Teen She-Wolf

Chapter 7 - See Your True Colours Shining Through

***STILES***

Lydia sinks to her knees, screaming as her power kicks in a second too late. Jackson and I run to her side and help her up. She's unsteady on her feet, so we can't let go of her for a few seconds.

Deucalion stalks off, leaving us to gape at the sight of Aiden sobbing pitifully over his twin's corpse. He looks utterly broken, and I almost feel bad for him.

Almost.

Of course, nobody deserves to lose their family like this. God knows if I were in his shoes, with Scott (who's my brother in all but blood) lying dead at the bottom of Derek's half-rotted porch steps, I'd be the same way. Inconsolable. Devastated.

I have to remind myself, though, that Aiden was the one who turned Allison. That he'd bitten so many others in the past, if what he and Ethan had said during their final conversation with Deucalion is anything to go by. That he'd killed so many of his victims.

"Stiles, what are you doing?" Scott asks as I approach the side of Derek's porch.

"What does it look like?" I grab one of the vertical wooden bars between the floor and the railing with both hands, then pull until I take a foot-long section off.

"That's my property you're damaging!" Derek yells. "You better have an explanation for this."

"I do believe he's gonna go all Jack Bauer on this mofo's arse," Hunter says. "And yeah, I'm paraphrasing his thoughts. A direct quote would've been censored if this were on TV."

"No!" Allison runs out and holds me back. No, really, she holds me back, just by holding on to my arm. Already her werewolf strength is building up.

Struggling to break free of her grasp, I say, "We need answers, Allison. I'm sorry, but it's the truth."

"Answers, maybe," Allison says, "but not-"

Scott takes her wrist until she lets go of me. "I think he knows what he's doing," he says. "And if he's getting too rough with him, I'll stop him myself."

"Please don't stop me," I say. I then walk over to Aiden and gently nudge his shoulder with one end of the wood - the less sharp end. He looks up at me, tears running down his cheeks, his eyes red - by which I mean "bloodshot," not "werewolf-glow-y."

"Wh-What do you want?" he asks, gulping.

"Did you bite Allison?" I ask, bringing my voice as low as I can.

No answer, except for a soft whine. I nudge Aiden again, a little harder this time, and repeat the question. "Why the hell are you asking me that?" he cries. "I did it! I DID IT! Happy?"

"Hardly," I say. "Scott? What about you?"

Before Scott can answer, Aiden jumps to his feet, spinning around three hundred and sixty degrees. "I'm gonna kill him," he growls, his face shifting as his fangs sprout. "Where's Deucalion? I'm gonna fucking kill him!"

"Slow your roll," I say, gripping the wood as hard as I can and holding it like the makeshift baseball bat it is. "We don't just kill people without pausing and thinking it through first, focusing on the conseq-okay, forget it. I'm with you, believe it or not. I wanna see that blind assbutt bleed."

Derek doesn't like this side of me. "You do realize," he says, pointing at Aiden, "that if he kills Deucalion, he takes his power? All his power?"

"That's a bridge we'll just have to cross when we get there," I say.

"This is less 'crossing a bridge' than 'crossing the Rubicon,' from what I'm hearing," Lydia says, still panting. By now, though, she doesn't need anyone to help her stand - she's doing just fine on her own. Trust her to come up with an obscure historical reference. Next thing you know, she'll be quoting Sun-Tzu. (I mean all that as a compliment, of course. I could never insult or belittle her. She already gets enough of that from people who know her ditzy act is just that, an act, and neither understand nor appreciate the reasons why she does, in her words, "plenty of sucking" for Jackson's benefit. In more ways than one, I'm afraid.)