The last thing James "Jay" Hale ever imagined was to begrudgingly return to Beacon Hills, find out his older sister was murdered, and then be forced to go on a wild goose chase after an enigmatic Alpha that seemed to have a particular interest in ru...
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CHAPTER EIGHT: Bitter is The Bond Between Brothers
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"It's here."
Jay's whisper hung in the crisp night air like a solemn oath as he kneeled down to inspect the blood on the loose gravel outside of the industrial building. Whether the blood was from the beast or an unlikely victim, he wasn't all too sure about it. He glanced up at Derek for some confirmation, but he was too busy scanning the surrounding area for any movement to notice, his ears perked and listening for even the faintest sounds in the night air.
After the small confrontation with Scott back at the Hale house, Jay had licked his wounds and gotten up again. And by wounds, he didn't mean the actual stab wound from Argent and the slashes from Derek, but instead the petty emotional one of finding out that Derek's been keeping secrets from him all along. However, rather than being angry and sulky like he usually would be, he'd sucked it up and moved on. They didn't have time to fight each other with the Alpha on the loose, and that kind of very mature thinking—which was honestly extremely under-appreciated by Derek who kind of just ignored it; something that sort of made Jay want to scream—brought them to where they were now the next night. They'd managed to have a breakthrough in their hunt. Derek somehow caught the scent of the Alpha, who had supposedly been stalking around the border of the Hale property lines, and they'd been trailing the thing for a good hour with no real luck.
Until that very moment, with the small blood droppings on the industrial building.
As Jay wiped his hands on his pants and joined Derek in surveying the area, a dark silhouette on a nearby tall building turned to face them, its red eyes gleaming in the dark night. In an instant, both Derek and Jay's heads whipped toward it, their nerves standing on end as they locked eyes with red and the figure charged off. Without hesitation, they launched themselves after it, their werewolf instincts propelling them forward with just as much speed and precision.
Derek took the lead as the two brothers leaped from one roof onto another. It was their usual hunting arrangement, Derek in the front and Jay just behind him watching his back. It was such a practiced motion that they'd managed to gain ground on the Alpha in no time, closing the gap between them. The thing must have known too, because suddenly it swerved to the side to try and shake them off.
They jumped to another roof and scaled the side of a building to follow, both their eyes locked on the movement. It was an Alpha, that much was true. But they were still werewolves as well. Hunting prey was in their nature. It also helped that it was the first real sighting they've had in the entire three weeks they've been staying in Beacon Hills. The adrenaline that coursed through their veins, as well as the fury for Laura's death, had them sprinting faster than what was necessarily normal even for their heightened capabilities.
