A/N: So, this chapter ended up being all Peter's POV. I didn't originally mean for him to have the entire chapter, but he's just so much fun to write I couldn't seem to help myself. XD Anyway, Peter's by himself for the first half of the chapter, then Riley comes back and they...well, snipe at each other, mostly. XD Enjoy!

Chapter 5

"Here," Carmen said, stopping in front of a door that had a triquetra written on it in chalk. "You'll be staying in this room until Riley picks something else." Then, suddenly and without warning, she yanked open the door and shoved Peter inside. "Laters!" she called in cheerfully before pulling the door shut again.

Peter spun around and growled at the closed door, then froze as the scents in the room caught up to him. Magic and petrichor and a dozen other little scents that added up to Riley. He'd known her for less than a day, but a scent like hers was distinctive, unmistakable.

Which behooved the question, what room had Carmen just dumped him in?

Turning back around, he was startled to see a medium-sized room with a sleeping bag spread out on the floor in one corner of the room with stacks of books piles up against the rest of the walls, with the exception of the wall across from the door, which had what looked like a large map of the town done in chalk on it, with the bunker and a few other locations marked with stars. Looking around, he noticed several notebooks and sketch pads scattered around, and he wondered once more where odd little things like that came from, because he highly doubted that the Wild Hunt brought along supplies for the people they abducted and erased. Then again, for all he knew, maybe they did; Riley had mentioned Lost Ones being taken as sacrifices sometimes, maybe the Hunt brought supplies to keep the ones not taken from openly revolting against their situation?

Although he had to admit, other than Riley and Carmen, none of the people he'd seen upon his arrival had seemed lively enough to stage any sort of revolt. Still, he didn't see any other way for those types of supplies to exist here, in possession of these people.

Or maybe, Peter theorized, those empty houses up above in the town might not always have been empty. Maybe there had been other people in the town once, people before the Wild Hunt had brought the Lost Ones to this realm. It would, he reasoned, explain some of the anachronistic clothing he'd seen on some of the Lost Ones; it'd also explain why some of the books piled around the room didn't seem to be in modern English...or sometimes not English at all.

Still, there was no way for him to either confirm or disprove his theories at the moment, so he shelved those thoughts for the time-being, instead focusing his attention on the room itself. Curious about the woman who called this room hers, the woman who'd swooped in and saved his ass from dangers he hadn't even known about, he prowled over to the closest little pile of books, kneeling down to pick up the sketchbook that was resting atop an an old bestiary that seemed to be written in Welsh.

He was surprised to see that the first few sketches were filled with sketches and doodles of Beacon Hills. Or rather, Beacon Hills of ten years ago. The town hadn't changed that much in the intervening years, but here and there Peter saw proof that the Beacon Hills in these pages wasn't the one he'd last walked through. There was a sketch of an ice cream shop that had closed down two years previously, and a drawing of the massive oak tree that had stood outside town hall until it had been blown down in that freak thunderstorm last spring.

He also saw numerous sketches of the Hale house, his family's house, from before the fire. It almost physically hurt to see his home on the pages in front of him, rendered in such exquisite detail, and it took a concentrated effort to keep his claws from slipping out and cutting into the sketchbook.

Chest tight and throat aching, he quickly turned the page, almost desperate to get away from those images of his family home before everything had gone so wrong.

He nearly dropped the sketchpad when he saw the next page: a detailed portrait of himself. It was him in what seemed to be his early twenties, his face at that interesting stage between teenager and full-grown man; a bit like that new book genre people were bandying about, what was it called, new adult? It was him in that stage.

What truly astounded him, though, even more than the existence of this sketch to begin with, was the level of detail in the drawing. The angle of his eyebrows, the line of his jaw, the slight upward tilt in his mouth as his lips lifted in a faint smile...it took his breath away, the level of care that must have gone into this rendering.

Then he turned to the next page and did drop the sketchpad, because it had another sketch of him, this time with his sister Talia at his side, beautiful and strong.

The sketch after that was him with a teenage Laura, and after that was a drawing of him with a young Derek, his nephew's cheeks chubby in a way that pegged him as middle-school age.

The next drawing was of Peter holding Cora as a toddler, and the one after that one was of their entire immediate family: Peter, Talia, the kids, and even Talia's husband Aaron. There were a couple drawings beyond that that depicted a handful of Hale cousins and the like, but most sketches were of Peter and the core of his family.

Heart pounding in his chest, he dropped the sketchpad back down onto the pile of books. Confused and conflicted, he just stood there for a moment, his whole body trembling.

After a moment, though, his insatiable curiosity got the better of him, and he reached out with shaking hands to pick up another notebook.

This one contained drawings of places he only vaguely recognized, since he'd barely left Beacon Hills in the last few years; San Francisco Bay, Golden Gate Park, Coit's Tower, Alcatraz. More sketches of places in Seattle, and then a handful of the streets and landmarks of Sacraento. Cities where Riley had lived or visited, he assumed, but couldn't be sure without asking; for all he knew she'd just picked the images at random from a magazine and recreated them (an admittedly unlikely option, since he saw no such magazines around, but still).

The next notebook he picked up had sketches of a beautiful long-haired woman who resembled Riley just enough for Peter to make the connection and realize that the bombshell depicted in the drawings must be the Rhoswen he'd heard both Carmen and Riley herself mention.

There were sketches of Rhoswen smiling, scowling, reading a book. A couple drawings of her with a younger Alan Deaton, and then a few more of a teenage Rhoswen with two people who Peter assumed were her and Riley's parents; a woman with wavy hair and smiling eyes and a tall man with dark eyes and a strong jaw.

There were a few more sketches of Riley's parents, but the drawings seemed different somehow, lacking the level of detail he'd seen in the others; it was like Riley hadn't been able to recall as much about them, like the memories were fading for her, and sketches reflected that.

He couldn't help but wonder if the reason she'd sketched them in the first place was to attempt to hold on to her memories of them. If that's what she was doing with all these sketchbooks; chronicling the things she'd seen and the people she'd known in the hopes of not losing those moments to the passing of time.

It made sense. So much must have happened to her since coming here; it wasn't surprising that she would want to try and preserved memories of her life before this place.

He briefly wondered why there weren't any sketches of Eichen House, then realized that those memories probably weren't ones Riley wanted to hang onto; God knew he'd forget the time he'd spent there if he could. Of course, it was equally possible that Riley had done drawings of that madhouse from hell and he just hadn't come across that particular sketchpad yet; that was a possibility, too.

Before he had a chance to snoop around anymore, though, he heard footsteps coming down the hall outside, accompanied by muffled voices that he recognized. Calm and amused and with the faintest hint of a Hispanic accent: Carmen. Annoyed, indignant, and sarcastic: Riley.

"You said to get him settled into a room," Carmen was saying, her voice just a little too cheerful to be without suspicion.

"I said a room," Riley snapped back. "Not my room!"

A low, melodious laugh. "I don't see what you're so upset about," Carmen replied. "You've been missing the guy for a solid decade; what harm can come from sharing a room now that he's here?"

Riley grumbled an impressive stream of aggravated curses before huffing out a short sigh. "I've decided that I'm mad at you," she announced, sounding just the slightest bit sulky. "I haven't figured out how to get back at you yet, but it's coming, I promise."

Carmen just laughed again, and Peter had to admit that even though the sound of it was distorted by passing through the thick walls and door, it was a nice laugh, genuine and uplifting and the warmth of it made him start to understand why Riley seemed to value Carmen's friendship so much; genuine laughter must be something hard to come by here. "Sure thing, Ri, whatever you say."

The women talked for a few minutes more, bickering back and forth, then Riley finally came into her room, kicking the door shut behind her and crossing her arms as she noticed Peter standing by a stack of her books with a sketchpad held lightly in his hands.

"Most gentlemen would refrain from snooping in a lady's private things," was the first thing Riley said, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. "But then I suppose you've never been the standard definition of 'gentlemen', have you?"

Peter found himself a bit irritated at that, but decided not to rise to the bait. "Can you blame me for being curious about my rescuer?" he asks instead, infusing his words with some of the charm and charisma he'd relied on once upon a time.

Riley just rolled her eyes, either immune to his charm or oblivious to it. "You always were very inquisitive; I suppose I should be happy that you've retained that quality over the years. Maybe you haven't grown too old to be clever after all."

Peter opened his mouth to respond, reconsidered what he'd been about to say, thought of something else to say, and then reconsidered that, too. In the end, he blurted out something he'd actually been planning to not ask about. "You didn't do any sketches of Eichen House."

Riley went so stiff it was like she'd turned to stone, her hands clenching into fists so tightly that Peter caught a faint whiff of salty blood in the air where her nails dug into her palms and winced. "How do you know that I was there?" she asked, her voice tight and full of pain. "And don't you dare say that you remembered it," she snapped, her voice almost a snarl. "Because I see the look in your eyes, Peter, and it's not remembrance."

"Carmen mentioned it," Peter said, swallowing hard and feeling the slightest stirring of guilt for throwing Riley's friend under the bus so immediately; the guilt faded quickly enough, though, because what else could he do but tell Riley the truth? It wasn't like she wouldn't figure it out herself anyway, she wasn't an idiot. "Something about your...psychometry?"

Riley gave him a cold look that actually made the hairs on the back of his neck raise up. "We're not talking about this, Peter. Drop it."

But even though his instincts were strongly suggesting that he pick another topic of conversation, he didn't heed them. "Don't think I will," he drawled. "Imagine my surprise when I learned that both of us have spent quality time in Beacon Hills' most exclusive madhouse."

Riley actually snapped her teeth at him in a very wolfish gesture of warning and aggravation (he assumed it was something she'd picked up during the time she'd spent with his family, though he couldn't help but wonder why and how she'd retained it after all these years). "I'm serious, Peter," she told him, eyes darkening like threatening storm clouds. "Drop it."

"Or what?" he challenged.

She glared at him, one hand twitching like she wanted to either cast a spell at him or simply punch him. In the end, though, she did neither, and instead just shook her head and walked over to her sleeping bag in the corner, kneeling down to fuss with the zipper. "Dinner's cooking now," she said in a very sudden subject change. "It'll be done in a couple hours, so I suggest we try to get some sleep before mealtime."

Peter blinked at her, thrown for a loop by how she'd blatantly sidestepped his questions. "You realize," he said slowly, "that I'm not going to stop asking you questions just because you don't want to answer them. Right?"

Riley huffed out a small sigh, yanking on the zipper a little harder than necessary as she opened her sleeping bag. "You realize," she returned, her voice rough, "that even if you keep asking questions, I might not give you the answers you want to hear?"

Peter considered that for a moment, continuing to watch Riley as she stood back up and crossed the room to peer at the chalk map on the far wall. For about ten seconds, he thought about dropping the subject. He dismissed that notion almost as quickly as it came, and instead opted for a more direct, albeit possibly brutal, method. "Did you ever encounter an asshat named Valack during your stay?" he asked. "Or was he not there at the time? Because I was hoping you might be able to tell me what he-" Peter broke off, distracted by Riley tripping over her own feet, reaching out a hand to brace herself against the wall. "So you do know him, then," he remarked, and it definitely wasn't a question.

"Valack is still around?" she demanded, sounding outraged even as her scent twisted with fear and anger. "Does no one have the guts to chop his head off? Even after all this time?"

"All this time," Peter repeated. "So he was there when you were."

"He was stuck in there even before I got in there," Riley grumbled.

Peter blinked, crunching the numbers in his head. "So he's spent over a decade in that place?"

"Almost fifteen years, actually, at least that I can be sure of. But, yeah. Seems like he's been there for quite some time," Riley agreed. "Accounts for his charming personality, don't you think?" she added sarcastically. "I did meet him while I was there," she explained at last, looking at Peter with an unreadable expression on her face. "I did a two year stint in that hellhole, and I shared a cell with him for a little while. Of course," she went on, "it doesn't take a genius to realize that tossing a psychometric mage into a small enclosed space with a sadistic mind-raper is not a good idea. Pretty sure we lasted about a month before trying to kill each other," she added thoughtfully, brow furrowed. "They separated us after that, gave me my own cell."

"Wow," Peter said, and meant it. "That must have been quite the fight."

"It was definitely something," Riley remarked, lips curving in a wry smile as the shadows of the past faded from her eyes. "Now, seriously, there's going to be a huge crowd once the stew's done cooking, so we should rest up now before it's finished."

"Stew," Peter echoed, then recalled the bits of conversation he'd picked up on earlier. "That's what you went out to hunt, something for dinner?"

Riley nodded in confirmation. "Yep. Just one moss hare, but it's big enough to give us enough servings for everyone."

"Moss hare?" Peter scowled. "What's a moss hare?"

Riley wrinkled her nose at him in a way that was, quite frankly, adorable. "A hare covered in moss, doofus," she said, tone exasperated.

Peter rolled his eyes. "Well, excuse me for asking," he said with a snort, trying very hard to not picture what such a creature might look like, since doing so would almost definitely put him off eating it. Then, "You caught it yourself?" He could definitely get behind a woman who was self-sufficient enough to go out and catch her own dinner; it bothered him that she was stuck in a place where she had to do it, but it was admirable that she'd adapted to her situation and found the means to survive and provide for not just herself but others as well.

"Yeah," Riley said. "Before my sister and I got taken by the Hunt," she told him, each word carefully measured, "I knew a guy who taught me how to snare rabbits." She gave a wry smile. "You-" She shook her head sharply, cutting herself off before continuing. "He," she went on, "used to tease me about how I'd feel so guilty for catching them. Called me a crybaby and everything."

Peter stared at her, trying to reconcile the idea of a Riley who cried over bunnies with the woman in front of him who hadn't hesitated to slash the throat of the shadow hound that had attacked them. "Seriously?" he asked, unable to mask the disbelief in his tone.

"Seriously," Riley agreed, her tone solemn even as her eyes sparkled. Then she gave him another unreadable look before heaving a sigh and crossing the room to a medium-sized steamer trunk that was wedged between two towering stacks of books. Opening the trunk, she rummaged inside for a bit before straightening up and turning back around to literally throw something fairly large in Peter's face.

Catching it, he was mildly surprised to see that it was a bundle of blankets. "What...?"

"You need to sleep," Riley said, her tone a peculiar mix of irritation, concern, and fondness. "You're exhausted, both mentally and physically, and you need to let your mind and body rest."

Peter instinctively bristled at the implication of you're weak right now that her words carried. "I'm fine," he snapped.

She laughed at him. Laughed. At him. "Sure you are," she told him, sounding and looking incredibly amused. "The bags under your eyes and the tremors in your limbs are all totally on purpose, right? Going for that strung out I-just-caught-a-red-eye-flight look?"

He growled at her.

She rolled her eyes, unimpressed. "Stop being so damn proud, Peter Hale. You've been through a lot; there's no shame in admitting that you need a breather."

Logically, he could acknowledge the truth in her words. But even so... "I really don't think that I-"

"Peter," Riley said, her tone suddenly sharp, "you can either fall asleep on your own, or I can hit you upside the head and put you out that way. Your choice."

Peter just gaped at her for a moment, unable to get his tone working to fire back a response. Finally, he settled for growling at her one more time...then he retreated to the corner of the room farthest from Riley's sleeping bag and got to work on spreading out the blankets she'd given him.

Riley, for whatever reason, didn't comment on his actions, though he caught a whiff of her scent as he worked: surprise, satisfaction, and that same exasperated affection that always seemed to creep into her scent when he was around.

He inhaled carefully one more time, breathing in her scent and all its intriguing flavors, then abruptly scowled, baffled by his own actions. Frustrated with both himself and the utterly ridiculous situation he'd landed himself in, he threw himself down onto his makeshift bed of blankets and drew the last quilt up over not just his legs and torso but his head as well, hoping to block out Riley's scent. It didn't quite work, since even the quilt was saturated with the redheads scent, albeit stale and faint since she evidently hadn't used this quilt herself in some time.

He did finally managed to fall into an uneasy slumber, darkness settling in around him as his weariness caught up with him.

He was only vaguely surprised when his uncomfortable almost-nightmares of Eichen House transformed into something else, something different. The new dreamscape felt suspiciously like the bizarre flashback he'd had earlier, when he'd seen the tattoo on Riley's back and it had triggered something in the back of his mind.

He was lounging comfortably on the couch in the living room (and wasn't that just utterly bizarre and heart-wrenching, sitting in the living room of his family home, which had very definitely burned to the ground years ago), holding a hardcover book in his hand.

"Peter!" Talia's voice was echoing through the house as she sought him out. "Peter, where are you?"

He rolled his eyes. "In here, sister dear," he called back, "as you'd know if you opened your ears for a minute." Honestly, even with their entire Pack residing here, it wasn't that hard to track down someone's specific heartbeat.

Talia strode into the living room and fixed him in a look that was somehow stern, exasperated, and amused all at once; Peter liked to think of it as the Big Sister Look. "And what are you doing in here?" she asked him

He arched an eyebrow and held up his book. "Reading."

She rolled her eyes. "What I meant," she said, clearly trying to project an aura of patience, "is why are you in here reading when I distinctly recall telling you to be outside with me so we can greet our new Emissary?"

Peter blinked at his sister and glanced over at the clock on the mantel. "That time already?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "I thought she wasn't getting here until this evening."

Talia shrugged, and for a moment she was just a woman trying her best rather than an Alpha who couldn't afford to show weakness. "She did say she was eager to get started. Although I think her impatience has more to do with finally coming to Beacon Hills than anything else."

Peter hummed in agreement. "Are you sure it's such a good idea?" he asked his sister, setting aside his book and springing to his feet. "Agreeing to take on a Druid we know almost nothing about?"

Talia gave a slight sigh as they headed for the front door. "A good idea? No, probably not. But we can't go without an Emissary, and Dante wasn't even close to done with Alan's training."

(Dante, Peter recalled, was their Emissary who had gotten killed in an omega attack a few months before; his apprentice Alan Deaton hadn't had the skills yet to ascend to the position of Emissary, so the Hale Pack had been searching for an adequate replacement. Why hadn't Peter remembered this before? Why hadn't be remembered the Emissary they'd had after Dante and before Deaton?)

"Besides," Talia went on, "the woman clearly wants to be in Beacon Hills so she can be close to her sister. There's nothing wrong with that."

"Pretty sure there's something wrong somewhere," Peter remarked, "since her sister's locked away in a nuthouse."

Talia gave a low growl and slanted him a chiding look. "Don't judge so hastily," she scolded him. "We don't know the details of why the girl's in Eichen House. And we aren't going to pester our Emissary about it," she added sternly.

"We aren't?" Peter asked, pasting a too-innocent look on his face.

"No," she said severely, "we're not." She gave him one more warning look and then they were stepping out onto the porch, both of them looking over to where a young woman with long red hair stood waiting for them on the front lawn. She seemed to be around Talia's age, and carried herself with a confident air that was only married by the faint shadows under her eyes that indicated a recent lack of rest.

"Greetings, Alpha Hale," the woman said, her voice calm and her heartbeat steady as she inclined her head in a deep nod.

"Good afternoon, Rhoswen Crowe," Talia replied, a faint smile gracing her lips as she gave a slight nod in return. "It's nice to finally meet you in person."

A/N: And...that's the chapter! Drop me a review if you've got a second, to let me know what you liked/didn't like/want to see more of/etc. Feedback makes me deliriously happy. ;D