┏━━━━⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆━━━━┓

SOMETHING'S OFF

SCOTT MCCALL THOUGHT THE ALPHA PACK WAS BAD ENOUGH, BUT HUMAN SACRIFICES?

As if shit couldn't get any worse.

He promised his mom that school would take the top priority this year, a fresh start and all, but it hadn't even been an entire week yet and he was already finding himself to be in more than precarious situations.

After a successful capture of Boyd and Derek's sister, yeah, the one he thought had died in the fire nine years ago, Scott was summoned to the hospital by his best friend. Stiles was pursuing a lead of his own after Lydia called him, like one massive game of telephone tag, after she'd found a body by the public pool.

And then there was Heather, the girl who'd gone missing from her own birthday party that the pair had just attended a few days ago. She was lying in the morgue now, same wounds that the man from the pool had. Hence his friend's conclusion of human sacrifices.

Strangled, throat slashed, head bashed in. It was a trifecta of murder wounds, and now they were just waiting on them to find the third body— the one belonging to a girl named Emily whose girlfriend had confided in Stiles.

"The only question that's left is; what are they being sacrificed for?" Stiles posed, rather grimly, as they exited the morgue.

"And we need to figure out who's responsible for it," Scott added, watching the way his friend grimaced. They had quite a number of questions that needed to be solved.

They discussed it as they walked through the hospital, the unfathomable truth that people still did human sacrifices was raining down on them. It seemed so far-fetched, and there they were, facing yet another threat that was targeting their town.

Suddenly, Scott smelt something that was out of place, stopping in place. That earned a silent question from the boy next to him. "There's another werewolf here."

Stiles was straightening up in an instant, eyes flickering around the halls that were littered with people going in and out of rooms. "What?" he blurted out. "You recognize it?"

He gave another tentative sniff before shaking his head. "No," he responded, "no, it's new."

Scott was off, tracking it as it lingered further down the hall. Stiles was hot on his tail, watching his friend move with a quick pace, eager to identify where it was coming from. It led him to one of the waiting rooms, and the closer he got to the source, the more he smelt one emotion that was stronger than the rest.

Guilt.

Entering the waiting room area, both boys scanned the room before it was Scott who found her first, the scent directing him right to the blonde that was staring blankly at the floor.

"Emerson?" he asked, trying to get her attention from where they were standing. She didn't make any motion of hearing him, which made him take a few hesitant steps towards the chair she was seated in.

It wasn't until his shoes came into her line of sight that she looked up, a bolt of worry shooting through him when her eyes flickered for a beat. "What are you doing here?" she asked, glancing around the room. Scott didn't have to have supernatural abilities to know that the girl was on high alert, though for a reason they didn't know.

"We should be asking you that," Stiles piped up, opting to stand while Scott took a seat on the girl's right. "You've been totally MIA for two days."

"I'm fine. My aunt's just sick," she responded blandly, and Scott didn't comment on the way her heart rate blipped. "Did you find them?"

"We rescued Boyd and Cora, yeah." She gave him a confused look, so he added, "Derek's sister. She was the girl in the vault."

Emerson's eyes widened, the first sign of clear emotion they'd seen from her. It was gone before anyone could say anything, her gaze back to the floor. "Tell him I'm sorry," she said, Scott catching another flicker of crimson passing through her eyes, "but Hannah's my priority right now."

"He'll understand. He's been busy too, making sure Ms Blake doesn't spill our secret," Scott reassured her, though he shared an uneasy glance with his friend who looked just as unsettled when she let out the smallest of growls. Not enough for heads to turn, but enough for the boys to pick up on it and enough for Scott to try and diffuse the situation. "It's a long story, really no big deal though."

She was losing her cool in the middle of the hospital, and in the short time he'd known her, he'd never seen something like this from her. Stiles leaned forward a little. "Listen, are you sure you're fine? We can wait with you if y—"

"No," she rushed out, her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap. An action she'd been doing since they spotted her. "No, you guys should go. There's school tomorrow, yeah?"

"Emerson—"

"I don't need you to baby me, McCall," she snapped, her eyes meeting his head-on before she heard her name being called up to the front desk. "You guys don't need to worry about me."

With sluggish movements, she left them where she'd once been standing, and it took all of Stiles' might to steer him out of the hospital. The entire time, he was mumbling about how odd her behaviour was.

Scott found himself agreeing, because Emerson was never that easy to rile up, especially in a room of humans. Something was seriously off— and it started with the reappearance of her scent, because shit, when had that happened?

ೃ࿔*:⋆

Derek had just finished being chastised by his sister when his phone rang, and he wasn't all too thrilled by the choice of words he heard from the other end of the line.

"There's something seriously wrong with your girlfriend."

Derek rolled his eyes. "She's not my girlfriend, Scott," he responded blandly, though he paused for a second before tacking on a, "we are talking about Emerson, right?"

"The fact that you needed to clarify speaks for itself," it was Stiles who added that, and Derek assumed he was on speaker. "Scott picked up her scent at the hosp—"

Derek's heckles rose immediately, because surely he had misspoke. "What do you mean her scent?"

"She has a scent now, Derek," Scott told him, a twinge of confusion in his tone, "but I'm pretty sure that's the least of our worries. It was like she was fighting for control."

"Yeah, her eyes were all oh look at me, I'm an alpha in the middle of the waiting room."

In the two days that had passed since they rescued Boyd and Cora from the vault, he'd been so busy helping them heal that he hadn't had the time to search for her. Sure, he'd sent Peter to keep an eye on her, but he hadn't seen him since.

There was so much on his plate, but he was immediately beating himself up for not looking for her sooner. That had been the plan after all, hadn't it?

He ignored the way Cora's interest was peaked, judging by the telltale signs of her head craned oh so subtly in his direction. "Did she say anything?"

"She told us to tell you that she's sorry," Scott started off, "but that Hannah's her top priority."

To the Hale man, it sounded like was pulling away from their deal of pursuing the alpha pack together— that had always been their top priority. "Why? What's wrong with Hannah?"

"She said she was sick, but she lied," Scott said, and that made Derek's eyebrows furrowed. "You should've seen her, Derek; it was like she knew she was about to get some really bad news."

Derek's resolve faltered for a single moment, realizing why Emerson had rushed out without a care the other night. If Deucalion was already hurting the betas of his own pack, there was nothing stopping him from going after Emerson's pack.

And Hannah was pack, whether Emerson could believe it or not, and ultimately was a target. She'd always been a target. "Damn it " he murmured to himself once he'd come to that bitter conclusion.

"I'm gonna ask my mom to keep an eye on her," the younger werewolf offered up, and Serek couldn't stop the relief from filling his chest. Hopefully Melissa would do a better job than Peter had been tasked to do. "You don't think Deucalion went after her, do you?"

The timing alone of the phone call alone, and the fact that it worked to separate Emerson from the others, from Derek, was all too coincidental for his liking. Deucalion must have went after Hannah, an easier threat, while they had been occupied trying to restore Isaac's memories.

"I think he—"

The loft's alarm system began going off, the flashing red light indicating that someone was headed their way. He ended the call without a second thought as Cora approached him. "What does that mean?" she asked, pointing to the flashing light.

"Nothing good."

He so didn't have time for this.

⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆

[ wyn's note ]

sorta filler sorta not— but enjoy nonetheless LOL

small disclaimer that there won't be any updates for the next couple of days: im moving back to uni so imma be super duper busy, but bear with me :)!

all my love xoxo