Harper didn't sleep a wink last night. All she could think about was her father and everything that he had told her, his voice burning her brain. His last words were demanding that she and her friends read his book, but she honestly wasn't sure that she wanted to. Valack had told her that it would be different for her, and she had no clue what that meant. Good different or bad different? Knowing Harper's luck, it was probably the latter one.

The brunette packed the concealer on under her eyes, pressing it down with the tips of her fingers just as Malia came into the room. Harper wasn't shocked to find that the werecoyote had just wandered in. At the start, it was so that she could sleep in the same bed as Harper, but now that Malia had Isaac it was for him. However, the Tate girl still liked to visit her closest friend.

"Hey," the short-haired girl greeted quietly, knowing exactly what kind of mood Harper was in.

The entire pack had been informed via a group chat that Harper wasn't involved in last night, and so they all promised to look out for her as much as they could without totally smothering her. Malia could sense Harper's tiredness, making her frown a little as she took a seat on the end of her bed.

"Hey, Malia," Harper managed a small smile, pressing the last of her concealer in.

Harper moved over to her bag while the werecoyote sat in silence, looking around the room for anything to spark conversation. Her eyes landed on all of the polaroids that Harper had pinned to one of her noticeboards, a smile crossing her face when she saw some of herself.

She glanced back at the Empath, her smile dropping when she realised that Harper was having a hard time doing up the laces of her white pumps.

Quickly, Malia moved down and brushed Harper's shaking hands away, kneeling in front of her while she tied them up. Harper stared at her for a few moments, saying nothing as she pursed her lips.

"Thanks," Harper swallowed thickly, not meeting Malia's eye as the werecoyote glanced up at her.

Malia sighed as she moved to the other shoe, not replying.

"Why are your hands shaking?" She asked once she had finished, standing up so that she more than Harper's height again.

Harper shrugged. "I don't know."

"Did you sleep okay last night?" Malia questioned, one brow raised.

"Yeah, yeah. It was fine," the brunette lied.

Malia glanced over at Harper's bed, finding that it was pristine. The covers weren't turned over like aways and there was no dent in the pillows. Her scent didn't linger there and Malia knew that was because Harper hadn't even gotten into the bed last night. She chose not to say anything though, since the last thing anyone needed was Harper being upset with the pack.

"Right," Malia nodded warily before remembering why she entered the room in the first place, her eyes lighting up. "Well, you left your phone downstairs, and Stiles called. He says he's on his way to pick you up."

"I drive myself to school now," Harper frowned.

"Yeah, but he said he was ditching the first few periods to go to his dad's office," Malia shrugged in return. "I'm coming with."

"What about Isaac?"

"He's not really talking to me right now, actually," the Tate girl huffed. "He's kinda pissed that I hung out with Theo last night instead of him."

Harper's eyes practically bulged out of their sockets, her body whirling around to face Malia. She moved pretty quick, feeling her head go a little fuzzy- most likely from the lack of sleep.

"Why were you hanging out with Theo?" Harper gaped.

"He offered to give me a driving lesson in his car," Malia shrugged. "I don't know. He was just being nice, but I ended up having a vision."

"A vision?"

"Mhm, like, ur, Valack said we would," Malia hesitated to say his name, but Harper's expression didn't change anyway. "It was the night of the crash. Theo took me to Isaac, but he wasn't happy, I guess."

Before Harper had the chance to reply, the front door swung open from downstairs, Stiles yelling out Harper's name, a shriek of surprise following.

"Does every teenager in Beacon Hills have a key to my house?" They heard Melissa gasp, startled by Stiles' entrance.

"Right," Harper picked up her bag. "Ready to go?"

Malia nodded with a small smile. "To Stilinski."
...

Noah crossed out a picture of Tracy from his noticeboard using red Sharpie, indicating her death. He stared at her face for a few moments, his own fallen in disappointment. It was obvious that the Sheriff was feeling let down he wasn't able to help.

"Chimeras," he muttered.

"Two dead Chimeras," Harper sighed.

"And eight new ones," added Malia.

Stiles finished, "that's ten in total."

"I'm thinking maybe eleven," Sheriff Stilinski admitted, his back still turned to the teenagers as he added another picture to the board, securing it in place with a pin.

Harper's eyebrows raised a little at the sight of Donavon who she actually hadn't heard a lot about in a while. The last anyone had seen of him was when Tracy attacked the station. He had been in the jail cell, but he disappeared after. All security footage had been cut out.

"Our station tech guys confirmed something for me," Noah continued. "they said, both the holding cell lock and the cameras could have malfunctioned because of something electromagnetic." He glanced at his desk, picking up Valack's book. "You said that, uh, these guys-"

"Dread Doctors," Malia automatically corrected him.

Noah scrunched his face up. "Are we really calling them that?"

Harper ignored him. "So, they broke Donavon out of the holding cell? Then turned him into a Chimera like the others?"

"That's how they got into Eichen, isn't it?" Sheriff Stilinski shrugged.

Malia nodded. "Donavon's a Chimera." She agreed, stepping closer to the board as she stared at his face pictured in black and white.

Harper felt panic coming from beside her, her face turning to see Stiles facing the ground. Frowning, she planted a hand on his arm reassuringly, trying to push some relaxing energy into him.

"Hey, don't worry," she murmured quietly. "I'm sure Scott will come up with something to keep your dad safe, if Donavon even tries anything."

Stiles glanced up at her, but as soon as their eyes met he tore them away like he couldn't handle looking into them. She sensed guilt there, making her heart thud. He'd been acting like this for a couple of days now.

Immediate conclusions sprung to her head, but she tried to push them away. Stiles would never do anything to intentionally hurt her, right?

The brunette felt a little hurt that he couldn't even look into her eyes for a second, her hand moving away from her arm and back to her side.

"But is he a failure like Lucas and Tracy?" Sheriff Stilinski asked.

Harper walked closer to them. "If he is, he's probably already dead."

Malia nodded in agreement, lifting up the red marker to cross off his face. Noah stopped her by gently clasping her wrist, shaking his head.

"Not until I've seen a body," he insisted.

There was a small silence until Sheriff Stilinski turned around, finding Stiles with his back to them in the corner. He was clasping his hands together, something he did often when he was nervous. Harper bit down on her lip, her worry sparking further.

"You're uncharacteristically quiet," his father noted, making him turn around.

"Sorry," Stiles swallowed. "Uh, I'm just uh.. Just trying to think about it. Uh... these are all teenagers, right? So, now, I mean, shouldn't we be trying to figure out why these teenagers? If the Dread Doctors, if they went through all that, burying them, killing them, breaking one of them out of jail..."

"They could have been chosen at random," Noah shook his head, his arms folded against his chest.

"They had to have had something in common," Malia disagreed.

"Something that made them right for this experiment," Noah hummed.

"Something that made them special."

...

"My mum's book club usually has more wine," Lydia retorted in an attempt to lift the spirits as the pack all crowded around the coffee table in the McCall household.

On top laid about eight copies of the book 'The Dread Doctors', all of which were going to get read tonight. Much to Harper's surprise, Theo was there too. Scott had asked for his help, claiming they needed as much as they could get. To say both Isaac and Stiles were displeased would be an understatement.

"Yeah, and they probably didn't read books that caused violent hallucinations," Stiles added, rolling his hazel eyes.

"That's why Malia's here," Scott nodded to the werecoyote, who sent him a smile.

"So none of us go running off into traffic?" Kira scoffed.

"Or worse," Isaac muttered.

"Like what happened to Judy," Malia said absentmindedly, frowning when she saw how the pack looked at her in confusion. "Chapter fourteen."

"Maybe I should get my mum to read it," Lydia huffed, picking up the original copy from off the table. "She might remember a girl with a tail leaping off the ceiling and attacking everyone."

"It it works," Harper spoke up for the first time that evening, picking a printed copy and grimacing at it.

"It has to."

"Why?"

"Because I think I saw them during my surgery," Lydia admitted with a small sigh. "When I look at the cover of the book, it's almost like..."

"A memory trying to resurface," Theo finished for her, making everybody glance at him and Lydia nodded.

Kira looked over at Harper. "Isn't that what your dad wanted when he wrote it?"

The brunette nodded, feeling sick to her stomach at the title that Kira had given him. She wanted to tell her not to call him that, but she didn't want to seem like some dramatic, heartbroken teenage girl, so she kept her mouth shut.

"He wrote it for Harper," Isaac recalled what Lydia had told them all this morning at school while Malia, Stiles and Harper had been at the station with Noah. "For you to remember, Harper."

Stiles huffed, "yeah, and he also said that it would be different for you. Maybe you shouldn't read it."

Harper swallowed. "If they did something to me like he said then I want to know what it was."

Lydia nodded along in agreement, about to say the same thing. Visions of them during her surgery kept popping up randomly and it was starting to impact her negatively.

"The book was written for her," Theo reminded Stiles, making her boyfriend glare slightly. Even Isaac looked a little pissed off, no longer thinking that the Stilinski boy was crazy for hating Theo so much. "If anyone here's gonna get something from reading it, it will be Harper."

"Theo's right," she sighed, though she didn't want to admit it. "My da- he said that Empaths have something to do with stopping the Dread Doctors, right? What if he put something in here I can get, but you guys can't?"

Everyone went silent, knowing that the brunette was right. Licking his bottom lip, Stiles reached down and grabbed a copy off of the table, everybody else following.

...

Harper sat on the couch in between Malia and Stiles, the book on her lap as she leaned forwards, reading it. As her eyes processed the words on the page, it was like she could hear her father reading it to her instead of her own mind. But his voice was a little softer, like how he would speak when he read to her as a child.

She was shocked that her father would read a young girl something like this, until she remembered who her dad was. Her mother was right for calling him out about it being morbid. Right now, some girl named Judy was smashing into the head of a girl called Amy with a bat.

"Anyone feeling anything yet?" She heard Scott call, but she didn't look up.

"Tired," Kira muttered while Lydia sighed, "hungry."

"I think he meant the book," Theo sent a smile in Lydia's direction, but she just blinked at him before turning away, holding her head in her hand.

"Harper," Stiles nudged her, making her finally look up from the book. "Maybe you should take a break and try not to overwhelm yourself."

"Yeah," Lydia nodded in agreement. "Can you get me a drink?"

The brunette raised her eyebrows, folding the page that she was on and throwing it onto the coffee table.

"I'll make coffee for everyone," she insisted. "We're gonna need all the caffeine we can get if we're gonna keep reading this absolute rubbish."

Stiles followed her out into the kitchen, insisting on helping. While they waited for the kettle to boil, Stiles sat on one of the barstools, leaning over it and rubbing his shoulder. Harper's face dropped from where she had been putting sugar in all of the mugs.

Instead of asking, she secretly connected to her boyfriend, immediately wincing at the pain that shot through her shoulder. She dropped the spoon, the metal clanging against the fragile cup and making Stiles' head shoot up.

"You okay?" He asked.

Harper played dumb. "My shoulder hurts."

Stiles pursed his lips nervously. "What did you do to it?"

Harper shrugged, "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"

  Realising that she had connected to him, Stiles froze. His hand moved away from his shoulder that he had been unconsciously rubbing, a guilty look shining in his eyes.

  "It was the hood of the jeep," he claimed— an obvious lie to the Empath. "It came down on my shoulder when I was trying to fix it the other night."

  "Let me see it," Harper demanded.

  "What? No," Stiles moved back in his seat, suddenly growing defensive.

  "I don't know why you're lying to me, Stiles, and I don't know why you've been acting so strange the past couple of days, but you're starting to make me really worried," she admitted. "Please. If there's anyone you can trust, it's me."

  Stiles' eyes were trained on the counter top in front of him, tears burning as he glanced back up at his girlfriend. He knew she was right- he trusted Harper even more than he trusted his own father or Scott.

  "I don't want you to hate me," he whispered, his voice cracking a little. "I don't want you to be scared of me either."

  Harper swallowed. "Did... did you cheat on me?"

  Stiles' entire face contorted into one of disbelief. "What?" He gaped incredulously. "Why the hell would you think I was cheating on you?"

  "Just... the way you don't like to meet my eye. And you didn't want me touching you, and you lied that you were sick. I don't know," Harper shook her head. "I know I overthink a lot, I just don't know what else could make me hate you. There is nothing else."

  Standing up from the seat, he moved around to her side and grasped her arms firmly, his face leaning down to look at her.

  "I would never," he promised. "I don't need to be with anyone else and I don't even want to be with anyone else. Not in a million years."

  "So will you tell me the truth then?" Harper begged, her voice low so that the others wouldn't hear them. "Please."

Stiles hesitated. His jaw clenched a little as he swallowed thickly and glanced back into the living room where the others were. He caught sight of Theo in an armchair, his back to them as he held up his copy of the book, but his head was tilted to the side as if he had been listening the whole time.

  "Not here," the hazel-eyed boy pursed his lips, "somewhere private."

  "My room?" Harper suggested.

  "No. Outside," he grasped her hand and pulled her to the back door, slipping out onto the patio.

  Harper shivered in the night air, wondering what was so secret that they had to be outside the house for him to say. He was pacing a little, running a hand through his hair. Harper sensed his nerves and grabbed his arm, tugging him back to face her.

  "Stiles," she warned. "You're starting to scare me."

  "That's exactly what I don't want," he muttered, his bottom lip trembling a little. "I have no idea how to say this."

  "Spit it out before you make me panic," Harper pleaded.

There was about thirty seconds of silence before Stiles finally said something.

  "You were right," he blurted, making her frown in confusion. "What you said at the Sheriff's station, about Donavon probably already being dead. You were right. He is dead."

  Harper's brows knitted together. "How do you know? Was he a Chimera too?"

  Stiles ran his hand down his throat, closing his eyes momentarily before he sighed. "I know... I know because it was me."

"I— I don't understand," the brunette whispered, her eyes studying him as if waiting for him to crack a smile and say he was joking.

"I killed Donavon."

  Harper froze, and Stiles didn't miss it.

He was pretty sure his heart had shattered the second he saw her eyes widen, an emotion he couldn't detect running through them. Harper gulped, pursing her lips to spot some sign of a lie. Stiles was telling the truth.

  "You killed him?" She whispered.

  "It was self-defence," Stiles told her quickly. "I— he was going to kill me, I had no choice. I didn't even mean to, I—"

He stumbled over his words as he watched her, unable to continue with the sight in front of him. Harper just looked so shocked and confused that he found every emotion he had experienced that night replaying over and over again, preventing him from finishing his sentence.

"Please," he pleaded, tears falling from his eyes. "Please tell me what you're thinking right now."

It was times like this that he wished he was an Empath. Usually, his girlfriend was pretty easy to read— she wore her expressions like an open book, to him at least. However, right now he didn't have a clue and it was terrifying, his heart pounding in his chest and bile rising to his throat.

  "Did you cover up the body?" Harper finally asked, her tone firm as she made eye contact with him. He was shocked. "Did you leave evidence behind that you did it?"

   "No, I— someone took the body, just like they did with Tracy," Stiles swallowed, a tear falling down his cheek as he remembered the night. "Why— why aren't you running away from me right now?"

"Because it's you, Stiles," Harper admitted, her voice still low. "And I know it was self-defence. And— and you don't deserve to go away for it. I can't let you go away for it."

His erratic heart started to calm down, realising that this hadn't made Harper scared of him. Stiles ran a hand through his hair, his eyes softening at her words.

  "It- it all happened so quickly," Stiles muttered, brushing away his tears with his hands. "I was trying to fix the jeep, and he came up behind me with teeth in his hands. He bit my shoulder- so I hit him with a wrench and I just ran."

  Harper released a shaky breath. "You ran home?"

  "That's not what killed him," he closed his eyes, the image burning in his brain. "We were in the library, and he was chasing me up the scaffolding. He told me- he told me he was going to kill me and then my dad. So I pulled a pin to try and get him off me. But the poles fell— and I heard it before I saw it. It went straight through him. There was blood everywhere. It was— it was awful. And whenever I go to sleep, all I can see is his face staring at me."

Harper grabbed his hands and squeezed them. "You're not a murderer, Stiles. You didn't mean to kill him, okay? What you did was justifiable, all right? Everything's gonna be okay."

  He began to cry a little harder. "I killed him!"

  "Shh. No, no, baby," Harper hushed him, pulling him to a hug as he cried on her shoulder. "Sti, you aren't a killer. You're not cold-hearted or murderous. You did what you had to do. You saved your dad's life."

  "Everybody's gonna hate me when they find out the truth," he whimpered, "Scott's gonna hate me."

  Harper's hand stroked down his back as she shook her head, "Scott could never hate you, Sti. When you're ready to tell him, I'm sure he'll be ready to sit and listen, and he'll react just like I did— he'll be there to help you."

  "You think?" He mumbled.

  "Scott's the most understanding out of all of us," Harper reminded him, "and you're his best friend in the entire world. I promise he won't hate you."

  Stiles was still crying, his tears leaking through the thin material of Harper's shirt and making her shoulder wet. Not that she cared, though. She brushed her fingers through his dark hair, an act that she knew he found comfort in.

  "Okay, okay. If you can't forgive yourself, put yourself in someone else's shoes."

"Who's?" Stiles sniffled.

  "Um, mine," Harper suggested. "My shoes, okay? Imagine I was you. Imagine he hurt me, and he threatened to kill me and your dad, and he was about to do it— so I saved myself. Would you think I was a murderer? Would you blame me?"

  Stiles rubbed his face with his hands. "I wouldn't," he admitted. "But we're not the same person. You're a better person that I am, Harper."

"That's not true, Stiles," Harper stated firmly. "You have a heart of gold, everybody knows that."

He ignored her, "I should of— I could have found another way."

  Harper shook her head. "People don't think like that in life or death situations, Sti. You're a human being, one that will make mistakes over time. If you had of let him get away, your dad could be dead right now. You could be dead right now."

  Swallowing thickly, Stiles nodded. His hazel eyes were rimmed red, making her sigh sympathetically. Reaching up, she pressed her lips against his and took him into a slow, passionate kiss.

"Then what would I do, huh?" She mumbled, her arms wrapped around his neck. "I can't live in a world without you, Stiles, and so— in some maybe sick way— I'm just so glad that you're the one that's okay. Cause if you hadn't of been, I would have been crushed. And so would your dad, and Scott, and everybody else."

  "I love you," Harper murmured. "I love you more than anything in this entire world, and what you've done doesn't change that. Not at all."

  "I love you too," he whispered, clinging onto her for dear life.

...

harper's words are gonna come back to bite her in the ass whoops

also i posted a stiles imagine in my dylan obrien imagines book today if you wanna check that out !

thanks for reading xo <3