FINALLY BUT WEIRDLY, ALL OF THE CROWS dropped dead and were lying on the floor of the classroom. There were feathers and bird blood covering all of the desks that were in shambles, and the students were slowly starting to stand up and look around once they knew for sure that it was safe for them to do so.

"You okay?" Ms. Blake's brother, whose name April still did not know, asked her, offering his hand to help her up. She nodded slowly in response and accepted his offer, running a hand through her hair.

"Thanks," she muttered, shooting him a grateful smile, and she looked up at him with a questioning expression. "Um, sorry, you just, like, saved me, and I just realized that I never caught your name."

His eyes widened as he released her hand that he was oddly still holding. He rubbed the back of the neck nervously. "Oh, I'm Elijah, Elijah Blake. You?"

"April," she told him with a nod.

They shared a moment of awkward silence, glancing around the class nervously. April made eye contact with Allison, asking her with her eyes to get her out of the situation, but the Argent just shrugged. Elijah was the one who spoke up. "So, it's really crazy how those birds just ran into the window."

"I know. It's like they were crazy," she agreed, but then she had flashbacks to what happened with Lydia's car the day before. She thought about what Scott said. Her voice lowered as she realized it. "Like they were scared."

"Hmm?" the Blake boy questioned, not quite catching what she said.

April snapped out of her trance, forgetting her thoughts momentarily, and looked up at him, shaking her head. "Oh, nothing." Fortunately for her, her phone buzzed on the desk behind her, giving her an excuse to get away. She grabbed the cell and checked it before her head turned back to him. "Uh, it's my aunt. I should probably get this."

"Okay," he responded, and then he left her to go check on his sister who was sitting at the front of the classroom, talking to one of the deputies that had just arrived. Allison's father was also there, speaking to her.

After texting her aunt to let her know that she was fine and that she didn't need to be picked up, April made her way over to Stiles who was typing something rapidly on his phone. "What are you doing?"

"Calling Scott," he replied before dialing the boy's number and putting his on speaker phone so that she could hear as they both moved to the back of the classroom so that everyone else couldn't. When the McCall boy picked up, he started talking. "We got a serious problem at school. Ms. Blake's class—"

"Can you tell me about it later?" Scott questioned, cutting his friend off through the phone. Stiles and April made confused faces at each other, wondering what was happening on his end.

The blonde girl leaned into the phone, talking to her friend with a stern voice so that he knew she was serious, "Uh, well, no. Pretty sure this qualifies for immediate discussion."

"All right, then meet me at Derek's house," the werewolf told them.

"Derek's house? What?" Stiles quizzed, glancing at the Sharpe girl next to him with furrowed eyebrows, and she just shrugged in response. "What the hell are you doing at—"

The McCall boy interrupted him once again. "Just meet us here, okay?" Then, he hung up, and the Stilinski boy pulled his keys out of his pocket, tossing them in his hand.

"Let's go, then."

《❀》

"YEAH, I SEE IT. TWO BANDS, RIGHT?" Derek said after staring at Scott's arm with his Alpha eyes. They were all at Derek's house, and the McCall boy was asking him how he got his tattoo t not heal. As all of them talked about that, April couldn't keep her eyes off of the unconscious boy on the table next to her. "What does it mean?"

Scott shrugged before taking two fingers and drawing a circle inside of another circle in the dust on the table with his fingers. " I don't know...It's just something I trace with my fingers."

"Why is this so important to you?" Derek questioned, looking up at the younger male with a questioning look.

The McCall sighed. "Do you know what the word 'tattoo' means?"

"To mark something," Stiles answered quickly for Derek, remembering what the man said at the tattoo parlor the night before when they asked about the meaning of Scott's tattoo.

"Well, that's in Tahitian. In Samoan, it means 'open wound,'" he informed them. "I knew I wanted to get a tattoo when I turned eighteen. I always wanted one. I just decided to get it now, to make it kind of a reward."

The Alpha furrowed his eyebrows. "For what?"

Scott answered, staring down at the ground, "For not calling or texting Allison all summer. Even when I really wanted to, even when it was so hard not to sometimes. I was trying to give her the space she wants. Going four months later, it still hurts. It still feels like a, uh..."

"Like an open wound," the blonde girl finished for him, her gaze finally shifting from the boy that she hadn't seen all summer to him to make eye contact with him.

Scott nodded, and Derek reached over and picked up the blow torch next to him, getting ready to light it because apparently, that was the only way the tattoo would stay on their skin. "The pain's gonna be worse than anything you've ever felt."

"Oh, that's great," the Stilinski boy muttered.

April furrowed her eyebrows at him in confusion. "You're not even the one getting set on fire." He just stuck his tongue out at her in response, and she rolled her eyes.

"Do it," Scott ordered Derek. The Hale man followed his orders and lit the blowtorch, and it made a whirring as blue and orange fire began shooting out of one end. 

"Oh, wow," Stiles exclaimed, his eyes widening at the flame. If he couldn't handle needles, how the hell was he supposed to deal with fire. "That's a lot for me, so I'm gonna take that as my cue. I'm just gonna wait outside."

The Alpha just grabbed him and spun him right back around toward his best friend. The sheriff's son groaned at the werewolf's tight grip on his arm. "Nope. You can help hold him down."

"Oh, God," April muttered as her friend walked over and grabbed onto Scott's shoulders. The McCall boy nodded to Derek, and the Hale brought the blow torch closer and closer to his skin until the flame touched him.

Scott yelled in pain, his fangs came out and eyes turning yellow as he struggled against the grips of both Derek and Stiles. The Hale man shouted over the screams, "Hold him!"

The Sharpe girl forced herself to look away and tried to think about something else to keep her mind off her friend in pain. Her eyes landed, once again, on Isaac who was still sleeping. 

She hadn't seen him since the fight with the Kanima and Gerard. Well, she had seen him around town and stuff, but she hadn't interacted with him. They hadn't actually spoken since right before they kissed, and she was a bit scared about what she was going to say when he inevitably asked about it.

He said that he was leaving, she told herself. He said that he was leaving, and you didn't want to reject him because it might've been the last time you ever saw him.

About halfway through the tattoo process, the screams stopped, and April thought that he had died for a second. However, he had just passed out, so after they were done, he jerked awake. He examined his arm in awe and exclaimed, "It worked!"

"Well, it looks pretty damn permanent now," Stiles pointed out after his friend got his shirt back on and they were making their way out of the house. 

"Yeah," Scott nodded. "I kind of needed something permanent. Everything that's happening to us, everything just changes so fast. Everything's so, uh...ephemeral."

The blonde girl's jaw almost dropped at that. He didn't usually use words longer than two syllables, sometimes three, and here he was. "Look at Scotty, using the big boy words."

"Studying for the PSATs?" the Stilinski boy questioned.

The McCall boy nodded in response. He had really been trying to get his grades back up over the summer, so he had actual read books and memorized vocabulary. "Yep."

"Nice," Stiles replied.

Scott went to open the door for them, but when he did, something caught his eye. He just stood there for a moment, staring at the door and running his fingers along it. He called to Derek, "You painted the door...Why'd you paint the door?"

"Go home, Scott," the Hale man ordered with an expression that was pleading the boy not to ask.

"Why is it so weird that he painted his door?" April furrowed her eyebrows, looking to everyone with a confused expression. "Ashley paints something in the house, like, every other week."

The werewolves just ignored her, and Scott continued to run his fingers against the red wood. "And why only one side?"

"Scott," Derek warned, walking over, but it was too late. Scott was already claw at the paint, ripping it off the door violently and grunting as he did so. Afterward, it revealed some weird symbol painted on it in black, and the Sharpe girl was still so baffled. What the hell just happened?

"The birds at school and the deer last night, just like the night I got trampled by the deer when I got bit by the Alpha," Scott muttered in realization, looking to the Hale man. "How many are there?"

He sighed, "A pack of 'em. An Alpha Pack."

"That sounds really bad," the blonde girl pointed out, and they all shot her a look, telling her that the fact that she just stated was pretty obvious already.

Stiles had a better comment, and it was a question. "All of them? How does that even work?"

"I hear there's some kind of leader. He's called Deucalion," Derek informed them. There's an Alpha of the Alpha pack? Doesn't that, like, defeat the purpose of them all being Alphas? "We know they have Boyd and Erica. Peter, Isaac and I have been looking for them for the last four months."

"Let's say you find them — how do you deal with an Alpha Pack?" the McCall boy questioned, taking a couple of steps toward the Hale man with question in his eyes.

Derek looked down at the ground before his gaze met Scott's once again. "With all the help I can get."

"Where is she?" came a groggy voice from behind them, and they all whipped their heads around to see that Isaac was awake and sitting up. "Where's the girl?"

"What girl?"