Chapter Text
It’s August and there’s a school that’s less one student, a boy who’s missing a friend, and a family sharing a hole in their heart where their son used to be.
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Chapter 1
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The forest is thinning around him and he knows that within a few hundred yards he’ll be running straight out of the woods and into the industrial park that’s been years out of business and no longer in use. It’s not ideal; he’d rather be under the cover of trees than in a building with corrugated steel walls surrounding him on all sides, but it’s the only option he has for now.
There are four distinct heartbeats behind him, all coming towards his direction with different gaits and closing in on him. They all smell of sweat, metal, leather and worst of all, wolfsbane.
He climbs over a dilapidated fence in two bounds and lands on the other side completely exposed with nothing to offer him any measure of concealment. He doesn’t look behind him, doesn’t need to as he hurries across the clearway towards the warehouse with its door ajar. He knows they’re close based on the thuds of their heartbeat in his ear and the strengthening smell of wolfsbane following after him.
The warehouse is mostly empty, which is both more and less than what he’d originally expected, with one more door on the opposite side and another leading into what seems like an office. All that’s left behind from the rundown business are some rusty steel pipes, pieces of I-beams of varying sizes either too small or too old to be reused and rows of storage shelves in different stages of decay. He sees a few chains hanging from the tall ceiling, too high for a normal human to jump up and grab onto but well within his reaches. He climbs as quickly as he can, pulls the chains up with him to lie over the steel panels, hides in the shadows and quiets down in time to see his chasers enter the building.
They’re silent in their approach and cautious as they scan the rows and rows of shelving, one low on the ground to check for shadows out of place while the others take turn spotting. They do this for the entirety of the warehouse, a task which takes the better part of 10 minutes and he hopes it’s enough time for their suspicions that he might still be in the building to be put to rest. Sure enough they leave the same way they enter but not before throwing in three cartridges and closing the door behind them.
He doesn’t get a chance to react before an explosion shatters his hearing and the subsequent flash blinds him, making him stumble off the beams until he’s falling backwards, crashing heavily on top of the shelves, the sides of the metal digging into the small of his back, and falling off to land awkwardly in a pile of limbs on the ground. He can’t see and he can’t hear anything past the ringing in his ears, knows there’s blood trailing down the sides of his face. He wills the pain to subside and tries to get back up on his feet only to barely manage a crouch when one leg refuses to cooperate.
He’s been shot.
He can feel the muscles on his leg contracting, twitching in a way he can’t control. It’s not a major artery – a godsend if he believed in one – but it’s a hurt worse than the fall and a dizzying mix with the three flash-bang grenades he’d just witnessed. His hearing and sight is coming back in small increments, too slow for his liking but enough that he can catch muffled conversation and vague outlines.
The thing about hunters is that they get cocky, especially when they’ve all but surrounded a lone werewolf that’s already been shot with a bullet liberally coated and filled with wolfsbane. They think it’s endgame. He uses this stereotype to his advantage; after all, what they think they’ve got is just another werewolf, what they don’t know is that he’s an Alpha.
‘Who wants the next shot?’ The hunter standing closest to his injured leg says with a wicked chuckle.
He becomes the first victim of four, sporting deep gashes across his jugular and spraying arterial blood in a wide arc. Shots are fired before the body hits the ground.
It’s chaos and a howl is ripped from him when another bullet is lodged into the meat of his shoulder. He knows the pack won’t reach him in time but it doesn’t make him helpless, it doesn’t mean he’s not capable of holding his own as he picks up one of the smaller I-beams and pitches it at the hunter he knows is hiding behind a stack of rotten crates, reloading a magazine. It breaks through easily, knocks the man off his feet as he crashes into a shelf, the rusty steel of it making a resounding twang and crack as it makes impact with the skull.
There are two more elevated heartbeats within the building, the third slowing in its unconscious state. He can’t tell their positions – his inner ear making it difficult to guesstimate certain distances – but he’s got a lead with the surrounding environment.
As he pushes against the wall and uses his feet to send one shelf to topple against the other he can hear an echo of howls in the far distance but the call is eventually lost in the resounding crash. His injured shoulder and leg protests but the sound of metal creaking and colliding onto a man whose voice cuts off abruptly is enough adrenaline to stave off the pain he feels running through his nerves, at least by a small amount. The floor is still rumbling beneath his feet as he edges towards the door closest to him. There are two sluggish heartbeats when he leaves the building behind him but the last hunter is gone. He can’t see him or hear him. He can’t smell him through the spilled blood, the tang of metal, burnt gunpowder and wolfsbane lingering in the air.
There’s a gaping hole in the fence where the hunters had cut through the wires and he’s glad it’s there for him to use as he limps across the clearway towards much appreciated cover within the woods. His ears strain for any sign of the last hunter but there’s no other heartbeat within range to be wary of. The winds carry nothing but the sound of rustling leaves, the shake of old metal and an audible snip of a safety being clicked off. He freezes in his steps and feels the air being punched out of his lungs as he takes multiple stumbling steps forwards before falling onto his side. It burns and he can’t help the choke he feels in his throat as he looks down at the sizeable bullet hole in his chest while his ears listen to the last hunter coming closer and closer to where he lay.
‘Looks like I’ll be having the last shot,’ the man is saying, his voice radiating anger, hate and vindication.
Blood is spilling from his mouth, mixed with rivulets of black as the accumulated wolfsbane works through his body to systematically shut down every muscle tissue and vital organ. He’s going to die and his approaching pack will bear witness to it.
The hunter is taking aim, pointing the barrel of the gun straight to his forehead; an unsurvivable blow. He doesn’t close his eyes, refuses to be cowed even if he can’t stop his body from shaking.
There’s the sound of breaking twigs somewhere in the woods behind him, followed by huffs and deep breaths. He can hear several heartbeats and several more footsteps drawing closer to meet him in the middle. There’s a pop of a button, a quiet swish of fabric and a harsh crack of a skull being knocked upon with excessive force.
The man falls to a crumpled heap at his feet, landing on his sniper rifle hard enough to snap off the scope. A boy stands in the man’s place with a gun in his hand, smelling strongly of sweat, gun oil and more wolfsbane. The boy is no older than the rest of his pack and he’s slow, cautious, when he crouches down to the unconscious man, their eyes never leaving each other as he digs through the pockets to pull up a spare magazine as well as a lighter. Both of them land within arm’s reach.
He’s confused, to say the least, as he eyes the items and only looks up in time to see the boy cable tie the man’s arms and legs together with quick efficiency before dragging the body off with a strength that belies his slight build. They’re halfway across the site before four more people join him at his side.
‘Leave him,’ he finds himself saying with a gurgle and a hacking cough when two of his betas almost run off after them. They stop in their tracks, reluctance evident in their postures as they trade stares with each other before turning to look at the backs of the fleeing men. ‘There’s three more in the warehouse; check them,’ he tells them while the two other betas work on burning the wolfsbane and applying them onto his body. He doesn’t know which one knocks him out, whether it’s the bullet wound that went through his back and chest, the one in his shoulder or the first shot at his leg.
He doesn’t ask.
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‘They’re dead,’ Isaac informs him as soon as he wakes up, ‘the three guys in the warehouse.’
Based on the height of the ceiling and the familiar smells surrounding him he knows they’re back in the train depot. They can’t stay here, not anymore, not with the windows shattered and multiple bullet casings littering the floor.
‘What about the two others?’ Derek grimaces as he sits up with a grunt, still feeling the aches in his back, chest, shoulder and leg. He doesn’t know how much time has passed since his stint at the industrial park but he doubts it’s been more than a couple of hours.
The curly-haired blond stops fiddling with the lighter in his hands, fingers poised over the carved initials of E.J, and looks at him with a bemused expression. ‘You told us to leave them.’
‘Good,’ he says before Isaac gets the wrong impression. He wants to tell them that the boy, the same boy who cable tied a man twice his age and dragged away like a prisoner, was the one who gave him the lighter and the magazine, both of which were vital to his survival, but he’s not sure if the boy helping out was a one-time deal only or if it’s something else.
He lets it go.
‘Do you know them?’
‘No,’ Derek doesn’t elaborate as he picks up the magazine from the table next to Isaac and feels the weight of it in his hand. It’s still heavy, guesses there’s at least nine more unused cartridges. ‘What did you do with the bodies?’
‘We buried them in the cemetery, in the new expansion. Erica took the guns and crossbows, left them in storage.’
He nods as he hands over the magazine for Isaac to take. ‘Put this with the others; change the combination on the lock once you’re done.’ He doesn’t wait for Isaac to leave before he’s taking off his bloodied clothes, smelling strongly of wolfsbane, and throwing them into a metal drum. As soon as he’s changed he starts packing all his essentials into a duffel bag, a task that takes him little to no time.
There’s nothing in the depot to tell him what time it is but he can assume that it’s well past midnight so he knows Erica, Boyd and Scott are all home by now, preparing for the next school day or sleeping off the night’s recent attack on them.
It takes Isaac 15 minutes to come back, another five for him to pack his own bag and a few minutes for a quick sweep of the area for double-checking before leaving the building behind them. Derek rents a motel room located on the other side of town, about 20 minutes away from school by bike. It’s just short term, only a week; enough time for Derek to find a new place of stay.
Hopefully, enough time to deal with the sudden influx of hunters in Beacon Hills, too.
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The man doesn’t wake, not even after all the dragging, the rough handling, or the uncomfortable tightness of the cable ties digging into his skin. He doesn’t wake even after they’re cut loose only for his wrists and ankles to be refastened onto a chair. The man doesn’t wake, but Dylan can be patient when he needs to be.
He’s come too far for all his efforts to go to waste.