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“Cora you need to calm down. We’ll never find her if you can’t control yourself.” Derek reaches out to grab her arm but she snatches it away. Her claws lengthen and she snarls at him.
“She’s my mate, Derek. And I’m going to find her and I’m going to kill the hunters that took her.”
She storms out, heart pounding with fierce adrenaline, and thunders out of the building and into the dark.
By the time Cora gets to Lydia’s car (the location of which Stiles managed to find out for her) the acrid scent of fear has dulled, mingling with that of pain and most importantly: gun oil. To a wolf, gun oil was the most common give away for a hunter and from a young age they were all taught how to sniff it out to keep themselves and the rest of the pack safe. It was a skill Cora was immensely thankful for now as she was able to follow it an old auto-mechanic-shop-come-warehouse, long since shut down due to bankruptcy most likely. She was surprised to find that it wasn’t heavily guarded and that she wouldn’t need to wait for the rest of the pack to come after her, probably. Lydia would kill her herself if she threw herself into unnecessary danger, but this was her mate, and she wouldn’t take it lightly. Cora would rescue her with or without the others.
She thinks there must be some sort of basement thats cut off from the rest of the shop because the main doorway is deserted and cold as she steps over the threshold. There’s an eerie stillness to the place, it’s empty walls making it look desolate and untouched by life. Cora has her claws out and ready when she gets to a door nestled round a corner that can only lead down in the bowels of the building. Below her are the muffled sounds of steady heartbeats, neither afraid nor alert, seemingly comfortable in their vulnerability but still too quiet to properly count. She thinks there’s probably four at the most, and she knows she could definitely handle two on her own but maybe three with guns would be too many…
A slap rings put from below and then it doesn’t matter how many of them there are, Lydia is hurt and the people doing it to her aren’t suffering yet. It’s all Cora can do not to waste her energy on ripping the door off it’s hinges as she flies down the stairs and takes out the first man - bulky but not quick enough to save himself - with relative ease, his blood warm on her claws. She hears the unmistakable sound of someone flicking the safety off a handgun and immediately her eyes find Lydia who’s chained to a chair with a horrible cloth gag in her mouth.
The next hunter runs at her which is lucky for her because she can use his body as a shield against the bullets flying at her. There’s a flash of silver to her right as he tries, in a last ditch attempt to kill her before he bleeds out, to jab a knife into her stomach but misses and slices her side instead. In seconds the wolfsbane laced blade is doing it’s job and she can feel her energy wane. The whole world slowly becomes cloaked in a stifling darkness pierced by the high pitched screams of her mate as she staggers with the body of the hunter still clasped to her front in defence against the slew of bullets.
The third (and thank god there is only three) hunter approaches rapidly, and Cora has just enough time to wonder if it’s all going to end for her right then when Derek is suddenly there and clawing at the hunter, killing him like she did the first.
It’s silent then for an ungodly amount of time.
Cora is running on nothing but adrenaline and she knows it, the wolfsbane having sapped all her supernatural abilities. Vaguely she’s aware that if someone doesn’t burn it out of her she’ll die, and the last memory either her or Lydia have of each other will be terrible.
“She’s hurt!” Lydia cries as soon as Derek can get the gag out of her mouth. “She was- she was cut with a knife. It must have been dipped in poison. She’s going to die, she’s going to die, she’s going to die…” She chants, still chained to the chair and utterly limp as she watches Cora drift out of focus.
No one ever talks about the bond between mates for a human. For Lydia when she met and fell in love with Cora, it was suddenly like they’d been melted together and reformed as one entity. The bond was just as strong for her as it was for Cora, so now, seeing her mate weak and on the verge of death, she too was useless, only able to look on blankly as Derek searched around for something to burn the poison out with. Lydia felt like half of her was dying with Cora.
Silent tears streamed down her face when Derek finally found a lighter on one of the bodies, along with an aerosol can of antifreeze tucked behind a dilapidated shelf. He ripped her top up the side to better get to the wound, the cut ugly and swollen, turning green with dark blue veins surrounding it, and sparked the lighter, spraying the aerosol-flame directly into the wound.
He hoped he wasn’t too late.
It got easier to breathe. Barely easier, but easier all the same, and she swore she could feel her pulse strengthen. But then she felt the searing hot pain of the fire on her skin and screamed herself hoarse.
“Just a little longer,” Derek implored. “Just until it’s all out.”
“It’s out, it’s out!” She gasped, finally able to focus on Lydia who was straining towards her with her vigour and crying with joy or pain she couldn’t quite tell. A mix of the two if their bond was to be trusted. “Derek. Derek stop - it hurts her too.” When he still didn’t let up she shoved at him and shouted his name again, dislodging him just enough to hoist herself up and drag herself over to her mate to cup her face. Cora knelt weakly in front of her, wiping Lydia’s blotchy, tear-tracked cheek and pressing her own face into the cold skin of her thigh, in silent comfort. She was ok, she was alive, and she was going to live and they would be ok.
“I’m going to kill you,” Lydia says miserably. “You could have died.”
“I know,” Cora replies, equally as sorrowful. “I couldn’t wait and have them hurt you more.”
“I love you.” Lydia hunches over as much as possible with her arms still chained behind her back until Cora looks her in the eyes. “Don’t ever do that again.“
Cora chuckles tiredly, “No promises.”