The Good Skinwalker

Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf (the TV show, the old movie, characters, dialogue, story arcs, and etc.). I don't own the ideas of skinwalkers, especially the ideas that have been perfected by True Blood or Patricia Briggs in her Mercedes Thompson series. I also don't own Cry Wolf, Fair Game, Blood Bound or Moon Called by Patricia Briggs, Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews or any other book, movie, videogame, song, character, story arc, or dialogue I may have mentioned along the way. I just so happened to use it for non-profitable fun in my spare time.

Author's Note: This is a story that is sort in the format of "thrown together". I don't want to write a full-fledged story with a distinct timeline that follows through continuous chapters, more like a couple of one-shots that run together to make some sense. (I also might mess with some of the plotlines of the show… ignore that.) I really wanted to write this character with Derek once I started watching the show so… here she is; Simone Haseya. (Pronounced Sim-moan Hos-ay-uh.)

I also have a Pinterest board for you guys to look at if you're interested in seeing what I think Simone Haseya looks like (and maybe some of my ideas on where this story is going). All you have to do is go to Pinterest and look up any of the following phrases; "Simone Haseya", "The Walker", "Skinwalker", "Teen Wolf", "Original Character" or RogueMetamorph. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 1 – 01x04 – Meeting Over Magic Bullets

At two in the morning, the bark of sound that split the air followed by a wolf-like howl might have been mistaken for someone scaring a wolf off their property. Humans at two in the morning tended not to think too hard about those type of things when they were laying comfortably in their warm beds. They wouldn't realize that the noise had echoed up from the warehouse district or that the gun had been a 12-gauge shotgun… or that the howl had been an Alpha werewolf's enraged roar. Then again, the average person didn't typically have that type of experience.

The familiar clap of sound caught Simone Haseya's attention as she slowed her late night jog to a slow walk, her head perking up as she pulled her earbuds from her ears. A 12-gauge shotgun was a familiar sound to her, especially with the sprinkling of scars from the buckshot she had on her rear end. And though she'd never actually heard an Alpha's howl before, something in the sound made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

Curiosity led her to take a left into the warehouse district, the scents of rusted metal and truck exhaust filling her nose as she walked. She came to a stop on the street corner, hidden away in one of that door's alcoves as she tried to calm her heart and breathing until she could listen to the near silent night. It took a moment for her ears to pick it up, the cautious footsteps off near the road as she listened to a gun cock. Nearby, within the cover of the warehouses, she could hear more animalistic noises; the sounds of claws scraping against the metallic roofs and subtle growling of a predator.

Then another shot rang out.

She heard the body hit the pavement, a heavy thud that made her think a hundred and sixty pounds of muscle rather than a two hundred and fifty pound Alpha-form. It was followed by a distant male groan that was human as he shifted on the ground. The pain she heard and the dog-scented blood she could faintly smell drew her in, called for her to help the Were but she remained still. She'd only just moved to Beacon Hills. She didn't need to throw herself into the middle of hunters on the lookout for murdering Weres when she herself wasn't all that innocent.

She'd spent years on the run from the world, hiding in caves or rock-bottom hotel rooms. The past seven years of her life had been a mixture of trying to understand who she was and trying to keep the person she was alive amidst the hail of bullets and knives. Now she was working as a mechanic in a rinky-dink shop just to pay for her apartment in the shady side of town. Maybe if she saved up enough money she'd be able to afford to buy real protein like meat instead of peanut butter and chicken broth Ramen noodles. Her life was far from perfect but even being stranded in Beacon Hills had its upsides, one of them being that no one knew that she was a creature that went bump in the night. And she'd much prefer to keep it that way.

Something brushed against her hip.

Simone glanced down, jerked out of her thoughts when the heavy body of an animal pressed against her. However, when she looked she didn't see anything. She almost thought it had been a trick of her mind except when she felt the presence push against her again. Carefully, she dropped her hand down until it landed on a furry back… the furry back that wasn't there to any of her other senses.

Damn ghosts.

Being what she was and the daughter of a shaman, Simone had been gifted with the ability to perceive spirits and ghosts. Spirits weren't ghosts; spirits were the consciousness of things that most people didn't believe to be alive: trees, bodies of water, earth, buildings— some of them, anyway—curses, and even ideas; ghosts were the manifestation of a person who'd died, sometimes a culmination of those who'd died, typically only a vague copy of the person that faded after a while. Ghosts could also be very pushy when they wanted something.

But this ghost was different. Not only was this ghost in the form of a wolf (she assumed wolf though she couldn't see it), but this one was the rare kind that was felt rather than seen or heard. It acted different too. This ghost wasn't the type that skirted away from her when she got too near, nor was it the tenacious type that hounded her from morning until well into the night that her grandda had taught her how to ignore. This ghost was subtle as she (because Simone was sure the wolf was a girl) pushed a prodded like a suggestion rather than an outright demand… though there was the sudden appearance of salt water in the gas tank of her car which had stranded Simone in Beacon Hills in the first place…

Damn ghosts.

Now the wolf pressed more urgently against her hip, knocking her other hip into the wall as if to pin her to the spot. Simone could almost feel the need in the push, the intent as the smell of blood nearly stung at her nose. She frowned down at the invisible presence and pushed back, crouching down beside it as if to whisper in its ear.

"You think destroying my engine is the way to get on my good side, sweetie?"

Another brush of fur against her shoulder, the scent of blood mixed with a familiar bitter scent nearly overpowering.

Guilt hit Simone in the gut with surprising force. As easy as it would be to turn around and jog home to her cozy apartment… it didn't feel right. Though she was sure the Were could survive a simple gunshot, there was that faintly familiar scent mixed with his blood that made her nervous. How many times had she gotten help when she'd deserved none at all? How could she refuse help to this Were, regardless of wanting to remain a secret while in Beacon Hills? What she was wouldn't think twice about leaving the Were to his fate in favor of running along home… but who she was, was an entirely different creature. Who she was wanted to help the Were, make sure she didn't hear the armed hunter end of his life when she could have done something.

"Fine," Simone sighed, feigning annoyance as she glanced towards where the head of the ghost might have been. "But only if you stop breaking my things,"

An amused feeling came over her just as Simone stepped around the corner and made her way towards the wounded Were.

Simone kept low and to the shadows as she moved through the wide spaces that littered the distance between herself and her target. She tried to listen for the armed hunter as she moved, wary of getting a hole through the head before she ever made it to the Were. However, any hope of hearing the hunter died with the powerful roar of an SUV engine approaching. A flash of headlights signaled the vehicles position nearby before she heard the armed hunter break cover with an annoyed (and feminine) grunt.

Simone tilted her head, catching on the sounds of the two individuals speaking in the distance. They were too far away for her to catch words or even a scent, just the sounds of their voices. One was female—obviously the armed hunter—with a sharp edge to it whilst the other was a male with a comfortable drawl that was nonetheless nervous, presumably because of the noise the shot had made. Most people might return to sleep that early in the morning, might truly believe it had been a warning shot aimed at a stray wolf, might even write it off as a shot the cops will deal with, might think it was anything else, but the people who knew what a 12-gauge shotgun bark sounded like would be on the move to find out what was going on.

With the hunter and the driver's attention elsewhere, Simone followed the pained breathing in the opposite direction, further into the warehouse district. With a put-upon grunt, she scaled a chain-link fence and landed in a crouch a few yards away from her wounded werewolf.

Every instinct in her, acquired or inbred, told her to turn tail and run for it.

The Were was certainly a looker despite his currently dazed expression tinged with pain. He was handsome with his dark hair, strong nose defined jaw that sported a five o'clock shadow that desperately wanted to be more. He had the body of a boxer beneath the long sleeved shirt, stout and thick with muscle that could give and take a hit. He was tanned and dark, his light eyes blinking a few times as he shifted against the ground to drag himself up and into a seated position against a nearby concrete support. She could smell the blood on him even from where she remained crouched and took that as a sign to not spook him. Werewolves didn't have many manners to begin with, much less when they were hurting. However, as soon as she moved to get closer, startling blue eyes snapped up to meet hers with the beginning of a warning growl rumbling in his chest.

"Sh-sh-sh," she hissed, holding a finger between them carefully. "There are at least two hunters nearby. We don't want them to hear you,"

Curiosity made the growl stutter as the stunning wolf-blue color faded to a human grey as he watched her cautiously, allowing her her silence.

"We need to get you up,"

He didn't argue with her.

Simone was slow to approach him— given that she didn't necessarily enjoy the idea of putting her neck within biting distance of a predator— but when he didn't growl at her or show fang, she began to get him to his feet. The Were allowed her to shift her shoulder under his arm to leverage him up, using the concrete support behind him as a brace to slide his heavily muscled body upwards into a standing position. From there he was able to walk mostly on his own power, using her for balance and direction as she led him towards the alleyway. They walked together at an easy pace until she caught the distinct sound of a pair of engines roaring towards them.

"Down!" she hissed, backing them into one of the door alcoves.

The Were groaned as his back smacked against the metal door, his body hunching forward onto hers as she tried to keep him up. At the mouth of the alleyway they'd been walking down, only a few yards away from their hiding place, she heard the SUV's engine humming as it drove down the alleyway adjacent to theirs, another vehicle following close behind. The Were pressed himself back into the shadows, drawing her closer to him as they listened with bated breath as the vehicles continued past the mouth of the alleyway and out of the warehouse district.

Simone looked up at the Were, watching as his own eyes turned to look down into hers.

"Well that was exciting,"

Together, they made their way through the warehouse district towards the south end of town where the warehouses butted up against some of the lower class housing and businesses. This was where Simone's apartment was located, on the fourth floor of the thirty year old white apartment building just off to their left. Unfortunately for the two of them, elevators were only mandatory for apartment buildings with five floors or more. Hers only had four.

The Were didn't make any indication that the walk up the four flights of stairs pained him beyond how rapid his heartbeat became as his breathing became more labored. She wasn't an expert on werewolves, even with the rare mentioning's of them from her grandda or from the on-the-fly lessons she'd gotten on the road, but she did know a few things. On top of heightened senses, speed, strength, and the ability to shift into a werewolf, they had the ability to heal quickly from almost any wound. Hell, she'd once watched a werewolf literally pop a bullet out of his pectoral muscle like it was nothing and then keep on fighting. However, their main weakness that counteracted their ability to heal was wolfsbane. This had been an ingredient in the protection rituals that her grandda had used often to ward off evil from the reservation they'd lived on. At the time he hadn't been warding off werewolves specifically but she doubted it hadn't been an added bonus in his mind.

When Simone and the Were finally reached her landing, she made sure to pause to examine him. His skin was turning grey beneath the tanned coloring, a sheen of sweat appearing across his brow as he breathed heavily into her hair. His heartbeat was erratic as she listened to it carefully, guiding him towards her apartment door, tossing her keys up in an attempt to catch her apartment key in a position that would allow her to unlock her door. It would seem the bullet he'd been hit with had been laced with a bit of wolfsbane… but it was shocking to see it work so fast and with such potency.

"I need to get a look at that bullet wound," she told him as she fought her lock to get her apartment door open. "You should have healed by now,"

"Wolfsbane," he told her in an exhausted huff.

"It shouldn't be affecting you this badly," she argued, shoving the door open. "Especially if it hit you in the arm,"

She guided him inside, shrugging him off of her shoulders and onto her aged couch. He landed with a groan, pealing the sleeve of his shirt up to reveal a bloody wound in his forearm with an iridescent bullet peeking out the puckered skin. The metal projectile glowed a strange blueish-purple that faintly reminded Simone of the pretty purple color of the monkshood flower, also known as wolfsbane. The bitingly sour scent instantly wafted up into the atmosphere of her small apartment, mixing with the sweet and dog-like smell of his blood.

Simone whistled at the wound. "They got you good,"

The Were snarled at her but it didn't faze her a bit. At least, she hoped it didn't look like it did.

"Quiet, you, or I'll swat your nose with a newspaper," she told him in a motherly voice that only served to make him glare at her. "I'll get my first aid kit and we'll figure out what's gotten into you,"

She turned, leaving him on his own whilst she walked into her bathroom, pulling the tool case sized first aid kit out from beneath her sink. She hadn't bothered to bring him into the bathroom. She wasn't about to be in an enclosed space with a wounded werewolf… and she had hardwood so there wasn't a carpet for his blood to stain. She made sure she had everything before walking back out into the living room.

She made sure to make noise as she approached him, opting not to startle the wounded werewolf. Even if he hadn't eaten her yet and she was being kind enough to help him, she didn't want to tempt fate. She gave him a wide berth as she walked around to the front of the couch, setting the first aid kit down on her apothecary chest which was currently acting as her coffee table. She lifted the latches and opened the lid to reveal the myriad of medical supplies inside, releasing the painfully sanitary smell that seared at her nose even at a distance. She sorted through it until she could the oversized tweezers and some towelettes to wipe away the blood. She set those off to the side to find a telfa pad, pulling out one with the adhesive edges so that she didn't have to wrap the arm.

With everything out, she turned to look up at him, meeting his eyes.

"May I?"

He frowned, as she was beginning to think was his default expression, and extended his forearm to her. She instantly got to work, wiping away the blood that had trailed down his arm before lightly dabbing as she got closer to the wound. It took a few growling minutes before she'd gotten enough of the blood away from the bullet to feel comfortable going at it with the tweezers.

And wasn't that frightening.

His face shifted to his werewolf form almost as soon as the tweezers dug into his arm in an attempt to pull out the bullet. The enraged snarl that left his mouth made her jump away from him like a startled fox, landing in a crouch a few yards away from him with glowing copper colored eyes as she yapped at him. He stared at her in shock, his face returning to human as he watched her straighten from her crouch, embarrassment making her frown to herself.

"What are you?" he asked with urgency.

She frowned at him, slowly approaching him again and picking up the tweezers from where they'd dropped to the floor. She quickly wiped them down with a fresh towelette before turning back to him, her eyes meeting his curious ones.

"Let me get the bullet out first?"

When she approached him again he jerked back, bringing his arm up against his chest. She groaned, rolling her eyes as she sat back on her heels.

"Tell me what you are," he snarled, his eyes flashing the stunning wolf-blue that she recognized as a plain threat. "You don't smell like anything I've come across before,"

"You probably wouldn't have," Simone told him with a put upon sigh, dropping her arms onto her thighs as she realized they weren't going to get anywhere until they talked. "My kind aren't the type to be welcome in the supernatural community, much less want to be welcomed,"

"What are you?" he snarled, eyes hard.

Oh, she was so going to die. She was so stupid. So, so stupid. "I'm… I'm a skinwalker,"

His reaction was instantaneous. One second she was kneeling in front of him as he sat on her couch, both relatively relaxed, and the next they were moving. His face had shifted as his unwounded arm had flashed out at her throat with razor sharp claws. Her reaction time shouldn't have been as good as it was, but adrenaline and having been ready for this reaction had her jerking back away from the claws before the met the flesh of her throat, springing to her feet in a flash of movement. It wasn't the first time a werewolf had heard what she was and immediately gone at her with fang and claw… that time she'd been lucky too.

He followed her, lurching to his feet as she danced around his clawed hand, sidestepping and ducking as he attacked her again and again. Her advantage was her speed and his having been poisoned by the bullet, slowing and limiting his movements. Otherwise, in such an enclosed space, she didn't doubt he would have mauled her in an instant. However, that didn't mean her luck continued to hold.

She ducked to her right beneath the flash of his claws only to be caught by the throat by his wounded arm, having counted it out of commission. A stupid and naïve move that sent her head smacking into a wall with his clawed hand wrapped tightly around her throat. A pained gasp exited her mouth as she blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to see straight as her vision swam.

"S-stop," she wheezed out desperately, her hands clawing desperately at his wrist. "Please,"

"Why should I?" he snarled, his fangs on full display. "Your kind are murders, tricksters with a fetish for killing anything that moves,"

It was true. As the Navajo people would tell you (if they weren't too frightened to tell you), they'd describe skinwalkers as evil creatures with the ability to shapeshift into any animal, driven by revenge to torment their victims with curses and outright violence. Skinwalkers were created when a medicine man—one of the Navajo people that practiced the healing arts, blessings and the removal of curses—turned from their path to pursue revenge so desperately that they were willing to murder a member of their own family to gain the power of the skinwalker. Those powers included shapeshifting into animals at will with the use of the animal's skin, performing curses and practicing the frenzy way to make people physically or mentally ill, imitating the voices of animals, family members or crying infants to lure people from the safety of their homes, and even the ability to communicate with the dead. The only way to tell a skinwalker hiding amongst the people of the tribe from any other human were the glowing eyes of the human form whilst their animal's forms eyes remained dull like a typical human's. For werewolves, it was as easy as smelling the stink of animal decay on their skin.

Simone, however, was a skinwalker of a different breed. Though she knew she smelled of animal decay, it was because of the small pieces of raven Skin she wore in her hair in case of emergencies like this that gave her the decaying smell. She also wasn't the nasty, revenge driven phantoms that the Navajo people painted in their legends or the power hungry Supers that her brothers and sister were in real life. Simone hadn't been after revenge when her mother had died in childbirth and thus she didn't have the darkness that typically accompanied the powers of a skinwalker.

But all in all, skinwalkers didn't garnish a lot of respect or compassion from the supernatural community, regardless of how they'd received their powers. Outside fellow skinwalkers, a skinwalker was more likely to be killed than given a cheery welcome. There had been more than one time when a werewolf had come after her with fangs bared or a Super had run her out of their territory.

Which was why Simone kept raven feathers braided into her scalp.

The world swirled around her as Simone allowed her skinwalker magic to envelope her in the Skin of the raven. Her body shrunk so suddenly that her body dropped out from the Were's grasp, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Disoriented though she was, she instantly flapped her wings and took flight, flying across the room to land on the back of one of her chairs before shifting back to human again. She wasn't planning on leaving. She just didn't want him to kill her before she explained herself.

"Please!" she shouted, holding her hands out as she balanced lightly on the back of the chair. "I just need you to listen to me! I'm not the typical skinwalker. I don't kill people or have some vendetta against the world. I became a skinwalker when my mother died in childbirth having me. I have the abilities of a skinwalker but it isn't who I am. I won't harm you unless you harm me. I won't hurt you,"

He still didn't seem convinced as he growled at her, taking a threatening step closer to her perch with his fangs snapping. "Is that what you said when you murdered my sister?!"

"What?" she breathed, taken aback for a moment.

"When did you get into town?"

Simone frowned, meeting his eyes. She could sense there was more behind the question than he was displaying to her. There was an urgency behind the question, a need to know the answer that he was trying to hide from her. No doubt it had to do with the dead body they'd found in the woods that had been revealed to have been his sister.

"A little over a week ago," she told him honestly. "I didn't kill your sister,"

"And I'm supposed to trust that?!"

Simone stepped off the back of the chair, putting it between them as she took a defensive fighting stance, holding up her hands up as if in surrender. She could feel the roots of her hair tingling again where she knew the stray raven Skin pieces had been embedded into her hair for an emergency like this one seemed to be turning into. Granted, she hoped that she'd be able to calm him down and convince him that she hadn't been the one to kill his sister but… you never know with an enraged werewolf.

"Please just listen to me. Listen to my heartbeat," she tried, taking a deep breath when he didn't move to attack. "I got here a week ago when my car's gas tank was filled with salt water. I'm renting this apartment. I have a job at a repair shop. I go on jogs to fill up my time. That's how I found you tonight. I didn't know your sister. I didn't know you before tonight. I didn't hurt your sister. I didn't kill your sister,"

She knew her heart hadn't made any influxes as she'd spoken and she knew that he hadn't heard any by the way the tightness around his eyes relaxed. The wolf-like structure of his face melted away to the human, leaving behind the blinding blue that stared back at her. She knew that they weren't done with the interrogation but at least he seemed less likely to kill her now that he knew she hadn't had a hand in his sister's death.

"I need you to trust me," she continued. "I'm not like most skinwalkers,"

"Is that your usual opening line?"

"I'm not," she repeated.

He remained silent, studying her as if to discern the truth, so she kept talking to try to convince him of the truth.

"My name is Simone Haseya. I became a skinwalker when my mother died in childbirth having me. From a young age I knew what I wasn't supposed to be; impolite, disrespectful, lazy, cruel… or a skinwalker. I remember having horrible dreams of men turning into animals, terrible deformed things that woke me with my own screaming… So I tried to be the medicine woman that my grandda always hoped he could make me. I learned all of the stories, the blessings, the rituals… but I could still feel the darkness around my heart, the yearning in my soul for something more, to change and be changed by the world. It was only a matter of time before my mother's Skins called to me with their power. And I put one on,"

He frowned. "Your mother was a skinwalker too?"

Simone nodded. "After she lost her first child, she killed my grandmother… She was a living nightmare for the tribe for nearly a decade. Men across the state would turn up mauled on their own doorsteps, raped and murdered. And that was the woman the tribe remembered when my grandda presented me to them.

"I left my reservation because my own tribe didn't trust that I didn't want to maim and murder them all. I left as soon as I turned eighteen; driving when I had a working car, buying bus tickets when I had the money and walking when I didn't. It didn't take long until I started stumbling across other skinwalkers, got them to teach me about my abilities…" She relaxed her stance minutely, keeping her eyes trained on his as if to make sure she had his attention. "Abilities I got from an accident by the way,"

Still, he didn't seem completely convinced but looked far more calm than the wolf-blue of his eyes was suggesting he was. "Why are you telling me this? Why try to convince me?"

"Because you're dying and you need my help," she told him, gesturing to his arm. Since she'd wiped away the blood, the blackened veins that had been spider-webbing out from the room were becoming thicker and more defined. He was getting worse and it was happening fast. "I want to help you but you need to trust me,"

"I don't trust you,"

"And, in all reality, I don't expect you to. Not completely," she told him, inching her way around the chair she was half hiding behind. "But you'd be an idiot to think that you're going to survive wolfsbane this potent all on your own. You're going to need help, first to get the bullet out and then to find out what subgenus the wolfsbane is so that we can find an antidote. Otherwise? You're going to die within twenty-four hours, thirty-six maximum,"

By now she had made it around the chair completely and was standing within killing distance. If he wanted her dead, all he had to do was swipe out at her.

"I need you to listen to my heartbeat and trust that what you're hearing is the truth… I'm trying to help you. Let me help you,"

The standoff between the two lasted a long minute, his wolf-blue eyes trained on hers as he contemplated her words. She could almost see the aura of apprehension radiating off of him as the gears of his mind worked behind his eyes. And she waited patiently, watching as his face relaxed into an unhappy frown and watched as the blue drained into a human grey. Without taking his eyes from hers, he stepped toward the couch, lowering himself down and extended his forearm to her.

"Fine,"

She felt muscles in her body she didn't remember having relax as she let out a breath, her eyes dropping shut with relief. Never in her short life would she have thought she'd be able to convince a werewolf to spare her life, much less convince them of the truth (though she was sure Derek wasn't 100% convinced of anything). Werewolves tended to be driven by instincts and emotions that led them to short-circuit on listening to what others said. This was a nice change.

Tentatively, she lowered herself to sit on the chest she was using as her coffee table in front of him, careful to make her movements slow and exaggerated as she picked up the tweezer from where they'd been dropped on the ground. He didn't object when she reached out to take ahold of his forearm, dropping her eyes to the glowing purple-blue bullet and brought the tweezers closer.

This time he held tight to his control as she dug into the wound, attempting to pull out the bullet made slippery by his blood. It was the fifth time that she finally managed to get the bullet out far enough to simply grab it between her fingers. She quickly wiped it off with another towelette and studied it carefully. The bullet barely looked like one, the metal a lump in the palm of her hand that looked like it'd been hollowed out and had collapsed in on itself when it had been impact. The center had probably been filled with some sort of wolfsbane rather than coated in it, probably a collection of dried petals or seeds to be released. Unfortunately, without another bullet, they might not be able to find out what subgenus of wolfsbane it was and be able to heal him.

"Verdict?" he asked, drawing her attention away from the bullet. She looked up at him to see an expression on his face that might have been curiosity mixed with a hint of exhaustion.

"She switched to a rifle," she told him, though she doubted he didn't know that already. "This is high caliber, overkill for anything short of a moose or bears… But look at the shape of the bullet? It was either made from a metal that was soft enough to mushroom when it made impact to keep it from traveling through the body or hollowed out. It released the wolfsbane into you like a capsule rather than being coated in an extract. Probably way more potent.

"This was a bullet tailored specifically for werewolves," she continued, watching him study it. "The way it was hollowed out not only meant infecting you with wolfsbane but also that it would mushroom rather than go clean through. Just the healing process trying to force the bullet out would knock at least some of the wolfsbane loose and infect the Were,"

He frowned at the metal lump, taking it from her to study it closer.

"This bullet, like it or not, is a work of art. This was meant to take down the meanest of the mean for good. I bet you she was aiming for the Alpha but got you instead,"

"Lucky me," he murmured before meeting her eyes. "How do you know it was a she?"

"I could hear the hunter. The one that hit you was a female. The one in the SUV was a male,"

He frowned again, dropping his eyes in though as she clutched the bullet in his palm.

With him distracted and silent, she grabbed yet another towelette to clean off his arm again so that she could put the telfa pad on. Once she'd pressed the adhesive bandage down against his skin to secure it around the wound, she began gathering up the bloody towelettes and wrappers to toss into the garbage bin. Better to give the werewolf time to think. She pushed herself to her feet, picking up She picked up the tweezer where she'd set them and tossed them into her sink, planning on disinfecting it later before replacing it back into her first aid kit. She then walked back to close the first aid kit and moved to return it to the bathroom when a hand closed on her wrist.

"I…" he began, seeming pained before he let out an annoyed breath. "I need you to find a kid named Scott McCall…"

…xXx…

Simone wasn't really made for "undercover". She was made for running through forests, hunting and the occasional car repair when money was needed. The oil and grime that clung to her hands were a sign of that, along with her inability to find any clothes that were completely clean of stains. It was either a grass stain, oil stain or blood stain. Take your pick. However, it would be a stretch to call going to a high school to talk to a teenager as "undercover". Regardless, that was what she was doing, making her way through the horde of teenagers in search of one teenage boy. A needle in a haystack.

Too bad she couldn't burn down the haystack to find the were-needle.

Teens were swarming out of the entrance of the school, some smelling of excitement, some lust, some anxiety. One tall boy ducking past her smelled of old blood and healing while another smelled faintly of sadness beneath the Axe spray. Both made her sneeze and absentmindedly wish she couldn't smell what others were feeling. It was their own business and a lot of the time there was nothing she could do to fix it.

"Scott," Simone whispered, her eyes scanning the crowd in search of any teenage male heads perking up at the sound of their name. With the hearing of a werewolf, he'd be able to hear her even if he wasn't paying attention to actively listen for it. And she needed a way to find a teenage Scott McCall without knocking someone's head in. "Scott,"

Finally, a head of dark hair spun around to look in her direction, brown eyes wide even as they flashed a searing gold momentarily. He was a tall boy standing over a bicycle, probably on his way to Allison's house if Simone had heard right. She quickly made her way over to him.

"Are you Scott McCall?" Simone asked in her most professional voice.

The teenager's eyes flicked to hers, cautiously nodding. "Yeah…?"

"I'm Simone Haseya," she told him, lowering her voice this time as a pair of teens passed by them, sure Scott would still be able to hear her. "Derek Hale sent me to find you,"

Scott's eyes instantly widened, his gaze shooting around as if he was worried the man would jump out and attack him. The reaction reminded Simone of herself when she'd left the reservation at eighteen, always on her toes and wary whenever anyone claimed to know her. Now that she was a bit older and a lot wiser, she could rest assured that she no longer looked like a deer in the headlights.

Scott gripped her arm and pulled her off to the side, looking up at her suspiciously. "How do you know Derek? And what does he want with me?"

"He's currently dying in my apartment from some sort of wolfsbane poisoning from a special bullet he was shot with," she told him, skipping past the first question. "He said he was shot by a family called the Argents and that you could help?"

Scott's eyes widened as her explanation continued until he looked outright panicked. "Well what am I supposed to do?"

"I can heal him but I need to know what subgenus of wolfsbane he was hit with. To find that out, I need to find the bullets they used… which means I need to get into their house,"

"You can't do that!" Scott nearly shouted at her, his arms shooting out as if to block her from coming any closer. "You can't just break into their house!"

"I won't need to," Simone informed him, a sly smile drawing up the corners of her mouth. "I heard that you're going over to the Argents' house to study today? With Allison? All I need for you to do is to lead me to the house, invite me in and I'll take care of the rest,"

"And what? She'll just except that I'm bringing some random woman over with me?"

Simone couldn't help but laugh. "'Course not. You'll be bringing over your new dog,"

"My new…" Scott's eyes widened, looking her up and down as if he'd just realized something terrible. "Are you a were-?"

"Not a werewolf," she interrupted, holding up a hand to stop his assumption. "I don't think you guys can fully shift to a wolf anyway. I'm something a bit different,"

"And I'll be able to sneak you in as a dog?" he asked, looking hesitant.

Simone nodded. "Your very wolfish dog, but yeah. You get me invited in and you won't have to worry about a thing,"

"And why should I help you or Derek?" Scott questioned, becoming a bit less panicky.

"Because you're a new Were," Simone answered easily. "And if I know anything about starting out in the supernatural world, it's that starting out on your own is hard. You need someone to teach you the things that you need to know. That's Derek for you. The internet and improvising isn't going to cut it for much longer. You'll get killed.

"And don't think I haven't noticed the murders or didn't hear that howl last night," Simone continued, stepping even closer and dropping her voice into a near whisper. "There's a rampaging Alpha in town and it's going to want a pack to hunt with. That's you unless you learn how to protect yourself from his influence,"

Scott didn't seem happy with her answer but didn't argue with her further. Instead, he nodded. "Fine, I'll help,"

"Good,"

Simone smiled, fishing the collar and leash out of her jacket pocket to hand over to him. He looked down at it in confusion, looking over the five foot long blue leash and the attached black collar. At the sound of trickling metal, he turned the collar until he could pick up the dog tag to read off of it.

"'Wolf'?" he read off, arching an eyebrow up at her. "Seriously?"

"Keep it simple, keep it safe," she shrugged. "Not to mention it's what your new dog is going to look like when you see her,"

"And that won't be suspicious,"

Simone rolled her eyes. "Like the Argents are really going to suspect you're bringing a shapeshifting supernatural creature into their house,"

"If it's named Wolf," Scott hissed, thrusting the dog tag at her. "Yeah!"

"Occam's Razor. The simplest answer is often the correct one. If you're bringing a new dog into their house by the name of Wolf, they'll probably assume that's what's going on,"

Scott didn't seem happy with it but sighed, giving in. "So why are you giving me this?"

"Because I need to shift before you put that on me or else people will stare," she told him easily, receiving a disgusted look from the teen. "Now remember, I need to be invited into the house by Allison before I can actually enter it. And when I've found the bullet, I'll lick your hand twice. Any time before that, try to keep me inside the house,"

Scott nodded.

"I'm going to go find a place to shift," she told him, beginning to back away towards the entrance of the parking lot. "Meet you around the block? I'll be the grey one,"

She didn't wait for an answer before spinning on her heel and heading out in search of a place to shift. It didn't take long before she found a very convenient cluster of trees that blocked her from being seen from the road. With a quick glance around to make sure no one was looking, she pulled her satchel off of her shoulder to pull out the wolf Skin sitting inside.

For a skinwalker to shift into an animal, they needed a Skin. A Skin acted as the anchor that shifted them into the animal, shrouding them in the instincts of the animal as they acted on the human will through it… or just ran around like a rabid animal, depending on your brand of skinwalker. There were two ways that a skinwalker could add a Skin to their available forms. First, they could spend months of observation to study the animal to understand the instincts and behaviors of the animal before taking the animal's life and Skinning it. The second was much easier; kill a fellow skinwalker and take their skins.

Simone had inadvertently done the former with the death of her mother, gaining her mother's wolf, coyote, bear, and crow Skins along with the understanding of the animals from them. Most of the skins were useful enough for Simone to use, but she tried to stay away from the coyote Skin as much as possible. The coyote skin bore the heavy influence of her mother's essence whenever Simone dawned the Skin, which was rare. Some years back, with the influence of a fellow skinwalker, that Simone had finally decided to create her own Skins, first a fox that had taken her nearly a year to perfect before gaining a usable Skin from her hunts. The raven Skin she'd gotten had taken much less time to create.

But now, she removed the wolf Skin from her satchel with great care, letting the Skin fall against her arm. It wasn't one of her most treasured Skins but she was careful with each, a part of her spirit attached to each despite not having created most of them herself. She could feel the kinship of the Wolf in every glance she aimed at Derek, the Fox's instincts to turn tail and run from the larger predator, the instincts of the Bear in every step she took, the influence of the Coyote's recluse behavior when she traveled alone, the pleasure of the Raven and Crow when she looked out her fourth story window… they were all a part of her.

She shifted the Skin to her head, positioning it there as she let the body of the Skin hang loosely down her back. There was that familiar tingling feeling that went up her spine at the sensation of the magic that moved between her skin and the Skin, sparking at her fingertips. She let the magic take her, feel the sizzle of magic run down the seam of the Skin as it enveloped her in the body of the Wolf. It was a smooth move from the human to the steel grey wolf that landed on its four paws, reddish-brown eyes glancing around as the world settled again.

The conversion of mass between her hundred and thirty pound body with clothes and shoes on to a two hundred pound wolf didn't make a whole lot of sense. However, it wasn't nearly a brain teaser as the conversion of mass to a four hundred pound grizzly bear or into a ten pound raven with feathers. But she'd stopped trying to make sense out of magic and just learned to accept the rules that magic did seem to go by.

Simone rubbed her nose against her foreleg to take away the last tingle of the change. It always took a moment to adjust to moving on four feet instead of two, a messy jumble when she'd tried it for the first time at age ten. She shook her fur out, taking a few experimental steps out of the trees before she took off towards the road. She caught Scott's scent as soon as her paws met the pavement, leading her towards the nearest corner where the teen stood waiting with his bike. She could smell the anxiety coming off of him as he shifted, glancing around as if waiting to take part in a drug deal.

Simone yipped once, practicing the part of loyal companion before she trotted up to the boy's side. Though she was in charge of herself, being in the body of the wolf left her more susceptible to the instincts of the animal and therefore left her influenced by a wolf's typical behavior. If she wanted to be okay with a collar around her throat and people petting her like a dog, she needed to keep a reign on herself and her wolf-ish instincts.

Scott's head spun around until he got a good look at her approaching form, studying the body of the wolf as she came to a stop beside him. "Is that you?"

Simone yipped again, lifting her head up to lick his hand twice. The action caused him to yelp in response as he wrenched his hand back, wiping it furiously against his jeans. Simone couldn't help but let her tongue lull out in a wolfish grin.

"Alright, come on," Scott frowned, leaning down to attach the collar around her neck. She made sure to stand still as he did, her head held high as she calmly waited for him to stand again and mount his bike.

Together, they made their way through the neighborhoods until they came to some of the fancier housing in Beacon Hills. Simone kept pace with his bike riding but couldn't help noticing the anxiety that tickled her nose. He was nervous to meet with the girl, not just because he was bringing a skinwalker into their home but because he was genuinely nervous about the study date. It was cute.

They stopped in front of a two story brick house with a turnaround driveway where a grey car was already parked and waiting. Scott was leaning his bicycle against the porch just as the front door opened to reveal a dark haired girl with a brilliant smile on her face. She was pretty and smelled like excitement and anxiety beneath the flowery perfume she wore. She skipped down the porch steps toward them, her eyes only for Scott.

"Hi!" she greeted. "I was wondering when you were going to get here,"

"Sorry. I sorta got sidetracked with…" He gestured weakly down to Simone as she shifted beside him, wagging her tail.

"Aw, he's so pretty!" the girl smiled sweetly as she bent down to pet Simone, scratching her behind the ears. Simone's tongue lulling out of her mouth as she tilted her head so that the girl's fingers scratched her in just the right spot. The wolf was wary of being touched but Simone buried the apprehension behind the pleasurable feeling of behind scratched. "What's his name?"

"Uh, Wolf. Her name is Wolf,"

"A girl," Allison smiled, brushing her hands over Simone's face gently. "My apologies, m'lady. Aren't you beautiful? I didn't know you had a dog, Scott,"

"Uh, I don't. She's not mine. Probably'll be the last time you see her,"

"Why? Whose is she?"

"Uh," Scott stuttered, looking down at Simone with a hint of panic in his eyes. She mostly ignored him however, tilting her head when Allison tried to move her hands to pet her neck. "She's, uh- She's Derek's,"

Simone's eyes slitted open to give Scott a sardonic look. Did he really think making her Derek's dog was going to be a good idea when he was surrounded by Argents? Where did he think this was going to get him?

"Derek Hale's?" the girl asked, turning to look up at Scott though her hand didn't leave Simone's fur. "I thought you said you weren't friends with him?"

"We're not friends," he told her. "It's a long story but my boss needed me to take her out for a while. Get some exercise after being cooped up in the clinic for so long. I'm getting some overtime so…"

Simone tilted her head. At least it was less likely to backlash in his face…

Allison bobbed her head noncommittally, walking past him towards her front door. "Well why don't we go on in?"

Allison unlocked the door and stepped inside, leaving the two of them to follow after her. But Scott and Simone stopped side by side at the threshold, looking through the doorway at the elegant house. The house was just as expensive looking on the inside as it did on the outside, with a staircase and chandelier on display in the foyer. Simone could smell four distinct scents, one of which being relatively new to the environment with a hint of gun powder. The wolf instincts told her to duck out and run in the face of these predators but Simone remained stationary before the threshold of the home. She needed to know the type of wolfsbane that had been used on Derek.

When the of them didn't follow, Allison turned back with a frown. "Don't worry, no one's going to be home for hours," she assured Scott, gesturing with her head for him to come in. "Come on,"

"Okay,"

Scott stepped inside but Simone remained where she was, whining sadly as she kneaded the threshold with her paws. Being a skinwalker, she couldn't enter a house without being invited in, much like the mythology for vampires. It was almost like a force field shielding the house that kept her from entering. She mostly didn't have to deal with this particular issue of her magical anatomy given that she wasn't the type of skinwalker to need to be kept from someone's houses like her brothers and sisters… but right about now she found it annoying.

"Aren't you polite?" Allison cooed at her, leaning down towards her. "Apparently Derek trained you with some manners. It's okay, girl. You can come on in,"

Simone internally breathed a sigh of relief as she stood back up to trot across the threshold to Scott's side. She came to a stop beside him as Allison closed the door, gesturing for them to follow her.

"We can put Wolf in the backyard," Allison suggested.

"Uh, actually-" Scott began again with wide eyes, his hands tightened on the leash as Simone shifted against the action. "I would but, uh- She can't go outside. She jumps fences and I don't want to lose her. Maybe if we can put her in a room or something? She's trained and all so you don't have to worry about her chewing anything up or-"

Allison smiled. "Alright then. We can put her in the guest bathroom," She led them towards the back of the house and down a hallway. Here the newer scent was strongest, the scent of metals and an overuse of bleach ticking her nose as Allison opened the door. "I'd put her in the garage but we still have some stuff in there that she might get into. My aunt is using the guestroom but I don't think she'd mind lending out her bathroom. I hope it's big enough for Wolf,"

"It's fine," Scott assured her. "I'm sure she won't mind this after days in a kennel cage,"

Allison walked through the guestroom without a glance, pushing open the bathroom door and stepping aside to let Scott and Simone through. The bathroom was more of an on suite than a guest bathroom, an oversized and spa-like room that housed a tiled shower and double sink. Scott carefully unhooked the leash from her collar and allowed her to move the rest of the way into the room. Simone padded across the tiled floor with a toss of her head, curling up on the bathmat in front of the shower.

Allison giggled at her. "Well, she seems to like it,"

"Yeah,"

"Come on. We can study in my room,"

She closed the door behind them, the teens' voices fading as they walked down the hall and up the stairs. Simone waited for a long moment, listening intently as the two teens walked to the girl's bedroom before shifting back to human. She remained kneeling on the bathmat as the world righted itself, her eyes clearing as she blinked down at the dull blue bathmat under her palms. Eventually she got to her feet, keeping the wolf Skin on her head in case of an emergency, quietly opening the bathroom door to enter the guest bedroom.

Assuming that Allison's aunt had been the feminine voice of the armed hunter she'd heard last night, the bullet would be here. The scent of metal and stinging ingredients only led her to believe her assumptions were right as she pulled a black duffel bag out from beneath the bed. Inside were various pieces of clothes covering a suspicious looking lockbox that opened easily beneath her hands.

Never had she seen so many bullets.

However, it was the antique looking box with a leaf and flower stock on the side that captured her attention. She lifted it from its spot, studying it until she noticed the words 'Aconit Napel Bleu Nordique' emblazoned on the lid. She recognized the name from one of her many lessons with her grandda over the intricacies of the subgenus' of various ingredients he used for his protection rituals. This particular brand of monkshood was rare, as suggested by the fancy box, and was especially deadly to anything that got near it. Simone could only assume it worked with the same if not more potency on werewolves. As if she needed more assurance, she lifted the lid and was instantly hit with the familiar bitter scent of monkshood whilst ten carved slots held a mere nine bullets.

"Hopefully you won't mind if I borrow one," Simone murmured to herself, pocketing on of the bullet in her jean pocket. "Thank you,"

Allison's bedroom door opened as two pairs of footsteps walked down the hall to the stairs and down them. Simone quickly returned the contents to the lockbox and closed the lid, returning the duffle bag in a flash of movement before returning herself to the bathroom. With a shock of magic that left her wolf form a bit disoriented, she shifted back to the wolf as the bathroom door behind her clicked shut. Even with her head feeling light with the change, she stumbled over to the bathmat and slumped down into a comfortable position, folding her paws in front of her. There she waited as her head cleared of the dizziness and the footsteps of the two teens came closer. However, the teens didn't even pause in front of the guest bedroom's door, but instead continued past it to the garage.

Simone groaned, dropping her head onto her forepaws.

A moment later, Simone's ears twitched as the familiar purr of an SUV's engine purred up the driveway and cut off with the sounds of voices. These voices she couldn't help but recognize from the night before, though they lacked the harsh tone she remembered. She listened to them with hesitant amusement as the male found the two teens hiding in his garage.

Simone couldn't help the amused snort that left her.

She listened unconcernedly from her position on the bathmat as the teens helped the two hunters bring in the groceries. However, when she heard the last bag of groceries brought inside, footsteps halting just before the steps to the door, she got nervous. Scott wasn't going to forget and leave her in the middle of a bunch of hunters was he?

"S-so," Scott began awkwardly. "Do you still want to study-?"

"I think she'll concentrate better on her own," the male voice interrupted him, obviously Allison's father and stuck in the 50's.

"Guess I'll see you later then-?"

"At school," the father interrupted again. "Ah-ah-ah. You, on the bike. You, inside,"

"Come on, Chris. Really?" the feminine voice of the armed hunter broke in, her voice full of sarcasm and mirth. "They were making out in the garage, not shooting amateur porn. You, with the adorable brown eyes, drop your bike. You're staying for dinner,"

Two pairs of footsteps trailed inside, most likely leaving both males outside.

"You eat meat?" the father, Chris Argent, asked.

"If you don't mind?" Scott asked politely.

"Actually no. Gives us a chance to know each other,"

Simone snorted again, feeling the utter threat in the seemingly innocent words.

She listened as the hunter and the nervous werewolf caught in the crosshairs walked inside together, Scott's heartbeat a bit quicker than it had been before. However, with him back inside, she allowed herself to relax and replace her muzzle back on her forepaws with a sigh.

"Hey, Scott, do you need to take Wolf out?" Allison asked.

"Wolf?" the father repeated.

"Oh, yeah! Scott brought one of the dogs he was watching from the vegetarian clinic over. She is so cute," Allison boasted with excitement and endearment. "I hope you don't mind, Aunt Kate. We had to put her in your bathroom,"

"No problem,"

"You brought a dog over to our house?"

"Y-yeah," Scott stuttered. "Sorry. It's for work. Allison didn't seem to mind. I'm sorry if-"

"Don't worry about it," the aunt interrupted, cutting his apology short. "Let's go see the little guy,"

"She's a girl," Allison corrected as their voices drew closer. "And she's not little,"

Footsteps followed Scott's to the bathroom door as it opened, brining Simone's head off of her paws as her eyes focused on the three people entering the room. The first were the two teens, but the last was the aunt whose scent permeated the guestroom. She was wearing a shirt that should have been too young for her to wear, the color making her skin look warm though she couldn't tell what color it actually was. Her body tight with hidden muscle that she hid well, her eyes harsh as she looked across the bathroom at her. Definitely a predator with a hint of madness.

The aunt was what brought Simone to her feet.

"Whoa," the aunt breathed, looking Simone up and down. "You call that a dog?"

Simone made sure to wag her tail as she approached Scott, rubbing her head up against his hand before licking it twice. He frowned down at her, wiping his hand off on his jeans as he clipped the leash to her collar.

"What breed is she?" the aunt asked, giving her a suspicious look. "Looks more wolf than dog,"

Scott, his pulse picking up as his eyes widened minutely, began to stutter again. He glanced down at her as if for help but she remained neutral, playing at being a dog as she wagged her tail up at him with a lopsided smile as her tongue lulled out.

"Uh, some sort of mix," he finally answered, looking back up at the aunt. "Irish Woulfhound cross of some sort, maybe something with a little wolf like a Husky or Samoyed? I, uh- I don't really know. She's Derek's, so-"

"Derek Hale's?" the aunt interrupted, looking suddenly interested. "She's his dog?"

"Yeah," Scott nodded, seeming to suddenly realize that saying she was Derek's was a very bad idea whilst being in their den. "He left her at the clinic where I work. Deaton asked me to take her out for the afternoon because she was starting to get a little bit stir-crazy in the kennels. She's real sweet and Allison didn't seem to mind so…"

"Huh," the aunt nodded, looking down at Simone with a critical eye as she crouched down in front of her.

The woman met Simone's eyes, making the part of her that understood the Wolf want to rip into the woman's throat for challenging them. However, Simone kept that instinct under control as best she could, even when the woman's hands brushed over her coat. There was nothing more she wanted to do than rip into the hunter but she refrained. Instead, she yipped at the woman, wagging her tail as she dropped to the ground onto her side as if waiting to be petted.

Seemingly satisfied with her inspection, the aunt stood.

"Cute," she frowned.

…xXx…

Simone and Scott came bursting into her apartment, the door banging hard against the wall as it swung wide.

After an exceedingly awkward dinner with the Argents, first with trying to get Scott to admit he drank alcohol and then by telling a horrifying story about a rabid dog the father had been forced to put down, which was an obviously veiled werewolf story, the night had ended on the highest of awkward notes when the aunt had accused Scott of stealing from her bag, followed by Allison revealing she'd stolen a condom. After that, Scott and Simone had been free. In wolf form, Simone had led Scott through town in an attempt to get to her apartment as fast as she could, shifting mid stride in a whirl of magic that had left her stumbling as she unlocked the entryway door to the apartment building. Their chests were heaving after running/biking across town at tops speeds followed by running up four flights of stairs to her apartment.

The noise drew the attention of the wounded werewolf standing in the center of Simone's apartment with a tomahawk clutched in his hand. It was a sight Simone hadn't ever expected to see in her life, even with the slightly glazed look Derek was sporting as he looked over at them. He looked much worse than when she had left him earlier that afternoon, made more evident by the shirt he'd chosen to remove. Granted, he'd been getting steadily worse as the day had worn on until she'd been forced to leave to find Scott but now he looked… like death. His tanned skin had lost all color and was covered in a heavy sheen of sweat, the scent of pain and death permeating the room from him. In the course of a few hours, the skin of his forearm had blackened while thick black veins ran up his bicep and down into his hand, intertwining with his fingers. As his head turned to look at them, his eyes flashed a stunning wolf-blue framed in purple bruises and exhaustion, the expression disoriented and pained.

"What the hell are you doing with that?!" Scott shouted, staring in shock at the ancient weapon clutched in Derek's unharmed hand.

"Did you get it?"

Simone held up her hand, the bullet pinched between two fingers for him to see. His eyes immediately caught on the glinting cylinder, dropping the tomahawk to the floor with a metallic thud as he moved strode forward. He tried to take the bullet from her, only to have Simone drop her hand to behind her back as she gestured for him to sit on the coach. When he didn't, she rolled her eyes and moved past him to her coffee table in the center of her living room. Simone quickly undid the latch on the chest and lifted the lid to reveal a plethora of vials, bundles of dried herbs, collections of feathers, rocks and twigs, various small objects that might have been knickknacks, papers with scribbled notes across them, a few daggers, and other miscellaneous objects.

"What are you going to do with it?" Scott asked, eyes wide as he studied the inside of the chest.

"Just give me a second,"

She looked through the contents with efficiency, pulling out a vial of herbs, a large silver tray and a cheap plastic lighter. She slammed the chest's lid back down, placing the tray in the middle of the table as she uncorked the vial to spill the pre-combined contents into the center. Next she bit the top off of the bullet, tapping the cap violently down onto the plate until small seeds began to trickle out and mix with the other ingredients.

Then she lit the mixture on fire.

Everyone jerked back as the wolfsbane went up, fire jumping a full foot up into the air with a loud crackling sound. The flame died quickly, leaving the violet-blue smoke to curl up towards Simone's face like a living thing. She frowned as she batted it away, tilting the tray until the ashen remains slipped down to the corner for her to easily pour into her hand. With the antidote cradled in her palm, she got to her feet and turned to find Derek sitting uneasily on the couch. She approached him only to have him quickly recoil back into the couch, his forearm pressed close to his naked chest.

It was a shock at first, the scent of his anxiety mixed was the decay of his body that was wafting off of him like Death. She knew he didn't want to die, if what she and Scott had walked in on was any evidence to the contrary. He'd had the tomahawk with the intention of cutting off his own arm, hoping his werewolf healing would staunch the bleeding before he bled out. It was a last resort that she didn't blame him for. The loss of an arm was well worth not having to die. But yet he recoiled from her. They both knew that he had no other option than the mixture she held in her hand, his body slowly giving out on him as the poison pumped ever closer to his heart.

"What did you put in it?" Derek demanded, a growl roughening the words as his eyes shifted between wolf-blue and human grey.

Simone sighed, realizing then what was wrong. She was a skinwalker, known for their tricks and curses that usually ended up with people dead or seriously maimed. If she'd wanted to, the ingredients that she'd added to the wolfsbane could have easily been a bit of Corpse Dust, a special mixture that caused swelling of the tongue, convulsions and, ultimately, death. He had no real reason to trust anything she said or did and now he was wary of her yet again.

"If I wanted you dead, I could have thrown the bullet out the window and watched you die a slow death and painful death on my couch. Instead, I got you this bullet and am offering you the antidote before you die,"

He didn't seem convinced, his forearm still held close to his chest.

She couldn't help but roll her eyes as she extended her hand to him, opening her fingers to reveal the ashen pile at the center of her palm. "Scent it. What do you smell?"

For a long minute, he didn't move. Instead of scenting the pile in her palm, he remained completely still with his eyes searing dangerously into hers. She held his eyes, raising an eyebrow as she patiently waited for him to stop being stubborn. If he was willing to wait taking the antidote that would save his life to put himself at ease then she was willing to wait as well.

A long staring contest late, without taking his eyes off of hers, he leaned forward. She watched as he brought his face close to her hand and took one sharp sniff.

"What do you smell?"

He frowned, thinking as he leaned back against the couch again. "Wolfsbane… Willow bark… Feverfew… And something else…"

Simone nodded. "Good nose. It's Devil's claw, St. John's wort, feverfew, blue mountain flower and blessed white willow bark. All of which is supposed to alleviate pain… specifically muscle pain but what can you do?"

He continued frowning.

"The wolfsbane leaving your body isn't going to feel good," Simone reminded him. "I threw together some of my grandda's go-to's for pain in a few of my vials for an emergency and added it to the wolfsbane. I'm trying to help-"

Before either of them could get another word out, Derek seemed to turn a sickly shade of green as he suddenly lurched forward. As a knee jerk reaction she put her arm out to clothesline him across the chest, catching him before he could tumble all the way off the coach and onto the floor. She felt his body stiffen as he vomited onto her floor, black blood a stark contrast to the rose colored hardwood.

"Ew," Scott groaned, backing away towards the door.

"Your body is trying to heal itself," Simone told Derek, though they both knew that he was well aware of what his body was doing. "You need to take this antidote. Now. Whether you think I'm poisoning you or not,"

He was breathing hard, his body stiff against hers and freezing despite the layer of sweat. She knew why he was hesitant, given what she was but they couldn't sit here and argue whilst his body was giving out on him. They needed to act. Now. At this distance, she didn't even need to turn her nose into the side of neck to breath in the heady smell of decay and pain.

The skinwalker nature she buried deep down within her rejoiced at the scent and wish she'd caused it, wanting to draw out his pain longer until she watched him breathe his last breath. Revenge was what drove the darkness in the souls but pain, fear and chaos was what fueled. There was nothing a true skinwalker loved more than watching their chosen victim suffer beneath their watch. It had been something that she'd seen too many times whilst she learned from her fellow skinwalkers, watching them choose a victim and torture them. She could still remember the addictive enjoyment she'd felt, the intense want she'd had to have blood on her hands… but a skinwalker was what she was, not who she was. And she chose every day to help rather than harm.

So when Derek nodded at her, she pulled back the telfa pad and pressed the pile of ashen wolfsbane and healing herbs directly into the bullet wound. The second the mixture entered the wound his whole body bowed backwards into the couch, arching stiffly with a pained groan. Simone moved back, opting to remain out of bone snapping distance while the antidote did its work, putting an arm out to ward Scott away from approaching the pained werewolf on her couch. Not that the teen Were needed any encouragement to remain where he was, his back against the apartment door.

Together they watched as Derek groaned in pain, his eyes flashing wolf-blue as his wound smoked with the same violet-blue smoke they'd seen earlier. The blackened skin and veins on his arm retracted back at an almost cartoon-like speed towards the bloody bullet wound until there was nothing left of the poison. With the poison gone, the wound healed and Derek's skin regained its natural color, leaving nothing to lead anyone to believe he'd been wounded except for the telfa pad still clinging pathetically to his forearm.

Scott and Simone stared in silence as Derek shifted against the couch, letting out a breath as he tore off the telfa pad and tossed it onto the ground.

"Feeling better?"

Derek gave her an unamused look.

"Told you it'd hurt," Simone continued, regardless of the expression he aimed her way. "But at least you aren't dead… Interesting considering you were expecting me to poison you,"

Another unamused look.

Simone shrugged as she stood up. She'd wait for him to at least acknowledge she hadn't killed him or at most to thank her for saving his life. She wasn't going to force it out of the seemingly grumpy werewolf if he wasn't willing to offer it freely. Instead, she got up and walked past Scott into her kitchen to get some rags to clean up the vomit he'd spewed onto her hardwood floor. If she left it for too long it would seep into the grain and she'd never be able to get rid of the smell. This left the two Weres to their own devices as she dug around through her closet sized pantry.

"Okay, I helped save your life which means you're going to leave me and Stiles alone. You got that?" Scott suddenly spoke up, his words quick and naïve. "And if you don't, I'm going to go back to Allison's dad and I'm going to tell him everything-"

Simone winced at the idea.

"You're going to trust them?" Derek interrupted. "You think they can help you?"

"Well why not?" Scott asked, revealing to Simone just how knew to the supernatural world he really was. "They're a lot freaking nicer than you are,"

"Yeah, I can show you exactly how nice they are,"

"… What do you mean?"

…xXx…

At six in the morning, most people are sitting at their desks at a comfy job or at Starbucks getting their fancy coffee in preparation for their comfy desk jobs. Simone, on the other hand, was burrowed under the engine compartment of an old 1973 Volkswagen Thing, settling a rebuilt transmission into its new home.

Ever since her older cousin Curt had dubbed her his own personal tool lackey, handing him tools when he asked for them as he fixed up his 1978 Volkswagen Rabbit, she'd been hooked. Fixing up cars had been a hobby through her teenage life and had saved her from starvation more than once while she'd been on the road. And while being a female mechanic is sometimes useful—smaller hands being able to go places a man's sometimes can't—more than one shop had turned her down, especially without a college degree. In the end, even the exercise and the minimal added strength of being a skinwalker couldn't give her the strength of a strong man. Usually leverage could compensate, but sometimes there's no substitute for muscle and Simone had just barely enough to get the job done on most days.

But she was thankful to have found Jim when she'd been stranded in Beacon Hills with a gas tank full of salt water. Jim Noble was the owner of Beacon Hills Mechanics, one of the three auto repair shops in Beacon Hills and the only one to be locally owned. He'd taken one look at her, sitting amongst the teen boys looking for a part-time job, and asked her to come back later. When she'd returned he'd asked her out into the garage to look at a car he'd had sitting out, a clunker with the hood up. He'd asked her to tell him what was wrong with it. After two hours of going through the engine compartment, starting and shutting off the engine, checking all of the fluids, going through the different typical checks, she told him there wasn't anything wrong with the car.

He'd hired her on the spot.

Since then they'd made a good pair. He took care of most of the heavy lifting and paperwork while she dealt with the more intricate repairs and customers. They were both loners and didn't talk a whole lot but that didn't mean the silence between them was awkward. They respected each other's space and had a silent respect for each other.

Someone cleared their throat at Simone's feet.

She kept the annoyed groan to herself. It was her fault for leaving the bay doors open. On cooler days she liked to have them open in the hopes of getting some fresh air instead of sitting in the same axel grease and burnt oil smell that permeated the garage. It wasn't the customer's fault for coming to the open bay doors rather than walking into the office where her boss was sitting doing paperwork. Yes, usually she dealt with the customers, but right now she was in the middle of something.

"If you head into the main office Jim will be right with you," Simone told them.

She shifted positions beneath the Thing to try to get the transmission in place without having to call Jim in. This had been her personal job without any of his help and she planned on finishing it by herself, even with the way her arms were shaking under the weight of the transmission. She quickly shifted her legs up until they were tucked against her torso, holding the transmission where it belonged with her knees and one hand. With the other she expertly slipped the first bolt into place and tightened it, grunting with effort.

"I'm not here as a customer,"

Simone froze, thankful that the bolt was holding the transmission in place above her or else she would have been squashed. She recognized the voice as Derek Hale's and was only now realizing that, beneath the typical potent scents that filled the garage, the smell of a werewolf was tickling her senses. She remained beneath the vehicle for a long moment, debating on what she should do (outright ignoring the overwhelming urge to run away). After all, she was at work… he wasn't going to maul her in front of her boss, was he?

"I just want to talk," he continued when she didn't come out from under the car right away.

She frowned, looking up at the transmission. She wasn't finished but the transmission would stay where it was while she dealt with Derek. If only she didn't feel like dealing with him was such a horrible idea… Simone let out a breath. In a swift move that came from practice, she rolled out from under the car and stood in one gracefully move, snagging a rag to wipe the oil off her hands.

Derek looked much better than he had the night before. His tanned skin was colored with an undertone of warmth rather than the dull grey it had been, even as he'd been leaving her apartment cured. His grey eyes had gained color too, a blue shade mixed with green that led Simone to believe that his eyes were the color shifting kind girls would kill for. Now he wore jeans and a t-shirt, a leather jacket hanging off his shoulders with sleeves that were too long and covered his hands. The leather suited him but the jacket itself didn't.

She glanced over her shoulder at the window that allowed customers to look into the garage to watch Jim and her work if they chose to stay. Through it, she could see the five matching chairs pushed up against the wall with a coffee table in the corner that held a few old magazines and a potted plant. She could also see the counter which currently didn't have Jim standing behind it meaning he was most likely in the office in the back, hunched over the lone desk doing the mountains of paperwork. He wouldn't come out until lunch break hit… at least, she hoped so.

"How did you find me?" she couldn't help but ask, turning back to meet Derek's eyes.

"You said you work at a repair shop," he reminded her, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "It was only a matter of looking,"

Simone nodded but didn't say anything.

"Are you planning on sticking around?"

She eyed him, trying to discern the real meaning of the question. "Depends… are you suggesting that I should move on?"

Derek frowned, dropping his head as if he was contemplating her words… Hopefully not contemplating killing her. With her car fried, she'd need to save up enough money to buy an entirely new rust-bucket to get her out of town. In a pinch she could pack up the essentials and buy a cheap bus ticket if she really needed to but… buses weren't her favorite mode of transportation. There were too many scents, new and old, which made her wish that she didn't have her heightened senses. She also had to have a set destination to take a bus. With a car she could decide to go anywhere based on a whim as long as she was careful about her gas level. Granted, she could just run as an animal but that would mean leaving all of her belongings behind and she preferred not to remain in animal form for too long. It messed with her sense of self and her instincts when she shifted back to human.

"No," Derek finally answered, looking up at her. "That's not what I meant,"

Simone bobbed her head, thinking. "Well, besides the family of hunters, the rabid Alpha and the overall unwelcoming feeling that Beacon Hills exudes… I might stay,"

As if on cue, a heavy body pressed against her hip, making her frown.

Of course, there was also the issue of the ghost-wolf who seemed to have the intention of keeping her in Beacon Hills for vague reasons, mostly revolving around helping Derek Hale. It wasn't the most tempting way of how to spend her time, especially with a rabid Alpha werewolf running around, along with her being the kind of supernatural creature that is known to the supernatural community as the kind that should be exterminated on sight. And then there were the lessons her shaman/medicine man grandda had taught her about how to ignore pesky ghosts that wanted things from her.

The feel of a cold, wet nose against her elbow led her to believe that this wolf knew what she was thinking and that a lot of those tricks wouldn't work on this one.

An awkward silence descended between the two, leaving Simone to wipe at her hands with the rag she still held. Despite how long or thoroughly she wiped at her hands or even despite all the different types of soaps she'd used in the past, she never seemed to get all the oil and grease off of her hands. It seemed to be imbedded in. Annoying.

"I- I wanted to thank you," Derek suddenly began, sounding like it pained him to say the words as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I… appreciate what you did,"

"You're welcome," Simone offered back keeping her eyes on her rag in the hopes that it would make it easier for him. He didn't really seem like the type that got around to saying thanks to people, in the same way he didn't look like the type that was said no to a lot either. "Just wanted to help,"

"You've said that," he nodded, sounding suspicious. "A couple of times,"

Simone smiled, bringing her eyes up to meet his again. "Can't a girl help a pretty man when he's dying of wolfsbane poisoning? Just because?"

This caused him to outright frown, not amused at all. "You didn't know anything about me when you helped me the other night. I should have killed you the second that you told me you were a skinwalker and you knew that. I did try to kill you. But you helped me anyway-"

"Because you needed my help," she told him seriously. "I told you that I'm not the typical skinwalker. I'm not. A skinwalker is not who I am, it's what I am. That means that I don't want to run around causing chaos and misery everywhere I go. It means that I don't stink to high heaven of decay and the frenzy way. I wanted to help instead of leaving you to suffer because that's who I am,"

Derek's eyes studied her, seeming to take in her words. It wasn't the sort of look she was used to. Even among skinwalkers, they didn't usually size up anyone like this Were was doing to her right now. Usually it was a glance that decided that you were worthy of being ignored or a danger that sent them running. And then the typical werewolf gaze usually resulted in fangs and claws that sent her running to get out of their path (like the other night). But now, Derek's gaze was much more methodical and thoughtful than before, leading her to believe he was actually listening to her despite his frown still firmly in place.

But she still couldn't help add; "And like I said, you're a pretty man,"

She turned before he could see her smile, tossing the rag off onto one of the workbenches. When she turned back he didn't look at all amused with her but she didn't care. He was fun to mess with, even if he did have the potential to kill her with one swipe of his deadly claws. He definitely had more than enough reason to, given what she was. Luckily, he seemed to be listening now.

"Even if what you're saying is true," Derek began. "I don't know you and I don't trust you,"

"Well," Simone smiled, approaching him slowly. "I did save your life last night without poisoning you like you thought I would,"

"Doesn't mean I trust you,"

She shrugged, stepping past him and out the bay doors as a car pulled up with a customer. "And if you want to get to know me… that's a start,"

"I never said that,"

She turned around to find him facing her. "Didn't you?"

"I didn't,"

She sighed. "Face it, Hale. If I choose to stick around, you'll trust me one day,"

"No I won't,"

She let out a laugh, walking backwards for a few steps before turning on her heel to approach the chattering elderly woman getting out of her car, owner of the Thing. "Challenge accepted, Hale,"

Author's Note: After an argument with a friend, I decided to upload this. Tell me what you think in a review!