The wind was cold and sharp, the kind that bit through fabric and crawled under skin like it was searching for something to carry away. Scarlett ignored it, her shoes striking the asphalt in a silent rhythm as she kept pace with Derek, the two of them moving through the darkness at the edge of the road like shadows that had learned to walk.
Derek had called an hour ago.
I have a lead.
Three words, nothing else, delivered in that flat, taut voice that left no room for questions. Scarlett had answered before good sense could intervene, had grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and said where with the same immediacy she would have used to breathe. If she still breathed that way.
The reason was simple. If Derek found Peter alone, he would surely would try to kill him. And Scarlett wasn't ready to let that happen. If she could even do just something to help Peter, she knew she would have done it.
In her heart, as she made this decision, Scarlett decided to try not to focus on honey-brown eyes and a goofy smile.
This has nothing to do with Stiles, she thought, feeling her chest thightening for some reason.
They ran side by side through the quiet streets of Beacon Hills, streetlamps painting brief stripes of orange light across the pavement before surrendering to darkness again. Derek hadn't explained the lead. But he had asked Stiles, Scott and Evelyn to take his car so that they could take the hunters off their backs.
"We have to be quick about it," Scarlett said as she ran. "The Argent surely have already found them."
"Stay focused," Derek said, his eyes sharp, "Nothing is going to happen to your boyfriend."
It was still strange to hear that word.
"Where the hell are we going?" She asked instead, but Derek didn't answer. He hadn't said how he'd found it, or where it was taking them, and Scarlett didn't ask again, because she knew enough about Derek Hale to understand that pushing only made him more sealed.
But she didn't have to wait long to find the answer.
She did, when the perimeter of Beacon Hills High appeared at the end of the road, the gates shut and the parking lot empty beneath the night sky.
Scarlett stopped.
Derek continued for three paces before noticing, then turned toward her with an expression that wasn't surprise.
"The school," Scarlett said, and the word came out almost flat, like she hadn't yet decided if it was a question or an accusation.
"Yeah."
She stared at the gates for a second. "Why would he come back here?"
Derek didn't answer immediately. He turned back toward the building, his profile hard against the sky, shoulders set. "There's someone inside he wants."
Someone, Scarlett thought, and the word turned slowly in her head as they resumed moving toward the side entrance Derek had already identified.
Someone inside. A janitor? A teacher?
She couldn't make it fit. In the weeks they had spent planning together, Peter had never mentioned anyone connected to the school. No name, no reference, no passing detail. And yet clearly there was someone — someone important enough to draw an Alpha back to a building.
They slipped inside through the side door. The corridor swallowed them into darkness, the linoleum reflecting faintly the streetlight that filtered through the high windows. The smell was the particular smell of schools at night — floor cleaner, paper, something faintly chemical that always clung to closed spaces— but underneath it was something else. A scent that she recognized.
Peter.
Derek had already caught it. She could see it in the way his gait shifted, lower, more careful, his weight moving slightly onto the balls of his feet as he turned toward the right corridor. Scarlett followed without a word.
They passed lockers, bulletin boards with faded activity posters, windows that showed the dark and empty parking lot beyond. Derek's footsteps were nearly silent. Hers were no less so. They moved like people who had learned in different ways that making noise could cost you something.
The smell thickened as they turned into the east wing.
And then Scarlett heard something else — a muffled sound, like something being pushed hard against a solid surface. A crack of plaster or wood. A breath that broke in the middle.
Derek accelerated.
Scarlett stayed half a step behind as they reached the chemistry classroom door. Through the narrow window in the door she saw a tall dark shape — too still, too large to be human in that particular way — and then the smaller figure pressed against the board, shoulders drawn in, face pale.
Harris.
Derek opened the door before Scarlett could fully process it, wood slamming against the inner wall as he stepped between the Alpha and the teacher with that speed that had always made his body seem built to absorb impact rather than avoid it. Scarlett entered a second later.
Peter was already gone.
The air in the room had already closed back over where he'd been — cold and still, as if his presence had been something physical that had left an absence in its retreat. His scent lingered, familiar and sharp, strong enough to cause something not entirely simple in Scarlett's chest.
Harris was pressed flat against the board, a piece of chalk still gripped in one hand as if he'd forgotten he was holding it. He was staring at the empty space where Peter had been with the focus of someone who couldn't yet believe what he'd just seen — or who believed it far too well.
Scarlett studied him without moving.
She had always found Harris irritating in that particular way of people who derived satisfaction from making others feel small — that voice that rose whenever he sensed weakness, as if vulnerability were an opportunity. But right now he was just a middle-aged man with hands that trembled slightly and eyes fixed on something he couldn't stop seeing.
Why you?
And then, quieter, angrier: What did you do?
Peter had sought out Harris. And Scarlett had been told none of it, which meant this wasn't part of the original plan.
A chemistry teacher from Beacon Hills.
Did he know Kate?
The question hung suspended in Scarlett's mind, heavy and unspoken, while Harris slowly lowered the hand holding the chalk as if trying to remember how his joints worked. Derek had straightened beside him, jaw tight, gaze moving between the teacher and the open door as if calculating the probability of Peter returning.
Scarlett opened her mouth.
Red and blue lights cut across the windows.
All three of them turned toward the glass. Outside in the parking lot, two police cars were rolling slowly toward the main entrance, their searchlights sweeping long white arcs across the building's walls.
"Split up," Derek said immediately, voice low and flat. "Meeting point."
Scarlett didn't wait for him to finish.
She turned on her heel and stepped out of the classroom, pulling the door shut behind her with a precision that made no sound. In the corridor she turned left, instinct and the memory of the building's layout taking over as the lights continued their sweep outside the windows. The police lights painted moving shadows across the linoleum, red then blue then red again, and Scarlett moved inside those rhythms as if she had counted them.
The rear exit was at the end of the east corridor, past the lab wing atrium and through a set of fire doors that stood propped open during the day and yielded to whoever knew where to push at night. Scarlett knew where to push.
The door opened into the cold night air.
She stayed one second with her back against the outer wall, and listened. No footsteps in the corridor behind her. No voices. Only the distant sound of officers outside the main entrance and the low idle of the patrol car engines.
She pushed off the wall and disappeared into the dark.
But the question stayed, fixed and hard in her chest like a splinter she couldn't reach.
Harris did something.
She was still turning the question over when her phone vibrated against her thigh.
She pulled it out without breaking stride, glancing at the screen.
Stiles.
Something in her chest shifted — involuntary and immediate, the way it always was now — and she answered.
"Stiles," she said, voice steady despite the speed.
"Scarlett." His voice was taut, slightly breathless, and she could hear the rumble of Derek's car engine underneath it.
"This is really not a good moment," she said.
"Why, what's happening?"
"Your father and all the department," she said, vaulting a low fence at the edge of the school grounds without breaking rhythm. "They just showed up at the school."
"What?" he said, the pitch of his voice getting higher, "Are you alright? Did they see you?"
"No." She cut between two darkened buildings, the gap barely wide enough, branches of an overgrown hedge slapping at her arm. "I'm out. Derek should be too."
"Okay." She could hear him recalibrating, the way he always did — panic absorbed into focus within the span of a breath. "Okay, where are you going?"
"Derek and I are going to meet again at the worksite on Deluca Road," she said.
There was a muffled exchange on the other end — Scott's voice, low and quick, then the sound of the car turning — before Stiles came back.
"Go there," he said. "We'll pick you two up."
She almost said you don't have to and stopped herself, because the truth was she was already glad he'd called.
"Alright," she said instead.
"Scarlett." His voice dropped slightly, quieter now, the edge of worry coming through more clearly without the urgency covering it. "Just — be careful."
"I will," she said, which wasn't entirely true and they both probably knew it.
She ended the call and pocketed the phone without slowing.
Deluca Road opened ahead of her, the half-constructed building rising out of the dark at the far end — exposed rebar and plywood hoardings and shadows that pooled between the beams like standing water. The police lights from the school were still visible behind her, distant strobes of red and blue cutting across the sky.
She saw Derek before she heard him, a shape moving fast along the opposite side of the road, jacket dark against the darker trees.
"Derek!" she called, low but sharp.
He changed direction without breaking stride, crossing toward her, and for a second they just looked at each other in the dark — both breathing, both intact.
"We gotta move," he said.
Then the barking started.
It came from their left — two sharp, aggressive voices cutting through the night, closing fast. Scarlett turned.
Two police dogs were sprinting toward them across the open ground, leads gone, teeth already showing. Trained animals. Fast ones.
Neither she nor Derek needed to discuss it.
They turned at the same moment, and Scarlett let her fangs slide down as she met the first dog's eyes, a low sound rising from her throat that wasn't quite human and wasn't quite anything else either. Derek's lips pulled back beside her, a growl building in his chest that carried something old and instinctive in it, the kind of sound that reached past training and straight into the part of an animal's brain that understood predator.
The dogs stopped.
Four paws locked against the ground, skidding slightly on gravel. The barking cut off mid-breath. For a second both animals stood rigid, then the closest one took a step backward, then another, and then they were retreating — not running, but moving with the deliberate speed of creatures that had just recalculated their odds.
Scarlett let her fangs retract.
"Okay," she muttered. "Now we—"
The flash detonated beside them without warning.
It wasn't fire. It wasn't an explosion. It was light — pure, violent, concentrated light that erupted less than two meters to her right with a crack like something splitting open. Scarlett recoiled instinctively, one arm flying up across her eyes. Beside her Derek made a sharp, pained sound and staggered, hands going to his face.
The brightness faded in seconds but the afterburn stayed, searing white shapes across her vision that wouldn't resolve. Her eyes watered. Everything at the edges of her sight smeared and pulsed.
She blinked hard, forcing her vision to clear faster than it wanted to, and when it did she saw the arrow.
It was embedded in the hoarding panel directly behind where they'd been standing, the shaft still vibrating faintly from impact, the fletching dark against the concrete. A bolt. Something chemical packed into the tip that had detonated on contact, designed to blind rather than kill.
Scarlett turned.
Chris Argent stood twenty meters away at the edge of the construction site, crossbow raised and already reloading with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this ten thousand times.
Something in Scarlett went very cold and very still.
Her fangs came down before she'd decided to let them. The sound that rose from her throat was low and threathening.
Chris finished reloading. His eyes met hers across the distance without flinching.
She grabbed Derek by the arm and yanked him sideways just as the second bolt cracked through the air where his head had been, the shaft sparking against the metal frame of the bulldozer as they threw themselves behind it. The steel bulk of it shuddered with the impact.
"I'm killing him," she hissed, barely above a breath, back pressed against cold metal, every muscle in her body coiled and ready.
Headlights swept across the construction site.
She recognized the sound of the engine before the shape of the car resolved out of the dark, that particular uneven rumble that she had somehow memorized without meaning to, and something in her chest unclenched one degree despite everything.
The black Camaro rolled in fast, angled badly, and the passenger door was already swinging open before it had fully stopped.
"Now," Derek said.
Scarlett was already moving. She grabbed his jacket and hauled him upright and they ran low and fast along the side of the bulldozer, using the bulk of it for cover until the last possible second.
She hit the car door first and threw herself into the backseat, pulling her legs in, and Derek was half a second behind her, the door slamming shut as Scott gunned the engine.
Stiles was right there — wedged between her and Evelyn in the backseat, turned halfway toward her before the door had even shut fully. His eyes found her face immediately, scanning with that quick, involuntary focus.
"You okey?!"
Scarlett moved without thinking. She turned into Stiles, one arm coming across his chest and pushing him down into the seat, her body angled over his, putting herself between him and the window as Argent kept shooting.
I'm killing him, she thought again.
The sound was enormous in the small space, a brutal crack of metal that punched through the chassis somewhere near the trunk and sent everyone ducking. Scott floored it. The tires screamed against gravel, the car fishtailing wide before catching and accelerating hard down the access road.
She stayed there, pressed against him, her hand flat against his sternum, until the sound of gunfire didn't come again.
She pulled back slowly, straightening in the seat as Scott pushed the car harder down the empty road, the construction site disappearing behind them in the dark.
The silence that followed was the kind that nobody wanted to be the first to break.
Scott broke it.
"What part of laying low don't you understand?" His voice came tight and frustrated from the front, eyes fixed on the road.
"Damn, I had him!" Derek's jaw was set, shoulders rigid, the barely-contained energy of someone who had been one second away from something and had it pulled out from under him.
Stiles had already leaned forward between the two front seats, "Who the Alpha?" he asked, turning his head toward Derek, then back briefly toward Scarlett. She gave him a small nod, and Derek confirmed it a beat later.
"He was right in front of me and the freaking police showed up."
"Hey," Stiles said, "they are just doing their jobs." Scarlett could not stop a little frown from forming as she looked at him.
"We have to admit they are doing it pretty well," Evelyn added from beside Stiles, her voice dry and even as she glanced at the rear window like she was checking for headlights following them.
"Yeah." Derek turned his head toward Scott, "
Thanks to someone who decided to make me the most wanted fugitive in the entire state."
Scott's grip on the wheel tightened visibly. "Can we seriously get past that?"
"Not that easy, pup," Scarlett said, her voice flat and unhurried, back resting against the seat.
"I made a dumbass mistake, I get it!" Scott's voice cracked slightly on the last word, frustration spilling into something that sounded closer to exhaustion.
"All right!" Stiles cut in, leaning further forward, one hand braced against each headrest. "How did you find him?"
"That's actually a good question," Scarlett said, eyes moving to Derek. "I don't know how many times I've asked him."
"Four," Derek said flatly.
"And you still didn't answer."
"Can you try to trust us for at least half a second?" Scott said.
"Yeah, all of us," Stiles said, but Derek's glare found him immediately and Stiles adjusted his trajectory without missing a beat. "Or just him. I'll be back here." He resettled into his seat as Evelyn leaned forward.
"Listen." Her voice was calm but direct, eyes steady on Derek. "We've been followed by hunters, I don't know for how long." From her sit, Scarlett glanced toward Stiles, the worry moving through her quietly. "If we have to keep this collaboration going, we have to talk to each other. I risk my life for you and the least you can do is talk to us."
Derek looked at her for a moment. Something moved behind his expression, but then
he almost rolled his eyes, and exhaled.
"Look." He turned slightly in the seat, and Scarlett noticed Evelyn settle back against the headrest with a faint, satisfied expression that she did absolutely nothing to hide. "Last time I talked to my sister, she was close to figuring something out."
Scarlett felt her chest tighten at the mention of Laura. Quiet and immediate, the way it always was. But then her brows pulled together. What had Laura been investigating? When did Peter had figured it out? Why he didn't tell her?
"She found out two things," Derek continued. "The first was a guy named Harris."
Stiles leaned forward again between the seats. "Our chemistry teacher?"
The confusion in the car was immediate and collective. Scarlett couldn't blame any of them. She'd had the same reaction standing in front of the man herself, watching his hands shake around a piece of chalk.
"Why him?" Scott asked.
"I don't know yet," Derek said.
"He seems evil enough," Evelyn offered, with the tone of someone making a reasonable observation.
"What's the second?" Scott asked.
Derek reached into his jacket pocket and produced a folded piece of paper, opening it against his knee. He held it up. Everyone in the backseat leaned in.
Scarlett studied it — a drawing, rough but deliberate, something that looked like a misshapen coin with a strange animal etched across it.
"What the hell is that?" She asked not hiding her confusion.
"Some kind of symbol," Derek said.
Stiles turned toward Evelyn. "Have you ever seen it?"
She shook her head slowly, eyes still on the paper, a small frown settling between her brows.
But Scott had gone quiet in a way that was different from the others. Scarlett noticed it a second before Derek did — the shift in his posture, the slight stilling of his hands on the wheel.
"Why?" Derek asked, watching him. "You know what this is?"
"I've seen it on a necklace," Scott said. "Allison's necklace."
The car was quiet for a moment.
Scarlett stared at the drawing and felt the anger arrive before the thought did — low and visceral, moving through her like heat under the skin. Harris was connected to the Argents. Some way, somehow, that man had been connected to the people who had burned her family down. She had sat in his classroom. She had held a clipboard on his field and timed his stupid drills and listened to his voice and he had been there the whole time, carrying whatever he carried, and she hadn't known.
What had he done?
Had he stood somewhere in the dark that night and watched the smoke rise and said nothing?
Had he lit the match?
"Hey." Stiles' voice came quietly, close. His hand found hers and she realized her fingers had curled tight against her palm without her noticing. He was observing her, his hand covering hers, warm and unhurried.
She loosened her fingers slowly and let him take her hand.
"Are you okay?" he asked, low enough that it stayed between them.
She looked at him. His eyes were steady and a little worried and entirely focused on her face.
"Yeah," she said, nodding once. "Yeah, I'm alright."
His thumb moved once across her knuckles, barely a gesture, and he didn't let go.
Outside, the road unspooled ahead of them in the dark, and Beacon Hills fell away behind the glass like a town that didn't know what was moving through it.
Here is the revised version:
Morning made everything look innocent again.
But not inside Scarlett. She still could not take her mind off Harris, the fact that Scott wanted to kill Peter, and Kate still out there somewhere, untouched.
This has to end, she thought as she moved through the school corridors.
Beacon Hills High stood under pale sunlight, students flooding the entrance with backpacks and laughter like nothing had cracked open the night before. Scarlett leaned against her locker, arms folded loosely, replaying the sound of the bolt hitting metal in her head even while the hallway buzzed around her.
Her phone buzzed.
Wait for me at your locker.
She didn't realize she was smiling at Stiles' message until she caught her own reflection in the locker door.
He turned the corner a minute later. Blue shirt, white t-shirt underneath, that goofy smile already on his lips as he spotted her and got closer.
For a second the night before felt very far away.
She pushed off the locker before he could speak and kissed him the moment he reached her. He still froze slightly when she did that, like some part of him hadn't caught up to the fact that it was allowed.
She liked that.
"Okay," he said when she pulled back, blinking at her. "Good morning."
She looked him over slowly. "You look very handsome today."
He blushed immediately, glancing down. "What? Really?" She just looked up at him through her lashes, lips curving into a smile without answering, and his ears went red, which only made her expression soften further.
Then his face shifted — the way it had started doing since the night the hunters had followed her. "How was last night?" he asked quietly. "Did anyone show up?"
"Nothing happened," she said, though the image of Chris Argent reloading his crossbow drifted through her mind uninvited. "They should know where I live by now. I'm just not sure what they're waiting for."
He didn't like that answer. She could feel it in the slight change in his pulse. "Probably they think you'll lead them to Derek."
She nodded. "That could be. Especially since they saw me with him yesterday."
"That's not good," he muttered, hand moving restlessly through his hair.
"Hey," she said quietly, her hands finding his shoulders. "It's going to be alright."
He studied her for a second longer than necessary, like he was checking for cracks in the answer. Then he nodded. "Okay. But don't tell me not to worry."
She let out a small laugh. "I wouldn't dare." Then she tilted her head. "How's Scott?"
Stiles exhaled. "Trying to figure out how to get the necklace."
Scarlett nodded slowly. "If that symbol is really connected to her family, she's not just going to hand it over to her ex-boyfriend."
"Which is why I told him to get back on her good side first," Stiles said, with the satisfied tone of someone who considered this excellent strategic advice.
She wasn't sure Allison would give the necklace to Scott so easily. It was true that she was still very much involved with the pup. So maybe it wasn't impossible. But the thought didn't settle the way it should have. They were getting closer to the Argents, and now they knew that the Alpha was searching Harris, something that Laura was doing.
They were very close to connect the dots. And that thought was almost dreadful.
"In the message you said you had something to ask me," Scarlett said, looking back up at Stiles and pushing the thought away deliberately.
He went tense immediately.
His shoulders shifted, jaw tightening slightly, fingers tapping once against his thigh before going still. He suddenly looked very aware of the hallway around him — of the people walking past, of the noise, of his own breathing.
She waited, watching him with quiet amusement.
"Right," he said. "Yeah. That." His pulse had picked up considerably. "Do you..." He took a breath. "Do you like to dance?"
"No," she answered simply.
"Alright. Great. Fantastic start," he muttered, visibly recalibrating. "Umm... Have you — have you heard of this thing called the Winter Formal?"
Scarlett glanced down the hallway, where half the school seemed to be whispering about dresses and suit rentals. "The thing everyone is losing their minds over?"
He frowned at her, eyes blinking rapidly. "Wow. You sound incredibly enthusiastic."
"Should I be?" she asked, genuinely uncertain.
"Well, I was hoping you would be," he said, "since I was planning on asking you to it." A beat. His eyes widened slightly. "That is absolutely not how I was planning on asking."
She studied him. "What were you planning on doing?"
"I had a whole speech," he said, with the energy of someone mourning a loss. "A real one. It was structured. It had pacing. Possibly some emotional build-up toward the end." He gestured vaguely. "And then you said you don't like dancing, which derailed the entire production."
She liked him when he acted like this — all that anxious brightness spilling out of him sideways, impossible to contain.
"I don't like many things," she said, and stepped closer, her arms sliding loosely around his neck. His breath caught. Her nose brushed his lightly as her voice dropped. "But I kinda like you. And you want to go, don't you?"
"Yes," he admitted, his heartbeat quick and unsteady against her.
Scarlett smiled slowly. "Alright then."
His eyes went wide. "What? Really?" he asked, like he needed to hear it again to believe it. She nodded, and something in his face opened up completely — that unfiltered, boyish delight he could never quite manage to hide.
"So," she said softly, "aren't you going to kiss me?"
He stared at her for half a second like he still couldn't quite believe this was a thing that was allowed to happen to him.
His hand came up first, settling carefully at her jaw like he wanted to be sure before he committed, and then his lips found hers — warm and a little uncertain at the edges, the way he always was when he forgot to perform confidence and just felt things instead. She felt him exhale through his nose as he relaxed into it, the tension in his shoulders easing by degrees, and she smiled faintly against his mouth because she couldn't help it.
When they finally pulled apart, his hand stayed at her jaw for a second longer, thumb resting lightly against her cheek, and his eyes opened slowly like he was in no particular hurry to return to the hallway and all its ordinary demands.
She was still smiling.
"So," he said, voice slightly lower than usual, attempting to recover some composure and not quite managing it. "We're going to a dance."
"We are."
"You're aware there will be slow songs."
"I'm aware."
"And people watching."
"They already are."
He glanced around the hallway. Indeed, several students were doing a very poor job of pretending not to stare. "Okay, wow," he muttered. "Public image upgrade."
She rolled her eyes. "You're insufferable."
"I think you like it." She didn't deny it. Instead she smoothed a hand over the collar of his blue shirt, straightening it slightly, and felt his breath catch at the small, casual gesture. Then their hand found each other so that they could start make their way to their classes.
"Are you nervous for tonight?" she asked as they walked.
That evening Stiles would play his first game on first line. From what she knew, it had been a long time coming — something he'd wanted badly enough to sit on the bench game after game and keep showing up anyway. Now he finally had it.
"Very nervous," he said with a small nod. "Actually terrified."
"You're going to be amazing," she said, glancing up at him with a quiet smile.
He looked at her for a moment, something warm and a little undone in his expression, like the words had landed somewhere he hadn't expected.
Then Scarlett felt it — a shift in the air, a change in the particular texture of the hallway noise. A familiar heartbeat, moving toward them fast.
She looked back. Stiles caught the change in her expression and turned at the same time.
Scott was jogging toward them, breath slightly uneven, shoulders tight. He reached them before either of them could ask.
"Jackson knows."
"How the hell did he find out?" Stiles demanded.
"How can the jackass know?" Scarlett said at the same moment.
They glanced at each other briefly.
The three of them fell into step together, moving down the corridor as Scott shook his head, something close to desperation in his voice. "I don't know!"
"Alright," Stiles said, already thinking. "Did he say it out loud? The word?"
Scott frowned. "What word?"
Scarlett almost rolled her eyes.
"Werewolf," Stiles said. "Did he say 'I know you're a werewolf'?"
"No, but he implied it pretty freaking clearly."
Stiles drew a sharp breath. "Okay, maybe it's not as bad as it seems."
Scarlett looked up at him. "Are we talking about the same jackass?"
"What I mean is — he doesn't have any proof, right?" Stiles pressed on. "And if he wanted to tell someone, who's actually going to believe him?"
"How about Allison's father?" Scott said.
Scarlett shook her head slowly. Jackson really couldn't have picked a worse moment.
"Okay," Stiles said. "That's bad."
"I need a cure right now," Scott said, voice tight. "Right now."
"You won't get it that fast, Scott," Scarlett said, and both of them looked at her. "I mean — you still have to find the Alpha and kill him. That doesn't happen overnight." She paused. "Does Jackson even know about the Alpha?"
"Or Allison's father?" Stiles added.
"I don't know!" Scott said.
Stiles exhaled and looked between the two of them. "Where's Derek?"
Scarlett shook her head. "He doesn't say where he's hiding."
"Why?" Scott asked, as if the answer might be reasonable.
"Because he's Derek," Scarlett said flatly.
"I have another idea," Stiles said, and something in his tone made Scarlett study him more carefully. "It's going to take a little time and finesse though. And I'll probably need Evelyn's help."
"We have the game tonight," Scott said. "It's quarterfinals."
"And it's your first game on first line," Scarlett added, glancing at Stiles.
"Yeah, I know, I know." He didn't look entirely settled, and Scarlett found herself wondering what exactly he had in mind. Whatever it was, it meant time — time she wasn't sure they had. Maybe she really did need to warn Peter. Or at least move faster than all of them.
"Do you have a plan for Allison yet?" Stiles asked Scott.
"She's in my next class."
"Alright," Scarlett said. "See what you can do. And if you need help, I'll step in."
Scott frowned. "What are you planning on doing?"
"Well, we're friends, aren't we?" She glanced between them and let out a small breath. "Girls sometimes lend things to each other. It wouldn't be strange for me to ask."
"You can actually do that?" Stiles asked, studying her.
"I can try," she replied. "Two are better than one."
And if she could get to the necklace first, she could pretend she didn't have it so that she could slow things down — then Stiles and Scott wouldn't be able to connect the Alpha and the murders to the Argents. Not yet. Not until she had dealt with Kate. They needed to move, and they needed to move soon. Which meant, as much as she hated the thought of it, she was probably going to have to talk to Peter.
They had to kill Kate as soon as possible.
Before Stiles and Scott found out everything. And she could not let it happen.