The last thing I had expected to hear was Scott's howl, long, loud, deep and teenagerish.

My head raised up and I looked to Derek. He was weaker than I was. The torture guy had gone full force on Derek when I had barely even been hit.

So I knew what I had to do to get Scott here and to get us out of there.

My howl was a little higher than Scott's, but not by much, and he could easily hear it from wherever he was.

He had better been coming soon.

And if he wasn't, I was pulling at the chains hard enough to where they would be coming off eventually.

When the torture guy came back, he had a baseball bat. Great. "Ready to have some more fun?" he asked us. "To be honest, my knuckles are kinda hurting." He stepped in front of me and Derek, raising the baseball bat up. "So I brought some help." He pointed at Derek with the bat. "But I need to warn ya. I used to play in colledge."

When he started to swing at Derek, I reached out to the side and stopped it from hitting my older brother. "I brought a little help too."

I looked behind him to Scott, and he followed my gaze. When he hadn't been looking, I swung the arm I had the bat in back, hitting him across the face and sending him back, hitting his head on the wall and knocking unconcious.

I reached down and pulled the bandage pack of death off, throwing it to the ground, and I looked up to the other chained arm. "Scott, help me with this."

Scott was standing in front of us. "No."

I looked up at him in surprise. "What?" I almost-demanded.

"Not until you tell me how to stop Peter."

"You really wanna talk about this right now?" Derek asked.

"He's going after Allison and her family. He's going to kill them."

"So what?" I demanded. All it was about Scott was Allison, Allison, Allison. I was so tired of hearing about it.

"So tell me how to stop him."

"You can't!" I said. "All right? Now--" I cut myself off, looking up at the chain on one of my wrists and shaking it.

"I don't know when Kate's coming back," Derek started, "so just get us out of these right now!"

"Get us out right now!" I exclaimed.

"Promise you'll help me," Scott said.

"You want us to risk our lives for you girlfriend?" I demanded.

"Huh? For your stupid little teenage crush that means absolutely nothing?" Derek went on. "You're not in love, Scott. You're 16 years old. You're a child."

"Maybe you're right," Scott admitted. "But I know something you guys don't. Peter said he didn't know what he was doing when he killed your sister, right?" He started to get out a piece of paper, unfolding it. "He lied." He held up the paper for us to see. "Remember this?" It was the paper that had the deer with the spiral on its side, the thing that had brought me and Laura back here in the first place. I shrank back a little, and Scott looked at me. "This is what brought you and your sister back to Beacon Hills, right?"

"Where did you get that?" I asked, my voice tight.

"My boss told me three months ago someone came into the clinic asking for a copy of this picture. Do you wanna know who it was? Peter's nurse. They brought you and your sister here so that Peter could kill her and become the Alpha, and that's why you guys are gonna help me." With every word that he was saying, I was growing angrier and angrier, shrinking back, and Derek was doing the same. I saw him pulling on his chains as hard as he could before Scott even turned around, and I started to do the same. "Just say that you'll help me, and I'll help you unlock Tara's other--" 

We both cut him off, pulling free from the chains, and I rubbed one wrist while Derek rubbed both of his. "We'll help you," Derek said.

Derek had his shirt on again, and both of us had our leather jackets as we walked after Scott. We were still a little weak, but not as much as we had been. "Hey," Derek said. "Hold on. Hold on. Hold on." I had turned back to him before Scott had. "Something doesn't feel right."

"What do you mean?" Scott asked.

"I don't know. It's--it's kind of like it's--"

"No, don't say 'too easy'," Scott cut him off. "People say 'too easy' and bad things happen. What, do you think finding you guys was easy? Getting away from Allison's dad? None of this has been easy."

"Fine. You're right."

"Thank you." Scott rolled his head away.

An arrow shot right into my shoulder before I could move. I fell to the ground, and when Derek had been trying to help me up and out of there, he was shot in the leg. "Flash bolt," I heard Kate say.

"Scott, your eyes!" Derek yelled.

"Now."

I had covered my eyes, and so had Derek, but Scott hadn't listened,

After the flash had gone off, I was opening my eyes and leaning up, tearing the arrow out of my shoulder to not drag out the pain, and Derek was getting his out of his leg. I got up and started to get Derek and Scott, "Get up," I said. "Let's go."

When we had gotten to the yard, I threw Scott forward. "Scott, go!"

Allison was walking toward us, and Scott said, "Allison, I can explain."

"Stop lying. For once, stop lying," she said.

"I was gonna tell you the truth at the formal. I was gonna tell you everything. Because everything that I said, everything that I did--"

"Was to protect me."

"Yes."

"I don't believe you."

"Oh, thank God," Kate said as she followed. "Now shoot him before I have to shoot myself."

"You--you said we were just gonna catch them," Allison said, clearly not knowing just how much Kate wanted from her.

"We did that. Now we're gonna kill them." She looked over to me and Derek, pointing the gun at Derek's chest and shooting, and then, before I could get away, mine. I could feel the bullet, but it hadn't gotten to my heart, or even my lungs, like she had meant to, but I knew that it was gonna take a while to heal from. "See? Not that hard?"

Even though I knew the wound wasn't fatal, I couldn't stay awake.

When I heard the gunshots, I started to come back to, and I heard Peter and Allison and Kate inside, but I didn't pay attention to the words as I looked to Derek, who was starting to get up to. I could actually smile because he wasn't dead.

I couldn't lose anymore family.

And we got inside pretty quickly, Kate lying dead on the floor with her throat torn out. She had killed my family. My mom, my sister Cora, had made it to where I had to put my human cousin Lucy out of her misery because she was gonna be burned alive . . . .

I didn't feel sorry for her.

Derek and I were coming in on the same side, and Scott was on the other as Peter said, "I don't know about you, Allison, but that apology--didn't sound very sincere."

When he stepped forward to kill Allison, Scott was there, growling, shifted, just like Derek and I, as we stepped out.

Scott barely turned his head toward Allison. "Run."

She ran, and we faced Peter again. Derek and Scott charged first, and Peter spun, a hand on either of their chests and throwing Derek to one side and before he could throw Scott to me, I was dodging out of the way and swinging an arm at his head, which he ducked, took me by the stomach and raised me to the roof, hitting my head and dropping me to the floor, and rolling me away.

Quite the difference from when he had been saving my life six years ago. I heard Scott trying to fight him, but didn't see what happened. Derek was up and back flipping into a kick in Peter's face and growling by the time I was turning back to them. Peter elbowed him in the back, knocking him down, and then in his face, knocking him to the side, throwing Derek into Scott in the other room.

When I was starting to stand, Peter was starting to turn into the beast, Derek was hopping along the tables and all the way over to Peter, who grabbed him and pushed him straight into me, knocking us both down.

His head hit mine, knocking both of us unconcious, like Peter had planned.

It hadn't helped that we had been tortured for the last two days.

By the time I was starting to wake, Derek was already gone, and I heard Scott saying, "Wait! Tara said the cure comes from the one who bit you. Derek. If you do this, I'm dead. Her father, her family--what am I supposed to do?"

As he spoke, I stood up from the ground and started to run for the door and stopping on the porch. Stiles and Jackson were here. When had that happened? I didn't pay much attention to that as I heard Peter rasp, "You've--already--decided." What the hell happened to him? How did they catch him on fire? He was hundred times worse than the fire six years ago. "I can smell it on you!"

Derek reached back with his nails claws, slicing down to Peter's throat as Scott yelled, "Wait! No, no! Don't!"

His hand slit his throat anyway, all the way, clear across it.

My mouth hung open a little as I realized what my brother had just done.

My mother used to be an Alpha. So had Laura.

So had Peter.

Derek looked back at Scott, and then saw me on the porch, his eyes glowing red, not blue any longer. "I'm the Alpha now."

His voice hadn't been his regular one, but the wolf one.

Great.

When the police had shown up to pick up Kate's body, we hadn't been there, but now we were.

And we weren't the only ones.

I heard Jackson's loud voice as he begged for what he had always wanted--to be a werewolf. "Derek. Derek! I--I helped you. I helped save you. And Tara. Okay, you got what you wanted. You got what you wanted. Now it's my turn to get what I want."

I stepped out into the burned and rusty hallway upstairs as Derek was leaping down then, and landing in front of Jackson. How many people had done that now? Me, Scott and now him.

I didn't see Derek's face as he bit Jackson on his side, but I had heard the growl.

Well, I knew what this would mean.

Derek didn't actually want Jackson to turn. He was just hoping he would die. If the bite didn't turn you, it killed you.

And once there was a new Alpha, certain people tended to take notice. Our mom had been close to a pack that recruited Alphas.

So Derek had to strengthen up in numbers if we wanted to survive.

Let's just hoped he was smart enough to pick someone better than Scott or Jackson.