SCOTT HAD ALMOST KILLED JACKSON ON THE LACROSSE FIELD. He was finally starting to grasp the idea that Stiles might not be totally crazy because at that party, he started feeling really weird, and he left Allison on her own. Wren, on the other hand, was having a hard time grasping the idea that freaking werewolves might be real. It was bad enough that she could barely get out of bed half of the time, and now, her best friend was a werewolf.

Wren was lying in her bed and letting the sheets and covers consume her. She was a pile of pillows and blankets, and she was on her side, staring ahead at her wall. There was music blasting through her headphones so that her thoughts did not intrude. If she had not been looking near the door, she would have never noticed that it opened.

Scott walked in cautiously, knowing that there was a really good chance that she was still angry with him. However, she was not feeling much of anything at that moment. She took off her headphones and turned off the music as she looked up at him. Her voice came out coarse and quiet. "Hi."

"Hi. Is it bad?" he questioned, stepping toward the bed and closing the door behind him. He watched as she simply shrugged, and he knew what that meant. They had been in that position a hundred times before. He frowned. "I'm sorry. Did you take your lithium?"

"Yeah, but sometimes, it just doesn't help that much," she answered. Most of the time, the medicine helped to stop her mood swings or make them less intense, but there were some things even medicine could not fix.

He sighed, and she glanced up at him as he sat down on the bed beside her. He placed his hand on her arm over the comforter and rubbed it soothingly. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked, willing to do pretty much anything to make her even a little bit happier. She shook her head, and he seemed a little hesitant about what he was going to say next, unsure of whether it would make things worse or better. "Well, Stiles and I are going to go see the dead body. Wanna come?"

"Sure," she responded, and he thought that she was just being nice, but then he realized that Wren was never being nice just to be nice. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and smiled.

He grinned back at her before grabbing both sides of her face and pressing a quick kiss to her forehead that made her heart flutter. He pulled back and patted her on the shoulder. "That's my girl."

It was darker than usual that night, or maybe it was because Wren's eyes were closed for most of the ride. She barely opened them while they were walking, not caring if she fell. She could've tripped and cracked her head open, but it would not have made any difference to her.

She stood there quietly with a flashlight in her hand, shining it where Scott and Stiles were digging a hole outside the Hale house. After a moment, Scott spoke up, sounding concerned, "Wait... Something's different." They paused for a second, and Wren looked over at him to see him sniffing the air and looking around. After a moment, he just shook his head. "Let's just get this over with. This is taking way too long. What if he comes back?"

"Then we get the hell out of here," Stiles answered as he shrugged nonchalantly, not looking up from his digging, and Wren furrowed her eyebrows at him because he was an idiot if he thought that they could get away from Derek. His next sentence just confirmed the fact that he was really dumb. "We all run different ways. Whoever he catches first? Too bad."

The Carter girl was too drained to even come up with some sort of comeback, so she just shook her head and breathed out, "You are such a dumbass."

"I hate that plan," Scott agreed, dumping another scoop of dirt by Wren's feet. He was about to got back in when Stiles' shovel hit something solid. All of their eyes widened, amd for the first time, the blonde girl was actually interested in what was happening. She dropped to her knees beside them and stared into the hole with the two boys. She cleared away a little bit of the dirt to reveal several twine rope strings poking out of the earth.

The boys eloped her continue to brush away the soil until they eventually uncovered what looked like a bundle of rough fabric, maybe burlap, and the rope seemed to be tying it together. Stiles began trying to untie it while Wren and Scott looked at each other cautiously, both kind of scared out of their minds that Derek was going to come back and find them. Wren muttered, "Hurry!"

"I'm trying. Did he have to tie the thing in, like, nine hundred knots?" He continued to untie one end of the bundle while Scott leaned down to untie the other end. The two managed to get it all unknotted with Wren not being helpful at all and just telling them to go faster, and they finally opened the bundle to find the severed head of a wolf.

They boys both screamed loudly and lept out and away from the grave, both landing on their asses as they scrambled away. Wren stared at them in disbelief from where she sat by the wolf, wondering what the hell was wrong with them. She just shook her head and sighed, "Wimps."

"It's a wolf," Scott pointed out, gesturing to the pile of fur in front of her, as if that was the best reason in the world to jump back and scream in fear. Derek probably heard them from across town and is on his way back.

"Thanks, genius," the Carter girl replied sarcastically before gesturing for them to come back over to her. Their eyes switched between the wolf and her nervously, and she was wondering how they ever worked up the courage to even talk to her back in seventh grade. They were actually such wimps. She groaned, "It's dead. It won't bite, I promise."

They slowly began inching back toward her and the grave as the Stilinski boy looked over at Scott in confusion. "I thought you said you smelled blood, as in human blood?"

"I told you something was different. We gotta get out of here," Scott responded, and Stiles threw his hands up in the air incredulously, as Wren nodded in agreement. The chances were that Derek was on his way back or already there, hiding in the woods somewhere. They all began pushing the dirt back into the grave when suddenly, Stiles stopped, staring at a spot on the ground a couple of feet away. "What's wrong?"

"You see that flower? I think it's wolfsbane," Stiles explained. Wren nodded slowly, not questioning how he knew what wolfsbane looked like. She had obviously heard of it, but judging by the look on Scott's face, he clearly hadn't. "Uh... haven't you ever seen The Wolf Man? Lon Chaney, Junior? Claude Rains? The original, classic Werewolf movie?"

"Or really any werewolf movie," Wren added, but Scott just looked even more baffled. She just shook her head at him and when back to covering the body. Stiles pushed himself up to his feet and jogged over to the flower, pulling the entire plant up by the roots. They all furrowed their eyebrows in surprise when they realized that the base of the plant had more twine rope tied around it, which was also buried underground.

He gently pulled up the rope, which had randomly placed wolfsbane petals attached at various points along the length of it, only to find it is connected to the bundle of burlap around the wolf's head, the long length of it buried around the grave in a spiral pattern which glowed red as Stiles unraveled it.

Wren watched Stiles, wondering if her was on to something or just being an idiot and wasting their time. She gasped when she looked down at the grave and saw that something had changed. Hearing her sound of surprise, the two boys leaned over and looked down into the grave themselves.

"Oh!" Stiles exclaimed because lying below them was the upper half of a dead female body.

《❀》

DEREK WAS ARRESTED FOR THE MURDER OF HIS SISTER THE NEXT MORNING. Wren, Scott, and Stiles watched as he was led into the police car, and he glared at each of them in turn. As his eyes landed on the Carter girl, she felt like he was staring into her soul, and she got really antsy all of a sudden.

They got back in the car, not wanting to be around the Hale house any more than they had to because if the blonde girl was being honest, the place freaked her out. Wren was sitting in the back seat like she always did, leaning forward so that she was included in the conversation. Scott was researching on his phone while she looked over his shoulder. "I can't find anything about wolfsbane being used for burial."

"Just keep looking. Maybe it's like a ritual or something? Like, maybe they bury you as a wolf," Stiles suggested, glancing over at the boy from where he was driving. "Or, maybe it's like a special skill, you know? Like, something you have to learn?"

"I'll put it on my 'To Do' list, right underneath 'figuring out how the hell I'm playing this game tonight,'" Scott groaned in response. He had been in a bad mood ever since they left, and he kept rambling angrily as they continued to drive. Stiles said something else, and it finally caused something in the McCall boy to snap. "Okay, stop it! Stop saying 'werewolves!' Stop enjoying this so much!"

"You know, you're gonna have to accept this, Scott. Sooner or later," Stiles insisted, and Wren glared at him because he really was not helping the situation.

Scott was obviously freaking out, and forcing it on him even more was not doing anything other than making him panic more. She slapped the Stilinski boy upside the head and yelled, "Stiles, shut up!"

"I can't breathe..." Scott panted out, and he groaned loudly. Wren slid back in her seat slightly when she heard the undertones of a deep growl. He thumped his hand on the roof of the jeep before shouting, "Pull over!"

"Why? What's happening?" Stiles questioned, and Wren wondered why he could not just pull over now and ask questions later.

Scott grabbed the backpack between them, and his eyes widened in almost pure horror when he saw the wolfsbane plant and the rope with the flowers attached to it inside the bag. Wren gaped in shock before turning to the boy driving and exclaimed, "You kept it?"

"What was I supposed to do with it?" he responded, and Wren just flopped back in her seat, not wanting to deal with him anymore. He clearly did not use his critical thinking skills to maybe think about the fact that bringing freaking wolfsbane into a car with a werewolf was not the best idea.

Stiles finally swerved over to the side and put the car in park, grabbing the backpack and practically stumbling out of the car. He chucked it as far as he could — which was not very far — into the woods. Wren sighs in relief before turning back to Scott to see how he was doing. Her eyes widened when she saw that the passenger seat was empty, and Scott was nowhere to be found.

"Scott?" she called, her eyebrows furrowing. She scanned the edge of the woods all around them, but he was out of sight. She jumped out of the car and yelled the the Stilinski boy, "Stiles, he's gone!"

AUTHOR'S NOTE

guys, i'm going to warn you that this books is pretty slow burn because I think that it's boring once the love interests get together. so, i'd also like to remind you that wren is a character with a story, and she does not exist for the sole purpose of being scott's love interest.