A/N: Hello all! Welcome to chapter three! I said last chapter I would post it later today and here it is. Unfortunately, this is probably the only time you'll get two updates in one day... I'm thinking the rest will be much more spaced out. I'll probably start trying to update weekly from here, but I'm not sure yet.

Anyway! Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed, followed, or favorited, it means so much to me!

Breath came and went like the waves of the ocean. Breathing in is the water rushing up onto the beach bubbling and undulating, breathing out is the water's retreat, dragging sand and seaweed and shells. With that said, Blake feels like she has to fight the ocean in all its immense glory for every breath. Some part of her had hoped that she'd be asleep when the infection reached her heart, she had hoped not to be conscious for that event. But it looks like life had other plans. She could feel death looming in the background of her every thought like an old friend or a fond memory.

It's not that Blake wanted to die; it's just that there was no way she could recover from the wound. Even now, it leaks sickly black blood and pushes a deadly infection straight to her heart. She had wanted to get Wess back so badly. The thought of him in that room with Kate makes her sick with anger. All she wanted before she died was to find another home for Wess. One that would take care of him, play with him, and love him the same way she loved him.

That's an impossible feat in itself, no one would ever love Wess as much as Blake.

Tears leak from her eyes and crash to the leaves below, her breath resigning. She feels so incredibly drained of life, the only thing she can hear is her tortured heart beating, reminding her that she's still clinging to the act of breathing.

There's a crunch of leaves to her right, and she opens her eyes to see a man in a leather jacket with his narrowed eyes set on her. Seeing as how she's already dying, she doesn't much care about what this man wants, even if he is rather handsome with his short dark hair, hostile green eyes, and strong jaw. But her carefully honed intuition screams at her. This man is dangerous.

The crunches get louder until he's right next to her, scowling down at her. "You smell like death," he deadpans. The way he looks at her, his eyes scanning over her and making stops at her shoulder, wrist and stomach gives her the uncomfortable feeling that he knows more than he should.

Blake gives a breathy chortle, somewhat amused by his choice of words—and lack of hesitance. She wonders if the smell brought him to come investigate. But ultimately it doesn't matter to her. There's nothing left he can do to her.

"You smell like death and Kate Argent. Why is that?" he asks severely, his unsmiling face looming over hers like a dark cloud that tells of a coming storm. Staring blankly at him, her mind decides that he's probably a werewolf on account of his sense of smell.

Blake tries to draw the breath to answer him, but the weight of her chest is suddenly too great to overcome. He snarls in irritation, no doubt hearing her struggle for breath, and hauls her into a sitting position, his hands hooking under her armpits. She gives a weak hiss of pain as his thumb presses directly into the half-healed gunshot wound. It had stopped healing some time ago, she figures it's on account of her body focusing on healing the bigger threat.

The man with the severe face leans Blake against a tree, though her body protests the movement it does get easier to breathe and thus prolonging her pain. "Kate Argent," he reminds snappishly, "how do you know her? Why do you smell like her?" he asks again, giving her the distinct impression that if she wasn't dying he'd have his hands wrapped around her throat. Somehow he restrains himself.

Blake gives a shaky smirk, positive that this man won't like her answer. "We were hunting partners," she rasps, fighting for every word. Her head lolls and bangs against the tree, the tiny impact sending a violent crack of pain through her brain that puts her out like a light.

"What? You were—hey!" he starts to say something, but is interrupted by the slowing of Blake's heart. Growling, he punches the ground and then shoves himself to his feet, pacing in front of Blake. He still needed answers from her and he couldn't get them if she was dead. It was obvious she had been shot with wolfsbane, but there was no plausible way for him acquire one of the bullets she was shot with in such a short amount of time.

Halting in his furious pacing for a second, he turns his eyes on the backpack laying a dozen yards from her. It's a longshot, but he has to check. He drops to his knees next to the backpack and rips the zipper open, rooting through all of her clothes and dumping them on the ground. Now that his nose is practically in the backpack, he can smell the wolfsbane. It's that disgustingly cloying smell that makes him want to claw his nose off. Finally, in a secure zipper pocket he finds a small plastic case of ammunition and pulls a single bullet from it. After that, he grabs a lighter and aluminum tin of breath mints also found in her bag.

Now that he has what he needs, he goes back to the nearly dead woman and kneels in front of her. Her heart's still beating, but it won't be for long unless he gets a move on it. He dumps all of the mints out of the tin and gives the inside a quick wipe with his shirt. Then he rips the bullet apart with his claws and pours the wolfsbane into the newly-emptied tin. Lastly, he takes the lighter and sets the small pile of wolfsbane on fire. It sparks wildly for a short moment before dying down. While the fire fades, he reaches over and rolls the woman's shirt up to reveal the putrid bullet wound on her stomach that has black streaks of infection branching out from it. There are claw marks surrounding the wound, making it worse and deeper than it probably was when she acquired it. She had clawed the bullet out, but the infection lingered.

He rolls his shoulders and prepares for her to wake up and try to kill him because this isn't going to be fun for her. Grabbing the hot tin, he turns it upside down over her wound, banging on the bottom to make sure all the ashes come out. Then he presses his fingers into the bullet hole, tamping the ashes down the same way a smoker would press tobacco into a pipe.

Blake's eyes fly open and a cry is immediately on her lips, one that starts as a scream and dies as a guttural growling. Writhing, she swipes at the mystery man, who yanks his hand back just in time to avoid her. Her hands jerk to her stomach, but before she can touch the wound that's causing her such intense agony, the man catches her by wrists and pins them above her head.

"Don't touch it!" he barks as Blake rolls and writhes desperately to get out of his grip. When the infection doesn't budge for a full minute, he thinks it might be too late for her, despite how hard she's fighting against him. But finally, the lines of infection begin to retreat back into the bullet hole.

Blake's wrists are released just as the bullet hole seals shut completely. She collapses into herself, panting raggedly. "What," she gasps, bewildered and still feeling the lingering shocks of pain, "the hell did you do?" One second she was dying, the next she was waking up in incredible pain. Though, apart from the pain, she did feel better than before.

"Saved your life," he growls, narrowing his eyes dangerously at her.

"How?" Blake asks, rubbing a hand over her stomach. She was certain that bullet was going to be the death of her, but now there's not even a trace of it. What the hell did he do?

"It doesn't matter," he says, his teeth clenched tightly. "Where is Kate Argent?"

Now it's Blake's turn to narrow her eyes, "What do you want with her?" she hisses, a bitter wave of hatred flooding her heart.

"I'm going to kill her," he says simply, staring Blake dead in the eyes, challenging her to oppose him.

Blake sighs and her head sags enough for her chin to rest on her chest. "Thank God," she mutters, "someone needs to take that psycho down. She's in a hotel about a mile that way," she says, pointing in the direction she remembers stumbling in from. "She's in room 119, it's on the ground floor," she informs him, slowly clambering to her feet. It feels a little like she's giving an elephant a piggy back ride.

He turns in the direction she pointed and begins to walk, "Wait," she calls weakly. He stops, turning to pin her with an impatient scowl. "I can give you a key card," she says, causing the scowl on his face to lighten a smidge. She frowns when she catches sight of her ransacked backpack and gives him a glance out of the corner of her eyes, which results in an indifferent shrug on his end. She figures he got whatever saved her out of her bag and doesn't push it. She digs through her disarrayed belongings until she finds her wallet. After digging the key card out, she makes her way back over to the man who wants to kill Kate Argent.

Blake bites her lip, a sudden spike of uncertainty hitting her. He holds his hand out for the card, watching her expectantly. "Wait," she says, "before I give you the card… can you promise me that you won't hurt the dog?" He glowers at her for not handing the key card over immediately, shifting his weight as if he's preparing to take it from her by force. "He's mostly black but he has tan on his face, chest and legs, his name's Wess," she elaborates, uncaring of how irritated he is. "He's the only thing I have left. Promise me you won't touch him," she says, staring unflinchingly at his hard expression.

"I don't have-"

"Promise me!" Blake snarls, interrupting whatever he was going to say. He arches an eyebrow at her sudden outburst, but doesn't respond, forcing Blake to elaborate once more, "If I find out you've hurt him…" she trails off, her eyesight snapping into the sudden sharpness that tells her they've probably changed color. It wasn't intentional, just an effect that accompanied her rising heartbeat at the thought of Wess getting hurt. "I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth and kill you in the most painful way possible," she threatens, her voice taut with poorly concealed anger.

His expression turns deadly in a snap, but he grinds his teeth together and holds his hand out once more, "I won't hurt the dog," he growls, keeping a leash on his anger.

Blake's shoulders sag in relief and the sharpness bleeds out of her vision. "Thank you," she whispers, pressing the card into his hand. "He's trained to track werewolves, he'll bark at you but he won't bite," she says, trying to make sure the man isn't startled by Wess's reaction and harms him.

"Just like you thought he'd never bite you?" he asks quietly, his eyes trailing down her arm to her wrist. She swallows thickly and winces at the reminder, unconsciously wrapping her fingers around her wrist. It healed since he did whatever he did to make the infection go away. But he must've seen it before that and put the pieces together. It wouldn't be hard to pick out Wess's scent on her bag if that were the only thing there, but there were also four or five of his dog toys in there as well as his collar and leash. He silently turns and begins in the direction she pointed him, his shoulders taut with tension.

Blake plops on the ground, leaning against the tree once more. Well, at least she's not dying anymore. She's still not sure how he did it, she only knows that whatever he did hurt like hell. To her right is a tin that formerly held breath mints, but now all it held was a few ashes and a black scorch mark. Next to the empty tin is a torn apart bullet shell that she recognizes as one of her special wolfsbane bullets. It looks like he tore the bullet open and set the wolfsbane on fire in the tin… but what after that? When she woke up, his hand was on her stomach. What was he doing?

Curiously, Blake lifts up the hem of her tattered white long sleeved shirt and runs a hand over her belly. The skin there is as smooth as silk and tells no story of the infection that ran rampant only a couple minutes before. In fact, the skin tells no stories at all. Not even of the time she tried to jump a fence and nearly gutted herself on the spikes at the top. That scar was nearly five inches long. How did it disappear?

Blake hesitantly rolls the sleeve of shirt her up, checking for the scar given to her by the razor ribbon wire when she untangled Wess from it, only to find no trace of it ever existing. Her skin was as smooth and perfect as the airbrushed models in magazines. Shaking, she pushes herself to her feet and trudges over to her bag to grab the compact mirror she always keeps on hand. Prying the plastic case open, she uses it to get a view of the side of her jaw closest to her ear. The other razor ribbon scar is gone as well. In a last ditch effort to find a scar, she moves the mirror to look at the bottom of her chin. When she was six years old she busted her chin on a window sill, leaving a permanent indent there. It was one of the oldest scars she had, but even that is gone.

Maybe if it were someone other than Blake, they'd be happy to be rid of all of their scars. But this is Blake, who uses her scars to remember. Each scar had a story and most of the bigger scars had, well, bigger stories. Her scars were a physical account of her life, her struggles. The indent on her chin told a story about her parents. The scars on her arm and jaw told a story about how much she loved Wess. The scar on her stomach told a story that said sometimes she was foolish and impulsive. Of course, there were other scars with equally important stories. But now, they were gone.

But they couldn't all be gone. It's impossible.

Blake unbuttons her jeans and slides them down to her mid-thigh, cautiously running her fingers over the smooth skin. Even that scar, the biggest one she had, is gone. It was given to her by a beta on her first serious hunt when she was 13. She was with her parents and while they dealt with the alpha, she was supposed to be taking down the last remaining beta. She thought she killed it and, like the amateur she was, she approached the body before making sure. The wounded werewolf raked its claws through her thigh, leaving three ragged scars that curled partly around her thigh even though it had been a long time since then.

But now the skin was smooth and firm, no indentations of ugly faded scars.

"Kate Argent wasn't in there."

Blake's head whips up at the sound, finding the man from earlier to be standing across from her on the other side of the small clearing. She takes a deep breath and presses a hand to her heart, trying to calm its frantic beating. Kate was gone. Did that mean Wess was gone with her? Grumbling under her breath, she shimmies her jeans back up to their proper position and buttons them. Her heartbeat continues its fast-paced beating, showing no signs of stopping as she continues her angry mumbling.

"I can hear you, you know," the man says blankly, staring at her blandly.

"Oh, can you?" Blake asks casually. "Well, that's fine. I was only grumbling about a creeper who showed up while I was trying to change my clothes-" Blake's heartbeat does an odd fumble in her chest, causing her to pause.

"That means you're lying," he throws in helpfully, his face completely impassive.

"Does it?" Blake hums, storing that tidbit of information for later use, "Well, that's useful. But more on point, what kind of guy silently creeps up like that and doesn't announce his presence? I have no idea how long you could've been standing there. What if I had actually been changing?" Blake asks, crossing her arms carefully over her chest. She really hopes Wess is okay. Maybe Kate left him behind for the maids to find.

He narrows his eyes at the accusation, "It's your fault that you didn't hear me and I did announce my presence, my footsteps, scent and voice did that. It's not my fault you don't use your senses to your advantage."

Blake shrugs, stuffing clothes into her backpack. She's about ready to sprint back to the hotel, screaming the entire way. Wess has to be there. Kate didn't even like him, why would she take him? "And it's not my fault I got changed against my will. These things take time getting used to, but I'm sure you know that," Blake says primly.

"No," he snaps, shifting his weight impatiently. "I don't."

Blake scrutinizes him for a short moment, wondering what he meant by that. Finally she hums and nods, "So I take that to mean you were born into it?" she asks casually while zipping her backpack.

"It doesn't matter," he grits. "Where is Kate Argent? You told me she would be there," he reminds, his expression getting more and more irritated by the second.

"I told you that because that's where I thought she would be," Blake replies easily, not bothered by worsening mood. "I had no reason to lie to you, and if I did lie, apparently you could tell," she pauses, exhaling slowly. "Was the dog there, at least?" she asks at last, wringing her hands together.

"The dog was gone," he says bluntly, shattering Blake's hope as if it was made of glass. "Kate's scent disappeared in the parking lot along with the dog's."

Blake winces and draws in a deep stabilizing breath, "Okay," she whispers, biting her lip. "Thank you." Tears come to her eyes but she blinks them away. Apparently she's going to be a werewolf for longer than she thought. There's no way she can let Kate do whatever she wants with Wess. Kate doesn't care about him and she's going to get him killed. Blake's resolve settles into an unshakeable determination. Even if it kills her, Wess is going to end up safe and happy. It's what he deserves.

Blake gives a shuddering breath, trying futilely to sort through the panic that rises in her chest at the thought of Kate being able to do whatever she wants to Wess with no one there to stop her. Shouldering her backpack, she crosses over to where the man's standing. "Can I have the key card back?" she asks.

He reaches into his pocket and retrieves the key card, but makes no move to give it back to her. "What were you and Kate doing here?" he asks, glaring down at her. This whole situation feels vaguely familiar, though the last time it was her withholding the key card.

"We were tracking a pack," Blake replies grumpily, wanting to just rip the key card out of his claws and make a break for it. "This pack moves around constantly, we've taken down a couple of their betas. We tracked them here and made an attempt to kill the alpha," she pauses and is reminded of last night when the alpha bit her. "But apparently we failed and it bit me as revenge," she scowls.

"Then why haven't you killed yourself yet?" he asks coldly. "That's what you're supposed to do, according to your little code," he spits the word code as if it had done him some great injustice, but the way he looks at Blake is worse. He's looking at her as if… as if she had killed hundreds of his kind.

And she has. She deserves all of his ire. But she only killed werewolves that had killed humans. She didn't kill innocent ones. She'd never kill a werewolf that never hurt anyone… right?

Blake shakes her head softly, at a loss for what to say. She isn't sure how to handle the faint trickle of uncertainty in herself and what she's been doing nearly her whole life. "I just… want to make sure my dog's alright. That's all I want."

He shoves the key card at Blake and brushes past her so roughly that it causes her to stumble back a couple steps.

And then he's gone.

A/N: Woo! So Derek makes his first appearance, though Blake doesn't know his name yet. Any thoughts, questions, or complaints? That little review box is the perfect place. ;)