Howling to the Heart || Isaac Lahey

69.

It had been days since Boyd's death, and they have been long and painful. Everyone was effect in one way or another with his death. Scott blamed himself, furious that he wasn't able to save the beta. Stiles was more quiet than usual, rarely any sarcasm being used.

Isaac smelt like rage and despair, barely eating or sleeping. When he did sleep, it wasn't usually longer than an hour. Due to his nightmares, he'd been sleeping in Neriah's room with her at the McCall house and thankfully Melissa was fine with it. Actually, she encouraged it.

Neriah hadn't been much better. Her head had been filled with 'what if' for days. What if she'd gotten there sooner? What if she'd killed Kali and the twins that night in the mall? What if she'd gone with them from the moment they told her their plan at school? There were too many 'what if'questions that were plaguing her mind while she was also trying her hardest to be strong for Isaac who had been depending on her since that night.

But even with their own problems, Derek had taken that night the hardest. Isaac had told them what happened, that her cousin was forced to kill Boyd as the twins held up his clawed hands and Kali pierced Boyds' stomach into them.

Derek was taking the grief so bad that he vanished without a single word or trace. Stiles had called Neriah today, asking her to join him to the Hale loft to get answers from Cora. At first, Neriah said no because she was worried about leaving Isaac at home alone. But Isaac had overheard the call and he called Stiles back the second she got off, telling him to come and pick her up. Which was the only reason why she now sat at the table in Derek's loft, zooning in and out of Cora's story that she'd heard before about her father and Derek.

"They were there for two days," Cora went on with her story as Neriah blankly stared at the table. "Waiting, hiding."

"That's what we're taught to do when the hunters find us," Neriah added flatly as Cora turned back around from the window to face them. "Hide and heal."

"Okay, so is two days standard, then, or are we thinking Derek's on, like, some extended getaway?" Stiles asked, pacing near the loft door while glancing between Neriah and Cora.

"Why do you care?" Cora snapped, the smell of worry and frustration seeping off her.

Stiles furrowed his brows at her. "Why do I care? Let's see, because over the last few weeks, Riah's apartment got trashed by the Alpha pack, my best friends tried to kill themselves. Scott's boss nearly got ritually sacrificed. A girl that I've known since I was three was ritually sacrificed. Boyd was killed by alphas. I—Do you want me to keep going? 'Cause I can, all right? For, like, an hour."

"You think Derek can do anything about that?" Cora asked, walking toward where Neriah was seated still at the table.

"Cora," Neriah started, trying to hold back the frustration slipping into her tone, "he's the one everyone seems to be after, it's more like he should do something about it."

"I don't know," Cora sighed, bracing her hands on the table. "There's something different about him now. He wasn't like this when we knew him."

Neriah nodded her head agreeing, sitting up straighter. "He wasn't always so damn cold and closed off when we were younger."

Stiles slowed down his pacing, considering their words. "What was he like?"

Neriah went to respond but looked to the stairs at the sound of footsteps and her eyes landed on her father looking at them as he walked down, ignoring her eye roll. "A lot like Scott, actually." He nodded, reaching the bottom of the stairs. "A lot like most teenagers—Unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic, tolerable really only to other teenagers," he finished, stopping at the head of the table across from his daughter.