Archive of Our Own ^beta

There was a boy sitting on the bleachers.

To be honest, Derek wouldn’t have given him the time of day normally, but there were a few things that struck him as odd. Firstly, there was still a good thirty minutes before school let out. Secondly, the boy was silently staring out towards the preserve with a pensive expression. Thirdly, he had no scent, and his heartbeat was non-existent.

Okay, maybe he should have led with that.

Still, could he have just been too far away or upwind? Sure, there was always that possibility, but Derek was a born werewolf, and those types of things didn’t normally stop him for getting a general read on a person, so this kid, with his moon pale skin and dark eyes, caught his attention.

It had absolutely nothing to do with how striking the boy was, or how his posture screamed hurtwoundedbrokensad. His wolf absolutely did not want to get all up in the kid’s business and fix him.

His wolf rolled his eyes, ‘Liar,’ it said. The wolf would have happily shoved the boy against the closest wall and scent marked him until he smelt of contentment and heat and them.

But Derek wasn’t some bitten newbie. He was the second born son of Talia Hale, Alpha of the Hale Pack, and being groomed to be his eldest sister’s Right Hand. Patrick, his older brother, was working on becoming their Emissary, and Cora, his youngest sister, would one day follow in his Uncle Peter’s footsteps being their Left Hand. No one knew what the twins would be yet, seeing as how they were only six.

Derek was proud of his to-be-position, and followed his father around learning about how to support a Pack, organize a household, fund Pack businesses, etc. He preferred that type of role to breaking kneecaps or remembering the exhaustive lists of protocols and (for the magically inclined) potions, spells, and wards. Granted, Patrick was human and training to be a Druid, so there were the innate differences in biology and magic making Derek unsuitable for the position, but he honestly could not think of a more boring job than memorizing all the different herbs and their uses.

Patrick was great at that type of intellectual stuff and would have moved into the library if their mom had let him, but Derek preferred doing something with clearly defined outcomes, which is why he was doing his degree in actuary science with the hopes of an MBA when he graduated next year. He was a few years older than most of his classmates, but he’d taken two years off in high school because of reasons he didn’t like to dwell on.

His attention drifted back to the teen. He looked older than many of the students at Beacon Hills High, but not by much. Maybe he was a senior on his free period, but why would you stick around school if you didn’t have to?

The bell rang, breaking through Derek’s thoughts and drawing his attention towards the front doors where he could already hear Erica and Jackson sniping at each other. He rolled his eyes at the constant bickering. You’d think after two years, Erica would know not to engage with Jackson on his level, but nope, they still went at each other like they were one wrong move away from a full-on Pack War.

“Jesus, let it go, will you?” he grumbled under his breath, knowing the others would hear him.

Isaac was the first to break off from the Pack and make a bee-line to Derek’s side. He was the youngest, even though he was the tallest, and the most insecure of his Packmates. Technically, the Hales had adopted him after his dad had been sent to prison for attempted murder of a minor, but he still felt like he could be replaced at any time, which meant the entire Pack spent a considerable amount of time with the young beta.

Long arms wrapped around his waist as the blonde scent marked Derek, making him smile. “Hey, Isaac, did your history presentation go okay?”

“Got a B-,” Isaac mumbled. “And Harris is still a dick. Jackson got detention tomorrow.”

Derek flashed a fang at the instant snarl from his cousin, reminding him to be nice. Jackson was much too like Peter in some things.

“Fuck off, Iz,” Jackson growled.

“What’d you do this time?” Derek asked.

“He miss-labeled the water and alcohol containers, then set the lab table on fire ‘on accident’,” Boyd commented, knocking his shoulder against Derek’s in greeting.

Derek snorted, “Sounds about right. Peter going to be forking out for another piece of equipment or were you lucky this time?”

Jackson’s response was to flick him off and climb into the Porsche he’d gotten for his sixteenth birthday. Peter was an enabler and no one could tell him otherwise.

“Oh, hey, Iz, do you know…” Derek turned towards the bleachers, but the other teen was gone.

“Know who?” Isaac asked, glancing towards the empty stands.

“No one,” Derek grumbled. “Never mind. Come on, you and Erica have Drivers’ Ed tonight with Laura.”

Erica crowed, jumping up and fist pumping the air in excitement while Isaac curled in on himself. “Are you sure I couldn’t just walk everywhere? The two of them are terrifying to drive with.”

Derek snorted a laugh, because yeah, they really were and he was so very glad that his dad was the one to show him how to drive when he’d been sixteen.

Have you ever bought a new car and suddenly you see the same model all over the place? That’s what the next two weeks felt like for Derek. No matter where he went, it felt like the kid was suddenly everywhere. He dropped Erica off at the library and saw the kid disappearing between the stacks. Swinging by the local coffee house – not the Starbucks, because of reasons, Peter, and thank you for ruining my favorite latte place – and the kid would be across the street by the duck pond. At the mall with Jackson and he’d be riding the bus past the parking lot. He was just everywhere, and yet no matter what, Derek couldn’t seem to get close to him, or get a read on him.

It was driving him crazy and yet, he didn’t want to bring the kid up to the Pack. He’d thought about it several times, especially after the whole Kate nightmare, but since he hadn’t had contact with him, it just kept slipping his mind. It was weird, when he was there, in front of Derek, it was like he drew Derek’s attention, but the minute he was out of eyesight, nothing. He’d completely forget about him until he saw him again. Like he said, weird, and considering he was a werewolf, that was saying something.

The problem with not having a job and being on break from university meant he became the younger Pack member’s chauffer in his free time. Granted, he didn’t normally mind hanging out with the younger members, but tonight he’d just wanted to curl up in bed and read, and he couldn’t do that if he was driving the lot of them to the local cinema.

He rolled his eyes at something Erica said to Isaac, making the youngest blush hotly when something caught his attention on the other side of the road.

It was the kid.

The same one he’d noted from a month earlier. He was wearing the same bloody red hoodie and beige slacks with red high tops. Why red, Derek had no idea, and at the moment, didn’t really care as he slammed on his breaks, one arm snapping out to stop Isaac from flying through the windshield as he spun the wheel hard to the left, making an illegal U-turn and setting off a stream of blaring car horns at the move.

“What the hell, Derek!?” Jackson yelled; hand pressed against the back window in an effort to protect his face from getting smashed in.

But Derek wasn’t paying attention, he was too busy pulling himself from the car and looking back and forth along the road like a crazy person because the boy was gone. Again. Derek had only stopped because he’d stepped off the sidewalk right in front of Old Ms. Marsh. The woman was mean as a snake and as blind as a bat. Honestly. He knew the Sheriff had tried to take her license more than once, but the old witch always got it back somehow. Derek and Laura thought it was magic; Patrick just snorted and told them there was no magic involved, although neither sibling believed him.

“Derek?”

He jumped at Isaac’s tentative touch on his shoulder.

“What did you see?” the teen asked worriedly. Isaac was always more sensitive than the others due to his past abuse, and as a wolf, that meant he was typically the one to sense when something was wrong with one of them.

“A kid,” he huffed, his heart still beating erratically. “A kid walked out in front of Marsh’s car.”

Isaac’s eyes went wide as he turned to survey the road. “I don’t see anyone. No one’s hurt or anything.” He gave Derek a considering look before glancing back at their car and the others. Derek heard Erica on the phone and figured she was giving his mom the head’s up. Great, just what he needed.

“Yeah,” Derek said breathlessly. “Yeah, that’s good. Sorry, I…” he shook his head to try and clear away the image of the car heading for the boy and couldn’t. It was like the worst case-scenario was burned into his brain and making his wolf scratch furiously at his insides. He patted his pockets, realizing belatedly that he’d left the car running and jerked his chin towards it.

“Why don’t you take the car?” he suggested distractedly. “Or rather, Boyd, take the car, since he’s actually got his driver’s license. I’m going to walk home.”

“You sure?” Isaac asked.

Derek watched as Boyd unfurled himself from the backseat and shoved Jackson back in when he went to take Isaac’s place. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay.” He tilted his head and then nodded. “Pat’s coming, just to check on everything.”

Derek blew out a resigned sigh. “Yeah, I figured.”

Isaac grimaced as he patted him on the back and headed back to the car. Derek scowled in forced apology at the remaining vehicles as they drove around them; at least no one had called the cops yet.

He stalked across the street, standing exactly where the teen had stood and took a completely non-subtle sniff, noting a slight chill to the air, but nothing else.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Derek knew he was no longer alone.

“Patrick,” he huffed.

“Baby bro,” Pat responded with a smirk, knowing it would annoy his taciturn brother.

Derek rolled his eyes. “I’m not crazy.”

Patrick stepped up beside Derek, knocking their shoulders together lightly. “No one said you were; you did however scare the crap outta the baby betas talking about an invisible kid trying to suicide by Old Marshface."

Derek stepped out into the road once a car had passed. “He was right here, but I can’t smell anything.”

Patrick crossed to him. Kneeling in the street, he let his eyes glow green as he reached out with his magic. Derek wasn’t prone to flights of fantasy, which was why their mother had sent him over to check on things. So far, he wasn’t getting the sense that anything was amiss, just a faint electrical hum on the edges of his magic. Like a hint of static electricity after a storm rolled through. Still…

“Der, come here,” he commanded, pulling his magic back.

“What?”

“Beta shift for me,” he told him, reaching up to snag his brother’s wrist and press his palm flat against the asphalt. As Derek’s wolf pushed forward, his eyes glowing blue, Patrick saw the flicker of orange magic spark weakly under his palm and sucked in a sharp breath.

“Damn,” he murmured, watching as Derek turned towards the other side of the road and south. “There aren’t any houses out that way. Just the old factory and some abandoned apartment buildings the city was planning on tearing down.”

“He’s there,” Derek rumbled, his voice more wolf than man.

Patrick watched as he stood, his eyes unfocused, following something Patrick couldn’t see. “Hold on,” he said sharply, grabbing Derek’s shoulder to halt him. “There’s magic here,” Patrick said. “Magic that I don’t recognize; and sure, it’s weak, but so far you’re the only one who’s being affected.”

Derek flinched at the reminder that he’d almost cost their family everything once already, hunching his shoulders at Pat’s warning.

Patrick groaned. “I’m not saying this is bad magic, Der,” he soothed. “But it’s different, so we need to be smart about this. You said it was a kid that you saw. What did they look like? Have you ever seen them before?”

“It’s…he’s not a kid, kid. He’s older than the others, eighteen, nineteen maybe.” He ignored Patrick’s raised eyebrow. “And I saw him at the school about a month ago. He was sitting on the bleachers. I was going to ask Isaac about him, but he was gone before I could.”

“And you’re just now mentioning him to us?”

Derek shrugged, his defenses going up at his brother’s tone. “He was just some teen I didn’t recognize. Not like that’s hard, we’ve only been back in town for two-years and there’s 900 people at the high school.”

Patrick reigned in his concern. Derek was right. They’d left after the Argents had almost burned them out, recouping in NY with their father’s family out on Long Island. It’d taken a few years for Peter’s scars to heal fully. Erica, Boyd, and Isaac had been new additions Cora, Malia, and Jackson had requested a few weeks after starting at the high school. Jackson had practically ripped Mr. Lahey apart when he’d heard Isaac crying out on his way home from Danny’s house one night, and Malia had gotten suspended for fracturing Greenburg’s jaw when she punched him for filming Erica during a seizure.

Boyd had been a surprise. Not because there had been anything wrong with the introverted teen, but because Cora had been the one to ask. She knew him from the skating rink where she was taking lessons and thought he would make a good, steady enforcer for the Pack. When she found out about Erica, she basically demanded he be included, knowing that he had a massive crush of the blonde. The entire thing had worked out for the best. Erica and Boyd ended up being mates, Isaac got a new start with a family that didn’t try and kill him, and the Hale Pack was three loyal betas stronger.

And while Derek didn’t hang around the high school often, he recognized a large majority of the kids in the sophomore and junior classes thanks to the six younger members. This teen wasn’t one of them.

“Okay, so you saw him at the school. What made you stop today? Beside old Marshface?”

Derek gave him a distracted glance. “The old witch isn’t enough of a reason to stop?”

Patrick snorted. “Don’t deflect, what was it?”

Derek frowned, rubbing at the back of his neck to get rid of the tension that had been sitting there since he’d seen the teen in the street. “Honestly? I don’t know. He’s…it’s like I can taste his sadness.” He shook his head at Patrick’s startled glance. “That sounds stupid,” he grumbled, ears pinking. “There isn’t a scent or sound to him. No heartbeat I can hear, but he feels sad to me.”

“Wait! He doesn’t have a heartbeat?!”

Derek shook his head, feeling more antsy as the conversation dragged on. “Not at the school and not here. I yelled,” he frowned as he paced a step away from his brother. “I think I yelled. Other people turned to stare at me, but he never turned. I don’t…I don’t know what color his eyes are.”

“What did he look like?” Patrick asked carefully, mind working over the implications and Derek’s odd fascination with the teen.

“Tall. Thin. Pale. He…he has these moles or freckles or something,” he said, waving at his own face absently. “And one of those messy hair styles, like he just ran his fingers through it and called it a day. Brown hair. Grey stripped hoodie, khakis, and the stupidest red high tops.” He frowned. “He had a red hoodie on before. Same stupid shoes though.”

“But you can’t smell him or hear a heartbeat,” Patrick repeated.

Derek shook his head, the need to move building inside him. “No.”

“Okay,” Patrick said, aware of Derek’s rising agitation. “Okay, so, this is what we’re going to do. You’re going after him, BUT!” he said sharply when Derek went to pull away. “But, you’re going to keep your phone on so we can track you, okay? If something goes wrong, you howl and I’ll port to you, got it?”

Derek nodded sharply, his features still in Beta shift as he pulled out of Patrick’s grip and after a quick glance at the empty road, looped out into the darkness.

Patrick groaned as he watched Derek race away and glanced down at the road before flipping his cell open.

“Hey, it’s me. What do you know about residual orange sparks?”

Derek traced the feeling to the industrial section of town. On a Friday night, most of the warehouses and auto shops were closed, their steel grates pulled low over shatter-resistant windows. He’d never bothered with this section of town before, and found himself wandering a few blind alleys before he managed to find the old apartment complex.

It was six stories and had two wings with a central entry and elevator shaft. Derek tried the door only to flinch back and away when a grinding, grating screech made his ears bleed. He stepped back into the road, trying to figure out how he knew this was the building he needed to get into and how. Going around the side, he found the emergency fire escape and smirked.

He had his way in.

Just like with the road, or the bleachers, there was something inside him pushing him forward. His wolf recognized that the teen was important to him, he just didn’t know why. As Derek moved silently up the side of the building, he went through what he was feeling. Something he’d learned the hard way after four years in forced therapy.

There was a sort of fascination that had fallen over him the first time he’d laid eyes on the teen. A feeling of hurt and pensiveness that called out to him. The teen reminded him of himself in some ways. After Paige had died, he’d been near inconsolable, unwilling to leave his room for over a week and to talk to anyone for almost three months.

His mom had put him in therapy and he’d spent another two months not speaking to her either. Until Kate wormed her way into his life. She was older, more experienced, and didn’t treat him like a social leaper, and for a few weeks he managed to keep her attention from everyone. It had been new and exciting and he’d let it slip during a session. Thankfully, his therapist had contacted the Sheriff and his mom, and between the two, Kate had been arrested before they’d had sex. He still shuddered when he thought about how close it had been with her.

The arrest brought in her father, Gerard, and if the Hales thought Kate was bad, it was nothing compared to the old sociopath who tried to burn their house down with them in it in revenge. Luckily, Pat was able to break the Mountain Ash line while Talia called the police. The Sheriff had come in guns blazing. The Sheriff and several deputies has been shot and killed before the Hunters Gerard brought with him had been subdued. Gerard had been dispatched by Talia herself where the humans couldn’t see her slice the bastard in half with his own sword.

The Hales had packed up and moved to New York shortly after to regroup. They’d been gone for four years, collected Erica, Boyd, and Isaac after they returned and Laura had finished her JD and they’d received word that Kate had died in prison. Ovarian cancer; which had made Laura cackle and note that karma really was a bitch. So, this teen showing up and giving off vibes like Derek during the months shortly after Kate made his wolf scratch at his insides, but it was even more than that. It was how he kept drawing Derek’s eye no matter the situation. Derek had only ever seen him in profile, the dark fall of hair, the creamy alabaster skin, the moles, and freckles like stars across the night sky, and upturned nose were all peripherally noted as attractive, something Derek would like to see more of, but it wasn’t what drew him in.

Derek paused at the top landing to gaze through the grimy bay window. It was huge, and would have given an awesome view over the city if it wasn’t coated in years’ worth of smog and dirt. The apartment could barely be called that. From his vantagepoint, he could see two huge metal sliding doors, one directly across from the window, and another on his right along with what looked like a hallway and a spiral staircase leading to the roof.

An old grey couch, threadbare with water stains along the bottom sat before a broken coffee table. A large work table had been upended, one of the legs snapped off and shoved against the huge hole in the wall leading to an elevator shaft that Derek immediately dismissed as a death trap waiting to happen. Beside the hole was a single, musty mattress stained an off-white. There were no sheets or pillows, and Derek shivered at the thought of sleeping on the thing.

The entrance to the kitchen was beside the main door, or, what was probably supposed to have been a kitchen, but the only things in the dark room were bare countertops and cabinets. The doors weren’t even installed, and other than a single large metal sink, there were no appliances. The loft was empty, and painfully so.

There were also no lights, and Derek couldn’t figure out how the kid ate or drank anything, let alone where he bathed, since he couldn’t see a bathroom from where he stood, but maybe that was in the hallway he could just barely make out. Either way, it was depressing as hell and seeing the kid sitting on the edge of the mattress, head bowed over his knees, he didn’t blame him for looking like misery personified.

He dug his claws into the side of the building, pulling himself up to the roof. There had to be an access door somewhere that would get him into the building. He still wasn’t sure why it was so important to get to the teen, but Derek knew he needed to, that for the first time in a long time, both the wolf and the man agreed on something, so he swung himself onto the small roof top balcony and snapped the lock on the door, allowing him to gain entry; albeit illegally.

The entryway led to two smaller bedrooms, both empty save for some broken furniture and moldy curtains. A waterlogged paperback was shoved into the corner of a utility closet. He moved silently, with just a cursory glance into each room that he passed; Pat’s warning and the memory of the Argents keeping him aware of his surroundings. The spiral staircase creaked as his weight was redistributed, making him wince. He paused, waiting for some sound from the teen, moving further down when silence greeted him.

The other hadn’t moved from his position on the ratty mattress. He was still bowed over his hands, his sleeves pushed back to show strong, corded forearms and long fingers that Derek spent much too long looking at before he finally crossed to him. Whatever, the kid was hot, and Derek had always appreciated the lithe form of the cross-country runners over the bulkier football players and this kid was squarely in the former category, although his shoulders and chest were a bit more defined than he was used to.

Maybe he played lacrosse like Jackson and Isaac? Although he didn’t remember seeing him at any of the games. Boyd had quit after one season, preferring to focus on his JROTC training. Erica had pouted for a month before Boyd had worn his dress formals, and then she could have cared less; as long as he kept dressing up for her.

He padded across the water-stained concrete floor, nose wrinkling at a suspicious rust stain half hidden under the couch, until he was standing directly in front of the kid. Slowly, he sunk to his knees. Even bare inches apart, he couldn’t hear his heartbeat or smell him and that was freaking his wolf out enough that he reached out a tentative hand to place two fingers under the boy’s chin, raising it until warm honey brown eyes focused on him. Derek swallowed hard when they flickered between orange and black, before fading back to brown.

“Who are you?” Derek asked on a whisper.

The teen blinked as he slowly focused on Derek. He swallowed, opening his mouth and then closing it again. “You can see me?”

Derek frowned, his eyebrows pulling down in a v over his hazel eyes. “Of course I can.”

“You’re the first then,” the teen said breathlessly.

“What do you mean?”

“Who are you?” the teen countered. “What are you? No one human can see me.”

“Wolf.”

The boy blinked slowly, nodding as he looked Derek over. “Makes sense, I guess. Are you dead too?”

Derek jerked back at the question. “No, I’m…you’re not dead.”

The other shrugged dejectedly. “The only ones able to see me are the others in the Train depot. I watched dad give me a funeral. I don’t eat or sleep. Pretty sure that means I’m dead, dude.”

“Don’t call me dude,” Derek said offhandedly. “What train depot?”

“The train depot. The holding spot for the dead. Don’t you wolves know anything?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure that’s not a real thing.”

“Pretty sure my ass sat on a bench waiting for over a year with a bunch of extras for the Haunted Mansion, so I’ll have to disagree.”

Derek shook his head as he stood and glanced around the room. He took a step back and sat gingerly on the couch, flinching when it groaned under his weight.

The boy watched him with a faint edge of sardonic humor, though it never reached his eyes.

“Stiles.”

“What’s a …”

“My name,” the boy cut him off. Derek had the feeling it was a long-standing issue he was tired of explaining.

“Derek.”

“If you’re not dead…”

“You’re not dead,” Derek said, rolling his eyes in exasperation.

The boy gave him a flash of black eyes that made his wolf whine and duck away in apology. “As I was saying. If you’re not dead, then it has to be something else that’s letting you see me.”

“I am a wolf,” he said condescendingly.

“So were the Pack, doesn’t mean they could see me either.”

Derek froze at the word. To his knowledge, the only Pack besides their own in Beacon Hills in the past thirty years was the Alpha Pack almost eight years ago. It had been because of them that a handful of teens had been attacked. Paige and two others had died, one had gone missing and was presumed dead, and another young woman had gone crazy and been sent to Eichen House. The only one that seemed to make some form of peace with the situation was Scott McCall, who their current Emissary, Dr. Deaton had taken away for two years for training. Last Derek had heard, he’d become a True Alpha and had a small Pack down in L.A.

“What year?” he asked hesitantly, dreading the teen’s answer.

“2004.”

Derek sucked in a sharp breath. “That…that was eight years ago. It’s 2012 now.”

Stiles nodded, even as he gave Derek the side-eye. “I know. I told you, dude. I’m dead.”

“You… you can’t be.”

Stiles stood and stepped up into Derek’s space, pressing his wrist against the wolf’s ear. “You magically hear a heartbeat, Big Guy? Because I haven’t since the night Deuc went crazy.”

Derek’s vision whited out at the name, his breath coming in painful gasps as he pushed away from Stiles, stumbling a few feet before collapsing to his knees.

“Shit! Derek? Derek! Come on man, don’t do this when I can’t…fucking hell!” Stiles hesitated for a second before snarling, his eyes flashing a dusky burnt-orange as he reached out to pull Derek into the v of his legs, pressing the wolf’s face against his throat and wishing with everything in him that he could do something that would help. Anything.

“Come on man,” he groused, rocking and hushing the wolf in turns. “Come on, I didn’t save your foxy ass that first night for nothing…Come on, Void!”

Stiles’ eyes flickered from orange to black, the scala swallowed until they consumed all the light streaking through the smeared window. His pale skin went chalky, cracks forming along the flesh and dark circles bruising his eyes.

‘Panic attack,’ a gravelly voice hissed inside his mind.

“No shit, help me stop it,” Stiles snarked back, long used to the disturbing echo the other’s voice gave him.

‘Shock. Injure him. Bite him. Punch him, but do it fast. Even wolves can hyperventilate if given enough lack of oxygen.’

Stiles remembered the last time he’d had an attack and Lydia had kissed him to shock him out of it. He’d come back to himself covered in blood with Ennis’s heart in one hand, a black katana in the other, and Kali’s head rocking by his feet. Heather, Camden, and Paige were dead, Scott was bent over with his fangs buried in his wrist as he tried to control the shift, and Lydia…Lydia was still screaming, even as she kissed him. Her eyes and hair were white, black blood cascaded from her now blind eyes, and the screaming…her screams would forever be a part of his nightmares. Hell, he couldn’t even get the sound out of his head in the train depot.

He buried long fingers in Derek’s thick black hair, idly wondering how it was still so soft with that much product in it, and turned the wolf’s head until he could press their lips together.

‘Breathe!’ he thought furiously, growling as deeply as any wolf. The sound rumbled through him and into Derek, a sharp, jagged breath sucked in through fangs, and a lowly, broken whine slipping back out on the exhale.

“Breathe, Derek, breathe, damn it!” he snarled, the lines cracking deeper as silver fangs slid free and small, deadly claws dented the wolf’s scalp. Stiles tasted the faint edge of copper, but couldn’t tell you who’s blood it was. He hadn’t been able to feel anything for so long…to taste anything, that it took long minutes before he managed to catalogue the taste at all.

It seemed Derek the werewolf was breaking a lot of Stiles’ preconceived notions about himself and to be honest, the teen wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

Pat was leaning against the veterinary clinics outside wall when Peter pulled in to the parking lot. The clinic was closed, but he knew Dr. Deaton was inside and while he would have normally gone straight to his mentor with something like this, considering it involved Derek, he wanted his uncle present. Alan and Derek hadn’t been on friendly terms in almost a decade, and Pat didn’t think adding in mystery orange magic wielders was going to change that anytime soon.

“Patrick,” the older wolf said, tipping his head with a sardonic grin.

“Uncle Peter.”

“So, you mentioned orange magic. Thoughts?”

Pat blew out a breath even as he checked the tracking app. Derek hadn’t moved from the middle of West 6th Street. “Der was fixated on the user. Almost entranced. It makes me worried.”

Peter’s jaw ticked as he rubbed absently at the smooth skin of his cheek. It’d taken eight years, but he’d finally healed. Physically at least.

“You think someone is using magic on him?”

Patrick shrugged, glancing at the closed sign on the door and back. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen orange magic before. It’s sort of why I called you.”

Peter gave him an enigmatic smile and waved towards the clinic. “Well, why don’t we see what Dr. Deaton thinks first, then we can discuss the last time orange magic was seen in Beacon Hills, and what it is going to mean for my recalcitrant nephew.”

Pat pursed his lips in annoyance. Since the Alpha Pack and fire, Peter hadn’t been the same. Everyone knew that Derek had been involved in both incidences, although unwittingly, and while Deaton showed active disdain for the younger wolf, Peter’s remarks were more varied. Half the time he defended Derek and half the time his remarks were borderline abusive. Only Talia seemed to be able to reign him in when things got too bad. Patrick worried this might be another of Peter’s vindictive swings and what that might mean for his younger brother.

Derek came back to himself slowly. He was on the ground. His chest burned as he struggled to breathe with his lips pressed almost painfully against Stiles’. He felt claws and fangs against his flesh, blinked up into an inky abyss and for the first time ever he heard Stiles’ heartbeat. It was enough to shock him free of the panic licking up his spine. Enough to make his wolf surge forward, pushing him into a Beta shift and biting at the startled man’s lips.

“Wha!” Stiles managed a garbled exclamation before he was pinned to the dirty concrete floor with two-hundred pounds of werewolf muscle pressed from lips to ankles. Glowing blue eyes burned down at him, making his breath hitch, even as Derek’s tongue stole into his mouth.

He groaned, pressing up against the other man, Void slipping backwards into the recesses of his psyche where he’d resided since that fateful night a bunch of dumb-assed kids decided to go searching the woods for half a body.

They’d found the body. A black man beta shifted and strung up between two trees. He’d been sliced in half, his insides on the outside and the teens had screamed, thrown-up, and tried to run all at the same time.

That’s when the Alpha Pack had found them and their lives had been changed forever.

It had felt a lot like this to be honest.

‘Mate,’ Void whispered. His voice almost reverent in its hesitance. Stiles saw flashes of Void’s memories. Knowledge gathered over a thousand years that he’d painstakingly managed to sort and catalogue into some sort of system that made sense to him.

There had been a woman once. A human that had loved Void and tried to be what he needed, but nogitsune did not have a physical form, and in the end, the woman hadn’t been able to take the man he’d possessed from his family. She’d killed herself when she found out she was pregnant and the loss had broken the fox completely. He’d gone dark-side for generations until his accidental release and possession of Stiles; the fledgling Spark shattering his prison beneath the Nemeton with his fear and untried magic. It had not been an easy integration, but now he understood why they hadn’t been able to leave the depot.

“We’re not dead,” he mumbled surprised.

Derek heard the comment and snorted, even as he licked into Stiles’ mouth. Fire and ice swirled through him as the teen’s magic crackled and popped across his skin. Flickers of light – sparks of white and orange – danced in and out of black pools of the deepest shadow. He rumbled, pleased, when the other man started kissing back; his wolf pushing for him to submit as he nosed down Stiles’ jaw and throat. He felt the tremble as Stiles struggled between wanting to go lax in Derek’s hold and wanting to press up against him, his clawed fingers pushing and pulling sporadically as he struggled for control. It confused his wolf, who had always considered itself stronger than any human he’d encountered. But then, the other man wasn’t really human; now, was he?

A snarl worked its way over him, the sound almost feral as Stiles jerked Derek’s head up sharply, silver fangs glinting dangerously as those fathomless black eyes stared into Derek, making his wolf whine and duck his head.

Stiles might be submissive, but whatever was inside him sure as hell wasn’t.

“Mate.”

Derek whined lowly in the back of his throat at the word. Fuck, but that made so much sense, even as it terrified Derek. Mates were not guaranteed. Not every person had one, but the likelihood was higher in supernaturals who could feel the magical connection more than humans could. Still, to think he had one…that he was allowed to have one after almost getting his Pack killed….

Stiles saw the uncertainty in Derek’s eyes, smelled the dank, bitter edge of self-doubt and recrimination as his senses came alive for the first time in eight years, and snarled savagely, pulling the wolf to him roughly. He buried his nose in Derek’s throat, low, growling-wet gasps of breath exploding against the blood-warm skin.

“Mate,” he said once more with absolute confidence, pushing the word against Derek’s skin as he lapped and sucked on it.

Derek whined brokenly as he bared his neck to the other, his eyelids sliding shut in anticipation as those razor-like fangs scratched back and forth against the column.

“Do it,” he rasped brokenly, his body trembling in a jumbled mess of fear and longing. “I want it.”

“Mine,” Stiles snarled, barely holding himself back from taking the wolf right there.

He felt Derek nod jerkily, his voice a gutted, punched out whimper of ‘yours,’ as he bit down sharply, blood flooding his mouth with its warm, coppery taste, and hips stuttering as the wolf’s body bowed upwards, the musky scent of cum flooding his nose as he ground against Derek.

“Fuck,” the wolf gasped. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

He felt Stiles’ wrist get pressed against his open mouth and latched on to it with controlled violence, fang marks forming a jagged oval over the delicate tendons. Blood poured out from either side of his mouth as Derek growled against his flesh, tongue lapping at the salty skin.

It was messy and more than borderline violent and even though there were still so many questions that Derek had, for the first time since Paige’s death, he felt centered. The agitation and guilt he’d carried for years because of Kate and Gerard replaced with a sense of calm and balance.

An anchor, his wolf rumbled, pleased when Stiles tilted his head back to lap at the thin line of dribbled blood on his neck. He felt the other man’s fingers absently pet his hair back into place as he shifted them to a more comfortable position on the hard concrete floor, folding Derek up under his chin and wrapping his long arms around the wolf. It should have been awkward, and gross, but he weirdly felt cared for.

Protected.

As he felt sleep pull him down, Derek absently realized it was because his wolf saw Stiles as an Alpha. He acknowledged the other man as being the stronger between the two, which was a terrifying thought on several levels, but held as he was, surrounded by their combined scents, Derek couldn’t work up the energy to be freaked out by the drastic change in his circumstances right then.

“Sleep, Derek,” he heard Stiles mumble into his hair. “Nothing is going to hurt you, I swear.”

Weirdly enough, he believed him, even when he hadn’t believed his own Pack when they’d told him the same thing after Paige, or Kate.

Pushing the disheartening thought away, he let the darkness take him, and slept.

Dr. Alan Deaton was an accomplished veterinarian, with dual degrees in Veterinary Science and Political Theory. His university hadn’t understood his driving need to learn as much as he could in both fields, but for a Druid being trained to become the Emissary to one of the oldest and most honorable werewolf packs in the past century, Alan thought it appropriate (on both counts). It was why Derek’s insistence in getting involved with that stupid human girl and then falling for an Argent of all people made him so disgusted. He was to be Laura’s Right Hand when Talia gave her the Alpha Spark. Erik had been training him for months. He knew he’d need to form alliances that would keep the Hale Pack strong, just like Laura would. That meant marriage to another wolf. One from an equally strong lineage, not some…some cello playing human girl!

He took a deep, centering breath and forced the tension out of his shoulders and down through his palms into the rowan desk and floorboards. The front office was the dark browns of the supernaturally inclined wood, while the back examination rooms was iron and stainless steel. One would work on his more magical clients and one was just easy to disinfect for his more mundane, four-footed ones.

“Are you telling me that Derek has once again gotten himself involved in someone that has the potential to destroy our Pack and you’ve not only failed to stop him, but actively encouraged him to seek out such a dangerous magic user?!” he hissed.

Patrick flinched back guiltily, but Peter just grinned. “’Dangerous’?” he asked.

“Of course he is!” Alan snapped, only realizing what he’d said when a predatory glint came into Peter’s blue eyes, the glow getting brighter as he leaned forward.

“Who is, Doc?” the older wolf asked darkly. “You wouldn’t happen to be referring to young Mr. Stilinski, now, would you? It was you who told everyone he’d died after all. Him and his mother.”

Stiles didn’t sleep. He should have. He desperately needed to for the first time in what felt like forever, but he had a new driving need to stay awake and protect the slumbering wolf curled so trustingly in his arms.

‘What the hell do we do now?’ he thought frantically, trying to keep his heartbeat steady, which turned out to be a lot harder when he had one again.

‘Now, we find the druid and figure out what happened to us.’ Void responded testily. He hated being wrong, and if they hadn’t truly been dead like Deaton had insisted, then he’d unwittingly stolen eight years from his young host, something he refused to accept. There had to be something about his awakening and their integration that had led to their disassociation from the world, because before Derek, the last people who ‘saw’ them had been Lydia and Deaton, and to his knowledge, the banshee wasn’t capable of seeing anything anymore.

Deaton was a different matter. The druid had been the reason he’d been in the nemeton in the first place. Void’s incarceration had been one of the man’s very first tasks when he’d become the Hale’s Emissary over thirty years ago. Okay, so maybe Void had been possessing Noshiko for the better part of a century, and maybe he shouldn’t have had her kill all those hunters, but honestly, they deserved it, and she deserved it for setting poor Rhys on fire, so he hadn’t really cared one way or another what happened to her.

Either way, the Druid had managed to trick him into a golem that he then sealed beneath the nemeton. Thirty years was nothing compared to the millennia the fox had been alive, but it still left him weak and borderline starving.

Until that night when six stupid teens went into the woods and found out monsters were real. Void hated the memories of the night, which was saying something about how bad things had really gotten. He couldn’t have told you what had transpired before he and Stiles had integrated, but from Stiles’ memories, he knew the friends had taken several bottles of alcohol out to celebrate. Camden was the oldest, and had just signed up for the Army that morning. He was getting out of this backwoods town before his father killed him in a drunken stupor. Lydia had received her early admission to MIT for the following semester and Paige was going to Julliard on a full scholarship. Heather and Scott still had six months before they graduated, but they were both planning on getting out as well and had even discussed getting an apartment in Los Angeles to save money.

And Stiles. Ah, his young host was something else entirely. He was the only one of the friends to know about the supernatural. His mother was a powerful Spark and had been working behind the scenes in Beacon Hills for years to maintain the flow of magic from the Nemeton to the rest of the town after it had been cut down during WW2. Rhys’s death had actually been the catalyst for the Army to destroy it and the area where the internment camp had been set-up. They hadn’t known that by doing so, even more deaths would occur.

When Claudia’s mother (also a Spark) started having dreams about the nemeton, the Gajos’ moved from Chicago where they’d fled during the war, and took up residence in the small town. They couldn’t regrow the tree, but they could start the healing process. Claudia was bonded before she was even born and she took her position seriously. By the time she’d married Noah Stilinski, she’d had dozens of run-ins with the new Hale Emissary. It got bad enough that she’d eventually gone directly to Talia, with Peter beside her as her Left Hand and informed them quiet bluntly that the druid was to be the Hale’s Emissary and nothing more. That she acted as the balance in the region and that when he was old enough, her son would inherit her position. She’d rubbed a hand over her swollen belly, orange sparks cracking and popping along her silk blouse.

The druid hadn’t liked that at all, but the Hale’s had agreed. Sparks were dangerous and rare, and no one sane crossed them for fear of what they’d do in retaliation. Claudia hadn’t wanted to be in a Pack with Deaton, and had declined the offer, but she had promised to warn them of any threats she encountered, as the wolves had agreed to as well.

It was a pity that they’d failed to keep their end of the bargain.

‘Stop thinking about it,’ Stiles groused, shifting slightly to try and get feeling back into his left foot.

‘He’s a Hale,’ Void said slowly, as if he wasn’t sure if he should rip Derek’s throat out right there and be done with it.

‘He’s our mate,’ he sighed, leaning backwards to stare at the stained ceiling. ‘I think Matka knew. Or realized or something, because she always said if something happened to her, Pops and I were supposed to go to Talia.’

Void grumbled even as he settled. ‘That night, you wouldn’t have made it. Not with Scott’s claws in your gut.’

Stiles bit his lip to keep the mewl of distress in. ‘Don’t,’ he said sharply. ‘It’s over, he didn’t mean to and…’

‘And the druid protected him. He let Deucalion live even as he bound Lydia’s banshee and…’

“I know!” he exploded, soothing Derek when the wolf jerked up half asleep, with bleary incandescent blue eyes.

“Sorry, sorry, it’s okay, Derek, just sleep, you’re okay….”

‘Jesus, Void!’ he hissed internally. ‘I know Deaton screwed us all over. I know he took advantage of Matka’s death and our integration to do something to us, okay? When we thought we were dead, I figured it was from the blood loss. That Matka hadn’t been fast enough and that it was the backlash of our magic that killed her. Watching…watching Pops bury us both was horrific. I thought I was going crazy. We were crazy, at least for that first year or two. Lydia was the only one who believed we were still alive and they sent her to Eichen because she wouldn’t stop screaming about the dead haunting her and the bleeding…God, the bleeding just freaked everyone out. Maybe if we’d know about Banshees back then we could have protected her. Given her some type of warning or training, but she was new to BH and the magic skipped a generation.’

‘There was no way to know, little one,’ Void murmured soothingly. ‘Banshees manifest differently in every case. She could have gone her entire life without knowing, but that much death…that much pain to people she cared about meant she had no choice.’

‘Do you think we can help her now?’ he asked cautiously. ‘Like, if Derek can see us and touch us and hear our heartbeat, that means we can get her out, right? She won’t need to be locked in there any longer?’

Void was silent for a long moment in thought. ‘Almost a decade has passed, Mischief,’ he warned softly. ‘She’s not going to be the same person you knew back then.’

Stiles gave a bitter, mirthless laugh. “None of us are.”

Derek woke to the first rays of light streaming across the loft’s floor. Stiles was curled over him protectively, his breath slow, but shallow. As he blinked the sleep out of his eyes, he noticed warm honey brown ones watching him through slits. The other man was still pale, but not the cracked ashen look he’d had last night.

“What are you?” he asked bluntly, wincing when he realized what a crappy first thing to say that was. “Shit, sorry, I mean, good morning.”

Stiles huffed as he pushed himself up into a sitting position against the couch. “Morning, Sourwolf,” he yawned, stretching out the kinks and numbness in his arms. “Nogitsune, or, a hybrid Spark!Nogitsune at least.”

“Nogitsune?” Derek asked confused. He’d heard of kitsunes, but not that.

“It’s a type of kitsune that eats chaos, pain, and fear. They manifest a bit differently than normal foxes in that they need a host to survive. I’m Void’s.”

“Void.”

“It’s Anglicized,” he dismissed on a wave, not wanting to rehash that first, terror-filled meeting with the dark fox any more, last night was enough of a trip down memory lane. Sliding out from behind Derek, he stood on wobbly legs and took a deep breath. He’d managed to doze a bit during the night, but not much else. He would need to crash soon, but not until he had some answers and was someplace safer than this abandoned loft.

Derek scrambled up beside him, wincing at the time. “I need to call my Pack.”

Stiles glanced over at his tone, judging the nuances of the wolf’s voice. Annoyance, defensiveness, and a bit of trepidation if he remembered how to read people.

“Sure. I’d offer my phone, but I haven’t had one in almost a decade so…” he shrugged like it didn’t matter, but Derek could hear the faint tremor in his voice. He reached out and snagged the other man’s wrist, dragging him up against his chest as he ducked his head to kiss him.

“We’ll figure it out.”

“There’s a lot,” he warned as the wolf dragged his nose across his temple.

Derek snorted. “There always is. I promise, Stiles, we’ll fix things.”

Stiles gave a tremulous exhale as he burrowed in close and prayed that for once the universe gave him something instead of taking things away. “If you say so, Sourwolf.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Alan said through clenched teeth. “Whoever or whatever left that orange residue is no friend of the Pack.”

Peter had a clawed hand buried in Alan’s shoulder as they climbed out of Patrick’s Subaru. Talia and Laura as Alpha and heir were the first ones to step away from the vehicle. Peter and Cora had Alan pinned between them, while Patrick was there as the Hale’s temporary Emissary. He still had a few years to go in his training, but he was more than capable of defending them against conventional attack.

“If it’s Claudia’s son, he had Pack protection, and you let us all think he was dead,” the wolf snarled, shaking the man, and digging his claws in a little harder. “If he asks for your head, I’m going to be happy to hand it over on a pike.”

Peter wanted to smash the arrogant asshole in the face. He’d warned Talia of the potential backlash when the Alpha Pack had gone crazy on their territory all those years ago, and now he was being proven right. He was strong. His Pack was strong, but against a pissed off Spark? Well, he just hoped it didn’t come to that.

“Mom?” Laura asked softly when the iron gates of the cemetery came into view, their lock melted into a lump of black and silver metal in the charred grass.

Talia reached out a steadying hand as Patrick took point, his eyes green and hands glowing softly. “Whatever you do, don’t antagonize him. Let Peter and I do the talking.”

Laura nodded, falling behind Peter and waiting until he handed Deaton over to her to watch. This whole thing was a nightmare. The fact that their Emissary had lied about a major magic user that was under the Pack’s protection, even while they protected the Pack, was insane. That a kid, a teen the same age as Derek had been, had single-handedly killed off most of the Alpha Pack, only to be gutted by his best friend, a friend who Deaton had then spirited away and trained to hate all magic users besides Druids and was now an Alpha himself…God, this could go so, so bad, and to top it off, they were going to have to rely on Derek to smooth things over. The same Derek who preferred to growl his answers most days and only really communicated with the baby betas and then only grudgingly.

As she crested the hill and saw her brother standing beside a young man who was almost as white as the fang marks on her brother’s throat, his eyes a solid inky-black, with dark cracks forming in his skin…she couldn’t help but groan.

‘Yup, they were all fucked.’

“The cemetery?” Derek asked as they walked up the worn stone steps.

Stiles nodded tersely, but didn’t answer, pausing when they came to the locked gates. He drew long fingers over the rusty metal, the locks melting under his touch, and pooling on the damp grass as Stiles pushed them open. In silence he led them further into the cemetery until they crested a small hill and he stood staring down at a set of gravestones. They all shared the same last name - Stilinski.

“Claudia, Noah and…”

“Mieczysław,” Stiles said hollowly. “Me. That’s the key-smash monstrosity they tried to make a five-year-old spell.”

Derek’s heart double-tapped. “Both your parents died?”

Stiles nodded. “Matka tried to stop Scott, or Void, or all of us. I’m a little fuzzy on what happened at the moment our powers met, but Deucalion killed her, and Deaton killed us. Or, I guess tried to since you keep insisting I’m not dead.”

“You’re not dead,” Derek growled lowly, making the other man smile faintly.

“What about your dad?” he asked after a few minutes of pensive silence.

“Killed during the Argent raid on your family. He was a deputy. Parrish is Sheriff now, I think, which is weird, because he was the one to recruit Camden into the Army in the first place.”

He shrugged, not noticing how stiff Derek had gotten beside him until the wolf breathed out, “You knew Cam?”

Stiles flicked his eyes over the green grass and the lightning struck tree beside his family plot before answering.

“I was the kid who went missing,” he told the wolf distractedly, watching as a dark blue Subaru Outback pulled into the parking lot below them. “We’d gone out that night to celebrate. Heather, Paige, Scottie, Camden, Lyds, and I. They were getting out and it was my birthday. I’d just turned seventeen.”

He gave Derek a sardonic grin that turned dark. “Happy fucking birthday to me. Three of my best friends torn apart by feral wolves, the girl I was in love with for close to a decade lost herself to the banshee side she never even knew about, and my best-friend, my brother, tried to eat me.” He lifted the edge of his hoodie and shirt, showing Derek the three jagged parallel lines across his chest and belly.

“Death didn’t fix them,” he said darkly. “Neither did Void.” He shrugged, dropping the material and letting his eyes go black as Void pushed forward. “Healing isn’t something Nogitsune can do,” the fox rasped, making Derek flinch as Deaton was shoved to the ground beside his mother and uncle as part of the Pack came forward.

“Killing traitors is.”

The Hale Pack winced as they heard the story the young man beside Derek told. The younger wolves growled, even as Talia and Peter’s eyes flashed at the tale. They heard the boy’s heartbeat and it was rock steady. Whatever he was, whatever his connection to Derek, they owed him so much more than they could ever repay because of Deaton.

“Mr. Stilinski,” Talia started. “I…”

“Don’t call me that,” the boy snarled savagely. “Call me Stiles, Alpha Hale, and realize that if you weren’t Der’s mom, I’d kill you all for what you did to us.”

“Mieczysław,” Derek admonished, risking wrapping the other up in his arms and holding him tight. “They didn’t know,” he said softly, ignoring his family’s incredulous stares. “I didn’t know. If you blame them, you have to blame me too.”

Stiles looked up into Derek’s jade-grey eyes and felt the edges of Void’s chaos recede slightly. “They knew my mom.”

“We did,” Talia said, stealing herself as stepped forward. “Claudia was a frighteningly strong woman. A powerful Spark and we had an accord. She wasn’t Pack, by her own choice, but we promised to warn each other of threats. I’m sorry I never believed the true threat against your family and the town was my own Emissary.”

“He shoved Void in the nemeton,” Stiles said bluntly. “Thought he could plug a thousand-year-old chaos spirit into the Western Seaboard’s supernatural battery and that it wouldn’t corrupt all the magic for a thousand miles?!” he took an aggressive step forward, halted only by Derek’s hand on his shoulder.

He took a deep breath, letting Derek’s scent anchor him. “Ennis went nuts when his beta was killed. I get that. He wanted revenge and we were the dumbshits between him and his dead packmate. Scottie was the idiot who picked up the sword and the rest of us were just collateral damage with him off the proverbial chain. I could handle that, sort of. I could even handle when Ennis ripped Heather apart, or bit Paige.”

“And then there was Deucalion, who I really thought was going to help us when he crashed the party. But no, he grabs Scott, all beta shifted new psychopath, and points him at me, saying ‘mush’ and go Team! I’m suddenly pinned to the ground, Heather’s blood staining my skin, Paige choking on black blood a handful of feet away watching us as she slowly asphyxiates, Camden doing his level best to run the fuck away like a smart person only to get ripped apart by Kali, and Lydia standing stock still in the center of a fucking bloodbath screaming loud enough to crack the Gods’-damned-nemeton as she goes banshee for the first time and then…then, when things couldn’t get any fucking worse, Void comes to my rescue, ignites my Spark into a Firestorm as he tries to force an integration and my mom…”

His voice cracks brokenly as he stalks forward to Deaton, Derek no longer able to hold onto him and not really wanting to considering what he’s feeling through their bond.

“Matka…my mom, the one person in my world who was always there for me, no matter what, comes tearing through the Preserve, her power lashing out at the wolves attacking us, forcing Scott off me and back towards the woods and Deucalion, and then you show up.”

He’s standing over Deaton’s prone form, the druid’s eyes huge and terrified in his face as he gazed up at his biggest mistake. The other wolves had fallen back, leaving the pair in the center of a black circle of fire and ice that makes no sense and yet is somehow existing simultaneously.

“My mom never would have hurt me. Her magic wouldn’t have hurt me, even with Void’s chaos magic rising up and lashing out at Ennis and Kali when they came at us, but you. You don’t play fair, do you, Doc?” he snarled, a black katana as thin as smoke and strong as steel coalesced in his hand. “Letharia Vulpina. Deadly to wolves and foxes. I don’t think any of us expected you to shoot me, and as Void said, foxes can’t heal like wolves. Nogitsune especially aren’t big on the whole regeneration of body parts thing, so a shot to the heart from less than five feet…well, there was really only one way that was going to end, wasn’t it?”

“And yet you’re still here, aren’t you, you…you Abomination!” Deaton spat.

Stiles gave him a fractured smile that made even Peter wince. “I survived because my mother and Void sacrificed themselves to tie our magics together. I survived because Lydia was screaming as a Banshee when it happened, and the gates were open for so long I got stuck in the damn train station. I survived because I was pissed and wanted revenge against everyone that hurt us. But I wasn’t alive. Not until Derek saw me and brought me back.”

He took a ragged breath, blowing out all the hate and anger and frustration that had built up in him over the past eight years and replacing them with the cold, calculated certainty of the nogitsune he was bonded to until he died.

“I lost eight years of my life, both of my parents, all of my friends, and almost missed out on meeting my mate and all for what? So, you could be the most powerful magic user on the West Coast? Well, I hope you enjoyed those eight years, Doc., because they’re your last.” He didn’t waste any more time with talking, slashing down with the katana between one breath and the next. Deaton’s head slid from his body with a wet thwack, making the wolves shift uncomfortably.

Stiles stood in the circle of magic with his head tipped back to stare blindly at the dark sky. He wasn’t happy or sad or even angry. He was just drained and felt emotionally dead inside. So much death and suffering because of greed and pride.

‘It’s over now,’ Void whispered gently, soothing over the gaping wound in Stiles’ heart with his magic, giving a cushion of separation until Derek walked right through their magic and wrapped Stiles up in his arms, pressing his face against Derek’s throat. He rumbled soothingly, a low sonorous sound that vibrated their chests.

“It’s over now,” the wolf repeated, leading them out of the fire, surprise on his mother’s face as he reached down to scoop Stiles into his arms.

“He’s my mate,” he said when Laura raised her eyebrows at him, rolling his eyes at her. “His magic won’t hurt me.”

“That’s not quite how it works, nephew,” Peter told him.

Derek looked down into haunted eyes. “It is for us.”

Stiles knows he’s disassociating. He knows he’s letting Derek take the lead and that he’s surrounded by the Pack that harbored the man that destroyed so many lives, but he doesn’t care. Not right then at least and maybe not for a while. He knows he needs to get Lydia out and find out what happened to Deucalion and Scott, but for now, Derek’s arms are warm and safe, and he’s certain if anyone came near him, the wolf would die defending him, so he closes his eyes and lets the darkness take him down into its depths.

He'll deal with returning to the land of the living tomorrow.

“How is he?” Peter asked solicitously.

“He’s shut down,” Derek responded, wiping a damp cloth over Stiles’ cheek to get rid of the flakes of dried blood.

“I don’t blame him. What he went through, and having to relive it by himself for so long. I’d have probably gone mad stuck in my own head for eight years.”

Derek grimaced at the honesty in Peter’s voice. Before Paige and Kate, Derek had been closest to his uncle. Peter had acted more like an older brother than a parental figure, even with his own kids not much younger than Derek, but Peter’s wife had been shot during the Argent raid by a stray bullet and they couldn’t stop the human from bleeding out before paramedics could arrive. He’d become more distant, to all of them, afterwards.

“I don’t know how to help him,” Derek confessed. “If it was just grief, I spent enough time in therapy to know some ways to help, but what he went through, and Void…I don’t know how to help with that.”

Peter cautiously laid a hand on the young man’s blanket covered ankle, squeezing lightly. “His mother was a force to be reckoned with,” he said wistfully. “If he’s half the Spark she was, you won’t need to worry about the fox-side of him. He showed excellent control today. He was able to reason out that we weren’t the ones who betrayed him, and as long we all remember what happens to those who break their word or try and kill those he cares about; we should be fine. From what I saw, it looked like he was using you as his anchor, which is dangerous, but also understandable.”

“Why dangerous?”

“Because if you ever get hurt, that means he’ll likely go feral and raze the entire area.”

Derek blinked owlishly at his uncle, then down at his mate. “Shit.”

Peter cackled. “Aptly said, nephew. Now, tell me what you know of this Lydia he mentioned.”

Stiles knows time has passed when he wakes. Obviously, since that’s how time works, but a lot of time. More than a few hours or even a day or two, because he’s got the long, hard heat of Derek behind him – he’s only felt it once before, but he knows the feel of those arms now. However, he knows time has passed because the front of him is cool, the faintest scent of spring rain and strawberries pressed against his nose and mouth and he can feel the tears as they fall as he pulls the small, fragile woman in tight, his voice a disused croak in the darkened room.

“Lyds.”

A sniffle is his only response until a shaky, “It’s Lydia, Stiles, not Lyds,” is returned and he’s looking down into eyes faded dusky silver-green by time and terror; a supernaturally induced blindness that will never define her, but breaks his heart none-the-less.

“Thank you,” she whimpers as he smothers her in his embrace; a broken, wet sound coming from her trembling lips.

“Always,” he swears it like a blood oath, lets the magic swirl between them and knows it’s as strong as one too. “I will always come for you Lydia, I’m just sorry it took so long.”

Lydia rubbed her face against his chest. “You were tethered to this plane because of me,” she whispered brokenly, “but you weren’t here because of Deaton. Thank God for Derek, and thank you for killing that asshole.”

She glanced up at his involuntary flinch. “You did what you needed to do, Stiles, what any of us would have done if we were capable. I’m just sorry my scream freed Void.”

“Void’s not too bad once you get to know him,” he defended, amused.

“I’ll see about that,” she warned, teasingly.

Stiles’ smile dropped away. “You haven’t mentioned Deuc or Scott.”

“Hmm?” she hummed. “Why would I mention the dead?”

“Because they’re not.”

“Aren’t they?” she asked, making him frown.

“What did you do? he asked cautiously, sitting up and startling a sleepy Derek.

At Lydia’s all-knowing smirk he groaned, “Seriously, Lyds, what did you do?”

Peter hated Los Angeles. It was just as crowded as New York, but four times as expensive and without the ease of public transport. Granted, he wasn’t a fan of public transport regardless, but at least in New York it moved, unlike the 101-freeway.

“Did you read the file Laura put together on this so-called McCall Pack?” Cora asked, frowning as she glanced up from the two-inch thick folder.

“I skimmed,” Peter responded, flicking on the turn signal, and changing lanes.

“He’s the same age as Derek and Stiles, but he’s a freaking mess. His first beta ended up being a chimera who tried to kill him and he wasn’t even wolf enough to take care of the problem himself. Some kid hit the guy with a car he’d hotwired, but in the process, he broke his neck and would have died if McCall didn’t bite him.”

She shook her head incredulously. “The new beta, he’s been kicked out of three different schools for random acts of violence…what’s IED?”

“Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Wait, did he seriously turn some walking time bomb into a wolf?” Peter asked, plucking the page out of the folder to scan the text.

Cora snatched it back when they almost side-swiped an Amazon delivery van. “Less reading, more driving, Uncle Peter. I don’t want to have to regrow my spleen…again.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “You impale one family member on accident and you never hear the end of it,” he groused.

“Anyways, yeah, seems like the Pack is sort of small. The time bomb is named Liam. They have a pseudo-Emissary named Mason, but I don’t know if he can actually use magic or not, and a chimera named Corey. A few other names are listed, but Laura crossed them off for some reason.”

“That means they’re either dead or have left his Pack.”

Cora’s eyes went wide at that piece of knowledge. “Wow, okay, then this guy has to be the worst werewolf ever, because there’s a dozen different names with lines through them.”

“Was she able to track down Deucalion?” he asked, pulling into the underground parking structure of the Marriot they would be staying in while in LA.

Pages rustled as Cora thumbed through them. “No. I’m not seeing anything in here.”

“Hmm, I guess we’ll have to see if Alpha McCall knows where he is then, won’t we?”

The look the two shared would have scarred a lesser person, but Stiles was Pack now, and Pack protected Pack. Something Scott McCall and his wannabe Pack were about to find out the hard way.

Scott’s head bounced against the concrete wall of the small donut shop. “What the hell?!” he snarled, blinking blood out of his eyes as he glared at the two strange wolves.

“Do you know who I am, assholes?”

Peter made sure not to look at his niece or he wouldn’t have been able to keep a straight face at the ridiculousness of that question. Cora rolled her eyes and groaned, leaning past her uncle to wrap her clawed hand around the ‘true alpha’s’ throat and pin him in place. “Yeah, an idiot who tried to kill his best friend, think you’re smart enough to figure out how we know that, Alpha McCall?” she sneered.

Scott froze; his hands wrapped around Cora’s wrist. “I…Stiles? How, what, how…”

“Huh,” Peter said in amusement. “I think you might have broken him, my dear.”

“Stiles is dead,” Scott said faintly, his face pale and voice shaky.

“Not so much,” Peter returned. “No thanks to you or Deaton either, so you have one chance to save yourself, tell us where Deucalion is and we’ll leave.”

“I don’t…”

Cora shoved him back against the wall when they heard the blip in his heartbeat. “Now, now,” she warned, “Don’t go being loyal now, McCall. We all know you haven’t the slightest clue what that word means.”

Scott snarled at her, making her laugh out loud. “Please,” she sneered. “My baby brothers are scarier than you and they’re only six! Now, answer my Uncle. Where. Is. Deucalion.”

“Punctuation, dear,” Peter said offhandedly. “Wouldn’t want you to start sounding like Derek, now, would we?”

Cora ignored the quip, it was a long-standing joke in the family along with Derek’s ‘Doom brows’ as Patrick had named them. Instead, she shoved Scott against the wall again.

“Reno!” Scott choked out, fighting against the Beta’s grip. He didn’t understand how she could be so strong.

The two Hales watched as Scott’s eyes flickered from red to blue and back again.

“You killed a defenseless teenager,” Peter said coldly. “We should kill you just for that.”

“Stiles was evil!” Scott sputtered. He was a True Alpha! Deaton had told him that’s what it meant when Stiles had died, that he had been taken over by something evil, and that when Deucalion and Scott had killed the evil, that his death was what allowed Scott to ascend.

“Stiles was a kid and the only reason Void went to him was because of you and the Alpha Pack,” Peter snapped angrily. He stepped right up into McCall’s space. “You let Deucalion and Deaton convince you what you did was right, but it was because of you that Stiles lost eight years of his life and his entire family.”

At Scott’s petulant expression Peter narrowed is eyes. He wondered if McCall’s eyes were red because he honestly believed he’d saved the world from Stiles and Void, or because of Deaton’s interference and if so, what would happen, now that the Druid was dead and Stiles very much, wasn’t?

“Where in Reno?”

“What?”

“Where is Deucalion staying in Reno?”

When Scott didn’t answer quick enough, Peter shoved his clawed hand into his chest, ripping it down through the wolves’ flesh in a mirror to Stiles’ wounds.

Sue him, he liked the little spark and this pup of an Alpha annoyed him on so many different levels.

“With Ito!” Scott screamed, eyes flickering to blue and staying. Across town, a lone wolf’s howl rose and broke in loss.

“He’s with Satomi Ito!”

“We should have killed him,” Cora grumbled petulantly as they turned off towards the overpass to get back onto the 101-freeway heading north.

“Hmmm, possibly,” Peter acquiesced. “But you realize that McCall wasn’t healing, don’t you?”

Cora frowned. “It was slow, but… wait, why wouldn’t he be healing?”

Peter smirked as he showed her the claws of his right hand.

“What are those?” she asked, leaning forward to touch the bright pink covers.

“Ah, uh,” Peter chastised, waving her hand away. “They’re claw tips specially designed to be coated in wolfsbane. Took me years to figure out how to do it.”

“They look like something Laura would put on her cat to keep it from scratching the furniture.”

Peter, ever the mature one, stuck his tongue out at his niece. They were basically the same thing, but Cora didn’t need to know that.

“So, what’ll happen to him?”

“Lydia, the dear, asked that I make it as painful as possible, and even though she’d prefer to have McCall’s head in a box for all of her missed birthdays, she said Stiles still felt a sense of loyalty to the boy and wouldn’t approve. This was our compromise. He’ll wear those scars for the rest of his life, and he’ll never be an Alpha again.”

“I wasn’t seeing things, was I? His eyes were blue.”

Peter hummed an affirmative.

“Do you think it was because of Stiles, or Deaton, that he ever became an Alpha?”

Shrugging, the older wolf checked the mirror before changing lanes. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said eventually. “The boy, even as an Alpha, couldn’t stand up to you. That means he either never fully embraced his wolf, or wasn’t as strong as a real Alpha should have been. If Deaton was funneling him power through some Druidic means we’ve never heard of, the magic would have stopped with the man’s death. If it was because Stiles wasn’t on this plane of existence, or some other supernatural oddity, then that too would have ceased when he and Derek mated. Either way, he’s no threat to the Pack the way he is now.”

“And if he calls to warn Deucalion? Or calls in hunters?”

Peter gave her a feral grin, his clawed hand flexing on the wheel in anticipation.

“Then we’ll get to see how your training’s been going, now won’t we, my dear?”

Alpha Satomi Ito was old, even by wolf standards, but that didn’t stop her ferocious attempt to keep the Hales from Deucalion, especially when she learned of Void’s return.

“He is evil!” she gurgled from under Cora’s boot. “The fox will destroy your Pack like he did mine.”

Cora glanced at Peter. The older wolf flicked blood and viscera off his pink claws with a look of disdain stamped onto his features as he stepped over Deucalion’s prone form. He cracked his neck as he pocketed the small Walthar PPK. Peter said he felt like James Bond using it, but Cora knew he only carried it to keep from becoming an Alpha. Wolves that killed with weapons never inherited the spark, so most Left Hands learned to use a variety of weapons, just in case.

“That fox,” Peter said calmly as he crossed over and crouched beside the Alpha, “is mated to my nephew. He is bonded to the nemeton just as his host’s mother was. They are fully integrated. The only threat the child is to our Pack involves listening to the two of them have sex and his inability to eat without closing his mouth.”

At Cora’s surprised look he huffed. “Lydia was more than happy to explain what we were in for with the boy and when we get home, I’m going to ask Talia to consider building them their own house.”

Cora snickered even as she pushed her foot deeper into the woman’s back. “Stop squirming,” she commanded, flicking her eyes to the younger members of the Ito Pack. “And don’t even think about it. You aren’t involved, and if you stay there, we won’t have an issue with you.”

A brother and sister pair from their looks and base smell were pushed behind a middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair and pale gold eyes. “Brett, Lorilee, enough,” the woman said. She wasn’t a wolf herself, but smelt of ozone and rain water.

“Witch,” Cora snarled.

The woman nodded slowly. “Emissary actually, but yes, I am a witch.”

“Did you know?” she asked harshly. “Did you know Ito was harboring that murdering psycho Deucalion?”

The woman straightened her spine, her lips tight as she said nothing.

Cora snarled savagely. “Deucalion and the Alpha Pack murdered three teens, bit another, sent an unaware Banshee into the mad house, and then, for funsies, that asshole tossed his newly bitten beta at the kid’s best friend, who just so happened to be a spark.”

The woman paled, her body starting to tremble as she glanced at Deucalion’s lifeless form then back to her Alpha.

“The boy was bonded to the nemeton,” Peter continued. “He had no idea how to defend himself, of course, because of his age. But when his mother, the nemeton’s actual guardian, raced in to save him, Deucalion brutally slaughtered her. The boy watched his mother’s murder and the banshee’s scream let loose a nogitsune that Ito and our former Emissary had trapped in the trees’ roots. The backwash gave him enough power to leave, but he chose to save the child everyone was so gung-ho on killing.”

He glanced back at the wolf. “What I find interesting, is that all of you, Deucalion and the Alpha Pack, Deaton, even McCall to some extent, were all trying to kill a seventeen-year-old boy who knew very little of our world and had no formal training. If you’d just left him alone, absolutely none of this would have happened. The Stilinski’s would have maintained the tree, Deaton would still be the Hale Emissary and sure, maybe the boy and my nephew would have become mates someday, but there wouldn’t have been nearly as much bloodshed.”

“Huh,” he said thoughtfully, rocking backwards on his heels. “It’s almost as if this is karma for betraying Void all those years ago.”

He glanced down into hate-filled eyes and smiled darkly, his finger tightening on the trigger in his pocket.

“And what do they always say? Karma’s a bitch, isn’t she?”

Peter was whistling as he took the steps up the back porch of the Hale house to sit beside the banshee. The young woman he and Talia had collected from Eichen House had been almost comatose on a cocktail of chemicals strapped to a thin mattress in a dank room in the basement of the building. The wolves had been horrified to find she’d been subjected to trepanation, the four small circular scars half hidden beneath her greasy hair.

Laura had been called and within half-an-hour Peter had carried the woman out the front doors, only his iron willpower keeping his eyes from flashing at practically everyone. Even Talia had trouble reigning in her wolf at the deplorable conditions she’d seen. They hadn’t spoken the entire way home, but Talia had kept a surreptitious eye on her younger brother after he’d refused to put the banshee in the back seat alone, instead sliding in and holding the woman in his lap as they drove.

The woman smiling up at him now was a far cry from the one whom he had carried into this very house five days ago. This woman was small and finely boned, and much too thin still, but her skin was a healthy soft peach, her lips full and pink, with a complicated French braid pulling hair shiny strawberry-blond hair away from huge eyes. He knew she was technically blind, but the shimmer of silver beneath the faded green-grey told him that she could still somehow ‘see’ him.

“I like the pink,” she said primly, inclining her head towards his right hand.

He laughed out loud, pressing his hand to his heart and gave her a sweeping bow. “Thank you, my dear. Cora said I reminded her of Laura’s cat.”

Lydia’s lips twitched. “After meeting that cat, I can definitely see the resemblance. He’s an asshole too.”

Peter chuckled as he bounded up the stairs to settle beside her. “How is he?” he asked, sobering.

Lydia sighed softly, turning to stare back out into the woods. “Quieter than I remember. I suppose we both are though.”

“The memories?”

“More like nightmares,” she corrected darkly. “I’m not sure what’s worse, knowing what happened, but not being able to see them, or having them burned into your mind because you have a hyperthymestic memory?”

Peter winced. “I hadn’t realized.”

Lydia nodded. “Stiles was always the smartest of us,” she said softly. “He skipped two grades, was listed for Valedictorian, and hadn’t even turned seventeen yet. I’m smart. Very actually, but Stiles is in an entirely different league. Did you know he speaks eight languages? I can read five, and speak three with fluency, but he can read and speak them.” She sighed wistfully.

“We were all so young and stupid and when the monsters came out to play, but he was the one who lost the most. Camden, Paige, and Heather died. I became this and lost my vision and Scott…well, that traitor deserves everything you gave him, but Stiles? He was the best of us. He was funny and smart and sarcastic to a fault, but he was also blindingly loyal and vicious in his defense of us. Scott had asthma, but desperately wanted to be on the lacrosse team, so Stiles, who could have cared less about sports, joined just so he could be there with an extra inhaler if he needed it.”

“Camden’s dad was a mean drunk. We all knew it, but he was the swim coach with a champion-team. Did that stop Stiles from getting his dad to do nightly drive-bys of the Lahey residence to scare the jerk into keeping his hands off his wife and kids? Of course not. And when Heather told him she was gay, he told her he was bi and dragged all of us off to San Francisco’s Pride festival the following month.” She laughed softly; her eyes suspiciously wet as she remembered.

“Scott’s betrayal, Deucalion killing his mother, Void…everything is swirling around inside that head of his so loudly I swear I can hear it from here, and so far, Derek has been good for him. They feel right together, but…”

“But you’re worried,” he said thoughtfully.

Lydia nodded, glancing up at Peter with shimmering eyes. “I’m worried it will be too much for him. For eight years we were basically dead. I didn’t know what a Wii was, Peter, and that is highly disconcerting, but manageable. But Stiles saw the world change with no way to be a part of it and now he’s mated and responsible for another person. He’s been taken into the Pack that harbored his pseudo-murderer, and while we can logic that to death, it’s still going to be there in the back of his subconscious.”

“Do you think he’s a threat to the Pack?” Peter asked wearily.

Lydia worried her bottom lip until the wolf reached out to thumb over the redness. “Given the right trigger, he may be a threat to the entire world.”

“Lydia’s afraid,” Stiles mumbled against Derek’s tattoo. “And maybe flirting with your uncle. Honestly, I’m not sure which is freaking me out more.”

Derek huffed out a small groan as Stiles’ teeth grazed over his bare skin. “Should she be?” he finally asked.

He felt Stiles shrug from where he was wrapped around Derek like an octopus. “Maybe. Probably. Between Void and I, yeah, we could do a lot of damage if we went dark side.”

Derek reached up to thread their fingers together over his heart. “Then I guess I better keep you from eating the cookies.”

It took a second for Stiles to get the joke, but when he did, he couldn’t keep back from shaking with laughter. “Seriously?” he laughed. “You’re a Star Wars fan?”

“Hey now, Leia was hot in that bikini.”

“And Han Shot first.”

Derek turned to give him a deadpan look over his shoulder. “I know.”

Stiles snickered again before he levered himself up and over the wolf, his hands on either side of Derek’s broad shoulders.

“Are you worried about me losing it?” he asked seriously.

Derek was shaking his head before Stiles finished asking. “No.”

“How can you be so sure? We barely know each other.”

Derek reached up to grip his hips with strong hands. “Because I was there, afterwards. Paige and I…we were supposed to have our first date that night, but Cora had fallen out of a tree and broken her leg that afternoon and everyone else was out dealing with the Alpha Pack, so I was left home to watch her until she healed. I had to cancel and she ended up in the woods with you all.” He swallowed harshly.

“Afterwards, I remember Laura holding me back. Ennis and Kali had been torn apart, but Camden, Paige, and the other girl…”

“Heather,” Stiles croaked.

“They had been laid out flat. Their eyes closed and arms crossed over their chests. They looked, almost peaceful.” He slid a hand up until he could thumb a tear off Stiles’ cheek. “The person who did that must have been moving on autopilot. There were bodies everywhere. I remember the EMS leaving and a Deputy screaming and being held back from racing for a woman’s body.”

“Matka and Pops,” Stiles shuddered In Derek’s embrace as the wolf pulled him down against his chest.

“Everyone was frantic, looking for you. I didn’t know you back then, had barely known Camden and Paige, but I remember thinking how much you were loved and that if you were the one who laid them out, then you were just as much of a victim as they were.”

“You aren’t evil, Stiles,” Derek said with conviction. “But you are a threat, just like Peter, or Mom, or anyone else in the Pack. We’re all monsters, love, but not all monsters do monstrous things.”

Stiles took a moment to let Derek’s words settle inside him.

‘He’s not wrong,’ Void chimed in.

‘I want to believe that, Void, but I can’t remember what we did.’

Void gave the mental equivalent of a bored yawn. ‘Does it really matter? You know your mother’s magic couldn’t hurt you. Nor could ours have hurt her. The same applies to the wolves. We cannot hurt Derek, and as long as the Pack doesn’t hurt us, the same applies to them. Lydia could hurt us, in so far as she could scream the gates open again, but with our connection to the wolf, she would never be able to trap us there. The only ones who might have been able to hurt us are dead.’

‘Scott’s alive.’

‘Because his death would hurt you worse, but you know the only way he could hurt us is if you let him.’

Derek palmed his cheek gently as he leaned down to press a soft kiss against his temple.

‘And we have gained too much to let that child ever hurt us again, haven’t we, little one?’

Stiles turned his face up to Derek’s searching mouth, letting the wash of love and longing, of want and rightness settle his quivering heart and soul.

“Yeah,” he breathed out against Derek’s kiss. “I think I’m finally getting that.”

On the back porch, Lydia shuddered. She turned to face towards Derek and Stiles’ room with a small, pleased smile.

“Never mind,” she told the wolf beside her breezily. “I must still be a bit off-kilter. Stiles is fine and we’re all going to be just perfect together.”

She turned back towards Peter with a beatific smile and the tone of a woman who knew more then she was saying.

“Just one big, happy family.”

“Pack,” Peter corrected hesitantly.

Lydia’s smile turned down-right flirtatious. “I stand by what I said, wolf,” she corrected, standing and holding out her hand to him.

Peter rose slowly. Taking her pro-offered hand, he wrapped it around his elbow to lead her into the house.

“Well, then, we really should get to know each other better if that’s the case, don’t you agree, my dear?”

Lydia’s laugh was bright and tinkling as they heard Stiles fall out of the bed with a shouted groan.

“That sounds like a brilliant plan, Peter.”

-end-