"No," Stiles says, snapping out of it, and half-bends, half-trips, palms pressing into the blood-damp dirt. He wipes them hurriedly on his shirt, puts two fingers to her throat.
"She's still breathing," he says, horror and relief and panic and loss washing up together in three words. "We can get her help, we can—This could be it, Lyds, this could be the time we actually get to change it."
Derek just looks at her, his throat closing and closing and closing.
Stiles was right.
Stiles was right, and Derek—
Maybe—maybe he'd wanted to believe it, the simplest answer, the easiest, she was—she is difficult, blunt, harsh, clingy, territorial, and she hates Derek, or seems to, and she isn't—Stiles could do better, that's all—
But that was before. Now his insides are twisting painfully, his gut clenching, because Stiles was right.
And Derek, Derek was wrong.
It's the first time Deaton's ever come to them, and he brings a stretcher with wrist straps.
Derek doesn't understand why a vet would even have that—unless he was expecting something like this, someday. Or maybe this happens all the time. The chunk bitten out of Derek's own life feels like a wound, an itch he can't scratch. It unsettles him worse now, somehow, than before. Because he was wrong, he was wrong, he's been an idiot and maybe—maybe older Derek would've known better.
Deaton makes them all clear out while he does the surgery, but Derek remembers something, looks around for the cat, for Laura.
He can't find her.
It's stupid, it's such a stupid thing to panic about, but he named her Laura. He named her Laura and then he left her, and now she's gone, and he can't even breathe.
"It's alright," Deaton says placidly when Derek finally manages to explain. "My niece has her. In a manner of speaking."
And what, what is that supposed to mean?
They all go back to the McCalls', where Scott's mother hugs Stiles, who looks dead on his feet, and Lydia, who looks—undead, honestly, dull-eyed and damp-haired and so unlike herself it's almost unsettling. Lydia cries a little against her, and Scott's mother says, "You're the reason she has a chance. Remember that."
She sits with them, waits with them, and Derek does too—he can't leave Stiles. But Kate's waiting, and, he realizes with sudden panic, she could be in danger—the benefactor, she said there was some benefactor going after supernaturals, what if—What if that baby was on the list? The easiest target? What if all of them were? What if someone's killing Kate right now, planning to collect for her proudly displayed body?
He can't hold off any longer.
He tells them about the benefactor, about his theory that the bodies were weres. Names on a list, getting crossed off. And then he swallows hard and tells them—tells them—
"Your what?" Stiles says sharply.
"My girlfriend," Derek says, and the rest comes out in a rush. "Kate, she—She's back in town and Peter hurt her and she's been staying with me but now, if someone's hunting us, it's not safe—"
Everyone is staring at him. Stiles, in particular, looks shell-shocked, horrified.
"Did no one think to tell Derek what happened?" Scott's mother says.
Stiles looks like he's going to be sick, like he's already been sick, sheet-white, eyes watering.
"What?" Derek says, but he has the most horrible feeling, looking at a gruesome picture he doesn't quite understand yet and knowing, already knowing how bad it will be.
"Derek, I'm sorry," Stiles breathes, and a tear drops down his cheek and Derek doesn't—doesn't—
"What?" he begs, and Scott's mother says, so gently, "Derek, Kate Argent set the fire."
No, Derek says, only he doesn't, because he can't make a sound. His breath is a rattle, a wheeze, a fucking miracle, he can't—
No, Derek says, and his vision blurs, and he can't—
"I'm sorry," Stiles is saying. "I should've told you, I should've just told you, Derek, I'm so—"
"Did I—" Derek manages, his throat a tight vise, air through it thin and unbreathable. The drained pain comes back, threatens to shatter his skull into pieces. Derek half-wishes it would. "Did I—help her?"
"No," Stiles says. "No, she was just—She's just horrible."
It doesn't make sense, it doesn't, Kate, she's, she would never—
"Why?" he chokes out, and then Scott is standing, walking to him, wrapping an arm around him as he shakes.
"She's psychotic," Lydia says. Her voice is scraped, Derek can hear it hurting her throat. "She probably thought it was funny."
"She's the one who kidnapped you," Kira says. "She's the nahual."
"She's a nahual?" Scott's mother asks.
Scott looks at her. "You know what that is?"
"A shapeshifter," Scott's mother says. "Supposedly, they can transform into animals by wearing their skin, and in that form, they can do magic."
"Wait," Lydia says. "They're not were-jaguars?"
"They can take the form of a jaguar," Scott's mother says, "but the magic—If Kate's a nahual, that could explain Derek's—condition."
"What, she's like a witch?" Stiles asks.
"Something like that," Scott's mother says.
"So she's just got a jaguar pelt lying around?"
Scott's mother smiles slightly, wanly. "Don't be so literal. A nahual can also use a totem to act as skin."
"A totem," Stiles says. "Like the pole?"
"A symbolic object," Scott's mother explains. "Skin, yes, but also claws or teeth, or even carvings—"
Stiles' phone hums and vibrates across the table.
It's Deaton.
"How is she?" Stiles asks immediately. "Will she be—"
"She's stable," Deaton says. There's something strange about the way he says it. Even stranger than usual.
"But?" Stiles asks nervously.
"But she's not Malia Tate," Deaton says.
"She's—what?" Stiles says. "We saw her, we—"
"She's Kate Argent," Deaton says.