Sam nervously lingered just outside of the door of the animal clinic.

She'd been there since before the the business had opened.

The clinic was only open for a short time on Sundays.

She reached for the handle and then stopped again.

Closing her eyes, she focused only on her hearing to make sure Dr. Deaton was alone -aside from the animals there in his care.

Finally, she grabbed onto the handle and pulled the door open.

Her eyes flicked up to the bell on the door to alert there was a customer.

"Sam?" Dr. Deaton greeted with a questioning look as he emerged through the doorway leading back into the exam room area.

"Hi!" She tried to plaster on a smile but the pitch of her voice raised.

When she didn't say anything else, he asked, "Is everything okay?"

She opened her mouth to say she was fine.
Knee-jerk response.

But then her gaze dropped to the floor.

She wasn't okay.
She was a lot of things; lost, scared, haunted apparently -but she wasn't fine.

"Samantha?" He repeated the question, his voice quiet with concern.

He took a few steps closer. Cautious.
Like she were a spooked animal that might take off at the smallest movement.

"I, uh..." Sam tucked her hair behind her ears, "I didn't know where else to go."

Changing her mind, she laughed, "I should probably go." She motioned towards the door, "I'm sure you're busy and-"

"You must have come here for a reason." He interrupted, walking out from the behind the desk and observing, "You seem incredibly troubled."

Troubled. Haunted. Crazy.
Take your pick.

"When Derek came to see you about me. How much did he tell you about what's going on?" She asked.

"Not much," Deaton admitted with a small smile, "He was about as forthcoming with information as you're being right now."

The comment brought a smile to Sam's lips.

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

When he gave her a questioning look, Sam caved and offered up more information, "Do you remember Matt Daehler?"

"Considering his actions, it would be hard not too." Deaton reasoned.

He'd been the one controlling Jackson as the kanima.
Held up the police station with a gun.

"I saw him last night." Sam said, her eyes growing wide as she spoke.

She thought he might laugh at her.

But instead he looked around the room and questioned, "Are you seeing him right now?"

"No!" Sam exclaimed.
Her eyes darted around the room just to make sure.

She explained the dream, more like nightmare, she'd had in as much detail as she could remember.

When he asked her what made her so sure this was real and not just a nightmare, Sam shook her head, "I can't explain the how, but it was real. He was real."

How she desperately wished it wasn't.

Nodding and seeming to accept what she was saying as fact rather than the ramblings of an insomniac, Deaton questioned, "You were close with him, correct?"

"If by close you mean he was literally stalking me-" She unintentionally snapped, "I thought we were friends... yeah, I guess you could say we were close."

She avoided Deaton's eyes.
Still having trouble accepting that she had been such a bad judge of character when it came to him.

To this day she felt nothing short of stupid for not seeing through the act he put on.

When she looked back at him she saw he ha an expression on his face like something had clicked into a place.

A light-bulb flaring to life.
The last piece of a puzzle that fit snugly into place.

"What?" she asked.

"You've had a few very close calls with death yourself," He started to say but paused when she crossed her arms over her chest and looked away, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to bring up unpleasant memories, but this is starting to make sense..."

"Is it?" Sam's brows raised.

It felt like nothing that had happened in the last year made any sense.

"If you didn't have supernatural healing abilities, you wouldn't be here right now. Sam, I think what's happening to you is that you're straddling two planes of existence." Holding one of his hands out he said, "You're alive, you're here in the world of the living."

Holding the other hand out, he added, "But you seem to be tethered to another plane, one that doesn't belong to the living. I believe that when you go to sleep, you're being pulled back there. Like a rubber band snapping back."

Derek didn't give him many details when he'd been there, but he had mentioned that Sam had a dream that seemed more like a vision.
And that she'd been afraid because it seemed like her dad had -had the same thing happen to him.

"Assuming that extrasensory perception or similar abilities run in your bloodline -you would already be more susceptible." He softly added.

"Great." Sam couldn't breathe, "So... I'm... what? Dying in my sleep?"

"Not exactly." Deaton shook his head, "Think of it more as... as an out of body experience. Your state of consciousness shifting from here to there."

Sam stared at him in shock.
Before her dad died, he'd told her she'd damned herself by becoming a werewolf.
She'd thought at the time it was more of his insane ramblings, now she wasn't so sure.

If she had to guess what being damned felt like -this had to be pretty close.

"How do I control it?" She questioned.

"I don't have an answer for that." He said with an empathetic expression, "But there must be a reason you're being pulled to a certain plane. Perhaps you should start with trying to figure out why."

"You mean the place where I saw Matt?"

He nodded.

"But," she nearly whined, "It's not like he's the only person close to me that died. I was much, much closer with Erica."

"It might a good thing that you're not seeing Erica. That more than likely means she's a peace. That she's moved on." He explained.

Piecing it together in her head, Sam was hesitant to ask, "So you're saying Matt is stuck... where? In hell? Because that place I ended up... it felt like a form of hell."

"A sort of purgatory is more likely." Deaton reasoned.

Paused for a beat and then commented, "It's interesting that the color of your eyes changed after the death of you father, isn't it?"

"Derek told me that it happens when you take a life-"

"Of an innocent person." Deaton corrected her, "Your father wasn't exactly innocent."

She looked down to the floor.

"Sam, I don't have all of the answers, but if I had to guess... you're feeling incredibly guilty for what you did. One might even venture to say you're living in your own purgatory." He offered up.

Sam rubbed her hands over her face. She'd hoped that coming to him for help would actually help, that she'd leave with solutions instead of more questions.

Now she felt more lost than ever.

An eerie thought slipped in as she thought of what Deaton had asked her earlier about if she was seeing Matt there currently.

"What you asked me earlier about Matt...," Sam swallowed hard, "That' can't happen right? If he's stuck in this purgatory place, he can't like just show up in this world, right?"

"I don't believe there are set rules to how this works."

His words brought her as much comfort as a bed of spikes.

~( )~

It was later that day that Sam made her way back to the loft with a box in her arms.

It was packed full of odds and ends from her family's storage unit.

Her dad had written letters to her nearly the entire time he'd been incarcerated for the attempted murder of her mom.

Sam had never read a single one. Most times she either torn them up or burnt them.

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20 and if she'd known back then the things she knew now, she'd have held onto them.

She'd been digging through the storage unit trying to find letters that maybe hadn't gotten destroyed. In the process she'd came across old random books that her dad had scribbled things down in.

Her meeting with Dr. Deaton earlier that day hadn't brought her any comfort. If anything she was left with more questions than answers.

And even if he was right about her straddling two worlds.
That still didn't explain how she'd witnessed Erica be killed before it happened or how her dad seemed to get glimpses into the future either.

Deaton had mad a comment about her abilities running in her family, maybe there was something to that.

Sam wasn't sure but she knew that she had to try and figure it out.

She juggled the box in one arm and pulled the sliding door of the loft open with the other; revealing a startled Cora standing inside. Staring at her wide-eyed.

"Oh!" Sam's eyes widened to match hers. If she hadn't been so lost in her own head she'd have known someone was in the loft.

Not sure how much memory Cora had of the night of the full moon, Sam started inside as she greeted, "Cora, hi. I'm-"

"Derek's girlfriend." Cora answered.

Sam's expression twisted.

"I mean... I feel like I've accomplished other things in my life aside from that... but yes."

Still thrown off by the encounter, Sam juggled the box again and pulled the door shut.

When she turned around Cora was still staring at her.

Sam side-eyed her as she crossed the open floor plan and went over to the bed that she shared with Derek.

Cora had heard a lot about Sam while she'd been held hostage at the bank with Erica and Boyd.

By all accounts it seemed like they were both more fond of her than they were of Derek.

Sam sat the box down before crawling onto the bed beside it.
The whole time doing her best to ignore Cora's fixated gaze on her.

"Well?" Cora finally said.

"What?" Sam finally looked back at her.

"There's a plan, right?" Cora stepped closer, "To go after the alphas. I keep asking but Derek won't tell me."

"I'm sure he's got some sort of plan." Sam offered with a assured smile before she turned her attention back to a stack of envelops she'd pulled from the box. Hoping scattered among old bills might be a letter or two.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Cora rolled her eyes.

Some pack her brother had built.
Two of his betas had abandoned the pack and tried to leave town, only to get caught by the alpha pack.

She'd met Isaac but didn't get to talk much to him before he'd taken off the day before to find Sam.

And now she was meeting Sam again. Who for some reason seemed far more focused on on rummaging through a box of dust covered items instead of training to go after the alphas.

Dropping to the floor, Cora broke into into set of push-ups.

Sam could hear the other beta's heart rate spiking almost immediately. Far too quickly than that of a healthy teenagers should.

"Maybe you should take it easy." Sam suggested.

"Maybe you should get off your ass and do something!" Cora snapped in a harsh tone.

"What?"
She stammered, caught entirely off guard. The paper she'd been holding slipped from her hand and floated down to the floor.

"We're basically sitting ducks." Cora hopped up to her feet and rolled her shoulders trying to stretch out the aches, "We need to make a plan. We need to go after the alphas before they come for us."

"I know you've been through a lot-" Sam tried to empathize with her.
She didn't know what Cora's life had been like since losing nearly her entire family in the fire so many years ago, but it couldn't have been an easy one.

"Yeah?" Cora interrupted with a near snort.

Sam sucked in a deep breath and force held it until her lungs started to burn.
By nature, she wasn't confrontational.

She had always been a big believer in trying to be kind because you never know what someone else is struggling with.

But her head had been spinning since her talk with Dr. Deaton earlier that morning.

She knew the alpha pack was an ever looming threat to them and as much as she'd been upset with Derek for excluding her from things lately but she now was understanding that he'd been right.

Until they could figure out what was going on with her, she could be more of a liability than an asset to her pack and that was the last thing she wanted.

Cora had no way on knowing the situation, but Sam thought it was more important to get a handle on the mess inside of her head before she'd be much help against the alpha pack.

"Look..." Sam tried to reason as she stood up from the edge of the bed and took a few steps closer to where Cora was still stretching out her muscles. "We can talk to Derek about it when he gets home. I think you're still healing from the full moon and should just relax for now. Are you hungry?"

She nodded towards the kitchen doorway.

"I don't need food, you idiot!" Cora edged closer, "What part of this aren't you getting? They kept us hostage for months. They killed Erica. They're going to come for all of us and if we're not ready -we're dead."

Anger flushed red into Sam's face, her cheeks were hot.

"I'm not stupid. I know they'll come for us. But, if we make a premature move against them before we have a plan. Before we're healed and strong enough to take them on -then we're dead."

Cora opened her mouth to argue but the situation morphed into two-against-one when Derek made his presence known, "Sam's right. The most important thing right now is healing and getting your strength back."

"I'm fine." Cora watched as he slid the door shut to the loft.

Turning back around to face the room, Derek nodded to Sam and then his eyes fell to the box on the bed.

When they'd parted ways that morning, Sam told him she had a plan to get to the bottom of the nightmares she'd been plagued with.

But she hadn't given him much detail about it and promised to fill him in later.

"How'd it go?" He walked over to see what was in the storage tote. From a distance it just looked like papers and books.

The angry emotions radiating off of her since her disagreement with Cora started to dissipate into something else.
Derek sensed more uneasiness from her.

Concern washed over his face.
He knew Sam had slept several hours the night before, but also that she'd woken up from a nightmare that she refused to tell him about.

Even though he didn't know much about her plan for getting more answers, he knew how determined she'd been that morning when she set off.

And as worried as he was for her, it was nice to see some of the fight come back to her eyes. Seeing her with a sense purpose once again after looking so lifeless for weeks.

Only now she seemed to be more lost than when he'd last seen her.

He slid a comforting arm around her.
The movement brought a soft smile to her lips as she leaned against his side and looked at him.

Pressing a quick kiss to her lips, he pulled back and asked, "What's all of this?"

Glancing over her shoulder to where Cora was watching them, Sam cleared her throat and said, "We can talk about it later."

She wasn't about to tell anyone aside from Derek that she was being haunted and apparently leaving her body in her sleep.

It would make her sound absolutely crazy.

Honestly, she wasn't even sure how Derek would take the news; but he'd believe her.
Or, at least she hoped he would.

"Don't mind me." Cora spoke out loud as she turned her attention to a suspended metal pipe from an crumbling doorway and jumped up to start on some pull-ups now.

She needed to be in peak physical shape to go after the alpha pack.
Being locked in a vault for months on end had left her entire system weakened. Add on to that the utter exertion of energy that finally shifting in the full moon and she was in rough shape.

She couldn't remember a time that she'd ever felt weaker in her life since the fire that had burned down her family's home and taken nearly every single Hale along with it.

Having been on her own since then, she fled to South America and did what she needed to do to survive.

She had kept herself alive through all of it and hadn't made her way back to Beacon Hills to be cut down by a crazed pack of alphas.

"Stop." Derek said as he watched his little sister struggling her way through pull-ups. The fact that she was struggling with it at all showed she wasn't back to full strength yet. "You're not done healing."

"Yeah?" Cora grunted through another pull to get her chin above the bar before dropping back down for another set of push ups. "I'm done lying around."

"Then sit." He retorted.

"You gonna help me go after them?" She asked.

She was done with waiting for them to come after her. And since Derek didn't seem to have a plan of attack ready, she'd have to make one of her own.

And that would start with her non-stop training, building her strength back up and going on the offensive. Launching an attack against them.

Derek walked over to where his younger sister was on the floor and in one quick motion, kicked one of her arms out from under her, spun and walked away.

Knocked off balance, Cora rolled over onto her back. Chest heaving from trying to catch her breath.

Sam saw the fire start to flare in Cora's eyes and without a word to either of them, she turned and went into the kitchen.

She'd done her best to be kind to Derek's long lost sister and she wanted revenge on the alpha pack as well, but her patience had been worn thin with just the short encounter they'd shared before he got back.

Sam had enough on her mind as it was and was done arguing with her.

Cora was Derek's sister, he could handle her.

"Come on, fight back!"
Cora's voice echoed loudly from the sparsely furnished space.

Even without extrasensory-hearing Sam wouldn't have had any trouble hearing her from another room.

The heightened sense of hearing aided her in picking up on the muffled thuds of punches being thrown against clothed skin.

Cora was trying to strike Derek, piss him off bad enough that he'd actually do something. Do a anything.
Show that he was angry about what the alpha's had done, show that he cared about what it cost them all.

She'd never met Erica Reyes or Vernon Boyd until they all ended up trapped in the vault together, but there was an instant connection between them.

These were betas that her brother had bitten and turned.
Members of the very pack she'd left everything she'd known for the last several years behind to search for.

There was nothing to do in the hostage situation aside from talk with one another to try and keep their sanity in tact.

It had been weeks and weeks of being there together, but not knowing day from night and not having a calendar to cross off days that had passed skewed time.

It felt like one endless very dark night that the three of them had shared.

Up until Erica couldn't take it anymore and did what they had all been dreaming of -she fought back.

Courageous as her attempt was to set them all free, she'd been struck down. Killed in front of them for her actions.

After that neither Cora or Boyd said it out loud, but they felt guilty that they hadn't done something.

Erica was fighting, not just for her own chance at freedom but for theirs as well.

The alphas would pay. Each and every single one of them.
Cora didn't have the battle strategy laid out yet, but she would make damn sure they paid a price for what they'd done.

Sam listened to the sounds of Derek blocking the blows Cora tried to land.

When the attempts to make him mad or hurt him failed, she took another shot.
This time with her words.

"I came back for this? I can't believe I got my ass thrown in a vault for three months for you. All those rumors I heard about a powerful new alpha, one of the Hales, building a pack. Do you know how long I've waited to hear something like that? Do you have idea how it felt to find out that you were alive?"

Sam closed her eyes and let out a low breath.
She felt the shot Derek had just taken in her own heart.

"Sorry to disappoint you."
Derek's voice was soft. Quiet. Defeated. Guilty, even.

The sadness she felt for him was quickly replaced with fear when the alarm system for the lost started to sound off.

"Derek?" Sam called, her heart in the back her throat as she darted from the kitchen back into the main room with them.

"What's that?" Cora questioned, her eyes roaming all around the room in response to the unfamiliar sound.

"Trouble." Derek swallowed.
His arms falling down to his sides from where they'd been crossed over his chest.

The heavy metal door was pushed open, the largest werewolf of the alpha pack emerged from the doorway with glowing red eyes and his fangs already extended.

The strength of his growl felt like it shook the foundation of the building. Swollen with power. Unbridled strength.

Bright golden-yellow fire burned in Cora's eyes as she snarled and charged for him without a moment of hesitation.

"No, wait! Stop!"
Derek yelled, but just like moments before when Cora refused to rest -she wasn't listening to him now either.

Ennis dodged the swipe of razor sharp claws through the air as Cora came at him, caught the beta by the throat and threw her against the wall.

She hit the ground and didn't get back up.

Sam's claws extended, gums sore and burning as her fangs grew.

Eyes glowing blue; she also ignored Derek's warning to stop as she charged forward.

She wasn't at 100% of her strength and abilities either but had no intention of going down without a fight.

Cora, as insufferable as she'd been in the brief time Sam knew her, was with them now. A part of the pack.

And while she hadn't been willing to entertain Cora's ideas of an early not thought out and too risky attack against the alphas, that didn't mean she wouldn't fight beside her and fight for her.

Just like her first encounter with Ennis in the elevator at the hospital, she didn't stand a chance against him.

With a motion that looked entirely effortless on his part, he threw Sam against one of the support beams and with as hard as her body collided with it, it was surprising the thing didn't come down on top of her.

Bones were broken immediately upon impact. The air had been knocked out of her with such force she thought her lungs had been entirely deflated

Immense white hot pain shot through her and by the time she was able to open her eyes they were back to their human shade of blue.
All of her enhanced abilities had been knocked out of her and shifted her back to human.

Before her mind could catch up, there was a large, clawed hand curled around her throat and prevented her from getting up.
Her own hands clutched onto Ennis' wrist, short and filed down human nails digging into skin as she tried to break free.

Another roar shook the walls, this time from Derek as he made a move towards them.

"Ready for a rematch?" Ennis' voice was distorted behind his teeth as he stared to where Derek was advancing on them.

Before he could come to Sam's rescue, Kali appeared in the open doorway to the loft.
The clawed nails on her feet clicking against the cement floor as she moved closer.

Cora pulled herself back up and charged at Ennis again, so Derek focused his attention on avoiding the lethal swipes Kali tried to deliver with her jump kicks.

Eventually he was able to grab her leg and flip her body through the air. Only she landed back on her feet and broke off the piece of metal pipe that Cora had been using as a chin up bar minutes earlier. She hit Derek in the head with it.

Sam could hear the bones in his jaw snap from the impact.
Her struggles to break free and go to his aide became more frantic. Legs kicked and flailed helplessly.

Cora was easily knocked back down by Ennis who didn't even have to get up from where he'd had Sam pinned to do so.

Cora's body slammed down to the ground -hard.

Clutching onto her shoulder that had taken the brunt of the wallop, Cora rolled from side to side gasping in pain.

Kali had bested Derek as well.
Several blows from the metal pipe had gotten him down on the floor.

He'd been on his way back up when Kali lunged through the air, metal pipe in hand and plunged it down through his back until the other end burst through his chest and chipped against the floor in a ever growing puddle of blood.

Sam's scream echoed through the loft as she saw the entire gory scene play out from where she was stuck on the ground.
A real life horror movie in slow motion with the love her life in the starring role.

Derek's neck craned back and he howled out in excruciating pain, his body lost the ability to stay transformed and just like Sam and Cora, the alphas had reduced him to human.

"No!" Sam shrieked, struggling with everything she had against the alpha who still had her pinned by the neck.

She reached for his face, trying to claw at his eyes but she was no match for him and her dulled human nails weren't doing much good.

Cora managed to roll over onto her stomach and up to her knees. The room had lost all sound as she stared at her older brother and the extent of his injuries.

Like being submerged in water levels reaching far above her head, the world seemed to vanish away around her.

Her ears felt clogged, throat and voice strained as she rose to her feet with her mouth open in a silent scream.
She tried to go to her brother but was stopped in her tracks when Kali shot her a look and warned, "Don't."

Knowing that making the wrong move would get Derek killed, Cora stopped and swayed weakly on her jello legs as the rug was slowly pulled out from under her again.

She looked back and forth between where Kali had impaled Derek with the pipe and where Sam was still trying to her best, but utterly failing, to fight and break free.

Helpless.
Cora's eyes burned and her throat swelled making it hard to breath.
Completely and utterly helpless. There wasn't a thing she could do for either of them.

One wrong step in any direction would seal someone's fate.

Ennis' grip tightened on Sam's neck when she refused to give up on her futile fight for freedom.

With another growl, he raised her up by the throat and slammed her back down against the floor.

"Everybody done?" Deucalion questioned. His guide cane tapping on the concrete as he descended the stairs and made his presence known to the room, "Because just listening to that was exhausting."

"So, let's chat." He folded up the cane and knelt down in front of Derek's face, "Sorry about this Derek, I asked Kali to be gentle."

"This is me being gentle." Kali grinned as she turned the pipe still plunged through Derek's body, breaking up the skin that started to heal and close up around it.

He cried out as more blood rolled down the pipe and onto the floor, spreading out even further and starting to blacken from his system trying to heal.

Sam's skull felt like it had been cracked from the impact on the floor but she still attempted to break free.

Derek was dying.
Her alpha, leader of their pack -and the man she loved was dying slowly and in unimaginable pain in front of her eyes.

Every cell, every fiber of her being ached and burned.
Tears poured from the corners of her eyes and soaked into her hairline.

She had to help him. Somehow break loose and save him -though she had idea how because she wasn't near a match to fight off even one alpha; let alone the three of them.

Derek's eyes were closed, he barely had the capability to hold them open.
The agony he was in was absolutely unbearable.
He could barely manage the short and shallow gasps for air without blacking out.

Even though the pain, he could hear Sam choking and gasping for her own breath

The air he managed to suck in through his open mouth tasted of copper from his blood and the salt of her tears.

"L-let... let her g-go." He somehow choked out.

His blood was blanketing the floor, he could feel the heat from it pooling around his freezing cold hands against the floor as he was stuck down on all fours.

With a flip of the hand, Deucalion signaled to Ennis.

After another look down the heavily, weakened and struggling beta in his grip. He relented, let go and moved back allowing her to roll over on to her stomach and then rise to her feet.

"Derek!" Sam cried out as she rushed for him.

"Don't... n-no." He choked out, "Sam... d-don't."

They'd kill her without any a second thought.

She didn't stop until he managed to turn his head enough to look at her and repeated, "Don't."

Her knees trembled beneath her, tears still spilling from her eyes and free-falling from the sides of her face and chin.

There was no longer a hand around her throat but her supply of oxygen had been cut just from looking at him.

"See? We're not unreasonable." Deucalion verbally patted himself on the back.

"Then let him go." Sam's voice was a whimper.

"What do you want?" Derek asked, having trouble getting his voice to be just over a whisper volume, "You want to kill me?"

"You really think I'm that boring?" He wasn't amused by the insinuation, "Don't loop me in with sociopaths like your uncle. I'm a man with far more vision than just simple murder. In fact I'm here to show you just how much vision a blind man can have."

Derek's body jerked, twitched involuntarily from the injury.
Wounded noises slipped from between his lips despite his attempts to hold them in.

Deucalion removed his sunglasses, damaged, clouded irises started to beam to life with a deep red color that spread out until there wasn't any white left in the corners.

He paused, then put the dark glasses back on his face.

Kali turned the metal again and Derek's weakened body slid down further. His elbows were losing the strength to keep himself up.

He choked.
Gagged on the blood coming up from his throat and draining from his open mouth.

"You're killing him!" Cora cried, as she stepped up next to where Sam was standing.

"Not yet, little sister." Kali waved a single clawed finger through the air as a warning to not move any closer, "But I could."

Derek coughed as more blood flooded into his mouth.

Cora rubbed her hands over her face, her eyes rimmed red with stinging tears.

"Please-" Sam stammered with another step closer to her wounded alpha.

"Who knows if it'll be five minutes or five hours before it's too late to take this thing out?" Kali smiled at the two teary eyes betas.
The corners of her mouth wickedly curling up.

"But, just to be on the safe side Duke, you might want to get to the point." She turned back to the leader of her own pack as she spoke.

Continuing the torture, she not only twisted the pipe around but also moved it back and forth some, seeing how much his body had tried to heal and close up the hole.

Derek coughed, his airways getting obstructed with all the blood.
His body sank further down, face getting close to the blood soaked floor.

Sam tried to take another step forward but her knees buckled beneath her.
She dropped to her knees. Powerless.

"Now you see the one problem with being in a pack full of alphas?" Deucalion held his hands out to the sides, "Everybody wants to make the decisions."

Adjusting some on the seat he'd taken, he continued, "Me? I'm all about discovering new talents. Like you."

"Not interested." Derek's voice was strained, gurgling on the blood.

"You haven't even heard my sales pitch." The alpha complained.

"You w-want me to kill... k-kill my own pack." He could barely get the words out.

Sam stared at another long trail of saliva mixed with blood that ran from his mouth down onto the floor, splashing into the existing puddle

"No." Deucalion corrected, "I want you to kill one. You do that and I won't have to ask you to kill the others. You'll do that on your own. I did it. Ennis did it. Kali did. Tell 'em what it's like Kali, to kill one of your own."

"Hmm." She hummed at the feeling the memory elicited from her, "Liberating."

"Listen to her, Derek. You really want to stay beholden to a couple of maladjusted teenagers that are bound to become a liability?"

Cora shifted on her feet.

Even the blood running from Derek's mouth was starting to darken in color.

It seemed like Kali's guestimate of the time Derek had left to survive this was closer to the low end.

"See, the reason I'm always invested in new talent is simple." Deucalion got to his feet and tapped the folded up cane in his palm. Tone casual and cool.
"We all know a pack is strongest due to it's individual parts. The stronger the individual parts, the stronger the greater the whole."

Letting one end of his cane fall loose, it snapped back into one long object again as he continued, "When I lost my sight, one of my betas assumed I wasn't fit for the role anymore and tried to take it from me. Killing him taught me something about alphas that I didn't know they could do... his power was added to mine. I became stronger, faster and far more powerful than I'd ever been. I tested this this new ability to subsume the power of your own by killing another one. In fact, I killed them all. "

Derek's arms shook as he tried to keep himself supported.

"I took the individual parts and became a greater whole."

Deucalion knelt back in front of Derek, who was sputtering on blood and having to fight for every single breath of air, no matter how shallow.

He ran a hand down the back of Derek's head before grabbing onto his hair and forcing his head up.
With the free hand he felt the bone structure of his face.

"You're right, Kali." Deucalion said with a small chuckle as he let go and Derek's head weakly slumped forward again, "He looks like his mother."

Cora diverted her pained gaze down to the floor.

"You'll get to know me, Derek. Like she did." He stood up.

Anger at the mention of his mother gave Derek a small boost of strength, enough that he was able to raise his head on his own and look to where the other alpha was standing.

"I know you." He said, "I know what you a-are. You're a f-fanatic."
More blood splashed to the floor. Sam could hear every droplet as it hit.

"Know me?" Deucalion's voice rose, "You've never seen anything like me. I am the alpha of alphas. I am the apex of apex predictors!"

Lighting struck across the afternoon sky. Thunder rumbled around them.

Cora backed up, cowering behind the nearest panel of wall.
His earlier words rang true. She had never seen anything like this before.

"I am death! Destroyer of words-" His voice roared out from his core, "I AM THE DEMON WOLF!"

The entire sky darkened from the view on the windows behind him.
The lenses of his glasses cracked and shattered.

Even Ennis took a step back from the wave of energy that vibrated through the space.

Kali jerked the pipe up from where it was pierced through Derek's body and dropped it to the floor with a loud clank.

"Derek!" Sam screeched out as he collapsed on his side.

She rushed towards him in a scrambled crawl, her bare hands and exposed knees slipping in the blood on the way.

"Oh, my god!" Sam flailed her hands. Torn between wanting to hold him and afraid any touch would cause him more pain.

His face was a dark. Veins protruding from his neck. Mouth still open and teeth stained in crimson as he struggled to breath.

"It's okay... it's okay-" She stumbled over her own words and wasn't sure which of them she was was trying convince more.

He tried to say something but all that came out was a strangled noise as he coughed up more blood. It ran from his chin like water from a leaky faucet.

Sam reached out, taking one of his hands in both of hers. Cradling it in her grip she did the only thing she knew how to do to help and provide any sort of comfort or relief.

She looked at him once more, closed her eyes and tightened the grip on his hand, concentrated and pulled the pain from him.
The veins in the back of her hands darkened and swelled beneath her skin.

Cora stayed where she'd been hidden until the alphas were gone and then she rushed over to where Sam and Derek were at in the middle of the room.

Her sneakers splashing in the puddle of blood on her way.

"Sam... don't." Derek found his voice finally and tried to pull his arm back from her.

She was severely weakened from the fight as it was and her body didn't need the extra stress of her taking in the pain.

"It's okay." She repeated in a strained tone.
Her eyes were pinned shut, face twisted in a grimace and the more Derek tried to pull out of her grip, the tighter she held on.

Flooding her own system with as much as she could take until she finally dropped his hand and sank back on her heels breathing heavily.

"You shouldn't have done that." Derek was able to speak in a full sentence.

Gingerly, he raised up more until he was able to sit fully sit up and lean against the table behind him.

The lessening of the pain gave his body a jump start to heal, he just hated seeing the impact it had on her.

Reaching out he stroked a thumb across Sam's tear stained cheek,"Thank you."

She nodded, leaning into his touch and doing her best to offer something as close to a smile as she could manage.

"Are you healing?" Cora questioned her brother. Her eyes darted back from the gaping wound to his face.

"Yeah." Derek's voice was thick, "Slowly, but yes."

~()~

A/N - Thank you for reading! I hope you're all still with me. I know it's been a while I updated, but I'm working as hard as I can to keep the chapters coming.

xx