IMPORTANT NOTE: I made an editing mistake in chapter 3 in which I repeated a scene. When fixing this I noticed that one of the repeated scenes had several lines cut from the end of that. So I suggest going back to see the now replaced lines at the end of the Derek and Laura scene.

(4)

It's easy to indulge. Scott makes her feel the warm of being wanted. With his puppy eyes, his firm but never harsh hands, the drag of his lips. It's a different variety of wanted than family, than pack, but not unpleasant. It's fresh and tangy like citrus. It's stings her cuts in her psyche, but it's not bad for her.

Scott's all enthusiasm. What Allison expects from your typical teenage boy. But he's more than just that, just typical. He's sweet, a little dopey, and he likes her in an uncomplicated way. She likes that he isn't all jagged edges.

Although she never thinks she'll be the PDA type (it's too revealing, too attention-grabbing, too exposed for the lifestyle of hiding, prowling, lurking she was raised to embrace), the next day in school she can't help the bare blush when she catches Scott's eyes from across the hall. Lydia catches on to it in a second.

Scott makes a beeline for them – for her. "Hey," he says when he gets to them, all breathy and hopeful and unsure what to say next. He noticeably grabs the straps of his book bag with hard fists.

Lydia rolls her eyes. "Finally," she says. She skirts away from them, presumably to give them some privacy in the crowded hallway. "See you at lunch," she says. "Both of you."

"Was that an offer or a command?" Scott asks.

"With Lydia, they're the same thing. She basically hijacked me into being her friend. Not that I mind."

"Do you mind?"

"Hm?"

"If I join you at lunch?"

Allison peers over his shoulder. "No… bring your friend too: Isaac."

Scott looks at her oddly. The majority of their conversations had been werewolf-related. Isaac hadn't come up in specifics. "How do you –?"

"I pay attention," Allison says quickly. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Scott's smiling in a way that makes her uneasy because it makes her weak-kneed. "I had to make sure you weren't killing anybody," she mutters in disgruntled defense.

"Right," he says, giving her excuse to her but still unutterably pleased.

"Shut up," she says, irritated but not at all irritated. She shoves lightly – playfully – at his shoulder.

…

Allison excuses herself to the girl's bathroom – possibly actually meeting up to confer with Lydia – before homeroom. That's when Isaac comes up to Scott.

"When did that happen?" he asks, looking at Scott as Scott's watching Allison disappear down the hall.

"I guess last night… but, slowly for a while," Scott says. He's still dazed by it himself.

"I guess that explains why you've been so… absent lately," Isaac says. He's good at hiding the hurt in his tone, but Scott hears it anyway.

"Sorry, I guess I've been a little distracted lately." He'll let Isaac interpret that for his own. It's not like he can just say 'sorry, I've been busy trying to deal with being a werewolf lately. Also that hot girl right there is also a werewolf. And then there's the werewolf who murdered the bus driver…'

"It's okay. I mean. I would be too, man," Isaac says.

"I'll make it up to you. And hey," Scott says, patting Isaac on the shoulder. "The good news is I got us invited to Lydia Martin's lunch table."

…

Lydia scoffs at something across the cafeteria. "I can't believe they're swooping in like that."

Danny's already rolling his eyes. "You're reading too much into it."

"They're usurping my position," Lydia says, glaring now. Allison looks over her shoulder in attempt to identify who exactly Lydia is staring at.

"You mean Erica and Boyd?" Scott's voice pipes tentatively up. Allison doesn't fault him; Lydia is deceptively intimidating.

Lydia scoffs again at the names, but says nothing more.

"You can't be the school's power couple when you aren't a couple," Danny says, like he's said it a million times already.

"Details," Lydia says dismissively. Then, "She wears too much eyeliner. And when's the last time Boyd's scored a goal?"

"We've only played two games this season," Danny says. "And he's defense."

"He's really good," Isaac says.

Lydia peaks an eyebrow at Isaac, who immediately shifts in his chair. "Still hasn't scored any goals," she says.

"You know, not letting the other team score is as equally important as scoring," Danny says. He's the one glaring now - at Lydia. She blissful ignores this.

"I think you're an important part of the team as an awesome goalie, Danny," Scott says, absolutely genuine.

"Thanks, Scott," Danny says, but distracted.

"You all care too much about lacrosse," Allison says and earns glares from all.

…

As they exit the cafeteria, Allison notices Stiles at a table in the corner by himself. He's surprisingly hard to notice around school for someone she had witnessed being as less-than-graceful in his own skin as him. He's got a thick book propped straight up on the table and his head is hidden behind it. He's curled over and in on himself as he reads. No one approaches him. He looks up at no one as they move around him.

Allison nudges Scott as they walk past. "What's his story?"

"Who? Stiles?"

Allison nods.

"Why do you care?" His answer is defensiveness hidden under curiosity.

"He was at the bus. I should care." It's a small truth, but mostly a lie. She hasn't told Scott about the interaction she had with Stiles in the woods her first weak in Beacon Hills.

"We used to be friends," Scott says. He rubs at his forehead. "Good friends."

"What happened?" Allison asks. She touches the back of his shoulder with her fingertips as if to stabilize him, or like this is the type of the pain she could pull out of him.

"He stopped," Scott says bluntly, looking down.

"Stopped being your friend?"

"Stopped being Stiles."

The heaviness of something so profound and large hangs in the air as they head with automatic footsteps to their lockers.

She doesn't prompt him. She lets him speak again, with clarification, at his own time.

"He was so funny," Scott says first. He's eyes aren't seeing what's in front of him, aren't seeing her. "Always had a sarcastic comment for everything. He was smart. And he cared, about me, about his dad." He pauses in walking and Allison pauses with him. "He was a good friend." The emphasis adds a new meaning.

"Did you ever try to talk to him about what happened?" Allison asks when Scott indulges in silence for a little too long.

"Of course I tried to talk to him," Scott snaps, then immediately shrinks. "Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to…"

"I know. It's okay." Scott's hardly the scariest person she's dealt with. It's not like he was close to turning in that second-long anger either.

"I just don't know. Part of him stopping being Stiles was stopping being my friend, anyone's friend. And I know that he's had crap to deal with… Like his mom died, but it wasn't then. I just don't…" He raises and drops a shoulder wearily. "It's just hard to lose someone, I guess."

Scott surprises Allison again with his double meanings.

…

Considering that Allison lives in a burned out ruin, they spend a lot of time together in Scott's bedroom. With his mother's job at a hospital, her hours leave appropriate chunks of privacy after school.

They spend time between his job and lacrosse practice there, exploring each other. Forgetting the whole werewolf thing, Scott doesn't know how he got so lucky.

…

Derek awakes with ice spiking down his spine. Disoriented, he pushes up from his tangled sheets. Sweat has clogged the back of his shirt, making it cling. The digital clock burns 1:53 into the dark of the room.

He doesn't need a shower, but he plods quietly to the bathroom anyway. He strips and turns only one faucet.

He steps in. The cold shocks the breath out of him. He stands in it, lets it pound. The cold is so harsh it burns. Derek gets out when he stops being able to feel.

He returns to his room, gets dressed. Laura's bedroom door is cracked open. Derek hears her snoring. He sneaks out the front. There is something he needs to face without her.

…

Allison had made herself a place to live in one of the back rooms in one corner of the shamble of a house. A room that still had all four walls and the roof intact even if the glass of the windows has long been busted out. She doesn't remember whose room it had been. Where there were patches of wallpaper left distinguishable - not burned, not soot gray, not weather worn, not torn away - it was a just visible floral pattern.

She remembers enough to know that it's not her parents' room and not her own. Those she remembers and hasn't returned to. She hasn't visited the basement either.

She lies on foam mattress and pretends to sleep, for in pretending she might trick actual sleep into overcoming her. Not tonight.

She hears something - a crack of a stick. She pushes up, tilts her head, listens closer. Crunch of leaves in a pattern that can't be ascribed to the wind. Footsteps, then, but too ungraceful and heavy for the animals that roam this woods.

Allison gets up and presses against the wall next to the sill of the window. She arches her neck enough to see out without being seen herself.

There's a figure approaching – male, broad-shouldered, scent decidedly human. He's coming up roughly where there had once been a proper path leading to the house, but is now long overgrown.

He's being awfully casual to be a hunter, but who else would be here this time of night? He's carrying no weapon that Allison can see, but that doesn't mean that there is nothing hidden under the shape of his jacket. It doesn't mean there wasn't more of them lingering farther back, waiting, planning, hunting. Hunting her.

A heat creeps up her neck. It's fear, and not an actual sensation, but it has her half-transformed nonetheless.

The man, the possible hunter, is just standing on what was the front lawn. What's the plan? What should she do?

She wants her mom and her mom's barking orders so much right now.

Is this a trap, them trying to lure her out to fight or flight? Or were they trying to keep her in as they prepared something more devious? Light up the house a second time?

Another, more rational thought passes through Allison's head. Whoever it is, hunter or no, might not know she is in here. They could be here at the house for completely un-Allison-related reasons.

She waits crouched by the windowsill, watching the man, ears straining for signs of others, claws out. The man just stands. An eternity in an hour later, he turns and leaves.

Not until he's gone for over a half hour does she move. Her bones ache. It's decided before she even reaches her true height again — she can't sleep here tonight. Can't stay here.

She doesn't want to be alone.

…

It's three in the morning when Scott is jarred out sleep by a knock on his window. Confused, he climbs out of bed and stumbles across his bedroom. He pushes up his window.

"Allison?"

That's one way to shock him awake, a pretty girl climbing through his window in the middle of the night. She's in a tank top and yoga pants – what she must have gone to sleep in – and her hair is tangled. He picks a leaf out of a curl.

"Can I sleep here tonight?" Allison asks, bashful hidden under blasé confidence.

"My mom's –" Scott starts.

"Not like that," Allison interrupts. Scott hadn't meant like that. "Just –" She tucks a frazzled strand of hair behind an ear. She pushes up on her toes and pressed a closed kissed to the corner of his mouth. "Please," she says as she leans back.

It's the most vulnerable Scott has ever seen her. For the first time, she's asking him for something.

"Of course," he says, not hiding his worried tone. "Are you okay?"

Her jaw tenses. There's a miniscule shake of her head 'no.'

...

They curl into bed together. Allison presses her head to Scott's chest. She's on his right side, but can still hear his heartbeat. She hears his lungs and the turn of his still digesting stomach. These noises comfort by the representation of life they are. Comforting more so, because they're Scott's.

His arms are around her, embracing her. Does it make her weak to feel stronger here?

"Werewolves aren't meant to be alone," she mumbles into his t-shirt. Being alone means being an omega. Being omega means being last and least. Pack is strength. It's never being alone even in your loneliest. More than family, even if it is family, like hers had once been.

"People aren't meant to be alone, period," Scott says back.

She curls into him more, hiding her face like she could hide her shame. Allison can tell by the tensing of Scott's arms that he feels her shoulders beginning to shake.

"I miss her so much," she chokes out. Scott presses his lips to her hairline and Allison sobs. It's the first time she's let herself in years. Even at the shock of first discovery of her mother's death, she had kept a sort of dignity of silent tears as she dug the grave. Even as the pain of loss too familiar and complete loneliness - not so familiar - had stabbed her deep.

But before she was alone. There hadn't been time for sobbing when she couldn't risk the blurring of her vision while she had to watch over her own back.

But now, here, she's with Scott. He's watching over her. She can let go.

She lets go.

…

Scott wakes up the next morning to Allison next to him, faces inches apart. She blinks blearily at him through the morning light. It makes her appear more young and innocent than Scott has ever witnessed her before.

"Thanks for last night," she says. "I'm sorry I was such a mess."

"You don't have to apologize," Scott says back.

She strokes her fingertips down his cheek down to his lips. She presses a strong kiss where her fingers leave. It's a pretty intense kiss for the morning, considering Scott's already dealing with a morning boner.

She presses to him regardless, obviously feeling it but not commenting or reacting. He drinks her in.

"Scott you're going to be late if you – Oh my God!" squawks a voice. Scott shoots up in bed. He knows his mother's voice.

His mom stands in his half-open doorway, a hand raised over her eyes.

"Mom!" His voice cracks like he's still going through puberty.

She peaks through a gap in her fingers and sags in visible relief. She drops her hand. "Thank God, you're both clothed."

Scott just gaps at her. He's pretty sure if he tries speaking right now, his voice will go even higher. He glances at Allison, now sitting up on his bed, looking tired but otherwise un-flummoxed. Of course, his mom walking in on him making out with a girl probably isn't one of her worst nightmares.

Melissa regains her composure a lot faster than Scott. Arms crossed, she asks in a we'll-be-talking-about-this-later tone, "Who's your friend, Scott?"

"This is Allison," he manages to say.

"Good morning, Ms. McCall," Allison says smoothly, rubbing at her eyes.

"I was saying, Scott, that you're going to be late if you don't get your butt out of bed now. When did Allison get here?"

"Around three," Allison responds like it's nothing. Scott's not sure if he admires or fears her casual nature.

"Three?" Melissa presses a hand to her mouth. Scott can just see the calculating of groundings behind her eyes. "Well, Allison, I think you should call your parents to tell them where you are."

"My parents are dead," Allison says. Melissa almost flinches at this; her eyes certainly soften.

"Well, maybe call whoever you need to call," she suggests.

Allison nods and climbs off the bed past Scott. She picks up her backpack – that Scott hadn't noticed her bring it the night before but definitely recognizes it as hers from school – from the floor. Scott knows Allison doesn't have anyone else to call, but she's smart enough not to reveal that to Melissa.

"Bathroom?" she asks. Melissa points her down the hallway.

After Allison disappears, Melissa returns her attention to her son.

"Are her parents really dead or was that just some angsty, emo teenager thing she said because she hates them," Mom asks in a tone disguised enough if Allison had human hearing.

"No they're…, she's…" Even unfinished, Scott's sentence is confirmation enough.

"Are you being safe?" his mom asks next. Scott feels all blushy.

"That not's what happened," he says. "She showed up at my window, saying she didn't want to be alone."

"Your window? Nevermind."

Melissa looks conflicted, emotions battling it out on her features. On the one hand, her sixteen year old son just had a girl he's obviously intimate with spend the night and that has to be against the rules somewhere; but then this is an orphan girl who seems like she needs some support. Scott had already adopted a friend, after all, who sought out Scott's positive energy as emotional support.

She throws up her hands in exasperation and resignation. "I'll figure it out later," she says. "Now, you need to get ready for school."

Allison returns aptly timed – Scott thinks this is on purpose – dressed and hair brushed.

"Allison was it?" Melissa asks her. Allison nods. "You're invited to breakfast. Most important meal of the day." She says this last bit with odd intensity, like it is the one thing she is sure how to lecture on this morning.

Breakfast is an awkward ordeal. Mostly because they were all trying to behave like nothing awkward had occurred at all. Melissa drives them to school.

When they get out onto school property, and Melissa drives off, Allison laughs.

"This has never happened to me before," she says.

Scott quirks a grin, finding some humor in it. "Me neither."

Unsaid but understood is that neither of them had someone to be caught making out with before.

"After that, I think it's time to introduce you to my family," Allison says.

Scott's face squints up in confusion. "I thought your whole family was..." He hesitates over the words, trying to find a better way to phrase it. He gives up: "All dead."

Bitterly, Allison says, "Not all."

…

After school, they go to the hospital. It's not a scary thing to Scott usually, long used to it as his mother's workplace, but his pulse throbs rather hard now. He knows it can be nothing good.

Allison leads silently. Scott follows just as quiet down the florescent lit halls.

"Here," is all Allison says as they reach a room in a less bustling corner of the hospital. They enter, go past the privacy curtain, and there a woman sits limply in a wheelchair.

One half of her face is heavily scarred, but with old scars, faded to mostly skin tone. She had blonde hair hanging lank. Scott imagine she could have been quite pretty, despite the scars and all, if her eyes weren't so blank.

"Scott," Allison says, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed and placing a hand on the woman's arm with affection, "meet my aunt Kate."