AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story starts with an alternate ending to the season one finale, "Code Breaker," picking up from just after Chris Argent has interrupted Kate about to kill Scott. First, this story was originally planned to be just this chapter, but it's since been expanded to be a little longer (how much longer only time will tell). Second, this story does not tie in with "Cold Skies," the crossover fic I'm writing that ties Teen Wolf in with Buffy, Angel, Supernatural, The Secret Circle, and Harry Potter (that fic uses the actual end of "Code Breaker" as a jumping off point).

And may the fun begin!

REWRITING CODE

"The Alpha," Scott said, his eyes glowing yellow and his claws extending. Chris, Kate and Allison Argent all drew in closer to his sides. My savior, my executioner, and my...what does she qualify as now? Scott wondered. Chris and Kate both checked their weapons and Allison drew an arrow to her bow.

"I'd suggest you get out of here," Scott said, his voice distorted from the change. He caught a look of slight shock at the difference in his voice from Allison – the reality of the thing's got lots of levels, more than she thought, Scott thought.

"Four against one is better than one against one," Chris Argent replied, his voice still relatively cool, but Scott could detect a note of nervousness there now as well. He's probably fought Alphas before.

"Two pop guns and a bow and arrow isn't going to enough damage to stop him," Scott muttered. A whooshing sound told him that Alpha was moving through the trees, although he couldn't pin down where. Scott caught Chris Argent's eye and nodded in a very specific direction. "Take Kate and Allison and get out of here. I can hold him off while you go."

A moment of unspoken communication passed between Scott and Chris. Please, let him understand, Scott begged silently. After only a slight hesitation, Chris nodded. "Okay," he said. "We'll go."

***/\***

"What?" Allison asked. He's not serious. "We're running?"

"No way am I running from a fight, Chris," Kate said. Her grip tightened on her pistol. "You know me."

Another whooshing sound, this time accompanied by a distinct howl. Unlike the howls she'd heard from Scott and Derek, this one was deep, almost like a roar. Allison had never heard something so unspeakably inhuman in her life.

"Scott is right, we don't have the kind of firepower necessary to fight this fight," Chris said, lowering his pistol and taking Kate by the arm. "And anyway, we both know he's after you. We should get out of here."

Allison threw a questioning glance at her aunt – why would he be after you specifically? She wanted to ask – but Kate's facial expression didn't change in the slightest. She did, however, allow Chris to begin leading her away from the ruined Hale house. Allison turned to look at Scott. "We shouldn't leave you."

"It's okay," he said. "I can help you get away." His eyes were golden, but she could see all manner of pain and anguish behind them. Behind them, he was still Scott. And he was giving up his life for hers. Oh...shit. What did I do? Before she could say anything else, she felt her father's hand grip her arm and start dragging her away from the Hale house. Her mind was so distracted that the only thing she could think was, this isn't the way to the cars. They're in the opposite direction.

At that exact second she heard another roar – this one right in front of her. The Alpha sprung out of the shadows of the trees, lunging toward her – she was closest – and she knew that she wouldn't get her bow up quickly enough. Likewise she knew that neither her father nor her aunt would be able to raise their guns quickly enough.

Only Scott, who'd planned the whole thing out, was quick enough, intercepting the Alpha in mid-air, now fully shifted into his own Beta wolf form. That was the nod, Allison thought. Telling Dad to go this way to the Alpha at our front, so we can run back the other way to the cars. A second later her father confirmed it by grabbing her by the arm as well and hissing, "Run!"

Her feet weren't working correctly, watching as the Alpha took a swipe at Scott, who dodged under it, the claws grazing the fabric of his dirty white dress shirt. Scott punched upward but the Alpha managed to twist out of the way and backhand Scott across the face, not cutting the skin but sending the young Beta wheeling backward. A second later her feet began working and she was following her father back towards the cars.

Once they were just out of sight – but not out of sound distance, Allison could hear as the fight continued, a giant crack as a tree trunk splintered from having one of the combatants thrown against it – Kate dug her heels in, causing Allison to stumble. "Wait," she said.

"Maybe there's some part of, 'run while I hold him off' you didn't understand," Chris began, bristling.

"I said, wait," Kate said, matching his tone. "We should wait here. Circle around, let them fight, then finish off whichever one wins. They'll never be weaker. We can put this town behind us again."

Allison's eyes widened as her Aunt Kate, the woman who'd babysat her when she'd still thought it was cool to have a babysitter, who'd sat and talked with her for three hours about the first boy she'd kissed, talked about either waiting for her boyfriend to die or waiting until he was too exhausted to fight them off, with the same expression she might use when talking about grocery shopping. She looked to her father and felt a little bit more of her world plummet out from underneath her; he was clearly considering it.

"No," Chris Argent replied, after a moment of consideration that, to Allison, felt like an entire lifetime. "I'm sticking by what I said earlier. The code still applies. There's no proof that he's taken human life."

"What if he kills the Alpha?" Allison asked, completely dazed.

"Doesn't make a difference," Kate said.

"Not so far as the code is concerned," Chris confirmed. "The point is that he has not taken human life. That won't change if he kills the Alpha."

"Doing our job for us," Kate said, with a smile that Chris frowned at. I'm in a complete nightmare, Allison thought. Again. How many times can that happen in one night? Kate's smile slipped. "Can't say I like this running thing. I still think we should pick off whichever one pulls through the fight. From the sound of it there isn't going to be much left of whichever one makes it. We won't get a better opportunity than this."

Chris shook his head and Kate shrugged, clearly disappointed but still acquiesing. The two older Argents turned to resume their trek back to the cars. After a couple of steps, Chris realized that Allison wasn't walking with them. He turned to see that his daughter's eyes were round as dinner plates. "Allison?" he asked, the cool tone he'd been using with Kate slipping back into the voice she more normally associated with her father – daddy, a part of her mind felt like sobbing and laughing hysterically at the same time.

Another huge crack, this time accompanied by a pained howl, not low enough in pitch to be coming from the Alpha. Allison's face twisted. "I can't leave him," she said, and turned and bolted back toward the fight.

"Damn it! Allison!" Chris hastened to catch up, but he'd raised an athletic daughter, and she had a head start on him.

As she ran, Allison drew another arrow from her quiver – silver shaft – and began to fit it to the compound bow's firing notch. By the time she'd gotten back to where Scott and the Alpha were dueling, the fight had moved to the clearing in front of the Hale house again. Scott had just been thrown off balance by another backhand from the Alpha, which left him stumbling down onto the ground scattering the leaves and dirt as he landed. His clothes were even more torn than they had been and he was bleeding from several cuts, notably a large gash over his right eye.

When he caught sight of Allison, Scott's golden eyes flared with pain and desperate fear. "Get out of here!" he yelled. "He'll kill you!"

***/\***

When Scott saw that Allison had come back for him his first thought, admittedly, was, she is so stupid. Even given everything it wasn't a thought he'd ever thought he'd associate with Allison, but it was there nonetheless. He'd yelled at her even as he saw her let fly her first arrow at Peter Hale, the Alpha who'd been more or less making him over into raw meat up until then.

The arrow struck Peter in the left shoulder, burying itself there. Peter howled, a lower, more guttural sound than Scott, or even Derek, had been able to make. In his full Alpha form, Peter wasn't capable of human speech at all, but he seemed to still have the capacity for human expression, because Scott could have sworn that he smiled as he pulled the arrow from his shoulder. He snapped the arrow in two, letting the two halves fall to the forest floor.

Allison drew another arrow, but by the time she tried to sight her target Peter wasn't there anymore. Desperate, Scott tried to launch himself at Allison, to push her out of the way, but Peter was there first, batting the bow violently out of Allison's hands and, in one perfect, fluid motion, turning to drive an uppercut into the lunging Scott, sending him flying into the Hale house's front wall. Scott tasted his own blood and actually heard a ringing noise in the back of his head as he settled back to the ground, shifting back to his normal form.

Scott's eyes, both ringed with bruises now, opened, to see Peter standing over Allison, who'd fallen to the ground and was looking up at him, a terrified look on her face. He tried to move – his body was beginning to heal, but the blow had shattered several bones and done other damage that Scott couldn't even consciously take stock of; he suspected that someone without a werewolf's durability and healing ability, not to mention constitution for pain, would have died of shock in his condition. Instead of springing to his feet to charge back into the fight, Scott's entire body twitched and he coughed up a not-small amount of his own blood.

Through his slightly cloudy vision, Scott saw as the Alpha reared to strike at Allison. His motion was interrupted by twin pops – gunshots, Scott realized – which blew him backward. Peter snarled at the interruption and pain and once more whooshed his way into the trees and out of sight. Chris and Kate argent approached from the positions they'd taken on either side of Allison, both bending down to check on her.

"Scott! He's hurt!" she said, pointing to where Scott lay with his back against the wall of the Hale house.

"Healing," Scott managed to grunt, although it made another large amount of blood spill out of his mouth. "Focus. Trees."

It wasn't any use. Peter had managed to regroup and, quicker than Kate or Chris could process Scott's words, he's managed to refocus himself on the new threat. Scott could tell that both of the older Argents had fought – hunted, he thought – werewolves in the past, clearly with success or else they'd both have been dead. Still, they were at an extreme disadvantage – at night, Peter's senses were far superior to theirs, they lacked any sort of backup and were carrying minimal firepower, and Peter knew the area far better than they did. And Peter was driven.

Peter managed to drop down right between the two older Argents. "Behind you!" Scott managed to yell. He tried to stand again and found that he could push himself up to at least a kneeling position. Progress.

Chris and Kate Argent both whirled, but neither was nearly fast enough; Peter could watch their movements and plan his own counterattack so that when he launched it, it flowed fluidly. Both Argents were trying to bring their guns to bear on Peter, but in a single motion he flung both arms outward sideways, his clawed fists connecting with the Argents' guns, sending the pistols flying into the foliage. Both Chris and Kate stumbled backward at the force of the punches, falling to the ground. Scott finally managed to push himself to his feet, feeling the last of the broken bones settling into place.

Peter, meanwhile, had shifted from the full Alpha form to one more befitting a Beta; his sideburns remained long and fur-like, his ears pointed, and his claws and fangs were still extended. This time he definitely smiled at Scott, who was making his way over to where Peter stood over the fallen Argents. "Scott!" he said. "You put up a marvelous fight. I'm quite proud of how long you managed to hold out against me; I wouldn't have expected you to last half the time. We'll make a strong fighter of you yet. Maybe the strongest."

"Let them go," Scott said, a slight wheeze still in his voice. He drew level with and about fifteen feet from Peter, who stood over Chris Argent, who was looking up at him with a look of disgust and anger. Neither Kate nor Allison moved. Both were within easy striking distance of Peter and neither had a weapon they could see or get close to.

"You know I'm not going to do that," Peter said. "This is why I'm here. This is what I've been building toward for the past few months. I'm not going to give it up now. But I will do you a favor, Scott. I'll tell you that if you leave right now, you might still be able to save your mother's life."

Allison, who had been watching Scott, snapped her head around to stare at Peter. Even Kate looked surprised. It took a second for Scott to process the words. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

"I've had a busy night," Peter said. "I knew I'd probably need some insurance on you before setting all this in motion, so I swung by your house after you left for the big dance. Your mother was so happy to see me – I think she's been very lonely for quite some time, Scott, a feeling with which I can empathize. She invited me in for coffee. I cut her in a dozen places before she hit the floor. None of them were arteries, and I didn't bite her, so she won't turn, but eventually she'll bleed out. Maybe if you go right now you can still save her."

Scott gritted his teeth. "I thought you were the good guy," he said.

Peter gave an almost imperceptible shrug. "I think we can leave all the pleasantries behind now, can't we?" he asked. "We are simply who we are – who we are made to be – and it requires no further discussion about 'good' versus 'bad.'"

Scott shook his head. "I still don't believe you," he said.

Peter cocked his head at Scott. "Smell me," he said. "Use those marvelous senses I gifted you with. They'll tell you everything you need to know." He stood and waited.

Hesitantly, Scott sniffed at the breeze. Even unshifted he could smell eight million things at once. He worked to isolate Peter, and then worked harder to isolate the numerous smells coming from the Alpha. He could smell minimal contact with Stiles, a few small amounts of Lydia's blood – What? - and then he could smell the scent he knew to be his mother's – and he could smell her blood. A lot of it. Scott howled, shifting back to his werewolf form instantly.

Peter remained half-shifted and held up a single clawed, slightly furry hand. "Wait," he said. "I now you're angry. But remember, if you go now you might still be able to help her. Leave these three to me."

Scott stood his ground, torn. His eyes scanned Chris and Kate Argent, both wearing similar looks of disgust and anger, mostly directed toward Peter, although he got the impression that those expressions would probably have turned on him in Peter's absence. Allison was watching him, curiously, looking terrified out of her wits.

After a moment Peter began to lose his patience. "Make your decision however you will," he said, turning sideways to look down at Chris Argent. "I'm going to kill this one while you make up your mind."

Neither Kate nor Allison could react as Peter raised a clawed hand and began a deadly swipe at Chris' neck. Again, it was only Scott who was fast enough. Realizing that Peter would be ready to parry another thrust directly at him (and not particularly wanting to wind up broken against the side of the house again), Scott instead did the next best thing – he dove into the path of Peter's strike, taking the full force of the hit as four searing, red-hot lines an inch and a half deep across the entire length of his back, the first serious cuts Peter had managed to inflict on Scott.

Scott's vision swam red. But he stayed conscious, pushing Chris Argent out of Peter's reach and turning to face the enraged Alpha.

***/\***

Allison saw every detail of the cuts on Scott's back as Peter tore his skin to shreds. She'd seen her share of injuries over the years, but never anything quite like this; between the adrenaline and the horror of the situation she felt hyper-focused and, despite the Alpha's speed, it was almost like she was seeing the cuts perforating Scott's back in slow motion. The claws actually dug in; instead of just red lines, Scott's skin seemed to flap as the claws tore deep, and Allison had the distinct impression that she could see into his back along the four gashes.

Scott howled and stumbled under the force of the blow which, Allison realized, probably would have completely severed her father's neck. Scott pushed her father out of Peter's reach and, somehow still standing, turned and swiped his own claws at the Alpha.

He's moving slower, Allison thought as Scott and and the Alpha resumed their fight. She looked wildly around, but there was no sign of her bow; when Peter had batted it out of her hands it had landed somewhere beyond the tree line, and there was no way she would find it in the dark. Similarly, Kate's gun seemed to have landed somewhere undetectable. Her father's gun, though...

A slight glitter on the ground about thirty feet away caught Allison's eye. She glanced at Scott and Peter – they were too busy with their new fight to be paying attention to her. Similarly, both Kate and Chris, still on the ground, seemed transfixed by the deadly dance Scott had undertaken with Peter. Taking a short, deep breath, Allison pushed herself to her feet and sprinted for the pistol. Her father started at her movement but seemed to think better of calling her name.

Allison slid to a stop next to the glittering object, which turned out, just as she'd quickly prayed, to be her father's sidearm. She picked it up, checked to make sure that the hammer was still cocked, and turned back to Scott and Peter.

Just in time to see Peter grab a dazed Scott with both hands at Scott's collarbone and tear downward, all eight of his primary finger claws drawing enormous gashes down Scott's chest, all the way to his waist, similar to the cuts Peter had inflicted on Scott's back but even deeper, leaving Scott's shirt and flesh in tatters. Scott's eyes actually rolled backward from the pain and he slumped back, his neck exposed. Peter bared his teeth.

"No!" Allison yelled, and as Peter's head twitched at the interruption, she began firing. Handily, Chris Argent had always been of the opinion that giving his daughter the knowledge to safely handle a gun was preferable to simply forbidding her to use them. While arrows had always been her forte, she was a decent shot with a handgun too. She squeezed the trigger six times in rapid succession, each of the bullets hitting Peter squarely in the head. On the third shot he dropped Scott to the ground. Allison began advancing on Peter, who stumbled back onto one knee under the barrage of bullets. After the sixth shot, the pistol clicked. Allison looked at it to see the slide drawn back, indicating that the gun was empty. She looked up in time to see Peter swiping the gun out of her hands before it was once again lost to the woods.

It was Allison's turn to stumble back, landing painfully on a rock. She wasn't carrying anything else with which she could defend herself, and Peter was looming over her, clearly completely given over to his rage and blood lust. Peter howled.

Which was nothing compared to the blood-curdling roar that Scott let loose from the ground behind them. Peter turned to look at the young Beta, but Scott moved too fast for him to counter. Scott drove the claws of his right hand straight up into Peter's throat, sinking them in so far that all four of the fingers on his hand disappeared into Peter's furry neck. Peter's wolf eyes went wide and he tried to shake Scott loose, raking his claws again and and again over Scott's outstretched arm, but Scott held on, rage of his own making his golden eyes shine especially strong, and he twisted, curling his fingers to tear at the inside of Peter's neck. Peter's body began shuddering violently. Slowly, still trying to bat at Scott's arm with decreasing strength, Peter began to shift back to his human form, until finally the only thing left to distinguish him as a werewolf were his glowing red eyes. He was choking on his own blood, trying to say something, but no words were coming out. Scott looked deep into Peter's red eyes, saw fear, and finished clenching his right fist, tearing Peter's throat – and half of his neck – completely clear of his body. Peter's body fell to the ground, the red glow dimming to nothing before it'd even fully collapsed.

For a second, Allison watched as Scott himself stood, panting, holding the torn remnants of Peter's throat. His breathing increased in rapidity and, suddenly, he pitched over, shifting back to human. Looking him over, Allison realized that the cuts Peter had inflicted hadn't healed fully yet and Scott had lost a lot of blood. Allison's eyes were wide and staring, still trying to process the sight of Scott physically ripping apart a man's throat. For all she'd seen that night she was starting to thinks she'd used up her ability to process information.

Which is probably why she couldn't figure out how to react when she saw Kate advancing on them, having somehow retrieved her own gun from the woods. "Perfect," Kate muttered. "Alpha dead, and you're not in any shape to put up a fight, are you, brown-eyes? We can wrap this up nicely."

She pointed the gun at Scott, who looked up at Kate with eyes that again glowed gold, and Allison, in her state of shock, could only think, Why is she pointing a gun at Scott? He just saved our lives.

Luckily, Chris head kept more of his head about him. He charged his sister from behind and hit her bodily with his shoulder, the gunshot went wide of hitting Scott. Scott hissed at the two older Argents and, recognizing danger, Allison wondered suddenly if Scott was going to attack her father and aunt. Scott himself seemed to be considering just that, but he raised his head, sniffing at the wind, then let loose another howl at the moon, full of pain and anger and everything completely animal and human at the same time, and then pulled himself up and began to lope, running with his legs and arms, away. He was out of sight before Allison could say anything else.

***/\***

She's not dead, Scott was thinking, running flat out through the trees so fast that low-lying branches were cutting his face. She's not dead. He was just saying that to goad me. She probably just cut herself on a knife and he took advantage to get her blood scent on him. He wouldn't hurt her. He wouldn't do that.

A part of Scott later would recognize that everything he'd been saying to himself at that point was completely foolish. Of course Peter would hurt his mother; hurting people is what Peter did, especially if it furthered his goals. And Peter wanted Scott as part of his pack, for Scott to break ties with the human world, and one of the biggest ties would, of course, be Scott's human mother.

That would come later.

That night, Scott was still justifying and scrambling for other ways to explain away what he was about to find as he approached his house, the house he'd grown up in, had his mother put bandaids on when he'd gotten cuts as a little boy, where he'd snuck out of bed at night for cookies, where he'd come running when a bully had pushed him into a puddle on the first day of kindergarten and where his mother had greeted him at the door and wrapped him in a giant hug that had seemed to last for hours and make it all go away.

She greeted him at the door again this night, although in a slightly different fashion. Scott was dimly aware of the EMS truck and flashing lights around the house. Dimly as well, on seeing them Scott realized he'd shifted back to human. He sprinted for the front door, ignoring a shout from Stiles' father, just in time to see two EMS technicians carrying a stretcher with a body covered in a sheet through the front door.

Still not fully believing, Scott grabbed the sheet and threw it and yes, it was his mother laying there, and he struggled to find any sign of life from her but she wasn't breathing because he couldn't feel the slight change in air that came with breathing from her and her heart wasn't beating because the only sound he could detect from stretcher she was on was a slight clicking noise that one of the metal pieces on the underside made and he could smell all the cuts and all the blood that she'd lost and it made sense to the wolf in him that she was dead but it didn't make sense to him and it couldn't actually be, could it?

Finally realizing that it really was the truth, Scott collapsed to his knees, tears beginning to flow. Sheriff Stilinski, who'd been standing talking with one of the EMS techs by their ambulance, managed to catch up to Scott, wrapping a hug around Scott's shoulders and holding him as his entire body shuddered with the force of his increasing, out of control sobbing. The sheriff continued to hold the sobbing teenager as EMS took his dead mother away.

Allison hadn't seen Scott in three days. After they'd gotten home after Scott had killed Peter and they managed to sort through everything that had happened (Chris promising to be angry at both Kate and Allison once the shock had worn off), they'd pieced together everything Peter had said and realized where Scott must have gone. They'd made a few calls and found, to Allison's complete horror and Kate's near-complete indifference, that Scott's mother had indeed been killed. When, after this, Kate had muttered that Chris should have let her put Scott down too, the conversation – which had lacked tension up until that point, mostly due to their mutual exhaustion – had exploded, Allison screaming her head off at her aunt, calling her a sociopath and murderer, Kate calmly responding that Allison was more a child than she'd thought and really wasn't ready for all of this, Chris silently agreeing, at least with the last part. Allison had tried to get Scott every way she knew how – his cell phone, the house phone, even Stiles' cell, but no one had answered that night, and Chris had forbidden her from leaving, going so far as to barricade her door. She'd spent the next day trying to find him, but he wasn't at the Stilinskis and his own home was cordoned off with yellow police tape. Finally, after texting Stiles for the eighth time that day, she'd gotten a response: Scott is safe. He doesn't want to talk to you. Stop calling.

She'd felt a lump in her throat then, but pushed it down and reasoned that it made sense, that he was going through a lot and wasn't sure where they stood and didn't want to have to try and work through that as well right now. She wanted to see him so badly it ached – worse than the bumps and bruises and cuts she'd gotten from the fight with Peter – but she was willing to wait. She knew where she'd see him; where he'd have to be.

His mother's funeral.

Both Chris and Kate had declined to go, Kate without a word of reason, Chris saying that he didn't think Scott would want them there. He'd made sure that Allison realized that she was now included a part of "them," but Allison had defiantly announced that she would go, and neither her father nor her mother, and certainly not her aunt who'd stopped speaking to her altogether, had tried to stop her. She'd purchased a modest black dress – something that would attract the least attention possible, the last thing she needed was Scott thinking she was trying to look sexy at his mother's funeral – and gotten the time and day from the local paper.

It was a relatively small service, held at noon in the local graveyard. A man from the local church – the kind that doesn't seem to have a denomination – was already speaking about how wonderful and strong a person Melissa McCall had been, holding down a difficult job while being a loving and attentive single parent, when Allison walked up. She'd planned on being a couple of minutes late; that way she and Scott could avoid trying to make conversation before the service.

"She was taken from us before her time," the man from the church was saying. Is Scott religious? Allison wondered. I never asked.

Scott himself was standing, rigid, right in front of the man from the church and the coffin, which was set on the scaffold that would be used to lower it into the ground. Again, she wanted more than anything to go to him, stand next to him, wind her hand around his and give him what strength she could, but she wasn't sure how he'd take that and she didn't want to cause a scene in the middle of Scott's mother's funeral.

The rest of the service, Allison couldn't help but think, was awfully generic. The man from the church said a few more words about good works that Melissa McCall had done in the community and that she was loved by all that knew her and would be missed. He then told the small crowd – Allison could pick out Stiles and his father, both standing to Scott's side, and a few other people she recognized from the hospital where Scott's mother had worked – that by Scott's request no one else would be speaking at the funeral itself, but a reception would be held at the Darger household on School Street if anyone was interested in congregating after the service. The man nodded at one of the undertakers, who began to lower the coffin. The crowd began to break up; Allison watched Stiles and his father walk over to Scott, Sheriff Stilinksi laying a hand on Scott's shoulder, but Scott waved them off, probably saying that he needed a minute. The sheriff caught sight of Allison as they turned to walk away and directed his steps toward her, Stiles following hesitantly behind.

"Allison," the sheriff said, hugging her quickly. "It's so good of you to have shown up. Scott's been so broken up about this – I'm sure he could use every bit of support he has right now."

"I know, "Allison said. "That's why I'm here."

The sherriff regarded Scott with a glance, which Allison shared. "He said he needs a few minutes and that he'd catch up to us later. He wasn't planning on going to this reception that Henry Darger is hosting – that's more for Melissa's work friends. Scott's staying with us for the time being – if he forgets just tell him we'll be at home, waiting for him."

"Okay," Allison said, the sheriff giving her a last smile before walking off toward the cars.

Stiles lingered a moment longer, waiting for his father to be out of earshot. "If I were you," Stiles said. "I wouldn't go over there."

"Why?" Allison asked.

"That's not my place," Stiles said, starting to walk away too. The look on his face was halfway between angry and sad. "But I'm just warning you. I wouldn't." He turned and jogged to catch up to his father, who slung an arm around Stiles' shoulders as they retreated toward the cars.

The coffin made a slight clinking noise as it hit bottom. The undertaker looked up at Scott and announced that he'd be back in half hour to remove the scaffold and finish covering the coffin with dirt, then turned and left as well, leaving only Scott and Allison standing by the open grave. It may have been Allison's imagination but its suddenly felt chilly.

Slowly, with not a little bit of hesitation after Stiles' discouraging advice, Allison approached Scott. "Scott?" she asked, when she was only a few feet behind him.

"Yes, I know you're here," he said. "I can hear your heartbeat. I know yours from a mile away. You think I'd missed it?"

Allison ignored the double meaning. "I just wanted to come and tell you how sorry I am," she said, drawing up beside him. He was staring as hard as he could at the coffin, not turning to face her. "You know, about everything."

"Everything," Scott muttered. "That's kind of a lot right now. Maybe you should be more specific. Because of Derek?"

Despite her better judgment, Allison felt herself get defensive. "I didn't kill Derek," she said. "Kate's the one who shot him."

"You shot him, too," Scott pointed out. "Put the arrows in him that let your aunt get close enough to put the bullet in his head that killed him. Much easier to kill a Beta than an Alpha. Guess I got lucky on that front. Oh, you shot the arrow that blinded me too, didn't you? Guess that wasn't the worst I took that night, but somehow it did feel the most personal."

"Scott, I was confused," she said, feeling a note of desperation creeping into her voice. I will not cry. "And you'd been lying to me and Kate was the only one who was giving me answers and - "

"You did tell me to stop lying," Scott mused, his voice hard as granite. "Fine, no more lies. From here on out I will only ever tell you the complete, unadulterated, straight-from-my-head-to-your-ears truth. Exactly what's on my mind. Okay?"

"Okay," Allison said, her eyes welling. Oh, God, I've lost him completely, haven't I?

"Seems you also said that you didn't believe that everything I'd been doing was to protect you," Scott mused again out loud.

"I believe now."

Scott laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "Well, that's a relief," he said. "After I stay behind to protect her and her family while my mother laid dying she comes around that I've been trying to protect her. A weight has been lifted from my heart. Catch me, I might fall from this new feeling of freedom."

"Scott - " Allison started, laying a hand on Scott's back. Scott immediately flinched, his uninterrupted stare at the coffin breaking as he looked down at the ground. "What? The cuts haven't healed?"

"Not completely," Scott said, gasping a little bit. Allison retracted her hand like it'd been burnt. "Stiles has been trying to find more information on the internet, but it's been slow going. Best guess, whenever an Alpha cuts a Beta the wound doesn't heal right away." Scott scowled, still looking down at the ground between them. "Then again, you'd probably know better than I would at this point. Your family has a lot more experience with werwolves than I do. Maybe I should be asking you."

"I'm not like them, Scott," Allison said, half-defensive, half ready to cry.

Scott finally looked at her. Instead of the gold they used to blaze, they were now a deep, blood red. Allison took an involuntary step back and Scott laughed. "Aren't you?" he asked.

"You're an Alpha now?" Allison asked, her breath catching.

"Yeah," Scott said, his eyes returning to normal. She almost wished they hadn't; Scott's brown eyes had always seemed so open and caring, and now were like a pair of precious jewels – beautiful but hard. "Funny, Derek thought that if I killed the werewolf who bit me I might be cured. Instead this happened. Isn't it grand? I suppose this makes me a target again."

"We have a code - " Allison began.

"'We,' she says," Scott interrupted, again laughing that harsh laugh. Not a single thing he's saying or doing sounds natural, Allison thought. "Well, fine. Let's talk about your code. It has something to do with killing, right? Like, you can't kill a werewolf unless you have proof that the werwolf has killed. Well, I've killed. I killed Peter. Doesn't that make me a target?"

"No," Allison muttered, looking down, now refusing to meet Scott's eyes.

"And why not?" Scott asked, although his tone heavily suggested that he already knew the answer.

"Because you have to kill a human in order for the code to apply," Allison said, scratching at the ground and wishing she'd taken Stiles' advice.

"Have to kill a human," Scott repeated. "But another werewolf doesn't count. Another werewolf doesn't matter. I think that speaks volumes about your 'code.' But you know, it doesn't really matter to me. Not anymore. Come after or me or don't come after me, I don't care. I wouldn't have even stayed this long here if I didn't still have responsibilities."

"Responsibilities?" Allison asked, choking back the tears that were again threatening to fall.

Scott gave her a sideways, calculating look. "What the hell," he muttered. "I told you I'd be completely honest with you. Might as well gamble with Lydia's life on that."

"Lydia's life?" Allison asked. "What?"

"Peter bit her. She's turning."

Allison shook her head to clear the cobwebs. "She's a werewolf now?" she asked.

"Right in one," Scott said, looking back down at the coffin. "Takes a little longer to really start feeling it for girls, I guess. She's still in the hospital – I talked to her the other day, explained everything. She's...coping. Point is, if I bail she's left completely alone. You know what they call a werewolf without a pack?"

"What?" Allison asked.

"Dead," Scott replied. "Something Derek tried to impress on me before your aunt murdered him. You can whine and be all righteous about your code all you want – how long do you think it'd be before Kate got to her, if I left her alone? So we develop an understanding."

"What understanding?" Allison asked, the sense of horror mounting inside of her.

"If anything happens to Lydia, and I mean anything, I'm coming for Kate, and I'll kill her."

"Scott, this is crazy - "

"No, this is our lives now," he said, harshly. He turned away from the coffin. "It'd probably be best if you relayed that message to the rest of your family. Let them know what we won't kill of our own accord – that'll make your dad happy – but we will defend ourselves, and remember that if anything at all happens to Lydia, Kate's life is mine." He started to walk away, not toward the cars or civilization, but toward the woods.

"Scott, wait," Allison said, running to catch him by the arm. "I love - "

"Don't," Scott interrupted, shaking his arm out of Allison's grip. "I just can't hear those words from you right now. I don't think I'll ever be able to, after everything."

He broke into a run. By the time he'd hit the treeline he'd begun to shift. As soon as he'd disappeared into the woods, Allison heard a deep, guttural howl – the howl of an Alpha.

***/\***

When she arrived home, Allison found her mother, father, and aunt all sitting around the dining room table, waiting for her. Still a little dazed, she nonetheless wiped the tears from her eyes and sat down in the chair her father offered to her.

"How'd it go?" Chris asked his daughter.

"Not, uh, not well," Allison replied.

"Did he hurt you?" Victoria asked.

"No," Allison said, quickly. "No, he wasn't violent. He just had a lot to say."

"What did he say?" Chris asked.

Allison took a deep breath. "Lydia's turning," she said. "Killing Peter made Scott the Alpha, and now Lydia's becoming a werewolf, too."

Chris nodded. "I figured as much, on both counts," he said. "What else did he have to say."

Allison bit her lip. "He said they won't be violent unless they have to defend themselves," she said. "He wanted to make that very clear."

"What aren't you telling us?" Victoria asked, sharply.

Allison cringed. "He – he said that if anything happens to Lydia, anything at all, he'll kill Aunt Kate."

Kate snorted. "Huh. Figures."

"Shut up," Chris muttered. "Whatever's wrong with you, Kate, you're the reason all of this is happening, from the very beginning. I'd send you somewhere else but I don't trust anyone to keep a close enough eye on you."

"You don't say where I go and don't go," Kate muttered.

"I do now!" Chris roared, surprising both Kate and Allison, who jumped. "That little stunt of yours with the Hale family is what got us into this mess. Then, dragging Allison into the mix the other night just made things worse. Maybe Derek and Scott would have been able to deal with Peter without our interference, and maybe Scott's mother wouldn't be dead, if you hadn't stepped in that one. Now we've got a new Alpha on our hands, full of rage and anger, but unlike Peter the first thing he thinks of is still to protect his pack. There hasn't been one like that in years; that sort of thing will draw lone wolves for miles around to join him. But in the meantime, he's still a teenager going through an enormous emotional trauma, having just inherited massive power, and newly without an authority figure – in either the werewolf world or the human world – to reign him in. We're going to have to keep a very close eye on him."

"Yes," Allison said, her heart breaking in half. "We are."

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I'd say that came out better than I'd thought it was going to. Excellent! As always, leave a review if you like what you see. Again, when this story was first published, this part said I wasn't planning on continuing it, but as of about now you should be able to see click the nifty little next button and keep reading.