It feels like the darkness might drown her, like falling into the center of the ocean. Black abyss swallowing her completely, but there is one thing that is much too clear. It's him and she knows it. Peter Hale. Her nightmare, and the still withholding claim of her heart. Lydia was laying on the bed in the attic, trying to nap. Peace however would not find her, instead chaos did.

"You can't hide from me little witch," his voice is like thick syrup running velvet through the air. It's a sickly kind of seduction. He knows just how to call to her. "You are mine…" She shakes her head, but her whole body doesn't feel like her own. There is nothing she can do to fight it.

She can see herself moving, lifting from the bed, but it's like watching a scene from a movie, one that goes in slow motion with eerie music playing faintly in the background. Her body is moving down the stairs, into the atrium, and gathering the veil of purple potion made for Derek. The action however is not her own. "If you aren't going to do it on your own, then I'm going to have to do it for you," he coos and though it's her voice it's almost unrecognizable to her.

All she can do is watch, even when she wants to scream to fight. Propelled forward, they move from the house. In the hall way mirror she catches a reflection of herself. She is covered in a fine veil of sweat, her warm red ringlets clinging to her skin where ever it is exposed, but that isn't the worst of it. Her eyes, they don't look hollow like she might have imagined. Instead there is a raw darkness, like nothing she has seen reflected back at her before.

Panic boils in her gut as he smirks. "We need to give that niece of mine a visit."

— —

Each breath pulls at Stiles' ragged lungs. The dull burn has his chest aching and still runs down the wooded trail towards their home. While that path is a clear one, his mind is completely chaotic. Bouncing from one thought to another. 'You can't do this,' he thinks, 'not again.' Derek's face fills his mind all the same. It's much too late to fight it. Hot tears burn the back of his eyes.

The heavy thud of his feet stop short. He tries to catch his breath chasing his fingers over his lips. Echoes of touch still reverberating over his skin. His chest feels hollow. 'It's like losing a piece of yourself,' some of the last words his mother ever spoke, ones he was suppose to hear. He had thought about it when he lost Danny. He had loved him there is no question, otherwise he would have never had to bury him. Yet still he hadn't understood the pain his mother felt, the pain that had killed her. His father had been her everything, her soul mate. He knows what he has found without question but that by no means guarantees safety. There is no neon sign showing him what to do to hold onto what he has, how to keep the past from repeating itself.

Then there is Lydia. How many times had she said she found her soul mate in Peter? Was she right? What if that is what it really was, something that consumed you in darkness, devoured your mind? Yet he was gone, and she still stood. The idea of living on without him hadn't killed her. Stiles pinches his eyes closed tight. None of this made sense. A muddled cloudiness twisted through his mind.

Just as he is falling into the deepest pits of his own mind, he felt her. 'Stiles!' Lydia's voice echoed in his mind. His eyes flashed open. Her voice is fleeting and rushed 'He's back, find me!' It comes out in a scream, one within the walls of his mind, one he can't escape. 'HURRY!'

Panic takes over and he starts to run again. His weariness is forgotten for the drumming of his feet, matching the too rapid beat of his heart. He doesn't think about where he is going, but lets his body be a dowsing rod for his twin. The world around him is but a blur. Hazy green and dull blue, nothing that pulled his notice. His pace slows just slightly as he felt himself draw closer. Eager as he might be to find her, he is not a fool. Rushing in without even knowing where he is rushing into is the best way to lose his sister once and for all.

Much to his surprise, the surroundings are familiar. A thin strip of rooms tied to a run down hotel. This is where he found Cora a few days before, when they had spoken after Derek's first arrival at the manor. Why would Lydia be here? He takes another step forward. Is Cora involved? Two more long strides. He reaches his hand out and hears a cry rip through the air. An Alpha's howl, there is no mistaking it. The weather worn door is just slightly ajar and the scene before him is reveled. The well manicured nails on his twin's hand are pushed deep in Cora's forearm. Thin lines of blood run down where they are still connected and into a reeking concoction. Peter's ethereal form hovers over the two girls. Lydia slumps slightly, wavering from the use of power.

Stiles doesn't waste a second. He lurches forward, though unsure if he plans to go to Lydia or attack Peter. The ghost wolf smirks, and waves his hand. Simultaneously, Lydia's arm strikes out using her magic to knock her brother to the ground despite his forward movement. He crashes, pain running a fast course through his body. From the new vantage point he looks up in horror.

It's too late…..

— —

It was Cora's howl that roused him. He had hardly had time enough to realize that Stiles had left while he slept, though certainly not enough to dwell on it. He ran on all fours, his wolf leading the way. He can smell the magic before he is inside. It burns his nose, makes him want to expel it from his senses. Not that he has much experience with it but the sensation is hard to forget.

The door is wide open and as he comes in view his eyes are gifted with more than he could have imagined. His sister lay bleeding from her arm and slumped together with the redhead witch, Stiles doesn't fair much better as he sits battered against the wall beside them, and hovering in the air is the devil himself, his uncle Peter. The disturbing familiar form is transparent but in a matter of seconds Peter solidifies to a corporal form.

Derek breathlessly stares at what both looks and smells like a corpse. It causes him pause, frozen in the door way. Peter smirks with his head tilted to the side. The hollows of his cheeks caught in the light of the dirty window. The grotesque silhouette edges towards him. Derek can see little of the wolf he had once known, though even that man wasn't particularly pleasant this is something far worse.

"Wolf got your tongue?" he asks, one eyebrow raised in humor of his own joke. Derek bares his teeth at the shell of a man. He glances over toward Stiles who is crawling across the floor away from Peter and towards the girls. He uses his body like a shield covering them both. Neither look well. Something needs to be done.

Derek crouches, claws extended and fangs out. A low guttural noise escapes his lips. He leans out into his gate taking a swipe at Peter. "Oh now! You're going to attack your family?" he says with a half laugh, stepping just out of the reach of his nephew's claws.

"You are NOT my family!" his voice is rough, hardly human "You're not even alive?" He moves forward again this time making a connection with Peter, breaking the sickly colored skin. A dirty near black blood oozed to the surface.

"I wasn't but I am again," he jerks his arm away from Derek, minimizing the damage. "Unlike our dear Laura." He steps to the side, almost in a dance, evading Derek's advances.

Where Peter is grace, Derek is brute force. "Don't you dare talk about her!" He throws a strike, landing a hit in Peter's abdomen stilting his breath. "You killed her," the sentence is almost broken, wavering in pitch.

"What makes you think I would do that?" he is still coyly keeping his tone even, as though they are trading blows. Peter hardly puts effort into his swings, like he is toying with Derek, playing a game.

"Power," Derek snaps, there is a disdain burning below his skin. After all how could someone do that? Kill what little family they had left.

"And I'm not the one with the Alpha status now am I," he takes a weighted step forward, claws digging into Derek's shoulder. "Who's to say it wasn't sweet innocent Cora?"

Derek snarls, part in pain but mostly because he has had enough. "No!" and he lunges forward struggling more intensely with his uncle.

"Well she is the one that has stood to gain from Laura's death now isn't she?" he is no longer actively fighting but merely defending Derek's blows. "Maybe we should take it from her?"

Derek slams forward, knocking Peter's back against the closest wall. There is a loud huff as all the air expels from Peter's lungs. "You're not going to touch her," the intensity pools in his limbs, quivering as he holds his uncle inches off the ground. "She's all I have left!" He raises his hand, latching on to Peter's neck and leaving bloody puncture wounds gaping in his throat. Still bleeding the same black blood, slowly falling down his corpse like skin.

"Okay, okay," he crocks "But that doesn't mean I killed Laura now does it." Derek stares into his chilling eyes. They still hold that hollow blue color, though not as intense as it had been in life. The very color that disproves his innocence, because in fact it shows the innocence he has taken.

"You're a killer," he nearly whispers, and in the same moment a wicked smirk paints Peter's lips.

"So are you," he says, his claws embedding in the space underneath Derek's ribs. The beta howls. He forgot to hold him down, lulled into false security when the other wolf hadn't fought. He numbly was aware of his own grip loosening and Peter gaining leverage, taking him to the ground. He tries to fight but only manages to curl his body into an almost fetal position. Peter leans far forward whispering where only Derek can here. "Is this the part where you tell me 'over your dead body'," he cuts his eyes over catching Derek's gaze "Because that can be arranged." Not a threat, not exactly, but the intention is clear. What ever piece of humanity might have been left inside after the fire is completely gone now.

Derek rears back all the force he can, concentrating his power in his legs and forces them out. Peter flies backward, claws jerking from Derek's chest. He shifts his weight, struggling to get up, to follow even in his weakened state. He will fight until there is nothing left inside him.

"Wait!" A voice rings out, Derek's head snaps to the source. Stiles kneels in front of the girls. He looks straight at Derek. "Stay back." Peter is just regaining his senses, clamoring to his feet. Any chance Derek had to take him off guard was ruined by the destruction. Stiles however, pulls back his arm and throws one of the veils that had been in a pile by them from Lydia's spell.

The moment the potion hits Peter it explores, consuming him in a lightening fast burst of flames. Just as quick the blaze dies. "NOW!" Derek strikes the moment the words are out of Stiles' lips, slashing Peter's throat.

There is a moment of shock in the undead man's eyes, before the light fades completely and he crashes to the ground in a heap of charred ash.