Scott felt a terrifying heaviness in his head, as if buckets of lead had been poured into his veins.
He tried to move his hands, but the thick ropes binding his wrists to the arms of the leather seat were stiff and tight.
He groaned in pain as he slowly opened his eyes, only to find the world around him shaking violently.
The car’s exterior lights flashed like a fast-moving film strip; trees, lampposts, and then suddenly, the road lights reflected off a large metal sign crossing above them: “Welcome to Mystic Hills – Have a Safe Trip!”
His eyes widened in sheer, unbelievable horror.
“Mystic Hills? No, we’re leaving… we’re leaving the town!”
With immense effort, Scott turned toward the driver’s seat.
The faint glow of the dashboard illuminated his mother’s face, Melissa.
She was driving with a resolute, rock-solid expression, her eyes never wavering from the dark road ahead.
— “Mom?” Scott called out in a raspy voice, trembling with shock, “What the hell is going on?! Why am I tied up?”
Startled by his sudden voice, Melissa gripped the steering wheel tightly but didn’t look back at him.
She replied in an eerie, calm tone: “We are leaving town, honey. Just sleep… we have a long way ahead of us.”
— “Leaving?!” Scott screamed, straining against the ropes with all his might, which left him gasping heavily, “Why?! We can’t do this!”
Melissa slowed the car down slightly, then looked into the rearview mirror, her eyes filled with a painful honesty: “This town is no longer suitable, Scott. It’s a merciless hell. You looked at me today with tears in your eyes and told me you didn’t want to be a killer… that you wished for death because of how much horror and pressure you are living under. I am your mother, and I cannot allow my son to suffer like this.”
— “You can’t just take me away like this!” Scott cried out, heartbroken, “What about school? What about my friends?! Stiles will think I just vanished! What about my job?! And Allison… oh my god, Allison! Her heart will break if I just disappear like this!”
Melissa erupted in a burst of suppressed rage, shouting in a harsh tone Scott had never heard from her before: “Shut up, Scott, and don’t argue with me! Stiles? The friend who abandons you in your darkest times? Allison? A girl you haven’t known for more than a week! The truth, Scott, is that you don’t have many friends… in fact, you have no one but Stiles. As for school and work, there are thousands of schools and hospitals in other states, in cities far safer than this cursed town!”
Scott was stunned; her words felt like a blow harder than Derek’s punches.
He tried to break free again, but his werewolf body—which had given him immense strength just hours ago—now felt an indescribable weakness.
It was a bizarre sensation, as if his blood had turned to water.
“Mom… what did you do to me? My body… I can’t move…”
Melissa replied with ice-cold detachment: “I injected you with a medical sedative strong enough to paralyze an African elephant. Don’t try to break free; it won’t do any good. Just sleep, my son… by tomorrow morning, we’ll be in another state.”
— “I don’t want to!” Scott screamed, tears streaming down his face and mixing with sweat, “Please, I can’t leave them like this! I’ll kill myself if you do!”
— “You don’t have a choice,” Melissa said, her voice beginning to crack despite her sternness.
“We are leaving and we are never coming back. There are billions of girls in the world, and many far more beautiful than Allison. Life is vast, Scott, you don’t have to bind yourself to this deadly place.”
Scott began to shake, his muffled sobs filling the car.
“Mom… please, let’s just go back home. Everything will be fine, just let’s go back…”
Melissa’s hands trembled on the wheel, and a single tear appeared on her cheek, but she gripped the steering wheel even tighter, keeping her eyes fixed on the dark road.
She fell into absolute silence and kept driving fast.
As the car devoured the dark road with wild speed, the heavy silence broken only by the sound of Scott’s muffled sobbing, the vehicle veered around a sharp turn flanked by dense pine trees.
Suddenly, the winter dampness vanished, replaced by an immediate sense of mortal peril.
From the heart of the pitch-black darkness, within the range of the car’s powerful headlights, a massive, sudden “thing” blocked the exact center of the road.
Melissa’s heart seized, and her eyes widened in genuine horror as she saw the hulking entity standing firmly on its hind legs, towering at over two and a half meters.
This was no ordinary wild animal; it was a living nightmare.
Its body was covered in thick, tattered black fur, with bulging muscles that rivaled stone in strength, and a terrifying wolf’s head breathing out plumes of hot condensation into the cold night air.
But the most terrifying detail, the one that froze Melissa’s blood, was the pair of eyes glowing in the dark with a crimson hue—the color of fresh blood.
It was the Alpha.
— “Mom! Look out!” Scott screamed with all his remaining strength, trying to lunge forward despite the ropes and the drug paralyzing his limbs.
Melissa slammed her foot down on the brakes with all her might.
The tires let out a sharp, terrifying screech as they burned against the asphalt, and the rear of the car fishtailed violently left and right.
Control was completely lost, and time seemed to slow down.
The Alpha stood his ground without blinking, watching the iron frame of the car hurtle toward him at breakneck speed, his red eyes reflecting the headlights with a deadly coolness, as if defying the human machine to budge him.
The Alpha extended his massive hand, tipped with long, razor-sharp claws, and raised it slowly into the air, bracing for the impact as the car closed the distance in a fraction of a second, screams tearing through the interior of the vehicle right before the inevitable crash.
There was no sound of tearing metal.
Before the front of the car could touch the dark fur of his body, the Alpha extended his massive arms like an unyielding dam and slammed his palms down onto the hood.
The iron frame shook violently, and the car ground to a complete, dead halt, as if it had struck a mountain.
Melissa’s breath caught as the beast stood firm, looking slowly through the windshield at the terrified Scott and Melissa.
His red eyes gleamed with the radiance of death.
— “Mom! Untie the ropes! Please, untie me now!” Scott screamed frantically, thrashing in his seat, desperately trying to tear the thick ropes that bound his drug-crippled body.
But Melissa’s hands were shaking over the steering wheel, her mind entirely paralyzed by the horror of the scene.
Slowly, as if compelled by a force she couldn’t resist, she opened the car door and stepped out onto the cold asphalt.
— “Mom! Don’t go out! Get back inside! Don’t leave me here!” Scott’s frantic, panic-stricken screams echoed from behind the glass.
Melissa took shaky steps until she stood face-to-face with the massive entity that had ruined her son’s life and turned his innocence into a nightmare.
With every step she drew closer, the fear in her eyes vanished, replaced by a raging fury and a motherly instinct willing to die.
— “It’s you… isn’t it?” Melissa said, her voice trembling but carrying an absolute tone of accusation.
“You are the monster that dragged my son into all this supernatural chaos?!”
A mocking smirk played across the Alpha’s jaws, revealing rows of sharp, shadow-stained fangs, and he said in a deep, rumbling voice: “In the flesh.”
— “What do you want from Scott?!” Melissa exploded into a scream, tears of rage burning her eyes.
“Why are you torturing him? Why are you turning him into a freak like you?!”
The Alpha tilted his massive head coldly and replied: “Your son has only himself to blame, woman. Instead of staying in his house like any sensible boy, he chose to wander the dark woods in the middle of the night looking for dead bodies. What teenager in their right mind does that? He crossed my path by chance… so I bit him.”
Melissa recoiled a step from the weight of his words, but she composed herself and shouted again: “And what do you want from him now?! Why won’t you just let us leave this cursed town and leave us alone?!”
Suddenly, the monster’s mockery turned into a furious roar that shook the leaves of the trees lining the road: “Because he is mine! Scott belongs to me… he is part of my pack!”
— “My son belongs to no one!” Melissa screamed with all her might, taking a defiant step toward him: “Get away from him, or I swear to Almighty God I will destroy you!”
The Alpha erupted into a booming, mocking laugh—a savage laugh that stripped her words of any power.
In the blink of an eye, his massive hand shot out like a viper and clamped around Melissa’s throat, lifting her off the ground slowly, as if she weighed nothing at all.
Melissa began to choke, her legs dangling in the air.
In that moment, inside the car, something snapped deep within Scott.
The explosive rage of seeing his mother die before his eyes shattered the sedative’s grip; his eyes flared with a glowing, vibrant yellow, and with a massive, savage roar, he ripped through the thick ropes as if they were cotton threads.
He lunged out of the car door, leaping into the air with the full extent of his werewolf strength toward the Alpha.
But the gap in power was vast.
The Alpha caught Scott’s body mid-air with his other hand with absolute ease, lifting him high before slamming him brutally against the hard asphalt.
Before Scott could even try to stand, the Alpha drew a single sharp claw across Scott’s chest, slicing it open in a long, horrific gash that bled profusely.
— “Aaaaah!” Scott screamed in agonizing pain, writhing on the asphalt.
— “Scott!” The cry tore from Melissa’s throat, choked and laced with terror as she struggled to break free, but the monster’s grip only tightened around her windpipe. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
The Alpha raised his massive foot and stomped down on Scott’s bleeding chest, pressing with his immense weight to keep him pinned.
Looking down at him coldly, he said: “This is because you disobeyed me… when I ordered you to kill Mr. Myers on the bus, you chose to refuse. Betas do not disobey their Alpha, Scott. That is rule number one in the pack… never forget it.”
Scott was trembling beneath his foot, blood pouring from his chest and the sedative still weighing heavily on his limbs.
He looked at his mother, who was beginning to lose consciousness, and in a cracked, defeated voice, he whispered: “Please… let my mother go…”
The Alpha suddenly loosened his grip, letting Melissa drop to the ground near Scott, coughing violently and gasping for air.
The beast took a step back, removing his foot from the boy’s chest, and said in a tone carrying a dark appreciation: “You have a strong and brave mother, Scott.”
He lowered his massive frame to the ground, extending his claws to grip Melissa’s face, forcing her to look at him.
He scrutinized her features closely, his red eyes consuming her face: “Hmm… and very beautiful too. You truly are a lucky boy… many men would sacrifice a lot to live with such beauty.”
With the last word, the Alpha scraped the tip of his claw gently across Melissa’s cheek, leaving a thin trail of blood.
The monster wiped the droplet of blood with his claw and licked it off coldly.
Scott’s body jolted violently as he tried to get up, but his severe injury and the lingering effects of the drug made him collapse back to the ground, groaning helplessly.
Despite the pain and the blood running down her face, Melissa did not cry.
Instead, she winced silently and raised her head to stare with rock-hard defiance directly into the monster’s red eyes, without blinking.
A flash of surprise was visible on the Alpha’s face for a second at her audacity, then he turned his gaze back to the prone Scott and said: “You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to your dear mother… would you?”
Scott gritted his teeth so hard they nearly shattered, and said in a voice filled with oppression: “Don’t… she’s innocent… don’t touch her.”
The Alpha released Melissa’s face and stood up slowly to his full, terrifying height, blotting out the moonlight.
He said in a deep voice portending ruin: “Tomorrow… a violent game will take place between our town’s team and Mercerto. Play it, and await my order there. Tomorrow will be the true test of your loyalty to me… do not disappoint me, or else…”
The monster did not finish his threat, but his deadly, fixed gaze toward Melissa was enough to make the fate awaiting them crystal clear.
Before Scott could process the words or utter a single syllable, the Alpha moved with supernatural, blurry speed, vanishing into the darkness in the blink of an eye, as if he had never been there at all.
The deadly silence of the night settled over the road once more.
With trembling limbs, Melissa crawled on her knees toward her injured son, pulling his head tightly against her chest, bursting into a bitter, hysterical sob.
Meanwhile, Scott closed his eyes lines with exhaustion, realizing that escaping “Mystic Hills” had become impossible.
Stiles woke up in his bed with a jolt of pain from the headache tearing through his skull, while a deep, heavy sigh escaped him, feeling like a mountain weighing down on his chest.
He rubbed his exhausted eyes and stared at the ceiling of his room, immediately assaulted by images of that fateful night two days ago; Carter’s hysterical screaming, Detective Lee’s stern composure, the dried blood on the alley pavement, and the panic that painted Scott’s eyes when Stiles’s fist collided with his jaw, and then his nose.
A lump formed in his throat.
He didn’t regret punching him as much as he regretted that things between them had reached this level of fracturing and estrangement.
He forced his exhausted body up and walked slowly to the bathroom.
Grabbing his toothbrush, he stood before the mirror, staring at the dark circles under his eyes.
As he moved the brush with mechanical routine, his mind was somewhere else entirely… he was drowning in the details of that shocking conversation he remembered overhearing in full two days ago between Stefan and Scott behind the school building—a conversation he never told Scott he knew about after carefully tailing them.
The reel of words spun in his head like a tape recorder that wouldn’t stop:
> “Scott, look at me. Please, tell me the truth… tell me you didn’t cause that chaos inside the bus.”
> “I don’t know! Okay! Is that what you want to hear? I don’t know if it was me or the monster inside me…”
>
Stiles spat out the toothpaste and rinsed his mouth with water as he recalled the broken tone in Scott’s voice, but his anger flared up again as he remembered the rest of the dialogue.
Stefan had spoken of a “werecoyote” with dark sky-blue eyes that had killed before and was living in the town, and he spoke of the “Alpha” who made Scott.
“A werecoyote?” Stiles muttered with bitter irony as he wiped his mouth with a towel.
“As if one wolf wasn’t enough to ruin our lives, now we have a whole zoo of freaks.”
But the part that made Stiles’s skin crawl during that conversation, the part that was echoing in his mind now and keeping him from sleeping, was Stefan’s talk about Derek Hale.
> “Laura Hale… Derek Hale’s older sister… he killed her to steal the ‘Alpha spark’ from her. When a Beta or an Omega kills an Alpha, they take their power… he wanted to become stronger, he wanted power.”
>
Stiles gripped the edge of the sink so hard his knuckles turned white.
All the effort he had exerted, all the risks he had taken with Scott to stop Derek and lock him in jail, had gone to waste because the forensic report claimed it was a “wild animal attack.” Worse still, Stefan had sent Scott walking right into the arms of that sadistic butcher who killed his own sister, just because he was his “Alpha,” under the pretext that he was obligated to teach and protect him!
> “You are part of his pack, you are his Beta…”
>
Stefan’s words echoed like a nightmare in Stiles’s consciousness.
He remembered Stefan’s final promise to Scott that he had locked his brother Damon with vervain in an underground dungeon, never to see the light of day.
“Does that immortal think we’re stupid?” Stiles stared at his reflection in the mirror, his eyes narrowing with a mix of helplessness and irritation.
“Damon will get out sooner or later, and Derek Hale is loose now and he’s a professional killer, and Scott thinks this lunatic is going to be his spiritual guide!”
Stiles walked out of the bathroom, rubbing the back of his neck with his usual anxiety.
He felt a freezing cold wrapping around his heart.
He had left him alone in the alley two days ago, telling him he wouldn’t be a part of his chaos anymore to protect himself and his family.
He had been serious; his honest father didn’t deserve to die because of a teenager who couldn’t control his claws.
But now, as he remembered that bond, the “anchor,” and the fact that his childhood friend was officially the “Beta” to a sadistic killer… he felt the weight of the old responsibility, and that the dark threads of Mystic Hills were beginning to wrap around all their necks, whether he liked it or not.
Stiles threw the towel onto the bed in frustration and sat on the edge, shaking his leg in peak nervousness.
To hell with the decision to stay away!
To hell with the survival instinct!
How could he sit back and watch while his childhood friend was slowly turning into a puppet in the hands of a werewolf who killed his sister, and a whole town stood on the brink of destruction?
Scott is an idiot, yes, stupid, and driven by his emotions, but he’s still Scott.
“Alright… screw school today,” Stiles muttered as he quickly grabbed his shirt and put it on.
He would skip school; a few extra absences wouldn’t hurt him.
Right now, it was about survival, not attendance percentages.
He picked up the keys to his blue Jeep, his mind flashing back to the night before—a night he spent staring at his laptop screen until dawn, searching dark forums and abandoned websites for any thread that could explain this madness.
He suddenly remembered that Latin website that sold old books, and the click that led him to a title etched into his memory: *Monstrorum Liber* – “The Book of Monsters.”
According to the site, an old, rare copy of this book was sitting somewhere among the forgotten shelves of the town’s public library, donated by a late historian.
If there was any place that held answers about the “Alpha,” the “Beta,” the “werecoyote,” and methods of control and memory, it was that cursed book.
Twenty minutes later, Stiles pushed open the heavy glass door of the public library.
The atmosphere inside was deathly quiet, smelling of old paper and dust.
He bypassed the elderly librarian who was dozing off and headed straight for the back section—the section for local history, rare books, and ancient religious texts.
He began running his trembling fingers over the spines of the books, moving between Latin titles and worn leather volumes.
There, in a dark corner of the bottom shelf, lay a massive volume with a thick black leather cover, embossed with faded, peeling golden letters: *Monstrorum Liber*.
“Found you!” Stiles whispered, picking it up quickly like someone who had unearthed a treasure, dust from over the years flying off it.
He pulled it out and headed to the nearest secluded wooden table in the furthest corner, sitting down to open it eagerly.
Before him appeared terrifying drawings of strange creatures and writings in ancient languages.
— “A heavy book… for an even heavier subject, isn’t it?”
The voice came suddenly from behind him, cold, calm, and carrying a tone that made the hairs on the back of Stiles’s neck stand up in terror.
Stiles bolted upright in his seat, slamming the book shut with a loud thud that echoed through the room.
He turned around to find a girl standing two steps away from him.
She was slender, with skin as pale as snow, dark hair cascading over her shoulders, and wide eyes that gleamed with a sharp, suspicious intelligence… she stirred a strange shudder inside him that he couldn’t explain, an instinctive feeling telling him she did not belong in this quiet place.
Stiles swallowed hard, trying to retrieve his sarcastic facade and usual stuttering:
— “Oh! Damn… you scared me! I mean… yeah, books… books are good for building muscle if they’re heavy, huh? I’m… I’m Stiles.”
The girl didn’t smile.
Instead, she took an extra step forward, her eyes locked onto the black leather cover of the book.
She spoke in a low voice, as if reading his mind:
— “I’m Anna. And I didn’t see you at school today, Stiles… Is ancient history more fun than chemistry class?”
Stiles’s body stiffened.
How did she know he was in her school?
And why was she watching him?
He pressed his hand against the book and said, trying to evade:
— “The lungs need some fresh oxygen away from school labs. Anyway, this is just… an old book, just nonsense and myths from the Middle Ages.”
Anna tilted her head slightly, a mysterious, precise, and cold smile gracing her lips.
She pointed her finger toward the faded golden letters and said meaningfully:
— “Monstrorum Liber… The Book of Monsters. I don’t think it’s nonsense, Stiles. In a town like ours, myths sometimes become reality walking the streets… and some monsters wear very familiar faces.”
Stiles felt a chill run through his limbs.
Her gaze was not that of an ordinary, curious girl.
She looked as though she knew… knew a great deal.
He looked at her with wide eyes, narrowing his stance as he said in a low voice:
— “What exactly do you mean, Anna? And what is your connection to this book?”
Suddenly, Anna burst out laughing, that cold look vanishing from her eyes to be replaced by the features of an ordinary teenage girl.
She tapped the table lightly and said:
— “Oh my god, Stiles! You should have seen the look on your face! You looked like you’d seen a ghost, I’m just teasing you!”
Stiles relaxed his tense shoulders, letting out a long sigh of relief that nearly emptied all the air from his lungs.
He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and muttered, annoyed:
— “Damn you… seriously, damn you! My heart was about to stop!”
Then he knitted his brows in confusion and looked at her, questioning:
— “But wait a minute… how did you know I skipped school today then? Were you actually watching me?”
Anna laughed again, shaking her head helplessly:
— “Watching you? Why on earth would I do that? I knew you were absent because we share almost all our classes, genius! But of course, you’ve never noticed me. And by the way… I’m skipping today too, just like you! Which means we are seatmates, you idiot!”
Stiles felt incredibly stupid.
The tension left his body completely as he joined her in a light laugh that brought some warmth back into the space.
The barriers between them dissolved, and Anna pulled up a chair to sit close to him at the table.
She asked curiously, looking at the massive volume:
— “So… why are you reading this book specifically? I’m pretty sure it’s written in Latin.”
Stiles frowned, surprised, and said:
— “Latin?”
He pulled the book toward the middle and opened it slowly, peering closely at the lines written in an ancient, complex cursive handwriting.
He sighed in frustration, pressing his temples, and swore bitterly:
— “Damn it! I know a few Latin words and symbols from the internet, but not enough to read a whole book in it! Translating this mess on my own will take weeks, and I don’t have that kind of time!”
Anna turned to him and shrugged simply:
— “I know Latin.”
Stiles’s eyes widened in shock, and he looked at her in disbelief:
— “Really?! You can read it and understand these riddles?”
She nodded, saying:
— “Yes, my mother was an archaeologist and mastered many ancient and dead languages. I learned a few things from her and inherited her passion.”
Stiles was completely awestruck, sitting up straight with enthusiasm:
— “Wow! That’s amazing! Do you live with your mother here now? I’d really love to meet her, maybe learn a thing or two that could help with my damn research!”
Suddenly, silence fell.
The liveliness vanished from Anna’s face, and her smile completely disappeared as she fixed her gaze on the dark wood of the table with a profound sadness that made Stiles’s heart sink.
He looked at her with confusion and regret, asking in a soft tone:
— “What’s wrong? Did I say something wrong?”
Anna replied in a cracked voice, choked with grief:
— “My mother… died in a big fire five years ago.”
Stiles felt as if someone had slapped him across the face.
A suffocating sense of guilt and foolishness washed over him, and he began to stammer rapidly, rubbing his hands anxiously:
— “I… I’m so sorry! I really didn’t mean to, I’m stupid and impulsive, my deepest apologies, Anna…”
She cut through his nervousness with a sad smile, looking up at him and saying:
— “It’s okay, Stiles, don’t blame yourself. A long time has passed since then.”
Stiles fell silent, unable to find the right words of comfort.
After all, wounds of loss are not healed by passing words… for he, too, had lost his mother when he was only eight.