She-Wolf

Parasomnia

Mrs Martin is counselling a student named Tracy at the high school. The girl is distracted by visions of a crow pecking against a window and a skylight banging in the rain.

Mrs Martin asks if the girl is getting enough sleep and she admits that she's not. The teacher explains that circadian rhythms are different for young people in that the teenage body produces a natural sleep chemical called melatonin late into the morning. Meaning a student's brain is still sleeping long after classes begin.

Tracy explains that she gets night terrors which Martin describes as Parasomnia.

(Parasomnia is actually a catch-all phrase for any sleep disturbance not related to Sleep Apnea. Despite the dramatic name, "Night Terrors" can be mild to severe feelings of great fear upon waking up)Rough Night For Tracy

Tracy says she usually doesn't remember what causes her fear but relays a story of one particularly stormy night when she woke to find a crow pecking against the skylight over her bed. Tracy has a silver leaf-shaped necklace hanging on her nightstand.

The crow is gone and as Tracy settles into sleep again, she sees a masked figure outside her window. She bolts awake and scrambles to turn on the bedside lamp. When she turns back the figure is gone. She makes her way to the window and checks to make sure it is locked.

She turns off the lamp and tries to go back to sleep but is quickly woken by a breeze blowing in from the now open skylight. The lamp next to her bed no longer works. In the darkness, she climbs up on a chair and attempts to reach the latch for the skylight. Straining, she manages to get it closed and locks the skylight. At that moment, a black-gloved figure grabs the chair leg and yanks it out from under her and she falls.

Back at school, Tracy explains that her father found her on the floor and that the skylight was sealed shut a couple of years back for weatherproofing.

Martin takes this to mean that much of what she experienced was just a dream. She explains a theory that one of the biological functions of dreaming is to present the brain with threatening events as a way to rehearse for real-world situations. She diagnoses Tracy with normal anxiety of a form common to seniors in high school.

As Tracy stands to leave, she begins to cough. Eventually, she throws up a torrent of viscous black liquid and black feathers. She asks Mrs Martin if this is part of common anxiety.

The Rules Have Changed

Scott is at work performing an intramuscular injection in the hind leg of a wirehaired mix. Deaton is overseeing his progress. Scott finishes the injection but removes the needle in a way that hurts the dog. It snaps at him. Deaton chuckles saying the dog is a little one but his teeth are still sharp. Scott apologizes to the dog and returns it to its owner, a little girl.

The little girl, Stephanie, calls Scott "Dr McCall." He corrects her that he is not a doctor "yet."

Deaton is examining the claw from the unnamed creature that attacked Scott at the school. He says it is less like a claw and more like the talon of a harpy eagle. While Scott wonders aloud how a werewolf gets talons, Deaton says the more interesting mystery is how the talons somehow absorbed Scott's power.

Deaton says the only creature capable of absorbing Scott's true alpha power would be a beta of his own making, someone like Liam.

Scott wonders if the same would be true of a beta that he did not make but that he allowed into his pack. He's talking about Theo. Deaton says normally the answer would be no, but, apparently, the rules of the supernatural are not as rigid as they believed or someone is trying to change the rules.

Stiles Investigates Theo

Stiles is trying to convince his dad to investigate Theo. He says the boy's family left town when Theo was nine or ten and that his older sister got into an accident when he was eight. The sheriff doesn't see why he should investigate Theo just because he is a werewolf. He points out that Stiles' best friend is a werewolf and he is dating a werecoyote. He says "When the flying monkeys come soaring through this station" he might pay attention to Stiles' concerns.