Unfortunately for Tristan, Satomi chose the worst time to be away from the country right when a group, no, a pack of Alphas decided to take residence in Beacon Hills.
According to Elias, she was out visiting some old supernatural communities, which meant she could be anywhere from the neighboring countries to another continent entirely.
As long as she got Elias' message, she could be back in the next few days or in a week's time so all Tristan and Malia could do was wait, especially when Elias couldn't tell them anything and told them to wait for Satomi's return.
When Tristan had told him what he had felt moments before they heard Derek's howl, the elderly man could only loosely attribute it to the same thing an animal felt in the event of a natural disaster but given that no one else felt it, or as acutely as Tristan did, he theorized that it could be something else but closely related. That was all he could say given how little anyone knew about vampires.
"Thinking it's a bad time for Allison to be gone on holidays?" Malia had asked after their visit to Elias and Tristan had nodded.
Given how close they were and Allison's Hunter lineage, he would have asked to see if she could dig up something from their archives. Unfortunately, she and her mother were gone for the holidays and would be back in possibly a week's time.
And Tristan had no reason for going up to Chris Argent and seeing if he knew anything.
They might have been cool with each other a while ago but all that changed after that day at the underground bunker.
Since there was nothing they could do until Satomi came back, and with Derek and his remaining pack members focused on finding Erica, Malia and Tristan took the day off(?) with the former dragging the latter to the clothing store to get some new clothes.
The last they came was at the beginning of the year and right now it is currently the last week of June. Due time for a wardrobe update, at least according to Malia.
Just like always, she went ahead picking up clothes for him, requiring little to none of his input, while he just relaxed and let her have her fun.
As they had literal boxes of clothes they've only worn once or never at all, Malia settled for picking only a few articles of plain colored clothes that Tristan very much preferred to the more fashionable ones.
To him, true fashion was quality and simplicity. The same with Malia, but she preferred a dash or couple dashes of 'fashion' to them. Not to Lydia's level, but definitely above Allison's.
They spent approximately 45 minutes there where Malia spent ninety percent of the time going through options than actually buying them.
"You've been spacing out a lot recently. Is whatever you felt that night still getting to you?" Malia asked her mate when she met his vacant eyes after checking out.
Tristan shook his head and stood up to take one of the bags from her. "Not that."
"Oh. So you're just retreating back into your thoughts to swim in them? That's something you don't do nowadays." Two words from Tristan and she immediately knew what he was doing.
"Why don't we eat out today instead of just going back? Allison once showed me this place with great gelato ice-cream." She suggested and happily drove them towards the location despite him not answering.
The place was cozy enough and had few people inside, Tristan's type of atmosphere. The snacks and ice cream they made were great, especially the ice cream and it became even better when Malia discreetly mixed in a whole handful of her blood in Tristan's portion, making it one of the greatest desserts the vampire has ever tasted.
Half an hour passed, spent resting and slowly relishing the tasty gelato ice-cream and they were ready to leave.
Making their way to their car, their attention was drawn to revving of two loud motorcycles, the type that Tristan very much hated, parked a few spots from their car.
The cause of the revving noise were two boys, identical twins based on their looks and matching body stature.
The twins, dressed in matching black leather, looking to be in their late teens or early twenties, looked up at them and instead of keeping the loud sounds down, smirked and fired it up even more before driving away while laughing.
"50% off bastards." Malia cursed and flipped a finger in the direction they drove in. "Come on, let's go."
Tristan said nothing and just silently entered the car and rested his head backwards. "Why do you think the Alpha pack wants Derek into their pack? I doubt they are recruiting just for the sake of it." He suddenly asked, taking Malia who was driving by surprise.
"How would I know? Instead of that, you should be asking why their Alpha suddenly decided to recruit Alphas into his pack instead of siring betas. He must have had them at some point, right?"
As far as she was concerned, nothing made sense when the topic revolved around the Alpha pack and their Alpha.
"Hmm. I guess we'll never know."
....
The grinding sound of something heavy being moved echoed loudly in the quiet space that it swallowed any other sounds being emitted.
The grinding came to a loud stop as it pushed fully open by a huge figure with a heavy muscular frame.
The source of the grinding - a multiple inches thick vault of an old bank - and inside the vault were female figures cuddled in a corner.
"What do you want from us, we never did anything to you!" Erica's familiar voice shouted as she saw a group of five figures but she quickly quieted down as one of them, the woman in the group, glared at her into submission with her red eyes.
The man leading the group of Alphas chuckled weakly as he took a step into the vault, making the two girls cuddle into each other in apparent fear. "Haha. What do I want from you indeed? Unfortunately, it is not I who wants something from you per se but your Alpha who does, at least he will come to with a little persuasion from me."
"… P-please, we didn't do a-anything." Erica choked out between terrified sobs, her current disheveled and frightened face drawing no pity to her.
Hearing her, the man, the pack's Alpha, walked closer to her while also drawing a peculiar observation to Erica and the other girl's eyes as they finally saw him fully.
An elderly well built man in his early fifties with short neatly trimmed dark blonde hair - a picture perfect older gentleman - with a retractable walking stick in his left hand to aid his apparent blindness.
Deucalion, the Alpha of Alphas.
"Oh my dear, of course you did nothing because there is nothing you can do. A betas purpose is elevating their Alpha to a higher height and it is the Alpha's job to make them fulfill that purpose, so rest assured as there is nothing you need to do."
He spoke slowly and eloquently that every syllable he said were clearly heard as he directed his gaze from Erica to the girl beside her.
"Worry not. Derek Hale will come around. He has no choice but to." Were his last words before walking out of the vault before it was pushed closed by the physically biggest Alpha amongst the group.
"Won't it be better to just kill them? Or are we really waiting for Derek to find and rescue them?" The Alpha who closed the vault, Ennis, asked.
"Ennis is right, Deucalion. Killing one will serve as motivation and enough persuasion to start weighing his choices." Said Kali, the sole woman of the group. Both were the same couple that met Allison when she was testing out a bow.
Deucalion smiled faintly while waving his fingers in a disapproving fashion. "Not yet. For now we react to how he acts. His next action will tell us everything we need to know about him as an Alpha. And besides, he isn't the main reason we came back here, especially after Gerard's death."
"We met the other one when we went out." One of the youngest duo in the pack, one of the twins Tristan and Malia saw earlier in the day, spoke. "All I can tell is that he felt weird. Definitely not a werewolf."
Deucalion didn't say anything in reply to that but gave a little warning instead. "We'll leave Satomi's little leech for now until we get the other one. Once we do, even someone as astute as Satomi will have to make her choice. Though I hope it never comes to that."
"People like me and Satomi, we are very rare. And I would hate to reduce that number even more."
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