and glanced through the small window in the door to Noah who looked stressed out over the consistent kidnappings in Beacon Hills. "I don't know, babe. I mean, look at him. Come on, he's completely overwhelmed as it is."

"He's overwhelmed because he has no clue what's happening. He's got people dying in his town, the town that he's supposed to protect, and it's not his fault that he doesn't know what's happening. He's gonna find out sooner or later," Meilani countered and spared her brother a pleading look. "You agree with me, don't you, Scotty?"

"Oh, please don't put me in the middle of your couple fights again," Scott whined, stepping back from the couple to show he wasn't getting involved in this conversation.

Stiles leant on the cage he had wrapped his fingers around and Meilani could smell the anxiety and sadness come off Stiles in waves. "Yeah, but is now really the right time?"

"What if not telling him now gets someone else killed?"

"What if telling him gets him killed, huh? I mean, okay, look, I get that Deaton's been like a father to you and Scott. I get that, okay? But this m- " Stiles cut himself off and shook his head defiantly. "Meilani, this is my actual father. I can't... I can't lose both of my parents, alright? Not both of them."

Meilani felt her heart shatter at the pure emotion on Stiles' face. It was an internal struggle for him over the whole supernatural thing because he didn't want Noah to get in the cross fire. Melissa had found out without Meilani being ready to tell her and she knew that she hated it, so maybe she should just let Stiles tell Noah when he was ready. "You're right, Sti. I'm sorry..."

"No, no I'm not," Stiles sighed and banged his forehead on the side of the cage with a heaved sigh. "I'll tell him."

"Scott and I can help you," Meilani offered, knowing that telling a family member something like this wasn't easy.

When the trio stepped outside the room, they saw Ms. Morell speaking to Noah and the deputy about letting her know if they find any other information on her brother. She waited for Noah and his deputy to leave before she walked over to the trio with a stern look. "Listen up the three of you. No sheriff, deputy, or detective is going to be able to find Deaton."

"You don't have to ask us for help," Meilani said, fully willing to do whatever it took to get Deaton back safe and sound.

"Actually, I'm trying to help you because if you're going to find my brother, then you need to use the one person who might actually have an ability to seek out the supernatural."

"Lydia."

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Meilani had gone back to the high school with the boys after their talk with Ms. Morell. Stiles and Scott would look for Lydia and then let Meilani know when they found her. She had tried to find Isaac to let him know that Deaton had been taken next, but no one had seen him all day. Something that threw her off since Isaac had gone in with her and Scott that morning.

Her phone beeped in her back pocket and she dug it out to see a text from Stiles.

STILES ❤️

found her

Meilani went to respond when she heard tapping from somewhere in the school, almost sounding like a ticking tock. Furrowing her eyebrows, she pocketed her phone and followed the sound of the tapping towards the darkened music room. Inside the room, Deucalion was sat at the grand piano as he tapped his walking stick against the top of it. Now it made sense why the sound was like a ticking clock.

"Do you know what a metronome is, Meilani? It's a tool to help you maintain a steady rhythm once you've set the tempo. Something tells me the tempo of your life has sped up considerably in the last few hours. If you'd like, I could help you slow it down to more a manageable pace," Deucalion offered, staring ahead of him with his walking stick now held between his legs.

"How?"

"By helping you find Deaton."

Deucalion pushed himself to his feet with the help of his walking stick and even though Meilani couldn't see his eyes properly thanks to the glasses, she could tell he had a calculating gaze. He probably heard how her heart hammered in her chest because of the anger that coursed through her. Anytime she saw Deucalion all she wanted to do was unleash all her werewolf rage on him, but she remained still.

"Your heart is pounding, but it's not out of fear. It's anger. I bet I know what you're thinking. Does he have something to do with Deaton's disappearance? Tell you what. If you can take the cane away from me, I'll tell you exactly where he is," Deucalion offered, holding the cane on his open palms. "Now, what do you think?"

Meilani grunted as she rushed at Deucalion to grab the walking stick, but he swung at her causing to roll under it. She stood crouched on one knee and growled at Deucalion as he continued to swing at her, knocking her on her back. Meilani pushed off the floor with her hands and landed back on her feet. She went to grab the walking stick again and was quickly dodged, being pushed in the opposite direction.

Meilani hopped from furniture to furniture, flipping around the room to get away from Deucalion's swings. As she landed on one of the desks in the room, Deucalion removed the red stopper on the bottom of his walking stick to reveal a small arrow on the end of it. She flipped off the desk and went to dodge the next swing from Deucalion, but he had pushed the arrow into her arm.

"Impressive," Deucalion praised, pulling the arrow from Meilani's arm which caused her to hiss in pain. "But you know I'm not the one slashing up innocent people, praying to ancient gods or gathering herbs, or whatever the hell Druids are supposed to do. I am part of a pack that wants Derek dead, though. Kali is coming for him, so there's a difficult choice you're about to face, because someone is going to die tonight, and whether that's Derek or Deaton, that's up to you."

Meilani glared darkly at Deaton and if looks could kill, he'd be six feet under right now and no longer be a problem for Meilani. Derek was finally healed after his plummet floors below to the escalator. She just hoped he stayed in his loft until this whole thing was fixed. "Tell me where he is."

"I'll give you a very important clue. Let the current guide you."

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Meilani had found Stiles, Lydia and Scott with Cora in one of the empty science labs. She had informed them that Danny had been a target last night after all, but he wasn't the next sacrifice. It was all just to distract Meilani and the pack while whoever took Deaton could get the dirty work done. They needed to get to Danny and fast, but Meilani had separated from Scott and Stiles to go to Allison's who had texted her that she had found something.

Chris hadn't been there when Meilani showed up, which was good for her and Allison because they could talk. Though, it hadn't lasted long when Chris came back to the apartment and the two girls had to hide inside of Allison's cramped up closet together for a good five, awkward minutes before Chris finally left and Allison took Meilani over to Chris' desk where a map laid. Allison had produced a black light and showed Meilani all the highlighted, blue circles, x's and symbols all over the map.

The map had showed twelve different locations when there had only been six sacrifices so far. It meant that Chris knew where the next few bodies could be found, one of them being Deaton. The circled spots didn't mean that Deaton could be at any of them, but it could be mean that he was somewhere near one of the locations until he eventually died. However, Meilani wasn't going to let Deaton get that far.

After sneaking out of the apartment when Chris had come back once again, Meilani ran out to her car and hopped inside, dialing Stiles' number. "Hey, Sti."

"Hey, babe. You find anything from Allison?"

"Yeah, Argent has been doing all this searching without telling anyone. He circled six extra locations on some map and Deaton has got to be at one of them. They're all over town so I don't know how we can get to all of them fast enough."

"Well, we might not have to. Danny was doing a project on something for Mr. Harris' physics class, and I think it actually means something. It was something on telluric currents."

Meilani's brain kicked into overdrive when Stiles mentioned currents. Maybe Deucalion didn't mean currents as in the currents of a body of water, but a scientific one. "Babe, did you say currents?"

⏤⏤⏤⏤╗❀╔⏤⏤⏤⏤

"So, what does this kid's homework have to do with finding Deaton?" Cora asked, staring at Danny's paper that Stiles held in his hand while Meilani pieced together a printed out map of Beacon Hills that she had taken while at Allison's house.

Meilani had met up with Stiles, Scott, Lydia and Cora at the animal clinic to go over Danny's paper. Somewhere in the paper had a clue to where Deaton was and they needed to act quickly if they wanted to get to Deaton in time. 

"Because it's not just homework, okay? It's a project on geomagnetic fields. They flow through the Earth. They can even be affected by lunar phases, alright? Now, look at this," Stiles said, showing Lydia, Scott and Cora the paper. "This is a note from Harris on Danny's proposal."

"I strongly advise you to choose another subject. The ideas, while innovative and thoughtful, border on pseudo-science. Not suitable for class," Lydia read the note scrawled in red pen at the top of Danny's paper. 

"Harris wasn't a sacrifice. He knew something," Meilani noted, glancing up from the map she had pieced together.

"Now, check this out. Allison's dad wasn't the only one with a map. Danny had one too," Stiles said, opening up the map that he took from Danny's bag. It had small markings littered across the map. "Danny marked all the telluric currents, okay?Now, the weird thing about Beacon Hills is that it actually is a beacon. You wouldn't believe how much energy flowing through the Earth is around this town.

Meilani looked between Danny's map and Argent's map to see that it was the same exact markings on both. "Stiles, look, these maps are the same." She grabbed the pen from the table and circled every spot on Danny's map that Argent had on his own. "Maybe they are sacrificing in between the currents."

"Let me see that," Stiles said, taking the pen from Meilani and put a cross in the middle of the circle around the animal clinic. "You said there's six more bodies to be found. Deaton's one of them. Got to be somewhere in between, right?"

Cora grabbed Stiles' hand before he could move it anywhere else and placed it over the vault, a sense of fear flashing in her eyes at the memories of being trapped in the bank vault. "He's in the vault."

Meilani squeezed her eyes shut, not believing she hadn't thought of that sooner. She scrambled to grab all the items for the map along with Lydia, Stiles and Scott while Cora took out her phone. Before Meilani could rush out of the examination room they stood in, Lydia called for her to wait.

"Lydia, we don't have time to hold on."

"It's Boyd. The plan didn't work," Cora announced, reading over the text Boyd had sent her. 

Isaac and Boyd had gone to Derek's to try and protect him from Kali who was going to go find Derek and more than likely kill him. They didn't want Derek to be alone and thought there was something they could do to trick Kali when she arrived to attack Derek, thinking he was alone in the loft. They were going to fill the loft's floor with water and place wires in the water so Kali would be electrocuted the second she stepped into the water. However, it seemed their luck never worked out for them in the end. "They cut the power."

Meilani's mind trailed back to what Deucalion had said about either Derek or Deaton dying that night. It was just up to Meilani who survived and who didn't. "It's just like he said. You guys go. I can save Deaton myself."

"What? Mei, what about us?" Scott argued, not wanting his twin to go off on her own.

"Cora can get there fast enough with you. Now go. We can save both of them."

Meilani didn't leave the pack any room to argue back before she ran out of the clinic and into her car to drive over to the bank's vault. She tried to not go over the speed limit as best as she could, even though she knew most of the police force were working on the disappearances. It hadn't taken her more than ten minutes to get to the bank and Meilani flew out of the car and inside the bank, the metaphorical clock ticking loudly in her head.

Inside the vault, Deaton was hung from the ceiling with his chin dropped onto his chest. It was only a matter of time before Deaton's body finally gave out. She could already hear his low heartbeat getting worse by the second. She went to rush over to Deaton and take him down, but an invisible force sent her flying onto her back. When she scrambled to her feet, Meilani noticed that black mountain ash was spread in a circle around Deaton. 

Meilani walked over to the circle and took a steadying breath. She had to try and fight through the circle so she could save Deaton. There was no way she could give up on him now. She placed both of her hands palm up in the air and tried to push against the invisible force, a bright purple taking over the room. She pushed hard against the force with all of her might, the pain nearly unbearable as it tried to push her out and away from Deaton. 

What she didn't notice was her eyes fading from yellow to red before the invisible force pushed her away once again and onto her back. 

"Meilani! Let me give it a shot," Noah said, appearing in the entranceway to the vault. 

Before Meilani could question how Noah even knew to show up at the bank, Noah fired his gun at the rope that held Deaton up in the air. Deaton's body fell limply to the ground and Meilani was relieved to still his heart beat inside of his chest, even though it was still low and slow. Noah had helped Meilani get Deaton up and leant up against the wall of the vault, Deaton's eyes thankfully open even though they were a bit droopy.

"How'd you find us?" Meilani asked, tearing her eyes from her boss finally. She felt like if she took her eyes off Deaton he would just disappear.

"The vials in the clinic with the Celtic symbols on 'em? I knew that one of them looked familiar," Noah explained and pointed to the massive Celtic symbol painted in the middle of the floor that kind of looked like a cross that just needed to be connected. 

"Sheriff, thank you for being one hell of a detective," Deaton breathed.

"You bet. Let's get you an ambulance," Noah replied and pat Deaton on the knee, walking out of the vault to dial 911 for Deaton.

As soon as Noah was out of the vault, Deaton grabbed Meilani by the front of her flannel and tugged her closer to him. She stumbled slightly at the sudden jerky motion and stared wide eyed at Deaton. "Meilani, your eyes were red. Bright red."

Meilani felt her blood run cold in her veins and gulped audibly. Her eyes had gone bright red? As in alpha red? But she wasn't an alpha. It was impossible, actually, because she'd never even killed anyone. 

Deaton opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Noah letting the duo know that an ambulance was on the way and that he'd be back in a minute. He checked to make sure Noah was gone once again before he spoke. "It's rare. It's something that doesn't happen within one hundred years, but every once in a while a beta can become an alpha without having to steal or take that power. They call it a True Alpha. It's the one who rises purely on the strength of the character, by virtue, by sheer force of will."

Meilani blinked at Deaton because he didn't sound the least bit shocked by any of it. He just sounded genuinely proud that Meilani had become a True Alpha. Almost as if he were waiting  on the sidelines for it to happen. "You knew this would happen?"

"I believed. From the moment I knew you were bitten, I believed."

"You're not the only one," Meilani whispered, her brain filling in the pieces about Deucalion and how he had mentioned before that she had potential. That he wanted to see what she was truly made of.

"No. Deucalion isn't after Derek. He's after you."

AUTHORS NOTE

NOT YET EDITED

Hi hey hello

I hate how long this chapter took me to write, but it's so important. Meilani finally knows she is an alpha. A True Alpha at that. Our girl is one powerful queen and we love that for her, wow! We also know Deucalion is officially out to get her not Derek. This ride is about to get real bumpy, folks! I don't think you're ready for this drop.