Unbroken ▹ Teen Wolf [02]

20; of the essence

Rachel had been silent for the past half hour since they'd gotten back to the loft.

They, being herself, Derek & Peter— all of whom had managed to survive. Derek had been out cold when Rachel & Stiles found him, but the Stilinski boy had managed to slap him awake & they escaped before law enforcement arrived. Apparently someone had called the police about all the commotion going on at the hospital, prompting the alpha pack to retreat & everyone else to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

Everyone else, aside from Scott & his mother.

Rachel couldn't lie, she expected Scott to come back. She really did. She expected him to walk off with Deucalion, only to talk for a few minutes & then return, because with his friends is where he belonged— but as she & Stiles stood up on the roof & the seconds ticked by, she realized Scott was gone. He wasn't on the other side of the roof talking, nor was he on one of the lower floors of the hospital. He was gone, and he wasn't coming back for them. Not tonight, anyways.

After that depressing realization, Rachel & Stiles had gone to find Derek in the elevator, unconscious. Jennifer had easily gotten away from him, as she could have all along, and took Melissa McCall while they were distracted by the alphas. The Darach now had two guardians, but no one had lost hope just yet; she needed three. All her sacrifices had been in threes, which Rachel had made sure to remind Stiles of when he began to lose hope of ever seeing his father alive again.

Once they found Derek, they were out. They got out of the hospital & met up with everyone else, where they informed the Argents of what had happened to Scott's mother & what was going to happen if they all didn't leave as fast as possible. Derek & Peter took Cora home to the loft, Allison & her father left, Stiles stayed to hold off the police & Isaac.. Rachel didn't know where he went. He showed up at the loft after a little while, presumably due to realizing he had nowhere else to go.

"She's dying, isn't she?" Rachel questioned, her eyes never leaving her sister. The younger Hale twin looked as though she were barely breathing now, and Rachel could no longer ignore the pain in her chest that worsened each time Cora fell still for a few seconds. She could still feel her sister's pain, but it was shifting into more of an ache than the stabbing pain it had been earlier— it was fading, along with her life. "I can feel it."

Rachel felt tired. She wanted to sleep, but she feared if she did, she wouldn't wake up. Her hands were shaking & every so often she would shiver from the cool air seeping in through the window behind her. She had been sitting on Derek's bed next to Cora since they got there, and she had no intention of moving any time soon.

"I don't know." Derek answered the girl, despite her already knowing. He never really understood her connection with her sister, how one was able to tell when the other eas in pain— he understood how it worked & such, but he didn't truly understand the depth of it. He assumed it was more of a pack connection; Rachel could feel that one of her pack members was close to death, but it was more than that. She felt it as soon as Cora was injured, and she'd felt it ever since— not quite as bad, but she knew the full extent of the injury. She was dying.

"Are you going to do something about it?" Isaac cut in before Rachel had the chance to.

"I don't know."

"Want to figure something out?" The beta snapped. "Because while Scott and Stiles were out there trying to help people from being killed, you were in here, rolling around the sheets with the actual killer. Do you get how many people she's killed? Erica and Boyd are dead, Cora is dying, and you are doing nothing!"

It was only a matter of time before Isaac finally got angry at Derek for all that he'd done— Rachel was almost surprised it took this long. He had every right to be angry, to hate the alpha for everything. This isn't what he signed up for, this isn't what any of Derek's betas signed up for; they wanted power, and now they were more powerless than ever. Two of three were dead.