I wasn't going to school unless Derek dragged me there himself. I just wasn't.

I hed never liked going, and I didn't need to. Especially now, when I didn't have anything bright left in my future anyway.

Derek was gone for most of the afternoon. I didn't know why, and I didn't care enough to go and find out. But sitting in what was left of the burned and broken and crumbling house of ours seemed like as good a plan as any.

I didn't want this to change. Yes, I hated just sitting around while the Alpha was out there, killing, the one who had killed Laura, but I wasn't going to change that by sitting through long, boring classes that I didn't need anyway.

I had heard about the attack on the bus driver, but I wasn't doing anything about it just yet. I didn't know if it had been Scott, the new wolf in town, or the Alpha. I needed to find out quick though, if there was any chance that I could find the Alpha and kill him.

The door creaking itself open made me super alert, ready to disappear if it was a deputy or the sheriff making sure that I was at school and not here, but all I saw was Derek walking in, and he didn't have the most patient look on his face when he saw me sitting down in the living room. "What are you doing here?"

"Nice to see you too," I said, standing up and walking around him to the stairs.

"You're not supposed to be here,"

"Oh, well. It's too late now."

"Tara, we have hunters after us and we're trying to find the Alpha--we can't have the cops showing up here again, seeing that you're here and not at school when we've already been warned."

"What are you so worried about?" I asked. "It's not like they can do anything without me coming back."

"Well, I would like to just skip that part."

"Shh," I said, listening to the outside as I heard a vehicle pull up to the house--the sound that I had been expecting to hear all day.

It didn't take long before both me and Derek were hidden in seperate parts of the house. I looked out the window as a deputy got out of his car, shutting the door and walking around it, getting out the radio. "Looks pretty deserted, dispatch. Uh, do you want me to take a look inside?"

"Unit 16, county property. Order's to make sure it's vacant."

"I don't--I don't think anyone's home."

"For the love of God, 16, go inside and see if anyone's in there."

"Copy that."

As the deputy stepped forward, his guard dog barked, and I knew that I didn't have to disappear again. "Don't do that," the deputy said.

As he stepped even closer to the house, I could tell that the dog was looking at me, and I tilted my head forward, eyes glowing blue to make him go pretty much insane with barks, like 50 times in a row before he whined, sticking his head through the cracked open window, telling his owner to get the hell out of there.

"Okay," he said, backing away to his car. "I'm coming. I'm coming."

He ran to his car, jumping in and pulling away, and I knew Derek was behind me before he even said, "Next time the cops won't have a guard dog with them."

"I don't care," I said, turning around and walked around him while he looked out of the broken window.

"I know you can hear me," we heard from outside. Scott. "I need your help."

Derek was going downstairs, opening the door and walking out, shutting it while I sat on the steps, listening to them outside. "Okay, I--I know I was apart of you getting arrested, and that we basically announced you and your sister being here to the hunters, I also don't know what happened to your other sister. But I think I did something last night. I had a dream about--someone, but someone else got hurt. And it turns out that part of the dream might have actually happened."

"You think you attacked the driver?" Derek asked. 

"Did you see what I did last night?" Scott basically demanded.

"No."

"Can you at least tell me the truth? Am I gonna hurt someone?"

"Yes."

"Could I kill someone?"

"Yes."

"Am I gonna kill someone?"

"Probably." I heard a few footsteps from outside. "Look, I can show you how to remember. I can show you how to control the shift, even on a full moon. But it's not gonna come for free." 

"What do you want?"

"You'll find out." Scott had been bitten by the Alpha--he had a link to him that no one else could. He could find him. If Derek taught him how. Then we could kill him. "But for now, I'm gonna give you what you want. Go back to the bus. Go inside. See it. Feel it. Let your senses, your sight, smell, touch. Let them remember for you." 

"That's it--just go back?"

"Do you wanna know what happened?"

"I just wanna know if I hurt him."

"No, you don't. You wanna know if you'll hurt her."

Derek walked back in after awhile, and when I didn't notice what he was doing, he said, "Come on."

"Why?"

"You know why."

"You really need to start trusting me," I said, getting up from the stairs.

"Not until you stop trying to find him yourself, going to get yourself killed in the process."

I rolled my eyes but followed him out to the car.

It was dark by the time that we got to the gas station, Derek getting out to fill the tank while I sat back in the car, just relaxing as much as I could.

A red SUV was pulling up in front of the car, and I heard another silver one pulling up behind  us.

"Stay in the car," Derek was saying from outside of it.

"Yeah, yeah," I said as I saw the hunter that had shot an arrow into my arm the other night step out of the car in front of us. Great. A hunter.

The windows on the camaro were tinted enough to where they didn't see me, but they had their full attentions on Derek. I heard him put the nozzle back and the hunter out in front of us said, "Nice ride." He walked closer. "Black cars, though. Very hard to keep clean. I would definitely suggest a little more maintance." He turned to the window washers, taking one and turning back. "You have something this nice, you wanna take care of it, right?" He started to wipe down the side of the windsheild that was on my side. "Personally, I'm very protective of the things I love. That's something I learned from my family. And you don't have much of that these days . ." he stopped cleaning the winsheild, turning to Derek, and my fist was already clenching at the mention of my family. ". . do you?" I heard Derek's knuckles popping outside the car, and I looked through the very tinted window and to the review mirror, seeing him in it, clenching his own fist. Then he was letting it go. I tried to do the same. "There we go. You can actually look through your windsheild now. See how that makes everything so much clearer?"

The hunter started to walk away, and Derek felt like being a smart-ass. That trait ran in the family, along with anger issues. "You forgot to check the oil."

He turned back around, looking at the two behind the car. "Check the man's oil."

The one in the white coat stepped forward, but I hated him as soon as he did what he did, smashing Derek's window that was across from me with the end of his gun, the glass shards flying to me and cutting into my skin, making me bleed.

It wasn't like I wouldn't heal, but that had pissed me off, and I saw Derek step up through the review mirror, looking like an actual worried brother for once, but then stopped when I glared at the hunter, who just smirked. "Looks good to me."

"You drive safely," the lead one said before turning for his own car and getting in, both SUVs driving away.

I got out of the car, shaking off a few shards of glass. "I'm gonna kill them."

"No, you're not."

"And why the hell not?"

"Because we need to focus on something else, okay?" Derek said. "Get back in the car, I have to go somewhere else."

"Where?"

"The hospital."

I looked at him weirdly as he rounded the car to the other side, getting in, and then I did, sitting on top of the glass, but we didn't care.

We drove to the hospital, and while he was busy asking the driver exactly what had happened, I was going into a room that I hadn't in years.

Uncle Peter's room. I knew that he wouldn't be able to say anything, or do anything, or even know if I was there, but I didn't care. He had been the one that had saved me six years ago from the fire, dragging me out before either of us could be burned alive.

He had gotten off a lot worse than I had, sheilding me from the fire. The side of his face was completely burned and scarred because he was protecting me.

If that wasn't guilt that I was feeling, I didn't know what I was.

I didn't say anything, but I walked around his wheelchair that he had been sitting in, looking slowly to his face that was scarred for life, because he had been saving me, and I just wished that he would've let me die, if it meant that it wouldn't have turned out like this.

But it didn't matter. It had turned out like this.

Cora, Laura, mom, Lucy, all of our other cousins and uncles and aunts . . all of them dead. This was it, the only Hales left in this hospital. Derek might have been in a different room, but the same principal's still applied.

I looked at the never flinching fingers, the never moving limbs, the never blinking or twitching eyes.

"Peter," I said, leaning forward. "Peter?"

"We gotta go," Derek said from the doorway.

"Why?"

"Just come on before one of us gets arrested again."

He turned away, starting to run, and I started to run after him.

Never a boring moment.

"Derek!" Scott yelled as he stormed into our house. "I know you're here! I know what you did!"

"I didn't do anything," Derek said in a creepy whisper.

"You killed him!"

"He died."

"Like your sister died?"

"My sister was missing. I came here looking for her and found Tara instead."

"You found her."

"No, I did," I said, snapping. "I found her in pieces." My voice was harsh, cruel. "Being used as bait to catch Derek."

"I think you guys killed them both," Scott said, nearing the top of the stairs. "I'm gonna tell everyone. Starting with the sheriff."

I walked down the hall as he got to the top of the stairs, pushing him down them, making him roll. Derek was already down there, walking into the room from the living room while Scott turned around to me, growling and shifted, his eyes glowing golden yellow, instead of blue like Derek's and mine, but everything else was the same.

I didn't walk down the stairs, keeping up with the dramatics and raising my knees to my chest and jumping down all of them until I landed in front of Scott.

I didn't get a chance to fight against him before Derek was walking forward, blocking any attack that he would have made, and Scott pushed him through one of the burned walls, shattering the wood completely.

Derek was spitting out splinters and dust, knocking of the wood pieces and standing up, brushing himself off. "That was cute," he said, starting to take off his jacket.

He walked behind the clear but foggy glass, rollding his head as he started to shift, eyes glowing blue, like mine, and growling.

Scott ignored me, too afraid to hit a girl, even though she could easily kick his ass, and went straight for Derek in the other room, walking through the hole in the wall, cirlcing around Derek.

Both growled before Scott was charging after him, and Derek took him by his shirt and threw him to the wall behind them, then knocking him back again, then across a table. Scott was crouching in a second, Derek jumping in the air and going to hit Scott before he rolled away, standing up, and on the other side of him, swinging his arm across Derek's face as he was turning around. Derek hit him back, knocking him back all the way to the ground.

Scott crawled up, then had both hands on the table he had rolled over, and Derek growled again, jumping over it and kicking Scott back to the wall.

He was starting to get up as Derek headed over, kicking up and then flipping away from the wall as Scott moved, taking a wooden oar and hitting Derek across the face with it, knocking him back into the table, and then rolling to the floor.

Using the oar, Scott was about to swing it down onto Derek when he rolled and it hit the floor, Derek getting up and standing behind Scott, knocking his feet out from under him and making him do a back flip all the way to the ground, face first. Scott rolled, Derek jumping over to the other side of him, grabbing his throat, pulling him up, then pushing him back down, then again.

Derek let go of Scott, standing, and when Scott was reaching for the oar again and trying to get up, Derek kicked him in the side, flipping him through the air and over a crate, to the floor. Scott jumped onto the crate with a growl, trying to attack Derek, who just slash him in the chest to get him back down.

The whole fight, I had been watching with boredom and annoyance. "You done yet?"

Derek's neck rolled while he shifted back to human, and so did Scott. "I didn't kill him," Derek said. "None of us did. It's not your fault, and it's not ours." 

"This?" Scott demanded. "This is all your fault!" He stood, walking closer to Derek, holding his chest while I walked further into the room. "You ruined my life!"

Derek circled him. "No, I didn't."

"You're the one that bit me."

"No, I'm not."

"What?" Scott demanded louder, looking at me.

I shook my head as Derek said, "I'm not the one that bit you. Neither of us were."

Scott looked down at the slashed shirt, the wound that was already healing, then blinked, like he was remembering something, and I bet that he was. Scott leaned back until he was sitting on the couch behind him. "There's another."

"It's called an Alpha," Derek said. "It's the most dangerous of our kind. You and us? We're Betas."

"This thing," I said, "is more powerful, more animal than either of us. My sister and I came here looking for him. Now we are trying to find him."

"But I don't think we can do it without you," Derek said.

Scott barely looked around, like he was in shock. "Why me?"

"Because he's the one that bit you," Derek answered. "You're apart of his pack. It's you Scott. You're the one he wants."

I didn't bother saying that we were betting all of this on some kid who didn't know how any of this worked.