I struggled with writing this chapter and trying to only write the parts Peter said bc they told the story from his and Gerard's point of view. I hope it worked out right.

I was laying on my bed doing my homework when my door slammed open. I jumped and looked up to see that Stiles was standing in the doorway with a grin. I knew that grin better than I wanted to, it meant that he wanted something from me. I sighed before sitting up and crossing my legs.

"What's so important that it's interfering with my English homework?" I asked, chewing on the tip of my pen as I glanced down at the textbook in my lap. "Whether I think something's up with Miss Blake or not, I can't fail her class."

He laughed before sitting down in front of me and crossing his legs like mine. "I need you to go on a little trip with me. Are you down?"

I reluctantly closed my textbook and scooted closer to him. "What all does this trip entail? I know better than to just go along with you, Stilinski. The last time I did that I almost died in a jail cell because of a full moon and a transforming Isaac."

He took my hand in his and looked up at me with puppy dog eyes. "Derek's been completely off the map since Boyd died and I want to go investigate. Scott's with Allison trying to pump Gerard's geriatric ass so that leaves you to accompany me."

I knew that I should stay and study for the test that we're having tomorrow, but Stiles' puppy eyes were impossible to say no to. He even stuck out his bottom lip and whimpered a little bit so I hit him with one of my pillows. He laughed and grabbed the pillow out of my hands, knocking all of my stuff off into the floor in the process.

I was laughing so hard that I was almost crying by the time he knocked me onto my back and pined my hands to the bed. I looked up at him and saw that our faces were only inches apart and he was smiling down at me gently. It wasn't the same grin he had earlier when he wanted something. No, it was the grin that I saw him always give Lydia whenever he was admiring her from afar except it was for me this time.

I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth and glanced down at his lips before I could stop myself. His lips were so puffy, I wanted to know what they felt like pressed against mine. I felt one of his hands holding my face and realized that he wasn't holding my hands anymore.

I saw him tilting his head and leaning into me. I placed one of my hands on the side of his neck and arched my back so I could get closer to him, my heart jumping out of my chest as I realized we were about to kiss. About to kiss seemed to be as close as we would get because I heard his phone ringing in his pocket.

He groaned before pulling away from me and pressing his phone to his ear. "What? This better be, like, a life or death situation or I'm going to make it one."

I grabbed my glasses from the bed beside me and slid them back on before getting out of bed. My legs were a little bit shaky and I tried to hide it from Stiles. I stood at my dresser mirror and reput up my hair while Stiles talked on the phone.

"That was Cora, she said that we needed to get there before she ripped our throats out with her teeth. I think she's being serious so we'd better head out," he said, locking our gazes in the mirror.

His face was flushed and I could see the frustration behind his eyes because we'd gotten interrupted. I realized that I looked a lot like him, he'd wanted to kiss me as much as I'd wanted him to. We'd have to talk about what just happened, or almost happened, whenever we had time together later.

"We'd better go then," I said, turning around and facing him. "Lead the way."

He nodded and walked out of my room jerkily. Then he turned around, took my hand in his, and started making his way back downstairs. That boy was seriously so weird sometimes that gave the werewolves and Lydia and everything else in this town a run for their money.

"Derek was running through the woods, trying his best to get away from the hunters. He hadn't realized that there were so many of them," Cora told us. "If it wasn't for Peter coming out of the shadows and stopping it, an arrow would've killed him that night."

Stiles and I had gotten to Derek's loft for find her waiting for us impatiently. She said something along the lines of 'this was for us and not her so we needed to be here on time next time' or something. I just rolled my eyes and sat down on the couch with Stiles beside of me. I honestly wanted to talk about what just happened between us instead of hearing Derek's life story, but I guess that wasn't going to happen.

"They ran until they found an old, empty house and hid in the basement for a few days. It's call hide and heal, all born werewolves are taught to do it whenever we're being hunted," she continued.

"How is this story helping us find Derek in the here and now? He hasn't been seen since Boyd died," Stiles argued, crossing his arms stubbornly. "Since everyone's after him, shouldn't he be here? Like, where people can help him be safe and stuff."

"Derek has changed since I knew him. I don't know what he's doing anymore," Cora answered.

"Derek used to be a lot like Scott. He was unbearably romantic and profoundly narcissistic," Peter said, coming down the spiral staircase and standing in front of us. "His experience with a girl changed his personality and his eye color from gold to blue."

"That's my brother you're talking about, asshole," I reprimanded him. Then I went on to ask, "Derek Hale, the same guy who hates everything, was so in love with a girl that it changed everything about him? And what do you mean it changed his eye color? What does that have to do with anything?"

"As I was saying before the annoying little McCall interrupted me, Derek was in love with a girl named Paige that he met during his sophomore year of high school. He was just as annoyingly arrogant as everyone is at that age, but something about it drew her in," Peter explained.

"Wait, if Derek was a sophomore then, what age is he now? What age were you then? Hell, what age are you now?" Stiles asked quickly, trying to get all the details

"Not as young as we could've been, but not as old as you might think," Peter responded cryptically.

Stiles muttered a few choice words under his breath before turning to Cora. "How old are you?"

"17," she answers with a wry smile.

"You see that? That's an actual answer to that question," Stile cried matter-of-factly.

As if she couldn't handle seeing Stiles not frustrated, she went on to add, "17 how you would measure in years, but not in lifetimes or experience."

"Oh my god, you all are impossible! You're going to cause his head to explode everywhere!" I exclaimed through my giggles when I saw his left eye start twitching.

"Derek had a special getaway that he went to to get some space from the family and such. It was an old abandoned distillery just outside of Beacon Hills. He told me about it because I was his closest friend, his confidant," Peter told us, but something about the way his moved his face told me that he wasn't being completely truthful. "Then Ennis, Kali, and Deucalion showed up with their full packs who were angry because the hunters killed one of their own."

"Hang on, the alphas used to have full packs of their own?" I asked stupidly. "Where did the packs go?"

Peter actually laughed at me and made my temper flare uncomfortably. "You stupid little girl, they had to kill their entire pack to gain their power. Then they all banded together and now they're almost undefeatable."

"They killed their own packs?!" I asked in disbelief, ignoring his jib at me. "How can an alpha kill his own pack? Aren't they considered their family and closest friends?"

"Yes, but that doesn't matter to someone who's power-hungry," Cora answered, her eyes flitting over to Peter. "Isn't that why you killed Laura, Uncle Peter?"

"I'm going to ignore that swipe and keep on telling the story," he said, looking back over at me. "All of the packs gathered in Beacon Hills to ask Talia Hale, my sister, for guidance."

"She was very well respected and known for having the ability to shift into a full wolf," Cora explained with pain and awe in her voice. "She had the gift so powerfully that it was passed on, Laura turned into a full wolf whenever she became alpha and I would as well if… you know."

Yet again I felt some sort of closeness with Cora. She was a hardass, but I would be too if I'd been through all of the things that she'd been through. Despite what would happen, I reached over and placed my hand over hers. She glared up and me, but I also noticed that she didn't make me move. I think she kind of enjoyed the contact with someone who wasn't trying to kill her.

"I hate to interrupt this Lifetime movie moment, but the story isn't over by a longshot," Peter said, breaking through mine and Cora's moment. "Ennis was dead set on getting his revenge, but Deucalion wanted him to stay away from that. Talia said that if he went after his vendetta that it would start an all-out war with the Argents."

Peter stood up and walked over to the windows of the loft. He moved his hands over the condensation that had gathered on it and left a large spiral when he stepped back. "That's the mark of vendetta that Ennis left on the wall of the distillery."

"What is it with werewolves having revenge-fueled killing sprees? They take the whole revenge thing to a new level," Stiles exclaimed, standing up and walking over to Peter with Cora and I trailing behind him.

"It's not about revenge, it's about losing a member of your pack. It hurts worse than losing a member of your family, it's like losing a limb," Cora explained, crossing her arms over her chest. "It's unimaginable."

I was yet again overtaken with the urge to hug her. She'd lost all of her family and her pack in a fire, even thinking that her brother and uncle died. I couldn't even imagine losing mom and Scott like that. Much less adding Allison, Lydia, Stiles, Isaac, and Derek to that pain.

"To make it even worse, the authorities wouldn't let Ennis see his dead beta. Stilinski said that it was a homicide and that Ennis wasn't family so he couldn't see the body," Peter tried to reign us back into the story. "As you can imagine, that didn't set well with Ennis. Pack is family."

I rolled my eyes at his use of that but didn't say anything.

"When I looked at Ennis' situation, I felt profound loss, but Derek saw it was a chance to always be with Paige," Peter said, his face doing the same thing as it did earlier so I knew he was lying. "I tried to convince him otherwise, but he was too convinced for me to change his mind."

"Derek lived in a constant fear that Paige was going to find out what he was." Everything that was coming out of his mouth was a lie apparently, but I still listened.

"Paige liked to sit alone at lunch and I always thought it was strange. Whenever I asked Derek about it, he always said that she liked to study because she didn't like his friends," he said. "I told him that perfect combinations were rare, and that he and Paige should always stay together because they were one."

That told me that he was lying. He said earlier that he tried to convince Derek to not give Paige the bite, but now he was completely going against what he said. I just hoped that Stiles caught on to it too, or I was going to look really stupid when I told him about it later.

"Why would Derek ever want someone to go through what we do? Especially someone that he was in love with," Cora asked skeptically, it seemed like she was wondering as much as I was why Peter was lying.

"Whenever you're in love with someone, young Cora, you'd do anything to be with them forever. It's even stupider when it's your first love," Peter mused, glancing at Stiles and I.

I looked over at Stiles and saw that his jaw was clenched tightly as he stared Peter down. I didn't know what was going on, but something was happening between them that I wasn't aware of.

"The counselor at your school who's Deaton's sister is actually the alpha pack's emissary," Peter said, trying to change the topic of conversation.

"Why do the werewolves never tell me important things like that? That's a very important thing to tell Stiles!" Stiles said, jumping back to his feet.

I stood up with him and placed a comforting hand on his back and made him turn around to face me. "Hey, it's okay. We're going to let Peter finish his story before jumping Scott's ass about not telling us."

The tension in his body left and he sat back down on the couch beside me. He took my hand into his and ran his thumb over the top of it to make sure he was chilled out.

"I told that woman a lot of things about my life, a lot of intimate details," he breathed out. "But she did give me really good advice…"

"That's what emissaries do," Peter agreed with him. Then he went back into his story, "Derek asked Paige to meet up with him at the school. But he actually wanted her to meet with Ennis so he could give her the bite. He sat in the locker room by himself, listening her crying and whimpering as Ennis chased her and bit her."

"Why would Derek want Ennis to turn her? Even more, why would Ennis want to bite and change her?" Cora asked skeptically, eyeing Peter.

"He was the perfect person to do the job. He had just lost a member of his pack and, by doing Derek a favor, he would gain a place in Talia's good graces," Peter told her.

"Derek doesn't remember that it was Ennis who bit her?" I asked, playing with Stiles' fingers.

"If he remembers, he hasn't said anything about it," he answered. The story went on, "After Paige was bitten, Derek realized that it wasn't going to change her."

"You told me the night that you bit Lydia that if the bite doesn't change you it kills you," Stiles said, suddenly putting all of the pieces together. "It killed Paige, didn't it?"

"It was going to, but Derek was trying to help her. He took as much of her pain away as he could and when it got too much for her to handle, he killed her," Peter finished his story. "When a werewolf kills an innocent, it takes a piece of their soul and makes it a little darker."

"That's what you meant when you said it changed his eyes! Yours are blue and Jackson's were blue whenever he finally changed last year!" I gasped, realizing that it meant they were all killers.

Whenever Peter left, I knew I had to tell Stiles and Cora that I thought he was lying. I hoped that they agreed with me because the last thing I wanted was the pair of them against me.

"What's that look about?" Cora asked me.

"What look?" I asked, feigning innocence.

"The look that makes me want to punch you," she answered dismissively, making me smile.

"Oh wow, you definitely are Derek's sister," I exclaimed.

I hit her shoulder with mine and made her laugh. Stiles looked at us with raised brows, I wasn't exactly easy to trust people after my dad left. I was being pretty chummy with Cora considering we'd just met.

"I think he's keeping secrets and lying about some of the parts of the story he told us," I told them both, making the mood more serious.

"Yeah, I thought so too while he was talking. We're reading Heart of Darkness in school and it has an unreliable narrator," Stiles said suddenly drawing mine and Cora's attention. "He tells the story from his perspective to make himself look like he's a good person."

"It's almost like we didn't get the whole story from him," I added.

"So are you planning to ask Derek about the girl that he loved but had to kill?" Cora asked Stiles with a raised brow that would put his to shame.

"I'll do it if I have to," he finally answered before standing up and pulling me up as well. "We're going to head out before this storm gets worse."

"I'll see you later, Cora," I said, squeezing her hand before following Stiles back outside and out to the front door. "Are we going to make a run for it? It's pouring outside."

He held his hand out for me and laced our fingers together. "On the count of three we run out to the Jeep. It shouldn't be locked."

I nodded and when he hit three, I clutched his hand and ran as fast as I could to the Jeep. I was almost inside when Stiles pulled me to a stop in the middle of the parking lot. I cupped a hand over my eyes so I could see him.

"What are you doing? I'm getting soaked to the bone," I shouted to be heard over the pounding rain.

"What's going on between us, Scarlet? I'm so confused about everything, especially us," he cried, throwing his arms out dramatically.

I scoffed at the fact that he thought he was frustrated. I was the queen of sexual frustration whenever it came to a certain Stiles Stilinski. I couldn't exactly tell him that without sounding like a total horn-dog so I kept it to myself. I actually stomped my foot on the ground and pushed his chest.

"Why do you think I know what's going on?! You've been there just as much as I have," I shouted back at him. "What do you think we are?"

That wasn't the answer that he wanted judging by the way he stalked off towards his Jeep. That wasn't even fair, I was supposed to be the one that threw bitch-fits, not Stiles.

I seriously rewrote this chapter like four times before I got it to look like this so... Yeah.