The howl was still echoing through the forest when everything happened at once.
Scott and Stiles burst into motion, splitting up in blind panic. I saw Scott trip over an exposed root, his flashlight flying from his hand and rolling across the forest floor. He fell hard, struggling to get up, breath hitching in terror.
And then Peter emerged from the darkness.
It wasn't gradual. There was no warning. One second there were only shadows between the trees; the next, he was there—a massive, twisted figure, half man, half beast. Moonlight caught his eyes first: glowing red, luminous, predatory.
Alpha.
My body froze. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but I was paralyzed, trapped between the horror of what I was witnessing and the knowledge of what had to happen.
Scott tried to crawl backward, still on the ground, eyes wide with absolute terror. "What— WHAT THE HELL—"
Peter didn't give him time to finish.
He moved with impossible speed, crossing the distance in a blur. Claws flashed in the moonlight—long, curved, lethal. Scott screamed as they tore through his shirt and sank into his torso, just below the ribs.
The scream sliced through the night like shattered glass.
"SCOTT!" Stiles's voice came from somewhere to the left, distant but desperate.
Peter held Scott there for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, red eyes locking onto the boy's terrified brown ones. Then, with a dismissive motion, he flung Scott aside like a rag doll.
Scott slammed into a tree with a sickening impact, then slid to the ground.
Peter turned his head, sniffing the air. Looking for Stiles, presumably. But Stiles was already running, the sound of snapping branches marking his escape.
For a moment, I thought Peter would chase him.
Then he paused, tilting his head slightly. He sniffed again.
And turned directly toward me.
My blood turned to ice.
No. No, no, no.
I was hidden. I was far enough away. How did he—
The medallion.
Beneath my shirt, the Lupaztlán medallion was burning. Not metaphorically—real, searing pain, like red-hot metal pressed against my skin. I bit my lip to keep from screaming, my hands flying to my chest, trying to pull it away.
That movement doomed me.
My foot slipped, snapping down on a dry branch.
CRACK.
The sound echoed through the silent forest like a gunshot.
Peter went completely still. Only his head moved, turning with deliberate, terrifying slowness until those red eyes locked directly onto me.
Through the trees. Through the darkness. Through every illusion of safety I'd had.
He saw me.
He sniffed again, and something in his posture changed. His shoulders tensed. His claws extended fully.
A witness.
The thought cut through my mind with icy clarity. I was a witness. Someone who had seen the Alpha. Someone who could identify him.
And Peter Hale did not leave witnesses alive.
He lunged.
There was no warning growl, no threatening stance. Just explosive movement—a blur of shadow and muscle and murderous intent.
Instinct took over. I turned and ran.
I had never run so fast in my life. My lungs burned, my heart pounded against my ribs, branches whipped my face as I tore through the forest. My sneakers hit uneven ground, roots trying to trip me, but I kept going on pure terror.
Behind me, I heard him—branches snapping like twigs, dirt ripping under claws, heavy breathing that was more animal than human.
He was playing with me.
The realization hit with sickening horror. He could have caught me already. He was chasing me, letting fear wear me down, making the hunt more satisfying.
I vaulted over a fallen log, nearly stumbling on the other side. I caught myself and kept running, directionless, just away. I had to reach the town—people, lights—
Something slammed into me from behind with the force of a car.
The air exploded from my lungs. I flew forward, the world spinning, before hitting the ground hard enough to make my vision burst with stars. Pain erupted in my shoulder, my hip, my face.
I tried to get up, hands scraping dirt and leaves.
A claw planted itself between my shoulder blades and shoved me back down.
"Please—" The word came out as a broken gasp. "Please, I won't—"
Peter flipped me violently onto my back. I stared up at that nightmare face—half human, half wolf, red eyes blazing with predatory hunger.
He said nothing. No villain monologue. No explanation.
Just claws coming down.
The first slash ripped across my torso, shredding jacket and shirt like paper. White-hot pain exploded through my chest, ribs, shoulder. I screamed, tried to roll away, but he held me in place.
The second slash tore into my abdomen. I felt flesh open, warm and wet, blood pouring out.
The third hit my shoulder, claws sinking deep, tearing muscle, scraping bone.
I couldn't scream anymore. I had no air. There was only pain—so absolute and consuming my mind couldn't process it. Just white static and the sensation of coming apart.
Peter raised his claw one more time, aiming for my throat.
This is it, I thought distantly. My second life ends in the woods of Beacon Hills, killed by Peter Hale, and no one will ever know.
The claw came down—
And stopped.
Not because Peter showed mercy. But because my body stopped moving.
I lay in a growing pool of my own blood, breaths shallow and spaced far apart, eyes half-lidded and glassy. For all intents and purposes, I looked dead.
Peter sniffed. Tilted his head, studying me. His chest rose and fell with the heavy breaths of the hunt, but he was already calming, the transformation receding slightly.
He sniffed again—my blood, my barely-there breathing.
Dead, his instinct must have said. Or close enough not to matter.
He wiped his claws on his torn shirt, casual and horrifying. He looked at me one last time—not with remorse or satisfaction, just the indifference of a predator confirming the kill.
Then he turned and vanished into the darkness of the forest, leaving me alone.
Pain.
It was all that existed. Every nerve in my body screaming, every breath agony.
I was dying. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. No one survived wounds like this. Blood kept flowing, soaking into the forest floor beneath me, carrying my life with it.
My vision darkened at the edges, tunneling inward.
I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry, Dad. I should've stayed home.
The medallion against my chest—still hanging around my neck by some miracle—suddenly BURNED.
Not like before. Not just uncomfortable heat.
It was as if someone had pressed molten iron against my skin.
I would've screamed if I had air. Instead, I only writhed weakly, back arching, hands uselessly trying to tear the medallion away.
Light spilled from it—golden, warm, pulsing.
And then something inside me woke up.
There's no other way to describe it. It was like a dormant part of my being suddenly becoming aware. Like an atrophied muscle forced to move, or a numb limb flooded with sensation.
But multiplied a thousandfold.
My body convulsed. My back arched so violently I felt something crack in my spine. My fingers dug into the dirt, no longer entirely human—claws? Not exactly. Something in between.
The wounds in my torso, my abdomen, my shoulder—I felt them change.
Blood still flowed, but slower. Torn edges of flesh trying to reconnect. Not instant healing like in movies—painful, grotesque, impossible.
But happening.
Regeneration.
The word surfaced from somewhere deep within instinct. Not conscious thought, but ancestral knowledge.
Lupaztlán.
Visions exploded behind my closed eyes—not my memories, but memories of the lineage. Druids around bonfires, chanting in Náhuatl. Werewolves being marked with bone symbols. Rituals of blood and bone and power.
The creation of the Bone Wolves.
My body was trying to awaken what had been dormant. The lineage my parents had hidden, the one I hadn't known I carried.
But I was dying too fast.
The regeneration fought the mortal wounds, trying to drag me back from the edge, but it wasn't fast enough. It was like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket.
My vision went completely black.
No, I thought weakly. Not again. I didn't survive death once just to die like this.
But darkness swallowed me anyway.
I don't know how much time passed.
Consciousness came and went in waves. Sometimes I was aware of the forest—the smell of dirt and blood, the distant sounds of coyotes. Other times there was only pain and darkness.
At some point, the sky began to lighten. Not full dawn, but that gray pre-morning light that comes before it.
Hours. It had to have been hours.
My wounds were still open, but not as badly. Skin trying to close at the edges. Bleeding reduced to a slow seep. The broken bone in my shoulder attempting to realign.
Still agonizing. Still potentially fatal.
But no longer a guaranteed death sentence.
The medallion had stopped burning, but it remained warm against my chest, pulsing faintly like a second heart.
I heard something.
Fast movement through the woods. Multiple footsteps. Coming toward me.
I tried to move, to turn my head, but my body didn't respond. I could only lie there, helpless, as the sounds drew closer.
"—he has to be here, I can feel—"
My mother.
Her voice, tight with panic and fear, cut through the haze of pain.
"Daniel! DANIEL!"
I tried to answer. My throat produced only a weak groan.
It was enough.
They burst through the trees—my mother and father, moving faster than any humans should be able to, eyes scanning the area with supernatural intensity.
My mother saw me first.
"NO!" The scream tore out of her as she dropped to her knees in the blood-soaked dirt beside me. "No, no, no… Daniel, baby, no—"
Her hands hovered over me, trembling, not knowing where to touch without causing more pain. Tears streamed down her face.
My father was right behind her, kneeling at my other side. His eyes—and for the first time, I really looked at them—flashed gold for a second before returning to their normal brown.
They scanned my wounds with brutal efficiency. Claw marks. Deep, multiple. Blood everywhere.
"Werewolf," he said tightly. "Alpha, from the marks."
"He should be dead," my mother sobbed. "With wounds like these, he should—"
She stopped abruptly.
Her gaze fell on the medallion around my neck, still faintly glowing with residual golden light.
Then to my wounds—still open, but visibly wrong for injuries hours old. Closing. Slowly, but undeniably.
Her eyes flew to my father's.
"The lineage," she whispered. "It activated."
My father looked closer, seeing what she saw. The tiny, nearly imperceptible translucent bone plates flickering in and out of existence beneath my skin where the wounds were healing. The way my fingers occasionally twitched into non-human positions before relaxing again.
"God," he breathed. "The attack woke him up."
"We have to get him home. Now." My mother was already moving, carefully sliding her hands beneath me.
I groaned as they lifted me—my father taking most of my weight, cradling me against his chest as if I weighed nothing.
"Hang on, son," he murmured. "We're taking you home. You're going to be okay."
My mother ran alongside him as they moved through the forest, faster than any human should while carrying a wounded body. Trees blurred past.
I slipped in and out of consciousness during the journey. Flashes of brightening sky. The sound of asphalt underfoot. Our front door opening.
Then I was in my bed, my mother carefully removing my blood-soaked jacket and shirt. Warm water, clean cloths.
"The wounds are still closing," she said shakily as she cleaned the blood away. "The regeneration is active, but it's slow. Just like when we awakened…"
"He'll survive," my father said, though tension laced his voice. "The lineage won't let him die. Not now that it's awake."
They worked in silence for a while—cleaning wounds, checking damage, monitoring my breathing.
I felt my body doing the work. Tissue reconnecting. Bone knitting together. Pain fading from knife-sharp agony to a deep, heavy throb.
The medallion finally stopped glowing altogether.
"We can't take him to a hospital," my mother said eventually. "How would we explain this? Claw wounds that are healing on their own?"
"We'll take care of him here," my father agreed. "The lineage will heal him. It'll just take time."
They settled into a vigil—my mother in a chair beside the bed, holding my hand. My father by the window, watching the street, posture tense and alert.
Protecting. Waiting.
I slipped back into unconsciousness, but this time it was different. Not the black void of near-death, but real sleep.
Recovery.
I dreamed of bones and fire. Of wolves singing to the moon. Of hands marking symbols into skin, power flowing through generations.
I dreamed of what I was becoming.
I woke slowly.
First came awareness—thoughts sluggish, hazy, drifting to the surface. Then physical sensation—the weight of the blanket, the softness of the mattress, a dull ache throughout my body.
I opened my eyes.
My bedroom ceiling. Familiar. Safe.
Sunlight filtered through the curtains—not early morning. Afternoon. How much time had passed?
I tried to move. Pain flared through my torso, but it wasn't the annihilating agony from before. More like the deep soreness of a severe injury.
A groan escaped me.
"Daniel!"
My mother was at my side instantly, hand squeezing mine. Her eyes were red from crying, her face pale with exhaustion.
"Don't move, sweetheart. You're safe. You're home."
My father appeared on the other side of the bed, his expression a mix of relief and gravity.
"Mom?" My voice came out hoarse, my throat dry. "What… what happened?"
Even as I asked, memories flooded back. The forest. Peter. Claws tearing. Blood.
"I died," I whispered. "I should be dead."
"You didn't die," my father said firmly. "You survived."
I looked at him, then at my mother, confusion churning.
"How? He… the claws… there was so much blood…"
My mother pressed her lips together, tears filling her eyes again. Carefully, she reached for the medallion where it rested on my nightstand—clean now, though I remembered it burning, glowing.
"Because you're special, Daniel," she said softly. "You always have been."
She held the medallion in one hand, tracing the symbols with her fingers.
"This belonged to your grandfather. And his grandfather before him. It protects our lineage. And last night… last night you needed it, and it awakened what was sleeping inside you."
"Lineage," I repeated. The word felt strange, yet familiar. "You said that before. On the phone."
My parents exchanged a look.
"We have a lot to tell you," my father said, pulling a chair closer and sitting down. "About us. About you. About what you really are."
I tried to sit up. Pain shot through my torso, but I managed to prop myself up with pillows. I looked down at my chest—clean bandages covered where the claws had torn me open.
But beneath them, I could feel it. Not just pain—something else. Something new.
I raised my left hand, studying it. It looked normal. But as I watched, I thought I saw—just for a second—the translucent outline of something beneath the skin.
Plates. Bone.
I blinked, and it was gone.
I looked at my parents, my voice trembling.
"I'm not human… am I?"
Heavy silence filled the room.
My father took a deep breath, bracing himself. My mother squeezed my hand tighter.
"No," my father said, his voice weighted with ancient truth. "You are Lupaztlán. Bone Wolf. And it's time you learned what that means."