Author's Note: Thank you so much to starrysky7, LOVEtoLIVE17, and Guests for reviewing. I really appreciate it! I hope you all enjoy this chapter.

Chapter 23

When Scott and Amy got Derek back to Amy's car, Stiles was in the driver's seat and the keys were in the ignition. Lyssa and Isaac were nowhere to be found.

"Where are the others?" Stiles questioned frantically.

Scott climbed into the front seat, while Amy rode in the back with Derek. After hovering her palm over his mouth to ensure he was breathing, she absently threaded her fingers into his hair. As she examined his gaunt and blooded face, she couldn't help but notice that despite the fact that he was so injured, his features were peaceful.

She was evidently so preoccupied with this that she didn't hear Stiles speak, so instead Scott answered, "They led the hunters away from us – they're probably out in the woods somewhere."

"What the hell did they do to Derek?" he asked, peering at the motionless Alpha through the rearview mirror as they sped back to the apartment.

"I don't know," Amy murmured. "He shouldn't be out for this long. But he has a pulse."

"Could it have something to do with the Kanima?"

"Maybe. Gerard's controlling it."

"Surprise, surprise," Stiles grumbled.

"But the rest of them don't know," interjected Scott. "It hid from Chris, and Allison was clearly surprised when she saw it with Gerard. For whatever reason, he's keeping it from them."

"Maybe Derek can tell us when he wakes up," Amy suggested softly, running her fingertips over his sticky forehead. She seemed completely certain that his recovery was just a matter of time, despite the fact that he still showed no signs of stirring.

Stiles and Scott shared a furtive, apprehensive glance. It was rapidly becoming apparent that Derek wasn't just knocked out – he was comatose. And none of them had even the slightest clue about what could do such a thing to an alpha werewolf.

They had, thus far, also steered clear of addressing the elephant in the room: Allison. She'd caught them, and she'd cut ties with them in the most direct way possible, in addition to threatening to kill Derek. It surprised Amy that Scott hadn't brought it up yet.

After several minutes of dead silence, Stiles said, "Lyssa and Isaac will be fine, right?"

Scott had grown quiet now that he'd had the opportunity to contemplate Allison and the intense pain in her beautiful eyes when she'd looked at him. His gaze firmly fixed out the widow, Amy answered, "They should be able to outrun them. They're not supposed to try to fight and they're not going back to the apartment until they're sure they've lost them."

"But Gerard knows where you live," Stiles pointed out.

Amy bit her lip – he was right.

"That time he stabbed me…" she gulped heavily, "that was the first and last time any of them ever showed up where we live. Given what happened tonight, it's highly possible that Gerard has been acting alone for quite a while."

Stiles didn't know how to respond to this, so instead he asked, "Are we any closer to knowing who the Kanima is?"

This time, Scott turned his head towards Stiles and rejoined the conversation. "No," he growled darkly.

Stiles arched his lush brows at his tone. "You okay, man?"

"No, I'm pretty friggin' far from okay," he spat. "You should have seen the way Allison looked at me," he continued, the words pouring suddenly out of his mouth like lava. "It was like she didn't even know me – like I was the enemy." He scrubbed at his face with his hands, as if to keep his emotions in check.

Amy could have sworn she noticed Stiles flinch at Scott's outburst. He opened and closed his mouth several times, like a fish gasping for breath, before finally deciding not to speak.

She sighed deeply and quoted, "This too shall pass, Scott. The pain will go away with time – it always does."

"Easy for you to say," Scott snorted angrily. "You've got your boyfriend back now."

Amy balked at him, even though she knew he couldn't see her. "In case you haven't noticed," she said, tone clipped, "he's been unconscious since we found him. Now I don't know about you, but I find that a little disconcerting." Her gaze flitted again down to Derek, who didn't appear any closer to waking up.

"Whatever," Scott mumbled more to himself than to them, turning his attention back out the window. "I'm telling you, I did this for you guys and now I'm out. I don't owe Derek anything anymore – he and I are square."

Amy stayed quiet, giving Scott some much-needed time to decompress. She continued thumbing over Derek's hairline and closed her eyes in an attempt to curb her own anxiety. In her state of quasi-meditation, she noticed for the first time that his scent had changed ever so subtly. He smelled similar, but not the same.

"Scott, does Derek smell different to you?" she wondered aloud.

Scott tilted his head towards the backseat and took a long whiff. His eyebrows knotted together. "Now that you mention it," he started, "yeah, a little."

"It smells like him, but mixed with something else," she said. "I just can't place it."

"I know what you're talking about," he concurred. "I know that smell. It's on the tip of my tongue…" He turned around fully and made eye contact with Amy.

"Wolfsbane," they realized simultaneously.

Amy furrowed her brow and flipped Derek's arm over so she could look at the inside of his elbow. As she had feared, there were track marks from someone trying sloppily to shove a needle into his vein.

"The must have pumped him full of it," she murmured, skimming her fingers over the area. Ripples of bruises darkened the skin around the injection site.

And then the car screeched to a halt; they had arrived.

Hauling Derek up the stairs and into the apartment was something of a project. He was dead weight, and it took all three of them to transport him. When they finally made it through the threshold, the dragged him to the living room and flopped him down on the sofa. Throughout the entire process Derek did not so much as blink.

Amy, out of breath, ran a shaky hand through her straggly brown locks. Severe panic was beginning to set in, like a creeping infection. "H-how long do you think this will last?"

Neither Scott nor Stiles was equipped to answer this question – they didn't know any more about this sort of thing than she did. Without Derek, they had no direction. They were just a bunch of lost teenagers in way over their heads.

"I don't know," Stiles admitted quietly.

"Sh-should we try doing something?" she stammered, trying to stop herself from crying. "Is – is there some way to fix him?" Her voice cracked. She fell to her knees beside Derek, looking something like a loyal pet. She was bound to him in every sense of the word.

Scott stared down at her, his cocoa eyes filled with pity. "I could try calling Deaton," he offered. It was late, but he knew his boss would be willing to help if he asked. As much as he wanted to extricate himself from the situation, he wasn't heartless – Amy needed him.

"Y-yes. Please."

Stiles knelt next to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder; he cocked his head towards Scott, who promptly fished through his jeans pocket for his cell phone.

She tried to swallow down the lump in her throat, but it was lodged there, burning a hole in her esophagus. She wove her trembling fingers through Derek's limp ones.

"He'll be okay, Ames," Stiles assured her. "He's come back from worse than this."

Amy sunk her teeth into her bottom lip, nodding. "It's just scary to see him like this," she grit out.

Stiles wordlessly rubbed circles against her back as they waited for Deaton to show. It did flash through each of their minds that they might need to start worrying about Lyssa and Isaac too, since they still weren't back yet.

Deaton arrived soon after speaking to Scott, for which everyone was thankful. After examining Derek he announced, "The particular species of wolfsbane they used is affecting Derek's neural system. For all intents and purposes, he's in a coma."

This much had already been clear. "How do we get him out of it?" Amy demanded.

"I'm not entirely certain," Deaton confessed, "but I have an idea."

"Well, what's that?" she pressed.

"It's dangerous," he warned. "If it doesn't work, there's no telling what type of permanent damage might be done to his brain. He might never wake."

"What are the chances of him waking up on his own?" Stiles asked.

"Slim," Deaton replied in that perpetually serene voice of his. "It looks like it's not just wolfsbane they used on him – there are traces of quicksilver and some sort of venom, so far as I can tell. They really did a number on him. His body is so stressed that his cells aren't repairing themselves as they should."

"Quicksilver?" Stiles echoed. "Isn't that just mercury?"

"Very good," said Deaton. "Someone was paying attention in Chemistry class. Yes, that's true – it affects werewolves even more harshly than regular silver. If it gets into a wound, it causes it to fester immediately."

"So what is this treatment you're thinking of?" Scott questioned.

"It might be advantageous to him if we do something to kick start his healing process – we really need his body to go into survival mode."

"Yes? And?"

"Well, bleeding him would do just that, as well as flush his body of some of the toxins it's been exposed to."

"I'm sorry, did you say bleeding him?" Stiles asked in disbelief.

"I know it sounds a little medieval, but it might be our best shot."

"Okay," Amy agreed, quicker than anyone had expected. "Whatever you think will work."

Scott and Stiles remained a bit skeptical, but figured that out of everyone Amy was in the best position to be making decisions on Derek's behalf.

"Help me move him to the kitchen table," Deaton requested.

They did, and soon Derek was lying lifelessly on the wood. Deaton then proceeded to rummage through their cabinets.

"What are you looking for?" questioned Amy.

"Bowls," he answered, swiftly locating them on one of the top shelves. He took out two, and then searched the drawers for a knife. A look of dire concentration on his face, he placed a bowl under each of Derek's hands, which were hanging off the edge of the table. Without further ado, he took the knife and made a frighteningly long incision in both wrists. Blood began gushing from the cuts as soon as Deaton dropped his hands.

Amy, clearly distressed, asked, "How long do you think it'll take?"

Before he could answer, though, Isaac and Lyssa came barging through the door to the apartment. Both were extremely dirty, with leaves and twigs poking out of various parts of their bodies and mud smeared on their faces. They looked exhausted until they saw what was going on.

"What the hell is going on here?!" Isaac exclaimed upon seeing Derek's state.

"Whatever they did put him in a coma," Stiles explained. "Deaton thinks this will jump-start the healing process and get him to snap out of it."

"How sure are you?" asked Lyssa, trepidation soaking each word.

"I'd say around seventy-percent," Deaton replied. "As opposed to being ninety-percent sure he won't wake up by himself."

"Shit," Isaac exhaled.

Already, the bowls were beginning to fill with blood – the white porcelain contrasted starkly with the growing dark, crimson pools. It was amazing how rapidly and easily the very thing that kept him alive could exit his body, Amy thought. As the levels began to reach alarming heights, some of the wounds on Derek's torso began to knit together.

"It's working!" Amy observed, tone suddenly optimistic.

"Yes…" Deaton murmured. He was still very pensive as he surveyed his handiwork. "I'll be interested to hear what they did to him when he wakes up."

As if on cue, Derek sputtered abruptly and his eyes flew open. He tried to sit up and within milliseconds began hacking and gasping for air; Deaton held him down and pressed a dishrag to his wrist, motioning frantically for someone to do the same with the other.

"Someone get me a needle and thread!" he barked.

Isaac was quick to comply, and soon enough – despite Derek's squirming and shouting – Deaton was stitching up the slashes he had inflicted only minutes before.

It took all of them to hold him still while Deaton worked. Amy and Lyssa grabbed his shoulders, while Isaac and Scott got his legs.

A very pale Derek gaped at his shredded forearms with unbridled horror. "What the fuck did you do to me?" he demanded hotly.

"You weren't healing," Deaton answered quickly. "We needed to do something."

"So you slit my wrists?!"

"It worked, didn't it?"

Instead of responding, Derek let out a low growl of dissatisfaction. There were deep, angry lines running on the undersides of his arms, and Deaton's stitching was messy on account of his constant thrashing. He looked a bit like Frankenstein, but at least his veins had stopped spurting blood.

"What did they do to you?" Amy asked once everyone had settled down.

Derek frowned in thought. He opened his mouth to speak, but faltered. Eventually, as if to his own surprise, he breathed, "I-I don't remember…"

Amy shot Deaton an alarmed look, and he swiftly interjected, "It's not uncommon to have some short-term amnesia after coming out of a coma. He should regain his memory quickly, in the next couple of days or so."

"Days?" shot Isaac.

"Maybe less. It's hard to say. Brain injuries are extremely complex, and I'm only a veterinarian. Luckily he's a werewolf, so any damage will be healed eventually. Until then, you'll just have to wait it out."

Author's Note: Please let me know what you think! Also, I just posted a new Supernatural story - it's Dean/OC and it's called Turn the Page. If you watch SPN you should check it out! :)