Broken Family Tree

0 - Prologue

Many things have happened in the life of the werecoyote called Malia Tate. To highlight the more life-changing events: at the age of nine (or ten?), she accidentally kills her adoptive mother and sister, the guilt caused by her actions making her choose to stay in her full-coyote form for seven years; she finds out she's actually a Hale and not a Tate through a chemical attack, making her doubt Stiles; she meets her birth mother, Corinne, who wants nothing to do with her and only wants to take her power back by killing her; and she nearly loses her biological father to the Wild Hunt (I include this because: (1) she asks him if he's "leaving her again" before he's erased, (2) she has to mean it when calling out to him to snap out of the influence of the Wild Hunt, and (3)—even if she doesn't actually know this—his worst fear is revealed to be something bad happening to Malia). After all of this happening and more (I'm just leaving it with those four, okay?), she didn't think anything else that could happen to her would poss­ibly trump those other incidents. But life certainly knew how to surprise her.

To give one example of surp­rises, in the three years that her and Scott have been dating, they got into their first big argument. When Scott was told by Malia about an annoying classmate in one of her university classes that wouldn't stop flirting with her and had actually tried making a move on her, he had started becoming a little overprotective. It started calm and rational—asking her if the classmate was still bothering her and if maybe she should tell the university, despite Malia's reassurances that she could handle herself—to utterly ridiculous and extreme—Scott insisting he go with Malia to "talk" with the classmate when said classmate showed no signs of stopping their behavior, driving Scott to think destroying their car—that means slashing the tires, keying the doors, and breaking the windows and headlights—was the only way to get the message across. When Malia heard about that, she immediately confronted Scott, accusing him of thinking her to be some "princess in distress" who's not capable of defending herself despite being a were-creature just like him. He tried to deny the statement, but Malia knew that was exactly what he thought. This argument occurred during the finals week of both their spring semesters, so once finals were done, Malia took the chance to pack some clothes and take an impulsive road trip across the country. Scott tried calling her when he saw she was gone, but Malia had shut off her phone, deciding that an electronics-free trip would be better; she needed to clear her mind and calm down before she did something she would regret and hearing her phone ringing and chiming from calls and texts would not help her with that.

It had been a month since then, and Malia had had a blast! She saw so many places, visited so many tourist spots, met so many people—it was incredible! Some were total jerks, but she wasn't surprised by that—that was the world, after all. One day, she was gassing up, putting the pump back, and getting into the car and reaching into the glove compartment in search of a napkin when her phone fell out onto the passenger seat. She stared at it for a long moment, thinking about Ms. McCall, Derek, Stiles, Liam—and Scott. She sighed, dreading the conver­sation that would come. He had made it seem like she was just some child that needed protecting. She was 21, for Christ's sake! She'd helped the pack in dangerous situations before! Did he forget that? Was school making him stupid? Wasn't he only stupid in high school? Malia stopped herself before she spiraled into her frustration, and took a deep breath in. And a deep breath out. Taking one last look at the currently-turned-off device, she turned on her car and made up her mind: it had been long enough. She was heading home and dealing with Scott face-to-face instead of on the phone. That way, it would be harder for him to lie and make excuses about his behavior.

However, her mistake was assuming that it would be a smooth trip back, because what she didn't know was that there was another surprise life was about to throw at her that would change the course of not just her life, but of two others, making them question what exactly Talia had been thinking when she took Peter's memory all those years ago...