Beacon Hills, sometime in 2009
Marlow Stilinski was ten years old and on a night camping trip in the woods of Beacon Hills with her best friend Mason Hewitt and his parents when she got lost on her own and met a strange man who promised to lead her back to the camping site.
Marlow was young, but not stupid. Her father had taught her better than to walk off with creepy strangers. She made a run for it, the man chasing her. When he finally caught up to the little girl, his eyes were glowing red. Marlow had screamed but the man bit her nonetheless. He ran, and Marlow Stilinski was never the same.
She didn't know how to tell her dad or brother what was happening to her - she didn't even know what was happening to herself -, so she kept it bottled up inside. Marlow did her research, as much as she could fathom at her age, and eventually concluded that whoever that man had been, he was a shapeshifter.
When the first full moon finally rolled around, Marlow had made a plan for herself. Her father was out on the night shift and Marlow and Stiles were spending the night at Scott McCall's house. She pretended to be asleep and snuck off to an abandoned little shack that she had prepared for herself.
But even the metal chains she had taken out of her brother's room couldn't hold her and she broke loose.
The next morning she woke up in an abandoned ruin of a house, covered in blood and with no idea of what had happened to her the previous night.
An older boy came up to her and offered her an old rag. "Here - to clean off the blood," he said. His voice was firm, but Marlow wasn't scared of him. She didn't know why. She should have been terrified.
Marlow reluctantly took the rag from him and started wiping off the blood. "Whose clothes are these?" she asked, looking down at herself. She was wearing way too loose sweatpants and a sweater that may as well have been a dress on her.
"My sister Laura put some of her clothes on you when she found you last night."
"Where is she now?" Marlow asked, putting down the rag.
"Out. Trying to find out how much damage you did," the boy said. In better lighting Marlow could see that he was older than her and Stiles, he looked to be in his late teens.
"What do you mean?" Marlow asked. The boy sat down. She could now fully make out his appearance. Black short hair, olive skin, blue-green eyes, wearing jeans and a black leather jacket.
"I'm assuming this was your first full moon?"
Marlow nodded. She still couldn't fully grasp what exactly that meant, but if he knew the effects the full moon could have on her, he must have known more. "What do you know about the full moon?"
The boy chuckled a bit. "More than enough after dealing with it my whole life."
"Are you also a shapeshifter?" Marlow asked.
He nodded. "You could say that. How old are you?"
"Ten," Marlow answered truthfully. She knew that when people talked behind her back it was usually about how uncharacteristically old she was acting for someone her age. She always assumed that ran in the family.
"And this is your first full moon? What pack do you belong to?"
Marlow narrowed her eyes at him. This was the first time she had heard the term 'pack' being used when talking about shapeshifters.
"You know, your pack. Your Alpha and the other Betas," he further explained. "You do know about these things, don't you?" he asked when she still didn't respond. She shook her little head, brown hair swaying along with it. "You weren't born like this, were you?" he asked after a few seconds of silence.
"No," Marlow said with a small voice.
"How did this happen?"
She shrugged. "I was camping in the woods with Mason and I got lost. There was this stranger with red glowing eyes. He bit me and then I noticed that things began changing."
"The wound healed," he said. Marlow nodded. "And you heard and smelled things you weren't supposed to."
"Yeah," she confirmed.
"And you haven't seen the man since?" the boy asked. Marlow shook her head. "That's odd. He should have come back for you if he wanted you to be part of his pack."
Marlow let out an exasperated sigh. She had read up on a lot, but only truly understood half of the information she had found. "I don't understand what you mean," she complained.
"Well then let me explain it to you."
"Go ahead," Marlow told him.
"That night you were camping there was an Alpha in the woods. A werewolf Alpha. He bit you and the bite gave you special powers. Like the healing, hearing, and smell. There are other things like speed, seeing, and strength. All of that will develop with time. The fact that the bite healed and didn't kill you means that you successfully transformed into one of us."
"One of you?" Marlow asked.
"A shapeshifter. My sister Laura and I are werewolves. Although I'm not sure you are one too. Your scent is different. We'll find out what you are soon enough. There are more kinds of shapeshifters out there than you can even think about," he explained. Marlow nodded, slowly processing the new knowledge in her head.
"Whoever that Alpha in the woods was, he gave you a gift. One that you may not want, but received anyway. You will never be sick again, injuries to your body can heal within seconds and all those powers I listed a few minutes ago ain't that bad either. But with that gift comes a downside. People who were turned like you have a significantly harder time controlling their abilities, especially when they're as young as you."
"Every day will be hard enough but full moons may be nearly impossible. Whenever that full moon comes out, you will completely give in to your new nature. And everything and everyone getting in your way is in danger."
"Where did that blood all over my face come from?" Marlow asked.
"Laura is trying to figure that out right now."
"Is it gonna be something bad?" she asked.
He nodded. "Most likely."
Marlow fought the urge to cry. She hadn't cried in front of anyone since her mother died a few years back and she wouldn't do it in front of this strange kid either.
"Normally, you'd have an Alpha to help you gain control. But yours seems to be in the wind. Whoever he was. Maybe the hunters got to him."
"What hunters?" Marlow asked. She shifted on the floor uncomfortably.
"They were out last night. After you, maybe some others. But I'd say mainly you. You have to be extremely careful. These hunters could be anyone and they have weapons - deadly weapons."
Marlow was stoic, as always, when something frightened her. Sometimes her father wondered whether she would ever grow out of that.
"I know you're scared. I can smell it on you. And your heart is nearly beating out of your chest. I don't want to scare you but unfortunately, I have to prepare you for the rest of your life," he went on.
"Normally your Alpha would be the one to protect you but now that he's not here, we need to find another way to keep you safe until you learn to control it," he said.
"Why did he do that?" Marlow asked.
The boy shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe he wanted to build up his pack. Maybe his intentions that night were crueler and you got away with your life. Maybe he was just bored. None of that matters anymore, you are what you are now and you can't change that."
"That sucks," Marlow told him.
He nodded. "It does."
"What time is it?" she asked, suddenly panicked. Clearly, it was well within the day and her original plan was to sneak back into the McCall house before everyone woke up.
"Early afternoon. Your family will be looking for you by now," he said.
Marlow got up and started pacing around the charred ruins of the house. "How do I explain this to them?" she asked. And what would they do if they found out? Would they believe her? Or have her locked up at Eichen House?
"You don't," he simply said.
"How? How do I keep this from them?!"
"You have got to find a way. Because if you tell them it could go three ways. Either they believe you and try everything to help you keep it from the rest of the world - highly unlikely, or they don't believe you and have you locked up because they think you're insane, or, finally, they don't believe you until one day on a full moon you loose control and maul them to death."
"Shut up! What do you know? You don't know my family, you don't even know me. And I don't know you or your sister. Who even are you?" she asked, now more enraged than frightened.
"I'm Derek. Derek Hale. This used to be my house."
Marlow stopped in her tracks. "Oh, my God. I've heard my brother and his best friend talk about you and your family before," she said. "They died in here, didn't they?" she asked cautiously.
Derek nodded. "Hunters killed them. A fate I'm trying to keep you from."
"Why? You don't even know me," Marlow reminded him.
"I know you, Marlow. I know you because your dad is raising hell and earth right now to find you and get you back home safely. I know you're the Sheriff's daughter and that your mother died when you were young and that is why you act like nothing can faze you anymore."
"You can find just about all of this out with one quick Google search," Marlow snarked.
Derek slightly smirked at her. "I also know that you act like a teenager when you're still just a kid. And that you're scared and confused about what's going on right now, which is why you will be lashing out against everyone who asks you what you perceive to be stupid questions. Right now that's me. But I can assure you that I'm not here to ask stupid questions. All of this is necessary because you're different from everybody else now. And it's not something you can tell anyone, because they won't understand. Now I know that's hard, trust me, but it's something that has to be done to keep the supernatural world safe."
Marlow looked him up and down. "And what are you supposed to be to me now? My Alpha?"
Derek shook his head. "I'm not an Alpha. I'm a Beta. Laura is my Alpha. She became the leader after my mother died. She's not your Alpha, but we can help you," Derek explained. Marlow gave him a suspicious look. He sighed. "Look at you. You're ten years old, even if you don't act like it. Without an Alpha or anyone else to train you, you're screwed. You can walk away from this, we're not forcing you into anything. But know that we will do anything to keep our world hidden and the hunters will do anything in their power to keep humans from getting harmed."
The door opened and Marlow jumped. A girl who looked to be a bit older than Derek walked into the house. She looked a lot like him. Marlow didn't need to be a wannabe detective like Stiles to figure out that this was Laura. Laura waved over her brother and whispered something to him. Marlow closed her eyes to see if Derek was telling the truth and if she really could hear anything. When she closed them, the words became louder.
"A camper was found mauled by the preserve," she heard Laura say. When she opened her eyes, both were looking at her.
"Did I kill him?" Marlow asked.
"They're saying it was an animal attack, but I'm assuming that you did," Laura told her. She walked up to her.
"There's one sure way to tell," Derek said.
"Only if she can control it, which I highly doubt," Laura told her brother.
"How can you tell?" Marlow asked.
"If you really did kill an innocent, accidentally or not, your eyes will glow blue. Like mine," he said before his eyes suddenly started glowing an icy blue.
Marlow took a step back. "How do I do that?"
"You probably can't control it yet. But maybe if you closed your eyes and focused on only that, it might work," Laura told her.
Marlow nodded. She had no reason to trust these two, especially when one of them just proved that he has taken an innocent life, but her gut told her that they were okay. She closed her eyes and focused on what she had just seen Derek do. When she opened them a few seconds later, she saw the siblings' faces visibly change from questioning to concerned.
"They're blue, aren't they?" Marlow asked as for the first time in years a tear rolled down her face in front of other people.
Laura approached her and instead of running, Marlow let the older werewolf wipe the tear off her face with her sleeve. She put her finger under Marlow's chin and held her head up. "We will help you train. You will get this under control. Do not worry about anything that happened last night."
"I killed someone," Marlow choked out.
"It was an accident. You can't blame yourself for it," Derek told her.
"But I do."
"The guilt will go away someday. And as far as the cops are concerned, that man died from an animal attack," Laura assured her.
Marlow took a deep breath. She didn't think that the guilt would ever pass but there were other things to focus on now.