"He's not going to hurt me, the kid's practically afraid of his own shadow," Derek said into his cell as he opened up his laptop. He was going to search for old news stories in the area about missing children to find clues as to the identity of the teenager in the bathroom.

"It's not a kid, Derek, it's a monster."

Derek frowned at the tone he heard in Laura's voice. Even through the electronic device he could feel the hatred. She decided to get her own room after Derek refused to abandon or murder the werewolf they'd found.

"He's been hurt, that much is clear, we don't even know if he's ever hurt anyone."

"If you were smart, you'd kill it and get rid of the body, but since you're just the muscle of our operation, do yourself a favor and chain it to the toilet. It wouldn't hurt to muzzle it either."

Derek knew she was trying to protect him, that's what she always did. She liked to tease him about the choices he made; he knew she didn't think he was stupid. Hell, two years ago, maybe even a year ago he would have just pulled the trigger without a second thought. There was something in the kid's eyes though, something he recognized in himself. It was beyond loneliness, it was the absence of hope. He remembered that fear, suffocating him after his family had been killed. If Laura hadn't been there for him, he could have turned out just like the werewolf had.

"I love you too," Derek said.

"You're so dumb," Laura told him, laughing as she hung up the phone.

Derek smiled to himself as he set his cell phone aside and opened up the browser on his computer. Predictably the internet at the motel they were in was horrible. At least it had free wireless.

He was good at research; he'd been doing it his whole adult life. Searching for clues and hints as to where packs of werewolves hunted. How hard could it be to find out who this guy was? He hoped that he wasn't a born werewolf. That would make the whole thing incredibly difficult. If he'd been bitten maybe there was a family out there looking for him.

Derek decided to start with the nearby town of Beacon Hills. He did a query searching for animal attacks. There were an alarming number of results. He tried to refine his search to look for deaths by animal attacks. That didn't help.

"What the hell?"

He clicked link after link, there were far too many attacks to be coincidence. How could a group of werewolves get away with so much? It didn't make any sense; the human authorities should have stepped in. He adjusted his search and added missing people into the mix. A headline caught his eye.

'Death of a Hero' was what was written at the top of the page.

Derek opened the webpage and read through it. Seven years ago, the local sheriff of Beacon Hills, a man named Noah Stilinski, had been found brutally torn apart. His son went missing, they had been camping in the Beacon Hills Preserve.

The article said that the local authorities thought it was a bear attack, possibly several bears based on the amount of blood and the state of the campsite. The town had elected a new Sheriff who had experience with animal attacks, a man named Chris Argent.

Derek's blood went cold when he clicked on a link that brought up a picture of the man. Chris Argent was a werewolf, Derek and his sister had fought with the man and his pack once before. Years ago, the first time they had gotten close to finding the wolves that killed their family. Part of him thought that the pack they had been hunting last night had been Argent werewolves, the brutality matched his previous experience with them.

The Argent family must have been using Chris's position in the community to route suspicion of their activities away from themselves. It was a vicious calculated move that Derek hated the man even more for. He closed the picture before the urge to throw his computer against the wall overtook him.

He went back to the article about the former sheriff. It turned out that the man's wife was still alive. She owned a bakery in the small town. Derek clicked on another link that brought up a picture of the woman. She had dark hair and beautiful brown eyes. She looked sad even though she was smiling as she handed a cookie to a small child clutching his father's hand. He wondered if she was thinking about her family when the picture was taken. He wondered if there was ever a single moment when she wasn't.

That article lead to another, and another after that each one referencing various movements by the local town to investigate the deaths and disappearances. Derek clicked through them feverishly until he found one about a young teenager who was tirelessly looking for his missing friend. There was a video clip attached to it. He opened it and turned the volume on his laptop up.

"We're here with a local high school junior by the name of Jackson Whittemore," a reporter said, "this young man has spent the last seven years searching for his missing friend." The woman with the microphone turned to regard a boy with blonde hair and pale blue eyes. He looked like a model, or at least, he probably would have if he ever smiled. "Jackson," she continued, "can you tell us about what you're doing?"

The young man looked directly into the camera as he held up a picture and leaned down to talk too loudly into the microphone.

"This is a kid I used to know," Jackson said, his voice sounded raw as he held up a picture of a young child, maybe nine or ten years old next to a blonde kid Derek assumed was Jackson as a child. The dark-haired boy had his eyes closed, caught in the middle of laughing in the picture. "Seven years ago, he was kidnapped when his father was murdered." The reporter looked nervously back at the camera, that's when Derek noticed it was a recording of a live news cast that had been taken several months ago.

"Mr. Whitmore, the police department's investigation found evidence of an animal attack, not a murder or kidnapping."

Jackson ignored her and held up a police sketch that was in his other hand, it was a rough rendering of a familiar looking boy who had shaggy hair. "This is what experts think he might look like now."

The reporter looked back at the camera, eyes wide with fear, like she knew something and was afraid to say more. Jackson looked directly into the camera.

"How many people are we going to let go missing before we stand up and fight back?" Jackson said, his voice tight with anger as he continued. "What if it's your kid next? What if it's your brother or sister? What if it was your parents who never came home?"

The reporter tried to lay a restraining hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged her off and lunged forward grabbing the camera and pulling it close to his face. "I'm going to find you Stiles, I know I saw you in the woods outside of town! Your mom wants you to come home. I'm going to find you!"

The video clip ended, they must have cut the live feed at the kid's outburst. He looked to see the name of the reporter for the event; her name was listed as Natalie Martin. Derek opened up his cell phone and made notes of the names of the blonde teenager in the video as well as the former sheriff and the reporter. He rewound the video to the artist's rendering of the shaggy haired boy. It's possible it could have been an estimation of what the werewolf in the shower would have looked like. If his hair had grown out rather than been shaved off.

The woman in the picture at the bakery had the same color hair and eyes as the werewolf. It was possible they could have been related. The sheriff's death and the taking of the son could have been part of the Argent's plan to set up shop in the town. Taking the boy seemed like an odd choice. Unless the Alpha of the pack had bitten him during the attack and the kid had lived.

Derek needed more information, he wondered if the kid would respond to the name 'Stiles'. That was such an odd thing for a parent to name their kid, but he shrugged it off. There were werewolves in the world, some of which liked to torture each other. He gave up on thinking the world made sense a long time ago.

He glanced back at the bathroom door. The shower was still going. The boy must have really wanted to clean up. He stood up from the bed and grabbed the pajama pants and t-shirt he had picked out. Derek knocked on the bathroom door and waited for a response. Nothing came. There was only the occasional creak of the bath tub as the weight of the occupant shifted back and forth.

"I'm coming in," he called out in warning before turning the door knob.

Derek walked over to the sink and set the clothes down. He looked up into the mirror and his mouth dropped open in horror. He could partially see the back wall of the shower where the curtain wasn't drawn all the way to the wall. There was a hand pressed against the wall covered in blood. Derek was shocked, unable to move as he saw the other hand reach forward with claws extended. The kid was tearing long gashes in his flesh, blood dripped into the tub below. The sight was awful, Derek had seen blood and pain, but to watch those claws slice through flesh, to not hear any gasps or crying accompanying it, it was horrifying.

Derek spun around knocking the clothes off the sink and ripped the shower curtain out of the way. The kid stood there with filmy trails of blood streaking his body. Wounds were slowly healing all over him, long gouges in his stomach and legs, ragged strips of skin hung form his arms. The face was the worst though, there were long scratches from forehead to chin, almost right through the eyes. They were almost faded from the healing process, but the evidence was there. Derek stared in mute horror as the last bits of the wounds sealed themselves. Brown eyes opened and regarded him blankly.

"What are you doing?"

That was all Derek could think to say, he grabbed the werewolf's wrists to keep the claws from digging back into the soft skin that had just been torn open. The werewolf barely responded at all, just tilted its head and regarded him. That empty gaze was unwavering. Derek thought the werewolf was waiting for something. He wished he knew what it was, wished he knew what to say to make it better.

"Stiles?" Derek asked.

He didn't know what to expect, didn't how the werewolf would react, or even if it would react at all.