by pebble/scifipony
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Characters: Tamora Monroe, Scott McCall
Words: 995
Tags: Episode Tag, Unreliable Narrator, Monroe POV
Warnings: Canon-Typical Bigoted Language (against werewolves)
Author's Notes: Written for the Scottuary Bingo 2025 event on tumblr, for the prompt "Rage". Originally posted on AO3 and SquidgeWorld on 2025/02/08.
Monroe had believed that she could be brave in the face of death. Having faced her worst nightmares before, she wouldn’t have thought it possible to be affected by fear again.
She was scared now, though.
She was staring into the blood red eyes of an alpha whose pack had been threatened.
The pavement beneath her feet shimmered in the pale streetlights, her feet frozen to the wet surface despite her brain telling her to run. Her arm slowly lowered to her side. The gun, now empty and useless, was a dead weight in her hand. The air still rang with the echoes of the gunshots she’d desperately fired off. Not that it had done any good. Some of the bullets had found their mark, and had done nothing to slow his approach.
He bared his fangs and she could swear her heart stopped beating. His roar shook the ground under her feet, filled with all of the pain and fury of a wounded predator.
It was only now that she realized it — she’d always been afraid. Since that fateful night on the bus, she’d never stopped being afraid of these creatures and what they could do. And she was standing face to face with one who she couldn’t bully or overpower or scare into retreat.
After their first meeting in the tunnels, when he’d tried so hard to negotiate for peace, Monroe had made the fatal error of mistaking his kindness for weakness. If she lived through tonight, she wouldn’t make that mistake again.
He shifted back to his human form, though his eyes never lost the red glow that burned through her soul.
“You lost,” he said, echoing the earlier statement of his beta. “Your plan failed. Your army is done. And with the Anuk-ite gone, good luck rounding up a new army anytime soon.”
She raised her chin defiantly, though she knew he could probably hear her heart thundering away in her chest. “So what now? You kill me?”
“No.” He smiled a bit sadly, the expression looking too human for her comfort. “We’re not the monsters you think we are.”
“Says the werewolf with fangs and claws.”
“It was your side doing the killing tonight,” he pointed out calmly. An eerie calm; one that felt dangerously fragile. “You don’t need claws to be a monster.”
The words might have stung — maybe even knocked her world out of the very binary viewpoint she’d locked it into — if she wasn’t already too far down that path to look back now. She’d made her choices, and she stood by them. She might have killed, but it was justified. They were not real people, not normal people, so it was all justified. It had to be. After everything, it had to be.
Her hand tightened on the gun at her side. It was still emptied of bullets, but she needed that extra reassurance or she’d never be able to speak.
“So what do you want with me?” she demanded.
“That depends. If you stay, you stop the violence and leave all supernatural creatures alone. If you can’t do that, you leave Beacon Hills. Tonight. Either way, you stop hunting.”
“You want me to give up, just like that.”
“I want you to walk away willingly before this pointless war has to get any more ugly.”
“It’s too late for that,” she told him. “You call it pointless, but it’s necessary. All of this was necessary to protect our way of life. We’ve seen what your kind is capable of. You’re not all innocent.”
“I know we’re not. Neither is your side. Good or bad isn’t a default, it’s a choice.”
There was a time when she had thought that way, too. She stared into his eyes and suppressed a shudder. “I’m not giving up.”
“Then that’s your choice.”
He almost sounded sad. Regretful. If he were truly human, she would probably believe it.
His claws came out, though he kept his hands at his sides. A low warning growl rumbled through the air before he added, “And if you ever go after another werewolf, I will find you.”
Her hands shook and she fought hard to keep her eyes from averting. His own eyes flashed brighter — that terrifying crimson spark that hinted at the power inside — and she lost the fight. Gaze dropping to the pavement near his feet, she nodded stiffly.
“Fine. This isn’t the end of it, though. You can frighten me now when I’m alone and unarmed, but I won’t be alone for long. Humans will never be willing to accept your kind. We will always keep fighting to protect our spaces from things like you. I’ll have another army soon enough.”
He took a step forward and she would have retreated on instinct if her feet had been capable of moving. Tearing her gaze from the street, she glanced up to meet a look that burned with danger and warning.
“You threatened and harassed innocent children,” he said, his voice low and simmering with barely contained fury. “You turned friends and family against each other. You murdered teenagers and then displayed their skin like hunting trophies. You had your minions beat up my beta — beat up Liam — when he wasn’t doing anything to hurt them.” He took another step forward. “Let me be clear. You attacked my pack. There isn’t an army in the world that is big enough to protect you if you do it again. This is your one warning.”
She had no comeback for him this time. She was staring into the depth of an alpha’s pain and rage. There wasn’t anything that could counter that.
A moment later, she was alone on the street. He was gone, back into the night where his kind belonged.
Her hands were still shaking as she climbed into her car and started the engine.
She was crossing the city limits within the hour, not daring to look back as she drove.
Thank you for checking out my fics! If you would like to chat with the author, you can contact me on my tumblr or dreamwidth, or leave a comment below!