Georgia Alexander met Aeolus whilst visiting Miami, though she was originally from Spain, she had been saving up for this trip for months and did not expect to fall in love, let alone love a god. They met at at a restaurant and Aeolus offered to be her tour guide. They began to date, despite Georgia being married, though she did say Aeolus didn't seem to mind and Georgia was head over heels for him so she did it anyway. The two went out for months, prolonging her return to Spain but when she had to it was Aeolus that ended the relationship but whilst on the plane she found out she was pregnant with Derek.
Derek grew up the baby of the family as he had three older siblings, his older sister, Jane, and two twins, Xavier and Sammy and his father (or so he thought) he did not know he was the child of another maan and Georgia intended to keep it that way. When he was seven he was diagnosed with Dyselxia, which made it difficult for him to learn how to read. When he was eight his parents went to pick him up from school but they were killed in a car accident, killing them instantly. After this, the four went to live in America, were their grandfather lived as they had no other relatives in Spain.
He continued to live with them for a period of time, he often spent time tinkering with scraps of metal. But as their grandfather was in hospital, and they had no other way to gain money as Jane, the oldest, was still in school, they were always low on money so Derek silently promised that he would get money for them. Later on, Jane fell in love with a man affiliated with the broken covenant, named Duncan, son of Apollo, who gave her money. Derek strongly advised her "I'll do something about the money, so don't see that guy anymore!" because he didn't trust him as Duncan was far to generous and even Xavier had begun to suspect something. Jane was touched by his kindness but refused, saying that if it was just her then she couldn't protect her family.
When he was thirteen, Jane finally listened to Derek and rejected Duncan but he got angry so the next night he killed Jane out of anger of her rejecting him as he is used to have everything he wants. When Jane was killed Derek ran out from the house, hearing her screams and when he saw Duncan with the knife in his hand he blew up. He used the air to push Duncan back and snatching the knife from Duncan he managed to dig the knife into Duncan's chest, killing him. After he realised what he had done, he was distraught and ran, not wanting to face anyone after killing someone, even if the man had killed his sister.
Derek left the village to start his life of crime without telling anyone why, even though he cared for them he had to find a way to get them money as there would be no way to pay for the grandfathers hospital fees. At one point, Xavier stumbled across him and tried to convince him to come back but Derek threatened him and told him to leave. Despite the bad memories it held, Derek determinedly stayed in the life of crime. His real goal was to get enough money to pay for the grandfather's hospital fees, but he did not tell the twins of this goal, causing many misunderstandings between them. Derek, however, considered it better this way as he would not have to worry about them getting hurt.
When he was twelve he was attacked by a hellhound, he ran for his life and was nearly killed if a satyr didn't come and save him, when they were battling the satyr threw Derek a sword and he was about to try and help the satyr when the satyr was killed but this gave Derek enough time to stab the hellhound in the neck as it was too caught up with the satyr.
Whilst in the life of crime and in the village, he was constantly attacked by monsters, his first was when he was fourteen near the town, when he was collecting firewood, but he knew how to fight, because a person in the village knew how to fight and taught Derek after he constantly bugged the person to teach him but the guy was a demigod and like Duncan suspected that Derek was a demigod as he had seen Derek use some powers over the wind so he gave Derek a standard CHB sword but he didn't have enough money to take Derek to camp, so Derek managed to fight the monsters off, but never knew what they were, it happened at least once a month but he thought that he was either going mad or someone was just pulling tricks on him, the monsters were mostly hellhounds.
Two years later, Derek joined a band of thieves and began to rob corrupted people to pay off hospital bills for Jane's grandfather. Whether or not he is really rich is not known to anyone, but he definitely gave a large amount to support the sickly old man. He gained street smarts and became a micro-expert in the field of explosives. It was during one of these scouts for places to plunder a satyr found him and classified him as a demigod and after a couple of weeks of persuasion he took Derek to camp at the age of eighteen and on his way to camp he encountered a couple of monsters, including empousai and hellhounds.