( SIX )
required reading

Alex walked into her room, the girl frowning in question as she noticed a small, wrapped box on her desk accompanied by a note.

She walked over to it and carefully unwrapped it, opening the lid to reveal a thin, golden necklace with small letters on the front reading 'stiles'.

A small smile overtook her features as she gently placed it back down on the desk, the girl picking up the note and reading it in her head.

To Alex,
I hope you like it.
From, guess who ;)

Alex's smile grew as she bit her bottom lip, glancing at the necklace again.

"I couldn't figure out what to write on the note..." A familiar voice interrupted, Alex turning to face Stiles, who was leaning against the doorframe.

Alex chuckled. "It's cute."

"I mean, I was going more for thoughtful, but cute works too." Stiles responded with a shrug, a small smile on his face as he pushed off the wall and approached Alex. "I know you're not one for jewellery or anything like that, but I thought I'd give it a try."

Stiles continued as Alex's eyes flickered between his. "God, this is gonna sound really self centred, but here goes...I wanted to give you something that'll make you happy when you're not, y'know? And I think I make you happy, so..."

When Alex raised her eyebrows, Stiles inhaled a breath, releasing it a second later. "Oh god, I knew it would come out wrong, that wasn't my intention..."

"Stiles, I love it." Alex grinned as she chuckled again. "And you do make me happy."

Stiles released a relieved breath, the boy smiling. "Okay cool, I wasn't sure if it was clear or not..."

Alex chuckled again as she cupped the sides of Stiles' face and connected their lips.

After they pulled away, Alex raised her eyebrows. "Well, are you gonna put the necklace on me, or...?"

"Right, yeah." Stiles huffed a chuckle as he gently picked up the necklace, Alex turning around and moving her hair to the side.

Stiles gently placed the necklace around her neck, carefully releasing it once it was safely on.

Alex turned around to face Stiles, the girl smiling at him again. "Thank you."

Alex engulfed him into a hug, Stiles hugging the girl back tightly.

As well as making Alex happy with the gift, Stiles also needed a distraction from his internalised panic and paranoia about Donovan and where his body had gone. And who better to distract him from worrying situations than Alex?

••••

Noah crossed off a picture of Tracy's face with a red marker, the man frowning as he spoke. "Chimeras."

"Two dead chimeras." Stiles corrected.

"And eight new ones." Alex added with raised eyebrows.

"So that's ten in all." Stiles continued as he shared a brief glance with Alex.

"I'm thinking maybe eleven." Noah responded, pinning a picture of Donovan on the wall.

Stiles' mouth parted slightly as he glanced at the ground nervously. His heart rate quickened as his brain revised the events that occurred the previous night. He accidentally killed Donovan, and he hadn't told anyone. Not even Scott and Alex.

"Our station tech guys confirmed something for me." Noah continued. "They said both the holding cell lock and cameras could've malfunctioned because of something electromagnetic."

"You said that these guys..." Noah added as he took the Dread Doctors book.

"The Dread Doctors." Alex confirmed with a nod.

"Are we really calling them that?" Noah cringed.

"Unless you have another suggestion." Alex raised her eyebrows, the girl crossing her arms as she continued. "So, they broke Donovan out?"

"It's how they got into Eichen, isn't it?" Noah raised his eyebrows.

As a brief silence fell between the group, Alex glanced at the picture of Donovan on the board behind Noah. She spoke as she walked closer to it. "Donovan's a chimera."

"Yeah..." Stiles released a breath.

"But...is he a failure like Tracy and...the other Lucas?" Noah questioned, making sure to clarify that the Lucas he was mentioning wasn't Alex's brother.

Stiles turned around and stopped, a million thoughts flurrying around in his brain.

"He's probably dead." Alex glanced at Noah as she picked up the red marker, the girl moving her hand up to draw a cross on the picture of Donovan.

Before the marker touched the picture, Noah grabbed her wrist, Alex glancing at him in question.

"Not until I see a body." Noah spoke, his gaze not faltering from the picture of Donovan.

Noah released Alex's wrist and turned around, noticing Stiles thinking to himself. He was fidgeting with his hands, Alex turning around and facing him too.

"You're uncharacteristically quiet." Noah spoke, snapping Stiles out of his thoughts. He turned around to face his father and Alex, who were frowning in concern.

"Yeah...yeah, sorry, I'm...I'm just trying to think about, uh..." Stiles stuttered, the boy glancing between Alex and Noah. "These were all teenagers, right? So, now shouldn't we be trying to figure out why these teenagers? If the Dread Doctors, if they went through all that, burying them, killing them...breaking them out of jail..."

"They couldn't have been chosen at random." Noah finished with a frown.

"They had to have something in common. Maybe it's related to their families? Their private lives?" Alex suggested, the girl crossing her arms and glancing between the other two. "Did they have friends? Anyone that would miss them?"

"Maybe. But there's nothing significant about either of their families." Noah responded, glancing at Alex. "And as for the second part, it didn't seem like it."

"Well, then that's one of the reasons why they were easy targets." Alex spoke, the girl frowning as she continued. "Something had to have made them good for this...experiment..."

"Something that made them special." Stiles finished, Alex and Noah glancing at him.

••••

"My mom's book club usually has more wine." Lydia started, the group all glancing down at the glass table, various copies of 'The Dread Doctor's' placed on it.

"Well, they also probably don't read books that cause violent hallucinations." Stiles added with raised eyebrows, sharing a glance with Alex.

"Hey, you never know." Alex spoke as she crossed her arms.

"That's why Malia's here." Scott sent a glance towards Malia, who was standing next to Lucas.

Malia nodded with a small smile.

"So none of us go running into traffic..." Kira sighed, glancing at Scott.

"Or worse." Lucas responded.

"Like what happened to Judy." Malia continued, the group glancing at her in confusion as she spoke. "Chapter fourteen."

"Maybe I should get my mother to read it." Lydia started as she reached over and took one of the copies, Alex slightly glancing over her shoulder at the book. "She might remember a girl with a tail leaping over the ceiling and attacking everyone."

Lucas had his eyes set on Lydia as she spoke, Theo noticing and glancing between the two.

"Yeah, if it works." Stiles clarified, glancing at Lydia briefly.

Without returning his glance, Lydia spoke. "It has to."

"What does that mean?" Scott questioned.

Alex frowned slightly as she glanced at Lydia, waiting for her response.

"I think I saw them during my surgery." Lydia explained, the group all frowning in confusion.

"What?" Alex asked, her frown deepening. "Further explanation, please."

"When I look at the cover of the book...it's almost like..." Lydia started, however her voice trailed off, the girl not knowing how to describe the feeling.

"A memory trying to surface." Theo finished for her, the group all glancing at him in question.

"Yeah." Lydia responded, nodding gently.

"Isn't that what Valack wanted when he wrote it?" Kira glanced at Malia, the girl nodding.

"If they did something to Lydia, I wanna know what it is." Lucas frowned, catching the group's attention.

Lydia glanced at him at the words, Lucas returning the glance. Lydia sent him a small smile, Lucas nodding once.

Alex glanced between the two, her gaze then trailing off to Malia, who was frowning at the copies, not aware of the interaction that just occurred.

Lydia then walked out of the room with one of the copies, starting a chain reaction, Alex taking one, Stiles taking another, Lucas picking up one, and so on until there were no copies left on the table.

"Am I gonna regret this?" Alex spoke to Scott as she sat down next to Stiles.

"I think we all are." Scott released a breath as he hesitantly opened the book to the first page, the rest of the group doing so as well.

••••

A few hours had passed, the whole group trying to stay awake, some of them blinking a lot to try and fight the exhaustion.

Alex's head was resting on Stiles' lap, her copy of the book over her closed eyes, covering them from the rest of the group.

"Lex, wake up." Stiles mumbled as he gently shook her body, the boy still forcing himself to read his copy, Alex groaning in annoyance as she opened her eyes, the girl taking the book off her face and beginning to read again.

"Stop waking me up, I'm tired." Alex complained as she continued to read.

"We all are." Lucas responded tiredly, annoyance lacing his tone.

Alex rolled her eyes as she continued reading.

"Anyone feel anything yet?" Scott questioned as he changed the subject.

"Tired..." Kira replied quietly.

"Hungry." Lydia added.

"Bored." Alex finished.

"I think he meant the book." Theo glanced at Alex.

"No one asked you what he meant." Alex snapped with a surly grimace as she continued to read the book. When she realised how abrupt and rude she sounded, she exhaled through her nose. "Sorry."

"Uh, that's okay." Theo replied, his gaze on her.

"That's it, I'm getting coffee." Alex then spoke as she stood up, walking towards the kitchen, Stiles following her.

Stiles sat at the table, the boy glancing down at it in deep thought, his hand gently rubbing his neck.

"You okay?" Alex softly asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee, pouring another one for Stiles. She slid it over to him, the mug stopping just in front of him.

Stiles glanced at the mug for a second before shifting his gaze towards Alex.

"What happened to your shoulder?" Alex continued with a small frown.

"What are you talking about?" Stiles questioned.

"I can smell the blood, and you've been rubbing it all night." Alex responded quietly. "What happened?"

The two didn't realise that Theo was listening from the other room.

"The Jeep died on me again, I went to check the engine and I fell on it." Stiles answered, Alex's frown deepening as she listened to his heartbeat.

Nothing happened that gave anything away.

Suddenly Malia walked in and sat next to Stiles, breaking the tension between the two.

"Hey Malia, how much do you remember about the accident?" Stiles asked, the boy changing the subject. "Did it play like a movie in your head, or was it like being completely in it again?"

"In it." Malia responded, crossing her arms.

"Nothing else?" Stiles questioned, Alex frowning as she glanced at Malia.

Malia's mind then flashed to the moment where she relived the accident all over again, the sight of a figure shooting bullets into a car flashing in her mind.

"Nothing else." She simply responded.

From the other room, Theo's head tilted towards the door slightly as he heard what the two were talking about.

Malia turned to face the other room, her gaze shifting towards Theo's head. Feeling her eyes on him, Theo faced the rest of the group again, acting natural.

••••

"What if she needs some kind of trigger." Scott suggested quietly. "Wasn't Malia driving when she remembered the crash?"

"That's what she told me." Alex responded with a nod.

Stiles frowned. "How are we supposed to trigger a memory that we don't remember?"

"Maybe it's a delayed thing." Scott responded, Kira frowning. "Maybe you have to wait a couple of hours to see what happens."

Suddenly, the lights began to flicker, causing not only Stiles, Alex, Scott, and Kira to frown and glance up at the lights, but some other students too.

They soon began to stop flickering, Alex, Stiles, and Scott sharing glances and slowly turning to face Kira.

"That wasn't me." Kira started as she glanced between the three. "I swear."

"We keep an eye on each other today, okay?" Scott spoke, the group nodding.

"Yes, and keep an eye out for eight other potentially homicidal Chimeras." Stiles replied, Alex blowing out an exasperated breath.

"And keep an eye out for the Dread Doctors." Kira continued.

"Just a normal day at Beacon Hills, how lovely." Alex sarcastically remarked.

Scott gently placed his hand on Kira's back as the two walked away, leaving Alex and Stiles alone.

"Starting to see the appeal of a third eye!" Stiles called out as him and Alex began to walk to their next class.

"Okay, so apart from deadly, murderous creatures and insane guys—or girls—that are disguised as 'doctors' trying to kill us, what else do you wanna talk about?" Alex started as she intertwined her fingers with Stiles', the girl glancing at him.

"Well, right now there's nothing else to talk about, so I guess we're gonna have to settle for the creatures and doctors." Stiles sighed, returning Alex's glance.

"Have I told you how much I like the necklace?" Alex smiled up at him, changing the subject, Stiles nodding.

"A few times, yeah." He huffed a chuckle.

••••

Alex released a bored breath, the girl not listening to the teacher anymore, as she already knew the information the teacher was telling the class.

She glanced outside the window, the girl not aware of how much time passed, as the students began leaving the room until she was the only one left, along with the teacher.

"Alex, class is over." The teacher spoke, her voice fading, as Alex's gaze was set outside the window. She narrowed her eyes as she noticed four familiar figures outside.

Her heart began to beat faster, the girl's lips parting as she frowned, already knowing what was happening.

It was her parents dying all over again.

She couldn't close her eyes or move as the event kept replaying in front of her. Dark spots began to cloud her vision as she began to hyperventilate.

Alex screamed as she was finally able to scramble out of her seat, the girl stumbling backwards and hitting the wall.

Blackness surrounded her vision as the room began to close in on her, Alex closing her eyes tightly as tears began to stream down from them.

"Alex!" The teacher's muffled voice shouted, the woman repeating her name until it was clear to Alex. "Alex!"

Alex slowly opened her eyes at the sound of the teacher's voice, the girl glancing around the room to find the teacher standing in front of her with her hands tightly placed on her shoulders, a concerned look on the woman's face.

"Are you okay, Alex?" The teacher spoke, catching Alex's attention. Her face was full of worry. "Do you need to go to the nurse?"

"I'm- I'm fine." Alex stuttered, the girl wiping the tears from under her eyes.

"No you're not, something happened." The teacher responded with a frown.

"We're going to the nurse, come on." The teacher continued, gently walking Alex out of the classroom and towards the nurses office.

••••

"Okay, then what are we doing here if you've already had your suppressed memories?" Stiles frowned as he glanced between Lydia and Alex.

"Yeah, what's going on?" Lucas asked.

"Don't ask me, I'm just as confused as you are." Alex shrugged. Lydia had brought Stiles, Alex, and Lucas to the hospital without telling them the specific details.

"Mine wasn't the right memory." Lydia spoke, glancing between the three. "I remembered my grandmother at Eichen House. There was nothing to do with the surgery, nothing to do with the Dread Doctors."

"So if you read the book, why don't you have the full memory of your experience with them?" Lucas frowned, glancing at Lydia, who shrugged.

"We're not supposed to know that, are we?" Stiles spoke for Alex and Lydia.

"No, something...happened during the surgery. But now I think maybe it has more to do with me being a banshee." Lydia responded, glancing between the group. Her eyes widened slightly in realisation. "It's not my memory. It's someone else's."

••••

Stiles held the door open for Alex, the two walking in, Lucas holding the door open for Lydia as they follow after the two.

"Can you turn the lights on?" Lydia glanced up at Stiles, who approached the light switches. He flicked them, however they didn't work.

The group frowned as they shared glances.

"Uh, not going on." Stiles spoke.

"Ask someone." Lydia responded, glancing at him.

Stiles frowned. "Okay, I thought this was more of an auditory thing."

"I still wanna see what I'm hearing." Lydia replied, glancing around the dark room.

"Makes sense." Stiles sighed and walked out of the room in search of Melissa.

Alex and Lucas shared a glance, while Lydia continued to glance around the room.

"Hey, did you have an...experience yet?" Alex asked Lucas, who nodded. "What, when?"

"Last night. I was trying to sleep and a memory of mom and dad woke me up." Lucas explained. "We were in some sort of doctor's office and mom was pregnant with you. These men with no faces came in and injected mom with some serum."

"The Dread Doctors?" Lydia asked with a frown.

"No, just regular guys." Lucas replied. "With no faces..."

Alex blew out a breath as she glanced around.

After a few minutes passed, the group realised Stiles was taking too long.

"I'm gonna go find Stiles, he's taking forever." Alex started as she began to walk out.

"I'll stay with Lydia." Lucas responded, Alex nodding as she left the room.

A silence passed through Lucas and Lydia, Lydia trying to hear something that could be useful to the group.

Suddenly, the sound of a machine beeping caught her attention, the girl slowly making her way to it, Lucas frowning as he watched her.

Lydia gently placed her ear near the machine, hearing the sounds of Dread Doctors saying a name. Hayden.

Lucas crossed his arms as his frown deepened. "What do you hear?"

"They're saying a name." Lydia responded as she faced Lucas. "Hayden."

Suddenly, Lydia gasped as the sight of someone being experimented on by the Dread Doctors.

Lucas frowned as he approached her, his arms around her shoulders as he tried to help her calm down.

Lydia gasped again, the girl's face filled with horror as she witnessed something Lucas couldn't see.

"Lydia?" Lucas questioned with a frown as Lydia leaned into Lucas' side, terrified of what she was seeing.

••••

Alex ran up to the roof, her eyes widening as she found Stiles being attacked by a Chimera.

Alex growled loudly as she quickly turned, catching the Chimera's attention. She ran up to the creature and kicked him in the stomach, sending him plummeting to the ground. She stood over him and began to punch his face over and over, Stiles stumbling away from them as he stood up.

The Chimera managed to punch Alex in the face roughly, kicking her in the stomach as she did to him, Alex tumbling over to the ground.

Before the Chimera could attack her, Theo appeared and growled loudly, grabbing the Chimeras wrist and flinging him across the roof.

Alex and Stiles watched as the two fought, electricity cracking near the couple, making them flinch.

As the Chimera began to get the upper hand, Alex ran up to him and began fighting, dodging his attacks and punching him roughly. She kicked his stomach again, sending the Chimera crashing into the gate.

Theo got up and grabbed the Chimera, the boy grabbing his throat and ripping it out with his claws, blood spurting out of it as he fell to the ground.

Theo's hands were coated in blood, the substance dripping to the floor.

Alex turned back to normal, the girl glancing between Theo and the Chimera.

"Stiles, Alex, you can't say anything." Theo spoke, glancing between Stiles and Alex, who were shocked at what they just witnessed. Theo was still in his werewolf form.

"Why not?" Stiles responded as he swallowed.

Theo gave Stiles a look that suggested he knew something. He quickly glanced at Alex, who was glancing at the dead Chimera. His gaze shifted back to Stiles as he mouthed one name. 'Donovan'.