"We live, we die

We steal, we kill, we lie

Just like animals

But with far less grace

We laugh, we cry

Like babies in the night

Forever running wild

In the human race"

Savages by MARINA

We tracked Boyd and Cora to the preserve then split up. Scott and I ran through the forest and he skidded to a stop. "You hear that?" he asked.

"I don't have super hearing," I reminded him. "Let's go." He took off running and I followed. We slowed when we found a jar of fireflies on the ground. Someone was out catching fireflies.

Scott picked it up then tilted his head. "They're close." We entered a clearing. A short distance away was Boyd lifting the walls of a small shack. "There are two kids inside."

"Use the fireflies to distract him. Get ready to run."

Boyd tossed aside the walls of the shack and Scott took off the lid of the fireflies and rolled the jar towards the rampaging werewolf, it rolling under his feet. The moment Boyd was distracted, Scott and I ran as quickly as we kid, both snatching up a kid and running as far away as we could. We heard a roar behind us.

A good distance away, Scott and I stopped, setting down the kids. They didn't let go of our waists the moment we set them down. Scott pulled out his phone and called Derek.

"We lost him," he told the alpha. He paused for Derek's response. "Yeah, we kind of had to." Another response. "I know, which is why I think we should stick together. Trust me, he's too strong, too fast, and way too angry for me and Sara to handle. We've got to do this together." Derek said something. "Yeah. Just got to drop something off first." Scott and I looked down at the little boy and girl clutching us. He put away his phone.

"Where are your parents?" I asked them.

"At home," the girl replied.

"And where is that?" She pointed through the trees. "Okay, let's go. Let's get you home."

Scott and I dropped them off outside of their house then took off to meet Derek and Riichi at the entrance to the trails of the preserve. Once we found them, we stopped to look at tracks.

"Is it them?" Scott asked, looking at a large tread next to a smaller one.

"We're not the only ones that decided to stick together," Derek noted.

"Great, werewolves into teamwork," I remarked.

Scott tossed a glance my way but didn't bring it up. "Is that gonna make it easier or harder to catch them?"

Derek looked around. "I don't know."

"Derek, we saw Boyd try to rip two little kids apart. Are they gonna do that to everyone they find?"

"Yes, Scott, unless we get there first. We should ask for help," I said. "Who knows better than anyone how to catch a werewolf?"

Derek growled. "No, I'll call Isaac."

While Derek walked a short distance away to make his phone call, I turned to Riichi who leaned against a nearby tree. I glanced at Scott and held up a finger, silently asking for a moment alone with Riichi. He listened, joining Derek's side. I went closer to my brother hesitantly. His eyes drifted up to mine from the forest floor. "One hell of a reunion," I told him with a smirk.

He smiled. "You were always a sarcastic child."

"And you always laughed." I studied him. He seemed far more closed off than he had been when we were children. His long hair was strange to see, but it oddly suited him. "What happened to you? I thought you and Cora died in the fire. We all thought you died."

He took in a slow, deep breath. "We made it out of the fire and ran. Cora thought her whole family was dead, including Derek. I didn't want her to be alone. I know I should've told you and Mom and Dad, but Sara, hunters lit the fire. Everyone in the house was supposed to be dead. I wasn't going to risk going home." He paused, glancing in the direction of the werewolves. "So are you and that Scott guy, like, dating or something?"

Before I could say anything about the change in topic and his bizarre question, Scott and Derek returned to us. "Isaac's on his way," Derek told us. "Let's go."

The four of us ran through the forest together and Isaac intercepted us on the way. Isaac and I sped ahead, being faster than Scott and Derek, and Riichi took up the rear, not at full strength yet from being held captive for months by the Alpha Pack.

We tracked Cora to a small campsite and jumped into the fray. I blasted Cora with fire straight into Isaac's claw and he swiped at her, knocking her to the ground. She growled and threw him against a nearby tree. Scott jumped over and kicked her away. We faced her and Derek and Riichi joined us, Derek letting his fangs grow and growl at her. We stood in between her and a human girl who had been camping. Derek took off running, and Isaac, Riichi, and I followed. Scott trailed behind after checking on the girl.

When we lost Cora, Scott got a call from Stiles. "Are you sure?" Scott asked. Derek and Isaac were listening in with their wolf hearing. I seriously hated not having super hearing. "Can you get a little closer to make sure it was them?" Oh, great, that must mean there's a dead body. Scott sighed at Stiles. "Please just do it." When Scott hung up, he turned to the rest of us. "Stiles said Lydia found a dead body at the public pool."

"This doesn't make any sense," Derek said. "The public pool is all the way on the other side of the woods. We haven't tracked them anywhere near there."

Scott put his phone away. "Derek, they killed someone."

"How are they moving so fast?"

"Derek."

"They can't be that fast on foot."

"They killed someone. Some totally innocent kid is dead and it's our fault."

"You're not the one who broke the seal," Riichi spoke up from his spot against a tree.

"Yeah, but we did break into the vault," I corrected.

"Who is he?" Isaac asked, leaning closer to me.

"My brother."

He did a double-take. "Your what?"

"It's my fault," Derek interrupted before the conversation could be derailed.

"We need help," Scott told him, not mentioning Derek's continued self-deprecating stance.

"We have Isaac now."

"I mean real help."

Isaac reared his head back, taking offense to Scott's statement. "Excuse me? What did I ever do to you?" I was about to say something, but Isaac held up his hand. "Don't answer that." I snorted and smirked at his response. I could tell Scott and Derek wanted to roll their eyes while Riichi watched amused.

"They're too fast for us," Scott explained. "Well, most of us." He gestured to Riichi and I being the resident kitsune. "But you can't track them by sent or hearing. And they're too strong, too rabid."

"We'll catch 'em," Derek said.

"What happens if we do?" Isaac asked. "We just gonna hold them down until the sun comes up?"

"Maybe it would be easier just to kill 'em."

I shook my head and made a noise of disagreement. "Nu-uh, not unless we absolutely have to, and I thought we agreed we'd be saving everyone?"

"Exactly," Scott said. "Killing them isn't the right thing to do."

Isaac looked at the shorter beta. "What if it's the only thing to do? If we can't even catch them, what else do we do?"

"Find someone who knows what they're doing," Scott told him. "Someone who knows how to hunt werewolves. Sara was right earlier. We need Argent."

We sat in Derek's new gray FJ Cruiser outside of the supermarket. It was roomier than his Camaro had been. Isaac and I sat in the back and Riichi and Derek were up front. Scott was the chosen one to talk to Chris Argent. Isaac had been filled in on what we found in the vault and what had happened on the way to the store. From the car, we watched from the car as Chris pulled a gun on Scott the moment he walked up.

"You're friends with a hunter?" Riichi questioned, disbelief clouding his voice.

"Not by choice," Derek replied.

"Do you think this is gonna work?" Isaac asked, his hand intertwined with mine.

"Nope."

"Me neither." Isaac paused then leaned forward, looking at his alpha. "So your, uh, your sister. . ." He trailed off as Derek turned to look at him. "Sorry, yeah, it's-" He cleared his throat. "It's bad timing, I'm sorry." Derek turned back to the fiasco outside. Isaac leaned back in the seat next to me, a small smirk pulling at my lips at the trainwreck my boyfriend was getting himself into. "I'll ask later. It's fine." Derek looked at Isaac again, turning more to look at him in the back. "Or never." He quickly nodded his head. "Yeah, yeah, I'm good with never. Wasn't that curious anyway."

"Sara, can you be a dear. . ." Derek trailed off, looking at me through the rearview mirror.

"On it." I hit Isaac in the stomach with our intertwined hands. He grunted in shock. It definitely hadn't hurt. "Been wanting to do that all summer." He looked at me incredulously. "Oh, don't look at me like that, baka. My brother isn't the only one I need to talk to." I noticed Riichi frown from the front seat.

"Are we really gonna do this here?" Isaac asked.

"Might as well before we all die by two savage werewolves and a fucking alpha pack of all things."

"Children!" Derek interrupted, turning back to glare at us. "Do I need to separate you two?" Isaac and I grumbled and relaxed in our seats, but we still leaned against each other and didn't let each other's hand go.

"Found who she's dating," I heard Riichi mutter.

In front of us, we saw Chris get in his car followed by Scott. Derek followed behind. Scott led Chris to the crime scene at the public pool then my phone dinged shortly after.

Wonder Pup: He's in. Meet at last place we saw Boyd and Cora.

I leaned forward and showed Derek the text. "Great," Derek said and took off again. After parking the car at the nearest entrance to the preserve, we made our way to where we had lost the two werewolves. We waited for Chris and Scott to catch up.

Once they arrived, Chris dropped a bag of supplies on the ground and knelt to look at the footprints. "You're tracking them by print?"

"Trying to," Scott said.

"Well, then, you've been wasting your time. There's only one creature on Earth that can visually track footprints, and that's man." He stood back up. "And if you're not trained like me, you have no idea that this print is Boyd's and these-"

Isaac cut him off from his spot next to me. "Are Cora's."

"Nope," Chris corrected. "They're yours." Isaac looked down at his shoes. "You trampled Cora's as soon as you walked over here. Listen, I know the three of you are focusing half your energy on resisting your own urges under the full moon, but that puts you at a severe disadvantage to Boyd and Cora, who have fully given in. They put the pedal to the floor where you three are barely hitting the speed limit. At least you have two unaffected kitsune to balance it out. Now you just need to find them."

"So what do we do?" Derek asked.

"Focus on your sense of smell. Actual wolves are known to track their prey by up to a hundred miles a day by scent. A trained hunter can use scent to track them. If the wind is with them, wolves can track a scent by a distance of two miles, which means we can draw them to us or into a trap." Chris pulled a net from his bag and tossed it to Scott. "The full moon does give us one advantage. They'll have a higher heat signature, which makes them easier to spot with infrared." He pulled out night vision goggles, tossing us each a pair before we could say anything.

"Thanks, but I've got my own," Derek said, shifting his eyes. He was under a lot better control than Scott and Isaac who were still young wolves.

I handed my pair back to Chris. "Same." Riichi passed me his, and I handed it to Chris, too.

Chris set them back in the bag. "Just remember, we're not hunting wild animals. Underneath those impulses are two intelligent human beings. Don't think they can't rely on that human side. It's suppressed, but it's there, reminding them how to mask their scent, how to cover their tracks, how to survive."

"Better than our last game of cat and mouse, huh?" I joked, looking at both Scott and Isaac. Isaac cracked a smile while Scott shook his head. At least one person appreciated the joke.

We stopped by the cliffs overlooking the town. "When's the last time you saw your sister?" Chris asked Derek.

"Six years. I thought she died in the fire."

"She thought you died in the fire," Riichi told him. Derek frowned more.

"Do you feel like you have a lock on her scent?" Chris asked. Derek shook his head. "Scott, how confident are you in your skills?"

"Honestly, most of the time I'm trying not to think about all the things I can smell."

Chris wasn't exactly overjoyed with the confidence. And he didn't even bother asking Isaac. "Alright. The problem is when they breach the woods and hit the residential area. Once they're past the high school, they're right in the middle of Beacon Hills."

"They're not gonna kill everything they see, are they?" Isaac wondered.

"No. But there is an important difference to recognize. Wolves hunt for food. At a certain point, they get full. Boyd and Cora are hunting for the pleasure of the kill." Part of me hated being the only girl in the group at the moment because Mr. Argent saying 'pleasure' actually sounded a little hot. "For some primal apex predatory satisfaction that comes from the ripping of warm bodies to bloody shreds. And who knows when that need gets satiated?"

"Well, that's vivid," I murmured.

"We can't kill them," Scott said.

"What if we can't catch 'em?" Derek asked.

I messed with the kunai in my pocket and twirled it between my fingers, careful not to tangle the chain. "Then I guess it's Gerard all over again."

After a hard look from Chris, he said, "Maybe we just need to contain them. There's no one in the school at night, is there?"

"You want to trap them inside?" Derek wondered.

"If there's somewhere with a strong enough door, no windows or access to the outside."

"What about the boiler room?" Isaac suggested. "It's just one big steel door."

"You're sure the school's empty?"

"It has to be," Scott said. "There can't be anyone there this late, right?"

My eyebrows pinched together as I turned to him. "Oh, you mean like how you and Stiles always seem to be?"

"Not helping."

Chris returned to his SUV and grabbed something out of the trunk, each of us following after him. Chris jammed a long, porch-light-looking object into the ground. "These are ultrasonic emitters," he explained. "It's one of the tools we use to corral werewolves, pushing them into a direction we want them to run." He pushed the top in. A light pulsed from it. "Gives off a high-pitched frequency that only they can hear." Chris smiled at Riichi and me as the werewolves cringed, holding their ears and pinching their eyes shut. The hunter looked all too pleased with himself.

"God, no kidding!" Isaac groaned. I smirked and chuckled a little. I got a sick satisfaction from it. Chris turned it off and began handing us each emitters.

"These are gonna drive them to the school?" Derek asked. He had recovered from the sound a lot faster than Isaac and Scott who were blinking hard and rubbing their ears.

"And then it's up to you to get them into the basement."

"Does anyone else want to rethink the plan where we just, uh, kill 'em?" I turned to my boyfriend and hit his stomach again, a little harder that time. "Ow, okay, that's a no."

"It's going to work," Scott said. Derek didn't look too sure. "It'll work."

I flipped the emitter in my hand, catching it as it came back down. "I hope so, Scotty." It looked like we were about to do lawn work.

"Riichi and Sara, both of you should run ahead, go to the furthest part of the school grounds," Derek said. "We'll corral them from this side. We all meet at the school."

Everyone nodded then took off running, Richie and I much more of a blur than even Argent's car. He was stronger as time passed. Running at top speed through the trees was the easiest thing I had to do that night. Once Riichi and I jabbed the emitter's into the ground along the furthest perimeter of the school and the lacrosse field and football field, we met up by the front of the school. A few minutes later, Isaac and Scott arrived.

I jabbed my thumb in the direction of the doors. "Wanna be the delinquents I know and love and break open the door?" I asked with a smile.

They both grinned and laughed, their footsteps in sync as they walked to the door and used their werewolf strength to bust open the school. Scott then looked back at me where I leaned against the stair rail next to Riichi. "Just so we're clear, I've only done this once before when Peter was on his killing spree," he told me.

Isaac shook his head, not believing him. "Scott, don't kid yourself. We all know it was you and Stiles freshman and sophomore year who pranked Coach on his birthday."

"Really?"

"Yeah," I answered. "You and Stiles are like the most obvious people ever. And also, we probably shouldn't stay by the door."

The four of us left to open the other entrances of the school. Riichi stayed with me to go to the back door while Isaac went to the side entrance. My brother and I glanced at each other then at the door.

"So, do we just bust it open?" he wondered awkwardly. Outward displays of strength weren't exactly our wheelhouse.

"I can melt the lock and the surrounding area," I suggested. "It'll be easier." He nodded in agreement and gestured towards the door. Placing my hands around the lock, I heated up my hands, allowing the metal to slowly melt enough to be pliable. I then backed up and Riichi helped me pull open the doors. "Watch them not even come this way." We then heard a howl coming from the football field. "There they are." I then heard honking from the side parking lot. "They're with Isaac and Chris, then." We heard loud footsteps then heard a growl. "Or not."

Riichi and I backed away from the doors and looked down the walkway. There stood Boyd and Cora, fully shifted and growling. Must've left Isaac and Chris. A flash then went off, and again, and again. Riichi and I dived out of the way for Boyd and Cora to run past us into the school. I looked up at the bus parked nearby. There was Allison with her bow. Isaac then came running, skidding to a stop when he saw her, too.

Isaac and I stared at her then watched her run off while Riichi regained his focus faster and said, "Let's go."

Isaac helped me off the ground, and the three of us entered the school, closing the rear doors behind us. We followed them and Derek cut them off, grabbing his sister and tossing her towards Boyd who growled at him. Chris came up behind Derek and held out his stun baton and Scott came down the stairs.

"Come and get us," Derek taunted. He and Scott took off down the adjacent hall, and Boyd and Cora followed. The shifted werewolves followed the other two down to the boiler room and were then locked inside.

Isaac and I stopped at the top of the stairs that led down to the boiler room, watching as Derek pushed against the steel door as Boyd and Cora hit it from the other side. They then stopped.

"Did that actually just work?" Scott asked.

"It worked," Derek replied. The alpha stopped pushing against the door and I relaxed against Isaac, completely relieved. Isaac wrapped his arm around me. Derek sat on the floor. Scott moved towards the boiler room door and tilted his head like he was listening. Derek quietly said something I couldn't hear and Scott replied. Derek said something else and Scott looked back at him surprised.

"What'd he say?" I asked Isaac whose eyes were wide.

"He said he can hear three heartbeats."

"Three?" I repeated then hurried down the stairs to join Scott and Derek, the latter of whom was moving towards the door. "Derek, what are you doing?"

"Close the door behind me and keep it shut," he said. My jaw dropped. No, no, he can't. He'll die. He can't die.

Scott shook his head. "You go in there alone and you're either gonna kill them or they kill you."

"That's why I'm going in alone," Derek said, turning to Scott and me with a solemn expression. My stomach churned at the look. He then opened the door and rushed in.

"Derek, no!" I cried. Scott stopped me from going in after him and shut the door. "Scott, let me in. Let me in!" Isaac grabbed me from behind, pulling me away and up some of the stairs. "No, no, we have to help him." A heavy thud and growling shocked Scott away from the door, but Isaac didn't let me go. "Please, we have to help him." He couldn't die, too. Not after Erica.

"Sara, no, we need to stay out here," Isaac said.

Minutes passed with my face buried in Isaac's shouldered and the skidding of shoes was heard from the top of the stairs. Riichi slid into view. "The sun's coming up," he announced.

Scott immediately opened the door, and Isaac and I followed him into the boiler room.

A short distance inside was Derek kneeling, covering in scratches and blood, between his beta and his sister. But he was breathing. He lifted his head. "There's a teacher. I'll take care of her. Get them out of here." I helped Scott with Boyd while Isaac lifted Cora on his own.

With the help of Riichi and Chris, we got them to Derek's loft. Chris left quickly and Scott got a call from Stiles telling him to meet him at the hospital. Shortly after Scott left, Derek arrived and promptly passed out on the bed in the main room. Riichi watched over Cora's unconscious figure and Isaac looked over Boyd's. I fell asleep on the couch.

Baka - Idiot