Cora and I were telling the story of our old life to Stiles, and I was looking out the window to the rain when I told him about Derek and Peter hiding in the root cellar.

"They were there for two days, waiting, hiding. That's what we're taught to do when the hunters find us . . . hide and heal."

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

I turned to face him. "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. Boyd was killed by Alphas. I--do you want me to keep going? 'Cause I can, all right? For, like, an hour."

"You think Derek can do anything about that?" I asked.

"Well, since he's the one everyone seems to be after, it's more like he should do something about it, yeah."

"I don't know," Cora said, looking down at the table. "There's something different about him now. He wasn't like this when I knew him."

"What was he like?"

We heard Peter stop on the spiral staircase. "A lot like Scott, actually." He continued down the stairs. "A lot like most teenagers. . . unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic, tolerable really only to other teenagers."

"And so what happened?" Stiles asked. "What changed him?"

"Well, the same thing that changes a lot of younger men . . . a girl."

"You're telling me some girl broke his little heart? That's why Derek is the way he is?"

Peter looked toward me, and then to Stiles. "Do you remember Derek before he was an Alpha, had blue eyes like Tara's? Do you know why some wolves have blue eyes?"

"I just always thought it was, like, a genetic thing."

"If you want to know what changed Derek, or even Tara for that matter, you need to know what changed the color of their eyes."

*

"Okay, so if Derek was a sophomore back then, how old was he?" Stiles asked after Peter started to tell us the story of a girl named Paige. "How old were you? How old are you now?"

"Not as young as we could have been, but not as old as you might think," Peter non-answered.

"Okay, that was frustratingly vague," Stiles said, then looked back to me and Cora. "How old are you?"

"I'm not telling you," I said stubbornly.

Cora rolled her eyes, saying, "I'm 17."

Stiles looked from me to Peter. "See, that's an answer. That's how we answer people." I raised my eyebrows as he looked back at me. "You're gonna punch me again if I keep talking to you like you're a little girl, aren't you?" I nodded once. "Okay, then. Oh, and by the way, my dad already told me you're 15 when he arrested Derek."

I sat back further in the chair as Cora said, "Well, 17 and 15 how you'd measure in years."

"All right, I'm just gonna drop it." He looked to Peter. "What happened to Derek and the cello girl?"

"What do you think happened?" Peter replied. "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 for five minutes. Their favorite dark corner was an abandoned distillery outside of Beacon Hills."

"All right, hold up. How do you know all this? You just said they were alone."

"Back then, I wasn't just Derek's uncle. I was his best friend, his closest confidante. That's how I know."

*

I was drawing a spiral in the condensation of the window, still raining outside, Peter telling us how one of Ennis' pack had killed an Argent, and they killed him for it. And how Ennis had clawed a spiral in the metal of the distillery with Peter watching.

"Our mark for vendetta," I said as I turned away from the window.

"Man, you guys really take that revenge thing to, like, a whole new level, don't you?" Stiles asked as I sat back down.

"It's not just revenge," Cora told him. "Losing a member of your pack isn't like losing family. It's like you lose a limb."

"They wouldn't even let him see the body," Peter said, continuing on.

*

"I don't get it," Cora admitted. "What does this have to do with Derek?"

"Everything. It's never just a single moment. It's a confluence of events. Personally, I looked at Ennis' circumstance, I saw profound loss. Derek saw something different. He saw opportunity."

"Opportunity?" Stiles repeated. "To do what?"

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

*

"I kept telling him not to do it," Peter said as he looked out of the window. Peter telling Derek not to turn Paige? I doubted that. "Everyday 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."

*

"They keep us connected to humanity," I explained to Stiles about the emissaries. "But they're a secret even in a pack. Sometimes the Alpha is the only one who knows who the emissary is. Derek, Cora and I had no idea about Deaton."

"Or his sister, Morrell," Peter agreed, standing next to the table.

"She's an emissary too?" Stiles asked.

"For the Alpha pack."

"Our guidance counselor?" Stiles demanded. "Why the hell don't you people tell me any of this stuff, huh? I shared some really intimate details with her."

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

"Actually, yeah."

"That's what they do," I told him.

"That's what Deaton used to do for Talia," Peter went on.

Talia . . . my mother.

*

"Ennis?" Cora asked, repeating the Alpha's name that Peter asked to turn Paige for Derek. "Why would you chose him?"

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

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

"If he does, he keeps it to himself."

"So then what happened?" Stiles asked. "Did he turn her?"

"Almost. He came at Ennis. A 15 year old boy against a giant." Both Cora and Stiles looked toward me. I was 15, and I'd fought with Ennis. I rolled my eyes, all of us looking back at Peter. "There was no reason for him to fight. She's already been bitten."

*

"So did she turn?" Stiles asked.

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

"When you offered it to me, you said, 'if it doesn't kill you'."

"If."

*

"He knew the answer, though," he told us when he told us about Derek asking him what was happening to Paige. "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 . . . " Peter trailed off after he told us about Derek killing Paige to put her out of her misery . . . just like I had done for our cousin Lucy. "Another in a long line of Beacon Hills animal attacks."

"And what about Derek?" Stiles asked.

"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 . . . " Peter's eyes glowed blue to prove his point. "Like mine. Like Tara's."

"What--" Stiles cut himself off, looking back at me. "You killed someone?" I looked down to the triskele on my hand, and Stiles tilted his head. "Well, actually, that doesn't surprise me. Who'd you kill?"

I didn't answer, standing and walking to the stairs, up, but stopping at the top, sitting down.

Stiles looked at Peter. "Who'd she kill, since she's not telling me anything."

"Another attempt to put someone out of their misery," Peter answered. "It was in the fire. Her favorite, 17 year old human cousin Lucy was in the basement with us when the floor underneath her gave away . . . Lucy's leg went through it, unable to remove it."

In my head, I saw flashes of the fire, of Lucy's leg in the floor with fire and smoke gathering around.

"She didn't want to die of the smoke, of the flames that would slowly kill her. Painfully. Slowly."

"Tara, please," Lucy's voice sounded in my head. "Please, just do it. Do it, please."

"I can't."

"A nine year old, put in that position of having to watch nearly her entire family burn, to watch them suffocate, and given the chance to save one member from that pain . . . . "

"Tara, please."

"No--I--I can't."

"Yes. Please." She had looked behind her as the flames reached closer to us. She had looked back at me. "Please!"

"So she took it," Peter finished, and I remembered crying as I took Lucy's life. "Then, before she could die too, I took her out."

I remember the flames reaching toward me again, and Peter grabbing me and blocking me from getting burned, resulting in the burns on his face as he carried me out to the tunnels.

"You saved her?" Stiles asked.

"I did."

I stood again, going up to the different floor as I thought.

I knew that Cora would go after them. The Alphas. I knew it. Because they'd killed Boyd.

Just what the hell was I supposed to do about it?