The road was uneven and cracks littered the pavement. On either side, his view was nothing but desert. He just couldn't seem to go fast enough. Even though the speed limit was a distant memory, she wasn't.

Scott McCall was haunted by their final words, by the things she had told him. He hadn't even said goodbye: to her, or to anyone else. All the farewells that needed to be said were already there. They were in that single, one way plane ticket to France. The ticket she was holding when she walked out him and everything they had built together.

Not even the wind could cool the heat he felt from the blistering summer sun. The Arizona desert was harsh. Scott didn't even know where he was going, or what he'd do when his motorcycle finally ran out of gas.

It had been at least an hour since he'd last seen another person. There was a sign indicating he was coming up on another town, someplace he could stay for the night and ignore the buzz of his phone. His mother, his friends, his job: nobody knew why he'd left. If they did, Allison had told them. But she hadn't even told him she was leaving. He'd come home early to find he getting ready to leave without a word. She was going to do to him what he had done to everyone else.

Another twenty minutes, and Scott was pulling into what looked like a reservation town. He hadn't realized that he'd crossed into Native American land. The gas station was old and dirty, as was everything else. It reeked of poverty, much like the town in Mexico he'd visited with his mother when her mother had died.

The woman manning the register, a teenager, really, took his twenty dollar bill with suspicion and held it up to the blistering light. Deciding it was legit when she'd seen the watermark, so primed Scott's pump.

"Is there a place I can stay for the night?" Scott toyed with a small bag of potato chips from the rack on the counter. He sat in front of her and retrieved another five from his wallet. His cash reserves were running low. Sooner or later, he'd have to use his debit card and then anybody looking for him would be able to find him. He wasn't ready to be found. It was why he'd disabled the GPS on his phone an hour out of Beacon Hills.

The girl counted out his change, then told him of a small bed and breakfast on the edge of town. "It's actually where the owner of the park lives. He rents out the rooms in his house to travellers to help cover the costs of upkeep."

"The park?" Scott stuffed the bills and coins into his pocket with little regard.

"Trailer park. You don't see any houses, do you?" The girl looked at Scott hard, as if daring him to say something. "You'll see it soon enough. This isn't that big a place."

Scott nodded and thanked the girl for her help. She didn't seem interested in his thanks, but sent him on his way with a "please come again" that she didn't mean.

It was only five minutes on the same stretch of road, which had a few small shops and one bar, but Scott found himself looking at a rundown house in front of several more rundown single- and double-wide trailers. He killed the engine on his motorcycle and held his helmet in his hands.

The house reminded Scott of Derek's house before he had burned it down. It wasn't that it was a burnt out husk, though it was on the verge of ruin from years of disrepair, but there was something that played at his senses. He could sense the supernatural, years of living as a werewolf and tied to a Nemeton would do that to a guy. And this sad excuse for a bed and breakfast scared Scott.

Pushing back his fear, Scott gripped his helmet and climbed off his bike. There was nobody around. The wind whispered warnings to him, which he found comforting. The sensation of danger had been the first thing to take his mind off of Allison.

The inside of the house was slightly less depressing than the outside. Everything was clean, but it was just as worn out as the rest of the town.

"Hello?" Scott called as he walked up to the counter and dinged the bell. Within seconds, an old woman with dark, wrinkled skin greeted him with a snaggletoothed smile.

"Well, hello!" she greeted with enthusiasm. It was the first sign of life Scott had seen in hours. The girl at the gas station had been far too listless for being so young. "Welcome to my home! You want a single room?"

"Yes, please," Scott answered as he pulled out his wallet. The girl at the gas station had told Scott a man ran the place, so he assumed the old woman was an employee or his mother. "Just for one night."

She cooed and awed as she took Scott's money, had him sign some ledger, then gave him a key for a room on the second floor. The old woman explained that the third floor was for family only.

"And if you see our new caretaker, please try not to stare too much. The poor thing was in an accident of some sort years ago." The warning made Scott raise his eyebrows. Until she'd said that, he had almost forgotten that something wanted him out of the house.

It wasn't his business, though. He wasn't a hero right now. Saving people and fighting big bads was what people who didn't run away did. And nothing about the town, or even the house itself, seemed dangerous. It was just wrong. Or so he told himself.

"I'll keep that in mind." Scott offered the old lady a smile. Then he looked at the room number taped to his key.

He was walking up the stairs to his room as someone else was rushing down. She apologized and smiled at Scott. He did his best to smile back, but it was harder than he'd anticipated.: much of her nose and half of her upper lip were missing.

"It's fine," he said as he held his hand out. His eyes locked onto the piece of wall just beside her head.

She shook his hand and both parties jerked away in shock. Scott stared at his hand. His fingernails had extended into claws and there was fur along the back.

"You're a werewolf," the woman whispered as she stepped up to Scott and touched his face. "I haven't seen one of you in so long..."

Unable to say anything, Scott just stared into her brown eyes as she ran her thumb across his cheek. She was dark: darker than the other people of the town, darker than Scott himself.

"I haven't seen one of your kind since this," the woman ran her other hand over her scars. "Why are you... Sorry, we can't talk now. What room are you in?"

Still unable to speak, Scott held his key up so she could read it. Her narrowed on the numbers and she retracted her hand.

"I'll talk to you tonight after nightfall. If you're here for the same reason I am, we should work together. If you're not, this conversation never happened. I'll keep your secret either way."

She turned away from Scott and disappeared down the stairs. All he could do was watch where she had been, his skin warm where she had touched him.

TW

The soundtrack of Scott's evening had been the concerned voice mails of his family and friends. A few of them even mentioned that Allison had gone missing as well. Those were the ones he deleted.

All he had eaten was the small bag of chips he bought earlier in the day. He hadn't even managed to keep those down, vomiting into the toilet less than twenty minutes after throwing the crumbled bag into the small garbage bin in his room.

Once, just once, Scott had thought about calling Stiles when he heard his friend sobbing into the phone. Stiles said that he hoped Scott was safe. It didn't happen. He wasn't ready. He didn't want anyone to worry about him, but just the thought of telling them why he left froze him in fear. It was unfair how much sway Allison held over his life, even though she had walked out. She had left him.

It didn't change anything, though. Scott still listened to every voice mail she had left him. Over and over, he heard the happiness in her voice as she told him she was running late, or picking up dinner. Had she been faking it as she plotted her escape? When he had held her, their bodies naked and flush with want, had she been trying to decide if she would stay after or just disappear?

When Scott's phone beeped, telling him that the battery life was less than ten percent, he let himself listen to Allison one last time. She wanted him to get dryer sheets after work. Then he plugged his phone into the cheap charger he'd bought his second day on the road. It was getting easier to pretend that he didn't have a life waiting for him.

A knock on the door disrupted his self-pitying reverie, and he remembered that the black woman from before had said something about meeting him. The sense of danger had never left. He welcomed the distraction from thoughts of Allison.

The carpet was so worn down, Scott swore he could feel the wood beneath it through his shoes. When he opened the door, the woman was waiting there like she promised. She also bore a plastic bag in her left hand.

"I picked up some stuff to eat. I noticed you were travelling on a motorcycle and figured you weren't hauling food," she explained as she held up the bag. There was something in a box poking through a small hole in the side.

"Thanks, but I'm not really hungry." Scott stepped back and let her into his room. She pulled a white powder out of her pocket and blew it through the doorway. It automatically settled on the frame of the door. Scott looked at her, and she indicated that he should shut it.

"It's just a small spell to keep anyone from overhearing us. Just a basic soundproofing, not hard to break, but noticeable if anyone does." The woman looked Scott over, then sat on his bed. He stood by the door with his arms crossed, waiting for her to say something else. She still hadn't explained how she knew what he was. Scott didn't even know her name yet.

"Who are you?" He felt the words rush out of his mouth before he was ready to say them. There were too many questions percolating in his brain for him to settle on one to start.

She tilted her head and smiled. It was unsettling for Scott, so he looked away. He'd forgotten her scars in his brief confusion.

"I'm Braeden. Braeden Morrell. I think I know you." Scott's ears perked up at her last name, but he said nothing. It likely wasn't a coincidence, but he didn't want to give anything away. "You're The Alpha."

"I'm an alpha," Scott confirmed suspiciously. "You're a druid. Aren't you?"

The woman nodded and furrowed her brow. "Scott McCall. You know my brother and sister. Alan and Marin."

Scott's arms were still crossed. He knelt forward but didn't walk to her. "You're supposed to be dead. That alpha pack that invaded Beacon Hills a few years ago was supposed to have killed you."

"They came close." Braeden traced the outline of where she used to have a nose with her fingertip. "Oh, right, I can drop the glamour."

As Scott watched, the woman waved a hand over her face and the scars vanished. They left behind a face free of disfigurements.

"We fixed it years ago. Druids can do that. But I like the glamour because I see how people really treat me. And people don't want to look at you when you're scarred like that. It makes investigating a little easier."

"You still haven't explained anything. At all." Scott let a bit of a growl into his voice. "Why are you here? Why are Deaton and Morrell still saying you're dead?"

"After what happened in Beacon Hills, I couldn't be in that town anymore. I... I needed to get away. Alan and Marin knew I might still be a target. Deucalion isn't the most forgiving guy. So they helped me get out of town. I still call sometimes, but most days I just travel trying to fix what went wrong. Beacon Hills and Cleveland aren't the only places where the supernatural has taken root. You had to have picked up on that." Braeden watched Scott's face, but he did his best to keep it blank. "But why are you alone? Most alphas don't travel without their pack. It's a lot easier for you to become a target than travelling alone as an omega. Nobody pays attention to omegas."

"That's not been my experience." Scott almost chuckled, but he was too suspicious. "And my travelling habits are none of your business."

"Fine." Braeden laid back on Scott's bed rested her head on the pillows. "You customers actually have worse beds than the employees. All three of us. Damn. Didn't think that was possible."

"What is happening that would attract a druid's attention?" Scott wasn't in the mood to play around. Even if this was the same person that had saved Isaac all those years ago, even if she was Deaton and Morrell's sister, Scott didn't know her. He didn't trust her.

"If I knew exactly what was wrong, I wouldn't still be investigating. I've been here a week. All I know is that this town is still living like it's the Great Depression. I think half the people here are unemployed, and the other half have to drive an hour away to work for minimum wage off the reservation."

"Don't these guys have casinos they can live off of?" The last thing Scott wanted was a lecture on finances. He hoped the sarcasm in his reply was thick enough for Braeden to pick up on it.

"Do you know how few people see any of that money? But, anyway, getting back on track..."

"Finally," Scott muttered. Braeden gave him a dirty look.

"As I was saying, the town itself is depressed, but it's just this house, this one location, that gives off the vibes. Bad mojo is afoot. Even the trailer park out back is clean. I've been in every room in the house, but not the basement. And it's always the basement."

"So why do you need my help?" Scott let a little bit of excitement build in his chest. Whenever he was home, there was always some new danger to get adrenaline up. With the others still there, the town would be safe enough. They didn't really need him or Allison anymore.

Braeden smirked. "I've already determined that I can break any enchantments on the door, but I can't actually open it. There is a really old, really heavy iron lock on it. And that should be nothing for you."

"So I'm just muscle?" Scott actually laughed. Of all the things she could have asked, all she needed was for him to open a door. "Sure, fine, I'll help. When did you want to do this?"

"Now works for me." Braeden shrugged and pulled a knife from her pocket. It wasn't one made for combat, not like what Allison used. It was just a collapsible pocket knife. She clicked it open, then shut it again and put it in her pocket.

"Now it is, then. I'm leaving tomorrow anyway, so if the owner kicks me out or is a chupacabra I don't have to worry."

TW

Scott smelled the basement long before they reached it. Braeden told him she couldn't smell anything, so they agreed his wolf senses were likely the reason why he could. He wasn't sure what it was, because it was faint, but it bothered him.

There were wards on the door. The woman said something about alarms and barriers and other things Scott had always left for Lydia and occasionally Stiles to deal with: the wards took about ten minutes to dissipate. All the time, Scott uselessly kept watch even though he could hear the other occupants of the house being silent.

When the last of the mystical protections fell, Scott heard the screams. One look at Braeden told him that she heard them as well. The faint smell that had been coming from the basement suddenly assaulted his olfactory senses as raw and rotting meat. It reeked like a bloating, rotting deer on the side of the road. If it weren't for the magic at play, Scott wouldn't have believed that it had gone undetected.

Braeden tensed herself, then nodded at Scott. Her eyes led to the heavy brass lock on the door. Not even caring about being stealthy, because he didn't know who wouldn't hear the wailing, Scott ripped the door off its hinges and threw it to the side. The wall splintered where the door struck.

Even though Braeden hard assured Scott that there were no more enchantments in place, a hazy purple aura hung in the air where the door used to be. The woman reached her dark hand out to touch the violet-Scott wanted to call it a mist because no other word fit. She ran the tips of her fingers through it, then pulled them back.

"What?" Scott growled as he began his shift. His senses and experience both told him it would be necessary.

"It's warm. Hot actually. Not scalding, but not comfortable." Braeden set her eyes and calmed herself. Scott hadn't even noticed she was shaking until she stopped. Steeling himself, Scott passed through the portal and found himself not in a basement.

Braeden followed close behind, actually bumping into Scott. Neither spoke, they just stared at the carnage before them.

It was almost like an indoor zoo, if Scott had recognized any of the creatures on display. Monsters, for they couldn't be called animals, lined one wall in cages of different sizes. Some were beside each other, eyeing their neighbours suspiciously, and others were about a foot apart so they couldn't reach each other.

The other wall was one large cage. It was almost empty, save for three humans in various stages off injury. Scott had no idea if the youngest, just a child, was even alive considering it was missing all four limbs and half its face. He couldn't even tell if it was a boy or girl. All he knew was that the urge to vomit was rising in the back of his throat.

"Help us!" One of the occupants, a middle aged man who seemed to be well past hysteria, shrieked at them. He looked fine for the most part, missing only one hand that had been wrapped in his dirty shirt. The other adult, a woman, hissed at them to leave and return with either cops or the army.

The smell of electricity hit the air and someone else cried out. Scott happily looked away from the captives and saw the old woman who had checked him into the b&b lying on the filthy floor. Braeden stood over her, pulling twins barbs from the fallen female. They were attached to wires that protruded from a stun gun. He didn't know Braeden had been carrying any weapons.

"Get to work on that cage before someone else shows up," Braeden said calmly as she put the stun gun back into an interior pocket in her jacket. Then she pulled out a set of handcuffs and put them on the unconscious woman. "I'll see if there's anyone else here."

That was when Scott realized that the room wasn't a rectangle, but instead curved at the end and continued beyond where he could see. Without thinking, he ripped the metal door off the cage and dropped it. It'd been easier than he'd expected, but the humans inside shrank away in fear. That was when he realized that he was still in his wolf form.

He didn't say anything, just backed away from the captives and looked to Braeden. She told them to leave and they did. The child, or what was left of it, was ignored by the two fleeing adults. Scott made sure he would come back for it when they left.

The woman and the werewolf advanced slowly. Some of the monstrosities on their left snarled and snapped. Others ignored them in favour of sleep. One was knowing on a small leg and it took everything Scott had not to try to kill it.

"What do you think did this? What kind of monster are we dealing with?" Scott asked Braeden nervously. He flexed his claws and growled at a particularly vicious beast: it resembled a mountain lion that had been skinned. It didn't make a sound. Instead, it just watched him with soulless eyes.

"Humans. In all the years I've done this, I've gone up against demons and creatures of forgotten lore. There was even an elder god in there that was barely a stalemate. Still, none of them frightened me quite as much as our fellow man."

Scott wanted to point out that, technically, he wasn't human anymore, but he let it go. Because even with their magics: druids, wizards, and that one covens of witches that had descended on Beacon Hills were all technically human but showed little to no humanity themselves.

They continued in silence. Scott could hear something at the end of the long and twisting hall. There was another door. It was bathed in darkness, and before he could even think to approach it, Braeden threw her arm across his chest. She pulled a bottle of a silvery liquid from another interior pocket and removed the lid.

The smell threatened to overwhelm Scott, and Braeden offered him an apologetic look. Then she splashed the contents of the bottle on the door and it began to melt.

"Stand back," she ordered as she crouched behind an empty cage. Deciding that it wasn't enough protection, Scott shielded her body with his own. Then the door exploded. Hot shrapnel embedded itself into his back and his neck. Braeden apologized, but quickly rose to her feet and pulled out another vial. Scott didn't even have to take a second to recognize it as mountain ash.

Braeden quickly cast a circle of it around Scott while he was down from the pain. He looked up at her in confusion, but she wasn't looking at him.
The woman had her eyes fixed on what remained of the doorway, and she pulled her taser back out of the pocket where she'd stored it. A man was leaving the room from the other side. Scott could barely make out a wall covered in photos, drawings, and writings behind him.

"You look familiar," the man said to Braeden. Scott remembered she had her glamour down, so of course he'd recognize the new caretaker but not be able to place her. "I'm not sure how you managed to find this place, but my food supply for my babies was getting low and you look like you'll do. And you've even brought me a new pet! I've never managed to get a werewolf before."

"How did you get so many?" Braeden didn't yell or advance on the man, but Scott did see her a shift her feet. It was a hint that she might have realized she was in over her head. "Where did you get them?"

"Family heirlooms and traditions," was all he said, the brown skin around his eyes crinkling as he smiled. Then Braeden fired her taser and he dove to the side. It missed and she tossed it aide. The discarded weapon hit the floor and she leaped at the man. Her foot almost connected with his face, but the palm of his hand deflected her trajectory and she fell onto her backside.

Scott felt his skin pushing out the bits of metal and wood. His claws pushed against the mystical barrier. He knew he would likely remain trapped, but he'd broken one before. Years ago, when his English teacher was also a serial killing dark druid. He could do it again. Whether or not he had the strength to pass through his pain was the question.

Braeden slammed her forehead into that of the middle-aged keeper. He recoiled slightly and she drove her fist into his chest. When she pulled it back, Scott saw it was covered in blood.

She flipped her knife shut, then punched him in the throat. It was likely only a flesh wound. Scott hoped it was a flesh wound. The blade was neither particularly sharp nor long. Still, something about the action the woman had taken left a sour taste in his mouth.
The woman then grabbed a piece of the broken door, a long piece of wood, and smacked the guy in the face with it. Scott yelled at her to stop, but she ignored him. Then she climbed on top of the man and pinned his arms down with her knees. The wood was to his throat and a struggle to breathe was the soundtrack.

Scott fought against the mountain ash, screamed for Braeden not to do what she was doing, but it didn't matter. He was too weak to break his containment and stop her. The echo of a man dying assaulted his ears. Then there was a crack and Scott knew it wasn't from the wood.

Braeden threw her makeshift murder weapon to the side and walked to Scott. He wouldn't look at her. Silent, she scattered the ash and stepped back. Both knew he neither wanted nor would have accepted her help.

"You didn't have to kill him. The cops would have handled it." Scott looked at Braeden when he found his voice. She didn't look different, but he knew he would see her differently now. This woman he had known for less than an hour... "We can be better than they are."

"The cops can't know about this place." Her voice was confident. She wasn't lying to herself. Her heartbeat told Scott she believed what she was saying. "Look at what is here. An enchanted tunnel under an old bed and breakfast where they feed humans to any number of things that shouldn't exist. It was a line I've crossed before and one I'll cross again."

"But the old woman..." Scott couldn't finish his sentence, his eyes locked onto the glassy orbs of the dead man. "I don't know what I'll do with her, but it'll be something. First, though, we have to destroy these things. And I have supplies, but there are so many... I don't think I have enough. And I don't even know what some of these things are or how to kill them. Dammit." For the first time, Scott detected doubt in what Braeden was saying. "You could probably handle some of the smaller ones, but I can't ask you to do that."

Scott was finally able to stand. He leaned against an empty cage and grimaced. The smaller pieces of shrapnel had already fallen to the floor, but the bigger ones were being stubborn. "I'm not letting you kill her."

"You aren't in a position to stop me," Braeden warned coldly. "She was a party to this. Probably raised this bastard," she kicked the still warm corpse at her feet, "to continue the work she had inherited from her parents. This isn't an innocent old grandmother. Who knows how many hundreds, maybe even thousands of people were killed in this damn showcase of the underworld?"

"I'm not letting you kill her." A low growl accompanied Scott's words and he bared his teeth. The woman didn't look at all scared of him. She just smiled and stepped into through the doorway she had blown up. If he could have, Scott would have followed her, but it still took all he had to remain on his feet. Whatever concoction she'd used on the door was slowing his regenerative abilities. When she came back out, all she had in her possession was a book.

"Bestiary," she explained as she held the aged tome up for Scott to see. "I was hoping it would help me identify how to kill some of these things, but it would take forever and I can't be in town too much longer."

"Why not?" Scott grit his teeth and willed the last piece of metal out of his body. "Too many murder charges following you?" The woman narrowed her eyes at him and tucked the book under her arm. "No. I just know that if I disappear, nobody will ask questions. People never want these things solved, they just want them over."

"That's cynical."

"It's true." Braeden wrapped an arm around Scott's torso and helped him stand. He considered pushing her away, but thought better of it. "If nothing else, I can always just seal the entrance and destroy this place."

TW

The decision of what to do with the old woman had been taken from them as she'd died from what Scott guessed was a heart attack. Braeden said it was probably a result of trauma from the taser. She didn't seem to care, and that bothered him. What bothered him more was that Braeden drove her old truck into the front of the bed and breakfast, then ran to Scott and hid behind him as it blew up.

"I hated that thing. Gas guzzling piece of shit," she told Scott as they watched the burning wreckage.

He'd been the only guest, she was the only employee, so the house was empty. Neither knew where the captives had fled, but the child had been dead. A little boy whose name Scott would never know and whose face he'd never forget. He hated how detached Braeden was acting. People were dead: people she had killed, and she was cracking jokes about her car.

"Can they get out?" Scott opted not to acknowledge Braeden's joke. "Are the people of this town safe?"

Braeden stepped out from behind Scott and looked at the trailer park. Nobody came out of their trailer. Nobody even turned a light on. "They should be. I cast a sealing spell before I blew the place up, but even if the things escape I don't really care. They had to have known. There were too many things there for this town to not know. Guests were kept as food, so what happened to the cars? Why didn't anyone warn you about people vanishing? Even if they weren't directly involved, and I don't know they weren't, these people are just as guilty by association."

"That isn't fair."

Looking at Scott, her face hidden by the shadows cast by the blaze behind her, Braeden pushed her hair behind her ears. "Listen, I'm not a good guy. I do the things that need done. If people die, they either deserved it or I couldn't stop it. The one thing I won't do is apologize for stopping a murderous piece of shit."

"But you aren't God. You don't get to make the call over who lives or dies." Scott walked to his motorcycle and threw his leg over the seat, then looked back at Braeden. "Come on, I'll drop you off in the next town."

"What are you doing?" Scott looked out at the dust covered road. It almost looked yellow in the firelight. He kept his eyes focused on the dark horizon, ignoring that his phone was vibrating again. "Unlike you, I am a good guy. And I can't leave you in the middle of nowhere."

Sauntering to Scott, Braeden sat behind him on the seat and wrapped her arms around his waist. "Fine, but on one condition. You answer that phone call that you've been dodging. I don't know you, but I know of you, and my brother told me you aren't the kind of man who would run from a fight. So stop running from whatever it is you left in California. I'm the only one who can be a brooding anti-hero."

"If you're an anti-hero, does that make me a superhero?" Scott grinned despite himself. He looked at Braeden and saw that she was smiling, too.

She squeezed Scott's midsection in chuckled. "I wouldn't go that far, Scarecrow."

"Scarecrow?"

"Just go," Braeden commanded. Scott nodded and started his motorcycle.