Disclaimer – I own nothing related to Teen wolf, all its characters and stuff belongs to MTV and its creator. I earn nothing from writing this but the headaches that come from writers block.

He entered the town of Beacon Hills and tried to contain his frustration. He’d searched so many towns just like this one with no luck he was starting to lose hope of ever finding him. It had been nearly a century now with no sign of him.

He knew the Druids were smart and that they would have hidden him away in a place like this. Somewhere small, without much in the way of supernatural problems, somewhere he would find boring. Just another punishment he supposed. He couldn’t wait to kill them all. Every last Druid would feel his wrath eventually, but first he had to find him.

They thought he would just give up, that if he went long enough without any new information that he would just move on, but they didn’t know him as well as they thought they did. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his love; no stone would be left unturned.

If after searching everywhere in this realm he still didn’t find him, then and only then would he admit defeat. His admission would only be temporary however, for then he would focus all his attention on those who had taken him away and their families. Any who helped to keep them apart would forfeit their lives for such an action.

Taking a deep breath he closed his eyes and focused, seeking out all the creatures of supernatural origins in this town, and surprisingly found a great deal. For such a small town it seemed to be an epicenter of sorts for the un-natural of all kinds. Focusing more on the largest concentration of them he found… werewolves. Excellent, they would do nicely as a first stop.

---

Talia Hale was supervising the training of the youngest of their pack, newly bitten Scott McCall among them, when the wind shifted and brought the scent of danger.

“Everyone inside NOW!” She did not recognize the scent as anything she had encountered before and the added distraction of the young behind her would be too much of a distraction.

Turning to face the coming threat, she did not have to worry about being obeyed the young knew their vulnerability and when not to push their luck with her, she found a man in his twenties with dark hair and even darker eyes who looked more than just dangerous. He looked powerful.

“What business do you have here, stranger?” If he was only passing by he could have been attracted by the noise of their training and let his curiosity lead him, but if he was here to stay then this could very easily become a challenge fight. One she wasn’t sure she could win. She had been the dominant force in Beacon Hills since she inherited her Alpha-hood from her father, but this man could easily overtake her and what was worse, he knew it.

“Be at peace wolf I mean you no harm, well for the moment anyway, how long that remains true is up to you. I come here seeking something that is lost to me; I will be in this town for some time until I am certain that what I seek is not here. To remain in a place as small as this without suspicion I wish for your help. You may grant me your aid and therefore spare your pack or I can kill you all and use that as my excuse for being here. So am I visiting relatives or burying them?” He sounded bored as he offered her the choice, as though the answer meant nothing to him. It sent chills down her spine.

She didn’t know what this stranger was after, she didn’t know anything about him at all really, but what she did know was that this wasn’t a threat so much as it was a statement of fact. If she refused to help him then he would help himself it was as simple as that. She really had no choice at all and they both knew it.

“My name is Talia Hale and you are … welcome here.”

He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. The only thing there was death and darkness.

---

Stiles was walking towards the school for another never-ending Monday morning of boredom and nothingness. He didn’t understand why he was always so frustrated with the lack of things to do here. It had always been that way in Beacon Hills, and he had always been in Beacon Hills, so he really should be used to it by now. He didn’t understand why he was always restless, but that was no reason not to do everything in his power to combat that miserable lack of excitement with every ounce of his strength. First line of defense against his mind shutting down from lack of stimulation, werewolves. Speaking of which…

“Hey man did you hear the news?” Oh, Scott, good friend, bad conversationalist.

“What news are you referring to?” Sometimes it took a little prompting for Scott to realise that he wasn’t continuing a conversation, but starting an entirely new one devoid of all information currently locked away in his head.

“The news about the new Hale!” Wait what? That didn’t make any sense, how was he only now hearing about this?

“One of the Hale’s had a baby?” Wouldn’t he have heard about it at least once before the due date. The Hale’s were like Beacon Hills royalty, if someone was expecting a little furry bundle of joy the news would have spread like wildfire, and everyone would have known about it before the end of the first day. The Hale family was his only source of entertainment, was he that unobservant that he didn’t notice a pregnancy or in its place a suspiciously absent female member hiding away their baby bump? Maybe that was why he was always so bored he just didn’t notice the exciting things that apparently happened in this town completely under his radar.

“No, man this guy is a fully grown-up Hale. He’s like visiting from somewhere and stopped in to catch up with the family or whatever.” Scott seemed to think this was a weird turn of events, like once a member of a family left they never came back for any reason. Given the current dynamic of his own family it was an understandable mistake to make. But his bestie’s confusion was not the headliner of that particular revelation, in fact it was so commonplace as to be unremarkable. No, the sirens song of his attention was grabbed by one simple fact, there was a new Hale.

How was there a Hale he’s never heard of before? Ever since Scott developed his little monthly problem and the Hales came out of the woodwork to help he’d made it his mission to know all about them. As far as he knew the only Hale’s who weren’t permanent residents of Beacon Hills were Talia’s parents. Even they used to live here all the time until Talia really took over as Alpha and they moved away to Florida to do the senior living thing so their daughter could truly take over as the pack leader without everyone looking to them to second guess her decisions.

“Did Talia say why he’d been away?” Did he go voluntarily or was he shipped off? Did he have problems with his other nature? Did he have an other nature to have problems with or was he the wolfy equivalent of a squib. Was he friend or foe? Not that the Hale’s would let a threat stand anywhere near their territory, but the internal debate was entertaining all the same.

“No, man that’s the weird thing Talia hasn’t said a word beyond introducing him to us. After he left again I heard Talia and Laura arguing because Laura wanted to know why she’d never heard of him before when she’s in line to be the next Alpha. Talia said she’d forgotten about him, which really didn’t seem to fly with Laura who accused her mom of not trusting her enough to tell her or something. Talia was about to own up to something about it when they noticed me and clammed up.”

Again, with the strangeness of it all. Usually when it came to the Hale family what Talia knew Laura knew. Even if Laura wasn’t allowed to make decisions on her own yet without consulting at least one of the adults, if not Talia herself, she was still included in their decision-making processes for training purposes or whatever.

“Okay so enough with the suspense bro what do you know about this mysterious new Hale?” He needed all the juicy details. This was his life, invading the privacy of a stranger was the most excitement to be had on a Monday. So sad.

“Not much really. He’s tall.” That… told him nothing at all. Wow! Absolutely nothing. There was so little crammer into that sentence he would have known just as much had it never been spoken at all.

“Yeah but so are most of the Hale men. Height is pretty much their bitch. Next.” Something good this time man, I’m begging you. Hopefully not centered around his appearance, though he wasn’t against knowing what the guy looked like, that wasn’t anything he couldn’t find out by clapping eyes on the guy. Which given the current population of Beacon Hills statistically he would see him sometime in the coming week, if only from a distance.

“He’s got a thing for leather. Even has this cool leather jacket.” Jackpot! Again, so sad.

“You mean there’s a Hale wandering around Beacon Hills in something other than neutral toned cotton and non-descript jeans! Kinky, I like.” Finally, a Hale that wasn’t trying to fade discreetly into the background. In his opinion, the more you shouted don’t look at me the more people looked. Wear your freak on your sleeve and no one will look deeper to find the real freaky shit underneath.

“Dude gross!” Watching Scott’s face scrunch up in disgust was so adorable he almost forgot what they were talking about. Almost. Then the rabid chipmunk that ran his brain perked up and dragged his attention back to the topic at hand.

“Shut up man, no wait you can’t shut up yet we’re still fishing in that vast dark nothingness you call a mind for what else you can tell me about the new guy.” At this rate they would be moving on to eye color next.

“Huh?” God why were they even friends? Oh right, because no one else had the patience to deal with him on a regular basis.

“What else do you know about the new Hale?” He had to fight not to enunciate each word, that would only piss Scott off and end the conversation here and now.

”He’s a bit darker than the other Hales.” Okay, they’ve gone from descriptive to vague but still kind of descriptive. He could work with this, he’s had years of dealing with Scott which was all simply training for this moment.

“You mean like Cora?” Dark hair? Or darker skin? Maybe he was tanned!

“Well yeah his looks are dark, you know dark hair and eyes, but I meant more like Peter.” Yikes! The last thing humanity needs is another Peter Hale. That guy was spooky, and not in the fun the mess with kind of way either, he always seemed to be about one insult away from gutting everyone in reach. Wait a minute.

“You said darker than the other Hales, so you think he’s darker than Peter?” There was no darker than Peter, was there? Peter had a sucking black hole where his humanity should be, what was darker than that. He shuddered to think, and yet he found himself intrigued. At the same time he quickly reminded himself this was Scott he was talking to, he thought that deer hunters were the epitome of all evil in this world. He asked him why once and was treated to a tearful treatise on the importance of Bambi in pop culture and how he would have been so much happier with his mother around.

“I don’t know man, I didn’t really talk to him, there was just this thing.”

“Thing?” Oh, he so needed to teach his bestie better descriptive words. Thing could mean any one of a million things, especially when attributed to a Hale of all people. That family had more things than most.

“Vibe I guess. He just felt off somehow and that’s really all I know.” Huffing out a frustrated breath through his nose he shook his head. That was about all he was going to get for now. When Scott got a feeling about a person, he could never explain it well to anyone who wasn’t inside his brain. He just didn’t have the verbage for it. 

“No it isn’t there is still one thing you know about him that I don’t.” Hell, there was probably a mountain of things he knew that his brain simply wrote off as being either obvious or insignificant, but pressing him would get them nowhere.

“What?” Come one man! Seriously?

“His name dude! What’s his name?” At least with that he could do his own digging around. There had to be some kind of record of this guy floating around somewhere, and he would find it. Because he had genuinely nothing better to do.

“Oh didn’t I say that already?” Obviously not if I’m asking but he decided to keep that less than kind thought to himself for once and just wait. “His name is Derek. Derek Hale.”

---

Talia Hale paced the small confines of the Veterinary Office in agitation. She needed to speak with Deaton and she needed to speak with him now! Instead she was being made to wait while he tended to a damn iguana of all things. She had imagined her road to answers being blocked by many things but a lizard was never one of them. Her family was being threatened and she had to pretend to everyone around her for the entire day that all was well and that nothing had changed.

All the adults of the pack were aware of the situation, she had wanted to tell Laura as well but for all her training she was still volatile and rash in certain situations and she couldn’t be trusted to behave as they needed her to while they were still gathering information. With her luck Laura would try to kill this stranger with the dark dead eyes and would endanger them all further in the attempt.

None of the children were to be informed of the truth, they were all told that this Derek was just a distant relation they had never before had the opportunity to meet. Thankfully they all bought it, well everyone except for Laura who knew her methods too well to be fooled by them now.

None of which mattered at the moment, all that mattered right now was getting answers and the only one that could possibly provide them was Deaton. Speak of the devil, no sooner had the thought entered her mind than the door opened and in walked the very man she was here to see. Followed closely by the man she was here to see him about.

“Deaton … Derek.” What on earth was happening here. At first she thought that maybe Deaton had betrayed her pack in some way, but then she looked closer at her old friend and she saw it.

Fear.

Alan Deaton was afraid of the man standing behind him. They were in even more danger than she’d originally thought. For an emissary to be so afraid this man had to be someone of immense power, with a reputation to match.

“I thought you might come to see Deaton here after my arrival seeking answers. That’s fine, seek all you wish, listen to all Alan here has to say. Know this though, it won’t help you. I know what they say but in this case knowledge is not power it is only… smoke on the wind. Now I’ll leave you two to your discussion. I only stopped by to introduce myself to the good doctor and to let him know what will happen to him if I don’t find what I seek here in Beacon Hills.” He was threatening Deaton as well? What could possibly possess him to stand against them both?

Without another word he turned and left seeming to take the dark feeling of foreboding with him. Letting out a sigh of relief she turned to her old friend. 

“Please tell me you know who he is. That you know something about him!” She felt as though she was going into this fight blind with one arm tied behind her back. She needed to understand the danger before she could work towards removing them all from its path.

“I know … legends, stories, if you like I could tell them to you. But there is a catch.” Deaton sounded older now than he had in all the years she had known him. Like his conversation with Derek had stripped him all his energy and life.

“What?” She would do anything to gain the knowledge necessary to protect her family from the darkness that surrounded that…man.

“I will not tell them to you alone I will tell them only to your entire pack. Any member of the Hale pack currently in Beacon Hills, related by either blood or bond, over the age of fourteen will all hear the tale together.”

No! Unacceptable.

“But Alan the children-” She began to protest, only to be cut off before she could finish the first sentence, something he had never done before. He was truly shaken by this entire affair.

“The children are in just as much danger as you are, maybe even more so, and will need to be just as prepared. These are my terms Talia, if you wish to know what I know they will know it as well.”

There was nothing else to be done, she’d known Alan for many years and once he put his foot down there was no moving him. Normally she saw it as an admirable trait, but normally it wasn’t being used against her.

“Fine, come by the house tomorrow evening we will all be gathered and waiting. I hope this information you guard so zealously is at least worth it.”

Slamming the door behind her she heard Deatons response from the other side, a whisper so soft it could almost be termed as a prayer. 

“So do I.”

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