Annie was right: the Sheriff was indeed worried about where she was. He was waiting for her when she opened the door.
"Where the hell have you been?" he demanded.
"Out."
"Out where?"
"With a friend." Annie carefully closed the door behind her. She wasn't exactly used to adults caring about her; she never ended up with homes like this when she was in the system.
The Sheriff crossed his arms over his chest. "Now who would you know here?"
"Dad! That was Derek's car that just left!" Stiles called from the other room.
"You know the Hale's?"
"I told you that I'd been here before." Annie passed the Sheriff to venture further into the house. She could see Stiles sitting on the couch with his computer perched in his lap. "Where's Malia?"
Stiles bent his head back so he could look at Annie. "She left a little while ago. Why?"
Annie shrugged. "No reason. Except that I just re-met her father."
Stiles pushed his computer away and turned around fully. "You ran into Peter?"
"He kinda followed me and Derek. I had to talk my way into getting this." She held up the red box.
"What's that?" The Sheriff and his son looked a little too eager to know the contents.
"Nothing of your concern. Look, I'm going to go upstairs and unpack since I didn't do it earlier." Annie looked Stiles in the eye. "But if you start talking about me, I will hear everything. Besides, I know where you sleep now," she threatened, smirking.
Stiles swallowed, throwing a thumbs-up into the air.
Annie could hear Stiles clicking away on his laptop again as she headed up the stairs. The Sheriff moved towards the living room where his son was, then she blocked out all noises from down below.
She still smelled a hint of Deucalion in her room, but opening her bags helped to eliminate the scent. She welcomed the smell of 'home' that flowed out of her luggage.
Annie first shuffled through a bag until she located a small wooden container: a container that held her mother's claws. She added those to the ones in the red box then set that box on the end table next to her bed. She changed the sheets and pillowcases on her bed, stocked the dressers with her clothes, set her computer on the desk, until the room was how she liked it.
Then she searched the bags for what had been broken earlier. Annie realized, as her hand was sliced open by a piece of glass, that it was a picture frame her mother had given her. Her hand knit itself together while she stared at the photo beneath the shattered glass.
There were two photos side by side, one of her mother's pack, and the other was hers. The photographers had used a special kind of camera so the flash wouldn't make the wolves' eyes blind the device. The first photo had been taken a mere month before the house fire; the second after the last Beta had been added to the pack six weeks before their massacre.
She brushed the broken glass away from her mother's face, who now would have been mistaken as Annie's twin.
The Alpha dumped the fragments into the waste basket by her bed, wishing that she had never been born into a family of werewolves; that her family had been human. Sure, she'd miss the increased speed, sense of smell and hearing, but at least she wouldn't be hunted every second of every day.
Annie remembered all too well the lunar ellipse that occurred six months before when she did indeed become human for fifteen minutes. It had felt great. That is, until hunters stormed the building her pack had been living in and fired round after round into each werewolf. Even though her wounds had healed, Annie herself had been hit at least twenty times. She truly wished that she had died along with them, hating the fact that she had been the lone survivor of not one, but two, bloodbaths.
The Alpha had vowed that she would never take another pack under her wing unless absolutely necessary. She didn't care if her Alpha status slipped down to Omega. She didn't—
"Annie?" A knock on her door brought her back to reality.
"Yeah?" Her voice cracked, surprising her. She hadn't realized she'd been crying.
The door opened and the Sheriff popped is head in. "We've got some pizza—are you okay?"
Annie wiped her cheeks, placing the picture frame next to the red box. "Yeah. I'm fine."
The Sheriff nodded slowly. "Anyways, Stiles let me order a pizza for dinner since it's your first night here. The leftovers are in the fridge that I can heat up for you if you're hungry."
"Thanks, but, uh, I had dinner at Derek's."
Mr. Stilinski entered the room, closing the door behind him. He sat on the bed next to Annie. "Listen, I should probably tell you that your dad's in town."
Annie stopped breathing. She never talked about her dad. Ever.
"Hey, relax." The Sheriff put his arm around her shoulders. "Your birth certificate was included with your criminal record, Annie. It gave me quite a shock when I saw who your father was. But believe me, I haven't mentioned anything to him. And I won't. Not unless you give me the permission to, okay?"
"Okay." Her voice still sounded a little too tight.
"You should probably tell your brother soon, though. Before things get ugly."
"Things will get ugly anyways. Especially when he finds out that dad cheated on his mom with mine." Annie shrugged the Sheriff's arm off. "Mom told me she wasn't too happy when she found out he was married."
"What did your mom tell you about him?"
"Not much. Only that she was happy that I turned out to look nothing like him. And that she was going to tell him that they had a daughter, but when she had stopped by the house, she could hear him talking to his wife. And she was saying that she was pregnant." Annie sighed. "Mom said she regretted never telling him, regretted what she did with a married man, but she never regretted having me."
"So you're older than your brother?"
"Yeah. Eight or so months, I think."
"Oh, boy. It's like a soap opera has taken over Beacon Hills instead of the normal horror film."
Annie huffed a laugh. "No kidding."
The Sheriff grinned. "You are so lucky that I answered Melissa's phone when your probation officer called about sending you here."
"Yeah, about that, why did you answer her phone?" Annie shifted on the bed so she was sitting cross-legged facing the Sheriff. "That call was intended for my dad."
"Uh…" A blush quickly spread over his face. "I might be dating her…"
"You might be dating the mother of my half-brother? This soap opera keeps getting better and better!"
Annie and the Sheriff's conversation continued for a while after that, but what was unknown to both of them was the fact that a certain teenager had followed his father up the stairs and heard every word they had just spoken.
A/N: I have sooo much more time to write now! Yippee!
I also have the next chapter done but I'm not going to post it yet. Maybe tomorrow or Saturday :)