A/N: Hello all! Brittany here, and I thought I'd introduce you to my newest fic. This one's a little different than the ones I already have, and if you've read one of my other fics, you'll know why. Blake, the OC I'm using in this fic, happens to also be the main OC of one of my other fics, 'Rabbit, My Claws are Down.' Now, some of you might find that an extremely lazy thing to do, and I'd be inclined to agree with you. Allow me a second to explain why exactly, I chose to include Blake in this fic as the OC instead of creating a new OC tailored to fit the Teen Wolf world.
I know that if I chose to instead create another OC specifically for the Teen Wolf world, there's a huge chance that she'd turn out to be very much like Blake. I know myself, and I know the characters that I lean towards. I also know that I haven't seen a story revolving around a hunter OC yet in my very brief stay in the Teen Wolf fandom. That's not to say I've searched, but I have been browsing the fics for the last two weeks, and while that's not a great amount of time, it's enough for me. It's an interesting concept that I haven't seen done before, so when I got the idea, Blake popped into my head and my brain ran with it. Really, the only thing I had to do to make her fit seamlessly into the Teen Wolf universe was to modify her background just a little. In the original fic using Blake, Rabbit, she's a hunter of all things supernatural. In this fic, she's a hunter of werewolves. There are a few other details that got tweaked and fine-tuned, but other than that, Blake's the same person she's always been… and that includes Wess, her ever faithful canine companion.
Unfortunately, there are some coincidences between Blake and her characterization and the characterization of some of the characters on the show. I'm not going to point out examples, for I'm sure you'll see them in time. But there is the extremely unfortunate coincidence between Miss Jennifer Blake and my OC, Blake Matthews. They share a name and they share Derek. But, let me assure you, Blake's name and all of her characteristics were set in stone a year and a half before I ever even knew about Teen Wolf. So all of the coincidences are just that—coincidence.
In short, I hope you'll continue to read this fic even if you disagree with my choice to include Blake in it. I hope you'll give the story a chance to maybe change your mind. With that said, I genuinely hope you like it. And if you like it, review! I can't stress how important reviews are to me. They feed me and they feed my muse. They keep me running. They inspire me. I'm already a little insecure about this fic, so your reviews will help me feel more confident. Thank you.
Sorry for the monster of an author's note. Special thanks to mcgonagiggles for her continued support and beta-reading abilities. Oh! One last thing, the rating is for language, mild gore, and violence. Thanks again, and I hope you have a happy read! :D
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Teen Wolf or any of the characters associated with it. I will never own it and that goes for every chapter of this story.
Blake grumbles under her breath, angrily rifling through her bag of belongings. Angry, panicked tears sting her eyes and a horrible knot of rage curls in her stomach. "I can't believe you," she seethes, turning her burning blue eyes accusingly on the female hunter sitting calmly across the room. Blake had somehow forgotten her name in the midst of her hatred. In response to her furious tone, Wess's ears perk and he slowly gets to his feet, carefully avoiding putting any weight on his front right paw. Three long slashes on his shoulder ooze blood slowly, matting his thick black fur. After a little more rummaging, she locates the item she was looking for, ripping it out of the bag as if it had done her some great injustice.
The woman scoffs, an ugly look of indifference clouding her usually pleasant features. "You can't believe me? You're the one bawling over a stupid dog!" she shot back.
Blake whips around to face her, clutching her wallet so tightly her fingers and knuckles turn white. Fury flies through her veins like a drug, fueling the next outburst. "You deliberately put him in danger! When you knew he's not supposed to be around when we hunt!" Her entire body starts to tremble and she can't keep her hands steady enough to pull her debit card out of her wallet. She gives a strangled yell of frustration, flinging her wallet on the hotel room bed. Wess had been specially trained to detect werewolves, a result of bucket loads of patience and treats on Blake's end. While it's useful for tracking, he becomes a liability during fights so he usually stays in the car. But the woman in front of her had purposefully brought him into the thick of a fight to distract the alpha.
"I thought I brought you along to kill an alpha, not whine about your little mutt getting a scratch!" the woman snaps, exasperated with Blake's hysteria. "Shit happens," she clips uninterestedly, studying her perfectly manicured nails.
Blake's arms ache with the unbelievable urge to wring her fellow hunter's neck. Her fingers thrum as if ants were marching up and down them. "He's bleeding! I told you to drop me off at a vet, NOT take me back here!" Wess limps over to Blake's shaking form and presses his cold nose into thigh. Blake bites back a sob, reaching down to scratch Wess's ears comfortingly as a tear rolls down her cheek. "J-Just let me borrow your car, please! He needs help!" she asks, scrubbing the tears from her eyes.
"Not a chance! That thing's dripping blood everywhere!" the female hunter retorts, smirking as she sits back and enjoys Blake's panic.
Blake's hands fly up to her hair, her trembling fingers digging into her scalp and ripping out a few strands of light chocolate colored hair with the intensity of her grip. She clenches her eyes shut and takes a deep breath, reminding herself that Wess needs help this moment. She can't afford a meltdown right now. Slightly more composed than before, she heavily exhales and picks her wallet off of the bed and shoves it into the pocket of her jeans. "If you EVER put him in danger again…" she pauses to lick her cracked lips, tasting the sharp sting of blood, "I will personally see to it that your heart never beats again."
The woman's eyes narrow dangerously. "Is that a threat?" she asks slowly, rising to her feet.
"'Is that a threat?'" Blake imitates crudely. "Yes, it's a threat! What'd you think it was, pillow talk?!" she yells, flinging her arms to side as if to punctuate her words. "I don't have time to deal with this. I need to get my dog, the one that YOU injured, to the vet. We will not be working together again. I'll come get my things after he's looked after," she says, keeping a tenuous hold on her temper. Having said everything she needed to, she kneels and gently pulls Wess into the cradle of her arms, making sure his wounds aren't being agitated by anything. Wess gives a sharp whine and wiggles in the discomfort of not having his paws on the floor, but settles after a moment, too tired to put up much of a struggle.
Blake slams the door behind her, striding down the long hotel hallway. A couple who happened to be walking down the hall to their room, stops and stares as she passes, but she doesn't care that she's not supposed to have a dog in the hotel. She really doesn't care that she just undid all of the effort she put into sneaking a 92 pound German Shepherd into this hotel and she could care less that if an employee spots her she could be fined.
She just wants Wess to be okay. That's all she cares about.
Blake's knee bounces anxiously, her boot squeaking obnoxiously against the dingy white tile of the veterinarian office. The light overhead buzzes irritatingly as it gives off a sickly white glow in the sickly white room. Across the walls are plastered cute little posters of kitten and puppies along with a couple informatory ones containing knowledge on things like how much food to give each size of dog and what to do if your animal stops breathing.
"Ms. Matthews?"
"Y-Yes?!" Blake yelps, springing to her feet. The vet looks at her with a small, knowing smile, as if she had seen this kind of reaction hundreds of times. Even so, Blake clears her throat and wipes her sweaty palms over her dirty jeans. "Um, yes?" she asks again in a steadier voice.
"The stitches have been completed and the local anesthetic has worn off. It looks like your dog is going to be fine," the vet informs her, ushering her into the door leading to the room Wess is in.
"Thank you," Blake replies, unable to keep the grin off her face.
"It's not a problem, Ms. Matthews. We're glad to help. Now, I'm going to give you a prescription for a medication for pain and some antibiotics," the vet says as she opens the door to reveal Wess lying on a stainless steel table, a vet's assistant standing by to make sure he doesn't try to jump off and pull his stitches.
Blake grins at Wess's cleanly shaven shoulder and neck, able to clearly see three long lines of stitching from where they closed the wounds. Wess's tail wags sedately as he catches sight of her. "Hey, buddy," she greets softly, carefully scratching between his ears. He whines softly, his tail thumping rhythmically on the table.
"Okay, Ms. Matthews, you and Wess are good to go, there are just a few things I want to go over with you about looking after the stitches," the vet says, launching into an explanation about how to clean the stitches and how to administer the pain medication and antibiotics and when to come back to get the stitches removed.
"Okay," she says at last, "that about covers it. Again, all of this information will be stapled to the bag the medication comes in, I just wanted to make sure you understand everything."
Blake nods eagerly, "Yes ma'am, thank you so much." She carefully slides her arms under Wess to gently lower him to the floor, allowing him to stand on his own shaky feet. After that, she's lead into the lobby, where she pays for the treatment and receives the medication, stapled with instructions as promised. Finally done with everything, Blake shoulders the glass door open, causing the bell to give a hollow jingle, and waits patiently for Wess to follow. As she clicks the thick leather leash into place on Wess's collar, which is also made of fine leather, she notes that the sun had since set and left the street in semi-darkness.
Blake exhales slowly through her nose and stuffs the white plastic bag of medication into her coat pocket, her chest tightening with worry. Wess's vet bills totaled 500 dollars. Now she only had 100 dollars of the money that's supposed to get her halfway across the country and back to her car. Suddenly, parking her car at a friend's house in Missouri while she tracked werewolves all the way to New York with a psycho wasn't the best idea. She didn't even know the name of the town she's in.
How's she supposed to feed herself and Wess AND somehow get the both of them back to Missouri to pick up her car?
Blake massages her forehead, deciding to deal with it later. Right now she's dreading the thought of forcing her injured dog to walk all the way back to the hotel room where her psycho of an ex-hunting partner is waiting. She had carried him the entire way her and her arms still ache; she's worried that if she tries to do it again, she'll drop him.
But Blake knows that the second Wess even hints at being in pain from walking, she'll break down and carry him anyway.
Blake casts a glance at Wess and grins weakly when she finds him staring at her already. "Ya ready, bud?" she asks for the sole purpose of making his tail wag. It causes its intended effect, the canine's tail swishing back and forth as he gives a short bark. She breathes a laugh and scratches his ears, beginning the long trek back to the hotel.
Blake can't help but feel guilty for Wess getting hurt. She should've been paying more attention to the way her ex-hunting partner acted around him. That woman was definitely going to get another piece of Blake's mind once she got back to the hotel. There's no excuse for using Wess to lure the alpha away like she did. Just thinking about it, she can feel the familiar warmth of anger heating her bones. That woman would be lucky if Blake let her get away with only a couple broken bones. Without her noticing, her fingers curled into fists and began to tremble. She'd like to cause more harm to that woman, but she knows that if she does more than give her a black eye, she'll have a mountain of hunters on her ass like stink on a skunk. Instead of being the hunter, she'd become the hunted.
Why's everything going wrong? Blake regrets ever agreeing to work with that woman. The whole experience has just been a huge nightmare.
Blake doesn't bother to hold in the grunt of frustration as she lashes out to kick a stray can, causing it to go whizzing off into the darkness. If Wess had died, she'd be completely alone. She hastily scrubs the building tears out of her eyes, mad at herself for tearing up again. Wess is the only constant in her life, without him the ground would come out from under her… and she doesn't think she could recover. She's had him since he was just a puppy. An acquaintance suggested that she should get a dog after the death of her parents to keep her company. She had laughed it off seeing as her parents weren't very good company, but she couldn't get the thought of a puppy out of her head. Soon after that, there was an ad in the paper about a mischievous 12-week old German Shepherd free to a loving home. They had him for two weeks and weren't ready for the potty accidents and damaged furniture. Blake, always one for a challenge, picked him up the same day.
It's been four years and Blake has been grateful for that decision ever since. Unconsciously, she rolls the sleeves of her coat up, her fingers dragging over the surface of a scar she had gotten saving Wess from a coil of razor ribbon wire. The still-small puppy had given her the slip and escaped into an abandoned demolition site. Inside there was a tangled mass of razor ribbon wire and Wess stumbled right into it. She heard his cries and, after retrieving some wire-cutters, she carefully extracted him from the deadly tangle. There was another scar on her chin from where she cut a stretch of wire with too much tension in it and, upon all of that tension being released, it lashed out like a snake, tearing a ragged cut open on the bottom of her jaw near her ear. She's lucky it didn't catch a vein in her neck.
Wess tenses, a sharp bark coming from him followed by a string of rumbling snarls. Blake is put on edge immediately, her hands flying to her coat pockets where she gropes uselessly for a weapon. She doesn't find one. All she finds is her wallet and the bag of medication. She left her gun on the table in the hotel room that morning.
This isn't good.
Blake turns her head slowly, only to be greeted with the sight of an alley way with two cardinal red eyes leering at her from the darkness. She doesn't even have time to flinch before the eyes are right in her face. A thick hand wraps around her throat and before she's able to react, there's a harsh, bruising tug on her arm and then wind whips through her hair. Not a second later, she finds herself slammed against a cinderblock wall. Grunting in pain, she feels her entire body reverberate with agony. The back of her head feels as if someone smeared liquid fire across it and she has little doubt that she's probably sustained a concussion.
Prying her eyes open, she finds a brown, white and red smear uncomfortably close to her face. It's likely an alpha, but she can't tell by the refusal of her eyes to focus. A rumbling growl that could be interpreted as a laugh echoes from the mass in front of her, "I'm surprised you're still conscious, little hunter." Blake blinks blearily, her vision sharpening just enough to see the face of her attacker. It's definitely an alpha, and in fact, it's the same alpha she thought she killed this morning. What luck. He hasn't transformed yet, his eyes being the only thing to betray his position to her.
She watches as his brilliantly colored eyes slide to the side, making her unconsciously follow along with her own eyes. Wess is sitting on the sidewalk, snarling and barking at the alpha. "Wess," Blake chokes, unable to draw a breath on account of the clawed hand crushing her windpipes. With the last of the air she has, she manages to make a simple command, one that would afford her peace of mind.
"Go… home!"
Wess cocks his head and plants himself on the concrete which makes Blake think he's going to ignore her command. But after a second, he gets up and bolts in the direction of the hotel. If she had the air, she'd breathe a sigh of relief. Instead, she digs her nails into the alpha's hairy arms. It's a useless endeavor, and she knows it. Her blunt fingernails don't break the alpha's skin even as she digs into him with all the strength she can gather. She pulls her knee up to her chest and kicks out, the sole of her boot connecting solidly with the alpha's sternum. His hot breath washes over her face as it's forced from his lungs and she's positive it would smell terrible if she actually had the ability to smell it, but his grip doesn't loosen.
"That hurrrt, little hunter," he drawls, his voice rasping into more of low grumble like metal sliding over gravel. "But since I'm in such a good mood… I'll leave you with a gift instead of killing you. Your little code has always amused me, I do love being the cause of such… anguish," he says, chuckling. Blake's eyes widen and she shakes her head softly, trying to pry his hand away from her throat. She can't breathe. He's going to kill her.
His large hand encompasses Blake's wrist as he tugs her arm up into a raised position. She tries to jerk it out of his grip, but no matter how much she struggles she can't free herself. She watches with some kind of sick fascination as his face morphs, four fangs each an inch long protrude from his mouth, the bridge of his nose widens and flattens as thick patches of hair crawl along his jawline to form some seriously gross mutton chops. The last thing to happen is the ridge of eyebrow growing and extending, causing it to appear as if his brilliant cardinal eyes have sunken deeper into his head.
What he plans on doing is only made apparent to Blake when he draws her arm up next to his mouth. She can feel his breath as it glides over her, she can feel the miniscule amount of moisture that clings to the surface of her skin after being deposited there by his exhale, she can feel the hairs on her arm being disturbed as his mouth comes ever closer.
And for a second, she can feel the point of his fangs as they drag gently along the surface, not drawing blood... until they sink deeply into the muscles of her forearm.
Blake struggles weakly, her vision going dark. The pain in her arm is intense, sinking all the way to the bone and spreading through her body like an infection. The crushing grip on her throat is removed and she crumbles to the ground, gasping desperately in an attempt to fill her lungs with oxygen. Instinctively curling in on herself, Blake wheezes loudly as tepid blood pours out of her arm and absorbs into the material of her shirt. She can feel the sticky metallic liquid make contact with her stomach. There's too much blood, he must have punctured a vein.
Through her gasping pants, she almost doesn't hear the alpha continue speaking. "I should kill you and put you out of your misery… but your code will do that for me," she hears the deep rolling chortle that boarders on a growl once again. "If you don't finish the job yourself, your little friends will."
Blake blinks hard, trying to clear the haze out of her eyes, but the alpha's already gone. This isn't good. Her body is on fire, everything hurts. Her arm's still bleeding at an alarming rate, coating her chest and stomach in blood. It feels like someone spilled lukewarm hot chocolate all over her.
To make everything worse, her eyes won't open any more. She's so sleepy. She's been up since three A.M. this morning, hunting werewolves, carrying Wess for hours, and being hunted herself. It's just all too much for her… maybe a nap will do her some good. That is, if she doesn't die from blood loss and the brain damage that surely occurred when her noggin came in contact with the cinderblock wall.
Just… a nap.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed! I just wanted to take another moment to say that Blake is a little different in this fic than in Rabbit, because she's under a completely different set of circumstances here. Anyway, if you have any thoughts, feelings, or questions, I'd be more than happy to hear them. :)