Chapter Text
Derek hated this time of year in Alaska. The sun wasn't out enough anymore for it to be fully warm, but there hadn't been a frost hard enough yet to kill off the mosquitos either. Everything was just wet, marshy and miserable.
The sight of the burned-out husk that had once been the Hale family homestead did nothing to improve his mood. He stared out across the drive and the house seemed to stare back. The shudders over the big front windows had been ripped off and their windowpanes shattered. They stood open, dark and gaping, like unseeing eyes. What had once seemed so solid, indomitable and alive, was now warped and sagging, collapsing under its own weight. His family home felt like little more than an unclaimed corpse, bloated and rotting in the woods.
But Derek was back now. He was the only one left, and he had come back.
Derek scanned the overgrown landscaping of the yard. A raven was picking at the remains of his mother's vegetable garden. It had been far enough away from the house to have escaped the heat of the blaze, but had gone to seed after more than a year of being left untended. How quickly the wilderness reclaims its land, he thought to himself. The raven cawed forlornly, pecking through a squash bed that must have volunteered itself into existence over the summer.
He walked over to the other side of the truck and opened the cab, taking a handful of dried oats out of the sack being stored there, for lack of a better place, and scattered them across the dirt and the weeds. A raven would bring mischief and its goodwill promised never to work out exactly as one hoped or anticipated, but Derek was not in a position to turn down providence in any form. A good omen was a good omen. He tossed out another handful of oats and the raven cried approvingly, pecking over them as Derek walked in the house.
He found Isaac in what had once been the living room, clearing out debris with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. The air was thick with ash and soot and there were scorch marks along the walls and smoke stains billowed across the ceiling like clouds.
Isaac stopped for a second, pulling off the scarf he had tied around his face and looking up, ruffling his dirty blond hair. It stuck up in tufts, soft and curly, like the belly of a lamb. "I wouldn't trust the upper stories, and the kitchen looks about one hard rain away from collapsing, but this room," he banged his shovel against the floor. "There's stone in the walls and the foundation. It's solid, I think this was the original house, the rest must have been added on later."
"It was." Derek walked over to the giant stone fireplace that had once been at the heart of the house. The chimney ran straight up, through its center, like the trunk of an ancient tree. Radiating heat, it had warmed the hallways and bedrooms above. "It was built by my grandmother when she came over from Holland in 1853. As the family got bigger, they expanded around it, adding another two floors and the separate kitchen and dining room." He dropped down to crouch on the hearth and peer up into the chimney, then poked around the cinders still caught in the grate. "Someone's been here recently, lighting fires."
Isaac leaned over his shoulder to look. He sniffed experimentally, then scrunched up his nose and sneezed, stepping back. Muffling another violent sneeze in the crook of his elbow, he wiped at his nose with the hem of his shirt and made a disgusted face. "Well, if it's arson, they're a bit late to the party, aren't they? I don't think it gets much more burned to the ground than this."
Derek stood up, leaning against the mantelpiece and feeling the smooth shapes of the river-rocks against the palms of his hands. He had stood like that so many times as a boy, drying himself by the fire on days just as cold and wet as this one that, for a moment, he could almost imagine they were warm. "Are you saying you'd rather sleep outside in the rain?"
"Are you going to sleep outside in the rain?"
"Not if I can help it."
"Okay, then, me too. I'd like to not help it too."
Derek shot Isaac an amused look, then crouched down again to clear out the grate.
He had met Isaac on V-J Day, the last day of WWII and the same day that Peter had died and Derek had become an Alpha. At exactly 10:25 in the evening, Derek had been standing on base at Guadalcanal, when he had heard a ringing in his ears, like artillery shells in the distance, and looked at his watch to log the time. There had been a pressure behind his eyes and his vision had gone red and started fading in and out as he concentrated on the watchface. The second hand kept slowing down and speeding up and he had been having trouble differentiating between the minutes and the hours. Then something had popped, like a glass jar under the wheels of a truck, and he had been sick all over his boots before passing out cold in the dirt.
Diagnosed with dysentery and excessive celebration, he had been sent to the med tent to sleep it off and woken up, newly an Alpha, one bed over from Isaac Lahey, an eighteen-year-old volunteer from New England who had looked both much too young to be a man and much too old to be a boy. Isaac Lahey had not been celebrating. Isaac had not been able to walk, or stand, or feel his hands or feet. His eyes had not tracked properly and he had spent most of the time confused, not sure of where he was or how he had gotten there, like someone with late-stage dementia.
He didn't have dementia, though, he had Beriberi, and it wasn't a disease. It was a form of malnourishment, specifically a deficiency in vitamin B1 so prolonged and so severe that it caused damage to the brain. Isaac had survived over a year in a Japanese POW camp and been released into the waiting arms of the US Army, only to die slowly in his own vomit on a cardboard mattress, a few days after the war had ended, because there just wasn't enough red meat in the world. Not turning him had felt like it would be both tempting fate and a crime of irony.
So, in a moment of insanity, Derek had turned him and Isaac had survived to become a werewolf. After that it had been blind dumb luck that had sent Isaac and him home, miraculously on the same boat, all the way back to San Francisco together without incident and just in time for Isaac's first full moon. A few days later, they had received their discharge papers and been sent on their way, along with thousands of other soldiers, newly released from active duty. Isaac had also been issued a bus ticket back to New England, but he sold it for cash and told Derek that he had no home to go back to. Derek hadn't pried, they were brothers now, it was for the best.
The new and ever-evolving plan had then become to wait until spring, returning north to the Hale family home, just outside Fairbanks, when the weather was milder and Isaac had had a little more time to practice controlling his shift. In the meanwhile, they made their way down Interstate 5 towards Bakersfield, California, where Derek's sister Cora lived with her new pack. The desert was empty, dark and dry and they had taken their time, driving slowly through the interior of Southern California, enjoying the quiet.
Cora, though, had not made herself easy to find and it had taken almost a year before they had finally tracked her down just outside St. George, Utah. The pack she had married into was paranoid and migratory, never stopping in the same place twice. It was from Cora that they had learned about what had happened to the Hale Family Pack: Peter's return from war and Talia's death and then about the fire that had caused the alpha powers to transfer to Derek, even though he had been half a world away. The whole pack had died, swept away by the fire, leaving only Derek, who had been at war, and Isaac, who was newly turned, and one other Beta, bitten by Peter, up in Fairbanks, just days before the fire, named Scott McCall.
Finding out about Scott McCall had changed everything.
~~~~~
They slept outside that night.
The rain had cleared, but it had been coming down hard the night before and their tent hadn't had time to dry yet. It was the same old tent they had used in the desert and all the way up to Fairbanks and the weatherproofing was starting to fade. It was leaky and cramped and had been slowly acquiring a slightly funky smell. But it was familiar, reliable, and mixed in with the stench of mud and sweat and canvas rot was something comforting. It was starting to smell like pack.
Isaac rubbed at his swollen, bloodshot eyes as he sorted out his blankets, shuffling things around, folding and tucking until everything was arranged just so. He was over six feet tall, with broad, sharp shoulders and long limbs, but, curled up in his blankets, he looked like little more than an ill-fitting collection of knobby knees and elbows that smelled vaguely of mildew and lanolin.
Derek had lit a fire in the fireplace earlier that evening, only to discover that the chimney had been lined with wolfsbane. It had slowly spread through the room in a vapor, released by the heat of the fire, irritating Isaac's eyes and making his throat swell. Isaac hadn't been a werewolf long enough to recognize what was happening, but Derek had known immediately. Even masked by the pungency of the smoke and ash that permeated the house, the smell of burning wolfsbane was not one he was likely to forget.
He wondered though, if five years ago, before he had learned hyper-vigilance, before he had become accustomed to living under the shadow of constant threat, before he had started wandering around on high alert at all times, would he have noticed? The signs had been subtle, easy to dismiss: a new Beta's watering eyes, a slightly off-putting smell. For him, now, that had been enough, but five years ago he wouldn't have been so certain.
Isaac sneezed and blew his nose into a handkerchief. "Who would do something like that? And why? How are we even supposed to clean it out?"
Derek shrugged, looking out at the sky through the open flap of their tent. The cloud cover had lifted and he could see the stars for the first time since their arrival in Alaska. "I don't know." It was one more in a series of too many mystery he had neither the time nor the energy to unravel.
It would have been nice, to sleep by a warm fire with a solid roof above them, but Derek found himself strangely glad that they had been driven out of the house. The whole place felt sad to him, oppressive, like living in a stone bunker, trapped under the weight of his own tragedy. It was less comfortable out here, but at least they could see the stars.
"Isaac," he whispered, still looking out into the night.
"Yeah, Chief?"
"Have you ever seen the Northern Lights before?"
Isaac shuffled forward to peek out of the open tent flap and into the night sky. It glowed bright overhead. Streaks of green and blue danced across it in waves, undulating over the backdrop of the Milky Way, like in an endless ocean.
"Wow." Isaac's eyes flashed gold, the wolf in him drawn out and wanting to watch. "What is it?"
Derek peered at him sideways for a second, then turned back to the sky. "The Athabaskan tribes believe that the Northern Lights are the spirits of the dead trying to communicate with the living. The sky people watch over us and send us messages in light."
"How do you know that?"
"My aunt, she was Athabaskan."
Isaac continued to look up at the dancing green and blue in the sky. "My parents are dead too."
Derek nodded. He could feel his own eyes flash, alpha red next Isaac's gold.
"That was a good explanation, Derek. I liked that one."
Derek nodded again, and smiled up at the sky.
~~~~~
They drove into Fairbanks the next morning, headed for the general store to pick up supplies and a few new tools. Wintering over in the old homestead wasn't going to be an option anymore and they had a limited about of time to come up with an alternative before the first snowfall.
Derek felt itchy and anxious. They should have had months to prepare for winter. Now, the autumnal equinox was upon them. The first snow was barely weeks away, if they were lucky, and there were only three full moons left until the solstice. Tonight was already the first. Everything was being cut much too thinly. If Scott McCall was still alive, and still himself, not feral and roaming the forest as a beast, they would need to find him soon.
Isaac wrinkled his nose and sniffed, adjusting his scarf and curling up against the door of the truck as he watched the scenery go by. "Why didn't we just wait until spring to come up here, if you're so worried about the solstice?"
Derek adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. "McCall might have made it through his first winter alone, but he won't survive a second one. It's going to be hard on you too, but he's one of us now. We can't abandon him."
He glanced over at Isaac, who had buried his chin deep into the collar of his coat and was hugging himself as he huddled by the door. Isaac was cold all the time and Derek sometimes wondered if it wasn't a holdover from the Beriberi that had almost killed him at Guadalcanal. Werewolves could heal from almost anything, but they couldn't manufacture nutrients out of thin air. Turning Isaac had not instantly cured him, werewolves could still starve to death, it just took a lot longer. But time was really all that Isaac had needed, enough time to absorb the nutrients his body was lacking, before it shut itself down. He was healthy now, had been for a while, but that didn't make him not remember what it had felt like to starve.
Pulling into a parking spot just off Cushman Street, beside the general store, Derek resolved to buy Isaac a better coat, and some woolen long underwear, and mittens and, also, a hat. Building a proper house would probably help too. And then Isaac could think about starting a family. Isaac would probably be less cold if he had a proper family. And then the pack would be bigger as well, which Derek would like.
First things first, though: they walked into the general store.
If small towns were good at anything, it was spreading gossip and starting rumors. Derek was fairly certain that within twenty minutes of him stepping into that general store, half of Fairbanks would probably know that the youngest Hale boy was back in town. But that had been inevitable from the start and fighting small town gossip was like trying to hold back the tide. Lacking the power of God, the moon, or the US army, it was impossible to stop but fairly easy to anticipate and outrun. With that in mind, Derek greeted the clerk, introduced himself and Isaac, and proceeded to spend the next few minutes idly chatting about the weather, the war and his plans to rebuild the family homestead, before coming around to mentioning an old friend he had served with for a while on Adak Island.
"Did Staff Sergeant Noah Stilinski ever make it back here, after the war?"
Asking about Scott McCall directly seemed like a bad plan, especially since the likelihood was high that he had gone crazy over the past year and could potentially be running around the woods naked now, living on raw moose meat and howling at the moon. New in town, and already under the spotlight of intriguingly tragic and suspicious circumstances, he couldn't afford to be caught asking shady questions and drawing even more unwanted attention to himself. Staff Sergeant Stilinski, though, Derek had served with him for almost a year and a half, all through the Aleutians Campaign, and Stilinski had more than once proven very adept at keeping his ears open, his mouth shut, and rolling with the punches. Stilinski hadn’t had much family, but had left a son behind in Fairbanks, and had spoken fondly of the day when he would be able to go back.
"Oh, he's back in Fairbanks all right. It's Sheriff Stilinski now, got himself elected last year."
Perfect.
They made their purchases quickly and loaded up the truck. Then Derek sent Isaac back to the house with instructions on how to grade out a foundation for the cabin they would be building over the next week or so, before starting out in search of the Sheriff's Station.
The station wasn't difficult to find. Fairbanks being small enough to not even have a proper courthouse, the entirety of the municipal government was run out of the Sheriff's Station, which was located conveniently next Vandusen's Furniture Store. Convenient, because the owner of Vandusen's Furniture Store also happened to be the town council, just like the mayor was also the owner of the GM dealership down the street. There probably weren't more than a half-dozen full-time employees in the whole city government, a fact which was underlined rather boldly for Derek when he walked into the reception, only to be greeted by an entirely empty office.
There was a bell at the front desk. He rang it a few times.
"Susan can you get that?" A voice called out from behind a closed door.
Derek swept his eyes around the empty room. "I don't think she's here."
"Oh, yeah, she went to lunch. Sorry about that, I was trying to catch up on some paperwork..." Noah Stilinski emerged from out of a back office, stopping short as soon as he caught sight of Derek. "Private Hale." A big smile broke out across he face and he stepped forward with enthusiasm, pulling Derek into a hug. "The man lives and breaths. It's damn good to see you, Hale. Come on back, this calls for a drink. You are old enough for a drink, these days, aren't you?" He waved Derek into his office, gesturing him towards a chair before sitting down himself.
Derek followed him in, amused. "I'm twentythree, but that doesn't mean I can get drunk."
"It's barely noon and I'm the Sheriff, neither of us can get drunk." Stilinski pulled two glasses and a bottle of whiskey out of the bottom drawer of his desk, pouring them each a finger and passing one forward to Derek. "It's a ritual, aren't rituals supposed to be important for people like you?"
"People like me?"
"People with, you know," the Sheriff gestured vaguely in front of himself, "shedding problems."
Derek snorted, sitting down as he picked up his glass. "I'm supernatural. Shedding is for dogs and rituals are for Presbyterians."
The Sheriff huffed out a laugh and raised his glass. "I'll drink to that."
They toasted and Derek sniffed at the whiskey, then took a sip. It wasn't bad. It tasted like smoke, tobacco and just the tiniest bit like molasses; it was exactly the kind of drink he would have expected Stilinski to prefer.
"To be honest, I didn't think you would be coming back."
Derek shrugged. "It's home, I would have made it here eventually. But I'm also looking for someone. There's a young wolf running around, eighteen, maybe nineteen years old, my uncle turned him just before the fire."
Stilinski nodded and sighed, then leaned back in his chair and rubbed at the bridge of his nose like he was developing a headache. "Got anything else? Because, these days, that doesn't exactly narrow it down much."
Derek raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, there's a whole pack of 'em. It seems like all of Stiles' friends these days have shedding problems. Even his girlfriend's got shedding problems."
It took Derek a second to respond. A pack. A whole pack. A pack of them. The words played over and over in his head. A whole pack of them.
He pushed those thoughts to the side, backtracking over the rest of the sentence. "Who's Stiles?"
A framed picture sat on Stilinski's desk and he picked it up and handed it across to Derek. In it, two boys were smiling at the camera. He pointed to one of them. "My son, Stiles."
Back on Adak Island, when Sheriff Stilinski had been Staff Sergeant Stilinski, he used to carry around an old black and white photograph of his son in his right breast pocket. He would pass it around proudly, showing it off to anyone who would look. Faded and dog-eared, the photograph had been of an awkward, skinny kid with a short buzz cut and big eyes. The boy had been caught turning towards the camera with his mouth hanging half-open, and he looked startled, as if he hadn't been expecting the flash. Stilinski used to laugh and say that it was the only photograph he had of his son that wasn't blurry and that taking his son’s picture was like taking a crash course in wildlife photography: the only way to get him to sit still long enough was to catch him by surprise or wait till he was eating.
The young man that looked out from this new photograph was older, no longer a boy. His hair had darkened and was no longer close-cropped. He had let it grow out long enough that it needed to be combed back from his face and it was rumpled and unkempt, like he probably ran his fingers through it often. He was still thin and wiry, with a delicate jaw and an upturned nose, but his shoulders had broadened and his face had become more angular. He was looking into the camera confidently, with his perfectly arched eyebrows slightly raised, and was smiling, as if he had a secret that it amused him more to keep than to tell.
"I thought his name was Mieczysław?"
The Sheriff waved his hand dismissively. "It is, but he likes to be called Stiles now. When the war started, I was called out of the reserves almost immediately and put back into active duty. So Stiles had to go live with some family friends." The Sheriff's wife had died years ago. "We've known the McCalls for years and the boys have always been friends. But imagine my surprise when I came back home, having newly discovered that werewolves were a real thing, and realized that, not only was this sleepy little town neck deep in the supernatural, but my son's best friend, Scott, was one of them." The Sheriff leaned over and pointed out the other boy in the photograph.
"This is Scott McCall?" Derek looked back down. Stiles' friend had a slightly stockier build and darker coloring, but he looked happy, healthy, and just as sane as Stiles. With any luck, it was a recent photo. Derek passed the frame back. "You said there are more of them?"
"Yeah, this girl, Malia. She just showed up in town one day, walked right out of the woods with no gear, no supplies, no transportation and no ID. The boys tried to convince me that she's some kind of a survival expert, wilderness guide, what-have-you, and, yeah, she's good with sled dogs, but I caught Stiles teaching her how to walk in snowshoes last winter year. Snowshoes! She couldn't even put them on! And watching her try to light a camp stove is like watching a cat learn how to tapdance.
"I'm pretty sure she and Stiles are dating and that she's a werecoyote, if there even is such a thing, and I really hope there is, because the alternative is that Stiles has been letting an actual coyote in through his bedroom window at night."
Derek nodded. "Yes, werecoyotes exist, but they're not common this far north. She would have to be strong to have wandered so far from the desert." Coyotes were a lot like wolves in some ways, but they had fewer pack instincts and tended towards warmer climates. Being alone was a lot less of a problem for them, though.
"And now there's this other kid, Liam, who's been hanging around. He's local, still in high school, so I'm not quite sure how he fits into all of this, but he scratched the ever-living-hell out of my kitchen table last week and it wasn't with his fingernails." The Sheriff knocked back the last of his whiskey and put his glass down. "Is it just that I know what to look for now? Is this normal?"
Derek frowned and looked down into his own drink. "No. Normally the local pack keeps things under control."
Stilinski sighed and paused for a second, then took in a deep breath through his nose. "I'm sorry, Derek, about your family. I really am." He looked sincere.
Derek shook his head. "I'm back now. Scott is my responsibility and so are the others. This is still Hale Pack Territory."
"Yeah, well." The Sheriff tapped his wedding ring a few times against the desktop, worrying it with his thumb. "Proceed with caution. These kids are stubborn, especially Stiles, and he's protective. The war was hard on everybody and they've gotten pretty used to handling things on their own. Threaten his autonomy and he'll shut you down so fast you'll think the power went out."
"You don't trust your son very much, do you?"
The Sheriff looked up sharply at that, narrowing his eyes. "I'd trust him with my life and anyone else's. I am honored, every day, that I get to call Stiles my son. It’s only..." He deflating slightly and rubbed at the his eyes and the bridge of his nose. "It's more that I'm not sure if he trusts me. He's gotten so used to being on his own."
Derek nodded and took a drink from his glass. They were both silent for a minute, lost in their own thoughts.
"I went back to the house the other day."
Stilinski grimaced, "Oh yeah?"
"There are ravens there now, like there were on Adak."
Thirty miles long by twenty miles wide, Adak Island was an uninhabited patch of rocky tundra, out at the ass end of nowhere in the Aleutian Islands. Out there, the winds blew in cyclonic storms and it rained 340 days a year. There was nothing to look at but moss, scavenger ravens, and a volcano that occasionally coughed up smoke into the overhanging clouds. The US Army had built an air base on Adak after the Japanese invaded Alaska, bombing Dutch Harbor and working their way up the Aleutians. Derek and Noah Stilinski had both been stationed there in '43, and it was there that they had met.
The Sheriff looked at the whiskey bottle still sitting in front of him, his face pained. He picked it up and shoved it back in the bottom drawer of his desk. "Please tell me wereravens aren't a thing. I don't know if I could handle wereravens."
Derek rolled his eyes. "No, there are no such things as wereravens."
"Thank God."
"Not everything is supernatural. Sometimes ravens are just ravens."
Looking thoroughly exasperated, Stilinski leaned forward onto his elbows and gazed at Derek steadily "If the ravens can breath fire or turn into yetis, tell me right now, straight-up. Otherwise, I would like it to be noted that you are terrible at small talk."
When Derek didn't respond, just glared and folded his arms across his chest in silence, the Sheriff laughed. Lifting his arms placatingly, he leaned back into his chair. "Don't worry about it, Hale, everybody's got to be bad at something."
~~~~~
Derek walked back from the Sheriff's Station, making it to the Hale property in the early afternoon to help Isaac get construction started on their temporary housing. The forest outside Fairbanks was lit up, green, yellow and red, from the changing colors of the tamarack trees. They stood out brightly against the grey skies.
That night, Derek and Isaac slept out under the stars again. With temperatures hovering just above freezing, the damp cold sank into their bones, making them miss the dry heat of the California desert. The full moon hung low along the horizon, its light filtering in weakly through the cloud cover and the deep shadows of the forest. For all of Derek's foreboding about the strength and power of the northern moon, its pull felt distant and diffused, less like a lightening strike and more like the soft hum of static electricity.
"How do you feel?" Derek asked. They had set up their tent on a small rise and dug a shallow trench around it to keep the water from pooling underneath them. Derek watched the rain flow down the sides of the tent and run away, down the slope of the hill, as the last sliver of moonlight sunk below the horizon.
Isaac inspected his fingers, extending his claws and flexing them in the dim light, then retracting them back to dull, human fingernails. "Strong, in control."
"Good." Derek looked up at the sky. "The harvest moon is always kind."
"What comes after the harvest moon?"
"The hunter moon."
"That sounds bad."
"It's not. We are hunters. The full moons on either side of the equinox are good to us. They are easy, balancing. Find your center in them, you will need it later."
"For the solstice?"
"Yes, for the solstice."
"The moon set tonight."
"Mmhmmm."
"Why would it matter whether or not the sun comes up, so long as the moon sets?"
It was times like these that made Derek glad to have Isaac in his pack. For all his wide, doe-eyed staring and meek mannerisms, he was surprisingly unafraid. Resigned, perhaps. Pessimistic, definitely. But also stubborn and unwilling to go to his fate quietly, which was what had drawn Derek to him in the first place.
He followed Isaac's gaze over to where the moon was disappearing behind the trees. "It doesn't, but the winter solstice is not just the longest night of the year, it is the longest full moon of the year. The moon will be in the sky over Fairbanks for close to twenty hours. If we were at the north pole, it would rise the week before and not set again until a week after."
"Why?"
Derek sighed and shifted onto his back, closing his eyes. "Imagine the earth as an apple."
"The earth isn't shaped like an apple."
Derek cracked one eye open, just enough to glare. Isaac immediately shut his mouth.
"Imagine the earth as an apple, orbiting the sun. The core is the axis on which it spins and the stem marks the north pole. As the earth spins, we experience night and day.
"Now imagine the apple tilted, ever so slightly to one side. It orbits the sun, but, because of its tilt, the stem of the apple will always be turned either slightly towards or slightly away from the sun. This is what gives us the seasons.
"During the winter solstice, the earth is at the point in its orbit where the North Pole is turned completely away from the sun. The Earth continues to spin on its axis, but the North Pole remains always in shadow.
"Now imagine the moon, on the opposite side of the earth from the sun, reflecting its light like a mirror. It takes twentyeight days for the moon to orbit the earth, four weeks. So, during the winter solstice, when the North Pole never faces the sun, there will be two weeks on either side of the full moon when the moon will always be visible in the sky, and two weeks on either side of the new moon, when it will always be below the horizon.
"That, Isaac, is the month of the wolf moon."
They were both quiet for a moment. Derek tilted his head to the side to look over at Isaac, who was picking at his cuticles and staring blankly out into the night. "Understand?"
"No."
Derek sighed and closed his eyes, rolling over again. "It just is. During the winter solstice, the full moon is in the sky for a long time and during the summer solstice, hardly at all, sometimes barely two hours."
"That doesn't sound good either."
"Let's worry about one thing at a time."
"Okay, but just so you know, that explanation was shit."
~~~~~
The next morning, Derek got up, washed his face, brewed some coffee, and went to go see Scott McCall. It would be best, he had decided, to approach the Beta alone. The poor kid was probably hanging on by his toenails at this point. A show of force might spook him, put him on his guard, make him run, and Derek really wanted this to go well.
He was tired. He had been tired on the morning he had left for war and tired every morning since. He wanted to go home, but he was already there. This was home: this land, this town, under this sky. If he couldn't make a home for himself here, he wasn't going to find one anywhere else either and he couldn't do it alone. A lone wolf was a death wish and two were a suicide pact, but, with three, they could rebuild. Three was enough for a new beginning.
He wanted this to go well.
According to Sheriff Stilinski, Scott worked at a veterinary office on the outskirts of town and Derek headed off to find it, hoping to catch Scott before he started work. He brought a thermos of coffee with him to drink on the drive in and tried to practice looking trustworthy and reassuring in the rearview mirror. His success was limited, but he hoped that the early hour would push things a little more into his favor. Nothing could truly be sinister before nine o'clock in the morning.
He found the office easily enough, the storefront was freshly painted and well kept and a bell sounded over the door as he pushed it open to let himself in. Scott McCall stood behind the counter in the back, already in deep conversation with a young man Derek recognized as Stiles Stilinski and a young woman he didn't recognize at all, with fair skin and short brown hair. She didn't smell like a wolf, exactly, but it was close enough to make Derek think that this was probably Malia, the mysterious werecoyote. Sheriff Stilinski gave good intel.
"Scott McCall." Derek greeted the Beta as he stepped forward. The three of them had already turned, looking up as soon as they had heard the bell. Scott came forward from behind the counter, putting himself in between Derek and the others. He stood a few inches shy of six foot, but carried himself like he was taller. Tanned, with dark eyes and dark hair, he looked good, healthy and confident. He had done well for himself, especially for having survived the bite alone.
"You're a werewolf."
Derek blinked. A bit blunt, but at least he's to the point. "Yes." He met Scott's eyes, allowing his own to bleed to red and letting the wolf shine through. "I am your Alpha."
Scott's eyes flashed in answer, also red, and Derek almost jerked back in surprise.
"Who did you kill?" He asked, incredulously. The only packs in the area were strong, old and well established, unless the war had changed things for more than just the Hales. But Scott's eyes had been alpha red, and there were a limited number of ways for a Beta to become an Alpha. Killing and stealing another Alpha's power was the most likely.
"No one. I came by my power honestly. It's my own, I didn't have to steal it from anyone else." Scott crossed his arms and took a step forward, his friends flanking him on either side.
"A true Alpha, then. That's good, but more strength means you'll need even more control. We need to start training immediately."
"Thanks for the tip, Sweetcheeks, but how about you back this whole thing up for two seconds and maybe restart by introducing yourself." Stiles's voice had a sarcastic drawl to it, like he enjoyed chewing his words as they came out, just to give them that little extra bite. He looked much like he had in his photograph, lean and lanky, with a delicate face. His hair looked softer in real life, though, and lighter, just barely too dark to be blond. He was leaning against the counter behind Scott, watching Derek with one eyebrow raised expectantly. He had dark circles under his honey-brown eyes and he smelled like cynicism.
Derek ignored him, turning back to Scott. "You've done well to make it this long on your own, but you need guidance."
The girl, Malia, spoke up, sniffing the air. "He smells bad. I don't like him."
"Bad smells are definitely a point against, highly suspicious. Tell us more." Stiles pushed himself away from the counter, standing next to Scott as Malia leaned forward towards Derek, sniffing. She covered her nose and grimaced.
"I don't know, it’s just bad. Like sickness."
Derek continued to direct his attention to Scott, trying not to glower. He was probably failing. "There's a lot you need to learn, that I can teach you. You need a pack, we're stronger together. It's how we survive."
Scott looked at him inquisitively, stepping forward and uncrossing his arms, wary but no longer overtly hostile. His friends had that part covered. "Are you injured?"
"Whoa there buddy," Stiles put his hand on Scott's shoulder. "How about we not touch the strange, potentially diseased, werewolf until we can be sure he's had all his shots."
Derek grit his teeth. "I am neither sick nor injured and this is my territory, Hale Pack Territory."
"Hale Pack," Stiles looked surprised, giving Derek a careful once-over. "Hale Pack as in the Hale family." He let the sentence stand there for a second and Derek gave up on trying not to scowl. "So that would make you... Derek Hale." Stiles snapped his fingers and nodded, turning to the others. "He served with my dad. Though, when Dad mentioned he was back in town, he left out the part about him being a werewolf." He brought up one finger, tapping it against his mouth consideringly.
Derek turned, slowly and deliberately, away from the Stilinski boy and back towards Scott. The air was hostile, it smelled like anxiety, tension and bitterness. This wasn't going as planned. "You are strong, you survived the first winter, but you will not survive another without my help. I can make you stronger, teach you control."
This shouldn't even have been a debate. How could they not understand? There were no training wheels out here. This was the frontier, the Great White North. When the moon came up in winter, it would hang in the sky longer and clearer than anywhere else on Earth. Turned werewolves were rare, they lost themselves too easily to the wolf, and then the pull of the moon became too strong, it was only the pack that could save them. Maybe Scott had been lucky for a year, found a way to survive, but he wouldn't be able to do it again. And why would he want to? Why would he say no? Derek wanted a pack so bad he could taste it like acid in his mouth.
Scott looked a little uncertain. "I'm sorry about your family, but I'm doing alright on my own."
The Stilinski boy looked less uncertain.
Derek didn't think he could frown any deeper if he tried. He was already giving himself a headache, he was frowning so hard. It was a battle to keep his eyes from glowing red and his fangs from dropping. He wanted to grab Scott by the scruff of the neck and shake him into compliance.
Instead, he tried to concentrate on the positive. Everyone was safe and sane. It was still early, not even quite the equinox. If Scott McCall had made it through a whole year without going feral, he could make it through the hunter moon, and probably the one after that as well. Contact had been established and Derek had done an excellent job of making a terrible first impression, but it was still early. He had time. Nothing more could be accomplished today.
Derek nodded to Scott and turned to leave. "Think about it, McCall, I'll be around."
The morning was still and quiet as he walked back to his truck and he paused for a second when he got there, leaning against the cab. He could hear them talking amongst themselves inside the animal clinique.
"He's sick? Are you sure? I didn't smell sickness on him." Scott sounded confused and slightly skeptical.
"It's not rotting, like meat, but more like old sweat and anxiety and maybe like he rolled around in something dead."
"He did just come back from the front."
"Yeah, a year ago." Stiles cut in.
"Maybe it's stuck to him, like battle sickness. I've never smelled someone with battle sickness before."
"Do werewolves even get that?"
"Everyone gets that, Stiles."
Derek took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he leaned against the door of his truck. He had nightmares, sometimes. Scott had been turned a year ago, in August, just days before the fire and Derek had always believed that Scott hadn't gone feral, but now he knew. He had looked into Scott's eyes and known for certain. He also knew, down to his very marrow, he knew that the bodies of his packmates had not been left to sit in that house, bloating and rotting in the August heat. They had been buried. He knew this. He knew this for a fact, despite having not seen the graves, they were neither in the cemetery by the church nor around the property of the house. He new these things, but sometimes he had nightmares. He wondered if that was what Malia could smell.
Derek climbed into his truck and drove away. Scott would come around. There was no other alternative.