Chapter six: Scott's time of the month

Stiles came to pick me up at seven, exactly like we planned to. The only thing that didn't quite go according to plan was that I'd completely forgotten to set my alarm, so when the doorbell rang at seven 'o'clock sharp, I was still asleep. The thing that woke me up was dad yelling my name. It didn't only wake me up, it made me instinctively grab for my knife I kept on my night stand. I sighed as my heart rate gradually slowed down. That was one way to wake up, I guess.

"Lora!" dad yelled again. "There's a Style here, says you had plans to go pick up Scott."

"Coming!" I yelled back, rolling my eyes at how he "misunderstood" Stiles' name. I knew dad, and he was very good at remembering names, so he was just doing it to tease the guy.

As quick as I could, I changed into clean clothes (which were immediately made dirty in some places because of my lack of showering) and tied my hair up into a quick ponytail as I ran down the stairs, jumping off the second to last step.

"Ready." I said. Of course at that point in time, the best thing to happen is for my stomach to growl with its almost cliche timing to show that I was, in fact, not ready.

Was I lucky that that didn't happen until we'd been driving for round and about thirty minutes. After which Stiles, of course, laughed at me.

"You want me to stop at the bakery?" he asked, grinning at me. I shook my head.

"First we find Scott." I said, pushing myself up the seat and forcing myself to sit up straight. Stiles' face filled with worry as I mentioned Scott. "Scott is fine, the worst thing that can happen is for either someone to find him or that his arrow wound got infected." That seemed to calm him down a little.

"You know, maybe it's a good thing you didn't have breakfast. Now he can use his werewolf powers to track down the weakest prey." he joked, but I scoffed at it nonetheless.

"Don't worry Stiles, I'll be there to save you." I said, patting his shoulder. Stiles rolled his eyes and let out a fake laugh. I paid no attention to that however, as I saw someone walk on the side of the road, clutching his arm, wearing jeans with a grey sweater. If I remembered correctly, that'd be Scott.

"There he is." I said, pointing at him. "You see? Fine." I said as Stiles halted the car. Scott looked up at us, shaking his head as he entered the car, sitting down in the back. I ran my eyes over him, doing a quick scan. He seemed alright enough. If anything, he was embarrassed.

"How's your arm?" I asked, nodding at it. He let it go, pulled up his sleeve and showed me an almost completely healed wound. "Give it a good night's sleep, it'll be gone then." I said, turning back around to face the road. We spent a few minutes with no conversation or communication. That was if you didn't count Stiles' constant glances towards Scott, who, after a while, spoke up.

"You know what worries me most of all this?" he said, and I immediately got a feeling of what he was about to say. Apparently, so did Stiles, as he tensed a bit before speaking.

"If you're gonna say Allison, I'm going to punch you in the head." he said, looking him straight in the eye to let him know he was serious. The fact that he wasn't had nothing to do with it.

"She probably hates me now." Scott said, leaning against the door and closing his eyes.

"Ugh." Stiles and I said at the same time, though I didn't stop with that. "Stiles told her you had an asthma attack. She bought it." Scott let out a breath of relief at that, smiling a bit.

"Yeah, or you could just tell her the truth." Stiles suggested, sending him a meaningful look. "And revel in the awesomeness that you're a werewolf!" he looked from Scott, to me, to Scott, and eventually shook his head. "Okay, bad idea."

"Yeah, kind of." I said, letting out a bitter laugh. "Scott, Allison's father is the one who shot that arrow through your arm, you know that right? Her family are one of the most feared hunter families out there. I don't know how to break this to you but maybe you shouldn't han-"

"No!" Scott yelled, though it felt more like a whine to me. I rolled my eyes and let out a huff, increasing the tension in the air. A tension Stiles was apparently keen to break.

"Hey, we'll get through this." he said, awkwardly attempting to pat Scott on the knee. "If I have to, I'll tie you up on full moon's and feed you live mice." I raised an eyebrow at him while Scott looked at him skeptically. "I had a boa once, I could do it." Stiles said, moving his eyes back on the road. I let out a laugh.

"Well in that case, I hope you don't have any plans tonight." I said. "Get out your chains and mice, it's a full moon." I turned to Scott, smiling. "First time, huh? He shifted in his seat.

"Yeah…"

"Don't worry, we'll go easy on you."

~o~

"How is this easy?" Scott yelled, pulling at the cuffs around his wrists. We were down in our basement, in the small room dad and I had dubbed the "Shift Room" when we moved here. There, we cuffed him, tied him to the pillar in the middle of the small room, which was a bit similar to those rooms they'd put crazy criminals in. You know, the one with the soft walls? Yeah those.

"Hey, I got you the soft cuffs." I said, not facing him as I made a circle of mountain ash around him. All of this may be overdoing it, but something told me that Scott could just be much stronger than someone would estimate him to be. Stiles watched as I set everything up, a small smirk on his face. Once all supernatural precautions were set, Stiles handed me some water and muesli bars, which I put down next to Scott.

"In case you get hungry." I said, standing up and checking everything one last time. Seemed all right. I walked towards the door, looking back one last time at Scott.

"Don't fuck this up Scott, if you do, you're a dead man. Or wolf." I said, nodding at him before stepping out of the room and locking the door, adding another line of mountain ash to be sure. I put the bag of ash back in my backpack and tried the door one last time to make sure it was shut. When I turned to face Stiles, he was giving me a look.

"What?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Nothing. I'm sure that it's very normal to put not only cuffs, but also chains and two lines of mountain ash around a werewolf." he said, looking at me innocently. I rolled my eyes, not commenting on it as I led him out of the basement. Truth was, I really didn't want this to go wrong. Dad had decided to let me do most of this job, that I was ready for it (or as ready as I was ever going to be). This was the most freedom he'd ever given me on a job, so I wanted to do it right. And not get any blood on my hands. Which, if Scott died, was the case.

Stiles and I decided to get through the night with what we'd used as an excuse to tell Stiles' and Scott's parents: a horror movie night. During which Stiles grew ever more annoyed as I pointed out all the flaws and inconsistencies in the supernatural area whenever they occurred. When I didn't stop, he tried started throwing pillows at me. In the end, the entire living room was a mess, and so were we. We also had a couple of drinks so that didn't really help.

"Are we gonna talk about what happened the other day?" Stiles asked, sitting upside down on the couch, his head getting redder with every second. "Like, you were out of it. Out of nowhere. That was scary."

"It wasn't that scary." I argued, looking at him from my position. Which was lying on the floor on a bunch of pillows. "Just a lil' blackout. Don't worry about it." I said, waving it off.

"Just a little blackout?" Stiles repeated with a scoff. "Lorraine, you were white as a sheet. For a second, I thought that you'd stopped breathing." For a second there, I wanted to tell him that I was going to do anyway soon enough. Only just managing to bite my tongue and keep it in, I said something about him not getting rid of me that easily. He was about to respond when a large crash sounded through the house, coming from the basement. It was closely followed by a second crash, the sound of glass shattering.

We sobered up instantly (calm down, we only had, like, two drinks.), getting to our feet and racing towards the shift room.

~o~

Now, you must understand this: the shift room is soundproof, lightproof, bulletproof, and could contain almost all shifters.

Wasn't it delightful that Scott was one of the few it apparently couldn't contain? But it just didn't add up. The only way he could've gotten out is that someone broke into the house and let him out. Which meant that either the Alpha had come into my house unnoticed, or he had an ally. I didn't know which one was worse.

In my frustration, I kicked against the now unhinged door of the shift room.

"We need to find him, dad's going to be pissed." I said, running back upstairs to see one of the windows in the hallway smashed from the inside out.

"But how will we find him?" Stiles yelled, running after me as I headed towards my car.

"I have no idea. He will be heading for something, that's for sure." I said, getting in the car. Before the moon rose, I told Scott and Stiles all we knew: about the alpha, Derek, how Derek probably wasn't the one who bit Scott (I still needed to go check his eyes), and our deal with the Argents.

"I don't think a werewolf would risk being in the inner parts of the city, though." Stiles said. "Let's go around it, check the woods." he offered. I nodded, that seemed like a good plan.

~o~

We ended up driving for over two hours, only to find Scott walking down the streets, heading back to my place. He seemed to have gained back his control, even with the full moon.

"That's admirable, Scott!" I said, genuinely surprised by him. "Most people take way longer." Scott didn't even listen to my compliment, but went straight into telling us what he'd seen.

"First thing I realised, I was at the edge of town, looking at the alpha. Like you said, he was a beast. He attacked a woman in a car, but I think she was a hunter because she shot Derek with a gun she kept in her ca-"

"Derek was there?" Stiles asked, interrupting him.

"He must've heard the Alpha call and went to check it out." I mumbled, then looked at Scott via the car mirror, waiting for him to continue.

"The Alpha ran, Derek got shot, then this car drives up with Allison's father in it, who helped the woman empty her car. She said Derek had fourty-eight hours tops." He looked at me expectantly, wanting to know what that meant.

"Fuck." I cursed under my breath. "She poisoned him with a wolfsbane bullet. At least, that's the method the Argents prefer to use. I think she's family." Scott leaned over, sticking his head between the two front seats.

"Alright, how do we cure it?" he asked.

"Are we really going to help him?" Stiles asked, looking at him as if he were an idiot. When Scott shrugged, he looked at me. When he saw my hesitation, he shook his head. "No, come on Lorraine. You barely know the guy. Up until tonight, we thought he was the one who bit Scott!"

"Yeah well, that's because you two are idiots who jump into conclusions." I said, glaring at him. "He's a friend of the family. That means a lot. Were going to help him." I said, not leaving room for discussion.

"And how are we going to do that?" Stiles asked. "We don't even know where he is!" I let out a huff at that, fixing my eyes on the empty road. Although… who was that figure walking on the pavement?

"Oh I think we do." I said, slamming on the breaks as we drove past the man, calling for Scott to unlock the door. "Get in." I told Derek, who managed to get in the car with only a few grunts of pain. He was clutching his lower arm with his hand, so I guess that's where the bullet had hit him.

"You don't look too good, man." Stiles said, wincing at the blood seeping through Derek's fingers. Derek just glared at him.

"Anyway." Scott said, giving me a pleading look. With a roll of my eyes, I turned on the radio to prevent the inevitable uncomfortable silence as we raced back home.

~o~

"I'll be there in four hours." dad said before hanging up. I put my phone back in my pocket and looked at the two werewolves on my couch, both sitting there like lost puppies. Well, one of the was a grumpy, bleeding lost puppy, but all the same. There came footsteps from the hallway and soon Stiles walked into the room with a MEDkit in his hand.

"Thanks." I said, racing towards him and taking it from him. I sat down beside Derek, taking a look at his wound before getting to work.

~o~

It was already seven 'o'clock in the morning by the time dad arrived. He'd sent us all out of the living room, saying he needed to take a look at the wound without three people gawking at him.

Scott sat down on the bottom step at first, but soon fell asleep. Stiles was pressing his ear against the door, trying to hear what was going on inside. After a while I got too annoyed, and I pulled him back from the door.

"Hey!" he protested, sticking his arms up in the air.

"Like you could hear anything. Whatever happens in there, dad will tell us. It's called trust, Stiles." He visibly tensed at that.

"You're trying to tell me about trust?" he snapped, talking fast and loud. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been trusting this girl that doesn't even know me for a couple of days now, I convinced my best friend, whose life is at stake, to trust her, and now she's telling me to trust people more?" he let out a scoff. "No thanks." he said, moving back to the door and placing his ear to it.

I let out an irritated sigh and let myself slide down against the wall until I sat on the floor.

Truth was, I hadn't thought about it that way. I never had. After all these years of moving from one place to another, I'd grown accustomed to treating people in a certain way. I wouldn't matter anyway, since I'd be moving again in another month or so and never see them again. Plus, often we were their best shot at surviving and they needed us, so they never complained about it.

We spent the rest of our time in silence. Not only because I didn't know what to say, and frankly Stiles didn't want to talk, but because he also fell asleep against the door after about ten minutes. When the door opened, this of course caused him to fall face first into the living room. Dad looked at him with a frown before looking up at me, one eyebrow raised. I just shrugged and stood up, waking up the both of them before going into the living room and listening to what dad had to say.

"It's a bullet filled with wolfsbane that he was hit with." dad started, confirming my suspicion from earlier. "We don't know what type of wolfsbane, so the wrong antidote might kill him. For the right one, we'll need another bullet so Deaton can identify the type."

"Wait, doctor Deaton?" Scott asked, looking up in shock. "He knows about this stuff?"

"He was a druid. He's retired, if that's the right word for it, but he still doesn't mind doing some research. What he does mind, is people asking questions about the supernatural" dad said, giving the boys a meaningful look. Deaton had tried to suppress his past for almost a decade, but when we got back in town, he'd given in. (which was probably because of me being near-death) "He can identify the wolfsbane in no time." dad then said. "But when he does, you will not harass him with questions he doesn't want to answer, understood?" The boys nodded at that.

"What are Druids?" Stiles asked.

"They keep the balance, and do anything to maintain it in both the normal and the supernatural world. They're often the negotiators between hunters and protectors." I said, explaining the most important things about them. At least all they needed to know now.

"Scott, you're close to the girl Allison Argent, am I right?" dad asked. Scott just nodded, knowing we didn't approve of their relationship. "You need to get inside her house and get the bullet. It's her aunt's."

"Bu-"

"No buts, Scott." dad interrupted him, holding one hand up in the air. "If you don't do this, he dies." Scott mumbled something, but then agreed to doing it. Dad nodded, content. "Now you boys get your asses out of here, it's eight in the morning and I've got business to attend to." he said, waving at the door before walking away. Since the two looked slightly startled, I stood up.

"I'll let you out." I said, giving them a faint smile. Even though I had training on this, the being awake for over twenty-four hours was starting to get to me, even with some coffee I'd managed to down here and there. I led them to the door, making sure they had everything with them. Realising they'd come here with my car, I went inside to get my keys and gave them a ride home.

~o~

I was biting the inside of my lip, not knowing whether or not to say something. I'd just dropped off Scott and was sitting in silence with Stiles. Part of me wanted to apologise for how I'd been acting, because Stiles had a point. The other part wanted to shrug it off, we wouldn't be staying in Beacon Hills for long anyway, why bother making non-job related friends? That was part of why I was staying away from that Lydia girl. And why would Stiles be any different? He was Scott's best friend, so it was his business too, that's why I was hanging out with him. Yes, it was. Not because he was genuinely a great person. No. There's no point in making friends you know you can't keep.

So I bit my tongue instead, spending the rest of the ride in silence with him, only breaking it when saying goodbye. I'd keep hanging out with him, but I won't let him get close. I had no time for friends, I've learned so much. Especially now we've got a dying werewolf on our hands. Which was also against our deal with the Argents.

All of this because of some stupid magic bullet.

A/N: Thanks for reading this chapter! It didn't quite reach the 4k, but a lot of stuff happened so I didn't want to add any more.

Also: This story will have fourteen, maybe fifteen chapters total. So that means that we're almost halfway! I hope you enjoyed it so far, and trust me, there is a lot more to come. Look at next week's chapter, for example, when we'll get some more information on Lorraine's "condition..."

Anyway, that's all for this chapter, until the next one!

~Lilly