Damn, this idea has been bothering me for about two weeks now -.-; It all started with Peter's little speech regarding injured wolves and what the other pack members do to care for it and just kinda spiraled from there. This is a slight AU from the beginning of Season 3 so Erica and Boyd are still alive, the Twins haven't become frenemies with Scott and the others, and there's no Darach nonsense yet. This is just a little different take on what could have happened instead. Hope you all like it!

Disclaimer: I own nothing =/

The forest is quiet this time of night, still and dark in the enveloping embrace of evening shadows. Save for a few bird calls and the chirping of crickets, it's absolutely silent. Even the breeze doesn't rustle the leaves on the trees or cause the blades of grass that blanket the ground to flutter as it passes by. It's a beautiful night, clear and cool with a scattering of stars and a hazy crescent hanging in the sky like an ornament. The glade in the forest seems like a painting in the silver glow of the moonlight, simple and yet ephemeral.

A lone stag wanders into the glade, hooves brushing softly over the underbrush as it walks. It walks slowly until it finds a suitable patch of foliage and lowers its head to graze. There's a brief movement off to the right, fleeting and sudden and gone a split second later. The stag stops, freezing instantly and looking up with liquid ink eyes. It can see the creature in the shadows, a dark, silvery-grey from the influx of moonlight bleeding through the canopy of trees. The stag doesn't move and neither does the other creature, they both just eye each other across the glade.

When no immediate attack comes, the stag warily takes a step backward, eyes still locked on the unmoving entity hidden in the shadows. Instincts kick in and the stag wanders back the way it came, leaving the glade behind. It recognizes a predator when it sees one, even if that predator is not in a traditional form.

And Kali is most assuredly a predator.

She watches wordlessly and still as stone as the stag wanders away. For a brief second she entertains the idea of chasing after it, bounding through the forest in and taking the animal down in a flurry of claws and teeth. The idea is dismissed almost immediately; she's here for a reason and football-tackling Bambi is not it.

They'd been in Beacon Hills for a few weeks now, watching and waiting as Deucalion planned his next move. Capturing the Betas had proved useless, a waste of time and effort. Despite their inexperience and lingering immaturity, they proved more resourceful and a hell of alot more resilient than the Alphas had anticipated. All it had taken was one brief second of distraction and they'd managed to make a break for it. Kali still doesn't know how; they should have been trapped in that bank vault until they went insane but they had somehow managed to break out. If there was one thing Kali simply couldn't stand it was to be outsmarted. She knew the female Beta had something to do with it, that little blond bitch was a lot smarter than she let on. And the bigger one, well, he was obviously the muscle they needed in order to make their escape.

Kali and Ennis had started to go after them then, intent on bringing them back though not necessarily alive and in one piece. But Deucalion had stopped them with a flippant wave of his hand, completely unperturbed that two infant werewolves had broken out of what was essentially the werewolf Alcatraz of California. He let them go with little more than a shrug and sigh and a muttered, "are all teenagers always this rebellious?"

He'd summoned Kali to him less than a week later with special instructions. He had another idea in mind for calling out Derek Hale and it didn't involve anything nearly as complicated as kidnapping his Betas. No, this plan was much simpler, much easier to pull off, and much, much more visceral. It would send the message they wanted without the complication of dealing with unpredictable and apparently masters-of-escape Betas.

He had given her a location and a time and Kali knew exactly what their plan entailed at that moment. Deucalion's instructions were simple: injure but don't kill, damage but don't destroy. That's why he was sending her in place of Ennis; they both knew that Ennis would get carried away and that the night would end with yellow police tape and a blood-stained white sheet. Kali was more suitable for the job because she had just fractionally more self-control than Ennis did. Deucalion had given her an airy smile that seemed almost ghoulish beneath his dark frames. "After all," he had told her, "we just wanted to send a message, nothing more."

Kali had taken the instructions without a word and disappeared into the forest that evening. She knew better than to question Deucalion's orders even if she thought this was another waste of time. Deucalion seemed to know something she didn't, his sightless eyes on a bigger prize than simply luring Derek Hale to their side. She didn't know what it was but she didn't ask either; she knew all too well what happened when someone challenged Deucalion and usually ended in no small amount of bloodshed. Deucalion had sent her out here for a reason and she obeyed, simple as that. There was a lot of power that came with being the Alpha in a pack of Alphas and it usually boiled down to the fact that Deucalion's word was law.

"There are other ways to break down a pack," he had told her just before she left that afternoon. "There are ways of bringing them to their knees without ever laying a finger on them. You just have to look for the right kind of leverage. A chink in the armor, you might say." And here in the quiet, dark forest on the outskirts of town, that chink was driving down the road and right into their hands.

Kali hears the car approaching before she ever sees it and stands slowly, long legs unfolding gracefully as she straightens herself. Deucalion had been right with his timeline, the car was pulling around the bend almost like clock work. Humans were predictable creatures, all wide-eyed and fallen into a routine like sheep being led to the slaughter. Like sheep being led to the wolves. Kali lets a feral smile quirk her lips at the thought, tongue brushing over too-sharp teeth as the first glimmer of headlights appears in the trees. "Time for some fun, little lamb," she whispers quietly, crimson eyes locked on the solid metal frame of the car.

She walks forward slowly, tracking the movement of the vehicle with expert precision. She needs to get the angle just right; too soon and the damage won't be as severe, too late and she'll miss it all together and that is unacceptable. It's a matter of physics, really; she'd always been good at that in high school. Calculations and estimation and everything in between. If she hadn't become an Alpha, she might have gone to college and become a physicist. But this was too much fun.

She pauses several feet away from the road, watching as the car gets closer to her position and closer to the angle she needs. Gravity and momentum will take care of most of the damage but once again, the angle has to be just right in order for the plan to work at all. Injure, don't kill. Damage, don't destroy. That's why Deucalion had sent her instead of Ennis; Kali always had been the more gentle of the two.

The headlights get closer and Kali crouches low like she's preparing to pounce. Then she's running, long legs taking even longer strides, covering the distance between the forest and the road in a matter of seconds. Bare feet leave the cool dampness of the forest floor to meet the warm, rough texture of the asphalt. She turns her body even as she runs, angling her shoulder toward the larger point of driver never even sees it coming.

The impact sounds like meteor crash-landing in a pile of scrap metal, a loud crunch coupled with the bending and buckling of steel and aluminum. Kali's shoulder crashes into the driver's side, crushing the door inward and causing the driver to lose control. There's a squeal of tires, the smell of burned rubber, and then another loud screech as the vehicle swerves off the road and crashes through the guardrail.

The embankment on the other side isn't that steep but the speed and the impact of the car going through the guardrail is enough. The car flips two, three, four times, mostly side-to-side but once end-over-end, before landing in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the embankment.

Kali stands at the top of the hill, smiling triumphantly as the wind combs its way through her hair. The crash couldn't have been more beautiful if she tried. All a matter of physics really.

She steps to the edge of the embankment, tracing the blackened streaks from the tires with her toes as she approaches. The car is still a shattered mess at the bottom of the hill, hissing and smoking from its tumble. In a few light steps she's down the hill, skipping lightly over twisted metal and broken glass. Her footsteps are feather-soft and silent as she approaches the ruined vehicle to examine her handy work.

The driver's side door is facing upwards, the rest of the car almost completely on its side. The windows are broken, the windshield a kaleidoscope of broken safety glass that's dotted here and there with a bright streak of blood. The smell of blood is heavy in the air, not enough to be fatal but enough to ensure that the driver is in a hell of alot of pain.

Kali steps up to the side of the car, leaning against the crushed door and peering inside. The driver in still fastened in his seat belt, slumped and limp across the front seat. Kali watches him silently for a few seconds, simply marveling at her work. The boy is still breathing, albeit shallow and labored from a combination of the seat belt and the almost certain presence of broken ribs, and his heartbeat is stuttering but steady enough to convince her that he's not in danger of immediately dying while she watches. Injure but don't kill and boy, had she injured.

The boy stirs just faintly, eyes sliding open with great effort and no small amount of pain. There's blood all down one side of his face, bright and shiny in the silver shadows of the moonlight. Kali clicks her tongue softly. That gash along his hairline looks painful, along with the starburst of blood on his forehead from where he'd hit the windshield. Sad thing about these older model Jeeps, sometimes the airbags don't deploy the way they should.

The boy groans softly, a weak, wet sound in the back of his throat that's accompanied by a hissed gasp of breath. He coughs once, grimacing as a mouthful of blood mixed with saliva seeps out between his teeth. He could have some internal damage, Kali decides casually with all the care and concern of someone supposing it might rain that day.

One arm is hanging at an odd angle, surely broken in at least one place and completely useless when the boy tries to lift it. He lets out a choked, broken cry, eyes squeezing closed and blinking through the blood that coats his face. Kali can smell the pain rolling off of him, hot and razor-sharp like boiling vinegar, and she smiles in a way that could be considered apologetic.

"Poor little lamb," she coos, reaching into the opening space where the window used to be and plucking a few pieces of broken glass from the boy's hair. He seems to notice her presence then and looks up at her, eyes unfocused and oddly dilated from the head injury. "This is what happens when you run with wolves," she tells him gently, very carefully brushing her thumb over another slick streak of blood threatening to slide into his eyes. She raises her hand and licks her thumb, tasting salt and copper and fear and pain. Her eyes flash crimson and she grins at him with sharp, gleaming teeth like a creature pulled directly from a nightmare. The shock and pain and fear are too much and the boy's eyes flutter briefly before rolling back in his head, his whole body going limp and boneless once again.

Kali sighs and steps away, suddenly bored with watching the human suffer. She'd done what Deucalion asked, now it was time to let the other pieces fall into place. With one last piece of business to attend to, she turns and very carefully traces a spiral on the crushed metal of the door with her claw. This is a message after all.

Headlights flash on the road above her and she hears voices calling out. A man appears beside the broken guardrail and she can hear his gasp of surprise from where she's standing. A cell phone is out in his hand and 911 is being dialed. It's time for her to leave.

She steps up to the side of the Jeep once more, hopping up on her tiptoes to lean into the broken window and press a kiss to the unconscious boy's forehead. Her lips come away bloody. "Sleep well, little lamb," she whispers, licking the blood from her lips and casually walking away from the ruined Jeep. "The fun is just beginning."

Ugh...Kali. I never did like her. Sorry for the cliffhanger guys! I'll try to update again as soon as I can! :D