CHAPTER 51

Lacrosse took quite a bit of his time everyday but he was able to cope with the loss due to having nothing noteworthy to do at home everyday. Lazing around d or the rare hanging out with Boyd was all he had to do in his downtime.

Having told Scott what to do, his plan was to find out where Derek was being held but he knew that that would prove a much harder task to accomplish. 

Yes, he remembered Derek's scent but that wasn't everything. The scent must have long disappeared, blown away by the wind, from whatever route they passed and not to mention the Hunters probably had a way of hiding their tracks. 

Whatever the reason was, he knew he, they, had to start from the very beginning. 

"Sooo, how do we do this?" They both stayed behind in school after Kate picked Allison up, wanting to brainstorm ways to find Derek. 

"If I knew that, we wouldn't be here, would we?" His reply was as sarcastic as it could be because they knew they had no clues where to start from. 

Malia rolled her eyes at his rebuttal but didn't say anything against it, instead wanted to know what he thought about Allison being a Hunter. 

"Seriously, Malia. We both know it was bound to happen at some point. She's going to find out one of these days whether we like it or not." Tristan said calmly. No matter how he tried to downplay it by looking perfectly calm, Malia knew he was anything but. 

Whether he would admit it to anyone or not, they both knew he enjoyed the company of the Hunter heiress quite well. 

"She's going to end up putting a gun in our faces and you and I both know what will happen at that time." The last part of his sentence was left unsaid because acknowledging it verbally left a bad thirst in his mouth. 

Tristan shook his head in dejection and decided to put that thought to the side for now. "What we should be thinking of is how to find Derek."

"Why should we find him in the first place?" Malia asked again. 

Tristan held his head and groaned as he cursed how many times he had to explain it to her, while Malia smirked at his frustrated face. 

His face twitched as he looked at Malia's amused face but ended up answering her question. "Because, Malia, we'll both have a hard time facing off against the Alpha. I would have preferred calling Brett and Jiang but they'll tell Satomi the next second they hear what I say."

Having his pack members along with him was the best case scenario but doing that will one way or the other end up dragging in the entire pack, and while that would be the easiest way to killing the Alpha it would also put them in the crosshairs of the Argents. Casualties were bound to happen at that point.

And besides, this was also his little vendetta. The Alpha had to pay for hurting Malia.

Malia too understood Tristan's reasoning which was why she was for keeping the pack in the dark. She normally wouldn't have entertained such thoughts had the Alpha had a sizable pack of his own but fortunately the only beta he had was Scott. 

"Whatever we do, we have to do it fast." 

"Why?" 

"Because now that Derek's being caught, the Alpha will have one less thing to worry about." He hypothesized. "McCall can't oppose his Alpha no matter how he thinks otherwise."

He had met the Alpha. Something like that was not anything McCall had hopes of opposing with his own will. The boy was weak. He was like a leaf in the middle of a storm, blown every which way without a solid ground to hold onto. The only thing Tristan was okay with Scott doing was calling out the Alpha, nothing else. 

"But we still don't know where to start with Derek. It's not like we can go and ask Mr. Argent for his location." Malia added. 

Tristan thought for a bit before an uncertain expression covered his face. "I think I might know how to find him. It's a long shot but it might work."

Malia asked impatiently. "Well, what is it?"

He chuckled at her antics but he answered nonetheless. "Maybe I can sense his hatred?"

"Hatred?"

Tristan then nodded and explained. "Yeah. You might not have realized it but dude's got some hatred alright. It's almost as suffocating as the Alpha's but it's just that he doesn't act on it. I'm sure being captured by the very people who killed his family is sure to set him off in some way."

Malia looked unsure as she looked at Tristan in a way that he couldn't put his fingers on. "So… you can track him by his hatred?"

He shrugged at her skepticism since he wasn't even sure he could do something like that. The most he's ever done was track a prey by the intense emotions they were exuding at that point in time. He's never tried tracking something by their emotions after days have gone by since that smell would have gone with them. 

He'd have to go to where Derek was caught and start from there to see if he could pick up any lingering feelings. He'd be able to get his blood scent very easily and with Malia at his side, tracking him from there shouldn't be as impossible as it might seem. 

"Well, it's your choice. Let's just get this done and over with." She stood and dusted her behind before following Tristan out of school. 

Since none of them were into extracurricular activities after school, except for Tristan's lacrosse practice, they were pretty much free the whole entire day after the closing bell. 

Tristan floored the gas and sped through the main road before veering off it towards the part of the woods where he presumed Derek got caught. 

It was embarrassing to think that a werewolf like Derek got caught again by the Argents after having his ass saved by Tristan the first time. 

If he knew he'd need Derek so soon then maybe he really should have entertained the idea of rescuing him at the time he was caught. 

They stopped before a clearing since the car couldn't go any further and got out. 

"Can you smell anything?"

Malia closed her eyes in concentration and sniffed the air for a few minutes before her nose twitched when she faced a particular direction. 

"There. I think I got something." Following Malia's lead, they both ventured a bit deeper into the woods as Malia tracked the origin of the scent she picked up earlier. 

As they went deeper, Tristan started picking up the faint smell of blood which they followed until they came across the spot where it was concentrated. 

"Yup. It's Derek's alright." Tristan said as he got a full whiff of the decaying metallic scent that just tantalized his nostrils. 

Malia looked around in confusion then finally at Tristan before asking. "We've gotten his scent. How are you going to find him through his emotions with that?"

Tristan knelt down and ran his hand through the place where he could feel Derek's dried blood on. "You know, Satomi always used to go on and on about spirituality and whatnot and I've actually been meditating on it these past few days until I recently came up with that idea."

"So what? You're going to spiritual mojo your way into this one?" She asked genuinely despite the sarcastic undertone her voice may have had. She was a werecoyote with a connection to lunar celestial bodies. Being sarcastic about spirituality was not something she would do in a setting like this. 

A full grin suddenly appeared on Tristan's face as he caught something within the stench of blood, a familiar fleeting yet heavy and musky smell. 

He closed his eyes and focused on the smell covered in blood as he tried to clearly differentiate it from the other things in the atmosphere that his nose could perceive. 

The area around his eyes darkened as the veins around his sockets became poisonous black that it was clearly visible to whoever was looking. 

His blue eyes shone as his eyelids opened with a brighter intensity than what Malia knew and that was when it dawned on her that he had changed. Something about the fight with the Alpha changed him. 

"I've got it. Let's go." No words needed to be said as they both left in a blur, this time with Malia following Tristan's lead. 

….. 

[In a dungeon basement underneath the Hale House] 

Derek looked wearily at Chris who had been torturing him for days and all he wished for at this moment was to sink his fangs in the throat of the Hunter in front of him.

"Glare at me all you want but it's not going to change anything for you. I'd think of what to tell me to get me to stop what I'm about to do to you." Chris said in a bored tone as he continued looking over a pile of weapons and other torture devices that he wanted to try next on Derek. 

The room they were in had Derek strapped to a metallic frame with iron net, all bloodied from the tortures he'd received from Chris and Kate for the past two days. 

The entire room stank of blood but none of the occupants in it cared about that. From barbed mace to spiked metal gloves. From electrocution to burning. Were it not for his regeneration abilities, Derek wouldn't have survived the first night and the fact that he survived everything thrown his way was a testament to his iron will and thirst for vendetta. 

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