Chapter 6:
Keeping the Peace
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"Liam?" Scott stared at his beta who had passed out on the road after having seen both Lori and Brett's dead body on the ground. Now he was driving him to Imogen's house in her car that she had left back at the school. Thankfully, she had given him a spare key in case of an emergency.
The beta eyes stared blankly out the side of the road, "Yeah?"
"I know you think what you saw was real but you have to trust me when I tell you that it wasn't."
He glanced at his alpha, confusion and sadness in his gaze. "What are you talking about?" All he could think about was how Brett and Lori were dead. He should have been faster.
Scott parked the car outside his girlfriends home, "Come on. You'll see." He got out of the car and locked the car when he heard Liam's footsteps behind him. He opened the front door, finding Lori sitting on the couch with an anxious expression. He could hear his girlfriend upstairs with his brother.
Liam stared wide eyed at the girl he believed dead. Except she was sitting there in front of him. He just stared at her in shock and could faintly hear the rest of the pack arriving as he just stayed there frozen.
"They told me to wait here." Lori said, still shaken by tonight's events. She flinched hearing her brother's pained whimpers upstairs. Imogen had assured her that her and Omar would do everything they could to save her brother.
Scott glanced at the stairs, "They'll save him." He said gently. He nodded at the girls who had arrived and they nodded back. Lydia and Allison helped Lori clean up before they all sat down and waited for any news on Brett. While Malia curled up against Isaac on the couch, Liam paced back and forth with an anxious expression on his face. Lori nervously chewed on her nails, it was a hard habit to break and her brother would scold her for it if he knew she was doing it.
It was about an hour later before Imogen came downstairs. She glanced at her friends who were looking at her eagerly and Lori immediately sprung up from her seat, rushing to her side. "How is Brett? Is he okay?"
Imogen gave her a tired smile, "He's fine. We managed to get all the wolfsbane out of him. You can go see him but right now he's fast asleep."
"Thank you." Lori managed before heading upstairs to be by her brother's side.
Liam wanted to go upstairs as well to see Brett. He wanted to see with his own eyes that he was actually alive. "How did you do it?" He asked, wondering how she had managed to make Brett and Lori's death look so real.
Imogen glanced at Scott, sending him a look wondering why he hadn't told them what she had done. He gave her a look that said I forgot. She shook her head. "When Omar and I got there to save Brett, we had a split second before the car crushed both him and his sister. All I knew was that if Gerard and this new hunter believed Brett and Lori were really dead, then they would be safer. I created an illusion of sorts that would seem like they died but it wasn't real."
"But all those people who saw..." He trailed, inwardly flinching as he recalled how he had wolfed out in the middle of the street.
She looked uncomfortable, "Yeah, I didn't know you would react like that." Scott had shown her Liam's reaction to seeing Brett and Lori lying dead in the street. The illusion had faded after a few minutes and before Liam could see it, he had already been whisked away by Scott.
Liam glanced at her before going to see Brett. Scott approached his girlfriend who looked exhausted, "We'll worry about what those people saw later. You should get some rest." He said gently.
She nodded, their friends all decided to go to their respective homes to sleep as well.
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A few days had passed and Brett was moving around with ease. Imogen had forbidden him and Lori from leaving the house considering that the hunters were probably aware they could be alive since her illusion had faded away. They couldn't risk either of the siblings getting caught by Gerard or the newbie hunter.
Scott had learned that Liam had been skipping school the last few days so he went to convince him to go back to school. There were already rumors flying around about him being some kind of monster.
She could feel it in the air when she had gone grocery shopping and could tell that the people seemed to sense she wasn't a normal human. She wondered if Gerard had something to do with it or whether it was human intuition. Regardless, once she had gotten back home, she felt like she could breathe again.
Her phone buzzed and saw it was a message from Scott in the groupchat that they shared with the members of the pack excluding Stiles, Liam, and Mason. They were meeting with Chris to tell him about Gerard. She glanced at the pair of siblings in her kitchen who were deciding on what to snack on, "Hey, I have to go. Remember-"
"Don't leave the house." Brett echoed, looking exasperated. While he was happy to be alive, he wished he could leave the house. He was in his last year of high school and had hoped he could enjoy it but seeing as how there were hunters who knew about him, he couldn't risk it. Especially his little sister.
She sighed, "You still haven't fully healed yet and until Omar and I find a glamour spell to disguise you both, you can't leave and risk being seen." She put her phone in her sweater pocket, "I'll be back later."
He and Lori replied as she left and drove to the bunker where they were meeting. When she got there, they were still waiting for Allison and her dad. But once they did arrive, they quickly began to explain everything.
"They were almost murdered." Scott continued, telling him about what had happened a few days earlier, "Almost killed by the new hunter in Beacon Hills. You know, when he took out the Hellhound, we thought that it was luck. That we were dealing with an amateur. But now we know that whoever this new hunter is, he has a teacher."
Chris concluded, "Gerard. Which means this is my fault." He wore a guilty expression, "I'm the one who let him go."
"You couldn't have done anything." Lydia said gently.
"He could've killed him." Malia pointed out, getting scolding looks in return. She shrugged, "Just saying."
"We're not killers, Malia." Imogen said, they had to be different from Gerard. It was naive to think that there wouldn't be deaths on either side if Gerard didn't back down, but the idea of killing people wasn't an easy pill to swallow.
"You are when it comes to war."
"That's why we're gonna make peace." Scott said, revealing what he and Imogen believed was the better course of action. They knew it wouldn't be easy but if they could avoid any deaths... they had to at least try.
Isaac looked between the two with a look of disbelief, "With Gerard? That's insane."
Scott sighed, looking over at their banshee friend, "Lydia, you know what's coming. We all keep using the same word."
"War."
"So what stops a war from happening?"
"Peace summit."
"Right. We meet face-to-face with Gerard. Find out what he wants and then we stop all this before it gets any worse."
"Last time Gerard was at a peace meet was with Deucalion." Allison reminded them of how much of a horrible person her grandfather was. "He blinded him and then killed everybody else, including his own men."
"I'll go." Chris offered, getting a shocked look from his daughter, "I know he's not going to kill me."
Malia looked at him dubiously, "You sure about that?"
He hesitated, "Not really."
"All we need is to find out what he wants. Then we can bargain."
"Even if he does agree, his terms might be difficult to meet."
"Well, that's why it's a negotiation. I don't expect to get anything without giving something up."
Chris gave the true alpha a serious look, "Then you're gonna have to figure out just how much you're willing to give, and how far you're willing to go to stop a war."
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"It's a trap, Scott." Imogen said as she followed her boyfriend into his kitchen. Liam had found out that Monroe who was a guidance counselor for the school was the hunter who had gone after Brett. Lydia had gone to the school to convince her to talk with Gerard so they could have a peace summit. The woman agreed to it herself and asked Scott to meet with her alone.
"She said that she would meet to talk." He said, seeing the anxious look on her face.
She clutched his hand, not wanting him to go alone. "Meeting alone in the middle of the tunnels with a werewolf hunter? It's a trap."
He glanced at the hands, he ran his thumb over her ring. They weren't even supposed to be here in Beacon Hills anymore. They should be in their apartment, enjoying the future together, not here wondering which of their friends Gerard will come after. "Then what do you want me to do?"
"Don't go. Not alone, please." She pleaded, she wanted him to have back up at least. That's the reason she was okay with the peace summit. If it meant that she could go with him. She didn't trust Gerard but she hoped that there was some shred of sanity left in him to not go through with this war.
"Gerard is recruiting new hunters, and he's trying to murder our friends." While it wasn't him that killed the hellhound, Gerard was still responsible for Monroe. "He's not gonna stop unless I convince him that we're not his enemy."
"What happens if you can't? You're gonna get yourself killed." She couldn't imagine a world without him and she didn't want to. Gerard had already betrayed a peace summit before when he met with Deucalion and everyone knew what that turned the alpha into.
"I have to try this." He said, he didn't want to go alone but what choice did he have? He didn't want to see any of his friends die. They almost hadn't saved Brett. Imogen told him that if they had been a few minutes late, Brett would be dead and Lori would've been alone. "All I want to do is to get Monroe to trust us. She agreed to this peace summit. And I have to go." He pressed a kiss to her temple before pulling himself away from her. "I'm going alone." He left reluctantly to meet with a woman who had the choice in whether more people would die or live.
Imogen stood there in the kitchen, tears in her eyes. Because of their bond, she could feel the emotions he tried to hide from her.
Fear.
He was afraid just like she was. Deciding to go against his judgement, she shot a text to her friends to help back him up in case things went wrong. She wasn't going to risk her boyfriend getting betrayed.