True Mate » Sterek

Chapter 5

"I can't find my phone!" Scott repeats again. He tares his bedroom apart searching for it, his temper still up from his encounter with Derek.

"Dude, calm down," Stiles sighs, "Where's the last place you had it?" Scott stops for a minute to think, and the last time he remembers feeling it in his pocket is at the old Hale house. "Derek's," he states.

"Maybe you dropped it when you guys were fighting—which was incredibly stupid. Seriously, he's an alpha now, not your best idea." Scott disregards the comment and sits on his bed. "Or I might have dropped it when I was running from the Argents."

"Wh—the Argents?! Scott, man, don't you think you should have brought that up when explaining the whole Derek thing!" Stiles exclaims, "What the hell happened?"

"We were fighting and then this flash arrow shot next to us. He told me to run, to get out of there," Scott mumbles. Stiles shakes his head, from threatening to saving, this alpha has some serious mood swing issues. "You're telling me the last time you saw Derek he was fighting a group of hunters?"

"Yeah...why?" Scott asks, clearly confused. "One werewolf versus a family of hunters with weapons, Scott, you tell me who's winning that fight."

They both hop into the Jeep and drive back to the Hale house, for both Scott's phone and Derek. At Stiles racing speed, it doesn't take them long to get there.

Derek is Stiles' first priority, so he checks every room in the house, but no one is there besides them. Stiles returns to the doorway and scans over the bullet and scratch marks covering the old wood. He was taken, no doubt.

"It's not here," Scott sighs, giving up on the hunt for his phone. "Neither is Derek," Stiles adds. They observe the beaten home one more time before exiting, and heading to their separate houses.

Stiles immediately wipes his board clean and puts Derek in the dead center, branching all of the other information from that. He writes down everything from the Hale fire to Scott's missing phone.

Out of breath and having a seriously sore arm, Stiles takes a step back to take in all of the clues at once. His attention bounces from one connection to the next, until he draws a complete blank and his head startsto throb. He decides to get some sleep.

***

Stiles does everything he can to focus after he wakes up. He eats, grabs some water, plays some music, even distracts himself with video games for awhile. Nothing works.

Stiles groans in frustration and flops onto his mattress, his head hanging off from it. His annoyed eyes scan the board for the hundredth time, but something clicks. He flips off his bed with his sudden moment of insight.

He laughs quietly to himself and plops into his desk chair. "Smart thinking, Derek," he comments aloud, now typing away on his keyboard. Only a few minutes pass and Stiles is tracking Scott's phone.

"Hm, that's not far from his old house," Stiles mumbles to no one, chewing anxiously on his bottom lip. Maybe Scott did just drop it, but then again, you can't be too safe.

With that in mind, Stiles sets out with his flashlight, baseball bat, and phone to continue tracking the signal.

Stiles trudges through the, now dark, forest. He is stumbling over his own feet and everything else on the ground. "I swear to god, if you have a hidden freaking layer or something..." Stiles trails off with a growl. As if on cue, his light flashes over something metal hidden beneath damp leaves and piles of dirt. "Oh, come on!"

He double checks his phone, and is nearly right on top of the red dot, marking the signal coming from the other phone. It's now just occurring that he should have brought backup, because if Derek is down here, he's probably being guarded by something out of Stiles' league.