The Wolf Amoung Us

Summary: After having lost Peter to his obsession with power, Sydney was sure of one thing and one thing only: she needed to pull her life back together. With unexpected news that will change everything, will she become the strong alpha that she desires so much or will she struggle to keep it together until it's too late? Season 5: Peter Hale/OC

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Teen Wolf, Sydney however is all mine.

Chapter 49:

Aidan was a good twenty feet in front of his brother but so long as he could still hear or smell Ethan, then he wasn't concerned. They had been out in the preserve for just over an hour and still there was no sign of anything except the vaguely unfamiliar scents of a myriad of supernatural beasts.

He could pinpoint a reptilian scent as well as a canine-esque scent, but he couldn't lock onto one specific scent. It was almost as though the things that he could smell were more than just one breed of creature, which only served to remind Aidan that whatever they were dealing with was much bigger than them.

He had heard talk of the chimeras, had even seen the very Theo Raeken in all of his glory, but that was completely different than locking on to the numerous other scents littering the preserve. It was almost overwhelming but it definitely worked in their favour. If they were having this much trouble trying to track down Deucalion, Aidan couldn't even begin to imagine how hard it was for the formerly blind alpha. At least Aidan was aware of what chimeras were, Deucalion would have enough trouble trying to figure that one out.

Slowing down in the forest, Aidan stole a quick glance back and caught sight of his brother in his peripherals. Ethan had also slowed down but he was focused in on something on the ground, something that Aidan had missed apparently. Without hesitating, Aidan retreated back to where his brother was and when he came up next to him, he immediately spotted the subject of interest.

"They could be Theo's, or one of his packs." Aidan said in a hushed whisper as he took in the sight of the footprints. They looked rather large though, which Aidan could conclude meant they belonged to a male, so if the tracks did belong to one of Theo's pack, he could eliminate the two females that he had with him.

"It doesn't smell like anything but a werewolf though." Ethan countered and crouched down. He ran his finger along the edge of the groove marking a heel print in the ground. When he lifted his finger up, he held it below his nostril and took a sniff, trying to figure out if it smelled familiar or not. There were still far too many scents floating in the air around them. "It could be Deucalion."

Aidan dropped down to a squat next to his brother and planted his hands on the ground on either side of the trail of tracks. He leaned forward and nearly pressed his nose into the impression itself but stopped a few inches away. Closing his eyes, he tried to focus on the scent in front of him, hoping that he could ignore the rest of the faint odours in the preserve. When he opened his eyes, he looked upwards and followed the tracks with his eyes.

Ethan twisted sideways and caught the glowing blue of Aidan's irises, something having struck a nerve with his twin.

"Who do you think it is?" Ethan questioned, his voice barely audible.

"I think it's Deucalion." Aidan answered, matching his tone with his brother. "But until I see him with my own eyes, I don't want to jump to any conclusions."

"Agreed, so, we follow it?"

"Lead the way." Aidan waved his hand in front of him as he rose up to his full height, quickly falling in line behind Ethan.

The two of them continued to follow the tracks, occasionally pausing to look left and right to make sure that there were no threats hiding amoungst the trees. Aidan also peered back behind him, making sure that nothing could surprise them from that direction while Ethan focused his attention on what was in front of them. They continued to follow the tracks and it wasn't until they reached a small stream flowing through the forest that either of them stopped.

Aidan backed away from the water and ducked down behind a wide tree trunk, Ethan following his lead. Together, the two of them peered around the tree and tried to figure out which direction to go in seeing as the tracks faded away the closer to the stream they got. Which way would this werewolf go?

"They walked in the water." Ethan pointed out in a whisper. "It would cover their tracks and dilute their scent."

"But is it diluted enough to throw us off completely?" Aidan quipped and scanned their surroundings, looking for any obvious and imminent threats. When he was satisfied that there were none nearby, he stepped out from behind the tree and closed in on the river, crouching down so that he was closer to the ground. Ethan stepped around the tree too but he kept his back against it while he acted as a lookout.

Aidan wandered along the side of the stream away from Ethan, inhaling the air every step before he came to a stop and turned around, doing the exact same thing in the opposite direction. Once he was about the same distance in the other direction, Aidan stopped and looked over to his brother.

"Just throwing this out there but should we maybe consider the tiniest possibility that this scent we're tracking belongs to Peter?" Ethan suggested and Aidan let out a sharp snort before shaking his head no. "Well why not?"

"Syd and Peter are mated, if this was Peter we were tracking, we'd know, it'd have traces of her scent in it." Aidan answered as if it were the simplest solution.

"Okay, fair point, but what if he somehow managed to break their mated bond?" Ethan countered with a smug look on his face.

"Still no." Aidan answered without skipping a beat.

"Really?"

"Bruin." Aidan tossed the baby's name out and Ethan let out a growl for not realizing it sooner. If there were tracking Peter, by some small miracle, and even if he had managed to somehow break his mated bond, his scent would still have traces of Bruin in it.

Ethan knew Bruin's scent by heart having spent enough time with the baby girl day in and day out. His brother was right, there was no way that the scent they were tracking was Peter Hale's, unless-

"What if the Dread Doctors got to him though?" Ethan barked.

"I guess maybe but they make chimeras, that's more than one scent, and like you said earlier, this is purely werewolf."

Ethan raised his hands in surrender and let out a soft, frustrated growl, "then which way did they go?"

A smile crossed Aidan's features and without another word to his brother, he took off in the direction that he was already heading. The werewolf they were tracking was clearly banking on anyone following him to have poor skills when it came to scents but Aidan and Ethan weren't new to the werewolf game. They were experienced, former alphas even, and just because the person they were tracking had walked in the water, didn't mean they were going to lose the twins.

Maybe the chimeras weren't that adept, but Aidan and Ethan knew better than some barely put together hybrids.

A silence fell over them and Ethan came up the rear this time, letting his brother lead them as they continued to try and hunt down whoever the faint scent belonged to. When the two of them approached a bridge over the stream in the distance, they took a few steps away from the running water and paused, looking for any threats or obstacles at the structure.

Aidan threw his arm out and held his brother back but he moved closer to the bridge in silence. When he was within thirty yards of the wooden walkway, he waved Ethan forward and listened carefully but heard nothing as his brother closed the distance between them.

"What does that look like to you?"

Without answering, Ethan took a step closer to the bridge and watched as a teenaged girl sauntered across to the opposite side of the stream to them. He continued watching as a couple teenaged boys followed her lead.

"Can you smell that?" Ethan hissed and sidestepped towards the thicker brush a few feet away from them. Aidan followed him closely and once they were hidden behind the branches, that's when they finally laid eyes on the very man that had ruined them.

Aidan stood frozen in the brush next to his unmoving brother as they watched Theo's pack of Chimeras try and nearly fail to get an advantage over Deucalion, the one and only Demon Wolf.

He might've stood a chance but there were more of them and they weren't giving up. It was a hard fought battle for their former leader but in the end, he had been brought down a few pegs.

"We need to tell Syd." Ethan remarked and continued to watch as the pack of chimeras surrounded the fallen Deucalion, each of them grabbing a limb before hauling him off the ground. "What the hell would Theo want with him?"

"I don't know but I'm going to find out."

XxxxxxXxxxxxXxxxxxX

The tunnels were super creepy and the last time Sydney could recall being on edge this bad was probably when she had been dealing with her heat. Peter hadn't been the most understanding, and she had ventured out into the sewers with him while she had wanted nothing more than to roll around in bed with him, but she had accounted her edginess at that time to the fact that she was dealing with her estrous cycle.

This was a totally different feeling of dread.

There were funky smells coming from every direction and she knew that one of those funky smells was wafting off of Gerard, but she wasn't about to voice her objections to being near the Argents. Chris was doing a decent job at leading them to wherever it was he wanted to find and Sydney wasn't going to get in his way. She'd merely make sure that Charlie was unharmed throughout the entire journey in the eerie, dark, dank, stinky tunnels.

When Chris rounded a corner and came to a stop though, Sydney seized the opportunity and took in a deep breath of the air around them. She could pinpoint Charlie's scent, as well as Isaac's, Chris' and Gerard's but there were a couple other familiar scents lingering around her too. Was that…no, no way, what were Scott and Liam doing down in the tunnels too?

Maybe they were doing the same thing as she was, maybe they were looking for something, anything, that might help them defeat the Dread Doctors.

Instead of breaking the silence, Sydney looked at Charlie and caught the amused look in her eyes, okay, so Charlie could smell them too, that was a good sign, at least Sydney wasn't going crazy, although she wasn't sure if there was a better reason as to why she was currently underground with two Argents and none other than Isaac Lahey.

Had she lost her mind after all? It wasn't like she had too much to base her sanity on anyways, she had thought that being mated to Peter Hale was a good thing and now she was kicking herself almost daily.

"We're nearly there." Chris whispered and waved them all forward, Sydney taking a few more strides than the rest of the ones behind her so that she was walking next to Chris. Gerard was right in front of them but when they approached a large, metal door tucked away in the corner of the tunnel, he froze in his movements.

"Can you hear anything?" Gerard questioned slowly and Sydney squeezed her eyes shut, trying to pinpoint any foreign sounds that might pose a threat to them. When she heard nothing more than the typical noises from the people she was with, she shook her head no.

"I think whatever's behind that door is clear." Sydney said firmly.

"I agree." Charlie piped up from the end of the line. "All I can hear is us."

Gerard took their statements as permission to open the door in front of him. He drew his gun, Chris doing the same, and hesitantly stepped inside. Sydney forced her claws out and when she glanced back at her beta, she spotted Charlie following her lead. One by one they all entered the room and once Isaac was inside, Sydney turned back to the door and gingerly shut it behind them. She didn't want any threats getting in the same way that they did and she certainly didn't want them surprising her if they did show up.

She leaned her back against the door and looked around the room, taking in the sights, scents and sounds that remained lingering in the air. She could faintly smell blood but it was old and stale, which meant that whoever it belonged to was already hurt. There was nothing more she could do for them, not unless she managed to catch a fresh scent of course.

"Where are we?" Charlie asked in a hushed tone and Chris took one hard look around the room before holstering his weapon. Gerard repeated the motions and once his gun was tucked away, he ventured off into the darker part of the room.

"Look." Isaac hissed and waved his hand in the direction of a pile of debris on the floor. Charlie followed his motion, as did Sydney and Chris, and the four of them looked up at a giant mural painted on the wall behind the actual wall of the room itself. She took a step towards it and studied it carefully but before she could ask questions of her own, she froze and focused her ears in on the faint noises coming from outside.

Sydney could hear them before she saw them and when the doorway behind her popped open again, she figured that Scott would be surprised to see her, unless he had managed to pick up her scent. She didn't figure he had been looking for anything like that though, if he was in the tunnels, then that meant he was looking for something else.

She heard Chris' gun cocking too, and when she turned her attention towards the hunter, she took note that he wasn't messing around. Seeing him standing there, his gun aimed directly at the two werewolves making their way into the room, Sydney briefly felt a little embarrassed for not informing him that she could not only hear Scott and Liam but she had smelled them practically the very second that she had gotten into the tunnels.

Right, Chris wasn't like her, or Charlie for that matter, he clearly had no idea if the people making the noises were friend or foe, so goes the life of not having super hearing. Then again, it wasn't like Isaac had put in any effort to inform Chris that they had company in the tunnels, and it didn't take an experienced werewolf to pick up on Scott's presence. Making a mental note to let Chris know what she heard or saw in the future, Sydney shook her head and focused her attention back to the task at hand.

Scott glanced quickly at her but he seemed to lock his eyes on the older Argent, Gerard, the very snake within the hunter family, and she could sense his apprehension towards the man simply because she could smell his scent changing slightly. Scott was just as surprised to see Gerard with Chris as she had been, but hey, Gerard wasn't really a threat, not to her anyways, not when she considered the fact that there were so-called Dread Doctors running loose in Beacon Hills with an evil plan of their own that Sydney wanted to thwart.

Without question, Chris lowered his gun away from Scott and quickly tucked it back under his jacket, where it would remain until another potential threat presented itself. Sydney closed in on Charlie and made sure to stay nearby in case anyone tried to pull a fast one on her, Gerard may not have been much of a threat to Sydney but she figured that Charlie would make an easy target for the crooked old man.

"You didn't." Scott quipped, looking directly at Gerard as an expression of disbelief took up residence on his face.

"I had to." Chris argued calmly and Gerard took a step closer to Scott, revealing himself in all of his ancient glory. Sydney shook her head and resisted the urge to growl at Gerard herself, he was not trustworthy but she understood the idea of necessary evil. If Chris thought that he needed his father's help, then she wasn't about to argue.

"Old news." Sydney muttered and Charlie looked over at her alpha with a knowing look on her face. She watched Scott though and when he brought out his vibrant red alpha eyes, Sydney was tempted to follow his lead, making sure that Gerard knew who he was messing with.

"Hello, Scott. I haven't seen that color on you. It suits you." Gerard remarked with a malicious smirk. Scott blinked his eyes and when he looked back at Gerard, his irises were their usual colour.

"Who's the old guy?" Liam voiced and Sydney couldn't help but smile at the little beta's curiosity. Good, Liam was catching on.

"At the moment they would call me a necessary evil, but you can call me Gerard." Gerard countered, looking between Chris and Scott. Sydney kept Charlie, and now Isaac, behind her, staying in the front line in order to protect her beta and keep her safe. It was her job as the alpha and while she trusted Chris, she definitely didn't trust Gerard, no matter how necessary he was to the plan.

"What were you thinking?" Scott accused.

"Back up a second there young guns." Sydney raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. "If Chris here says that we need him, then I think we should maybe listen to him."

"Is that what you think? Do we really need him?" Scott asked, but there was more anger in his tone than questioning. Whatever Scott's plan was, it didn't seem to involve Gerard, and Sydney couldn't really fault him for that sort of thinking.

"I do, I believe that we need him." Chris answered calmly, coolly and Sydney couldn't help but wait anxiously for more information from the two Argents. This was what they needed, they needed theories, they needed information, and if being in some dark and dingy tunnel with Chris and his untrustworthy father was the way to get it, then Sydney was all in, she just wasn't going to be all in all by herself.

"Common enemy, right?" Sydney supplied with a brief shrug. She was trying to make her own point, she knew that there was something bigger out there waiting for them, she knew that they were going to need all the firepower they could get their hands on, and if Gerard happened to get caught in the crossfire and become a casualty of the beast, then it would be a win-win situation for them all, right?

"He's right. If you want to catch a werewolf like the Beast of Gevaudan, you're going to need more than one Argent." Gerard explained cryptically.

"He knows all the stories, all the folklore; everything written and everything passed down." Chris explained and Sydney rolled her eyes.

She could certainly get the twins to start googling this so called beast, it wasn't like the people on the internet weren't full of theories on different supernatural creatures, but having an Argent who knew first hand things, well that would certainly be a good asset to have, she just wished that she felt less uneasy when it came to Gerard.

He had been the father to the woman who had burned her house to the ground, the same woman who had lit the Hale house up with the entire family, save for a couple of them, locked inside to die by the heat of the flames. When it came to Gerard and Kate, part of Sydney would've rather seen them both dead by her hands, but his execution could wait until this so called beast was taken care of.

"You sure about this?" Scott pressed, clearly still skeptical over Gerard's presence.

"Take a look." Chris instructed and turned towards the mural painted on the wall behind him. There were two black beasts facing off against one another in worn out brushstrokes, but the picture was still very, very clear and Chris knew exactly what it represented. "The one on the right is the Beast of Gevaudan. Do you know what the other one is?"

"With any luck it's the ultimate supernatural warrior." Sydney said in a low tone, trying and failing to make light of the situation.

"And hopefully it's invincible." Charlie added, her tone equally as low. Isaac looked between the two girls and shook his head, but the smirk on his face said it all; he wouldn't have been too upset if they were actually right about the beast on the left.

"The Hellhound, the guardian of supernatural places. They're both creatures of the night, but you may know them as ordinary people during the day." Gerard answered after a few beats of silence.

"And most likely neither of them know what they are." Chris added in sadly. He held Scott's gaze but the true alpha was looking over at Liam, which immediately set Chris on edge. "What is it?"

"We found a message in Latin: 'Damnatio Memoriae'." Scott answered genuinely and suddenly the two Argents were looking at one another, knowing looks on their faces.

"What the hell does that mean?" Sydney hissed and took a step closer to the wall, yet she was still a good ten feet away from it. "Translation please?"

"They want it to remember itself." Gerard announced and Sydney bit back a growl of frustration. Okay, so she was going to have to look up the phrase on google when she got home, she just hoped that she could remember it, or at the very least, that Charlie had been paying attention when Scott said it the first time.

"That might give us time." Chris murmured, looking away from his father.

"Time for what?" Liam barked out quickly.

"To prevent this." Chris replied and sauntered over to the mural on the wall. Sydney watched his every movement and even when Charlie slipped her hand into hers, she didn't flinch, she remained standing exactly where she was as Chris pressed his palms against the painted beasts. He raised his one foot off the ground and went to town on the remnants of the wall near the floor, the stone wall cracking into pieces and falling to the concrete floor below.

Sydney furrowed her eyebrows together in confusion and took in the sight of the mural that hadn't been revealed to them before. Was that…were those bodies littered underneath the battling black beasts depicted on the wall? Dead bodies even?

Chris took a few steps back, allowing them all a clearer view of the mural. It was unmistakable at this point, they were certainly bodies, piled high and clearly not of very lively people at all.

There were wounds on each and every visible limb of the people in the painting and blood leaking from their injured skin, but were her eyes deceiving her? Those couldn't possibly be what she thought they were.

"Holy hell." Charlie sucked in a breath and made a move to step closer to the wall but Sydney tightened her grip on Charlie's hand and held her in place next to her.

"Who are they?" Liam asked the question on everyone's mind. Okay, so he certainly thought they looked like bodies too, but maybe there was a reasonable explanation, maybe it wasn't as bad as it seemed?

Who was Sydney kidding, this was Beacon Hills and things were never that easy.

"Us. It's all of us." Scott answered breathlessly, his eyes never leaving the mural.

"No." Charlie protested and moved closer to Sydney, wrapping her arms around her alpha's middle. "None of those look like me."

"Yeah, I know." Sydney murmured and ran her hand up and down Charlie's back in an attempt to soothe her. "None of them look like me either but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen."

"Is this why you and dad wondered if I wanted to go back to Colorado with him? Did you know this was coming?" Charlie pressed but Sydney shook her head no.

"I knew bad things were going to happen but I had no idea about this. If you want to leave with your dad though, obviously I wouldn't be upset." Sydney replied in a low tone. "This shit is terrifying."

"Yeah, but I still think I want to stay." Charlie whimpered. "If we can stop this thing, if we have a chance to take it down, we're going to need all the help we can get, right?"

Sydney tilted her head to the side and considered Charlie's statement. She was absolutely right, they were going to need as many people on their side as possible, but that didn't change the fact that whatever was going to happen was absolutely horrific. Maybe they'd be able to band together and stop this Beast, or maybe they'd figure out a way to defeat it, that didn't mean that more people weren't going to die and in the end, maybe it'd all be for nothing.

"Chris?" Sydney called out to him and he glanced over his shoulder at her, giving her a nod to go on now that she had his attention. "Can we stop this thing?"

"My family did it once before." Chris answered softly.

"Can you do it again?" Sydney quipped.

"We all better start praying." He stated firmly. "This beast isn't going to go down without one hell of a fight."

Charlie's fingers pressed into Sydney's sides the slightest little bit, drawing her alpha's attention down towards her. Sydney met Charlie's eyes and forced her vibrant red irises to the surface, Charlie countering by bringing out the gold colour in hers.

"We got this." Charlie sighed.

"We don't have any other choice." Sydney countered and silently prayed that her pack would all make it out alive.

XxxxxxXxxxxxXxxxxxX

So it seems that maybe Deucalion is in Sydney's pack's sights...what do you think about that?