go and do something stupid. Rose sighed again and headed over to where Scott was waiting, not noticing the figure watching her from the hospital window.

~{•.•}~

Chapter Text

“Why the hell can’t I just go home? I’m fine.” That was definitely the voice of Jackson Whittemore. Derek had arrived at Rose’s house a few minutes ago saying there had been another killing and had dragged her, without much difficulty, with him to the scene of the murder.

“I hear ya, but the EMT says you hit your head pretty hard. They just wanna make sure you don’t have a concussion.” That was the Sheriff, using what Rose thought of as his’ be patient with the victim’ voice.

“What part of “I’m fine” are you having a problem grasping? Okay, I wanna go home,” Jackson continued to rant, even as Lydia stayed curled up in a shock blanket, not reacting to very much around her.

“And I understand that -” 

“No, you don’t understand, which kind of blows my mind, since it should be a pretty basic concept to grasp for a minimum - wage rent - a - cop like you! Okay, now, I wanna go home!” Stiles had obviously had enough of Jackson shouting at his father because he got out the car and exclaimed loudly,

“Oh, whoa, is that a dead body?!” The Sheriff shout him an unimpressed look but quickly moved everyone back so that the stretcher could come through. From the roof of Video 2*C the two werewolves watched as the limp body of an employee was wheeled out of the store. 

“I don’t understand,” Rose said quietly, not wishing to be heard and caught in an awkward position near a crime scene. “These aren’t just random attacks, or Jackson and Lydia would be dead as well. But why? Werewolves don’t just go on random killing sprees, do we?” She looked up at Derek, who was standing above her.

“No,” he said, remembering what his mother had told him when he was younger. “We’re predators; we don’t have to be killers.”

“Then why is the Alpha killing?” Rose asked uncertainly.

“That’s what we’re gonna find out,” Derek told her, moving away from the edge of the roof. He had seen all he needed to, there was no point in them getting caught lurking about.

~{•.•}~

“So much for focusing on finishing high school” Rose muttered to herself, staring out the window as Derek drove her back home. She could see his reflection raise an eyebrow, but she ignored him, instead asking, 

“Is there any way you can find the Alpha? If not by sight, by scent or something?”

“His human scent could be entirely different,” Derek said, sounding frustrated by that information even as he said it. “It has to be you. You have a connection with him, a link. We may be able to use that so you can find him.” Rose turned to look at the other werewolf, 

“Might be able? There seem to be a lot of unknowns about this,” she commented.

“Usually the link is between betas to their alpha, I don’t know if it will work without you accepting him as your Alpha.”

“What would happen if I did that?” Rose asked, slightly wary of the answer.

“You might have no choice but to follow his orders, even if it meant killing.”

“I thought you might say that,” Rose grumbled. “But once I’ve found him, you can stop him?” she asked. Derek shook his head,

“Not alone,” he told her, “we’re stronger in numbers. A pack makes the individual more powerful.” Rose blanched, feeling slightly disgusted.

“Which is why he bit me, why the Alpha wanted me to… the… on the bus…” she stammered out.

“Yeah,” Derek said quietly, understanding what she was trying to ask and feeling slightly for the other werewolf that had been thrust into the situation she had not asked for.

“But this time as different,” the teen pointed out. “He killed without me being there. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Derek said cluelessly as he pulled up in front of the McCall house. “Be careful,” he added as she moved to get out the car. Rose paused, looking back at him, smiling slightly,

“You too, Derek. Goodnight.”

~{•.•}~

 When Rose opened her locker before lunch the next day, a folded slip of paper fell to the ground. It had been torn out of a workbook, and opening it revealed a scribbled message that read,

Jackson saw nothing. 

Not lying. 

Wound on neck still open. 

No name left on the note, but a furtive sniff revealed sandalwood and anise. Derek had been in the school and had interrogated Jackson.

From his note, the other wolf seemed to be satisfied with what Jackson said, but Rose was not so sure. He may have been telling the truth that he didn’t see anything, but that did not mean he didn’t know anything. She wasn’t going to pursue it, though, not yet. Jackson was already suspicious of Scott, and she didn’t want to increase that suspicion, nor did she want to push him into blabbing, especially not to the wrong person. She could have someone keep an eye on him though, and so she went looking for Stiles and her brother.

Stiles was just getting out of Chemistry when Rose found him, and, focused more on his phone than his surroundings, he failed to notice her in the corridor.

“What?” Scott’s slightly exasperated voice came from the other end of the line.

“Finally! Have you been getting any of my texts?” Stiles responded, equally frustrated with the other boy.

“Yeah, like all 9 million of them,” Scott complained. Stiles ignored it.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on? Lydia is totally M.I.A., Jackson looks like he’s got a time bomb inserted into his face, another random guy’s dead, and we have to do something about it.”

“Like what?”

“Something,” Stiles shrugged, despite the other teen not being able to see it.

“Okay, we’ll deal with it later,” Scott dismissed. “Left, left, left, left, left,” Stiles then heard fading off as he hung up on Scott. Stiles sighed, looking around and coming face to face with Rose. 

“Hey, what’s up?” he said once he recovered from his surprise.

“Hey, Stiles,” she greeted, smiling slightly. “Where’s Scott?”

“Um, you heard that then,” Stiles avoided her gaze, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

“Yes. Werewolves do have rather good hearing. Where is he, Stiles?” Rose asked sternly.

“He left school with Allison this morning because it’s her birthday, which is kinda nice and everything, but I think he might be in the preserve with her,” Stiles rushed out all in one breath.

“When there’s an alpha werewolf running about that we know has no problem with killing people,” Rose hissed back. She was not angry at Stiles, even though he had not told her what Scott was doing. Nor at Scott, at least not about this. But her brother seemed to have taken leave of his senses when it came to Allison, and someone was going to end up hurt, which worried Rose.

“But it didn’t attack Lydia. or Jackson,” Stiles defended. “The Alpha went right past them and didn’t attack.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t told Scott that,” Rose told him. “We’re not exactly talking at the moment.”

“I haven’t either,” Stiles said, deciding not to ask why the siblings were at odds. 

“We don’t even know what the motive behind these killings is,” Rose griped, leaning back onto the row of lockers behind her as Stiles opened his own. “There must be some connection.”

“Or he’s a murderous lunatic,” Stiles suggested as an alternative. Rose looked at him flatly.

“That doesn’t help Scott’s case for being in the woods. Turning to face Stiles she started to explain, “Scott is the brother of someone the Alpha bit and wants to join his pack -”

“So, he might be fine.”

“- and who is dating Allison, who is from a family of known werewolf killers.”

“Oh.”

“Only thing we know for sure, is that so far the Alpha has only attacked at night. Let’s hope that doesn’t change anytime soon,” Rose added grimly, leaving Stiles to stew as she went to get her lunch.

~{•.•}~

“Hey, it’s me again,” Stiles said into his phone, leaving Scott another message. He had gone to Lydia’s house after school and had gotten new information. “Look, I found something, and I don’t know what to do, okay? So, if you could turn your phone on right now, that’d be great. Or else I’ll kill you. Do you understand me? I’m gonna kill you. And I’m too upset to come up with a witty description about how exactly I’m gonna kill you, but I’m just gonna do it, okay? I’m gonna—ugh! Goodbye. God.” He threw his phone down on the table. This was getting ridiculous.

“Please tell me I’m gonna hear good news at this parent/teacher thing tonight,” Stiles heard from behind him as his dad entered the kitchen.

“Depends on how you define ‘good news’,” Stiles answered slightly evasively.

“I define it as you getting straight A’s with no behavioural issues,” Noah said, making Stiles feel a bit guilty.

“You might wanna rethink that definition,” he said carefully.

“‘Nuff said,” the Sheriff sighed, leaving his son to his own devices.

“Come on, Scott. Where the hell are you?” Stiles said to himself, then paused. Maybe he had forgotten to turn his phone on again. Stiles legged it up the stairs to his computer and pulled up Skype, but was disappointed to be greeted not by Scott, but by his sister.

“Hey, Stiles. No Scott isn’t home, his phone is off, and he hasn’t been home since this morning,” Rose said all before Stiles could do more than say hello.

“Right, you’d be able to smell it.” Stiles wasn’t entirely sure how he should feel about that information; that any of the werewolves could work out where he had been simply by smelling. “Anyway,” he went on, “I went to see Lydia earlier, and she is completely out of it. But she is convinced that what she saw was a mountain lion.”

“Well that’s good,” Rose said, relaxing into the chair. “Derek says Jackson doesn’t remember anything either.”

“I’m not so sure,” Stiles told her, shaking his head. “Lydia’s pretty drugged up and told me that her stuffed giraffe was a mountain lion, but she definitely saw something. She had a video on her phone of the creature as it went through the glass.”

“Did you delete it?” Rose asked urgently.

“Yeah, not before sending a copy to myself. I’ll send it on to you. The clip’s a bit blurry, but you can still see it. It’s a bit,” Stiles pulled a face, before going on, “if that is the thing that bit you, how are you not in two pieces? It’s huge.”

“Yeah, well, we both saw Laura Hale’s body,” Rose reminded him as he swapped to his emails, “or what was left of it.” Stiles watched as she turned her head, hearing something from another room. With a quick “hang on”, got up, leaving Stiles staring at Scott’s empty bedroom. Rose soon came back holding her laptop, and he could hear the muffled sound of the video he had just sent to her. 

“Yeah,” Rose said, frowning slightly as the video finished, “that’s the Alpha. He looks kind of more… both more wolfish and more human… I dunno. Something is different.”

“Good different or bad different,” Stiles asked.

“I’m not sure.”

~{•.•}~

“Scott, you need to call me right now,” Rose heard her mother say from where she was waiting for Scott’s interview to be over. One of the joys of being a senior was having to go to the parent/teacher interviews, but being a sibling also meant having to wait for them to finish too.

“Allison,” Rose then heard a male voice say from nearby. “Answering your cell phone will make discussing the terms of your grounding much easier. Well, call me back before your punishment reaches biblical proportions.” It was Chris Argent, soon joined by a woman Rose guessed to be his wife.

“Kate hasn’t heard from her either,” she said.

“She doesn’t do this,” Argent said to her in return.

“So, do you want to kill him, or shall I?” Rose blurted out, a combination of irritation at Scott, and uneasiness at confronting the two Argents.

“I’m sorry?” Chris responded, confused by the blunt question from someone he did not know.

“Oh, Rosalind McCall, Scott’s sister; we spoke on the phone the other night,” Rose introduced herself, getting up from the steps she was on. “From what Stiles was telling me, Scott had the marvellous idea to skip school on Allison’s birthday so that she wouldn’t have to put up with questions about her age. The only problem is that my idiot brother decided it would be a good idea to go into the preserve when there is a wild animal about killing people. So, do you want to kill him for his stupidity and running off with your daughter, or shall I?”

Allison’s mother and father shared a look, but before they could ask Rose anything more Melissa walked up to them, phone in hand.

“Excuse me, you’re not Allison’s parents, are you?” she asked. “I’m Scott’s mom, and I hate to say it, but he’s not answering his phone either.”

“You’re his mother?” Chris Argent clarified, not at all impressed after what he had just been told. Melissa, who had previously faced opposition from people who thought they knew better about her children and how she, as a single mother, should be raising them, became quickly defensive.

“Funny how you say that like it’s an accusation,” she snipped.

“Well, I wouldn’t claim it as a source of pride,” the Argent male returned, “since he basically kidnapped my daughter today.”

“How do we know skipping school wasn’t your daughter’s idea?” Melissa started, but Rose jumped into the conversation, stopping her mother before she could dig too deep a hole.

“Mum,” she interrupted, shaking her head, “it was Scott’s idea. Stiles told me,” she added.

“And not answering his phone?” Mrs McCall asked her daughter, who shrugged saying,

“it’s been off for most of the day.”

“He doesn’t do this,” Melissa said to herself, unknowingly imitating the two Argents she stood infant of.

“Well, he’s never had a girlfriend before either, so…” Rose left it hanging, letting her mother make her own conclusions.

“My daughter” Chris started but interrupted himself when Scott and Allison sheepishly got out of Allison’s car. “- is right there,” he sighed.

Melissa’s brisk walk got her to the couple first, and ignoring Allison, she ripped into her son,

“Where exactly have you been?” 

“Nowhere, mom,” Scott told her, trying to laugh it off. Rose didn’t have much sympathy for him; he was the one who skipped school when he was failing, not her.

“Nowhere, meaning not at school,” Melissa continued. Scott winced, knowing he was not going to get out of it.

“Kinda,” he murmured. Allison jumped to his defence,

“It’s not his fault,” she said as her parents came over. “It’s my birthday, and we were -”, but her father was having none of it.

“Allison, in the car,” he ordered, pointing towards his SUV, but they were interrupted by a scream.

All over the carpark, people were running in all directions towards their cars. To Rose, it seemed as though most of the people there didn’t actually know what was going on, but were reacting anyway. Still looking around, Rose saw Chris Argent move towards his car, she assumed for a gun. The Sheriff was also there, directing people out of the way. She knew that he also had a gun on him.

Leaving Scott, Allison, and her mother with Mrs Argent, Rose moved through the frenzied crowd, trying to see anything. The incident was confusing her. She knew that this could be the Alpha, but he had never attacked a large group of people before. She also knew that some people were armed, and would shoot, but part of her felt tense and upset at the possibility that they could kill the Alpha, despite all the problems he was causing. 

Rose paused. Was this the connection that Derek had been talking about not even 24 hours ago? Now was not the time to experiment, and so, keeping that thought in the back of her mind, Rose continued to move, looking and listening for anything. From her left, she heard a growl, but it was far higher in pitch than the sound she had heard from the Alpha when he bit her in the woods, it sounded almost like -

BANG. BANG.

The sound of a gun firing pulled Rose out of her thoughts. The smell of blood spread as the panic died down. Mountain Lion. The same animal that the public thought was killing the people had just been shot by Chris Argent.

Everyone moved cautiously towards the quickly dying animal. No one spoke as they approached, no one was quite sure what to do. Rose was not watching the animal though. She was watching Scott’s face as he started to realise what had just happened and that his own sister could have been the one at the other end of Argent’s gun.