Archive of Our Own ^beta

Look, Hayden knows that cell phones exist. She doesn’t live under a rock. She knows that if you want to talk to someone, you should just text them, or call them, or FaceTime them, or use literally any of the other apps designed to communicate with people who are far away. She’s as addicted to her phone as anyone else her age. Despite this, Hayden finds herself flying down the highway at the tail end of a four-hour drive just to talk to someone she could’ve easily texted. 

She actually didn’t even tell him that she was coming, or give him any indication that she wanted to talk to him at all. Her plans for the night had originally consisted of pretending to ironically watch The Bachelor with her sister and working on her calculus homework. She certainly hadn’t booked out time to drive to UC Berkley. Hayden wouldn’t say that she’s a particularly impulsive person, and yet she had found herself in the parking lot after soccer practice hesitating to start the car to drive home. Next thing she knew, she was merging onto the freeway.

Hayden spots the UC Berkley sign as she reaches campus, focusing on the directions that are taking her to the specific apartment that she entered and trying to ignore the nervousness running throughout her body. This was a stupid idea, she thinks to herself as her car crawls down the one-way street packed with parked cars on either side, sighing in relief when she finally finds an open spot. Thank God Val had insisted that she needed to know how to properly parallel park. 

There’s a large part of her that just wants to drive right back home. She hates feeling nervous, the uncertainty of the situation hanging over her like an inescapable storm. The problem is that this feeling isn’t new. It might be amplified at the moment, but the reality is she’s been trapped under this storm since she left Beacon Hills after junior year ended and took on the omega mantle out of sheer stubbornness without fully understanding what it entailed.

She steels herself by taking a deep breath and gets out of the car.

His apartment building is surprisingly easy to get into. She supposes she fits the look of a tired college student worn down by existence. At first glance, she doesn’t seem out of place.  The nervousness and uncertainty that comes with being an omega have taken its toll on her more than she would ever care to admit. His scent is easier to track than she thought it would be, although she can’t help but note with a tinge of bitterness that his scent, which was always grounding before, now sends fear flying down her spine, wolf instincts screaming to get out of the alpha’s territory before she’s ripped to shreds.

Hayden finds herself staring at a door 211, which she’s positive belongs to him, when it hits her again how incredibly stupid this was. It’s almost eleven pm. Who’s to say he’s even awake? Or has time to see her? Why would he want to see her, or even be willing to hear her out? He gave her kindness and she threw it in his face by walking out of his pack without even pausing to look back.

“Hayden?” She blinks and suddenly she’s no longer staring at the door, but at a person. Scott McCall stands in the doorway, looking surprised. He looks a bit different than when she last saw him, a tad older. She remembers that phenomenon from when her sister went to college, the subtle differences that college students gained from being on their own. Even though she’s the one that drove four hours to get here, Hayden finds herself staring back in shock too.

She was so sure she’d know exactly what to say when she saw him, that she’d be able to confidently ask for a place in the pack back and be able to appear indifferent to whatever answer he gave. Staring at Scott now, Hayden has no idea where to start. Her head is so full of conflicting emotions, thoughts, and instincts that she doesn’t even manage a proper hello, finding herself only slowly nodding in response.

Scott’s face settles into a neutral expression, eyes studying her as he likely tries to assess why the hell his former beta turned up at his college apartment on a Thursday night.

“Is everything okay?” He asks, worry flashing across his face. Guilt rushes through Hayden and she suddenly finds herself tripping over her words to reassure him.

“Everything’s fine! I was just hoping to talk with you. If you had a minute,” She manages to say, relieved it comes out with her usual confidence even though she feels like she’s spiraling. Scott’s expression settles back into a slightly confused one, but he still gestures for her to come into the apartment.

Hayden obliges before she can take a moment to rethink it. She finds herself in a combo entry way-kitchen-living room that’s typical for most apartment layouts. There’s some dirty dishes in the sink, a guitar sitting next to the worn-down navy couch, but besides that, she’s surprised to find it’s not very decorated. There’s very little sign that Scott lives here at all. He shuts the door behind her as she’s looking around. While many of his belongings might not be in view, his scent is everywhere. The skin-crawling feeling of approaching danger creeps up her spine again, and she tries her best not to squirm at the stress that suddenly overtakes her at being in an alpha’s space.

Scott takes a seat in the chair and Hayden quickly moves to sit on the couch that’s slightly across from where Scott is now seated. 

‘What the hell am I gonna say?’ Hayden thinks to herself, panic quickly rising. Just like in the doorway, now that she’s here, she doesn’t know what to bring up first. Hayden will be the first to admit that she doesn’t like being overly vulnerable. (A voice that sounds a bit too much like Liam’s for her taste snorts in her head and corrects her, saying that she detests being vulnerable). She’s not emotionally constipated or anything, at least, not any more so than the next eighteen-year-old werewolf, but she prefers to pick and choose who gets to see beyond the surface, and throughout her life that group has totaled to less than the number of fingers on her hand. Part of the reason she’s in the mess is because she never really let Scott be one of them. As much as she’s recognized her mistake there, it doesn’t help her work to fix it now when she’s just created an insanely awkward environment for both of them by showing up here at ass-o’clock.

“Did you…still wanna talk?” Scott asks, shifting a bit in his seat, trying not to appear as uncomfortable as this is making the both of them. Hayden blinks. She realizes she’s been sitting here for minutes without talking. She opens her mouth, then closes it quickly, pressing her lips together. Her frustrations builds—why can’t she just talk about her issues? The guy in front of her literally saved her life by changing her into a creature of the night and she can’t bring herself to talk to him about how much being an omega sucks?

Hayden growls softly before she realizes what she’s doing—too overwhelmed and her frustration with herself only growing. Scott’s eyebrows shoot up. In any other situation, it would be amusing how he proceeds to glance around a bit, almost as if hoping someone will appear to help.

She supposes when she refused to confide in Scott the first time, Liam did always turn up right when things were starting to get insanely awkward. The thought of him makes her growl again, teeth grinding against each other. She throws her head in her hands, fingers raking up through her hair. She’s not doing this. She’s not growling because she can’t manage a conversation. She’s certainly not spiraling and thinking about her ex.

She whips her head up suddenly, so suddenly that Scott leans back slightly, concern and confusion written on his face.

“I was not going to come here today! I was getting in my car after practice, fully ready to go have Bachelor-Night with my sister, and then I was on the highway! I didn’t even shower!” She rants, standing up suddenly, her voice a tad more hysterical than she would prefer it to be. “It’s not the first time I’ve thought about doing this either. I had to talk myself out of it last week, and two weeks before that, and about every other night of the goddamn week for the past two months!” Hayden exclaims in distress, hand tugging through her hair again. 

She wishes she was one of those people who once they just started talking, they spilled like a glass knocked over—quick and without thought. Annoyingly, even has her hysteria and misery continue to escalate, she locks up again. Her mind continues to reel but it’s like her thoughts are moving too fast in too many directions, she can’t pick a route of conversation to go with. Increasingly overwhelmed, she turns to look at Scott, arms crossed, her hand grabbing at her other arm as she wills claws not to spring out and create a bloody mess.

Scott looks slightly alarmed, definitely unsettled. She shouldn’t really be surprised. This is the most emotion he’s probably ever seen out of her—aside from when he saw snippets of her…decline as a chimera, and aside from the few full moons he helped her through, but that was just anger, manufactured by the moon. It wasn’t anything like this.

“You’re not part of another pack,” Scott says. She freezes, arms closing in around herself in a way that resembles more of a bastardized version of a hug than the defiant, self-assured arm-cross she had initially been aiming for. He doesn’t sound surprised, but he doesn’t exactly sound not-surprised either. Overall, he’s very neutral. Something about that calms her—the lack of judgment. She can’t even pick up anything from his scent, though she knows he could just be concealing that from her.

Hayden shrugs, her manic hysteria sucked out of her by the abrupt change in conversation. She sinks back into the couch.

She thinks she sees understanding cross his face, but he doesn’t say anything. She gets the sense he’s distinctly waiting for her to breach this subject.

They sit for another few minutes in silence, this time Scott doesn’t look confused or worried. At least, he doesn’t the couple times Hayden checks as she tries to string the words together right and force herself to own up to her mistakes and stop being a coward.

She doesn’t like screwing up—not that she really knows anyone who does, but Hayden knows she doesn’t deal with it well. Anything below an A puts her in a bad mood for an hour, a critical goal missed at a game used to mean silent car rides home, with her sister knowing to just play some light music and not breach it with her until she had showered and calmed down a tad. It wasn’t anger, it was biting self-doubt and embarrassment. Her sister had enough to worry about without her doing badly in school. Her team counted on her to make the risky shots. She learned a long time ago how to be self-sufficient, and the feeling of messing up, of needing someone else to help her fix things or make up for her failure, had never sat right with her.

“You bit me at a crazy time in my life,” Hayden ends up saying without really meaning to. A stupid thing to say—making excuses, alleviating the role in the decisions she had made and the consequences of them. Scott however, chuckles, seemingly unable to fight away a budding smile. Hayden finds herself smiling slightly too.

“‘Tends to be how werewolf transformations go,” Scott says with a slight smile, angling himself to face her now that she’s ready to talk. Hayden hums.

“I like being a werewolf. At least, it’s better than being a chimera, so…” Hayden shrugs. “Beggars unwillingly pulled into the supernatural can’t be choosers I guess,” She says with a slight laugh that doesn’t really hold any humor. Scott loses his smile, a slight grimace overtaking it. “I just…” Hayden pauses, steels herself. “I didn’t deal with everything well that comes with the bite back when you turned me. Being a werewolf is a lot…different than being a chimera. I think maybe I just didn’t want to deal with anything more than I already was, and pushing everyone away—leaving,” She swallows. “It’s just my default sometimes. Once I knew the basics of control, I wanted to deal with it by myself,” Hayden finishes, studying the small nicks carved into the worn coffee table in front of her.

Liam had been so excited when she could finally control herself through a full moon. He’d had that pure, child-like excitement that she really only ever saw him get for pack stuff and video games with Mason. He’d shown up at her window, grinning from ear to ear, (of course, on a full moon, that smile was a bit too wolfish to pass as pure or child-like in any form), making his way into her space easily, talking about meeting Scott and Malia in the woods and that he’d talked them into the longer run to show her this really cool rock formation by a stream they’d found. She hadn’t gone. She’d figured she could take care of herself at that point, and didn’t want to admit to a weird need to spend the full moon with them still. That fight had been the first of many ugly ones between her and Liam.

“Did I ever tell you I was an omega for my first year as a werewolf?” Scott asks, yanking her out of her depressing trip down memory lane. She pauses to think.

“Maybe. I think you or someone else mentioned it. I don’t remember anything about that though,” she admits. Scott and the others had offered her a place in the pack with a smile; they would’ve answered any question she had. They had tried to bait her with conversations, but she hadn’t been ready to engage with any of them.

“Peter was deranged when he bit me, and I was constantly fighting his influence over me. When Derek killed Peter and became the alpha…I refused him constantly. I didn’t agree with either of their methods; I refused to align myself with their ideals and proposed solutions,” Scott explains. Hayden quickly looks over at him in worry. Does he think that’s why she left? That her morals didn’t align with those of the True Alpha? 

“I didn’t—that’s not why I left. It wasn’t over conflicting views on anything-“ She scrambles to say, startled at the direction the conversation has taken. Scott’s eyes widen a bit, and he shakes his head lightly with a smile.

“I know that’s not why you left, that’s not what I’m saying,” He pauses. “For as much as I didn’t want to be in the pack, it didn’t make being an omega easier. I have no regrets about not choosing their pack, but looking back, I sometimes wonder even if I had found people less inclined to solving problems with murder…I’m not sure I would’ve been able to bring myself to join,” Scott admits. He shifts slightly, mouth twisting for a moment. Hayden realizes with a bit of bewilderment that he’s uncomfortable too. The hesitant vulnerability on his face is impossible for her to miss now that she’s noticed it. After all, she’s seen it staring back at her in the mirror for months now.

“The idea of a pack makes everything about being a werewolf lot more real. It’s a commitment. Even if I would’ve found a pack I agreed with, I think I was still too in denial at the time to ever join one,” Scott admits. Her head snaps to him after he finishes talking. Her eyes are wide and Scott looks back with a kind, sad smile. Hayden bites her lip and looks away before she does something stupid, like start crying.

“It was just so much, I guess? Being a werewolf, it seemed like the solution—it was the solution, but I wanted a solution that meant it was all over. The power was familiar, even if it was stronger than as a chimera. That didn’t scare me. The other parts like…actually being in a pack and the whole new set of wolf instincts…I just couldn’t even bring myself to think about it. If I tried to I’d spiral. Even once I left, it took a bit for me to get to a place where I could process those parts, and once I did…” Hayden pauses. Steels herself. Sometimes it takes courage to be vulnerable, and she can’t keep living with this hole in her chest. It aches when the moon is up and sometimes she can be standing in a packed hallway and still feel so lonely that it knocks the wind out of her.

“Scott, I don’t want to be an omega anymore,” Hayden admits softly, unable to bring herself to look at him. For a moment he doesn't say anything, and panic floods her.

“I’m sorry,” She says quickly, standing up and heading for the door. “I’m the one that left. I don’t get to turn up here and tell a sob story and change that. I shouldn’t’ve come here. I shouldn’t be putting this on you, you’re not my alpha,” she barely contains a wince, hides it as she reaches for the door nob. “-I’m sorry, I-“ Hayden is moments from opening the door when Scott is suddenly in front of her, eyes wide, putting one hand on the door and one out placatingly in front of her.

“Hayden, you have nothing to be sorry for,” He says, so earnestly that it manages to spark a rage in her.

“I left you guys! You turned me and I just left!” Hayden shouts, distraught as she finally voices the guilt she can barely even bring herself to think about most days. “You changed me! Your pack took me in and I practically threw it in your face! I left at a moment’s notice and didn’t look back! How can you not be mad at me?” She asks, confusion overtaking her anger, stepping back from the door to look at Scott helplessly.

He should be angry at her. She knows more scary shit went down after she left. How can he not be resentful that she wasn’t there to help? Even besides that, Hayden thinks she’d be angry if she was Scott: turning someone then having them leave a few months later with no explanation. She wasn’t very involved in the pack, but she remembers the intense feeling that had come with it. The only thing she’d ever experienced that she could compare it to was her connection with her family. A sense of binding loyalty, the urge to protect. Her family has been only her and her sister for years now, and family is something Hayden doesn’t take lightly. She knows how serious Scott is when it comes to his friends and his family too. How can her leaving not have been the ultimate betrayal in his eyes? 

Scott’s hands drop from the door.

“It’s okay. I was never mad at you. I was sad that you left, but you weren’t happy with us. I knew that. I just wanted you to be happy. You weren’t ready. I wasn’t either when the werewolf crap got dropped on me. I can’t blame you for that,” He says with a slight smile.

Rather than waiting for her reply, he nods his head toward the kitchen and she follows him, thankful she doesn’t have to rummage up a reply to that.

He pulls out a bag of popcorn and throws it in the microwave.

“Did you eat after practice?” He asks casually. She pauses at the radical change in subject but recognizes it for what it is—giving them both (mostly her) a moment to breathe.

She shakes her head. She hadn’t even realized she’d forgotten to grab food. Her wolf instincts had been so set on yanking her here as quickly as her Corolla could manage.

“I have leftover Chinese or frozen pizza. Which sounds better?” He asks. Hayden knows the right thing to do would be to insist that she isn’t hungry and doesn’t want to take his food, but she knows that Scott won’t have any of that, and she is hungry. She’ll slip him a $5 when she leaves.

“Pizza would be awesome,” Hayden says, starting to relax again. He grins, preheating the oven and grabbing the popcorn out of the microwave, ripping the bag open and placing it on the small kitchen island in between them.

“How’re classes?” She asks, anxious to fill the silence, but also curious. She hasn’t talked to him once since she left. Scott makes a weird face.

“Good. Hard. Less stressful than something trying to kill you but still kicking my ass,” He says with a slight laugh. As carefree as his tone is, Hayden can tell there’s something deeper that’s bugging him. She catches the scent for a moment but it’s gone before she can decipher the emotion.

“Something wrong?” She asks before she can think it through. They were never this close, she really has no reason or excuse to ask him that. He looks over at her, surprised. He just shrugs.

“You’ve gotten good with those chemosignals,” Is all he says, taking another handful of popcorn. Hayden shrugs. She’s willing to take his obvious detour out of that path of conversation if he doesn’t want to talk about what’s weighing on him.

“I had a lot of downtime, my new school is boring. I’ve been going to their open gyms for soccer but,” she shrugs again. “I can’t seem to bring myself to make real friends,” she admits. Scott looks at her curiously. 

“Same, actually. I have some acquaintances, I guess, but…” He shrugs, trailing off suddenly. She studies him as she swallows her popcorn.

“I’m guessing that’s what’s bugging you?” She asks, confused as to when she got this blunt and willing to have deep conversations with Scott. Lord knows she didn’t do this before. Even though Hayden knows that was part of her problem, she didn’t really intend to set out to fix it immediately, but he’s just so easy to talk to. She’s not sure if that’s a side effect of receiving his bite or just something about him as a person. 

Scott turns to get the pizza out of the freezer before answering while his back is turned.

“Nothing’s wrong, just miss the pack. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the same room with them, or hundreds of miles away, or even if you’re not in one,” Scott pauses, turns back to look at her. “Wolf instincts about pack just follow you,” He says, a sad smile on his face.

She distantly notes how easily he turned the conversation off of himself again, but gets too caught up at the mention of pack again to give any more thought to it.

She’s only eight months into this. She’s just getting to the point where control doesn’t take all of her brainpower. The hole in her chest is back at the mere mention of a pack, and even in the presence of her former alpha, she finds useless resentment filling her. She’s never needed anyone except her sister. Why did a bite change that?

“I don’t like needing people,” Hayden says suddenly, glancing back over at Scott, slightly nervous at the admission. What sort of way is this to ask for a spot in his pack back? This whole night has been absolutely off the rails, with random shit spewing out of her mouth and the important things getting caught in her throat.

“It’s not about needing people. You could’ve never come here and you would’ve been fine. It’s about having people to make it easier, better,” Scott looks like he wants to say more, but stops himself there. Hayden can see the love he has for his pack clear as day on his face. She’s glad he refrained from continuing, she can barely process this as it is. Her mouth twists. While her first instinct is to argue, she supposes he’s right. She wasn’t dying away from Beacon Hills. She was getting good grades and enjoying soccer practice and laughing with her sister over terrible reality TV. She’s been so caught up with the hole in her chest and the crushing instinct to have a pack that she never really stopped to think that she could continue without one and be fine. It’s nice to have the vote of confidence from Scott that she could continue being alone, but she’s just so tired of it—it’s why she drove hours to be here. She didn’t want another moment with this loneliness. Becoming an omega was so jarring. Even though she hadn’t been that involved with the pack, their absence was so apparent from the moment she left that it had been hard to process.

“Did you join a pack before you became an alpha?” She asks curiously. Scott puts the pizza in and sets the timer as he tilts his head from side to side.

“Technically no. It’s more so that another beta just started treating me as his alpha,” Scott supplies. On another day, Hayden would love to dig into that—was Scott already part alpha then and his eyes just didn’t show it? How would that even work? Right now, however, that’s not what she wants to discuss.

“How’d it feel? Even though it wasn’t a formal pack yet did it…fill the hole?” She asks, for lack of better wording.

“Yeah. Yeah, it helped a lot,” He pauses, then laughs a little. “Sorry, I don’t really know how to explain it. It just didn’t feel cold anymore, it felt warm,” He says with a soft smile, lightly rubbing his chest. Hayden hums. She’d never thought about the pack sensation as warm vs cold but she can understand that analogy. The most annoying thing about her wolf instincts is that it’s so difficult to describe them. They don’t quite match up with any other experience or descriptor she has. Empty vs filled. Cold vs warm. It all gets at the same idea, and that’s good enough for her. 

They munch on popcorn for a bit while the pizza finishes cooking. Hayden waits until Scott turns his back to get the pizza out of the oven before talking.

“Can I come back?” Hayden asks softly. The fear she had earlier is gone, replaced with a bone-deep tiredness she’s been carrying around since she left (and before that, if she’s being honest with herself). She’s tired of feeling empty, of feeling lonely in a crowd, of pretending to be human every moment of the month except when the full moon rises and having no one to share that experience with.

Scott puts the pizza on the stovetop and places the oven mitt next to it before walking back over to her.

“You know I’ll have some degree of control over you again, right? And regardless of how you feel about the others now, you’ll be connected to them again. I know that you know the pack bond doesn’t instantly make people friends, but it’s still a connection,” He warns her. She’s so nervous she’s practically shaking—something she almost never does. She can tell he’s not trying to talk her out of it, although as stressed as she is her instincts are inclined to disagree, he just wants her to be informed. 

She pauses. She hasn’t talked to Liam in months. He’s gonna feel her in the pack again and, and—

And it doesn’t matter. She’s doing this for her. She’s sidestepped around everyone for too long. Liam can deal with it, and she can put up with an ex. She’s done with being an omega.

“I don’t really care about your control over me,” Hayden admits. She trusts Scott, knows that he’s a good person. She’s painfully aware that everything in life is transactional. She didn’t have to live a life on dialysis, but she had to deal with the limitations of a kidney implant. She didn’t die for a second time from supernatural causes and she got powers, but she gets angry once a month and the literal messiah of werewolves has some degree of influence over her when she’s shifted. There are worse tradeoffs she could be stuck with.

Scott frowns at that, but she moves on before he can protest. “-and I know what being in a pack comes with. I’d honestly rather have that—strained pack connections—than the nothingness that I have now,” She admits, knowing full well they’re both thinking about her and Liam’s disastrous break-up. She shakes her head slightly. She’s not thinking about him right now. “I just want a pack again,” She states, fighting to keep her voice confident, and forcing herself to be just a bit more vulnerable, which hasn’t really gotten easier even after their long night of emotionally taxing conversations.

Scott smiles and pulls her into a hug, one hand lightly cupping the back of her neck before moving down to rub her back. She relaxes instantly. 

The hole in her chest is gone. Whatever fills it is weak but it's there, and Hayden starts crying before she can even form a coherent reactionary thought.

Some part of her is embarrassed, she doesn’t like to cry and she’s been vulnerable enough tonight, but the wolf instincts that flood her mind are far too overwhelming to put an ounce of energy into being embarrassed at her tears. The relief that fills her nearly has the power to knock the wind out of her. The loneliness that was ever-present since she left is just gone, like it was never there. The warmth, fulfillment, whatever you want to call it, it feels like coming home. Scott—her alpha, again—holds her tight for a moment longer and continues to rub her back.

She pulls away, ducking her head and quickly wiping her eyes, ready to apologize for how she just can’t seem to keep it together tonight, but she looks up and is shocked to see that Scott’s wiping away a few stray tears too.

“Pizza?” Scott asks with a slight chuckle, a smile forming on his lips. Hayden laughs, it’s a bit watery, but she really doesn’t care about that, not anymore. She nods, smiles.

Scott turns to grab a pizza cutter and Hayden closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. Things are gonna get better, she thinks to herself. It’s never going to be perfect, but as she laughs as Scott fails to cut the pizza in straight lines, she knows that this is a start.

+

Hayden moves back to Beacon Hills the week before Christmas.

Her sister is driving the truck, singing along to the Taylor Swift album that’s on. For all that’s she’s tone-deaf, her passion makes up for it.

Hayden winces at Val’s ungodly attempt at a key change. Okay, maybe with werewolf hearing, passion can’t be the sole skill that carries one through an attempt at singing Getaway Car.

She can feel the moment they’re back in Beacon Hills, or at least, the moment she’s back on Scott’s territory. She never noticed the first time she was here, but after being gone for so long and not having been back since Scott accepted her back into the pack a month and a half ago, the shift is obvious, the sensation of her instincts calming, clicking into place. Home.

Now that she thinks about it, she’s not really sure if Scott’s territory aligns with the Beacon Hills border. She looks out the window to see if she can catch the town’s welcome sign, but all she sees are the trees whipping past her.

“You didn’t have to do this you know. We could’ve stayed in Upper Monta,” Hayden says for what has to be the twentieth time this week. It’s not that she’s not grateful, but she can’t help but feel guilty—making her sister move twice in one year. Val rolls her eyes.

“Stop it, I told you it’s fine. We were subleasing the apartment to Sarah while she tried to find a place, remember? Literally the week after you came back from McCall’s apartment, Sarah texted me that she found a place and didn’t need to sublease anymore come December,” Val pauses, glancing over at Hayden. “That’s like fate. Is that a thing? Like with werewolves and stuff? Do you guys have predetermined destinies?” She asks with a tone that suggested they were talking about the latest Bachelor gossip rather than her status as a creature of the night. Hayden groans.

“No! Why on Earth would you think we have predetermined destinies?!” Hayden asks, unable to tell if her sister is being serious or not. Val must be at least slightly serious because she shoots her a look that screams ‘can you blame me?!’

“Your eyes glow gold and your ears get pointy now. How am I supposed to know what’s out of bounds?” Val asks, exasperated, but the laugh she fails to hide shows she’s mostly fucking with her.

Hayden sighs, equally as exasperated. They really did luck out with the timing of Val’s college friend subleasing from them, so she supposes she’ll give her sister a pass. For all the shit that’s happened to Hayden over the past year, it was about time something worked out in her favor.

“Besides, I liked the Beacon Hills Station a lot better. Even with all of the crazy stuff, they have better people. Upper Monta had a squad full of entitled ass-holes,” Val grins. “Oh I can’t wait to casually drop to Stilinski that I’m in the know about the supernatural now. Parrish too, right?” Val asks, Hayden nods. She’d told her sister the truth about a month before they left Beacon Hills. She’d been trying to keep her sister out of it, but when she was deciding if she wanted to leave the pack, she needed her sister involved if she wanted an out. Val had been a bit freaked out by the crazy crap that had happened in Beacon Hills, even if she didn’t know the truth behind what had caused it at the time, so it hadn’t been hard to convince her to leave. It’d actually been Val that had suggested it first. Hayden didn’t even realize that’s what she’d wanted until her sister had started looking for new apartments.

Val had taken it super well, thankfully. It had thrown her a bit at first, but once Hayden had told her the whole story, her sister had seemed more worried for her than anything else. Hayden had never wanted to talk about it until she rejoined the pack last month, as she spent the summer mostly in denial about the magnitude of her change. Now that she had re-engaged with Val on the subject, her sister took any chance she got to learn more and ask questions, even stupid ones like if Hayden had a predetermined destiny because a sublease timed out right. Once a detective, always a detective.

“You know I would’ve found a way to move us back anyway, right?” Val says more seriously, glancing over at Hayden while they’re stopped at a red light. Hayden blinks.

“That makes me feel worse. You deal with enough already, you don’t need to bend your life around me. I could’ve driven the hour and a half down to see them sometimes, it’s not a big deal-“

“Your happiness and comfort is a big deal,” Val cuts her off sternly. Hayden’s speech about the move not being necessary dies in her throat. “Hayden, you’ve been through…a lot over the past year, and I didn’t know about it. I can’t help you with the werewolf stuff, but I can make sure you’re near people who can, so that’s what I'm going to do. The way you described some of this stuff…” Val trails off, face twisting with emotion. “This pack vs lone wolf thing clearly has a big impact on your well-being. You deserve to have comfort in your day-to-day life again, settle into your new normal,” Val finishes, having stared straight ahead almost the whole time, but her sincere emotion and passion still very apparent to Hayden.

Hayden wants to say that Valerie deserves to be working full-time on her degree and shouldn't have to deal with caring for her younger sister, but that argument never goes over well, and she has a feeling it would go worse than usual right now.

They sit in a comfortable, Taylor Swift backtracked silence after that. Her sister is one of the few people she can have intense conversations with and it never feels completely unbearable after. Even when she’d broke down sobbing and told her the whole werewolf story before they left Beacon Hills, she hadn’t felt awkward like she would have with anyone else.

They pull up to their old apartment complex and Hayden can’t help but smile. She feels bad they had to go through the hassle, but she’s glad to be back.

Then she sees Liam.

Hayden freezes. Their building is close to his home, but not that close. There’s no way he’s walking down her street the same time she’s moving in, but it’s him alright. He’s grown out his hair, she notes. He’s with Mason, they’re both laughing when Liam freezes, eyes snapping over to look at her. His mouth drops open slightly as they make eye contact. Panicked, she flicks her gaze over to Mason, who seems to be questioning Liam before following his gaze. Shock runs across his face at first too, but then he breaks out into a smile and waves.

“Hayden! You’re back?” He shouts across the street. It says something that Liam doesn't even react to that, still looking at her like she grew a second head.

Hayden, like the badass werewolf she is, scrunches down in her seat.

“Oh my god,” Hayden mutters. She hadn’t told Liam she was coming back. She knows that Scott hasn’t told the others yet either, he was waiting till they were all back in town, as no one had said anything or noticed when he tied her back into the pack in October. The sight of him again, much to her frustration, makes her freeze up. The last words she said to him were…not great. Not that he’d had much nicer things to say, both of them all glowing eyes and growling behind fangs to hide the hurt of her abandoning him.

Val looks at her, confused, then looks out the window. She rolls her eyes and proceeds to mess with her phone, still connected to the audio.

“They’re coming over,” Val informs her, sounding less than impressed as she puts the phone back down, a new song starting. Not that Val needed to tell her that, she can hear Mason dragging Liam across the road clear as day. 

Hayden may have been thrown for a loop, but there’s no way she’s facing Liam for the first time in almost ten months scrunched down like a coward. Hayden sits up calmly and rolls down the window, still unwilling to get out of the truck.

Mason and Liam come up to the truck, Mason grinning and Liam looking progressively more and more uncomfortable and confused.

“Hey,” She says, like she’s seeing them in Coach’s class after the weekend, not like she dropped everything and moved away for the summer and the first half of their senior year.

“You’re back,” Liam says, as if that isn’t obvious by her being here with boxes piled in the bed of the truck and Mason having already pointed that out thirty seconds ago.

“Yeah.”

“No like, you’re back back,” He says, face and voice still thick with confusion and shock despite the lack of tone of her reply. She distantly sees Val and Mason share a confused look—they have no idea what he’s talking about. But just as Hayden can feel she’s in the presence of a pack member—two actually—there’s no distance weakening the fresh bond anymore, which means Liam can tell too.

That causes any mean-spirited defense lines she had at the ready to vanish from her brain. The earnestness on his face makes her mouth go dry. She doesn’t know what to say to that, she just nods slowly. 

She hates how being near him again after all this time still draws her in, like he has his own gravitational pull on her. They only dated for a few months, yet she could never manage to just make herself move on while she was away. She’s not sure she’s comforted by the extremely apparent fact that he hasn’t been able to move on either.

After what must’ve been an extremely awkward silence filled with Liam and Hayden staring at each other like the other one dropped from the moon, Val clears her throat.

“Alright boys. This has been a nice… catch-up, but Hayden and I have to unpack. She can see you later if she wants, okay?” Val says as a clear dismissal, slightly turning up the music volume as she does so. Hayden shoots her a confused look at that, they’re about to get out of the car, why would she turn the music up? 

Her dismissal works and the boys awkwardly bid her goodbye, Liam looking somehow more pale and awkward than before.

Hayden watches them until they’re out of her sight, walking back the way they came. The song ends and Hayden blinks in recognition. I Forgot That You Existed is thrumming loudly through the speakers.

“Jesus Christ Val!” She exclaims, her brain working overtime to contextualize the past few minutes. Val smirks.

“He deserves to squirm a bit. Your brain clearly wasn’t up to par to do that,” Val snarks, turning the car off and not even trying to hide her laughter.

Hayden gets out of the car and pauses, Liam’s scent is still in the air and it’s making her tense.

She dissolves into laughter, joining her sister out of nowhere. It’s a bit hysterical on Hayden’s part—she can’t believe that whole interaction just happened and her brain is still a few steps behind her, but something so simple as Val going to stupid lengths to intimidate a boy for her has her cracking up. They make their way to the door still laughing. Hayden steps into her old home and smiles.

+

“I could’ve driven myself you know,” Hayden says, annoyed as she sits in the passenger seat with her sister behind the wheel.

“I know,” is all Val says, and Hayden rolls her eyes. Val had really insisted on driving her to the McCall’s, but she’s not sure why. 

She wishes she wasn’t nervous, but as it is, seeing the pack for the first time since she left has her feeling cagey. Scott told her he already told them she was in the pack again, not that he probably had much of a choice to wait after that disastrous run-in with Liam and Mason. She’s managed to not see anyone else for the rest of the week, not that she’d really mind seeing any of the others. It’s the day after Christmas, and they’re doing a small dinner as an excuse to see each other and celebrate the holidays. Hayden tries not to clutch the dish holding the mashed potatoes in her hand too hard as they turn down Scott’s street.

Scott’s waiting for them on the porch when they pull up to the driveway, he grins when they park and it’s enough that Hayden can calm down enough to get out of the car with ease. It’ll be fine. It’s only awkward if she makes it awkward, and she’s done getting in the way of her own happiness.

“Hey! Merry Christmas!” Scott says, pulling her in for a one-armed hug when she reaches the porch. His scent is grounding, Hayden finds herself smiling without even meaning to.

“Merry Christmas,” She says back, moving to walk into the house when she hears the car door shut. Hayden whips back around to see Val getting out of the car. 

She gives her sister a look she hopes clearly conveys the ‘what the hell are you doing’ thoughts she’s having, but Val ignores her.

“Hey Scott, you got a minute to talk?” She says with a tight smile. Hayden’s eyes bug out of her head.

“Val, you’re literally a cop, if you wanted to background check my friends you could use the system at work,” Hayden protests. Val gives her a pointed look.

“As it is, our system is severely lacking in the supernatural department. I just had a few questions about all of…this,” she admits, having the decency to look a bit hesitant as she gestures vaguely around.

Scott, the saint he is, continues to smile.

“No problem,” He turns to Hayden and nods towards the house. “You can go in, the others know you’re here. We’re about to eat,” He says. She’s reluctant to leave Scott at the mercy of her sister, but when she hesitates he raises an eyebrow, trying and failing to fight back a smile as he looks pointedly towards the house again. Hayden huffs, but turns towards the house to leave them alone, it’s not like she wouldn’t be able to hear them if she really wanted to.

She steps through the entryway to the McCall house and comes face to face with Lydia. Hayden could probably count on one hand the number of times she’s had an actual conversation with her. Lydia gives her a tight grin that Hayden has trouble distinguishing as real or fake.

“Common, I’ll show you where we’re putting all the food,” Lydia says in place of a normal greeting. She promptly turns and is halfway through the next room by the time Hayden processes what she said. Hayden tries not to look like she’s scrambling after her as she catches up to Lydia.

The table is packed with food. It surprises her for a moment before she remembers who she’s in the company of. It makes her feel better that it’s clearly been brought by a variety of people—Mrs. McCall didn’t have to do all of this. She places the mashed potatoes in a free space she can find, face scrunching up as she starts to take in the contents of the table.

A ham next to bags of Doritos, a homemade pie next to a pack of Oreos. 

“You know werewolves. We figured casual snacks for after would make sure everyone got some of the good stuff without anyone having to labor over making a bunch of it,” Lydia explains with a laugh, noticing the perplexed look on Hayden’s face.

“Are you insinuating Red Vines and Doritos aren’t included in the good stuff?” Stiles exclaims out of nowhere, practically materializing next to Lydia in typical Stiles fashion. It takes him a second to notice her, but once he does he breaks out into a grin, hands flying out in excitement.

“Hayden! Scott told us you’d be back,” Stiles says, making his way over to her. He’s clearly trying a bit too hard to make it not weird—grin just a tad too big and face just a tad over-animated, even considering his usual eccentricness. She’s relieved he doesn’t try to hug her, she spent more time with Stiles than some of the others during her time in the pack, but not enough to warrant a hug. Instead, he leans over once he’s beside her, hand in front of his mouth like he’s ready to gossip.

“You were the only other one good at Smash so I’m gonna need you to be on my team tonight after dinner, okay? We’re gonna take these losers down!” He says, mischief clear in his eyes. Lydia rolls her eyes.

“She just got here, give her a break Stiles. Just because you can’t win a game without someone else carrying your team doesn’t mean you need to make it everyone else’s problem,” She says with pursed lips, judgment and fondness equally clear on her face. Stiles sputters, following Lydia out of the room, vehemently protesting.

Hayden takes a moment to breathe and process the interaction. It felt nice, she decides. Even if they were both trying a bit too hard, she finds herself appreciating it more than them not trying at all. Maybe she didn’t know them well before, but she reminds herself that doesn't mean she can’t get to know them now.

Her head turns at the mention of her name—outside.

“Hayden’s been through a lot. I know you all have, but I was really worried about her over the summer. She wasn’t right, some days she barely got out of bed. She seems happier since she went and talked to you, but this seemed to be part of the problem last time so I’m not sure what to make of it,” She hears Valerie say from outside. Hayden stiffens, she glances into the room where the others are, but thankfully those with better-than-average ears seem to be too preoccupied to listen to the conversation outside.

“Werewolves are like our animal counterpart in a lot of ways, one being that we’re pack creatures. It’s in our nature to want a pack. It doesn't mean we have to be in one, but it’s something we’re inclined to seek out,” She hears Scott pause. “The change is a lot in the beginning. Outside of controlling the shift, the instincts can be overwhelming too. Hayden told me she wasn’t ready before, but that she is now-“

“So what, this is some…instinct thing? It’s not actually something that she wants?” Val asks, cutting Scott off, worry clear in her voice.

“She’s here because she wants to be,” Scott says, with so much conviction that it surprises her. “The instincts we have don’t control us, they’re just another part of us. Either way, I’m not particularly fond of alphas that act like dictators. If Hayden wants to leave again, she can, but right now she’s here. I protect those in my pack, and your sister is one of them,” Scott replies. Distantly, she notices how different Scott sounds when he uses his ‘interacting with humans about werewolf business’ voice compared to the way he talks to his pack. He sounds as grounded and calm as a mediator, but with a clear underlying cause—a missionary devoted to his faith.

“I plan to hold you to that,” Val replies, a slight bite in her voice that causes Hayden to frown. 

Scott replies but Hayden tunes it out again. She doesn’t like the idea of them talking about her right outside in the yard, Val like Hayden is something broken and Scott with calm faith and optimism. Her hand tightens around her forearm. It reminds her too much of when she’d had her kidney replacement, Doctors with calm reassurances and a clear recovery plan and Valerie with a wary gaze and a protective stance.

Hayden had been so resentful of Val’s worry then. She wants to be now too, but she finds herself falling short. She isn’t thrilled at her sister grilling her alpha, but she almost can’t blame her. Almost. Val had been through so much already on Hayden’s behalf before all the Dread Doctors shit. The guilt isn’t lost on her, for adding to her sister’s stressors once again, but something in her—likely the werewolf part, she reminds herself—wants to go out there and throw them apart. So what if Valerie’s concerned? Hayden recently turned eighteen, she’s technically an adult. She doesn’t want Val to fight her battles; she doesn’t need her to. If Valerie still looks at her and can only see the cracks, is that what everyone else is seeing too? She’s a werewolf. She’s strong by nature. She’s strong enough to take care of herself. She has to be strong enough. 

She survived half a year as an omega. She’s not here because she was weak, or because of some trivial wolf instinct that she can’t control, she fights to remind herself. She is not her wolf instincts. She choose this. She wants to be back here and she will fight tooth and nail against anyone who protests to her that this means weakness, even if it’s her misguided sister, or, most nights, her own thoughts. 

Hayden’s been trying—to be better, to be strong. She feels like she’s tried glue and tape and every other adhesive she can think of to put the pieces of herself back together but none of the pieces are fitting like they should. But she’s here now. She stopped groveling and did something about it. She recognized that the pieces of herself were scattered so she asked Scott for a place in the pack back. She moved back to Beacon Hills. She’s having Christmas dinner with them in a few minutes. The stupid voice in the back of her head that’s telling her that she hasn’t actually improved since she rejoined the pack, so there’s no evidence that being in Beacon Hills again will help either, can shove it. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Hayden snaps out of her thoughts and finds herself face to face with a concerned Liam.

Anger shoots through her but she manages to hold back a growl. If she growled then everyone would know that she can’t handle her shit, that she’s weak, and it would become a matter of Liam vs her just like it was before she left. Hayden knows deep down who’d they’d all pick.

“I’m fine,” She bites out. His eyebrows shoot up at her aggressive tone, even as hushed as it is. She brushes past him into the living room before he can get another word out.

Dinner is fine. The pack is kind to her, though they’re still acting so overly normal that it gets a bit weird. Even Derek makes a point to talk to her. The most he’d done last time was tackle her to the ground during a full moon when she’d completely lost control. Even though it’s weird, she still finds herself appreciating it.

Distantly, she knows that the hole she talked about with Scott before is gone. There isn’t an instinctual sense of loneliness and unease that she’s carrying around anymore. It’s tentative, new, but the hole is gone. She has a pack.

Hayden leaves as soon as it's socially acceptable, no one offers her a hug besides Scott and she sighs in relief when she closes the door. Valerie picks her up and they ride in silence, the waning moon peeks out through the clouds and races alongside them.

When she gets home, Hayden muffles her sobs behind her hand in the shower even though there’s no one with super-senses around to hear her, and tries to figure out what’s so broken about her that she still feels so fucking empty even though she’s no longer an omega.

+

“I’m surprised you agreed to this,” Lydia says as they walk alongside the outdoor shops.

Hayden nods. She’s not really sure why she agreed to Lydia’s hang-out proposal before she agreed to anyone else’s. She’d probably talked to Lydia a total of three times before she left. Lord knows she has three texts from Liam on her phone that she hasn’t even looked at. Scott texted her last night and she went to sleep instead of answering it.

“I like shopping, it’s fun,” Hayden says in place of a real explanation. Lydia’s gaze snaps to hers, a slight twinkle in her eye Hayden has never seen before.

Hayden likes shopping, but apparently not as much as Lydia. She gets a few things for herself, but Lydia has about doubled her haul.

“Why’d you ask me to hang out? I don’t really know you,” Hayden asks as they look around the fifth store. She’s being too blunt, she thinks to herself. Just because she feels connected to the pack—an instinctual sense of home and family leading off every which way with them all spread out like this—doesn’t mean she actually knows them or that they know her enough for Hayden to be this casual in her interactions. Her sister knows she has a tendency to be blunt and get to the point, but most people she meets just write her off as a closed-off bitch.

Lydia however, smiles lightly. 

“Honestly? Scott made a big deal about everyone being nice to you and not making this weird. He didn’t mean to, he’s just passionate about the pack, you know how he gets,” Lydia waves a hand at this, and Hayden nods. “Except then everyone started being more weird about it. I figured you’d appreciate someone being direct with you, and you looked like you could use an afternoon away from the werewolf stuff. I would’ve asked you to hang out at some point anyway, it just sped up the process,” Lydia assures, ending with a rare moment of sincerity. Hayden remembers Lydia being impossible to read when she was a chimera, now that she’s pack it’s a bit easier. At least, enough to where she can tell Lydia isn’t lying.

Oddly enough, she’s not self-conscious that Scott is the reason everyone was overly nice during their Christmas celebration. She’d kind of figured he’d had something to do with it, and even if it was a tad over the top, it had clearly come from a good place.

“He told Liam to give you some space, they had a whole talk about it outside, the rest of us got bored,” Lydia inspects a dress on a hanger and rolls her eyes. “When I was in high school,” She starts, as if she isn’t only in her first year of college. “half of the pack broke up and dated every other month,” Lydia says with a slight laugh. Hayden thinks she’s exaggerating, but she also really can’t tell. Lydia looks back at her with a mischievous glint in her eye that she’s pretty sure  Stiles has at least five times a day. “Honestly, did you two have a disastrous meltdown or what? The Scott and Allison fiasco felt less strained than this and her dad held guns to his head,” Lydia’s voice gets a tad softer at the end at the mention of their passed friend, but the small, impish smile remains. 

Hayden halts in the middle of picking up a shirt. Had she done something to make things incredibly awkward with Liam that affected the rest of the pack? She’s been going to extra lengths to avoid that. She didn’t go anywhere near him at the Christmas party, and made sure to stay busy talking to others so it didn’t look like she was avoiding him.

She was incredibly focused on not making her re-entrance to the pack the Liam-Hayden shit-show. If her rejoining the pack was a drama fest, who’s to say they wouldn’t kick her out? Even if Scott wouldn’t do that, it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t make everyone else resent her. If they had to take sides, Hayden knows she’s not the side anyone is taking. She’s not even sure she had the high ground in their breakup. 

Hayden puts the shirt down gently, flattening it back out on the table.

“Depends on your definition of disastrous; I just packed up and left,” Hayden says carefully, unsure what direction this conversation is going. Lydia snorts.

“He needs to get over it. The least he can do is be mature about it like you are,” Hayden’s head snaps up.

She wouldn’t really describe not answering his texts as mature, but relief floods through her that Lydia doesn’t think Hayden’s been the one making it awkward for others. Then again, she hadn’t realized Liam was either, but one of the few things she knows about Lydia is how perceptive she is.

“He hasn’t done anything around you, of course, but Jesus that conversation where Scott told us you were coming back was so awkward. You guys only dated for a few months,” Lydia rolls her eyes. With a slight rush, Hayden realizes they're gossiping. The normalcy of it is so bizarre compared to the last year of her life that Hayden nearly laughs. 

Even though the topic is uncomfortable for her, she can’t help but smile. Gossiping about her ex with Lydia Martin while out shopping. It’s the most normal thing she’s done in so long it almost hurts.

“Yeah?” Hayden asks, curiosity winning out. Lydia nods, lips pursed.

“You made the right move, high school boys are not worth your time,” Hayden’s nose scrunches in confusion.

“Aren’t you dating Stiles? Who you met in high school?” She asks. Lydia smirks lightly, her lips slightly pursed.

“Well, three or so years of life and death situations result in a bit more bonding than math class and lacrosse games. Do as I say not as I do,” She instructs, abruptly turning towards the exit, Hayden tries not to look like she’s scrambling after her.

The most annoying thing about rejoining the pack is reevaluating why she left Liam. At the time, when she was leaving the pack, she knew she needed to cut all of her ties. Pushing him away and getting a rise out of him for fights was easier than dealing with her emotional, supernatural-affiliated baggage at the time. But had she really wanted to leave him? Did she want to be with him again?

“I can’t blame him,” Hayden admits, breaking the steady silence they’d been walking in. Lydia looks over at her, eyebrows slightly raised, a solemn sort of curiosity written in her eyes.

“I left him cause of other circumstances. I needed to leave the pack, I needed to get away from everything. I—,” She pauses, not because she’s hesitant to continue, but because she’s really not even certain how she felt at the time. Everything was such a blur back then. “I needed to deal with my own shit I guess, ‘work on myself,’ or whatever, not that I did much of that while I was away. It didn’t give him much closure. I didn’t have a good reason to break up with him, I just did,” She admits, feigning disinterest, but her mind is whirling as she finally confides her guilt to Lydia Martin of all people.

Lydia stops walking, hand slightly out in front of her.

“Working on yourself is a perfectly good reason to end a relationship. You’re a senior in high school, a boy shouldn’t be the center of your world,” She says, voice strict but compassionate.

There’s an odd scent coming from her that takes Hayden a moment to place. Hayden’s already nodded slowly and entered the parking lot to ride home with Lydia before she places it —nostalgia. 

“Did Scott and Allison ever get back together?” Hayden asks out of nowhere. She hopes it isn’t an inconsiderate thing to ask. After her parents passed, it took her a while to be able to talk about them again, but something about the answer feels pressing in that moment. Scott likes to say that the past only repeats itself if you don’t learn from it. Hayden feels like she’s trying to solve a puzzle, but no one’s told her what picture she’s making. She has all these pieces, but she doesn’t understand how they fit together.

The same nostalgia scent floods the car — her hunch about the original cause was right then. It’s tinted with sadness this time though, and Hayden finds herself holding her breath as she waits for an answer.

“No,” Lydia finally answers softly, starting the car, avoiding eye contact with Hayden the whole time. “They didn’t get the chance,”

+

Hayden puts Liam out of her mind for the next week. He’s not why she came back, and even though their situation keeps tugging at her mind, it’s not enough to consume all her waking thoughts, not by a long shot.

She stares at her reflection in the mirror, huffing as she tries to get her ponytail tied in a way that limits her frizzy fly-aways. She lingers after she finally manages to pull her hair back in a way that she can settle with.

Her eyes catch on a picture, tucked into the frame of her mirror. It’s from the summer before her junior year, right before her life was upended by all the supernatural shit. She’s grinning next to two people she used to call her best friends but she hasn’t spoken to sense around that time, apparently, friendships forged through soccer practices and championship games don’t always hold up when you drop off the face of the planet and start hanging around ‘that group of kids that trouble and tragedy just seem to follow’.

Hayden glances back between the picture and the mirror.

On the outside, nothing has changed. She barely looks different than the girl in the photo, same black curly hair, same fairly fit body type. Her eyes were a bit tired then too, how could they not be? Dead parents into kidney failure—sob story central.

Hayden’s mouth twists, she lets her eyes go gold for a moment. It usually makes her uncomfortable, but in this moment it gives her a rare sense of satisfaction. Tangible change. She wants to scream it from the rooftops: ‘Look!,’ she thinks. ‘I’m not the same! My life fucking crumbled to pieces and this is what’s left!’

She told Lydia last week that she’d left to figure herself out. As she looks back at her gold eyes, doubt fills her. When she got back from asking Scott to rejoin the pack, she’d finally felt relief. That was it, right? She finally dealt with what had happened to her. She was ready to recognize herself as a supernatural creature and stop resisting Maslow’s hierarchy of werewolf needs or whatever. Hayden huffs, letting her eyes dim again.

If she had actually figured herself out, then why did she keep thinking of life in terms of a puzzle she couldn’t solve?

“I’m Hayden Romero,” She says out loud. Immediately she rolls her eyes. What kind of Katniss Everdeen shit is this? What, she’s gonna list out facts about herself and suddenly feel grounded again? She hasn’t felt grounded in years. It didn’t happen all at once—her parent’s accident, her kidney disease, becoming a supernatural science experiment—every time she settled into a new normal her life was flipped upside down again. At what point would she have been flipped so many times that being upside down would just become her new natural state?

“My sister is Valerie Romero. Her career is split between being a deputy and a thorn in my side but I love her,” Hayden continues despite herself. She heads out to her car, locking the door behind her.

“I’m a senior in high school. I play soccer and I’m damn good at it. My parents died in a car crash when I was in the sixth grade. Two years later I had a kidney transplant. Three years after that my DNA was combined with various supernatural creatures. The experiment failed. I di—,” Hayden pauses, her voice catching.

Frustration fills her. She hits the steering wheel of her car. It bends slightly, but not enough for her sister to notice later. She growls. She doesn’t want to pull her punches. She wants to be angry. Why is her mental rundown of her life filled with tragedy? She’d already felt like a sob story before all of the supernatural crap—pitying glances from classmates that she’d pointedly ignored. She didn’t like feeling pitied so she became a star soccer player. She worked out so she’d appear strong, and not some weak, sniveling little girl. But no matter what lengths she goes to define herself, things just seem to happen to her. Someone goes out for a drive after one too many drinks and changes her and Valerie’s life in unfathomable ways. Her body revolts against her even as she works to be in the best shape of her life, and she ends up sick in the hospital. Old doctors play God and try to make her into a monster, and the only person there to explain any of it is the boy who gave her a black eye in the sixth grade.

Hayden doesn’t remember starting to run, but the next thing she knows, she finds herself outside Scott’s house, claws digging into her skin through her fist.

Malia and Scott are in the backyard talking to Derek when she approaches. She’s so lost in her frustration that is simultaneously sourced by everything that’s ever happened in her goddamn life and nothing at all that she doesn’t even really process that she’s probably interrupting them.

She blinks when someone touches her hand. Scott’s in front of her, calmly prying the claws out of her skin. Hayden looks down dizzily. She hadn’t even realized she was bleeding.

Scott is looking at her with concern, but before he can get a word out, Hayden beats him to it.

“I need to hit something,” She grits out.

Hayden isn’t an angry person—that’s a common misconception about her. She’d even had to correct Liam when their paths had crossed again—not angry, but vengeful. She doesn’t let senseless anger or grief consume her. She’s learned the hard way that it doesn’t get you anywhere. She’s strategic in her emotions—proactive. Liam had the audacity to ruin her sixth-grade year even more than it already had been and then turn up in her life again suddenly charming and cute? Plan vengeance. Stick gum on his things and pretend it isn’t her equivalent of fourth-grade boys pulling the pigtails of girls they think are cute but don’t know how to talk to. She can’t deal with being a part of a pack after the chimera shit? Become withdrawn to push them away. Leave. She realized being an omega was making her miserable and she accepted that a pack could help with that? Acknowledge her past mistakes. Ask Scott for another chance.

Hayden prides herself on not letting biting emotions like unfiltered anger control her actions. Now, however, the temptation to just be angry for once is all-encompassing.

Scott opens his mouth to say something but closes it after a second, mouth twisting. He looks back at Derek. The older wolf has absolutely no emotion on his face, not that he ever really does. The few times she’s interacted with him, she’s never seen him even come close to emoting.

“Common, I’ve got a good place,” Derek says, and with that, he takes off running into the preserve. Malia follows, leaving Hayden and Scott in the yard.

Scott sucks the pain from her hand before she can stop him. It brings her back to herself a bit. She’s still angry, but the guilt of him taking pain she caused herself takes a bit of the edge off. He smiles at her.

“Let’s go,” Is all he says before he turns to follow them into the preserve. Hayden launches after them without missing a beat.

Running isn’t calming exactly, but it lets her turn her brain off for a second. 

She’s never disliked being a werewolf. It was the emotional aspects of the change that she’d struggled with—was maybe still struggling with, if she was being honest. The power that courses through her veins, the way she anticipates branches and leaps over rocks without a second thought—Hayden has always loved that about the change. She’s barely winded by the time she reaches the clearing and she’ll never not love that.

It takes her a moment to remember they’d taken her out here to hit something. Hayden looks around in confusion—the only thing in the clearing are some rocks and a fallen down tree.

Derek walks up to the tree and leans down to grip a branch—it’s as dense as Derek’s arm, but it doesn’t stop him from ripping it clean off the tree, chucking it behind him once it comes off.

Scott shoots her a sheepish look.

“We found this tree and sometimes one of us comes here if we just need to blow off some steam. We spar occasionally too, but sometimes even fake fighting just makes it worse,” Scott admits. Hayden blinks as she processes the information. 

Malia rips off another large branch and cackles with delight. Hayden keeps staring at Scott. He rolls his eyes at Malia’s antics but has a fond smile on his face. She can’t picture him doing any of this—ripping apart a dead tree whenever life gets to be too much and the wolf growls for any outlet. 

“Have you done this?” Hayden asks. She doesn’t know why she’s hung up on that. She’s dying to try—she’s never really tested her strength and she still has frustrated anger flowing through her veins, so this would be a great chance to kill two birds with one stone. The wolf part of her is still foaming at the mouth for any sort of aggression to the point where she can’t really hold it back, but she finds herself hesitating.

She’d told Liam once she didn’t want to be with the bad guys anymore. Scott does the right thing, he makes good judgment calls. That’s who she wants to be aligned with.

Scott looks even more sheepish than before somehow. He nods.

Hayden shifts. She can’t remember the last time she shifted and it wasn’t on a full moon. The wolf part of her is chomping at the bit to go nuts but she manages to keep it reigned in a little. With a growl, she grabs a branch—larger than the ones Derek and Malia just threw—and pulls. She lets herself be angry and not have a reason behind it. She doesn’t need to shape the emotion into something more evolved. Instead, she thinks about the ways her life has been spinning out of her control since the sixth grade. She thinks about the things she can’t control that happen to her and the people who fucked up her life without a second thought.

The branch rips free and Hayden sends it soaring through the clearing.

“Look at that go!” Malia cheers, watching the log of a branch finally land. The werecoyote turns to grin at her. Hayden can’t help but grin back—she’s no longer shifted but she can tell it’s distinctly wolfish.

She’s surprised, but manages not to jump when Scott claps her on the shoulder, grinning down at her.

“You’re strong,” He says, pride clear in his voice. The double meaning is evident.  Hayden continues to grin, still breathing heavily. 

She’s going to figure out the puzzle that is her life. In the moment, any other option seems impossible. She will succeed. She’ll come out on top over whatever the hell is wrong with her. She’s not there yet but she’s close, she can feel it.

The wolf is practically singing in her veins. It’s something she’s never felt before. Malia and Derek start sparing off to the side, and Scott gently rubs her back. This is what pack is supposed to feel like, she thinks briefly. A common understanding. A shared life experience that they can support each other through.

“Feel better?” Scott asks, taking his hand away. Hayden lets herself think about it for a moment.

“Yeah,” She answers truthfully, the buzzing in her skin smoothing out her previously frantic mind. Her anger is gone, tossed across the forest clearing with the branch. Hayden sighs contently, mind finally clear for the first time since she moved back to Beacon Hills.

+

The night before the full moon, Hayden finds herself in the preserve. She’d never let herself go run at night in Upper Monta when she felt restless—too many unknowns, that was a death wish as an omega. Here in pack territory, however, she feels safe enough to wonder around a bit. It’s a nice change.

She feels the wolf instincts more strongly with only one night left till the full moon. Now that control is less and less of a worry each month, the instincts have, in turn, gotten stronger and stronger each month, especially in the two months since she rejoined the pack, even though she’s only been back in Beacon Hills for a couple weeks. She feels weird seeking any of the pack out even though she feels the urge to. They’re all going to see each other tomorrow. She can handle herself for a night. 

She’s leaning against a tree trunk, trying to block out every movement in nature that peaks the interest of her wolf instincts when she hears voices.

“Common, don’t tell me those short legs of yours make you this slow.” Malia. Hayden gets up off the ground as the werecoyote’s voice approaches. 

She hears a light growl that’s more playful than angry that makes her freeze. She hears a body hit a body and then both of them hit the ground. 

“Don’t tell me you’re so concerned with making fun of me that I could get the drop on you,” Liam snarks. Malia growls and she hears more wrestling. They’re really close to the clearing, Hayden knows that, but she can’t bring herself to move. She was able to push down the instinct to seek out the pack when she was alone, but when they’re right here…that wolf part of her can’t resist. It frustrates her. She’s in control. She doesn’t feel the pull of the moon or the urge to loose control at all, why are these instincts still so difficult to resist?

She’s just managed to make herself turn around to leave—she hasn’t talked to Liam yet and she doesn’t know Malia well so if she stays it’ll be more awkward than anything, no matter what her wolf instincts are telling her—when Liam flies into the clearing.

Concern shoots through Hayden. He was clearly thrown. She’s not shallow enough that she doesn’t care about his well-being. She moves to take a step towards him (she was like three steps from the trail and being out of here god damn it) when he growls, kipping up off the ground. 

Malia emerges through the trees into the small clearing, a shit-eating grin on her face.

She must not see Hayden, because she makes her way over to Liam and messes up his hair even more than it already is. 

“Don’t bite off more then you can chew short stack,” She says. He growls playfully again, grabbing her arm and flipping her to the ground before she can react. 

“Oh piss off Dunbar,” Malia says through an odd mix of a growl and a laugh.

The moment Liam finally notices her standing a few yards away also happens to be the moment Malia grabs his leg and yanks him down with her.

“Hayden?” He says in surprise, looking up at her from where he’s landed on the ground. Malia pauses, looking over at her too.

Liam hops up off the ground in time with Malia. That throws Hayden off, their synchronization is off-putting, something about it unsettling her. 

She knows that this is the part where she should say something, but just like every other time they’ve run into each other, Hayden and Liam end up unable to do anything other than stare at each other like idiots.

“Okay, this is weird,” Malia announces after a minute of silence. The comment snaps Hayden out of her stupor, and she shoots her an annoyed look. Their situation really isn’t for anyone else to judge. Hayden almost says something but Malia turns away from her to Liam without batting an eye. If she noticed Hayden’s annoyance it didn’t phase her one bit.

“I’ll be back in like thirty minutes,” Malia tells him. He opens his mouth to protest but she waves it off. “Sort your shit out,” She says, looking between the two of them before promptly running off.

Liam glances back at Hayden apologetically.

“Sorry, she can be…blunt,” He says, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot before making his way over to where she’s standing.

“I remember,” Hayden says with a grimace, looking over at the spot where Malia had just disappeared into the woods.

“What were you doing out here?” Liam asks after another empty moment passes. There’s no judgment in his voice, only curiosity, so she decides to answer truthfully.

“‘Full moon’s close, I was feeling restless, decided to wonder around for a bit. It’s nice, I couldn’t do that as an omega,” she says, finally tearing her eyes away from the surrounding forest to look at him. If they’re finally gonna talk she’s not gonna look like a coward who can’t look in his general direction. Concern causes his brow to furrow.

“You shouldn’t go out alone, you should’ve asked one of us to come with you.” Annoyance flashes through her. Does she really seem that weak to him? 

“I can protect myself,” She says, mouth hardening into a firm line. Liam huffs.

“I know that, but it’s safer to be with someone,” he insists. His sincerity throws her. Why is he being so nice to her? After all the fights they had? After she left? 

“It’s not your responsibility to tell me what makes me safe,” She bites out. He looks at her, confused and bewildered.

“We’re pack, we absolutely have the responsibility to keep each other safe,” He says, with the tone he gets when he’s not going to budge on a subject. “Even if you hadn’t come back, I’d still want you to be safe,” He admits. He studies her for a moment. She lets him. She’s been better about not keeping her guard up 24/7 around the others, but sometimes she still falls back into shutting herself off. It’s shockingly easy to not put her guard up now, to not school the emotions on her face and just see what he gets out of it. He was always good at reading her, sometimes better than she was at reading herself.

“Why’d you come back?” He finally asks. Hayden runs a hand through her hair, sighing. She sits down with her back against a tree, deciding to bite the bullet and settle in for what’s likely going to be a long conversation. He moves to sit next to her but stops, shifting uncomfortably as he tries to figure out what to do.

She pats the ground next to her without looking at him. He makes his way over to her and sits down. 

“Being an omega sucked. It was just this pit in my chest and somedays it felt like it was eating me away. I wasn’t ready to be in the pack when I was here the first time. You know I liked being a werewolf, but that part of it wasn’t something I knew how to deal with. I’m very…independent,” She says. Liam snorts and she shoves her shoulder into him without thinking. They both laugh. She relaxes. It feels like old times, like nothing between them has changed.

“I needed time,” She says softly, knowing she’s drifting dangerously close to talking about their break up but plowing ahead anyway. “It helped. I came to terms with being a werewolf, and once I did it was impossible not to acknowledge how much I didn’t want to be an omega anymore. So I did what any normal person would do and I showed up at Scott’s door one night on the edge of a mental breakdown,” She says with a joking tone. Liam laughs, turning to look at her. She smiles before grimacing, breaking their eye contact to look straight ahead into the trees.

“You’re allowed to be mad at me you know. I know we fought a lot, and even if I don’t regret leaving, I know it still hurt you,” She says. She’s wrestled with this since she got back and she’s finally decided that their breakup wasn’t clear cut. Hayden refuses to regret leaving. She’s certain that staying would’ve spelled disaster for her and the pack. She would’ve lashed out and made an enemy out of herself. When they talked, Scott told her that she needed the time to adjust and she knows now how true that was. She wasn’t ready to be fully involved in this before. Lydia’s reaffirming conversation during their shopping trip had helped more than she had expected it to as well. Hayden had needed time to figure herself out. That wasn’t anything to be ashamed of.

“I was mad for a bit,” Liam admits. “but it wasn’t going to change anything, and eventually I just got tired of being mad. I was really hurt, but whenever I started to get mad again, I just remembered how you smelled for that last month,” Liam says. She turns to look at him, confusion causes her nose to scrunch up. He looks back at her and starts to explain before she even has to ask what he means.

“Hayden, you were miserable. I tried to help but it always clung to your scent, even when you were happy,” He says, pushing his grown-out hair off of his forehead. 

She’s not really sure what to do with that information. It’s nice to have a confirmation that it wasn’t just in her head, that she really was miserable then, but she also doesn’t like knowing that everyone around her with a good nose could tell too.

“I’m glad you're back,” He offers, looking over at her. She can’t help but smile. The thing about Liam is that he’s annoyingly charming without trying to be. Even when he’s angry he always says what he means, and that’s something Hayden can appreciate. It means she doesn’t have to worry about him telling trivial lies like so many of the boys their age. He might omit things sometimes like any normal person does, but he wouldn’t lie to her about stuff that matters.

Despite herself, Hayden finds herself staring at him with what she knows is a dumb smile on her face. She’s always liked his eyes, bright blue and easy to read. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and Hayden’s always envied him for that, even if she knows he doesn’t really like that about himself. 

He’s staring right back at her and she can see the light blush on his cheeks. 

Hayden finds herself debating the merits of how a casual fling between them would go before they have any real in-depth conversations solely about their relationship when he suddenly smirks, raising an eyebrow and pointing to her foot. She looks down, she didn’t even realize she was tapping it.

“Wanna go for a run?” He asks, still smiling. She scoffs, barely managing to bite back a growl.

“No, sorry, it’s the stupid moon. I’ve been fighting back instincts all day. I’ll be fine,” She says, brushing it off and focusing on pushing down the stupid wolf instinct to let off some steam and go run around. Liam loses his teasing smile, and instead looks at her, slightly perplexed.

“Instincts like what?” He asks. She rolls her eyes and looks up at the nearly full moon peeking out through the clouds.

“I don’t know, stupid stuff. It’s gotten worse since I got a good grasp on control. Earlier tonight it was the urge to go be with the pack, now it’s the want to go run under the moon,” She forcers herself to otherwise remain still as she makes a brushing-off gesture, even though her instincts to go run are only getting stronger.

“Why don’t you listen to your instincts?” He asks, seemingly concerned. She pauses to look at him, confused. 

“Why would I?” 

“Why wouldn’t you?” He asks again, almost studying her as he waits for an answer. She shifts uncomfortably. Isn’t this something he should understand?

“We’re all seeing each other tomorrow, it’s a stupid reason to go bug people just because some weird wolf instinct thinks I should. Same with the running. I have pretty steady control. I can overcome a few annoying wolf-thoughts,” She jokes even as his confused expression causes her to become increasingly uncomfortable.

“I thought you said you came to terms with everything?” 

Hayden frowns.

“I did. I have a good grasp on control and I acknowledged the instinct to be in a pack,” She explains, shooting him a look like he’s crazy even as he continues to look at her like she’s the crazy one. 

“There’s more to it than that,” He begins, a tad awkwardly. He grabs for her hand and starts playing with her fingers, likely attempting to distract her from how uncomfortable he clearly is. “It’s one thing to have control, but it’s a whole different thing to actually accept the change in all levels of your life. You should listen to all of your instincts! You don’t have to follow them if you don’t want to, but especially since you have good control now it’s good to be in touch with that side of yourself—“ before Liam can continue she yanks her hand away, standing up.

Hayden’s mind is moving a thousand miles a second. She feels like she’s been slapped in the face. He’d been so casual to say ‘there’s more to it than that,’ as if she hadn’t fought tooth and nail to get the control she has today and swallow her pride to come seek the pack back out. She laughs as she drags her hands over her face.

Of course there’s more to it than control and a pack. She feels so stupid. Hayden’s been staring at her life like a puzzle, wondering why the pieces won’t fit, when it turns out she’s been trying to force them into the wrong order. She knew that she’d changed, but she’d been thinking of it in terms of a small altercation, like the scar her kidney transplant left. When she’d nearly broke down in front of the mirror last week as she desperately looked for proof of her change, she had settled with gold eyes in lieu of a surgical scar. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Her scope had been too narrow. She couldn’t find any changes because she was looking for something specific. She should’ve just looked at the full image of herself.

Scott and Liam had warned her that the bite would change her, but this whole time she’s been looking for small changes to herself. It had never occurred to her that she’d changed in totality. The pieces won’t fit because she’s not the same girl anymore, and the realization floods her with hysterical panic.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Had her transplant ended with that scar? It had been followed with medicine and a total life-style adjustment. Grieving her parents wasn’t a one-step process, it was something she still wrestled with. How foolish was she, that she’d thought becoming a werewolf was a problem with a simple two-step solution?

“Hayden? Common Hayden breathe, it’s okay,” Liam says, breaking through her racing thoughts. He’s standing in front of her, hands in front of him like he wants to touch her but isn’t sure if he should.

His presence, no, she corrects herself, his scent, calms her down and she scrambles away. She doesn’t want his scent to calm her down. Why can’t it just be him? Why does her stupid panicking wolf-mind latch on to his scent? 

“Hayden!” He calls but she’s already racing away. 

She needs to calm down, but she feels dizzy, disconnected from the world around her. Hayden sobs, stopping suddenly beside a tree. 

She hits the tree with a mix of a sob and a growl that makes her feel even worse. Is this what she is now? What she’s been for ten months now? An animal that growls in reaction to things and makes decisions based on instincts? She’s been kidding herself, thinking that she choose to follow her instinct to be in a pack. How is she even supposed to differentiate? She wonders hysterically how much of any decision she makes now is made by the wolf and how much is made by her.

She’s dealt with changes in her life, so many frustrating, fucking changes that have left her different, but she’s never dealt with something like this, something that changes the core of who she is.

How does someone deal with something like that? There are books and therapy to deal with grief. There was medicine to deal with her kidney, what’s the solution to becoming a fucking werewolf?

The gunshots that ring out and the subsequent bullets that sink into her right thigh really weren’t the answers she was looking for.

+

Post meltdown and slowly coming down from an adrenaline rush, Hayden deliriously thinks to herself that maybe her wolf instincts are good for something after all.

She had taken off as soon as she’d gathered her bearings, letting her senses and instincts take over without even realizing that they were successfully leading her away from whoever the hell had shot her. Liam had nearly crashed into her, panic clear on his face, but quickly scooped her up like it was nothing. It had taken them about five minutes to reach the cave.

“You don’t need to do that, I’m fine,” Hayden insists as Liam takes some of her pain. He shoots her an exasperated glare.

“You’re not fine! You have three wolfsbane bullets in your leg! Let me help you!” He says, so sternly it’s almost an instruction rather than something he’s asking to do.

Hayden winces as she shifts her injured leg. There’s no way she could run on it right now, too much of her adrenaline has faded, and after her freak out, she feels like she could pass out at any moment.

She rips her shirt off and uses it to apply pressure to the wound. Thankfully, she had chosen to wear a sports bra today. Even if she hadn’t, it wasn’t anything Liam hadn’t seen before. 

Hayden works to pace her breathing, taking slow, measured breaths. It really isn’t that bad. The bullets didn’t hit anything critical and she’s not bleeding as bad as she could be. She’s been in worse situations than this, she reminds herself as her breathing fights to pick back up in panic. The biggest threat right now is the poison.

“They missed a few shots. I grabbed a few of the bullets I came across when I was looking for you. All we need is a lighter and we can burn it out,” Liam says. Hayden nods, trying to keep her thoughts coherent. The poison is starting to make her woozy.

She pulls out her phone.

“Fuck! I don’t have any service” She groans, tucking her phone back in her pocket. 

Across from her, Liam bites his lip, eyes flicking back between the bullet he’s holding and her leg.

“What?” She asks, he’s clearly on the fence about something, but she can’t figure out what.

“We can howl, but it might lead them back to us,” He says, looking back at the bullet and biting his lip. 

“What’s on the bullet?” She pants, flinching as the pain continues to worsen.

“There’s nothing on the bullet, that’s the problem. Normally hunters have their crests on the bullet. We had these people while you were gone…”Liam trails off. The stress is practically rolling off of him in waves. He shakes his head. “I’ll fill you in on it later, but they weren’t like normal hunters. They were worse, and they didn’t use a crest. If this is them, I don’t want to lead them to us,” He explains. Hayden nods, struggling to think.

“Okay, you said they weren’t like normal hunters? Were they more or less experienced?” She asks. 

“Less. But that doesn’t mean-“ He starts but she cuts him off.

“—I’m not saying that doesn’t mean they were worse, but if they’re less experienced, they probably don’t know how to track a howl right? Malia is probably still out in the woods and Scott is fast, I like the odds of howling better than waiting for this poison to spread,” Hayden says, pressing down on her wound. Liam nods slowly. She can see his mind reeling, connecting the pieces she’d just laid out for him.

He opens his mouth, and suddenly Hayden just really doesn’t care for his protests. Maybe she’s not thinking logically, but she can feel the poison spreading in her leg and she refuses to find herself at death’s door again. 

She’s never howled before, but the instinct has been right below the surface of her thoughts since she got shot, so she’s pleased she doesn’t have to figure that out, and, for once, she just gives into her instincts and howls.

It’s loud, louder than she thought it would be, especially in the cave. Liam covers his ears and winces.

She sinks back after, blinking repeatedly to try and stay awake. She didn’t think howling would be tiring, but it feels like it took all of the adrenaline she had left and more. Liam curses and scrambles over to her, pressing down on the wound with her shirt. She hadn’t even realized she’d let the shirt go.

“Why’d you do that?” He hisses. “I would’ve done that! You need your energy!” She thinks he draws more pain because it suddenly becomes much easier for her to think.

She can take care of herself, she wants to insist, but she knows how that would sound with three bullets in her thigh. The look he gives her says he knows what she wants to say and doesn’t agree with it. Liam deflates. He so rarely does that, that it helps wake her up. He’s not really one to give up during an argument.

“Just focus on staying awake,” He instructs. Hayden nods, tiredly leaning back again.

They don’t really talk while they wait. By the time Liam perks his head up and immediately sighs in relief, the poison has already made her throw up black gunk once. Liam had grimaced at that, but she had just been relieved that it wasn’t silver, even though those days were long past her.

Scott rushes in, Malia behind him.

He looks urgent, but not panicked. Hayden’s thankful for that, she thinks that if he was freaking out then she’d start freaking out too.

“Alright, Liam hold her leg still. Hayden, the bullets are still in there so I’m going to take them out, okay?” Scott says. She’s surprised he brought surgical tongs for that but she’s also relieved. The alternative of claws digging through her to find the bullets sounds extremely unpleasant to say the least.

“Sure,” She huffs, wincing as she scoots forward so she can fully lay down. There’s no way she’s doing this sitting up. She covers her eyes with her hand and gives Scott a thumbs up with the other one. Someone huffs a laugh at that, she thinks it’s Malia.

The bullets coming out are painful, but not as painful as getting the wolfsbane burned out. Malia and Liam both have to hold her down for that. Once it’s done, Hayden wastes no time in finally passing out.

+

Hayden wakes up in a bed.

She sits up immediately, groaning as she tries to move her leg, and the events of the last few hours hit her like a sack of bricks. Someone seems to have gotten her out of her bloody, tattered pants and into some running shorts, which outside of being much more comfortable, also means she can see the bandage on her right thigh. Her leg shifts as she sits up and she has to stifle a groan. Her thigh is still sore. Hayden can’t help but roll her eyes. Wasn’t the bite supposed to help her heal faster?

“You’re awake.” Hayden barely stops herself from jumping in surprise as she whips her head to see who’s on her right.

Liam is sitting in a bungee chair that looks just like the one he used to have in his room. Hayden’s thoughts practically glitch as she thinks that, slowly looking around the room.

She’s in Liam’s room, she realizes. She’s in his bed. She can’t believe it had taken her that long to realize it. Now that she knows, it’s all she can think about. 

Everything looks mostly like it had before. There’s a new poster on the wall, and the picture of them he had on his desk is gone, she notes, but besides that, everything looks the same and even smells the same.

Well, that’s not exactly true. The last time she was lying in this bed, everything had smelled quite pleasant. Now all she smells is concern and annoyance. Her gaze drifts back over to Liam.

He’s doing a good job at hiding it, for him at least. He looks fairly neutral, but there’s a pinch in his eyebrows that gives him away.

“What’s wrong?” She asks, bluntly. She might’ve just woken up, but she’s still sore and exhausted, reeling from the shock of three bullets to the thigh and getting the poison burned out of her. She doesn’t care to put in the extra effort to seem concerned. Why does he have a right to be annoyed anyway? He wasn’t the one who was shot.

The scent of annoyance, which to her has always smelled like an unearthly combination of rotten eggs, dirt, and chemical cleaner, spikes as he presses his mouth into a firm line.

“Nothing, go back to bed. The others are out looking for the hunters, I’ll go give them a call to let them know you’re awake,” He says, fighting to keep a smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes. 

Before he can even reach for his phone, Hayden groans.

“Cut the bullshit. There’s no way I can sleep with the scent of your annoyance everywhere anyway, what’s wrong?” She asks, exasperation growing. 

Liam closes his eyes and takes a breath. When he opens his eyes again he pointedly looks anywhere in the room but her.

“We’re not doing this right now,” He says, and she can hear how he’s fighting back his anger by the way his voice is clipped and restrained. Hayden fails to hold back a growl.

“No! If you’re got something to say, we’re doing this right now. We’ve not skirting around our shit anymore,” Hayden says, turning in the bed to face Liam fully, ready to get up at a moment’s notice if that’s what it takes for them to actually talk.

“Hayden—,”

“—Liam!,” She interprets childishly. She’s so over this. Even in the woods, it was clear he was skirting around her. They were both trying to act like things were normal. Things aren’t normal. Things have never been normal between them, and if Liam refuses to talk about this and it becomes just another thing in her exponentially growing pile of topics to skirt around and think about at night alone, Hayden thinks she’s going to finally lose her fucking mind.

“What do you want me to say?!” Liam says, rounding on her. A pit forms in her stomach when she notices that his hands are bunched into fists, shaking as he tries so hard to keep his cool, but the part of her that’s tired and, she’ll admit it, angry at nothing in particular and everything all at once, chooses to ignore it. “That I’m mad at you? I’m not mad at you! I don’t want to fight with you! I just want you to make up your fucking mind!” He says, dragging his hand over his face as he works to pace his breathing. 

She doesn’t understand his last comment, but refuses to resolve into mere confusion.

“Make up my mind about what?” She bites out.

Liam has the gull to look bewildered. Her own annoyance rises at that. Emotions are so clear-cut for him. He’s easy to read and is perceptive of the emotions of those around him. It always irks her when he forgets that not everyone else is as in-tune with emotions as he is. He’s making it seem like the answer is just so obvious, when Hayden’s confusion is only growing.

“Are you with us or are you not? Cause you keep saying you are, you said you were last time-,” Hayden winces despite herself. “- but you don’t act like it!” He says, voice almost taking on a note of hysteria rather than the biting anger she’s so used to from him when they fight. Before she can even ask what the hell he means by that, Liam starts talking again.

“You’re actions aren’t lining up with what you’re saying. You say that you’re a part of the pack, but you’re avoiding texts from basically everyone, except Lydia for some reason! You say that you’ve come to terms with being a werewolf, but you started freaking out when we started talking about listening to all of your instincts! And when you started freaking out you just ran away,” Liam sits down next to her on the edge of the bed and buries his face in his hands. 

Hayden feels frozen. She didn’t think it was that bad. She knew she was putting off talking to some of them, awkwardness and self-doubt stopping her from replying to texts. She knew it probably wasn’t great that she ran away from him, but she didn’t think it was as bad as last time. The sinking feeling in her gut had only grown every time he compared her actions to when she’d been here before, leaving her with a chasm where her stomach should be.

“That’s not fair,” She bites out, latching on to her anger and desperately trying to hide the hurt in her voice, the self-doubt that fills her. “You don’t get to sit here and evaluate my relationship with the pack! You don’t get to criticize me because I thought I was doing well and you informed me the I haven't come to terms with my change like you were talking about the weather!” She stands up suddenly, wincing as her thigh protests.

“I’m not trying to do that. That’s not what I’m saying,” Liam says, his tone overall less aggressive even as her own anger continues to climb. He stands up again, one of his hands reaches out to comfort her but he stops it at the last second. She’s glad he chose not to, she probably would’ve growled in his face.

“Hayden, you got hurt tonight, and it could’ve been way worse if we hadn’t run into each other and you were out there alone. A pack is supposed to take care of each other, we keep each other safe. I just want you to be safe.” His anger is almost entirely gone, and it’s making it so much harder to hold on to her own. Without her anger, she knows she’s just going to feel ashamed and desperately sad. She feels like that all the time and she’s so tired of it.

“You know I’m not good with depending on people,” She bites out, but her voice has lost a lot of its anger too, her tiredness is showing.

“I know that, but you said you came back because you were tired of being alone. I thought that meant you were ready to depend on us, or at least-,” He bites off the end of his sentence suddenly. Hayden knows what he was going to say though, that he thought she was at least comfortable depending on him when she needed to, she always had before, but she refuses to give him the olive branch of finishing the sentence for him. Either he’s ready to talk about them or he’s not.

“Scott and Allison never got back together,” Hayden says after a minute of silence that reeks of insecurity and sadness. Forget the olive branch, apparently she’s throwing him an olive dagger, because she has no idea where the hell she’s going with this, but it’s been eating away at the back of her mind since she got that answer from Lydia.

“What?” Liam asks, bewilderment clear on his face at the abrupt change in topic.

“Scott and Allison, they never got back together before she died, I asked Lydia,” Hayden says again. Liam shakes his head, brow still furrowed. 

“I know that, but what does that have to do with anything that we’re talking about?” He asks again. 

Hayden sighs. It really doesn’t have anything to do with what they’re talking about, but to Hayden it feels like it has everything to do with what they’re talking about. She’s been trying to make herself forcibly move past her issues. And okay, so maybe she’s not really dealing with them in the messy way people expect others to deal with things, but why does anyone want to waste time on that? Especially when it always results in everyone and herself only feeling worse. 

“I don’t want us to do that!” She admits suddenly, as desperation fills her to show him what she means. “I don’t want us to be so caught up in all the shit that takes up our lives that we waste time and we don’t even try again! Can’t you see I’m doing my best? I made myself come back here, I’m not freaking out about being a werewolf. Is this what you want us to do too? Waste time fighting about the stupid intricacies of all this until I di-“ Hayden closes her mouth suddenly, freezing. She’d been so caught up in essentially voicing her stream of consciousness that she hadn’t even realized where her sentence was heading. She closes her eyes shut, taking deep breaths.

She’s not gonna think about that.

She’s not gonna think about drowning in mercury, the light of the world dimming, her excruciating pain buzzing out into numbness, the awareness of her own body fading, only to wake up amongst a pile of bodies in the woods.

Hayden opens her eyes when she feels Liam grab her hands. She watches as his hands, calloused in the palms but smooth across the back, easily intertwine with her own.

After a moment she looks up to meet his eyes. She nearly steps back when she sees how stern and passionate that look that he’s giving her is. 

“We’re not Scott and Allison.” Liam bites his lip in uncertainty as he chooses his next words, but she’s not sure he’s ever said anything with more conviction to her in his life.

“Everyone thought that. Scott definitely thought that, he might even still think that, but we’re not them. I don’t think we really even know what they were together—we never knew Allison. Just because we’re passionate and younger than the others, everyone talked about the similarities when they thought we weren’t listening, but our situation isn’t even remotely similar to what there’s was.” Liam finishes. She’s impressed at how steady his voice has been the entire time. Hayden realizes this is something he must’ve thought about before, and something he clearly, deeply believes.

“You can’t live your life not dealing with things because it feels like you’re wasting time to deal with them, or because it’s uncomfortable to deal with them, or because it’s easier to not think about them, because they’re still gonna affect you whether you like it or not,” Liam tells her bluntly. Hayden looks down at their hands again. 

He’s always been so good at reading her, and maybe this was why she had really been avoiding him—not because she hates him after their breakup, or because she feels uncomfortable around him. No, she’s avoiding him because he’s never hesitated in telling her the hard truths that she needs to hear. She knows that what he’s saying is true. Deep down, she’s known that this whole time, ping-ponging back and forth between processing her shit one day and then shoving it back off to the side where she can’t see it the next.

“Therapy talk huh?” Is all she says, looking him in the eye and trying to make a joke even as tears threaten to spill from her eyes. He huffs, not even attempting to hide his sad-smile.

“You don’t go through a few years of mandated therapy without picking up on a few things,” He jokes back, the self-deprecation clear in his tone. She pulls away from him and throws herself back on his bed. She hears him chuckle and then he does the same. 

Nostalgia fills her. They used to do this sometimes, when both of their minds were absolutely racing. They would just lay back and stare at the ceiling and talk, not even holding hands, just enjoying the company of the other and asking for advice. She used to joke that they’re both so stubborn the only way they could ask for advice from each other was when they were looking at the ceiling. 

Hayden figures she must’ve finally hit actual acceptance in her long-venture with her supernatural-trauma, because for the first time in months, her mind is relatively calm. 

“What should I do? I’ve been pushing my way through all my shit this entire time because I didn’t know what would happen when I stopped. When I stopped last time, I broke down in front of my sister and we moved. What do I do now? There’s no book that tells you the steps to deal with becoming a werewolf.”

Hayden stares at his ceiling as she waits. The moonlight coming in from the window is bright, and it creates shadows across his room that she traces like clouds in the sky. With him next to her, she’s calm. The shadows don’t look like evil scientists and medical instruments. Instead, the shadows get to be whatever she wants them to be—a bear, a paw-print, a pyramid.

“I think you should talk to Scott,” He says after a moment. Of course, she thinks, why hadn't she hadn’t thought about that before? Hadn’t she known that was the problem the first time, that she had refused to confide in Scott? “About the pack and werewolf stuff definitely, and about how you’ve been pushing past things instead of dealing with them if you want. He’s not gonna have like, professional advice, but you know how it is to talk to him, it’s like all the instincts in your brain get to shut down for a moment, and you get to just exist and think calmly,” He says. Hayden hums. She remembers bits of that from before, though she’d only really experienced it when she showed up at his apartment. 

“For me, it’s not really like my brain gets to shut down, it’s more like it's sent into overdrive but for once I don’t care what comes out of my mouth,” She admits. Liam laughs, Hayden finds herself joining him.

She’s not exactly happy, or content. She’s still exhausted from the night and her wound and their conversations and the hand full of life-altering realizations she’s had in the past few hours, but for the first time in a while her fixation on finding the answers—solving the puzzle that is her life—it doesn’t feel as pressing as usual. Hayden takes a deep breath.

“Do you think we got caught up in what I was talking about earlier last time? That so much shit was happening around us and to us that we went too far too quickly?” She asks, inhibitions gone as the thought that’s been slowly growing in her brain long before this conversation finally formulates itself into words. There had always been something off about their relationship. She could never figure out why she couldn’t move on, why it had felt so intense. A few months of dating didn’t correlate to her experience.

As she waits for an answer she likes to picture his expression. The way his brows furrow when’s he’s presented with new information he has to process. The emotions that fly across his face as he struggles to land on one.

“Yeah,” Liam says roughly, and he sounds so choked-up she almost turns to look at him. She manages to keep her gaze fixed on the ceiling, giving him the space he needs to think and process.

They had moved fast, it’s impossible to skirt around that. She can’t remember them ever going on an actual date. All of their time together had been spent dealing with or running from supernatural shit or in one of their beds. She finds herself running her hand across his duvet and smiling lightly without meaning to as she reminisces. 

It takes her catching a new combination of scents—uncertainty, insecurity, worry—before she realizes he hasn’t spoken again. Her mind loops back and she connects the dots immediately.

Hayden knows this will be easier for them to keep staring at the ceiling and talk, but she also knows that it’s now verging into the territory of pushing each other away again. Their current position helps when they’re both scatter-brained and too wound up to think, but she doesn’t need that anymore. She knows with certainty what she needs to say and what he needs to hear.

Hayden peels her eyes away from the ceiling with the moon’s shadows scattered across it and turns to look at him.

He blinks in surprise when he notices that she’s turned to face him, hesitantly turning to face her as well.

She steels herself, sometimes it takes courage to be vulnerable, she reminds herself, and maybe part of confronting all of her shit involves being courageous when it comes to the small moments too.

“I don’t regret anything,” She says, her voice steady and full of conviction. She hopes he doesn’t regret anything either, but ultimately that’s not her decision. 

He visibly relaxes at that, smiling shyly, and reaches out to intertwine his hand in hers.

“I just don’t want us to make the same mistakes again,” She says, twirling their hands together. She’s already been repeating her mistakes the entire time she’s been back in Beacon Hills. While she knows that this thing she’s been trying to do: fix herself and understand who she is in a matter of weeks instead of being patient, was practically impossible and mostly a fools' errand, it’s not gonna stop her from trying to fix what she realistically can. Maybe fixing herself is going to take an annoying amount of time, but this, her and Liam, maybe this is something that can change for the better at a faster rate if both of them want it to.

Liam nods, a smile stretching across his face like it’d always been there, erasing the furrowed brow and pressed together lips that arguments always brought.

Hayden goes to sit up and cries out as she moves her thigh wrong. She huffs, funny how four or so emotional revelations later can make you forget about your bullet wounds.

“Why isn’t it healing?” She says in annoyance. Liam reaches out, he takes a bit of the pain before she realizes what he’s doing, but she can’t find it in her to be angry again at his help, instead relaxing as the pain lessens.

“You had three wolfsbane bullets in you, that’s a lot of poison. Scott and Derek said it would probably take more time than norm-“ Liam stops talking at the ping of his cellphone. He opens the message quickly. Whatever he reads must be good because he visibly relaxes.

“The hunters are gone, they didn’t find them but their scent trails took them out of town,” He says. Hayden lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.

“You wanna stay here or do you want me to drive you home?” Liam asks. 

Hayden hesitates, as usual, he’s extremely easy to read. He wants her to stay, of course he wants her to stay. She can see it in the way his eyes are bright and wide, waiting for her answer, and the way he has that small smile on his face, just waiting for her to say yes until it breaks into a full grin.

“Can you take me to Scotts?” Hayden asks, then blinks. That wasn’t really what she had intended to say at all. She knows that the ‘right’ answer is to go home. Her sister is probably wondering where the hell she is, but as much as Hayden loves Val, she really doesn’t want to deal with the number of questions she’d ask right now. The back of her mind, the part filled with wolf instincts she doesn’t understand and often doesn’t like, really just wants to see Scott. She just knows somehow that the only way she’ll actually get rest is if he’s in the house. It makes her a bit uncomfortable, assessing wolf instincts as they present themselves in the moment. It’d been easier to do when it had just been the one instinct—the need to join a pack, and she’d had months to process it. But Liam had insisted she at least listen to everything. With her panic gone, even though it makes her uncomfortable, it’s easier to make herself do it than she thought it would be. She’s presently surprised to find that taking the moment to contemplate the instinct doesn’t overtake her like she had assumed it would. The pack one had been like that, so strong and repressed that it had been overwhelming, but this small one—the urge to seek out her alpha when she’s hurt—when she takes the time to think about it, it’s just that, a thought.

Liam frowns slightly, likely sad she’s not staying, but doesn’t seem as surprised by her question as she was.

“Yeah, of course, I’ll shoot him a text to let him know,” He says, grabbing his phone from where he’d discarded it on the bed. Hayden hesitates.

“You’re not gonna ask him?” She asks, suddenly worried that Scott won’t want her there. He’s clearly had a long night tracking down the hunters, he probably doesn’t want to put more energy into dealing with her injured ass.

Liam shoots her a weird look.

“It’s Scott. Half of us have keys to his house. He probably wants to see you,” Liam reassures her. Hayden really doesn’t agree with him, but she’s far too tired to argue anymore.

Liam helps her up out of his bed and down the stairs into his car.

They ride to Scott’s in a comfortable silence. Hayden waits until they’re waiting at the light to turn onto Scott’s street before she breaks it.

“You know it’s not that I don’t want to stay with you, right?” She asks, worried he misunderstood. He looks over at her in vague surprise when she suddenly speaks up after a car ride of silence. He doesn’t say anything immediately, instead he studies her, like he’s searching for the right answer to her question, so maybe he doesn’t understand. 

“I still like you Liam,” Hayden admits. She thought it’d be scary to say that after her time away,  but it’s not. It’s as easy as breathing. “I want to stay with you tonight, but like I was saying, with us moving so fast last time…I just don’t want to repeat our mistakes,” She admits, looking away from him and back out the window at the empty street as her voice becomes hesitant, suddenly finding it difficult to string the right words together. She risks a glance back at him. He nods, smiling softly, but he still doesn't say anything. She can tell that he’s still thinking. It doesn’t worry her. She’s fine with waiting until he figures out exactly what he wants to say.

He pulls up to the curb beside Scott’s house and finally turns to her.

“Do you wanna go on a date Tuesday?” He asks, looking excited but slightly nervous.

“What?”

“Do you want to go on a date with me?” Liam asks again, confidence clearly sinking as his nerves start to get the best of him. He runs a hand through his hair. “You pointed out that we never went on a date before, and you said we went too fast last time, so I thought this could be a good place to start? I know a good place downtown. It’s over-priced and the parking is a nightmare so we’ll probably have to walk like ten minutes and it’s kinda fancy so we’ll be uncomfortable all night in nice clothes but-“ Liam keeps talking quicker, slowly working his way up to full-out rambling before Hayden cuts him off.

“I’d love that,” She says. She can’t help but grin. After all of the shit they’ve been through, and all of the shit she’s gone through just tonight, it feels like such a win for them that if she sits here a second longer she’s thinks going to do something stupid, like cry.

She’s about to move to get out of the car when she notices Liam keeps glancing down from her eyes to her lips. Hayden smirks.

“My eyes are up here,” She says, barely restraining a laugh. Liam flushes beat red.

“We’re gonna take it that slow, huh?” He asks, she’d be annoyed if he wasn’t clearly teasing her. Liam’s smiling wide. The excitement and happiness are plain on his face and clear in his scent. Hayden grins.

“Glacially slow, Dunbar,” She says, barely attempting to take on an expression of mock-seriousness. They both dissolve into laughter.

They bid each other goodnight and Hayden can’t wipe the smile off of her face.

There’s something so pure to her about them teasing each other over just a kiss when they’d moved so fast the last time. It doesn’t fix everything, she admits to herself. This doesn’t fix all of the issues they had before that they’re both still dragging around, and it certainly doesn’t help to get rid of her monstrous amount of baggage, but it makes her happy. As she approaches Scott’s door and gives it a knock, Hayden finally feels a sense of hope.

+

“We’re at…the field?” 

Scott pulls into the parking lot by the school field, and Hayden asks the question without meaning to, confusion spiking. 

Last night when she’d gotten to Scott’s, he’d pointed her to his bed while he took the chair and she’d been out like a light. Her leg had felt a lot better this morning. While the wound wasn’t totally gone, she could walk on it fine. She’d been surprised when Scott had tossed her a Clif Bar and told her they were going for a ride. The field was the last place she’d expected them to go.

Scott smiles, a tad shy, and hops out of the jeep, opening up the trunk to grab…a soccer ball.

Hayden’s glad she stopped to change into leggings and grab a jacket before they came here. December in California doesn’t usually bring snow or anything unbearable, but forty degrees is still chilly. It’s not really her favorite soccer weather, but she follows Scott down to the field without a word.

“You play soccer?” She asks, surprised as Scott puts the ball down at his feet. He laughs.

“No, actually. The last time I played was during gym class freshman year and I nearly had an asthma attack chasing after the ball,” He says with a smile. Scott passes the ball to her. It’s probably stupid of her to notice when he quite literally just told her that he doesn’t play, but about five ways to fix his form crop up in her mind just after seeing his pass. He does succeed in aiming it at her general direction though, so she holds her tongue.

Without thinking, she starts doing one of her favorite stationary soccer drills. She hasn’t been neglecting soccer, she went to all the open practices that her old school had so she would still be prepared for the spring season, but it still feels refreshing to do this again after moving back to Beacon Hills. Old habits kick in, and she starts going through the steps to gear up for a shot without thinking about it. She glances up at the goal and sends the ball flying towards it.

She looks up smiling, surprised to find Scott has moved into the goal. From his position laying on the ground, she guesses he must’ve tried to stop the ball.

“You’re really good,” He says, tone full of praise rather than the surprise she gets from most people when they finally see her play. He gets up, grabs the ball, then kicks it back to her. Hayden has to run a few feet over to get it, but she’s seen worse passes.

“Thanks. I had a few college recruiters get in touch with me last year, I’m hoping to score a decent scholarship,” She tells him, starting another stationary exercise. 

“That’s awesome. I’ll make sure to make it back for a few of your games,” Scott says. Hayden smiles as she kicks the ball into the goal again. Scott gets closer to catching it, but he still misses, and the ball hits the back of the net.

They repeat that for what has to be about 10 minutes. Neither of them talk, but it’s comfortable. Hayden finds herself relaxing even more as she sinks into a rhythm.

It stops when Scott catches the ball.

He whoops and she groans, still smiling the whole time. She’s honestly surprised it took him that long, given his experience goal-keeping in lacrosse and his status as an actual alpha of werewolves.

She excepts Scott to kick the ball back, but this time he keeps the ball in his hands, tossing it back and forth. He looks contemplative.

“I know you brought me out here to talk,” Hayden says, a smile still tugging at her lips. She could let him flounder and try to ease her into whatever topic he wants to address, or she could just be straight with him that she knows what’s up. Scott looks at her, surprise flicking across his face before he settles on that shy smile of his that Hayden’s learning is a common expression for him.

“You okay with that?” He asks, putting the soccer ball down.

Hayden nods. She is okay with that. As uncomfortable as it can be to talk about things, to her annoyance, she’s been having to do a lot of that lately. While she still dreads it, she can admit to herself that it’s been helpful. It makes her feel better, more in control of her life. She’s also not stupid. She knows that she wants to confide in Scott about her problems, one of the pesky new instincts running around her head that Liam had advised her to stop ignoring and start processing as actual thoughts.

“Yeah. I don’t mind talking to you Scott, I’m just not always great at initiating conversation, or knowing what I want to say,” She admits. Scott nods in understanding.

Hayden walks over to him to pick up the discarded soccer ball.

“So I think I might not be fully at terms with what it means to be a werewolf,” She says casually. She’s not always great at conversation, but she’s good at being blunt. Scott laughs, reaching out to take the soccer ball from her.

Hayden’s a bit nervous to see his reaction. She had told him she was ready for all of this. Will he be upset with her? Tell her she should just get over it already like she tells herself? 

“I’d be surprised if you were,” He says, bending down to dig through the gym bag she hadn’t even realized he brought.

“You don’t have to say that just because I’m struggling. I know it’s not that big of a deal. I just have…other shit going on,” She says, waving her hand as she thinks about all the other crap she’s been through that she can’t manage to stop carrying around. She doesn’t want Scott to take it easy on her. It reminds her of when her sister would spend all of her time worrying over her when she was in the hospital. It’s not productive. She doesn’t need pity.

Scott turns to her, concern written across his face.

“It’s a huge deal. Every cell in your body changed. That’s not something that you adapt to overnight,” He says, turning back to his bag to find whatever he’s looking for.

“Okay, but you didn’t bite me last night. You bit me about ten months ago,” She protests. Scott huffs a small, humorless laugh, turning back to her with two lacrosse sticks in hand and a lacrosse ball in the net of one. He passes her the stick without a ball in it.

“And Peter bit me three years ago.” There’s a note of bitterness he has that she’s not used to hearing in his voice. He walks away from her, likely to create distance so they can pass the ball. He smiles at her when he’s a few yards away. He doesn’t say anything else, but Hayden can connect the dots. She knows Scott doesn’t really talk about his experience with the bite. After just the one sentence she can sense his discomfort. She’d always thought it was because he just didn’t like talking about himself. While she thinks that’s still true, in the context of their conversation, it’s easy for her to see now that it’s also because he’s still hasn’t fully come to terms with everything.

She thinks if she asked him about what that means to him, what he still finds himself struggling with about the change, that he might answer, but she doesn’t really want to make him discuss it in-depth if he doesn’t want to, so she loops back to a sentence that’s been nagging at her brain.

“Every cell, huh?” She asks. Scott nods slowly.

“Yeah. I got curious during lab one day and just put a few of my skin cells under the microscope,” He shrugs. “I don’t really know what the differences are or what they mean, I could just see them. Malia and I let Lydia take blood samples, I think she’d always wanted to but had never wanted to offend us by asking. It’s become a little side project of hers.” Scott pauses. He makes a gesture that lets her know he’s going to throw the lacrosse ball at her and she nods. He tosses the ball easily with his stick, she tries to catch it but misses.

Hayden frowns as she bends to pick up the ball. She wishes she could just use her hands, the extension of the stick is weird. She voices her grievances. Scott chuckles. 

“New things take practice. It takes time to adapt,” He says. The connection it has to their current conversation isn’t lost on her.

She sighs and awkwardly attempts to launch the lacrosse ball back at him. Scott has to run a bit, but he manages to catch her wonky attempt at a pass.

“Okay but what if you’ve practiced a lot and you’re still failing? I know the mistakes I’m making, but I just keep making them. At what point am I just bad at this?” She asks, swallowing as her nerves build up the more it becomes obvious that they’re not talking about lacrosse. 

She wants Scott to toss her the ball again, but he rests his stick against his shoulder, looking at her curiously.

“What mistakes are you still making?” He asks. She makes a weird, awkward sort of shrug that she doesn’t think she’s ever done in her life and never plans to do again if she can help it. She focuses her gaze on the lacrosse stick. Scott’s taped the handle but it’s falling off, the adhesive is failing. She starts picking it off.

“You can be direct with me, I don’t mind. I know I’m doing the same shit I did last time I was here. I’ve ignored most of your texts. The only person I’ve actually spent time with was Lydia during that one shopping venture we had. I just…I thought I was doing so much better.  But it was brought to my attention,” She voices bitterly, “that I’m just doing the same things I did before. I’m not trying to excuse it, but-“ Scott cuts her off with a hand on her shoulder. She jumps slightly, she hadn’t even realized he’d crossed the field to join her.

“Who told you that?” He asks. She's taken aback by the sternness of his voice and the concern written across his face. She flounders for a moment before finding her voice again.

“Liam and I talked last night. Not just about that!” She says quickly as Scott’s mouth hardens into a firm line. “He didn’t say it like I’m saying it either. We had a long discussion about…a lot of things. It just came up,” Scott nods and her shoulders relax. She wasn’t trying to put Liam in the hot seat because of a discussion she had insisted upon. 

“I’m glad you guys talked, but Hayden, you’ve been doing a lot better, don’t cut yourself short,” Scott says, his expression magnetically earnest. Every fiber of her being wants to agree with what he’s saying. Instead, she shakes her head.

“I know I’m not acting like I trust you guys…I promise I do. I’m going to get better at it,” She says, plowing ahead with the conversation despite the alpha’s hesitancy. Scott shakes his head again.

“Hayden, you’ve been doing so much better. It’s okay to keep pushing yourself but if you don’t recognize the process you’ve made you’re gonna burn yourself out,” Scott warns. He gently pries the stick from her hand—out of her claws, she notices in displeasure as she looks down. Stupid full moon. 

He places the sticks aside and sits down in the grass, she joins him without him even having to motion for her to.

“How?” She nearly growls out. “Because every time I think I’ve got this—that I’ve solved this stupid, fucked up puzzle that my life’s become—I have some new realization that I don’t got this; that I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Well, for starters, when you left here in July, I was kinda worried if something set you off on a full moon that you didn’t have enough control yet to reign yourself in, but you’re here right now in full control of yourself,” He says, a smile on his face. Hayden feels her face scrunch up in confusion.

“We both see my claws right?” She asks rhetorically, waving her hand in front of his face. Scott tilts his head from side to side.

“Okay, but are you hurting anyone with them?” He asks. Hayden glances away from her claws at him in confusion. She shakes her head. “Are you planning on hurting anyone with them?” She shakes her head again, a frown starting to form on her face. “Do you mind having them out?” He asks. This one brings her pause. She settles on a shrug.

“Not really I guess,” She admits. Hayden could make them go away if she really focused on it, but she just doesn’t really feel like it.

“Then I’d say it’s fine to have them out as long as it’s something you’re fine with. You’re not around anybody who shouldn’t see them right now. You’re a werewolf, it’s okay to have claws,” He says. He sounds a bit like he’s working to convince himself at the end too. Hayden looks up with an eyebrow raised. Scott looks a bit embarrassed but smiles nevertheless.

“It’s something I’ve been working on too,” He shares with a small shrug. Hayden hopes he knows how much she appreciates that—him sharing his struggles with her. She doesn’t care that he’s not comfortable enough to go in-depth, his casual comments are enough for her to know that he struggles sometimes too, and that if he’s still working at this—at being a werewolf—then it’s probably okay that she’s still working at it too.

“Okay, so I can control myself pretty well, but that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten better with this pack stuff,” Hayden says, looking away from Scott at the empty goal as she feels her face grow red in embarrassment. 

“I’d say you have. You reached out to me to rejoin. That takes some guts and a lot of self-awareness of how you want to grow as a person and as a werewolf. You came to our Christmas party, even though I know it made you uncomfortable. You subjected yourself to shopping with Lydia,” Scott laughs, faking a shudder. Hayden chuckles. “Last time I did that we were at the mall for five hours. I didn’t even know there were that many stores,” Scott and Hayden both laugh, Hayden finally looks back over at him. “You came and found me when you needed to let off some steam. You howled for us when you got shot so we could find you. You’re talking to me again right now. You’re doing really well Hayden, especially considering how hard this part was for you the first time. I’m really proud of you,” Scott says.  

Hayden blinks quickly as tears threaten to build up in her eyes. She knew this alpha-beta stuff wasn’t to be taken lightly, but it still surprises her how much hearing that from him means to her. She knows in this moment that she really does trust him. She’d never quite understood the whole ‘control of an alpha’ thing and the bond she has with him. She didn’t mind it pur se, Scott wasn’t going to be an ass about it and she’d rather him be able to stop her from attacking someone in a rage if it came down to it than not be stopped at all, but she realizes now that she had only understood the wolf side of it, the side she experienced when she was shifted or out of control. 

Every moment she chooses to be here, she’s choosing to have him as her alpha and to be in his pack. She seeks his approval because she knows he’s a good person, not just because of some instinct she barely acknowledges. While all of her past realizations have made her feel stupid, this one makes her laugh. She’s a werewolf. She doesn’t really know what that means for her yet, but she does know the meaning of the word: part human, part wolf. Of course being in a pack would be about more than just wolf instincts. Hayden smiles as she finally recognizes the human part of this equation that keeps her here as much as her instincts do, if not more. It puts her mind at ease. Earlier, she had wondered if her instincts were ruling her without her realizing. She’s sure now more than ever that they don’t. They’re thoughts, and she needs to start acknowledging them rather than shoving them into the back of her mind, but they’re just thoughts. They’re not in control of her. She makes her own choices.

“Okay but I still want to do better. It’s been mental-breakdown city for me and I feel like each new thing I learn has been completely up-ending my worldview. I want to make myself be more involved and talk with everyone more. I want to find some stability,” She says, serious about her intentions, a small smile still lingering on her face. Scott nods.

“If that’s what you want to do then I know you’ll get there, and we’ll help you along the way,” Hayden scrunches her nose at that. She likes being self-sufficient, but she’s slowly learning that letting the pack in isn’t a bad thing like she’s taught herself to think it is. 

“How long is it going to take?” She asks. It’s a bit of a childish question, but Scott is her alpha, and he has this aura around him that he could fix anything she could throw at him. She can’t help but wonder if maybe he can fix this. Scott chuckles and shrugs.

“How long did it take you to become good at soccer?” He asks in place of an answer. Hayden groans, rolling her eyes.

“Christ I hope it doesn’t take that long.” She’s been playing soccer since she was in middle school. Scott smiles apologetically. 

“Some things just take time and practice. It’s not my favorite answer either, but it’s the only one I’ve found that actually works,” Scott stands up, grabbing a lacrosse stick as he does. “Just try and take things day by day, and one day you’ll wake up and find you’ve got a skill down that you used to work at daily,” He says as he shoots the lacrosse ball easily into the middle of the goal.

He smiles down at her and reaches out a hand to help her up. Hayden smiles and takes his hand.

She stifles a groan as she stands, her thigh protesting again out of nowhere.

“Is your leg bugging you again?” Scott asks. Hayden shakes her head quickly, now that they’ve talked, she’d actually just like to keep playing with Scott, she doesn’t even care if it's lacrosse or soccer. Scott raises an eyebrow, fixing her with what’s she’s quickly coming to learn is his ‘don’t bullshit me I’m your alpha’ look. 

“Go sit for a bit,” Scott says.

Hayden huffs.

“It’s fine, I can keep playing,” she insists. He shakes his head, nodding towards the bench.

“This is the ‘time’ part of the time and practice. Sometimes you need to rest,” Scott says with an easy smile.

“You know, I’d take just sitting on the bench if I were you,” Malia shouts. Hayden and Scott turn towards the parking lot in surprise. Malia is leaning beside her car as Liam, Stiles, Lydia, and Mason all climb out of her back seat and Derek steps out of the shotgun seat. Hayden raises her eyebrows at how many of them were packed into Malia’s small car. Malia runs down to the field with Liam right behind her, the others slowly following.

“I thought I told you to stop putting too many people in the backseat of your car. That’s not safe,” Scott says to Malia once she’s closer to them. She waves him off.

“He barely let me leave my room for a whole day the last time I got shot,” Malia adds, looking over at Hayden, pointedly ignoring Scott’s comment about the number of pack members she likes to put in her car. Malia grabs the soccer ball and takes it away from where it was sitting in the goal. She kicks it over to Liam.

“Isn’t it nice to see it directed at someone else for a change,” Liam says to Malia with a shit-eating grin, shooting Hayden a look that makes it clear he’s poking fun at her as he kicks the ball and misses the goal by at least three feet.

“Your form is ass,” She retorts, fighting back laughter, attempting to remain serious as she insults Liam. He sticks his tongue out at her as she finally walks over to the bench.

Lydia sits with her as the others start perhaps the worst game of makeshift soccer Hayden has ever seen. Stiles in the goal is nearly painful to watch.

“My leg was seriously fine before. I promise I wasn’t pushing it,” Hayden says after a moment. Hayden knows that she’s stubborn, but she wants Lydia to know that she isn’t stupid.  She wouldn’t waste the work the pack had done to take the wolfsbane poison out of her leg by hurting herself again. Lydia hums.

“I’m sure it was, healing doesn’t tend to be linear,” the banshee fixes her with a look, a small, knowing smile on her face. Hayden sighs. Right, she reminds herself, time and practice. 

“I know, I guess I just manage to forget that every time I’m injured,” She admits.

“People tend to do that too, it’s why it’s good to keep others around to remind you,” Lydia says, a twinkle in her eye as she hands Hayden an ice pack for where her leg is aching.

Hayden smiles as she takes the ice pack, leaning back on the bench. She watches the others for a moment. Liam and Malia have completely abandoned the game of soccer, starting some crazy form of one-on-one dodgeball that Mason seems content to just referee. Meanwhile, Scott and Stiles seem to be trying to coerce Derek into a game of basketball at the neighboring court. 

She feels so grateful for them in that moment. For once, she lets herself acknowledge the werewolf part of her that’s so happy in the presence of her pack. Lydia, as usual, is right. Healing isn’t linear. It never has been and she knows it never will be. Today she feels great being around them, but two days from now, it might be a fight to open up to one of them again, or maybe she’ll push away the werewolf part of her instead of listening to its instincts like she knows she should.

Maybe Scott was right about her improving, she thinks. Usually, thoughts like these would make her spiral, but at the moment, it just brings her peace, the certainty in the uncertainty of it all. Hayden hums. Time and practice.

“You know what, I think you’re right,” She says turning back to Lydia.

Lydia turns back to her, confusion crossing her face before she realizes Hayden is talking about her previous statement. Hayden smiles awkwardly, she must’ve been stuck in her thoughts longer than she had realized.

“Of course I am, I’m always right,” Lydia says with a mischievous smile and a laugh. Hayden joins her. Their laughter mixes in seamlessly with the others on the field and Hayden smiles.

Whatever comes next, she has them, and while it's not a guarantee that everything will be okay, it feels like something pretty close to it.