SILENT GUARDIAN ◦ STILINSKI; REWRITE [1]

PROLOGUE

(REWRITTEN)

❝For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face: now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am know. ❞
— 1 CORINTHIANS 13:12

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CARTER GIGGLED AND KICKED the soccer ball to her older sister, Cora, while they played makeshift soccer in their front yard. Their warm panting breaths could be seen in the cool air around them. That was when they heard the screams - and they could smell the fire burning the wood. All the two siblings could do was stare as the flames rose higher and higher.

    As if suddenly coming to her senses, Cora turned to look at Carter, bending down to her level, as panic fell in her chest. "Go into the woods and hide. You need to stay safe. I'll come and find you, I promise." She said to her before running into the burning building.

    She knew that shouldn't be the last memory she allowed herself to have of her family. As quickly as she could, being only ten years old, she ran off into the dense woods and took refuge behind an old quince tree. She sat there for hours, watching and listening to spine-chilling screams of her entire family burning - trapped inside with no escape.

    Carter sat there until the flames flickered out - until they were just wisps of dark smoke. Salty tears soaked her soot covered cheeks as she stared hopefully at the destroyed house, desperately awaiting Cora's miraculous appearance from the rubble. But a pair of arms suddenly wrapped around her waist. Her head whirled around to see a sixteen year old, Derek and an eighteen year old, Laura. Two pairs of saddened eyes gazed down at her.

    Laura brought a slender finger up to her lips, silently telling Carter to stay quiet. They dragged her away from their home, from their lives, and from their family. Derek then had to shove Carter into Laura's car with extreme force, seeing that Carter was doing everything in her power to try and break out of her brother's hold.

    Once the three of them were in the car, all Derek could do was stare at her.

    Her eyes, filled with tears, began to change from their normal dark brown to an igniting scarlet-orange - a color so vibrant it was as though her irises were made of pure fire. Her eyes had never done that before, she wasn't a shapeshifter like the rest of her siblings, and the color of her eyes was something Derek had never seen before.

    That was when he knew it was his job to protect her now.

○ ○ ○

    "Derek?"

    Carter gently set down her suitcases and bags down on the old wooden porch, the wood creaked under the weight. The porch looked as though it were slowly crumbling to pieces, well, the entire house seemed that it was slowly decaying and warping until it was prepared to completely come apart and fall into a heap of charred wood. A floor so tilted that a marble placed at one end would happily roll its way to the other end before making a final leap for freedom off the side.

    In truth, the porch looked completely different than one would expect, seeing as though it had survived a devastating fire; it still held a solid bench, with wood slats and iron curlicues. If one were to sit on the bench they could gaze out into the dense forest of Beacon Hills without a single neighbor in sight. It had been one of the porches that would inspire you to learn how to make a proper mixture of lemonade and iced tea, just so you could sit on the porch and watch the numerous werewolf children scamper across the green yard.