Chapter 17

| Third Person's POV |

| Friday morning |

Nine days have passed since the fight with the alpha and Nate is a little tired. He spent most of the week trying to find the alpha but no such luck. On the other hand, Scott has returned to school since that day with an explanation that he saw the mountain lion in the parking. When it suddenly starts running toward him, he took off for the forest, while running away he got lost and he dropped his phone. He then wondered one direction in hopes that he would find his way back. In the end, Derek and Scott said that Derek found him sleeping in the preserve when Derek was training.

Nate aside from looking for the alpha spends the rest of his time hanging out with his friends. He and Allison would run together almost every evening and her parents would invite Nate for dinner almost every other day thinking that Nate was a lonely and sad boy with no family there for him so, maybe they could keep him some company here and there. They couldn't imagine how hard it was for Nate to live all alone and the notion of Allison living a life like that at her age was heartbreaking for them. Besides that, Nate was a delight to talk to he was honest, respectful, attentive and a great friend with their daughter.

Today Allison was very excited and happy. When she was asked about the extra energy and excitement, she had for the day she answered that her aunt Kate was in town and how much she loves her, and that she was like an older sister to her. School comes to an end for today and you can see the students all over the place some leaving, others chilling out and talking, and some preparing for their after-school clubs.

Nate and Allison are in Nate's car driving on the way to their houses when Nate gets a message from Derek. Derek was asking him to meet him in the animal clinic as fast as possible for help. Wondering if he found the alpha Nate asks Allison to push back the work on the assignment they had to do together since they were partners for a couple of hours. So, he could go and check out what was happening.

Allison asks if everything was alright and Nate replies that he doesn't know but a friend asked him if they could meet as soon as possible. She curious asks about the person since she didn't know Nate had any friends outside of school and he didn't talk about them either. Nate without giving her a name tells her that he met him a couple of times on his walks around the town. And they got to talk about the cars since they both saw each other with their cars. Allison changes the subject and tells him that she wanted to talk too later.

Nate drops her off before her house and takes off toward the Clinic. He parks close to the clinic and sees Stile's car there. He gets out prepared for things going south, he sees stiles coming out to meet him who is clearly afraid of him with the way he looks at him and stands also seems to hate him too. Nate looks at him as he still hasn't said anything about what was going on.

"Well? Will you talk? What is going on?" stiles flinch at Nate's voice.

"Derek got shot"

"Okay end?"

"Wha-- what you mean okay? He got shot and he isn't healing, okay? So you have to help?"

"hm... let's see what's going on," Nate says and goes inside the clinic with stiles following him and glaring at his back.

They go inside the treatment room to see Derek and Scott there. Scott pales at Nate's sight and moves back a little. Derek on the other hand didn't look so good, Nate sees the gunshot on his arm, and veins branch out from open sores while the rest of his arm turned a sickening yellow.

"I guess you want my help with that?" Nate states the obvious and Derek gives him a look.

"Can you help or not" Derek replies agitated about his current condition.

"Do you know the kind of strain you were shot with?" Nate answers back with a question of his own.

Derek growls at him and Scott says that he heard the one who shot him that he had 48 hours to live. Nate ponders about it but there were many kinds of strain with that effect and they were quite rare too so he couldn't be sure which one was used or if he even had the right one and tells them his thoughts about it. He gets a "is there anything else we can do" from stiles.

"Well, there is something that might save him..." Nate says.

"What? What is it?" Stiles asks quickly.

"We could cut the arm and hope for the best" Nate answers with a smile at them. Stiles and Scott were taken aback by Nate's attitude, how he could talk about this kind of thing with such an ease and a smile on his face.

"Are you crazy? We can't do that he will die!" stiles shouts.

"We not doing that" Scott comes forward as if protecting Derek from Nate.

Derek keeps silent for a moment and thinks about his situation. It was true that cutting the arm would possibly save him but that also would put him out of the fight with the alpha. As it was, he could barely fight him alone with full strength and now with one limb less he would be slaughtered. His hope of getting better was the same kind of bullet he was shot with and to get that he needed someone inside the house. Nate was the only one who could do that.

"You have to get the bullet from the Argents" Derek tells Nate, he sounds weak the poison was taking a big toll on him. It was already a miracle that he was still conscious and hadn't lost consciousness.

"Why should I help you? You know I didn't want to say anything but how about you tell me about your blue eyes first and then I decide if you are worth saving. What you say?"

Derek glares at him his eyes shining bright and snarls. Then the memories come and the reason why his eyes were cold blue...Paige. He doesn't say anything.

"Dude are you just going--" Stiles begins but gets interrupted by Derek

"Does it matter? You not going to believe me even if I told you" Nate gives a quick smile.

"You right I don't trust you--"

"Oh, come on! No one trusts the other and that's the problem" Stile starts talking over Nate. Derek and Nate give him a look that shut him up and make him take a few steps back fearing for his safety.

"I'll see what I can do. But I make no promises" Nate says and walks out. With Derek's life in his hands, Nate drives to his house. Nate goes over to Allison a lot earlier than they agreed. Allison opens the door and sees Nate.

"Hey, you early is everything alright?"

"Hi yes everything is good it just something come up for later today and I was hoping we could start earlier so I could make it on time"

"Yeah sure, come in we can begin right away," Allison says

"Really? Great you are the best I own you one"

"Come on don't be silly I didn't do anything that special, let's go to my room and start the work"

"Either way thanks. Are you alone? Didn't you say your aunt come today?"

"Yeah, no one's is home. Dad and Kate are out shopping and Mom said she had some family business with others."

"Okay then let's start this cursed thing called schoolwork," Nate says complaining about the work and Allison laughs.

"Well, the sooner we finish the more time we'll have to have some fun later so let's get started"

After a solid 45 minutes of work, Nate excuses himself to go to the bathroom. He goes downstairs and sees that no one was still home. He starts to search the guest rooms. The first one was empty and the second one had some black bags and one under the bed. He finds a box filled with bullets and there was a smaller box with one missing bullet the box was written 'northern blue monkshood' so he was pretty sure this was the one. He was also sure that he had this kind too so he wouldn't need to steal one. He puts everything back as it was and goes back to Allison's room.

They worked for another half an hour when Nate decided to stop for today.

"Well, I think it's enough for today what do you think?"

"Yeah, I'm exhausted and hope they come back soon because I'm starving" as soon as she finishes talking, they hear the front door close.

Nate picks up his staff and goes down with Allison. They see Chris and Kate Argent organizing the items they bought. Nate and Allison greet them and Allison introduces Kate and Nate to each other.

"Aunt Kate this is Nate my friend from school who also happens to live next door, Nate this is my aunt Kate Argent also my favorite aunt" Allison smiles as she happily introduces them. They greet each other and then Kate hugs Allison for her comment about her and tells her that she was her only aunt. Then invites Nate for dinner seeing him close to Allison.

Nate declines saying that he already had plans for the evening and maybe some other time. He bids them farewell and leaves the house for his home to look for the variant wolfsbane to save Derek.

He barely makes it on time as Derek was unconscious and Nate cracks the tip open and pulls out a lighter from his pocket. he holds the flame to the contents inside. sparks fly as bits of wolfsbane light aflame. he palms the smoldering ashes and grinds it into Derek's gunshot wound. In seconds, the open sores close, the wounds heal, the black lines withdraw back, and the arm returns to normal.

Derek after a while comes back to his senses and feels much better than before. Nate tells him that now he owns him one for saving his life and leaves.