Derek was taking teaching Scott to the extremes, but I didn't really care. Yes, the kid could be a way for us to find the Alpha, probably be the best chance that we had, but with the way he was taking it and the things were going, that looking less and less likely.

What felt more likely was that he was gonna end up with us getting killed.

While he was trying to help him, I was trying to get answers from extremeities that I didn't think were gonna work, I just wanted to try.

I wanted to go to the man that had saved my life six years ago by pulling me out of the fire.

Uncle Peter was always in his wheel chair, facing away from the door, in a catatonic coma, but I had to do something. I had to try. I sat down on his hospital bed, bringing his wheelchair closer, rolling to where I could see him eye to eye. When I looked at his face, the burned right side of his face that was because of him protecting me, I looked down. I had felt guilty about that since that day of the fire because he had been protecting me, trying to keep me safe.

I tried to push down the feeling. Laura was dead. Derek and I wanted to find the Alpha and kill him for it, and we were asking help from a newly-bitten kid that had no idea what he was getting into. "I need your help," I said to my non-talking, non-moving, non-living uncle. "If you can hear me, I need you to give me a sign. Blink. Raise a finger, anything. Just--" I cut myself off, looking down. "Just something to point me in the right direction. Me and Derek. Okay?" I looked at his burns, looking down once more. "Someone killed Laura. Your niece. Laura." I still got no reply. "Whoever he is, he's an Alpha now. But he's one without a pack. Which means he's not as strong." I looked down again, wondering if the next words I spoke were true or me just saying that. "Derek and I can take him. But we have to find him first. Look, if you know something, just give me a sign. Is it one of us? Did someone else make it out of the fire?" Even though seeing him like this brought out the guilt and the hurt, I was still a Hale, and I still got angered easily, but I wasn't up to that point yet. "Just give me anything. Blink, raise a finger, anything." I gripped his arms. "Say something!"

"Let him go," a voice said from behind me, and I turned around to face his nurse. "You think that after six years of this, yelling at him is gonna get a response?"

"You got a better method?" I asked.

"Patience," she said. "He'll respond if you give him the time."

I looked back at Peter, shaking my head. The Alpha, Scott, Derek, me . . it was all going too fast. I looked back at her. "I don't have anymore time."

I walked past her and out of the room, then out of the hospital.

I saw Derek's camaro there when I got out. "Get in."

"How'd you know where I was?"

"Didn't take long to guess at," he said, raising a paper in the air as snowflakes started to fall. "Did you know about this?"

"About what?"

He gestured for me to come over to his side of the car, and I did, taking the paper. There was a deer, with a spiral cut into its side. A spiral was our sign for a vendetta, or revenge. "This is what brought us here in the first place," I told him. "Where did you get this?"

"Never mind. Get in."

I walked over to my side and opened the door, Derek already in the car as I got it, shutting it and then we were pulling away from the hospital.

Tires were squealing as he took two sharp turns out of the parking lot, and I asked, "Where're we going?"

"To the guy that looked at that deer."

"Which is?"

"Scott's boss."

"A veternarian?" I asked with disbelief as we pulled over in the parking lot, getting out of the car and walking to the door, and even though the sign said closed, we walked in.

"Scott, you're late again," said his boss. "I hope this isn't getting to be a habit."  Derek was walking into the back first, and I stood in the doorway. "Can I help you?"

"I hope so," Derek said. "I wanna know about the animal you found with a spiral on its side."

The boss' eyes furrowed. "Excuse me? What animal?" 

"Three months ago," I said. "The deer." 

Derek unfolded the paper, holding it out. "Do you remember this?" 

"Oh, yes," he said, nodding. "It was just a deer. And I didn't find it, they called me because they wanted to know if I had ever seen anything like it."

"What'd you tell them?" Derek asked.

"I told them no."

I listened carefully to the sound of his beating heart, looking to the side. "Did you hear that?"

Derek stepped forward, and he stepped away, moving slowly to the side. "Hear what?"

"The sound of your heart beat rising," I told him, stepping further into the room as Derek stood across from him at the table.

'Excuse me?" he asked.

"That's the sound of you lying."

Derek grabbed the ends of his white jacket, pulling him over the table and knocking him unconcious, and torturing him just a little bit to see if he was who we thought he was. I had tied his hands behind his back, and after a while, he was awake, looking around. "Oh, God."

He was trying to get out weakly, and Derek asked, 'Are you protecting someone?"

"All right, the key to the drug locker is in my pocket--"

He hadn't seen me behind him, but I gripped his shoulders tightly from behind. "We don't want drugs. We wanna know why you're lying."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, clearly lying again. Derek nodded his head for me to move to the side, and I did, and he spun the chair around, lifting it from the ground. "What are you doing? What do you want?"

"I want to know who you are," Derek said in his face. "Or who you're protecting."

I looked to the doorway as someone stepped in, and I rolled my eyes and turned my head away when I saw Scott as he demanded, "What are you doing?"

He flipped the light on and his boss turned his head. "Scott, get outta here!"

Derek put him on the floor again, and he landed a punch to his face, and Scott ran over, pushing me out of the way to try to stop Derek. "Stop! Stop!"

"Look, when he's concious, he can keep himself from healing, but unconcious, he can't," Derek said.

"Are you out of your minds?" he demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"You wanna know what the spiral means, Scott? It's our sign for a vendetta, for revenge. It means he won't stop killing until he's satisfyed."

"You think he's the Alpha?"

"We're about to find out," I answered for him, stepping forward and reaching out with a clawed hand to him, but like I had done with breaking his hand the other night, Scott gripped my wrist.

I was shocked when I saw him totally shifted. Hair on the side of his face, ears pointed, eyes glowing a yellow-gold, four canines and a triangle of hair on his forehead, his hands clawed as he growled at me.

Did Derek really have to teach him that so soon?

I looked to Derek, who looked as shocked as I was. So he hadn't taught him. Who had? And how did he find an anchor so fast? 

Scott let go off my wrist, letting it drop and pushing it to the side, backing away and letting the features of the wolf fade away until he was looking ordinarily human again, looking back up to us. "Hit him again, and then you'll see me get angry."

Scott was dapping away the blood, cleaning the cut on his boss' cheek as Derek paced, and I stood there looking bored, wanting to do something. If his boss really was the Alpha, I wanted him dead, and I wanted to do it myself.

Derek stopped pacing, going up to Scott. "Do you have a plan?"

"Just give me an hour," Scott said.

"Then what?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Meet me at the school. In the parking lot."

I didn't move at first, but Derek was moving for the door. When he noticed that I hadn't moved, he stopped. "Tara."

I slowly turned away from Scott, walking away and toward Derek and walking out with him back to the camaro, and then we were waiting an hour to meet Scott at the school, pulling into the parking lot and having his boss in the backseat, and of course, Stiles was with Scott.

I started to get out first, and then Derek. "Where's my boss?" Scott asked.

"He's in the back," I answered.

Scott and Stiles looked through the very tinted windows. "Oh," Stiles said sarcastically. "He looks comfortable."

Scott tapped him on the shoulder and they started to turn away, walking toward the school and Derek said, "Wait, hey. What are you doing?"

"You said I was linked with the Alpha," Scott said when they turned back to face us. Then they turned back around. "I'm gonna see if you're right."

Stiles and Scott walked up the steps to the school, and then to the door, breaking into the school and putting the tool aside, and then walking in. "This isn't gonna end well," I said with a breath, leaning against the camaro.

A few minutes later, we heard Scott's pathetic, puppy drowning howling, and I closed my eyes at the sound, in embarrassment that he was making the rest of us look bad. "You've gotta be kidding me."

One minute later, the howl was a lot better, a lot deeper, and sounding like an actual werewolf, shaking the school and loud enough to attract the whole state of California.

This could get a whole lot of people dead.

When they walked back outside, Derek pointed at them. "I'm gonna kill both of you."

"What the hell was that?" I demanded.

"What are you trying to do?" Derek asked. "Attract the entire state to the school?"

"Sorry," Scott said. "Didn't know that it'd be that loud."

"Yeah, it was loud," Stiles said, nodding and chuckled. "And it was awesome."

"Shut up," I told him.

"Don't be such a sour wolf," he said.

Scott's hand reached to his stomach, and he looked in the back of the camaro. "What did you guys do to him?"

"What?" I muttered, both of us turning around.

He was gone. Derek turned back to them. "We didn't do anything."

I heard growling as I heard skin puntured, and I looked over to Derek, right next to me, as he was being raised in the air, blood coming out of his mouth before I felt another set of claws in my back before I could even move, piercing through my leather jacket, my shirt, and through ever layer of skin I had, making blood come from my mouth too as he raised me from ground, and even more blood overflowed onto my chin.

Scott and Stiles were already running for the school when the Alpha threw Derek into the brick wall twenty feet away, and then me. My head hit the brick before I fell to the ground, eyes closed and I saw blackness.