Wolfbane Heart

Jude vaguely heard a muffled voice around her head but waved her hand towards it, hoping it would go away. She was unsuccessful.

“Stiles! Jude! Stiles! STILES!” The voice was getting louder and Jude groaned, curling her body into itself a bit more. The noise disappeared for a second and she sighed in contentment, getting ready to drift back into dreamland. She was almost out again when she heard a rush of water, a high pitched squeaking sound, and then a thud. Jude jerked up, groaning when the light from the window hit her eyes.

She blearily looked around the room and realized that her and Stiles had fallen asleep while researching lycanthropy. Groggily peeling a textbook page off of her cheek, she suddenly became aware of the scene around her.

Stiles was sprawled on the ground, one foot still caught in his desk chair, and the Sheriff was standing over him with a giant and empty salad bowl.

“What? Couldn’t find a bucket?” She asked in amusement, her voice still scratchy from just waking up.The Sheriff rolled his eyes and tucked the bowl under his arm, taking in the mass amounts of books and textbooks scattered around the room in disdain.

“I don’t even want to know,” he finally said, shaking his head and turning to leave. Jude had always wondered if he ever needed to go to a masseuse because of how much he seemed to do that while in his son’s company. But then again, Stiles’s neck movements were always much more severe and he never seemed to have any major muscle issues. Jude was torn out of her musings when the Sheriff stuck his head back in the room, “Oh and Scott called the home phone. Said that he had to talk to you guys and that you weren’t answering your phones.”

Stiles and Jude shared a worried look before both turning back to the Sheriff with matching wide smiles.

“Ok thanks a bunch dad! We’re just gonna continue studying! You know, working out those brain cells!”

“Yeah, yours need all the help they can get,” Jude muttered, before a pencil case smacked her in the arm. “Okay ow!” Sheriff Stilinski merely shook his head, again, before closing the door behind him.

“Scott must have really needed to talk to us if he called my home phone,” Stiles muttered to himself, fishing his phone out of his pocket and cursing when he saw the five missed calls from Scott. He quickly pressed the speed dial button on his phone and put it on speakerphone, tossing the device onto the bed with Jude and scooting over to sit on the floor next to her foot.

“FINALLY!” An exasperated Scott rang through the smartphone, making Stiles and Jude wince apologetically even though Scott couldn’t see them.

“Sorry Scott, my phone died and I guess Stiles’s was on silent, what’s up?” Jude asked, trying to sooth the werewolf on the other end.

“Allison told me that DEREK HALE drove her home last night!” Scott said, anger seeping into her tone and making Stiles gape down at the device on his bed.

“What? The murderous and dangerous Derek Hale? Did he threaten her? Is he messing with you?” Jude quickly intervened before Stiles’s accusations could go much further.

“You guys are being ridiculous, he didn’t threaten her, or me for that matter. He was just helping us get home.” Stiles turned to gape at her incredulously and if Scott was there with them, she was sure he would be doing the exact same thing. The two boys both started ranting and yelling at her about how dangerous it was to be getting into the same car as him, and how she wasn’t thinking, and what if she got hurt? Jude sighed and pinched her nose, waiting for their yelling to die down. “This is why I wasn’t going to tell you guys.”

“Well when I spoke to Derek he said I shouldn’t see Allison anymore because she’ll cause me to wolf out! How ridiculous is that?” Scott continued ranting from the other side of the phone, but Jude frowned when she actually realized what he was saying.

“Wait you saw Derek today?” She asked, making Stiles frown as well.

“Well I may have gone to confront him when Allison told me who drove her home…” Scott trailed off, making Stiles jump in.

“What? You went to go confront an Alpha werewolf-“

“We don’t actually know if he’s the Alpha,” Jude cut in, but Stiles waved her off.

“- when you haven’t even mastered shifting? What’s wrong with you? He could have killed you! Why do both of my best friends have death wishes?” He threw his hands up in the air and Jude sighed, predicting more ranting and making herself more comfortable on the bed. “What did he do? Flash his Alpha blue eyes at you?”

“Alphas don’t have blue eyes,” Jude cut in, before frowning when she realized that that wasn’t something she had read the night before; it was a fact that seemed to jump from the recesses of her brain, almost like a blurred out memory. Jude was suddenly pulled from her reverie when Stiles’s face loomed above hers.

“Come on Jude! We’re going to go meet Scott at the haunted mansion!” He said, pulling his shoes on while attempting not to fall over. Jude frowned. What had she missed?

“What? Why?”

“Scott said he smelled blood when he went to Derek’s house so we’re going to go check it out!”

“What is with you and following body trails?” She mumbled, throwing a sweater over her tank top from the party and following him to his beat up Jeep. “How do we even know that Derek will be there?”

“What are you on? We’re hoping that Derek wont be there. We can’t go snooping around when Mr. Broody is lurking in the shadows!”

“I don’t think you can lurk around your own property Stiles.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that was one of Sour Wolf’s hidden skills,” he retorted, before peeling out of the driveway and towards the woods.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I can’t believe you actually brought shovels.”

Jude was looking at her two best friends like they had officially snapped.

“C’mon Jude, we just have to know if we can trust Derek,” Scott was less confident of the idea than Stiles but he was still curious as to what the older werewolf was hiding.

“And you want to win his trust by digging up his front yard?”

“Ok, we don’t need Sourwolf’s trust, he has to earn ours!”

“Stiles what if he comes back? Do you think he’ll be ecstatic that you’re trespassing and digging up a potential grave in front of his house?”

“Scott will tell us if he smells him.” Scott nodded his head in agreement. Jude sighed and threw her shovel to Stiles, who just barely caught it.

“Fine. But don’t expect me to take part in this,” she muttered, going back to lean against the jeep. Stiles sighed dramatically and started digging, gesturing for Scott to do the same.

Approximately twenty minutes passed before Stiles’s exclamation of surprise woke Jude from her short nap in the Jeep.

“What the holy hell is that??” Jude quickly threw open the car door and ran to the edge of the hole before reeling back in surprise. Placed inside the crater Stiles and Scott created was half of a wolf. Yes, you heard that right, half of a wolf!

“I swear it was half of a body when I found it the other night!” Scott said, still looking in shock at the animal.

“Wait! I think I got something!”

Scott and Jude looked expectantly to where Stiles was crouched next to a flower.
“Stiles now is not the time to stop and admire nature.”

“No Scott, Stiles is right! I read about that flower last night, it’s wolfsbane!”

“Wait seriously? I didn’t know that, I was talking about the rope under it. How much farther did you read than me?”

“I read for like three hours after you fell asleep, it’s not a big deal,” Jude responded, waving her hand and going over to the wolfsbane-laced rope next to Stiles’s foot. She and Scott watched with uncertainty as Stiles slowly pulled the rope out of the ground, and her uncertainty changed to amazement as the rope revealed a spiral shape and half of a human body in the center.