Distance [Derek Hale]

Chapter Twenty

"Mmmm, not exactly but you do know my nephew quite well," her mind racked every possibility until her heart dropped into her stomach.

"Oh my god, y-you... you're supposed to be dead."

"Unfortunately yes," he droned sounding bored, "as of right now I'm in need of your help. I don't need my dear nephew killing me so I'll be needing your assistance to keep him distracted," he said and she frowned trying to understand what it meant before he'd grabbed onto her arm.

She immediately winced, "ow, ow, no, if you're going to be doing some hostage situation please use the other arm," she pleaded and he looked at her confused before he grabbed onto the edge of her jacket pulling it to the side to see the bandage poking out from her t-shirt.

"Hmm, fair enough. I'm not a monster after all," he said grabbing onto her other arm before he began to tug her towards his car.

Flicking through the books, Derek tried to find an answer to the question they'd been asking for so long. How could they defeat Jackson or save him, but more importantly defeat him? Sensing two of his beta's behind him, he slammed the book shut dropping it onto the table.

"You've decided," he said turning around to look at both Erica and Boyd, "when?"

"Tonight," Erica admitted.

"Everyone's gonna be at the game. We figured it was the best time."

Feeling guilty over the idea that they were abandoning him and giving up him, Erica sighed, "It's not like we want to."

"What do you want?" Derek asked.

"Since I just turned sixteen a month ago, I wouldn't mind getting my license... I can't do that if I'm dead, you know," she said sheepishly and Derek gritted his teeth together.

He had warned them all beforehand, he had told them all beforehand, they were more than aware of the price and so he didn't like the fact this was happening at all. Especially when they were in the process of fighting for their lives. "Well, I told you there was a price," he countered crossing his arms as he did.

"Yeah, but you didn't say it would be like this!" Boyd snapped.

"Yeah, but I told you how to survive-- you do it as a pack. And you're not a pack without an Alpha."

"We know," Boyd admitted.

"You wanna look for another pack?" Derek asked as if it was the most unbelievable thing in the world, "how are you even gonna find one?"

"We think we already did..."

"Like, all of a sudden, we heard all this howling. It was unbelievable."

"There must have been a dozen of them-"

"Maybe more!" Erica interjected and Derek scoffed.

"Yeah, or maybe only two. You know what the Beau Geste effect is? If they modulate their howls with a rapid shift in tone, two wolves can sound like twenty."

"Look, that doesn't matter, okay?" Erica cut in her eyes filled with so much hope, "there's another pack out there. There's got to be. We've made up our minds."

"Yeah. We lost, Derek. And it's over. We're leaving."

"No. No, you're running. And once you start, you don't stop. You'll always be running," Derek snapped. The pair took their leave and he turned around to look at the books again. He was even more desperate now that he had been left alone. A familiar scent entered his senses and he grabbed onto the piece of the broken mirror he'd found covered in kanima venom and had kept to test Jackson. He whirled around and threw it but regret filled his eyes as it landed barely two inches away from a very different throat.