Tethered // Teen Wolf // Isaac Lahey

TWENTY-SIX

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KOREY

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Despite my best efforts to run away from everything that had happened and all the things I wanted to forget, I ended up back in the place where everything started.

I stared at the abandoned pack house, the white, wooden panels staring back at me with the accusation of a thousand eyes. I had done this. I had ruined everything for everyone.

Two of the porch steps were broken from my fight with Mason, and there were track marks from the car going in every direction. Dust settled over the structure, trying to pretend that all the memories of the house were part of distant history, which was simply not true.

The door wasn't locked and it had been left slightly ajar, as if the last person in the house had left in such a haste that they hadn't had time for such frivolous things such as locking a door.

I pushed it open further, the wooden floorboards creaking under my weight as I stepped into the living room. My eyes casting over the couch and the coffee table, faint traces of every pack member's scent clinging to the furniture and the walls. It was like walking through a haunted house, except there were no ghosts; just lingering memories I would have preferred to squander and forget.

I ignored the kitchen where the smell of Archie's chocolate and cinnamon scent stuck the most desperately to even the smallest of spoons. I couldn't face all of that now, not when I knew that I would never be able to find him again.

Mason never told us where he was buried, and the secret died with him.

I let out a shuddering breath, grabbing onto the bannister of the stairs instead and forcing myself up the steps, trying to focus on anything but the smells. I walked straight past Aaron's room without an ounce of hesitation, and I did the same with Blake's room, finding that no amount of reasoning could ease the bitterness that encircled my heart and strangled it.

I pushed my room door open first, tracking my eyes over the scarcely decorated walls and the poorly painted walls. Archie had helped me paint them, and we'd been planning to buy posters of random bands that he liked and wanted to introduce me to, to stick on the walls. Now, there was only a long, clear bead string that hung across the window in my room; a DIY project of Paisley's, a suncatcher of sorts.

I took it down first, tossing it over my bed as I hunted down a backpack, stuffing the suncatcher into it before I began throwing other things inside it: a photo album with half the photos torn out, a scorpion emblem necklace from my swim team– one of the only ties to my human life– and a couple bits of clothing.

I rushed into Paisley's room next, grabbing one of her signature pink cardigans and a bottle of her sweet smelling perfume before I cast them into my bag as well. I tried not to linger, hoping to maintain some emotional control until I was done with Archie's room.

I had to go to Archie's room. It was only right. His room was at the end of the hall, opposite Mason's and past the office. I practically tiptoed towards it, the backpack shaking between my fingers, the fabric straining as my nails dug into it.

Archie's scent was suffocating the second I walked inside. It clung to every fibre in the room, and it forced its way down my throat like a shard of jagged glass. I closed my eyes, trying to regulate my breathing as I blindly moved through the room, searching for anything that I could take for the sentimental value without it crushing me.

His watch was sat on the nightstand beside his bed, the leather band worn down, the colour fades around the edges, and the golden metal was cool against my skin. He'd worn the watch everywhere. It had been a gift from his father, but it seemed as though he'd forgotten it that night in his panic.