Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
"…Hmm?" Tristan woke up to the systematic sound of a dripping faucet and groggily pushed himself off his bed to get started with the day.
Test day; another bane of his teenage life. Except…
"The hell is this?"
Blood. Everywhere.
He looked at the bed behind him and all it was was an elevated platform of flowing blood. Everywhere he turned to look at was a waterfall of blood.
Out of curiosity, he touched the bed of blood and licked his finger, looking genuinely confused about everything.
For some reason, the sea of blood around him did nothing to tickle his hunger. Not even a tingle of his tongue.
It looked like blood. It tasted like blood. His instincts told him it was blood, but for some reason it just didn't incite any hunger in him to drink from it.
Knowing nothing and having no idea on what to do, he started walking forward with his path of direction being where the sea of blood seems to be flowing to.
All he could hear was the occasional dripping sound of blood, yet he couldn't figure out where the dripping sound was coming from.
For some inexplicable reason, as he continued walking, the blood started flowing faster and his heartbeat banged against his chest as if warning of a malicious forebode.
"… Malia?... Grandma? Brett!?" He didn't know when he broke off into a sprint and started yelling out names that his hearing couldn't even pick up due to the resounding clash of waves that swept away every other sound, except the constantly dripping sound that was now discordant as akin to the loud chime of a bell.
The closer he got, the more his screams increased… but he heard none of it.
...
"Gasp!" His eyes shot open in fright and his first instinct, being to escape out of whatever hellish nightmare that was, kicked in and he lashed out at the smallest sense of threat.
He heard things crashing but all his eyes seemed to see was waterfall of red clouding his eyes and when he about to lash out again just for the slight reprieve of being able to take another measured breath of air, the red clouding his eyes started receding and he could now hear and see the little sounds and specks of light of his environment.
Unfortunately, he wasn't given the joy of being finally awake before something tackled him to the ground. Before he could react, a searing pain tore through his brain that forcefully and excruciatingly brought him back to reality.
Huff! Huff! Huff!
"Tristan! Look at me!" Forgetting the pain from his broken shoulders, Tristan's focus was entirely on the person who was pressing him to the ground.
"*Huff… Huff*… Brett…?"
"Look at me. Look at me!... You're okay. You're okay." Brett said calmly as they locked eyes with each other until Tristan slowly nodded.
"Malia.. Where's Malia?" He asked frantically.
"Ugh, you bastard. Did you have to hit me that hard?" Malia's voice sounded out in pained groans as she stood up holding her bleeding head.
Seeing Malia, Tristan finally realized the bloodied state of everyone in the room, even him.
There were splashes of blood all over the bed, walls and ceiling. Brett had three long claw marks running down his arm and a thick long gash on his back while Malia had a bleeding head and a busted shoulder.
Tristan's wounds and broken shoulders quickly healed up as his breathing got in order unlike Brett's and Malia's.
Just the state they were in told Tristan everything that had happened but he asked nonetheless with a regretful voice and a hand over his face. "What happened?"
Before he could get any reply, Tristan found himself being yanked up by Malia who didn't give him the time to speak out any sort of apology and suckered punch him straight in the face.
"Argh. I guess I fully deserved that."
"You guess?" Malia angrily glared at him, an expression that was rarely ever directed at Tristan, which made him feel even worse for it.
"… You tried ripping your heart out."
Not just Tristan, even Brett was stunned. Unlike Malia who woke up due to Tristan's erratic movement and labored breaths as he slept, Brett had hurried over after hearing Malia's shouting at Tristan and the loud crashing sounds that followed.
"What?" Was the only thing Tristan could say.
"You tried to rip out your fucking heart out, Tristan! How the hell else am I supposed to put it, huh?" She shouted angrily at Tristan who was too stunned to say anything else.
Like a robot, his head crankily looked down at his chest and though the wounds had closed, the claw marks on his shirt and his blood on his hands verified what would have been a nightmarish reality.
"I… I…"
"Tristan, what happened? It obviously was a nightmare, but how exactly nightmarish was it that you wanted to rip out your own heart?" Brett asked, seeing how only he was in the right mind to ask the important questions.
Oh he was frightened by what Malia said, but that made it much more important to know what Tristan must have seen to make his subconscious react in such a violent way, like choosing to end his life instead of just forcing him awake.
But Tristan only shook his head with a blank look on his face and replied. "Nothing. Just blood."
"What?"
He said it again. "All I could see was blood… which was probably mine, but… but something about it felt like-"
"Everything was dying." Malia interjected, earning the stare of the two boys. "That was all I could feel from you when I woke up. It was… suffocating to say the least." She clarified.
"Shit." Was all Brett and Tristan could say though for entirely different reasons. "Has something like this ever happened since you became an Alpha?" Brett inquired which led both teens to shake their heads.
"Maybe my emotions going haywire or randomly waking up at night, yes, but nothing like this." The distraught vampire got up and walked over to Malia to envelope her in a hug to calm her nerves.
Even now, he couldn't think of anything about the dream that should have warranted such an extreme response from him.
'Was the dream that scary?' He thought. The feeling he got while awake and the one he felt when sleeping were vastly different that the latter felt somewhat of a distant memory.
"It's okay, I'm fine." Malia whispered but it wasn't until after three minutes passed before she released her arms around him.
Brett didn't pay much attention to them and just focused on his wounds and healed them by the time they let go of each other.
"Okay guys, get cleaned up so we can go." He said as he stood up. "What's with the look? Like it or not but you're both over your heads with Tristan being an Alpha, so yes, I'm dragging your asses to Satomi."
They weren't opposed to meeting Satomi like Brett was thinking, the look of reluctance on their faces had been their wish not to burden Satomi even further now that she was fully at odds with Deucalion.
Whatever happened that day had remained between the two older Alphas and not even when Tristan and Malia asked out of curiosity had Satomi told them but they knew that the two Alphas were now at odds.
Thankfully for them, only a few of Satomi's pack were young given that the old Alpha was not in the business of turning people to betas - most of the young betas in the pack were invited into the pack when they were already betas like Brett, Lori and Jiang - meaning any chance of Deucalion attacking would be easily found out.
So to burden Satomi with Tristan's issue, which she would likely have no answers for, while it made the two teens sympathetic they knew that they were over their heads at this point.
...
[Alan Deaton's Animal Clinic]
Alan bowed his head slightly towards Satomi as he welcomed her into his clinic.
"I figured I'd be hearing from you soon, Satomi-san. Hopefully it's something I can help with." He said, and then turned to Scott to excuse him for their private discussion but Satomi shook her head.
"He can stay. He is, in a way, related to why I'm here today."
She threw a pouch at Deaton that he caught. He opened it and took out what was inside and in it was a piece of wood that had a symbol carved into it.
Deaton chuckled wryly. "This, Satomi-san, I'm afraid what you're looking for is not something I can help you with given my current profession."
Though she rarely ever smiled - especially to outsiders - , a trait Tristan had copied from her, the current expressionless look on her face unnerved both Deaton and Scott.
"I am not here for your current profession, dear Alan." She started calmly and clearly. "Someone from your previous order is doing something in Beacon Hills that's affecting the natural order and has inadvertently involved my children in their vendetta against the Demon Wolf. The lines between what was and what is has already been blurred, Alan."
Deaton sighed, wondering just why he had to deal with Alphas at this point of his life. Peter, Derek, Satomi, Deucalion and pretty soon Tristan and…
"Scott, flip the sign at the door, will you?"
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