Chapter Text
The world around him shimmered, unreal and weightless, like stepping through a memory that wasn’t his own. The air smelled of pine and fresh snow, a crisp mountain wind curling around him. He wasn’t in Beacon Hills. He was somewhere else somewhere older, untouched.
The training grounds stretched before him, wide and open beneath the northern sky. The ground was packed dirt, worn smooth by years of footsteps. The echoes of past warriors lingered in the space, in the way the earth pulsed beneath his feet.
A voice called out a voice he knew, but younger, softer than he’d ever heard it.
“Duke.”
Derek turned without meaning to, his body felt different, lighter. His limbs moved with a grace he hadn’t earned, strength he hadn’t built. When he looked down, his hands weren’t his own.
*This isn’t me.*
Talia Hale stood before him. Not as he remembered her commanding and composed but as something else entirely. She was younger, freer, happier. Her dark hair was caught in the wind, loose instead of tied back, and her golden eyes gleamed not with earned authority but with warmth. She looked… so very young.
“Holding back doesn’t serve either of us,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
The body he was in laughed, shifting into a defensive stance. “I wasn’t holding back.”
Talia smirked. “Liar.”
They circled each other, the energy between them electric, the kind of connection forged in years of trust, of battle, of something unspoken. Then, without warning, she struck. He barely blocked in time, muscles moving on instinct, countering with a strike of his own. It was a dance, each move testing the other, searching for weakness.
Derek could feel the raw power in every step, the effortless precision. It was nothing like the way he fought this was refined, practiced, controlled. He was strong yet agile.
The realization settled deep in his bones.
As the two of them clashed, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in a blade flashing between them.
Cora’s hair. Laura’s face. His eyes, father.
He had never seen his father’s face before. Not in photos, not in memories. Just a name whispered in dark hallways, murmured in grief, or cried out in the loneliest of nights. Just a story, spoken only when their mother wasn’t listening.
Derek’s breath hitched. He had always wondered. Wondered why he and his sisters looked so different. Why their mother’s face would crease with something unreadable that time when Laura shaved her head. Why she wept when she cut Cora’s hair after that one bubblegum incident. Why, sometimes, when she looked into his eyes, her own would go sharp like she was seeing someone else entirely before softening back into something familiar.
Then Talia spoke again, softer this time. “You’re ready, you know.”
“For what?”
She smiled. “For what comes next.”
There was something weighted in her words, something he couldn’t quite grasp. But before he could respond, she took a step closer, reaching for him.
And then—
Derek jolted awake.
His chest heaved, his heart pounding as he stared up at the ceiling. The remnants of the dream clung to him, vivid and unshakable.
That hadn’t been just a dream.
That had been real.