"Hey, I'm off to work, do we need anything from the store?" Rose asked her brother, catching him before she left school for the day.

The days after the full moon had been quiet. No waking up in strange places, and thankfully no headaches from sensory overload. Finding out that the hunter that shot at her was Scott's new girlfriend's father was momentarily heart-stopping. He didn't seem to have recognised Rose at all, something which she was immensely thankful for, but she could still feel her heart race at the possibility every time she saw him. She hadn't yet heard from Derek either, something which she was not sure how to feel about. He hadn't been unkind to her when he helped her on Friday, and he was her only real source of information.

On the other hand, he hadn't exactly been forthcoming either; something Rose had briefly complained about to who she had quickly worked out was his uncle in her visit for that week. The last name and the similar features being what had given her a clue that Derek and Peter were related. She had also asked one of the nurses, but that hardly counted.

"No, I'm good," came Scott's slightly distracted reply to her question. "I thought you didn't have to work until later?"

"Yeah, it sucks," Rose said, "But, I got a message from the manager saying everyone's shifts have been changed around so that all students are home before curfew at 9:30." She shrugged helplessly. "So until the Sheriff's office decides to lift it, I get no break between school and work. Yay me."

Scott, in typical brotherly fashion, smirked at her misery, then noticed the dark brown leather jacket that she was holding. "Hey, I thought you said you left that jacket at the party on Friday."

"Yeah," she frowned. "I thought I left it in a friend's car, but it was in my locker this morning. Lydia must have found it and brought it back from the party."

"Lydia brought it, or did someone give it to her?" Scott asked sharply.

"What are you going on about?"

"Stiles said you left the party pretty early with Derek Hale." Rose was taken aback by the slight hostility in his tone.

"Yeah. So what? I wasn't feeling well, and Derek offered to take me home." Well, she thought, that was true, the fact that they went home the long way was not something her brother needed to know, especially as it involved being shot at.

"Something about him is just really," Scott floundered for a moment, trying to find the right word, "off," he ended lamely, not sure if he should mention the two times he had seen the man in question, in the preserve and at Lydia's party, and the strange manner in which he acted on both occasions. Rose frowned at him.

"If there's a problem, why didn't you say something earlier. You didn't say anything all week." Scott shook his head helplessly at her. "Okay, whatever. Look, I have to go, or I'm going to be late."

"Wait-"

"Bye Scott," she cut off as she turned, walking away from him.

"Rose!"

~{•.•}~

Scott rode furiously towards the old Hale house, hoping that either Derek Hale was there or there would be some clue to where he was. Rose, and almost certainly Stiles, would tell him he was being an overprotective idiot and tell him to drop whatever issue he had with Derek, and Scott was man enough to admit that they would be partially right. He was protective of his older sister, but he had since their dad had abandoned them both several years ago. On the other hand, Scott also felt he had reasonable justification for not wanting Derek and Rose near each other, and it was exactly as he told Rose, something about the man was off, and if he could not convince Rose to stay away, then he would have to confront Derek.

At the top of the long uphill driveway, the sophomore stopped to take a pull of his inhaler and strode towards the house.

"Derek!" he yelled out. "Derek!" There was no answer but the echo of his own voice bouncing off the hollowed out shell of the old Hale house.

The upper floor was half collapsed onto the lower, sections of wall and roof having been burned away in the fire that had killed most of the family six years ago. Bits of broken glass and timber littered the veranda, and the wind whistled mournfully through the remaining structure. The only sign of life was the sleek black Camaro parked at one corner of the house. Not even birds flew nearby.

Scott couldn't see anyone around and the eerie feeling the place gave him did not encourage him to go exploring. If the Camaro was Derek's car, then the owner was not there. All that was there was a strange rectangle of overturned soil to one side of the house — a patch that was about the right size for the missing half of the dead girl's body.

~{•.•}~

"What did you find? How did you find it? Where did you find it?" Stiles asked all in one go as he entered Scott's room, Scott having sent him a text that just said I found something. "And, yes, I've had a lot of Adderall," he quickly added. "So…?"

"I found something at Derek Hale's," Scott said, pacing his room. He had gotten back to his house only just before Stiles arrived, as he had sent him a message straight away.

"Are you kidding? What?" Stiles asked excitedly.

"There's something buried there," Scott said seriously.

"That's awesome!" Stiles exclaimed, then realised what he said and added, "I mean, that's terrible. What?"

"I don't know. But when we do, your dad nails Derek for the murder," Scott said decisively.

"So he buried the other half of the body on his property?" Stiles was baffled. Why would Derek do something like that?

"Which means we have proof he killed the girl." Scott came to a stop in front of Stiles as the other boy asked,

"Why do we think he killed the girl?" Scott looked at his friend in disbelief.

"He arrives back in town after having been gone for ages, a dead body turns up, and both the times we've seen him, he's been in strange places!" Stiles held up his hands defensively.

"Tell me something first. Are you doing this because you genuinely think Derek killed someone, or because you want to him to stay away from your sister, who is, by the way, a legal adult and capable of making her own decisions?" he questioned.

"Stiles!" the other boy exclaimed. "What if Rose is the next body?"

"Okay," Stiles gulped, face paling at the idea Scott had put in his mind. "Then we're gonna need a shovel."

~{•.•}~

Scott looked around nervously.

"This is taking way too long," he said. The two boys had driven carefully to the preserve and hiked to the burnt out shell of the old Hale house, waiting for Derek Hale to leave. When the older male had come out of the forest and left the property, it was dark, and the boys had to use torches to see. The pair had been digging where the overturned soil was for some time already.

"Just keep going," Stiles said, wanting to know what was there, body or not.

"What if he comes back?" Scott said, ever the more prudent of the two.

"Then we get the hell out of here," Stiles stated as though obvious. Scott wasn't as reassured, knowing how their little ventures usually turned out.

"What if he catches us?" he suggested.

"I have a plan for that," Stiles assured.

"Which is?" Scott asked cautiously.

"You run one way. I run the other," Stiles shrugged. "Whoever he catches first, too bad."

"I hate that plan," Scott muttered, knowing that of the two, Stiles could easily outpace him.

Eventually, Stiles pushed his spade into the ground and hit something other than dirt and rocks. Gesturing at his partner in (solving) crime to stop digging, he bent over, using his hands to scrape the soil off the dirty canvas wrapped something they had found.

"Hurry," Scott urged him as he tugged at uselessly at the knotted rope holding the canvas shut.

"I'm trying," Stiles huffed. "Did he have to tie the thing in, like, 900 knots?"

"I'll do it," Scott told him, moving the other boy out of the way as his nimbler fingers made quick work of the thick cord. As soon as the last section on knot was undone, the boys pulled back the canvas, revealing something they did not quite expect.

"What the hell is that?" Stiles exclaimed, pulling his hands out of the hole.

"It's a wolf," Scott told him weakly. So much for finding the dead body.

"Yeah, I can see that," Stiles told him, a hint of confusion in his voice. "This doesn't make sense," he murmured. Why go to all that trouble for a dead bit of wildlife, especially one that shouldn't even have been in the area.

"We gotta get out of here," Scott pulled Stiles out of his thinking, reminding his friend that Derek could return at any moment.

"Yeah," Stiles agreed, "okay, help me cover this up." Before either boy could move very far, a speck of something purple caught Stiles' eye. 'It couldn't be. Could it?' the older boy thought as his brain went off a hundred miles an hour. 'That would be impossible.'

"What's wrong?" Scott asked, seeing his friend's hesitation.

"You see that flower?" Stiles asked, shining his torch over the tiny plant. Scott looked between him and it blankly.

"What about it?" he asked.

"I think it's Wolfsbane," Stiles murmured, and seeing Scott's still blank face asked, "haven't you ever seen the Wolf Man?"

"No." Scott was used to the other boy's convoluted way of explaining, and so answered the question, despite not seeing any relevance.

"Lon Chaney Jr.? Claude Rains? The original, classic werewolf movie?" Stiles continued.

"No. What?" The questions weren't helping Scott in the slightest. Stiles sighed in exasperation at his curly-haired companion,

"You are so unprepared for this," he commented, before darting over to the innocuous looking plant and carefully pulling it out of the ground. What he was not expecting was the thin rope that was attached. Now just as confused as Scott, Stiles pulled the flower-studded cord up out of the ground from where it was buried in a large spiral around the grave, winding in towards the wolf's body.

"Stiles!" Scott yelped frantically, jumping away from the hole he thought he saw something move in, just as the last bit of rope came out of the ground. Stiles ran over to look down at the body.

"Holy-" Stiles cut himself off, not sure what to say. A sentiment Scott agreed with, only letting out a brief "Oh, God". As the two boys stared down into the hole they had dug, the vacant eyes of half a dead girl stared back at them.

~{•.•}~

"Okay, just so you know, I'm not afraid of you," Stiles stated from the front seat of the patrol car. A statement that was quickly amended when faced with the stony face of the cuffed occupant in the back seat. "Okay, maybe I am. Doesn't matter. I just wanna know something. The girl you killed, was she a werewolf? I mean, she went from being an actual wolf to being a girl. Well, half a girl. And dead. Anyway, normal people can't do that. Is that why you killed her?"

Stiles and Scott had waited until Derek had returned to the house, and then called up the Sheriff's Department to inform them that they had found the body. Neither of them mentioned to either the officers nor each other the wolf they had seen, but questions had been building in Stiles' head, and his mouth seemed to have found an outlet in the form of the young Hale adult that had just been arrested for murder. Perhaps not the best source for information, but Stiles never claimed to be the best at self-preservation.

Unfortunately, or fortunately going by the silent glare Derek was giving Stiles, the Sheriff noticed Stiles' legs sticking out the car door and interrupted his son before he got any form of response. Stiles' semi frustration at the lack of answers was quickly brushed aside by his somewhat failed attempt at keeping himself and Scott out of trouble. One which almost got them into more trouble when it was revealed that they had both been in the forest the other night. Luckily for Stiles, his dad had other things to worry about and so instead ordered his son back home; an opportunity Stiles took without questioning.

~{•.•}~

"So when you said you heard a wolf, maybe you were half right," Stiles said, as he and Scott entered the McCall house that evening, taking the opportunity that both McCall women being out gave them to talk. They had not had a chance during the day, Scott having been working in the morning, the Sheriff having kept half an eye on Stiles on his afternoon off, and both having been slightly too freaked out to talk in depth the previous night. "Maybe it was a werewolf."

"You seriously think that werewolves are real?" Scott scoffed in disbelief.

"Well, how do you explain how a wolf changed into a girl?"

Scott shrugged, "I don't know?"

"Well then," Stiles said, as though that was that, leading Scott up to his own bedroom and floomphing on the other boy's bed. "I've been doing some research. Like a lot of research, and everything fits. People becoming wolves, stray bodies showing up (or one so far), Wolfsbane. Only thing I can't find is wolfsbane being used for burial, only for harm. Maybe it's like a ritual or something. Like, maybe they bury you as a wolf. Wait, Rose said she got bitten by something didn't she?"

"Yeah, but it was just scrapes the next day, she told me she must have imagined it being an actual bite."

"Maybe she's a werewolf."

"That's just crazy." Scott looked incredulously at his friend, neither of them noticing the front door opening or shutting as the very person they were talking about entered the house.

"Well, we could always ask," Stiles suggested innocently.

"What? No," Scott protested. "You can't just walk up to Rose and ask a question like that; she'll think we're nuts."

"I already think that," a voice said from the doorway, "I'm not sure there is much you could do to change my mind."

"Oh, hey Rose," Stiles said, not quite looking at the older girl. "How was the hospital?" Rose raised an eyebrow at him.

"Fine," she said, a little suspicious. "Tony was as pleasant as ever, but I also got to spend half an afternoon listening to Mrs Goodall talk about her seventeenth child, also known as Lacy, the Siamese cat. It kind of balanced out."

"Ugh, boring," Stiles moaned as Rose sneezed.

"And that is why you have no people skills."

"I so have people skills," he protested.

"Only if you have your mouth duct taped shut." Rose smiled sweetly at him, Scott in the background was laughing at the banter. Rose sneezed again. Something in the room was irritating her nose.

"What is that?" she asked, "and why do you both look so tired?"

"What's what?" Scott asked, deliberately ignoring the second question.

"I don't know, just… Oh never mind." Rose shook her head, cricking it from side to side. "I'm going to go get changed, this bra has been sticking in me all afternoon," she muttered turning away to her room.

Stiles watched her retreat, a contemplative look coming over his face.

"What?" Scott asked as the other teen looked between the bag he had brought with him and the now shut door to Rose's room. Unhurriedly, Stiles wandered over to the backpack and reached inside, pulling out a slightly dirty rope. The splash of purple at one end told Scott exactly where it had come from, and he blinked disbelievingly at Stiles.

"You kept it?" Scott asked in incredulity, staring at the long rope Stiles now had bundled in his fist. Stiles shrugged at him.

"What was I supposed to do with it?" he asked, walking down the corridor towards Rose's room.

"What are you doing?" Scott hissed. Stiles flailed his arms around the way he usually did when he thought someone asked a question with an obvious answer, the end of the rope swinging wildly as he did so, fortunately not hitting anything in the hallway. When Scott continued to stare blankly at him, Stiles sighed and said,

"I'm just gonna see if anything happens."

"And if it does?" Scott asked, not entirely convinced his friend was correct.

"Well, let's hope she doesn't eat me" Stiles grinned, knocking on the cream door to the older teen's room. The door opened readily, and Stiles immediately thrust the bundled up rope and wolfsbane in front of him, almost hitting Rose with the stray end. Reacting entirely on instinct, Rose leapt back snarling at the sharp, acrid scent that burned her nose and that every bit of her told her she needed to get away from.

Before the boy's stunned eyes Rose changed, her hands becoming sharp claws, ears growing pointed and more animal-like, the ridge above her brows becoming more pronounced, and her normally warm brown eyes becoming a blazing gold. The pair backed up as she let out a rumbling growl at them, her mouth opening to reveal long pointed teeth that would have no trouble at all tearing into their throats.

Rose was lost to her more wolfish tendencies, not yet having enough control to recognise that she knew the people in front of her, only seeing a danger. Unknown to Scott and Stiles, the wolfsbane was the only thing that kept Rose from attacking; instead, she followed her flight instinct and jumping out of the fortunately open window, taking off into the night.

Stiles was the first to recover his senses, dropping the rope and turning to look at the other stunned teen.

"She's a werewolf," he whispered, "an actual werewolf. Oh my God, your sister is a werewolf." He couldn't seem to decide whether to be excited or terrified.

"Okay! Stop it!" Scott demanded, finally coming to himself.

"Stop what?"

"Stop saying 'werewolf'! Stop enjoying this so much." Scott was almost hyperventilating, his voice high pitched and shrill.

"Are you okay?" Stiles asked concerned at how his friend was taking the information.

"No! No, I'm not. I'm so far from being okay," Scott snipped, retreating to his room.

"You know, you're gonna have to accept this, Scott, sooner or later," Stiles stated firmly, somehow managing to sound a lot calmer than he felt.

"I can't. My sister just…" Scott floundered, clueless to explain what he had just seen.

"Well, you're gonna have to," Stiles half laughed. "Your sister is a werewolf."

"How?" Scott asked utterly confused at the very idea; this was real life, not some movie or TV show. Stiles shrugged in reply, then thought of another thing.

"Better question," he said. "Does she know?"

~{•.•}~

A dark streak ran through the town, and on into the preserve.

Running.

Running.

They had to get away.

Go somewhere safe.

Where.

Find Alpha.

Go somewhere safe.

The streak stopped, revealing it to be Rosalind, changed to beta shift by the self-preservation instincts of a new wolf she was entirely running off of, but still unmistakably her. A howl tore itself from her throat, the sound of a lost wolf trying to find its way to safety. Everything was quiet in the forest as the echoes of the howl faded. There was no response.

Keep moving.

Find somewhere safe.

Rose took off again moving at a more moderate pace, winding her way through the forest towards higher ground. A little later she howled again, sounding slightly more forlorn. This time, a deeper howl echoed back to her from somewhere to the south. The howl called to her, comforting in a way, warming her insides and gently tugging her in the direction it came from. Rose ran eagerly towards the sound, joy thrumming through her as she leapt over streams and fallen logs.

Alpha!

Safety!

Go!

In a clearing at the edge of a small lake, referred to by the people of Beacon Hills as the Woodland Pond, Rose and the Alpha who bit her met for the second time. The younger werewolf hesitated slightly, whimpering a little, anxious in her approach. Yes, this may technically be her Alpha, but he was still a stranger, and there was no telling what a strange wolf might do. The older wolf was patient though, and the massive beast chuffed at her, encouraging her to approach.

Rose moved forwards cautiously, the Alpha holding himself still while she inspected him, relaxed, but with an air of confidence and superiority. Rose circled him once, before approaching, keeping herself low as to not be seen as a challenge. She let out a soft questioning whine, breathing in the Alpha's scent of thyme and cold mountain air. The large wolflike creature bent his head towards her, giving another of his reassuring chuffs. Tentatively Rose closed the distance between them, pressing her head up under the older male's chin, allowing her to smell the nutmeg undertone to his scent. The Alpha rubbed his cheek over Rose, scenting her and encouraging her to do the same, mixing his scent with her vanilla and jasmine scent, and chasing away the last remnants of Wolfsbane from her mind.

~{•.•}~

"I kissed her," Scott said dazedly to his best friend, referring to his girlfriend Allison who had just walked away from the two friends to head home.

"I saw," Stiles said, rubbing the back of his neck, standing awkwardly in the doorway to the male change rooms. The first lacrosse match of the season was over, the Cyclones had won and Scott having shot the winning goal from his new position on the team. Rose hadn't been there, and Stiles was not sure if that was a good thing or not.

"She kissed me," Scott grinned happily.

"Saw that too. That's pretty good, huh?" Stiles half laughed at his friend, but he was genuinely happy for the other boy.

"Maybe I can do this," Scott said optimistically. "Maybe this year won't be that bad."

"Yeah, heh. We'll talk later, then," Stiles suggested, not wanting to spoil his best friend's moment. Scott stopped him,

"What?" he demanded, coming out of his daze.

"The, uh, medical examiner looked at the other half of the body we found…" Stiles trailed off, not sure he wanted to say.

"And?"

"Well, I'll keep it simple," Stiles decided. "Medical examiner determines killer of girl to be animal, not human. Derek's human, not animal. Derek not killer. Derek let out of jail."

"Are you kidding?" Scott asked in disbelief.

"No, and here's a bigger kick in the ass. My dad I.D.'d the dead girl — both halves. Her name was Laura Hale.

"Hale?" Scott was surprised, and Stiles nodded solemnly, confirming what his friend was thinking.

"Derek's sister."

~{•.•}~

Out in the forest, by the shore of a small lake, two werewolves relaxed into each other. One, content to take comfort in the presence of a strong Alpha. The other, relishing the peace of a pack mate after so long alone.

~{•.•}~

So this was slightly later than I had hoped. Scott was not cooperating, especially in contrast to our lovely Alpha, so I ended up writing this backwards. Kind of an odd way of doing things really. Oh well.

Lots of the boys in this one, but it was kind of necessary. Back to the others next chapter. Except for poor Melissa and Allison. They kind of get the short straw for screen time in this thing. Poor them.

Hope you enjoyed, let me know what you think. See you next time,

- Shade