"He may not have been dead before, but he fucking will be soon."

Those were the first words Rachel had said to her sister Cora upon arriving back in Beacon Hills & returning to the loft.

After learning from Ethan that her brother was probably still alive, Rachel was relieved to say the least. She wasn't all that happy about upholding a conversation with one of the alphas, if only for a few seconds, but it was worth it. She could finally relax & stop being the pack's own personal hope enthusiast, and instead focus more on healing the self-inflicted wound in her arm— which had still yet to fully heal, but had improved significantly. On top of all that, the cross country meet in Hell had been cancelled, hopefully forever, and they were returning home a day early.

Rachel had been extremely happy for about 0.5 seconds, until Cora had texted her to confirm that Derek was indeed alive— and screwing her english teacher. In fact, Derek had been so preoccupied with Ms. Blake, that he didn't even bother letting anyone know he was alive until the next day.

"So, how was your cross country meet?" Cora tried to make conversation with her, her gaze falling on her twin's bandaged arm. "What happened to your arm?"

"The meet was postponed, and we were forced to spend the night at a shady motel. Someone poisoned all the werewolves, myself included, with wolfsbane & I think you can fill in the blanks for yourself— I certainly have, because I don't remember shit. One second I was reading a text from Lydia saying she needed help, the next I was dying in an unfinished motel room with self-inflicted wounds."

"That sounds fun." Cora mused, her tone as sarcastic as Stiles. The past twenty-four hours for her had been equally as horrible, albeit with significantly leas death– she & Peter had been out stalking the alphas, trying to find out whether or not Derek had survived.

"It was. I also punched someone in the face." And then made out with him two hours later, but you don't need to know that part. It made her seem like a bit of a hypocrite, when it came to the reason she was here in the first place.

"There's the Rachel I remember." The Hale wolf half smiled, leaning back against one of the many support beams in the loft. "What else did you do?"

"That's it."

"No it isn't."

"There's the Cora I remember." Rachel mocked her sister's words from a moment ago, rolling her eyes. When they were little, one twin keeping a secret from the other was the definition of impossible; it couldn't be done. They'd concocted a theory that the link between them that warned one when the other was in pain, also warned one when the other wasn't telling every last detail of a story.

"Are you going to tell me?"

"Nope."

"I'm hurt, I thought we agreed not to keep secrets from each other?" Cora faked hurt, frowning. It was an agreement they'd made as far back as she could remember, when they were six or seven & had begun sneaking out of the house, eavesdropping on various people; particularly, their mother, when she went out on important alpha business,

"I'll tell you eventually, when I'm sure Derek & Peter aren't lurking in the shadows listening." Rachel assured her, getting up off the floor; she had been working out to pass the time until Derek returned, but it was tiring doing everything with only one arm. Her left one had yet to fully heal, and she wasn't about to make it worse. "Speak of the devil, how the hell did you manage an entire twenty-four hours with Peter? I would've killed him. It was a perfect opportunity, too. There was no Derek to stop you. Dammit!"

"I heard that!" Peter yelled from the other room.

"Why the fuck are you still here?" Rachel yelled back, listening for a moment. She waited for a reply, but one never came. What she did hear however, was the theme song of her favourite television show. "He's watching Pretty Little Liars again. Oh my god. Can we please kick him out before he buys one of those fold-out couch beds & moves in?"

"You can try, but it won't work." The younger Hale twin shrugged, looking at the doorway the voice originated from. "He's got a really annoying neighbour at his apartment building, plays loud music all night. He said he's retired from murder, so he can't do anything about it."

"I'm not retired, I'll go kill the neighbour if it gets Peter out of my damn loft."

"My loft." Derek corrected as he walked in the door, setting a bag of groceries down on the table. "And since when do you live here?"

"Since always, Mr. I'll call my sister & tell her I'm alive after I'm done screwing her english teacher. Seriously, Derek? This is an all time low for you." The reflector hissed, glaring daggers across the room. It was taking every but of self control she had not to walk over there & punch him. "Do you have any idea what the past twenty-fours have been like for me? I almost died!"

"So did I."

"Yet you still found time to sleep with my english teacher."

"Can we move on from that?" His tone was a mix of impatient & insensitive. Derek didn't even acknowledge the fact that Rachel had almost died, and she was betting he still wouldn't even if he knew how— the darach poisoning her. He was Derek, and despite caring a lot about both his family & his pack, he rarely showed it (and when he did, his ways were often unorthodox & easily mistaken as insensitive).

"Derek, everyone thought you were dead." Rachel deadpanned, staring at him as though he'd committed a massacre. Did it not occur to him that people were heartbroken? That people looked up to him as a leader & would be lost if he were to have actually died? Even after all that had happened, Rachel still loved him; he was her brother, he was family. One of the only two family members she had left, and the loss of either would hurt worse than any physical injury.

"Well, I'm not, so you can tell them to stop worrying."

"What should I tell the darach? The presumably psychotic dark druid that tried to kill us all, while you were recovering." The amount of disgust in the last word that left her lips was record breaking. Derek stared blankly back at her, silence filling the room until Rachel spoke again. "Nice to see you give a damn, as always. If you need me, I'll be in my room mourning the loss of the brother who actually cared about me."

—

New Message
10:47pm
To: McWeirdo
From: Rachel
Congratulations, you're now my new emergency werewolf contact since my old one no longer gives a shit about me.

From: McWeirdo
To: Rachel
what happened

To: McWeirdo
From: Rachel
Things I would seriously rather not be reminded of by having to type them all out. Can I come over?

From: McWeirdo
To: Rachel
im at the hospital rn, danny & ethan are here

To: McWeirdo
From: Rachel
Please tell me no one is dead.

From: McWeirdo
To: Rachel
no, but danny had a collapsed lung, my mom saved him!! also do u know anything about mistletoe

To: McWeirdo
From: Rachel
Scott, I swear if you or Stiles ate any, I'm going to kill you before it does.

From: McWeirdo
To: Rachel
so its poisonous? danny was throwing it up

To: McWeirdo
From: Rachel
Extremely poisonous. But also not common around here. Danny isn't stupid, why the hell would he eat mistletoe?

From: McWeirdo
To: Rachel
idk?? i dont think he did

To: McWeirdo
From: Rachel
You don't think anyone would poison Danny? He's Danny. Everyone loves him.

From: McWeirdo
To: Rachel
idk

To: McWeirdo
From: Rachel
Do you know anything?

From: McWeirdo
To: Rachel
no

Do you ever know anything? She wanted to text that in response, but she knew taking her anger out on Scott wasn't a good choice. It wasn't his fault her brother was an inconsiderate dick, and more than likely if she wanted to rant about it, Scott would happily listen— but he had enough to deal with, by the sound of it. She wasn't going to make him worry about her too (she knew he would, if he wasn't already, because he was Scott & he cared about people).

"Are you gonna tell me now?"

Rachel looked up from her phone screen to see Cora standing in her room— how the girl had managed to open the door, enter & close the door without Rachel noticing was beyond her knowledge. "Nope."

Cora rolled her eyes & sighed. Rather than leaving, she walked over & flopped on the end of the bed, turning to her sister with another question the reflector couldn't answer. "Are you at least gonna tell me how you almost died? You were just reading a text, then you blacked out.. And woke up almost dead?"

"Basically." Rachel shrugged— she wasn't lying. She had no memory whatsoever of what had happened, aside from the little that Lydia had disclosed. The strawberry blonde had found her via the sound of clicking, which the girl told Rachel she believed to be werewolf's claws tapping against the unfinished floor. Although it could have easily been brushed off, Lydia followed it because the sound stood out to her amongst all others. Much like the voices of the dead that'd warned her in time to stop Boyd from drowning.

But then again, what Lydia told her couldn't all have been truth, because her heartbeat had skipped multiple times throughout the retelling.

Just as Rachel was about to say something, the text tone of her phone interrupted her. Not a second after the sound chimed through silence, Cora was already asking, "who is it?"

"Probably Scott." Rachel shrugged, pressing the home button to illuminate the screen.

11:08pm
From: derek's bitch #1
are you awake

"Scott's name in your phone is Derek's bitch #1?" Cora raised a brow, confused. From what she had gathered, Scott didn't like Derek— at least, not enough to be considered a member of his pack & definitely not enough to be his bitch.

"Yep." Rachel answered, locking her phone & stuffing it under her pillow.

"You liar!" Cora called her out after hearing the skip of her heartbeat. Rachel always was a bad liar, especially when it came to her sister; it didn't help that Cora never passed on an opportunity to expose her lies. It went both ways— Cora couldn't lie to Rachel either, but the difference between the two was that Cora hardly ever tried. Once or twice was all Rachel could ever remember, meanwhile she could recall her own attempts failing countless times. "Who is it?"

"Stiles."

"No it isn't."

"Boyd."

"Nope."

"Cora, go to bed." Rachel sighed. It was like arguing with herself— and that was the definition of impossible. She was running out of people to name, and sooner or later Cora was going to guess. It wasn't that she didn't want her sister to know about her little crush, she wanted to tell her. Rachel missed having a sister to tell everything to (up until now, said "sister" role had been played by Stiles, who she could tell was getting sick of her shit), but she didn't want Derek to overhear. And he would.

Even when she didn't think he was listening, he was— there was no such thing as a private conversation when there was a werewolf in the same building as you. They heard everything, whether they wanted to or not.

"Are you a booty call?" Cora raised a brow, eyeing her suspiciously.

"What?" The reflector gaped, momentarily stunned by the question. "No! Oh my god. If I ever become one, you have my permission to slap me."

"Can I get that in writing?"

"No."

—

It was almost as though a law existed in Beacon Hills forbidding any member of the Hale family from having nice things. Whether they were burned, broken or spray painted with the alpha pack's stupid symbol, some how everything Rachel or Derek owned always managed to be destroyed. The most recent thing being the window at Derek's loft; the alphas had decided in the early hours of the morning to break in & vandalize yet another one of Derek's homes.

But their symbol, their own variation of a triskele, meant more than just needing to wash the window. It was a warning, signifying that they were coming for Derek. He may have survived the fall, but Ennis had not— and they were out for vengeance. Derek had two choices, to kill or be killed, and it wasn't seeming like they were ready to give up on him just yet.

Rachel, however, had very much given up on him. Maybe it was because the alphas' idiotic schemes had costed her three hours of sleep, leaving the brunette to run on a little over an hour. She was in one of her "if you so much as look at me the wrong way, I'll bite you" moods. If she had've stayed at the loft & listened to Derek's ranting & Peter's douchebag comments for even a minute more, she would've thrown them both through the damn window.

But luckily for them, she went to school. Rachel figured if she wanted to survive the supernatural bullshit constantly infiltrating her life, she wanted to do it while obtaining an education so she could actually do something with her life once it was over. Her grades were starting to suffer from the amount of days she'd skipped, and she wasn't about to look like an idiot failing simply for slacking off. She was smart, albeit not when it came to algebra, and she was going to graduate high school. With her sister.

Her sister, who she had lost track of amongst the crowds of students flooding into the hallway when the bell rang. It was the end of morning break, Rachel had been showing Cora around the school during first period but ended up having to go to the other end of the school for math class whilst her twin went to english class— the bell had rang almost ten minutes ago, the halls were clearing & Rachel still hadn't found Cora. She was beginning to think the girl had gone back to the loft with Boyd & Isaac (to pitch the idea of the world's dumbest plan to Derek, who would more than likely go along with it & get himself "killed" for the third time) until the fire alarm went off.

Rachel had been at Beacon Hills high school for almost a year now, and not once had the fire alarm gone off. There wasn't even the faintest scent of smoke lingering in the air, nor were there any teachers hurrying students towards the nearest exit— the only teacher Rachel had seen looked confused, as if they weren't expecting it. If Cora was anything like she was seven years ago, the fire alarm would not conveniently go off on her first day without her somehow being involved.

"Is there a problem?" Lydia's voice sounded quiet in comparison to the loud fire alarm blaring through the halls, but Rachel picked up on it as soon as she rounded the corner.

"Yeah." Cora answered, her tone threatening. Rachel could already tell this wasn't going to end well. "Derek would like to kindly ask you to stop seeing Aiden, which means that if I catch you with him again, I'm not going to pull the fire alarm. I'm going to pull your tongue out of your head."

"Sweetheart, my last boyfriend was a homicidal lizard, so I think I can handle a werewolf." Lydia snapped back.

Before either girl could say another word, Rachel was already at the door to Coach's office, interrupting the disagreement before it turned into a fight. She was aware Lydia was sneaking around with Aiden, but she chose to ignore it for the simple fact that it wasn't her business. It didn't affect her in any way, and if she let the alpha twins think it affected her, then they'd have more leverage. They, along with their pack, were already threatening her siblings on a daily basis.

"Remember when I said I had friends?" Rachel questioned her sister, looking back at Lydia. "This is one of them, and it'd be really great if you could refrain from killing her."

"Who's killing who?" Stiles' voice behind her made Rachel jump. It was next to impossible to sneak up on her, but somehow both he & Derek managed to do it every so often.

"No one's killing anyone." Rachel fake smiled, wrapping her arms around Lydia & Cora's shoulders. "We're all friends here."

The homicidal look on Cora's face & Lydia's eye roll screamed otherwise, even someone unable to see either of those could sense the tension in the air, but Stiles didn't seem to want to question it. What happened before he arrived was the least of his problems. "Okay then friends, I need to borrow Lydia and Rachel."

"What do you need with us?" The reflector understood why he could need Lydia— she was quickly becoming Beacon Hills' resident dead body detector. She hadn't gotten any texts from anyone aside from Boyd & Isaac all morning, but she didn't doubt that there was another body needing to be found.

"I'll explain on the way."

—

UNEDITED. rae's probably gonna get slapped real soon tbh

short chapter yikes but i wanted to update & express my hatred for currents. this episode jumps around so freaking much & it's literal hell to write already (hence the reason i skipped like half of it for some quality family time). also, if i were to continue this book into season five, would anyone read it? season four would be skipped. i'm strongly considering it because i feel like cramming everything i have planned into 3B would be too much (+ i really want to write a lot of rae & malia, and i want her to meet liam), but i don't know. nothing's decided as of yet.