The house was quiet in the way only late evenings could be, when even the pipes seemed to breathe more softly and the wind outside turned thoughtful instead of restless. Evelyn was sitting cross-legged on her bed, a biology textbook open in front of her but long forgotten, her phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she absentmindedly twirled a pen between her fingers. The soft yellow glow of her bedside lamp pooled over scattered notes, a half-finished essay, and three different nail polishes she had been debating over for no real reason other than boredom.
"No, I'm serious," Clara insisted through the speaker, her voice bubbling with gossip. "He has been orbiting you. Like, aggressively orbiting you. It's embarrassing."
Evelyn laughed, flopping back dramatically against her pillows. "Aggressively orbiting me? What does that even mean?"
"It means," Clara continued with exaggerated patience, "that ever since you dumped Daniel, Michael has suddenly discovered that every empty seat in every class is magically the one next to you."
Evelyn rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her hand. "First of all, I did not dump Daniel. We mutually agreed that we were both incredibly underwhelmed."
"You were underwhelmed." Clara pointed out.
"Okay, fine. I was underwhelmed," she admitted with a grin. "He was cute. Like, aesthetically pleasing. But when he tried to explain cryptocurrency to me for forty-five minutes, I felt my soul leave my body."
Clara burst out laughing. "You're impossible."
"I just want… I don't know," Evelyn said, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars still faintly stuck to her ceiling from middle school. "If I'm going to freeze to death at the Winter Formal, I'd like it to at least be for someone interesting that could give me a good time."
"So you would go with Michael?"
She hesitated just long enough to be dramatic about it. "If he asks me? Sure. I mean, he's sweet. And he's funny in a low-key way. And he doesn't talk about blockchain."
Clara laughed, "That's basically a love confession."
"It's really not," Evelyn said, sitting up again and reaching for her notebook to doodle absent shapes in the margins. "It's just… I don't mind going with someone. I just don't want to do the whole tragic-single-girl-standing-by-the-punch-bowl thing because she has a crush on anyone. That's so cliché."
"You? Cliché? Never."
Evelyn smiled to herself. This was normal, her late night talk with Clara, the lacrosse gossip, winter dances, mildly disappointing ex-boyfriends. No spirals carved into cars. No hunters asking too many questions in flower shops. No conversations about balance and creatures watching from the dark.
She liked this version of herself. The one who complained about boys instead of monsters.
"You know," Clara went on, lowering her voice conspiratorially, "I was sure he was going to ask you today."
Evelyn felt a small flutter of something that was pleasantly human. "But he didn't. So if he's planning to dramatically confess his undying affection, he's going to have to work on his timing. You know how strict I am."
"Maybe he's building suspense." Clara suggested and Evelyn giggled again.
"Maybe," Evelyn muttered.
Then suddenly, outside her window, something shifted.
It was subtle at first—just a faint scrape against brick. Evelyn's laughter faltered for half a second, but she told herself it was just the wind catching a branch. The oak tree near her room had been shedding leaves all week.
It's surely the wind, she said to herself.
"Eve?" Clara asked. "You there?"
"Yeah, yeah," she said quickly, forcing brightness back into her tone. "Sorry. I was just thinking "I just don't want to overthink it. It's a dance. If he asks me, I'll go. If he doesn't, I'll survive. I'm trying this new thing where I don't spiral over boys' cryptic actions."
She heard another sound. This time heavier, like a dull thud against the outer wall.
Evelyn's hand stilled over her notebook. Her eyes drifted toward the window without meaning to. The curtains shifted slightly, though she wasn't sure if it was the wind or something else.
"Okay, that was not wind," she murmured under her breath.
"What?" Clara asked.
"Nothing," Evelyn was quick to answer. But then she heard the same sound, but louder. "Clara, I think I have to go." Her eyes fixed on the window.
"Why?" Clara asked with a little chuckle, "Did your mom start chanting again?"
Evelyn huffed a weak laugh, but her attention was no longer on the conversation. Her skin prickled, that same subtle awareness she had tried to explain to Deaton days ago creeping up her spine. The feeling of being watched. Of something lingering just beyond sight.
"I'll text you," she said. "And if Michael asks me tomorrow, you'll be the first to know."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
She ended the call before Clara could ask more questions and slowly set the phone down on her desk. The room felt different now. Quieter, but not in a peaceful way. She kept her gaze fixed fully on the window.
The memory of the flower shop flashed in her mind—Kate Argent's smile, the way her eyes had studied her, the warning about boys who watch too much. And earlier that day, the mountain lion in the parking lot. The gunshot. The way the air had tightened afterward.
Then she heard another sound. This time she frowned, because it seemed like a low, strained exhale. Like someone had just fall outside outside her window.
Evelyn slid off the bed carefully, bare feet silent against the wooden floor as she took a cautious step closer. Her heart began to beat faster, she was trying not to panic, not yet. But she needed to see what was outside her house. Her fingers brushed instinctively against the small vial hanging at her neck.
"Okay," she whispered to herself, voice steadier than she felt. "Please be a raccoon. I can handle a raccoon."
The curtain slid aside with a soft whisper of fabric, and for a split second Evelyn saw nothing but the dim stretch of her front yard bathed in silver moonlight. The protective ash line carved into the stonework along the perimeter of the house glowed faintly where it caught the light, an almost invisible boundary woven into the architecture itself; the house had been built with mountain ash in its bones, sealed into the walls and threaded beneath the windowsills so that every door and every frame completed a circle when shut. Safe when closed. Broken when opened.
Her gaze adjusted.
And then she saw him.
A dark shape sprawled just beyond the porch steps, half in shadow, half illuminated by the pale wash of the moon. For one disorienting second her mind refused to recognize what her eyes were seeing. Then her breath caught sharply in her throat.
"Derek?"
He was lying on his side in the grass, one arm bent awkwardly beneath him, the other stretched forward as if he had tried to pull himself closer to the house and failed. Even from the window she could see the unnatural stillness of him, the rise and fall of his chest too shallow, too slow.
Her pulse spiked. And before she realized it, she had turned to ran, bare feet flying across the hallway, down the stairs two at a time, fingers fumbling for the lock.
The moment she pulled the door open she felt it—the subtle shift in the air, the invisible seal snapping as the ash circle broke.
"Derek!" she called, rushing down the steps and dropping to her knees beside him. Up close, the damage was worse. His shirt was torn and dark with blood. There was also dried crimson at the corner of his mouth, and when she touched his shoulder he didn't react at first.
"Hey," she said urgently, sliding her hands beneath him to turn him carefully onto his back. "Hey, look at me."
His face was pale beneath the faint stubble, jaw clenched even in unconsciousness as if he were fighting something in his sleep. When she shifted him, he groaned faintly, and relief flooded her chest so quickly it almost hurt.
"Okay. Good. That's good," she murmured, brushing his hair back from his forehead. "You're fine. You're going to be fine."
He was not fine.
She could feel the heat radiating off him, the wrongness in the wound. If he wasn't already healed that must have been something different than a regular scratch.
"Mom!" she shouted over her shoulder toward the open door. "Mom!"
Footsteps thundered inside the house, and her mother appeared in the doorway moments later, still in her long cardigan, eyes sharp and immediately alert. "Evelyn, what—"
She stopped when she saw him. And her expression hardened instantly. "Absolutely not."
"Mom—"
"No." She descended the steps slowly, gaze fixed on Derek as if he were a live wire. "That is a werewolf."
"He's injured," Evelyn shot back, her hands still pressed against Derek's chest in a futile attempt to slow the bleeding. "He could die."
"This is not our business, Evelyn," her mother replied, voice low and tense. Evelyn's eyes grew wider.
"I know that, I know!" Evelyn said, breath shaking despite her effort to stay steady. "But we can't leave him out here! What if something is chasing him?"
Her mother's eyes flicked to the dark tree line beyond the yard, calculating.
"I am not letting a wolf into my house," she said finally.
Evelyn looked down at Derek again, at the way his brow furrowed faintly in pain even unconscious, at the blood soaking into the grass. She thought of the parking lot. Of the mountain lion. Of hunters and spirals and the way everything in Beacon Hills felt like it was tightening.
"He's not just a wolf," she said quietly but firmly. "He's a person. And he came here."
Her mother's jaw tightened. "That doesn't mean—"
"I don't care about that!" Evelyn interrupted, more forceful now. "He doesn't have anyone else to go."
Her mother just observed her in silence and Evelyn let out a frustrated breath in seeing her so cold. She shifted, trying to lift Derek's shoulders, but he was heavier than she expected and her grip slipped slightly.
"Alright, do whatever you want," she said, not looking up this time. "I am bringing him inside. So you can either help me carry him, or you can stand there and lecture me while I drag him across the porch."
For a long moment there was only the sound of Derek's labored breathing and the distant rustle of wind through the trees.
Then her mother exhaled sharply through her nose, stepping forward. "You are exactly like her," she muttered.
"Is that a yes?" Evelyn shot back, though her voice trembled faintly with relief.
"On three," she said briskly. "And if he so much as growls—"
"He won't," Evelyn insisted quickly, though she wasn't entirely sure.
They lifted together. And as they did Derek groaned again, his head lolling slightly against Evelyn's shoulder, and she tightened her hold instinctively.
"It's okay," she whispered near his ear as they carried him toward the house. "You're safe. We've got you."
They maneuvered him through the doorway with difficulty, Derek's weight sagging heavily between them, boots scraping faintly against the wooden floor. The moment they crossed the threshold, her mother twisted back immediately and shut the door with a firm, deliberate motion. The latch clicked into place.
Something subtle shifted in the air.
The house sealed again.
They half-carried, half-dragged Derek toward the long wooden table near the center of the room. Evelyn's arms trembled by the time they managed to lift him onto it, his body landing with a dull weight that made her stomach twist.
"Careful," she whispered automatically, even though he was unconscious.
Her mother stepped back first, already scanning the windows, ensuring each one was latched shut. Only when she seemed satisfied did she return to the table.
Evelyn's hands were already at Derek's shirt. The fabric was stiff with blood, sticking to the wound beneath. She peeled it back carefully, breath catching as the damage came into full view.
He had been pierced clean through.
Four distinct punctures tore across his chest in a brutal line, close together but not aligned like blades. The wounds were too evenly spaced to be swords. Too shallow and too close to be daggers. The flesh around them was torn, not sliced.
"What did they use?" Evelyn breathed, confusion rising fast. "What kind of weapon does that? What could the hunters possibly have used?"
Her mother's voice was colder when she answered.
"This is not hunter work."
Evelyn looked up sharply.
"These," her mother continued, gaze fixed on the wounds, "are claws."
Silence fell heavy between them.
Evelyn's eyes dropped back to Derek's chest. The wounds should have already begun knitting. Werewolves healed fast. She had seen it before. But this—
"Why isn't he healing?" she demanded quietly, fear beginning to thread through her voice.
Her mother inhaled slowly. "An Alpha is free in this city."
Evelyn's stomach tightened.
"And wounds inflicted by an Alpha are different," her mother continued. "A bite can kill a vampire outright. A scratch can cause devastating damage to another werewolf. It can even kill one that was created by that Alpha's own bite."
Evelyn swallowed. The implications settled like lead in her chest.
"Alright," she said after a second, forcing steadiness into her tone. "Then how do we help him?"
"I'm not going to do anything." Those words made Evelyn freeze in place, looking at her mother with wide incredoulus eyes.
"Mom—"
But her mother interrupter her protests, "You cannot be involved with him, Evelyn." She was talking coldly, and almost unbothered. Evelyn could not believe that her mother could not find a little bit of compassion for someone wounded as he was.
"What are you talking about?" She asked in frustration, "We need to help him, mom."
"This is the first step," her mother kept saying, "I've warned him to not let you come this close to all of this, I should have listened to myself." Evelyn observed her mother, she could not believe that she was starting to rumble now. They had to move, they had to help him.
"Please, not now, okay?" Evelyn said almost pleading.
"The curse is all around this family," her mother pressed on, voice low and intense. "It has always been." The words landed hard and Evelyn could just stare at her in silence.
"Him and people like him will be your downfall, Evelyn," Her mother's eyes flashed, something deeper than fear surfacing there. "So I do not care what happens to him if it means saving you."
Fear and worry, that was all her mother was feeling, and what she had always felt. But Evelyn didn't want to live like her. She wasn't like that. She didn't like that word too, but she would have not turned away to help someone, just because she was afraid.
If her mother wouldn't help, she would do it alone.
She moved quickly toward the cabinet near the back wall where dried herbs and preserved plants were stored in carefully labeled jars. Her mind was already racing, flipping through knowledge she had absorbed over years beside Deaton — antiseptics, clotting agents, stimulants that accelerated natural regeneration. They had studied dozens of plants and their properties. She knew the theory.
She didn't need permission.
She began pulling jars down with shaking hands, scanning labels, assembling what she would need. Crushed comfrey to promote healing. Yarrow to slow bleeding. A tincture mixture that could stimulate cellular repair.
Behind her, Derek's breathing hitched unevenly.
"I can do this," she muttered under her breath, more to herself than anyone else. "I know what I'm doing."
Evelyn's hands moved with increasing precision as she gathered what she needed, the earlier hesitation gone. She crushed dried comfrey leaves into a fine green paste, the sharp, earthy scent rising immediately into the air. Yarrow followed, ground carefully to thicken the mixture, her fingers steady despite the tremor in her chest. She added shavings of white oak bark, scraping them thin with a small blade, then a measured pinch of mountain ash powder — not enough to harm him, just enough to contain the energy still tearing through his wounds.
Her mother watched from across the room, silent now, but tense.
Evelyn poured a small amount of lunar water into the mixture — water that had sat beneath the last full moon, stored in dark glass. The paste shifted in color, deepening slightly as if something within it awakened.
Derek's breathing faltered again.
Then she moved back to the table and spread the thick green mixture carefully over the puncture wounds. He jerked faintly at the contact, a low growl rumbling in his throat even unconscious.
"It's okay," she whispered. "It's gonna be okay."
But she knew herbs alone wouldn't be enough. The damage was deeper. It wasn't just physical.
She stepped back, closing her eyes for a moment. She knew what she had to do, she just never did it without Deaton.
Then she reached for the small ceremonial bowl on the shelf — carved wood, etched with ancient druidic symbols. She drew a shallow line across her palm with the edge of a silver blade.
Her mother stiffened. "Evelyn—"
But she didn't stop. A drop of her blood fell into the bowl, mixing with the remaining ash and water. She dipped her fingers into it and began tracing a symbol beneath Derek's sternum — an old sigil of restoration.
"You are not ready for that," her mother warned.
But Evelyn was already whispering, her voice lowered and steady.
"Spirits of root and stone,
guardians of the ancient grove,
mend what fang has torn,
restore what blood has stolen."
The air in the room shifted.
The potted plants near the windows trembled faintly though no breeze touched them. The lamp flickered once. The scent of earth deepened, richer, heavier.
Derek's back arched suddenly, a strained breath tearing from his lungs as if something inside him had tightened and pulled all at once. The wound reacted under her hand—not closing completely, not yet—but the bleeding slowed in a visible way, the torn flesh trembling as if caught between resisting and yielding. Evelyn did not pull away. She pressed her palm more firmly over the sigil she had traced, her eyes closing instinctively as she focused not on the wound, but on what was happening beneath her skin.
She had whispered before. She had tried small things before. A fractured wing. A torn flank. Gentle guidance, like coaxing a current to move in the right direction. But this was nothing like that.
This time she did not feel like she was guiding something outside of herself.
She felt it inside.
It began as warmth in her palm, a deep, root-like heat that traveled slowly up her wrist and into her arm. Then it spread further, not burning but expanding, threading through her veins in steady pulses that matched neither her heartbeat nor Derek's breathing. It felt ancient. Vast. Not loud, not violent—but immense. As if the forest floor after rainfall had risen beneath her ribs and taken root there.
Her breath faltered.
The energy did not simply respond.
It answered.
And it answered through her.
The room seemed to draw inward, the scent of soil thickening in the air, the potted ivy near the window shivering faintly as if brushed by an unseen current. Evelyn felt something align deep in her chest, a pressure that was not painful but powerful, like a door opening in a space she had never entered before. For a fleeting second she was terrified—not of Derek's wound, not of the Alpha—but of herself. Of how naturally it came. Of how easily the energy moved when she did not try to control it too tightly.
The wound beneath her hand twitched again, the flesh knitting slightly more at the edges, stabilizing rather than sealing. It was not full healing, but it was enough to stop the dangerous bleed. Enough to anchor him to life.
Her mother stepped closer, and this time there was no irritation in her expression—only something quieter. Unease.
The warmth didn't fade when she lifted her hand away. It didn't retreat back into the earth, didn't dissolve into nothing. It stayed. It coiled inside her chest like something that had just awakened and was not quite ready to sleep again.
Her palm still tingled. No—more than tingled. It felt alive.
Derek's breathing had deepened. The bleeding had slowed to almost nothing. The torn flesh, though still marked and brutal, no longer gaped the way it had minutes before.
Her mother was staring at the wound.
Then at her.
Evelyn followed her gaze down to her own hand as if seeing it for the first time.
"I didn't…" she whispered, her voice thin and distant. "I didn't mean to—"
She hadn't known it would answer like that.
She had expected resistance. Strain. Maybe partial success. She had expected to try, fail, adjust.
She had not expected the earth itself to surge through her like that.
She had not expected to feel something ancient recognize her.
The energy inside her shifted again, a deeper pulse this time, and it made her knees weaken. It wasn't painful—but it was overwhelming. Too much. Too vast for a body that had only ever practiced on broken wings and torn fur.
"I've never…" she breathed, looking at her mother now, confusion and awe mixing in her eyes. "I've never felt it like that before."
Her mother did not answer.
Evelyn looked back at Derek's chest, at the slowed bleeding, at the faint tightening of flesh.
I've done that? The thought did not land cleanly in her mind; it hovered there, fragile and unreal.
She stared at Derek's chest, waiting for the wound to undo itself, for the blood to start flowing again and prove that it had all been coincidence, that she had simply dramatized a werewolf's natural healing. But it didn't.
Her fingers curled slowly against her palm. It still felt strange—charged, but not painfully so. More like she had dipped her hands into something deep and cold and come back warmer than before.
She hadn't forced the energy, hadn't dragged it into the room the way she imagined darker magic might require. She had opened something, and it had come willingly. That was the part that unsettled her. Not the power itself, but the ease.
She glanced back at Derek, half expecting him to wake, to look at her and confirm that he had felt it too. He didn't. He only breathed, his chest rising and falling under the dim light, alive in a way he hadn't been minutes before. The realization crept up slowly and then hit all at once, stealing the air from her lungs in a different way than before.
"Wow," she breathed, the word soft and utterly unguarded.
She let out a shaky exhale and leaned back against the edge of the table, the exhaustion settling into her limbs now that the surge had passed. Her legs trembled slightly and she lowered herself onto the nearest chair before they could give out on their own, eyes still fixed on Derek as if he might vanish if she looked away.