Gosh, this episode feels like it's taking forever. Definitely one of my least favourites of this season.

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When we reached the apartment building, Cora lead the way to the room with all the fuse boxes. Stiles pushed the door open, standing in front of the wall of switches.

He finally stopped to examine the wall, "Okay, what do we do?"

Cora was as lost us the rest of us, so she decided the best way to remedy this was to instruct us to pull all of the levers.

No one questioned the logic of this decision as Lydia, Cora and I began to pull on the levers while Stiles went onto his phone to let Isaac know what we were doing. Hopefully we weren't too late.

As soon as we flipped all the switches which we thought may actually do something, we ran up stairs towards Derek's apartment. Cora lead the way, her werewolf speed coming in handy.

We kept going until we finally reached Derek's apartment. Skidding to a stop at the door, we peered into the dark room. But we were to late.

The plan had been to have the Alpha's be in the water when the current hit and electrocute as many of them as they could. But that obviously hadn't played out the way they wanted it to.

So Derek was kneeling in the centre of the room, water pooling at his knees, someone lying in the water in front of him.
A quick scan of the room and I saw Derek, Isaac and for some reason Ms. Blake was also here; which left the body in the water to be Boyd.

"Oh, my god," I gasped quietly as I brought my hand to my mouth, watching Cora run down and collapse beside Boyd's body.

Lydia and I remained standing beside each other as Stiles walked slowly down to stand behind Derek. The Alpha's head was bowed in regret and mourning, blood on his hands. Had he been the one to kill Boyd?

Stiles placed a hand on Derek's shoulder as the Alpha stared down as his deceased beta. I looked down to Isaac to see him sitting close by Ms. Blake, watching over her. His eyes drifted from Boyd up to me, his expression drowned in sorrow.

Boyd, Erica, and Derek had been the closest thing he had had to family since his dad died. Besides me of course. He had already lost Erica, and now Boyd. I didn't know if he would be able to handle much more.

I knelt down beside him and Ms. Blake, taking his hand in mine. "I'm so sorry," I whispered.

His jaw clenched as he squeezed my hand and looked down, sniffling a little. No one really did anything for a while as everyone tried to take in what was happening around us.

How did we stand a chance against this enemy when we barely knew anything about them?

♡♢♤♧

Later that night Scott, Stiles and I all sat around the McCall dining table, untouched coffees going cold in front of us.

After another five minutes of silence, I cleared my throat. "So what happened? After we left, I mean."

Scott rubbed his eyes, "Derek wanted to deal with Boyd on his own, so he made us all leave. After that, he just. . . left."

"What do you mean 'left'?" Stiles enquired.

"Exactly how it sounds," our werewolf responded. "He left and no one has heard from him. Not even his sister."

I sighed as I rolled my head to stretch my neck, "Great. So he's left us here with the Alpha pack alone?"

Stiles shook his head, "I'm more worried about the fact that they want Derek, and he's not here. So what's going to happen if they don't get him?"

I still hadn't told them what Deucalion had said to me that night he had my mother killed. About how he would come to me again with his offer to help his pack. How he was so sure that I would say yes the next time he asked.

"They're not after him," Scott started slowly. "They're after me."

I lifted my hand up a little, "And me. Sort of," I said quietly.

Stiles started blinking quickly as he raised his eyebrows and looked at me. "Both of you? And neither of you thought to tell me this sooner? Seriously?"

I just shrugged as I fidgeted with my mug of coffee. "We were going through enough as it was. I didn't want to add to that."

The boy shook his head as he looked at me. "Riley, we help each other, that's what we do. Let us help."

He had a point. It just felt like a lot to put on their shoulders when we already had to deal with the alpha pack as it is, without worrying that Deucalion thought I was going to help him.

I sighed as I slid the coffee away from me. "The night Ennis killed my mother, Deucalion said something to me. He told me about how my mum used to help him. Now he's saying that since I'm the same I'm going to replace her."

"Okay, well that's clearly not going to happen, and we'll be talking about this again," Stiles stated simply before turning to Scott. "Alright, now you."

Scott took a moment, staring very intensely at the table. "Something happened."

When no one said anything else, Stiles threw his hands up, "Gonna need a little more than that, Scott."

"Sorry, just thinking," he replied. "When I saved Deaton in the vault, there was a circle of mountain ash around him. I tried to push through it but nothing happened."

"What's this got to do with Deucalion?"

Scott ran a hand through his hair, "I'm getting there. I didn't break through the circle, but Deaton said he saw something. He saw my eyes. . . they went red."

"Alright, Scott wins," I exclaimed, pulling my mug back towards me and wrapping my hands around the lukewarm surface.

Stiles' mouth had fallen open in surprise as he stared at our friend. He said Deaton said that his eyes went red, but that wasn't possible unless he killed an Alpha. Right?

"So. . . you're an Alpha?" Stiles queried.

"That's the thing," Scott replied, before making his eyes glow. They still went their soft gold colour as he looked at us both. "They haven't changed."

This was making no sense.
"So, what does that mean? Deaton lied?"

"I don't think so."

"Then you need to get him to tell you what he was going on about."

Scott sat up straighter in his chair, as he took a sharp breath. "He thinks I'm a true Alpha."

"A what now?" Stiles asked quickly, blinking.

"A true Alpha," Scott repeated. "He said sometimes a Beta can become an Alpha without having to steal or take it from another. When a Beta rises through character, virtue and sheer force of will."

"You're becoming an Alpha," I concluded.

♡♢♤♧

"They were there for two days, waiting, hiding. That's what we're taught to do when the hunters find us - hide and heal," Cora said as she stared out the window, watching the rain trickle down the panes of glass.

After Boyd had been killed, Derek had left town. It had been a few days and no one had heard anything from him. Scott, Stiles and I had began to grow worried, so we decided one of our best options was to talk to his sister.

And while Stiles and I were working this angle, Allison and Scott went on their own little interrogation trip. I hadn't exactly been all for the idea, but Scott believed that Gerard may have some useful knowledge that could help us.

Ever since the incidence at the end of the kanima section of our saga, Gerard had been in a hospital based nursing home where he was under round the clock care. None of the doctors knew what was happening to him, so they were unable to treat him.

Apparently pumping someone's vein chock full of mountain ash and then letting them be bitten by an Alpha wasn't the best for one's health.

Cora had just told us a story about how her brother and Peter had almost been caught by hunters. They had hidden in a small abandoned warehouse for two day, hiding quietly.

"Okay, so is two days standard, then, or are we thinking Derek's on, like, some extended getaway?" Stiles asked.

Cora turned to us, eyes narrowed, "Why do you care?"

"Why do I care?" Stiles repeated. "Let's see. . . because over the last few weeks, my best friend's tried to kill himself, his boss nearly got ritually sacrificed, a girl that I've known since I was three was ritually sacrificed, my girlfriend has nearly been killed. Boyd was killed by Alphas. I- do you want me to keep going? 'Cause I can, all right? For, like, an hour," he exclaimed.

"Stiles," I said softly, putting a hand on his arm. Even though he had a point, taking it out on Cora was going to get us no where. "Look, Cora, we need to find him, okay?"

She uncrossed her arms as she walked towards us, "You think Derek can do anything about that?"

Stiles almost seemed surprised by the question, "Well, since he's the one everyone seems to be after, it's more like he should do something about it, yeah."

We decided it was best to not tell everyone about Scott's eyes going red. For now, it was something we thought best to keep on a need-to-know basis.

"I don't know. There's something different about him now," Cora admitted. "He wasn't like this when we knew him."

"What was he like?"

At that moment, we heard footsteps coming down the metal, spiral staircase. I heard myself groan rather loudly as I realised that it was Peter.

But then annoyance turned to slight anxiousness as I remembered that I hadn't seen him since the incident where I threatened to kill him. And I doubt he had forgiven me in the time we'd had apart.

"A lot like Scott, actually," Peter answered for Cora as he made his way down to the ground. "A lot like most teenagers - unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic, tolerable really only to other teenagers."

"So what made him the way he is today?" I asked, ignoring the pointed look I was getting from Peter every few moments.

"That, my dear, would be the same thing that changes a lot of young men. . . a girl."

Stiles practically balked at even the idea, "You're telling me some girl broke his little heart? That's why Derek is the way he is?"

"Don't act like you haven't let something like that change you," I retorted with arms crossed in front of me.

He went to reply, but just let his mouth fall shut as he turned back to Peter, who was now looking at his niece.
"Do you remember Derek before he was an Alpha had blue eyes? Do you know why some wolves have blue eyes?"

Stiles and I shook our heads, my boyfriend deciding to speak his mind. "I just always thought it was, like, a genetic thing."
It was a plausible explanation.

"If you want to know what changed Derek, you need to know what changed the colour of his eyes."

Peter went on to begin his story, telling us how Derek had met a girl named Paige when he was a sophomore. He was a werewolf who played basketball, she was a human who played the cello, they were from separate parts of the school yet they still managed to find each other.

Like, High School Musical, but make it werewolves.

Stiles and I sat beside each other at the table, him with his hand on his head in thought. "Okay, so if Derek was a sophomore back then, how old was he? How old were you?" He then froze for a moment, his eyes squinting in thought, "How old are you now?"

Peter sat back on his couch, legs crossed, "Not as young as we could have been, but not as old as you might think."

"Okay, that was frustratingly vague."

Stiles turned to me to see if I understood.
"I don't know what to make of that," I shrugged.

He then turned to Cora. "How old are you?"

"I'm seventeen," she answered simply.

"See, that's an answer," Stiles informed Peter. "That's how we answer people."

"Well, seventeen in how you'd measure in years."

I held a hand up to stop Stiles from furthering the pointless, and seemingly endless, conversation. "Alright, let's move on, shall we? What happened between Derek and the girl?"

"What do you think happened?" Peter sighed.

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be asking, would I?"

He didn't seem too pleased with my response, but continued anyway. "They were teenagers. One minute, it's, 'I hate you, don't talk to me.' The next, it's frantic groping in any dark corner they could manage to find themselves alone in for five minutes."

"Something about Derek I could've gone without knowing," I mumbled.

"Their favourite dark corner was an abandoned distillery outside of Beacon Hills."

Stiles interrupted before Peter got the chance to proceed. "All right, hold up. How do you know all this? You just said that they were alone."

Peter uncrossed his legs and pushed himself forward on the couch. "Back then, I wasn't just Derek's uncle. I was his best friend. His closest confidante. That's how I know."

I felt my eyebrow's pull together in confusion. Knowing both of these men and their relationship with each other like I did, I found that pretty hard to believe.

The story continued, Peter telling us that the Alpha's later arrived at the same distillery with their respectful packs. A young beta from Ennis' pack had been strung up from the roof and cut in half by the Argents. Another Alpha's beta had challenged Ennis, revealing to all that the beta had been killed because he himself had killed an Argent.

Ennis steamrolled the beta, going on about how the hunters need to be stopped. Apparently, Deucalion had tried to defuse the situation, but Ennis wasn't having it. In response to the events, he placed his claws on the wall and ripped through the metal, creating a spiral.

Peter had made his way over to the window by this point, tracing a spiral on the pane of glass in front of him. "Our mark for vendetta."

Stiles entwined his fingers as he rested his elbows on the table, "Man, you guys really take that revenge thing to, like, a whole new level, don't you?"

"It's not just revenge," Cora grumbled in her low voice. "Losing a member of your pack isn't like losing family. It's like you lose a limb."

Seemed a bit of a stretch to compare the two, but I wasn't about to tell her that.

Peter didn't look away from the spiral he had drawn, "They wouldn't even let him see the body."

"What does this have to do with Derek?"

"I agree," I added, raising a hand. "I mean, you've only told us he had a girlfriend and that Ennis was psychotic, which we already knew."

This made Peter spin around to face us. "This had everything to do with Derek. It's never just a single moment. It's a confluence of events. Personally, I looked at Ennis' circumstances, I saw profound loss. Derek saw something different. He saw opportunity."

"Opportunity? To do what?" Stiles probed.

"To always be with her. The thing was, he always had this constant fear. He was obsessing over it, thinking about it all night, all day, always on his mind. He finally came to the conclusion that he had to turn her."

"Really?" I questioned, my voice dripping with doubt. "Derek doesn't seem like that sort of person."

"Sorry to break it to you," Peter shrugged. "I kept telling him not to do it. Every day the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became. You know teenagers. I bet he even blames me. He's probably convinced himself the whole thing was my idea. When he put together that the Alphas and their packs were in town, he realised this could be his chance."

Peter went on to tell us the story of Lycaon, and how the druids became emissaries - advisers - for the packs.

"They keep us connected to humanity," Cora explained, expanding on what druids actually do for the packs. "But they're a secret even in the pack. Sometimes only the Alpha knows who the emissary is. Derek and I had no idea about Deaton."

"Or his sister, Morrell," Peter tacked on.

Stiles' eyes widened, "She's an emissary too?"

"For the Alpha pack."

"Our guidance counsellor?" He exclaimed loudly. "Why the hell don't you people tell us any of this stuff, huh? I shared some really intimate details with her."

So had I. I hadn't wanted to, but she somehow coaxed it out of me.

"And did she give you good advice?" Cora asked.

"Actually, yeah."

Peter nodded, "That's what they do. That's what Deaton used to do for Talia."

I rubbed my eyes as I tried to go over everything I had told Morrell, and everything Peter was telling us now in my head. "I feel violated."

"Finally, Derek went to Ennis, asking him to be the one to bite Paige."

This seemed to catch Cora's attention. "Ennis? Why would you choose him?"

"Why not? Ennis needed a new member for his pack. Paige was young and strong. Doing a favour for Derek meant Ennis would be in good with Talia. Back then, everybody wanted to be in good with her."

Even so, Ennis was so unstable. Out of all the Alphas, he would be my last choice.

"He doesn't remember it was Ennis, does he?" Stiles asked.

The man shrugged as he leaned against one of the columns holding the roof up. "If he does, he keeps it to himself.

"So, then what happened? Did he turn her?"

"Almost." Peter looked away in thought as he continued his story. "He came at Ennis. A fifteen-year-old boy against a giant. There was no reason for him to fight. She had already been bitten."

After a moment or two of silence from Peter, Cora spoke, "So did she turn?"

"She should have. Most of the time, the bite takes. Most of the time."

I felt my hand lift to my mouth as I tried to withhold a gasp. I didn't like where this was headed.

Stiles spun in his seat to face Peter, "When you offered it to me, you said, 'if it doesn't kill you.'"

"If," Peter nodded. "He asked me what was happening to her, but he knew the answer, though. It didn't matter that she was young and strong. Some people just aren't made for this. But she fought. She struggled desperately, trying to survive.

"I remember taking her body from his arms, to the woods, to a place where I knew that it would be found. . . another in a long line of Beacon Hills animal attacks."

Cora stood up as Peter made his way over to the steps to sit down. "And what about Derek?"

Peter stared down at his hands, "Taking an innocent life takes. . . something from you as well, a bit of your soul. . . darkening it, dimming the once brilliant golden yellow to a cold, steel blue. . . like mine."

He looked up at us, his eyes glowing blue just like he'd said. We had already known he had killed people, so this came as no shock.

Stiles and I glanced at each other. Neither of us really knew what to make of this all.

♡♢♤♧

Not long after his story, Peter left to take care of things, leaving Stiles and me with Cora.
We all sat together on the steps to the loft, quietly mulling over everything that we had just found out.

"What?" Cora asked, noticing the grimace Stiles was currently wearing. "What's this - what's this look on your face?"

The boy peered up from his hands, "What look?"

Cora looked at him with a sharp sigh, "The kind of look that makes me want to punch you."

"Oh, my god. You are so Derek's sister. I forgot."

"Well, what is with the look?"

I waved a hand, "It's just his thinking face. What's going on in that head of yours, Stiles?"

He half smiled at me, grasping my hand, before glancing at us both. "I just don't believe him. All right, in Ms. Blake's class, we're reading Heart of Darkness, and it's in first person, right? Narrated by Marlow."

"It's Peter, no one trusts him," I pointed out. "What are you getting at."

"The things is that he's - he's an unreliable narrator. You know the details of it have changed, you know, just because of his perspective."

Cora raised her hands slightly, "Well, then we heard the story from Peter's perspective."

"Right, and I don't think we got the whole story."

"So, what, are - are you just gonna ask Derek about the girl he fell in love with and then killed?" Cora asked, knowing full-well we knew it wasn't going to be that easy.

Stiles looked away, his jaw clicking, "If I have to. . . yeah."

Okay, maybe I was the only one who thought this clearly wasn't an option.
"Stiles, we can't do that?"

"What other choice do we have?"