It was pouring down rain by the time that we made back to California and to the animal clinic. Stiles shut off the car and Scott, him and I got out, dragging young Derek out with us and into the animal clinic. We laid him onto the medical table and Deaton took one look at him and stared at him in confusion.
"Wow." Deaton finally muttered.
"Wow?" I questioned him, expecting more from the Druid.
"Wow as in, I've seen this before and I know exactly what to do, kind of wow?" Stiles inquired. "Cause that's the kind of wow we were hoping for."
"I think you might be overestimating my abilities." I slammed my fists onto the metal table, denting the material as my claws grew. A growl rumbled in my chest in frustration.
"What is happening to my mate, Doc?" I snapped.
"He's cold." Lydia said, touching Derek's hand. "Really cold."
"Do you think this is permenant?" Scott asked as Deaton felt Derek's hands too before shining a flashlight into his closed eyes.
"I'm not sure a medical diagnosis is even adequate." Deaton answered. "This is well beyong my experience."
"Then you better get some experience and fix this." I snapped.
"Callana, I know you're frustrated and worry about your mate but getting angry is not going to solve anything." I inhaled deeply and stood straight up, closing my eyes and nodding my head. He was right. I was an Alpha Female. I had to remain calm and sort this out level headed.
"So what do we do with him?" Stiles asked.
"Until he wakes up? Probably not much. It might be best to leave him with me. He'll be safe here."
"You mean from Kate?" I spat her name out like spoiled food on my tongue.
"If she's alive and she is what you say she is, she won't be able to walk past that gate."
"Why would she want to do this to him?" Lydia inquired.
"Knowing Kate, it's probably for a reason that won't be any good for anyone but her."
"And bad for everyone else." Scott added.
"You guys should probably go home. He doesn't look to be in any danger. So maybe the rest of you should get some sleep? It is a school night. And you all need to start taking care of your own lives again."
"Someone should stay with you." Stiles said.
"I'm not leaving him." I said. "He's my mate, my pack. As Alpha Female, I have to protect my pack. I'm not leaving. My grades are fine anyways. Despite missing a few classes."
"I'm so not okay with this."
"Guys, go."
"No." I looked at Scott for some backup.
"Text us if anything happens." Scott informed me.
"Nope, still not okay with it. Not going anywhere." Scott grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and started to drag him out of the clinic. "All right, just cause you're stronger. . ." Their voices left my head as I pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning my head against the table, not taking my eyes off Derek. Even at seventeen years old, he still had the looks.
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My eyes fluttered open and I blinked a couple of times to get used to the sunlight pouring in from the windows. I looked up to see Deaton standing over top of Derek examining him.
"How's he doing?" I asked.
"His heart rate is alarmingly high." Deaton informed me. I stood up and gingerly took his hand in mine, running my thumb across his soft skin.
"He's a lot warmer now."
"Calla, I'm going to try something. I want you to keep holding his hand, if that's okay." I looked at him like he was stupid.
"You're asking me if it's okay to hold my mate's hand?" He ignored me and picked up a scalpal. He dug the blade into Derek's arm and began to cut down his arm. The cut healed as fast as Deaton was cutting it. "That looks like it healed really fast."
"Unusually fast."
"What does it mean?"
"I'm not sure." I surpressed another growl of frustration in my chest. "Let's try something else. Grab me a five-millimeter syringe. Top drawer." I walked around the table and began to rumaged through the drawer looking for the syringe as Deaton rumaged through the medicine cabinet. A low rumble sounded behind us and we turned to see Derek climbling off the medical table his nails fully grown.
"Derek?" I called to him.
"Derek?"
"Derek, are you all right?" He looked up at us, his electric blue eyes shining bright as he breathed heavily through his canines. "Derek? Derek. . . Derek?" His eyebrows knitted together as he tried to place together where he was and who we are.
"Are you all right, Derek?" He took a threatening step towards us, not sure what his next move was going to be.
"Derek? Derek?" He clutched his head with both hands and groaned in pain.
"Can you hear me? You're safe."
"Derek? Derek?" Derek lashed out at us and his claws raked across Deaton's arm before he turned and raced out of the clinic. After making sure my boss was alright, I ran out of the clinic after Derek but he was nowhere to be seen.
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I stood by the medical table as I wrapped Deaton's arm with bandages as Lydia, Scott and Stiles stood in the entranceway of the clinic.
"I don't think he's just younger in body." Deaton said. "I think he's younger in his mind, too."
"He didn't recognize either of us." I added as I put the last piece of medical tape on his arm. "And he looked like he was scared out of his mind."
"So if you're a teenage werewolf and you're scared, where do you go?" Lydia wondered.
"A wolf goes back to its den." Scott said. "But Derek lives in a loft."
"Not when he was a teenager." Stiles corrected him.
"The Hale House?" I suggested.
"He wouldn't remember the fire." Deaton said. "It wouldn't have happened yet."
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"Hold on." Lydia called to us as Scott, Stiles and I were about to walk out the door. "Say you do manage to catch up to him, what are you going to say to him? That his whole family is dead?"
"I guess I'm going to have to." Scott said.
"Oh. Good luck with that."
"Well, we can't lie to him." I retorted.
"She's probably right." Stiles said. "Maybe you shouldn't. You know, at least until we figure out how to get him back to normal."
"I can't lie to him."
"Okay, I'll do it."
"I don't think any of us can." Scott said. "Remember, he can hear a heartbeat rising. When we find him, we tell him the truth."
"If he gets to the house first, you won't have to."
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Stiles, Scott and I barged through the police station to see Jake staring at the recent picture of Derek and the seventeen year old Derek sitting on the bench in front of his office.
"I'll handle this." Jake informed Parrish as he waved us into his office and closed the door behind us. "I want you to be honest with me. Absolutely and completely honest. Have you been time traveling?"
"Hang on, what?" Stiles questioned him, completely off guard by the question before looking at Scott and me with a bizarre look on his face.
"Because if time traveling is real, you know what, I'm done, I'm out. You're going to be driving me to Eichen House." Stiles and I rubbed our foreheads with our fingers in disbelief.
"We found him like that." I said.
"Where? Swimming in the Fountain of Youth?"
"No." Scott said. "We found him buried in a tomb of wolfsbane in an Aztec in Mexico underneath a church in middle of a town that was destroyed by an earthquake." Stiles closed his eyes and inhaled slowly as Scott let out too much information in too little time as Scott looked at us wondering if he said too much.
"You told me you were camping!"
"Yeah, we were." I said. "In Mexico."
"Derek's been aged backwards." Scott said, trying to move the conversation along before Jake could yell at me for going to Mexico. "He can't remember anything."
"We just need to talk to him." Stiles said.
"Yeah, well, so far he's not talking to anybody." Jake sighed.
"He'll talk to me." I said.
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"Why would I go anywhere with you?" Derek questioned as he sat on the leather couch in Jake's office.
"There was an accident." I informed him, choosing my words carefully and keeping my heart rate steady. "You lost some memory but we can help you get it back."
"How much memory?"
"A lot." Scott said. "But you can trust us." Scott and I flashed our Alpha eyes at him.
"You're alphas. Okay, who are you? And who's he? Who are you?"
"Oh, we're the guys keeping you out of jail." Stiles informed which wasn't a total lie.
"Let us help you." I pleaded but Derek shook his head and leaned back into the couch.
"No." He snapped. I hung my head and sighed. He was stubborn even when he younger.
"Okay, dude, you almost tore two cops back there." Scott reminded him. "You need to listen to us. And that starts with no fangs, no claws, no wolf man. You got that?"
"I'm fine as long as it's not on a full moon."
"You still have trouble with the full moon?" Stiles questioned him.
"I said I'm fine."
"All right, you coming with us or not?" I asked.
"You want me to trust you? Where's my family?" Oh, great, the one question that I didn't want him to ask. We all sighed trying to think of an answer or waiting for the other to say the truth first.
"There was a fire." Scott said. "And. . . They're not here anymore. They're fine." What happened to not lying to him? "Just had to move out of Beacon Hills. And we're going to take you to them as soon as we figure out how to get your memories back."
"Okay." Derek exhaled.
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"I shouldn't have done that." Scott said as we leaned against the front desk waiting for Derek to fill out his release forms. "I lied my ass off."
"Hey, your ass is fine." Stiles reassured him. "You saved him a ton of unnecessary pain. We'll figure this out in a day or two, he goes back to being old Derek, everyone's happy. Except for Derek, who's never happy."
"He's happy with me." I objected.
"Well, that's because it's you, Calla. You make everyone happy."
"It's just another person that we're lying to." Scott said. "Just that I always fell like it's better when we tell the truth. With Lydia, my mom, both your dads."
"But that is Derek Hale in there." Stiles reminded him. "He may be a kid right now, but he's still Derek Hale."
"All right." I said. "Take him to Scott's house and don't let him out of your sight."
"And where are you going?" Scott asked.
"I'm going to go talk to the guy we should have gone to before."
"Uh. . . Yeah, I hate that guy." Stiles yelled after me as I left the station.
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I opened the door to the loft and walked in with Malia right behind me. I shook my hands to shake the anxiety off them as I got nervous about Malia meeting Peter. Her father.
"What's wrong with you?" Malia inquired.
"Nothing." I answered hastily.
"Your heart is pounding like crazy. Are you nervous?"
"Yeah, nervous about not finding a way to save my mate."
"She's mainly just bad at introductions." A voice sounded and we turned to see Peter laying on the couch reading a book.
"Peter. This is Malia." Peter closed his book and stood up and slowly made his way to Malia, examining her from head to toe. Malia just stood there and stared at him with curousity.
"Beautiful eyes. Did you get them from your father?"
"Mother." Malia answered, confused.
"Interesting." I looked from Malia to Peter and back again trying to figure out how this was going to play out. "Anyway, I'm sure they've told you a lot about me."
"The homicidal killing spree came up."
"Well, we're all works in progress."
"Well, when you progress to your next killing spree, why don't you try and make sure they all stay dead?"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"What do you know about people being turned by a scratch?" I questioned him and Peter turned to me, astonished.
"Did you scratch someone, Calla?" I looked at him, letting him figure it out on his own. "Don't worry about it, the claws have to go pretty deep."
"But it's possible. Like if you clawed out someone's throat?"
"Well, yeah, it's possible. It's also beyond rare. I mean, we're talking one in a. . ." His voice trailed off as he pieced the puzzle together and his face hardened. "Million."
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"Can't someone in this town stay dead?" Peter growled.
"I think they were hoping you would." Malia said and Peter glared at her.
"Yeah, she was a coyote for like seven years so she's still learning the social thing." I explained to him. "Do you have any idea why Kate would turn Derek into a teenager again?"
"What color were his eyes?"
"Blue."
"After Paige. Which could mean around the time he first met Kate."
"Derek and Kate knew each other?" Malia questioned him.
"Unfortunately." I growled, grinding my teeth together.
"Bibically." Peter said. "That's right, Malia. Scott wasn't the first wolf to climb into a hunter's bed."
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"Okay, Derek went to the site of the house thinking that it was still there, right?" Peter asked.
"Yeah." I said. "But he doesn't remember the fire."
"But if he doesn't remember the fire, then he doesn't remember that it was Kate that set it."
"So what does that mean?" Malia asked.
"Kate didn't just take him back to being a teenager. She took him back to the age where he still knew her. When he still trust her."
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"Where is he?" I inquired when I answered Stiles's phone call. "Is he hurt? Missing?"
"No, he's in Scott's bedroom, he'll be totally fine." Stiles reassured me. "To be honest, I'm starting to miss the old Derek. So, if you actually think that Kate's coming to find him. . ." Stiles's voice trailed off.
"Stiles? Stiles, you there? Stiles?"
"You might be right."
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"Wait." I called to Malia and Peter as they started racing to the door.
"For what?" Peter snapped as he stopped and turned back to me. "Kate's out there twisting her way into Derek's head yet again. We need to find her."
"All we need's a scent." Malia snapped.
"That could take hours." I said. "If we want to get ahead of her, we need to figure out where she's going."
"Not to underestimate my own cognitive faculties, but we're not exactly a brain trust of geniuses here."
"Then maybe we should call one." I dialed Lydia's number and she answered on the first ring and informed me that her and Kira were at a gas station and found a mutilated body in the bathroom.
"We called Stilinski." Lydia said. "They're on their way."
"What does it look like? Can you send pictures?"
"Uh, okay." She cleared her throat. "To be honest, I have 4.0 in AP biology, and there are parts of the human anatomy I have never seen before on these walls."
"Focus, Lydia." My phone beeped and I put it on speaker phone to look at the pictures at the gas attendant that was torn to shreds. I almost vomitted as I looked at the intestines spilled onto the concrete floor of the bathroom. Even part of his brain was showing.
"Why would she want to kill a gas station attendant?" Malia shot out a question.
"I don't think she could help it." Peter said. "This was done in a frenzy. It's not murder. It's a symptom."
"Of what?" I asked.
"She can't control the shift."
"Derek said that he had the same issue on the full moon. That he was still learning."
"Kate's still learning?" Malia questioned us.
"She wants to learn." Peter corrected her.
"So she wants Derek to teach her?"
"No. She wants the Triskelion."
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Malia, Peter and I ran up the steps of the High School to the Hale Vault when Malia stopped and inhaled deeply.
"Did you catch a scent?" I asked her.
"It's the same one. The same one as Mexico." She answered as she looked around her surroundings trying to find the source of the smell.
"What is she talking about?" Peter inquired.
"One of them came after us in the Church ruins." I explained.
"And one on the road." Malia added. "They couldn't have followed us here."
"But they could've been brought by Kate." A growling noise sounded in the darkness and echoed in our werewolf ears.
"Oh, I've heard that sound before." Peter groaned. "Did it have an animal skull? A human wearing a skull over its face?"
"I think so." Malia agreed.
"What are they?" I questioned him. The growl sounded again, closer this time. Heavy soundsteps echoed on concrete, the same footsteps in the tunnel in Mexico.
"Berserkers." Peter breathed. I looked down at the overpass and saw a large figure walking out of the shadows. He had a long animal skull head with bones covering his entire body making an armor and a bone shank in his right hand. Malia growled and was about to charge at him but Peter grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back. "Are you crazy?"
"There's just one of them." Malia said.
"And that means we have a chance."
"To beat him?"
"To survive." Peter pivoted on his feet and raced back up the steps and out of sight. Malia and I looked at each other and figured it was wise to follow him with the berserker behind us, covering the steps in five bounds.
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We ran through the outside food courtyard where we somehow managed to lose sight of Peter. Just when I thought that we would make it to safety, a berserker appeared in front of us and we skidded to a halt.
"Calla." Malia breathed. "It's both of them. They're both here."
"Where that hell's Peter?" I growled as we backed up some steps.
"I don't know. He just took off." I turned and raced up the steps with Malia behind me but before we could reach the top, another berserker jumped down and onto the platform. We looked to the one at the bottom of the steps to the one up top, trying to figure out our next move.
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I leapt at the one at the bottom of the steps as Malia took the one at top. I bounced off of a pillar and slammed my fist into the berserker's skull. I snarled as I landed on the ground behind him and I quickly stood up and raked my claws across his bony chest which had no effect on him. He grabbed my head and slammed into the the railing before pressing it against the pillar. I groaned in pain as my head throbbed with him growling in my ear. He grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me to the top of the steps. I landed beside Malia who was backing up on her back away from the berserker she attempted to fight. Kira and Scott appeared behind us and charged at the berserkers, claws and sword ripping through the air attacking the attackers. One of the berserkers slammed his hand into Scott's chest and sent him flying back while the other back handed Kira in the cheek and tossed her to the ground. Footsteps sounded behind the berserkers and I looked past them to see Derek running towards them and jumped into battle with them. He moved with agility and skill as he dodged their attacks and landed his punches square on them. I watched in amazement as Derek single handedly took on the two berserkers. A loud screech sounded in the distance and the berserkers abandoned Derek and ran towards the sound, back into the shadows. Derek stood up from the ground with his back to us. He was a lot taller than I remembered him to be. He turned around and my heart fluttered with relief. I was staring into the eyes of twenty-eight year old Derek Hale. I scrambled to my feet and was about to race to him but something stopped me. His eyes were glowing but not the electric blue glow that I grew to love but a lemon yellow glow.