The first thing Evelyn registered was the smell.
Cold concrete and something metallic underneath it — rust, or blood, or both — and a dampness that suggested underground, or at least a long time without windows. She held still for a moment before opening her eyes. Even her eyelid seemed to be heavy.
What the hell happened? She could not recall.
The room was large and dark — exposed concrete walls, bare bulbs casting flat yellow light, the kind of space that had been built for storage and repurposed for something else entirely. There were chains bolted to the far wall. Electrical equipment she couldn't name on a folding table to her left. Then her eyes widened when she saw Derek tied up against some rusty bars in front of her. His arms were held over his head, he was not wearing a shirt and attached to his skin there were the electrical wire linked to the equipment that she saw earlier.
"Derek!" She called, but she noticed that her wrists were zip-tied to the arms of the chair she was sitting in. Her ankles too.
She pulled against them once, but they were very tight and she immediately looked over at him. He moved his arm as she called him, his eyes were on her. And she could feel the panic raising in her chest.
What was going on?
"Here she is, our sleeping beauty," Evelyn shivered at that voice.
Kate Argent came into her line of vision from the right, moving with that particular ease of hers — unhurried, shoulders loose, like she had all the time in the world and found the idea of hurrying faintly amusing.
"You gave us quite a scare," Kate said, stopping a few feet in front of her. "I may have hit you a little harder than intended." She tilted her head slightly, studying Evelyn's face with something that looked almost like concern. "How's your head?"
"Fine," Evelyn said.
"Good." Kate smiled.
Evelyn said nothing. She was still looking at Derek — at the wires against his skin, at the way he was holding himself, at his eyes which were on her with an expression she couldn't fully read from here.
"What do you want?" she said.
"Oh, just a conversation." Kate moved to the folding table, running one hand lightly along its edge, her back partially to Evelyn. "You've been spending a lot of time with interesting people lately." She glanced over her shoulder. "Right, Derek?"
Derek said nothing. His jaw was tight. The chains shifted faintly when he breathed.
"He's not much for conversation," Kate told Evelyn, with the tone of someone sharing a mild personal observation. "He never was." Something moved in her face — fast and complicated, gone before Evelyn could name it. "I used to find it charming, actually. That whole—" she gestured vaguely "—packege." She looked back at Evelyn. "You probably know what I mean." Evelyn searched for Derek's gaze without even thinking, and she almost jumped when Kate pulled the chair from the folding table and sat down on it backwards, arms folded across the back, entirely relaxed.
"Here's what I need. It's a short list, I promise. The Alpha's name. The other Beta." She spread her hands. "That's it. Two things. You give me those, I drive you home, and tomorrow you'll be all ready for the Formal."
Evelyn looked at her steadily. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Mmm." Kate studied her. "You're going to want to think very carefully about how long you want to stick with that answer." Her eyes moved briefly to Derek, then back. "I've already tried it with him. It's not—" she tilted her head "—going well. That's why you're here. He can be very stubborn but we can work on that."
Evelyn's eyes grew larger as she saw Kate getting up.
"Come on, Derek," she said then, standing, moving toward him. Her voice had shifted into something lighter, almost conversational. "He killed your sister. Now, either you're not telling me because you want to kill him yourself—" she stopped in front of him, studying his face with focused attention "—or, for some reason, you're protecting him."
Derek stared past her.
"Look at that sour face." Kate's voice went almost fond. "I bet you always got people coming up to you saying, Smile, Derek. Why don't you smile more?" She tilted her head. "Don't you just wanna kick those people in the face?"
"I can think of one," Derek said, without inflection.
"Promise?" Something flickered across Kate's expression that looked almost like genuine amusement. "Because if I thought you'd be that much fun, I'd let you go."
She turned back to the folding table. Going through Derek's things, finding his phone.
"All right, let's see… Nothing… nothing… nothing…" She setting it down with a small click. "I hope yours will be better," Kate said looking at Evelyn, before she rolled her eyes. "God, I hate this detective crap."
"Are you going to torture me," Derek said, flat, carrying the specific exhaustion of someone who had been in this room a long time already, "or are you just going to talk me to death?"
Evelyn looked at him. At the wires still attached to his skin. At his wrists above his head, at the angle of his shoulders which had to hurt, had to have been hurting for hours. The practical inventory of it settled in her chest like something heavy.
God, she's kept him here all night, Evelyn thought.
"Oh, sweetie." Kate turned with an expression of exaggerated hurt. "I don't want to torture you. I just want to catch up." She moved back toward him, slower now, and something in the quality of her movement changed — still easy, still unhurried, but purposeful in a way it hadn't been before. "Remember all the fun we had together?"
Evelyn frowned.
Something shifted in Derek's face. Fast, and then controlled, and then gone — but not before she'd caught it. The specific movement of a memory arriving that you hadn't braced for. She had seen grief do that to people's faces. She had seen guilt do it. She had never quite seen them arrive together like that, layered so tightly they were almost indistinguishable.
Remember all the fun we had together.
The words rearranged themselves in her mind, slowly, into a shape she hadn't expected.
"Like the time you burned my family alive?" Derek said.
"I was thinking more about the hot, crazy sex we had."
The floor seemed to shift slightly under Evelyn's chair. She stared at Kate's back — at the complete, unremarkable ease with which she had said it, as if it were simply the more relevant memory, as if the two things existed on the same plane and one was merely more interesting than the other. She was sure that Kate was older than Derek... did she played with him?
"But the fire thing?" Kate continued, something slow and satisfied moving behind her eyes. "That was fun too." Derek tried to move but he couldn't.
And Evelyn shivered in hearing Kate's satisfied chuckle. "I love how much you hate me. Remember how this felt?" Evelyn's jaw tensed as she saw Kate licking Derek's abs, and she gasped when Derek's fangs came out as he tried to move as to bite Kate, but because of the chains bounding his arms, he could not reach her.
"Get away from him." The words left Evelyn's mouth before she'd finished deciding to say them. Flat. Steady. Nothing like how she felt.
Kate turned. Slowly, like someone who had heard something mildly interesting from across the room.
"What did you just said?" she asked.
"Evelyn, no," Derek said, pulling at the restrains once again.
"I said get away from him." Evelyn held her gaze. Her wrists were pulling against the zip ties without her telling them to, the plastic cutting deeper.
Kate turned fully toward her. Something shifted in her expression — not surprise, something more interested than surprise.
"Okay," she said simply.
She crossed the room and crouched in front of Evelyn's chair, studying her face with the focused attention of someone reading something carefully. Evelyn didn't look away.
"You care about him," Kate said.
"I don't—"
"You do." Kate tilted her head. "It's fine. It's actually very helpful." She stood, moving back toward Derek, but her eyes stayed on Evelyn. "Here's the thing. He won't talk to protect his pack. That's very Derek — always was." She tilted her head. "But you're a different thing."
"So here's what's going to happen," Kate said pleasantly. "Every time you tell me you don't know something—" her hand moved to the equipment on the folding table, resting there without pressing anything "—he pays for it." She looked at Evelyn steadily. Then she moved, slowly, and stopped behind Evelyn's chair. Her hand came to rest on Evelyn's shoulder, light and completely unbearable. "And every time he stays quiet—" she looked up at Derek "—she does."
The room went very still.
Evelyn felt Derek's eyes move to her before she looked at him. His jaw had changed. Something in his face had shifted in a way she hadn't seen before — not the controlled stillness from earlier, something rawer underneath it, something he was working much harder to keep in place.
"Don't," he said. To Kate. Very quiet. "Don't touch her."
"There it is," Kate said softly. Almost to herself. She lifted her hand from Evelyn's shoulder and moved back toward the center of the room, satisfied in the specific way of someone who has just confirmed something they already knew. "That's all I needed to hear."
"You can't do this," Evelyn said, feeling her eyes fill with tears but she refused to let them run down. "I'm human. Your code— you're going against your code."
Kate chuckled, "You know about the code." She said amused.
"I know enough," Evelyn said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Hunters don't go after humans. That's the whole point of the code. That's what separates you from—"
"From them?" Kate tilted her head. "Sweetheart, you stopped being just a human the moment you started running around with werewolves." She moved back toward the folding table, unhurried. "The code protects people who aren't involved. You involved yourself."
"She's not part of this," Derek said, pulling at the chains. "Kate!"
Evelyn felt her body tremble. What could she do? What could she do?! She didn't want for Kate to know about Scott, she would have hunting him down if she did. But she also didn't want for her to hurt Derek...
"Oh, sweetheart," She said going towards Derek, "I really don't want to hurt you, none of you." Then the heavy metal door opened making Evelyn gasp as she turned. And she saw a man all dressed in black entering in the room.
"But he does." Kate said calmly.
Evelyn looked at Derek.
He was already looking at her. And what was in his face now was something she hadn't seen there before. He was worried about her.
"Hey," she said, quietly enough that the man at the table wouldn't hear. "Look at me."
His jaw tightened.
"It's gonna be okay," she said. "It doesn't matter what they do to me, you are not going to say anything. Do you understand me?"
"Evelyn—"
"Derek!" Her voice came out firm even if she could feel it crack in between her lips. "Do you understand me?"
He looked at her for a long moment. The man at the table made a small sound — something clicking into place, something being tested.
Derek looked away from her. His hands closed into fists above the chains.
"Yeah," he said finally. Quiet. Rough. "I understand you."
Evelyn looked at the zip ties on her wrists. At the man at the table. At the open door and the corridor beyond it and the distance between where she was sitting and anywhere else.
She pressed her palms flat against the chair arms and closed her eyes for just a moment.
Spirits of root and stone, she thought. If you're there. If there's anyone. Now would be a very good time.
The heat didn't come.
She opened her eyes.
The man at the table turned around.
And Kate pulled the chair and sat down facing Evelyn. And her expression was the one she'd worn at the beginning — patient, focused, almost pleasant.
"Let's start with you, shall we?"
she said. "The Alpha's name."
Evelyn said nothing.
Kate nodded, once, to the man at the table.
The sound was sharp and electric and Evelyn flinched before it had fully registered — and Derek made a sound she was going to be carrying with her for a long time, short and involuntary and immediately cut off, and his whole body went rigid against the chains.
"Derek!" The word left her before she could stop it.
"The Alpha's name, Evelyn," Kate said again.
Evelyn pressed her lips together.
The man at the table moved again. And Derek let out a loud scream as his fangs appeared and his eyes turned electric blue.
Evelyn felt the first tear before she knew it was coming. Hot, fast, running down her face before she'd decided anything about it.
"It all can stop, sweetie, if you tell me the name."
"I don't-- I don't know," she said with a sob as another wave of shock made Derek cry in pain. "Derek!"
"The Beta," Kate said. "Just a name. One name."
Evelyn shook her head. Her throat was so tight she wasn't sure she could have spoken even if she'd wanted to.
"Evelyn." Kate's voice dropped into something almost gentle. "Look at him. Look at what not answering costs him."
She looked. She couldn't help it. Derek's head had dropped, his breathing ragged and uneven, the controlled distance completely gone. He was just a person, in this moment, in pain, and she was three metres away and she couldn't close that distance and she couldn't stop it and the tears were coming faster now and she couldn't—
"Stop it," she said. Her voice came out cracked. "Please stop it."
"One name," Kate said.
"I don't—" Her voice broke completely. "I don't know, I swear to you I don't know—"
"Evelyn." Derek's voice. Rough, barely making it out. "Don't."
The man at the table moved again.
The sob that came out of her wasn't quiet or controlled. It just came, the way things come when there is nothing left to hold them back, and her hands were shaking against the chair arms and her vision was blurring and she could hear Derek's breathing from across the room and she couldn't do anything, she couldn't reach anything—
The man at the table moved again.
Derek screamed.
"Stop it!" The words tore out of her at the same moment, raw and cracked and nothing like her voice, and her whole body was shaking now, her hands white-knuckled against the chair arms, and the tears were running freely down her face and she couldn't breathe properly and Derek was still making that sound, that terrible sound, and she couldn't stop it she couldn't stop it she couldn't—
"The name," Kate said. Completely calm. Like the screaming wasn't happening.
"Stop it, please—" Her voice broke on the last word and what came after wasn't a word at all, just sound, just the raw animal fact of watching someone she cared about in pain and being unable to do anything, and the shaking had spread from her hands to her arms to her chest and her vision had gone strange at the edges—
The man moved again.
"STOP IT!"
It came from somewhere below her sternum, below language, below anything she'd ever consciously done.
the sound of it, pushed outward with everything she had left, with the shaking and the tears and Derek's voice still in her ears—
Something answered.
All at once. Like a door blown off its hinges.
It wasn't in her hands. It was everywhere — flooding up through the chair and into her spine and behind her eyes and filling every part of her that the fear and the grief had hollowed out, and it was enormous, it was furious, it was nothing like the careful warmth in the examination room, nothing like the steady resistance she'd held against the mountain ash — this was none of those things, this was something older and much less interested in being controlled—
The lights flickered.
Kate looked up.
The equipment on the folding table began to make a sound it hadn't made before — high-pitched, climbing, the sound of something being asked to hold far more than it was ever built for. The man beside it took one step back. Then another.
Then the equipment exploded.
A sharp crack, a flash of white that turned the whole room momentarily noon-bright, and then the smell of burning plastic and scorched metal, and every bulb in the room blew simultaneously, and the darkness came down all at once like something dropped.
Silence.
Then Derek's breathing. Ragged, uneven, real.
Then the specific sound of Kate's voice, very controlled, with something moving underneath it that Evelyn was too exhausted to name: "Get the lights. Now."
Evelyn sat in the dark.
Her hands had stopped shaking.
The thing that had moved through her was gone, all of it, leaving behind an emptiness so complete it had weight. Her arms felt like they belonged to someone else. Her head felt enormous and far away. The zip ties were still on her wrists.
But the equipment was gone.
She could hear the man moving somewhere in the dark, Kate's footsteps, getting closer.
"Oh my..." she said with an amused smile, "What are you?"
Evelyn didn't answer.
Derek had raised his head.
She didn't even know what she had just done. She still didn't know. Her hands were empty and her body was hollow and the room smelled like burning and she had no idea — no idea — where that had come from or what it meant or what she was.
But Derek was looking at her like he was asking himself the same question.
And she looked back at him, wide-eyed and wrecked and completely lost, and for a moment neither of them had any answers at all.