(no subject)
Story Type: Fanfiction
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Characters: Isaac Lahey, Derek Hale, Peter Hale, Scott McCall
Pairing(s): None
Warnings: Body horror, mild gore
Summary: Part of being an alpha is learning to shift into a more pure wolf form. Derek has just reached this point, and only Isaac is there to see it.
Isaac wasn’t the best sleeper even before he turned into a werewolf. Even before his mom died he’d been skittish and prone to getting lost in his own head. He’d always been the kid with monsters in his closet, or lurking in wait under his bed.
And after the bite, well, who can sleep when there are hunters out for your pelt and giant lizard monsters with paralytic venom? And that’s only if you survive the blood-stained maw of your own wolf, always hovering just under the skin, always eager to tear its way out.
So Isaac was already wide awake, his mind a frantic swirl of Erica and Boyd and the sight of Derek plunging his claws into Jackson’s belly, Jackson just standing there and taking it like Derek was doing him a favor, when the sour, biting scent of panic and the frantic thrum of a heartbeat filled his head and coated his tongue and he shot upright, his sleeping bag tangling with his legs.
It wasn’t Peter. Isaac always knew were Peter was. Peter had that same anticipatory threat hanging over him, like Isaac’s dad had. It was like a match hovering over a fuse, or a trail of gun powder. Isaac wasn’t about to turn his metaphorical back on that. And Isaac would have noticed if anyone else had come into the depot. But he still had to extend his senses across the room just to be sure because it couldn’t. It just couldn’t be Derek.
Derek was angry, sure, and he had a habit of charging in without thinking, and Isaac had come to realize that a lot of Derek’s stratigic shortcomings came from ignoring his human side in favor of listening to the wolf, which was a whole bag of psychological crap Isaac wasn’t ready to deal with yet, but what Derek was most of all was in control.
Isaac really, really didn’t want to get up and look in Derek’s car. He really didn’t. It was one of those weird disconnects where his wolf side was pushing and nipping at him to do one thing while his human side was curled up in a ball and muttering an endless stream of “screw that”. The wolf was usually stronger, which pissed him off, but lately his human was learning to stand on its own two feet, metaphorically speaking, and he actually managed to hesitate for about half a minute before the wolf got hold of the human’s burgeoning curiosity and started to gnaw on it like a dehydraded pig’s ear.
He got up, and followed his senses to his alpha.
Derek didn’t notice him coming. That was freaky in and of itself, but it was nothing compared to what Isaac saw inside the train car when he reached it.
Derek was on all fours, the balls of his feet flat against the floor, his knees folded into a crouch, and his hands were splayed out in front of him, claws extending and retracting in a weird sort of pulsing motion. The rest of him was a mottled patchwork of skin and fur which grew and receded as Isaac watched.
Derek was naked, but Isaac was too busy being freaked out by Derek’s body to be freaked out by…Derek’s body. Because he could see the muscles shifting and slithering around under his skin, the fur rippling down over his arms and across his back. He could also see Derek’s face stretching into a snout and back again and this was nothing like the smooth transition from human to werewolf that Derek seemed to do without even thinking about it. This looked painful, and wrong, and twisted.
But even more wrong than that: Derek was crying.
Well, suffering was probably a better way to put it. His eyes were watering but it wasn’t like he was sobbing or anything. Just gritting his teeth and clenching his eyes shut like he was in pain. It definitely looked like whatever was happening to him hurt. And it took a moment for Isaac to hear past Derek’s pounding heart and the squelching sound coming from inside his body and realize that Derek was talking. Praying, kind of.
“Please.” He was panting. “Please, stop. Change back, change back, please. I don’t want it, please.”
Derek was a lot younger like this, scared and hurt and sort of helpless. Isaac felt like a complete tool just standing there and looking at him while Derek went through some kind of werewolf body horror. But what was he supposed to do? Reach out a hand so Derek could bite it off? Christ, his fangs were huge. Way bigger than the ones that’d sunk into his side, and those had hurt like hell.
“Derek?” Crap. He so did not mean to say that out loud.
Derek glanced up at him, like Isaac was the least of his problems right now. “Isaac.” He gasped out, and god, he really was in pain. “Get out of here. This doesn’t concern you.”
But then something seemed to rip through him, and Derek screamed and pitched forward onto his knees and elbows, which prompted the kind of yelp a human can’t make as he landed hard on joints that couldn’t make up their mind which species they belonged to.
Isaac found himself kneeling at Derek’s side. His wolf seemed perplexed at the move, which meant his human had to have been at the wheel. He’d celebrate that later. “You’re my alpha, and this is clearly werewolf stuff I don’t understand yet. That makes it my business. And it’s your job to teach me about it.”
Derek growled, and tried to draw himself back up onto his hands, but another wave of whatever it was hit him and he ended up on his side, hands balled into loose fists, and the fur rippled out over his whole body for several seconds before he managed to pull it back. His fangs and claws stayed, however, and his eyes were perma-red.
“It’s alpha stuff.” Derek gritted out around his canines. “Doesn’t concern you.”
Isaac frowned. “Because I could never be an alpha.” He sniped. “My god, Derek, you can’t know what’s gonna happen to us down the line. What about my kids? What if I have kids and they’re werewolves? I need to know this stuff.”
Derek looked like he was going to answer, but then something snapped in his legs and he howled loud enough to shake the car around them, and probably the rest of the depot. Isaac’s wolf jumped into the driver’s seat and tumbled him back, out of his alpha’s strike radius and flat against the wall on the opposite end of the car.
“Isaac.” Peter’s voice came out of nowhere, and for a second Isaac couldn’t place where in the depot it had come from. That was disconcerting. He hated losing track of Peter. He really hated it when Derek looked like the bigger threat of the two. He’d chosen Derek.
“Stand up, calmly, and walk out of the car. Derek is in no condition to explain.”
“I’m not sure I want any explanation you give me.” Isaac replied.
“You don’t trust me. I understand that. You’re a smart boy, Isaac. But you’re right. A beta needs to know what’s going on with his alpha, especially when it leaves his alpha incapable of protecting him. What could it hurt to listen?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask Lydia next time I see her.”
“That was harsh.”
“So is murder.”
Peter sighed, and the sound drifted through the depot like wind, and it made Isaac shiver. This was the guy who’d been Scott’s alpha, once upon a time. And Isaac hadn’t missed the fear mingled with the hatred when Scott had seen Peter fresh out of the grave after the championship game.
“Fair. But better out here with me than in there with a rapidly deteriorating alpha and no room to manouver.”
Okay, that made sense. Honestly, Isaac’s whole life was like a guide to making incredibly bad choices, but he still got to his feet and freaking motored out of that car as fast as he could without actually making any sudden movements.
Peter was standing on the rickety flight of metal stairs leading up to the decrepit offices of the depot. As far as Isaac knew, he had some sort of evil lair up there or something. He really had no desire to find out.
Okay, maybe a little one.
“It’s his alpha form.” Peter said. He was leaning casually with one arm draped over the railing.
“His what?”
Peter started down the stairs, more like a CEO at a fundraiser than a psycho in an abandoned transportation facility.
“When you shift,” Peter explained. “And your eyes turn yellow and the fangs and claws come out, that whole thing.” He waved as if turning into a half-animal creature of myth was about as significant as getting a hang nail. “That’s your beta form. Most werewolves go their whole lives without ever moving past the beta shape. Alphas, on the other hand, are more in tune with their wolf side.”
“You mean-”
“I mean betas inhabit a happy medium between human and wolf. Omegas are closer to humanity without actually becoming humans, and conversely, alphas are as close to actual wolves as we can get without actually being wolves.”
“So Derek’s turning into a wolf.”
“No.” Peter said. Isaac narrowed his eyes, confused.
Peter rolled his eyes. “He’s trying not to become a wolf.”
Isaac glanced back at the car where Derek was still audibly struggling with his transition.
“But Derek’s all about being a wolf.” Isaac said. “Why would he fight something like that?”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe he’s afraid.” He suggested. “Scared of what shape he’ll take.”
“You mean there are options?”
Peter smirked. “Well when I was an alpha, at best you could say I wasn’t a looker. At worst, I was something out of Lon Chaney’s filmography.”
“You mean…Derek might be turning into a monster?”
Peter arched his eyebrows. “He might be. But then again he might not.” His face took on a far away expression. “Laura was so beautiful when she shifted.”
“Laura?”
Peter froze. He looked at Isaac like he’d just discovered some kind of hideous growth on Isaac’s face. “Derek will get himself under control soon. Maybe he’ll talk to you then.”
Peter turned and headed for the exit.
“Wait!” Isaac called after him. Peter ignored him.
“Peter!” Peter just kept walking.
“Who’s Laura?” But by then, Peter was gone.
When the shift finally subsided, Derek was exhausted and weak, his skin ashen and sweaty, and Isaac had to help him into some loose sweats. They gave up shirts as a lost cause and Isaac took the opportunity to study Derek’s tattoo more closely. The way Derek wore it wasn’t like the people Isaac had seen on those TV shows with the tattoo artists. They wore their ink kind of like merit badges, or trophies. Derek wore his like a scar.
“How much haven’t you told me?” Isaac asked. He tried to keep the accusation out of his voice, but he wasn’t sure he did very well.
“I’ve told you everything you needed to know.”
“To survive, maybe.” Isaac conceeded. “But I need more if I’m going to figure out how to live. I’m in this, Derek. Forever. I don’t get to just wash my hands of it and go back to being human when it gets old. I’m going to die a werewolf, and I need to know as much as I can if I’m going to have any kind of life between now and then.”
Derek grunted. “All right.” He rolled onto his back and propped himself up on his elbows. He had two sleeping bags stacked under him, but Isaac kept feeling like he needed more. Like he’d suddenly turned fragile and needed to be cushioned from the impact of reality. God his wolf was a mother hen.
Derek met his eyes. “What do you want to know?”
Why don’t you want to shift into your alpha shape? Why is Peter still here when you killed him? Why are you so obsessed with Scott when you didn’t even turn him? Who are the alpha pack and what do they want from you? What about Erica and Boyd? Am I ever going to be safe again?
“Who’s Laura?” He could’ve slapped himself.
Derek’s face shadowed, and he let himself fall onto his back, his hands folded over his stomach. “Where did you hear that name?”
Isaac was about to answer, but Derek held up a hand. “No, don’t tell me. I can guess.”
“Yeah. So, who is she?”
“My sister.”
Isaac’s eyes widened. “What happened to her?”
Derek’s eyes flicked to him, then back to the ceiling. “She was my alpha.” He said. “Then Peter was.”
Isaac gulped. “He killed her.”
“He manipulated her. Tricked her into letting her guard down then cut her in half.”
“Why…?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ll bet. Is that why you don’t want to go full alpha?”
Derek’s eyes slid to him and this time they didn’t look away. It wasn’t a total glare, but it definitely wasn’t encouraging.
Isaac pressed on. “I mean, because of where you got the power from? Because Peter thinks you’re scared you’ll turn into a monster like he did.”
“Peter says a lot of things. Some of them are even true.”
“Then what is it?”
Derek looked at the ceiling again. “It’s not meant for me.” He finally admitted.
Isaac slid closer to him. “What do you mean?”
Derek let out a breath. “I mean, I’m a beta. Like you. Always was.”
“I’m pretty sure the red eyes tell a different story.”
Derek shook his head. “No. I stole it, but it was meant for someone else.”
Isaac really, really didn’t want to think about how the first place his mind went was “Scott.”
But somehow, whatever it was inside him that found Scott so magnetic was right on the money, because Derek just nodded.
“I promised him.”
Isaac frowned. “But…why would Scott want to be an alpha? He doesn’t even want to be a werewolf.”
Derek rolled onto his side, facing away from Isaac. “I lied to him. To get him to help me.”
“Lied about what?”
Derek was silent for a long time, and Isaac was just aobut to check and see if he’d dropped into a healing sleep when he confessed.
“A cure.”
Okay, so Derek was cryptic at the best of times. In the midst of recovering from traumatic alpha shifting, he was about as useful as a prophecy in a B-movie. But Isaac wasn’t stupid, and he knew how to connect the dots. He just needed a few more to complete the picture.
“Derek.” Scott said, incredulously. “You asked me here to talk about Derek?”
Isaac looked around the cemetary. He’d grown so used to it over the years that he sometimes forgot that people could get freaked out by all the dead people. He and Camden used to play hide-and-seek using tombstones and open graves whenever Camden was stuck babysitting.
“Do you wanna go somewhere else?” He asked.
Scott glanced around. “No, it’s cool. Just…why Derek?”
Isaac frowned. “He’s kind of a big deal for me. He’s my alpha.”
Scott winced and swung his head in a kind of shrug. “Yeah, but…he doesn’t have to be.”
Isaac shifted on the low stone wall and looked down at his hands where they were folded in his lap. “He’s not the monster you think he is.” He tried.
Scott made a face. “I don’t think he’s a monster. I just don’t think he deserves to be in charge of anybody. The guy can’t even take care of himself.” He looked over and captured Isaac’s eyes. “You deserve better. Someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“Like you?” Isaac challenged.
Scott recoiled a bit at that, his eyes widening. “Me? No way, dude. I’m making this up as I go.”
“So is he.”
Scott narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, but the difference is I never expected anyone to follow me. I’m not trying to be some kind of leader, I’m just trying to survive long enough to keep people safe. Including you.”
“And what do you think Derek’s doing?” Isaac demanded, and tried not to admit how much he wanted an answer to that question.
Scott shrugged the question off. “I don’t know, but whatever it is it looks a lot like running scared. And I get that, you know? I’m scared, too. But Derek, it’s like…it’s like he’s always hiding behind something. And whatever it is, it’s keeping him from being real with anyone. I can’t follow someone I can’t trust.”
Isaac worried his bottom lip between his teeth. “Do you know how his sister died?” He asked.
Scott nodded. “Yeah. I’m the one who found her body.”
Isaac flinched. “Oh.”
“Yeah. It was pretty horrible.”
“She could turn into a wolf, couldn’t she?”
Scott looked at him, and Isaac felt like he was being studied. “Yeah…she could. Stiles and I saw her body all wolfed out. It just looked like an animal.”
“You never saw her like that when she was alive?” Isaac asked, but he knew it was a long shot.
Scott shook his head. “Just the body. But Peter was more like one of those monsters on the Syfy channel, only, you know, real.” He looked out over the graves. “It’s happening to Derek, isn’t it?”
Isaac nodded, watching Scott stare into the middle distance. “He’s trying to stop it.”
“Why?”
Isaac lowered his head. “I’m not sure. Peter thinks he’s scared of how he’ll look, but I don’t know. I don’t think that’s it. He said…a lot of stuff.” He wasn’t sure why, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to repeat Derek’s confessions. Not even to Scott. Especially not Scott. “He said something about a cure.”
Scott’s head whipped around to look at him. “He told you about that?”
Isaac nodded. “He didn’t say what it was.”
Scott scoffed. “I’m surprised he told you about it at all.”
“Why.”
Scott leveled his gaze at Isaac. “Because you have to kill the alpha who bit you.”
Isaac felt a sudden lurch, like the wall under him had suddenly tipped at a forty-five degree angle, and he had to grip tight to keep from falling off. “So…when Peter…when Derek--”
Scott nodded. “He promised to help me kill the alpha, before we knew it was Peter.” He tilted his head. “He also said he didn’t know if the cure was real.”
Isaac puzzled over this. “So…if you’d killed Peter instead of Derek, you could’ve been the alpha.”
“Or I could’ve been human. It was a risk I was willing to take.”
“You would’ve killed him?” Isaac asked.
Scott looked down at his feet, swaying six inches above the grass. “I don’t know. I thought I could. I never got the chance to find out.”
“I thought I could kill Lydia.” Isaac said. “But that night at your house, when you fought me off? I was kinda relieved. Like when it came down to it, I didn’t want to be…you know…”
“A killer.” Scott said. “Yeah, Derek told me once. We’re predators. We don’t have to be killers.”
“What’s the difference?”
Scott looked up at the gray sky, heavy clouds threatening rain. “Survival. I guess. Killing because you have to, instead of because you want to.”
“Have you ever? Killed someone?”
Scott glanced at him, then went back to studying the graves. “No. I never did.”
“Do you think you will?”
Scott tangled his fingers together, his shoulders drooping. “I don’t want to. I don’t know how much longer I can avoid it, though.”
“Maybe that’s why Derek did it.” Isaac suggested. “So you wouldn’t have to.”
Scott smiled at that, small and flimsy. “I don’t think Derek was thinking about me at all when he killed Peter.” He said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure the only voice he was listening to was his sister’s.”
Isaac thought back, to the phone call, to his dad hurling anything he could lift against the wall, to the funeral and the night after, locked in the freezer with the darkness seeping into his skin and filling his mouth so he couldn’t even scream. And Camden’s voice in his head.
You gotta be a man, Isaac. Don’t let him break you. Wait him out and keep your head down until you get your chance, then never look back, you hear me? Never look back
“Sometimes the dead are so loud you can’t hear anything else over them.” Isaac admitted. “Sometimes they’re the only thing real enough to bother listening to.”
He found Derek sitting in a window, looking out over the industrial park like there was actually something worth seeing out there.
“I know why you don’t want to shift.” Isaac said.
Derek glanced at him.
“Got me all figured out?”
Isaac smirked. “Hell no. But I think I’ve got a handle on this.”
He took a breath, and came to sit beside his alpha. It took a moment to screw up his courage, but then he jumped straight in.
“My big brother was a tool.”
Derek looked at him sidelong.
“I mean, really. He was a jerk, and so full of himself. He was just like my dad, only, not really. Like, he never hit me. Well, sometimes, but we were brothers. That’s what brothers do. Anyway, he wasn’t all that great a guy.”
Derek said nothing, but he didn’t try to shut Isaac up or give him one of his death glares, so Isaac went on.
“But he was my brother. I looked up to him as a kid, and when he enlisted…part of me was proud, but the rest of me felt like he was walking out on me. He used to protect me, when dad would go off on us. He’d take the worst of it for me. Then he was gone.”
He watched Derek, looking for some sort of clue. Derek was a blank slate.
“Thing was, he was a really, really good swimmer. He could’ve gone pro. He used to coach me. When dad was in a really bad mood, we’d go to the pool and just train for hours.” He swallowed. “After he died, I couldn’t even look at the water. I couldn’t even take baths without freaking out. For, like, a year I hated swimming and everything to do with it. Because it was his, you know? When I thought about Camden, I thought about swimming. And I guess it felt like if I tried to swim without him, I was erasing him from that.”
Derek did look at him then. Really looked at him.
Isaac braced himself, and met Derek’s eye.
“Tell me how Laura looked when she changed.”
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Characters: Isaac Lahey, Derek Hale, Peter Hale, Scott McCall
Pairing(s): None
Warnings: Body horror, mild gore
Summary: Part of being an alpha is learning to shift into a more pure wolf form. Derek has just reached this point, and only Isaac is there to see it.
Isaac wasn’t the best sleeper even before he turned into a werewolf. Even before his mom died he’d been skittish and prone to getting lost in his own head. He’d always been the kid with monsters in his closet, or lurking in wait under his bed.
And after the bite, well, who can sleep when there are hunters out for your pelt and giant lizard monsters with paralytic venom? And that’s only if you survive the blood-stained maw of your own wolf, always hovering just under the skin, always eager to tear its way out.
So Isaac was already wide awake, his mind a frantic swirl of Erica and Boyd and the sight of Derek plunging his claws into Jackson’s belly, Jackson just standing there and taking it like Derek was doing him a favor, when the sour, biting scent of panic and the frantic thrum of a heartbeat filled his head and coated his tongue and he shot upright, his sleeping bag tangling with his legs.
It wasn’t Peter. Isaac always knew were Peter was. Peter had that same anticipatory threat hanging over him, like Isaac’s dad had. It was like a match hovering over a fuse, or a trail of gun powder. Isaac wasn’t about to turn his metaphorical back on that. And Isaac would have noticed if anyone else had come into the depot. But he still had to extend his senses across the room just to be sure because it couldn’t. It just couldn’t be Derek.
Derek was angry, sure, and he had a habit of charging in without thinking, and Isaac had come to realize that a lot of Derek’s stratigic shortcomings came from ignoring his human side in favor of listening to the wolf, which was a whole bag of psychological crap Isaac wasn’t ready to deal with yet, but what Derek was most of all was in control.
Isaac really, really didn’t want to get up and look in Derek’s car. He really didn’t. It was one of those weird disconnects where his wolf side was pushing and nipping at him to do one thing while his human side was curled up in a ball and muttering an endless stream of “screw that”. The wolf was usually stronger, which pissed him off, but lately his human was learning to stand on its own two feet, metaphorically speaking, and he actually managed to hesitate for about half a minute before the wolf got hold of the human’s burgeoning curiosity and started to gnaw on it like a dehydraded pig’s ear.
He got up, and followed his senses to his alpha.
Derek didn’t notice him coming. That was freaky in and of itself, but it was nothing compared to what Isaac saw inside the train car when he reached it.
Derek was on all fours, the balls of his feet flat against the floor, his knees folded into a crouch, and his hands were splayed out in front of him, claws extending and retracting in a weird sort of pulsing motion. The rest of him was a mottled patchwork of skin and fur which grew and receded as Isaac watched.
Derek was naked, but Isaac was too busy being freaked out by Derek’s body to be freaked out by…Derek’s body. Because he could see the muscles shifting and slithering around under his skin, the fur rippling down over his arms and across his back. He could also see Derek’s face stretching into a snout and back again and this was nothing like the smooth transition from human to werewolf that Derek seemed to do without even thinking about it. This looked painful, and wrong, and twisted.
But even more wrong than that: Derek was crying.
Well, suffering was probably a better way to put it. His eyes were watering but it wasn’t like he was sobbing or anything. Just gritting his teeth and clenching his eyes shut like he was in pain. It definitely looked like whatever was happening to him hurt. And it took a moment for Isaac to hear past Derek’s pounding heart and the squelching sound coming from inside his body and realize that Derek was talking. Praying, kind of.
“Please.” He was panting. “Please, stop. Change back, change back, please. I don’t want it, please.”
Derek was a lot younger like this, scared and hurt and sort of helpless. Isaac felt like a complete tool just standing there and looking at him while Derek went through some kind of werewolf body horror. But what was he supposed to do? Reach out a hand so Derek could bite it off? Christ, his fangs were huge. Way bigger than the ones that’d sunk into his side, and those had hurt like hell.
“Derek?” Crap. He so did not mean to say that out loud.
Derek glanced up at him, like Isaac was the least of his problems right now. “Isaac.” He gasped out, and god, he really was in pain. “Get out of here. This doesn’t concern you.”
But then something seemed to rip through him, and Derek screamed and pitched forward onto his knees and elbows, which prompted the kind of yelp a human can’t make as he landed hard on joints that couldn’t make up their mind which species they belonged to.
Isaac found himself kneeling at Derek’s side. His wolf seemed perplexed at the move, which meant his human had to have been at the wheel. He’d celebrate that later. “You’re my alpha, and this is clearly werewolf stuff I don’t understand yet. That makes it my business. And it’s your job to teach me about it.”
Derek growled, and tried to draw himself back up onto his hands, but another wave of whatever it was hit him and he ended up on his side, hands balled into loose fists, and the fur rippled out over his whole body for several seconds before he managed to pull it back. His fangs and claws stayed, however, and his eyes were perma-red.
“It’s alpha stuff.” Derek gritted out around his canines. “Doesn’t concern you.”
Isaac frowned. “Because I could never be an alpha.” He sniped. “My god, Derek, you can’t know what’s gonna happen to us down the line. What about my kids? What if I have kids and they’re werewolves? I need to know this stuff.”
Derek looked like he was going to answer, but then something snapped in his legs and he howled loud enough to shake the car around them, and probably the rest of the depot. Isaac’s wolf jumped into the driver’s seat and tumbled him back, out of his alpha’s strike radius and flat against the wall on the opposite end of the car.
“Isaac.” Peter’s voice came out of nowhere, and for a second Isaac couldn’t place where in the depot it had come from. That was disconcerting. He hated losing track of Peter. He really hated it when Derek looked like the bigger threat of the two. He’d chosen Derek.
“Stand up, calmly, and walk out of the car. Derek is in no condition to explain.”
“I’m not sure I want any explanation you give me.” Isaac replied.
“You don’t trust me. I understand that. You’re a smart boy, Isaac. But you’re right. A beta needs to know what’s going on with his alpha, especially when it leaves his alpha incapable of protecting him. What could it hurt to listen?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask Lydia next time I see her.”
“That was harsh.”
“So is murder.”
Peter sighed, and the sound drifted through the depot like wind, and it made Isaac shiver. This was the guy who’d been Scott’s alpha, once upon a time. And Isaac hadn’t missed the fear mingled with the hatred when Scott had seen Peter fresh out of the grave after the championship game.
“Fair. But better out here with me than in there with a rapidly deteriorating alpha and no room to manouver.”
Okay, that made sense. Honestly, Isaac’s whole life was like a guide to making incredibly bad choices, but he still got to his feet and freaking motored out of that car as fast as he could without actually making any sudden movements.
Peter was standing on the rickety flight of metal stairs leading up to the decrepit offices of the depot. As far as Isaac knew, he had some sort of evil lair up there or something. He really had no desire to find out.
Okay, maybe a little one.
“It’s his alpha form.” Peter said. He was leaning casually with one arm draped over the railing.
“His what?”
Peter started down the stairs, more like a CEO at a fundraiser than a psycho in an abandoned transportation facility.
“When you shift,” Peter explained. “And your eyes turn yellow and the fangs and claws come out, that whole thing.” He waved as if turning into a half-animal creature of myth was about as significant as getting a hang nail. “That’s your beta form. Most werewolves go their whole lives without ever moving past the beta shape. Alphas, on the other hand, are more in tune with their wolf side.”
“You mean-”
“I mean betas inhabit a happy medium between human and wolf. Omegas are closer to humanity without actually becoming humans, and conversely, alphas are as close to actual wolves as we can get without actually being wolves.”
“So Derek’s turning into a wolf.”
“No.” Peter said. Isaac narrowed his eyes, confused.
Peter rolled his eyes. “He’s trying not to become a wolf.”
Isaac glanced back at the car where Derek was still audibly struggling with his transition.
“But Derek’s all about being a wolf.” Isaac said. “Why would he fight something like that?”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe he’s afraid.” He suggested. “Scared of what shape he’ll take.”
“You mean there are options?”
Peter smirked. “Well when I was an alpha, at best you could say I wasn’t a looker. At worst, I was something out of Lon Chaney’s filmography.”
“You mean…Derek might be turning into a monster?”
Peter arched his eyebrows. “He might be. But then again he might not.” His face took on a far away expression. “Laura was so beautiful when she shifted.”
“Laura?”
Peter froze. He looked at Isaac like he’d just discovered some kind of hideous growth on Isaac’s face. “Derek will get himself under control soon. Maybe he’ll talk to you then.”
Peter turned and headed for the exit.
“Wait!” Isaac called after him. Peter ignored him.
“Peter!” Peter just kept walking.
“Who’s Laura?” But by then, Peter was gone.
When the shift finally subsided, Derek was exhausted and weak, his skin ashen and sweaty, and Isaac had to help him into some loose sweats. They gave up shirts as a lost cause and Isaac took the opportunity to study Derek’s tattoo more closely. The way Derek wore it wasn’t like the people Isaac had seen on those TV shows with the tattoo artists. They wore their ink kind of like merit badges, or trophies. Derek wore his like a scar.
“How much haven’t you told me?” Isaac asked. He tried to keep the accusation out of his voice, but he wasn’t sure he did very well.
“I’ve told you everything you needed to know.”
“To survive, maybe.” Isaac conceeded. “But I need more if I’m going to figure out how to live. I’m in this, Derek. Forever. I don’t get to just wash my hands of it and go back to being human when it gets old. I’m going to die a werewolf, and I need to know as much as I can if I’m going to have any kind of life between now and then.”
Derek grunted. “All right.” He rolled onto his back and propped himself up on his elbows. He had two sleeping bags stacked under him, but Isaac kept feeling like he needed more. Like he’d suddenly turned fragile and needed to be cushioned from the impact of reality. God his wolf was a mother hen.
Derek met his eyes. “What do you want to know?”
Why don’t you want to shift into your alpha shape? Why is Peter still here when you killed him? Why are you so obsessed with Scott when you didn’t even turn him? Who are the alpha pack and what do they want from you? What about Erica and Boyd? Am I ever going to be safe again?
“Who’s Laura?” He could’ve slapped himself.
Derek’s face shadowed, and he let himself fall onto his back, his hands folded over his stomach. “Where did you hear that name?”
Isaac was about to answer, but Derek held up a hand. “No, don’t tell me. I can guess.”
“Yeah. So, who is she?”
“My sister.”
Isaac’s eyes widened. “What happened to her?”
Derek’s eyes flicked to him, then back to the ceiling. “She was my alpha.” He said. “Then Peter was.”
Isaac gulped. “He killed her.”
“He manipulated her. Tricked her into letting her guard down then cut her in half.”
“Why…?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ll bet. Is that why you don’t want to go full alpha?”
Derek’s eyes slid to him and this time they didn’t look away. It wasn’t a total glare, but it definitely wasn’t encouraging.
Isaac pressed on. “I mean, because of where you got the power from? Because Peter thinks you’re scared you’ll turn into a monster like he did.”
“Peter says a lot of things. Some of them are even true.”
“Then what is it?”
Derek looked at the ceiling again. “It’s not meant for me.” He finally admitted.
Isaac slid closer to him. “What do you mean?”
Derek let out a breath. “I mean, I’m a beta. Like you. Always was.”
“I’m pretty sure the red eyes tell a different story.”
Derek shook his head. “No. I stole it, but it was meant for someone else.”
Isaac really, really didn’t want to think about how the first place his mind went was “Scott.”
But somehow, whatever it was inside him that found Scott so magnetic was right on the money, because Derek just nodded.
“I promised him.”
Isaac frowned. “But…why would Scott want to be an alpha? He doesn’t even want to be a werewolf.”
Derek rolled onto his side, facing away from Isaac. “I lied to him. To get him to help me.”
“Lied about what?”
Derek was silent for a long time, and Isaac was just aobut to check and see if he’d dropped into a healing sleep when he confessed.
“A cure.”
Okay, so Derek was cryptic at the best of times. In the midst of recovering from traumatic alpha shifting, he was about as useful as a prophecy in a B-movie. But Isaac wasn’t stupid, and he knew how to connect the dots. He just needed a few more to complete the picture.
“Derek.” Scott said, incredulously. “You asked me here to talk about Derek?”
Isaac looked around the cemetary. He’d grown so used to it over the years that he sometimes forgot that people could get freaked out by all the dead people. He and Camden used to play hide-and-seek using tombstones and open graves whenever Camden was stuck babysitting.
“Do you wanna go somewhere else?” He asked.
Scott glanced around. “No, it’s cool. Just…why Derek?”
Isaac frowned. “He’s kind of a big deal for me. He’s my alpha.”
Scott winced and swung his head in a kind of shrug. “Yeah, but…he doesn’t have to be.”
Isaac shifted on the low stone wall and looked down at his hands where they were folded in his lap. “He’s not the monster you think he is.” He tried.
Scott made a face. “I don’t think he’s a monster. I just don’t think he deserves to be in charge of anybody. The guy can’t even take care of himself.” He looked over and captured Isaac’s eyes. “You deserve better. Someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“Like you?” Isaac challenged.
Scott recoiled a bit at that, his eyes widening. “Me? No way, dude. I’m making this up as I go.”
“So is he.”
Scott narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, but the difference is I never expected anyone to follow me. I’m not trying to be some kind of leader, I’m just trying to survive long enough to keep people safe. Including you.”
“And what do you think Derek’s doing?” Isaac demanded, and tried not to admit how much he wanted an answer to that question.
Scott shrugged the question off. “I don’t know, but whatever it is it looks a lot like running scared. And I get that, you know? I’m scared, too. But Derek, it’s like…it’s like he’s always hiding behind something. And whatever it is, it’s keeping him from being real with anyone. I can’t follow someone I can’t trust.”
Isaac worried his bottom lip between his teeth. “Do you know how his sister died?” He asked.
Scott nodded. “Yeah. I’m the one who found her body.”
Isaac flinched. “Oh.”
“Yeah. It was pretty horrible.”
“She could turn into a wolf, couldn’t she?”
Scott looked at him, and Isaac felt like he was being studied. “Yeah…she could. Stiles and I saw her body all wolfed out. It just looked like an animal.”
“You never saw her like that when she was alive?” Isaac asked, but he knew it was a long shot.
Scott shook his head. “Just the body. But Peter was more like one of those monsters on the Syfy channel, only, you know, real.” He looked out over the graves. “It’s happening to Derek, isn’t it?”
Isaac nodded, watching Scott stare into the middle distance. “He’s trying to stop it.”
“Why?”
Isaac lowered his head. “I’m not sure. Peter thinks he’s scared of how he’ll look, but I don’t know. I don’t think that’s it. He said…a lot of stuff.” He wasn’t sure why, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to repeat Derek’s confessions. Not even to Scott. Especially not Scott. “He said something about a cure.”
Scott’s head whipped around to look at him. “He told you about that?”
Isaac nodded. “He didn’t say what it was.”
Scott scoffed. “I’m surprised he told you about it at all.”
“Why.”
Scott leveled his gaze at Isaac. “Because you have to kill the alpha who bit you.”
Isaac felt a sudden lurch, like the wall under him had suddenly tipped at a forty-five degree angle, and he had to grip tight to keep from falling off. “So…when Peter…when Derek--”
Scott nodded. “He promised to help me kill the alpha, before we knew it was Peter.” He tilted his head. “He also said he didn’t know if the cure was real.”
Isaac puzzled over this. “So…if you’d killed Peter instead of Derek, you could’ve been the alpha.”
“Or I could’ve been human. It was a risk I was willing to take.”
“You would’ve killed him?” Isaac asked.
Scott looked down at his feet, swaying six inches above the grass. “I don’t know. I thought I could. I never got the chance to find out.”
“I thought I could kill Lydia.” Isaac said. “But that night at your house, when you fought me off? I was kinda relieved. Like when it came down to it, I didn’t want to be…you know…”
“A killer.” Scott said. “Yeah, Derek told me once. We’re predators. We don’t have to be killers.”
“What’s the difference?”
Scott looked up at the gray sky, heavy clouds threatening rain. “Survival. I guess. Killing because you have to, instead of because you want to.”
“Have you ever? Killed someone?”
Scott glanced at him, then went back to studying the graves. “No. I never did.”
“Do you think you will?”
Scott tangled his fingers together, his shoulders drooping. “I don’t want to. I don’t know how much longer I can avoid it, though.”
“Maybe that’s why Derek did it.” Isaac suggested. “So you wouldn’t have to.”
Scott smiled at that, small and flimsy. “I don’t think Derek was thinking about me at all when he killed Peter.” He said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure the only voice he was listening to was his sister’s.”
Isaac thought back, to the phone call, to his dad hurling anything he could lift against the wall, to the funeral and the night after, locked in the freezer with the darkness seeping into his skin and filling his mouth so he couldn’t even scream. And Camden’s voice in his head.
You gotta be a man, Isaac. Don’t let him break you. Wait him out and keep your head down until you get your chance, then never look back, you hear me? Never look back
“Sometimes the dead are so loud you can’t hear anything else over them.” Isaac admitted. “Sometimes they’re the only thing real enough to bother listening to.”
He found Derek sitting in a window, looking out over the industrial park like there was actually something worth seeing out there.
“I know why you don’t want to shift.” Isaac said.
Derek glanced at him.
“Got me all figured out?”
Isaac smirked. “Hell no. But I think I’ve got a handle on this.”
He took a breath, and came to sit beside his alpha. It took a moment to screw up his courage, but then he jumped straight in.
“My big brother was a tool.”
Derek looked at him sidelong.
“I mean, really. He was a jerk, and so full of himself. He was just like my dad, only, not really. Like, he never hit me. Well, sometimes, but we were brothers. That’s what brothers do. Anyway, he wasn’t all that great a guy.”
Derek said nothing, but he didn’t try to shut Isaac up or give him one of his death glares, so Isaac went on.
“But he was my brother. I looked up to him as a kid, and when he enlisted…part of me was proud, but the rest of me felt like he was walking out on me. He used to protect me, when dad would go off on us. He’d take the worst of it for me. Then he was gone.”
He watched Derek, looking for some sort of clue. Derek was a blank slate.
“Thing was, he was a really, really good swimmer. He could’ve gone pro. He used to coach me. When dad was in a really bad mood, we’d go to the pool and just train for hours.” He swallowed. “After he died, I couldn’t even look at the water. I couldn’t even take baths without freaking out. For, like, a year I hated swimming and everything to do with it. Because it was his, you know? When I thought about Camden, I thought about swimming. And I guess it felt like if I tried to swim without him, I was erasing him from that.”
Derek did look at him then. Really looked at him.
Isaac braced himself, and met Derek’s eye.
“Tell me how Laura looked when she changed.”