I feel like not as much happened this season; like, I haven't been able to get a lot of chapters out of it as I usually manage.
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All the way down to the bottom floor of the hospital I had been trying to contact Malia. Every single time it went straight to voicemail, and that was giving me no confidence whatsoever.
"Guys, I'm sorry, but I need to go and find Malia. She's not picking up," I told them as I shoved my phone into my pocket.
Stiles sped up to be beside me, "I'm coming with you."
"Stiles-"
"Don't try and talk me out of it. I'm coming."
I sighed, before nodding. "Alright. Scott, call Isaac and get him to meet you there and text us when you find Parrish. We'll be there as soon as we can."
Scott agreed, before grabbing something out of his jacket and holding it out. Stiles looked just as confused as I did, asking Scott what it was.
"Something I've been working on for a while. Just make sure Malia gets it," Scott answered as I accepted the item.
It was a cylindrical object wrapped so that I was unable to see what it was, and his answer didn't really help. Either way, I knew he wanted to help Malia, and that was enough.
"I will," I assured him.
"Is it plan B?" Stiles asked, trying to get a better answer.
Scott shook his head, "It was plan A."
"Plan A never works."
"This one will."
Stiles and I glanced at each other and knew we weren't going to get a better answer than that. Sliding the item into my jacket pocket, I turned on my heel and began to run towards the hospital door with Stiles right behind me.
Getting into the Jeep, we peeled out of the car park. Trying Malia's phone once more on the way, I threw it to the floor of the car in frustration. "Stiles, I really need you to go faster."
"If I go any faster, I'll end up killing us both," he said as calmly as possible.
My hand was at my mouth as I chewed on my fingernails nervously. I needed her to be okay - we literally almost just lost Lydia. This had been a long day and I wasn't sure how much more of it I could take.
We arrived at Scott's house not much later, Stiles skidding to a stop out the front. Before he even had the chance to put the vehicle in park, I was out of the car and running towards the front door.
I heard Stiles swear as he tried to keep up with me, his long legs coming in handy. Grabbing the door handle, I found it was unlocked already. Pushing the door open, I stepped in, only to have a gun being pointed directly at me.
The woman from the school parking lot - Malia's mother; the Desert Wolf.
"Riley!" Stiles shouted as he got closer.
I turned to see Malia running at me, shoving me out of the way and grabbing her mother. Malia had used her strength when moving me, causing me to be thrown at the far wall.
Malia and her mother tripped over each other, both of them falling onto the McCall's glass coffee table. As they struggled Stiles ran to my side, checking me for injuries.
"Are you okay?" he asked in a panic.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said quickly, sitting up and rubbing my shoulder. "You need to go. Right now."
"And leave you with the crazy lady with a gun? Yeah, sure thing."
Rolling up onto my knees, I saw the Desert Wolf beginning to work towards us, her eyes focused on me. She knew who I was and my relationship with Malia.
If hurting me would hurt her, she would do it without hesitation.
Stiles noticed my shoulders stiffening, glancing behind to see the woman. His jaw clenched as he climbed to his feet and rushed at the woman.
I don't know what he thought he was doing, but he was completely unsuccessful. As Stiles reached for her, she grabbed him and, expertly throwing him down onto the smashed glass from the coffee table.
"Stiles!" I shouted, feeling my body begin to tremble.
He rolled over to look at me, revealing a large shard of glass protruding from his chest, blood dripping down it. As the Desert Wolf was distracted with Malia, I ran over to Stiles.
Reaching towards his chest, my hands were shaking. He looked up at me, his eyes half rolling back from pain and adrenalin.
"Hey, hey, I need you to stay awake, please," I begged, trying not to cry.
With one hand on his chest need the shard and the other on the side of his face, I told him to open his eyes. He did so weakly, head falling back to rest on the floor.
"I'm fine. Go and help Malia."
When I heard a gunshot, I knew I had to go. "Don't die," I demanded as I stood up.
He attempted to laugh, wincing as he did so. The look on his face made me hesitate, but I knew I had to help my sister.
"It's not the full moon, Malia, but you know what? It's close enough," The Desert Wolf said, shooting her in the stomach again.
Malia cried out in pain, asking her to stop. I tried to think of a way I could help without getting shot in the head when I remembered Plan A.
Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out the item that Scott had given me in the hospital. Getting my sister's attention, I threw it over to her.
She unwrapped it, to reveal a jar with claws inside of it. I recognised them immediately as the claws of the man who had tried to steal Scott's power back on the night of Senior Scribe.
Malia's mother approached her, eyes glowing and claws extended. As she reached her daughter, who was backed against a wall, she drove her claws into her stomach.
"I want my power back," she growled.
The girl was able to get the jar open in time, connecting the claws to her own before dropping the jar. The item smashed loudly at her feet as her eyes began to glow.
Malia returned the favour, burying the much larger claws into her mother's abdomen. "I want my family back."
As Malia's cobalt blue eyes began to glow even brighter, the Desert Wolf's mouth hung open in both shock and pain. As the woman's eyes faded, Malia ripped the claws out.
The woman stumbled backwards before Braeden hit her across the back of the head with the butt of her gun. As she dropped, I ran over to check on Malia.
Thankfully, she was already beginning to heal, the absorbed power pushing it along faster. She took deep breaths as she steadied herself, leaning against the wall behind her. Braeden approached us both, giving a small nod to my sister.
They had found a sense of retribution from this win. Braeden had been hunting the Desert Wolf for years, and Malia had been haunted by her. Being able to take her down was nothing short of a triumph.
"Can someone please come and take this gigantic shard out of my chest? Please?" Stiles asked from the floor.
My eyes widened as I swore beneath my breath, running over to him.
♧♤♢♡
I had managed to get Stiles into the Jeep and drove him to the hospital. While he trusted me, I wasn't prepared to remove that shard when I didn't know how deep it had gone.
I had taken him directly to Melissa, who successfully removed it before stitching it shut. The shard had gone over an inch deep; he had been lucky that it hadn't punctured anything on its way in.
After she had finished stitching him up, I drove us back to his house. His dad was still out at the station dealing with the aftermath of the Beast, so I went about making us some food. Stiles claimed that he wasn't very hungry, so I just ended up making us some sandwiches.
I came into the lounge room to see him sitting on the couch with the next Star Wars movie we were up to waiting on the screen. I took a seat beside him on the side where his stitches weren't, passing him one of the plates.
Just as we were about to turn on the movie and start eating, the doorbell rang. I offered to get it so that Stiles could relax, placing my plate down onto the coffee table. I went and answered the door, smiling when I saw who was on the other side.
Scott followed me back into the living room, taking a seat across from Stiles as I sat down next to my boyfriend once again. He went through what happened with the Beast, filling in everything we had missed when we had gone to Scott's house.
There were several moments where they had nearly lost it again, like Lydia falling onto a lower level of the pipelines. Parrish had gone after her while Scott, Isaac and Liam went after Sebastien.
Kira had apparently shown up to help also, actually reaching Lydia before Parrish. While she had been helping her, Scott, Liam and Isaac hadn't been having much luck against the Beast.
Sebastien had been going to kill Scott, at which point Liam was prepared to kill him - killing Mason along with him.
Unfortunately for the Beast, he made the mistake of inserting his claws into the back of Scott's neck. Since he had been the first werewolf, he probably didn't even know that he had the ability to see into someone's head.
While in there, he had seen Allison. Except, Scott said that he had called her Marie-Jeanne. Lydia had then arrived, using her abilities to separate Mason from the Beast.
Once he was free of the Beast, Parrish came in and grabbed a hold of it while Scott speared the Beast with the Doctor's cane. And with that, we'd finally been able to bring an end to the Beast.
Scott had also bitten Hayden, who had been dying after being attacked by Sebastien. Scott's bite saved her and Hayden was now a full werewolf.
"She saved our lives," Scott said softly through a smile. "Allison saved us."
I got up and went to sit beside him, putting an arm around him and squeezing him lightly. Losing Allison had been so hard on all of us, but Scott. . . there were points after she died where I thought he might not bounce back.
"She had a knack for doing that," I smiled.
I looked between the two boys and thought about how much we had grown. I was honestly surprised we all made it out of this one. Between the Dread Doctors and the Beast, I fully expected to lose at least one member of the Pack. I was more than glad to be wrong in this case.
"How did it go with Kira?" I asked Scott.
He shrugged lightly, "It hurt to see her go, but it's the right thing to do. She was going to hurt someone if she kept letting the fox take control. Being with the Skinwalkers is the best option for her."
"She'll be back eventually. She still has to graduate, after all."
"That's the thing, though, I don't know. . ." Stiles said from the other side of the room. "When we started this school year, I was so stressed about everyone ending up in the same place after we graduate. But I don't think it matters."
Scott's brow furrowed as he looked at our friend, "What do you mean?"
"We always seem to find each other anyway."
I bit my lip with a soft smile, walking back over to sit by Stiles, resting my head on his shoulder.
"We're a family; we'll always find each other. Even Allison."
♧♤♢♡
A couple of days after defeating the Beast, Stiles and I went to see Doctor Deaton just like he said we would. The Dread Doctors were all dead and the Skinwalkers and Kira had dragged Theo into the earth, so Deaton was the only person who may not what the Doctors did to me.
"What seems to be the problem, Riley?" Doctor Deaton asked when we requested to speak to him privately.
We were currently standing out the back of his shop around the table. I felt nervous, placing my hands on the table so that I would stop shaking.
"The Dread Doctors. A few nights before we saved Lydia from Eichen House, they kidnapped me. They did something to me."
"Do you remember what?"
I shook my head a little. "Some of it. Not everything. I remember the pain, and how cold it was, and some of the things they said."
Stiles wrapped his hand around one of mine, squeezing it gently. I glanced up at him for a moment, before turning back to the Doctor and making my eyes change.
"I see," Doctor Deaton said quietly, eyes narrowing in thought.
Blinking my eyes from silver to brown, I proceeded to remove my jacket and scarf. "There's also this," I informed him as I pulled down my collar to reveal the veins on my neck and chest.
They were still discoloured, a soft smoky grey spreading like vines across my skin. This caught the Doctor by surprise. He took a few steps so that he was standing in front of me, reaching for my shoulder.
"May I?"
When I nodded, he lowered the collar a bit further so that he could get a better look at the veins below. The fact that he looked confused wasn't helping to settle my nerves.
"Do you know what it is? What they did to her?" Stiles asked apprehensively.
The Doctor had his pen light in his hand, examining the veins closely. "Can I see your eyes again please?"
Nodding, I allowed my eyes to glow again. The pen light moved from my neck to my eyes. I struggled to keep them open as he shone the bright light directly into them.
"Interesting," he mumbled. Moving my head from side to side so that he could see my eyes from different angles, he finally turned the light off and took a step back.
"Well?" I asked hopefully.
"This is what I was afraid of," He sighed as he walked over to his bench and began to rifle through some papers. He brought over a slim manila folder, opening it and finding a specific page.
Stiles threw his hands up, blinking a couple of times. "You wanna maybe. . . elaborate on that? Huh?"
"The night of your rescue of Lydia from Eichen House, I recorded a storm. It wasn't a normal storm, however. It was an unscheduled lightning storm," he told us, showing us his notes and the charts for that night. From what I could tell, he was right.
"Did anything strange happen in Eichen House that night?"
I thought back to that night, going through each moment in my head. Everything went to plan for the most part. But then there was the unplanned parts. "We were with Corey and Josh for a bit after Parrish nearly killed Corey. And then. . . Kira lost control. I got hit with some of her electricity but I was fine."
Deaton's head fell to the side as he pursed his lips. "Unfortunately, I don't believe that was the case, Riley. You and Kira. . . I believe the two of you caused that storm."
"How could I have done that?" I asked, thoroughly confused. "All I can do is control the air."
"That was before," Deaton corrected. "But Lydia's rescue was after the Dread Doctors experimented on you. I believe they enhanced your abilities. Your abilities were already quite strong to begin with, but then what they did to you; I think they may have experimented on your DNA the same way they did the Chimeras. Except, you already had two sets of supernatural DNA coursing through you, so the results were different.
"I think that's why you're stronger, and why you're capable of more. And in terms of the lightning storm - I believe you brought the storm, and Kira the lightning."
"Okay, but why?" Stiles asked. "Why would the Dread Doctors go through all the trouble to let the fox out with Kira and strengthen Riley? Why create a storm like that?"
Doctor Deaton turned from Stiles to his notes, and then finally to me. "That, I'm afraid, I do not know."
My hand tightened around Stiles' as I looked up at him. I was hoping to find the bravery I needed in his eyes, but he looked just as confused as lost as I felt.
The Dread Doctors were gone and so was the Beast. So why did this storm have Doctor Deaton so worried?