It was weird for them to be sitting in a house, to suddenly have roots. It wasn't something Brenna could remember having since before she was taken from home. She wasn't sure Zane had even ever had any. It was an unspoken rule between the two of them to not talk about their lives before they were turned. It worked for them. Everything before their fate was chosen for them seemed inconsequential when they were running from hunters and packs and fighting for their lives.

But now they were renting a two bedroom split-level in Beacon Hills suburbia and the itch between her shoulder blades was intensifying as she stared at the butter cream colored house with green trim. It was idyllic as a starter up for a family. The couple next door – elderly, sweet, extraordinarily human without the trace scent of gunpowder or wolfsbane thankfully – already assumed that she and Zane were newlyweds, starting their life together. It was easier to let them assume than to correct.

Zane was enjoying how uncomfortable it made Brenna, slinging an arm around her shoulders and leading her into the house with a jaunty wave at the observers watering their lawn. Seriously, who actually waters their lawn themselves?

Brenna shrugged him off as soon as they were inside the house, trying not to choke on the scents that still clung to a renovated house – sawdust and paint fumes, carpet cleaner and wood shine. "I don't like this." She said for the umpteenth time.

"Tough." Zane responded automatically, used to the argument as he walked over to their four duffel bags that made up everything they owned aside from Brenna's car. "We're gonna be here awhile. We need ground that we can defend better than that motel room." One bag of clothes for each and then a bag each of weapons and meticulous journals. "We should give one of these to Stiles, see if he could come up with something that might help us figure out Peter's master plan."

Brenna snatched the book from Zane's hand. "Not this one. Never this one." Her fingers curled tightly around the worn leather of the handmade journal. She'd spent hours sewing together the pages to the leather, her fingers bleeding and staining the pages even as they healed. Being the daughter of a book restorer came in handy. It was the one piece of herself she truly had left.

Zane's gaze softened as he noticed the book he'd been brandishing during his suggestion. "Of course not. It was just the first one I grabbed." It was the journal that described the pack laws of the werewolves that she would forever be enslaved to.

She scowled at him as he went back to rifling through their bags, occasionally pulling out and stowing away weapons so that they were within reach. Zane was too well adjusted with being a werewolf for Brenna's taste. She still hated everything about herself and what she was, preferring to use steel and bullet instead of claw and teeth to take down enemies. The less she used of her beast, the better.

"Fact of the matter is though, Bren, you're the closest we have to understanding what Peter might do next. Derek will know enough, but you have first hand experience with these pack laws because of…" He trailed off when her eyes flashed, just like they always did when her past was brought up.

"Then you can tell Derek. You know enough too. I've told you things." And she had, things to keep him alert and on his toes, alive, in case they ever encountered a pack during their travels that still practiced the archaic laws.

"But you lived it." Zane hedged, eyes lingering on her arms where the gloves covered every inch of skin from the ends of her fingers to elbow where her shirt covered the rest.

"I'm not doing this. I'm not going back there, Zane. I've ran from there for the last five years and I'm not doing it again." Her tone didn't quiver, didn't plead with him to drop it like anyone else's would in her situation. It was final, a decision that she was making for all of them to refuse to go back through it.

Zane felt his stomach clench. He knew in the long run, no matter how long he'd known Brenna or how long they ran together, he'd never know just how deep the scars ran below the surface. He'd never know exactly what her Alpha had done for the three years she was captive. The wolf inside him paced restlessly, feeling protective of her, wanting to kill and tear apart the person that left a stench of burned flesh and sorrow around her aura. His nostrils flared, fingers curling in fists as he tried to abate the urges, tried to put the wolf to rest.

"I want to burn him like he burned you." He growled, eyes stuck to her arms. He'd seen the horrors of her uncovered flesh only once and both had made sure never to let it happen again.

"You know the plan, Zane. We kill the pack, I kill him and it ends. For all of us."

Zane didn't like that plan. That plan ended with Brenna committing suicide so that there wasn't another Alpha.

Which then left Zane alone.

Again.

Allison could feel the tension crawling across her skin. Even from her perch by the window, she could hear her parents fighting downstairs. She'd been banished to her room for the duration of their meeting with a friend. The woman had left ten minutes prior and Allison's hand had been wrapped around her doorknob when the yelling broke out.

It was becoming a frequent event in the Argent household. They tried to shelter her from it, much like they'd tried to shelter her from everything else, but she could still hear the words drift up and over the cold marble. She could make out that her mother thought her father was growing weak in their missions, that he was too lenient on the werewolves that invaded Beacon Hills, that they should all be eradicated. That working with this woman was wrong, was dangerous, her power was unpredictable and she should be put down too.

She longed for the times of ignorance, before she knew her father was a hunter of supernatural creatures and that her first love was incidentally one of them. Wished for when she could close her eyes and pretend not to see the strain of the double life on her family, when they could act like normal people because for all she was aware of, they were.

The sound of glass breaking in the kitchen was the final straw. She couldn't stand the suffocating tension anymore. Hastily grabbing her bag, a jacket, and her car keys, she swept out of her room. Her hair bounced behind her as she took the steps quickly, stomach jumping with it as she got closer and closer to her parents in the kitchen.

She was about to shout out to them that she was leaving to see Lydia out of courtesy when she heard a name that apparently belonged to the woman who'd been here. Something about it set her nerves even more on edge when she saw her father stomping away from her mother.

Chris paused when he saw her, Victoria staring over his shoulder at the shaken look on their daughter's face.

"I'm going to go visit Lydia." Allison said quietly, taking a couple of steps backwards as if waiting for them to explode at her like they'd been doing to one another. When no protests came, just buzzing silence, she turned quickly and fled.

She was halfway down the street before she redirected her route from the hospital to Scott's house. There was something about the woman, about her name, that was setting bells off in her head with familiarity. Like something she'd heard about in passing but couldn't be sure of. She'd never seen the woman with her parents before, not that she could remember, so it had to be linked to Beacon Hills.

Outside. Need to talk. She texted him when she was pulling up. She parked at the curb, nervously watching Ms McCall's car as if her father was about to jump out of the trunk and renege on any sort of agreement he may have with the wolves because she was sitting in front of Scott's house. She jumped when the passenger door opened, her seatbelt digging painfully into her shoulder and chest because of the movement.

"Is everything okay?" Scott asked, looking worriedly as his nostrils flared.

She hated that he could sense her emotions. "I don't know. A woman just left my house and then my parents got into a huge fight. They've been fighting a lot lately, but my mother was saying how this woman was unpredictable and her power was dangerous and that she should be put down like the werewolves."

Scott paled, "What did she look like?"

"That's the thing. Really familiar. I've never seen her before though. I took a picture though." Allison pulled out her cell phone, scrolling through the settings until she found the picture. It was a zoomed in shot, slightly blurry because of that, from when she'd been spying from her window. Handing the phone over to Scott, she saw Scott pale when he looked at the picture, his mouth dropping open in shock. "What's wrong, do you know who that is?"

Stiles spun round and round and round in the computer chair, staring up at the popcorn ceiling and groaning. This is the last place he wanted to be and doing absolutely the last thing he wanted to be doing. He'd rather be trapped in his Jeep with Peter Hale and Kate Argent arguing the pros and cons of hunters and werewolves living peacefully together.

"Focus, Stilinski." Danny snapped his fingers above his head, drawing them back slowly and watching amusedly as Stiles followed them like a puppy. "We're here to learn how to control this."

"Why?" He groaned, "If I'd known you meant magic when you said study and not evil Harris' chemistry exam, I wouldn't have invited you in and gave you one of my Hot Pockets."

"It doesn't count when you ate two and then half of mine, so shut it." Danny sat on the corner of Stiles' bed, bracing his hands on his knees as he focused on Stiles. He smiled triumphantly when Stiles stopped spinning. He looked confused, twisting and bending in the chair but the coils refused to move with him. He looked up at Danny in confusion, eyes narrowing after a second. "That's why. Our gifts are different. Has your mother told you anything about it yet?"

"No." The word was tight and clipped, mouth paling out as he bit his lips and his eyes flashed angrily.

Danny put Nat on the 'do not mention' list. "Mine works by slowing down or stopping energy. From what I've seen of yours so far, yours is speeding it up."

"So you can freeze time?"

Danny smiled a bit, seeing the excited grin spread across Stiles' face. He was reminded of a time when they would pile into Stiles' tree house with Jackson and Scott and go over the difference between Marvel and DC, and which superpowers would be the best. It was the only thing Jackson and Stiles could ever consistently agree on: Marvel was way better than DC. But that was a lifetime ago.

"No, that's not how it works. If I focus on something hard enough, I can slow down the energy or molecules long enough to do what I need. My Mom is teaching it to me, how to focus it and control it. The gifts can be dangerous. Yours especially. You inherited the ability to speed up molecular structures. Kinetic energy."

Stiles got a thoughtful look on his face, one that always set a worried edge to Danny. Those looks reminded him of times that led to skinned knees and broken bones in the name of adventure.

"Like a car window?" He wondered, looking up at Danny.

"I suppose. Like we said, your trigger seems to be anger. If you were around one and angry, your energy, your magic, might've been looking for an outlet and focused on the closest object that was weak enough to combust. Like when you were trying to get away and the deadbolt blew. You were focused on escaping, that was in your way, so you unconsciously tapped into your magic and it blew."

Stiles stood, trying to pace the restless energy out of him. It'd always been sitting beneath the surface and he wondered if maybe that's what it'd been all along. The magic. His birthright. His destiny. He wanted to snort at the thoughts, the possibilities, that he was meant for something more. Something big. Maybe it wasn't ADD or ADHD that he had. Maybe it was just the magic in him slowly boiling for the last decade in preparation of his eighteenth birthday.

He wasn't ready for this. For any of it.

"Training me is pointless. I don't want this."

"Bull." Danny spat angrily, causing Stiles to look at him in alarm. Danny was nicknamed The Buddha on the team because he was always so levelheaded and didn't let things get to him. "You can't get rid of it, Stiles. Not anymore than a werewolf can get rid of theirs. It's a genetic mutation. It's not going to go away. So you have a two options. One is to not use it and risk hurting people by tapping into it like you have been, when you don't want to. Two is to man up and learn this so that you don't completely screw up and hurt yourself or your friends or your father."

Stiles sighed through his nose harshly, plopping back into the chair and staring Danny down. "Who else knows?"

Danny was surprised by the sudden subject change. "Uh, my family, obviously. That's really it."

"Why not Jackson?"

"Because he wouldn't understand." Danny shrugs it off, pushing off the bed to turn away from Stiles. He wanted to tell Jackson more than anything. But his family made it clear that no one that wasn't like them could know. It'd put too many people in danger.

"He knows about the werewolves, dude. I'm sure he'd understand."

"I just can't, okay? My family won't let me."

"Well," Stiles trailed off, pausing to consider how to continue that. "That sucks. I mean, I thought when we decided to go from quarto to dos that we'd still at least have best friends that we could confide in about everything. I'm telling Scott the next time I see him. You should be able to tell Jackson."

Danny frowned, "We didn't decide anything. You and Jackson were fighting over Lydia and neither of you were budging about who could go for her under the rules of the Bro Code of Dibs that we made when we were like… eleven. It broke up the Fantastic Four and you and Scott became Batman and Robin while we became Iron Man and Bruce Banner. I couldn't leave Jackson alone. So we just went our separate ways and I lost two of my best friends."

Stiles gaped. "Danny…"

"It's okay, though." Danny shrugged it off, "It looks like destiny has our plans sorted for us."

The thing about lies, is they always have a way of catching up to a person. You can convince yourself that you're keeping the secret to protect someone you love, maybe multiple someones, but when it comes down to it – it'll implode like a nuclear bomb and evaporate anyone within a five mile radius.

It all comes to a head when Scott's lurking outside of the door, voices penetrating the weak wood and sounding loud to his enhanced hearing. One is arguing about how they need to know the truth, they deserve it. The other is fighting back, saying it's her choice and he needs to stay away like she warned him, that no one can know about their past.

It's all Scott can take before he's shouldering his way into the room, the door creaking and splintering down the center through his rage. The shock and electricity that crackled in the air from the woman set Scott even more on edge than he was. His eyes volleyed between the two occupants, anger building with each passing second. His claws extended, canines following and his vision sharpening as he gave into the wolf.

"Scott…" Derek attempted a warning tone, eying him warily, but Scott let out a growl, halting his speech.

"You knew all along, didn't you? You knew she's been alive this whole time and you didn't think Stiles had a right to know?" Scott wanted to bite and tear in the name of his friend, his brother. "I knew we shouldn't have trusted you but Stiles said we should give you a chance with the wolves coming to contest the territory and with Peter and Kate still out there. He said we needed to work together. He defended you to me! And all along you've been betraying him."

"Scott, please, there are some things you don't understand."

"Like you working with the Argents?" He rounded to Natalie. "Allison saw you leaving the house. Heard her parents talking about wanting to kill you like they do werewolves. That you can't be trusted. So how about you tell me what the hell's going on and then we can go tell Stiles, who deserves to know more than anyone."

Natalie and Derek shared a look, moments filled with tension as they contemplated whether or not they should be telling Scott the whole story. Eventually, Natalie heaved a sigh and sat down on the ratty motel bed, scrubbing her hands over her face in a way that was so entirely Stiles that Scott let his wolf bleed away in the familiar comfort of it.

"It all started ten years ago…"