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Now at the end of it all; after Gerard’s death, Scott’s betrayal and Jackson jetting off to a private English boarding school like the entitled prick he was, Derek could admit to himself a truth that he would never voice, he had wanted it to be Lydia.
He had wanted Lydia to be the Kanima. It was why, when she hadn’t been paralysed, he was so ready to take that as proof. Because Lydia being the Kanima would have meant that it wasn’t his fault. He wouldn’t have screwed up again.
The blood of more people on his hands.
His bad choice, his failure, his burden.
Jackson.
It would be easy to blame it on the initial instinctual drive. The desperate need for betas, his need to stabilize all the new found power flooding through him. But with brutal honesty, the voice that reminded him that Kate hadn’t smelt right when they had sex, the part of him that said he had chosen not to come back to Beacon Hills with Laura, leaving her on her own, told him that what he had really wanted was the power to put the little shit in his place.
Lydia would have been Peter’s fault. Not that his uncle would have had an ounce of remorse.
Underneath this, a darker more insidious reason twisted him. Killing Lydia would have been eliminating the competition. It would have been punishment for the hurt she had heaped on his mate with her careless disregard for him. It would have been an irrefutable assurance that she could never realize what she was missing and take his mate from him.
His mate.
He hadn’t believed his senses when he had seen him, standing in the woods in harsh morning light. Pale skin and whisky eyes. Everything had fallen into place. The world both so much better and so much worse.
Better because in that moment his world had spun on its axis, nothing and everything had changed. A reason to live, a reason to be the best he could be. Someone that he could build a life around, someone that had been created for him and him for them.
And so much worse. His blindness with Kate, how could he have thought she was the one; it was a betrayal to his self, his pack and his mate. The selfish actions of a teenager, who had sacrificed everything for the pleasure of the moment.
So here he was at an impasse, not worthy of his mate, but unable to allow his mate the solace of another. His wolf writhing under his skin at the thought of another taking their rightful place.
But maybe he wasn’t irredeemable, just maybe if he could prove himself, he would be able to ask, to plead, for a chance.
After all, regardless of how he felt, he hadn’t killed Lydia. In all honestly he hadn’t really tried all that hard to, sending in untrained betas, unable to be the one who cause his mate pain.
So maybe, if he could protect them, this ragtag band of teenagers, all so damaged, then maybe he could be allowed to love the one person he ached for.