A.N.: An update! Shocking, I know! So…'Night School'…

Jekyll and Hyde

13

Rapid Escalation

She heard it over her noise-cancelling headphones. Over freaking Metallica.

Mary pulled the headphones off, abandoning her homework, the practice tests she was writing up for Isaac, climbed off her desk chair and went to the window, pulling it up and open, gaping, appalled.

She groaned, lightly head-butting the window. "Idiots."

Mary quickly changed into yoga pants and a black sweatshirt, grabbed her phone and keys, not particularly subtle about leaving her parents' house. She took off at a run, gaining speed as she followed Scott's howl. She could follow the sound easier on foot than in her car, to be frank she hit the ground running purely on instinct, drawn to another werewolf's call. Whatever those two idiots - and she felt sure only Stiles would have encouraged this - were up to, that was a call. Scott was signalling his position to the Alpha, only it wasn't just the Alpha who could hear him.

She slowed, nearing the school, scenting the air carefully, her nose twitching with what she did catch in the air as she slowed her approach, prowling closer cautiously. The school was dark, the moon bright, and the parking-lot was empty but for two vehicles, a shining Mustang, and a powder-blue Jeep with the hood prised open, gored with claw-marks. She scented the air, and caught the scent of Stiles and Scott, their fear, the Alpha's rage and confusion, their…amusement, and Derek. His blood.

"Derek!" she whispered, listening to all her senses, following the scent of Derek's blood. She found him crumpled in a heap under a wall, his leather jacket, and the skin beneath it, shredded to ribbons, as if someone had raked a hot poker through butter. Claws would do that to a person. He was bleeding profusely, and she rushed to him in the half-dark, keeping low and alert, immediately checking for a pulse. She found it, weak but stubborn, his skin losing warmth as he lay in a puddle of his own blood. God knew he would heal from this, but not quickly, and not without help.

"You need to get him away from here." The voice was calm, but sent her senses into overdrive; in one movement, she covered Derek's body, an aggressive attack stance to the person who had spoken, alarmed that she hadn't heard anyone approach. Scenting the air, she just caught a hint of wolfsbane. Enough to mask his scent. In the dark, she saw calm, clever eyes, a man crouched into a submissive stance. She scented antibacterial soap, anaesthetic and a lot of other animals on him. Scott worked for a veterinarian. "I know what Derek is, and I know what you are."

Startled, she bristled. Usually she was in complete control of her shift; her eyes must have flashed as she warned him away with a threatening growl. "You know…?"

"Scott can't know yet," the man said softly, carefully approaching. "We only have a short window before the Sheriff's Deputies show up. You need to take Derek away from here. He's vulnerable." She glanced over at the Jeep, following the boys' scents to the front-doors, prised open… There was broken glass where one of the cafeteria windows had been smashed.

"What about the boys?"

"The Alpha won't hurt them," the man said with calm certainty. "But he has hurt Derek. You need to keep him safe."

"Do you know who the Alpha is?"

"I have my suspicions," the man said. "I just hope I'm wrong. Here…" He unlocked Derek's car, and Mary hoisted his unconscious form against her, half-carrying, half-dragging Derek to the passenger-seat. All she could think was how pissed he'd be that there was blood on his upholstery. He loved his car. She manoeuvred Derek into the passenger-seat; to any observer he'd merely look like he was sleeping. Even though he was unconscious, he hissed in pain as she settled him against the seat, his back shredded to ribbons, bleeding out. She stared, the arm she had used to hoist Derek against her slick with his blood, quickly cooling against her bare skin.

Distracted, she glanced at the man. "What's your name?"

"Deaton," he said, and she glanced over her shoulder, her ears twitching as she picked up the sound of sirens. "Go!" She didn't need to be told twice, throwing herself into the driver's seat, adjusting it before putting the car through its paces, her Hunter training kicking in as she tempered the urge to speed away, her better reasoning reminding her how to evade suspicion as she left the scene of a crime, her werewolf instincts telling her that she needed to keep Derek safe and hidden so he could heal.

She knew her father's resources, knew that one whiff of Derek's name associated with what had happened tonight, with two seemingly innocent teenage boys involved, would paint an even larger target on Derek's back. He was the only wolf in town that the Hunters knew of; but her father was clever enough to know Derek wasn't an Alpha. Still, the Hunters would be on red-alert looking for him. And she wasn't about to make finding him any easier. The only safe place she knew of, where she could control access and give Derek the medical attention he desperately would need to heal properly…she headed out of downtown Beacon Hills to the industrial park, the storage facility where she rented a container, where there was enough space for a recuperating werewolf and his shining Mustang. Luckily she could access her container any time she wanted; she navigated the labyrinth of containers and stopped in front of her own, unlocking the door, pulling it up, and, using the lights from Derek's Mustang, moved everything she had stockpiled for when she got her own place out of the way, reversing the car inside.

She shut the door from the inside, not bothering to lock it, and made room to lay down her brand-new mattress on the ground. It was still wrapped in plastic, and she draped old beach towels over it as an extra precaution, before hefting Derek out of the car. He was a lot heavier when unconscious; and he growled in pain as she moved him, grimacing guiltily as she manhandled him onto the mattress. It wasn't like she could help it! She was in this alone, and he wasn't exactly a delicate little sparrow. Getting him away from the school had been the easy part; she could only do so much to help him now.

But she had her First Aid kit, modified to suit the needs of a werewolf, whose parents were also Hunters, the best in the business. She had been taught all the Hunters' tricks, from the masters. And she was a werewolf who had also learned very quickly, through brutal experience, how to counteract those weapons that Hunters like her parents best liked using. She had learned things no Hunter ever could about werewolves, about how they healed themselves, each other, about how fiercely they protected each other… She had been stockpiling resources for any eventuality, if not for herself, then for people like Derek, and Scott. She had experience with this, though it never got any easier to handle finding her friends torn to pieces.

Methodical. As a Hunter, her training had taught her to approach any situation no matter how harrowing with a sense of cold, detached calm and clarity. To put everything aside until the job was done: She had to stifle the trembling in her hands as she cut Derek's jacket and t-shirt from him, pulling on Latex gloves to piece together the remnants of his back. In some places the damage was so bad she had to create sutures to provoke healing, something she had never liked doing; she had never been good with the gory parts of things. Fighting, she was excellent; repairing the damage, that took a stronger stomach than she had. At least unconscious, Derek made a better patient than she ever did. Her phone kept ringing, the screen flashing 'Dad' each time, intermittent with 'Stiles'.

"Dad, I'm doing inventory," she said quietly. When she was working, he knew she never answered her phone; a half-dozen calls in twenty minutes necessitated immediate response. For her own safety.

"Hey, kiddo… You're okay?"

"Yeah…why?" Pleading ignorance had become an art-form for her.

"Something's happened at the school tonight, your sister's fine, but she was involved," Dad said solemnly. She stared into the darkness.

"Allison was?" She hadn't scented her sister at the school. Dread curdled in her stomach, her heart thumping painfully against her ribcage.

"Apparently a local werewolf, Derek Hale, has taken to terrorising kids," Dad said, and Mary pulled a face, glad her dad couldn't see her piecing together the gaping wound of his mortal enemy. "Until we find him, I want you to be extra careful, okay?"

"I'm always careful, Dad," she told him quietly.

"I know," Dad said heavily. "There may come a time we may have to teach Allison that same due diligence." She didn't answer, and her dad picked up on the glacial silence. "You don't agree?"

"It's not the life I want for her," she admitted honestly, half-mumbling.

Her dad sighed heavily. "It's the legacy she may have to embrace if she's targeted again."

"Well, hopefully that will never have to happen," Mary said, with a bite. She didn't want Allison drawn into all of this…this mess. She didn't want her sweet sister to have to live a double-life, never truly letting anyone close - or making her entire life about the hunt, deriving warped romance from the violent men who inevitably were drawn to the life.

These were all reasons Mary had used in her argument against indoctrinating her little-sister: She may have rejected her family's legacy, walked away from the life, but where Allison was concerned she had every right to voice her opinion.

"Listen, just be careful on your way home, okay?"

"I won't be coming back to yours tonight," Mary said, grimacing. "Staying at a friend's downtown, so…"

"Just…be careful," her dad sighed heavily. He had long since ceased to try to convince her to respect curfew, when she was now nineteen years old and kept several small jobs so she could save money to inevitably abandon the family.

"You be careful," Mary told him, sincerely. "Don't go out hunting by yourself." They said goodbye, and Mary turned back to Derek. He growled under his breath when she stuck him with a needle, the syringe full of a serum concocted from a special plant that promoted swift healing, even from the damage inflicted by an Alpha's claws. It was more expedient to use the serum than the dried flowers, the way werewolves had been healing themselves for millennia. She sighed, filled with a grim sensation swirling in the pit of her stomach as she looked at the little silver case of vials. She only had a handful left. They had to be more careful than this.

What the hell had the boys been thinking, calling the Alpha to the school? They had to know no good was going to come of it? They had no clue who it was, what they were after, what they were truly capable of.

Carefully piecing Derek's back together like a quilt, she finished the sutures and started cleaning him up, wiping away the blood with baby-wipes, wishing there was running water here. He had stopped bleeding, at least. She used alcohol to disinfect everything, taped a bandage in place and wrapped him up with gauze, before settling him more comfortably on the mattress, replacing the bloody beach-towels with fresh ones, covering him with an unzipped sleeping-bag. She'd have to launder the towels to get the blood out, and while she was at it, take a shower herself. She was covered in his blood.

Her heart leapt into her mouth as her phone rang again, and Derek startled in his sleep. She rested a hand on his arm, sifting her fingers through his dark hair to soothe him, until his body relaxed a little, and answered the call.

"Finally! Why weren't you answering?!" Stiles blurted indignantly.

"I'm sorry, there's blood on my hands and the touch-screen wouldn't work," Mary answered, stripping off her Latex gloves with a wet smacking noise. Stiles was speechless for a couple of seconds.

"Blood - ? Mary - Mary - I think - something bad's happened - Derek - !"

"Stiles, Derek's okay. He's with me," she interrupted, Stiles too excitable to speak coherent sentences.

"He - What?!" Stiles blurted, his tone back its normal eccentric, sarcastic deadpan.

"What the hell happened?" she asked in an undertone, as Derek stirred. She kept stroking his hair, his arm. Constant grooming and touch were key elements to wolves caring for injured members of their pack; at times like this, animal instinct took over. And she needed Derek sleeping, calm, to heal himself. The longer it took, the longer he was vulnerable. She had to help him heal as quickly as possible, at least until she could figure out what to do with him next.

She carefully sat down on the mattress. Physical contact was healing; for werewolves, contact meant she could siphon his pain. Their closeness would help speed Derek's healing. She had only ever done this with one other person, and it felt strange, to settle under her unzipped sleeping-bag in the bunker-like container full of her things, preparing for a new life, while Derek shuddered beside her, in agony, a reminder of the most vulnerable times of her life - and the most extraordinary. Times like this proved who true friends were.

"A lot," Stiles panted.

"Stiles, was Allison with you at school?" Mary asked.

"How do you know we were at school?"

"'Cause I followed Scott's howl. And I found Derek," Mary said. "Stiles, was Allison there?"

"Uh…yeah. How did you - ? Someone texted her from Scott's phone - we think it was the Alpha - to meet us at the school. Jackson and Lydia were with her, too," Stiles blurted. "The janitor's dead - oh, and get this, Scott thinks the Alpha wants him to kill us all." She didn't respond immediately. "Uh, hullo? I just told you the Alpha all but put a hit out on us."

"They're trying to separate Scott from his old life," she said softly. And the Alpha knew Scott well enough to know he was connected to Allison. Whether the Alpha had figured out she was the daughter of Hunters was another story; right now it only mattered that the Alpha had drawn Allison into this.

"And that's not insane?"

"I don't think we can classify this Alpha as in their right mind," she said, biting her lip. "Everything I've seen so far, this Alpha seems much more far gone than just an Alpha. They're…animalistic. Stiles, what happened? Why was Derek there with you guys? And - a guy called Deaton?"

"Derek thinks Deaton's the Alpha. Something about a symbol drawn on a deer, I don't know. Same symbol the Alpha drew on Scott's car the other night," Stiles sighed.

"What symbol?"

"A spiral." Her heart stopped. "Mary - are you there - what does - what does that mean?"

"It…tells the supernatural community that someone is out for revenge," Mary said quietly, glancing at Derek, who had been brutalised but not killed outright. "They probably bit Scott as an opportunistic attack; they're trying to draw him in to settling their vendetta. What happened tonight?"

"Scott wanted to prove Deaton's innocent, so we -"

"Had Scott broadcast his call over the school sound-system," Mary said grimly.

"You heard it?"

"Every wolf in Southern California heard it - possibly even New Mexico and Nevada," Mary said crisply. "What were you thinking?"

"We wanted to draw the Alpha to the school, prove to Derek that Deaton's innocent."

"Well, he is. While he was helping me load Derek into the Mustang I could hear the Alpha inside the school," Mary said.

"Why did you need help getting Derek into his car?"

"The Alpha shredded his back. Sliced through a few of his ribs like Play-Do," Mary said grimly. "Might've nicked a few vertebrae in his spine." Stiles was silent for a few seconds - a first, in her experience of Stiles Stilinski. "He'll heal. He just needs time to lay low from my dad."

"Yeah, uh, good idea," Stiles said, and she picked up on the guilty tone to his voice. "Uh… That's…something I was gonna talk to you about…"

"What have you two done now?" she asked irritably, rolling her eyes.

"Scott might've…told my dad that Derek's responsible for the vandalism…and the emotional terrorisation…and the dead janitor." Mary almost dropped her phone, rolling her eyes as she raised a hand to her eyes, pinching hard. Inhale…exhale…turn their entrails to…ex-trails… Only sixteen… Can't murder the Sheriff's son, or your sister's boyfriend…

"You did what?"

"I - I - I didn't! Scott did it! Not me!" Stiles blurted, as if he was being confronted by his mother.

"You two are both as bad as each other, you know that, I'm serious, I am chaperoning you from now on!" she growled, lowering her voice when Derek grunted in his sleep, his eyebrows drawn in pain and annoyance.

"Well, I think right now you're a little busy wolf-sitting Derek," Stiles sighed.

"He's all stitched up - you, on the other hand - where are you right now?"

"I'm at home. My dad had one of the Deputies drop me off while they sort out everything at the school," Stiles sighed. "By the way, my dad says the school's probably gonna be closed the rest of the week."

"Sweet-tacular," Mary said, fist-pumping the air. She didn't have work until tomorrow-evening; she could stay with Derek and look after him.

"Hey…your dad came to pick up Allison…"

"Yeah, he knows Derek was there," Mary said.

"How?!"

"I don't know, one of your dad's Deputies must've name-dropped," Mary said, shrugging. That was the way her father operated. She sighed, glancing down at Derek. This guy cannot catch a break… "As this is entirely your fault, you won't mind helping me keep him safe until we exonerate Derek from multiple felonies," Mary said sternly. "He won't be healed for a few days; my dad will have his guys out sweeping the town."

"Good thing they don't have your nose," Stiles quipped. He sighed. "Look, I can't get a hold of Scott, his cell's lost and I'm pretty sure Mrs McCall is reaming him a new one at home right now so I can't call -"

"Why do you need to get hold of him?"

"Uh…to go over what happened tonight in minute detail?!" Stiles said, as if this was obvious.

"Well, I know I'm a poor substitute, but Derek's out cold for now; can I head over to yours?" Mary asked.

"Uh - yeah. I was just gonna ask -"

"Good, 'cause I need to do some laundry."

"Laun - what about Derek?"

"He's in a safe place. I've stitched him up as best I can, the rest is up to him," Mary sighed. "He knows what to do. Hide and heal… Once he's mobile I'll need to move him someplace with running water. Alright, I'm headed over to yours."

"How do you know where I live?"

"Stiles, I can follow the scent of your terror through a sewage refinery," Mary said, rolling her eyes. "I'll see you in a little while."

The Sheriff's house was dark when she pulled her car up in front of it, Stiles' bedroom window the only source of light. It was pushing one a.m. and rather than risk waking the neighbourhood, she climbed on top of the garage to wiggle Stiles' window open, climbing through silently. He was passed out, fast-asleep on his bed, still fully-clothed, his cell-phone clutched in his hand.

With a yelp, Stiles woke, snorting and spinning away from her when she shook him awake. She couldn't help rolling her eyes as he sneezed, clambering drunkenly from the floor where he had fallen off the bed with a loud thump. "Mary?! You're gonna give me cardiac-arrest… Time is it?"

"Almost one," she whispered. "I had to run home to get my car and drive over… Your dad's not home yet."

"He'll be at the station," Stiles sighed, his eyelids drooping. She went over to the wall and switched on the ceiling light, wincing in the brightness. "Uh - is that blood?!"

"Derek's," Mary nodded. "You mind if I shower?"

"No, please, get rid of any evidence that the guy we just painted as a felon was in fact attacked by a feral werewolf Alpha and…we're now helping him evade my dad and his Deputies," Stiles said, shuddering awake. He rubbed his head quickly, blinking a dozen times, and indicated the bathroom. She pulled on clean panties, cropped black sweat-pants and a band t-shirt she had customised, not bothering with a bra at this late hour, her hair wet but combed neatly over her shoulder, and commandeered Stiles' washing-machine, throwing in her clothes with the bloody beach-towels she had tried to rinse out as best she could.

Stiles pulled a bag of Oreos out of the pantry, pouring them both a glass of milk, and Mary smiled as she sank down at the kitchen-table, suddenly so much more exhausted than she would usually be at this hour.

"You okay, Stiles?" she asked quietly.

"Kind of buzzing," Stiles admitted, his foot jigging as he held his hands in front of pursed lips, his eyes whizzing. She could see the cogs whirring.

"Stiles…?"

"The Alpha was…was destroying the school, and the others wanted…the others wanted to call the cops…my dad…" He glanced up at Mary through his long, curling lashes, shamefaced and anxious at the same time, fiddling with his cookie and overemotional.

"You're worried the Alpha might've hurt your dad," Mary guessed.

"My dad's the Sheriff…every day he leaves for work, he might be… He might get hurt," Stiles said, trying to shrug it off. He adored his father; was fiercely proud to be his son. She could scent it on him; could scent the genuine affection and respect between father and son just from the house. Homes took on the scents and chemo-signals of the people who lived there: When awful things happened, the house smelled of it. Here, in the Stilinski household, she scented respect, exasperated impatience, amusement and deep love.

"You want me to lie to you, tell you everything's gonna be okay?" she asked quietly, reaching over to rub his shoulders, and he gave her a tremulous smile.

"So, where's Derek?" Stiles asked, looking sombre.

"He's at the storage-container I'm renting, keeping all my things until I can find a place of my own," Mary said. "I'll head back over in a little while, me being close will speed his healing. My scent's all over the place so he'll know I took him there when he wakes up, he's safe, just for a few hours. He can't stay there."

"Okay, well, he can't come here. Scott's is out too, his mom's…really thorough with her housework, she'll notice a grumpy wolf," Stiles said.

"I think it's best we rent out a motel room for a couple weeks for him," Mary said, resting her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. "He'll be cooped up and hate it, but he'll be out of the Hunters' crosshairs."

"Uh, and the cops."

"My dad's guys are far more thorough than yours," Mary said grimly. "Derek won't be able to put a whisker out of doors without my dad knowing about it… And Allison was dragged into this so he'll be super-motivated. What happened?"

Stiles told her. At one a.m. on a school-night, sat eating cookies with fresh milk, he told her about their plan to lure the Alpha to school, and the Alpha luring Allison to the school in turn, bringing Jackson and an unwitting Lydia with her. The psychological torment, Derek spurting blood from his mouth, the GBH on Roscoe - Stiles' Jeep! - the mauled janitor in the boys' locker-room, Lydia's failed Molotov cocktail…the howl that had pushed Scott to try and kill his friends, tempered only by his thoughts of Allison.

"What's worse is, Scott said he wanted to do it."

"That's the Alpha, digging into our primal urges, to hunt," Mary said. "An Alpha's call to us is…the most primal thing there is. It's hard to ignore it… It wasn't Scott who wanted to hurt you, it was…the Alpha's influence over him. Whether or not Scott joins his pack, there will always be a connection between them; they created Scott. When an Alpha bites someone, they give a little bit of themselves, their power, to that person."

"Scott thinks the Alpha's trying to make him get rid of his old pack… Me, Allison, Lydia…Jackson… Something weird happened with him, Mary," Stiles said, frowning.

"He grew compassion?"

"When the Alpha howled, we all heard it - Jackson…was screaming. He kept holding the back of his neck, he was on the ground in agony - wouldn't let me take a look at it, refused to talk about it. Lydia said he has these cuts on the back of his neck, won't say where he got 'em," Stiles sighed.

"Cuts, on the back of his neck?" Mary stared at him, perplexed. She raised a hand to the back of her own neck, her cold wet hair making her shiver, and the sensation of her fingernails raking the back of her neck made her bristle, triggering a memory. "Crap."

"What? No. No, no, no more crap tonight! I've had all the crap I can handle!" Stiles blurted, holding up his hands. "This is now a designated crap-free zone until I get some friggin' sleep. Okay, tell me!" Mary scoffed, shaking her head; he was hard to keep up with.

"There's…there's something we can do, with our claws… They're a source of power, they can render horrific injury to our enemies, but they can also… An Alpha who's trained to do it without hurting anyone can use their claws to get into someone's head. Their memories. They can dig up the past, find what's lost, even remove memories if they're damaging enough."

"An Alpha can take someone's memories?"

"Yeah. You have to do it like this…" She reached over, curling her fingertips down the back of Stiles' neck, making him shiver and twitch away from her. It made her lips twitch to see his eyelashes flutter as he blushed, bashful at her proximity. "Is that what the marks might've looked like?"

"Yeah…" Stiles said slowly. "Why would Alphas want to get inside other people's heads?"

"Wouldn't you? Think how much easier your dad's job would be if he could. We're pack animals. When we're strong, we can be almost invincible. When we're hurting…everyone else can feel it. Weakens the collective; if the memories are bad enough, they can be detrimental not just to the werewolf but the pack," Mary said quietly. "I mean…Alphas use the skill for different reasons: Sometimes it's to erase trauma, or steal information from rival pack Betas. Either way, it's a pretty powerful weapon. And if we don't do it properly…well, we're supernatural. When we leave people with scars, there's always more than just tissue-damage."

"What do you mean?"

"You remember I said that when an Alpha bites someone, they give a little of their power? It's not quite the same with claws, but…if the wound goes deep enough, there's still a connection to the wolf that attacked you," Mary sighed, holding back the nugget of information. "It's happened to Hunters before."

"Like…Voldemort leaving a Horcrux in Harry?"

"Scar senses! But…more like a warning. Like a reminder of their own mortality," Mary said quietly. "Was Jackson attacked in the video-store?"

"He was buried under a bookcase, but I don't think the Alpha actually touched him," Stiles shrugged. "Hey - why wouldn't the Alpha kill him? Doesn't seem like he's the conscientious murderer type."

"It feels like there's method to what they're doing, they're not sloppy enough to be doing this because they're out of control," Mary said thoughtfully. "There'd be a much higher body-count - and they'd deteriorate far too quickly not to get caught by my dad. Maybe has a list?"

"Like Arya Stark?" Stiles pouted thoughtfully.

"Yeah. And we don't know that it's a he…"

"Uh, I saw the Alpha, okay, that was definitely a macho-man he-beast," Stiles said. "He threw my car-battery through a window to taunt me - if anything is the way to a guy's heart it is through his car. He prised Roscoe's hood open like he was peeling a banana."

"Be grateful it wasn't your ribcage," Mary said glumly, rubbing her face. Stiles gaped at her. When the washing-machine buzzed, she transferred everything to the dryer, and promised Stiles she'd be by in the morning to pick up her laundry - and him. "We'll grab Scott too, and decide on a course of action."

"Hey, Mary?" Stiles said softly, glancing nervously at her. He fidgeted, uncomfortable, scared, adorable. "Is…will Scott hurt someone?"

Mary wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him that nothing bad was going to happen - that his best-friend wasn't going to do something he could never take back. She wanted to tell him that he didn't have to be afraid.

She said the only thing she felt with certainty: "Not if you can help it… Get some sleep, Stiles. I get the feeling things are…gonna get a lot worse before they can get better."

"That's - really comforting, thank you, I'm gonna sleep so well!" Stiles blurted indignantly, and Mary shrugged enigmatically, listening to make sure Stiles locked the front-door after her. She drove her car back to the industrial estate, parking away from her container as a forensic countermeasure, walking into the facility and avoiding the cameras her Hunter training had taught her to notice. She let herself back into her lockup, pulled off her shoes, and without jostling Derek, lowered herself onto the mattress, under the unzipped sleeping-bag.

The heat of his body seared her bare arms as she stretched alongside him, a sure sign his body was fighting to heal itself. He would wake up in a few hours, hollow from hunger, exhausted, but healed. And she rested her hand gently on his arm, closing her eyes and snuggling close, to try and take some of the worst of his pain.

It hurt, but was a drop in the ocean to what Derek was feeling; but sharing their warmth, her strength and security, the tension thrumming through his body eased, his muscles relaxing, the pain etched into his face softened, and her discomfort helped him to heal. In crucial moments like this, when survival hung in the balance, the pack made sacrifices for the individual.

'When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives'… She took the edge off his pain; and he gave her warmth in the chilly container. Symbiosis…

They were a tiny pack, if they could ever be a true pack without an Alpha, and they were broken, but they were something, and when it came to life and death, it made all the difference.

A.N.: What do you think? Please review. Who wouldn't want to snuggle with Sourwolf?