Chapter Text
Years before, the small town of Beacon Hills was safe. The citizens of the town never felt like they needed to worry about crime any more than any other small town, because it just didn’t happen often. If there was ever a report of a murder, it was being told on the televised news and was from one of the neighboring towns. The students of the local high school might have participated in illegal activity like drug use and underage drinking, but no one died. Everyone there felt safe, and then the animal attacks started.
With the first dead body found in the woods, people started taking every necessary precaution to keep them safe. They had no way of knowing if the psychopath who had murdered the young woman and cut her in half was still in Beacon Hills, or if they had left. And they definitely had no way to know that the murderer had been a mountain lion. Until the police released a statement, people didn’t know what to expect. They stocked their houses with weapons, and locked their doors at night. When there was a knock at the door, no one would immediately open the door anymore. People were more cautious than they had had to be in a long time. All because a “mountain lion” showed up in their small town and killed Laura Hale.
Immediately following the death of Laura Hale, more people were being killed. Every time a new person died, they seemed to have the same scratches and bites along their bodies, helping keep the image of the mountain lion attacks. After Laura came a school bus driver, found dead in the back of a school bus, then a video store clerk, found dead in the video store. The citizens of Beacon Hills felt less than safe following all of these attacks.
At parent-teacher conference night, the animal was finally seen in the parking lot of the high school, and killed by Chris Argent. But that didn’t end the attacks. After the animal was killed, two men were found dead in the woods, and the police gave the same excuse for death. The citizens started talking about the possibility that there were more mountain lions in the area, even though the animals had never been seen in Beacon Hills prior to the start of the attacks.
Within a few months, the attacks stopped, and it seemed like the town would be safe again. The people started saying that those last two attacks had been a retaliation done by another mountain lion, and then that one had left, fearing the same end that the first one had met. For a while, the town went back to a normal state, where the citizens weren’t as cautious when they left their houses.
Then another wave of attacks happened.
This time everything started when Mr. Lahey was found in an alleyway. This line of attacks looked like they had definitely been done by a human being, and that threw the town into a bigger frenzy than the animal attacks. What the police didn’t understand was the cuts that the victims had on the back of their necks. They hadn’t been the cause of death, but the cops knew they had to have had a meaning.
After Mr. Lahey came the local mechanic, found crushed the death under a car that he had been working on, then there was an attack at the local gay club, The Jungle, that had not resulted in any deaths but had left seven people paralyzed, then a young woman was found dead at a rave, and then the entire night shift at the police department were found dead.
This time between attacks there wasn’t a break. When the paralyzing attacks ended, large groups of teenagers were found dead in the woods, then people who couldn’t swim started being found in the lake on the edge of town, and then more people seemed to be taken right from the street and then wound up being found in the woods, scratches and bite marks littering their skin, and their throats tore out.
The citizens of Beacon Hills didn’t know what to think of all of these attacks, but the more they happened, the more people wanted to move away from the town.
…
At the beginning of the attacks, a teenage boy named Scott McCall was bitten by whatever was doing all of the attacks. He had sworn to his friends that it was just an animal bite, but he hadn’t seen what had done it, and his best friend, Stiles Stilinski, didn’t seem to agree with the idea. When Scott started showing superhuman abilities, hearing things that people shouldn’t have been able to hear, smelling things other people couldn’t smell, running faster than anyone else, and being able to lift things that normal humans couldn’t, Stiles’s theory seemed more likely than a simple animal bite.
Scott McCall had been bitten by a werewolf, and then turned into one. The things that he liked the most about it were that he didn’t seem to have asthma anymore, and he was better at lacrosse than he had ever been before. Everything else he pretty much hated with a passion, especially when he and Stiles figured out that they needed to find out what was killing the citizens of Beacon Hills, and do their best to kill it.
And then when they found out that the werewolf killing people had been Laura Hale’s uncle, Peter Hale, they knew that it wouldn’t stop there. When the next creature came they fought it and found out that somehow Jackson Whittemore had become a monster and was being controlled. Then they had to fight the witches that were killing large groups of teenagers, then they had to fight the merpeople that were luring people who couldn’t swim into the lake, and then they had to try and work out what was snatching people off the streets and killing them.
“You being bitten by a werewolf was probably the worst thing that could’ve ever happened to me,” Stiles whispered to Scott as they quietly walked through the woods, attempting to find where the latest body had been found.
“How was it the worst thing for you?” Scott replied, stopping in his tracks to give his friend an incredulous look.
“Hey at least you got a good relationship out of this, I’m still hopelessly single and a virgin.” Scott made a look of distaste and Stiles rolled his eyes. “Oh calm down. Anyway it’s worse for me because I could be doing a lot of other, more fun, things with my Friday nights but instead I’m wandering around the woods with you, and our other friends are wandering around here too.”
“I’m sorry this is such an inconvenience,” Scott said, walking again, after letting out a huff of annoyance and rolling his eyes.
“You should be. I don’t want to look around the woods for the latest creature.”
“How’s your research going anyway?”
Stiles shrugged. “Lydia and I have been working together, pouring over old books and the internet, and we think it’s a rogue werewolf. Either one or a group of them. We’re leaning toward a group of them right now.”
“How can they be rogue if they’re a pack?”
“That’s the thing. They aren’t a pack. None of them are alphas first of all, and they just kind of bound together, they have no leader and no one to keep the group together. They probably have a very loose relationship with each other, and probably want to rip each other’s throats out. We think eventually they will kill each other off.”
“So if we wait this will end?”
“Eventually, but innocent people will keep dying.”
The two let out long, resigned sighs at the same time.
“You didn’t happen to get any information about this from your dad did you?” Scott asked after a few more minutes of wandering.
“No, even though he knows about all the supernatural stuff, he’s still reluctant to tell me stuff about his cases because he isn’t supposed to. Sometimes I can get him to if I bring him a big greasy burger, but I don’t like doing that too often.”
Scott’s phone started ringing in his phone, the sound resounding in the silence, and he pulled it out, giving the flashlight to Stiles, and answered it. By the happy look on his face, Stiles knew exactly who it was.
“Hey Allison, how’s it going?”
Stiles couldn’t hear the other half of the conversation, but by the little fall Scott’s grin did, he figured that the other group wasn’t having any better luck than they were.
Scott took care of his phone. “I guess we should just go back home? We could go to yours?”
“All of us?”
Scott shrugged.
Their group, Stiles, Scott, Lydia, Allison, Jackson, and Danny, all ended up at Stiles’s house, crashing on the living room floor.
…
A few weeks later, after two more attacks, Stiles and Lydia finally decided for sure that the group doing all of the killings were a group of rogue werewolves. The werewolves of their group had found where the group was staying and had sent Stiles’s dad and the rest of the police department to take them in. Most of the police had had no idea that they were going after a bunch of werewolves.
When the group had been taken in, Stiles had snuck into one of the interrogation rooms where one of the werewolves were waiting for an interrogator.
“Why did you guys come to Beacon Hills?” Stiles asked, sitting down in the seat across from the werewolf.
When the group had been found, they had all looked grimy, like they hadn’t had showers or clean clothes in a while. This werewolf was no exception. He looked cleaner than he had the first time, but his hair was too long, and matted in some places. The clothes he was wearing were torn and covered in blood. Stiles had to try very hard to keep his emotions steady so that the werewolf wouldn’t pick up on how worried he was. No one would know he was in there if the werewolf decided to attack him.
The werewolf ignored Stiles’s question. “Just because you managed to get around being caught by us, doesn’t mean that you won’t be captured by the alphas.”
“What do you mean? What alphas?”
“If you had just come with us, we would have taken you to the alphas, and this would all be over. Instead you have managed to make the job much harder. You should have let us take you.”
“What do the alphas want with me?”
The werewolf laughed. “How do you not know?”
“How do I not know what?”
The werewolf could tell that Stiles was getting frustrated, and that just seemed to egg him on. He barked out another laugh. “You might want to get away from your nice small town Stiles.”
“How do you know my name?”
“We were sent to get you, why wouldn’t we know your name?”
“Why do I need to leave?”
The werewolf raised an eyebrow and a grin took over his face. “When the alphas come, they won’t start out by killing people from town. We did that because we were hungry, the alphas won’t be, they won’t need to kill anyone off. They might kill your little rag tag group that you call a pack.”
“Why would they kill my pack?” Stiles asked, hysteria marking the edge of his words.
“Because your pack will try to protect you. The alphas want you for what makes you special Stiles. When they come, they will immediately find you. The only way anyone will know that they were here is that you will be missing. They won’t leave a blood trail like we did. I told you, they won’t try to kill people from town first, they will go after you and they will take you away. Just like they wanted us to do.”
Before Stiles could react to what the werewolf said, the actual interrogator walked into the room. All she did was sigh when she saw Stiles.
“What are you doing in here Stiles?” she asked, giving him a little push to get him out of the seat.
The werewolf was smirking at him, and Stiles couldn’t help but stare, his mouth hanging open in shock.
“I was just leaving.”
Stiles practically ran right out of the room and right into his dad’s office.
“I’m not safe,” he said, causing his dad to put down the case file he was looking over and look up at Stiles.
“What do you mean?”
“I talked to the werewolf that Lisa is interrogating right now.”
“You snuck into the interrogation room? Why am I not surprised?”
“Okay, getting past that, he told me that I should have just let the rogues take me because now the alphas are going to come and they are going to take me.”
“Why do they want to take you?”
“I don’t know!” Stiles exclaimed, flailing his arms around a bit. “He said there was something special about me that the alphas want! I need to get out of town!”
“Won’t the alphas just come to town anyway?”
“He said that they don’t plan on killing anyone.”
The Sheriff sighed. “Okay, I guess we need to get you out of town.”
…
Stiles was in his jeep, driving away from Beacon Hills. Saying goodbye to his friends had been hard, and saying goodbye to his dad had been even harder. This was only a temporary thing, but he couldn’t help but think that his dad was going to be spending his time alone in their empty, quiet house. He could only hope that at least Scott would pay him visits sometimes, and that Mrs. McCall would make sure that his dad took care of himself.
Every once in a while Stiles would look in his rearview mirror, and think about turning back. He would see the outline of his home, and have the urge to go back to his dad and his friends. He knew he couldn’t, and that they would just send him back again, but he really wanted to.
From the passenger seat, his phone seemed to mock him. If the alphas were going to torture anyone close to him, he had to make it look like he left and that no one from home knew about it. This whole thing was killing Stiles inside, but he knew he had to do it.