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Derek knew. He just knew when Laura died. He could feel it all over. His alpha was dead. Not just his alpha, his sister, the only family he had left. It hit him like a train in the middle of the night. He woke with a start, her name on his lips. Swore he heard her call him. He knew.
He flung himself out of bed and packed a duffle full of clothes as hurriedly as possible. He didn’t need anything else. He could buy whatever he needed when he got back home.
Home.
That’s where she’d gone. Back to California. Back to Beacon Hills.
She had taken her Camaro, her flashy car (“Don’t you think you should drive something more practical? Something with better gas mileage?” “Look, Derek, if I want a freaking Camaro, I’m going to buy a freaking Camaro because they are gorgeous cars and I feel like a badass in it, okay? I don’t need your permission anyway, baby brother.”). He had hated it the idea of it. But when Laura came home driving a sleek, black Camaro with that rumble, he couldn’t help but love it, too.
Derek secretly wishes he could spend the insurance money on something so frivolous, but his guilt could never let him. He locked away that money; he was never going to touch the half he received. He worked for every penny and he bought his shitty 1998 Jeep Cherokee for $2,000. But that car was only useful to get him to work and back. There was no way he was about to drive cross-country in that heap.
Laura took the Camaro, she wasn’t a fan of flying (“Derek, we’re wolves, we weren’t meant to fly. If we were, we’d have wings.” “Laura, you’re being ridiculous, flying’s cheaper, and faster.” “I’m not going to be stuck in a tin can hurtling across the US for hours with smelly humans, Derek.”). She would take a couple of weeks, or as many days as she could, and drive herself across the continent. It was faster when Derek came along, they could switch shifts, get more driving in before they would have to stop for a nap at some rest stop, but Laura could still manage the drive on her own in a few days, running on pure desire to get where she wanted to go.
Derek called a cab. His Jeep was in the shop, and he needed to get to the airport.
If he thought waiting the twenty or so minutes for a cab in the middle of the night was excruciating, it was nothing compared to waiting for the next flight. The best he could do was catch an early morning flight from Newark, and then hop another to Sacremento. He would have to wait three hours. Three.
He called Laura’s cell too many times to count. He was starting to run out of minutes. She never picked up. He knew it was useless. He knew why she wasn’t picking up, but he had to do something to keep busy.
His sister.
She was dead.
****
Derek arrived in Beacon Hills in the middle of the night. It took him too long to get there. It’s not like the movies where someone’s in a hurry and they manage to get a random flight from where they are to where they want to go. No, he had to change flights in both Denver and Phoenix before landing in Sacremento. Nearly twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours of hell.
He couldn’t deal being stuck in another tin can trying to get to his childhood home, so he ran. He just ran. Through the trees and the woods that surrounded the area, over the terrain, duffel bag bouncing along with him. He ran the ten miles from the bus depot to the Hale House faster than he’s ever run before; lungs burning and legs jelly from pushing himself.
Laura’s car was out front.
The Camaro.
Just sitting there, like she was sleeping inside.
Like nothing had happened.
Derek dropped his bag.
He hadn’t been back to the house since it was still smoldering. He couldn’t face it, not after what happened. He knew Laura liked to come here when she visited. The times when he came back to Beacon Hills with her, he would spend the day with Peter, just talking, apologizing, brooding, anything other than having to go back. He sometimes just walked around town, head down, hands in pockets, trying to look unnoticeable. She would eventually join him and they’d share a motel room for a few days, then head home. Laura thought it would help him move on, Derek thought it was a penance.
Derek took a deep breath, breathing in the smell of the forest, of dead and decaying wood, and the scent of his sister. He turned around, hoping to pinpoint which direction she was located, only to notice the faint glow of blue and red lights and the barking of dogs. In his haste, he had blocked everything out he didn’t even notice all the police officers roaming the woods. If the police were here, did that mean Laura’s body was here?
Derek crept back into the forest, trying not to alert the police dogs.
“Nah, I got nothing over here, Sheriff, the dogs can’t seem to pick up her scent either,” he heard an officer say.
“Then head back to the station. We’re getting nowhere in the dark. We’ll pick up the search again in the morning at first light.”
The officer confirmed the action on the radio and turned to leave.
Derek didn’t understand what was going on. The cops were obviously out here looking for a “she”, but did that mean they thought “she” was missing? Who in Beacon Hills would notice that Laura had gone missing? Was Laura the “she” they were looking for?
He had so many questions and didn’t know any of the answers. The only thing he was certain of was that this rock in his stomach and the ache in his heart definitely meant his sister was dead. He just had to find her. Surely, if they knew about Laura being dead, they would’ve called Derek by now, but the only message he had on his phone was work calling him asking why he didn’t show up to his shift. He still hadn’t called them back. He didn’t really know what he was going to say to them.
Derek caught her scent on a breeze, along with a boy’s and another wolf’s. He took off in that direction.
He could smell her so close now. That fading scent marred with blood and death. Overpowered by another wolf’s scent. He could barely take it.
He stumbled, breathing in through his mouth, the smell made his nose ache and tears spill from his eyes.
She was there.
Right there.
In front of him.
Her cold, dead eyes staring up at him, mouth agape in a silent scream.
She was naked.
And there was half of her missing.
Derek let out a choking sob.
He called her name, but she would never answer again. She would never smile, never laugh. She would never roll her eyes at him, or ruffle his hair.
Her body was cold.
He pulled her to him, rocking her, sobbing, crying her name over and over, asking her questions.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
Like a whisper through the wind he heard one word.
Revenge.
Derek gathered up the remains of his sister.
Finding an inhaler nearby, he snatched it as well and headed back to the house. It smelled of the boy from earlier and it was his only clue to the unfamiliar alpha.
****
Derek didn’t know how he did it. A strange adrenaline ran through him that night, he carried her torso back to the house and dug a hole, buried her, and carefully marked the spiral. He would avenge her. He would find her killer, even if it killed him. Someone stole his alpha and his sister from him, and he was angry.
He slept in her Camaro that night.
****
The room was cold. A breeze flitted through the broken window. A rock on the floor was lain by his feet.
Derek looked down at the shards of broken glass. A sad reflection of the dingy room looked back at him.
Going through the house had been torture, but he needed to see it all. He needed to see what he'd done.
Empty rooms save a few things still strewn around.
This room had been the nursery. The walls once were a happy yellow were now a grimey mustard and brown, spots of mold growing in the corners. Proof of the fire was non-existent in this room. Derek didn't know what that meant. Every room in this house had signs of the fire, but the nursery was scorch-mark free.
Something skittered in the far corner. A mouse, hiding behind some old building blocks.
They had been his at one point, and probably his dad's before that. Up till the fire, they were his young cousin's.
The kid was only six. The youngest in the house. The smallest urn in the mausoleum.
Derek bit back the tears and all but ran from the room, closing the door behind him. Visions of his smallest cousin still dancing behind his closed eyes. Derek turned to find the door to his parent’s room still open. He could see there was still a bed there.
As he slowly approached the room, he could feel his walls breaking, his tough and impassive façade falling.
He stood in the doorway and scanned the room. It smelled of Laura.
The bed was slightly rumpled, like she was just lying on top.
The room had barely changed since Derek lived here.
There were some burns along the floor and walls, but the wallpaper was still mostly intact.
His mother’s high boy was nestled between two windows on the wall to his left.
Crossing the room in three strides, he wrestled a drawer open. The smell of cedar overwhelmed him, but underneath was the faint scent of his mother. He pulled out a sweater he gave her for the Christmas before she died. It still smelled a little like her after all these years. Pulling it to his nose, he felt a tear fall.
Derek turned away from the dresser with the sweater still to his face to see his mother’s vanity on the opposite wall.
The furniture in this room had been old family heirlooms, his mother having inherited them from her mother who inherited them from hers.
He went to the vanity.
His mother’s comb, an old ivory comb that if Derek had been paying attention, would know how old it was and who it came from, but he just remembered, on the evenings when his mom and dad would go out, just the two of them, Derek could see her brushing her hair with the silver plated brush and then masterly craft her hair up, using the comb as a decoration.
Why Laura let these antiques sit here for years while anyone could come and steal them, he didn’t know, but he had a feeling it was because she wanted to preserve this room as it was. It was like learning a secret. He and Laura didn’t talk about what happened. Laura had tried, but Derek would always shut her down. Looking around this room now, Derek realized it was a mistake. As much as Derek didn’t want to talk about it, Laura needed to. She had lost her whole family as well, and there he was acting like it had only happened to him. She left the room like this because she hadn’t moved on. She was still holding on.
Derek squeezed his eyes shut. Forced the thoughts away. Built his wall back up.
He wasn’t going to cry about this.
He wouldn’t cry until it was over.
Until the wolf that killed his sister was dead.
And when that was done, he would take the few pieces of furniture left in the house, put them in storage, and finish what Kate had started.
He would burn the rest of the house down.