Hey everyone! I'm ouran4eva and this is my story Puppy Love! For those of you that know me, you know that my other story Kon'nichiwa eh! has been put on temporary hiatus and I said that I was beginning to write a Darkest Powers fic. Well here it is! I hope you enjoy!

I OWN NOTHING! Kelley Armstrong owns Darkest Powers!

"Awww! He's so cute!" I heard Tori's high pitched coo resonate all the way from the living room and up into my upstairs bedroom.

Being a werewolf, I had enhanced senses, one being able to smell what other people can't and, also, super sensitive hearing. Don't get me wrong, it comes in handy from time to time, but having super hearing can be both a blessing and a curse. Right now it was a curse seeing as how my ears were now ringing because of Tori's grating voice.

"Isn't he?" Chloe's voice trailed up the stairs after Tori's, her voice muffled by something.

A slurping noise reached my sensitive ears followed by both Tori's and Chloe's unanimous "Awww!"

Curious, I abandon my homework and trudge out of my room and into the bare hall, banging my head off the top of the doorway. Being over six-feet tall had its pros and cons; short doorways being a con and a pain in the ass and forehead alike.

Grumbling under my breath, I ducked under the doorway and stalked down the hallway, following the strange slurpy noises and Chloe's giggles; which were a very rare sound in the past few months.

About three months prior, our small group of genetically altered supernaturals had escaped the clutches of the Edison Group, the group of scientists who had done the altering to "fix" the problems that supernaturals face with their powers. A lot of good that did. All they did to us was make our powers worse. Well, worse in my mind.

Chloe's modifications had made her necromancer powers unnaturally strong—strong enough that she could summon ghosts without any outside help and could even raise the dead in her sleep. Just the thought of the hobo corpse she once raised by accident had me shuddering at the memory.

I myself was quite far off in werewolf standards. I mean, I shouldn't have been able to Change at the age of sixteen, but apparently that was a perk of being a part of the Genesis II experiment. I ended up being an early bloomer and had gotten to experience the wonderful pain of the Change early on. I'd be exaggerating if I said that it had been the time of my life. At least Chloe had been there.

Tori, though as much as it pained me to say, was powerful for a witch. On more than one occasion, her ability to cast without uttering a single word had saved our butts, just don't tell her I said that or she would have a field day and I wouldn't hear the end of it.

Simon, in the Edison Group's eyes, had been a successful sorcerer experiment. His powers were very much like an internet connection, one day they were really good and he had no trouble casting, on another day they would be on the fritz and he would spend an hour trying to get a basketball to levitate an inch above his palm. If his powers were an internet connection, the computer would have probably been thrown out the window within a few seconds.

Our pack of supernaturals, including my dad and Chloe's Aunt Lauren, was now on the run—fugitives of the supernatural world—and after leaving the New York state all together, we had made our way south into Virginia. After staying in grimy motels and surviving off of take-out and vending machine food, my father had found us a place to stay in Greene County.

The city was Twin Lakes, population one-thousand-six-hundred-forty-seven, very small compared to Buffalo, and dad had rented a house in the country whose closest neighbor was a few miles away. An added bonus was the forest that was right next door—a good thing for a teenage werewolf who Changed on a weekly basis. I could just walk right outside, stroll into the forest and Change into a wolf; no concerns whatsoever that a stray neighbor would see my body contort painfully as I Changed.

But even though we haven't so much as heard an inkling of the Edison Group in the past few months, I was still on my guard. I couldn't help it. So much peace and quiet was unsettling after the weeks on the streets where you had to constantly look over your shoulder to make sure that there wasn't a rogue werewolf following close behind, or even someone pointing a tranq gun at your back, intending to bring you to the evil scientists who you were on the run from.

I was absolutely positive that the Edison Group was lying low. Watching and waiting in silence. Waiting for us to put our guards down and then…poof! Strike when we least expected it.

"Whatcha got there?" Simon's voice punctured my inner tirade. "Oh my god! Where did you get him?"

"Aunt Lauren and I were walking back from the mall when we saw him in a box on the side of the street," Chloe explained through the slurpy noises. "We couldn't just leave the poor thing there to starve and die, so here he is."

My eyebrows crinkled in confusion. Did Chloe and Lauren bring a hobo home? It was the stupidest explanation ever, but it was all I could think of.

"When Derek sees him, he's going to freak. You do know that, right?" Simon asked.

"What Wolf-Boy doesn't know won't hurt him," Tori said. "We can just hide him for a little, easy peasy."

"Hide him? From Derek?" Chloe said incredulously. "Uh, did you forget that Derek's a werewolf? He'd be able to sniff him out as soon as he came into the living room to watch T.V."

"Well, why don't I hide him, and if Wolfie smells him, just say that Simon had a taco and is passing gas."

"Seriously?" Simon said. "I don't even think a stranger would believe that, let alone Derek."

"Well, what do you suppose we do, then, Harry Potter?" Tori snapped.

Simon was silent for a few seconds, contemplating, before he snapped his fingers when an idea came to him. "Spray some air freshener and then take him outside for awhile until Chloe can explain him. That way, Derek won't be able to smell or see him."

"Derek won't be able to smell or see who?" I rumbled, turning the corner and entering the small living room.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes when all three of them jumped about a foot in the air. It's not like I was sneaking up on them, I was just quiet when I walked—it was what felt natural to me—and I tell everyone this, but I still seem to get glared at when I supposedly "sneak up" on everyone.

Peering around the room for the source of the slurpy noises, my searching gaze landed on a wide-eyed Chloe who bristled under my gaze, quickly shoving something dark behind her back before I could catch a glimpse of the mystery object.

I raised an eyebrow, scowl in place as I crossed my arms over my chest. "Watcha got there, Chloe?"

"N-nothing," she lied, her baby blue eyes widening innocently as she shook her now-blonde-again head.

Now, if I had just met Chloe for the first time, I might have believed the lie in those seemingly innocent baby blues, but I knew better. After spending the past few months on the run, you get to know a person, especially if said person was your girlfriend. And the stutter was an obvious give away.

With one last raised eyebrow at Chloe, I inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring as I took in the scents that were floating about the room. I immediately smelled Tori's, Simon's, and Chloe's scents at the first whiff. Smelling around them, I caught a strong scent coming from behind Chloe's back.

As soon as I had smelled the scent, something started to growl and bark keenly from behind Chloe.

"Shhh," Chloe hissed behind her back, a bead of sweat forming on her forehead when she looked back at me. The something must have started squirming in her hands because Chloe started to fidget, shifting from one foot to the other.

I heard a thunk from behind Chloe. All of a sudden, a husky puppy with matted black and white fur and dark blue eyes darted out from behind her, yipping and barking madly as it stumbled on its short, stubby legs towards me. The puppy skidded to a halt and grabbed onto my pant leg with its teeth, growling and whipping its head from side to side.

"What the hell?" I muttered.

"Koda, no! Bad dog!" Chloe gasped.

"You named him?" I asked, scowling down at the puppy who was trying to play tug of war with my pants. I tried to gently shake him off but he held on tight, his teeth a vice.

"Well, I wasn't going to refer to him as 'puppy', now, was I?" Chloe said, bending down and detaching the still growling puppy from my leg. She patted him on the head and he immediately stopped growling. Instead, he turned his head around and started licking the hand that was petting him, eliciting an "Awww" from Chloe.

"We're not keeping him," I said sternly, scowling at the puppy.

As if it understood what I was saying, the puppy turned its head at the sound of my voice and growled, baring its tiny teeth at me. Before I could stop it, a tiny growl bubbled in my chest and escaped. The puppy's tiny blue eyes widened slightly before they narrowed. He ramped his growling up a notch, his lips pulling back from his teeth as far as they could go and his tiny ears pinning back until they touched his head. Chloe gently tapped his head and he turned his attention back to her.

Confident that the puppy was distracted, Chloe opened her mouth to speak, possibly to argue, but Tori beat her to it. "Wolf-Boy, don't even start." She grabbed the puppy from Chloe's hands and held him in her own. "We are keeping this puppy."

"Um, hello?" I said, pointing to myself, "Werewolf here. Dogs plus werewolves equals a big no-no if you hadn't noticed already." To get my point across, I showed her the scar on my hand that I had gotten from a killer Chihuahua last year.

"You'll just have to deal with it, then."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Since when do you like dogs, anyway?"

"Since now," she said, narrowing her eyes at me and lifting her hand. Blue sparks jumped from her fingertips. "Do I have to go all Wicked Witch to convince you?"

"You don't have to convince me because we're not keeping him and that's final."

"I warned you," Tori said before flicking her fingers, hitting me with a knockback spell.

I sailed through the air and hit the living room wall with a thud.

"Tori!" Chloe and Simon said at the same time.

"What?" Tori said. "At least I warned him."

"Oh yeah, I was so prepared," I said sarcastically, shaking my head to clear the spots that had appeared in my vision. Looking back, I saw a Derek-sized dent in the wall behind me.

Chloe came over to where I was sitting against the wall and checked me over despite my protests. Her hand went to the back of my head and I winced slightly when she touched a bump the size of a cantaloupe that was already starting to heal thanks to my werewolf genes.

"I'm fine," I muttered, gently pushing her hands away. I stood, brushing the dirt off my pants, glaring at Tori while doing so.

"What?" Tori said, shrugging. "I warned you."

"Yeah, well, we're still not keeping that dog."

Her dark eyes narrowed again. She was about to lift her hand and hit me with another knockback but Chloe stepped in between us.

"Tori, Derek, that's enough." She paused, looking between the two of us to make sure we didn't start going at each other again. She looked at Tori. "I think Derek's had enough knockbacks for today, Tori, put your hand down." Tori complied but she kept her narrowed eyes on me.

Chloe turned to me and touched my arm, eyes softening. "And you. Stop your growling and come with me. I need to talk to you." Grabbing my hand in hers, she dragged me into the hall with her.

I looked down at my much larger hand in hers, smiling slightly. Rewind a few months back, I was seeing the same thing, but only with Simon's hand enclosed around Chloe's instead of mine. I was still kind of in a state of shock that I had gotten Chloe and not him. I mean, he's Simon, ladies man extraordinaire, for crying out loud!

Halting, Chloe turned to me. "Derek—"

"We're not keeping him, Chloe," I interrupted her. "I mean it."

"Derek, he has nowhere to go," she argued, her blue eyes pleading. "Aunt Lauren and I found him in a box on the side of the street. What did you expect us to do, leave him there? He would have died."

"Someone would have found him…eventually."

"Derek." She placed her hands on her hips, giving me a look.

"What?" I looked at her.

She raised her eyebrows at me, not saying anything.

"Chloe, look," I sighed, running my fingers through my shaggy black hair. "You have to understand where I'm coming from with this. It's not like I hate the puppy, it's just that dogs and werewolves don't make a good combination when together."

"And I know that, but you have to understand where I'm coming from with this. That puppy doesn't have a family and—"

"What if he does?" I interrupted again. "What if his owners are out looking for him right now?"

I had her there. She stood in front of me, her mouth opening and closing like a fish, no sound coming out. Leaning back against the wall with my arms crossed over my chest, I watched and waited.

She eventually cut her fish act short when she found her words. "Don't make me out to be the bad guy, Derek."

"I'm not." I shrugged. "I'm just pointing out the facts. That puppy may or may not have a family and we could be keeping him from them."

"Fine," Chloe huffed, walking back to the living room. "We'll put posters up and try to find his owners."

"Good." The sooner that dog was out of here, the better. Tomorrow specifically.

Almost like the darn thing knew that I was thinking about him, the puppy, or should I say Koda since that's what his unofficial name was, came barreling down the hall as fast as his tiny puppy legs could take him, nearly tripping Chloe in his haste. He ungracefully stopped in front of me, nearly face-planting into the ground, and plopped onto his haunches, looking up at me with his big blue eyes wide and his head tilted to the side the way that puppies expertly know how to do.

"What?" I asked, eyebrows crinkling and my own head tilting to the side.

Koda yipped softly, huffing as he flew back to a standing position. His tiny nose twitched and, in a blink, he flew past me in a blur of black and white.

"Weirdo pup," I muttered under my breath, following Chloe back out to the living room.

Just as I took a step, I felt a wet sensation on the back of my leg and an acrid stench wafted up to my nose. Plugging my nose, I looked down at my leg and saw Koda standing beside me, his back leg lifted.

"Son of a—"

"Oh, and Derek," Chloe interrupted me before I could start cursing up a storm. "If nobody claims him, we're keeping him."

"Great," I mutter unenthusiastically, glaring down at Koda.

Koda placed his leg back on the floor and booked it past Chloe. Before he went into the living room, he looked over at me, a gleam in his eyes. Oh great, this pup has it in for me.