DEREK

I don't know why I decided that turning teenagers into werewolves was a good idea. Especially not when it turned out that they'd be a liability. Scott, I always thought that Scott had potential, and I still did, but right now I wanted to fix this whole thing by myself.

"You don't still live here, do you?" Scott asked.

"No. The county took it over, but there's something here that I need. It'll help heal a wound from an Alpha" I replied as I was looking through some stuff.

"Yeah, but it did heal" Scott replied.

"Not on the inside" I replied. Apparently there was a new werewolf in school, and she wasn't one of mine, but Stiles had called telling us that he was coming over with her. Apparently she was hurt.

"Hey, are you gonna tell me who that was back there? That Alpha" Scott asked me. I didn't want to tell him, I wanted him to go back to being a teenager, to continue the good work I'd seen him do over the summer.

"A rival pack. It's my problem. I know you wanna help, and you did. I owe you one. Now go home. Go back to being a teenager" I told him.

"A rival pack? So there's already a pack here then?" a girl's voice asked.

"Everyone, this is Dakota, Dakota this is everyone" Stiles said as he stood beside her.

"Dakota?" I asked and looked at her, she looked different than she did last night, but I could recognize those eyes in a mile's distance.

"Ah, of course" she replied and shrugged. "Look, the witty guy over here can't help me with this…" she said and turned around trying to point at her back. A large piece of glass was standing out of her skin, there was blood all over her clothes. "What's up with him?" she asked looking at Isaac lying on a table inside.

"How…?" Scott asked and looked at Stiles.

"Well, there was this whole bird incident at school" Stiles explained.

"I would have done it myself, but I seriously can't reach it" she said and turned around. It was like no questions were needed, we all knew that she was a werewolf, that she knew about us. So everyone kept quiet.

"Sit down" I told her and showed her the chair. She sat down on it, her legs parted and hugged the chair's back. I took a firm grip on the glass and pulled it out, she barely winced. She pulled up her top and exposed her back to me, showing me that it wasn't the large piece of glass, it was smaller one's too. Blood was streaming down from her wound, more than what was normal for a werewolf. By now it should have started to heal, but it seemed like it didn't. I started picking out the smaller pieces, and the more I picked out the more she was bleeding.

"Why aren't you healing?" I asked her, making Scott and Stiles more interested in what was going on.

"Navajo wolves dude, not the regular werewolf" she replied.

"Navajo?" I asked her, not sure where I'd heard it.

"Yeah, Native American. Created out of legends, not from bites, it's complicated" she said, trying to explain.

"I've heard about the Navajo tribe, they were a fairly nice people" Stiles said. That guy seriously needed to know when to shut up.

"Yeah, pretty much" she mouthed as I pulled out the last few pieces of glass.

"Look, Derek, I was hoping that you could repay that favor" Scott said and looked at me and smiled. "I got a tattoo last night and it kind of healed" Scott added.

"That's gonna hurt" Dakota said. She probably knew that all too well, her arms were covered with tattoos.

"Yeah, I was kind of figuring that" Scott replied.

After wiping away the blood from Dakota's back, I sat down with Scott to look at his tattoo.

"Yeah, I see it. It's two bands, right? What does it mean?" I asked him.

"I don't know. It's just something I traced with my fingers" Scott replied, drawing the tattoo on the dust-covered table.

"Why is this so important to you?" I asked.

"Do you know what the word 'tattoo' means?" Scott asked me.

"To mark something" Stiles commented.

"Well, that's in Tahitian. In samoan, it means "open wound". I knew I wanted to get a tattoo when I turned 18. I always wanted one. I just decided to get it now, to make it kind of a reward" Scott explained.

"For what?" I asked him.

"For not calling or texting Allison all summer. Even when I really wanted to, even when it was so hard not to sometimes. I was trying to give her the space she wants. Goin' four months later, it still hurts. It still feels like a, uh…" Scott explained.

"Like an open wound?" Dakota asked from the corner of the room, standing in the shadows.

"Yeah" Scott replied. I could understand him, but it was on a level that I would never really show him, I couldn't show my vulnerability to Scott, he needed to see me as the strong one. The leader. I took the torch from the table and looked at Scott seriously.

"The pain's gonna be worse than anything you've ever felt" I told him.

"Ah, that's great" Stiles said, looking green.

"Do it" Scott replied. That was my queue. I lit the torch and I could see Scott's face shifting.

"Oh, wow… That's a… that's a lot for me. So I'm gonna take that as my cue. I'm just gonna wait outside" Stiles said, making his way to the door. I grabbed him and stopped him.

"Nope. You can help hold him down" I told him and looked at Dakota if there was any help to get from her.

"Oh my God" Stiles exhaled. Dakota helped Stiles to hold Scott down while I started the procedure. Lucky for him, the tattoo wasn't that big. I took the torch to his skin, and this hissing sound from the fire burning Scott's skin was chiming. Scott started to move, and all though Dakota was strong, she wasn't strong enough.

"Hold him" I told them, and they did until Scott passed out. When the tattoo was done I looked at the pair standing behind him. Dakota looked pale, but it was probably just because her wounds wasn't healing as fast as I thought they would.

"You okay?" Stiles asked her when he noticed the sweat tripling down her forehead.

"Yeah, I'm good" she replied. "Just the heat" she added and smiled. Some seconds later Scott woke up, and immediately looked at his arm to see that the tattoo was there visibly.

"Aah! It worked!" Scott said and smiled. After Scott had gotten his shirt back on, they told me they were headed home. Dakota barely smiled to me before she followed them to the front door.

"Well, it looks pretty damn permanent now" Stiles said and smiled to Scott.

"Yeah, I kind of needed something permanent. Everything that's happened to us. Everything just changes so fast. Everything's so.. uh. Ephemeral" Scott said. I started to clean up the mess we'd made with the glass and the blood. When I thought they'd left, I was about to head out myself, when Scott suddenly called from the porch.

"You painted the door. Why'd you paint the door?" he asked me. No, he was not going to find out this way.

"Go home, Scott" I yelled back.

"And why only one side?" he added. He let out his claws and started ripping up the fresh paint.

"Scott" I yelled. When he stopped, the symbol was there loud and clear.

"The birds at school and the deer last night… just like the night I got trampled by the deer when I got bit by the Alpha. How many are there?" Scott asked, putting it all together.

"A pack of'em. An Alpha pack" I replied.

"No" I could hear Dakota whispering to herself.

"All of them? How does that even work?" Stiles asked.

"I hear there's some kind of leader" I explained. "We know they have Boyd and Erica".

"Deucalion" Dakota added. I looked at Dakota, realizing that she probably knew more than we did.

"Peter, Isaac and I have been looking for him for the last four months" I explained.

"Let's say you find them. How do you deal with an Alpha pack?" Scott asked.

"With all the help I can get" I replied.

"Where is she? Where's the girl?" Isaac asked, now awake and present.

"What girl?" I asked him, this couldn't be a coincident.