Derek is getting in over his head. He is trying his best to cope with the new development. Isaac has an epiphany. Among other things, it leads to a new injury for Stiles. We learn more about Hester. They catch a werewolf, but he's not talking. A plan develops. Allison plays a big part. If you pay attention you'll understand what it's all about. She makes her dad proud.
A couple of weeks after episode 3.23 I came to a conclusion. I can not kill a major character even if they did. My fic is not very canonical in the first place, so it doesn't really matter. I decided to make her some kind of hero. I want to give my Allison a hero-status. How that is going to go I'm not quite sure of yet, but I have some ideas. Sterek will still be there, but this story lives it's own life. New and surprising developments will follow. Hang in there.
Enough said. Hope you guys will enjoy chapter 32. The longest so far.
As he walked up the path to the patio, Derek instantly recognized the man sitting on the lounge chair by the door. The memory of Stiles getting thrown to the wall flashed before his eyes. The urge to attack was overwhelming, but he managed to brace himself.
He wondered if Hester was aware of this, or if it was just a coincidence that the guy was here. He got his answer seconds later as Hester emerged. "I guess you two have met before, but you were never formally introduced to each other." She took a few steps forward, and reach her hand out to Derek. He didn't take it.
He knew he'd been fooled, and could feel the claws coming out. Hester and her family had been friends of the Hales for decades. They hadn't really mingled much, but there had always been an understanding between the families about supporting each other. He knew that they were filthy rich, and that they had a strict policy of not mixing with humans on a regular basis. None of them had ever set foot in a public school. Hester herself had been home-schooled until she was sent to a relative in Europe to attend a prestigious private school in France at the age of ten.
Her older brother had been destined to inherit the pack, but was shunned by the family after impregnating a human. The girl had been payed off, and the twin girls she gave birth to had been turned before they reached their fourth birthday.
Hester had suddenly become the sole heir. Not only as a leader of the pack, but also to a small real estate empire. After her parents died, she'd raised the twins as her own, turning them into spoiled brats.
There was a rumor going around that her brother was killed by hunters a few years back. His remains were never found, but according to the stories, Hester had proof. If the tale was true, she also knew who killed him.
"Benjamin, Ben, this is Derek, Derek Hale, but you already knew that, didn't you?" She smirked as she turned to him. Derek knew he wouldn't stand a chance in combat with the two of them. He also knew that there was at least five more werewolves in the house, so he decided to withdraw from the scene.
"I made a mistake. Forget it." He didn't even manage to take a step backwards before Hester was at his side. She grabbed onto his arm, and leaned her head on his shoulder. "Oh, you silly man. You think you have a choice?"
He tried to come loose, but gave up. He would have managed, but he was pretty sure she wanted him alive, so he decided to play it by ear until he could leave.
"I know you have enough money to support yourself, but wouldn't it be nice to have a decent home?" Hester chuckled a little as she led Derek up the few steps to the patio. "I mean, something better than that dingy loft."
She gestured towards a chair and urged Derek to sit. "If you join us, I'll make sure you won't miss anything. My girls love you. Any one of them would be happy to be your mate." She scoffed and gave him a lopsided smile. "They wouldn't even care if they had to share you."
Derek turned away in disgust. "Seriously. I expected more class here. I thought pimping was beneath you." He was actually quite abhorred by this. Hester chuckled. "No, don't get me wrong. They asked for this, but of course, if your tired of the young ones, I'll be more than happy to keep you warm at night."
With a sigh, she continued. "Unless... If you prefer guys, I'll see what I can do."
He didn't want to be there anymore. This just freaked him out too much. "Hester, please! I made a mistake. I don't need your help." He tried to get up from the chair, but she pushed him back. "Not so fast." After exchanging a quick glance with Ben, she continued. "Ben wants you dead. He wants Stiles Stilinski dead, but he is willing to give it up if you join us."
Derek looked at her and recollected a childhood memory. He and his sisters watching 'Snow White'. The evil queen could easily have been replaced by Hester. 'The fairest of them all' was also the most wicked and conniving bitch he'd ever come across.
"This is the only way, Derek." She shrugged and took a step back. "Let me get you a drink. You need to relax."
For a minute, Derek was left alone with that Ben-character, and he contemplated on either attacking or making a run for it. He didn't get a chance to decide before Hester was at his side again. She handed him a glass of wine, and lifted her own in a silent toast. "What do you say? At least say you'll think about it." She smiled and nodded towards the glass in his hand.
Derek shook his head. "No, Hester. I can't. I thought of you as a friend, but..." He lifted the glass to his lips and chugged down the wine, before he got up from his seat. "I'm going to leave..." The pain was excruciating. Before he knew it, he was curled up on the ground feeling the urge to rip his own throat out. "Why?" He croaked out before he passed out.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Scott and Stiles were still sitting with Mr Stilinski, and Isaac volunteered to get them. He knew what part of the hospital they were in, but he didn't know the room number. He didn't bother to go back and ask, so he tried to sniff them out.
As he walked down the hall, pausing for a second outside every room, a male nurse or nurse's assistant bumped into him as he passed. Isaac heard a faint: 'sorry', before the guy entered a room a few doors down. Seconds later, he came out again. He startled a little when he almost ran into Isaac again, but then he hurried to look at the papers he was carrying before he turned and walked the other way.
There was something familiar about the guy, but Isaac was unable to remember where he'd seen him before. Probably in town; maybe he'd even been a student at Beacon Hills High at some point in time.
Isaac drew his breath through his nose. He had to get back on track. He immediately caught the scent of Scott, and was surprised to discover that it came from the room the nurse just exited. He went inside and after processing the scene – seeing the sheriff like that was disturbing – he told Scott and Stiles to come.
It took a while to get Stiles to join them, and Scott had to call his mom to get her to convince him that it was okay. She checked the sheriff and could tell them that he was now sleeping soundly. She also reminded Stiles that he was being monitored at all times, and that any change in his condition would alert the staff.
As soon as they had met up with the Argents again, Chris led them to the meeting-room. Stiles asked for Derek, and Isaac noticed that Chris seemed a little uncomfortable. "He's doing some research, I'm sure he'll be here soon." Chris looked away as he spoke, and Isaac sensed that he wasn't completely truthful.
"We have to talk about the list." Chris started talking before they were all seated, and everybody turned to him. "Derek is next, but we don't know if it is a hit-list or if they want him in their pack." He paused for a second. "Personally I think it's a mix of both. If they can't convince him to join, he will be the next target." He shifted his gaze between Scott and Isaac. "And then there's you two."
Isaac had found a chair and slumped down. "I'm not an Alpha, why would they want me?" He rolled his eyes. "It would be just to have someone around to do their dirty-work." He was about to giggle a little when it hit him. He knew where he'd seen that guy before. He jumped out of his seat and panned the room. "They're here. It was a werewolf."
He rushed to the door, waving for the others to follow. "We met him at Derek's, with, uh, Heather, no, Hester. He was in Mr Stilinski's room."
-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Of course Hester had a dungeon. Unlike the basement where he had been held by Kate, this one was quite classy, if you liked that sort of thing. Derek could easily have enjoyed the surroundings from a different point of view. At the moment he was caged in, in some kind of kennel. The iron bars were thick as a finger and set so close to each other that he couldn't even get his arm between them. It would be almost impossible to break out.
Whatever poison she'd had in the wine was wearing off, but he was still not completely back to normal. He felt stupid. Hester had given him the wine before he had actually turned her down. He wondered if she would have stopped him from drinking it if he'd told her he'd think about joining them, or if the outcome was planned already.
And then he drank it all in one big gulp, making it even worse. Derek clenched his fists until he had his own claws dug deep into the palms of his hands. Crying over his own misfortune was not in his nature, but he felt like crying for Stiles. Stiles was waiting for him to come back and comfort him. At the moment, the danger was even more grave than before.
Derek just hoped that Scott would be there for Stiles, and protect him. He didn't know if Hester and her pack would go after Stiles now, or if she was going to use him as a bargaining-chip. He could only hope for the latter.
A sound turned his attention to a staircase at the other end of the room. The basement was dark, but a small stream of light came from upstairs, and he could see the outline of a man standing there watching him. It was probably one of Hester's young protege's sent out to keep an eye on him.
Derek growled and bared his teeth, making the guy jump. It pleased Derek in an odd way, but at the same time, he felt embarrassed about acting like that. He scooted back to the far corner of the cage and tried to relax. There was nothing else to do than wait and see what would happen.
"The girls are fighting over you. You are threatening the stability of the pack." Derek startled a little when the young man spoke, but chose not to comment. "I wish you were dead. I wish I could kill you now." The sincerity in the omega's voice could not be misconstrued. Derek looked at him. "And why don't you. I'm a sitting duck. I can't fight back. You clearly have the upper hand."
He could see that the guy shook his head. "I have my orders, unfortunately." He turned around and put his foot on the bottom step of the stair. "But if you ruin my chances of bettering my status in this pack, you should watch your back." His eyes lit up with an orange glow for a second, before he walked up the stairs and disappeared.
-o-o-o-o-
Stiles felt the taste of blood in his mouth as he ran down the hall. Every step he took was excruciatingly painful, but he managed to push it away. Scott and Isaac were way ahead of him, and he hoped that they would make it there in time. He didn't know what to expect, but he feared the worse.
Allison and Chris were running next to him and he could see that they wanted to go faster, but even if he wanted to, it wasn't possible. As he turned into the hallway where his dad's room was, he tripped and stumbled forward. He felt Allison's hand on his back, as if she tried to grab him, but she didn't manage to prevent that he landed face first on the floor.
He almost passed out from the pain. The sprained ankle he suffered in the garage was not that serious, and it was nothing compared to this. He's arms had taken most of his weight, and he wondered if he'd sprained his wrist also. Chris yelled for Allison to help him, as the man continued down the hall and entered Mr Stilinski's room.
With tears welling up in his eyes from the pain, he held on to his ankle as he kept an eye on the door a few meters down the hall. Allison tried to help him up, but there was no way he could stand on his foot.
It took forever for the guys to come out, and Stiles feared that they had come too late. Suddenly, Isaac peeked out and panned the hallway before he disappeared again. Shortly after that, Melissa came from the other end of the hall pushing an empty wheelchair.
She noticed Stiles on the floor and her eyes widened a little, but then she just continued in to the room. They could hear a little bit of a commotion from there before Melissa came out again. The wheelchair was no occupied by a young man. He was semi-conscious, and he was wearing a nurse's uniform.
Before Stiles got a chance to ask what had happened, Scott came over and lifted him from the floor. "I guess you need a doctor. Again!" He smiled and carried Stiles the rest of the way to his dad's room. "I'll stay here with you. Mom will come back with a doctor." Scott sat down and sighed heavily. "I don't think he was here to kill him. I think they wanted to warn us."
-o-o-o-o-o-o-
The guy was clearly just an omega, but he had a stamina that could make anyone a little jealous. Chris had brought the guy they captured in the hospital to the basement under the Hale-house. So far, he hadn't said a word.
Allison and Isaac had kept out of the way as Chris used some of the equipment Kate had left behind. The only thing he had accomplished so far was to make the guy scream in pain a couple of times.
"Why don't we just kill him? He's not gonna talk." Isaac was obviously fed up with the whole deal. "Maybe he doesn't even know anything." He stepped forward and bared his teeth. The omega didn't even flinch.
Chris gave it a thought before he dug his hand into his pocket and fished out the note. "Because of this." He held it up in front of Isaac's face and could see that the boy got the picture. "He has to know something. This was a warning."
When Chris came into Mr Stilinski's hospital room, the omega was busy trying to fend off Isaac and Scott. That they didn't kill him there and then, was probably because they were interested in knowing what the guy was doing there in the first place.
The two werewolves had been too busy to notice the piece of paper on the floor. When Chris came in, he'd managed to give the guy a Wolfsbane injection, causing him to collapse.
Scott had taken charge and called Mrs McCall, while Isaac made sure that the sheriff was okay. In the meantime, Chris bent down to pick up the note. He'd was pretty sure he knew what kind of note this was. It looked like one of those lists Derek had told him about. Only on this one, 'Hale' had a cross next to it also.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
"Who was that?" Stiles looked up at Scott while he did his best to not pass out from the pain. "He could have..." He sniffled a little. "Do we know him?" When Scott didn't answer, Stiles turned to his friend and repeated the question in a more demanding way. "DO WE KNOW HIM?"
Scott seemed to think about it for a moment, before he squatted in front of Stiles. "I'm trying to remember, but..." He sighed. "Isaac recognized him as one of Hester's pack. You remember her, right?" Stiles got a little tense when Scott mentioned her name.
He did remember her. He remembered how she'd been practically glued to Derek's side at that infamous party. He remembered how she frowned when she realized that Derek was hanging out with humans. More than anything, he remembered that Derek had thrown everybody out when Joy flirted with Stiles. It was after that party that he and Derek kind of found each other again.
He knew there had been a couple of young men with her, but Stiles had been too busy keeping an eye on Derek to really notice them. "That bitch! Is she behind this? If so, we have a problem."
They didn't get a chance to talk about it anymore, because Melissa came through the door with a doctor in tow. "Here he is. He stumbled and fell, can you check it out. He really wants to stay here with his dad."
The doctor examined his foot, and Stiles wasn't quite sure, but he thought he passed out for a second during the examination. "I think it's just a serious sprain, but you need an x-ray." The doctor got up and turned to Melissa. "It's late, we can do it in the morning. I'll get some pain medication for him."
As soon as the guy had left the room, Stiles turned to Scott. "Derek needs to know. He think that she's his friend." He searched through his pockets to find the phone. "I'll call him. He should have been here by now."
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
It was really quite comfortable in the cage. The floor was made of soft fabric, with possibly some foam rubber underneath. It wasn't the best sleeping quarters he'd been in, but when he curled up a bit, Derek managed to lie there without feeling any of the iron bars against his skin.
He decided that the best course of action was to get his strength back, so trying to get some sleep was important. The dungeon in itself had a decent temperature, so even without a blanket, he didn't feel cold.
He'd made his decision. He knew what to do. From now on it was just a waiting game. He knew that Hester had fancied him since he started to buff up in his late teens. Now, he could use that to his own advantage. She was almost ten years older, but it didn't seem to matter to her.
Derek had never looked at her as anything else than a family friend, albeit her stunning beauty. He had however noticed the stares she'd sent him, and lately the obvious flirtation.
In his younger years he'd been slightly intimidated by the wealth her family possessed, but her parents had always behaved like it didn't matter. They had still made it perfectly clear that they didn't want to mingle with humans.
Hester's brother had always been more drawn to normal human life, and that had ended pretty badly for him. He was just a beta when he fathered the twins, and when he got the choice of killing the mother or leaving the family, he chose the latter. Nobody ever heard from him since. When tragedy struck and Hester's parents got killed in a plane crash, she'd taken over as head of the family.
Nobody knew how she'd required the Alpha status, but she carried it as a natural. The twins were already in training to be spoiled rotten, and Derek had always resented them. If he was forced to pretend to take one of them as his mate, it would be kind of tricky, but he had a plan to get out of this.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
He was chained to a chair, and he could hear that they locked the door behind them when they left. The omega chuckled a little. These guys clearly didn't know what they were doing. A simple wooden chair – even if it was bolted to the floor – couldn't hold a werewolf.
After wiggling for a while, he managed to rock the chair a little, and shortly after it started to give in. He had to keep at it for another fifteen minutes before the chair broke under him. The cuffs around his wrists were impossible to loosen, so he wrapped the chains around his arms before he walked up to the door. It was old and dingy, but the lock must have recently been changed. It was still no challenge for him to get it open. Pretty sure that they had all left, believing he was secured, the omega smiled to himself. They would be in for a surprise in the morning.
It was slightly annoying having to carry all that chain, but it wasn't a big deal. He was strong and fast and if he could get to the hospital and retrieve the car, he'd be home in a couple of hours. He didn't notice the orange flash far behind him as he ran through the woods.
He panned the parking lot. There were only a few cars there. A girl was leaning on one of them seemingly waiting for someone. He snuck over to his own car, and just as he was about to get in, the girl came up to him. "I'm sorry, can you help me?" She stared at him with big pleading eyes. "I, my car key..." She gestured towards a car she'd been next to moments ago. "I dropped it on the ground and accidentally kicked it under there."
He wanted to take off, but it would only take a second to help her. In the darkness she didn't seem to notice that he had chains wrapped around his wrists. He got down on his hands and knees and reached under the car. It was almost bizarre how the key had landed right in the middle. He managed to reach it anyway, and then he got up and handed it to the girl. He panned the dark parking lot again. As he was about to walk back to his own car, he turned to her. "You shouldn't be out here alone, you don't know what kind of predators you can meet."
He didn't notice the smirk on the girls face, and he didn't notice the tall lanky character sneaking away from the parking lot in the other direction. He didn't notice a lot of things. He was just a little bit too cocky about his accomplishments to pay attention to the surroundings.