If I Could Turn Back Time

We Hunt Those Who Hunt Us

"'Cause I've been shaking,

I've been bending backward til I'm broke

Watching all these dreams go up in smoke

Let beauty come out of ashes!

Let beauty come out of ashes!

And when I pray to God, all I ask is,

Can beauty come out of ashes?"

________________________________

After writing down everything in her notebook, Allison packed up her things while Derek went up to the counter to pay for everything. When he returned, Allison asked him if he would drive her to where he wanted to talk to her in private, which once again took the Alpha by surprise, as he had not been expecting her to be this trusting of him. Nevertheless, nodded in agreement and they walked out of the diner. Then they got into his Camaro, and he drove off.

"So, where are you taking me?" Allison inquired. "To where my story began," Derek stated. Allison groaned softly. "Look, I get that part of being a werewolf is that you have to be mysterious, but-" "It's not about me trying to be mysterious," Derek replied. "It's just that the place we're going to has a lot of painful history... for both of us."

* * *

They were riding in the car for about an hour and a half before Derek parked the car in front of the charred remains of Derek's old family home. Allison gaped in astonishment at the gnarly, burned-out husk of his former house while Derek clenched his jaw tightly as his hand gripped the steering wheel tightly. "What the hell?" Allison gasped. "Where are we? What is this place?"

Without taking his eyes off of the house, Derek exhaled deeply through his nose and said, "This is where I grew up." Allison snapped her head up in his direction, her dark brown eyes as wide as saucers as she tried to process what he just said. "Come on," he muttered. "We have a lot to talk about." Derek released the wheel from his death grip and unbuckled his seatbelt. Then he got out of the car and started up the hill toward the ruins of his childhood home.

Allison quickly unbuckled her seatbelt and followed after him, making her way up the slope to meet the Alpha in front of the ramshackle building. "Why did you bring me here?" she asked.

However, instead of answering, the Alpha pointed in the direction of a tall, old Oak Tree standing a couple of hundred yards from the right side of the house. "You see that tree?" he began, redirecting her attention to where he was pointing. "My siblings, my cousins, and I used to climb that tree every day. We used to hang from the branches and pretend we were monkeys and race each other to the top. Mostly though, we would just sit up there and talk about... whatever, it was our safe space to just be."

Allison smiled fondly, as she listened to him talk about her family, despite her earlier confusion. "It sounds nice," she said. "Yeah, we used to have a tire swing, too, but my cousin Max broke it," Derek snorted. Allison tilted her head at him. "How'd he do that?" "There was this one time when we were kids, Max pulled a prank on my sister Laura. She was trying to ride the tire swing, but when she jumped on it, the rope snapped and she and the tire swing fell out of the tree," he reminisced, with a chuckle. "God, she was so pissed off when that happened. Although, to be fair, it was pretty hilarious."