A/N: Welcome to yet another OC-centric fanfic that began in my plot bunny field. XD Basically, this is a Teen Wolf Peter/OC fic that begins right around the start of Season 6 (aka the last season of Teen Wolf :'(, which just started airing a few weeks ago). It's basically going to be an AU fic, because while I'm excited to see what the show does with the Wild Hunt, I have ideas of my own for how things should go down. ...Also I wanted to have a Peter/OC fic, and what better time than when he's been erased from existence like Stiles? That being said, this fic will begin a bit before the actual proper start of Season 6, because Peter gets taken by the Wild Hunt before Stiles does, and the first chunk of this fic is going to be what's going on with Peter before Stiles shows up. Let's see, what else...ah, yes, alternativing viewpoints! Because that's a thing that I do. XD For now, it'll be Peter and Riley (the OC), but Stiles will get some bits from his POV once he shows up. In the meantime...Peter will probably come across as OOC, because...well, mostly just because. He will still be sassy, though, once we get past all this initial WTF mentality he's rocking at the start. XD

Chapter 1

Peter woke up feeling like he'd been bashed over the head and tossed down a very steep mountain.

After opening his eyes and blinking away the blurry shadows at the edges of his vision, he discovered that he was laying flat on his back and staring up at a gloomy overcast sky that seemed to consist of nondescript gray clouds for as far as the eye could see.

He sat up, cursed under his breath when doing so caused aches and pains all over his body to suddenly become noticeable (his werewolf healing eased the worst of it within minutes, but even so it was aggravating), and then cursed again when he saw that his immediate surroundings were just as nondescript and gloomy as the cloudy sky overhead.

Dull gray buildings along a seemingly deserted cobblestone road that disappeared into a peculiar fog bank several blocks away, that was all he saw. No cars, no animals, no people, no signs of life at all.

And wasn't that just incredibly fucking creepy.

It was unnerving even by Peter's standards, which (unsurprisingly given who and what he was) had a generous amount of leeway where such things were concerned.

This, though...this place felt wrong. Something about it was setting off all of his instincts, making the wolf under his skin incredibly uneasy.

The closest simile he could think of was when a person walked into a forest that should have been full of chirping birds and chattering squirrels but instead had only tall forbidding trees and a cold dry wind. It was a bit like that in this strange place, had that unsettling feeling of unnatural stillness and emptiness, and yet somehow it was worse.

How did I even get here? Peter wondered, trying to recall whatever he'd been doing before ending up here, where the hell here was.

He could vaguely remember Eichen House, the memories disjointed and hazy because of the outrageous drug cocktails they'd been shooting him up with, wolfsbane and ketamine and God only knew what else. He remembered Valack, the fucking freak with his third eye from Hell; Valack had, at some point during Peter's imprisonment, mysteriously never returned from a supposedly routine medical check-up, and Peter found himself desperately hoping that someone had finally found the good sense to off the freakish bastard.

How had Peter gotten out of Eichen House, though? Because unless he had finally and truly snapped and gone 'round the bend and was hallucinating all of this, this was definitely not the institution where he'd been held prisoner for the last...however many months it had been. Christ, he couldn't even remember how long he'd been trapped there; what kinds of opioids had they given him, that he couldn't even count the days?

Okay, forget about that for now, he told himself sternly, trying to quell the wrath building in his chest at the mere thought of those orderlies manhandling him and jabbing needles into his skin. Focus on the now.

He decided that standing up would probably be a good start to figuring out what the fuck was going on, so he did that, looking around and hoping to spot something that looked at least a little familiar.

He wasn't terribly surprised when noting familiar presented itself. No, life -especially his life- was never that easy. After a couple more minutes of wandering aimlessly around the cobblestone road, though, he finally saw something that piqued his interest.

At first glance it looked like just some sort of strange geometric graffiti, a spiral within a triangle, but upon closer inspection he discovered that it seemed to have been painted in blood.

It had long since dried, of course, and even dark and flaking at the edges of the symbols, the scent was unmistakable.

Curious, he reached out a hand.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you," a woman's voice called out suddenly, the words startling after the maddening silence that had held reign over the area until now. "Unless you want to summon your own death."

He spun on his heel, hands flexing at his side as he scanned the area for who had spoken. It took a few seconds, but finally he could hear footsteps approaching, and a moment later the speaker came close enough for him to make out her features through the chilling fog that had somehow crept in closer without him noticing.

With short strawberry blonde hair and gray eyes, she somehow managed to exude an aura of don't-fuck-with-me despite being a few inches shorter than he was (and slender to boot). Or at least, she exuded that feeling until she really saw him; then, her eyes widened with what almost seemed like recognition (impossible, because he couldn't remember having ever met this woman before in his life).

Her facial expression changed in a split second, though, smoothing from startled recognition to distant amusement; likewise, her heartbeat, which had gone jittery and jumpy upon seeing his face, had settled and steadied and was now thump-thumping along in a normal tempo. "Well, well, well," she said as she stopped walking towards him and tucked her hands into the pockets of her slightly scruffy capelet coat. "Peter Hale, as I live and breathe. You're certainly not someone I expected to see today, that's for sure."

Peter narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously at her tone of friendly familiarity; was she the one responsible for bringing him to...wherever the hell this was? "You know me," he stated flatly, not bothering to disguise the blatant wariness in his voice.

"I know you," she agreed, peering at him intently for a minute before her gaze dropped to where his claws had come out of his nail beds. "But you don't know me," she added softly, some sort of powerful emotion flickering through her eyes as her heart skipped a beat.

And Peter couldn't be entirely certain with the fog muddling up his senses, but he could have sworn that he caught the scent of grief coming from her, but before he could question it, the scent was gone, just as her heartbeat steadied out again.

The woman's gaze, meanwhile, flickered back up to his face. "Of course you don't know me," she said, shaking her head and giving a self-deprecating snort of laughter. "Why would you? The Wild Hunt is nothing if not thorough."

Peter just stared at her. "The Wild Hunt," he repeated, not quite willing to admit that he had no fucking clue what she was talking about; as far as he knew, the Wild Hunt was just some of European fairy story...wasn't it?

The woman gave a smile that didn't seem very happy. "Do you remember how you got here, Peter Hale?"

He lifted his lift in the barest hint of a snarl. "No," he said, trying not to sound too sullen about it. "I was severely drugged at the time," he added by way of explanation when the woman arched an eyebrow questioningly. "Ketamine and wolfsb-" He cut himself off before he could accidentally out himself.

Not that his attempt seemed to matter much in the end.

"And wolfsbane?" the woman finished for him, smirking now. "Relax, Peter; I already know that you're a werewolf."

This time he did snarl at her, at both her knowledge and the easy way she spoke to him, as if they actually knew each other. "How could you possibly know that?"

She just gave a careless shrug. "Just do," she said simply. "Now," she went on, ignoring his glare, "weren't we discussing how you got here? I mean, I'm happy enough to continue this pointless little glare fight if that's what you really want because hey, whatever floats your boat, but surely someone as clever as you wants to know what the fuck is going on?"

Peter opened his mouth to snap at her again, then frowned; whatever floats your boat, she'd said, and something about the way she'd said it...it was strangely familiar, somehow, a bit like the chorus of a song he'd heard long ago but could only distantly recall.

Then there was the rest of her statement to consider, and he was forced to choose between his pride and his need to know what he'd landed himself in this time. On one hand, he hated having to ask for something to be explained to him. On the other hand...

Oh, to hell with it. "What the fuck is going on?" he asked, exasperated.

She gave a wide grin and actually clapped her hands together a couple times. "Happy you asked," she said, her tone just short of openly mocking. "To make a long story short, you've been abducted by the Wild Hunt and erased from existence. Also, welcome to Tech na cinn Caillte."

Peter blinked. "...What."

"Welcome to Tech na cinn Caillte," she repeated, looking torn between amusement and sympathy.

"Not that," he retorted irritably, not even willing to verbally touch whatever gibberish had just spouted from her mouth; it had sounded like an old Goidelic language...Gaelic, perhaps? Oh, who cares. "What did you say before that, about the Wild Hunt? What does that old story have to do with...this?" He waved his hands around to indicate the unnaturally empty street where they were standing.

The woman gave a slight sigh, all traces of amusement vanishing, to be replaced with pity, reluctance, and a sort of soul-deep weariness that made his chest tighten in trepidation. "The basic myth," she began, "is that there's a group of spectral huntsmen, riding steeds of the darkest black with eyes of burning fire. These hunters are a force of nature, practically unstoppable. They ride through the night, bringing storms with them, and they take people."

"Take people," Peter repeated, scowling now as his mind turned the concept over. "Take them where?"

"Here," she replied, spreading out her arms to indicate the eerie environment around them. "Tech na cinn Caillte."

"That's the third time you've said that," Peter said, rolling his eyes, "and still all I hear is you gargling rock salt."

To his surprise, the woman smiled, shaking her head with a wistful expression. "Peter Hale," she said, her tone strangely fond. "Still cheeky, I see. It means 'House of the Lost Ones'", she added in explanation to his unspoken question. "That's us, in case you're wondering," she went on, waving a hand vaguely between the two of them. "We're the Lost Ones. Us and the others."

"The others?" Peter asked. "What others?"

"The others taken by the Wild Hunt," she answered, then jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "We have a place that's safe from them, if you want to come. The Hunt probably won't come back to snatch anyone so soon after dumping you here, but better safe than sorry, you know?"

Peter did not know; he had no fucking idea what was going on. At all. "Why would they snatch anyone from here?" he demanded, starting to get a headache from trying to keep all the nonsense straight in his mind (which was already under a bit of a strain from coming off of the numerous and varied drugs they'd had him on at Eichen House). "They're the ones who brought us here, aren't they? So why would they take us from the place they dumped us? That makes no sense."

"It makes sense if they need to make a sacrifice to whatever gods they're paying homage to," the woman replied, her tone very straightforward, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I don't know what their long-term plans are for the majority of us, but it seems that sacrificing a few here and there is okay for them; they tear through here a couple times a month, grabbing up anyone who's stupid enough to be out and about, and then take them to the Shadow Lake to be sacrificed."

There were so many questions Peter wanted to ask in response to all of that, but in the end he settled for, "And you have a safe place that keeps them out? The Wild Hunt?" he added in a slightly more cutting tone. "A group of immensely powerful beings who are capable of erasing people from existence with minimal effort? And you have the power to keep them from getting to the poor bastards in here?"

The woman matched him sneer for sneer, gray eyes turning stormy. "I've been here a long time, Peter Hale. Ten fucking years, not that you're asking. I may not have been Emissary material when I got tossed in here, but I wasn't powerless, and I've picked up plenty of tricks since then, fuck you very much!"

Well. Peter had no idea what to say to that, although he took the little tidbits of implied information and stored them away for later assessment; she'd mentioned being an Emissary (well, not being and Emissary, but whatever) and having power, so she must be a Druid of some sort, or at least have a Spark. And she'd been here for ten years? God, he could barely wrap his mind around that; she'd been in here for ages, since before he'd given Scott the Bite, since before Derek had returned to Beacon Hills, since before Derek had left Beacon Hills (the first time), since before the fire that had destroyed Peter's life entirely. Hell, even longer than that; she'd been trapped in here for, what, three or four years before the fire? Damn, had Derek even been in high school then? Peter couldn't seem to remember; either way, it was a long time to be gone from a world you'd previously called home.

Lord Almighty, trapped in this hideous place for a decade. It was enough to make him cringe in sympathetic misery.

"How old are you?" he found himself asking suddenly, looking at the woman with new interest; he'd been ready to write her off as a necessary nuisance before, but now...knowing that she'd been taken by the Wild Hunt and survived in this dismal alternate realm for a decade seemed to have inspired the smallest kernel of respect within him; he could appreciate her survival, appreciate the way she'd lasted all this time without getting killed or just giving up from the hopelessness of it all.

She arched an eyebrow, amusement returning as she gave a faintly sly smile. "Make a guess," she said.

He snorted. "Why?"

"Because I say so," she said in a too-sweet voice, batting her eyes at him.

He rolled his eyes. "Twenty-five."

She made an angry buzzer sound. "Nope! Guess again."

"Thirty-five," he guessed.

She made a face at him. "What? No, definitely not."

"What's wrong with being thirty-five?" he asked, mildly affronted at her tone. "I'm thirty-five."

Now she was rolling her eyes at him, as if he'd just said something completely ridiculous. "I'm well aware of how old you are, Peter, thanks." Then she shook her head slightly as if banishing some thought or memory. "Guess again," she told him before he could think to ask how in the world she knew how old he was.

He narrowed his eyes at her, studying the planes of her face, taking note of the faint laugh lines at the corners of her eyes and lips, observing the way she stood (confident but tense at the same time, like a soldier at rest who knows that danger could pop up at any time), and assessing the way her pale orange hair was styled in an easy to manage bob, practical without being ugly. "Thirty?" he offered.

She flashed him a smile, a real one, bright and affectionate. "Close," she told him, seeming to concede the contest to him with a slight nod. "I'm twenty-nine."

"Twenty-nine," he echoed, then frowned. "You were nineteen when the Wild Hunt took you?"

Her smile vanished, replaced with a blank expression, her lips thinning and her eyes dimming. "Yeah," she said shortly. "Nineteen." She tucked her hands back into her pockets and started walking back the way she'd come from. "We'd better get going, if we want to get back to the bunker before nightfall; it's not a good idea to be topside in the dark, that's when the Hunt comes looking for sacrifices."

Peter jogged to catch up with her and then fell into step with her, the motion feeling oddly familiar, like he'd done it before. Which, like so much of the familiarity of this woman, made no sense; he was certain he'd never met her before, or even anyone like her before. He considered voicing this concern to the woman in question, because what if these snippets of déjà vu had something to do the Wild Hunt? But then something else occurred to him.

"You never told me your name," he realized, almost stopping in his tracks as it occurred to him; was he really that off his game still, that he'd forgotten to even get her damn name?

The woman, for her part, slanted him another one of those unreadable looks, her eyes dark with emotions that flickered through her gaze too quickly to identify. "You can call me Riley," she said at last, after the silence between them stretched on too long, heavy with unasked questions and untold answers.

"Riley," Peter repeated, tasting it, getting a feel for it on his tongue. It felt familiar, too, but like something was missing, like there was some connection he was failing to make, like a puzzle piece forgotten or lost.

Oh, whatever, he thought irritably, shaking his head. It's probably just the residual medication in my system, confusing everything. Once my body's clean of the drugs, things will start making sense again.

Or at last as much sense as could be expected when one was a borderline-psychotic werewolf who'd just served time in a bedlam house for the homicide-inclined supernatural elite.

"Nice to meet you, Riley," he told the woman beside him, deciding that maybe he should just roll with things and see how it all played out. If nothing else, maybe he could figure out why the red-head seemed so damned familiar.

Riley just gave a slightly pained smile, as if his words hurt her, and her scent was once again a faint mixture of grief and regret and affection. "You, too," was all she said in response, and Peter was somehow not surprised to hear the uptick in her heartbeat and realize that she was lying, although about what exactly, he couldn't say.