'we are animals down to our delicate bones.' deborah landau.

season 2, episode 1
omega

Mere days before the third full moon of the year, the forest did not stand alone.

Basking in moonlight, nearly straying from the waning gibbous, the forest creaked. As wind caressed the trees, shaking their bare branches, releasing any stragglers that managed to hold tightly with the brunt of winter's hand. Moonlight fought against the branches to light up the forest floors. Failing at their duties, shadows encased the land.

Fog rolled in as the late hour settled. Very few were outside of the safety of their homes. Recent news of missing teenagers, brutal murders, and an uncovering in the forgotten Hale case, the people of Beacon Hills lacked a reason to step outside in the dark. Children were forced to end their playtime when the sunset. Not even the beauty of stars could convince them to come out.

All but a lone security guard, tasked with the simple job of observing the Quarry, was out that night. Put under recent lock down, no one dared to near it without proper authentication. A simple task in his eyes, endure time, and fight his restless body. He appeared at work earlier to escape his failing marriage. He sipped on lukewarm coffee.

Winter pinpricked his skim despite the layers he engulfed himself with. Wind grew louder, rushing through the trees as if it were running away. The still Quarry quivered. A disturbance in the water. Shifting, aching inside the Earth. The heavenly planet groaned before him.

To the senses of a human, it was a simple gust of wind, a rock falling out of balance, a stray dog in the distance. His mind preoccupied with his attempts to calm his deranged wife at home. Texting as fast as he could with the phone buttons that required several clicks to achieve the letter he wanted. Threats to leave him with his children after accusations made against him came to light.

His mind far from his job to notice a ripple in the water.

Splitting the water with its head, hair slicked down the face of an awoken beast. Slits for eyes, scanning the area as their stomach ached in pain. Several days without a meal, it would anger anyone.

Like a child, its eyes lit up at the sight of a man. Plump in size, yet short. A perfect shape for a starving novice.

The beast did not understand the hunger that festered inside. Why the glimpse of an innocent man watered their mouth? Their tongue licked their lips. Starvation muddled comprehension. None of it mattered. They needed the dull pain to subside.

Water dripped along the grass. Wind rustled, blowing against something nearby. The man flickered his eyes from his phone. A girl. The girl dressed in a mint green dress. Torn at the end. Water diluted the blood soaking from her side.

Darkness surrounded her eyes. A shell of a person. Not a person. She was declared dead—fell from the tip of the Quarry, rolling against the cascade of rocks until her body collided into the frigid waters. No one could have survived that fall. Not with the jagged rocks at the bottom.

Confined to a moveable building with windows on every side. The man braved against his notion of ghosts, opening the feeble door. Barely a year or two younger than the woman he kept a secret.

"Are...are you alright, ma'am?"

Neviah Degrace tilted her head. Her features were as frozen as the water, but as sharp as ice. Sopping-wet strands veiled the side of her face. Not a clear intention peeked through her eyes. They were unreadable. She was detached from herself—her body shocked by the fridged temperatures.

"I should call this in. Your father—he's gonna need to see this," the man claimed, grasping his phone. With one chubby finger, he dialed 911.

The ring disbursed through the open land. It sounded like a thousand screeching birds to the girl. Heart pounding. Blood pumping. Sweat producing.

Clamping onto her ears, Neviah cried out. Her legs collapsed under her weight and shook, scrapping against the small rocks.

The man set the phone down, stepping outside the small building to look down at the girl. Aching in pain, shivering as her breath materialized in front of her blue lips.

"It's alright," the man told, tugging off his jacket. He swung it over her shoulders, kneeling to her face to get a better look at her. A soft gaze.

Neviah lifted her chin, gazing up at the man. She could have sworn a light reflected off his ivory skin. His pulse beat in a steady line on his neck. It visibly quaked with each beat. Blood running through him. It called to her. It pulsed for her.

The hunger became more than Neviah could bear.

In one moment, the phone call was picked up by a deputy at the station. He called out and his only response was a blood-curdling scream. Disturbed birds fled to quieter space. The scream ceased as a sharp staggering set of teeth yanked out a throat, spilling blood down her jawline to her collar bones. He sputtered below her. Gasping, pleading with his eyes. Blood bubbled from his gaping wound, mouth, and nose.

The next moment, there was no man. There was no Quarry. Only an open road as Neviah stumbled with her bare feet against the pavement. Blood smeared across her chest, drying over her lips. She cowered in the oversized jacket. She soaked in every inch of warmth she could.

The hunger subsided, settling in her bones as her body celebrated the feast. It was only the beginning.

Her mind was elsewhere, unable to settle on a coherent thought or idea. Murky as the water she disappeared in. She traveled for what felt like hours, clutching onto her exposed flesh for warmth. Streetlight came into view, brightening a path and Neviah's memory of the town. She wanted to go home.

The pit in her stomach tightened. It spread out to her organs and muscles, tugging it inward. Neviah let out a groan. Her hand pressed against her abdomen in hopes of comfort. She had never experienced cramps like that. She had never experienced any of this. Her body fought against itself, unsure how to manage the human flesh it consumed.

Tearing her eyes from the road, a pair of headlights illuminated her. The vehicle went faster than the law permitted. It spun by, screeching the tires. Neviah barely got a glimpse of it. Only the shade of blue and the presence inside. Comforting and warm.

Her innards continued to stab itself. Collapsing to her knees, she expected her body to connect with the ground. Slam her head against the road and her vision would blur. Her suffering would end before it truly began.

Arms curled around her inside. Beneath her legs and her neck as if she were an infant. They rose her from the frosted ground, cradling her body close to their leather clothes.

The pain was too agonizing for the girl to peel her eyes open. She scrunched into the leather-clad arms, sinking into their warmth. Tears pricked her eyes.

"You're gonna be okay, Neviah," a familiar voice told, holding her tighter before placing her inside a car.

The bright headlights returned. But by then, Derek Hale had taken Neviah Degrace elsewhere.

"She was right there," Stiles exclaimed, waving his arms around in his jeep. He jerked the vehicle into park. His eyes were glued to the empty space. "I'm not going crazy! Am I?"

In the past week, he felt himself spiraling. He didn't know what to do with himself. His fingers fidgeted with anything he could hold. His mind was absent, only ever thinking of one thing. Her.

"We all saw her, Stiles," Scott reassured, placing a hand on his best friend's shoulder. Scott watched Stiles' eyes bounce back and forth from the conflict in his mind over the girl he cared about. He rubbed his face, sinking into his hands.

"It looked like her," Harley let out, pulling at her rings. Neviah standing in the middle of the road, coated in blood as if her ghost had come to haunt them. Were they supposed to consider a ghost as their next enemy? Haunting their waking moments. Neviah would do that if she could. She had plenty of reasons to do so. "It looked real."

Allison shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut to refuse exit to her tears. "It can't be her, guys. She's...gone."

Scott turned in his seat to Malikai, squished to the side by Allison and Harley. The McCall boy didn't believe in Neviah's death for a second. Not when he learned of Peter's connection to it. He wanted a pack, why would he lure the girl out only to kill her? For fun? Everything Malikai told him made Peter seem calculated. "Did you feel anything?"

"I was focusing on Lydia...I-I didn't sense anything," the boy confessed. Explaining his abilities was hard enough when he did not have the answers himself. His mind blocked out Neviah since Damian shouted at Kory for suggesting a funeral.

"She isn't dead!" he had claimed, refusing to put an empty casket in the ground with his daughter's name above it. The man grew silent. He faded from the town, rarely showing up to work. He spent hours at the Quarry, waiting for his daughter to reappear out of thin air. He knew something they didn't.

Damian knew what Neviah was.

"But...I think it was real...I think Neviah's alive."

༻❁༺

"You're an Alpha?" Neviah inquired; her hands curled around a mug of hot chocolate Derek somehow made her in the abandoned train cart bay below the surface. She didn't question it. She accepted it urgently, not caring that her skin singed at the heat. She wasn't interested in asking the wrong questions. Beating around the bush had got her nowhere. Her intentions were as clear as day to her mind.

Derek nodded. A day after he found her on the side of the road. He helped her get cleaned up, a change of clothes, and rest. When she woke up, she begged him to tell her the truth. Answers to the riddles that man had begun telling her. None of it made sense.

He reluctantly obliged, indulging in her curiosities that led her just as the cat. It was his guilt.

"As of a few days ago, yeah."

"So, you weren't the one who attacked the school?" Neviah asked, flinched at the thought of that night. Pressing her hands tightly around the mug as a chill sent shivers through her body. She paced back and forth in an oversized shirt, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks. "Who was that?"

Derek sharply inhaled. His eyes drifted from Neviah. "Peter. My uncle."

"The comatose one?" Neviah laughed nervously. She remembered visiting him once. His face was completely scorched. His flesh melted and merged. The doctors salvaged what they could. "Yeah, right."

He looked at her, his expression unwavering. He was serious. She paused in her tracks. He found it hard to look at her. Everything that happened to her happened because he let Peter convince him he was trustworthy. "You met him. He...he was the one who led you to do...to kill yourself."

"What?" Her body froze in place. The airflow in the dingy building ceased. The single warm light above flickered.

Neviah remembered that night. Trailing after the man as he concealed his secrets, tugging her along like a helpless dog. She wanted to believe in him, to believe in someone. She wanted to believe someone could place trust in her to spill the truth.

"You are impatient and demanding. You think you deserve the world handed to you because of what you were forced to believe. You want everything but don't give enough. You think you are perfect, but in reality, Neviah, you are a monster."

Her godfather. His face flashed in her mind. In her last moments with him, life did not exist in his eyes. He was burdened by greed and gluttony. She saw that in her, the sins they shared.

His motivations for choosing her were unclear to the girl. Not that she would ever have answers from him again. She would have to suffice for answers to more intriguing questions that lay restlessly in her mind.

"Then he's dead, right? You're the Alpha now," Neviah recalled her notes. The hierarchy within werewolves consisted of three levels: Alpha, Beta, and Omega. Falling under Peter's Beta before, Derek must have killed him to gain his new title. The next of kin for the Hale Alpha.

Derek didn't question her knowledge. He knew her curiosity would fester in ways, fighting against the spell placed over her. "Yes."

She locked eyes with him. The years separated. Moments when she spotted him watching over her. It came back to her in dreams. Even if she tried to keep him away, he still protected her. From guilt or because he knew something she was unaware of.

Or maybe, just like his uncle, Derek needed something from her. She could see it in his eyes, feeling it reverberating from his body. His heartbeat against his ribcage. Hair rising behind his neck. She could feel it all. And she needed something only he could offer. Safety, answers, help. A guiding hand to whatever might happen to her.

Neviah didn't trust that her friends would be able to understand. Her father kept her out of this with the ignorant belief she would never need to experience this. They would all tiptoe around with the information she truly desired.

"Then you can teach me," she suggested. Hope filled her veins as confidence laced her tongue. The fog in her mind hadn't fully cleared. There were things that were still missing. She had fallen for false hope in Peter. But Derek? He needed a pack. He needed to become stronger. Everyone needed power in this world. He had a legacy to rebuild in the name of his fallen family.

He had a less violent way in mind compared to Peter. However, he lacked time. Therefore patience. He would be desperate.

Derek furrowed his eyebrow. He shook his dark head of loose curls. "You're not a werewolf, Neviah. I can't help you."

She stepped forward, straightening her shoulders. "But you will. You took me here when you could have easily taken me home. You don't want my dad to know what you're doing."

Derek never liked games. Not Neviah's mind tricks, how she managed to find loopholes for any situation she found herself in. She had a knack for getting exactly what she wanted, and he had fallen for it.

"You need a pack. Betas who will be willing to devote themselves to you."

His face hardened. Any sign of emotion was locked behind his cold exterior. She hit the spot. It was how the world worked. To rise above, you needed people to follow you. Whether by fear or admiration.

"You know I can help you. There are people in Beacon Hills who are just waiting for a chance to escape their lives." She took a long sip of her now room-temperature drink. She knew the desperation of people. Doing anything and everything to be seen the way people saw her. They betrayed for a taste, forgetting the importance of alliances. "You help me. I'll help you."

Holding her hand out in front of him. She smirked, knowing he could make this a hell of a lot easier for him, or go down the hard route just to protect Neviah. "Deal?"

"Deal."

"Good," she spoke with a pleased look on her face. She turned from him, noting the state of the building. Chains bolted into the concrete walls. A thin mattress in the fastest corner, hidden in the dark.

Derek had been living here since returning home. Alone, not afraid. He spent years following his older sister around only for her to die the moment he left her for his own life. Guilt and grief still lingered in his blood. Neviah could smell it.

"You'll need someone who will leave everything for you. That requires someone who has very little left.

"His name is Isaac Lahey. He'll be the first."

༻❁༺

Inflict pain on others, it shall return tenfold.

Neviah had never believed that; never believed in karma. What she had done to people for years was a result of their bad character and the subtle damage they caused for her and those around her. They deserved it. Each and every one of them. From James Washington and his uncontrollable hands to Coach Lahey. She punished them for hurting others and her. They deserved everything she sent their way to implode in their faces.

Her choice in Derek's Beta came from killing two birds with one stone. His fear was ingrained into her mind. The way his eyes would flitter around his own house, terrified of every step she took. Bruises littered his pale face—lacrosse, he would blame. He had the same amount of playtime as Stiles.

Choosing Isaac came from Neviah's selfishness. She did not shy from it.

Instead, she accepted it. Providing Isaac with an out from his father wasn't only for him, it was for her. She wanted a demonstration of the process of becoming a werewolf. How every factor contributed to the shift. Why teenagers were more likely to survive than any other? Why she had not been given the same change?

Maybe it was the factors. Deep down inside a person, the bite lifted it out. The core of a person. What made them, them.

"Sometimes," Derek started, sympathy ricocheting in his words. He stared down at her sweat-coated body, shivering from the cold and then burning up from the heat. "The body rejects the bite."

"I wasn't bitten. I was killed."

As Neviah writhed in pain against the cement floors, curling into herself as if she had not led herself to this spot, the greedy, gluttonous monster that resided in the deepest depths of her rose to the light.

A horrific scream ripped out of her lungs, reverberating against the metal train container. The light fixtures quaked under the vibration.

The girl lay alone in the abandoned building. Clawing at the ground for salvation. Her fingers trembled uncontrollably. The pain had no source. It circled her body whole. Not a piece of her did not trouble her.

Flashes of broken memories were uncovered in her mind. Rapidly fired into her synapses, reconnecting where they had been burned out by that witch. Days when werewolves and witches were normal, they played games with her day in and day out. They did not bare teeth at her but held her hand as she scraped her knees. Days where did not spend her days lonesome. Days when a father kissed her goodnight, every night. Days when a mother cooked her meals.

A mother. The person she had shared a thin nose with, mischievous slits of eyes, and a charming laugh that drew people in.

A mother.

Tears curved over her nose bridge. A sob choked inside of her. The fog tore from her mind revealing all that was taken from her.

The bases of Neviah's hands pressed against her temple, pushing back her black curls. Her eyes stung as she blinked back the tears that fought to come out. A heavy weight hung from her chest. She couldn't breathe.

Her mind ran rapid. Everything rushed back to her in a single moment. Every detail long forgotten by that spell; her memories all came back.

A strangled cry escaped. Neviah inhaled deeply to reel it back in. It didn't work. As if it was a line of dominoes, the first had been knocked down.

Flashes of the fire came to her. The night didn't end the way she remembered—the way she was forced to remember. There was a woman, trying to call for her. Her mother. And she followed. The way she called for Neviah strung a sense of comfort in her.

Leading her into the tree line as the fire bubbled from the bottom up. Screams began to split the silent air. Neviah skidded to a stop. She turned her cloud of curls to the house; a golden light filled the basement.

Smoke seeped from the opening, clouding the air as the bellows echoed. Her eyes widened. Her family was there. Cora. Lilith. Derek. Laura.

"Let's go, Neviah," her mother insisted, tugging the child by her wrist. She cared little about the force she had pulled her with or the pressure she surrounded her tiny wrist with. She yanked her daughter around, forcing her away.

The girl begged and pleaded to her mother, "Why are you doing this?"

She stared down at her creation. Her eyes were milky white, yet darkness was all Neviah saw. "Power comes to those who are willing to take it."

Then it all happened so fast. Someone pulled Neviah away from the monster that disguised itself as her mother; no matter how hard the young girl reached out for her mother, called for her, she couldn't reach her. She no longer existed.

Blinding lights filled the night. A scream echoed, toppling those who stood like a tidal wave.

Even now.

Neviah cried loudly, a scream tore through her. Her hands wrapped around her collarbones, waiting for the weight to be lifted. Each pause between inhales decreased as it got harder to breathe.

She couldn't remember the woman's name but knew everything she meant to Neviah.

Her mother.

It was too much. Her mind cried as more memories flooded in. Memories of her mom, of Cora, Lilith. Memories of the supernatural, of the family she had never seen since. Happiness, sadness, anger, grief. Guilt.

Neviah screamed with tears running down her face. The windows in the train shattered. A loose mirror fell, breaking once it hit the cement. Her voice was heard for miles around. Birds startled from their perches. The Supernatural alerted.

As she let it out, the weight eased, and it became easier to breathe. Neviah looked at herself in the broken mirror. For once she saw herself in the reflection. All the things she believed laid out in front of her to be true.

With red surrounding her pearlescent eyes, and tears barely drying down her gray scaly cheeks, Neviah accepted the truth.

Peter was right. He could sense it inside of her. She couldn't deny it anymore at the sight of herself. Baring her teeth, a sharp collection of fangs. In her DNA, designed at birth to be this way.

A monster stood in her reflection. A monster she had always been.

so...how've we been? i've missed you so much, reading all your comments since coming back has been a joy. your reactions are everything to me. 

i hope you all enjoyed <3

Edited: 11/13/2024