You Changed the Colour of My Eyes | Derek/Paige

Chapter 1

Cursing under my breath, I collapsed onto the floor of the house, blood oozing from my leg. I grabbed the knife that was still stuck in my thigh and pulled it out, trying not to howl with pain as I did so. Immediately the wound began to heal, and I rested my head against the floorboards and closed my eyes in relief.

Hunters. New hunters. They weren't Argents, I knew that. There was something different about them, their scent was different, their technique. The Argents were smart, they used specialised equipment and clever tracking tactics to hunt down the supernaturals of Beacon Hills. These hunters were amateurs compared to them, but the fact that I didn't know anything about them still made them dangerous. At least they hadn't followed me. Yet.

I turned onto my side and looked at the piece of clothing I had managed to rip from one of the hunter's t-shirts. I brought it to my face and sniffed it. I smiled. At least I was able to smell them coming.

Slowly lifting myself up from the floor, I looked out of the window. It was still dark, but the sun was starting to rise. Though I was able to keep my wolf-like impulses in check on a full moon, it still affected me badly. I could already feel the violence dying away, slowly being replaced by the normal feeling of emptiness. I sighed.

I walked over to the small desk at the corner of the room and took out a large book from one of the drawers. My diary. I had started writing this at age fifteen, the day I met Paige. I was so infatuated by her that writing in the diary was the only way of dealing with my obsession. Years ago, Cora found the diary and taunted me about it for weeks. However, the most recent pages of the diary were full of vague descriptions of hunters and various mild encounters with other werewolves. I flicked through the pages, breathing in the faded smell of the past...

Before any of my lycanthrope senses could kick in, a swarm of figures flew through the open door and smashed through the window. I leapt up, ready for another attack from the hunters. I turned, fangs out, but instead of a group of hunters, I was met with something much more shocking. It was a pack of werewolves, all staring at me.

"Who are you?" growled one of them, stepping forward menacingly. He was tall, dark and... well handsome. If it wasn't for the huge scar that cut up half his face, I might have said he was rather attractive.

"Derek Hale." I had no reason to lie. I watched as they all looked from one to the other in disbelief.

"I thought all the Hales burnt in the fire," uttered the tall man, showing his teeth.

I ignored the man's statement. "What are you doing in my house?"

A short young woman at the front of the group bounded towards the t-shirt which I was still carrying. "I was following a scent," she said enthusiastically. "We're trying to catch some hunters."

The scarred man took another step forward and I backed away, aware of how outnumbered I was. Then the man looked over his shoulder, calling to someone behind him. "Nosey's brought us to the wrong place, Emma. Nobody here but a liar with an attitude problem."

I started to growl at his insult but stopped when a woman, supposedly called Emma, drifted out of the shadows and into the light.

She hadn't changed that much, that was the first thing I noticed. She was taller, older, and somehow more tired than she was at age fifteen. But it was her. Everything about her was so familiar. Her heart-shaped lips that raised up to the side when she smirked. The mole that sat just below her left eye which I often used to stare at when she wasn't watching. Her hands that could manipulate the strings of a cello flawlessly.

But where a bow should have been attached to her fingers, a set of claws had appeared from the beds of her fingernails. The rest of the pack looked at her and I realised, with great incredulity, that she was the alpha.

I gaped at her for what seemed like minutes before I found my voice. "Paige?" I muttered, feeling my eyes well up from just saying her name.

She looked at me with furrowed eyebrows. "Who?" She asked.