Derek watched how she secured their food at the treetop before he effortlessly started climbing the tree as well, settling for two large branches a little above her resting spot that would hold him and even allow him to lie down. It wouldn't be comfortable but it would do and he needed the break. He would have been able to jump the distance but he still had no idea how much she knew about him and he wanted to keep his real identity as a werewolf hidden as long as possible, even though he got the sinking feeling in his stomach that he wouldn't be able to do this for very long. Not under these circumstances. She spoke as soon as she had settled in her spot and it took a long time for her words to sink in. When Derek finally raised his voice again, it had gotten dark and he wasn't able to see her properly any longer. He had a good vision in the dark as wolf but not in his human form. He knew that she was still awake though because he could hear her breathing and her heartbeat and it hadn't changed a bit during the silence.

His voice was dangerously calm, giving away no emotion whatsoever. "You tell me that there was an apocalypse twenty years ago, that mankind is more or less extinct, only leaving the walking corpses behind, that there is something called the council that puts people here on this island to run tests with them and if they pass, they will be allowed into a rebuilt society, or what's left of it?"

Her silence spoke more than thousands words and Derek was so confused that he had no idea what to even think but the truth was that he was deeply scared. He wasn't scared about what probably was to come but he was scared that she actually was telling the truth. Right now he didn't even question how all of that was possible, just the if. In a way, it did make sense though. It would explain the state of the building he had woken up in, it would explain why he hadn't seen or heard a single plane while walking through the forest for nearly the whole damn day and it would explain the corpses. But if it was true, it also meant that everyone he had known, cared for and loved was dead.

Every. Single. Person.

His mind wandered to the members of his pack, to Scott and all the other people from Beacon Hills and all of his sudden his fear turned into a full-blown panic attack. He had gotten those now and then as a boy before he had been able to control his shifts so he knew what it was but he hadn't had one in almost twenty years. His breathing picked up while he felt like suffocating at the same time. His heart raced within his chest and he realized that he was shifting again but this time he didn't care. It was pitch dark by now and she wouldn't be able to notice. He was better in controlling fear when in his wolf form anyway, because it was turned into anger. And anger was easy to control.

His claws dug deep into the bark of the tree while his will battled his emotions. He wanted to jump down from this tree to run, to be free, to howl at the moon, to get rid of those human feelings, at least for a short while but he didn't. There was a last, sane rest of him that kept him under control. If he had been a younger or more untrained wolf, he would have lost control right now but he wasn't and so he clung to the rest of his humanity and his sanity until his breathing calmed down again. He had no idea how much time had passed but when he opened his eyes, they were human again. For a few moments he only stared up into the sky. It was a beautiful sight with a clear sky and millions of stars, at least the part he could see right now, but he couldn't bear the beauty of it. Not right now.

Derek fell silent and Sophie didn't blame him or pry. All the ones before him suffered through the same thing. Well, most of them. Their reactions could be categorized: angry, upset, shocked, inconsolable, suicidal and silent. The quiet ones suffered alone. A habit that conditioned them to hold their emotions inside. She sympathized silently. Knowing all too well about the confusion, tumultuous pain and disbelief that swelled inside him. The familiar guilt that crept inside her reared its ugly head as she sighed in self-criticism and dropped her head back against the jacket. At this point there was absolutely nothing she could say that would make it any better. Not that she wanted to. It was better to go through and accept the pain than it was to fight it. Especially outside the walls of Eden.

Opening herself to the sounds of the night, as she should have done before, Sophie settled in for a long one. Between the heavy shifts of his breath and the groans of the dead she knew sleep wouldn't come. Not that it ever did. Insomnia - a lovely side effect of all she'd been through.

Above her, he shifted restlessly and she heard the unmistakable sound of breaking bark just before it rained down upon her. She swatted at the pieces near her face and plucked them from her hair as she glared up at him in the dark. A face she couldn't keep for long being that she knew he was suffering. There were times she was ill tempered and allowed her short fuse to take over. This wasn't one. She held to one of the pieces still, rolling it between her fingers before letting it fall with the rest. It fell soundlessly to the ground and she watched it for as long as the moonlight would allow.

It took Derek a while to focus his attention back onto the woman, Sophie, her name was Sophie as he reminded himself. He wondered what her role in all of this was, considering she was telling the truth. Was she some sort of entrance gate to Eden? Was she the one who decided in the end if he passed or not? How often had she been forced to endure this already? She didn't make the impression of being here voluntarily but maybe he was wrong about this.

Parts of him still clung to the idea that he was caught in some sort of hallucination simply because he wasn't able to bear the possible truth but another part of him already had settled for survival. It was not only his wolf nature; it also was part of Derek's personality. No matter how much shit life had shoved at him, he never had given up. He always had fought his way out and this part of him already started to accept the fact that things had changed and were different from now on. This part of him told him to play along until he could be really sure what was going on. Until he saw with his own eyes. This thought calmed him furthermore. He wouldn't accept any truth until he actually had proof. And until then, he would play along.

Sophie definitely had been right about one thing though. The sounds of the night were terrifying, especially because he heard way more than she did. He heard the wails and moans of the corpses but there also were other things. Things and noises he couldn't identify and he also didn't wanted to identify. He knew they were more or less safe up here because otherwise she wouldn't have told him to sleep. Not that he could. His body and his mind were beyond exhausted but his eyes just wouldn't close. He had gone a few nights without sleep before and despite the fact that he wanted to sleep, not least to escape this nightmare, he just couldn't and by the sound of it Sophie wasn't asleep either.

As Sophie stared down at the still ground she once again found herself amazed that Derek was actually able to catch not one but two live animals. Yes, the council helped to keep their numbers stable but it was still a rare hunt. Especially on the first day when there was so much to accept and adjust to. Only the dead and the brush stirred tonight. Even though their sounds were still horrific she was relieved that it was only their hungry moans she heard. There was another sound she listened for in the night. One that promised a much more terrifying evening.

The knife she found in the hotel basement carefully skimmed beneath her fingernails to pry the caked mud and blood from her piss-poor manicure. Occasionally she would shift to find a stream of moonlight, dangling legs catching the rough bark each time to hold her steady. There was an unusual calm about her. Even in her concern of what could creep up on them, she still felt more at home outside the walls of Eden than within. There was a certain freedom that she had no access to when she was there. This was home; horrors, dead and all.

Derek wanted to ask how it was possible that he hadn't aged and that his body was still functioning the way it was if she had told the truth but to his own surprise an entirely different question came out when he opened his mouth. The gentle tone of his voice surprised him even more.

"How long have you been doing this, Sophie?"

By the time he spoke again Sophie had sat up from her laid back position and when his voice finally sounded above her she stilled in her motions. Rather than look up at him, she watched the moonlight reflect off the blade she held for a moment for a moment before closing her eyes. That was the million-dollar question. It was also the first time anyone had asked her that. Most didn't care to learn anything about her. Not that she could blame them. They were dropped into a world of the dead with a lack of anyone to blame but the one other person with them. She was suspect number one and she was used to it. A very large part of her wanted to tell him the truth. The other part new the rules and new better than to break them. She'd been burned enough by them and had the scars to prove it.

"Long enough," she finally answered in a half whisper as if to she was answering him and coming to terms with it at the same time.

She evaded answering him in detail and the shadow of a smile actually wandered across Derek's face. She was as withdrawn as he was and he wondered what secrets she was hiding. If, and that still was a large part of his thought process, if she was telling the truth she must have seen many men and woman walk through this hell and either pass or fail. If he was in her shoes, he wouldn't get too close to him either.

Sophie actually thought to elaborate when she heard it: that terrifying click low to the ground. It was a cross between the creepy grudge woman and the tick of a long claw against marble flooring just before the raptor in the movie ate them. Either way, she didn't like it and as soon as she heard it growing stronger rather than fading away, she stood. Quick hands caught and secured her coat bringing it with her as she stood slowly and as quietly as she could manage. Thankfully his chosen branch was within the length of her body and she located him easily. Finding his shadowed profile, she gently skimmed her fingers over his face and lips just in case he planned to say anything if she startled him. Bending towards him, she brought her mouth close to his ear to whisper cautiously.

"Not a sound. Don't move. It's hearing is impeccable. It can't see us but it can most certainly hear us." And smell them. But the hearing was their biggest threat as their sense of smell was closer to a human.

Derek suddenly noticed that she tensed and then her heartbeat picked up. Not remarkably but slightly and he sat up and tensed as well, trying to figure out what it was that was making her nervous. He couldn't determine the one sound that had alarmed her from all the others since to him they were all unfamiliar. She got up and he could feel her cool fingers finding his face and brushing over his lips in order to tell him to keep quiet before she whispered into his ear. Her hair was tickling his face, her breath warm against his skin and Derek felt the sudden and very inappropriate impulse to pull her into his arms. It hadn't necessarily to do with her specifically but with the fact that the embrace of a woman would give him comfort. When things had been especially bad in his life he had went out to pick up a random woman at a bar for a one-night stand. In the arms of them he had been able to forget, if only for a few hours. He never had had troubles in finding a willing woman. Derek Hale knew about his looks and he could be very charming if he put his mind into it. He immediately pushed the urge aside, surprised that it even had crossed his mind under these circumstances. Instead he only nodded his head slightly to let her know that he had understood.

Trusting that he would heed her warning, Sophie turned her head to look around the base of the tree. A shadow shimmied, grew then shifted and stretched away from the rest. It crawled grotesquely with an unnatural bend of human arms and legs. Like a spider, it kept its body low to the ground, sniffing at the dust occasionally then quickly lifting its head to listen. Its snapping movements reminded her of someone pressing the slow, speed and skip buttons concurrently on a video player.

While she watched, it once more dipped its head to the ground and sniffed. When it stilled she knew it had picked up on something there. The rabbits? Her blood? Had she forgotten to cover some drops after packing her bite? Fuck...it was a rookie mistake. Either way, when its empty sockets snapped up to the tree as if it knew they were there, she grew impossibly still and waited. Hopefully it would pass on. She would not be able to get closer without it noticing and shrieking to alert the others. A crawler's screech called the dead for miles. One crawler was bad enough. Unlike their counterparts they were impossibly fast.

For a while the two of them were frozen in silence until Derek was finally able to see the source of her fear. It was like something from a horror movie, a grotesque mimicry of a human being trying to be a spider, only that it was worse than just that. Every hair on Derek's body rose and the wolf inside of him reacted strongly towards the threat. Everything inside of him told him to attack and kill before he was attacked and killed.

The creature's head snapped up, supplying Derek with another mental image for his nightmares because the face wasn't human at all, it was a horrible grimace, a thing that would haunt him for a long time. The eye sockets were empty but it had some sort of graspers around his mouth like a supernatural bug and for a moment Derek had the hysterical thought that this was the post-apocalyptic spider man. A corpse bitten by a nuclear enhanced spider probably would be able to create something like this and for a moment he feared that he had to laugh, a hysterical unhealthy laugh and it already was bubbling up, looking for a way out but then the creature moved closer towards their tree and the urge to laugh was completely gone in an instant.

And then everything happened at once. With supernatural speed the creature jumped up towards the exact spot where Sophie was standing and Derek jumped too, turning while he did so and crashing with the full force of his body against the thing before it could reach Sophie, a ball of claws, teeth and fury. He hadn't decided to jump and he hadn't decided to turn, it was instinct-driven. In the logic of his wolf nature, Sophie was a member of his pack now and there was strengths in numbers. Therefore, the members of the pack had to be protected at any cost.

He was an Alpha, after all.