1.

Certain words are more than words to Lydia. Of course, she understands that English is not a symbolic language, in that words in her mother tongue are composed of letters and not ideas, unlike, say, Japanese. She knows this, but there are some words that are more.

Words like symmetry. From the Greek symmetria, meaning "measure together." This word is not letters but a vision of his face, hidden in shadows but still familiar. She began seeing him after waking up in the hospital. Well, the two of them. The one who bit her – she saw him first, and still sees him. She knew from the first that he was wrongness and badness because the way that she saw him (under the ice, wandering the school hallways) was wrong and bad. But the other was good and right. Him she saw under her sheets, standing behind her bedroom door. A secret. Like Scott to Allison. But more because he was her secret.

Secrets mattered to him. It's like she could remember that about him, but how was that possible, since he wasn't real?

Understand that Lydia was never interested in secrets or hidden things. What was the point? Things had value or they didn't. Value of a thing is primarily derived from the extent to which others covet it, and if others don't know that the thing exists…well, no point. Simple, logical. She indulged Allison's secret because she knew how much it meant to her best (only) friend to keep Scott. Allison loves Scott. Allison is fierce and brave and passionate.

Not Lydia. She is cold, she is careful and precise. She respects order because it is ever under siege by chaos, and she craves stability and definition because she knows that even though these things are not glamorous to foodies or hipsters, they are the antidote to war and confusion. This is not to say that she has no feelings, because she does. And she understands people, the things that drive them. She knows Stiles is in love with her, and she knows that Jackson is now (and has always been) in love with himself. What does she love?

Mom. Dad. Allison. Calculus.

Him.

No, he's not real.

Unless he is.

Actually, she was convinced that he was some kind of manifestation of her suppressed memories of those two days she was naked and running around the woods and somehow did not die of thirst or exposure (and in fact was not even the worse for wear) until the night that Stiles caught her crying in her car. He had seemed like he was going to listen to her tell him about the broken mirror and the blood and the men with glowing eyes – the one who bit her (really) and the one who kissed her (but not really) – but then he hadn't come back. He had left her alone.

Because sometimes the people closest to you can be the ones holding you back the most.

And so she had gone home and crawled into bed. She had just given up on the idea of sleep when she plunged deep into a dream.

In the dream, she lives in a house in the woods. Her family's house. The sun streams in through the windows and makes her feel young and powerful. Pictures of long dead relatives hang on the walls. The bad and wrong man is sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book (the cover reads Le Signe du Loup-Garou) and eating cereal. She finds this funny because how could she ever have been scared of him?

"Peter," she says, and he looks at her. "Eat, then read."

She is sort of kidding but sort of not, and he gives her a look (resentful) before putting down the book and giving the cereal his full attention.

"You're annoyed with me now," she tells him, "but you'll thank me later when you don't have milk spilled on the pages of a three hundred-year-old hand-illuminated volume on supernatural creatures."

"Yes, Laura," he sing-songs, not looking at her. "Whatever you say."

"He's going to kill you."

That voice. His voice.

Lydia turns around and looks and sees him plainly for the first time, no shadows or moonglow obscuring him but instead the bright day on his face. He stands in the doorway, dark hair wet from the shower. He is beautiful. And so, so sad.

"Won't you save me?" She asks. He doesn't answer, and she rises from her chair and goes to him, touches his cheek and watches, fascinated, as his eyes close for a heartbeat, then open. They glow blue, then turn angry red.

"You're the Alpha now." She leans forward and nuzzles his neck. She is not afraid of him either. "You can change things."

He cups her face in his hands and draws her back to look in his glowing ember eyes. "Say my name."

"Derek." Derek. He has a name. And she knows it, has always known it. But here, in this house, is he going to call her Laura, like Peter did? Does he think she's someone else too? She slips a hand down to the small of his back. He is hot to the touch. "Say my name."

It feels like his skin is burning her hand. He leans down and kisses her, and yes he's done that before in her visions of him but this is more, this is devouring. Something in her blood, something in her bones is singing, screaming, shouting. She wants to press closer, be nearer. Her hands curl into the soft cotton of his shirt and she thinks about trying to tear it off of him so she can feel all of him against all of her. She makes a noise like a growl and he makes the noise back. Her edges are blurring; it feels like something is about to happen. She is on the verge of being unmade.

He pulls away and presses his mouth against the thin skin over her collarbone, where she is vulnerable.

"Lydia," he breathes. He is trembling. She knows then that he will do anything that she tells him, and she understands that she must not betray him with that power. Betrayal is not the way of their family. No, their way is revenge.

She wakes up, alone in her room. Her bed is cold. She whispers his name, "Derek."

Outside, in the distance, she hears the long lonely howl of a wolf.

2.

Derek wakes up with the god of all headaches. As usual, he can't remember his dreams and as he rises from the tangle of sheets there is a feeling of loss pressing down on him like a suit of armor. His family, his pack, all gone. He has tried to make a new family, but it's not the same. Not that it's fair to compare them – the powerful and ancient Hale family with their dark blood full of magic to a band of high school outsiders who don't deserve the gift, but won't fight it either. Yet somehow, the outsiders won – they're alive while the Hales are all dead. Almost.

This is what he's been reduced to. Leading a pack of children, and none of them born wolves. And he can't shake the feeling that this never would have happened, that he never would have sunk so low, if Laura were still alive.

Or Peter…

No, forget Peter. Fuck Peter. He was a murderer and a thief and a liar and a monster.

And an Alpha.

Not like him.

And this is where Derek begins and ends every day: with the knowledge that he is Alpha by right of conquest but that it's a hollow victory because it's just not in him. He's faking it and he just wants to run for the hills and become an Omega when he looks at these desperate wounded souls he's made into wolves. They follow him around thinking that he knows things. He doesn't know anything. He was never supposed to lead. If it hadn't been for the fire, if the loss hadn't driven Peter mad, he would still just be Derek. Beta, and forgiven.

He sits on the edge of the bed for a moment. In the empty room inside his head, words are echoing: Won't you save me?

"Lydia," he murmurs, then shakes his head. That's not right. He tries again: "Laura."

He stands up. Today is the day he's going to teach the pack to call one another. Somehow, Scott figured out the howl on his own. It was actually very annoying that Scott was so good at being a wolf and yet wanted no part of Derek's pack. It actually…hurt Derek's feelings. And also made him furious, because what was the use of refusing to be with your own kind? What was Scott hoping to get out of it?

Allison. Oh yes, love. Derek has never been in love (except in a dream that he can't quite remember) but he knew from his father's stories that it was dangerous to love a human. And it went without saying that it was dangerous to love an Argent.

"Derek?" The voice on the other side of the door is almost fearful. Erica. Around other boys she is brazen and wanton and angry, but around him she's like a child tiptoeing behind the back of an abusive parent. Don't hit me, please.

Not that she's afraid that he'll hit her. He rejected her advances, and it got under her skin. He doesn't blame her – the fact that she has known nothing but mockery her whole life is what made it so easy to persuade her to accept the bite. If memory served, it had taken less than three minutes for her to say yes. And she wanted him, both because he was Alpha and because was apart from the high school and didn't carry any of its tainted memories of her.

"What?" He tries to sound like Peter, like Laura, but instead he just sounds tired.

"It's after ten. I made you breakfast."

That reminds him of the time he stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Lydia tease Peter. No, Laura. But Laura didn't have red hair, and he remembers that part most clearly – such beautiful hair. And when she turned and looked (smiled) at him, he didn't think sister. Not at all.

"You made breakfast?" He lives in an abandoned subway. No power outlets.

A pause, then, "I got you a biscuits and gravy from KFC."

"Yeah, okay. I'll be right out." He waits until he can hear her footsteps echoing down the tracks before rising and peeling off his t-shirt and track pants. In the corner of the room he has claimed as his own is a shower that he rigged using a water pipe and a camp shower kit from the Academy Sports in Madisonville. He stands under it and scrubs himself with a bar of soap. Irish Spring, Laura's favorite.

What does Lydia like? He tilts his head under the cool downpour and considers this. She wears a lot of girly things, so maybe something that smells like flowers? But no, because her mind is like the engine of an Italian sportscar and isn't interested in a lot of nonsense in the shower. Not that kind of nonsense, anyway.

Her red hair in his hands, slipping between his fingers.

A spark of heat flares at the small of his back, as though he can still feel her hand there.

With a curse, Derek shuts off the water. Maybe this is what happens when you become an Alpha – you lose what's left of your mind. Look at Peter!

But then there was Laura, so good and strong and right all the time (not like him). And before her there was Amelia, his mother, who made sure that everyone understood that "family" and "pack" were one and the same. They had all gone on the hunt together, all seven Hales that were wolves, and Mom's voice had been gentle in his mind when he caught the scent of human on the night air. "No, Derek," was all she had said, and the bloodlust disappeared like a whisper in a storm. He had a feeling that if any of his wolves got close to a human on the full moon, nothing he could say would stop them from seeking blood and bone between their teeth.

So maybe the difference was becoming an Alpha by killing instead of by natural passing. Laura had become Alpha after Mom had been killed in a car accident. And even though he'd always known that one could become Alpha by conquest, no Hale had ever broken faith that way. Not until Peter. And Peter had been driven mad by grief after the fire. That's why he'd killed Laura.

Wasn't it?

He grabs a towel from the floor and dries quickly. It really is cold down here, and not even being a werewolf takes the edge off. Plus, it's always dark. It makes him long for the house he grew up (saw Lydia) in. The sunshine on the walls, pale in the morning and dark gold in the afternoon. The sound of laughter, the smell of laundry, the constant thumping of feet on the stairs and the creaking of doors opening and closing. The house had been so full of life, and now it was nothing but a blackened shell.

Just like him. Even now, after all this time, he didn't feel like the man he used to be. Maybe he never would.

He rummages through the clothes he's shoved in an old cardboard box (dresser burned up) until he finds jeans and a t-shirt that aren't obviously stained and pulls them on. Now it's time to teach his wolves how to be Hales.

He walks out of his room into the tunnels. Today's lessons had better bring some progress. The first full moon since he had made his pack was only a few days away, and he was beginning to seriously consider the possibility that they might not be ready. If he couldn't teach them control in time, he would have to lock them up. Or kill them.

3. Book

Lydia's favorite place in Beacon Hills is the public library on Division Street. It was built in 1923 after a tornado had ripped through the town one autumn night and razed half of the buildings downtown, including the old library. Sometimes Lydia tries to imagine what it would be like to see that kind of awesome devastation: one minute things are there, the next they are gone. It didn't seem possible, but it happened every day. Even now, somewhere in the world, something is being destroyed.

When she was a little girl, she spent whole days at the library, especially when her parents started fighting. Between the tall stacks of books, volumes lined up spine to spine, she would run her fingers over the bindings and forget the yelling and the crying and lose herself in all of the knowledge and ideas that tumbled from the pages.

She stands in the library foyer now, the marble floor seeping cold into the soles of her feet through her ballet flats. She feels a little lost. She doesn't know why she's here now, on a Saturday morning. She should be sleeping off a hangover or sneaking Jackson out of her bedroom. No, that's what she used to do. She's here now because when things get confusing and she can't stand to be left in her own mind any longer, this is the refuge.

She walks up to the circulation desk and leaves her bag behind the counter. She doesn't recognize the librarian, a young man with blonde hair. How long has it been since she came here? Her eyes wander up to the great chandelier that hangs from the ceiling. She used to love looking at that chandelier, but the thousand little points of lights twinkling from its crystal prisms now seem blinding. She looks away and wanders into the main reading room.

There are two parallel rows of long, polished wooden tables. Green banker's lamps rest on every table top, with four chairs facing the front of the room. On the wall opposite her is a large reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry. There are people sitting at the tables; not surprising, but it annoys Lydia. She feels like this is a private place where she should be alone with the books and her thoughts. One of the people closest to her, an older man with watery blue eyes and wispy hair, looks up and meets her eyes. Lydia darts into the stacks to her right, wary. The idea that she should watch that man, follow him, make sure he isn't a threat, arcs through her mind and then dissolves.

It's a man in the library reading a book. Nothing wrong with that.

Giving herself a mental shake, Lydia turns away from the tables (and the man) and begins to wind her way through the stacks. She figured out the Dewey Decimal system on her own when she was seven, but she doesn't look at the numbers now. As she walks she raises her hands and runs the tip of her fingers down the spines of books on the row just above eye-level. Impulsively, she pulls a book down without looking at the cover and opens it. A poem. Her eyes rest in the middle of the page and she reads

Laura stretched her gleaming neck

Like a rush-imbedded swan,

Like a lily from the beck,

Like a moonlit poplar branch,

Like a vessel at the launch

When its last restraint is gone.

She closes her eyes and rips the page from the book, putting the volume back on the shelf without looking (because she can sense the empty space) to see where it belongs. With trembling hands, she folds the page carefully three times (three to keep it safe) and puts in the pocket of her tweed jacket. She realizes with a jolt that she wore this jacket yesterday. And the day before. She doesn't do things like that, unless someone likes that article of clothing and she's trying to catch his eye. But there's been no one like that since (Derek) Jackson.

"Lydia."

She opens her eyes. No one is there. But there's a scent on the air. Soap and dirt and…something dark. It reminds her a little of Jackson, but wilder. Dangerous. And then Derek's voice.

"He's going to…"

It's just a whisper really, seems to be coming from the mezzanine level, where the history and folklore books are kept. She knows those holdings well. Once, in seventh grade, she wrote a fourteen page paper for English on the evolution of the Little Red Riding Hood (Little Red Cap) fairy tale. Her teacher had called it "brilliant but disturbing."

Up the stairs she goes, into the stacks. The whispering doesn't come back, but there's a strange burning at the base of her skull. It's not unpleasant, and it makes her feel like she's glowing, illuminated from the inside. A flutter, like the touch of first love, begins in her stomach. She knows exactly where to go, as though the path were laid out before her in chalk.

In crumbled ash.

The book is slightly pulled away from the volumes on either side of it, and when she reaches for it she could swear it falls into her hand, open to the page with an illustration of a tremendous wolf/man with hot coal eyes. Underneath the picture, The Beast of Bray Road is printed in an old, curling typeface. On the opposite page, she reads the word werewolf and she understands.

She is very smart. She understands everything. The man who bit her was a werewolf. His eyes, his teeth - oh god, his teeth.

Then it comes like a flood over a levee, the memory of those two days she'd wandered the woods. She'd gone to the Hale House, what was left of it. She'd sought out the one who'd bitten her, marked her, called her. But he wasn't there. Instead, the stink of death was in the ground under a great gnarled oak behind the house. She'd dug the soft earth with her fingers, hours and hours it seemed, until she'd reached him. Peter. Sorrow so sharp had gripped her then, and she had screamed and wept and wailed but he was still dead.

And then she began to see things through his eyes. His wife, with flashing dark eyes, and their three beautiful children. All of them dying in the fire. And him, burned but healing so slowly. Killing Laura and beginning the long transformation to Alpha. The nurse. The rage, the need for vengeance.

The spiral. The end is the beginning. Revenge was the way of all wolf families, because it kept the secret deep. Anyone who sought them out and struck them down had to be eliminated. Knowledge must not be allowed to spread. And now that Peter was gone, she would have to make the one who killed him pay, to keep the secret safe.

The one who killed him. She could see Peter's face in her mind's eye as he waited for the death blow (flesh burned, again), but she didn't see who delivered it. Was Peter keeping it from her? But why would he do that?

And what about Derek, the one who kissed her, the one whose touch made her feel like she was more and could be more than that if only he would keep kissing her until the moon went from full to half to new?

A ghost's cold kiss on her forehead. I made you for myself, she hears. Not the same as the Derek-whisper that drew her here – this is Peter's voice. The fine hairs at the nape of her neck stand on end. But now you belong to him…like everything else that was mine.

So much loss. Lydia feels full and empty at the same time.

Somewhere on the first floor, a book is dropped with a bang so loud it jolts Lydia back to awareness. She doesn't know why she hasn't changed, but now that she remembered being bitten, remembered the fire and (the dead people) Peter and the spiral, it was only a matter of time before she would put it together.

Anger stings her. Peter had showed her his interactions with Scott, Stiles, Allison. They had known all about what happened to her, who Peter was and what he wanted. They knew that she had been bitten, that Peter was dead, and that she could be transforming. But they had told her nothing.

Sometimes the people closest to you…

She takes the book to the circulation desk and checks it out. There is so much more she needs to know, but this was the only book on werewolves that looked even somewhat credible. She would use the Internet to find out more. She couldn't look for help from her friends.

She is alone. And now that Peter is gone, she is afraid that she will be alone forever.

4. Call

In the woods at night, Derek is listening for his pack. Of course, he can hear them because they're crashing around like kids in a restaurant (stealth is another lesson), but he's waiting for one of them to send the call. Just one of them. Boyd, maybe. Boyd is the least damaged of the three of his progeny, and consequently spends less time reveling in his sudden strength and animal magnetism and more time listening and learning from his Alpha.

So Derek waits. And waits. From somewhere off on his left, he hears what sounds suspiciously like a giggle from Erica. So glad she's having a good time.

His patience, something he never had that much of to begin with, is wearing thing. His hands are shaking slightly. He finds that, in the past few days, he's been sleeping longer and longer (trying to make the dreams last) but is getting less rest. He feels strung out and tight as a tripwire, ready to punch something or break something or…find that girl and tear her clothes off. That's what he'd like to do. And the fact that he's obsessing over someone who isn't real (maybe) is just a testament to how long it's been since he's been laid.

A long time. An eternity. Nothing regular since Kate fucking Argent, who he refused to think about. But it was strange, because even after she'd betrayed him and killed his family and strung him up to torture him, he'd still thought that maybe she had loved him, once. Now he found that he didn't care what she'd felt. The Argents were zealots and all of them could go to hell. Allison (especially) included, for all that she seemed to really be in love with Scott.

And yes, he could admit now that he had been jealous of Allison and Scott. It had stung more fiercely than he could put into words that his Argent hadn't been moved by him at all, while Scott's Argent couldn't keep her hands or eyes or heart to herself. What did Scott have that he didn't have?

But now it seemed so clear that he had gotten that question wrong from the beginning – it should have been "what did Allison have that Kate didn't have?" And he had the answer to that one: a fucking soul.

So he's decided to let the Allison thing implode on its own, as it surely will. Scott will become one of his pack eventually. And in the mean time, he has his memories of Lydia's hair and Lydia's skin and Lydia's lips…

"Goddamnit," he growls. He needs to focus on being the Alpha and not on this Lydia that his subconscious had created to drive him to new heights of sexual frustration. The full moon is coming soon and the way things are going, his wolves were going to eat half the town before it was all over.

Closing his eyes, he focuses on his awareness of Erica, Isaac, and Boyd. They are bright flames in his mind, pricking his consciousness. There is also his awareness of Scott, but it is much weaker and further away. Scott had been part of Peter's pack, and once Derek had taken Peter's power as an Alpha, he had gotten Scott along with it. Not that he had pressed the point with Scott, but there it was.

He reaches out in his mind to his three young pack members. The power of the Alpha, like wires strung along the lines of his veins, surges – he can feel his Betas come to attention. He wanted them to call him, but he'll make it easy this time. He opens his mouths and the Alpha call rolls out like fog over a river.

Answer me, the call commands. As he suspected, Boyd is first. His call begins thin and uncertain but deepens until it fills the air – I am here, Boyd's call tells him. For the first time that night, Derek smiles. Erica is next. She surprises him – her call is perfect from beginning to end. Then again, Erica is actually good at a number of practical Beta skills, but she is easily distracted. Especially by Stiles, which is sort of hilarious. Of course, Derek doesn't begrudge her that, since Stiles is probably the only human that he's ever completely trusted, and the kid does have a sort of quirky endearing quality – when he isn't making Derek want to hit him over the head with a deck chair. But Stiles really redefined "oblivious." For all that Erica was now undeniably lovely, Stiles still spent all of his time pining over…

Lydia.

It's like a stone catches in his throat. But no, it had to be a coincidence. He's never met Stiles' Lydia, so he must have just subconsciously appropriated the name. Yes, it had to be just a coincidence. But hadn't Stiles once said something about strawberry blond hair and green eyes? Actually, Stiles had said something about that at least a dozen times. "She's the most beautiful girl in the world," Stiles had told him once. "Five foot three, strawberry blonde, green eyes, a face like an angel…"

Her face, her body - all of her forms so clearly in his mind's eye then that it takes his breath away. He dimly hears Isaac's call, but for a moment that stretches out like unspooled ribbon all Derek sees is her. Lydia. Lydia.

Light in the darkness. Beginning at the end.

The realization thunders through him: she's real. She's in this town. She's at the high school. He can see her any day he wants to. He can send Isaac and Boyd and Erica to go get her and bring her to him. He can shut her up in a subway car with him and they…and they…and she…

"Derek?"

He blinks. He's disoriented. Where is he? The woods, yes. Not far from his house (but he doesn't live there anymore). Erica, Boyd, and Isaac are standing in front of him. They look worried.

"Uh…good job, guys," he says. Even he knows how lame that sounds, but what is he supposed to say? Sorry for the zone out, I was just thinking of having you guys abduct a sixteen-year-old girl so I can convince her to let me kiss every single inch of her while I send all of you out on some five hour mission and then I'll never talk to Stiles again but it will be worth it and now that I think about I may have to kill him but maybe when it's all over I can finally get some sleep.

Yeah. No.

Erica arches an eyebrow. Boyd clears his throat.

"What are you looking at me like that for?" Derek barks. "Scatter and let's do it again. We'll keep this up until you guys can initiate the call. We've got to make sure we can all communicate if there's trouble – you can't depend on me all the time."

His three Betas disappear into the trees. Derek resists the sudden urge to howl at the waxing moon. A howl for joy. Lydia, I have found you!