He had been at school when he received the news.
Derek was perched happily at the lunch table with his friends, laughing at some bawdy, raucous joke Stephan Mikerson had just made.
"Could you be a shade more lecherous?" Derek asked incredulously, his voice rumbling with laughter like honey poured over thunder. Stephan just shook his head unabashedly in response, pleased by the all the uproar.
Derek's history teacher Mr. Demhy was standing behind the groups table, words that would bring grief caught in his throat.
Derek missed nothing. He knew the moment Mr. Demhy had started toward them. He was aware of every footfall, the way the teacher sometimes unwittingly shuffled his feet, and the deep labored breathing of the fifty-five year old smoker. Derek was so attuned to subtle mannerisms from growing up a Werewolf that his body automatically fixed to scents, sounds of peoples heartbeats, and other familiar noises. He had only supposed the teacher was there to plead with them to tone it down, as he had done many a times in the past year.
The older man merely tapped Derek on the shoulder and asked if he could speak with him in private for a moment, that he had some important news to relay. Derek happily obliged and trotted after his History teacher, waving briskly back at his friends as if to say he'd return to them soon, as he followed the man outside the double doors of the lunchroom.
Little did he know he wouldn't return to them soon, he wouldn't return to them at all.
Mr. Dehmy explained that a terrible accident had occurred back at the Hale house, that a fire had eaten his home up with his family inside. All Derek could picture was the wide, terrified, and hollow gaze of his siblings, parents, and cousins; their faces ashen under grime, soot, and blood streaks as flames hungrily licked at their lifeless corpses.
"I-I can't...they can't be-" Derek started in a voice that broke like dry wood, his usual warm lilt hollow with heart ache.
He just shook his head tersely in denial and tore off down the empty hallways of Beacon Hills High, leaving the sympathetic teacher in his wake, and frantically began combing the classrooms for his sister Laura. Fate would have it that as Derek rounded the corner, Laura burst forth from her Math class, eyes feral. Someone must have shared the news. The pair of Werewolves ran together from the school, not bothering to dig out the car keys from their pockets, trusting their feet to carry them all the way.
As they jetted through the parking-lot, sneakers steadily pounding against wet pavement; the sun peaked from behind dark clouds and sent streams of grey light through the pale mists of the rainy day. Derek's panicked gaze flitted to the mountains to the north like a wall of silent blue giants with jagged promontories and snow on their shoulders. The wind blew long plumes of ice crystals from the high peaks like banners, whipping he and his sister in the face as they raced. Derek felt an unusual chill deep down in his bones and it had little to do with the sudden, unnatural inclimate weather that befell the usually sunny California.
The siblings now entered the woods, it was the shortest distance to their home that way. Dense thickets of lightly snow covered trees pressed close around them, branches dripping with curtains of bone pale moisture. The rainfall turned snowfall had wreathed the wood in wisps of grey and white. It was all the more unsettling to Derek, even if it was winter, but he went onward. It was as if nature knew...and it grieved. The two didn't slow until they had nearly traversed the entire spanse of the forest.
As they neared the Hale manor, Derek smelled something burnt, and the acrid tint of death teased his keen wolf senses. His feet seemed to fly then, scarcely touching the ground. They couldn't have carried him fast enough as he over came his sister and was the first to arrive on scene.
All that remained were the scorched walls of the house, little left but charcoal. Smoke unfurled from the ashen heap like the clawed fingers of the Grim Reaper, laying claim to the land; and men donned in nauseatingly bright neon red swarmed about like tiny devils rejoicing in the tumultuous mayhem.
"You can't be here!" One of the men, a firefighter Derek now realized, called out; clambering toward the despondent pair.
"This is our house." Derek ground out through bared teeth, tone dangerously wolfish, and his gaze as threatening as a loaded, level gun. His hackles bristled and his fingers curled to hide the claws that grew from his nail beds as a sob escaped Laura's lips.
It was true. Their home was gone, along with everyone they loved. It was too much to bare.
There was a mirade of memories running rampant in their minds as they turned from the smoldering pile of sheetrock and shingles that was once their home, unshed tears now stinging their eyes and threatening to spill. As fast as they had ran there, now they could not barrel away hastily enough.
Derek nearly tripped over the gnarled and twisted roots that wrestled one another beneath the surface of the cold packed forest soil. The roots reminded Derek of his soul, so twisted by natures cruel design. He wretched his head back and howled, a mournful sound, as the change overtook him. His bones broke and reformed in a painful instant and fur spread over his skin like wild fire on the dry plains. In moments it was all over, and his wolf ran through the forest, blinded by anguish. Laura's change followed soon after, and their paws pounded in tandem on wet leaves and hard earth. Both of them had taken full wolf forms, like only an Alpha could. It would be sorted out later which of the two would keep the form, but for now nature allowed them to mourn the way a wolf should.