Derek Hale

24

Derek was a tall, muscular, and handsome man with black hair, blue-green eyes, and olive skin. He tended to wear simple, casual clothes such as boot-cut jeans, henley or v-neck shirts in neutral colors, a black leather jacket, and boots, and he typically had either facial stubble or a scruffy beard. He was also notable for having a black triskelion tattooed between his shoulder blades to remind him that all Werewolves, whether Alphas, Betas, or Omegas, have the potential to rise to one rank or fall to another. In his full wolf form, Derek's fur was completely black.

Derek's first love at the age of 16 was Paige. Alas, the love was not entirely successful, as the girl died, unable to withstand the bite of the alpha, Ennis. In the end, she died in Derek's arms. He tried to take half of her pain away, but she couldn't bear it anymore and asked him to kill her, which he did, unable to watch his beloved suffer. After Paige was killed, Derek's eyes turned blue. The second time, at the age of 19, Derek fell in love with a hunter, Kate Argent. But that relationship didn't last either. The girl took advantage of him, sneaking up on his family and destroying them. She locked Derek's loved ones in the basement of his house, doused them with petrol, and set them on fire. Derek underwent noticeable changes; he became stronger. But it's hard not to notice that the werewolf is lonely.

When he was first introduced, he was a sullen and aggressive Werewolf who was overwhelmed by grief and survivor's guilt following the Hale House Fire and the murder of his sister, Laura. He was prone to threats and anger, and had very little patience for the newly turned Scott McCall and his teenage ways. He used violence and fear to train Scott to survive being hunted by the Argents and the Alpha, and vehemently opposed Scott's relationship with Allison Argent due to his own unresolved issues about his relationship with Kate Argent. These personality traits only became more pronounced after he became the Alpha, as the power he gained in conjunction with the fear caused by the imminent arrival of the Alpha Pack caused him to behave harshly towards the Betas around him, using fear, violence, and pain to try to teach them how to survive the threats to Werewolves in the area. Derek's power struggles continued to become even more intense after his packmates were either killed or alienated from him during the Darach and Alpha Pack battles, which made him lose all confidence in himself. Derek puts a lot of pressure on himself to protect the people he cares about, and when he temporarily lost his Werewolf powers, he was very worried that he wouldn't be able to be helpful to the pack due to essentially being a mundane human. However, unlike his uncle Peter, Derek does not look down on humans or believe them to be lesser to supernaturals, because he understands that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses regardless of their species. Much of Derek's sense of identity is tied to his lycanthropy, and it was eventually because he embraced both his human and his Werewolf nature that he was able to become an Evolved Werewolf like his mother and older sister, giving him the ability to full-shift into a real wolf, an ability that is rare among Alphas and unheard of among true Beta Werewolves.

Derek was born the middle child of Legendery Alpha Werewolf Talia Hale and her unnamed husband on the outskirts of Beacon Hills, California in the mid-late 1980s. As a member of a centuries-old and highly esteemed Werewolf bloodline, Derek was raised along with his sisters Laura and Cora and his uncle Peter to see lycanthropy as a gift. When he reached high school, he joined the Beacon Hills Cyclones basketball team. However, when he first came into his powers in adolescence, he had great difficulty learning to control his transformations during full moons, even despite the fact that he was able to maintain control at any other time, nearly exposing himself during a basketball game that happened to fall on a full moon. Talia attempted to train Derek to stay in his human form by using a large bronze coin stamped with a the symbol of the Hale Family, the triskelion, which she claimed was a powerful talisman for control when used with the mantra, "Alpha, Beta, Omega." Unfortunately, since Derek knew there was nothing actually magical about it, it did little to help him, which led Peter to teach him to use anger, rage, and hatred as an anchor to his humanity, a method which ultimately worked, though it wasn't exactly the healthiest coping mechanism. This caused him to be a generally angry person in general who had a hard time connecting with others as a result. One night when Derek was a teenager, he was running away from Argent Hunters when he ran into a Beta who belonged to Ennis' original pack. Before they could fully identify each other, the Hunters caught up with them and shot the Beta through the neck with an arrow. Derek was too stunned to react and only avoided the same fate due to Peter's timely intervention at the last moment. The boys rushed over to a nearby root cellar to "hide and heal," as was the Werewolf protocol for when they were caught by Hunters and wanted to avoid drawing the danger to the rest of the pack.

Unbeknownst to Derek, however, the root cellar was actually built around the roots of the Nemeton, a powerful tree used as a sacred meeting place for Druids. A short time later, after Derek and Peter had returned home, Derek met a quiet, shy girl at school named Paige Krasikeva, who he immediately took a liking to after she proved immune to his put-on cocky, jock-like demeanor. They soon fell in love with each other and spent as much time as they could together, even if it meant that Derek was just watching her practice the cello in the music room. For unknown reasons, Peter remarked to Derek that their relationship would be doomed if she ever found out that he was a Werewolf, and claimed the only way that he could prevent that from happening would be if she was given the bite and turned into one of them. Peter thought they should take advantage of the fact that several Alphas were in town meeting with Talia, including Deucalion, Kali, and Ennis, since he knew that Talia wouldn't give Paige the bite without Paige's informed consent. With this in mind, Peter later arranged for Ennis to bite Paige, as he had lost one of his Betas to the Argents already and believed that doing a favor for Derek would put him in Talia's good graces. However, after luring Paige to the high school, Derek was only able to listen to Paige's terrified screams for a few moments before he decided to intervene and stop Ennis from biting her. Unfortunately, Derek was only fifteen and a Beta at that time, so not only did he stand no chance against him, but he arrived too late to change anything—Paige had already been bitten and was fearfully crawling away. In a not-uncommon twist, Paige's body rejected the bite, and black blood began to pour from her nose and mouth, forcing Derek to bring her to the Nemeton's root cellar to hide out while he figured out what was going on.

Derek continued to struggle with controlling his transformations on the full moon, though he refused to let it stop him from playing on the Beacon Hills High School basketball team. Shortly after Paige's death, Derek met Kate Argent, who, unbeknownst to him, was an Argent Werewolf Hunter who initiated a love affair with him in order to gain information that could be used to take out his family. At some point near the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, while Derek and Laura were at school, Kate and her co-conspirators set fire to the Hale House while the majority of his family was trapped inside. ("Code Breaker") His mother Talia and between seven and ten additional people (according to two differing reports) died in the fire, and there were only two survivors: Peter, who had second and third-degree burns over the majority of his body that caused him to go into a coma for six years while he healed ("Magic Bullet"); and Cora, who, at just eleven years old, went on the run and fled Beacon Hills under the mistaken impression that none of her family had made it out of the fire alive, not even Derek or Laura. ("Fireflies"), ("Unleashed")

Derek, too ashamed to tell his family that he accidentally made it easier for Kate to attack them by dating her, left Beacon Hills with Laura and moved to New York, where they lived together for approximately six years until 2011, when strange animal attacks drew them back to their hometown. Laura came to Beacon Hills first, after she was sent a photo of a dead deer in the preserve that had a spiral burned into its fur. ("Pack Mentality"), ("Heart Monitor") After not hearing from Laura for a while, Derek travelled to his hometown to check on her, only to find that she had been killed by an then-unknown Werewolf and her body cut in half post-mortum by Argent Hunters to ensure she would not be able to heal and revive herself.

Enormous strength — physically much stronger than ordinary people, and now also stronger than other werewolves. High speed — can move very quickly, both in human and wolf form. High agility — can perform jumps and somersaults that would be impossible for an ordinary person. High survivability — can sustain wounds or injuries that would seriously maim a normal person without any visible damage to his condition. Healing — can heal himself from injuries, and quite quickly. Healing is slower if the injury is severe. Heightened senses — all human senses are heightened: sight, hearing, smell, taste. Transformation into a wolf — can transform into a wolf at will.

Aconite — acts as a poison. Rowan — weakens the werewolf. Mistletoe — acts as a poison. Arrows — as long as the arrow or dagger remains in the wound, the werewolf cannot heal. Explosive arrows — temporarily blind the werewolf.