┌─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───┐
chapter twenty-three!
LYDIA'S TREES
└─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───┘

( alpha pact, pt. i )

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

DOMINIC RETURNS TO school the next day. If anything, their friend group has grown accustomed to returning to their academic lives after a near-death experience like it's no big deal. After a trip to the police station to confirm he's alive, he spends the night at Vera's because his family is still held back by the storm.

The building is unusually empty today. After the disaster at the memorial recital — Jennifer had caused the demise of another teacher, completing her third death for the Philosopher sacrifices — it seems that most parents had wanted their children to stay home. Scott is off God-knows-where with Deucalion. Allison isn't picking up her phone. Isaac is nowhere to be seen. It's just Lydia, Stiles, Dominic, and Vera wondering what the hell their next move is going to be.

Being stagnant is the worst phase of a battle. There always comes a point where there's nothing to be done as each side reevaluates their plays. The problem is that Vera doesn't even know what they can possibly do when she can't see the whole board. Even the people on her side — Scott and Allison, for example — seem to be hiding things.

But what is her side anymore? She'd always thought it was her and her friends versus the Alphas, but now that Jennifer is involved, they've formed an overlapping triangle. Derek needs Jennifer to heal Cora. She and Scott need the Alphas to keep their mothers safe. The lines between ally and foe are becoming more blurred than she would like.

Even though she'd wanted nothing more than to give up and show up to school with unbrushed hair and still dressed in her pajamas, she'd forced herself to look presentable. She'd sluggishly pulled on a pair of black jeans and a white top with a light blue denim jacket over it. Her mother had styled her hair into two french braids like she was a little girl again, the action far more comforting than Vera would like to admit. She hadn't bothered to put in her contacts and had instead opted for her glasses.

Between third period and lunch, while Vera and Dominic are standing at her locker, she gets her first message from Isaac all day.

LAHEY: jennifer took allison's father

Vera's phone almost slips from her grasp before she quickly catches it again. She doesn't feel anything at first, just a harrowing sense of numbness. Her entire body becomes encased with cold. It can't be over so soon, can it? Have they really come this far just to lose?

"What?" Dom asks, his brows pinched in worry after noticing her vacant expression. "What is it?"

She turns her phone so he can read the message. After he does, he squeezes his eyes shut and rubs them in dismay, stretching out the pale skin of his face. His messy hair is characteristic of his now-panicked mood. The pastel-green hoodie he wears sends a punch to her gut— everything has gone so, so wrong that anything bright feels like a lie when Vera's insides feel so dark.

"Oh, man," he groans. "Oh, shit. She has all three of them, then. Right?"

Vera nods. She can't find her voice in her throat right now.

Dom abruptly freezes, his green eyes widening once something hits him. "Stiles. Where's Stiles?"

Without waiting for an answer, he takes off running down the hallway, dodging the few students still loitering around. Vera doesn't move for several more seconds. She merely stands in front of her open locker with Isaac's text on her phone screen, her unfocused gaze staring at nothing. This can't be happening. She can't let her friends lose their parents, and she can't let Jennifer win. But what is there for her to do? Nothing. Nothing except stay stuck in this stupid school and somehow pay attention, pretending that everything around her isn't falling apart.

"Hey, you alright?"

A gentle hand touches her arm. It takes Vera a moment to feel it, and even longer to move, her surroundings becoming sharper as she zones back into them. Her phone screen has gone dark. A taller girl is standing in front of her with concern in her dark, angular eyes. Her black hair is falling in her face as if she's attempting to hide in it, but it doesn't obscure the freckles scattered across her nose or make her as small as she wants to be. That being said, Vera isn't sure she's familiar with this girl.

"Maybe you should talk to the guidance counselor," the girl suggests when Vera doesn't speak. Her voice is kind of quiet, again, like she barely wants to be heard.

Vera nods, managing to lift her lips in a minuscule, friendly grin that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Yeah. Thank you."

She turns around to shut her locker. By the time she faces the hallway again, the girl is gone, and there's no trace of her anywhere. Part of her begins to wonder if her mystery Good Samaritan had been a mere figment of her imagination. She regrets not even catching her name.

As she heads toward Miss Morrell's office, she unlocks her phone and finally responds to Isaac's message.

PÉREZ: is ally okay?

LAHEY: she says she is, but it's allison.

Right. So that means she's definitely not.

PÉREZ: tell her to hang on. we'll figure something out

She doesn't know if she's saying that for Allison's sake or her own, but it's likely a mixture of both. Vera doesn't like admitting that she's running out of options. Even if she's not a Hale by blood, she shares their stubbornness and inability to back down when something is wrong.

Speaking of that... Derek hasn't volunteered to help them since Cora was removed from the hospital. The storm had impeded them from driving her to the one in the next town over, so she's back at the loft with her situation not doing great. And all Derek is doing is sitting there and waiting. What he should be doing is helping them track down Jennifer so he can convince her to help him. But he's not. He's ignoring Vera's calls again, mostly because he knows that she'll spend fifteen minutes yelling at him if he picks up.

She loves her brother, but she also really hates him sometimes.

When Vera finally walks across the school to the guidance counselor's office, she sees Dominic, Stiles, and Lydia sprinting toward the door as well. All three of them appear troubled. However, her eyes narrow in on a faint redness tinting Stiles' pale cheeks. Why he's flustered, she doesn't know.

Lydia nods to her in greeting. Her long hair is tied in a fishtail braid down her back, the strands framing her face softly. That hairstyle, in combination with her sky-blue dress with a round neckline, puts the pink, blotchy bruise around her neck on full display. Vera has to admit that she's surprised. Last school year, Lydia Martin wouldn't have been caught dead with a single visible flaw. It alone shows how much she's changed since this all began in January.

"Party in Morrell's office?" Vera manages to joke, but her heart isn't in it.

"Something like that," Dominic answers vaguely.

The door is closed, but to hell if that ever stopped Stiles. He outright barges inside with flailing limbs. Vera, Lydia, and Dom share an exasperated look before following him inside her small office. Morrell's chair is empty, but there's already a girl waiting for her in the seat in front of the desk. She turns to look incredulously at them when they all file in.

"Are you here for Miss Morrell?" Stiles asks her.

The girl raises a sarcastic eyebrow. "No, I thought this was gym class."

"Sweetheart," Lydia tells her with the passive-aggressive smile that Vera used to hate but has now grown to love, "we're not in the mood for funny. Do you know where she is?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be waiting here for twenty minutes. So how about you guys back out the door and wait your turn?"

"We're not here for a session," Lydia replies.

"Well, I am."

Vera meekly raises her hand from the back of the group. "Uh, yeah, I kinda was, too."

Stiles lightly swats her on the wrist, shooting her a warning expression when she glares at him. His eyes flicker to Dominic for a second before switching back to the girl.

"I've got some serious issues to work on," she adds.

"Hey, wait, wait," Stiles interrupts, blinking rapidly as realization hits him. "You're Danielle. You're Heather's best friend."

Vera's heart gives a small tug at the mention of Stiles' childhood friend— a girl who had been one of Jennifer's first sacrifices at the beginning of the school year. She hadn't known Heather, but losing a friend isn't easy. Stiles had been distraught and they hadn't been that close in high school.

"I was Heather's best friend," Danielle corrects him. She gives a wave toward Morrell's empty chair. "We've been working on that issue three times a week."

Lydia's brows crease. "Hold on. Did you say Miss Morrell's twenty minutes late?"

Danielle nods. "And I don't know why, either. She's always on time."

Vera peers around Stiles' lanky frame to look at the counselor's vacant spot. Her desk is cleared of all materials where she would normally keep them. There isn't a file, a paper, or even a pen out in the open to suggest she'd merely stepped out for a minute. Her bag is nowhere to be seen.

It seems like Miss Morrell's not only late— she hadn't come to school at all.

"I was seeing her at the beginning of the semester," Lydia informs them. "She was never late."

"Great, now the guidance counselor's missing, too?" Dom asks.

Lydia's expression is grave. "What if we're not the only ones who think she knows something?"

Vera, frankly, has no idea what they're talking about. She'd actually come here to talk about her problems.

"Then I want to know what she knows." Stiles maneuvers around the tiny office to the other side of Morrell's desk, bending down to search through the drawers.

Danielle leans forward in her chair with an appalled appearance. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to find her," Stiles replies as he rifles through her records.

"Those files are private."

"Yeah, she's kind of right," Lydia says.

Stiles holds out a manila envelope. "That one's yours."

"Let me see that." She snatches it out of his grip, all traces of morality vanishing as she plops it on the wooden table. Vera tries not to look. She really does, but her eyes still flicker downward to see the strawberry blonde holding a sketch of a tree.

"Wait, Lydia, that's your drawing," Stiles points out needlessly.

Vera pretends to widen her eyes in shock. "No. Really? I thought it was a stolen piece of art from the Louvre."

"Yeah, I know," Lydia answers, ignoring Vera's sarcastic remark. "It's a tree."

Danielle peers over the desk with an impressed expression on her dark face. "Yeah, good, too."

Lydia clearly hadn't been expecting the compliment. She manages a small, gracious smile. "Thank you."

"Our lives are fucked and we're spending this much time talking about a drawing of a tree?" Dom mumbles, rubbing his temples with the pads of his index fingers. Only Vera appears to hear him; the others are still completely focused on Lydia's file.

Stiles points at the paper in her hand. "No, but it's the same one, though."

"Same as what?"

"Same as the one I always see you drawing in class."

"It's a tree. I like drawing trees."

"Oh my God." Dom buries his face in his hands.

"No, but it's the exact same one. Don't you see?" Stiles stands up and moves Lydia's arm so she can see the next page in her file. It's a second tree sketched in black ink on a piece of torn notebook paper, its jagged, pointed branches scaling toward the top of the page.

He reaches in Lydia's purse and pulls out a composition notebook. After hurriedly flipping through the pages, he locates another tree drawing toward the back and places it beside the one in the file. "There. See?"

Vera moves closer, weeding her way between Stiles and Lydia so she can see, too. Her brows furrow as soon as she looks at the two drawings. They're absolutely identical. Lydia's drawing isn't simple by any means — it contains countless branches all crisscrossing around each other, but the sketches are the same down to every last stroke. It's as if Lydia had used a copy machine instead of her hand and a pen.

Stiles turns the page of the notebook. There's another tree. It's smaller and done in pencil, but it's still identical to the others. As he keeps going, they find more and more trees all done in the same style.

Danielle blinks in shock. "Okay, you can have my session," she says, grabbing her purse and turning to leave. "You got bigger issues."

The boy hasn't stopped flipping pages, revealing tree after tree. Even Dominic has found an interest in the strange phenomenon. He leans his hands on the desk beside Lydia, taking Danielle's spot and staring at the notebook in awe.

"What is this?" Lydia asks, her eyes fearful as she realizes how many times she'd managed to draw the same exact thing without realizing.

Stiles reaches a page where the tree is drawn on the bottom of the slightly-wrinkled paper. He pauses on it for a second, his dark brows knitting together as he examines it more closely. Vera's about to hurry him along when he turns the notebook upside down. From this angle, it's no longer a tree— it's a stump with roots extending far beneath the earth.

He drops the book onto the table. "I know where they are."

Vera isn't sure how a drawing of a tree stump could tell him anything, but she'll take Stiles' word for it — he always seems to know things he shouldn't. Plus, it means that they finally have something useful to help them find the missing parents. The four of them hurriedly clean up Lydia's file and erase all traces that they'd touched Morrell's belongings before exiting her office.

"It's the Nemeton. It has to be." Stiles puts a hand on Vera's shoulder, causing her to look up at him. "Vera, do you know where the root cellar is?"

"Um..." she trails off, twitching her nose to push her glasses further up her face. "What cellar? That's really vague."

"Dominic?" Stiles asks, looking at the boy, who shrugs with his mouth turned down in an I-have-no-idea expression. "Seriously? Derek didn't tell either of you?"

"Tell us what?" Vera questions. "Do I have to be mad at him?"

The raven-haired boy sighs. "About Paige."

She stops, her blood turning cold at the mention of a name she hasn't heard in years. Paige was the name of Derek's very first serious girlfriend. Vera had been nine at the time, so of course she had teased him relentlessly, but the truth was that she'd loved the quiet, kind-hearted girl. She would sometimes show up to Derek's home basketball games, which was where Vera had met her. Derek had been over the moon. She still has yet to see him as happy as he'd been with her.

But then, something happened. Paige all but disappeared from their lives. Vera had offhandedly asked when the next time she'd see Paige would be, and Derek had screamed at her to go away. His mother, Talia, explained that there'd been an accident and Paige had gone to the place where Vera's dad was. She'd said to be careful around Derek and that he hadn't meant to yell at Vera; he was just feeling too much and had a lot to process.

Even though Vera had been in the fourth grade, she'd still been smarter than the Hales gave her credit for. Derek had tried to hide the color of his wolfish eyes, but when he'd had trouble with maintaining control on the next full moon, Vera had seen the change. His formerly amber eyes had frozen to a cold, bright blue.

It wasn't until she was older that she'd understood what the color meant; Derek had taken the life of an innocent.

Vera hasn't brought up Paige since. Truthfully, as time had passed, she'd almost forgotten about the girl. But hearing Stiles of all people bring her up causes a troubled rivet to form between her brows.

"How do you—?"

"Stilinski!" a voice calls at the end of the hallway. The group turns to see a tall man in an impeccable suit walking toward them with an unimpressed expression on his long face. An FBI badge dangles around his neck.

Stiles' mouth drops open in an agitated sigh. He faces them again, saying, "Alright, look, go to Derek, okay? He and Peter, they've been there before, so they'll know where it is. Tell them it's the root cellar, alright? They'll know."

Lydia nods. She grabs Vera and Dominic and hauls them away just as the unfamiliar man approaches Stiles.

"So?" Lydia asks when they stop around the corner.

Vera looks at her blankly. "So..."

The girl rolls her eyes. "Well, he's your brother. I mean, kind of. If anyone can get the information out of him, it's you."

"Yeah... maybe not." She scratches the back of her head and pushes her glasses up again. "Derek's been ignoring my calls."

"What? Why?"

"It's Derek. Hell if I know."

"And he doesn't even know I'm alive," Dominic adds. "That's how much he's been ignoring her."

Lydia glances between the two of them before puffing out a frustrated breath from her glossed lips. "Fine. We'll all go."

— ✯✯✯ —

Derek and Peter end up being completely useless. It's not much of a surprise to Vera, but she'd still been frustrated when Peter had revealed that Talia had used her claws to steal the memory of the Nemeton's location from their minds. He'd said it was so they wouldn't be tempted to go back there again.

Derek had hardly met Vera's gaze the entire time they'd been at the loft. He'd hugged Dominic and expressed gratitude that he's alive, then had gone right back to brooding.

Stupid. Vera had to swallow down some choice words for him in her mother tongue. He's not acting like an Alpha. Alphas are supposed to lead their packs, going above and beyond to find solutions to any problems that arise. Instead, it feels like he's abandoning them for Cora and not risking something to save her life. All because... Why? Because Jennifer had betrayed him?

Now, they're in the examination room of Deaton's clinic — Vera, Dominic, Lydia, Stiles, Isaac, and Allison, that is — to brainstorm some location ideas. So far, they've had no luck with figuring out where the Nemeton could be. Considering the town is home to a crap ton of trees, it's going to be a difficult task.

"It has to be on a telluric current," Stiles tells Deaton, "or maybe even at the axis of two, or where they all intersect. I just know it's where Derek took Paige to die."

Allison steps forward and places her hands on the edge of the examination table at the center of the room. "My dad and Gerard were there once, but Gerard said it was years ago, and he couldn't remember where it was." A shadow passes over her face, causing Vera to place a comforting hand on her arm. "My dad obviously isn't here to tell us now."

"Yeah, mine either," Stiles sighs.

"Then how do we find this place?" Isaac questions from his place perched on the desk behind Stiles.

Deaton has a pensive expression on his face that makes Vera shift uncomfortably. She doesn't like that look. Whenever he has it, he's about to say something none of them will enjoy hearing.

"There might be a way," he admits. "But it's dangerous. We're gonna need Scott."

Stiles and Deaton end up driving to retrieve him, leaving the rest of them waiting at the veterinary clinic. Vera's nerves are at an all-time high. The Druid had explained the gist of the ceremony that will have to take place. Like they'd done with Isaac last month, Allison, Scott, and Stiles will have to be submerged in ice baths. Their heart rates will slow enough for them to retrieve hidden memories about the Nemeton's location. However, unlike the ritual with Isaac, they'll be dead for however long it takes for the memories to resurface. And the effects — a certain darkness around their hearts — will last forever.

Not exactly the ideal answer they'd been hoping for.

Vera sits with Lydia and Allison in the clinic's waiting room. She has her hands in Allison's, pretending to be calm when she's truly anything but. Her leg aches to bounce up and down but she forces it to stay still. Allison is already afraid enough as it is; she has to be strong for her friend.

"Hey," she says softly, causing Allison to look up, her dark eyes swimming with nerves, "it'll be okay. Your dad is tough, Ally. Knowing him, he'll put up a fight."

"I just — I don't understand," she mutters. Lydia carefully brushes a stray strand of raven hair from the girl's face, tucking it behind her ear. It had fallen out of its knot at the crown of her head. "He let himself be taken. Why?"

"Maybe he thought he could battle his way out once she took him," Vera guesses. If there's one thing that's certain about Chris Argent, it's that he likes having answers. He'd probably figured he could be captured, figure out where Sheriff Stilinski and Mrs. McCall are being held, then help them all escape before the full moon tomorrow.

"Maybe." Allison doesn't sound very confident. Her mouth pulls into a small frown. "Can... can we talk about something else?"

Lydia begins speaking about something ridiculous her dog, Prada, did yesterday. As she launches into her story, Vera feels a pair of eyes on her. She turns toward the back room to see Isaac looking at the trio, but he turns away as soon as she catches his stare. Dominic's voice is muffled as he says something to Isaac that she can't decipher. She'll bet anything that Isaac had heard her pounding, anxious heartbeat and wanted to see what was going on. That nosey jerk.

"Vee," Lydia says to get her attention. When Vera looks back at her, her green eyes are knowing. "I think you just need to screw him, and then all of your problems will go away. Trust me. It works."

Vera's mouth drops open in a perfect 'o' shape as Allison snickers. She releases one of Ally's hands to lightly punch Lydia's arm. Her voice comes out in a furious whisper, "I am not — are you insane? He—"

She cuts herself off to point at her ears, reminding Lydia of his enhanced sense of hearing. The girl merely smirks. She's clearly not apologetic about what she'd said.

"I'm going to talk to Dom," Vera announces, standing up from the uncomfortable plastic chair. "At least he's sensible."

She returns to the examination room and pointedly avoids looking at Isaac. Dom sits on the table, swinging his legs and picking nervously at a thread sticking out of his sleeve. Even though Vera doesn't touch him, she can still feel that constant warmth that seems to radiate from his body when she stops in front of him.

"I kissed Stiles," Dom blurts the second she comes to a halt. Vera chokes on her own spit, her eyes going wide and brain whirling for something to say that isn't a confused and excited scream. But Dom doesn't look too happy as he continues, "I mean, I didn't really mean to — it wasn't planned. But Stiles found out about Argent and started having a panic attack, so Lydia and I took him to the empty locker room. He couldn't breathe. She kept telling him to hold his breath, and so I just—"

He smacks his hands together as an indication of how the kiss had gone. Vera is still in too much shock to respond; she isn't sure why Dom looks as upset as he does.

"Did I fuck up?" he asks. "Because I thought my gaydar was going off around him — or my bi-dar... is that a thing? — anyway, but I guess not cuz he got beet red and wouldn't look at me or talk to me unless completely necessary. And he still won't. I just feel like I crossed a line and shouldn't have, and now I've fucked up our friendship."

Vera snorts. Stiles? Straight? That's like saying Derek is the most easygoing, patient person on Earth. She thinks back to when she'd asked Stiles if he'd been crushing on Dom. He hadn't gotten a chance to reply, but the bewildered expression on his face had suggested a moment of realization.

"Don't worry, Dom," she says. "I don't think you fucked up. In fact, that may have been a good thing."

Dominic raises his eyes and gives her a thankful tug on one of her braids. She smacks his hand away with a playful roll of her eyes, then turns around to see a smirking Isaac right in front of her. The unexpected proximity makes her jump a bit in surprise.

"So, screw me and all of your problems will go away, huh?" he questions with a quirk of his brow.

Vera feels embarrassment flood her from head-to-toe, internally cursing Lydia for saying that out loud within earshot of Isaac. She'll never live it down— he'll make sure of that.

But her face doesn't reveal any of her inner emotions. She merely reaches up and cups Isaac's cheek with her hand, feeling him go completely still under her touch. Her thumb lightly grazes his sharp cheekbone as it gently rubs back and forth on his smooth skin. She tilts her head to the side, regarding him intently while his crystal-blue eyes turn wide.

And then she hums and says, "Sorry, Lahey, but I'm more of a cat person," and pats his cheek before walking back toward the waiting room.

__________

a/n:

vera has that Big Dick Energy™

also, here's a reference photo of aimee carrero to show how cute vera looks in these next few chapters:

she genuinely has my entire heart🥰🥰🥰

we're finally almost at the finale! yay! i'm not going to make a separate book for 3b or anything; it'll all just be in this book for the sake of coherency and also because i'm too lazy to think of another title or make another cover tbh

— kristyn

( word count: 4.5k )