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Chapter Text

Derek sat in the midst of revelry and excitement and wondered at the strange numbness inside him. The happy smiles and giddy laughter of the hunting party sounded hollow and distant to him as he clutched his mug and tried, as he had unsuccessfully all evening, to regain the sense of pride and excitement that had carried him at fifteen all this way at the heels of his uncle and his...

He glanced a look at where Kate of the Argent pack was singing and boasting and thought, not for the first time, how like a wild thing she was. Derek wondered at what she saw in him, twelve years her junior and admittedly as tame as any child who was especially beloved. The high laughter of the troop did nothing to drown out the keening whimpers and cries coming from the basket-like cage set off to the side. The sharp smell of blood and thick grief pouring from its sharp metal weaving like a censer and choking Derek as he tried to drink away the images of that afternoon in a house still burning at the edge of town.

It was known by all the packs that they and their world prospered because they were strong. Dual in nature, there was little that had ever stood against the sheer adaptability of their gifts. The Pack was as Strong as the Weakest Wolf and there were seldom weak wolves. Seldom, but not never. The New Moon Born were an abomination. Weak, small, lacking in the ability to shift, lacking in the ability to heal... Derek recalled all the tales of babies born who sickened as none of them sickened, who died from a single cut. They didn't connect with their pack like they should, their senses were incomprehensibly dull... The stories all told of the parents of the abominations bringing them to the ruling pack, asking them to take them and care for them. Derek hadn't thought anything of the fact that when word reached the High City of the birth of an abomination that his parents had asked his Uncle Peter to lead a hunting party. Hunting. As if somehow the baby could flee... Or that the parents would hide it. All Derek had thought was what any fifteen year old would think - I want to go.

Derek's stomach roiled at the memory of his excitement. His insistence. The thrill of the hunt and all of the... excitement of what he and Kate had done during the trip to the tiny village of Beacon in the Hills. He had felt so mature... So heroic.... Teeth clenched as his gorge rose. Villagers whispering of the Stilinski pack, strange and small. Friendly only to the mother and son of the McCall Pack, not the father, not any of the rest of that family.... Not the village at all. They should have known, the village elder said so placidly, had not young Scott finally confessed to the village priest the strangeness of the Stilinski boy, they might never have known! Derek remembered glancing at Scott, looking small and scared under the proud arm of his father, like he was happy but sick because of it.

The abomination wasn't a baby. It was a boy of seven whose father had refused them entry. Had blocked them from the tiny home as if he could actually stop what was about to happen just through will alone. Kate and Peter had shoved him aside and Stilinski had snapped. It was impossible the feats he had done, the alpha of a pack of two... well one really - the boy could hardly count. But the father had savaged his uncle, taken Kate down before Derek had moved, grabbing the boy and the near feral alpha's attention long enough for the rest of the Hale party to join the fray. Derek had backed himself into a corner, trembling at the sight of an alpha decimating the pack they had brought with him. He fought like only a parent could fight. He fought like a hero in the old ballads. The boy fought too, pale and rail thin, unshifted fingernails digging and tearing into Derek's flesh almost faster than he could heal as he struggled to reach his father. Derek recalled striking him to silence, the body weak in his arms as he turned to shield the child from the inevitable. Maybe to shield himself too.

Derek took a deep shuddering breath and then again, sounding not unlike the child when it awoke to the dead body of his father and the celebratory masses while his home burned. It had been awful, the gasping, wheezing breaths that came from the basket before the racing heart suddenly calmed and the boy must have passed out. Glancing to the basket again, Derek could see the boy was awake again and peering out. Long, thin fingers gripping the gaps in the weave of his container, heedless of how the sharp wire strands cut his skin and made him bleed. Eyes that, while they neither glowed nor sparked as anyone else's would, still shone as beta gold as his own as the boy watched the revelry. Derek felt struck with an uncanny, cold feeling that maybe- maybe New Moon Born were born so strange because they had to be. Maybe they were too much a wolf and needed the severe limitations just to keep from unseating the world. The hairs on the back of his neck rose at that thought, distantly Derek felt it was an oddly deep thought for himself at all, like it hadn't come from him at all.

Blinking as he realized those gold eyes were staring back into his, Derek felt a prickling of actual fear though how could he really? Dark flowers seemed to bloom across the boy's face, his own doing in trying to subdue him, and they did not heal or even seem like they would be healing any time soon. Steeling himself and feeling foolish he had to, Derek moved to the basket.

"Are you thirsty?" Derek asked.

The thin, soft voice of the boy was rough with the aftermath of his grief. "What is your name?"

"Derek." He felt absurdly brave, but foolish for feeling brave to just give his name. The intensity of the gold eyes on him had sent a wave of goosebumps across his flesh.

"I won't forget it was you, Derek." The boy said quietly then balled himself up in the depths of the basket leaving Derek to feel dismissed and more than a little like someone had stepped on his grave.

Chapter Text

The smell of blood, fresh and dripping, had been upsetting Derek's stomach all morning. He'd slept poorly in the night and, like their prize, he'd been unable to eat when they readied to leave. There had been no sound from the basket but the rabbit fast beating of the boy's heart when he'd offered food. They'd left as they came, a slow parade of horses but now the basket, no the cage, swung between his horse and the pack animal they'd brought. Kate rode back to join him, her smile as bright and alive as before but no longer as captivating to Derek.

"Sweetie," She cooed, stroking Derek's cheek lightly, "You look so green. Did the peasant food sit ill with you?"

"I'm fine." Derek grunted, hunching his shoulders and leaning from her touch. "He really doesn't heal, does he. Should we give him a blanket? Couldn't he ride in front of someone?"

"Awwwww.... You have such a tender heart." Kate simpered, touching his chest and rubbing Derek in a way that before had excited him but now was beginning to further inflame his indigestion. "The unnatural things are seldom so big. Tender little babies are usually what are brought to us. They don't move or fill up all that space so how were we to know its delicate hide could split itself on its cradle?"

Derek swallowed convulsively as his gorge rose, burning for just a moment and tasting the bite of acid. Yet, he did not correct her at all; instead he felt too warm for the cold pit of his stomach and wished he could move clear of her grasping hands.

"Molesting my nephew Kate?" Peter drawled, he still bore the wounds from Alpha Stilinski but they were healing.

"He likes it." Kate bared her teeth, snapping them playfully at Derek who didn't move at all. That, if anything, made her finally let him go, sidling her horse back to ride beside the basket. "Are you still alive in there little Thing?"

Stiles didn't answer but all the wolves could smell the mixed emotions coming from him as his heart thundered in its own cage.

Kate lashed out with a kick that sent the basket swinging wildly and startling the pack horse. Stiles grit his teeth against crying out as his skin was cut and recut deeply as his cage jostled him. Kate laughed at the boy's agony, Peter rolling his eyes indulgently.

"You can still be such a child, Kate. That must be why you like deflowering them - ey Nephew?" Peter teased them. Derek sat stiffly on his horse and felt as if his whole world was nothing but his blush. Peter only smiled at him indulgently, "Don't be embarrassed, everyone is aware of it and nobody thinks less of you seeking pleasure."

"Uncle, please! Stop!" Derek gasped, thinking that maybe the shame of his earlier acts would end this current torture by just letting him die now.

Peter laughed and was distracted to tsk at Kate as she kicked the basket again. "Kate! My sister does expect it to be alive when we get there. Besides, I want to see her face when she finds out its not a baby that will die on its own of neglect in the Little City."

"W-what do you mean? Die of neglect?" Derek asked softly.

Peter's eyebrows went up and he rode close to his nephew, he did so love to lecture. "Derek, New Moon creatures aren't like a proper child. They have no sense of pack. They can't feel the moon. They take so much longer than one of us to begin crawling. How could it feed itself? Even within a few months you could at least almost catch a bug to jam it in your insatiable tummy. That thing probably languished on milk for years and needed its father to chew its food for it. They are a terrible weakness and a sickening test of The Pack. That is why they are placed in the Little City, don't you know your stories properly?"

"But the Little City is to keep them safe." Derek sputtered. "It's the safest place. Once placed inside nothing gets in or out. I... I tried to go in once but I couldn't. It was like an invisible wall keep me out. It's a sanctuary! It..."

"...Was built by an Alpha's New Moon twin so that they could stay together," Kate snidely chimes in, mocking Derek. "Separate but within the Alpha's Citadel it would help him to feel The Pack and to not be the burden on its brother's rule. It's a pretty story. But The Pack is better off without these creatures."

At Peter's chuckle, Derek holds his tongue and deep in his roiling guts he was very glad he hadn't gotten inside the Little City. He wondered if it kept the angry spirits of the dead inside too.

Chapter Text

Night brought a welcome pause for Stiles, finally drawing Kate's attention from him. Everything hurt; his insides ached with a hollowness his father used to fill. His outsides hurt; it felt like there wasn't an inch of skin that hadn't been cut at least twice. Stopping at an inn for the night had left Stiles outside in the damned cage as chill fingers of cold and mist lightly frosted the cutting wires. He wanted to sicken and die but instead he shifted himself into as tight a ball as he could to try and keep his warmth close. Tears threatened but remained unshed as he listened to the laughter and revelry from inside. Stiles was so angry. He longed for his fathers claws or his fierce gnashing teeth - for a moment he could feel the soul deep ache to rend every one of them with his bare hands. He took a shuddering, deep breath only to flail and press himself to the bottom of his prison when the top suddenly opened and bright gold eyes glowed down at him.

"I brought you food." The soft voice of Derek whispered to him. "And I got you a blanket."

Stiles didn't reply and when the older boy reached in to touch him, he latched onto his hand. Savage, blunt teeth sank deep into flesh and Stiles hardly felt it when Derek shook him off, tearing out a chunk of the literal hand that was feeding him.

Derek choked down a yelp, cradling his hand to his chest as he watched the boy eat what he took from him and bare his teeth like a feral wolf. "G-good to see your appetite is back." Derek snapped out, eyes ablaze as he listened to the boy's hissing sort of growl. It would have been funny and a bit cute except for the fact he'd just been cannibalized.

Stiles huffed a strangled chuckle, "Got you good. Now I've got you."

Derek refused to be terrified by that statement from a kid so much less than he is. "Yeah well. Just until you're put where you belong." He all but threw the bread and cheese in on top of the boy and stuffed in his own blanket on top before cramming the lid closed again for his obvious protection.

"I don't got nowhere I belong now." Stiles' soft, sad voice replied after Derek had turned to rejoin the rest of the hunting party. Derek glanced down at his healed hand then back at the basket that reeked of such misery he couldn't leave it. Returning to sit beside the basket, Derek refused to believe it was because the boy had eaten part of his hand. That didn't really give one one power over anybody... Well Derek hoped not and decided not to think about it too deeply.

"So what's your name?" Derek asked. He waited out the silence for a while before the basket began to bob and swing slightly as Stiles lined the basket with the blanket.

"I'm Stiles... now." Stiles whispered.

"Now you are? What were you called before?"

"Son."

Derek flinched, a soft whine escaping him at the thought of his own father.

"Derek?"

"Yeah, Stiles?"

"Why? Why'd you guys come get me? Why... Why'd you kill my dad?" Stiles clenched his teeth against how weak he sounded. He felt weak, but his Dad had been so strong - the strongest! - and he'd fought so hard and Stiles wouldn't let him down.

Derek cleared his throat, he'd been asking himself those questions for the past day and he still wasn't sure of the answer. "I'm... I don't think it was supposed to be like this." Derek closed his eyes and tried to ignore the laughter and raucous storytelling of individual feats on the hunt that came from inside and to his ears were so loud. "Children like... you. You were supposed to be brought to us to be kept safe."

"But that guy said babies die." Stiles points out, nibbling the bread and trying not to feel sick that his Dad is dead and he's eating like everything is fine.

"I didn't know that." Derek whispered honestly. "I thought..." He wasn't sure really what he thought. All Derek knew now is that he hadn't thought about a lot of things and he was just the type of person to feel horrible about it now that he was. "I'm sorry."

"Am I bad?" Stiles asked softly, picking the food into tiny pieces over eating it now.

"No."

Stiles didn't feel better. He didn't understand why this had happened. His Dad must've known it would, after all only Scott was the only other kid he had ever got to play with. Nothing made any sense and he was all alone. Stiles felt terror starting to press in on his chest, making it hard to breathe again. He rolled himself up tight in the blanket he'd been given and fought to live as the world seemed to suffocate him until it did and he knew nothing more.

Derek hunched in on himself, hearing the boy - Stiles - gasp and wheeze as his heart ratcheted up before he passed out and his breathing and heart smoothed out into a smoother rhythm. Sometime tomorrow he'd be home and Derek was anxious for it. Stiles would be placed in the Little City and he'd be alone, but he'd be safe. Maybe this would be the last terrible thing to happen. Derek rubbed the spot where Stiles had torn off a chunk of his flesh and tried not to think about how the boy had eaten it and said he'd got him. Derek tried not to think of anything at all for a while, tomorrow was going to be trouble enough.