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Derek leaves with one sad, backwards glance, and Stiles just stares after him for a moment, before going to the laundry room to soak his blood-stained shirt and put on a clean one, careful of the bandaged wound on his wrist. The pressure of the cuff makes it ache, but hides it as well. No way he's going to be able to hide this from the wolves forever--herbs can mask the smell of injury and blood, and then a leather cuff of some kind will hide the scars--but his dad can't see it...
Exhausted, scared, in over his head, Stiles trudges up the stairs and into his room, only to stop and stare in shock.
Lydia's sitting on his bed making notes on her tablet from one of his oldest lore books.
"How long have you been here?" he stammers.
"Since the end of the meeting. I figured you and Peter wouldn't be long nor would he spend the time getting you back to his place. He looked like he wanted to eat you." Making a face, she sets aside her work and leans back on two hands to look up at him. "Why are you wearing a different shirt and why did Derek bring you home and stay for thirteen minutes?"
God she terrifies him.
Stiles gulps and sinks down into his desk chair, then crosses his arms over his chest without thinking. His wrist gives a painful throb and he winces, then winces again when her eyes narrow. Glancing down he notes that the bandage is hidden, but it's bulky, and...
"He bit you," Lydia says flatly. "Your right wrist is thicker than your left by one-fifth of an inch on the inside and approximately one-seventh on the outside. The fangs pierced from the inside out, therefore the worse damage is there, needing at least two gauze pads as well as the wrap." Her calculating eyes run over his face and she scowls. "Was it consensual? Did you ask him to make you his mate?"
He stares at her in shock. From a wince and a thick wrist she knows. She knows everything. How...
"No, of course you didn't ask. You're relationship with him is...was...a thing of necessity turned to one of fun, for you at least." Her scowl deepens and she sits up straight, biting out, "He forced this on you. Taking an Emissary as his mate, gives Peter not only prestige but power. Willing or not, all you are, all your potential, all your gift, is his. You'll bolster his own strength without even knowing it. That son of a bitch." As she grows angrier, her face darkens and flushes, and her eyes narrow along with her lips. "I should have killed him months ago."
How does she know all this? How...how...
Panic flashes across Lydia's face and she's across the room, on her knees and taking his hands in an instant. "Stiles? Breathe, honey. You're not breathing."
Oh. Right. He's not.
The attack hits hard and he gasps and shakes, his fingers twitching in hers, his eyes dimming and watering. A panic attack, worse than the one he had at the school just three days ago. His chest feels like its being squeezed in a vice, and she can't save him like she did last time.
Peter will kill her if she kisses him.
"Guh...guh...nyahh." He can't talk, can't breathe, and everything is going black.
"Stiles," she yells, and somehow he's on the floor, cradled over his lap as her fingers massage his cheeks, his neck. He can't see her anymore. "God, don't do this! Breathe, honey, please, please. I can't kiss you!"
Of course she knows. Brilliant, she is, his Lydia.
And, that thought makes him try to smile. His lungs release their constriction and he drags in a shuddering breath.
"Thank God," she breathes with him, hugging him tightly, bending over and pressing a kiss to his sweaty forehead. "Jesus, don't do that again. We'll work through this. We'll survive this, I swear. I'll be right there with you. I'm never leaving you. We're Pack."
Stiles breathes again, coughs, but it's good. Vision clearing, he blinks up at her.
Lydia's crying.
With a shaking hand, he pats her wet cheek. "'s okay, Lyds."
"Don't call me that, idiot," she sobs out affectionately, her fingers stroking over his head and his arm, stopping at the edge of the bandage. Their breathing evens out and they sit in the quiet for several minutes, until Stiles feels strong enough to pull away and sit up. Careful of his wrist he wraps his arms around his drawn up knees and rests his cheek on them.
"I'm so fucked, Lydia."
"Yeah, probably," she agrees, leaning back against the bed and stretching her legs out.
He looks over at her. "How long have you known about me and Peter? I mean, you saw us kiss, but..."
"One minute you were freaking out over being a virgin, and yet you didn't beg me to relieve you of that problem, which I found very telling, and the next day you were relaxed. You went to someone. Through a simple process of elimination it only took about ten minutes for me to figure out who. The kiss three days ago just confirmed it for me."
"You scare the shit out of me."
She grins, all teeth, and, not for the first time, Stiles sees the wolf buried within her. He wonders if she had turned, if she'd be the one with a bitten wrist and an unwanted mate.
Which leads to another thought.
"This doesn't make any sense." Stiles' mind is back on track and he frowns at the knowledge flooding into him--different bits of lore and truth hidden within myth. "Okay, yeah, power and prestige; I get that, but there has to be a reason it's not commonly done. Maybe it doesn't always work that way? Maybe it can backfire? It can't be a good idea for an Emissary to be under the control of their Alpha, right? He...I felt the Alpha command and I couldn't do anything but obey." He feels himself flush in embarrassment at the memory. That loss of control...
Giving him a sharp look, Lydia reaches back for her tablet and types something on the screen. "Okay, added to the growing list of research topics."
Stiles nods, ponders. "Maybe one percent of Alphas take their Emissaries as mates and in most of those cases, they had a pre-existing relationship."
"So did you."
"Yeah, but also most of those are male and female pairings, and that's what I'm getting at. I can't give Peter children. Our Pack is tiny. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to seek out a woman to build the Pack through cubs?"
"Unless he's gay." But she's frowning at that, because, yeah, that's not right.
"At the most, bi. He had a wife."
"Really? Why am I just hearing about this?"
Stiles shrugs. "It wasn't important. I think he had a kid, too." A shiver goes through him as he realizes they both must have died in the fire. "Look, Lydia, this thing between us, it wasn't serious. I don't understand why he made it permanent. He gave me that bit about power, but...doesn't that seem like an incomplete reason?"
"Yes." Frowning, she looks down at her tablet. "He's got a plan and he's several steps ahead of everyone else."
"He has been for months. I never saw him taking advantage of the eclipse to kill an Alpha. I guess I should be grateful he didn't kill Scott."
"And why didn't he? Okay, a True Alpha is something so rare, it's to be respected, but if Peter had taken that kind of power... He says that the two Packs can coexist, but this is Peter we're talking about. He can't be happy about his ancestral territory being shared with his former Beta." As she talks, she swipes her fingers back and forth across the screen. "We're missing something."
Nodding, Stiles rises to grab his laptop and pull it down to the floor with them. "Luckily, we're as smart as he is."
"Oh honey," she gives him a smirk, "We're much smarter. He's just clever."
Chuckling, Stiles shoves all thought of his mating and the bite from his mind and dives into research.
No more panicking. Dealing.
End