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strangerstilinski · 2 years ago

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SELENOPHILES OF BEACON HILLS | Teen Wolf Rewrite

Stiles Stilinksi/Original Female Character

chapter six

fic summary; after an already traumatic evening involving the unfortunate discovery of a gruesome scene, amber is convinced to hike through the woods with her two best friends in search of the other half of a dead body. but it's not as if she could ever say no.. not when stiles looked at her like that.

chapter word count; 15,008

chapter notes; the alpha throws a dangerous wrench in amber's plans for a girl's movie night, and lydia is left mildly traumatized by the events. scott goes awol. amber gets her first glimpse of kate argent. parent teacher conferences get a little crazy thanks to a *ahem* mountain lion.

masterlist

c h a p t e r s i x

the tell

In the backseat of Mrs. Martin's Volkswagen, Amber was sitting with her arms crossed over her chest, staring at the vacant passenger seat that she'd thought she would be sitting in. Lydia had borrowed her mother's vehicle for the evening and Amber let her eyes travel over to where the strawberry blonde sat behind the wheel of the car.

"Hey, what did you do with all those balloons, anyway?" Amber questioned suddenly, leaning forward in her seat and tucking a lock of her ashy brown hair behind her ear. She'd nearly forgotten about the favor she'd done for Lydia that afternoon.

"I hid them in Allison's locker for her birthday." Lydia smiled, turning onto the next street. "Thank you for picking them up, I couldn't get the car until my mom got home."

"Oh!" Amber said in surprise at the new information, "Yeah, it was no problem." She smiled as she recalled how Stiles had slapped at the balloons in annoyance as they floated around the inside of the Jeep. He'd agreed to drive her back to the school that afternoon so she could hand them off to Lydia, and he had been very vocal about his regrets.

Amber's smile was wiped away and replaced with a frown when they turned to park in Jackson's driveway. The girls waited for him to come out to the car so that he could join in on what Amber had thought was supposed to be a girl's movie night.

"I still cannot believe you invited Jackson to our movie night," Amber hissed as Jackson opened the front door and stepped out onto the stoop.

"Oh, come on, babe-" Lydia sang, glancing at her friend in the rearview mirror, "It's one movie night. And besides, Jackson's been acting really strange since last week.. I couldn't say no."

Amber thought back to the look of sickening fear on Jackson's face after Derek had shoved him against the lockers a week before. She sighed, settling back into her seat as Jackson pulled the passenger door open.

"Hey," Jackson said to his girlfriend, dropping into the seat and leaning across the center console to peck Lydia on the lips. "Amber." He greeted her with a grimace before turning to buckle his seatbelt.

"Hi, Jackson." Amber said as politely as she could manage as Lydia pulled out of the driveway and headed in the direction of the video rental store. She absently picked at a loose thread on her jeans for a few minutes before breaching the silence, "So, what movie are we gonna get?"

"Here me out," Jackson started, turning to face Lydia with his hands up in a placating gesture, "I have a movie that I think all three of us will enjoy-"

"What kind of movie?" Amber asked, leaning forward in her seat in interest.

Jackson sighed at the question, "Okay, so it's a Drama.." He hedged slowly.

"And?" Lydia prompted, raising an eyebrow.

"And also a sports movie-"

"No."

"Lydia, c'mon!" Jackson pleaded, "It's really good!"

"No." Lydia repeated as she slowly turned into the parking lot, "We are not watching some stupid movie about football or whatever."

"No," Jackson argued, "Hoosiers is not only the best basketball movie ever- It is the best sports movie ever made."

"No." Lydia blinked, unimpressed as she put the car in park.

"It's got Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper." Jackson defended.

"Who?" Amber asked from the backseat. Jackson quickly turned to shoot daggers at her with his eyes and she frowned in apology, leaning back in her seat.

"No." The redhead said again, continuing to stare out the windshield.

"Lydia, I swear to god you guys are gonna like it-"

"No."

"I am not watching The Notebook again!" Jackson said angrily. Lydia turned her head toward her boyfriend slowly and said nothing but she gave him a sinister smile.

Jackson took a deep frustrated breath and huffed loudly through his nose, getting out of the car and slamming the door closed behind him. He made his way into the video store and Amber unbuckled her seatbelt, moving to go in with him.

"I'll just.. Go and make sure he grabs something decent."

Amber trailed in a few seconds behind Jackson, and looked around the large room at all of the shelves holding different genres of movies. A phone was trilling loudly at the empty front desk and Amber sighed in annoyance as it just kept ringing, never going through to any sort of machine.

"Can somebody help me find The Notebook?" Jackson called out loudly and Amber snorted in amusement.

"I'm sure we can find something else." She laughed at him, squatting down to peer at the movie cases on the bottom shelf in the aisle labeled 'Romantic Comedies'.

"Hello?" Jackson called out again, walking past the aisle that had caught Amber's attention and moving further into the store, "Is anybody working here?" He sighed and the lights in the store flickered, drawing Amber's attention toward the ceiling. "You gotta be kidding me." Jackson mumbled.

Amber rose to stand and her eyes caught on the ladder that stood a few rows away. It was propped up beneath the flickering fluorescent light. She moved around Jackson and walked to stand underneath the hole in the ceiling, frowning in confusion. Someone had left the long light tube dangling down to rest on top of the ladder as if they'd stopped what they were doing mid-installation.

"Amber.." Jackson's voice was quiet as he took slow, measured steps toward her.

"What?"

The girl spun to face him and found his eyes were glued to the floor at the end of the aisle across from her. She turned her head to follow his eyeline and a scream slipped past her lips when she saw the full picture of what had caught Jackson's eye.

Jackson could see the feet that stuck out past the end of the shelf, but what was hidden inside the aisle was so much worse. There was a young man leaning against the shelf with his throat ripped out, the skin of his throat slashed from four long mangled cuts, blood dripped down to seep into his video store uniform shirt and leaving it stained a dark red. Worst of all, his eyes were open wide in unseeing fear behind his glasses.

Stumbling back in fright, Amber bumped into Jackson's chest just as he was coming to stand behind her. He reached up in an attempt to steady her with his hands on her arms but it was too late and the two of them fell backwards, tumbling into the ladder behind them. It crashed to the ground loudly, ripping the dangling light from the ceiling in the process and plunging the store into darkness.

"This can't be happening." Amber whined as Jackson pulled her up and steadied her on her feet again. Heavy, fear-filled breaths came from the boy beside her and the sound was only amplified by the way the lights flickered weakly in an attempt to come back on, the store remaining eerily dark.

There was a low growl from the darkest end of the store and Amber's head snapped up to look over Jackson's shoulder, a pair of glowing red eyes meeting her own from the darkest corner of the room.

"Jackson. Run." Amber whispered hurriedly, giving him a hard shove in the direction of the front door.

As soon as he had regained his footing, Jackson was turning back to grab her wrist, dragging her to squat down with him as he hid behind one of the shelves. They were both breathing too loudly, shaky exhales leaving their lips in quick bursts. Amber held a hand against her own mouth to muffle the sound as she peered out around the corner of the shelf slowly.

She looked back in the direction she'd seen the creature that she knew had to be the Alpha, something dark darting between the rows in a blur and rushing to the other side of the store with another low growl. A gasp escaped her at the sight of it and she retreated quickly back into the aisle, taking a few deep breaths.

The shelf the two were hiding behind shook against their backs and a handful of DVD cases rained down onto the ground around them. Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and then another, and then another, and Amber belatedly realized it was the sound of the shelves knocking against one another as they toppled over like dominos down the row toward them.

"Shit-" Amber exclaimed, moving out of the aisle and pulling Jackson behind her. She slipped out of the way just as the shelf collapsed but the boy beside her was pinned underneath it from the waist down. "Oh my god! Jackson."

Amber tried in vain to lift the shelf off of the boy's legs but he was pinned not only by the weight of one, but the weight of all four of the shelves layered on top of one another. She groaned and lifted with all of her strength once again but the shelf only moved a couple of inches before she was forced to drop it back down again.

"Amber, just go-" Jackson pleaded.

Her stomach dropped at his words, "But-"

"Go." He hissed at her while attempting to pull himself free.

Amber whined miserably but rose to her feet. She looked up from the floor and her eyes widened at the sight of the beast now looming over Jackson's back. Its red eyes still glowed bright in the dark store as it reached down with a clawed, paw-like hand to pull at the collar of Jackson's jacket, leaning down to sniff at a newly exposed scab on the back of Jackson's neck.

She wasn't sure what it was smelling, but after a few seconds of huffing breaths over the boy's back, the Alpha rose to its full height again, towering over Amber by more than a foot. It was inhumanly tall, and black. Covered in thin, mangy fur. It had a horrifying, wolf-like face, its mouth pulled back to display dangerously sharp teeth as it snarled at her.

The Alpha took a menacing step forward and Amber countered it with one step back, her wide eyes glued to the creature in fear. Her hands shook as she slowly matched its steps in an attempt to keep the beast at a distance.

On her fifth step toward the back of the store, Amber stumbled over the ladder yet again where it had fallen to the ground and she tripped as her foot caught on the metal. She fell to the ground, catching herself on her elbows and gasping when the thin shards of glass from the broken light cut through the skin of her bare arms.

The Alpha leapt forward several feet until it loomed over her, leaning down to sniff at her in the same way it had done to Jackson just a few moments before. It sniffed at her hair first, huffing a hot, sneeze-like breath over the top of her head before it moved to sniff lower, breathing in and out at the collar of her tshirt. Amber whimpered quietly when its nose brushed against the skin of her throat but It moved to sniff lower again, stopping at a spot on the fabric that covered the center of her chest. It huffed another hot breath accompanied by a quiet growl before taking one step away from her.

Suddenly, the Alpha turned and took off in the direction of the front of the store, jumping straight through the large glass window with a loud crash and running into the dark of the night.

Amber remained on the floor for a moment and took a few slow, trembling breaths before her mind cleared and she frantically moved to untangle her legs from the ladder, more small shards of glass driven into the skin of her forearms as she struggled to get up.

"Jackson!" She called out as she got to her feet. She rushed back to the front of the store on shaky legs, "Oh my god, are you okay?"

"Would you just call someone strong enough to get me out from under here!" The boy snapped at her.

"I- Jeez, okay," Amber relented quietly, pulling out her cell phone to call 911, "I thought near-death experiences were supposed to bring people closer together, not turn them into bigger assholes." She muttered under her breath as she dialed the phone and exited the store.

As soon as she stepped foot outside, she caught sight of Lydia staring out the windshield with wide, fear-filled eyes and Amber hesitated as the operator picked up on the other end of the phone, aching to comfort her friend. She shook her head with a trembling breath, moving to the other end of the parking lot as she spoke to the woman on the phone and reported the dead worker. If she were far enough away, Amber hoped her friend wouldn't be able to overhear anything, so she paced at the edge of the pavement as she spoke, not wanting to scare Lydia any further.

When Amber hung up the phone with shaking fingers a few minutes later, she rushed back toward Lydia, finding her still in the same position that Amber had left her in, with fear-filled eyes glued to the empty space in front of her. Amber wrenched the car door open and knelt down onto the pavement to take Lydia's hands in hers.

"Lyds, babe-" Amber said softly, her voice only slightly shaky, "Are you okay?"

The redhead didn't speak, continuing to stare ahead of her still with wide, unblinking eyes and Amber sighed, taking a shallow breath and rubbing Lydia's cold hands softly between her own. She gently toyed with her friend's fingers while whispering quiet soothing words, hoping to pull her friend out of her state. Amber continued for several long minutes, time dragging in a haze before she spotted an ambulance pulling into the parking lot with flashing lights.

"I'll be right back, okay?" Amber told Lydia softly, still not getting a response.

Leaving the car door ajar, Amber made her way over to the ambulance just as three EMTs were exiting the vehicle, all rushing toward her with rapidfire questions until Amber pointed them all in the direction of the store.

"There's a worker dead inside," She told them past a lump in her throat, "And-And my friend Jackson, he's stuck under some shelves but- I wasn't strong enough to lift them."

They nodded and rushed inside, one of them heading to the back of the store where Amber knew the dead worker was still lying while the other two moved to free Jackson as quickly as possible.

Amber made her way back to the Volkswagen and enveloped one of Lydia's hands in her own again, standing just outside the driver's side door.

When two police cruisers pulled into the lot a few minutes later, the group of officers split off and spread out to cover the scene. One of the officers cautiously approached where the girls were waiting at the car and patiently began to ask Amber a long list of questions, collecting as much information from the frightened girl as he could.

"The animal, did you get a good look at it?" The officer questioned eventually.

"I, yeah, uh.. It got pretty close." Amber told him nervously.

"Do you think it could've been a mountain lion?" He asked her.

"A mountain lion." Lydia repeated quietly from inside the car.

"Uh, yeah, a mountain lion sounds right." Amber corroborated, squeezing Lydia's hand.

As soon as the shelves were lifted enough for him to slip out, Jackson rushed outside, shoving past the two paramedics in the store when they tried to check him for injuries. He made a beeline for Amber and Lydia just as a police officer a few yards away was lifting a hand in signal, the officer who had questioned them darting over to assist with something. Jackson shoved Amber out of the way when he got to the vehicle, his focus on where Lydia was still sitting inside the car. He leaned in to pull her from the vehicle, speaking to her softly.

Amber took a reluctant step back from the couple, turning to watch through the broken window as two of the EMTs and a coroner moved over toward the dead body while the third paramedic made his way back outside to check on the teens. The paramedic led Lydia and Jackson over to the back of the ambulance and waved for Amber to follow when he caught her gaze.

She joined them just as Lydia was being guided to sit at the end of the ambulance between the open doors and Amber rushed to her friend's side, squeezing in to stand beside Jackson.

The paramedic glanced back at Lydia for a moment before he spoke to Jackson and Amber quietly, "She's not responding due to shock.. That should wear off soon. But she's got some blood on her hands and clothes-"

"She's not bleeding." Amber assured him. Her eyes fell to the blood on the backs of Lydia's hands and shirt and Amber frowned in confusion.

"Miss.. Are you alright?" He asked her, finally taking a moment to look the brunette up and down in scrutiny.

"I'm fine." She told him impatiently, "Could you please just get her a blanket or someth-"

"You're bleeding." Jackson muttered into her ear.

"What?" Amber looked down at herself and her eyes caught on the large smudges of blood that trailed down the skin on the backs of her arms. Now that she was looking at the red stains, the glass embedded in her flesh suddenly stung painfully, "I-I forgot." She admitted quietly.

"It's because of the adrenaline. That happens a lot." The EMT assured her. He gently guided her to sit down beside Lydia, climbing into the back of the ambulance and moving around behind them in the space. He re-emerged a few moments later with tweezers, a small metal bowl, gauze, cotton balls, and rubbing alcohol.

Amber pressed her knee into Lydia's thigh and sat silently as the paramedic raised Amber's trembling right hand above her shoulder and began to pull tiny shards of glass from the back of her forearm. She winced with each piece that was tugged gently from her skin before being dropped into the metal dish beside her.

Jackson moved off to the side after a moment, mumbling something under his breath about calling both Lydia's parents and his own.

Amber watched through the colorful lights flashing in the parking lot while the police officers worked quickly to block off the building with yellow tape. They moved around methodically, speaking with one another and frequently speaking into the radios that were clipped onto their shoulders.

By the time Jackson returned, the paramedic had finished removing the glass in Amber's right arm and had moved on to clean the cuts with alcohol while she bit down her lip painfully at the sting it caused, trying not to pull away.

"I'm going to head out." Jackson announced, standing several feet away.

The EMT didn't look up from where he was tending to Amber's arm, "I'd still like someone to take a look at your head before you go-" He insisted for what must not have been the first time.

"No, I'm fine," Jackson snapped, "I'm not one of the people here who are dead or bleeding."

Amber looked up to give the boy a look of astonishment, "Jesus, Jackson. Way to be sensitive-"

A Sheriff's Department cruiser pulled into the parking lot just as Jackson was turning to face Amber with a dark look, "Oh, shut up, Callisto. You're the one who left me trapped in there-"

"I- You told me to!" Amber defended herself, wincing when the paramedic began to pull tiny shards of glass from her left arm.

"This is ridiculous! I'm not even injured," Jackson's voice rose as he argued with the paramedic who was still focussed pulling glass from Amber's skin, "Why the hell can't I just go home? I'm fine." His voice trailed off into something quieter as he finished speaking.

"I hear ya, but the EMT says you hit your head pretty hard," Sheriff Stilinski's voice cut in as he approached the group. His gaze caught on the brunette sitting at the back of the ambulance and he paused, frowning at her with worry for a moment before he re-focussed his attention on Jackson, "They just wanna make sure don't have a concussion."

"My god. Jackson, just let them look at your head. It'll take five minutes." Amber finally said, yelping when a particularly long piece of glass was pulled from the underside of her arm above her elbow.

"What part of 'I'm fine' are you people having a problem grasping?" Jackson asked, raising his voice again, "Okay? I wanna go home."

"And I understand that-" The Sheriff started gently.

"No, you don't understand! Which kind of blows my mind, since it should be a basic concept to grasp for a minimum wage rent-a-cop like you! Okay, Now I wanna go home!" Jackson yelled in the Sheriff's face.

Amber had heard enough. She pulled her arm out of the paramedics grasp with an angry snarl and closed the small distance between herself and Jackson with purpose, her fists clenched in rage, nails digging into the palms of her hands. She was only a second away from hitting the boy when Sheriff Stilinski stepped between them and gently pushed her back with his hands on her shoulders.

"Oh, woah! Is that a dead body!?" She heard Stiles' voice cut through the tension.

Her fury dissolved immediately and her head snapped around to see the boy standing at the passenger side of his dad's cruiser, his arms draped over the open door with an arm pointing in the direction of the store behind them.

The Sheriff gave his son a disappointed look and Stiles began to shrink back before his eyes landed on where his dad was releasing Amber's shoulders from his grip.

"Amber?" Stiles called out worriedly, slamming the car door shut as he stumbled over his own feet and jogged toward the back of the ambulance.

"Stiles," She sighed in relief at seeing her best friend, flinching in surprise when she felt the paramedic place a hand on her shoulder and guide her to sit still again, this time off to the side so that the other EMTs could wheel the dead body into the back. "Sorry," She apologized to the man quietly as he wordlessly lifted her arm and resumed with the tweezers.

"What happened?" Stiles asked in concern, looking her over and narrowing his eyes when another tiny piece of glass was plucked from her arm.

"I tripped?" She settled on in explanation for now. Her eyes flicked nervously over the large crowd of people that had filled the parking lot.

The paramedic began to wipe her cuts clean with alcohol again without warning and she winced, reaching out automatically to grip Stiles' hand in her free one.

Stiles looked at her worriedly while the paramedic wrapped gauze around her forearms before the man left the two teens alone. Stiles pulled gently on Amber's hand in his and tugged her away from the crowd to stand behind his father's car, leaning close to speak to her quietly, "Okay. So, what actually happened?"

She swallowed, tightening her grip on his hand, "The Alpha killed the video store clerk," She explained in a choked voice, "He chased me and Jackson but didn't hurt us at all. I-I don't know why-"

"Your arms?" He interrupted, eyes flicking down to her bandage injuries before meeting her own again.

"I tripped and fell in a little bit of glass from a broken light, it's fine," She assured him before continuing, "But the Alpha, it just- Smelled us both and then ran away."

He took a deep breath and she watched as he licked his lips in thought before his gaze dropped and paused on her chest, "Where did you get that shirt?" He asked.

She glanced down at the dark gray tshirt she was wearing. She'd tied the oversized shirt in a knot at the bottom, cropping it above the waistband of her jeans to reveal a strip of skin on her stomach.

"I don't know-?" She said honestly, "I was running late when Lydia picked me up and I just threw it on. It was in my room. I figure it's either yours or Scott's."

Stiles reached out to tug at the neckline, pulling it out to look at the tag sewed into the collar, "It's not mine," He confirmed, leaning back to look at the front of the shirt again, "Scott?"

"I don't- You don't think the reason the Alpha didn't kill me is because I smelled like Scott?" She asked nervously, heart rate picking up.

"Maybe," He replied, "But then, why didn't it kill Jackson?"

"I'm not sure." She furrowed her eyebrows and looked up at the boy in front of her.

The flickering red and blue lights from the emergency vehicles filtered over his face in a haunting way, the blinking glow bringing the ever-present queasy feeling from the knots in her stomach into a sudden focus.

Her eyes drifted back to the video store. The broken glass on the pavement in front of the large front window reflected the shining colors of the lights. The yellow crime scene tape flapped back and forth in places where officers were ducking underneath it to move in and out of the building. The tshirt she was wearing suddenly felt too heavy against her skin as she remembered the way the Alpha had sniffed it deeply before growling and exhaling a hot menacing breath over her.

"Amber?" Stiles called out quietly, his voice sounding oddly distant to her ears.

She belatedly realized that she wasn't entirely sure when she'd last taken a breath and she attempted to inhale deeply but her lungs barely managed to pull anything in before she was forced to exhale again with a sharp gasp. She tried again and found herself choking on the air as she sucked it in, looking up at Stiles with wide panicked eyes as she felt her chest tighten with anxiety at the lack of oxygen.

"Hey, you need to breathe." Stiles said gently, reaching up to rest his hands on her shoulders and rubbing his thumbs softly back and forth.

"I-" She started before gasping around another too-small inhale, "Stiles- I can't."

He pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her tightly, cradling the back of her head and guiding her face into the crook of his neck in a practiced motion.

"Hey, listen to me," He said softly into her ear, "You're okay. I know you're scared, but I'm not gonna let anything happen to you ever again, y'hear me? You're okay-"

She gasped in a lungful of air and her whole body trembled when she exhaled against the warm skin of his neck.

He carded his fingers through her hair as he continued to murmur in her ear, "You're safe now. And I'm gonna keep it that way because- Because I'm the Batman of the group, yeah? You said so yourself. So, I'm gonna keep you safe." He promised quietly.

As he spoke, she finally managed to lift her hands from where they'd been hanging limply at her sides and she thrust them into the warmth beneath the fabric of Stiles' jacket and gripped desperately at his waist over the thin cotton of his shirt.

Every inhale filled her nose with the scent of him. The strongest thing she could smell was the lingering traces of his body wash, beneath that there was the laundry detergent from the collar of his shirt, and then a barely-there hint of sweat. She pushed her face further into his skin and breathed in the calming, familiar scents gratefully.

It took a few minutes, but her head slowly cleared, breathing evening out as more oxygen was pulled into her body. She continued to puff out warm breaths from her mouth, parted lips pressed into the soft skin of Stiles' neck. She focused on the sound of his voice, the gentle rhythm of his long fingers combing through her hair, his chest against hers.

"Yeah, y're okay," Stiles said softly, his mouth pressed close to her ear. He waited for her to take in a couple more deep, even breaths before his grip loosened around her shoulders, "Y'okay?"

"Yeah, I-" She let out an embarrassed laugh, speaking quietly, "I'm sorry."

"No, hey. Don't apologize, alright?" He combed his hand gently through her hair, pushing it back from her face.

"I don't know what happened, I just- I was thinking about the way it looked. The way it moved. The way it was so close that it could've ripped my throat out-"

"But it didn't, right? For whatever reason, it didn't. You're safe now." He assured her.

She took a deep breath and nodded just before Stiles' dad came to stand beside the pair. He squinted at her in scrutiny, "You doin' alright, Amber?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay now." She stepped out of Stiles' embrace but grabbed his hand in the process and interlaced their fingers.

"Alright. Well, I talked to the paramedic and he says you're all set to go home." The Sheriff told her.

"Good, cool." She nodded distractedly. Her mind raced with what she was going to say to her brother when she saw him, "Can we hold off on telling Jason about this until he's off shift?" Amber pleaded.

"No can do. I already called him-" The Sheriff told her. At her outraged squeak, he continued, "I'm sorry, kiddo, but it was out of my hands. You're a minor and you were injured at the scene of what we still have to consider a possible homicide."

"Oh, god." She whined, looking around the parking lot frantically as if Jason were about to appear out of thin air to yell at her.

"Not to mention this is the third time you've stumbled across a dead body in the last month-" The Sheriff frowned at her with a disappointed look that she was sure would rival the one she'd be getting from her brother at any minute. "I don't know what is going on with you kids, but this has gotta stop happening when you all are around. Y'hear me?"

Amber and Stiles both nodded.

"You're coming back to my place, right?" Stiles asked quietly into her ear when his dad was distracted by something happening behind them.

She nodded, whispering back, "Yeah, we need to talk to Scott ASAP and figure out what the hell-" She started before a faded red pickup truck caught her eye coming down the dark street.

When Jason's truck turned into the parking lot, it did so in a rush, coming to a stop just behind the Sheriff's cruiser without bothering to pull into a parking space. He flew out of the vehicle, rushing toward them, and his hands went to cup Amber's shoulder and the side of her head as soon as he was close enough to grab her.

She watched her brother huff out a relieved breath as he verified that she was mostly unharmed and she released her grip on Stiles' hand to stepped forward and pull Jason into a hug.

"I'm fine, I'm okay." She attempted to reassure him.

When she stepped back from the embrace, Sheriff Stilinski had pulled Stiles away, leaving the siblings to talk in privacy.

"What happened?" Jason asked her firmly.

"Um, they think a mountain lion might've gotten inside the store somehow before we got here.. It attacked the worker. Then it knocked some shelves over on top of Jackson, and I tripped trying to get away but- It, um, it just ran off."

"You're damn lucky it did," He told her, smoothing the hair at the side of her head down flat. His own hazel eyes went to the scene around them and he took a deep breath before letting it out slowly, "How are you feeling though? Really. Must be shaken up?"

"I- Yeah. I-I am. Shaken." She admitted quietly.

"I'd be worried if you weren't," He said with a small smile, squeezing her shoulder firmly in reassurance, "You ready to get out of here?"

"Can I- Would it be okay if I slept at Stiles' house tonight?" She asked nervously.

"Do I need to remind you what happened the last time I let you go to a friend's house right after something like this?" Her brother questioned. The cool and calm attitude he'd displayed since he arrived at the scene seemed to fade into something more panicked and Amber shrunk back under his gaze but she didn't speak, so he carried on, "You went out in the woods to look for the other half of a dead body. And I didn't find out until Noah Stilinski called to tell me about it almost two weeks later," He paused to take a breath, "And that was before we knew it was just an animal attack! For Christ's sake, Amber. You're killing me here."

She figured it would be in her best interest to let him get it all out at once, so still, the girl deigned not to speak. She chewed her lower lip and glued her eyes to a small stain on the collar of her brother's tshirt until he filled the silence again.

"You keep finding dead bodies, and you're trespassing on private property to get my old classmates arrested for suspected murder, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do to keep you out of trouble," Jason sighed, "Would things be different- If I didn't work so much? I'll leave the station if you want me to- I will. I can find a regular nine to five and-"

"No!" She interrupted quickly, "Jay, c'mon you love being a fireman." The girl reached up to rest her fingers over the hand on her shoulder, "I'm sorry about digging up the Hale property and getting Derek arrested — I really am." She promised him.

He sighed after a moment and held a hand out, gesturing toward his parked truck, "Home tonight. Okay?"

"Okay." She agreed, following him toward the vehicle. She cast a final look back toward where Stiles was standing a couple yards away, waving to him sadly as she went.

The boy gave her a small reassuring smile in understanding and waved back just as she was climbing up into the truck. As soon as she closed the door behind her, she dropped her head back against the headrest with a sigh.

The next morning, after a fitful night's sleep, Amber was dropped off at school unreasonably early before Jason had to be back at the station. Her brother had insisted on giving her a ride, and after seeing the pleading look on his face, Amber couldn't help but agree.

The first bell wouldn't ring for another hour, so Amber wandered into the library to work on an English paper that wasn't due for another week. She managed to nail down her outline and wrote a few hundred words before she noticed a handful of students milling around the library, returning and checking out books, and she suddenly realized that there were only ten minutes left until the first bell.

Collecting her things in a rush, Amber made her way through the halls, pausing when she saw Allison just a few steps away from her locker. Amber smiled in giddy excitement and plastered herself to a locker beside the girl, leaning against it casually.

Allison gave her a sweet smile, "Hey, Amber." The girl seemed to pause in thought before her face set in determination, "Can I ask you about something that's been bothering me?"

"Yeah, of course." Amber agreed immediately.

"Why was Derek at the school last week?" Allison asked, her eyes downcast.

"Um," Amber started, struck dumb by the question, "He was- Looking for me."

"Mm, how come?" Allison questioned, fingering at the edge of her leather jacket.

"He- He wasn't feeling well, so-" Amber struggled to come up with a believable lie on the spot, "Stiles and I ended up giving him a ride to the doctor's office."

"Okay-" Allison responded slowly after a few seconds passed, "And you and Derek aren't still- Y'know?"

"No, no, we're not." Amber said quickly, "Just- Friends? Sort of."

Allison nodded, pursing her lips. She looked like she was about to ask another question so Amber deflected quickly.

"So.. Birthday girl," Amber started, grinning when Allison's eyes went wide and glanced around them to see if anyone had overheard, "How does it feel to be sixteen?"

"I- Uh, I'm actually turning-" Allison looked around them worriedly again before whispering, "Seventeen." Amber went to speak but Allison held up a finger to the girl's lips before speaking again, "Please don't tell anyone. It's always a huge thing when people find out-"

Amber laughed, pulling Allison's finger away from her lips, "Why is being seventeen such a big deal?" She asked, "Stiles turns seventeen in two months."

Allison seemed surprised at this, "Really?"

"Yeah," Amber said, "I mean, he was held back in elementary sc-"

Allison sighed loudly, "That's exactly what I'm worried about people thinking."

"Who cares?" Amber asked her, "People get held back. It happens. Being held back doesn't mean you're stupid or something." Amber said defensively.

"No, no, you're right." Allison said with a shake of her head, "I'm sorry."

Amber relaxed slightly, "It's okay."

Allison turned back toward her locker and moved to begin working the combination on the little purple padlock. When she got it undone, she pulled the door open and a cluster of colorful balloons tried to break free from the confined space. The girl frantically fought to push the balloons back inside and looked around with wide eyes while Amber laughed at her.

Pulling a small card from where it was magnetized to the inside of the door, Allison flipped it open and read the note inside.

"You and Lydia-" Allison began to whisper quietly before Scott approached them from the other side.

"Is it your birthday?" Scott asked innocently, pointing to where a balloon was about to drift free from Allison's locker yet again.

"No, no!" Allison said immediately, fighting with the balloons, "Uh, no. I mean, yes. Please don't tell anybody. I don't even know how Lydia and Amber found out."

Scott looked up at Amber with a wide eyed look of betrayal and she raised her hands in surrender, "I didn't know. Lydia asked me to bring her balloons after school yesterday and I did. She didn't tell me what they were for until last night."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Scott asked softly, his attention focussed on Allison.

"Because I don't want people to know." Allison said quickly before pausing, "Because- I'm seventeen."

"You're seventeen?" Scott asked in surprise, blind to the way Amber was waving her hands frantically for him to shut up.

"That's the reaction I'm trying to avoid." Allison said with an annoyed look.

"Why?" Scott tried to recover, grimacing when he caught Amber's eye, "I mean, I-I totally get it. Uh, you had to repeat a year because of all the moving around, right?"

Allison looked at him in surprise before closing her locker door. She turned her back to Amber and leaned into Scott's space to give him a slow kiss.

"What was that for?" Scott asked with a smile.

"For literally being the first person ever to make the correct assumption. Everybody always assumes I got knocked up or held back." Allison told him, taking a step back to lean against her locker and glance at Amber again.

"-Which, y'know, if either of those were true that would be okay too." Amber reminded her futilely.

"But, that's what you hear on your birthday?" Scott asked, ignoring his best friend.

"Oh, yeah." Allison told them, "All day long."

"Then- What if you and I get out of here?" Scott asked her with a tender look.

Allison looked at him closely, "Skip class?" She asked.

"Yeah, the whole day." Scott smiled, reaching up to pull gently at one of Allison's curls.

"Scott, are you sure that's a good idea-" Amber started, cutting herself off at the sharp look he gave her. She pursed her lips, rolling up onto the balls of her feet before dropping back down, "And, I am going to leave you two lovebirds to make your own questionable choices." She announced, stepping back from the pair slowly. 'Happy Birthday' she mouthed at Allison with a grin before turning and heading in the direction of her own locker with a shake of her head.

In third period Chemistry class, Amber took the open seat across from Stiles with a smile, rubbing her hand back and forth along the softness of his short hair as she passed him and fell into her seat.

They were having a quiet class period wherein they were all supposed to work on the problems from the current chapter in their textbook — so that they could ask questions if they had trouble with anything. Hardly anyone ever did ask for help, given that Mr. Harris was a condescending nightmare on a good day, but if they talked quietly enough, it was easy to work with the people at your table.

Amber pulled out her things as class started and she began copying down the questions into her notebook. Twenty minutes passed and she was only just beginning to work on question number three, the pencil in her hand having spent more time hovering over the page in her notebook than it had pressed against the paper. Her concentration was hard to keep focused when her eyes kept drifting up to the boy in front of her.

Stiles had shifted his stool to the corner of the table to be closer to her and he was rapidly highlighting important information in his textbook for when the two of them would make flashcards later on. He had the cap of the marker held between his teeth and she watched Stiles gnaw on it, his jaw working distractedly as he traced over the words.

Her attention was suddenly torn from the way that Stiles' lips wrapped around the tiny piece of plastic as Mr. Harris began to speak from the back of the room.

"Just a friendly reminder.. Parent/Teacher Conferences are tonight," He said as he began walking down the aisle between tables slowly, "Students below a 'C' average are required to attend. I won't name you.. Because the shame and self-disgust should be more than enough punishment." As if the statement had triggered something in his brain, Mr. Harris paused at the end of Stiles and Amber's workbench, his eyes narrowing at the empty stool at their table. "Has anybody seen Scott McCall?"

Stiles looked up at where Mr. Harris was standing beside him but Amber bit her lip and looked down at her notebook in avoidance. She was saved from having to come up with a lie about her friend's whereabouts when Jackson walked into the room late, drawing their teacher's attention.

"Hey, Jackson," Mr. Harris spoke quietly, approaching the boy as he found his seat, "If you need to leave early for any reason, you let me know."

Jackson nodded and Amber scoffed at their teacher's kind comment. She'd been told nothing of the sort when she had entered the room at the start of class, despite her also having been attacked by a psychotic werewolf the night before.

Mr. Harris stepped back and moved to the chalkboard at the far end of the room, "Everyone, start reading the next chapter." He announced, pausing mid-step before speaking again, "Mr. Stilinski-"

Stiles' attention snapped up from his textbook again and he looked to the front of the room with wide eyes, surprised at having been called out.

"Try putting the highlighter down between paragraphs," Mr. Harris told him loudly in front of the class, "It's Chemistry. Not a coloring book." He finished patronizingly.

Amber's eyes narrowed at their teacher's back before her eyes were drawn to the boy in front of her again. She watched as Stiles threw his head back, exposing his long neck and sharp jawline, her eyes following his eyes movement. He blew the marker cap from his mouth and up into the air over his head, snatching it effortlessly in his outstretched hand as it fell back through the air.

Amber leaned forward across the table on her elbows and nodded her head to beckon Stiles closer. His eyes seemed to trail down to the low cut of her shirt for a second before he leaned in on the edge of his stool, closing the distance until only a small gap separated them.

"Don't listen to him," Amber told her friend quietly, reaching out with the hand not holding her own writing utensil and grabbing the capped highlighter from him. She innocently fingered the cap, chewing her lower lip for a second as she thought about the place it had been between his teeth a only few moments before. She shook her head and blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear her thoughts, "It's a studying method that works for you-" She tapped the highlighter lightly on the tabletop, "..And he's a dickhead." She whispered as an afterthought.

She unthinkingly raised the highlighter cap to her own teeth to pull it off single-handed before holding the bright yellow marker back out to Stiles. He took it from her outstretched hand with a dazed look, eyes never leaving her face.

She grinned at him and the action reminded her that she still had the cap held between her lips. When she reached up to grab it, the piece of plastic slipped from between her fingers and dropped beneath the neckline of her shirt, stopping to settle at her belly button where her shirt had been tucked into the waistband of her jeans. She cursed quietly, leaning back on her stool and peering down her shirt to look for it. She reached past the lace of her bra to fish it out, the material of her shirt stretched slightly around her arm, and just as her fingers closed around the cap, there was a loud crash.

Amber flinched, looking up to see Stiles' stool toppled over at the end of the table and the boy on the floor with it.

"Stiles!" She said in quiet alarm, "Are you okay?"

Stiles' cheeks were flushed pink as he climbed to his feet again and righted his stool, nodding and wordlessly taking the marker cap from her fingers before sitting back down in his seat. He didn't look up at her as he slowly began highlighting the page of his textbook again and Amber blinked in confusion.

She glanced around the room and caught the eye of Danny Mahealani, who was sitting directly behind Stiles. He was already watching her and Stiles with an amused grin and when she gave him a questioning look, he shook his head and turned back around to face his own table again.

Weird.

At the end of the school day, Stiles rushed up to Amber and slammed his body into the open door of her locker. He gripped the metal before it could smash into the girl and moved to stand beside it.

"Scott is being painfully unhelpful and we need to figure out what exactly Lydia saw." He said quickly as she shuffled her books around, "Where is she, anyway?"

Amber shrugged, "She was really shaken up last night. I think she stayed home for the day, but she hasn't been responding to any of my texts." She explained, zipping up her backpack and pulling it over her shoulders.

"Well, we should go to her house and talk to her, then." Stiles said simply.

"I- Yeah, I mean- I was going to-" She paused when she caught his eye, deciding against telling Stiles her plans for the afternoon.

Stiles raised his eyebrows at her sudden silence and she sighed quietly, closing her locker, "No, we should definitely go see Lydia." She agreed.

When the two arrived at the Martin house, Lydia's mom answered the door with a smile, "Amber, sweetheart." The woman pulled her into a hug, "It'll be so good for Lydia to see you. She's been holed up in her room all day."

"Yeah," Amber agreed, pulling back from the embrace, "We just wanted to check on her."

As if she hadn't noticed him until that moment, the woman's eyes caught on the boy standing beside Amber, "Oh!" She said, "And who's this?"

"Uh, I'm Stiles." He said with an awkward wave.

"Well," Mrs. Martin said simply after a moment, "Let's get you two inside then."

The three climbed the stairs to Lydia's bedroom and Mrs. Martin knocked softly on the closed door, pushing it open and poking her head in as she spoke, "Honey, Amber and Stiles are here to see you."

Lydia was laying across the bed on her stomach in a beautiful but revealing blue nightgown, examining her fingernails distractedly. Her strawberry blonde hair was long and loose, falling messily around her, and when she looked up, her eyes looked drunkenly distant.

Amber pulled Stiles through the doorway by his hand as Lydia blinked, "What the hell is a styles?" She asked in sleepy confusion.

Mrs. Martin laughed awkwardly behind them, clasping her hands together, "She, uh, took a little something for her nerves," She told them as she began to pull the door closed behind her, "I'll just, I'll leave you three-"

"Thanks." Stiles told her as Amber pulled him over to the bed.

"What are you doing here?" Lydia asked, turning onto her side and exposing her chest as she focussed her attention on Amber.

"We wanted to make sure you were okay." Amber told her softly, moving to sit beside the girl and combing her friend's red hair back from her face with her fingers.

"Really?" Lydia asked, glancing at where Stiles was still standing beside the bed, "Both of you?"

"Yes, both of us," Amber told her, tugging Stiles down to sit beside her harshly and causing him to land very nearly in her lap, "We were both worried about you today."

"How're you feeling?" Stiles asked, looking at the redhead on the other side of Amber.

Lydia propped herself up on her elbow, leaning into Amber's hand in her hair for a moment like a cat who was enjoying being petted. The redhead then came closer until her forehead rested in the center of Amber's chest, Lydia's face pressed against the place where the fabric of Amber's low cut shirt revealed her cleavage.

Lydia spoke softly into Amber's skin, "I feel.. Fantastic." She slurred as Stiles watched them with wide eyes and huffed an awkward laugh.

Amber looked down at the girl in surprise and Lydia leaned back from her place between the brunette's breasts to settle a hand on her thigh instead. Amber looked over at Stiles with wide eyes of her own and saw the matching look of shock on his face.

Stiles suddenly reached around both girls to grab a little orange prescription bottle from the bedside table before examining the label. Amber leaned close, peering down at the plastic in Stiles' hands and reading the dosage of Lorazepam the doctor had prescribed.

"Lydia, your dose is only half a tablet to start, how much did you take?" Amber asked, pulling the bottle out of Stiles' fingers.

"Mm, I took two." Lydia said dreamily.

Amber shook her head in concern for her friend. Lydia was so hopped up on her medication, she was almost completely out of it.

Stiles looked at the redhead for a moment before a small smile pulled at his lips, "I bet you can't say 'I saw Suzy sitting in a shoeshine shop' ten times fast."

Amber laughed quietly, placing the bottle back on the table, "Stiles, I couldn't say that ten times fast."

Lydia leaned forward with a determined look on her face, "I saw Shuzy-" She started.

"Ah-" Stiles interrupted quietly with a grin.

Lydia sighed, eyes moving to Amber as she started again, "I shaw-" She said, her smile slowly fading until she flopped back down onto the bed heavily, "I saw."

"What?" Stiles asked.

Amber leaned closer, resting her hand on Lydia's arm, "Lydia, babe. What did you see?" She asked gently.

"Something." Lydia said distractedly.

"Something like-" Stiles prompted, resting a hand on Amber's thigh as he leaned closer, "A mountain lion?" He asked.

"A mountain lion." Lydia agreed with a small nod.

"Are you sure you saw a mountain lion?" Stiles asked.

"-Or are you just saying that because that's what the police and I said." Amber finished.

Lydia continued to stare at the wall at the side of the bed, "A mountain lion." She repeated.

Stiles reached around the two girls to grab a small stuffed giraffe from the bedside table, holding it out in front of his chest, "What's this?" He asked her.

Lydia turned to face the both of them again and looked at the stuffed toy in Stiles' hands, blowing a clump of hair out of her face before answering, "A mountain lion."

"..Okay," Stiles said slowly, putting the animal back where he found it and flopping down to sit beside Amber again, "She is so drunk."

Just as quickly as the words left his mouth, Lydia dropped her head into Amber's lap and nuzzled her face into the girl's stomach.

"Um.." Amber laughed quietly at their current position as the redhead reached an arm past Amber to place a hand at the top of Stiles' thigh.

Stiles gasped out a surprised breath and when Amber looked over to see what was wrong, her eyes caught on the spot where Lydia's fingers were resting on Stiles' upper thigh, just along the inner seam of his jeans.

Amber took pity on him and reached out to move the offending hand, but when her fingers settled over the top of Lydia's, Stiles made another choked noise, his mouth dropped open and he leaned back, clenching his eyes shut tight. At his shaky breath, Amber quickly removed their hands from where they'd both been clearly violating him.

"Sorry." She told him quietly, "..Are you ready to leav-"

"I gotta pee." Stiles said urgently, standing from the bed and turning his back to the two girls. He stumbled and tripped over his own feet as he headed in the direction of the door.

"I- The bathroom is across the hall-" Amber told him as he rushed from the room, "Well. You, he finds attractive," She told her unconscious friend quietly with a frown, "But then, don't we all?" Amber combed her fingers through Lydia's hair for another moment before sighing, "Alright, Lyds. We should really get going." She lifted Lydia's head from her lap and the girl pouted sleepily.

"Stay." She told her, sitting up straighter and reaching out to touch Amber's cheek, "Stay-" Lydia leaned closer and her green eyes traced slowly over her friend's face before cupping Amber's other cheek and holding her face softly between her hands. Lydia's thumb trailed down to brush over Amber's lip and she pulled it from where the brunette had it nervously pinched between her teeth, "Please?"

"Lyds, I-" Amber started nervously.

Lydia tilted her head forward and brought their mouths closer until their lips brushed together softly. Amber froze found her heart beating loudly in her ears at the barely there touch of lips.

"Oh for the love of-" Stiles' voice cut in loudly in distress.

Amber flinched and jumped back from the bed like she'd been burned. She watched as Lydia flopped down onto the mattress as if nothing had happened and snuggled into the pillows sleepily.

A moment of silence passed.

"Not. A word." Amber said quietly, lifting an accusing finger at the boy whose mouth had already been opening to say something.

Stiles raised his arms in surrender and Amber shook her head, her eyes caught on where Lydia's cell phone was sitting on the bedside table. She remembered how the redhead hadn't returned any of Amber's messages and wondered if it needed to be charged.

She took a step closer and picked up the phone, surprised when it immediately unlocked to display Lydia's camera roll. A video began to play automatically and Amber squinted at the dark grainy footage, her stomach dropping when she realized it was the moment that the Alpha had jumped through the front window of the video store. She paused it just as the creature broke through on the screen and gulped as she looked at the close-up of the Alpha's wolf-like mouth open in a snarl.

"I- Stiles?" She said in a quiet voice, waving him over.

He moved to stand beside her immediately, "What? What is it?" He asked.

She tilted the phone toward him and showed the frozen image of red eyes that glowed on the dark screen.

"What-? She got a picture of it?" Stiles asked frantically, pulling the phone from her hands.

"A video." Amber corrected quietly.

She took the phone back and texted the video to both Stiles and herself before deleting the file and the evidence of the outgoing messages, gently putting the phone back on the tabletop.

She turned, grabbing Stiles' hand and pulling him along behind her, "Let's go."

Despite the situation with the Alpha and her need to go speak with Derek growing more dire with every passing second — More than anything else, it was the guilt churning away in her gut that affected her the most.

Amber couldn't believe that she'd practically let a drug-delirious Lydia kiss her.

An hour later, Amber stepped off of her bike at the top of the gravel driveway in the preserve and made her way toward what was left of the large covered porch surrounding the Hale house. After a moment's hesitation, she wheeled her bicycle over to the side of the charred house instead of simply abandoning it out front. Once she had stowed her bike in the overgrown weeds and bushes, she climbed the porch and knocked on the chipped, soot-covered red paint of the front door.

The door was pulled open a few seconds later to reveal Derek standing in the entryway, shirtless and covered in a light sheen of sweat. In juxtaposition from the last time Amber had seen his muscled body shining with sweat, the sickly paleness from the week before had been replaced with a healthy looking glow.

"Why are you here?" He asked simply, raising his eyebrows with an unimpressed look.

"Why are you all sweaty?" Amber countered, stepping past him to enter the house. She looked around with barely concealed curiosity, eyes flicking over the room around them.

Unlike the caved-in shell that she knew stood at the back of the house, the front rooms seemed slightly less damaged. Standing in the entryway, she could almost imagine what the house might've looked like before it burned but regardless, Amber didn't much like the idea of Derek holed up in the ruins of the home where his whole family had burned alive.

Derek didn't respond to her evasive question, but he closed the front door and came to stand by the staircase in front of her, leaning back against the banister and crossing his arms over his chest as he waited for an answer to his own initial question.

"I wanted to check and make sure you were doing okay after last week-" She started. When Derek only proceeded in raising his eyebrows as if he didn't quite believe her, she carried on with a small sigh, "..And also I wanted to know if you figured anything else out about the Alpha. Scott's information distribution skills are crap at best and that thing could've killed me last night, but it didn't.. I want to know why, and also how we're planning to get rid of it for good."

Derek sighed, "First off, you are not going to be doing anything, even if I do come up with a plan. You are going to try to stay out of all this, like I told you before. Just because it left you and your friends alive last night, doesn't mean you'll be so lucky next time."

Amber took a step forward and opened her mouth to speak but he continued on.

"You can't keep coming around, alright? The hunters don't know about Scott yet, but they do know about me. If someone sees you hanging around, you're going to have more than just the Alpha to watch out for. I don't need you to be worrying about me."

Amber tore her eyes away from him to focus on the dust that covered the dark hardwood floors, "Someone should." She muttered under her breath.

"I don't need anybody to worry about me. I can take care of myself."

"But that's just it, Derek. I don't think you should have to go through all of this on your own. I want to help-"

"I don't need your help," He said simply, "I need you to not get yourself killed."

Amber's face scrunched in frustration and she sighed loudly, "Well, I don't want you to-"

Derek suddenly stepped forward and pressed the palm of his hand to her lips, his other hand coming up to cup the back of her head to ensure she didn't move away. His eyes were squinted in concentration as he looked toward the front door and Amber recalled the way he'd done something similar when he'd been listening to Argent's vehicles approaching at the gas station.

Amber made a small, questioning noise and his eyes snapped back down to her. His green eyes met her hazel ones and before she could take a breath, he had wrapped an arm around her waist and had begun to drag her down the hallway, her feet barely touching the floor as they moved. When they reached a small closet beneath the staircase, he pulled open the door and shoved her to crouch inside.

"Listen. I mean it- Do not say a word, d'you understand? I don't care what you hear or see, you stay put and you stay quiet."

"Der-" She squeaked nervously.

"Not a sound." He told her, quickly shutting the slatted closet door and moving back a few steps further into the house.

The small storage closet wasn't much of a hiding space. There was a ten inch hole in the wall to her left that gave her a decent view through to the living room and the door was shutters instead of solid wood.

Amber leaned as far away from the hole as she could in an attempt to hide herself from view, peering through the slats to see what Derek was doing only to find that he seemed to have disappeared.

Amber had only just placed one of her hands on the wall to maintain balance in her crouched position when the front door to the house burst open with a crash. She flinched hard at the loud sound of the shattering wood but managed to hold back any noise of her own as two men and a woman entered the house. One of the men held a large black gun in both hands, turning with it slowly as if ready to open fire at any moment.

"No one home?" The man with the gun asked, shuffling around as he looked around the house.

"Oh, he's here," The woman grinned playfully, "He's just not feeling particularly hospitable."

"Maybe he's out," The second man started. Amber thought he looked more like a nineties boyband reject when compared to the dangerous aura the other two held, "Burying a bone in the backyard."

"Really?" The woman asked him in disappointment, "A dog joke? We're going there and that's the best you've got?" The three moved a bit deeper inside the house as she continued, "If you wanna provoke him, say something like, 'Too bad your sister bit it before she had her first litter,'" She smiled and raised her voice, "'Too bad she howled like a bitch when we cut her in half!'"

Amber raised a hand to covered her mouth and muffle a gasp. She heard Derek growl loudly from the other side of the house, followed by a scream that had to have come from the boybander who'd been outside of her field of vision. Derek must've thrown the man to the front of the house because his body landed in the front hall with a loud thump.

She watched as Derek jumped up and swung from the doorway, hitting the man with the gun in the chest with a hard kick that sent him flying to the back of the living room. Derek rose to his feet and snarled at the woman standing in the center of the room. He charged at her and the woman pulled a baton from her back pocket, whipping it out and extending its length with an electrified zapping noise. She thrust it into Derek's naked side as soon as he was close enough and Amber watched in horror as he dropped to the floor in pain.

Derek writhed on the ground, rolling onto his side and releasing small noises of discomfort. Amber bit her lip to the point of pain, her jaw trembling as she was forced to watch Derek's body tense and twitch from the shock of electricity.

"Wow," The woman stated, stepping closer and circling Derek on the floor as she examined him, "This one grew up in all the right places." The woman watched with a smile as Derek recouperated slightly and got his hands underneath him, "I don't know whether to kill it, or lick it."

Amber's heart clenched in both fury at the women's words, and pity as Derek weakly dragged himself along the dusty floor in an attempt to put distance between himself and the woman standing above him. The electric baton zapped threateningly at his back a couple of times as the woman followed behind him with a smile.

Derek tried to pull himself up with the help of the sofa in the corner of the room and the woman shocked him again with a jab to the stomach. Derek flew back several feet from the jolt and his body twitched, muscles tightening with the after effects.

Amber pressed her hand tighter to her mouth to stifle a sound and her eyes welled up with tears as the woman laughed joyfully at Derek.

"Ah, nine hundred thousand volts," The woman grinned, examining the baton in her hand, "You never were good with electricity, were you? Or fire." She laughed again.

Amber took a quiet trembling breath and she watched through the blur of her tears as Derek slowly pulled himself away again, his legs dragging behind him limply.

"-Which is why I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. And, well, maybe we can help each other out." The woman sat on the end of the sofa and looked down at Derek as he took a shaky breath and continued to crawl across the floor, "Yes, your sister was severed into pieces and used as bait to try and catch you.. Unpleasant." She tutted, "And, frankly, a little too Texas Chainsaw Massacre for my taste, but quite true." She laughed again, "Now, here's the part that might really kick you in your balls — We didn't kill her."

Derek finally pulled himself up into a seated position at the end of the room and leaned against the wall. He glared up at the woman as the muscles in his body continued to tremble.

"You think I'm lying?" The woman asked, her eyes wide in faux surprise.

"Wouldn't be the first time." Derek choked out as his body shook.

"Sweetie," The woman said the word mockingly, coming to stand at the end of the room and crouching down in front of him, "Well, why don't you just listen to my heart and tell me if I am, okay?" She leaned into his space until she could speak directly into his ear, "We. Didn't. Kill. Your. Sister.. D'you hear that? No little blips or upticks. Just the steady beat of the cold hard truth."

Amber took another large shaky breath in through her nose, the exhale puffing out over the backs of her fingers where they covered her mouth. Her calves and thighs were beginning to ache from crouching in the cramped broom closet for so long and the resigned look on Derek's face made her chest feel tight.

The woman's lips spread into an eerie grin as she rose to stand above Derek, "They found bite marks on your sister's body, Derek. What d'you think did that? A mountain lion?" She laughed, "Why aren't we helping each other out? You might as well admit what you've been guessing all along which is; The Alpha killed your sister." She stated unsympathetically with a tilt of her head, "All you have to do is tell me who he is and we'll take care of it for you. Problem solved. Everybody goes home happy."

The woman paused with a smile, as if waiting for a response. Derek took slow even breaths but didn't respond to her, his eyes cast down to the dusty floor.

"Unless.." The woman said with a look of surprise, "You don't know who he is either." She chuckled in astonishment, shaking her head, "Wow. Guess who just became totally useless?"

As quickly as the question left her mouth, the woman pulled out a large gun that Amber hadn't even realized she'd been holding. Derek rolled to the side and dashed out of the way just as the woman pulled the trigger, releasing a rapid-fire stream of bullets.

Amber muffled a frightened noise with the hand over her mouth and Derek ran through the front door and out of the house, avoiding the area near the hall closet to protect the girl from getting caught in the line of fire.

The moment that Derek was gone, the woman sighed woefully and dropped the gun to her side. She made her way over to the men she'd brought with her, giving each of them a swift kick and ordered them to get up. Both men groaned in pain but did as she instructed, pulling themselves to their feet slowly.

"Well, that was a bust." The woman said in disappointment.

"What if Chris finds out we disobeyed him and came here?" One of the men asked, brushing himself off as the group slowly made their way to the front door.

"He won't." The woman told them, "And besides, we didn't kill him. Just.. Played with him a little."

Amber leaned toward the hole in the wall to watch them leave and waited, taking slow shaky breaths. She counted to three hundred before easing open the closet door and cautiously stepping out. Her hands trembled as she took careful steps toward the front door and when she reached the open doorway, she looked around the property warily, checking to be sure they were truly gone.

Both hearing and seeing nothing, she let out an anxious breath she'd been holding.

It was entirely possible that Derek had been on to something when he told her it was dangerous for her to keep coming around.

It didn't mean that she planned to listen to him — Just, it was possible that he wasn't totally incorrect.

"Hey, it's me again-" Amber said into her phone after going straight to Stiles' voicemail for the third time, "Look, I don't know if you're ignoring me because you're mad that I ditched you earlier or if you're on another call or what. Just-" Amber sighed, flopping down onto her bed, "I don't know if Scott's talked to you but I still can't get a hold of him. So, anyway, I'm going to go to the parent-teacher thing with Jason. Gonna see if I can talk to him there." She told Stiles through the tiny speaker, "Right. Just, call me or text me when you get this. Bye."

There was a sudden loud knocking and Amber flinched in surprise as her bedroom door was pushed open, sitting up in bed to find her brother standing in the doorway.

"Hey, you about ready to head out?" He asked her.

"Yeah, let me just grab a sweatshirt." She told him, walking over to the closet and pulling out a large gray hoodie that had almost definitely belonged to Stiles at some point.

"You know you don't even have to go to this thing, right? Your grades are really good." Jason pointed out with a raised eyebrow.

Amber pulled the zip-up sweatshirt on over her tank top and brushed past him to head downstairs, "I know. But Scott has to go. I wanna talk to him about something and he's not answering his phone."

"Alright," Jason conceded as they reached the front door, "But I guess if you're coming with, I might as well show you now-"

"Show me what?" Amber asked in confusion, following him outside.

Instead of heading toward the old pickup truck that was parked on the side of the driveway, he led her to the closed garage door. Amber's heart thumped nervously in anticipation as she watched her brother pull open the large rolling door. When the garage door went up and out of the way, it revealed an absolutely hideous AMC Pacer — nearly identical to the one their dad had purchased in the seventies and had still owned when the two of them were kids. It was a ridiculous sunshine yellow and the metal was lightly rusted at the bottom and it looked so much like the one that their dad had driven them around in for the first several years of her life.

"Oh, my god." Amber finally choked out.

Her eyes welled with tears at the memories that cropped up of their dad picking them up from school. The memories of their mom complaining loudly about how much she hated the ugly car and the way things were always falling out of the backseat because, for some reason, the passenger door was built different from the one on the driver's side. The memories of Jason sitting in the back beside her and reading a comic book, flipping it around as he finished each page to show his sister his favorite parts.

Amber took a shaky breath, "It looks just like dad's."

"It is dad's," Jason revealed, stepping up behind her and putting a hand on the back of her head, "Or, it was. He sold it to that older couple over on Beacon Lake, remember?" When she nodded weakly he continued, "Well, turns out they're both eighty now and the husband finally lost his license. He sold it back to me for almost nothing."

"You bought dad's car back?" Amber finally pulled her eyes away from the vehicle and turned to face her brother.

"Yeah, bud. It's yours, if you want it."

"I want it," She said quickly, her head snapped back and forth between Jason and the car, "I want it. Oh my god."

Her brother laughed, pulling a small keychain out of his pocket and handing it to her, "It's yours."

She took the keys with wide eyes, her hands shaking as she gripped them tight.

"It's manual, though. So, you're gonna need to practice driving stick shift." He warned her.

"Stiles tried to teach me in the Jeep once," She told him, "I did okay, I think."

"Alright, well, why don't you drive us to the school and we'll see how good of a teacher your friend Stiles is." Jason grinned, walking to the driver's side door and holding it open for her.

Amber bit down on her lip and made a small excited noise, ducking into the car and onto the stained tan seat, sliding behind the wheel. Her fingertips traced over everything she could see; the ancient radio knobs, the cigarette lighter, the gear shift behind the steering wheel, the speedometer that only reached ninety miles an hour.

She was going to drive her car to the parent-teacher conferences, track down Scott, and figure everything out.

When Amber finally located Ms. McCall outside of the school, the woman was standing by herself, watching the parking lot like a hawk, and Amber deflated slightly as she approached.

"No Scott yet?" Amber asked.

"Have you talked to him?" Ms. McCall asked immediately, checking the phone in her hand as if it might've gone off without her noticing, "I should be in there already but I can't get a hold of him."

Amber attempted a reassuring smile, "I'm sure he'll be here any minute. I'll wait for him out here and I'll send him in the second I see him." She promised.

Scott's mom looked like she wanted to argue, but then she watched the last of the other parents trickle into the school and sighed, "Okay. But, send him straight in. I mean it, Amber."

"I'll send him straight in," Amber promised, "I'll even give him a kick in the ass for being late."

Ms. McCall cracked a smile before agreeing and heading inside as the doors were closing behind the final group of adults.

Amber sat down on the stairs outside the building, bouncing her knee impatiently as she waited for Scott to show up. She sat restlessly, fiddling with the strings on her hoodie and shaking her leg in anticipation. She waited for over an hour, eventually turning sideways to lean back against the cement that held the guard rail.

As more time passed, she began to lose hope. Her stomach dropped sadly when she heard the school doors creak open again after nearly two hours. Parents filed back out of the building and at the front of the pack, she spotted Mr. Argent and a woman she figured had to be Allison's mom.

"Allison. Answering your cell phone will make discussing the terms of your grounding much easier." Amber heard Allison's dad say angrily into his phone, "Well, call me back before your punishment reaches Biblical proportions."

"Kate hasn't heard from her either," Mrs. Argent told him worriedly as they descended the stairs.

Amber scrambled to her feet as the couple reached where she was and winced at the chill in her backside from sitting on the cold ground for so long, sighing at the realization that Scott was still with Allison.

Ms. McCall put a hand on Amber's shoulder as she passed and the woman went to stand in front of the Argents at the bottom of the staircase, "Excuse me, you're not Allison's parents, are you?" She asked, "I'm Scott's mom, and I hate to say it, but he's not answering his phone either."

"You're his mother?" Chris Argent said judgmentally.

Amber took a defensive step forward to stand beside Ms. McCall but the woman responded before she could cut in, "Funny, how you say that like it's an accusation."

"Well, I wouldn't claim it as a source of pride since he basically kidnapped my daughter today." He said gruffly.

"Hey-" Amber said in anger, quieting when Mrs. McCall put a hand on her shoulder.

"How do we know skipping school wasn't your daughter's idea?" She asked defensively.

Mr. Argent glared, "My daughter-" He started loudly, cutting off as he caught sight of something behind them and sighing, "-Is right there."

Ms. McCall immediately turned and rushed toward the parking lot. Amber caught sight of her brother exiting the school and she held up a hand in signal for him to give her a minute, when he nodded and pulled out his phone, she turned to follow behind Scott's mom with wide eyes.

"Where exactly have you been?" Amber heard Ms. McCall yell as the girl approached the group.

"Nowhere, mom." Scott responded quietly.

"Nowhere meaning, 'not at school,'" His mom clarified angrily.

"I- Kinda." He told her.

"It's not his fault," Allison defended, "It's my birthday and we were-"

The girl was cut off when her dad reached them and pointed sternly to the back of the parking lot, "Allison. In the car."

Suddenly, there was a shrill scream from the other side of the parking lot and Amber's stomach dropped, immediately looking at Scott with wide eyes. He met her gaze with a matching expression of uneasiness.

People quickly began yelling and rushing around the parking lot, proceeding to get more frantic as the seconds passed. No one was sure what was happening, but fear spurred them on and people rushed to their cars, some tearing out of the parking lot quickly to get away from an unseen threat.

Scott began to wander away from the group and Amber followed behind him with a hand gripping his jacket, "Is the Alpha here?" She asked quietly.

"I don't know." He told her, tilting his head as he listened through the chaos around them.

Another scream sounded out loudly above the murmuring shouts and Amber flinched, releasing Scott from her hold. When she heard her name being called, she spotted Jason standing at their yellow car on the other side of the lot and he waved to her urgently but she held up her hand again, pleading with him to give her another minute.

There was a growl in the distance and Amber flinched again at the sound, though it didn't resemble the one she remembered from the night before. In the mayhem, she realized that she'd lost Scott, her friend no longer beside her, and she wandered forward, eyes alert as she searched for him.

"Allison!" Amber heard him yell from several yards away.

Amber rose onto her toes to watch as Scott pulled Allison out of the way of a car that was barreling through the parking lot, managing to save her only a second before she would have been hit.

Amber's heart thumped painfully beneath her ribs with adrenaline and the yelling around her only seemed to get louder with each second that passed.

There was another animalistic growl, louder this time, closer, and Amber gasped and spun around as she heard whatever it was dash past where she was standing between two parked cars. When she looked up, she spotted Sheriff Stilinski standing just to the other side of the vehicle beside her.

"Move!" He yelled at the group that was forming around the parked cars as he went to head in the direction the animal had gone.

Amber ran forward in time with her friend's father. As they reached the back of the car, she noticed the tail lights come on and her eyes went wide, reaching out toward Stiles' dad and giving him a small shove just as the car tore out of the spot in reverse and backed into her. She was slammed back several feet and down onto the pavement but the car managed to come to a stop before it could run her over entirely.

"Amber!" Mr. Stilinski yelled worriedly, "What were you thinking, kid? You okay?"

There was another loud growl in the distance and Amber's heart beat loudly in her ears while Stiles' dad grabbed her with one hand in hers and another on her waist as he pulled her to her feet.

Her elbow hurt from the fall and her left hip throbbed painfully where the car had rammed into her, but she didn't feel any serious injuries, "I-I'm fine." She told him breathlessly.

The man's eyes flicked back and forth between her hazel ones before he nodded and stepped back, looking around them at the ever growing chaos. Amber watched him reach down toward his shoe and pull a small gun from a holster he had hidden beneath his jeans at his ankle.

Just as quickly as he'd pulled out his weapon, there were two loud echoing gunshots from the other side of the parking lot. Mr. Stilinski covered Amber's head with his hand and pushed her down for cover as the girl let out a quiet yelp in fear.

A few moments later, Jason sprinted up to them and pulled Amber toward him. When his hand pushed on her hip she cried out at the tender spot and his eyes widened further, "What happened? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I-"

"She got hit by a car." Mr. Stilinski told him over her head.

"What!" Jason asked frantically, "We should go to the hospital-"

"We don't need to go to the hospital. They just bumped me, I'm fine." She assured both men, looking between them, "I'm probably getting a bruise already, but I'm fine." She focussed on Jason, "But the gunshots- What-"

"The mountain lion," Jason told her, "It was wandering around the parking lot and someone shot it."

"I- A mountain lion?" She asked in surprise.

"Yeah," He said, "Probably the same one that killed that guy and scared you last night."

Amber looked between the men, seeing the relief on her brother but a look of confused disbelief on Mr. Stilinski that she was sure matched her own. Before she could say anything else, Jason thanked Stiles' dad for his help and pulled her under the safety of his arm, guiding her back toward the car.

"I feel like this should go without saying, but I don't think you should drive the car for a couple days," Her brother told her as they reached the yellow vehicle, directing her toward the passenger side with a gentle push.

Amber sighed but nodded, wincing when she bumped her sore elbow as she climbed into the car.

As her brother drove them home, she couldn't help but think how unlikely a coincidence it was for a mountain lion to wander into town and get killed while the Alpha remained conveniently out of sight.

Amber clicked Stiles' contact to call him the second she closed her bedroom door. She propped the phone in the crook between her shoulder and her ear as she attempted to peel off her tight jeans painfully. She was pulling on a tiny pair of shorts that had a loose waistband as he picked up.

"Amber, hey!" Stiles said casually, "Sorry I didn't get your calls earlier, I was trying to get a hold of Scott."

He sounded normal, which meant his father most likely hadn't gotten home to talk to him yet. Amber sighed as she sat at her desk and pulled out the Algebra II homework she'd yet to start.

"Don't worry about it." She paused, gnawing on her lower lip.

"So, did you talk to Scott at the parent-teacher thingy?" Stiles asked her after a moment.

"Uh, yeah, kind of," She said, "We, uh, didn't really get much of a chance to talk before all hell broke loose though."

"Hell? What hell?" Stiles asked, "What happened?"

"Mountain lion." She told him, "An actual mountain lion this time. It just showed up in the parking lot and everyone was screaming and panicking and it was... Insane."

Stiles seemed to have too much he wanted to say, releasing a series of small aborted noises on the other line before he spoke, "Wh- Well, what happened?"

"Well, everyone was running around terrified. It was just stalking between cars and growling and then your dad almost got hit by a car-" Stiles released a horrified noise and she continued quickly, "He didn't get hit." She reassured him before adding in a quiet voice, "I did."

"What! Amber I sw-"

"I'm fine!" She said for what felt like the hundredth time in the past twenty-four hours, "Apparently Chris Argent shot the mountain lion, and after that everyone kind of calmed down and we all went home."

"Okay, we can circle back to the mountain lion- You got run over by a car?" Stiles asked her frantically.

"I was not 'run over' by a car," She said with an eye roll, "I was clipped. Tapped. Grazed, if you will."

"You were grazed by a car?" Stiles repeated disbelievingly.

"Yes. I was." Amber confirmed.

"And where the hell was Scott when you were being grazed by said car?" Stiles asked in annoyance.

"He was on the other side of the parking lot. He barely pulled Allison out of the path of another car- I told you, everyone was panicking." Amber explained before sighing, "Anyway, I have a doctor's appointment first thing in the morning so I might miss the beginning of English- I'm not sure yet. I'm hoping it won't take long."

Stiles groaned, "A doctor's appointment? I thought you were only tapped?"

"I was tapped!" She defended, "I couldn't talk Jason out of it though. It was like, his one stipulation for allowing me to go to school tomorrow at all."

She heard Stiles sigh as she mindlessly solved a problem to find the vertical asymptotes of the function in her textbook. When she finished solving the equation and Stiles still hadn't responded, she set down her pencil.

"Look, as much as I appreciate your concern for my well-being, I have like twelve more problems to finish before my Algebra Two homework is done." She told him, "I'm gonna shut my phone off for the night, but I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"I- Yeah, alright." He agreed reluctantly, "Talk to you tomorrow."

"G'night." She smiled down the phone.

"Night."

The call ended and she powered her phone down with a sigh, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes for a moment. There was a quiet noise behind her and she spun in her chair and jerked, nearly falling out of her seat.

"Jesus- Derek!" She exclaimed as she caught herself on the edge of her desk, "What are you doing here?"

Derek was in her bedroom, casually resting against her windowsill like it was a bench. He had put on clothes since she'd seen him that afternoon and he now wore a dark tshirt beneath his leather jacket.

"Well, I came to make sure you were alright after this afternoon. But from what I just heard, Kate wasn't the only one I needed to worry about almost killing you today." He said, raising his eyebrows at the red splotchy skin that poked out from the places where her tank top had ridden up and beneath her tiny shorts.

"It was an accident." She told him defensively, pulling her shirt down over her hip.

"I heard you tell Stiles you were hit by a car at the school." Derek reminded her.

"Grazed," Amber repeated, "I was grazed by a car. And I'm fine."

Derek shook his head at her and seemed to reluctantly drop the subject. He stood from the windowsill and stepped over to her desk, studying the bulletin board hanging above it and eyeing the many photographs of Scott, Stiles, and herself. He looked at them in silence for a minute before he pursed his lips.

"I also wanted to let you know I'm going to try to train Scott." Derek said before turning to face her.

"Really?" She asked excitedly, "Finally! That's great-"

"Try." Derek repeated, "I'm going to try. I don't know if I even can train a bitten werewolf."

Amber nodded, "As long as you both give each other a chance."

Derek nodded, turning toward the window and making to leave again.

"Wait-" Amber called quietly. Derek had one leg out the window and he turned to face her, "Are you okay?" She asked him, "After earlier. That woman-"

"Kate." Derek told her, "Kate Argent. She's Allison's aunt."

"Kate," Amber repeated, "She- She electrocuted you or tased you or something. And the things she said-"

"I'm fine, Amber." Derek said, "I already told you- I don't need you to worry about me."

"That's not going to stop me from doing it." She murmured softly, "I'm pretty sure I'm going to worry about you, regardless."

Derek seemed slightly stunned, still hovering half inside the window. It took him a moment, but he seemed to recover with a small shake of his head, "Just.. Be safe." He told her.

He ducked his head around the open window to leave and jumped to the ground, landing silently in the grass beneath Amber's window.

"You too." She mumbled to the empty windowsill after a few seconds.

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