CHAPTER ONE : runaway lydia

( omega )

————

WHEN SHANNON HEARS LYDIA'S scream, she's already half-packed. Most of her things have been stuffed into a little tote bag, the majority of what's left splayed out on top of the bed that she had called her own for the past weekend.

The doctors had called Shannon's recovery 'remarkable'. While she still limps when she walks and can't move around as fluidly as she could before the attack, the fact that she's walking at all only a mere three days later is incredible. Lydia, she had later found out, had got off easy in terms of how badly she was actually hurt. Shannon was the one battling severe blood loss and who needed stitches, while Lydia just got a few bandages ( although she did repeatedly go into shock, something Shannon was pretty happy she didn't have to deal with ).

Yet, Lydia's the one screaming, not Shannon.

Now dressed in a pair of dark mulberry sweatpants and a black tee, Shannon discards her hospital gown to the chair to her side, and her dad, who was in the middle of putting some girly magazine into the tote bag, quickly ceases his task. The Finstocks leave the small room together to investigate.

Three people have already burst into Lydia's room next door — Lydia's father, a nurse named Melissa ( the mother of one of Shannon's close friends — Scott ), and Stiles, who had been hanging around the halls of the hospital since the Saturday after the attacks for, what he called, moral support. Stiles pushes his way to the front of the group before Shannon has had her chance to limp her way over to the doorway, and by the time she gets there, the rest of them are already in the room's adjoining bathroom. She hovers in the doorway, her father behind her, as it goes totally silent.

Many, many minutes later, Shannon finds herself leaning against a wall, fingers fiddling with the adhesive on the edges of her bandages. Stiles stands across from her, uncharacteristically quiet, which makes the blonde marginally more nervous. Shannon's father had disappeared back into her room to stuff the last of her things in her bag, and in the meantime, the police that Melissa had called had arrived to begin an investigation.

Shannon realises very quickly that Stiles is only silent right now to eavesdrop on the conversation that the sheriff — his father — is having with Melissa and Lydia's dad.

The sheriff turns to one of his deputies. "All right, let's get an APB out on a sixteen-year-old redhead," he says. The man nods and exits the hallway, and the sheriff turns back to the two other adults. "Any other descriptors?"

Stiles bursts forward. "She's five foot three, green eyes, fair-skinned, and her hair's actually strawberry blonde," he rattles off. Shannon lets her head fall back against the wall with a light groan at his obviousness. Even before Shannon left Beacon Hills, Stiles had been harbouring a crush on Lydia, and it was no less obsessive now as it was eight years ago.

The sheriff squints his eyes. "Is that right?" he asks sarcastically.

Stiles nods earnestly. "Yeah."

"Uh, come here," Stiles' father says. The younger boy groans as he's grabbed around the neck and pulled away from the grown-ups. "What the hell are you still doing here?" the sheriff asks.

Stiles fumbles for an answer. "Um... providing moral support," he gestures back to where Shannon is standing, and she offers the pair a wave, "for my friends?"

"Uh-huh. How about you provide your ass back home, where you should be?" the sheriff suggests.

Stiles smacks his lips together. "Okay, I can do that, too."

The sheriff just about throws Stiles out of his grasp and he sets off walking right past a fallen-over vending machine that two maintenance workers are attempting to sort out. He whips out his phone and Shannon's beeps a mere moment later.

BILINSKI:
scott's coming to help find lydia if you wanna come with???

COACH JR:
Will try to convince my dad. I'll let u know.

She tucks her phone back into the pocket of her sweatpants and goes back to the hallway next to where her room was. Her father is sitting outside on one of the rows of chairs, the tote bag he had finished packing resting between his legs.

"Dad?" she starts.

He looks up. "Hey, ready to go?" he asks, pushing against the arm of the chair to give himself leverage as he stands up.

She takes a breath. "Actually..." she trails off nervously and she can see her father's shoulders deflate. "Scott and Stiles are gonna go look for Lydia."

"Shannon—"

"I'll be super careful and I'll make Stiles drive me home if anything happens or if I get hurt, I swear, just... please?"

Her dad sighs. He already knows that he's going to lose this argument. "If you get so much as a— a splinter, I want you home," he relents. He means it.

Shannon beams. "Okay, okay, thank you!" she exclaims. She hurries away down the hallway before her dad can change his mind, and hops into the elevator, thankfully getting down to the ground floor and out to the parking lot without any interruptions. Stiles' blue Jeep is idling right by the doors, and he and Scott are inside, while Allison is leaning in through the passenger side window. Shannon approaches the vehicle and rhythmically taps her hands on the hood. Stiles peeks his head out of his window.

"He said 'yes'?" he asks.

Shannon nods. "But if I get so much as a splinter, I have to go home." She's mocking her dad, voice and all, but Stiles accepts the instruction without question. He doesn't need another reason for the coach to hate him.

They both go quiet to let Scott and Allison's conversation go by uninterrupted. Shannon comes to Stiles' side and leans in through his open window.

"I can find her before the cops can," Scott says.

"How about before my father does?" Allison asks.

Stiles gapes. "He knows?" he asks exasperatedly.

Allison nods. "Yeah. I just saw him and three other guys leave my house in two SUVs."

Scott leans back and turns to look at Stiles and Shannon. "Search party," he determines.

"It's more like a hunting party," Allison corrects him.

"Get in," Scott instructs the girls.

He opens his door so that Allison can climb into the back seat through the middle of the two front seats. For Shannon, it's a little more difficult. Stiles gets out of the car altogether and hoists her up towards the seat. One of her hands presses down on his shoulder, the other gripping the Jeep's roof. Getting over the centre console isn't an easy feat either, but she manages it with minimal pain and struggle. Stiles gets back in once Shannon is situated and reverses out of his parking spot.

"All right, but if she's turning, would they actually kill her?" Stiles asks.

Allison flaps a hand around in frustration. "I don't know. They won't tell me anything, okay? All they say is, 'We'll talk after Kate's funeral when the others get here.'"

Shannon raises her eyebrows. "Well, that sounds ominous," she mutters.

"What others?" Stiles asks.

Allison shrugs, annoyed. "I don't know, they won't tell me that either."

Stiles presses his lips into a line. "Okay, your family's got some serious communication issues to work on." He turns to look at Scott, who, at some point in the past thirty seconds, had unwound his window and stuck his head out into the wind like a dog on a road trip. "Scott, are we going the right way?" he asks, projecting his voice so that the Werewolf can hear him over the screaming wind.

"Take the next right!" Scott calls back.

————

The last thing that Shannon, Scott, Stiles, and Allison expect to come marching upon in their search through the woodland is the dilapidated, old Hale house. The house, once a stately, tan-brick manor, is now just a cluster of wooden boards folding in on themselves tied together with bright yellow police tape. Stiles leads the charge towards the ruins but turns around before getting too close.

"She came here? You sure?" Stiles asks.

Scott nods once. "This is where the scent leads," he says with a huff.

Stiles turns back and takes a few more steps towards the house. He stops again. "All right, but has Lydia ever been here?" he questions.

Allison and Shannon shake their heads presumptuously. "Not with me," Allison says.

They all start walking again, Shannon putting a little more effort into each step to get closer to Stiles, effectively splitting the quartet into two groups. Allison leans in closer to Scott and hushes her voice, although Stiles and Shannon can still hear her as clear as day.

"Maybe she came here on instinct? Like she was looking for Derek," she proposes.

"You mean, looking for an Alpha," Scott elaborates.

The corners of Allison's mouth point downwards into a very brief frown as she thinks for a moment. "Wolves need a pack, right?"

Scott takes a second and slows down as he gets closer and closer to Derek's house. "Not all of them..."

Shannon and Stiles both stop advancing towards the house the moment they sense that Scott and Allison have stopped and they circle around to join back up with the couple.

"But would she have been drawn to an Alpha? Is it an instinct to be part of a pack?" Allison asks.

Scott looks at her. "Yeah, we're— we're stronger in packs," he says, nodding through the sentence.

Allison nods back at him. "Like, strength in numbers."

Scott takes a breath. "No, like— like, literally stronger, faster... better in every way."

Stiles has checked out of the conversation, moving behind Scott and Allison while he stares at the ground. Shannon follows him, still listening to the couple's conversation.

"That the same for an Alpha?" Allison asks.

There's a long beat of silence only broken by the sounds of autumn leaves crunching under Shannon and Stiles' feet. Stiles crouches to the ground, and Shannon watches his nimble fingers search the forest floor from above, not wanting to risk pulling a stitch by squatting down after him.

"It'll make Derek stronger, too."

Stiles gets back to his feet and kicks through some leaves before his eyes focus on a wire strung up between two trees. "Whoa, hey! Look at this!" he says. Allison steps away from Scott's side to investigate with him, though Scott stays put, just looking at his friends and girlfriend over his shoulder. Stiles lightly grasps the wire in his fingers. "You see this? I think it's a tripwire."

He gives it a light tug and a clanking noise sounds out through the preserve. Shannon sees movement out of her peripherals and turns around, quickly having to stifle a giggle with the palm of her hand. Scott is helplessly dangling upside-down by one ankle, bouncing around from the sheer force of the wire's grip.

"Stiles—" Scott says, his complete done-ness evident in his voice.

"Yeah, buddy." The slightly younger boy turns around in his squatted position and very quickly sees the issue he's created. "Oh." He straightens up.

"Next time you see a tripwire?" Scott begins. Stiles and Allison stand up, Allison also covering her mouth with her hand so that a laugh doesn't slip. Scott extends his arms out wide. "Don't trip it."

Stiles nods sheepishly. "Yeah, noted."

The teenagers who still have both feet firmly on the ground approach Scott with the intention to help him out of his predicament but he holds an arm out towards them. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!" They all stop. "Someone's coming. Hide," Scott says. Nobody moves. Shannon, Stiles, and Allison look around the area in a way that does not match the potential severity of the impending situation. "Go!" Scott instructs.

This time, they move. Stiles reaches out to grab Allison by the arms and they scurry away and slip behind a tree. Shannon, on the other hand, is hindered by her limp and can't quite get out of sight fast enough before —

"Shannon?"

Her face scrunches up and her head rocks back as she turns back around slowly. "Hi," she says, awkwardly, averting her gaze to the ground.

The man, Chris Argent, Allison's father, gives the blonde a small nod. He's flanked by two other men in dark leather. He turns his attention to the only other person outside of his squad that he can see in the general vicinity, taking a few more steps forward and squatting down so that their faces are at the same level. "Scott."

Scott nods back at him, though upside-down, it looks a little wonky. "Mr Argent..." he says, his voice tired and unamused.

"How are you doing?" Chris asks fakely.

"Good. You know, just hangin' out," Scott replies. Shannon audibly sighs at his joke, rubbing her temples with her thumb and middle finger. Scott looks down, or up, his body at the wire wrapped around his ankle. "Is this one of yours? It's, uh, good. Nice design. Very constricting," he says.

Chris sighs. "What are you two doing out here?" he asks.

"Looking for our friend," Scott says.

Chris' head tips back in a sort of nod. "Ah... that's right. Lydia's in your group now, isn't she? Part of the clique? Is that the word you use? Or is there another way to put it?" He takes a long, dramatic pause, something that Shannon now believes is an integral part of the Argent vernacular. "Part of your pack?"

Shannon shakes her head, although Chris isn't looking at her. It's a motion mainly intended for the other two men who have their eyes trained on her.

"Actually, 'clique' sounds about right to me," Scott replies. Something Shannon had admired about that boy since the moment they first interacted was his ability to keep a cool front under pressure, and here, he's using it like his life depends on it — mainly because it does.

"I hope so," Chris says. "'Cause I know she's a friend of Allison's, and one special circumstance such as yourself? One, I can handle. Not two." The older man turns his attention back to the blonde. "Speaking of which. Shannon, how are you feeling?" he asks.

Shannon knows that he doesn't care about her well-being right now, not really. Before being bitten, he liked her enough. He thought she was a good influence on his daughter and had no suspicions that she knew anything about the supernatural even though she had only been integrated into Scott and Stiles' friendship because she walked in on a wolfed-out Scott trying to kill Stiles in the locker room. He also liked that Allison liked her. She'd struggled to make good friends with all the moving around.

None of that mattered now — Shannon had been bitten and could very easily turn into a beast at any moment. He couldn't have Allison being associated with another Werewolf.

She raises her eyebrows with pursed lips. "Fine," she says bluntly. Aside from the searing pain she feels when she shifts too much weight onto her right leg and the mild state of anxiety she's in, she isn't lying.

Chris goes to stand up but chooses to just stare at her. She doesn't feel creeped out like she would if any other man in his mid-forties was staring her down. Instead, she feels hunted. He eyes her gauze-covered arms, analysing the amount of blood that had seeped through, and after a long moment, he looks back at the boy hanging in midair before him.

"Scott, do you know what a hemicorporectomy is?" he asks.

"I have a feeling I don't want to..." He knows he's about to find out anyway.

"A medical term for amputating someone at the waist." His eyes are trained on Scott's face, analysing his reaction to his words. "Cutting them in half. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to cut through tissue and bone like that." He reaches up, dragging a hand through the air in front of Scott's waist, and Scott flinches away as Chris' fingertips make contact with his shirt. "Let's hope a demonstration never becomes necessary."

With that, he stands up and leaves, his men following him without a word. Once they're a safe distance away, Stiles and Allison reappear from the tree they were hiding behind and rush over to Scott and Shannon.

"Are you okay?" Allison asks.

"Just another life-threatening conversation with your dad," Scott says.

Allison looks up at the wire around Scott's ankle and follows the path of it down to where it hangs by the trunk of another tree. "Stiles, help me with this," she says as she rushes over to the mechanism. Stiles and Shannon follow her and they start fiddling with the pieces of it.

The slack on the device releases and the three teenagers turn around to where Scott is now standing, no longer restrained by the wire.

"Thanks..." he says, straightening his spine so he can stand at his full height, "but I think I got it."

"Yeah..." Stiles mumbles while Allison lets out a little 'guffaw' in disbelief.

Scott goes to set off but turns back around after a few steps. "Comin'?"

Shannon rolls her eyes as the three set off after him. "Does he want us to applaud?"

————

Shannon's day up until this point had been somewhat eventful, which was at least better than being totally boring. Scott and Stiles had filled her in on the announcement her father had made to the lacrosse team, where he thought it necessary to expose his lack of one of his testicles, Jackson had begun bleeding black blood in the middle of a pop quiz just after Stiles had managed to land himself another after-school detention, and now, she and Scott were hiding behind a grave marker shaped like an angel to watch over the funeral of Allison's aunt, Kate.

When Stiles finally does arrive, the pair are watching as an older man embraces Allison's parents and finally greets the younger girl.

"Who the hell is that?" Stiles asks, crouching behind Scott.

The older man looks towards the marker they're using as a hiding spot. The three of them quickly jerk away, out of sight, and all pray that they hadn't been spotted.

"He's definitely an Argent," Scott says.

"And he's definitely creepy," adds Shannon.

When they think it's safe, they peer back out at the procession. Allison glances over once the man has taken a seat and Scott gives her a quick, small wave. She smiles, though it's subdued so that her family doesn't see and question her on it.

"Hey, you know, maybe they're just here for the funeral?" Stiles suggests. Scott looks back at him. "I mean, what if they're the non-hunting side of the family? There could be non-hunting Argents. It's possible, right?" he rambles.

"I know what they are. They're reinforcements," Scott says.

He looks back at the Argents, but before he has a chance to get comfortable, a hand comes down on the back of his collar. He and Stiles are yanked up to their feet, while Shannon, who is already standing, turns around to face the assailant with wide eyes.

Stiles' father stands there, visibly seething with rage, his fists full of Scott and Stiles' clothing. "Ah. The three of you. Unbelievable." He looks down at the mulchy ground. "Pick up my tie," he says to his son.

Stiles bends to grab the tie from the ground. "Got it. Sorry. I know I'm supposed to ask—"

The sheriff drags the boys all the way to his squad car, allowing Shannon to walk herself over — only because his hands are full and he doesn't want the extra responsibility of trying not to re-injure the poor girl. He doesn't say anything the entire way to the car, nor after he's made the boys get into the back and Shannon into the passenger seat and he's got in himself.

"Four-one-five Adam," a garbled voice over the radio says, finally breaking the silence. Shannon mentally thanks the deputy and whatever crime has just occurred for interrupting the awkwardness.

Stiles' father holds his radio closer to his mouth, his other arm propped up on the steering wheel of his car. "I didn't copy that, did you say four-one-five Adam?" he clarifies.

"Disturbance in a car," Stiles quietly translates for Scott and Shannon. They acknowledge him with a nod before going back to eavesdropping on the call.

"They were taking a heart attack victim, DOA, but on the way to the hospital, something hit 'em," says the deputy on the other end.

The sheriff's brows furrow. "What? Hit the ambulance?"

"Copy that," the deputy confirms. Scott and Stiles lean in closer from the back seat. "I'm standing in front of it now. Something got in the back. There's blood everywhere. And I mean everywhere."

Once again, the sheriff brings the radio closer. "All right, Unit Four, what's your twenty?" he asks.

"Route Five and Post. I swear, I've never seen anything like this."

The sheriff sighs lightly. "All right, take it easy. I'm on my way." He reaches forward to turn the radio off, the rustling sound of his jacket rubbing against itself just barely masking the noises Scott and Stiles make as they unbuckle their seatbelts and slip out of the car without a word. "Now, as for you two—"

He turns around in his seat and stops talking the second he sees that the boys have disappeared, leaving the doors wide open in their wake. He looks at Shannon, who flashes him an apologetic smile, and he sighs again. "Up for a ride along?"

Shannon shrugs. "Do I have a choice?" she asks.

He shakes his head.

————

Her dad was probably wondering where she was, but Mr Stilinski hadn't yet had a free moment to drive Shannon back to her house, so here she stands — leaning against the hood of the sheriff's squad car as Stiles, who had just appeared from the woods, speaks to his father.

Her eyes fixate on something in the distance, where none of the lights from the scene quite reach, yet she can still make out the shape of a person moving around.

After a few long moments, Stiles' conversation trails off as he, too, notices the figure.

"Lydia?" he questions. His dad scrunches up his face in confusion. "Lydia?" he calls out.

Lydia emerges fully from the tree line. Her red hair is full of leaves, arms pressed against her chest to cover most of her bare breasts and to conserve as much body heat as physically possible. She's shivering so violently that, even from such a far distance, Shannon can see it.

"Lydia!" Stiles shouts.

This time, she looks up. Everyone in the area turns around.

"Well," Lydia begins. "Is anyone gonna get me a coat?" She extends her arms in a questioning manner.

The deputies and paramedics in the area, including Stiles' father, quickly avert their eyes. Stiles finds his eyes fixated on her as he reaches out to start grabbing at his dad's bulky coat. He collapses to the ground before he can slip it off one of his shoulders. His dad stares down at him.

Shannon pushes herself off the hood of the car, and Stiles' father, who has now removed the jacket of his own accord, passes it off to the blonde. She approaches her friend as quickly as she can physically manage and helps the redhead into it, pulling it closed over the girl's front. It doesn't quite cover her entirely, but it's much better than nothing.

She reassuringly rubs Lydia's shoulder. "Let's go, c'mon."

————

published : october 24, 2022
word count : 4k