Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When their son is born, the doctor looks down at him and freezes, even as his baby’s cries pierce the hospital room.

“What?” John snaps, “What’s wrong?”

His son is alive, he’s crying, but - he knows that look. That’s not a good look.

“Oh - oh, nothing, sorry,” the doctor says, eyebrows dipped together. “I just - for a moment - I could have sworn your son’s eyes were red.” He laughs, placing the newborn on Claudia’s chest, just for a couple moments, and then Melissa will take him away and clean him up. “Maybe this should be my last delivery tonight. I’m starting to see things!”

“Ha,” John says shortly, not able to muster up anything more believable.

He leans down to kiss Claudia, to look at the pink, squirming infant, and he sees the fear clawing at his throat reflected in her eyes.

~

“It shouldn’t be possible,” Claudia says as soon as they’re alone, “I’m human. I’m the last of us - I was supposed to be the last of us.”

Mieczyslaw - even the doctors are already calling him Stiles - shifts in his sleep, turning into the warmth of his mother’s chest. “You are. If there were anyone else - well, if there were any other wolves left, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Her face crumples as she gives up on denial. “We have to keep this a secret. It’s one thing that he’s a werewolf. My whole family was wolves, it’s fine, it’s not what I expected, but it’s fine. But he’s an alpha too. If anyone finds out that a baby, that our tiny, defenseless son, is an alpha-”

“They’ll kill him,” John finishes, because he knows how werewolves work, about where their power comes from. He met Claudia in college, after her pack had been destroyed by hunters, after she was left the last one standing. But she told him everything. “Some beta looking for power will kill him.”

“We’ll protect him,” Claudia swears. She softens, looking down at their son. “I was ready to move on. To live like a normal human. I thought my pack was destroyed. But Mieczyslaw’s power is from my blood, my pack. His powers is the same as my grandmother’s. The hunters didn’t succeed.” She meets his gaze, as fierce as he’s ever seen her. “My pack lives.”

John doesn’t know what being pack means, although it seems like he’s going to find out, but he’s pretty sure it’s just another name for family. Maybe with more teeth and claws. “Yeah,” he says, and kisses her, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

~

Claudia has money. She has so much money, because she was the last one left standing when her pack died, when her grandmother died, so all the land and property and investments that had been used to run a whole pack got passed down to her. She sells the land and houses, because a human can’t hold pack land, and she knows that. She barely touches the rest of it, uses it to pay for school but not for her wedding. John knows about the money, of course he does, he knows everything, but he never presses her to use it.

She uses it to buy their house. He doesn’t ask, says they chose a house that he could pay off on his salary, and it’s fine if they do that, but she refuses. Her pack is dead, and they’re not coming back. Making her husband work overtime so they can afford to live is foolish. So she buys the house. They don’t have a mortgage, she just pays for the whole thing.

After Mieczyslaw, the money doesn’t seem like a curse, like a burden, like something dark and awful and looming. It seems like hope. It’s pack money, and so Mieczyslaw can have it, when he’s older it will become his money, and he can use it to build his pack. He can buy land and homes and whatever else he needs to do to make their pack bigger, to make it stronger.

The wealth was too much for one person, for one family, and it had felt like it was suffocating her. But now she can breathe again.

~

“Claudia,” Talia says, staring at the woman standing on her porch, no idea why she’s here. “How are you?”

They know each other, vaguely. She’s the wife of one of the deputies, and Talia sees her around town. But she has no idea what could have brought the woman to her house not even a week after giving birth.

She swallows, jutting her chin up like a challenge. Or baring her throat in sign of trust. Humans are so confusing. “I’m the granddaughter of Alpha Katarzyna Kowalczyk.”

Talia’s eyes flash red before she can stop them. Claudia doesn’t flinch. “I think you should come inside,” she says.

Claudia doesn’t fidget as she sits across from her, doesn’t look away or seem uncomfortable at all. They’re in her study, where the rest of the family knows not to disturb her. “I’m sorry about what happened to your pack.”

She shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, and Talia’s internally curls her lip. “That’s not why I’m here. It’s in the past. Or it was.”

“Are hunters coming?” she asks, wondering if Claudia is trying to warn her. Wondering if anyone warned the Kowalczyk pack.

She shakes her head. “No. I - my son,” she stops, biting her bottom lip.

“Is he sick?” Talia tries. Does Claudia want her to bite her son?

“No. He’s not.” She makes sure she’s looking Talia straight on. “He was born a werewolf.”

That really wasn’t what she was expecting. “You’re human,” she says, and it’s not a question. She’d be able to smell it if she wasn’t.

“As is his father. It comes from me. John doesn’t have wolves in his family,” she says.

“That’s rare.” Wolves aren’t normally borne of humans, even humans who were borne of wolves. But it’s not unheard of. “You want to join my pack.”

Claudia surprises her again and shakes her head. “No. That’s why I’m here. We want to stay in Beacon Hills. John has a job here, we bought a house, we have a life here. But we don’t want to be part of your pack. If my son chooses that later, when he’s older, then I won’t stop him. But that’s not a choice I’m willing to make for him.”

“He’ll be weak as an omega,” Talia says, frowning. “He needs a pack.”

“He’ll have one, one day,” she answers. “But I want it to be one he chooses. He wasn’t born into your pack, and I won’t decide for him. Do we have to move? Will you make things difficult for us?”

“No,” she says, even though maybe she should. Letting an omega stay on her land grates at her, but he’s just a baby, and, realistically, he’ll end up in her pack one day anyway, when he’s old enough to ask for it. “No, you can stay. Your husband knows about all this?”

Claudia’s face doesn’t change, but Talia can tell she’s irritated. “Of course. I don’t keep things from my husband.”

She doesn’t address that, instead saying, “There are times when it would be useful to have law enforcement look the other way.”

Claudia nods, like this is what she was expecting. “Let me know. John will do what he can.” She doesn’t hesitate, and her heartbeat is steady. She must have talked with her husband before coming here, must have already been prepared to bargain away some of the deputy’s power to help her son. Talia can’t help but be a little impressed.

“Your family is welcome to stay in Beacon Hills. But you’re not pack, and you’re not under my protection. I won’t risk my life or the lives of my pack for you,” she warns. If something supernatural causes trouble, she’ll take care of it, but the Stilinskis won’t get any special treatment from her just because one of them is a wolf.

Claudia’s mouth twists, an almost smile, and for some reason Talia almost feels uncomfortable under the other woman’s gaze. “Yes. I know.”

~

It’s a good thing Claudia was already planning to be a stay at home mom, because now they don’t really have any other choice. She grew up with wolves. She knows what to expect.

Wolves are born mostly human, except for the eyes. But by the time Mieczyslaw is two, he’s already transforming, already has unnatural strength for his age and size. He’s stronger than she remembers her nieces being, but that makes sense. They were betas. He’s an alpha.

John worries, because they get a lot of bruises, ones Mieczyslaw never means to give them, but Claudia doesn’t. Her husband didn’t grow up with wolves, so he has no reason to know this, but their son has fantastic control. His claws come out, but he never scratches them, there’s been some close calls with the furniture, and a lot of shredded blankets, but he’s never drawn blood, which is more than can be said about many human children.

They are very, very careful about biting.

“Never,” she tells him, four years old and getting ready to go on a playdate with Melissa’s kid. She’s been telling him this since before he could walk, since before he could talk. “You must never, under any circumstances, bite someone. Understand? Your bite is powerful. You shouldn’t use your claws either, but you must never use your teeth.” It doesn’t count if he bites anyone when he isn’t shifted, of course, but she doesn’t want to make the distinction. All it takes is one second of lost control, and then they’ll have a new werewolf on their hands. Then everyone will know what Mieczyslaw is, know that he’s an alpha, and they’re going to have to run. His true status has to remain a secret until he’s strong enough to protect himself.

One day, when he’s ready to start building his own pack, they’ll have to move. They’ll have to go somewhere that isn’t claimed or controlled by another pack and start fresh. Or maybe he’ll want to join another pack instead, but if so, she doubts it will be the Hale pack. She doubts that Talia will tolerate another alpha. But that’s years in the future, and as long as Mieczyslaw can keep his teeth and red eyes to himself, there’s no reason to rush.

“Okay,” Mieczyslaw says, big brown eyes wide. “I’ll be good. I won’t hurt Scott.”

“I know you won’t,” she says, and kisses her son’s forehead. He will likely break something or convince Scott to do something he shouldn’t, like climb the tree in Melissa’s backyard, but that’s fine. The type of trouble Mieczyslaw seems to get into is human trouble, kid trouble, so she tries not to scold him too much for it. He follows the important rules, the ones about teeth and claws and red eyes, so she’s predisposed to let the other ones slide. That might be a problem, in the future, but for now she doesn’t want to press her luck.

He’s a sweet kid, and he’s good at controlling the wolf, even on the full moon, when he can’t help but shift and huddle into her side. He doesn’t go out on those nights because he can’t stop his eyes from bleeding red when the moon is full and high, and there are too many Hales that might come across him.

As long as he’s tucked against her side, he’s fine.

One day, her son will need a different anchor. But not for a long, long time. She’s not going anywhere.

~

Stiles is seven when things begin to change.

“Put on your coat,” Claudia says, for the dozenth time. John sits and drinks his coffee, mouth turned down at the corners. He wants to help, wants to get involved, but Claudia says it’s important that they don’t look weak in front of him, which means that he won’t undermine her by getting involved without her asking him to. He doesn’t understand, but he suspects this is one of those things that’s more about being a wolf than being human.

“I’m not cold,” Stiles says, and he’s not yelling, but he’s definitely whining. He’s gearing up for a proper tantrum, and while John doesn’t want to deal with that, it’s at least more straightforward than this strange almost argument he’s having with his mother.

“That’s because you’re not outside yet,” she says. “You’re going to miss the bus if you don’t hurry, and then Scott will be sad that you weren’t there to sit with him.”

He scowls. “I’m not going to be cold when I go outside either! I’m a werewolf! The cold doesn’t bother me.”

That’s not exactly true. The cold can’t hurt him. John knows that he still gets cold. He should put on the coat, for his personal comfort as well as appearances. If he doesn’t wear a coat, they’re going to get a call from the school, and it’s going to be really awkward if people start accusing them of child neglect.

“Mieczyslaw,” Claudia says, “put on your coat.”

She reaches for him, like she’s going to force it on him, or at least force it into his arms, since neither of them are strong enough to manhandle Stiles when he doesn’t want it. His eyes flash red and he growls, “No!”

Claudia freezes, then slowly bares her throat. John feels - scolded, for some reason, like he’s a kid in trouble. He pushes the feeling away, because they knew this was coming, his wife warned him this would happen, they just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

Stiles is an alpha, and they’re his parents. That means they’re his pack, that he’s their alpha. It doesn’t matter that he’s a literal child, that he’s their son, it just doesn’t matter. He’s their alpha. But Claudia didn’t think this, this - shift, this change, would happen until Stiles was older, a teenager, maybe.

This is going to be a problem, he can tell. Because he doesn’t want to make Stiles wear his coat anymore, because he said no. He said no, and it feels like that should be the end of the conversation, even though he knows it isn’t. He’s not a wolf, wasn’t born into a family of werewolves, but Stiles is his son, so he’s nothing if not his son’s pack. It’s affecting him too. Claudia said it would, but he hadn’t really believed her, thought something so instinctual and solid couldn’t just settle into his psyche without permission, but he was wrong.

Things are going to get very difficult, and very out of control if they can’t even discipline their own child. It was bad enough when they were contemplating a teenager who wouldn’t have any reason to listen to them, but this - it’s too much, too soon.

But Stiles’s eyes fade back to brown. He looks in between them, eyebrows pushed together, like he felt the change as much as they did. Claudia is still standing there, not moving with her throat bared, and John wants to do something, but he doesn’t know what. There’s no guidebook for this, even amongst wolves.

Stiles steps forward, takes his coat from his mother’s hands, and puts it on. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Claudia says, finally easing back into a more natural position.

“Sorry,” he repeats, and hugs her before darting out of the front door. John leans back to look out the window, and Stiles makes it to the end of the driveway just in time for the bus to pull up.

John turns to his wife. She breathes out slowly. “Did you feel that?”

“Yeah,” he says.

Her face breaks into a grin, and he’s startled at the intensity of it. “We’re a pack, John.”

“Yeah,” he says again, because he doesn’t know what else to say, how else to react. It’s too early. It wasn’t supposed to be this early. This will cause problems.

It does. But not as many as he feared.

Stiles gets into trouble in school, he drags Scott along with him, he still argues and has the occasional meltdown. But he’s such a good kid.

Other parents don’t understand, and he can’t explain it to them. From the outside, Stiles seems like a tough kid, always causing trouble, too loud and never paying attention. The force loves him, he’s still sweet when he’s not driving them all crazy, but they look at him and see a kid who doesn’t listen. Which, well, they’re not wrong. But they only see the half of it.

Stiles goes through so much effort to never pull rank on them.

He holds his temper, when he gets upset he doesn’t flash his eyes and speak in that tone of voice that seems too old for him and makes John want to obey him instead of the other way around. The few times he has done that, he’s instantly contrite. In Stiles’s mind, if he has to growl and flash his eyes to get his way, he loses. That’s the end of the argument, and he does exactly what his parents were asking of him, because he’s lost.

They get to actually be parents to their kid, without having to step softly or move around him. Because he argues and whines and causes trouble - but all human things, in all human ways.

They have a really good kid, and someday John thinks he’s going to make a really good alpha.

~

Talia’s on the front porch with Peter when Stiles walks up to them, clothes dirty and torn, and drops two dead kelpies in front of her. “These were in your lake,” he says, and he doesn’t bare his throat, doesn’t make any sort of submissive gesture at all, even though he’s an omega on her land, even though he’s a nine year old wolf without a pack. “I killed them. Thought you might want them.”

Talia doesn’t know what to make of Stiles.

She’s seen him around town, even smelled him on the preserve. Cora’s in his class. She says that if she couldn’t smell the wolf on him, she’d never know. He’s gangly instead of graceful, and he’s all laughter and too loud talking. He doesn’t seem like a wolf. He doesn’t seem like a predator.

She always assumed he was weak. Of course he’s weak, he’s a lone wolf raised by humans, he’s lucky he’s even alive. A sad excuse for a wolf.

But now she’s got two dead kelpie at her feet, and a wolf who doesn’t submit to her. She thought Stiles would be over here begging to be in her pack as soon as he could talk, would feel the emptiness and loneliness of being an omega like a knife in the ribs. But apparently not. He’s not weak either, not like he should be as a child omega. She wouldn’t send Laura to kill two kelpies alone, they’re vicious and slippery, never mind Cora. And Cora is stronger than Stiles. Should be stronger than him, since she’s part of a large pack and he’s all alone.

“Bye,” he says, when she only continues to stare at him, turning his back to her. She hears the crunch of bones as he shifts, but doesn’t see his face as he runs back into the woods, towards his own home.

Peter pushes the kelpie corpses with the toe of his boot and mutters, “Interesting.”

“The kelpies or the kid?” she asks, looking at her little brother.

“Both,” he says bluntly. “But the kelpies are the more pressing of the two. What the hell were they doing in the lake?”

“Thanks for volunteering to find out,” she says. He glares, but before he can argue she flashes her eyes at him. He grumbles, but goes into the direction of the lake. He flips her off as he does it but, well, he’s Peter.

She looks in the direction of where Stiles left until her husband calls her inside. Something doesn’t make sense about that kid.

~

When Claudia gets her diagnosis, her first concern is Mieczyslaw.

“He needs a new anchor,” she tells John as soon as they’re back in the car. “My mind will go before my body, so we don’t have any time to waste. He uses you to anchor himself too, so the transition shouldn’t be so bad. He’s going to have a hard time controlling himself when I die. If he’s struggling, make up some excuse about why he can’t attend my funeral. We don’t need anyone finding out he’s an alpha now. He’s not a baby anymore, but he’s still not strong enough. You’ll have to let him see my body though, even though the doctors probably won’t like it. It’s important. If he doesn’t get the chance to smell I’m dead, he’s going to have a hard time processing everything. A harder time. It has be before I’m embalmed, because I’ll smell wrong then, that’ll just be worse. We’ll have to go the bank too and add you to the pack accounts, so that you can access that money if you or Mieczyslaw need it. I was thinking he’d get the money at twenty one, but he has such a good head on his shoulders, I think eighteen is fine, he doesn’t have to do anything with it, of course, but it’ll be there, if he needs it.”

She’s so focused on planning, on how to make this easier for her son, that she doesn’t realize John is crying until she looks over. She holds out her hand, and he grabs it tight enough to hurt, but she doesn’t complain. “I don’t want to lose you,” he says, “I don’t want Stiles to lose you.”

Hugging him is easy, kissing him even easier.

She doesn’t want to die. She wants to see her son grow up, wants to see her husband go grey, wants to see the type of pack Mieczyslaw will build.

But she won’t get to see any of that. She’s going to die. She’ll probably die soon.

She doesn’t have time for grief, especially grief that serves no purpose.

~

The second time Stiles comes to her is only a few months after the first time. “Would the bite cure my mom?” he asks as soon as she’s opened the door.

Talia raises an eyebrow. “Are you asking me to bite her?”

“I’m asking you if turning into a werewolf would save her,” he says, and he’s nearly glaring at her. An omega, being disrespectful to her on her own land, but one who isn’t looking to start a fight. He’s talking to her as if they’re equals. It’s baffling.

But he’s a child, and his mother is dying. Asserting her dominance over him now would be a pointless thing for her to do, no matter how much her wolf is itching for her to do just that. “No. She’s too old for the bite to take well, even if she’s from a werewolf family. Plus, her body is weak. It would probably kill her.”

“So she’s going to die, and there’s nothing anyone can do,” he says. He’s speaking in a flat monotone, and Talia aches, suddenly, in a way she hasn’t before. The thought of her dying and leaving her children to mourn her - if she were to die, and leave Cora crying over her grave - she doesn’t envy Claudia this, the knowledge she’s going to hurt her son without any way to prevent it.

“I’m sorry,” she says. He nods, once, then leaves.

~

Stiles doesn’t want to be strong, but he has to be, because this is destroying his father and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s the alpha, he should be able to fix this, it’s his job to fix this. But his pack is falling apart around him, and he doesn’t know what to do. His dad is drinking more and working more. He still comes whenever Stiles calls for him. His dad may be good at faking his smiles, but no matter what his face looks like, Stiles can smell the sour scent of grief clinging to him, and it hurts him that his dad is hurting and he can’t do anything about it, that his pack is hurting and he can’t do anything about it.

He’s at Scott’s because his mom is in the hospital and his dad is working late, and he stares up at the ceiling. He’s in Scott’s bed, his best friend’s face pressed into his shoulder and drooling on him. Scott smells like him. Cora has noticed it, looks at them strangely, looks at him with pity, because she probably thinks his scent on Scott is a sad attempt at a pack. It’s not. He’s an alpha, and it doesn’t matter that there are no other wolves in his pack, it’s still his. Scott is pack, it’s what he became at some point when they were younger, and Stiles still hasn’t really figured out how to tell him that.

Maybe he doesn’t have to. Scott knows he’s important, that he’s Stiles’s best friend. Maybe that’s enough.

But he wants to tell Scott the truth. He hates lying to him. He shouldn’t lie to his pack.

~

When John gets to the hospital, Stiles is sitting with his knees pressed to his forehead, and Scott is beside him, wide eyed and holding onto his arm, gripping the sleeve of his friend’s sweatshirt like he’s afraid something terrible will happen if he lets go.

He knows the moment he sees his son that Claudia is gone.

“John,” Melissa says, materializing at his elbow, her face creased in sympathy, her eyes dark in grief. She looks like she’s been crying.

“How long ago?” he asks. It sounds like his voice is far away.

“A few hours. We tried to call you, but - well. She wasn’t alone. Stiles was with her when she passed.” He flinches, and she grips his arm. “I had the sitter bring Scott so he was waiting for him out here. As soon as he left Claudia, he was with Scott. He wasn’t alone.” She pauses, and says quietly, “I tried to be there with him, when she died, but he yelled at me to get out. I listened to him - why did I listen to him? I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Oh. Melissa is pack. It makes sense. Scott is Stiles’s best friend, he’s pack, so Melissa is too. “It’s okay,” he says, because of course she listened. When Stiles speaks in that particular tone of voice, John wants to listen too. But Stiles never makes him. Apparently this was more important than any of the arguments he’d gotten into with his father.

He thought he was ready. He knew it was coming. They had so much time to be ready for this, so much time spent watching her slowly slip away from them. But his chest feels too tight, and Melissa is guiding him over to a chair, trying to get him to sit down before he falls down.

It’s been a long time since he had a panic attack.

“Dad.” He looks up, and Stiles is standing there. Shit. He - Stiles can probably smell it on him, can smell the panic and anxiety clawing their way into him. Stiles steps closer, wrapping his arms around him, pulling him forward until John’s forehead is pressed against his sternum. “It’s okay. Calm down.”

This is pathetic, this is so pathetic, his son just lost his mother, he should be the one comforting Stiles, not the other way around. Alpha or not, he’s the adult here, and he needs to act like it. He holds his breath, forcing his shoulders to relax, forcing himself to focus. He can have a panic later. When Stiles can’t see him.

He sits up and grabs Stiles, hugging him properly, tucking his son’s head beneath his chin and rubbing a hand up and down his back. “I got you,” he promises, “and you’ve still got me.”

The first sob is a relief. Stiles breaking down and crying in his arms means he can breathe again. Stiles is still a kid. He’s John’s kid, and red eyes doesn’t change that.

They can do this. It’s going to be harder, to navigate all the werewolf stuff without Claudia, to function at all without his wife, but he has to do this, he can’t let this break him.

His son needs him.

~

Scott thought that Stiles was a vampire.

He’d noticed things, over the years. The odd flash of red eyes, fangs that are there in one moment and gone the next, the way his hands sometimes look like claws. It doesn’t make a lot a sense, because Stiles is warm, and he’s getting older, and Scott has felt the rapid pace of his pulse under his hand before. But it’s the only thing that he can think of that can explain the rest of it.

Stiles tells him he’s a werewolf when he’s ten, just a few short weeks after his mother’s funeral. His eyes are glowing red when he says, “I’ll tell your mom too, but - later. Dad’s worried that she’ll just think this is a reaction to the grief, and that she’s grieving too, so proving it to her might just make her think she’s gone crazy. So we’ll tell her. But in a few months. Or maybe a year.”

“Why are you telling me now?” he asks. It’s easy to accept this as the truth. It makes sense, and it doesn’t change anything, not for him. Stiles is his best friend. His only friend, really.

He looks hesitant for the first time, but licks his lips and says. “It’s - I. My mom was my anchor, before. But she’s not anymore. Obviously.”

“But you need your anchor to control your shift!” he says, because he’s been paying attention.

Stiles almost grins. “Yeah. I know. But that’s why I’m telling you. It’s you, Scott. You’re my anchor now.”

Scott pauses, something warm unfurling in his chest. Stiles loves him, he always knew that, and he loves Stiles. That’s not even in question, he’s pretty sure that’s what Stiles meant when he called them pack. But that he’s important enough that Stiles uses him to control himself, to stay human even when he’s angry or sad or afraid -

“You’re my best friend,” Scott says, even though he has to know.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, fond, and eyes still with that warm red glow.

~

It’s only a few months after his mom dying that he gets pulled out of class, and Stiles feels his heart hammering in his chest, and has to bite down on the urge to shift. Deputy Harrison - George, as he’s always told Stiles to call him - is there to pick him up. “Where’s my dad?” he asks as soon as he sees him.

His fear must be obvious, because George lays a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Hey. Calm down, it’s okay. Your dad’s fine. I’m not sure what’s going on, but your dad asked me to come get you. I don’t know why, but he’s okay, I promise.”

Stiles spends hours in his dad’s office, waiting and waiting and waiting. He’s asleep in his chair when the door opens, and he barely has the time to blink awake before his dad is hauling him into his arms. Stiles hugs him back, and his nose is filled with the scent of smoke. Under that is blood, and the uncomfortable smell of burned flesh. Then, just faint enough that it’s almost unnoticeable, is the acrid scent of mountain ash. “Dad?”

“You need to go,” he says, pulling back. There’s ash on his hands and smeared across his uniform, and his eyes are so wide as to look crazed. “I’m sending you to your great aunt’s in Arizona. For a week. Maybe more, but at least a week.”

What? “Dad, what are you talking about? What’s wrong?” he demands. He hates acting like an alpha with his dad, it feels wrong, but he kind of smells like he’s starting to work himself into a panic attack, and Stiles knows if he pitches his voice just right and tells him to calm down, he will.

“The Hale house caught on fire, it’s basically gone,” he says, and Stiles stares.

That’s awful, of course, but it doesn’t explain his dad’s reaction. “That sucks. Are they going to tear it down and start from scratch?”

“Stiles. They died. The Hales are dead, all except Derek and Laura, and Peter – we don’t know about Peter. He’s alive. For now.” His dad holds his hands, and if he were human he think it would hurt. “Hunters came for the Hales. There are hunters in Beacon Hills, and you can’t be here, understand? If they find out what you are–”

“I can’t leave!” Stiles says, knowing his eyes are glowing red but unable to make them stop. “If – if they’re really all gone, they’ll need help, I can’t just leave them, I’m a werewolf too and they’ve just lost their pack, I can’t just run away–”

“You may be an alpha but you’re still a child,” he says. “What can you do for them? What you can you really do for them? I’ll keep an eye on them, I swear, they know that I know about them, I’ll get the real story out of them. But I can’t do my job if I’m worried about you, understand? I can’t go out there and try to make this better if I’m worried about a hunter shooting you in the head with a wolfsbane bullet.”

It’s wrong, it feels wrong to leave now, to run, but his dad is upset, he’s so worried, and Stiles has to take care of him. The best way he can take care of his dad is by listening to him. “Okay. Okay, I’ll go, I won’t fight you on it.”

His dad’s relief helps distract Stiles from the unpleasant churning sensation in his stomach. He feels like he’s making a mistake.

~

John means to help. Claudia had spoken about how devastating losing her pack was as a human, for werewolves it has to be even worse.

They’re in his office, the door closed and the blinds drawn. Derek has sunken in on himself, shoulders slumped and face pale, huddled into the corner of the couch as if trying to make himself as small as possible. John’s impressed he hasn’t transformed from the grief.

Laura is sitting in the center of the couch and she isn’t holding her wolf back, but it’s clear that she isn’t trying to. Her eyes are glowing red and her lips are pulled back in a snarl, like she thinks that will work on him, but it won’t. He’s used to red eyes, she isn’t his alpha, and he’s not even just some human she can an intimidate. He’s part of a pack. “You seem to be managing your mother’s power well,” he says softly, and it’s not quite a reprimand. “I’m on your side. I want to help.”

“On our side,” she snarks, lip curling like it’s a joke. “Is that why your son is gone? You sent him packing as soon as you’d heard what happened to us.”

Is there something she’s not saying? Something he should know but doesn’t? He doesn’t understand her anger. “Of course I did. He’s eleven years old, and there are hunters in town.”

Derek flinches. “How do you know it was hunters?” Laura growls at him, and he lowers his head. John doesn’t like that.

“Do you know of someone else who could lay a mountain ash circle around your home?” he asks. Now they’re both staring at him. “Was it your emissary? Because those are the only two people I can think of who use mountain ash.”

“You know we have an emissary? And about the mountain ash?” Laura demands.

He rubs his hand over his face. They exhaust him. “My wife was part of a large pack, you know, and my son is a werewolf. No pack that expects to be taken seriously would be without an emissary, and I saw the mountain ash. How else would fire kill a houseful of werewolves? Even one that was so obviously magically enhanced.” Her eyes narrow, and before she can ask, he says, “House fires don’t run hot enough to do what happened to your family. Especially not so localized. At that heat - your house should have been nothing but ash. The forest surrounding it should have caught fire. It didn’t. If you have an explanation that isn’t magic, then please, I’m all ears. Tell me what happened. Tell me who did this so I can bring them to justice.”

She’s still staring at him, so clearly suspicious of him, and he doesn’t know why. “Your son is an omega. You’re not part of our pack. I’m not telling you anything.”

“I’m the sheriff,” he snaps. “This isn’t just a werewolf problem. Setting a house on fire and murdering everyone inside is a crime, and they should be brought to justice.” Derek hunches in even further, attempting to make himself impossibly smaller, and John feels a flash of guilt. He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to be calm. “What are you going to do? Rip their throats out?”

“And what if I do?” she challenges. “They murdered my pack.”

“All on your own?” he asks. “You’ve just became an alpha. You have Derek and Peter to take care of. Are you going to go off on your own, against an enemy that’s clearly more powerful than you are? That’s foolish.” He can’t take issue with the concept of murder, of a werewolf’s justice. He and his wife had a lot of conversations about it.

There are times when the human and supernatural lines blur, and that world has its own justice, its own laws. He can’t tell a new alpha she doesn’t have the right to avenge her pack, even if it makes his skin itch.

“You’re not pack,” she repeats. “We’re not telling you anything. Write up whatever cause or explanation in the report you like. We don’t care.” She leaves and Derek follows, not even bothering to look at him.

He resists the urge to throw something. They’ve just lost everything, they’re traumatized, they need time to relax, to regain their equilibrium. He almost wishes Stiles was here, wishes he didn’t have to be a secret. An alpha’s power is a heavy thing. Laura could use some help, and John only knows one alpha.

Laura and Derek are gone the next day, having given their statements and left with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. John wasn’t even there to stop them, didn’t think he had to stop them. It takes a lot of talking to convince his deputies that their behavior isn’t suspicious, that Laura is just acting out of grief and panic and not guilt.

“They left?” Stiles asks, horrified, his voice kind of crackly from the other end of the phone. John had driven him home to get changed, and then driven him to the airport. He didn’t like Stiles flying alone, but he didn’t have much choice, and it’s not like he had to worry about Stiles getting kidnapped or hurt by humans. Just hunters. “That doesn’t – it’s their territory. They wouldn’t leave.”

“They left,” he confirms, ignoring the rest of it, because he doesn’t know what to say. Peter Hale is still unconscious. He might be unconscious forever, because if his werewolf healing hasn’t fixed him already, maybe it never will. They hadn’t stuck around for a funeral because there hadn’t been anything to bury, the fire burning so much hotter than the arson expert can explain. They’d barely found bone fragments for the rest of the family, and no way to tell who they belonged to. It’s a miracle Peter survived at all. Stiles makes a wounded noise on the other side, but doesn’t say anything more.

He finds out when Derek Hale’s school records get pulled two weeks later. Wherever they are, whatever they’re doing, at least Laura is planning to keep Derek in school. The kid’s only fifteen, and she’s only nineteen, barely more than a kid herself.

He wishes they’d stayed. They’re not his pack, but they’re still wolves, still kids, and he would have helped, if they’d let him.

~

It ends up being not one week, but three.

His Great Aunt Sue is his grandfather’s sister, and Stiles has only met her a couple of times. She seems nice, and his dad doesn’t hate her, but they’re not close. She may be family, but she’s not pack.

Stiles thinks she’s a good person, would have to be to just let her nephew’s kid stay with her for nearly a month with no notice. She likes to garden, and to go hiking and rock climbing. She lives alone, had never remarried after her wife died, and never had any kids, so she’s clearly at a loss with what to do with Stiles.

During those three weeks, he gets really good at rock climbing, and she teaches him to cook. He burns his hands about a dozen times, but they always heal before she notices.

He talks to his dad every day, and Scott twice a day, before school and after, because being without his anchor for three weeks is terrible. “Does your mom think this is weird?”

“I think she thinks it’s weird that she doesn’t think it’s weird,” Scott says. “She asks about you whenever we finish talking.”

Stiles feels warm at that, that Melissa cares. That’s what makes her pack, although they still haven’t gotten around to telling her about werewolves. Being Scott’s mom isn’t enough, because his dad isn’t pack, in fact Stiles wouldn’t mind sharpening his claws on Scott’s dad, so it’s not that. It’s just Melissa, being there all the time, stern and kind and warm and trying so hard. That’s what makes her pack. He knows his dad doesn’t get it, not really, and he has a lot of words inside of him, but not for this. He will, one day, he thinks.

~

When he lands, Scott and his dad are waiting for him at the airport. He panics, because he doesn’t know who to go to first. Because his dad is his dad, but Scott is Scott, so he just freezes, not wanting to choose.

He doesn’t have to.

Scott goes running for him and knocks him to the ground, and it’s comforting that Scott’s missed him just as much as he’s missed Scott, that he’s not just his weird, needy werewolf best friend.

They eat dinner with Melissa, and it feels good, feels right. He has his pack again.

~

John doesn’t think this is a good idea, but Stiles is being stubborn about this, and this is a werewolf thing, or maybe just an alpha thing, but whatever it is, it’s important. Stiles asks Scott to come with them, which comforts John a little, because at least Stiles knows this is a bad idea.

He drives them up to what’s left of Hale house. It’s rained twice since the fire, and another wall has collapsed. The rain should have been cleansing, should have washed away the scent of fire and smoke and burning human flesh. Instead it’s just made everything more of a mess.

Stiles’s nose wrinkles before they even get there. “Mountain ash is still here.”

“I broke the circle when I found it,” John protests. “The rain should have washed it away.”

Stiles shrugs, doesn’t say anything as they walk even closer to the charred and broken remains of what the Hale pack used to be. He holds Scott’s hand and doesn’t say anything at all. John’s bones are starting to feel the cold by the time Stiles says, “Okay. We can go.”

That night Stiles crawls into his bed. This isn’t entirely a wolf thing, it’s a kid thing too, so he lets Stiles sleep on his mother’s side of the bed even though he’s far too old for it, and pretends not to notice him staring at him before he falls asleep, or the way Stiles looks exhausted the next morning, like he didn’t get any sleep at all.

If keeping watch for a night from monsters that aren’t after them makes Stiles feel better, he won’t begrudge him.

~

Stiles lets it lie, for a couple weeks, certain that they’re coming back.

But spring melts into summer, and still no one returns.

The hospital staff know him as well as they know Scott, and it’s not weird for Stiles to be here on his own, not really. Everyone jokes about how Melissa has two sons, about how Stiles is constantly underfoot, and it’s depressingly easy to cash in on that as he walks through the halls. He smiles and waves like he would if he was here doing anything else, and no one spares him a second glance.

It doesn’t take him long to find where he’s going, and he lowers himself into the chair next to Peter Hale’s bed. He still looks awful, skin burned and peeling, pink and leaking and all the worse for it. His chest rises and falls in staggered, sluggish breathes. More than any of that, it’s the needle in his arm which Stiles can’t stop looking at. Needles pierce their skin, no problem, but they heal so fast that their body just pushes it back out if it takes more than a minute or so. IVs are not meant for werewolves, it just doesn’t work, and seeing one in Peter’s hand is making him feel kind of nauseous.  

“So,” he says, clearing his throat before trying and failing to get in a more comfortable position in this horrible hospital chair. Luckily, he has tons of experience sitting in these things from when he would come to visit his mom. “So, I know this is really weird, but, um, they say you should talk to coma patients, and I’m really good at talking, so I thought that I could help, maybe. So there’s that, but I also feel really awful for you, because  - well, I’m sure you’ve noticed. You’re all alone. And that’s really messed up on like, a human level, but on wolf one it’s - yeah, I mean, you know. Worse. And I’m sure they had their reason for leaving, and, um, leaving you behind,” why didn’t they take him, why didn’t they demand a transfer to a hospital where they’re staying, Stiles doesn’t understand anything, “but you’re still alone. Which is bad. So I figured I’d, you know, hang out or whatever, until they come back for you,” they have to come back for him, “and if Laura gets mad about it, we can, I don’t know, have a fight in the parking lot about it.”

Peter doesn’t say anything, of course, because he’s in a coma, and nearly burned to death. It’s been over a month, and he’s barely healed. Granted, any human would be dead, but it doesn’t look good. He doesn’t look good.

Stiles shoots a look at the door, because he’s definitely not supposed to be in here, and then slides his hand under Peter’s arm, where it’s not super obvious to anyone standing on the other side. His skin is tender where it isn’t rough, and it makes his stomach lurch. But someone has to do this, and if it’s not going to be the Hales, then it will have to be him. The veins in his arms bulge and blacken as he leeches pain out of Peter, going slow so he can manage the pain that’s flowing into him, so that it has enough time to fade before he takes in more.

He keeps talking, first about all the recipes that Sue had taught him, then about how much of a pain it was to try and catch up after three weeks out of school, because the school year is just about over, and there’s no way he’s doing summer school. He keeps taking on Peter’s pain the entire time, and, maybe it’s his imagination, but he thinks Peter might be breathing easier when he leaves two hours later.

~

Melissa had thought she would need to do a lot of arguing and cajoling and possibly some outright begging to get the hospital staff to allow Stiles unrestricted access to Peter’s rooms, because after nearly a month of him showing up a few times a week, it’s clear that this isn’t something he’s letting go, and Melissa doesn’t really want to make him.

She’d talked about it with John, worried that this was a trauma thing, or something she should be worried about, and not just Stiles’s latest project. But John had gotten quiet, and said, “If you can do anything to help, we’d really appreciate it.”

It had actually been pathetically easy to get Stiles and John listed as family. “Someone should claim him,” his doctor had grumbled when setting it up, and then she’d looked a little guilty. “I do feel bad for those kids, of course.”

“Of course,” Melissa had echoed. Everyone felt bad for them. It still didn’t make leaving a comatose uncle behind any easier to understand. She’d known Peter, in a distant sort of way, the only way anyone ever seemed to know the Hales. Handsome and polite enough, always with a grin like he was in on some joke that no one else was.

It hurt to see him like this, unmoving, scarred, barely clinging on to life.

So the hospital staff had put Stiles on a list, because they knew Stiles from Claudia and from her, and they knew the sheriff, and no one wanted to get in the way of a good kid doing a good thing.

It’s not until a few months later that she finds out there’s more to the story, and when she does, it’s Rafe’s fault.

It’s a Saturday, and Stiles and Scott are in her son’s bedroom, theoretically asleep but she knows better, knows that they’re watching something or playing something, doing something that isn’t sleeping, but she doesn’t see any reason to stop them. It’s not a school night, after all.

She’s in the kitchen, getting some cleaning done now while she has the chance. She has work early tomorrow morning, and so does John, so the kids are on their own until a little before dinnertime. She knows exactly how that’s going to end. They’ll spend the day playing video games, and then Stiles will make lunch. She’s happy to leave them money for pizza, but ever since those three weeks that he spent in Arizona, Stiles really enjoys cooking, and he’s good at it. He’s not good at not making a huge mess, and he always cleans up after, but Melissa ends up doing it again anyway. He leaves it clean, but not clean enough, or possibly she’s just a neat freak and needs to learn to relax.

Either way, it’s easier for everyone if she does the dishes in the sink and scrubs the counters tonight.

She doesn’t hear the door open and close, but she does hear footsteps. One of the kids trying to sneak down for a midnight snack, she assumes, and she’s smiling as she looks over her shoulder, “Aren’t you supposed to be asl-”

It’s not the kids.

A large man covers her mouth before she can scream and presses her up against the counter while someone else grabs her wrists and pins them behind her back, handcuffs sliding into place and pinching against her skin. She tries to struggle, to kick or fight, but he’s strong and large and easily moves out of the way as she lashes out. A gag replaces his hand, and he says, “Just shut up and do what you’re told and you won’t get hurt. I’d hate to give you back to Rafael in pieces.” She’s angrier than she is scared, but then something cold and metal and cylindrical is shoved against her back, and she freezes. He’s holding a gun.

What the hell does her ex-husband have to do with this? Who are these men? Oh, god, what if they’re here for Scott too -

“Get your hands off of her.”

They turn, and Stiles is standing there in his pajama bottoms and a too big t-shirt, looking even younger than his age, and he’s shaking. She screams, eyes wide, trying to tell him to leave, to run. He’s going to get himself killed or taken, he should have ran!

“I already called my dad,” he says conversationally, like he’s not afraid. He’s not, she realizes, after another moment of looking at him. He’s not shaking with fear. He’s furious. “Whether or not you’re alive when he gets here depends on what you do next.”

The one holding her snorts. “You’ve got balls, Scott.” They think Stiles is her son. “But Rafael is too far away to do you any good. Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing him real soon.” He jerks his head towards the other man, who lunges for him. Melissa yells for him to run, even though it’s muffled by the gag, and fights back even with a gun pressed to her stomach, because Stiles is insane and idiotic and he’s going to get himself killed, and she can’t let that happen.

The man grabs Stiles, and then there’s a scream. But it’s not her, and it’s not Stiles. The man staggers back, and his arm is bleeding. It’s bleeding a lot, with five deep, jagged cuts curling down across his bicep.

“That was a warning. Let her go.” Stiles’s voice sounds different, and he looks different, eyes glowing red, his teeth sharp and protruding from his mouth, and his fingers are longer, no, wait, those are claws. One of them is bloody.

He looks like a demon.

“What the hell,” the man holding her breathes, and now the gun is pointed at Stiles. The bleeding man charges him again, but Stiles turns and punches him the gut. It doesn’t just send him stumbling back, it sends him flying, until he hits her wall with a sickening crunch and then slides unconscious to the floor.

Stiles turns those red eyes in her direction, and Melissa should be afraid, she understands that this is a terrifying sight. But she’s not. Why isn’t she scared? “Everything is going to be okay,” he tells her, voice coming out different with all the extra teeth.

She nods, because he still hasn’t looked away, he’s waiting for something, for her to do something or react or anything.

He relaxes a little at that, and his expression is still mild when he looks at the man holding her, the man who has a gun pointed at him. “Let her go.”

He doesn’t let her go. Instead he pulls the trigger – once, twice, and then a third time. She can feel the way he braces his body against the kickback, and if Stiles hadn’t already called his dad, surely someone else will, now that they’ve heard a gun go off in her home.

She barely has the time to think it, to think anything at all, before Stiles is on top of them. He’s all snarling teeth when he breaks the man’s wrist and the gun goes clattering to the ground, the sound of metal hitting linoleum unbearably loud. He tries to punch Stiles, but before he can Stiles yanks him down until he’s on his knees, then presses his hand against the man’s throat, pinning him against the counter, not quite strangling him but definitely putting too pressure on his windpipe for him to breathe properly. It’s so much, but it happens in seconds. “Scott, you can come out now.”

Melissa can’t focus on that. She’s just noticed the blood. There’s so much blood. She tries to call his name, but it comes out unintelligible thanks to the gag. He may be – whatever the hell he is, but he’s still Scott’s best friend, still John’s son, and he’s bleeding too much.

He’s been shot.

“Mom!” 

Scott comes running out from behind the stairwell, and he doesn’t even glance at Stiles. Whatever’s going on, he’s apparently known all about it. He reaches up to pull her gag out of her mouth, and she says, “Stiles! You’re bleeding, you have to lie down, let me – get me out of these handcuffs and let me help you!”

“I’m fine,” he says, not looking away from the man he’s effortlessly pinning in place. His mouth open and closes silently, face turning a concerning shade of red. Maybe Stiles should ease up on the pressure.

“You got shot,” she snaps, “You’re not fine!”

“You got shot?” Scott asks, momentarily distracted from messing with her handcuffs.

“I’m okay,” he says, and then there’s a small ping as something hits her floor, and then two more. She watches in disbelief as three bloody bullets roll across the linoleum. “See, they’ve already worked their way out.”

“Didn’t that hurt?” He apparently gives up on the handcuffs. “Stiles, can you get these off?”

He doesn’t look away from the man he’s slowly strangling. “How many hours have you spent in the station with me, and you don’t even know how to pick a pair of handcuffs?”

“Shut up,” Scott says, just as a blue and red lights filter into their window. “Your dad’s here. You can let him go now.”

Stiles doesn’t move.

Scott looks concerned for the first time. “Stiles. Let him go. You’re going to kill him.”

He doesn’t look at all upset about that.

Her front door opens, and John runs in gun first. He gives her a one over then reholsters it. He doesn’t blink at Stiles’s appearance, at the blood all over her kitchen, at the unconscious man slumped on her floor. “Son.”

Stiles doesn’t answer.

“Stop it,” he says, but he doesn’t sound nearly firm enough for Melissa’s taste, isn’t going over there and prying Stiles’s hand off the man’s throat like she thinks he should. She wonders if he’s afraid of Stiles. He doesn’t look afraid. Scott takes a few steps closer to Stiles, but John shakes his head, and he stills. “They’re humans. That means they get a human punishment. Not a werewolf one.”

Werewolves? Well, it’s better than demons, at least.

Stiles growls but smashes the man’s head against the counter so his eyes roll back in his head. Melissa is the only one close enough to see, but Stiles has three clear bullet holes in his shirt, is dripping with his own blood. “Fine.”

He turns around and John’s face drains of color. “They shot you?” he demands, and his hand goes to his gun, probably unconsciously.

“If I’m not allowed to kill them, you aren’t either,” Stiles says wryly, face melting back into the one Melissa recognizes. He lifts his shirt and swipes a hand across his stomach to clean off the blood. His skin is whole and undamaged, like nothing ever happened. “See, good as new.”

John doesn’t look like he agrees. Stiles turns to her, stepping closer carefully, watching her face. She struggles not to flinch, not to do anything that he’ll perceive as rejection. She doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but she knows Stiles saved her, knows whatever’s going on isn’t news to Scott or to John, so that means Stiles is still the same boy she knows. Mostly.

She’s being calm about this. Why is she being calm about this?

“You’re pack,” Stiles answers, and it’s only then she realizes she was speaking out loud. “There’s a part of you that accepted this a long time ago.”

“Can you uncuff my mom now, please?” Scott asks impatiently.

John reaches for his key, but Stiles steps closer and grabs a bobby pin out of her hair, and he has the cuffs open before John even gets the key in his hands. “I think,” he says, “that there’s some things we have to tell you.”

She laughs, rubbing at her wrists, and it’s only got a little bit of hysteria in it.

~

John takes care of the two men, and she doesn’t know how he explains their injuries, but she doesn’t care. Rafael calls, tries to talk to her, but instead John stays on the line with him, reassures him that she and Scott are okay, and works with him to ship the two criminals who had been trying to use her to get to him back to Washington D.C. and far away from her.

She doesn’t have to talk her ex-husband, and when everything’s sorted, they go to the Stilinski home and they tell her everything.

Melissa never thought she’d be a part of a werewolf pack, because she didn’t know they existed. But she can’t say she minds it so far.

~

It’s a year to the day from the Hale fire when everything starts to spin out of control.

Alan has been doing his best, has been trying to hold the land, to speak to the surrounding wolf packs to keep them away, to take care of all the supernatural crap that seems so attracted to Beacon Hills, but he’s not a werewolf, he’s an emissary without a pack, and it could only last for so long.

This is prime pack land, and with the only one Hale left in Beacon Hills a beta, and a comatose one at that, it’s no wonder that other wolves are starting to get curious.

“This land isn’t open for claiming,” Alan tells the three betas prowling around in the woods. He’s got a fistful of mountain ash, but they’re young and strong, and he’s not sure he’s either of those things anymore. It’s not just wolves who draw strength from their pack. It’s emissaries too.

“Our alpha sent us here to scout,” says the one in the middle, “The Hales were good people. But they’re gone now, and it’s foolish to leave the land unclaimed. Unprotected.”

She’s not wrong, but Alan doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want some wolves he doesn’t even know moving in to Beacon Hills. He can’t even ask any of the local packs for help, because they won’t help him, they won’t stick their neck out to defend an emissary’s claim to pack land. Pack land belongs to a pack, and he doesn’t have one. Not anymore.

“What are you doing here?”

Alan turns, and he knows Stiles, knows he’s the Sheriff’s son. Why is he here? Doesn’t he know that it’s dangerous to be out in the woods alone? He’s surprised the Sheriff lets Stiles have this much freedom. “Stiles, it isn’t safe, you need to leave.”

He doesn’t answer, instead staring at the three wolves. They look entirely human, so Alan doesn’t know what could possibly be holding his attention. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re not a Hale,” she says after taking in a deep breath. “Sorry kid, but if you’re going to try and claim this land, you’re going to need an alpha to do it.”

The pieces slot into place. “You’re the omega?” Talia had mentioned letting a child omega stay in Beacon Hills without joining her pack, but he hadn’t though much of it after that. Omegas didn’t last long on their own. When she didn’t mention it again, he forgot about it, maybe assumed the kid’s family had moved on and joined a different pack. Not this. Not that he was still here, not that he was the Sheriff’s son, not that he was Stiles.

“You’re their emissary,” Stiles returns, then his eyes glow red and Alan forgets to breathe. “And I’ve never been an omega.” The three betas recoil as if they’ve been struck. They shift to their werewolf forms, but Stiles doesn’t, bouncing back on the balls of his feet. “I’m an alpha, and I was born in Beacon Hills. I’ve lived here my whole life. If anyone is going to take over this land, it’s going to be me.”

The female beta turns accusatory golden eyes onto Alan. “You never said Beacon Hills had another alpha!”

He didn’t know. How could he have not known? How could Talia not have known? “This is Hale land.”

“The Hales are gone,” she says bluntly. “If you want to stop another pack from moving in, you and your young alpha have a lot of work to do. I’ll report back that this land has a claim from an alpha who’s lived here for ten years. Consider it a gift to the new regime. Well, if you two can pull it off, that is.”

“I’ve been in Beacon Hills twelve years,” Stiles corrects, irritated.

“Twelve,” she agrees, mouth twitching. Then they’re gone, fading back into the trees, and Alan can’t see or hear them anymore, but judging by the way Stiles is glaring into the forest, he can.

Alan clears his throat. “So. You’re an alpha.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” he says, answering the question Alan had felt to awkward to ask outright. “I was born an alpha. My mom was part of a pack that was destroyed by hunters, so when she had me,” he shrugs. “Well, you can see.”

“Are you interested in running the Beacon Hills pack?” he asks, trying not to reveal how desperate he is. He wouldn’t be asking if he wasn’t desperate.

Stiles makes a face, which isn’t promising. “I’m in middle school. I don’t think I’m qualified. Plus, my pack is just three humans.”

“Three humans and one emissary,” he says quietly, thinking of Talia, of all of them. But his old pack is gone. If he wants to protect the land they loved so much, he needs a new alpha. “If – if you want.”

Stiles stares at him for a long moment, eyes wide, then says, “Let’s go talk to my dad. I don’t think I can agree to participate in a territory war and become an officially recognized pack without parental permission.”

Alan’s lip twitches up at the corners. He likes Stiles’s attitude, if nothing else. “Okay. Let’s talk to your father.’

~

John is going to strangle Deaton with his bare hands. “He’s far too young to lead his own pack, to lead a pack that’s more than just a few of us. Are you insane?”

“I’m not saying he should just go out and start biting people,” Deaton says, frustrated, “but if Stiles doesn’t claim this land and make a show of being a proper alpha, then someone else will. Why not here? He’s an alpha, he’ll need his own territory someday anyway. So have it here. Start your pack here. The preserve is perfect.”

“The preserve is owned by Peter Hale,” he points out.

Deaton waves a hand like that doesn’t matter. “Owning a piece of paper and actually claiming the land are two different things. Even if Peter woke up tomorrow, he’s not an alpha. The Hale Alpha is gone. Laura is gone and I don’t know where she is or how to contact her. We need someone new. Better Stiles than some whole new pack none of us even know.”

John’s eyes narrow, but before he can say anything, Stiles finally speaks up. “He’s right. Alan is right.”

“Stiles,” he starts, frustrated.

His son shakes his head. “I don’t want to move. Do you? You have a job here, we have a life here, and so do Melissa and Scott.” Because Stiles would want them to move with them, and the insane thing is he knows Melissa would do it. “If it’s not me, it will be another alpha, and we’ll have to leave. I don’t want to leave. So it has to be me.”

John wants to say no, but can’t, because this is a werewolf problem, and he vowed not to challenge Stiles about werewolf matters, not to make it harder for him to the balance the two sides of his life. But he’s too young. This is all too soon.

They were supposed to have more time. Why is it that they can never have more time?

He turns and leaves, walking out his own back door so he can stand in the backyard and breathe, so he can stop himself from saying something that he might regret. He hears someone walk up behind him, and he takes two more deep breaths before saying, “Okay.”

“It’s not your choice, or mine,” Deaton says softly, “it’s his.”

That makes John’s shoulders relax, just a little. “Yeah.”

~

It’s slow.

First, it’s Alan coming over for dinners, it’s him giving a copy of his keys to his home and office to Stiles. Stiles holds the keys for a long moment, then sighs, and reaches up and grips Alan’s wrist and Alan relaxes.

“It’s a scent thing,” he explains to his dad later, “I’ll start touching his neck soon, his wrists, pulse points, thinks like that. Alan doesn’t smell like pack yet. But he will.”

Scott loves the veterinarian’s office, and Alan opens its doors to Scott, lets him pet the animals and stay even as he works. “He’s pack now,” he tells Stiles, before admitting, “Actually, it makes a nice change. None of the Hales were ever really interested in my day job.”

Stiles can still smell the grief and guilt that swallows Alan whenever he talks about the Hales, but he doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t know what to say.

Taking a proactive role in controlling whatever supernatural threats pop up is what his dad is most concerned about, but Stiles doesn’t worry. He’s been killing weird crap that shouldn’t be there since before his mother died, and he’s not exactly easy to kill. Plus, with Alan’s knowledge and magic, he’s not fighting blind like he has for so much of his life.

A snarling creature that has too many teeth swipes for Alan, and Stiles doesn’t even have to think before pushing him aside to take the blow onto himself, gritting his teeth against the pain as his torso is torn open and his skin falls around him like ribbons. He’s getting used to pain, and it sucks, because his wounds hurt the same as a human’s, but he can’t react to it, has to learn to push through it and keep fighting. When he was shot, he barely even noticed, he was so full of adrenaline that he didn’t start to feel the pain until he was already mostly healed. He ends up tearing the things throat out with his claws, and doubles over panting, waiting for his body to heal itself.

“Stiles!” Alan hunches down to next to him, carefully placing a hand in the center of his back. “What were you thinking?”

“You’re pack,” he says without thinking, the words coming out muffled thanks to his teeth. “Protecting you is my job. Besides, I heal a lot faster than you, just give me a couple more minutes.”

“Oh,” Alan says, and then doesn’t say anything else, but he smells – content, for the first time since Stiles has known him.

It’s true. He is pack now, he’s Stiles’s emissary, and if any wolves stumble across him they’ll be able to smell it on him. He has an alpha’s claim on him, and it’s some protection at least. No one wants to hurt a pack’s humans. It usually ends up in one seriously pissed off alpha.

The thing that he’s most nervous about it what’s coming. There’s only a couple weeks left of summer, which seems like a scam to Stiles, since he’s spent most of his summer running around and taking care of supernatural problems.

Once a year, the California alphas meet up, talk to each other, make sure they’re all on the same page. There was no alpha for the Beacon Hills area last year, but that had been acceptable, just a couple short months from the disastrous fire. But if someone doesn’t show up this year, that’s as good as calling it abandoned, and curious alphas looking to make a move are going to start showing up.

He has to go. If he wants to claim Beacon Hills as his own, he has to go, and there’s nothing to do about it.

~

Alan puts off making the call for as long as he possibly can, but if he doesn’t hurry up about it, he’s going to look rude, and that’s not how he wants to start off presenting them. The phone rings for an agonizing thirty seconds before a cool voice says in his ear, “We were wondering if you would call.”

“I always call.”

“You even called last year,” Diane agrees, “when none of us expected you too. You told us that your alpha couldn’t come because she was grieving. What have you called to say this year?”

Diane is the most powerful alpha for the next thousand miles. She runs a pack of over three hundred wolves, and she’s always the head of these meetings. Talia hadn’t liked her, had regarded her blatant disregard for the traditional pack structure with contempt, and Alan suspects the contempt was mutual, even though he never saw any evidence to back up his suspicions. Diane had always been nothing but courteous, had always taken his calls even though she could have had one of her emissaries do it, or one of the two alphas who swore loyalty to her.

“I don’t know where Alpha Laura Hale is,” he admits. “I don’t know what she’s doing or who she’s with. But I’m not calling for the Hales. I have a new alpha.”

“I heard,” she murmurs, “news travels fast.”

He closes his eyes and swallows. “He’s young, but he’s taking this seriously, and he’s – he’s a born alpha, he doesn’t have any problems with adjusting or control.”

“Alan,” she cuts him off, “you and your young alpha are of course not only welcome but expected.”

“He’s twelve,” he tells her, because if she hasn’t heard he doesn’t want it to be a surprise when they show up. Surprised werewolves never end well for anyone.

She makes a dismissive sound in the back of her throat. “It doesn’t matter. A child king is still a king.”

Diane hangs up on him and he sighs into the dial tone. “A child king is still a child,” he says to no one.

It doesn’t matter. Stiles is his alpha, and he’s their best shot on not losing this town to a foreign pack.

He’s their only shot, actually.

~

“Are you sure it’s okay that it’s just the two of you?” his dad asks for the thousandth time.

“It’s fine,” Alan says, “It’s usually just alphas and seconds, if the pack can spare them. Plenty of alphas show up on their own or only with one other person.” Alan’s not his second, he’s his emissary, but he doesn’t have a second right now, and Alan’s the one who knows all these people anyway, so he has to be there.

Stiles cuts his dad off before they can have this argument. Again. “You can’t be my second because you’re my dad and that’s weird, and Melissa doesn’t know enough about werewolves yet, and Scott has asthma.”

“I wouldn’t if you would just bite me,” he grumbles.

“Sixteen!” Melissa and his dad yell at the same time, and he and Scott share an eyeroll.

“No biting until you’re sixteen,” his dad says. Then he seems to remember he’s not supposed to give him orders about werewolf things, and tacks on, “Please.”

Scott is his best friend, and he wants to be a wolf, and Stiles is confident that it wouldn’t kill him. Obviously he’s going to bite him. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Their parents had decided sixteen, based on nothing, but Stiles is ten months older than Scott, so he’ll be fifteen when he becomes a werewolf. As a sixteenth birthday present to himself, Stiles is giving himself a beta.

Kids who just want a new car clearly aren’t thinking big enough.

Alan sighs. “As Stiles said, none of you are really suitable to take the place as a second. Currently,” he amends, because Alan isn’t stupid, and he knows that Scott’s going to take that place. One day. Maybe. Stiles hopes so, but sometimes Scott is kind of dumb. “We’ll be fine.”

It’s a good thing that he’s the only wolf, because he’s the only one that can tell that Alan is lying.

He waves at them out the window until they’re just a speck in the distance, then asks, “So what’s really going to happen?”

“It should be fine,” he amends, and he’s not lying this time. “But you’re young, and our pack is small. You have a legitimate claim to the territory, but if someone decides they want to fight you for it,” he swallows, then shrugs.

“Is it to the death?” he asks.

Alan nearly hits the car in front of them. “What? No! Of course not!”

“That’s fine, then,” he leans back, satisfied.

Alan mutters under his breath, like Stiles can’t hear him perfectly well, and he snickers, leaning against the door to watch the passing scenery.

It’s a six hour drive, and he ends up falling asleep for the second half of it. Alan shakes him awake, and his eyes flash red as he takes in a deep breath. He freezes, but Stiles forces himself to shift back to normal and grumbles, “I’ve never smelled so many different wolves all in one place.”

“There’s a reason this always happens during the new moon in the summer. There’s no need to give a bunch of werewolves even more of reason to be on edge,” Alan says, reaching for their bags. Stiles goes to grab his own, but Alan shakes his head, and he rolls his eyes. He’s an alpha, he’s not supposed to carry his own bags, or whatever. That’s stupid. If anything, he should be the one carrying both of them, he’s a lot stronger than Alan, but fine.

They check in, and it’s a secluded campground in the middle of nowhere, so a great place to get murdered. Or to have secret werewolf gatherings. They’re not pitching tents or anything, apparently having rented out every cabin in the place for this. It’s possible they’ve rented out the whole campground to ensure privacy, Alan hadn’t been very clear.

They toss their stuff on their beds, and then it’s time to present themselves to coolest werewolf ever, apparently.

Stiles can feel everyone’s eyes on them as they walk across to the edge of the lake. Alan had made this whole thing sound very stiff and serious, but everyone seems relaxed, and actually half of them are wearing bathing suits. He gets the sneaking suspicions that this is less about super serious secret alpha business, and more about getting together to relax for a weekend away from their packs with some important things thrown in as needed.

There’s a woman in her seventies lying on a beach chair. Her hair’s gone white and most of her is wrinkled with sun spots, but she doesn’t look a bit out of place in her black bikini and ridiculously large sunglasses. She pushes them up her nose, and she’s got eyes so blue that for a moment he thinks she’s a beta. Then her eyes flash red, and he does it back, grinning. He likes her. She smiles back. “Stiles, it’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Diane,” he greets, and Alan steps on his foot. “Uh, Alpha Diane Hernandez.”

She snorts. “Diane is fine. Most of us are alphas, there’s no need to start throwing titles around. Alan tells me you’re a born alpha? That’s rare.”

There’s no judgment or disbelief in her voice, just curiosity. Stiles doesn’t doubt for a second that every wolf here is listening to this conversation, but they’re doing a decent job of not being obvious about eaves dropping. “Yeah. My mom was human, and the last left of her pack. My great grandmother was Katarzyna Kowalczyk.”

Conversation around them dips for a moment, everyone absorbing that information before remembering that they’re not supposed to be listening. Stiles doesn’t roll his eyes, but only barely.

Diane has softened, although Stiles couldn’t say for sure what about her has changed. “I knew Katarzyna. What happened to her pack was awful. I – your mother was Claudia?”

“Yeah,” he says, surprised, “You knew her?”

She shakes her head. “Only of her. I heard – well, I’m glad you were born a wolf. I would have been sad to see that line die out. But you’re shouldering a lot. The Kowalczyk Pack was hunted to near extinction, and most of the Hales were burned alive in their own home. If you take on the Hale land, then you’re going to have to face a lot of tragedy. A lot of pain, and a lot of ghosts are going to be chasing you.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, because he doesn’t want to look impulsive, because he wants her to take him seriously. “I’m an alpha. I have a pack. I don’t know anything different, because there was never a point when I wasn’t an alpha, when I didn’t have a pack, even if it was just my parents.” He meets her gaze, and doesn’t stop his eyes from shining red. “I have the power of my grandmother, and Beacon Hills is my home. I can’t reclaim my grandmother’s old pack land because another pack is there, and I can’t bring the Hales back. Laura is gone, and no one knows where she is. Beacon Hills is full of strange supernatural things, thanks to all the ley lines, and someone needs to take care of it.”

“Why should that someone be you?” she asks, again with nothing but curiosity in voice.

“Because it’s my home,” he repeats. “My dad is the sheriff, and I grew up running in those forests, grew up with these people. I know Beacon Hills, I know its land and people in a way that no one who’s just moving in will be able to. I was born there, it knows me too. I don’t just want the land for me, or for my pack. I want Beacon Hills in its entirety, because I love it, because I care about it. It’s not just land or an opportunity to me. It’s my home.”

He swallows, nervous, wonders if he said too much, if he sounded too much like a kid and not enough like an alpha. But Diane’s smile stretches into a grin. “Okay. Why don’t you go with some of the other alphas to collect firewood? You look like you could use the muscle.”

She reaches out and pinches the skin of his waist. He yelps and jumps away from her, glaring. She laughs, and he grumbles, but heads towards the woods, running when a couple people wave him over. They shift before bolting into the thick clump of trees, and he has a moment to be surprised before he’s shifting too, chasing after them. He catches up in no time, and they both laugh and nudge him when he pushes in between them.

It’s nice to be around other werewolves. Even when the Hales were around, Stiles had to avoid them, out of fear that he would slip up and they would realize he was an alpha.

Here, for the first time, he’s not hiding anything.

He likes it.

~

Alan waits until Stiles is hopefully far enough that he can’t hear them before asking, “Well?”

“He needs training,” Diane says. “He’s unpracticed, if strong, since he’s held his own for now, but that’s not enough. You need to help him grow stronger, give him some sort of fighting practice. He needs wolves in his pack too. That can wait until he’s older, but not for long.”

“His father doesn’t want him to bite anyone until he’s sixteen,” Alan says, something that might be a horrible mix of hope and relief rising in his chest.

She makes a face. “He’s going to need the help before then. His humans aren’t even witches, which means they can’t help him fight, not really. He can’t take care of all of Beacon Hills’s problems on his own, or even just with you. He needs a larger pack. I’d prefer if he at least had a couple wolves he’d bitten himself before bringing in strays, but I understand his father’s concern. We wouldn’t want Stiles biting someone who couldn’t handle the transformation. But he has you, and there are tests for that.”

“So you approve?” he asks. “You’ll support him?”

She’s silent for a long moment, then says, “I’m willing to let him try. If he can’t do it, another pack will have to move in, for everyone’s safety. But – he can try.”

Diane can probably smell his relief, but he doesn’t care. She’s not above the other alphas, not really, but she’s old and respected and her pack is huge. They won’t cross her without a good reason.

For now, Stiles is under her protection. She’ll vouch for him and chase off any packs looking to take their land.

They have a real chance of doing this.

~

Stiles was right.

This is basically just a vacation. Two alphas from the same pack, Rachel who’s actually in charge and Mark who pledged himself to her, wake him up earlier than everyone else and teach him how to fight with more than just instinct and strength.

Which he has, apparently. They’re all alphas so if they hurt each other they’ll heal slower than normal, so they’re trying not to do more than bruise, and the first time he manages to get close enough to punch Rachel in the jaw, she looks impressed. “You really only have four in your pack?”

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging. “I haven’t really started trying to build a pack yet. Who I have now is kind of just who was, y’know, around. My dad, my best friend, his mom, and Alan.” He wonders, too late, if he wasn’t supposed to say that, if it revealed just how vulnerable he was. But it’s not like he can get away with lying to them either.

“You’re strong for being so young and having a small pack,” Mark says. “Keep growing your pack and keep training, and you might actually be an alpha of note one day.”

Stiles growls, but it’s playful, and tackles Mark to the ground. He’s not expecting it, so they both fall over, and Rachel is laughing at them.

He meets everyone, and he does mean everyone. He doesn’t remember all of their names, but they’re all curious to meet a born alpha, especially since Diane has apparently given him her tentative approval. But it’s just fun, too. They train together, but it’s a joke, it’s just a bunch of werewolves playing tag. Alan spends all of it off to the side and watching over him, which Stiles finds a little annoying because, hello, he’s the alpha here, and Alan is the squishy human, but they’re supposed to present a united front or something, so he keeps his opinions to himself. But he makes a note to complain about it on the way back home.

Throughout the weekend, they’re all drinking something purple that smells like wolfsbane, and he finally caves and asks to try it. Xavier, the alpha who’s only a three hour drive from Beacon Hills, hands it over without question, and Stiles can’t help his pleased flush. No lecture or caveats, just a drink shoved into his hands. He takes a sip, makes a face, and hands it back. “That tastes like roadkill smells.”

“You develop a taste for it,” Xavier says, “more or less. Eventually. Actually, you learn to tolerate it when it’s the only drink that will do anything for you.”

“Couldn’t you just drink until the healing can’t keep up?” he asks.

Lisa, a bubbly girl with locs down to her hips, leans between them. “We could, but what’s the point? We can drink like, five bottles of absinth, which is disgusting, or a couple glasses of punch. We go for the punch.”

“You’ll appreciate it when you’re older,” Xavier promises, sipping from his drink and only grimacing for a moment, which is better than Stiles had managed.

At the end of the weekend, he doesn’t know if he feels anymore alpha-like, but he has a training regimen and he knows a bunch of new cool adults. About a dozen of them, those closest to Beacon Hills, press their contact information into his hands and say that packs, even the oldest and strongest, can use allies.

~

Stiles feels a little bad about not going to his pack first, but his dad and Melissa are at work, and he doesn’t want to have to describe the weekend in its entirety twice, so he asks Alan to drop him off at the hospital.

He bounds into Peter’s room, like he always does when he visits. “Did you miss me?” he asks cheerfully, throwing himself into the poorly constructed chair. “I know I usually come on Saturday morning, but I was at this cool werewolf gathering thing. You might have gone? Talia’s definitely been there, but I’m not sure what you’re place in the pack was, since I never really got to see it in action.” He fits his hand over Peter’s arm, leaching away his pain, also like he always does. “I’m going to have to start acting like a real alpha if I want anyone to take me seriously, which as far as I can tell means continue to do what I have been doing and not dying, so, you know, easy enough.”

He always pauses, just in case Peter has anything to say. He’s silent. One of the nurses had asked if he was trying to irritate him into waking up, which no, not really, but if it works he won’t complain.

“I’m lying, it’s not going to be easy at all,” he says, grimacing as he takes on more of Peter’s pain. He’s gotten really good at this in the past year, and he can do a lot more than he used to. “If you were awake you’d already know that, but you’re not, so I thought I should be clear.”

He keeps talking, describing the weekend and complaining about Alan, talking about the kids in his class who aren’t Scott, and therefore worth less of his attention, even Lydia. He talks until his voice goes hoarse, but then he just rests for a moment and waits for the strain to heal itself before continuing.

Melissa’s shift is about over, and he’s considering catching a ride with her back to her house. Then he can call his dad and tell him to meet them at the McCalls so he can tell them all about the this past weekend. “I have to go,” he tells Peter, “but I’ll be back on Tuesday, probably? My new werewolf workout routine starts tomorrow, but I already told Alan we’ll have to do it in the mornings instead a couple days a week so I can still come and see you. So don’t worry, you won’t have the chance to miss me.”

He’s just stood up when something changes. Peter’s heartbeat, steady for the past year, speeds up, and his breaths grow shorter. He’s worried something has gone wrong, and he’s about to go find a nurse when something else happens.

Peter opens his eyes.

For a moment they’re a normal dark blue. Stiles had forgotten what color his eyes are, and they’re rather pretty. But that only lasts a second, then he’s shifting to his beta form, claws and teeth coming out along with his shining eyes.

He hasn’t gotten more than a couple inches off the table when Stiles grabs biceps and slams him back down. Stiles is an alpha, and Peter’s been in a coma for over a year. It’s almost pathetically easy. “No,” he says firmly, shifting and growling at Peter. “No. Understand? We’re in a human hospital. You have to be human.”

Stiles can smell his fear and confusion, but the machines are beeping crazily all around them, and they only have so much time until a nurse or doctor comes rushing in. Peter finally focuses on him, and Stiles doesn’t flinch away from his panic, only tries to look calm, tries to project that calm onto Peter. He needs to settle down, otherwise they’re going to have a lot of awkward questions to answer.

Peter relaxes by degrees under his hands. By the time a nurse bursts through the door, he’s human again, and Stiles pulls his hands away before he can get yelled at for touching him.

The nurse starts yelling and more people pour inside, converging on Peter. Stiles slips out of the room, but doesn’t miss the way Peter stares at him until he’s out of sight.

Chapter Text

When Peter wakes up, and his room smells nothing like his family, he assumes that’s because they’re all dead. That he’s the last Hale, and that he’s all alone.

It takes them about a day to correct him, to tell him what happened. Derek and Laura are alive.

They’re just not here.

They left him.

His pack left him.

He’s not the last Hale, but he is all alone.

He tries to control the wolf, to keep the howling inside his chest. But the moon’s high in the sky when he rips the hospital machines off of him and disappears into the night and into the forest. It hurts to shift. His body isn’t strong enough yet, but he doesn’t care, he can’t care.

Grief threatens to swallow him whole, both for the family that’s dead and because of the family that left him for dead, and he doesn’t know if he can outrun it. But he’s going to try.

~

When Melissa finds Peter missing, she doesn’t know who to call. Stiles, who’s her alpha? John, the sheriff? Alan, the only one of them who actually knew Peter?

She hesitates for too long. Another nurse finds him gone and calls the police. She goes to the bathroom to pull out her phone and send a group text. It’s a pack problem. It affects everyone, so she’ll tell everyone.

~

Stiles calls Alan first. “Come to Scott’s, and line the place with mountain ash. Just in case.”

“I don’t think–”

“I’m not asking,” he says, then hangs up. Scott is looking at him with big worried brown eyes, and he sets a hand on his best friend’s back even as he makes another call. “Dad, I need you to keep everyone out of the woods. It’s not safe.”

Dad’s silent for a moment before he says, “You’re going after him.”

“I’m the only who can,” he says. “Even a weak and injured werewolf is too dangerous for a normal human, maybe even more so, and I’m not sending Alan to nearly get killed trying to do what I can do easily.”

“Easily?” he repeats.

Stiles shrugs. “Peter’s a strong wolf, and he’s older, but he’s still a beta. I’m an alpha. I can restrain him, if nothing else.”

Dad lets out a harsh breath. “I don’t like this.” Stiles knows that. He also knows his dad won’t try and stop him. This is a werewolf problem. That means it’s Stiles’s call.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, because he will, “I love you.” He hangs up and turns to Scott. “Don’t go anywhere. Wait for Alan.”

“Be careful,” Scott says sternly, but Stiles only ruffles his hair before heading out the back door, scowling as fat raindrops splatter against his head and shoulders.

He’s just a kid, but he’s an alpha too. Peter may not be his wolf, but he is a wolf, and he needs help. Stiles has to get to him before he hurts either himself or someone else.  

His eyes bleed red, and his bones crunch as he shifts. He heads for the woods, moving too fast for human eyes to see. He knows Peter’s scent, he just has to find the trail and he can follow it. Hopefully. The rain is going to make this harder, so he has to hurry, because soon whatever trail Peter’s leaving is going to be washed away.

The Hale House is his first stop. Stiles is hoping that that he’ll be there, that he’ll be lucky.

He’s not. But there’s blood seeping into the soil that the rain hasn’t quite managed to wash away, and it’s Peter’s. On one hand, that’ll make him easier to track. On the other, it means he’s already too late, he’s already managed to hurt himself.

Stiles darts through the trees, trying to follow the blood to Peter, but he loses the trail several times. It’s dark and pouring out. Thunder rumbles in the distance, which gives him an idea.

He wouldn’t do this normally. But the thunder and rain give him some cover for this.

He tilts his head back, takes a deep breath, and howls.

There’s never been a reason for him to howl before. He’s the only wolf in his pack, and he’d avoided the Hales for the most part. It’s louder and deeper than he thought it’d be. It’s an alpha’s howl, loud and piercing and carrying.

Seconds turn to minutes. Nothing happens. Stiles tries not to feel disappointed. They’re not packmates, not friends, Stiles doesn’t think they’ve even had a real conversation. The only times he spoke to the Hales was those couple of times with Talia, and then Cora because she was in his class. Peter has no reason to trust him.

Then, just faintly heard against the sound of water slamming into the earth, is an answering howl.

~

Peter’s curled up and miserable, too tired and hurt to keep moving. He’d gone through the house, searching for something he knew he wouldn’t find, looking for his sister, his brother in law, his nieces and nephews, any of them, looking for anyone.

But all that’s left is ash and rotting wood. He’d fallen through second floor, blood is flowing freely from his side and he thinks he might have broken his arm, but he just can’t bring himself to care.

His pack is gone. His family is dead, and those who aren’t dead have chosen to abandon him.

He’s always used his pack as his anchor. It was always so safe. Even if pack members died, the pack was supposed to remain, changing, sure, but still there.

It’s missing. He has no anchor, no pack, no family, and it’s too easy to hide beneath a tree and pull his legs to his chest, to just stop. He’s alone. An omega. The wolf doesn’t have anywhere to go, the only instinct he has is to huddle against the elements and to curl into his bleeding side. It should have stopped bleeding by now. It should have healed by now. But he’s weak, and alone. He doesn’t have a pack’s strength anymore.

Maybe he’ll just die out here. He doesn’t want to die. But he thinks it might hurt less.

He’s sunken into the mud, too cold to shiver, and still bleeding. How does one stop bleeding? It’s never been a problem he’s had to deal with before. How much blood can he lose now? Before, his body could replace blood almost as quickly as he lost it, but he doesn’t think that’s the case anymore.

He guesses he’ll find out, one way or another.

The cold seeps into his skin, sinking down into his bones, and maybe he’ll just close his eyes, just to see if he opens them again.

Then he hears it.

In the distance, barely heard over the thunder, is a wolf who’s calling out, who’ searching.

Someone is trying to find him.

It’s not his pack, it’s no one he recognizes, but it’s someone. Someone who doesn’t want him to die out here, cold and bleeding and alone.

He tilts his head back and gives an answering howl.

He must actually close his eyes, but he doesn’t know for how long, because then he’s opening them, and it’s that kid, the same one as before, wet and panting and sitting right in front of him. “Peter,” he gasps, pressing a hand against his side. He’s warm, almost a searing heat compared to the coldness around him. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Stiles,” he says, his memories finally falling into place, things starting to make sense as he forces himself to think past the crushing weight of his grief. “You – your eyes.”

“Why aren’t you healing?” he asks. “We have to get you to Alan, something’s not right.”

Peter reaches up a hand, clumsily grabbing Stiles’s face and trying to force him to look at him. “Your eyes.”

He sighs then gives in, his eyes glowing red. “Peter, we don’t have time for this right now.”

There was the damn kelpies he’d killed, Claudia refusing to join their pack, the way Stiles had never acted like an omega, not even when looking Talia straight in the eye. “You’ve always been an alpha. This whole time.”

For one insane moment, Peter considers lunging forward and biting into his jugular, trying to kill this kid and drink up the power he’s been hiding. But it fades just as quickly. What would he do with an alpha’s power? Go after Laura and Derek and do what, exactly? Kill them for abandoning him? A fitting punishment, but one he’s not capable of giving.

Besides, he’s an injured omega. Stile is a young, healthy alpha. He’d just get himself killed.

“Yes,” Stiles says, taking a step back. “Look, I’m sorry your family is gone. I tried to be there, but I know I’m not the same.”

“You tried–” The smell that had covered the hospital room, he’d thought it was his nurse, maybe a doctor, it had been one person and it has been thick and old, someone who’d spent hours in his room, day after day, for months at the very least. “You were there.”

Stiles reaches out, grabbing his hands. His veins bulge and blacken as he takes Peter’s pain. He does it easily, without flinching, like he’s done it before. Like he’s been doing it for a year, maybe, ever since the fire. “Yes. I still am. Can we go now?”

He stares at him, then admits, “I don’t think I can walk.”

“That’s okay, I’m tall for my age,” he says and turns around, exposing his back. “Climb on.”

Is he really going to carry him? Peter grabs onto his shoulder, then hesitates. Is this – a joke, or a game, maybe a trap? But Stiles reaches back, grabs onto his wrist, and pulls him forward, until he’s leaning against his back. Stiles stands, his hands under Peter’s thighs even his arms dangle around Stiles’s shoulders.

Stiles goes running, careful not to jostle him too badly, and Peter’s already made up his mind by the time they make it out of the woods.

~

Peter gets put in the Stilinski’s guest bedroom for the night, but he’s already passed out by the time Alan gets there. The cut on his side has finally start to heal, so there’s not much for Alan to do except help Stiles manhandle Peter into a pair of his dad’s spare pajamas.

“I’ll stay with him,” he says to Stiles. “I’ve been meaning to catch up on some reading. You get some sleep, you’ve done enough tonight.”

“I’m an alpha, it’s not like he was heavy,” he says crossly.

Alan sighs. “Stiles. Please. You’re my alpha, and Peter and I used to belong to the same pack. Let me do something for the both of you.”

He wavers, chewing on his bottom lip, then nods. “Let me know if you need me.”

“Of course,” he answers, and Stiles squeezes the back of his neck before leaving the room.

He spends several hours with his head buried in journals before Peter begins to stir. He freezes, tensing up, then visibly forces himself to relax, slowly prying his eyes open. “Alan?”

“If you try and run again, Stiles is across the hall. He won’t let you get very far,” he warns, but he’s mostly joking. He doesn’t think Peter will run a second time.

Peter takes a deep breath, then his eyes narrow. “You smell like him.”

He weighs several responses to that, and he used to love playing vague word games with Peter, but now’s probably not the time for that. “You weren’t the only one that got left behind.”

Peter closes his eyes. “You don’t know where they went either?”

“They just – left,” he says, and he can’t keep some of the bitterness from leaking into his voice. Over two decades as the Hale family’s emissary, and it had gotten him not a moment’s consideration, not a warning, not a postcard. “Three days after the fire, and they were just – gone.” He hesitates, then asks, “Can you find them?”

“Yes.” Alan flinches. “Tell me about Stiles. He doesn’t have any wolves in his pack, does he?”

“No. Not yet,” he says, because he knows Peter, he’s known Peter his whole life, that’s what happens when you grow up in a town like this. “He needs to expand. Diane made it a condition of her approval.”

Peter grins. “So he’s already met Grandmother.”

“She hates it when you call her that,” he says, and it’s an old argument, something familiar in a situation when nothing else is. “Are you going to go after Laura and Derek?”

“Why should I?” he sneers. “If they don’t want me, then they won’t have me.”

~

Stiles doesn’t even have to think about it. “Yes.”

“Is this a good idea?” his dad asks quietly, standing just behind him, looking down at the prone and scarred form of Peter Hale. “We don’t know him.”

Peter snorts, but Stiles is smiling. “I guess we’ll learn. You’ll move in with us while you recover.”

“Yes, Alpha,” he says, and it sounds sarcastic, but there’s something warm underneath that. “Are you planning to hurt me?”

His dad growls, something he picked up from him, but Stiles makes a considering sound. “Shouldn’t you heal more first?”

“Stiles!” John shouts.

He looks over his shoulder to grin at him. “Don’t worry, Dad. Just some scratches.”

“Lots of scratches,” Peter corrects, “My body is a mess.”

Stiles laughs, but his dad still looks concerned, so he explains. “His body healed like that, and it saved his life, but all the scarring and soreness isn’t ideal. Once he’s stronger, he’ll heal normally, so if I want to fix him–”

“You’ll have to hurt him,” John finishes. “But won’t the wounds take longer to heal since you’re an alpha?”

They both pull a face at that. Peter asks, “Are you sure you don’t want to bite anyone? What about your friend with the breathing problem?”

Stiles grins, turning at his dad, “It’s for the greater good, really. And with Peter here, I won’t have to try and train Scott all on my own. He’ll help. Right Peter?”

“Whatever my alpha says,” he says with such perfect earnestness that it has to be fake, and Stile bites his lip to hold back a laugh. Peter seems like he’s going to be fun.

He hadn’t dared hope that he would get to keep him, that Peter would want to stay, but he’s happy. He’s spend the past year hanging out in Peter’s room, trying to help. Of course he wants to keep him. As far as he’s concerned, Peter was his already.

His dad runs a hand over his face. “Let’s talk to Melissa.”

~

Melissa hadn’t been the one to impose the age restriction on biting. That had been John.

Pretty much as soon as she discovered that Stiles was a werewolf, she’d resigned herself to the reality that one day her son was going to be one too. To be totally honest, it had been a relief.

She’s a nurse, she’s seen so many kids brought blue and shaking and out of breath, seen children die because an asthma attack has stolen the breath from their lungs. She sees people die from all sorts of things, every day, and the idea that Scott could become basically impervious to so many of those things –

Well, it’s comforting.

But they’re still young, Stiles is still young, and it’s not just a change for Scott, it’s a change for Stiles too. It’s not even just about Scott being old enough and sure enough to make his own decisions about his body. It’s about Stiles being prepared to take on that responsibility.

But he took three bullets for her, spent a year talking to a man who never spoke back, and is one of the few things standing between Beacon Hills and whatever weird new supernatural creature has decided to cause harm to it.

She trusts Stiles, not only with her life, but with Scott’s.

She trusts him to take care of her son.

He’s her alpha, after all.

So when John comes to her, clearly conflicted, and tells her everything, she just takes his hands. “I’m sorry this is happening faster than you wanted it to.”

His eyes are pinched in the corners. “I just – I wanted to have more time. I wanted Stiles to just be able to be a kid, for at least a little while longer. But it’s too late for that, I think. He’s the acting alpha of Beason Hills. There’s not much childhood left for him to have.”

She doesn’t have anything to say to that, because he may be right, maybe there’s no room for the ease of childhood with how many things Stiles is being forced to carry. So she just squeezes his hands in hers.

~

There are a lot of rumors going around town about Peter, but John and Melissa do their best to manage them. He just wants privacy. He’s continuing to recover outside of the hospital. He needs time.

People aren’t surprised to find out he’s moved in with the sheriff, not with how Stiles had carried on this past year. And everyone knows how close the McCalls and Stilinskis are, so Peter has a nurse and the sheriff looking after him, he’s fine, and he’s a Hale, they’ve always valued their privacy.

On the night of the new moon, when Peter’s almost back to normal, Stiles goes out into the woods just as the sun starts to set. It’s just him, Peter, and Scott. No parents. No Alan. No squishy humans that could get hurt.

Stiles’s eyes are red when sinks his teeth into his best friend’s shoulder.

~

Melissa and John don’t sleep that night. She assumes Alan doesn’t either, but he’d elected to stay at home rather than wait with them. She gets the impression that while they may be pack, he still doesn’t quite know what to do with her. So instead, John and Melissa stay up together, a pot of coffee and a monopoly board between them. John scowls down at the board while Melissa hides her smile behind her coffee cup. “How are you so good at this?”

“Luck?” she offers, but he only glares at her, so she snatches up the purple properties he’s been eyeing.

Grey is just bleeding to orange when the front door opens. Scott is the first one through, and Melissa stands so quickly the chair goes clattering to the floor. “Are you – did it–”

His eyes flash gold before he picks her up and spins her around like she weighs nothing, grinning. “Yeah.”

She throws her arms around him, and she’d known it was going to be fine, knew Stiles would never risk Scott’s life just to gain another beta, but it’s still such a relief to have him whole and healthy, unharmed from the transformation. She looks over his shoulder to see John with his arm around Stiles’s shoulder, and Peter leaning against the counter, sipping from her mug and making a face at the lack of sugar.

She’d forgotten how handsome he was.

His scars are all gone, his skin as smooth and clear as it was before the fire. “It’s a good thing we’ve been keeping people from seeing you. This might have been a little hard to spin as an overnight transformation.”

He laughs, grabbing the sugar to add it to her coffee. He’s standing right next to a cupboard full of mugs. He could get his own. “Jumpstarting the healing process is effective, if unpleasant.”

“I think Scott was more upset about it than you were,” Stiles says dryly.

Scott shudders while Peter laughs, so that’s probably an accurate assessment.

~

Alan starts to breathe a little easier after that.

Scott struggles with control, but by the time the school year starts, they don’t have to worry about him transforming in front of everyone. And if for some reason he does slip, Stiles is right there.

Peter slides into the role of Stiles’s second like pulling on another skin. He helps Alan train with Stiles in the morning, not only for Stiles’s improvement, but so he can regain the strength he lost from his coma, then he helps Stiles train Scott in the afternoon. Three wolves dealing with supernatural threats means Alan isn’t terrified all the time, means it becomes something they can handle instead of something they’re trying and failing to manage.

But Alan knows that things aren’t perfect.

John tells him that sometimes Peter wakes up screaming, and he can’t even do anything, because in the throes of a nightmare, his claws and teeth come out. So instead he’s forced to watch as Stiles pins Peter to the mattress until he calms down. It would be easier, Alan thinks, if he used his status of alpha on those nights, but Stiles refuses. He won’t use red eyes to snap Peter out of it, just his hands on his arms to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else.

Alan doesn’t know if that’s the best approach, but he doesn’t know that it’s not either, and Stiles is the alpha. He’ll save his energy for arguing against things he’s sure about rather than the ones he isn’t.

Time passes, and life starts to become a routine. Diane is pleased with Stiles’s progress, with his two betas, is especially impressed with Peter Hale choosing Stiles as his alpha over going in search of Laura, even if she hadn’t seemed particularly surprised.

They’ve found something close to firm footing.

Which means, of course, that it can’t last.

~

“Ghosts,” Stiles says flatly. “You’re joking.”

They’re in his living room, everyone scattered in their traditional places for a pack meeting. Peter is sitting at his right, and he’s got a vicious smile curled around the edges of his mouth, but it’s not doing anything to fool Stiles. He’s miserable and doing a poor job of hiding it. “I suppose we should have assumed. I should have checked earlier.”

“I’ve been to the Hale House,” Stiles insists. “I went there with Dad and Scott less than month after it happened. There weren’t any ghosts. Besides, I’ve been on the preserve a hundred times since then, and I’ve never noticed anything.”

“You’re an alpha,” Alan says, “They won’t mess with you.”

He scowls. “Isn’t that all the more reason to mess with me? I’m intruding on their territory, taking their land and claiming it for my own. Shouldn’t they be attacking me, not random hikers?”

“Be it a virtue or a vice, my sister believed in hierarchy,” Peter says. “That won’t have changed, even in death. You are an alpha. She’s not. Not anymore. Anyone who’s with her will take her lead.”

Stiles chews on his bottom lip, crossing his arms over his chest. “Okay – okay. Fine. But, do we have to do anything? They’re not hurting anyone. Not on purpose. The hikers were just scared. They weren’t hurt. This is Hale land. If anyone has the right to haunt it, it’s a bunch of Hales.”

Alan shakes his head. “It’s only a matter of time. Now, perhaps, they are what they were in life. They are – ghosts aren’t spirits, really, just imprints with enough will to act on their own. Soon, they’ll twist. They’ll start hurting people. We have to get rid of them now. Besides, we can’t tear down the old Hale house and build something else until they’re gone. Not unless you’d like the new house to be haunted too.”

He doesn’t want to get rid of them. They already died once, and this feels like killing them all over again. But Alan seems so sure, and Peter isn’t protesting. Just because he hates it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to done, just because he thinks it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean it is. He’s the alpha. But that means he has to listen. Just like when he was a little kid with his parents. He has to listen to the people around him, not just do whatever he wants just because he can. His dad squeezes his shoulder, like he knows exactly what he’s thinking, and he forces a smile. “Alright. How do we do this? I’ve seen you banish demons before. Ghosts can’t be that much more difficult.”

Peter snorts. Alan doesn’t say anything. Stiles gets an odd sinking feeling in his gut.

“They’re not normal ghosts,” Peter says. “They’re werewolves still. In a way. The only easy way to get rid of them is to have their alpha banish them.”

“But Talia is the alpha,” he protests before he remembers. “Oh. So we need–”

“Laura,” Melissa sighs. “But we still don’t know where she is.”

Scott turns to Peter, frowning. “You could find her, couldn’t you? If you tried?”

Peter tenses, and Scott’s eyebrows dip together. Outwardly, Peter looks fine, but the way his heartbeat is too quick and stuttering is anything but fine, but it’s something only the werewolves pick up on.

“You don’t have to,” Stiles says. “I’m not going to make you. We’ll just do it the hard way. It’s fine.”

He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. Even without superhearing, Melissa and John don’t look fooled.

“It’s probably better if Laura doesn’t show up now anyway,” Alan says. “We wouldn’t want her to challenge Stiles.”

“She wouldn’t,” Peter says. “I’d challenge her first.”

Stiles understands Laura less and less every day. Peter is kind of a jerk, but he’s loyal and smart. He’s nice to Scott and everyone else, charming in way that’s honest and a little fake at the same time. He’s a good packmate. Stiles can only assume he was a good uncle too.

“No one is challenging anyone,” he says. “We’ll do it the hard way. Final decision.” Peter doesn’t visibly change at all, but Stiles can hear the suddenly steady beating of his heart. “Now. What is the hard way?”

Alan grimaces. “We could really use someone with a specialty in death magic. Maybe a necromancer. There’s one in the tribal territory up north, I think.”

“Or a banshee,” Peter says, contemplative. “That would be ideal.”

“A banshee?” Melissa repeats. “Where are we going to get one of those?”

“Why right here in Beacon Hills, of course. We might have to wait a year or two until she’s older though. Which should be fine. Another year shouldn’t make the ghosts malevolent, and it will just mean another year in the guest bedroom for me,” he says.

Alan startles. “You mean there’s another–”

“Miss Martin takes after her grandmother, yes,” Peter confirms. “We really shouldn’t try and get her to use her power before she has a few years on menstrual cycles. She might get hurt.”

It finally clicks. “Wait. Wait wait wait. Are you talking about Lydia?”

“Our Lydia?” Scott asks, in his perpetual state of well intentioned confusion. “She’s mean.”

“She’s a menace,” Stiles says darkly, because she may be pretty and smart and smell nice all the time, but she’s also super annoying. She lies too much. She’s always lying, with her smiles and her eyes, and it makes her impossible to read. “How do you know she’s a banshee? Why didn’t I know?”

“Most humans don’t always smell of lilies,” he answers.

He likes that she smells like lilies. He likes lilies. Just because she’s got a heavy hand with her perfume –

Wait –

He’s known Lydia since elementary school

She’s always smelled like lilies. He doubts her mom was letting her douse herself in perfume when she was seven.

“I’m so stupid,” he moans, burying his face in his hands, and the ripple of laughter finally gets rid of some of the awful tension in the air. “Fine, how do we deal with the ghosts until Lydia gets her period?”

“Better question,” Melissa says dryly, “How are you going to know when she has her period? Please tell me you don’t plan to ask.”

As one, Stiles, Peter, and Scott point to their noses. Melissa looks horrified while John stifles a laugh. Alan just sighs. “Miss Martin’s menstrual cycle aside, if you want to corral the ghosts temporarily, you might be able to find some spirits to help.”

“Ghosts against ghosts?” John asks, which is an awesome video game title.

Stiles shakes his head. “Spirits and ghosts are different. Ghosts are just impression with a will and some power that have been left behind. Spirits are real ghosts, they’re more than just afterimages. Stronger. More like people. Also rare. Where do you plan to find one?”

“Me? Nowhere,” Alan answers. “I’m a druid. My kind is known for banishing ghosts, so none will risk revealing themselves to me. You’ll have to go find them yourself. Ghosts of werewolves won’t go near you, but spirits don’t have those leftover instincts. I recommend the graveyard as a good starting place.”

“Great,” he says unenthusiastically. He loves spending his Saturdays surrounded my dead bodies. At least he’ll get to visit his mom.

~

John waits until Stiles is asleep, because it’s the only way to have any sort of private conversation in this house.

He means to knock on Peter’s door, but when he passes by the window, he sees the man outside with his head craned back. Which is odd. He grabs a jacket because he’s not a damn supernatural creature that runs hotter than the sun itself, and goes to join him. Peter doesn’t react, and John lets the silence hang for a minute before asking, “Well? Are you going to try and go see them?”

“They’re not real,” he says, not looking over at him. “It’s not actually my family. Just an after image with some of their memories.”

John tries to think what he would do if he was in Peter’s position, if his wife had left a ghost behind that he could torture himself with. The answer is easy. He wouldn’t go, if only because him spiraling out of control would hurt Stiles.

But he got to say his goodbyes. Claudia’s death wasn’t sudden, wasn’t violent. Everything he needed to say to her, he’d already said. Trying to talk to a something that wasn’t quite her would just rip open healing wounds.

He can’t help but think that Peter’s situation is different.

He never got to say any goodbyes, and his family’s deaths are so recent to him. The Hale fire might have happened nearly two years ago for the rest of them, but for Peter it’s only been a handful of months, it’s all fresh and painful, made even worse by his niece and nephew’s absence.

It hasn’t escaped John’s notice that sometimes the names Peter screams in his nightmares belong to the living.

“I could go with you,” he offers. “If you don’t want to go alone. I know you’d probably prefer Stiles, but since they won’t go near him,” he shrugs, “I’m here, if you want. If you don’t, that’s fine too.”

Silence.

John’s teeth are starting to chatter when Peter says, “I’ll think about it. Now go inside before you catch hypothermia.”

Damn supernatural creatures and their stubborn refusal to react to the cold. He’s buying every werewolf he knows a sweater.

~

Stiles is thrilled with being thirteen because it means he’s a teenager, if only barely. Maybe he won’t get as many jokes about him being a kid from creatures that are trying to kill him. That’d be nice. A disturbing amount of them die still making fun of him, which ruins the satisfaction a little bit.

He’s thirteen and the promise of high school is just around the corner. He can’t wait.

The downside is he’ll definitely end up sharing approximately no classes with Scott. The upside is he’ll probably be in all the same ones as Lydia, even if she is a banshee. Except math. He doesn’t know if they make a math class advanced enough for Lydia. Sure, he’ll be taking honors level algebra with Danny, but he’s pretty sure Lydia mastered algebra when they were still in elementary school.

“Can you take college classes as a high school freshman?” he asks his dad, messing with the volume controls in the cruiser. Dad has to go to work right after they’re done spirit hunting, which means he’s stuck running home. It’ll only like him like fifteen minutes, but that’s hardly the point. “I’m asking for Lydia, not for me. Honors is good enough.”

His dad sighs, turning down the road that leads to the cemetery. He used to get worried about taking Stiles on patrol, concerned that the loud noises of the siren or something else unexpected would make it hard for him to maintain his control. These days if some unexpected noise is enough to break Stiles’s control, it’s a sign they have bigger problems. “You’re not supposed to, but I’m sure exceptions are made. I thought you said Lydia was pretending to be dumb?”

He makes a face. “Yeah, but only in front of other people. She still gets As in everything. The only people who think she’s dumb are the ones that aren’t paying attention.”

“Uh huh,” he dad says. “Are you sure you don’t have a crush on her?”

He flushes a bright red. “I’m an alpha, I don’t get crushes.”

“Mmm,” he says, not taking his eyes of the road. “And Danny? He’s just really cool and talented and smells nice?”

Stiles scowls and crosses his arms. “If you’re going to make fun of me, I’m not going to tell you stuff.” He’s lying and they both know it.

John leans over to pat him on the knee. “At least it’s not Jackson. That kid’s a jerk.”

“Dad!” he cries, appalled, “I have standards.”

John keeps laughing at him until he parks. They’ve walked this way before to visit mom, and it’s smells like it always does, death and decay and the cloying scent of lilies.

Oh.

Lilies. The same scent that’s clung to Lydia for as long as he’s known her.

He’s so stupid. It’s a good thing he has smart pack members, otherwise he’d be screwed.

“Am I really just supposed to say a few words and wait to see if spirits show up?” John asks, looking Alan’s handwritten instructions in confusion. “He knows I don’t speak Welsh, right? I’m not going pronounce of this correctly.”

“It’s about intent more than execution,” Stiles answers absently, because against his best efforts he does actually absorb some of the stuff Alan talks about. He cocks his head to the side. There’s something – something doesn’t sound quite right, but it’s too far for him to hear properly. Or too faint. He can’t really tell which. “If you believe it’ll work, then it will.”

He snorts. “Well, I don’t believe it’ll work, so. We should have had Scott do this.”

“Are you implying that my best friend is gullible?” he asks, but he can’t really focus on bantering with his dad, or even on the smell of lilies. There’s something just outside his range of senses, something like a ringing in his ears or a bead of sweat down his spine.

It’s annoying, and barely there, but it’s the only thing he can focus on.

“Stiles,” his dad says slowly, “is everything okay?”

“No. I just – I have to,” he growls, frustrated. “I have to check on something. Sorry.”

“Stiles!” John yells out, but he’s already running, already almost gone. “Don’t let anyone see you!”

He waves over his shoulder in acknowledgement, but by that point he’s already out of sight. He runs across the graveyard, thought a thicket of trees, and comes out on the other side, right in the middle of a picturesque neighborhood. He’s been here before. He’s been everywhere in Beacon Hills before.

He can’t run around a cul-de-sac with glowing red eyes, so he forces himself to walk, to calm down and make a slow loop around the neighborhood, keeping his eyes open for whatever is bothering him so much.

His eyes are useless.

There’s someone screaming.

Once he catches the sound for good, once he realizes what he’s hearing, he’s half transformed and bolting across the well manicured lawn before he can think better of it. He yanks the door open, noting vaguely that he’s taken it off its hinges.

“HEY!” shouts a man that coming towards him, “What the hell do you think–”

He snarls, cutting the man off. He finally seems to notice Stiles’s eyes and teeth and claws, and tries to back up, tries to run away, but he snags the back of the man’s shirt and yanks him back before he can get very far. “Stay,” he growls, shoving him into the hall closet, and then pushing the couch up against it so he can’t open it.

Next he goes to the basement, and he sees the industrial freezer and doesn’t even think about it. He rips the cover off its hinges and it goes flying across the room.

“S – Stiles?” Isaac asks, pushing himself upright from inside the freezer, wide eyed, his hands bloody and bruises blooming on his pale skin.

“I don’t suppose your dad is a vampire or a witch or something? Because I can’t kill him if he’s just a human,” he says, leaning forward to help Isaac out of the freezer.

Isaac stares at him for a moment before he buries his face in his bloody hands and his shoulders start to shake. Stiles worries that he’s upset him, but after a moment of trying to interpret the muffled sounds, he realizes that Isaac is laughing. “He’s human,” he says finally, blood now smeared across his face as he takes Stiles’s hands, letting the shorter boy easily pull him out. “Although I’m guessing you’re not.”

“Nothing gets past you, does it, you’re a regular private eye,” he snarks, but Isaac only laughs. “I should call my dad. He’s going to be really mad I locked your dad in the closet.”

“You did what?”

~

Isaac’s father is given the option of a fight in court he will certainly lose, death, or to signing over all his parental rights.

He chooses the last option, and Stiles can’t help but be a little disappointed. He was hoping for the chance to maim him. Just a little.

Melissa becomes Isaac’s new guardian. When Stiles informs her that he’s already forged her signature on all the paperwork, she only sighs.

~

Erica and Isaac aren’t friends, exactly, but they’re friendly. They eat lunch together and partner on projects. It’s less because they like each other, and more because then they don’t have to suffer the embarrassment of no one else wanting to be around them.

Erica knows Isaac is getting hurt, that his dad is the one hurting him because who else could it be, but she doesn’t know what to do about it. She tried to tell her parents, to see if they could help, but her mother had just snapped, “Don’t we have enough problems with taking care of you?”

She hadn’t pressed after that. It’s not her fault she’s sick. She doesn’t mean to make things difficult for her parents. Her dad’s work has good insurance, so it’s not even about the money. She thinks that if it were about the money, she could understand. If her illness was bleeding them dry, if they had to dip into their savings to care for her, if they had to work long hours or take second jobs, then she could understand how they could grow to hate her.

But it’s not about the money. Her parents have good jobs. Most of her medical expenses are covered, and what isn’t, they can easily afford.

It’s just her. She ruined everything by not being a healthy child, ruined their picture perfect white picket life. But it’s not her fault.

She doesn’t think what’s happening to Isaac is his fault either. But she doesn’t know how to tell him that, how to bridge the gap between people who tolerate each other to being the type of friends who can talk about that kind of stuff. So she says nothing, and hopes that one day he’ll take her pointed silence as an olive branch. But she doesn’t expect him to.

Which means when on Monday morning when he comes marching toward her at lunch, grabs her by the elbow and starts dragging her in the opposite direction of their usual table, she’s thoroughly confused. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”

“I had an interesting weekend,” he says, and her eyes flicker to his hands, to the scabs on his fingertips and the trail of blue bruises that disappears up his sleeve. “I’m not living with my dad anymore.”

“Are you on the street?” she asks, appalled. Isaac can stay with her, her parents never come into her room anyway, they’ll never notice.

He shakes his head. “I’m living with Mrs. McCall, Scott’s mom. She has legal guardianship over me. Or maybe the sheriff does? To be honest, I’m not totally sure.”

She stares. “What the hell kind of weekend did you have?”

“Oh, hey Erica,” says Stiles Stilinski, the boy she may or may not have had a crush on since she was eight years old. She didn’t think he even knew her name. The table Isaac has dragged her to has Scott and Stiles sitting there, smiling.

Which makes sense. Isaac is living with Scott, and Scott is Stiles’s best friend, so now Isaac sits with Stiles, and he’s dragged her along for the ride.

She’s going to kill him. If she’d known Stiles would be speaking to and looking at her today, she wouldn’t have worn sweatpants. Or she would have at least put on lip gloss, or something. She yanks her ponytail out, letting her long curly blonde hair fall over her shoulders. At least her hair always looks great. “Hi.”

Stiles kicks out a chair for her, smiling his stupid smarmy grin at her, and she may or may not have had several daydreams about this. “Sit, relax, hangout. Did you bring lunch?” Fuck, no, she knew she was forgetting something. She’s halfway seated when she curses, trying to stand upright again and somehow managing to lose her balance. She’s already resigned herself to falling on her ass in the middle of the cafeteria when Stiles grabs her arm and pulls her upright, like it’s nothing, like grabbing her out of the air and supporting her with one arm is easy.

That’s hot.

“Relax,” he says, still grinning as tugs her back in her seat. “We can share. Peter always packs too much.”

“Peter Hale?” she asks, because who hasn’t heard about his miraculous recovery from last year, who hasn’t gossiped about the way the remaining Hale children are missing and Peter lives with the Stilinskis now.

Scott makes an agreeable noise, already halfway through a monstrously large bowl of brightly colored pasta. “He says we need to eat more vegetables, so he’s started making us lunch.”

Stiles takes out his own huge bowl, and Isaac has one too, but it’s not quite as large. Still too much food for him to reasonably eat. Does Peter just pack them one bowl for the week? They can’t seriously be eating one of these a day. They’d stop fitting through doors.

“Here.” She turns, and Stiles pulls his chair closer until their knees touch. He produces a spare fork from who knows where and offers it to her handle first. “It’s not real pasta, it’s made of squash or something. But there’s chicken in it too, so it’s not half bad.”

“Thanks,” she says, hoping she isn’t blushing. She’s sharing Stiles’s pasta, one too long strand away from a Lady and the Tramp mishap, and he’s looking at her and smiling, his knee pressed up against hers.

Isaac is unbearably pleased with himself, which is infuriating. But as long as Stiles keeps looking at her like that, she’ll consider just maiming him and not crossing the line into all out murder.

~

At first, Scott isn’t thrilled with Isaac, or with Erica, but she’s easier at least because she’s only around during the school day, as opposed to Isaac, who comes home with him.

It’s not personal. Isaac is fine. He’s quiet and polite, with moments of dry sarcasm that remind him of Stiles. He’s also clearly terrified of upsetting them, and in shock of his complete lifestyle change, so Scott feels like a huge jerk for feeling like this. He doesn’t want to make Isaac’s life harder. It’s been hard enough already.

Peter notices and pokes him in the side with his stupid strong fingers, hard enough that it would bruise if he wasn’t a werewolf. “He’s not an interloper, and he’s not a threat. He’s our dear alpha’s newest acquisition.”

“What?” Peter uses so many big words. Then he takes a second to think it through, because he’s not actually an idiot. “He’s pack?”

“He will be, I think,” he ruffles Scott’s hair, and Peter is the annoying big brother that Scott never wanted. And sometimes the dad he always has. It’s confusing. Scott spends a lot of time being confused. “Give it some time. Stiles has clearly taken an interest in him. It takes a while for humans, it’s not instantaneous like it is for us.”

Peter’s right. He’s right a lot. It’s super annoying.

It’s nothing dramatic, or sudden, it’s just a couple weeks later they’re all hanging out at Stiles’s house doing homework, the adults having gathered in the backyard. He can hear Alan’s even tones against Peter antagonistic ones, his mother’s laughter, the way the John just sighs like he’s annoyed, even though he isn’t, really.

“Here, you got that one wrong,” Isaac says, looking over at Scott’s worksheet. He pulls it over and erases his answer. “Watch, I’ll work through it, I think you’re just skipping over a couple steps.”

He leans forward, in his space, and it’s hard to tell, because they’re in Stiles’s house and Stiles is sitting right across from them, but Isaac smells like Stiles too, and he doesn’t mind Isaac being in his space, likes that Isaac is helping him, that he knows him well enough to know how he thinks, how he messed up the problem without even having to watch him do it.

“Oh,” he says. “You’re pack.”

Isaac flushes, pleased and vulnerable and hopeful all at once, and Scott rubs a hand over his shoulders. Isaac still flinches away from people when they get too close or move suddenly, but his only reaction to Scott is to lean into his touch.

“Just figuring that out now, Scotty?” Stiles asks, but he sounds amused.

Scott sticks his tongue out at him, but can’t help the automatic sense of belonging he feels when Stiles’s eyes bleed red.

He hopes Isaac feels it too.

~

Stiles has been half in love with Lydia since kindergarten, back when she was quiet and watchful and wore her hair in pigtails. She’s loud now because she’s figured out the right things to say, but back then she was waiting, observing and learning and biding her time.

He’s never done anything about it, has kept the torch he’s carrying for Lydia buried deep. He’s neither the first nor the last person who will fall in love with Lydia Martin.

The reason he doesn’t do anything about it is because most of the reason he wants her has to do with pack and belonging and strength.

Lydia would make an excellent addition to any pack. He’s known that since he was a kid, has wanted to bite her since he figured out that it would make her his. Sure, she’s gorgeous and smart and interesting, but he knows his interest in her has more to do with what she could do for him as an alpha than as a human, so he does his best to keep it to himself.

Erica, though.

She’s a different story.

He knows her because he knows everyone, because he’s a werewolf and an alpha and the sheriff’s kid, and Beacon Hills just isn’t that big. He knows her because he’s gone to school with her his whole life. She smells like hospitals and pain a lot, and anger, hot and fresh and threatening to boil over. He doesn’t have anything against that. Most of the time, he figures angry people have a good reason for it. But she’s always been just on his periphery, someone he knew of but didn’t know.

Then she starts sitting with them at lunch, and Stiles notices how pretty her eyes are, and keeps catching the smell of her conditioner on her hair. Usually he’s pretty good at ignoring scents, but it keeps creeping up on him.

She watches the same shows and reads the same comics, and that should put her in bro territory, like Scott, except his stomach doesn’t flip when Scott touches him and he doesn’t try as hard to make Scott laugh, at least if he’s not upset, but he just wants Erica to laugh all the time. She’s so pretty when she’s smiling, and she didn’t use to do that a lot. Stiles wants her to smile. He wants to be the reason she’s smiling. He likes the way she’s smart in way that doesn’t have anything to do with school, likes her trash talk and her soft hands and the way her eyes narrow when she’s pissed off.

“Oh my god,” Stiles says, “I have a crush on Erica.”

Not because she’s valuable or strong (although, of course, she is), but just because she’s Erica.

“Just figuring that out now?” Scott says, mocking, while Melissa takes too large bite of lasagna in an attempt to mask that she’s two seconds away from bursting out laughing.

Isaac says, “She has a crush on you too, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Oh no, that’s even worse.

“Is it unethical to date someone without telling them you’re a werewolf?” Stiles wonders aloud.

Neither Scott nor Isaac have anything useful to offer. Melissa finally manages to swallow the last bit of her too large bite to say, “Just tell them before the wedding date.”

Okay, he can work with that. He’s thirteen, he’s not planning to get married.

~

“So,” Peter says, a few months after Stiles had burst into Isaac’s home and changed his life, “are you going to bite our newest packmate? We do need more betas.”

Isaac looks to Stiles, hopeful, but his alpha is scowling. “I didn’t do it because we need more betas!”

“But we do,” Scott says, “and he wants it anyway, and he’s pack.”

Stiles pauses, then turns to him. “Do you want it?”

That’s an easy question. “Yes.” Stiles is still frowning at him, uncertain. “I don’t want to feel powerless again. If someone else tries to hurt me, I want to have the ability to stop them.”

Scott’s face twists, and Peter says, “People have become werewolves for worse reasons.”

“I’ll think about it,” Stiles says, which doesn’t sound promising but isn’t a refusal either. “You don’t have to be a wolf to be part of the pack. You know that right?”

“Yes,” he says, because he does. He’s part of the pack now, and he’s human. He has no reason to think that has an expiration date. Besides, over half their pack is human. The wolves are the minority here.

A week later, Stiles corners him and says, “I need you to go to therapy.”

He recoils. “What? But I–”

“I wasn’t going to push before,” he interrupts. “But if you want to be a werewolf, you have to work through all the crap in your head, and we’re going to start physical training now, while you’re human. I’m need your control to be perfect when I turn you.”

“Do you think I’ll hurt someone?” he asks quietly. He might. He tries to control it, to use it, to let it go, but sometimes an absolute tidal wave of anger and helplessness sweeps him away, and it’s all he can do to not climb out the window and run. Which isn’t fair, because he loves Melissa and Scott and Stiles, and everyone else, but there are times when it all gets to be too much.

Maybe Stiles is right to be concerned. Werewolves have a harder time managing their impulse control and depend more on instinct than reasoning. If he freaks out when he’s a werewolf, it’s very possible that he’ll lash out and hurt someone. Just like his father. What if becoming a wolf turns him into his father?

“No,” Stiles says, firmly enough that it pulls Isaac from his own thoughts. Stiles is glaring at him, and some of the tension bleeds out his shoulders without him having to think about it. “Of course not, not outside of a full moon anyway. But that’s the thing. Full moons are hard, and I don’t want them to be hard for you. Peter’s a born wolf and an adult, now that he’s anchored he doesn’t need my help. Scott’s different.” Isaac knows. Apparently full moons are strictly no humans allowed because of Scott, because he’s too young and too new to control himself. “It’s easy because between me and Peter, Scott can’t get very far or do too much damage. We hold him down and hold him back, we fight until he’s bruised and bleeding and exhausted. I don’t want to do that to you.”

He protests, “That’s not fair, I don’t mind–”

“I do,” Stiles says, and Isaac falls silent. “I mind. I refuse to be someone who hurts you, okay? So I need you to be better and more prepared for the shift than Scott was. Because I can dig my claws into Scott and hold him still if I have to, but I don’t want to do that to you.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, while Stiles keeps staring at him, his eyes dark and serious in a way that makes him look like a grown up. “Okay. I’ll do it. Whatever you say. You’re the alpha after all.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Stiles jokes, trying to hide his relief as he throws an arm around Isaac’s shoulders.

~

Erica had assumed that being friends with Stiles would make her like him less. She’d assumed her embarrassing crush would fade and be replaced with fondness and exasperation, would turn into something different and real.

She’d assumed wrong.

He’s funny and warm and protective, and she knew that thanks to five years of thinking he was the cutest boy in the world, but now all those traits are focused on her. He has her as Batgirl in his phone, and texts her random things at two in the morning when she can’t sleep, and always reminds her to take her medication if she forgets. She doesn’t know how he even knows if she hasn’t, since it’s not like she takes it at school, but he always does.

Maybe, more than anything else, it’s how he doesn’t shy away from her illness. She doesn’t know why she thought he would, since there was his mom, then Peter, and Stiles still hangs around the hospital since he’s practically Ms. McCall’s other son. He doesn’t talk around her sickness or get quiet or awkward. He just treats it like something else about her, like how she loves brownies and country music and hates swimming.

He does something not even her own parents can do, so of course she loves him for it.

She’s not going to say anything. Not going to cause a fuss. Isaac keeps urging her to say something, to make a move, but Erica refuses to risk it.

She has friends now. Isaac is really her friend these days, there’s no denying it. She has him, and Scott, and Stiles, and she’s not willing to lose any of them by making things awkward with Stiles. She thinks that if he started ignoring her, the others would follow suit, even if they claim they wouldn’t.

So she says nothing. Stiles’s friendship is valuable, so she guards it jealously, even from herself.

~

Summer has only been out a week, and the only thing on his mind is how to organize a trip with the pack to the beach for his fourteenth birthday that doesn’t end with him spending three hours saying formal hellos to Lisa, the alpha who controls the coastal land. He doesn’t want to do this formally, he’s not really a formal sort of guy. Can’t he just text her an invite to his beach party and hand her some baked goods and call it a day? He’ll run it by Alan, but he really doesn’t want to do the whole formal dinner and pissing contest thing that’s expected. Besides, he likes Lisa. She’s kind of a hardass, but she makes really good scrambled eggs, and she laughed whenever Stiles would fall during training, which is a plus in his book.

So when his phone rings and he sees Diane’s name on the screen, he’s nonplussed. They still have a few more weeks before the annual alpha retreat, and besides, it’s Alan’s job to worry about that, even if Peter’s the one going with him this year.

“Hi Diane,” he greets, flopping back onto his bed, and wincing when that sends a tower of of his summer reading books over the edge and onto the floor. “What’s up?”

“Alpha Stilinski,” she says, formal, and he frowns. “We have a problem. I’m calling all the other alphas as well. I need your help.”

~

John doesn’t think he’s ever been angrier in his whole life. Or more terrified. “This is – has she lost her mind? You’re a child!”

The rest of the pack is scattered around their living room, each of them in varying states of discomfort and anger, but right now Stiles only has eyes for him. “Yes. But I’m an alpha first, before all else. And this is a problem that only alphas can handle, so I’m going. Just like pretty much every other alpha in northern California. It’s Diane. Beyond that, it’s not just about her, it’s about what will happen if I don’t help. If those things make it past her land, then they’ll head for all of us. If we can’t beat them together, then we sure as hell won’t be able to beat them apart.”

“You’re a kid,” he repeats stubbornly, “You’re too young to go to war.”

Peter snorts, but raises his hands in surrender when John shoots him a warning look.

Stiles sighs. “Dad. I’ve been killing weird shit that’s causing trouble since I was eight. This isn’t new.”

“That’s – different,” he says, even though it’s not. Stiles is a predator, he’s always known that, Claudia made sure that that was something he understood. Stiles doesn’t flinch away from violence or death, and it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care or that he’s a bad person, he just operates off a different set of rules.

Stiles is really good at following the human rules. But that doesn’t change what he is. It’s better now than it was a year ago, his son doesn’t get torn to shreds and narrowly escape death quite so often these days, but that all still feels different. That’s maintenance. That’s Stiles and Alan and Peter, and even sometimes Scott these days, doing their part to make sure things don’t fester, to keep Beacon Hills safe. Who knows what would happen if they allowed creatures and not quite human things to run through their town unchecked.

But this isn’t maintenance. This is war.

“I don’t want you to go,” he says, voice tight, because that’s as close as he’ll get to flat out telling Stiles no. He’s the alpha. When it comes to the supernatural, John doesn’t have any rank to pull.

Stiles softens, but he’s still just apologetic. All he offers is, “I’m sorry.”

Well. That’s that, then.

~

Stiles ends up taking a bus out so Xavier can pick him up, since he can’t drive yet (he can, technically, but his dad refuses to let him drive on his own without a license, so he’s reduced to taking public transportation, supernatural emergency or no) and he refuses to let his pack get anywhere near this.

Xavier is waiting for him when he gets off the bus, looking particularly creepy with his growly face and rusting dark green pickup truck. Stiles can’t help but grin as he pulls himself into the passenger seat.

“So,” he says, flashing his eyes at the man and being silently pleased when his eyes glow red in return, “what the hell did Diane do to piss off a bunch of fae?”

He pulls a face, pulling out of the parking lot and onto the highway. “She didn’t do anything.”

“They just decided to attack wolf held land out of nowhere?” he asks skeptically, popping open Xavier’s glove compartment to rifle through it. It’s disappointingly boring. Napkins, deodorant, registration, garlic cloves, gum, flashlight –

Wait –

“They’re not part of the Court, otherwise we’d be having a much bigger problem,” he says.

Stiles holds up the garlic cloves, incredulous. “Forget that. Garlic? Really? I thought they weren’t vampires.” They’re totally vampires.

“Vampires aren’t real,” he says automatically. “But, well, lost fae are the source for a lot of those rumors. So it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

“Do you have a wooden stake under the seats too?” he asks, twisting to check. “Maybe some holy water?”

Xavier is annoyingly unruffled. “Some of the rumors have to be true. But no, there’s no holy water.”

Stiles pulls himself upright, a large wooden shank held in his fist. “This is ridiculous. Your teeth can do ten times more damage than this thing.”

“Fae taste gross,” he says. “Use your claws.”

“You still haven’t really told me anything,” Stiles points out, and Xavier shifts in his seat. “No way. Diane didn’t give you any details either?” He’d thought he was being left in the dark just because of his age, so it’s nice to know that’s not the case.

“It’s Diane,” he grumbles, “sharing details isn’t her strong suit.”

Well, being the most powerful alpha on the west coast and running an insanely large pack for over fifty years clearly generates enough goodwill that Diane can just casually summon every alpha in NorCal with barely any explanation.

That’s a little concerning, actually, that any one person has that much power. It’s a good thing it’s Diane, who’s super cool and probably won’t ever abuse her powers to take over the world.

~

Lost fae are those who have either been outright thrown from the court, or who were bargained away for humans, or are literally lost and can’t seem to find their way home. No matter the reason, the result is the same. Being away from court changes them, and not for the better. They don’t belong in the human realm, and they end up twisting themselves into all sorts of shapes in an attempt to fit.

Being a fae is about conformity, about fitting in, about belonging. But humans don’t work like that, and fae aren’t happy here.

They can become succubi, or ghouls, or there are even a few who have found homes among the ocean floor.

But far and wide, lost fae become vampires.

There’s no sleeping in a coffin, no aversion to sunlight, and they’re not undead. But they do run cold, they can drink fresh human blood in attempt to make themselves warm, and although it doesn’t sustain them, it does allow them to get close enough to humans to feed on them instead.

Which they can just do by being around them, apparently.

That’s why this is alphas only, why a few dozen of them are gathered around the edges of Diane’s land, waiting for the next attack.

The last one killed three of Diane’s betas and seven of her humans. She hadn’t come to them lightly.

Alphas can last against vampires. They’re strong enough that it takes the fae time to drain them dry, which is time they can use to win this fight.

“Hold on,” Lisa says, brown eyes flashing red, “so our plan is just to attack each other and hope we manage to kill them before they kill us, all while they’re draining our energy, so as we get weaker, they get stronger?”

“If anyone has any better ideas, I’m quite open to suggestions,” Diane says.

Nothing.

The vampires are coming. They have to stop them, so this is what they have to do. They’re alphas. They can’t risk these creatures coming to their lands, to their packs, so this threat has to be stopped now, before their people are in danger.

“You still haven’t told us why they’re coming here, of all places,” Mark points out.

Diane sighs, but before she can say anything, Stiles answers. “It’s the ley lines.”

There’s a moment of stillness, the everyone’s eyes are on him, but he refuses to react. Mark blinks. “What?”

“It’s the ley lines,” he repeats, because he has been listening to Alan and Peter’s lectures, even when they’re super boring. “Right? We have such a large amount of them in California. Whether they’re here because there are so many werewolves, or whether we first came here to draw our pack lines alongside them, that’s anyone’s guess.”

Taika raises an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, Stiles,” Diane says, staring at him in a way that he’s not totally comfortable with. “What to the ley lines have to do with it?”

Why is she asking him? He’s not even fourteen for over a month, and literally everyone else here in an adult, she should ask one of them. He’s not suicidal, so he’s not going to say that, but he does think it’s a little unfair that he’s the one being put on the spot. “All roads lead to Rome, right? It’s possible to use the ley lines as a map to the fae realm. Or so the rumors say. So they could be trying to do that. But what I think is more likely is that they’re trying to tap into the power of the ley lines instead of feeding the traditional way.”

“What's the point? Don’t they usually stay in cities anyway, so they can steal a little bit from everyone without causing a scene?” Lisa asks. “The last thing they want is a bunch of hunters coming for them.”

Vampires feed on human energy, which isn’t exactly their lifeforce, and Stiles doesn’t understand it completely. It’s renewable, if the vampires are careful no one dies or is seriously hurt, just tired. Of course, take too much too quickly, and death is inevitable. And exactly what they’re going to be trying to do to all of them tomorrow, on top of the physical fight.

Stiles is so glad Diane hadn’t told them anything over the phone, because if his dad had known exactly what he was walking into, Peter would have had to lock him in the basement.

Diane says, “You can only survive on table scraps for so long before you’d do anything for a feast.”

Her heartbeat is steady and her voice is even. She’s completely relaxed.

But for some reason, Stiles is sure that she’s lying.

~

Erica isn’t stupid.

Her grades may not be the best because the school puts a cap on how many excused medical emergencies she’s allowed to have (she wishes they could put that cap on her body and maybe she’d manage to get more than Cs across the board) but she’s not stupid. She’d even go so far to say that she’s clever.

She knows that there’s something the boys aren’t telling her, but she doesn’t dwell on it, because they’re boys and they live together, it’s natural they’d have some secrets. She tries not to take it personally, and resolves that if she ever gets some friends that are girls, they’re going to have secrets too.

The first time they all hang out, and Stiles is missing, Isaac and Scott tell her that he’s sick. So sick, they insist, that he can’t possibly leave his room or have any visitors.

Which is weird, since she and Stiles had texted for about two hours last night about which breakfast foods different superheroes would prefer, and he hadn’t mentioned so much as a sniffle.

It’s also weird because Stiles doesn’t get sick.

Except for those couple of weeks fifth grade when he had to go visit an aunt or something for some sort of family emergency, Stiles has never missed a day of school. He has a better attendance record than Lydia, who approaches school with the type of seriousness usually reserved for nuclear warfare.

Erica weighs her options, but decides the blunt approach is the most efficient, and regardless she’s curious enough to prioritize her satisfaction over discretion.

She texts him that night. r u sick?

Another weird thing is that he’s only been answering her texts at night, and usually he answers them almost immediately, no matter what time she sends them.

of you? never <3

She’s glad no one is around to see her blush. Why does he have to send her things like that? He’s making it really hard to act cool around him. But she doesn’t want to ask him to stop, because if she told him to knock it off then he would, and she likes it, even though it makes her life harder.

scott n isaac said u were sick, she types out.

There’s nothing for a while. That’s what she’d expected. Stiles has to go talk to Scott and Isaac and find out exactly what they told her. It probably means he’s not at home. He’s somewhere not here, and it’s enough of a secret that their friends felt the need to lie about it. But not a big enough secret that he told them to lie to her.

Or maybe he did, but he didn’t give specific instructions, which led to the worst lie ever. But that doesn’t sound like Stiles. The giving vague instructions part, not the lying.

Stiles lies all the time. That’s another thing she tries not to take personally, because it isn’t, he lies to everyone. If only she could figure out what he’s lying about.

scott and isaac are dumb. i’m staying with family up north, there’s this problem they needed some extra hands with, so i volunteered to go.

The worst part about text is that she can’t tell when he’s lying. when will u b back?

soon!

Soon, huh?

Well, fine. But when Stiles gets back, she’s going to pry the whole story out of him if it kills her.

~

The good news is they have a couple of days until the army of lost fae descends upon Diane’s borders.

The bad news is that it’s spent entirely with Stiles getting his ass kicked.

“If you keep this up the vampires won’t have to kill me,” he groans, letting Taika peal him off the ground. They’re in a clearing about a mile away from the makeshift base camp.

He grins. “You know, most of the time alphas figure out how to make the full wolf shift way before they’ve spent fourteen years with red eyes.”

“Sorry I wasn’t running around as a cub when I was toddler,” he mocks, twisting to try and get his spine back in place. “That definitely would have made my parents’ job way easier. Every day when they woke up it would be a fun game of Do We Have a Son or a Dog Today?”

Taika’s eyes crinkle in the corners, and Stiles just sighs. He’s being extra sarcastic because he’s worried. Every alpha here can make the full shift. Except him. They’re trying to coax it out of him, using any spare time they have to try and help him make the full shift, because he’s stronger that way, because he’ll last longer against the fae if he’s fully transformed.

The problem is the trigger to the shift seems to be unique to every alpha. There’s stress, usually, but what kind is different. Some alphas fully transformed when their pack was in danger, a couple more transformed during sex (hilarious and so awkward) while others were just training or playing or grocery shopping and it just clicked, no dramatic adrenaline fueled revelation needed.

“You know,” Taika says, not smiling anymore, “you don’t have to do this.”

He frowns. “I might as well train while I have the chance. That’s what everyone else is doing. Well, that, or helping to narrow down the attack perimeter, but my theoretical geometry isn’t good enough for that.” He really wishes Lydia was here. Everyone had spent the past day and a half running the numbers, and if she was here, she’d already have the answer, and they could all be focusing on something else.

“That’s not what I meant. You’re a kid. You can – you shouldn’t have been put in this situation. A lot people were pissed Diane even called you,” he says gently.

His nails lengthen into claws before he can stop them, and that hasn’t happened to him in years. “This better be some sort of tactic to see if making me angry can force the shift.”

He holds his hands out in a calming gesture. “No one would think less of you if you left. Many of us would prefer it, actually. A kid’s death is a lot harder to cover up.”

“My dad’s the sheriff, he’ll take care of that,” he snaps. Indignation is welling in up inside him, pointier and harder to stamp down than rage. “I’m an alpha. I have a pack. I control Beacon Hills. I may be a kid, but that doesn’t change my responsibilities.”

“Well, it changes ours. Do you think any of us want to watch you die? Do you think we want to take your dried out husk of a body to your father and tell him, hey, good luck with explaining this, and oh, by the way, some other pack will be moving in now that Beacon Hills is up for claiming again. Did you think about that? If you die, your pack dies,” Taika says.

“Any pack that dies with its leader is a shitty pack led by a worse alpha,” he retorts. “My power may be gone, but my pack would live. The ties that bind them wouldn’t snap with my death”

“Are you sure?” Taika asks quietly. “You may be willing to risk your life, but what about the wellbeing of your pack? Of your home?”

Stiles would like to say that he’s tempted, that he’s swayed by this reasonable argument, but that would be a lie. “Yes. They’re my pack. It’s my home. I refuse to lay down and hide instead of doing everything I can to protect it. This is about all of us, not just Diane.”

“Isn’t it?” he asks, mocking.

Stiles considers jabbing his claws into Taika’s thigh just to be a brat, but he’s trying to act like an adult, so he only says, “I’m leaving now,” before walking away.

He hasn’t made it more than a quarter mile when he smells smoke. He only has a moment to panic before he picks up the chemicals and tar. It’s not a forest fire. He follows it out of a lack of anything else to do, because he doesn’t actually want to return to the others while he’s this angry. The last thing he needs is someone accusing him of throwing a tantrum. It doesn’t take him long to find the source of the smoke. It’s Diane, sitting cross legged on the ground andleaning against a tree trunk, a cigarette held between her fingers.

“Those things will kill you,” he blurts before he can think better of it.

She laughs, shifting her head just enough so she can look at him with those piercing blue eyes. “If they manage it, someone should put up a statue. Where every sort of monster fell, in triumph stood tobacco, my one weakness.”

Oh. Right, they’re werewolves. Whatever damage she’s doing to her lungs is healed within minutes. “It still smells bad.”

“It does still smell bad,” she agrees, and mouth twitching into a half smile. “You know, most of them agree with Taika.”

He flushes, heat crawling up his face. “You heard all that?”

“I like to keep an ear out,” she says, blowing a cloud of smoke away from her face. “It could have been worse. Taika actually likes you. The same can’t be said of everyone here.”

“Why?” he asks, then realizes he sounds young and vulnerable, but it’s too late to take it back.

She shrugs. “They want the Beacon Hill land. They think the Hales should be running it. They think you’re too young. They don’t like that you’re a born alpha. Plenty of reasons. I got a lot of shit for slapping my name on your regime. I think I rejected proposals to challenge you for your territory every day for almost two weeks.”

His shoulders hunch before he remembers to straighten them. “I – thank you. Why would you do that?”

“I said you could try, that you could have a chance. I’m a woman of my word. Besides. I like you. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t like everyone.” That is actually a secret, even if they all kind of assume. Diane is equally kind and courteous to everyone, regardless of their rank or stature or personality. It’s impossible to like everyone, but Diane’s never admitted it before. “You’re a good kid. You’re doing good work in Beacon Hills.”

“Why’d you call me?” he asks, because she seems to be in a sharing mood, and after his conversation with Taika, he has to know.

She smiles, fangs peeking out past her lips. “To see if you’d come.”

He glares. “If you’re just jerking me around–”

Diane stands and claps him on the back, hard enough that he stumbles. “Don’t be too upset. It’s a two way street. I called, you came, no arguments, no hesitation. If you call me, I’ll come too, even long past when you’re using my name to keep other wolves out of Beacon Hills.”

That’s – huge. That’s not a little thing, what she’s saying, offering to come personally if he asks her to. “Everyone else came too.”

“Not the first time I called,” she says, “Not when they had everything to lose, not when they didn’t know what they were getting into.”

“Maybe I’m just stupid,” he retorts, “Maybe it didn’t even occur to me to ask and now I regret showing up at all.”

She nods. “Maybe. Or maybe you decided that ignorance was an acceptable price for loyalty.”

“Still sounds like stupidity to me.” he grumbles.

Diane laughs, throwing an arm around his shoulders and tugging him along with an alpha’s deceptive strength. They’re headed back towards base camp. “Well, it’s my kind of stupidity.”

That does make him feel better, actually.

Chapter Text

Just because a truth isn’t spoken aloud doesn’t mean it ceases to exist.

Peter has known the truth about Diane for most of his life. He’s heard the rumors, seen here off and on for decades, listened to the stories told by wolves far older than he is. Talia had thought it was just rumor, that nothing so unseemly would take place, that hundreds of werewolves couldn’t possibly follow her if it were true.

His sister was a traditionalist. She did things as they’d always been done, because they worked, and they’d been working for a long time.

Not everyone is as rigid as she’d been, no matter what she’d liked to assume.

When Diane calls forth her soldiers, speaking of a war she can’t prevent on her own, Peter knows what it’s about. Or thinks he does, at least.

It makes him want to dig his claws into Stiles’s shoulder and force him to stay, to pull him back from the battlefield before he can step foot on it.

But Grandmother is calling, and Stiles is the Alpha because of her word, because she put the strength and power of her massive pack behind his claim to the Hale land. He has to answer.

Stiles doesn’t have a choice, even if he thinks he does. Even if he would choose to go anyway.

So Peter says nothing, and waits, and hopes he isn’t about to lose his alpha for a second time.

~

The vampires (“Lost fae,” Xavier corrects, but Stiles always ignores him) have been in Diane’s woods for days. They’ve been waiting, and waiting, and it’s making everyone irritable.

Then it’s time for the battle to begin, and Stiles almost wishes they could wait forever.

 He can smell them, but he can’t see them, the scent of rotting earth filling his nose. The alphas are all standing in a circle, facing outward, waiting.

“It’s too late to run now,” Taika says, coming up and squeezing in between him another alpha.

Stiles snarls. “I’m not running anywhere. Don’t try to stop me or protect me. Getting yourself killed because you were trying to protect the baby alpha is a shitty thing to do your pack.”

Taika actually looks taken aback. “What about you? Me dying on my pack is shitty, as you say, but it’s fine for you?”

“It’s really starting to piss me off that you seem so convinced I’m going to die,” he answers. He doesn’t disagree, necessarily, but it’s still annoying.

“Enough,” Diane says, and everyone falls silent and they all stop shifting and shuffling. If Stiles didn’t have werewolf hearing, he’d say that they weren’t even breathing. “It’s time.”

Sure enough, the scent gets closer, and more overpowering. Everyone’s wrinkling their noses, all the alphas shifting so that they’re a sea of red eyes to the fae that are coming for them. They start to take shape, emerging out from the trees around them. The leader is pale limbed, her clothes torn, nervously biting at the nail of her thumb.

She looks like a tweaker, all twitchy and hungry. They all look like that, the dozens of vampires pushing closer. Stiles can’t help the punch of sympathy in his gut, even knowing that they’re all here to kill him. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” she says, voice soft and melodic, at odds with the rest of her appearance. “We don’t want to hurt you. Just give us what we want.”

What they want – what do they want? A fair amount of wolves had been derisive of this battle, even though they’re here, even though they showed up. Stiles hadn’t thought to question why, and he’s realizing that might have been a mistake.

Diane smiles. “You know I can’t do that. My deal with the queen won’t let me.”

“You can,” she continues, wretched, “you can, you’re not like us, you’re not bound by your word, you can break it. What can she do to you, what can she really do? You’re not – you’re not like us. It’s not fair!”

“Crossing the queen never ends well. As you well know,” Diane’s eyes flitters across the assembled lost fae. “I am bound by my word, and I will not break it. Not for you, not for anyone. This is the life you’ve been dealt.”

“Tell us where it is!” one of the lost fae roars, coming closer, his hands clenched into fists and his eyes wide. “You can – you know. You’re the only one who knows. You can help us go home.”

Diane’s smile looks like it hurts. “The court isn’t your home anymore, if it ever was. You can’t return.”

The man snarls, but the woman puts a hand to his chest. “Fine. If you won’t let us go home, then we’ll destroy yours.”

It all happens so fast, first the vampires are on the edges of the clearing, then they’re all on top of them, claws and too sharp teeth digging into their skin, trying to get as close as possible so they can drain more of their life force more quickly.

Almost everyone transforms into their wolf forms, a sea of dark brown, black, and grey wolves surrounding him. Stiles shifts into claws and fangs, ripping a fae off of him with enough force that her shoulder makes a horrible squelching, ripping sound.

A howl pierces through the air, and Stiles shivers, ducking under a fae’s kick and turning his head, searching.

Diane isn’t like the rest of them.

Her alpha form is a pure, snowy white, and she’s a slight woman, but in this form she’s bigger than all of them. Her massive jaws snap at the fae around her, and anything that gets between her teeth gets crushed – limbs, hands, skulls.

Stiles hisses as a fae rips a gash down his side. It’s already healing by the time he turns and pulls her forward, close enough to lock his teeth around her jugular and rip it out, feeling the warm gush of blood down his front. He tosses her aside and spits on the ground. Uhg, Xavier was right. Fae taste gross. Like old blood and honey mixed with battery acid.

It's a lot, so many fae all around him, and he’s constantly in pain from new wounds that they tear into his skin. But he’s been an alpha his whole life, has a had a predator’s instincts his whole life, which means he isn’t easy prey. Minutes tick to hours, and he’s pretty sure he’s lost his weight in blood a couple times over, but he’s still standing.

Then there are hands around his neck, and Stiles has to do a backflip that ends with him pinning another fae to ground. He barely avoids getting his neck snapped, and before he can more effectively return the favor, there’s another vampire at his back. How many of these things are there, really? This is ridiculous. He rolls to the ground, hoping to knock its breath out so he can gain some time, but it doesn’t work, and the one who’d tried to snap his neck jumps on top of him. Stiles is too adrenaline filled to panic, but this isn’t looking good for him right now. He manages to twist out of the way from claws that are doing their best to gut him, but that just puts an uncomfortable amount of pressure on his throat. He can regrow internal organs if need be, but he still needs to breathe.

The bigger fae is pulled off of him, and Stiles twists, pulling the other vampire with him and managing to smash his head against the ground. He’s only dazed for a second, but that’s all Stiles needs to pull his head from his shoulders. He turns just in time to see Taika gutting the other one. “I said not to help me!”

“You’re welcome,” he grunts, leaning forward to brace his hands against his knees, panting. He’s pale, and it’s a good thing Stiles is looking at him, because he wavers, and Stiles rushes over to hold him upright.

He doesn’t seem to be bleeding, no horrible life threatening wounds that their healing ability can’t keep up with in sight. “What’s wrong, what’s happening? Are you okay? Why are you in your human form?”

“Aren’t you exhausted?” Taika asks, pale in the moonlight.

Stiles blinks, uncomprehending. He’s tired, sure, but he wouldn’t say he’s exhausted.

“I guess your youth is good for something,” he mutters. “More life force to lose.”

Oh right, the fae are draining their energy while this is happening. Oops

Wait.

Stiles looks around the battlefield, and about half the alphas have been forced into their human form, pushing forward in spite of their sluggish movements. Wait. If age affects this –

He turns just in time to see a fae slit open Diane’s belly, gutting her like a fish.

She howls, still in her wolf form, her fur dyed a deep red from blood. Stiles doesn’t think all of it is hers.

“NO!” he yells, running towards her. Taika tries to hold him back, but he’s not fast enough. Diane can’t die. Stiles needs her, but more than that, he likes her, she’s what keeps all of them together, she’s the one who organizes the alpha meetings and talks to the other alphas across the world, she knows everyone and cares for everyone, and maybe he doesn’t know what kind of war she’s dragged them all into, but he doesn’t care. He can’t yell at her if she’s dead, so she can’t die. He won’t let her die.

~

Taika curses and takes stumbling steps after Stiles. “STOP HIM!” he yells out, because the brat’s a good kid, and Taika has kids that are older than Stiles, and he can’t imagine having to go to this boy’s father and tell him that his only child is dead.

But Stiles is the youngest of them by a couple decades, which means he’s the least affected by the lost fae’s presence. He’s too fast for any of them to stop, not while they’re all drained and dying.

He’s so sure he’s about to watch this kid kill himself trying to save Diane. But between one step in the next, he – changes.

Most alpha transformations aren’t smooth, they look like something out of someone’s nightmares, all rippling skin and jagged bones popping out of places that shouldn’t exist.

Stiles’s isn’t like that.

He lifts his foot, and by the time he puts it down, he’s not human anymore. His paws hit the ground and he goes running, even faster in this form, his red eyes glowing in his face, the transformation from human to wolf a seamless transition that happens between one blink in the next.

“Shit,” someone whispers, a mix of jealous and impressed, and Taika can’t blame them. The transformation is a tell, it lets everyone know how in control and in tune an alpha is with their instincts, with the more animal part of them.

For Stiles, it seems there’s not discord, no disconnect, no two halves to reconcile into one. There’s just Stiles.

He guesses that’s the advantage of being born an alpha. Stiles doesn’t know how to be anything else.

Stiles leaps on top of Diane, grabbing a fae with his jaws and ripping him off of her. She shrinks down back to human form, huddling beneath Stiles’s as her body knits itself back together, like a pup seeking shelter. Stiles may be a kid, but his alpha form doesn’t care about that. He’s huge, not towering over the rest of them by any means, but still much bigger than many expected him to be. Bigger than some alphas who’ve been consolidating power for decades.

He’s the size and shape of a direwolf, teeth bared and red eyes gleaming as he stands over Diane’s healing body. His fur is the same color as his eyes in his human form, a bright amber that gleams in the weak light of the moon.

“Well, come on!” Lisa shouts, forcing herself to her feet. Most of the fae are dead, but they’re all exhausted, and it’s a struggle to remain upright, never mind to fight. “Are we just going to stand here? We have to help!”

She’s not wrong, but Taika doesn’t bother to stifle a groan as he transforms back into a wolf. His bones crunch loudly in protest, but soon enough he’s on all fours once more, and the few wolves who have the energy to move and who aren’t busy tearing apart the last of the fae follow suit. They barrel towards Diane and Stiles, and between them, they make quick work of the remaining fae, using claws and teeth to rip apart their limbs and stop their breath.  

Until only wolves remain.

Taika shifts back to human, and so do the others. For some it’s slow and clunky, while for others it happens all at once, like letting out a breath after holding it in too long. “Diane?” he asks.

Stiles growls, blood staining his muzzle, but then he steps back, revealing Diane lying on the ground, chest heaving as she takes in deep, heavy breaths. The skin on her stomach is new and pink, and there’s a pile of something unidentifiable next to her that he thinks may have been her pancreas. She looks more tired than he’s ever seen her, she actually looks her age for once, but she’s alive.

“I’m fine,” she says stubbornly, then tilts her head back, holding out her hand. “Stiles.”

Stiles steps into her hand, his forehead resting against her palm, and it’s so hard to remember he’s a kid like this, massive and bloody, his fur glowing gold in the rays of early morning sunlight.

She smiles, softer than he thinks he’s ever seen her, and she says, “The trigger for the alpha shift is loyalty. You first shifted to protect me. I won’t forget that.”

Oh, great. Now they’re never going to get rid of him, not between this and him saving her life.

Taika’s less irritated at that than he would have been before. Stiles took out a sizable chunk of the fae, and he saved Diane. His youth, which they’d all been so derisive of, is what ended up saving all of them.

~

Someone must howl really loudly, or maybe just send a text message, because not long after everything’s ended, dozens of Diane’s betas descend upon them. Some go right to work cleaning up the remains of the lost fae, and Stiles has no idea where they’re even going to put that many bodies. Maybe they’ll just bury them on pack land, but he’s heard rumors that strange things happen in places where a fae’s been buried, so he doesn’t know about that. Burning, maybe, although that’s a little conspicuous. They should throw a barbecue or something to mask the smell.

Hm. That’s pretty messed up, actually. Also, if burning fae bodies smell anything like living ones taste, there’s not enough barbecue in the world to cover up that stench.

Now he wants barbecue, damnit. Killing a whole bunch of angry otherworldly creatures is a lot of work, and he’s hungry.

All the alphas get pulled and piled into trucks and vans, and he must have shifted back into human form at some point, because one of Diane’s betas is wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, which is rather nice. Then she stuffs him in the back of an already packed van, like they’re a bunch of werewolf sardines, which is less nice.

He thinks he may fall asleep standing up at some point, and then he’s woken up just long enough to be bustled off to one of the cabins, and then left to fall asleep once more, along with all his belongings that they must have taken from the base camp. The first time he’d came here, he hadn’t realized that Diane owned the campground, but he’s thankful for it now. The tents were fine, but it’s nice to be back in a normal bed again. He just barely manages to pull out his phone and text his pack a thumbs up before drifting off.

Stiles sleeps for two days straight.

He wakes up starving, and he only has to walk around the campground dazed and still half asleep for a few minutes before a beta finds him and drags him to the kitchen. This is a much better solution than his stupid brain had come up with, which had been to go hunting for rabbits like an idiot, even though he knew full well Diane kept at least six different kinds of Pop Tarts in the cupboards at all times.

He’s halfway through his third sandwich before it occurs to him to ask, “Hey where’s everyone else? I haven’t seen any of the other alphas.”

The beta, whose name he thinks is Ricardo, or maybe Rich, or possibly Carrie? No, he’s pretty sure it’s Ricardo, but there’s some sort of nickname going on there that he can’t think of off the top of his head.

The downside of the annual alpha meeting being alphas and seconds only means he knows fuck-all about everyone else’s betas. They need to start having one of these meetings where they bring at least some of the betas too. Maybe in Beacon Hills? They have the space for it.

Ricardo gives him a flat eyed stare, halfway through frying up some bacon that kind of makes his mouth water. “They’re asleep.”

“All of them? Still?” he demands.

His flat eyed stare doesn’t change. “Yes.” Stiles just blinks, waiting, and he sighs and says. “They’re older, and were more affected by the vampires than you were.”

Ricardo calls them vampires! Okay, he’s Stiles’s new favorite. “Oh. Do I – should I wait? Or can I go? It’s just that I have to get back to my pack.”

His face softens. “We heard what you did for our alpha. You may come and go from Alpha Hernandez’s land as you desire, Alpha Stilinksi.”

Stiles flushes and ducks his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Er, awesome, thanks.”

Luckily Ricardo saves him from any further embarrassment by piling his plate high with bacon.

~

Stiles kinds of wants an explanation about what the whole battle they just fought in was about, but he also wants to go home, and he doesn’t want to have to wait for Diane to wake up for that.

Whatever. The annual alpha retreat is in like a month anyway, he’ll beg an explanation out of her then.

There’s the little issue of not being able to drive, and not having a car, so he’s already resigned himself to having to catch a ride to the bus station from one of Diane’s betas. Once he’s back in Beacon Hills, he just sticks to the forest and runs back. Luckily it’s night, so he’s got an extra cover of darkness to protect him. He’s most of the way home when he hears someone crying.

More importantly, someone he recognizes.

If he starts snooping around residential neighborhoods, someone will definitely notice, and then they’ll call his dad. He likes to keep the number of times his dad has to talk him out of trouble to a minimum.

He’s not that far from Deaton’s, so he doubles back and drops his bag at his emissary’s place. He’s not home, which is unfortunate, Stiles could have said hi, but he doesn’t dwell on it. He shifts into his alpha wolf form, easily going from two legs to four.

He loves his wolf form.

His senses are even more heightened, he’s faster, he’s stronger. He even feels warmer. Now every time his dad makes a comment about him wearing a jacket he’s just going to transform into a wolf. He’s shorter like this, and it’s easy for him to run beneath windows and bushes, to keep out of sight of anyone who might be looking out their window.

Erica’s house has a high fence, which is good because the no one will call the cops about a wolf in the Reyes’s yard, but it does mean he has to risk being seen so he can jump over it.

He flattens himself against the ground once he makes it over, but he doesn’t hear anyone screaming, so he assumes he’s in the clear. Erica’s room is at the back of the house, and he trots over, following the sound of her crying. She’s on the first floor, too, which is convenient, but it’s not until she looks through the window and her shocked, teary eyes meant his own that he realizes he may not have thought this all way through.

Coming here as a wolf made it easier for him without getting caught, but because he’s an idiot, he didn’t transform back into a human once he made it over the fence.

Oops.

Should he stay? Should he run? He can’t decide, so he just stand there, frozen in his indecision.

~

There are no wolves in California.

Somehow, that’s Erica’s only thought as she stares through her window. But she’s pretty sure there aren’t wolves like that anywhere. It’s – it’s too big, nearly as tall her window ledge, its massive body almost as wide. It’s not a coyote, she’s seen coyotes before, and they looked nothing like this. But she doesn’t think she’s ever seen a wolf like this either, not just the size, but the light brown fur, and those intelligent light hazel eyes.

Wait.

She’s seen those –

No. It’s impossible. Like wolves in California are impossible, but way, way worse, and really impossible, not just unlikely.

But.

Those do look like Stiles’s eyes.

The wolf isn’t doing anything, isn’t growling or aggressive, or even listless like it’s sick or has rabies or anything. It’s just. Staring at her. Maybe it’s not a wolf at all, maybe the reason it doesn’t look like one is because it isn’t one. Maybe instead of making one of those super small teacup dogs, a breeder decided to go the other direction, and this is just a giant designer dog that escaped, and found its way to her window.

She hesitates, hopes she’s not about to regret this, then grabs the bottom of the window and shoves it open. When the wolf – dog? – just continues standing there, she does the same to the screen, so there’s nothing between them but the open air. She holds out her hand, trembling, and says, “Goo – good boy?”

The dog – no okay, maybe he’s a designer hybrid, but he’s definitely a wolf – sits down and cocks his head to the side. Then he leans forward and shoves his whole face in her hand, tail wagging and pink tong lolling out of the side of his mouth. She giggles, shoulders dropping in relief, and leans out the window to scratch him behind the ears.

Those hazel eyes are really, really familiar. She’s sure he already has a name, but he doesn’t have a collar or anything, so it won’t hurt for her to give him her own nickname for a little bit.

“You’re a good boy, aren’t you, Stiles?” she coos, already thinking if she can risk going to grab her phone and snap a picture of the wolf. She wants to send a picture to Stiles so he can see his namesake.

Except the wolf freezes and hunches his shoulders, eyes wide, looking a cross between guilty and surprised.

No fucking way.

“Stiles?” she repeats, because it has to be a fluke, or a coincidence, or maybe she’s finally broke and lost her mind.

The wolf leans back and sighs with his whole body. Then it shifts, almost too quickly for her to see, just a glimpse of elongated limbs and him leaning back on his hind legs, then Stiles is in front of her, her Stiles, human Stiles. Or humanish Stiles. “How did you know?” he asks, frowning.

“I didn’t, what the fuck,” she says, heart hammering on her chest. “I – you – I have to sit down.” She does just that, taking a few stumbling steps back and falling too hard on top of her bed.

Stiles grimaces and climbs in through her window, “Shit, I – fuck, Erica, I’m so sorry, when you said my name I thought –”

“Stiles,” she interrupts, looking up at her ceiling, “please put on pants.”

He pauses. “Oh.”

“I have sweatpants in the second drawer in my dresser,” she continues, wondering if her face is as red as it feels.

Having Stiles naked in her bedroom is way less sexy than it was in her daydreams during math class.

More exciting, though.

~

It won’t take that long, Alan said. It’s better than just sitting at home and waiting, Peter said. Might as well, John said.

“I DON’T THINK THIS IS GOING AS PLANNED!” Melissa shouts, trying to be heard over the wind whipping all around them.

Her son’s arm is wrapped around her waist while the other is curved around a low hanging branch. Isaac is doing the same, keeping a solid grip both on her upper arm and a branch. She thinks that’s a little unnecessary, but what does she know, werewolves are real, maybe spirits and ghosts fighting creates the type of wind that’s literally strong enough to blow them all away.

The Hale house creaks ominously, and someone screeches. Something screeches. It’s either a Hale ghost or some of the spirits Peter had managed to summon, and she’s not sure if that makes them persons or things, and she’s too worried about it being an impolite question to ask for clarification.

“I didn’t think they would start fighting like this!” John yells, bracing himself behind a huge tree trunk so he’s protected from the brunt of the wind.

Peter and Alan share a look from their place beside her, and she scowls. “You did.”

“It was a possibility,” Alan admits.

“My sister does have a volatile side to her,” Peter allows.

She’s going to murder them. “Well how do we stop it?”

They exchange another glance, and Scott snaps, “Guys! This isn’t going to go unnoticed for long, we need to stop it! Eventually they’ll leave the preserve, and then someone could get hurt.”

There’s a loud, thunderous noise of something ripping apart. Melissa peaks around the corner to see about half the Hale house has collapsed in on itself. There’s flashes of pale white and silver among the wreckage as the Martin spirits attack the Hale ghosts, trying to keep them back or destroy them for good, she’s not sure.

“You know,” Peter says, “I’m finding this strangely therapeutic.”

Isaac lets go of the tree to lift Peter up and shake him. Only he’s a bit too short, so Peter’s feet never actually leave the ground. “What do we do? Come on!”

“I could go in and see if the ghosts of my dead family can control themselves long enough to keep from killing me,” he offers.

“No,” Melissa says, and is gratified to hear the rest of the pack echo her response.

Peter looks quietly pleased for a moment before he says, “Well, an alpha might be able get them to quiet down, but since we don’t even know if ours is back yet,” he shrugs.

Scott scowls. “Only one way to find out.” He tips his head back, and Alan says, “Wait, don’t–” but he’s too late. Her son howls in a way that makes all the hair on her arms stand up and a chill go down her spine.

John sighs. “You know I’m going to get dozens of calls about people hearing wolves now.”

“Easier to explain than a ghost battle,” Scott says, unrepentant. Alan seems mollified by that, but not by much.

John just sighs again. “So we just have to hope Stiles was close enough to hear that, and that he’ll find us before anyone else does. Wonderful.”

~

Stiles feels like an idiot, because he’s revealed himself to be a werewolf to Erica when he super didn’t need to. But he clearly can’t regret it that much, because he’s still here. If he truly didn’t want her to know, if he wanted to keep this a secret from her forever, he would have gone running for Alan. He’s an emissary, he has a few memory altering potions and spells up his sleeves. But Stiles doesn’t do any of that. Instead he borrows her sweatpants, sits on her bed, and tells her everything.

She’s been halfway to pack for so long, and Stiles wants to her come the rest of the way, wants all of her.

“Stiles,” she says softly, eyes wide, “can – would – if you bite me, would it fix me?”

He can’t help himself. He flinches. “You’re not broken.” She glares at him, and he raises his hands in surrender before she can yell at him. “It – I don’t – maybe,” he settles on, because part of the reason he hadn’t told her before was because he knew that she’d want the bite, that she’d want to become a werewolf. “I don’t know. Brain injuries are – tricky.” Would the bite have saved his mom if she was able to survive it? Maybe. Or it would have just locked her in the state she was in, not getting worse, but not getting better either.

To him, that would have been an acceptable risk, when death was the only other option.

But for Erica, it’s not that dire. He doesn’t think.

“It’s dangerous, even if you’re healthy,” he tells her, “and it might just mean that it changes nothing, except that medication can’t help you anymore. I have an adderall prescription that I never fill, because there’s no point. My body burns through the drugs too quickly, and even Melissa can’t smuggle the amount of drugs I’d need for it to have the intended affect. So I just have to deal with it on my own, which sucks. I’m lucky that I can manage it on my own.”

They’ve all heard the stories about wolves who needed help they couldn’t get, needed drugs that didn’t exist for people like them. Being a werewolf isn’t some one stop shop, cure all for all everyone’s problems. What being a werewolf doesn’t fix, it makes unfixable.

“So it’s a risk,” she says, defiant. “I’m used to risks. I want to try.” He hesitates, and she deflates. “Unless, of course, you don’t want me. Sorry. I – sorry.”

“That’s not it,” he says earnestly, taking her hands. This is beyond his crush on her, more important than how pretty and cool he thinks she is. “Erica, you’re strong. You’ll make a fantastic beta, and whether you become a werewolf or not, I want you in my pack. You’re most of the way there already. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Let me try,” she insists. “Let me belong.”

He sighs and says, “You already do, okay? I’ll talk to Peter and Alan about it, about making sure it won’t hurt you.”

Erica gives him a blinding smile, like distilled sunshine, and he returns it helplessly.

He’s barely gotten the chance to think of what to say next when he hears it, too quiet for any human to pick up on, but as clear as day to him.

“Scott’s in trouble,” he says, getting to his feet. “I have to go.” She opens her mouth, but he only leans down to kiss her forehead before kicking off her sweatpants, tying them around his neck, saying, “I’m borrowing these,” and diving out the window. He’s a wolf before he reaches the ground, and then he goes running, jumping over the fence and heading in the direction the sound had come from.

What kind of trouble could Scott have possibly gotten into in the middle of the preserve?

~

Danny’s parents had told them to go to sleep hours ago, which was supposed to mean he took the guest bedroom down the hall. Jackson’s not sure if it had been his parents or Danny’s that had come up with that rule, but either way, it’s bullshit.

He’s been sleeping over at Danny’s ever since he was four, curling up under the covers together and talking into the night, or playing videogames, or trying to scare one another with ghost stories. He’s not willing to change that just because Danny finally told everyone that he likes dick, as if Jackson hadn’t figured that out forever ago, as if Danny hadn’t told him first, before anyone else, when they were eleven.

He’s his best friend, and they’re not changing their sleepover tradition just because some adults had suddenly decided it was inappropriate. So as soon as he hears Mr. and Mrs. Mahealani go to bed, he opens the door and tiptoes back into Danny’s room. The only downside is it means he has to set an alarm to make sure he sneaks back into his own room before the rest of the house wakes up.

“What took you so long?” Danny asks as soon as Jackson shuts the door behind him. “I thought maybe you–”

“Your parents stayed up watching some movie or something, they just went to bed,” he says, cutting him off before he says something that Jackson will have to punch him for. He pulls back the covers and crawls in, immediately shoving his freezing feet against Danny’s calves just so he can laugh when Danny yelps and squirms away. “Now, what were you saying earlier about the school’s cyber security being shit? Does this mean you can change all my grades to As?”

“You already get straight As!” he protests, but he’s smiling. Good.

They’re in middle of debating which of the Harry Potter movies is best when his phone rings, because Danny’s a nerd, and he is too but he’s never going to admit it. That’s why these conversations need to take place during sleepovers when they’re huddled together under the same blanket, obviously. Parents are idiots.

He frowns at the screen, because it’s close to two in the morning, but Lydia’s number is flashing across the screen. That’s weird. Lydia is his girlfriend, but she has strict rules about her sleep schedule. He and Danny share a concerned glance before he flips it open, answering it on speaker. “Hey, Lyds. Is everything okay?”

She sniffs, her breath coming out ragged, making it clear that no, everything is not okay. “Lydia?” Danny asks, eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”

“I need a ride,” she says quietly, voice choked out. “Something is – I can hear – please, I need you to pick me up and take me somewhere.”

Jackson blinks. “I – like, with a car? I can wake up Danny’s parents, but what’s going on?”

“No parents,” she says sharply, then ruins it with a long sniff. “Please. Just – just come get me.”

He blinks helplessly down at his phone, because how the hell is he supposed to do that? He can’t drive.

“Okay, we’re coming,” Danny says. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Lydia’s is way more than a twenty minute walk away. What is he saying?

“Thanks,” she hiccups, the word catching on another sob, then she hangs up.

Jackson raises an eyebrow, waiting, and Danny flicks him in the side of the head. “Come on, we can take the dirt bikes in the shed.”

“Your dad will be pissed,” Jackson warns already jumping out of bed to pull on some real clothes.

Danny shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, even though it totally does. “Lydia’s crying.”

Well. Yes. Okay, fair enough.

~

Boyd usually doesn’t mind living close to the woods, he thinks its kind of nice, even though he has to wake up early to catch the bus and there aren’t any kids in his neighborhood, just a bunch of weirdos who like living in this tucked back corner of the town. It’s slow, and quiet.

Usually.

Boyd is staring out the window, searching for whatever could have made that sound, like a wolf, but it can’t be a wolf. He’s never seen a wolf in this woods before. It’s so loud it had woken him up, even as his parents slept on, so maybe he dreamed it, maybe it wasn’t real.

But now that he is awake, he hears something else, a high pitched whistling sound, almost like it sounds when there’s a storm and the wind threatens to blow their whole house away.

Except, there’s no storm. He steps outside, and there’s not even a faint breeze, nothing at all to account for the strange sound that he can still hear.

It’s none of his business, it’s probably – okay, he has no idea what it is, but whatever it is doesn’t concern him, so it shouldn’t be his concern.

He calls himself ten kinds of idiot as he walks back inside and shoves his boots onto his feet.

~

Erica’s too keyed up to sleep, with all the new information in her head, and the low undercurrent of worry for whatever’s going on with Scott that sent Stiles running. She paces around her room for a bit, then tries to read some comics, but she can’t focus long enough to absorb anything. So she gets dressed, pulls her hair back, and crawls out her window. Maybe if she goes for a walk she’ll manage to tire herself out enough that she’ll actually manage to fall asleep, or at least quiet her mind enough that she doesn’t drive herself nuts.

The night air is cool, and the stars twinkly invitingly in the night sky. Everything is quiet, as usual, in their sleepy little town, which had more secrets than she ever thought it would. It’s all nice, and normal, and calming – up until she turns the corner to see Lydia Martin standing at the end of her driveway and sobbing.

What the hell?

She and Lydia aren’t friends, not even close, but they’re not exactly enemies either. Erica used to be jealous of her – still is jealous of her, if she’s completely honest with herself, but it doesn’t burn as hot or a brightly as it used to, not since Isaac pulled her into being friends with Scott and Stiles, not since she hasn’t felt so alone.

But friends or not, jealous or not, she can’t just stand there and watch her cry.

“Lydia!” she calls out, jogging across the street, “Lydia, are you okay?”

She looks up at her, face splotchy and swollen and her eyes an irritated red. “I – what are you doing here?”

“I was taking a walk,” she answers.

“It’s two in the morning!” Lydia sniffs, as if it’s any less odd to be standing around sobbing in the middle of night than it isto just go for a walk.

“Yes. Why are you crying?” What could she really have to cry about? Oh, unless something happened to her parents or something, being a rich, pretty girl doesn’t solve everything.

“I – nothing,” she tries, and Erica just stares at her. “You won’t believe me, you’ll just think I’m crazy.”

She snorts. “I’ve had a really strange night. Try me. I’ll believe anything right now.”

Lydia bites her bottom lip, looking at her hard and searching. Erica just raises an eyebrow. “I – I’m hearing things.”

Erica waits, and when nothing more is forthcoming she says, “Okay. I assume you hear lots of things all the time.”

She scowls, looking a little less devastated, and Erica beams. “Yes, obviously. I – I mean, I’m hearing. People. Or – people like. Things.” She waits, twisting the bottom of her shirt in her hands, but Erica only nods encouragingly. She saw her friend turn into a wolf in front of her eyes. This is nothing. Lydia relaxes and continues, “Something’s wrong, I think, they’re fighting, and they’re so loud, and I – I want to help, I have to go and, and, oh, I don’t know, but I have to go and do something, I can’t just keep hiding in my bedroom and covering my ears, hoping it all goes away!”

Well, shit. Maybe this is some sort of problem that Stiles could deal with? But he’s busy right now. She can’t let Lydia go on her own, and she can’t call Stiles to help, so she says, “Okay. Where are they? How are we going to get there?”

“We?” Lydia repeats.

“We,” Erica says firmly. “Can you tell what direction it’s coming from? Can we walk there? Or, I don’t know, I have a couple skateboards at my place if you can manage not to fall off.”

“I have a ride,” she says, looking over Erica’s shoulder. Then she corrects herself, “We have a ride.”

Erica doesn’t understand until she turns around to see Jackson Whittemore and Danny Mahealani driving up the street on dirt bikes.

Can tonight get any weirder?

~

It doesn’t take long for Stiles to pick up the sounds of something terrible happening in the middle of the preserve, which only worries him more. Then he realizes its coming from the direction of Hale house, and somehow that’s even more concerning.

He puts on an extra burst of speed and he doesn’t see his pack, but he smells them. He runs the long way around the Hale house to avoid whatever the hell is going on there and trots up behind his pack. They’re not bleeding, nobody looks injured, but they are all huddling behind a thick patch of trees from the frankly insane wind that’s whipping around them. It’s like a mini tornado, and really, how did it even get here? The only magic user they have is Alan, and maybe Peter on a good day.

Isaac, Scott, and Peter look over before the others, and he growls at them, eyes glowing red before he shifts into his human form, shoving on his borrowed sweatpants before snapping, “What’s going on?”

“Stiles!” Scott cries, grinning.

Peter says excitedly, “You managed the full alpha shift!”

His dad reaches out a hand, grabbing his arm and pulling him forward in a quick hug. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Stiles returns the hug before turning to them all and gesturing to the Hale house. “Seriously. What the hell? I thought you guys were going to wait for me to get back before trying to deal with the whole ghosts situation.”

“Oh, were we? Oops,” Peter says with mock innocence. Isaac pokes him in the ribs hard enough to make him wince, but the smile stays perfectly in place.

“At least tell me you know how to fix it,” he says.

Silence.

“Oh my god,” he mutters.

“The Martin spirits are helping us, and since you’re an alpha, you might be able to scare off the Hale ghosts,” Alan says. “They won’t try and hurt you. Probably. And you’re the only one of us strong enough to make it through the wind barrier.”

“Super,” he says unenthusiastically.

Worst case scenario, he can always turn into a wolf and run away. It’s nice to have options.

~

Lydia sits behind Jackson of course, and Erica behind Danny, who takes the new addition in stride even while Jackson’s eyebrows convey that some sort of explanation about any of this would be great right about now. She ignores him, instead wrapping her arms around his chest and saying, “I’ll tell you where to go.”

Jackson sighs with his whole body, but doesn’t argue, not even when they leave the street and go careening into the preserve. She’s appreciative of their transportation choice as they zip through the forest, Danny and Erica following right behind them.

“YOU DON’T BELONG!” her grandmother’s voice screams, coming from nowhere and everywhere.

“Not your home any longer,” says a woman’s voice that she doesn’t recognize.

Another woman cackles, “Aberrations, memories, doppelgangers. Be gone be gone be gone!”

At first, she’d thought they were talking to her. She’d thought her grandmother had come back from the dead to torment her, for reasons she couldn’t understand. But she was wrong.

She can hear them, she’s forced to hear them, but they’re not talking to her.

It’s not as much as a relief as she thought it would be.

“Here, stop here!” she yells, slapping Jackson in the chest.

He hits the brakes, sending up a spray of dirt, and Danny does the same. His face twists, “Do you hear that?”

She stares. “What?” She hadn’t told them why she needed to go here, only Erica knew about the voices in her head.

“That – it’s not whistling, exactly,” he frowns.

“We probably couldn’t hear it before because the bike engines,” Danny reasons. “Lydia, do you really not hear that?”

She can’t hear anything over the women screaming. Their taunts are mixed in with pained yelps. Whatever battle they’re fighting, they’re not winning. It doesn’t sound like they’re losing, either, but, it doesn’t sound good.

Erica steps forward, and Lydia reaches for her hand without thinking about it. She had barely payed any attention to the girl before, had considered her beneath her notice, but she’d gone to her when she was crying and didn’t think she was crazy, had followed her to the middle of the woods, all because she wanted to help her.

Considering Erica Reyes beneath her notice was clearly a mistake.

“Can you guys wait for us here?” she asks.

“Have you lost your mind? No,” Jackson scowls, and her shoulders tense. “Whatever dumb thing you’re doing, we’re doing it with you.”

She looks to Danny, who only raises an eyebrow, clearly in agreement with Jackson. “It’s – it’s going to be strange.”

“You called me at two in the morning to come get you and take you to the middle of nowhere for no reason, and now it sounds like the woods is whistling,” he says, “It’s already pretty fucking strange, Lyds.” 

Well, when he says it like that. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she says.

Jackson only rolls his eyes and grabs her free hand, intertwining their fingers. He then holds out his hand to Danny, who takes it with a grin he tries to bite down on. Lydia knows that he’d been worried that Jackson wouldn’t want to do things like have sleepovers and hold hands once everyone knew he was gay, which Lydia thought was one of Danny’s dumber moments. People have been making fun of Jackson and Danny by calling them boyfriends since they were eight, if it didn’t bother Jackson before, it wasn’t going to bother him now.

“To the sticking place?” Erica asks, smiling at her.

“Rotten, rotten, rotten, you are rotten and you rot all you touch!”

“I’ll tear you from this place if I have to tear myself apart to do it."

“OUT! OUT! OUT! YOU DO NOT BELONG!”

“Yes,” she says, swallowing past her fear as Erica takes the lead and they all walk farther into the woods. She squeezes each of their hands, forcing herself to hold her head high as they navigate the darkness. They’re all holding onto each other. They can’t get lost like this.

~

Boyd thinks he might have gotten himself lost.

He grew up playing in the preserve, his childhood was spent in these woods, and he’s never gotten lost, not really. He’s ended up places he didn’t meant to be, and taken longer to get back then he intended, but he was never lost, because he always knew, at least vaguely, how to get back home. It might take him a while, he might end up taking a few wrong turns, but he still had a good sense of where, exactly, he was.

For the first time, that isn’t true.

He’s been following the strange sound, like someone who’s the first to die in a horror movie, but he has to know, he has to figure out what it is. He’s never heard it before.

But it’s dark, and the light of the flashlight only extends a couple of feet in front of him, and he thinks he may have gotten turned around at some point. Except the sound isn’t getting softer, so he must be getting closer. Or maybe he isn’t, because it doesn’t sound louder either. Has he just been walking parallel to whatever it is this whole time? No, that can’t be right.

A twig snaps behind him and he turns, hands raised, either to defend himself, or at least protect his face. But it’s not a wild animal or anything, because that would make too much sense.

No, it’s four of his classmates, each of them looking just as startled to see him as he is to see them. “What are you doing here?”

“What are we doing here? What are you doing here?” Jackson demands. “Do you often go walking around the woods alone in the middle of the night?”

That seems rather hypocritical. “Do you?”

“Why are you here?” Erica asks, and he’s glad it’s dark, because he feels his whole face warm up. First Scott and Stiles, now Lydia, Jackson, and Danny? She’s gathering friends at the speed of light these days. Good. He’s happy for her.

He just wishes he could be one of those friends. Erica’s the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, and he’s always wished, just once, that she would look at him, that she would see him.

This isn’t how he was hoping that would happen.

“I. The noise,” he says, because she has to hear it too, they all do, that is not a normal sound that comes from a forest. “I’m looking for it.”

All of them turn to Lydia, who lets out a long breath and says, “Yeah, okay, it’s not like we can just leave him here.”

Boyd’s confused until Erica holds out her hand. “Come on,” she says, smiling, “We’re looking for it too.”

He should refuse. He should tell them to leave, and he should leave too, this was all ridiculous and insane from the beginning.

But Erica is smiling at him.

“Okay,” he says, placing his hand in hers.

“At least he was smart enough to bring a flashlight,” Danny says, and Jackson snorts.

Boyd cracks a grin when Erica giggles.

“Go to the left,” Lydia says, jerking her head in that direction. “We’re close.”

He has no idea how she can possibly know that, but he’s not about to argue with her about it. He holds the flashlight in front of them and leads them deeper into the woods.

~

The good news is neither the spirits nor the ghosts are trying to kill him.

The bad new is they’re not listening to him either.

The pure white Hale ghosts are battling the Martin spirits, who shine silver and seem solid and there in a way the Hales don’t. About half the house has collapsed, and Stiles is mostly worried about the other half collapsing on top of him while he’s inside it. Which won’t kill him, but will still hurt like all hell.

“Look, maybe we can talk about this?” he tries.

A Martin spirit screeches and jumps onto the ghost of Kevin Hale, who snarls, looking nothing like the man Stiles remembers.

He’s really grateful that Peter isn’t here. He knows his dad thinks it would have been helpful, and maybe it would have, if Peter had seen them before the ghosts got all twisted, but now – now, Stiles doesn’t think it will help at all. If anything, it’ll just dig the knife a little deeper.

“Guys, please,” he says plaintively.

The ghost of Talia throws what Stiles is pretty sure is Lydia’s grandmother out the window.

How is it even possible that fighting a couple dozen energy draining faeries was less annoying than this?

~

“The Hale house?” Danny mutters, not sure why Lydia has dragged them here, of all places. It looks worse than he remembers. As soon as he steps into the clearing, he’s blown of it with enough force that the only things that stops him from landing flat on his back is Jackson’s tight grip on his hand. He yanks him upright before he can fall, and Danny goes stumbling into his best friend’s side. “What the hell?”

Then there’s a dart of something bright among the wreckage. Like – a flashlight maybe? Are they no the only ones here? But more than that, everything in the clearing is moving wrong. It doesn’t many any sense. The whistling sound they heard really was wind, but it’s only windy in this one concentrated spot, that’s what had blown Danny back so harshly. But that doesn’t make any sense. That’s impossible.

The bright light gets bigger and comes through the window. Danny thinks maybe someone threw a flashlight, but the light is big, and silvery, and – standing up.

What.

Silver light in the shape of a young woman who, actually, looks a rather lot like Lydia, gets to her feet. A pale white arm reaches out of the window and grabs her by the throat, and the woman snarls, trying to pry the fingers off her windpipe.

“Grandma!” Lydia shouts, letting go of both Erica and Jackson’s hands to run forward.

“Don’t!” Danny yells, trying and failing to grab onto her. He braces himself to catch her when she’s bounced back, but she hits the solid wall of wind, and screams, in a way that he didn’t think she could, in a way that doesn’t sound human.

Lydia breaks through the barrier, running towards the house, and Erica bolts after her, dragging Boyd along with her. Jackson squeezes his hand, then they’re running, following Lydia passed the opening she managed to make by screaming, somehow.

~

Isaac doesn’t know what Stiles is doing, but he doesn’t think it’s very effective. Why did they have to go and cause this mess in the first place? Why couldn’t they have just waited for their alpha to get home like a normal pack, instead of having to go out of their way to stomp on a hornets’ nest?

They all need better hobbies.

There’s a sound that makes all the werewolves flinch, then there’s a half dozen heartbeats in his ears, and a handful of familiar smells.

“People are here,” Peter growls, moving to go towards the house.

Scott slaps a hand against is chest, frowning. “Wait – I think – I might be wrong, but–”

“Holy shit, it’s Lydia,” Isaac says, peaking around the tree. His eyes widen, “Oh, no, it’s Erica too! And Boyd, and Jackson, and Danny.”

“What?” Scott yanks Isaac back so he can get a better look. “What – how did they even get through the wind? How are they just walking through that? They are human, right?”

“Oops.”

Everyone stops and turns. Peter and Alan looks vaguely guilty, which is so very concerning.

“Oops?” John repeats.

Alan rubs the back of his neck. “It’s possible that awakening the Martin women might have also awakened some of Ms. Martin’s power earlier than recommended. Which is rather useful for us, but I imagine quite confusing to her.” He peaks around the tree. “She does seem to be handling it rather though, it looks like the early awakening wasn’t too damaging.

“Oh my god,” Melissa says. “We have to help her!”

“Well, I still can’t get past the wind barrier. Can you?” Her eyes narrow, so Isaac jabs his fingers into Peter’s ribs again. “Ow! Stop that!”

“Oops,” he says, deadpan, and John does a poor job of turning his laugh into a cough.

~

Stiles can tell the moment his classmates get through the wind barrier. He abandons the ghosts and goes outside, where the wind is just as powerful as before, except that it’s curling around and away from his classmates, which doesn’t make any sense. “Erica? What are you doing here?”

She seems surprised to see him, so she didn’t follow him here. “Stiles! I don’t know, I just came with Lydia.”

He saw her like an hour ago. How did she go from sitting in her bedroom to somehow making friends with Lydia to following her out into the preserve in that amount of time?

“You have to go,” he says firmly, “before you get hurt.” Lydia is staring at the house, and she stumbles forward, trying to walk past him. He puts his arm out to stop her, and she turns, snarling.

Her eyes are pure black.

“Fuck,” he says, scrambling back. “What the hell, Lydia?”

“They need my help,” she says, her voice suddenly gaining a strange quality to it. “I have to help them. Don’t you want me to help them? They scream in your name, Alpha.”

Erica’s head snaps in his direction, but Stiles shakes his head. He’s never told Lydia anything. He doesn’t think she knows anything either, or at least she didn’t before she somehow managed to unlock her banshee powers. “It’s dangerous.”

“For you,” she answers, derisive and haughty, and it makes him want to smile and roll his eyes at the same time.

Jackson comes forward and grabs his girlfriend’s arm, puller her around to face him. “Lyds, what’s going on?” He freezes when he sees her eyes, but to his credit, he just gently tilts her face from side to side and says shakily, “Lydia. I think something’s wrong.”

“Yes,” she agrees, stepping away from him. “I’m going to fix it.”

She walks toward the house, and this time Jackson is the one that Stiles has to stop. “Stilinksi, I swear to god I’ll rip both your arms off.”

“She can do this, don’t worry,” he says. “She’s a banshee. Death magic is her specialty.”

Danny raises a hand. “Hi, excuse me, but what the fuck Stiles? Seriously. Just. What the fuck is going on?”

He looks to Erica, who just shrugs and says, “You might as well tell them. They’re going to find out anyway, since you can’t keep it a secret from Lydia anymore, and she’ll tell Jackson, who will tell Danny. At least if they hear if from you, you know they’re hearing the right information, instead of a dangerous game of telephone.”

Well, she’s not wrong.

Uhg, this sucks. He’s going to have told more people about the supernatural in the span of a few hours than he ever has in his life.

“Okay, well first off, I’m a werewolf,” he says.

“Bullshit,” Jackson scowls at the same time Boyd blurts, “You mean all the stories about the Hale preserve are true?”

Stiles points a finger at Jackson, “Rude, I can turn into a wolf to prove it to you if you want,” then shifts it to Boyd and says, “What stories? But also, probably, yeah.”

~

Lydia feels like something’s unlocked in her brain, like she’s spent her whole life with a word on tip of her tongue, and now she finally knows what it is.

Banshee.

There’s so much information inside her head, and suddenly more voices, but she silences them, pushing them down and out of the way. They’re not important. This is.

She steps inside the Hale house, and instantly silver spirits surround her.

These are her ancestors.

“My darling Ariel,” her grandmother murmurs, this voice out loud rather than in her head. Her face different in youth, but Lydia knows it’s her.

More of them swarm around her, shielding her and trying to get close to her. The ghosts are rushing at them, trying to make it through, but the spirits don’t falter, they don’t break ranks. They make it impossible for the ghosts to get at her, to touch or hurt her. “Scream,” they say, lovingly, cool hands brushing down her arms and barely-there lips against her forehead. “Send them away, they don’t belong, they are echoes. Scream, darling, youngest Martin daughter, scream, Banshee.”

Lydia opens her mouth.

Her ancestors break apart, making a clear path, and the ghosts rush forward.

She screams.

It’s not a sound, not really, it’s a kind of vibration, it’s something that comes from her soul rather than her throat. She screams, and the ghosts charging at her evaporate in the air, as if they were nothing more than smoke.

“Good girl, clever girl,” they say as she stops, chest heaving and tears pricking her eyes. “So well, you did so well, we’re so proud of you.”

The spirits are fading too, going back to rest now that their job is complete, but tears spill down Lydia’s cheeks before she can stop them. “Wait, no come back, don’t leave me alone! Please!”

Her grandmother smiles and blows her a kiss. “You don’t look alone to me.”

Lydia doesn’t understand until she turns, looking out of the huge hole in the wall to the outside.

Jackson and Danny seem like they’re two seconds away from jumping in after her, Erica is wringing her hands together in worry, and Boyd’s eyebrows are pushed together. More people have come from somewhere, Scott and Isaac, and Peter Hale, and Scott’s mom, and the sheriff, all of them looking at her in a mix of awe and concern, and not a hint of fear, even with what they must have just seen her do.

Stiles is standing in front all of them, and he should look ridiculous, shirtless and wearing sweatpants that are a couple inches too short, but he doesn’t.

There’s a lot of new things swimming around her head, but this one stands out sharper than the rest of them. “Alpha.”

His eyes glow red. She wonders if she should feel afraid, but she doesn’t, she feels like she’s coming home, somehow.

“If you want,” he answers, holding out his hand.

She’d meant it as a statement, not a question, but – she does want, she thinks. Her ancestors succumbed to the death whispering in their ears, they died crazy and alone.

If she has a pack, she’ll never be alone.

“Yes,” she says, stepping out of the house and taking his hand.

~

When everyone finally disperses, the kids that don’t live with them going back to their homes and the pack going to the Stilinki’s, John feels like he needs a drink. “Really? All of them?”

“Lydia and Erica are non negotiable,” Stiles says, arms crossed.

Peter shrugs. “Technically, they’re all non negotiable. You’re the alpha.”

Shit. Right. “I’m not – I don’t,” he stops, frustrated. This is a supernatural matter. That means he can offer opinions, but he doesn’t get to make any decisions. “I just worry, is all.”

“They ran to the scary supernatural thing, not away from it,” Isaac points out. “That’s a pretty good indicator.”

Okay, sure. But. “Jackson’s an asshole.”

Scott snorts while Melissa pretends to be scandalized and Peter laughs outright. Stiles sighs. “Yeah. But – he’s not a bad person. He’s not, I don’t know, going to grow up to be a psychopath or a racist or whatever. He’s just kind of a jerk. And if we don’t let jerks into the pack, both Peter and Isaac are out.”

They grin at each other and Peter ruffles Isaac’s hair. “Stiles has a point.”

Of course he does. They need a bigger pack, and Stiles has wanted Lydia in his pack since he was a little kid, so none of this is a bad thing really. It’s just a lot, all at once. “Are you going to bite any of them?”

Stiles looks to Alan, who nods. “Erica should take to the bite, and I think it will help her. But, Stiles, if she does,” he stops, rubs the back of his neck and continues, “just know, I wouldn’t recommend, if you do bite her, that you – just, I know you like her, and she likes you, but. Uh.”

“It’s too much,” Peter says bluntly, “to be her sire and her alpha and then her boyfriend on top of it, at least at first, at least now. If you bite her, you have to put a break on the rest of it, and be her alpha first, before anything else.”

There’s a moment where Stiles looks heartbroken, but then he wipes it away, shoving it down where the rest of his disappointments go. “If I put wanting to kiss her over her being happy and healthy, then I’m not fit to be her boyfriend or her alpha. I understand.”

John’s heart aches, all at once, because this is what he’s so worried about Stiles missing out on when he has to deal with difficult adult problems and make adult decisions. John likes Erica. She’s a sweet kid who obviously like his son, and she and Stiles would have been good together, and they were clearly heading in that direction. He’d kind of already half expected that Erica was going to be his son’s first girlfriend, that they were both going to get to have that normal, blossoming teenage love that all other teenagers get to have, even though one of them has to deal with chronic illness and the other is an alpha.

But now they don’t.

And it’s better, of course it is, because Erica will be pack and she’ll be healthy, and she’ll still have Stiles, of course, she’ll be family. But it’s not the same, not normal, not what he was hoping either of them would get to have.

“Diane will be happy, at least,” Peter says, clapping John on the shoulder like he knows exactly what he’s thinking.

“Oh, shit,” Stiles says, “right, yes, she still owes me an explanation actually. I think we’re allies or something now?”

“We were already allies,” Alan says, confused.

He shrugs, “Super good allies, or whatever. I saved her life by transforming into my alpha wolf form and her betas started acting weird.”

Peter chokes and Alan pales. John frowns. “What? What’s the matter? Stiles saves people’s lives all the time, why is this any different?”

“Because Diane isn’t any person, she’s a changeling, and if Stiles saved her life, like really saved her life, not just – was at the right place at the right time kind of thing, then that creates a life bond between them,” Alan says, like that’s supposed to make sense. He must notice his look, because he clarifies, “It’s, well, it’s basically like Stiles said. We don’t have to ask permission to enter her territory and things like that, and that works both ways. Other things too, but mostly – we are very, very good allies now.”

“Hold up!” Stiles glares. “Diane is a changeling? She’s a fae, and no one told me?”

“Of course not, fae can’t be werewolves, and Diane is a born werewolf,” Peter says. “Rumor says – and in this case, rumor is true – that she wasn’t the child the fae left behind. She’s the child they took.”

Melissa blinks, “But – but isn’t the story that they keep the child forever? So she escaped?”

“Yes and no,” Alan sighs, “Most children live in the court forever. But Diane didn’t escape, the queen let her go.”

Stiles groans and rubs a hand over his face. “That’s what the vampires were talking about. Diane knows an entrance to the court, and they wanted her to give it to them, but she refused.”

“Good,” Peter says shortly, “better a thousand hungry, desperate vampires than one pissed off faerie queen.”

John rubs a hand over his eyes. His life is so strange.

~

Lydia is sitting on a towel laid out on the warm sand, soaking up the sun. If someone had told her two weeks ago that she was going to take a four hour car ride to go to the beach for Stiles’s birthday party, she would have laughed in their face.

But, well, things change.

“Shouldn’t you put on sunscreen?” she asks Stiles, nudging him with her foot. “Although, I have to say, you could use a tan.”

“I can’t tan,” he says, popping open one eye to smile at her. “That’s skin damage, so my body just heals. I’m cursed to remain this exact same shade of pasty white forever.”

Uhg, she’s more and more glad she can’t be turned. Spray tans are fine, but so much work.

“When – how are you going to,” she stops, frustrated, wanting to know but not sure if it’s something she’s supposed to ask about.

Stiles says they’re pack, but it’s not that easy. Erica and Isaac have a comfort and ease with the rest of the pack that she, Jackson, Danny, and Boyd just don’t. They’re too new, it’s all too strange. But they’re trying.

“You can ask my anything,” he says patiently. “I’m an alpha, not a dictator.”

“Peter’s your second, right?” she asks, because she’s smart, and it’s obvious. Scott is Stiles’s best friend, but Peter is his second.

He nods. “Yep. Alan is our emissary, and after Peter,” he pauses, and now he looks awkward.

“What?” she asks, nudging him with her foot again.

“This is going to sound creepy,” he says, like anything can ever beat helping her grandmother get rid of a bunch of ghosts from the place they were burned alive in, “but I’ve wanted you to be part of my pack for a long time. I’ve wanted you to – to help lead my pack.”

“Really?” she asks, unable to help the curl of pleasure in her chest. She’d worried it was pity. That he saw no one else would want her, but that she needed someone if she was going to survive, and he’d decided to take her on because she was too pathetic to leave alone. But if he wants her, if he needs her, well – that’s different.

He nods, pulling his legs to his chest so he can rest his chin on his knees. “Look, I’m not – I don’t really pay attention to tradition and rules and all that stuff. Nothing about me is traditional, obviously. I’m not asking you to date me or be with me or anything, you’re gorgeous and perfect, but also you scare me, in ways that have nothing to do with your banshee powers. But there is a traditional role that I want you to fill, in a non traditional manner.”

“Okay,” she says, trying to keep from smiling.

“It’s Alpha’s Mate,” he says, all in rush, “but I’m way too young to think about getting married, or any of that, and even when I do I think it’s all kind of crap anyway. You’re clever and good with people and just plain smart. I’ve wanted you for that role ever since I learned what it was, but I don’t mean any of the love or marriage stuff or whatever.”

He leans forward, nervous, trying to gauge her reaction. She beams, unabashed, because – this, she can do. It has nothing to do with her being a banshee, with her being popular or pretty. It’s just her, just who she is, and Stiles wants that to help take care of his pack.

Their pack.

“I accept,” she says. “Who will teach me, Peter or Alan? Or someone else? What about this Diane person you helped, can we ask her to get me a teacher? I want to do this right.”

Stiles grins, leaning forward to flick her sunglasses so they fall down onto her nose. She slaps his hand away, but he’s laughing, warm and relieved. “Don’t worry, Lydia. You’ll do great. I know it.”

What would have been a really nice moment is ruined when volleyball comes sailing out of the sky, and Lydia means to warn him, but Stiles lifts his hand and catches it without even having to look away from her.

“Oi, Stiles!” Jackson calls out, “Are you going play with us or not? The teams are uneven.”

“Why don’t you ask your girlfriend,” Stiles complains, but he’s smiling as he stands up.

Jackson scoffs. “She’s not going to play, she just got her nails done, didn’t you notice?”

Stiles blinks, looking down at her. She holds up her perfectly manicured hands. “He’s right.” It’s dumb, but the fact that Jackson pays attention to her and knows her so well goes a long way to make up for all the stupid things he says.

“Stiles is on my team,” Danny says.

Jackson glares, “No, no way. You already have Scott and Isaac on your team. Even number of wolves for each. The only reason this is a little bit fair is because Erica’s better at volleyball than the rest of us.”

“So you get the best volleyball player and our alpha?” Danny puts his hands on hips. “How is that fair?

Erica looks over at Stiles, as if letting them have even volleyball teams is a good reason to bite her right now instead of waiting for the new moon. It’s mostly joking, and Stiles just rolls his eyes. “Make Peter play then.”

“Peter’s busy,” he says from where he’s stretched out on a beach chair, sunglasses on and a drink of something foul smelling and purple in his hand. Melissa, John, and Alan are equally occupied, although their drinks look normal, and not whatever Peter’s drinking.

“Where’s Boyd?” Stiles asks, twisting around.

“Collecting sea glass,” Lydia answers, pointing down the beach in the direction he’d been headed. “He’ll be back, don’t worry.”

“See?” he says, “You’re already good at this.”

She flushes as Stiles gets up to join the game, and thinks that, just maybe, everything is going to be okay.

Maybe it will be more than okay.

Lydia thinks that maybe all of them, together, are going to be something spectacular.

Chapter Text

They have a lot of money. They have more money than anyone could possibly need, because it’s not just meant for two people, it’s meant for the whole pack. So she never checks the bank statements. What’s the point? It’s not like they’re going to run out.

Which is why it takes her five years to notice that they don’t have any more charges from the Beacon Hills hospital.

“Oh,” Laura says, tears pricking at her eyes. “Oh.”

There’s the crash of something dropping in the next room, and then her brother is standing there, eyebrows pushed together and scowling. “What’s wrong?”

She opens her mouth, tries to think of how to say their uncle died all alone and no one even thought to call them, maybe wasn’t able to call them. She clears her throat. “I have to go home. I won’t be long.”

“We are home,” Derek says.

No. No, they’re not, they haven’t been home in years.  Not really. No matter how much she tries, Laura knows she’s not a home, no matter what color her eyes are. “I’m going back to Beacon Hills.”

He flinches and steps back like she’s struck him, and she’s sorry, she’s tried so hard to let Derek forget, to help Derek move on, to keep her brother in the here and now and not with the screaming, burning, dead members of their family. She hasn’t been very good at that either. She’d known she failed when he came home with his back burned, blistering, and smelling of mountain ash, with their family’s triskelion inked into his skin.

“I’ll go by myself,” she says, because someone has to. She needs to see if anyone thought to bury her uncle in their family plot, and if not, she has to get him moved. She hopes they didn’t burn him. Before the fire she hadn’t cared one way or another about cremation, but after - well, it just seems cruel, somehow. Considering.

Derek shakes his head and throws his shoulders back. “No. If you’re going, then I’m going with you.”

She wants to argue, because she just knows that going back there is going to traumatize him all over again. But she’s selfish, and she doesn’t want to go alone. “Okay.”

~

Stiles doesn’t care about being popular. He doesn’t have the time for it. He’s the alpha of Beacon Hills, and he has to build the kind of connections and reputation that other alphas spend decades cultivating. Thank god for Diane. She introduces him to all the right people, but he still has to do the work himself. He goes on a lot of trips during summer vacation, pushing selkies back into the ocean and dragging miscreant wolves back into their packs. Adults are always so embarrassed when he comes to collect them that alphas start using him as a threat to miscreant betas, because no one wants to be scolded and rounded up by a teenager.

The point is, he has more important things to focus on than what the other kids in his classes think about him. Like what the surrounding alphas think of him.

Unfortunately for him, his pack cares. A lot.

Well, Lydia and Jackson care, and they just bully the rest of them into it.

“We’re going to Michael’s party on Saturday,” Jackson announces, walking into the Stilinski’s house like it’s his own. Which it is. That’s what being pack means, after all.

Scott grumbles, “I don’t get why we have to go to these, or why you get so excited. We can’t even get drunk.”

“You can’t,” Lydia corrects, bouncing down on the couch between Danny and Erica. “I can.”

Danny and Lydia high five. As the only teenage non werewolves in the pack, they lord their ability to get wasted over the rest of them. He’d been a little hesitant to give Jackson the bite, worried it would just make him into more of douchebag like it did to Isaac for a little while, but instead it had finally mellowed him out. Jackson had just wanted to be sure he belonged somewhere. When Stiles bit him, he’d given him a place he’d belong forever. Even though Stiles had told him a thousand times that he was apart of the pack no matter what, bite or no bite, becoming a werewolf had been the thing that had finally settled him.

“I like dressing up for parties,” Erica says. She and Lydia are the undisputed queen bees of the school, gorgeous and smart and absolutely terrifying. Boyd and Jackson are good friends in addition to being packmates because they end up not only spending pack time together, but a significant amount of their free time together too, since their girlfriends are best friends with each other.

“I’m busy,” Stiles says, mostly to see Lydia turn and glare at him.

She says, “You’ve missed the last two parties, you have to go to this one. It’s not up for discussion.”

“I’m busy,” he repeats, and she throws a couch cushion at his head. He doesn’t try to dodge or stop it, just let it hit him in the face. Scott laughs, which had been the whole point. “I’m in charge here you know.”

“Whatever,” Lydia rolls her eyes. “You’re not that busy that you can’t show up for a couple hours. I spend more time managing your reputation than I do managing the pack.”

That’s a blatant lie. “Am I allowed to dress myself this time?”

“No,” half his pack says simultaneously, and this is a little insulting.

Danny says, “I’ll come over and dress you before you go. Otherwise you’ll show up in a hoodie.”

“I like hoodies!” he protests.

“You have too many,” Jackson sniffs. “And  you wear them too often. We keep throwing them out. How do you have so many?”

“Money can be exchanged for goods and services,” he says. Jackson’s almost worse than Peter, who pretty much always looks like he just stepped off the runway. He spends more time in front of the mirror than even Lydia does.

He actually doesn’t mind letting his pack play dress up with him, he just likes giving them a hard time. It makes them happy, so it makes him happy. Although he wishes Danny was a little less partial to skinny jeans, he can barely breathe in those things.

~

“Are you sure about this?” John can’t help but ask, not for the first time.

Peter rolls his eyes. “It’s a little late if I’m not.”

He has a point. John glances around at the construction crew, which is made up entirely of werewolves and pack humans. It at least cuts down on the need for forklifts. “It’s not bothering you having all these foreign wolves here? The kids are all twitchy. Except Stiles.”

“Letting some of the neighboring packs chip in to help rebuild is almost as good sending Stiles to fight another war in our name,” he points out. “Besides, that’s just because they’re young. I’m in my territory, and everyone is here by the express invitation of my alpha. I have nothing to be twitchy about.”

That all sounds reasonable and everything, but John knows Peter too well for that. “You would have preferred it if just us and a human construction crew took care of it.”

He lets out a breath and crosses his arms. John’s just about resigned himself to aloof silence when he says, “Yes. This isn’t normal, you know, having other wolves around and being friendly with everyone, all this blurring the lines between propriety.”

“Is it a bad thing?” he asks.

Peter shakes his head, then shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s – it’s different than it’s always been. Diane and Stiles aren’t like any other alpha that’s come before them, and they’re drawing us all together instead of keeping us apart. Which isn’t bad. Just because something is different doesn’t mean it’s bad. But it does mean it’s different.”

This is the only pack he’s ever known. He has nothing to compare it to, so he just places a hand on Peter’s shoulder without offering anything else. Someone has to know the value of silence in this pack, and lord knows it’s not going to be his son.

~

“There’s been some strange movements in California,” her grandfather says, standing with a map spread out before him. Allison doesn’t like the way he’s standing at the head of the table. She doesn’t like the way her aunt is letting him stand at the end of the table.

Soldiers should speak when spoken to and offer opinions when asked. They shouldn’t be standing at the head of anything.

“And?” she asks.

Her aunt sends her a warning glance, but she ignores it. Kate is the head of the Argent family, and Gerard isn’t. Gerard is a man. Allison outranks every man in this room. Her three year old cousin outranks every man in this room, but Allison outranks every woman in this room too.

Except one.

Allison doesn’t agree with the way Kate runs this family, but there’s nothing she can do about it, not really. Allison leads them in fights, she helps them plan strategy, and she commands her cousins and other hunters. But she’s only eighteen, and no matter what she does or how well she fights and leads them, her aunt will always outrank her.

Her mother places a hand against the center of her back. She married into this family, but she’s still a woman. As Kate’s sister-in-law, as the mother of the second in line, she holds a high rank within this family, even if she’s not an Argent by blood.

Apparently every hunter family for a hundred miles tried to arrange a marriage with her father, knowing that marrying him meant having power in the Argent clan. They’d sent plenty of men to Kate too, but she’d rejected all of them.

“Wolves don’t move into each other’s territory like this,” Gerard says, not just to her but to all of the assembled women. He at least speaks to them properly. Most of the time. “It’s new. Abnormal. We should investigate.”

“Is going to Beacon Hills wise?” her great aunt Marlene asks. “They must hate hunters, considering what happened to their old pack. Besides, I’ve heard rumors that they have a powerful alpha, which means he’s a powerful enemy to make. We have more than enough of those as it is.”

Allison remembers hearing about the old Beacon Hills pack. She was still a kid, and her parents had only just told her about the supernatural world and their role in it.

Everyone heard about what happened to the Hale pack.

Some insane, rogue hunter trapped them all in their home and burned them alive. They’d never found out who did it.

“We’ll just look into it,” Kate says firmly. “We’ll go slow. Me, my brother and his family, and,” her eyes flick across the soldiers, “David and Charles.”

“Do I have to enroll in the local high school again?” she asks, resigned. She skipped a grade and then took extra classes so she could graduate when she was sixteen. Not that it’s done her much good. She always spends at least a couples of weeks pretending to care about math.

Kate grins as there’s a ripple of laughter across the room. That’s definitely a yes.

~

Melissa hopes they don’t turn another wolf anytime soon. Not because she doesn’t want the pack to expand, or because she has a problem with Stiles biting more teenagers, even if some more adults in the pack would be nice.

She just really likes being with the pack on the full moons. A newly turned wolf means the humans get banned until Stiles is sure no one will get hurt, and which is fair and logical and makes sense, she just doesn’t want to give it all up quite yet.

Isaac is helping her make sandwiches, the least antsy and most in control of the betas, besides Peter. Erica tends to avoid them all, because she gets, well, bitchy, to be totally honest. Which, Melissa’s a big girl, she can handle a little teenage attitude. But Erica is always so upset with herself after she’s calmed down that Melissa doesn’t press anymore, letting the girl hide away with Lydia or Boyd or Stiles, pushing herself towards the people who know how to handle her and away from the people she’s worried about hurting.

“You and your sandwiches,” Peter teases, leaning against the doorframe. “You’re really ruining my chance to be a provider.”

She doesn’t blush through years of practice. Peter’s always teasing, either her or John or Alan, or all them together, with his ridiculous grin and his eyes.

One positive of not being allowed on full moons was that the three of them would get together, drink, and lament about things like the shape of Peter’s hands. He’s so pretty. And good with their kids, and so good with Stiles, the exact right amount of sarcastic, guiding hand and deferential beta.

It’s just not fair that he’s pretty too. At least Alan and John get to suffer with her.

“Some of us prefer our food not to be freshly killed,” she sniffs. That’s not strictly true, John’s an old hand at gutting and cleaning animals, and all the wolves have brought home game more than once. But there’s that, and then there’s her son proudly dropping a bloody rabbit at her feet, more like a cat than a wolf.

That had been a horrifying moment when she wasn’t sure if Scott expected her to eat it raw. But no, he’d used his claws to cut it up and put it on a skewer for her to roast over the fire. Still, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are less traumatic for everyone all around.

Peter snorts, derisive, which is at odds with him scooping two of the sandwiches into his hands. He stuffs a whole sandwich in his mouth, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, before winking at her and walking away.

“I feel dirty,” Isaac announces, “I’m far too young to be exposed to these types of things.”

Her eyes narrow. “I’ll ground you,” she threatens. She’s not his alpha, but she is his mom. She can do that.

“Sure you will,” he answers, but he does kiss her on the cheek, so she supposes it’s fine.

~

Danny loves full moons.

He’s learning some tricks from Alan now, and he even gets to go on some of the monster hunting trips, but there was a period of time after Jackson got turned that he was the only normal human in the pack who wasn’t someone’s parent. He knows he could have it if he wanted it, that Stiles would turn him if he asked, but – he doesn’t want it. He wants the pack, but the werewolf thing he can take or leave. Besides, he actually gets along with his parents, so he wouldn’t want to do it without telling them, and that’s going to have to wait until he’s eighteen, and he can just move out. He’ll either move in with Stiles or Peter, he’s not picky, but he just knows he’s not going to want to be under the same roof as his parents once they know. They tend to worry. He loves them, but having them constantly asking after him will drive him up the wall.

Because no matter how upset they get, he’s pack, and he’s never going to be anything else. And full moons remind him of that like nothing else.

They drive out to a clearing in the preserve, and if Danny stares hard enough he can catch glimpses of them in the trees, their wolf pack members keeping pace with the car and watching over them.

There are a lot of foreign wolves in the preserve tonight, but Danny isn’t worried. They’re all their allies, and Stiles already told them which parts of the preserve are off limits tonoght. The wolves know there isn’t any real danger, but that’s doesn’t matter, because their instincts won’t let them stray too far from the humans if they go into the woods with them.

On the full moon, they’re more wolf than any other time, and the wolf inside of them knows that the humans are pack, that they don’t have the same strength and resilience as the werewolves do, so they circle them all night, making sure nothing is stupid enough to go after them.

Danny had once asked Jackson if it was annoying, having to stay close to them during the full moon. He’d shaken his head and said, “No. I like it when you’re there. When everyone’s together – it – it feels like family. Of course we want to keep you safe.”

Family used to be such a hard word for Jackson, but now he says it easily.

Danny loves his pack.

~

They don’t arrive on the night of the full moon, because that’s just asking for trouble, but they do move into an empty house a couple of days later. She leaves the guys to unpack, because hello, she’s too important to do things like put her clothes in the closet.

That’s very untrue, even Kate unpacks on her own things, although that’s mostly because she’s a control freak. But her dad loves her, so he’ll let her get away without unpacking so she can go explore. She loves walking around each new place they visit, getting to know the different shops and meeting the people. Her mother describes it as reconnaissance, but honestly, Allison just likes being somewhere new.

Clearly she should be paying more attention to her surrounding, and less on her thoughts, because she walks right into someone, and it’s almost like walking into a warm brick wall. Large hands cradle her elbows to stop her from stumbling, and then she’s looking right into soft brown eyes. “Hi.”

“Hi,” says the cutest boy she’s ever seen in her whole life. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” she answers, not moving away from him. In fact, she takes half a step closer, so they’re chest to chest. “It was an accident. But if you’d like to make it up to me, I could really go for some lunch.”

His eyes drop down, but they don’t go lower than her mouth, and she’s almost impressed. He has a perfect view down her shirt right now. “I know a place. I’m Scott.”

“Alison,” she says, smiling in a way that she hopes conveys she’s imaging him naked.

She hopes her dad didn’t put her unicorn sheets on her bed. That’ll be really embarrassing when she has Scott spread out over them later.

~

Laura thought it would have changed. She expected it to be different, she expected Beacon Hills to have completely transformed in her family’s absence. But it hasn’t. It’s still the same, down to her favorite coffee shop on the corner.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t check in with the alpha here?” Derek asks, shoulders hunched. “Surely there is one.”

It’s not quite a reproach, but Laura flashes her eyes at him anyway. She knows he’s right, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She should have reached out to the neighboring alphas to find out who had taken control of her land. Diane would know if no one else, but her mother had never like her, and it feels like some sort of betrayal to go to her for information. Derek understands that, she knows he does, but he’s irritated she didn’t reach out to anyone at all. Territory lines are the one thing that all wolves share freely with each other. There’s nothing anyone wants less than an unnecessary territory war just because someone got off on the wrong exit. Some alphas are more permissible of wolves wandering into their territory than others.  Mom hadn’t ever started a fight over it, but she’d also insisted lost wolves pack it up and move on.

Well, except for that sheriff’s kid, but Laura knows that’s just because her expected him to be pack eventually. He couldn’t survive alone forever, and unless he moved out of Beacon Hills, he’d join them one day. So either he would become one of them, or he would leave, and either way Mom would have been satisfied.

She wonders if he’s still here. A new alpha would be stupid to let an omega exist on their land. If he’s still here, he’s probably been forced to join the new pack.

“We could ask them,” Derek says, and she blinks. He jerks his chin over her shoulder, and she turns to see a group of strong, broad shouldered women staring at them from the coffee counter. She must have been really deep in her thoughts not to notice the scent of wolf on them.

Laura smiles and raises her hand in greeting. They sniff and turn away from her, even though they’re acting plenty friendly to the tan barista who’s handing them several carafes of piping hot coffee. One of the women leans over, and Laura focuses just in time to hear her whisper, “Those wolves aren’t with us. Tell your alpha.”

Derek shoots her a bitchy look, which means he totally heard that too. Great.

“Visitors?” he asks, looking over them and smiling. “Maybe they’re lost. Or they’re here to help with the building. You know he called in a lot of favors to help.”

The barista isn’t a werewolf, but he clearly knows about them, and seems to know that they can hear him. One of the other women shakes her head, picks up the coffee, and says simply, “No.”

The barista frowns. Laura grabs the back of Derek’s jacket and drags him out of the coffee shop.

He’s silent until they get outside, slipping out her grip and scowling. “What was that for? They didn’t sound mad, or like they wanted to challenge us or anything. The boy clearly knows the alpha, just go in and say hi.”

“You go in and say hi,” she snaps, mind still spinning. “Tell me that’s not all you got out of that.”

He crosses his arms. “No, it also proved that you’re insane.”

She wishes they weren’t in public. She’d pick him up by the back of his neck and shake him like a puppy. “No. Something else.”

They’d said your alpha, not our alpha. So they’re not part of whatever pack is here, and the boy hadn’t seemed surprised or concerned to see strange wolves in his territory, or particularly concerned about informing his alpha. So his alpha is either someone who encourages the kind of casual border crossing most wolves hate, or is so powerful that they don’t care if some wolves try and encroach on their territory because they know they’ll be able to take care of them if they have to.

Or both.

“I think it’s Diane,” she says grimly, heading back towards the car.

“What’s Diane?” he asks, trailing after her. “Are you talking about that crazy alpha that Mom used to go visit in the summer? That’s not so bad, right? I know Mom thought she was a little weird, but-”

“Mom hated her,” she says, throwing herself into the driver’s side of the Camaro.

Derek sighs, but slides into the passenger seat. “I don’t think she hated her. Mom didn’t hate anyone.”

That’s - well, that’s probably true. “Why did it have to be her?”

“It’s good that it’s her,” Derek says firmly. “She knows us. Maybe she won’t be too mad that we’re here.” He pauses, then adds softly, “Maybe she was the one who took care of Uncle Peter. That’s good, right? She would have known the right things to say.”

Laura doesn’t answer, shoving her sunglasses over her eyes and peeling out of the parking lot so her tires screech against the pavement.

She was so worried about Derek not being ready to come back that she hadn’t considered what being back in Beacon Hills would do to her.

It was her home, and it was supposed to be hers one day. But it’s not now, and maybe she’s entertained a few fantasies late at night, of coming home. She’s not bad in a fight, and sure her pack is small, just her and Derek, but she’s still strong, she’s still a Hale. Maybe the alpha who took her birthright would be someone small or young or weak, someone she could beat without having to kill. She could take it back, take Beacon Hills back. Derek won’t see their family’s murderer in every shadow, he barely even has nightmares anymore, surely he’s almost ready to go home. That had been the dark dream she’s kept tucked in her chest these past few years. Her brother, no longer too broken to go home, and her, storming back into Beacon Hills triumphant, able and willing to wrest the mantle of Beacon Hills Alpha away from whoever had been foolish enough to claim it for themselves.

But this isn’t a young, inexperienced alpha. This is Alpha Diane Hernandez. She runs the largest pack on the West coast, possibly in the whole country. Last she checked, her pack numbers ran into the hundreds, and she has at least three alphas who answer to her and control her massive territory in her name. Even if Diane herself isn’t in Beacon Hills, although by the barrister’s conversation it sounds likes she is, she’ll certainly come running if Laura tries to usurp her.

Coming home was always a pipe dream anyway.

~

Stiles is hunched over the potions ingredient list the other alphas had sent over. The preserve grows extremely potent magical plants, and it seems a waste just to let them run wild and uncultivated when so many people need them.

That said, this list is so long.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and types out: guys, what the fuck.

Starting a group chat for all the alphas he’s friends with is the best idea he’s ever had. There’s an email group for official things, like the newsletter that Lydia sends out, and that goes to literally every alpha who’s address they could get their hands on. But the group chat is the best.

Ignore all the things that we can grow in the oceans, Lisa responds. The siren queen has agreed to grow things for us as long as we keep acting as her security detail on the land.

Mermaids, it turns out, just want to eat cheeseburgers without having to worry about being put in a circus tank, or laboratory, or eaten. Hanging out with a bunch of scary werewolves helps with that. Also, Lisa was crazy to think they were even trying to invade in the first place, what kind of merpeople could control land anyway? Why would they want to? He wishes every dispute he’d mediated had been that easy to solve.

Is your computer boy going to make a website so we can keep track of all this stuff? Taika asks. Otherwise this is going to be impossible.

His name is Danny, he shoots back, even though he knows Taika already knows that. He likes to play tough, but he thinks Stiles’s how teenage pack is adorable. He once made the mistake of telling Lydia that though. Poor guy.

Everyone starts typing out organizational ideas, and they’re still debating about whether this whole thing should be a barter system, a money based one, or a little of both. Stiles is of the opinion that as long no one is ruining anyone else’s ecosystem by making ridiculous demands, it should just be a free for all. No one else agrees. Whatever, he just can’t wait until they’re done hammering out the specifics of all this crap so they can hand it all over to the emissaries to deal with. Deacon always gets a little starry eyed whenever it comes up. Apparently some ingredients are really, really hard to get ahold of unless you have an alliance with the right people, and some significant bargaining power on top of that. Which is dumb and Stiles doesn’t know why they’ve been living like savages.

His phone buzzes, and speak of the devil, it’s Danny calling. He accepts the call and says, “Hey, what’s up? I thought you were at work right now.”

“I am,” he says, voice hushed. He’s probably hiding in the storage closet. He doesn’t understand this at all. He, Erica, Boyd, and Isaac all of jobs, which baffle him. Scott assisting Deaton at the vet at least makes sense, and okay, Boyd working at his family’s ice rink is logical too, he guesses, but he can’t explain the rest of them. They spend so much of their free time dealing with supernatural bullshit, so Stiles doesn’t have any problem helping them pay for things.

They don’t have a mortgage, or any debt, so he and his dad have plenty of money for random crap that his pack wants, and his eighteenth birthday is looming ever closer, when he’ll access to the real pack money. There’s always Peter in a pinch. He’s told Stiles over and over again that his money is pack money, so it belongs to the pack, but Stiles still feels a little guilty using it. It’s Hale money, after all. But his dad had seemed to get it, even said his mother had felt the same way when she was alive. When all that money is just used for one person, or a couple of people, it’s just a reminder of what they lost. But using it for pack means they’re not alone, means they belong. Peter’s funding the majority of the building of the cabins in the Hale preserve, and the new house in the center of it all.

It has been a really hard day, a couple years ago, when Peter had stubbornly told them he wanted to tear down what remained of his family home and refused to build there again. Dwelling on the past wouldn’t change it, so he’d decided to move on from it. Stiles had felt so laughably out of his depth for that conversation, he’s so grateful that Melissa and Deaton had been there to help.

Point being, Danny has no reason to be working for minimum wage and hiding in storage closets.

“There are some new wolves in town,” he says.

Stiles raises an eyebrow. They have a lot of new wolves in town. “Diane’s? Or Xavier’s?”

“Neither. Diane’s girls said they weren’t with them, and I know all of Xavier’s betas.”

Hm. That’s strange. “Well, maybe they’re from another of the packs we’re friendly with,” he suggests, putting the call on speaker so he can bring up the alpha group chat and type out, hey, there are a couple strange wolves in beacon hills, do they belong to any of you?

“Maybe,” Danny says, although he doesn’t sound convinced. “I just thought I should give you a heads up.”

“Good thinking, thanks. Now go back to work before you get fired. Or just quit,” he says, because seriously, Danny’s on the lacrosse team and spends hours a week training with Deaton, this whole part time job thing is nonsensical.

He can practically hear Danny rolling his eyes. “Bye Stiles.”

He makes kissy noises down the line until he’s greeted by the dial tone. Then he checks the group chat and frowns at the series of denials on his screen.

Strange.

~

Lydia has her head in Jackson’s lap, reading a textbook while he watches the movie version of Much Ado About Nothing. Wrapping his head around Shakespearean language isn’t his strong suit, and he’d read the play through at least three times before Lydia had just snapped at him to watch the movie. He’ll understand it better after, no, it’s not cheating, please stop having mental breakdowns in the library.

Her phone buzzes. It’s from Isaac. Strange wolves just checked into the hotel. They definitely aren’t one of ours, because they didn’t react to me at all, but they smell kind of familiar. Maybe one of the omegas we fought? Stiles knows about it. I sent them to the diner.

She frowns. Is Erica working?

There’s a long pause. She’s just getting impatient when he replies, She is now.

Good. She nudges Jackson in the side and says, “We have to go do some investigating.”

It takes him several seconds to tear his eyes away from the screen, and he looks a little crushed, frankly.

“Oh my god,” she sighs, “just stay here, I’ll do it myself. “

He shakes his hand, already reaching for the remote. “No, it’s okay, you shouldn’t go alone.”

“I’m a banshee, Erica is there, and I outrank you,” she lists off, pushing herself to her feet. “Finish the movie. I’m going to quiz you when I get back.”

He gives her a kiss for good luck before she goes, which is all she needs, really.

~

On one hand, Derek resents that curly haired kid urging them to go Mel’s Diner like they’re just tourists and don’t know this town at all. On the other hand, he’s really missed Mel’s pancakes.

“It’s lunchtime,” Laura says reproachfully, her cheeseburger untouched before her.

“It’s pancake time,” he answers, in exactly the same tone of voice. She pulls a face at him, but whatever, what’s the point of having a werewolf metabolism if he can’t eat a stack of syrup soaked pancakes in the middle of the day?

Coming home to Beacon Hills is twisting him all up inside, it’s home but it’s not, it’s the place where he made the worst mistake of his life and destroyed their family. But he can’t show that, he can’t admit to that. Laura is so worried about him, and she’s so upset to be back, that he just can’t bring himself to make this worse for her.

“How is everything?” a bubbly voice asks, and Derek looks up to see a pretty young waitress with a mass of curly blonde hair piled on top of her head. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Laura snarls, and Derek thinks they’re going to get kicked out of here, what is she thinking, doing that in the middle of a restaurant to some poor waitress -

But she doesn’t scream or panic or react in any way at all. Instead her brown eyes flash gold, so quickly that Derek might not have noticed if he wasn’t looking. “No need for that, now.”

She works here. She’s not visiting, she must belong to the pack that’s here currently. There are so many wolves around he hadn’t even noticed that she was one, the smell of them seeming to follow them wherever they go. “Hi,” he says, giving her the type of smile he used to use to get into seedy New York clubs when he was underage.

She’s unimpressed. “You’re not looking to cause trouble, are you?”

Laura doesn’t say anything, mouth pressed together, so Derek says, “No, we’re not. We’re just - here on family business. Maybe you can help with that.” They need to talk to Diane, she probably knows what happened with their uncle’s body, and even if she doesn’t, they should report into her regardless.

The waitress frowns. “What do you-”

“We’re leaving,” Laura says, slapping a fifty onto the table and sliding to her feet, glaring at the waitress.

“My pancakes,” Derek protests, and he’s pretty sure he sees the waitress bite down on a smile. Laura turns her glare onto him, and he scrambles out of the booth more as a preventative measure than anything else. It’s one thing for two betas to come strolling in unannounced and unaccompanied, it’s quite another thing entirely for an alpha and her beta to make themselves at home in someone else’s territory.

This used to be Hale land, but it’s not anymore. It belongs to Diane, and she might understand why Laura is back, why an alpha so blatantly ignored the traditional rules of entering another alpha’s territory. But there’s no guarantee that her betas will. If they find out that Laura is an alpha, they might go for an attack now, ask questions later approach, and then they’ll end up getting in a fight, and someone will get seriously hurt, and then it’ll be a lot harder to get Diane to help them when they’ve injured one of her betas.

So Laura needs to keep her eyes to herself.

“No need to rush off,” the waitress says, mildly enough, but Derek doesn’t like the calculating look in her eyes. It makes his skin itch.

Laura doesn’t answer, only turns on her heel and walks away. Derek sends the waitress another million watt smile, which gets the same perplexing non-reaction, before he goes chasing after his sister.

He knows this is hard, he knows being here is hard, but they can’t keep going on like this. When he’s being the diplomatic one between them, it means something has gone horribly wrong.

“Laura,” he begins, but is cut off with a growl. He thinks he’s offended. He hasn’t done anything worthy of a growl. But then he looks past her and sees a frankly gorgeous redhead stretched out on the front hood of the Camaro, looking like something out of an old pinup magazine.

“Get off my car,” Laura snaps.

The girl slowly slides her gaze towards them, a thinly veiled level of faux disinterest hiding a very much not faux contempt. “Oh, is this yours?” She makes a show of glancing around the car, “I don’t see your name on it.”

Derek has to grab onto Laura’s arm to keep her from doing something stupid. What the hell. He’s not supposed to be the impulse control here. He takes in a deep breath, and she’s not a wolf, but she’s – she’s something. “You smell weird.”

A touch of actual amusement cracks through her façade. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Who are you?” Laura demands. Derek prays she keeps her red eyes at bay.

The amusement fades. “I’m someone with the rank and power to cause trouble for you if you decide you want to cause trouble for us. You’re welcome here, until you’re not. Understand?”

“You’re not going to ask us to leave?” Derek asks, surprised. He wonders if she’s the second to whoever is acting as Diane’s authority here. She hadn’t lied about being powerful.

She shakes her head, rueful. “My alpha has a thing about … friendliness. Hospitality, even.” She finally pushes herself off the hood, and Derek can’t help checking the paint job. Not a scratch on it, even with those dangerously tall heels she’s wearing. “Enjoy your stay in Beacon Hills.”

Derek waves goodbye. Laura looks like she wants to kill someone. “Come on, let’s go back to the hotel. Get takeout, maybe, since we’re out a lunch.”

She doesn’t take the opportunity to glare or make fun of him like he was hoping she would. Instead she says, “That kid that showed us to our room was a werewolf too.”

“How could you tell?” he asks, surprised. The hotel had stank so badly of werewolves that Derek wouldn’t have been able to smell the wolf on Laura if she wasn’t standing right next to him, never mind anyone else.

She doesn’t answer him. “If he’s a wolf and he works here, then he’s part of the main pack too.”

“Okay,” he says, not sure where she’s going with this. “So this pack has a lot of teenagers with part time jobs?”

“That girl is too young to hold a position of power,” she snaps.

Okay, yeah, but. “It’s not like Diane is the most traditional of alphas. Look, can we please just go talk to her? We should have talked to that girl while we had her, it sounds like she could have heard us out in Diane’s stead.”

Laura ignores him. Again. “I’m sick of waiting around. I’m going to the hospital.” She looks to him and softens, for a moment shifting back from this unreasonable, unruly person to the sister he knows. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

Like he’d make her go and do that alone. He’ll find somewhere to cry and have a panic attack somewhere if he has to, but he’s not leaving her alone to deal with that. “Don’t be stupid.”

She smiles at him and grabs him into a headlock. He goes limp forcing her to either let him go or manhandle him into the Camaro. She chooses the latter. Of course.

~

“Did you go say hi to our visitors?” Stiles asks, helping some of Diane’s wolves work on the walls of one of the cabins in the Western clearing. He doesn’t turn around, but he’d recognize Lydia and Jackson’s scent anywhere.

They’d been so committed to not landscaping the preserve, to really only making the type of structures that could be dismantled and taken away without the hurting the land, but that also meant where they put them was important. Which is why there’s no rhyme or reason to any of this, not like Diane’s campground, just basic cabins in flat fields. There’s no running water, but they are planning to set up electricity using generators. Bathroom are optional, but internet access isn’t. He’s a werewolf, not a monster.

There’s a pause, then Lydia says, “Who told? Was it Erica? Isaac?”

“No one,” he answers, and the Carey snorts. “I just know you. I assume you gave them a warm and friendly welcome?”

“I didn’t scream at them,” she says, because to her that’s basically the same thing. “The girl’s kind of a bitch. The boy seemed nice. He’s cute. If you have to fight, try and avoid his face, it’d be a shame to mess it up.”

“Oh good, at least our interlopers are attractive,” he teases. “Also, he’s a werewolf, he’ll heal.”

“You’re an alpha, it’ll take a while,” she shoots back. “And where will he be without his good looks? It’s clearly half of his personality.”

“Like Jackson?” Stiles asks, and it’s a sign of how far they’ve gotten that Jackson just sighs without protesting. He does have a personality, it’s just buried under protein shakes and his ridiculous car.

Lydia frowns and admits. “No. Not like - he seems like he uses it as a crutch, or maybe a defense mechanism. When all else fails, smile, then run.”

Odd. Okay. So much of this is odd. “Did you place them?”

She shakes her head, irritated. “No. Erica says she recognizes them too. You should go check it out.”

“Maybe. They haven’t done anything wrong yet, and if I confront them as an alpha, I’ll have to confront them about their lack of etiquette too. Which I don’t really feel like doing if they’re just passing through.”

Jackson finally speaks up. “They’re either brave or stupid to be hanging around now, of all times.” Stiles raises an eyebrow. “This place is crawling with wolves. Sure, most of them aren’t pack, but they’re allies, clearly. If I wandered into someone else’s territory and it had as many wolves as we do right now, I’d turn around and get the hell out of dodge. But they haven’t. That’s weird.”

Okay, that’s actually a good point. Especially considering Jackson isn’t exactly the pack member he depends out to run away from danger. Danny and Melissa are the only ones smart enough to do that, and even then they don’t go very far. “Okay, I’ll go and talk to them. But I’ll give them a day or so, unless they do something more than being weird.”

Lydia sighs, but doesn’t argue further. Jackson is unimpressed.

Carrey says, “You’re too easy going. That’s going to get you in trouble one day.”

“Don’t you have some wood to hammer?” he asks, “Besides, I learned if from Diane. This is all your alpha’s fault.”

“You didn’t, and it’s not,” she squawks, and now the surrounding wolves, obviously all eavesdropping on the conversation, are laughing at her.

~

There’s probably a proper way to go about this, and that way probably isn’t marching to the front desk of the hospital and snapping, “Peter Hale.”

She can feel Derek’s judgmental stare on her back, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She knows she’s acting ridiculous, that she’s just making this harder than it has to be, but she can’t help it. Being back in Beacon Hills is getting under her skin, leaving her itchy and irritable, like she wants to shift but can’t, but it’s more than that, it’s all of her.

The nurse gives her a bitchy look, which, okay, fair, but also fuck her. “What about him?” she asks. Then her face goes slack and she says, voice too high pitched and loud, “Laura Hale?” She cranes her neck to look around her, then says, “Derek?”

“Hi?” he says. Laura only vaguely recognizes the nurse, she has dark brown skin and long curly hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was friends with her mom maybe, or at least friendly with her.

“Oh,” she breathes, eyes wide. “Wow, um, we thought - I never expected to see you two again, is all.” She looks around and says, “Hold on, if you have questions about Peter, I’m not the best person to ask, let me grab his nurse - oh, wait, no, Melissa’s not working today, um, and actually that could be awkward. Camille! She’s here, and she helped with your uncle. If you’ll just. Stay here.”

“Okay,” Laura says, but the nurse doesn’t actually wait for her response before she’s bolting from behind the desk.

She turns to look at her brother, and he’s trying to stop himself from scowling. “At least someone finally recognized us?” he asks.

Laura’s surprised anyone recognizes them. They were well known, but they were also reclusive, and she didn’t have many friends. Besides, she’s different, she carries herself differently, even if her face is the same nothing else about her is. No one’s going to recognize Derek. When he left he was a lanky fifteen year old, and now he looks like a bodybuilder.

The same nurse returns, gripping a redheaded woman who looks like she’s seriously considering fighting her way out of this situation. That must be Camille.

“Hi,” she says unenthusiastically. “Let’s talk somewhere more private.”

She leads them to an empty doctor’s office. At Laura’s look, she says, “It’s my wife’s, and she’s at a medical conference, so.” Camille sits behind the desk and gestures for them to take a seat, perfectly comfortable here. “Now, what can I help you with?”

Finally. “You were my uncle’s nurse?”

“Mostly,” she allows, “at least in the beginning. Melissa ended up taking over for me, which really just made everything easier later, so it worked out.”

Derek blinks. Even Laura’s struck at the cavalier way she talks about Peter dying. She’s a nurse, she must see death all the time, but a little tact would be - well, not appreciated, exactly, but at least expected. “Did he suffer?”

Her lip curls. “Well, he was covered head to toe and burns, so I can only assume. However, how much sensation a coma patient experience is debated, and either way, he’s not experiencing any now, so there’s that.”

Derek flinches. Laura’s one hundred percent certain that this isn’t appropriate. What psycho was watching over their uncle? “Okay,” she says, and she really wishes this woman was a wolf or something, and not a squishy human. “What happened to his remains?”

She blinks, then her eyebrows dip together. “His what?”

“His body,” Laura snaps, because she’s had just about as much of this as she can handle. “Was he buried? Cremated? Buried in the family plot, or did you throw him down the fucking laundry shoot?”

She’s on her feet, and she can feel blood dripping from clenched fists, her claws digging into the skin of her palms.

Camille is staring at her with wide eyes, her face pale. “Ms. Hale - Laura - no, none of those things.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she yells, and Derek’s hand warm and large on her shoulder is all that’s keeping her from doing something stupid. “What did you do to him then?”

She raises her hands in front of her, and her whole face has changed, she’s softer now. “Nothing. We didn’t - I don’t know why you thought - Laura, Derek. Your uncle is alive.”

Derek’s hand balls into a fist at her back. Laura goes slack, and actually it’s a good thing Derek’s there, because she feels like she’s going to fall over. “What?”

“He’s alive,” she says clearly. “Peter was discharged five years ago.”

“Where is he?” Derek asks, voice smaller than she’s heard in years, ever since the months after the fire.

Camille says, “Here. He lives here. He never left.”

Oh.

He’s here. Her uncle is alive, and awake, and here.

“I have to go,” she says abruptly, tugging herself free of Derek. She’s barely catches her brother thanking Camille before she’s running, out of the hospital and through the neighborhood, faster than she probably should be.

When she hits the preserve, she only takes a few steps in it as a human before she shifts, running through what used to be her home on four paws.

~

Derek tries to track her first. But she smells differently in her alpha form, and there are so many different smells in the preserve that every time he catches her scent, he ends up losing it again. He keeps running across wolves, people building and giving him curious and wary looks, and no one has been hostile yet, but he always backs away from them whenever he sees them.

He can’t let them know his sister’s an alpha, especially not an alpha that’s lost control and is running through their land.

It’s strange, not to think it’s his anymore. They hadn’t thought Diane would touch the preserve, that she would be able to. It belongs to Peter now, and if they’re messing around with it, if they’re doing more than patrolling and using it, that probably means they’re doing that with Peter’s permission.

Is he part of their pack? Or is he a lone omega who turned his back on all of it when he woke up to find his family dead or gone? But if he’d turned his back on it, wouldn’t he have left? But he didn’t, he’s still here, somewhere.

The sun is just beginning to set when he gives in. He wishes he could go to Peter, even if the idea of facing him is – it’s too much, Derek hasn’t even begun to process it, hasn’t even tried. He can’t, not yet, not until he finds his sister.

He has to go to Diane.

First he goes back to the coffeeshop, but the barista is gone. He’s hoping the scary redheaded girl will be waiting for him on the hood of the Camaro when he comes out, but he’s not that lucky.

He heads back to the diner, and there he does get lucky. The waitress from earlier is just leaving, walking with a dark skinned boy about her age. They both snap their heads up to look at him before he’s even close and both their eyes flash gold. He stands in front of them, rolling back on his heels. He’s nervous, and worried that Laura will be mad at him, but he has to find her, and he has to let Diane know that they’re not here to cause problems before someone tries to tear his sister’s throat out.

“What’s wrong?” the guy asks bluntly.

The waitress doesn’t appear quite so intimidating as she had before, none of that sharp focus or judgement. “You smell worried,” she says, “What’s wrong? Where’s your friend?”

“She – you’re part of the local pack, right, you’re not just visiting?” he has to ask, because there are so many wolves here who don’t belong. He has to be sure. He has to get this right.

They both nod, and the guy repeats, “What’s wrong?”

“I told her we should have done this formally,” he says in a rush, “we didn’t mean – we know it wasn’t proper, but we came here to take care of something really personal, and then we got some news we weren’t expecting, and now – now my sister is, she’s – she needed to go in the woods. For a run, to cool her head.”

“That’s fine,” the waitress says, “We have plenty of wolves in the woods now, no one will mind if she’s running around. They might think she’s a bit strange, but as long as she stays out of sight of the humans, no one’s going to cause a fuss.”

Derek stares at them. The boy says, “There’s more?”

Can he trust them? Does he have any choice but to trust them? “She’s an alpha.”

He’s braced for claws, for anger and teeth ripping at him, for daring to challenge their territory like this.

Instead the boy curses and the waitress yanks a phone from her pocket, dialing. “Is she in control right now?” he asks.

Derek blinks, taken aback. “Uh, I – yeah, I think, probably. I think she’s just upset, and now I can’t find her.”

Someone answers the girl’s call. “One of the wolves we couldn’t place is an alpha, and she’s upset and somewhere in the preserve.” She slides her gaze over to him and sighs, “Don’t go after her straight away. Come here first. Her brother is with us, and he’d probably feel better if he was with you.”

Whoever’s on the other line, he’s assuming Diane, hangs up without a word. Derek is so confused. Who talks to their alpha like that? She’d spoken like she was the one giving orders. “I thought the redhead was second in command.”

“She’s third,” she answers dismissively. “I don’t even rank, technically. Although I might be right after Lydia, I think, I’ve never asked.”

“Where does Scott rank?” the boy asks.

She snorts. “Scott is the last person in the pack I’d want to be taking orders from in a time of crisis.”

“Jackson,” he says, and the girl pulls a face.

“I’m Derek,” he says, holding out his hand. He has no idea what’s going on, but he’s trying to be polite, he wants to stay on their good side. He’s wants to be someone they like enough that they might think twice about murdering his sister. That call with Diane sounded like they were going to help him, at least.

“Erica,” the girl says, and gestures to the boy. “This is my boyfriend, Boyd.”

Boyd is frowning at him, and he wasn’t doing that before. “Derek, you said? And the alpha is your sister?”

“Yes?” he answers, not sure what he’s getting at.

Erica’s face light ups with understanding, but just as quickly falls back down, her eyes wide. “Oh, shit.”

Derek means to ask what’s wrong, but he catches the scent of another wolf just then, one that almost smells familiar. He looks over just in time to see glowing red eyes in the darkness. The alpha trots forward, and Derek has to catch his breath.

The alpha has honey colored fur that shines golden as he passes under a streetlamp, his massive body moving quickly and easily. He’s big, even bigger than Laura is in her alpha form, and Derek has so many questions. “That’s not Diane. Is that – is he hers?”

“Uh, no,” Erica says, and the alpha snorts, sitting in front of them. Derek knows he’s not a dog, but he gets an insane urge to pet him anyway. “What? Did you think Diane was the alpha here?”

He nods, still unable to look away from those deep red eyes. He should look down or look away before the alpha decides he’s trying to challenge him. But the alpha doesn’t seem concerned, head cocked to the side, nothing threatening or dangerous about him besides his massive size and the clear strength and power he exudes.

Boyd rolls his eyes. “No. Diane and our pack are allies. Even friends. And we like her a lot. But she’s not our alpha.”

“Oh,” Derek says. “Okay.”

The alpha snorts, like he’s laughing at them, but Derek can’t really bring himself to care. He doesn’t seem mad, and he’s going to help Derek find his sister. That’s all that matters.

~

Stiles knew it was Derek Hale as soon as he got in smelling distance, which also means the missing alpha sister is Laura Hale.

He grew up around the Hales, they were the only werewolves he was exposed to as a kid, of course he knows their smell. He feels like a huge moron for not checking them out sooner, for being worried about giving them their space. The rest of his pack besides Peter all got turned after the Hales had already left town. Maybe they would have been able to pick up the similarities between Derek and Peter if Beacon Hills wasn’t crawling with other wolves right now, but it is, so he can’t even bring himself to be disappointed in them.

Peter, of course, would have recognized them at the first hint of their scent. Stiles is so, so grateful that they’ve managed to avoid that. For now. Obviously, Stiles is going to have to tell him as soon as they track down Laura, but at least he’ll be able to tell him in a controlled way. Which is way better than Peter finding out on his own, and then the only way Stiles would be able to know if something is wrong would be if he came home and Peter was guzzling wolfsbane liqueur.

This is better. He thinks.

He had ditch the clothes he was wearing to transform, which is a little annoying because he liked that hoodie, but mostly because now he has to go through the effort of not being spotted in the middle of town as a giant wolf. He was originally planning on transforming when they got to the reserve, but when he’d smelled Derek, he knew that plan had to change. Confronting Derek as himself is too much now, not when there’s a problem he has to deal with.

He sighs, then goes running towards the shadows. He goes slow until he hears them getting into Derek’s car, and then he stays just ahead of them the whole way, watching and listening.

~

John thinks he might have to start running a tighter ship, or at least start punishing people for lack of creativity.

“Have a good night,” Deputy Marie Johnson says earnestly, pointedly not looking at Peter while she equally pointedly closes the door shut behind her.

Peter grins from where he’s seated across his desk, slouched in a way that makes his long body even longer and pulls the fabric of his shirt across his chest.

John points an accusing finger at him. “You’re enjoying this far too much. You’re the reason I can’t get a date, you know.”

“I most certainly am not,” he sniffs, pushing the chair back so he’s balancing on the back legs. “You can do anything you like with whoever you like. That has nothing to do with me.”

“Except that half this damn town thinks I’m stepping out on you if I’m seen with anyone else,” he says.

Peter pouts. “That’s hardly my fault. The other half believe you’re dating Melissa, while there’s another half who think Melissa and I are dating, and you’re cheating on one or both of us with the other.”

“That’s too many halves,” John points out. “Why doesn’t Alan have to deal with this crap?”

“Because Alan’s a vet who rarely leaves his office, while you’re the sheriff and Melissa is a nurse, meaning you’re out in public and seen by hundreds of people every day,” he says. “Alan could be strapping me to the examination table and having me several times a day and no one in this town would notice anything amiss. Whereas I visit you for dinner, and your whole office assumes you’ll be spreading me out over your desk as soon as they step outside.”

John feels his whole face go red. How can Peter just say these things with a straight face? He feels like he needs a shower just from listening to him speak. “Can’t you just come in through the window or something?”

“Ah, yes,” Peter nods wisely, “because if I sneak into your office, that will definitely look less suspicious and not spur any kind of rumors at all. An absolutely perfect, foolproof plan.”

He’s just tried to decide if it’s worth the lost fry to launch it at his head when Peter’s phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket and slides his finger in a complicated pattern across the screen to unlock it, his eyebrows dipping together as he looks down at the screen.

“What?” John asks. “Is it the kids?”

“Like it’s ever anything else,” he types out a reply before shoving his phone back into his pocket and getting to his feet. “Sorry darling, duty calls.”

John stands. “What’s happening? Is something wrong?”

“Just Lydia saying she saw something strange,” he answers casually. Too casually. “I’m going to go check it out just to be safe, but I’m sure it’s fine. I wouldn’t worry.”

He just crosses his arms.

Peter cracks, a real grin peaking out. “Really don’t worry, at least not yet,” he says. He leans across his desk to place a delicate kiss at the corner of John’s mouth before exiting his office and giving his staff a cheery goodbye as he leaves the station.

John hasn’t been a virgin for thirty years, but that’s how he feels around Peter, uncertain and excited and like every touch is something new and different.

He can’t wait to get drunk with Melissa and Alan and complain about their terrible shared crush on Peter Hale.

~

Lydia and Jackson are getting ice cream when Jackson twists his head around says in a flat sort of voice that means he’s panicking, “Erica and Boyd are in that car.”

She turns just in time to catch a glimpse of a black Camaro. “Are they struggling?” she demands.

Jackson shakes his head. “I – I didn’t hear screaming or a struggle of anything. I just don’t know what they’re doing in there.”

“Well, luckily we’re not living in the dark ages anymore,” she comments, typing out a message to both Erica and Boyd that’s just a serious of question marks, then sending out an update to Peter and Stiles, because the possible kidnapping of their packmates seems like something they might want to know about.

Peter texts back on my way at the same time that Erica responds, it’s fine, we’re with stiles, don’t tell peter

“Well, shit,” Lydia sighs, tossing what’s left of her ice cream in the garbage. “Come on, whatever’s going on, we better go help too.”

Jackson goes from looking in horror from her hand to the trash to looking mournfully at his own ice cream cone. “Just throw it out, I’ll buy you another one later.”

“Can’t we go after I finish?” he asks in a way that isn’t whining, but is dangerously close to it.

“We have to go now,” she insists. “If you give me the keys to your car, I can drive and you can finish your ice cream in the passenger seat, but we have to go now.”

Jackson scowls. He’s left his life in her hands more times than she can count, she can’t believe he’s still so reluctant to let her drive his Porsche. “Come on, you have to choose.”

His eyes narrow, and he opens his mouth as wide as it can go, then shoves the whole ice cream cone down his throat. He looks absurdly pleased with himself for about forty five seconds before his face twists in pain and he’s rubbing at his temples.

Lydia rolls his eyes and grabs his elbow, dragging him over to his car as he whimpers pathetically, just like she knew he would.

He ends up letting her drive anyway, and he bitches about the ineffectiveness of werewolf healing on a brain freeze the whole way there.

~

Stiles leaves the others behind, because honestly, it’s just going to be easier to go searching through the preserve without waiting for them to keep up or having to keep an eye on them. He probably could have used Derek’s help, but there’s no way he could ask Derek to help him while telling Erica and Boyd to just go about their day like nothing’s happening.

He can see how Derek would have struggled to pick up and follow the scent trail what with the smells of so many different werewolves over the preserve. But he’s not Derek, a beta with barely any pack to call his own. He’s an alpha, with a strong pack and more major alliances than he as limbs. He picks up her scent and follows her trail easily.

He finds her in a makeshift den beneath a fallen tree. She looks a little pathetic, actually, and he keeps thinking that until she jumps on top of him with a desperate howl and sinks her teeth in his shoulder.

He tosses her off with a growl, red eyes narrowed. He really wishes he could speak in this form. He’s so dumb, an alpha she doesn’t know hunts her down while she’s trespassing, obviously she thinks he’s going to attack her. He means to shift back to human form to explain, but she doesn’t give him the chance, barreling towards him with her teeth bared.

~

Alison hates werewolves right at this moment, because here she is making out with the cute boy she met earlier today, and but then there’s a howl cutting through the air and drifting through her window.

She hears a bang from downstairs, which she assumes is her aunt getting ready to rally them all to investigate. Great. She’s already trying to figure out how she’s going to explain this to Scott when he pushes her off of him, sits upright, and demands, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” she asks, because she doesn’t think normal eighteen year old girls pick up on these type of things, especially when they’re about to get lucky.

Wait, normal seventeen year old boys aren’t supposed to notice these type of things either -

“I have to go,” he says, leaning over to give her a quick kiss. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, really.”

“It’s okay,” she says, perplexed. “Why do you-”

He opens her door, and nearly gets punched in the face by Kate, who was about to knock on her door. “Bye!” he tells her, basically running down the stairs.

Kate blinks. “Nice work. That was fast.”

“Thanks,” Allison answers, something sour in the pit of her stomach.

She jerks her chin towards Allison’s closet. “Suit up. I want you downstairs in two minutes.”

Allison nods. She wants to argue, wants to think of some reason that they shouldn’t go after what clearly sounded like a very angry werewolf, but she can’t. The only person she can’t argue with is Kate.

Maybe it’s just a strange coincidence, and Scott has nothing to do with werewolves.

~

Laura doesn’t want to die.

That’s all she’s thinking of as she huddles beneath the fallen tree, hoping so badly that the alpha doesn’t find her, that he just passes her by. He’s not Diane, she can smell that, but everyone knows that Diane’s pack is so large that she has several alphas who report to her, the lieutenants to her general, the dukes to her queen. Either way, he’s an alpha, and she’s done nothing but make herself a nuisance since she got here. And doing that when they all thought she was a beta is one thing, but as an alpha it’s another thing entirely.

If she had land and people to her name, if she was more than just a transient alpha with only her brother as a beta, then it would be an act of war. Even still, it’s more than enough reason to kill her, and she doesn’t want to die.

The alpha lowers himself to look at her, red eyes glowing in his golden face, and Laura only hesitates a moment before launching herself forward. She sinks her teeth into his shoulder, and for a moment she thinks that maybe she can do this, but then he tosses her off of him and she goes skittering across the forest floor. She’s expecting an immediate attack, but he doesn’t even growl, only stares at her.

She can hear people coming, and it sounds like most of them are running way too fast to be human. Reinforcements. Great. She runs towards him, intent on at least getting in a couple good hits. Even if she can take this alpha, she can’t take what sounds like a half dozen betas, and she doesn’t want to die without a fight.

She doesn’t want Derek to think she died without a fight.

He hopes he forgives her one day for doing this. It’s all her fault, if only she’d done this properly, if only she’d swallowed her pride and fear and just talked to Diane, maybe they could have avoided all of this.

The alpha meets her head on and doesn’t react as her claws scrape down his side. Instead he ignores that to flip her over, and he presses his weight down on her, his paws over her shoulders and hips. She tries to shove him off, but can’t get the leverage. But he doesn’t bite or claw at her. Instead he lets out a low, deep growl that settles in her bones. It’s not - it’s not angry. It’s supposed to be relaxing, almost a purr, it’s something her mother used to do to calm her down when she was a child.

There’s a crashing in the trees around her, and she can tell they’re surrounded. She can smell Derek, and if Derek’s with them it must be okay, unless they’ve taken him hostage -

There’s another shift in the trees, and now someone else is here, someone who’s smell she recognizes instantly, even though it’s been half a decade.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” her uncle snaps. “What are you even doing here?”

The alpha steps off of her, and she rolls to her feet.

Peter looks just the same, he barely even looks like he’s aged. When she saw him last he was nothing more than burned, loose, slippery skin, and now he looks just the same.

“Well?” he snaps, angrier than she can remember him ever being before.

The gold alpha steps between them, as if shielding Laura from her uncle’s glare. The alpha shifts back, a smooth, nearly instant transition from wolf to human. She only has a moment to be jealous before she registers what she’s seeing.

“She didn’t know, I should have gone after in human form, she was just confused,” says the alpha. Who she knows, who she recognizes, who’s the lone omega boy her mom let stay on their land.

“Who did you kill?” she asks. Why would Diane let him join the pack? Why did he agree to join Diane’s pack when he was so unwilling to join theirs? Did she prime an alpha up for the slaughter for him, and that’s how she got his loyalty?

Stiles looks at her over his bloody shoulder, and there are deep scratches from her claws curving around his waist, still bleeding sluggishly. “No one.”

“What – how do you,” she pauses, and several things slot into place at once. “You were born an alpha. You’ve always been an alpha.”

Stiles looks like he’s going to respond to that when there are several crashes through the trees. It’s about half a dozen hunters, which, perfect, literally the only thing to make this situation worse.

“Allison?” shouts one of the betas.

One of the hunters, a pretty woman in her thirties, raises an eyebrow and says, “Hello, Derek.”

Her brother flinches back and hunches his shoulders. What the hell?

“Scott,” sighs another hunter, one who has to still be a teenager.

“Peter?” the red headed girl mutters, glaring at all of them, her fingers twitching like she wants to reach for a weapon, but Laura’s not sure where she would hide on in the skimpy outfit she’s wearing.

Stiles rolls his eyes and puts his hands on his hips. “Stiles, in case anyone was wondering. Now that that’s out of the way, can someone tell me what the fuck is going on? And does anyone have any pants?”

Oh, shit, right. They’re both naked right now.

She considers crossing her arms over chest or something, but then decides she doesn’t care, and places her hands on her hips. Stiles coughs in a way that sounds like a laugh, and then he matches her stance, raising an eyebrow at the hunters. “So, seriously, what are you doing here?”

Laura must have been in a stranger situation than this one before, she just can’t think of it right now.

Chapter Text

“You know,” Allison says to her aunt, “if you were trying to be sneaky, you’ve done a shit job of it. We haven’t even returned the moving van.”

This is just great. The cute boy is a werewolf, and now they have two alphas to deal with. Fan-fucking-tastic. She’d known that going to Beacon Hills was a bad idea.

The oldest werewolf, Peter, snarls, and she doesn’t like the way he’s looking at them. Before she can shout a warning, he’s closed the distance between them, with his hand on Kate’s throat. He’s pinned her to the trunk of the nearest tree and knocked her gun from her hand. Shit.

Her father raises his gun, and Allison smacks it down, because seriously, can they not escalate the situation, please? “Stand down!” Her father smoothly shifts back, and she can hear her cousins and mother doing the same.

“Are you crazy?” Kate shouts. “Kill them!”

The rest of the pack closes in, not attacking but making it clear they’re ready and willing to so if provoked. Allison shakes her head, and her family doesn’t do anything, they’re listening to her. For now.

“Peter!” the boy alpha, Stiles, snaps. “What the hell? Let her go.”

“It’s her,” he growls, fingers tightening. “She was there the night of the fire.”

Allison isn’t stupid, and she knows her aunt. She knows what fire Peter is talking about, as if there could be any confusion when the subject of fire and Hales comes up. She’s watching Kate’s face, looking for confusion, for anger, maybe even fear. Her face cycles through all of those, but not fast enough.

First, before she could control herself, she’d looked satisfied.

Her father’s sharp intake of breath is all the confirmation she needs. He saw it too.

“Don’t jump to conclusions, okay?” the alpha says. “How well could you even smell that night, with all the smoke? Let her go. We can talk about this.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Peter says, never looking away from Kate. “I know it was here.”

A man, one of the betas, clears his throat. “It. It - it was her.”

“That’s Kate?” the woman alpha asks. She goes to lunge for her, but Stiles holds her back. But he’s not looking at her, or at them, or even her aunt. He’s looking at the guy who’d just spoken.

“You’re sure?” he asks.

He nods, eyes darting towards Kate and then away, as if he’s afraid. As if her helpless, restrained aunt is someone he can’t bear to look at.

Fuck.

“Did you do it?” Allison asks, even though she already knows the answer. She knows Kate can be unconventional sometimes, knows she hates in a way that Allison has personally never found to be very productive. So often when they’re trying to help, they end up getting in their own way.

Kate starts to deny it, then sees her face, and shrugs as best she can under Peter’s grip. “And what if I did? They were getting too powerful. If I hadn’t stopped them, Talia would have become another Diane, a whole pack that’s too large for us to even hunt. Whoever killed them did everyone a favor.”

“No,” David says, “no, Kate - how could you - we have a code.”

“It’s outdated,” she says, uncaring, and then looks toward Peter, who’s chest is heaving, Allison assumes with the effort it’s taking not to kill her aunt. “Well, are you going to kill me or not? Of course, if you kill me, you’ll have to kill all of us, and then it will be war on all of you, war on Beacon Hill’s doorstep. I’m ready to die for a worthy cause. Are you?”

Allison can’t believe this. Is her aunt really so willing to use them all as some bargaining chip, or some sacrifice to start an interspecies war? What the hell kind of leader does that? They’re more than her soldiers and her generals. They’re her family.

~

Stiles was so not prepared for any of this. But now that it’s here, he’s got no choice but to deal with it. Laura isn’t fighting him right now, but she wants to, and the small and horrified look in Derek’s eyes is going to haunt him.

“If you kill her,” Stiles says, “will you be able to put it down?”

Peter freezes. Lydia whispers harshly, “Stiles.”

“The grief you’ve been carrying, the anger, the feeling of loss and losing, the thought that you should have been able to stop it, that guilt in your chest at not being able to save them,” he says. He’d picked up on some of it, but not all of it. That’s what the other adults in his pack were for, although it’d been Alan who’d laid out most of this for him. “You’ve been carrying it for five years, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any lighter. If you kill her, if you tear her limb from limb, if you take the life of the woman who took the lives of you family - will you able to put it down?”

There’s a heavy beat of silence. No one even breathes.

“That’ll start a war,” Peter says. “I’m not that selfish. I won’t hurt my pack.”

Stiles isn’t letting him off that easily. “Will it start a war, though? I have Diane on my side. She owes me a couple. Never mind everyone else. We could kill the Argents right here and right now if we wanted. They’re outmatched. Lydia could take care of all them before they could shoot a single bullet, and if more hunters come calling, we can take care of them too.”

He sees the hunters look over at Lydia, at her thin limbs and short skirt, at the way she’s so obviously not a wolf, and they find her lacking. That’s always the first mistake. A banshee’s scream will be all the distraction they need to kill these hunters before they can kill them.

Peter takes a deep breath, then slowly shakes his head. “No. I - no. I don’t need revenge. I have my pack. I won’t risk a war, even one we would win.” He swallows and lets go, dropping Kate onto her knees and taking a step back. “What I have is more valuable than the ghosts of what I had.”

Kate is coughing, hands on her throat. Stiles steps forward and claps him on the back, “I’m proud of you.” He looks towards the hunters, finding the girl standing in front of all of them, the one who they’d listened to. Allison. “She’s guilty. You know that, don’t you?”

He’s asking more than that, and he knows she understands that by the wash of grief over her face. She lowers her bow. “Yes. I know that. We know that.” She bites her bottom lip. “But – please, we’ll take care of it-”

“What’s your code?” he asks, voice hard. They’re not getting out of this either. He won’t let them get out of this. If he’s going to make Peter face his demons, he might as well do the same to this Argent girl.

She falters. “Ex-excuse me?”

“What’s your code, Argent?” he says, taking a wild guess, because there’s only one matriarchal hunter family headed by a woman named Kate.

Allison’s lips press together, but then she says. “We hunt those who hunt us.”

“Then it’s only fair, isn’t it?” he asks. He can sense his pack’s confusion. Well, not Lydia’s. She knows exactly what he’s doing, and she must approve, otherwise she would have tried to stop him. This is why she’s Alpha’s Mate, why she’ll always be Alpha’s Mate. Smart and ruthless and only pulling him back when she really has to.

Allison sighs, but doesn’t argue anymore.

Good.

Kate has just pushed herself to her feet, still coughing, still rubbing at her bruised throat.

“Hold!” Allison shouts at the same time Stiles darts for Kate.

She doesn’t even get the chance to scream before his hands are around her throat. She’s human, and he’s a werewolf. It takes almost no effort at all to snap her neck. Her limp body topples over, and she’s dead before she hits the ground.

“I said hold!” Allison says, stepping in front of her family’s guns, putting herself between them and his pack.

She may be an Argent, may be a hunter, but Stiles likes this girl.

He walks to her, stepping over Kate’s body to look her in the eye. Her family is tense at her back, but they’re listening to her, have stood down even though they obviously don’t want to. She would make a good alpha.

“Kate Argent murdered the Hale pack,” he says clearly, and then narrows his eyes, “Revenge would have been if I’d trapped you all in your brand new house and setvit aflame. Justice would have been if I’d burned her alive and made you all watch. This is mercy.” He leans in close, their eyes still locked. “I won’t be merciful twice.”

“You won’t have to be,” she says, chin raised. “If I keep silent on the cause of my aunt’s death, will you keep silent on what she did?”

Shit, that was her aunt? Stiles feels his respect for her grow. Murdering psychopath or not, Stiles doesn’t know if he could remain this composed if he had to watch his aunt get executed. Maybe all hunters are little bit off.

“You have a reputation of being fair, of being good, and you want to keep it,” he says. “Which might be a bit hard if everyone finds out that your aunt murdered a whole family in cold blood.”

“Yes,” she says, unflinching, and damn, Stiles really likes this girl.

“I’m willing to agree to this,” he says, and her shoulders slump. “But,” and now she’s tense again, “it’s not my pack that she slaughtered.”

He looks to Peter.

Peter grins, all teeth, and says, “My alpha has killed the woman who murdered my family. I’m satisfied.” Stiles knows that’s not true, not exactly. Peter’s tendencies run towards salting and burning the earth, scorching away everything that’s displeased him. But Kate’s death is enough to sate him, and he’ll hold.

Laura swallows, looking between Kate’s corpse and then towards Derek. Not for the first time either. Whatever Kate did, it has something to do with Derek, it involved him somehow. He’s sure of it. “Fine.”

Stiles almost wants to press for Derek to give his agreement too, but he’s not even looking at them, seeming small even when he’s among the tallest here. Laura’s his alpha anyway, and her agreement is good for the both of them.

He holds out his hand. “It’s a deal. I assume I’m speaking to the new matriarch of the Argent family?”

Allison falters, but the other woman in her group, older with cropped red hair, says, “Yes, you are.”

He can’t help but quirk up a lip at Allison’s startled expression, like she hadn’t realized what her aunt’s death meant for her. But she slips her hand in his, giving it a firm shake. He says, “The queen is dead. Long live the queen.”

She shoots him a look, and it’s unfortunate they have to be enemies, he thinks they could be great friends. “We’ll be gone tomorrow.”

What a waste. He’s met a lot of hunters, but no one quite like her. His pack is going to be pissed, but. “No rush. I would have appreciated a heads up and all, but you’re honorable hunters. You’re Argents. You follow your code, so what do I have to fear from you?”

That settles her family, even if they still look suspicious. But he’s serious.

“My aunt probably didn’t act on her own,” Allison says, and he blinks, taken aback. Why would she volunteer that information? “But I’ll find out who it was.”

“And then what?” he asks.

Her eyes go flat and cold, and this is the part of her that’s a huntress, that’s a queen. “I’ll take care of it.”

It’s so unfortunate she’s a hunter. He wants her for his very own. “I’ll expect to be kept updated.”

“Fine. But I’ll be the one dealing with it, understand? You only get to kill one member of my family in front of my face without consequences. Cross me on this, and consider our deal broken. I’ll deal with the consequences of what my aunt did. I want to keep it a secret, but I won’t allow a werewolf pack to hold my family hostage to do it.”

He grins. “I like you.”

The other hunters look like he just said he wanted to eat her liver. She sighs. “Well, if you hadn’t just killed my aunt, I might even say that I liked you too.”

“We’ll work through it,” he says confidently, because Kate being a psychopathic bitch clearly isn’t news. The two male hunters in the back had even looked relieved when they’d realized Allison was the matriarch now.

“I have an early shift tomorrow,” Erica says, “so are we like, done now?”

“We’re done,” Allison says, then takes a step towards her aunt’s body.

Peter growls, but Stiles raises a hand, and he cuts himself off. “We’ll let you bury your dead. It’s more than the Hales got.”

“What were you going to do? Dump her in the river and hope that police didn’t notice?” one of the male hunters asks, incredulous.

There’s a ripple of laughter through his pack, and Stiles grins. “Pretty much. Oh, did I not mention? My dad’s the sheriff.”

He loves pulling that card.

~

Lydia is going to strangle Stiles. It won’t kill him, and it will make her feel better. She waits until the Argents have melted away, taking Kate’s body with them, before walking over and smacking Stiles upside the head. “Ow!”

“Seriously, you couldn’t have waited to do that? Until Deaton was here at least? Or your dad?”

“I’m a man of opportunity?” he tries. “It’s not like I was going to let her go. She’s a mass murderer.”

She rubs at her forehead. “Whatever. Convene at your house. Text the rest of pack,” she says, knowing one of them will listen to her. She looks toward Derek and Laura. “What are we going to do about them?”

“They can go back where they came from,” Peter snaps, and he looks almost as angry as when he was looking at Kate. Great. “This isn’t Hale land anymore.”

Laura and Derek flinch. Stiles says, “No, but it’s okay. They can stay as long as they like.”

Peter turns to glare at him. Stiles raises an eyebrow. He huffs, “I’ll see you at home,” turning his back on his niece and nephew to disappear into the wood’s edge.

Danny says to the remaining Hales, “Really, it’s okay, you can stay. No one is chasing you out.”

“Uh, thanks,” Laura says, edging backwards towards her brother. She looks at Stiles and her shoulders hunch before she forces them back down. “Um. I - sorry, about,” she gestures to the scratches and bite marks that have stopped bleeding, but still aren’t fully healed.

Stiles waves a hand, “Whatever, I’ve gotten worse at the summer retreat. Don’t worry about it.”

Laura just looks confused, but nods before snagging the back of her brother’s jacket and dragging him into the woods.

Isaac pipes up to say, “So, uh.”

“Allison is nice,” Scott says with the type of forced casualness that has Lydia immediately suspicious.

“Can we please continue this at home?” Boyd asks. “Also, someone should definitely let the visiting wolves know that we have Argents in town.”

“On it,” Stiles says, reaching for his hip like that’s where his phone is. Except that’s when he realizes he’s still naked, and therefore not wearing jeans, and doesn’t have a pocket. Or his phone.

“Everyone, shoo,” Lydia orders. “Jackson, give Danny a ride. I’m going with Stiles.” If any of them are still watching, she wants them to get the wrong impression.

Jackson salutes before the rest of them rush to do what they’re told. Stiles winks at her before transforming back into his alpha form, a giant golden wolf.

This is one of the things that Lydia likes best about being in this pack. Stiles trots over to her and sits down in front of her, waiting. She carefully climbs onto back, locking her arms around his neck and clamping her thighs down around him.

He gives one short, warning yip, and then he’s running.

He moves so quickly, and lands so lightly, that it feels like they’re flying.

~

John knows that something is wrong when he gets the text. But the way Peter absolutely storms into the kitchen, still transformed, has them all getting to their feet. He’s never seen Peter like this, the closest is when he’s in the midst of a nightmare, and even that doesn’t have this edge of - something to it, he’s not even sure what it is. But it worries him.

“Peter?” Melissa asks, reaching for him.

He turns and snarls at her, but she only raises an eyebrow. She’s the mother to two teenage werewolves, it’s going to take a little more than that.

“What happened?” Alan asks, hovering, hanging back like he always does.

Peter shakes his head, curling his hands into fists. He still has his claws, so blood drips from his hands and splatters onto the kitchen floor.

“Hey!” John says, throwing caution to the wind and grabbing for Peter’s wrists, pulling him close and glaring. “Stop it.” Peter looks at him, startled, but opens his hands. The wounds heal almost instantly, but that’s not the point, really. “What’s happening? Why are you like this? Are the kids okay?”

“It’s,” he pauses, and his eyes slide to Deaton. “It was the Argent Matriarch. All this time, it was her.”

Deaton pales and sits down heavily. “How are we supposed to stand against that?”

John must be more sleep deprived than he thought, because it takes Melissa gasping and pressing her hand to her mouth for him to connect the dots. “The Argents set the fire five years ago? They’re the ones that did this?”

Peter nods, then rubs a hand over his face, leaving bloody streaks across it. “It - it wasn’t all of them. Just her. The others didn’t know about it, and they weren’t lying, I was listening. Just one rogue hunter.”

“Who’s the matriarch?” Alan asks. “If we go after her, her family will close ranks around her, regardless of what she did.”

“No,” Peter says. “The second in line was there when we found out. They all were. Besides, we don’t have to worry about it anymore. Stiles killed her.”

It takes a lot for John to control his reaction to that, and judging by the way Peter’s eyes flicker over to him, he’s not entirely successful. Stiles has killed a lot of things, has hurt creatures that were people if not human, but he’s never killed a human before.

He has to accept this. He can’t make a fuss about it. This human killed Peter’s family. John’s a sheriff, and he wants to bring her to justice, wants to throw her in a cell and let her rot for what she’s done. But he’s human, and that’s a human’s justice.

Stiles isn’t. John’s part of a werewolf pack, which means when it comes to supernatural matters, he has to accept a werewolf’s justice. Even when it causes his stomach to turn. “Is everyone okay? Are you okay?”

“He offered to let me do it,” he says, and John’s not sure if he’s answering him or just thinking aloud. “I had her, with my claws around her throat, and he told me I could kill her. He’d deal with the mess. If - if killing her would set me free, then I could do it, and he’d protect me from the consequences. But I said no, and then he killed her anyway.”

“He’s our alpha,” Melissa says, as if that’s all the explanation that’s needed. Because it is. “He just wants to do whatever’s best for you, even if what that is, is uh, murder.”

“Talia wouldn’t have done that,” Alan says carefully. “She wouldn’t have risked it. Wouldn’t have shown hunters that anyone in the pack gets to make decisions outside of her.”

John squeezes Peter’s wrist. “Do you wish you’d done it?” He knows Peter’s killed before. He almost wishes it had been Peter rather than his son, but that’s not fair to either of them, so he buries that feeling down where it won’t do any harm.

He shakes his head. “No, I - no. Killing her wouldn’t have set me free. Having the opportunity to do so, and choosing not to, choosing now over then - that did.”

John doesn’t quite understand what he means, but then Peter’s grabbing onto his forearms and pulling him closer, slotting their mouths together, hot and desperate, and so much more than any of the teasing butterfly kisses he’s left on John before. He’s so lost in kissing Peter that he doesn’t notice the others moving to leave, not until Peter pulls back, and he’s got a hand around Melissa’s arm, having grabbed her as she tried to move past, but he’s not looking at her, instead staring at Alan, pinning him in place since he’s in the middle of attempting to do the same as Melissa. “Where are you going?” Peter asks, voice hoarse.

“I,” Melissa looks to him, wide eyed, but he only shrugs. If she thinks he understands what’s happening right now, then she’s sorely mistaken. “Shouldn’t I leave?”

“Only if you want to,” he says, withdrawing his hand. “Stiles gave me a choice, and I’m choosing. I’m putting it down. I’m not - not going to go on a revenge killing rampage. So I’m here. If you want me.”

Is that what Peter was worried about? Is that what was holding him back this whole time?

Melissa doesn’t need to be told twice, jumping onto Peter and wrapping her legs around his waist, cupping his face and kissing him like she’ll die if she stops. John looks to Alan and raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

He hesitates. He’s always hesitating. “I’m monogamous.”

“But do you care of if your partner is?” he asks. He likes Alan. He’d be willing to try and make it work with him if that was on the table, and he’s had more than one fantasy about Melissa through the years. But he knows none of them are under any illusions. Peter is the thread that binds them together, and Peter wants all of them.

“No,” Alan says finally, “Not if it’s with you. Not if it’s with Melissa.”

Peter wants all of them, so that’s what he’ll have.

There’s a loud knocking at the door and Isaac calls through, “Is everyone clothed? I’ve seen a lot of weird things tonight, but I refuse to add my seeing any of my parents naked to that list.”

It’s not one of the first time the kids have called them that. They are, rather inarguably, the pack parents.

“We can go off and murder some people instead,” Erica adds, and Melissa hops off of Peter, rolling her eyes, and goes to get the door.

Peter uses his werewolf speed to get across the other side of the room so he can pin Alan to the wall, and he only stops kissing him when Stiles lopes through the door, Lydia still on his back, her hair windswept. Stiles transforms back into a human. “Gross.”

“My virgin eyes!” Danny cries, as if John doesn’t have a small heart attack every weekend when he goes to pick up some new guy at the Jungle.

Peter still has Alan pinned to the wall, but he twists his neck to give Danny a flat eyed stare. “I’m pretty sure none of you can be called a virgin at this point.”

“Can we not talk about this?” John begs. The only thing that makes any of this tolerable is that most of his kids are wolves and can rip out the throat of anyone who tries to take advantage of them. And if they don’t, he owns a gun. “Son, go put on some pants.”

“Why does everyone always say that to me?” he gripes. “Okay, but after that we’re going to talk about the hunters in town and what we’re going to do about it.”

“You didn’t chase them out?” Melissa asks.

Stiles shakes his head. “Oh, no, I like this new matriarch, she seems cool. And Scott wants to bang her, so there’s that.”

John can’t tell if he’s too old for this, or not old enough. Either way, Peter’s cackling isn’t helping at all.

~

Stiles has pulled his sweatpants up when his phone rings. He answers it on speaker, it’s not like there’s any point trying to have a private conversation in a house full of werewolves. “That was fast.”

“What the fuck is going on over there?” Diane asks. “What the hell text is that?”

“What did Lydia say?” It’s not like he checked.

“Hunters who killed the Hales in Beacon Hills. Don’t panic.”

He opens a draw, rummaging around for his mom’s old college sweatshirt. “Well, that about covers it really. Hey, what do you know about drawing up alliances with hunters? You must have a couple.”

“No, my entire strategy for dealing with hunters is being too big to fuck with. You want to make allies with the people that murdered a pack? Really?”

“Well, I already killed the woman who did it, and the rest of them seem alright.” There’s a moment of very loud silence. “Oh, did I not mention? Kate Argent is dead.”

“I hated that woman,” Diane says, “you know, if she’s dead, her father is going to come looking for blood.”

“Yeah,” he answers, “I’m counting on it. That’s their first test.”

She curses down the line, then says, “That’s risky.”

“Very,” he admits. “You might want to recall your pack. I’ll call Lisa and Taika to update them too. I wouldn’t want any of them getting hurt.”

“I don’t want you getting hurt,” she says, “I’ve invested far too much into you to lose you now. Keep my wolves.”

“But you’re not going to try and stop me?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

She snorts. “I’m your ally, not your alpha. That’s not my place. Besides, you’re just like me, kid. I know better than that.”

He’s still grinning when the dial tone greets him a moment later.

~

Allison is the one that carries her aunt’s body back. She makes it up until she settles Kate into the back seat, and if not for the awkward angle of her neck, she could be sleeping, and then she crumples, falling down next to the car and pulling her knees to her chest, sobbing into her crossed arms.

Kate wasn’t a good leader. More than that, she was a murderer, she broke the code, and this would be no less than they would have required to do themselves if they were to preserve their honor, their reputation. They act outside the law, so they must be their own law. There’s no room for mercy.

She wonders if the boy alpha knew that. If he was trying to spare her. If he hadn’t killed Kate, then she would have been the one to do it, she would have had to place a gun to Kate’s temple, and be the one to pull the trigger. She’s the next in line, and it would have been her responsibility, she would have had to watch her aunt’s brains splatter against the wall with the gun in her hand and act like it meant nothing to her.

At least this way, there isn’t any blood. At least this way, she didn’t have to look Kate in the eye and end her life with her own hands.

“Hey,” her mother says, falling to her knees beside her. She wraps her arms around her and pulls Allison to her chest, tucking her head beneath her chin. “It’s okay, you’re okay, you’re doing so well. You were amazing, and so smart, and so strong, do you know that? You protected this family’s reputation, you negotiated and didn’t flinch, even when we were surrounded. I’m proud of you. I’m proud to be your mother. Do you understand?”

She nods, trying to swallow down her heaving sobs.

Kate was a serial killer.

But she was still her aunt, her mentor, her matriarch. Putting that down hurts. It hurts so much, and she thinks it’s going to keep hurting, forever.

It takes her several minutes to compose herself, to pull herself from her mother’s embrace and push herself to her feet.

Her cousins and father are standing back, and she can see their tears, but their backs are tall. They’re soldiers. They’re not allowed to bend.

They’re her soldiers.

“Matriarch,” her dad says, more formal than he knows she wants him to be, holding himself back from her even though she would find him comforting, and she knows it’s because he’s reminding her of her place. “What now?”

She’s not ready. She’d wanted to change things, wanted to be lead her family differently. But not yet. She’s too young.

But that doesn’t matter. The moment her aunt took her last breath, Allison took her place. Being matriarch isn’t something she can just unbecome, she refused to let it be taken from her. She has cousins, has great aunts and distant relatives. If she steps down, someone will take her place.

She won’t. It’s her place, and she won’t cede it. If it’s more than she can handle, she’ll just have to become stronger than she is.

“We keep my word,” she says, voice hoarse. “Kate wouldn’t have done that alone. She would have told someone.”

Someone in particular, one someone who’s always pushed Kate in their family in directions that Allison hates. Kate dying hurts. She doesn’t think this one will hurt in the same way. She’s spent too long hating him.

Her dad closes his eyes, anther moment of mourning, but that’s all he allows himself. “Yes, Matriarch,” her father and cousins say together, and her mother squeezes her shoulder.

Her grandfather played his part in this, Allison is sure of it, and she won’t let Kate suffer for both their sins. He broke the code, and Allison will make him pay for it.

Even if that means looking her grandfather in the eye and killing him with her own two hands.

~

Derek had thought that if he ever saw Kate again, it would kill him. He remembers being fifteen and dumb, remembers being fifteen and helplessly, stupidly in love with her, remembers telling her all little, inconsequential things about his family, things he would have told any of his friends if they’d asked, easily talking around their werewolfness like he has his whole life, to every other person he’s ever spoken to.

But Kate wasn’t just some human. She was a hunter, and she heard all the things he wasn’t saying. She pieced together things about his family, about his mom, his alpha, by threading together every tidbit of information he told her.

He was so happy to talk to about his family with her, because he was an idiotic fifteen year old boy, and he thought she was his forever, that she’d be his wife one day, when he was older. And he loved his family, even when he hated them, so it mattered to him that Kate seemed interested in them, that she wanted to hear about them. Loving him meant loving his pack, and how could she love people she didn’t know? It’s not like Derek could introduce them, so this was as close as he could get, pouring his love for his family over Kate, in a desperate hope she would learn to love them too.

Instead, she’d killed them.

It was his fault. At least a little. He knows that. If he hadn’t fallen for Kate, if he wasn’t so stupid, his family would still be alive. No amount of excuses or explanations can change the cold, hard truth.

So he’d thought seeing her again would bring that all rushing back. His desperate half-formed love, the betrayal, the anger, the ocean of grief and guilt that would drown him as surely now as when he was fifteen years old and every breath felt like a struggle.

But it hadn’t.

Seeing Kate meant nothing to him. Well, not nothing. First surprise, then rage, then it settled down into fear. Was she here to finish what she started? Was she here to kill his uncle and sister? To burn this new Beacon Hills pack that Stiles was heading to the ground?

But he wasn’t afraid of her anymore. He’d been afraid of what she might do, about what her death would mean to all the wolves surrounding them. But he hadn’t been afraid of her. Maybe all those stupid therapists Laura had begged him into talking to had actually done something worthwhile. Kate was someone he thought he loved, and who betrayed him, and it hurt, and he hated her for what she’d done to his family, but - she wasn’t a demon, wasn’t something otherworldly, wasn’t anything more impressive than a hateful bitch.

When Peter had backed off, he’d nearly broken his silence. Were they really going to let her go, even knowing what she’d done, were they really going to just let her out of their sight and give her the chance to do it all again -

Then Stiles had snapped her neck, and for the first time in five years, Derek felt the knot of tension loosen in the center of his back, where he’d been carrying it all this time. He has been worried, deep down, in the back of his mind, for the past five years. That she would look for him, and that she would find him, that she would do something even more terrible.

But now she’s dead, and whatever consequences that might bring, Derek can’t help the swell of relief. Because she’s dead, because seeing her didn’t break him, because the terrifying monster he’s been afraid of these past years is nothing more than a crazy hunter, and now it’s over, at least this small part of it.

Once they’re out of the woods, out of earshot from anyone, Laura grips his shoulders and then changes her mind and cups his face. Her glowing red eyes settle and ground him. They’re a reminder, that no matter what, he’s not alone, he’s not an omega. He’s has a pack, even it’s just his sister.

“Are you okay?” she asks urgently. “Derek, I’m so sorry, this is all my fault-”

He covers one of his hand with his own, and she cuts herself off, waiting. “Do you think - can we come home now?”

She lets out a long sigh. “Yeah. Yes, of course, we’ll get the first tickets back to you New York.”

He shakes his head. “No. Not New York. Here. Beacon Hills. I think - maybe, maybe it’s time we came home.”

Her breath catches in her throat. “Derek, I can’t. This - this land isn’t ours anymore. I’m can’t be an alpha here.”

“You’re not an alpha in New York either,” he says, because it’s true. The New York alpha is tolerant of them, of all the other small packs and omegas that end of up in her city, but there’s no mistaking it. They’re there on sufferance, and she’s the one in charge.

“You know more Argents are coming, right?” She asks. “Soon, this place will be crawling with them.”

Derek isn’t brave. He’s never been brave, never had to be, because he’s always had other people to be brave for him. First his mom, then Laura, and maybe it’s time it stopped. Maybe he can be brave for her instead, for once. “I’m tired of running away. Before we go, maybe we should – should make sure we’re leaving, and not hiding.”

Laura’s looking at him like she’s never seen him before, and he’s worried he’s done something wrong, pushed on something he shouldn’t have pushed on. Laura’s his alpha, he’ll go where she goes, but he just wants - he wants something to hold that won’t crumble to ash in his hands. Something besides his sister, because that, at least, has always been solid ground.

Her eyes fill with tears and she throws her arms around his neck and whispers, “Okay.”

~

If Allison wants to be the type of matriarch they’ve never had before, she has to do what no other matriarch has ever done. Even if it’s crazy, and they all call her crazy for doing it. Under normal circumstances, she’d bring her aunt’s body back home and lay her to rest in the Argent graveyard. But these are not normal circumstances.

“Stick her in the freezer,” Allison orders. “And send out the call to the rest of the family. They’re coming here.”

Her father hesitates. “Here? To Beacon Hills? Where there’s a pack that just threatened to kill us all?”

Her mom is glaring, because her dad really shouldn’t be questioning her orders, but Allison doesn’t mind. It’s not like he’s doing it in front of the rest of the family. “If they wanted to kill us, we’d already be dead. There was a couple dozen wolves in this town besides them, just from what we passed in the woods. We’re good. But five of us up against a few dozen betas and two alphas? Not a chance.”

Because David is a huge dork, he raises his hand, and waits for Allison to not at him before he says, “So, why are we trying to antagonize them? I’m confused.”

“I’m not antagonizing them. It’s a show of trust, and a sign that I’m not planning to go anywhere. I’m not really one to talk, but that alpha is young to be holding his position, especially since he talks like he’s been an alpha for years.”

“Allison,” her mother says, sounding a cross between horrified and impressed, “do you want to make an alliance with the boy who murdered your aunt?”

Well, it sounds so bad when she says it like that. “I want to make an alliance with the alpha who responded to a group of well known hunters entering his territory by dealing out a justice it would have been our duty to provide anyway, and then letting us go. It’s usually one or the other. Either they’re too afraid of us to put up a fight, or crazy and acting more rabid than anything else. But he’s neither, or both. If we were ever going to have a successful alliance with any werewolf pack, I think it’d be this one.”

He family looks impressed, and that’s probably because she doesn’t add that it’d be a really nice bonus if she could get Scott back in her bed. It’s not the only reason, but hey, it doesn’t hurt.

~

None of the alphas call their wolves away.

“You know I’ve goaded hunters here in what could be an all out massacre?” he demands, scowling in his computer screen, which is split into three panels. From left to right is Diane, Taika, and Lisa. “We could all die.”

Taika rolls his eyes. “Like you’d have done it if you thought for one second your pack couldn’t handle them. You wouldn’t gamble with them like that.”

“It’s still a gamble,” Stiles insists, even though they’re right, of course. Trapping a family in a line of mountain ash and then starting a magically fueled fire when they don’t even know you exist is one thing. Going against a pack who’s well aware of all of them is quite another. Besides, if Allison ends up disappointing him, he’ll just plant evidence of them all having conspiracy to murder, or, hell, maybe that they’re running a drug ring, who cares really. Point is, he can always just have his dad arrest them all. He could even get the FBI involved, Scott’s dad is always so desperate to show that he’s not an absolute waste of space that he’d jump at the chance to go make a show of making a bunch of big arrests in Beacon Hills. Or they could even just kill all the Argents, like, whatever works.

The point being, okay, yes, he has plans, and options, but that still doesn’t mean he needs to endanger anyone but his own pack.

“You talk as if they want to leave you,” Lisa points out, amused. “You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type, otherwise I’d be pissed at how much all my betas like you so much. Just so we’re clear, if you steal any of my pack, I’ll rip your eyes out.”

Gross. “As if any one of them would choose me over your beach house.” Lisa actually has several beach houses, and they’re all amazing. Now that the selkie and mermaid situation is taken care of, it’s just unfairly nice. Stiles and his pack usually drive there at least a couple of times in the summer, but this summer has been, well, more eventful than most, even before the Argents and Hales hit town.

“You’re a strong second, at least,” Taika says. “We’ve already told our wolves exactly what’s going on. They asked to stay. For some reason, they’re under the impression that you’ll do something insane if you’re not being looked after. Besides, it’s not like having a couple dozen more wolves on your side in a fight can hurt.”

Yeah, okay, that’s a good point. “Fine,” he says, “anyway, I hope all this crap is resolved before the summer retreat anyway.”

“That’s in two weeks,” Lisa points out.

“I’ve done more in less,” he insists, and the other alphas roll their eyes.

~

Laura doesn’t know how long she wants to stay, but she pays for the room through the end of next week, just in case. Isaac raises an eyebrow and says, “Stiles will be glad you’re sticking around.”

“Will he?” she asks warily. Stiles has already been more accommodating and understanding than any other alpha would have been of her behavior. He said they were welcome to stay, but she’d been too distracted by - well, everything, to check to see if he was lying.

“Yes,” Isaac says. “Assuming you’re here because you’re trying to fix what you broke, because you miss your home, and not because you’re trying to take over.”

“I’m not,” she says, but can’t even work up any offense over it. She’s thought about it. She wants it. But - only in the abstract. She wants her family back, but her family is dead, and there’s no status symbol that can change that.

He hands her the receipt, still perfectly pleasant and mild. “That’s good. Our alpha is more trusting than the rest of us, and he’s friends with all the surrounding packs, including Diane’s.” He grabs her wrist, tight enough to bruise if she was human, and it takes all her self control not to attack him. He’ll heal, but she’s an alpha, and it won’t be instant. She gets the impression that Stiles will be a lot less understanding over her hurting his betas than he was when she hurt him. “Even if by some miracle you managed to kill Stiles, even though he’s been an alpha for seventeen years and the alpha of Beacon Hills for half a decade and you barely have one beta to your name, you still wouldn’t be able to take his spot. We’d kill you, and if we failed, the surrounding packs wouldn’t. You’d be an exile, more alone than you’ve ever been before.”

Isaac says all this with a level of cool calmness that speaks to his absolute conviction in what he’s saying. “I’m not planning anything,” she insists, and it’s true, but his warning still makes a chill go down her spine.

He lets her go. “Good. Just so we’re clear.”

She growls, shoves her receipt in her pocket, and goes back up to her room.

~

“So, uh,” John rubs the back of his neck. Stiles looks up from what might either be his summer chemistry homework or plans to make a bomb. With his son, it could be either. “Are you okay with. Uh. Me and Peter?”

He knows they have more important things to worry about, so many things that are more important than this. But this is still important, and he has to ask.

Stiles blinks. “Like. As your alpha, or as your son?” John opens his mouth to answer, but Stiles cuts him off. “It doesn’t matter, the answer is the same. As long as you guys are all happy, then I’m happy. Also watching you all pant after Peter, while hilarious, is also supremely awkward for all of us. Now we’ll get to witness new, even more awkward things, but they’ll be new, so there’s that.”

“We weren’t panting after him,” he says, indignant, and yes, okay, blushing.

His son raises an eyebrow. “You were. All of you, even Alan, even though he keeps that shit locked down. I’m embarrassed for all of you.” His phone beeps, and he flicks it open. “Huh. Danny wants to go out. Got to go.”

“It’s a week night,” he reminds him. This is something he could put his foot down about, it’s not wolf related, and Stiles would listen. But honestly, he’s not a kid anymore, he’s a real alpha, more adult than any other seventeen year old that John knows. Pulling the dad card on him at this point just feels silly.

Stiles claps him on the shoulder as he heads out the door. “It won’t take long. Or maybe it will. I’ll text you.”

John just sighs. It’s Melissa’s night with Peter, and really, John is glad there’s three of them. It means when Peter’s with one of them, the other two can still irritate each other, and no one is left completely alone.

He feels no guilt at all at calling Alan and asking if he wants to get a drink.

~

“Is there a reason we’re going to the Jungle on a Tuesday?” Danny asks, poking his head up from the backseat. “Not that I’m complaining, but if I’d had a little bit more forewarning I could have washed my good jeans.”

Stiles frowns, not taking his eyes off the road since he’s driving and all, but Scott suddenly regrets his decision to sit in the front seat. “I thought this was your idea?”

“Scott invited us,” Erica says, sitting on Boyd’s lap. Lydia’s on Isaac’s, and Danny’s on Jackson’s. They really should have just taken two cars, this is ridiculous, and it’s not like they’re low on designated drivers. Lydia and Danny are the only ones who can get drunk.

“I may have overheard,” he begins, “that possibly, maybe, someone else was planning on coming here tonight.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Lydia groans. “Scott! Really?”

Jackson starts laughing, and Isaac says, “What? What am I missing?”

“Allison is going to be there tonight,” Stiles says, but he doesn’t look mad, so there’s that.

“No?” he tries, even though they’re all werewolves and he’s a crap liar, they definitely don’t need any super hearing to know that. “Okay, maybe, but she’s really pretty and I haven’t had a chance to see her in like, a week, and only from afar, because she’s always surrounded by her creepy family. I overheard her talking about going out and doing something tonight, and the only decent place is the Jungle, so she might be there. Maybe.”

Which, the literal army of Argents that have descended on their town makes him nervous, it makes them all nervous. Except Stiles. If he has any reservations about the parade of hunters in their territory, he’s keeping it to himself.

“That’s called stalking,” Boyd says, and the rest of the car erupts in laughter.

Erica shoves Danny aside so she can lean forward. “You really think the matriarch of a hunter family is going to sleep with a werewolf?”

“I think there’s only one way to find out?” he says, and not that he doesn’t want to sleep with her. Well, he wants to do that too, obviously, but he wants more than that. He wants to date her, he thinks, or at least he wants to try.

They have a connection.

“Yeah, sure, okay,” Stiles says, and Scott can totally tell that he’s doing his best not to laugh at him. Which is way better than his alpha and best friends being upset with him, so he’ll take it. “Better you do it with us there than not, I guess.”

There’s a beat of silence, then Isaac goes, “Gross,” and they’re all laughing again.

~

Peter isn’t an animal, so it’s not like he starts going hot and heavy with all his significant others the second they’re alone. He has five years of repressed sexual impulses, but whatever, delayed gratification is so much sweeter.

Also, it’s fun, because while John and Alan appreciate being wine and dined, it’s just irritates Melissa. If they did everything her way, she’d be eating dinner off his stomach, and neither of them would be wearing clothing until she had to leave for work the next morning.

But she’s also the only one of them that agreed to go skydiving with him, so it balances out.

She loves him, and he’s a fantastic cook, so she comes over and sits on the counter while he cooks, stealing bites and talking about her day and their kids, and if he almost burns dinner because she keeps pulling him close for a kiss, well, it’s not like he’s going to complain. It does make the part where he sternly tells himself he can’t just throw her over his shoulder and carry her upstairs a little harder to listen to, because that’s obviously what she wants him to do, but he just knows that if he gives in once he’ll never get a nice candlelit dinner out of her again. Besides, they need a lot of calories for what they’re going to do later, he’s just trying to be a considerate lover.

Of course, because it’s going so well, it had to start going terribly.

Melissa sees the exact moment that he realizes, and she cuts herself off mid story and leans forward to place her hand over his. It’s only then that he realizes he’s bent the pan’s handle in half. Oops. He looks up at her, and he doesn’t know what his face looks like right now, but it can’t be good. “Should I call Stiles?” she asks.

He shakes his head, turning off the heat and pulling his hand from hers. “No. It’s just my niece.”

“Laura?” she asks, like he has another one these days. He used to, but - but that’s in the past. He thought she was in the past too. “Is she here?”

“She’s outside,” he growls, moving towards the front door.

Melissa grabs onto his arm, and she’s not strong enough to stop him, obviously, but he stops anyway. “Don’t - maybe you should talk to her?” He growls, but she’s unfazed. “Or if you don’t want to talk to her, let me go, and I’ll send her away.”

“Why?” he snaps.

She raises an eyebrow. “Because she’s your niece, and you love her, and I don’t think you want to hurt her.”

“I’m not going to hurt her!” he says, “Even if she deserves it.”

She touches his hands, tracing his nails, which are still human, and not even claws. “There’s more than one way to hurt a person. If you want to hurt her like she’s hurt you, then I won’t stop you. That’s not my place. But I just - be sure that that’s really what you want to do. I don’t want you to regret your decision, whatever that decision is.”

He looks into her eyes for a long moment, nonjudgemental and loving, and he thinks of his pack. The pack he has now, not the one he lost, thinks of his lovers and his kids, of his alpha. Of what his alpha would want him to do, and how he knows Stiles won’t judge him either way, won’t punish him regardless of what he does.

“I’ll be back,” he says, and kisses her cheek before leaving.

He opens the front door, and stands on the porch, arms crossed.

Laura is standing at the edge of his driveway, her arms wrapped around herself like she’s cold, even though it’s a perfectly pleasant summer night. God, he’d seen her that night in the woods, of course, had seen her in her alpha form and naked standing next to Stiles, but he hadn’t looked at her, couldn’t bear it.

She looks young.

He’d thought in the five years since he’s seen her she would have grown up, and maybe she has in some ways, but seeing at her standing in front of him now, huddled in on herself and looking up at him, shoulders hunched - she doesn’t look grown up. She doesn’t look like an alpha, like she had that night, when she’d stood shoulder to shoulder with Stiles and hadn’t given an inch.

She looks like a kid, like she’s a twenty four year orphan who’s had to help raise her brother, like she’s exhausted. And that tugs on part of him, it does, but it just makes the rest of him angrier. Why hadn’t she come home before this? If it had been so heavy, she should have come to him, and - and even during that first year after he’d woken up, if his niece and nephew had shown up needing him, if they’d gone it’s too much, and we’re so tired - of course he would have taken them in. He’s not an alpha, but he’s their uncle and maybe he wouldn’t have accepted Laura as his alpha, not after Stiles had cared for him and chased after him, but he would have accepted her as his niece, as someone he loves and who needs his help.

When had that changed?

“What do you want?” he asks before the silence can become to unbearable.

Her eyes flash red and she growls, then flinches, like she hadn’t mean to do that, and she lowers her head enough that he can’t see what color her eyes are. At least some part of her seems to think he should be her pack, and that should piss him off, should make him angry that she feels like she has any claim to him at all, but -

It doesn’t. He thinks it would hurt if he meant nothing to her, if she looked at him and didn’t care at all. She cares, even if it’s only as an alpha who’s lost a packmate.

“I just,” she swallows. “I - we know Stiles won’t tolerate us here forever.” Yeah, he will. “And I just - we wanted - are you okay?”

He blinks. “What?”

“Are you okay?” she repeats, voice high and reedy. “I - you seem like you are, and Stiles seems like a good alpha. You - you have half the family money, so I don’t think you need any, but is there anything else that you, uh, need?”

“The family money is Stiles’s,” he says, and her shoulders hunch. God, it’s just like when she was a little kid. She’d get big and loud and angry, become irrational with it, just like she’d been when she’d first arrived in town. Then she would come down, and be so apologetic, it wasn’t even a temper, it was just refusing to bend until she broke, every time. “I could have used my family when I woke up, but they were already dead or gone, so.”

Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that.

He’s trying to think of way to backtrack while still saving face when she takes a step forward, swallows, and says, “I’m - I’m sorry!”

Uh, what? He’s pretty sure he hasn’t heard Laura apologize since she was a toddler. And even then, it took Talia using her alpha voice to get that. “Excuse me?”

“I’m so sorry,” she says, and her eyes are red, but not with in alpha’s glow, just with held back tears. “I thought - everyone was gone, and they couldn’t move you, and I was so afraid of them coming back. I wanted to stay, I planned to stay, but-”

She cuts herself off, the tears spilling down her cheeks. He’s still her uncle, even when he’s furious. He hates seeing her like this.  “But?”

Laura licks her lips, then says. “You knew it was Kate, because you smelled her, right?” He nods. He hadn’t known who had burned down the house, but he’d smelled her there that night, had heard her laughing from behind the mountain ash line. He hadn’t known her name or her face, though, just known that it was a woman, that it was a hunter. “I knew it was Kate all along.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he explodes, a fresh wave of anger washing over him. She’d known this entire time, and she said nothing, they could have taken care of this years ago if only she’d done something about it.

“The two of us, against the Argent clan?” she says, “No, of course not.” Peter bites back a curse, but can’t argue it too strongly. Most alphas aren’t Stiles. Their allies would have offered support, help, would have given Laura and Derek protection and a place to rest. But they wouldn’t have stood against the most powerful werewolf hunting family for them. “But I - the reason I left,” she hiccups, and she’s really crying now, big fat tears down her cheek. “I - I had to,” she stops again.

Peter can’t deal with this. “Just spit it out!” he snaps, and feels bad as soon as he does it. He’s trying not to be an asshole to her, he’s just not very good at it.

“I couldn’t lose Derek too!” she blurts out. “God, if only you could have seen him in the days after the fire - I had to flash my eyes at him to get him to do anything, even to eat and sleep. I was so afraid if I took my eyes off him for one second that he’d - that I wouldn’t have a brother anymore and I couldn’t handle it, not after losing everyone else, not after losing you. The doctors told us that you’d never wake up, that you’d be in that coma forever, and Derek was basically cationic, and I had to leave. It was the only thing I could think of to help him, to get him out of the place where - where,” she rubs at her eyes and whispers, “Kate hurt Derek, okay? She knew when we’d be home and how to board us all in because Derek told her, because she - she seduced him and touched him, and he was only fifteen and she was too powerful for me to kill and you were too sick for me save and the only fucking person I had left, that I could help, was Derek, and the only way I could think to do that was to leave and to not look back-”

Peter’s pretty sure his vision goes black, and he realize Laura’s stopped talking only because he’s growling. He can feel Melissa come up behind him, but it’s a distant realization, one he can’t focus on right now. “Kate hurt Derek?”

“Yes,” Laura says, voice steady and her heart not missing a beat, and she’s not lying, not that he’d think that she would lie about this, but he was hoping she was.

Melissa’s hand on the center of his back is all that’s preventing him from transforming. “I should have slit her throat myself when I had the chance.”

Laura laughs, and it catches on a sob, like she agrees with him.

Thank everything for Melissa, because she looks to Laura and says, “Why don’t you come inside?”

She shakes her head, “Oh, I don’t - I’ve already intruded so much.”

“Come inside,” he says, before he can even really think about it, and hopes she can hear what he can’t bring himself to say just yet.

Come home.

~

Whatever sympathy and compassion Allison had been able to dredge up for her grandfather is long gone.

The rest of her family listens, they follow orders, they fall in line. She says come, and so they do, driving or flying as needed, but they arrive within twenty four hours of her call.

Except Gerard.

It takes him three days to arrive, and Allison has half a mind to beat him when he arrives for this insolence. Even if he hadn’t betrayed them all, she’s not Kate. She won’t put up with his disobedience, and if he thinks otherwise, he’s a fool. This is why men are soldiers.

“Allison,” he greets, walking into their house with a dufflebag over his shoulder. Her family is all staying there, and it’s cramped, but it was only supposed to be a for a day for most of them. Of course, that got extended because of her grandfather’s delay. Maybe it’s best that they start this with everyone pissed at him. It’ll make it easier.

“You’re late,” she says, cold, “and you’ll address me as Matriarch.”

He smiles, reaching out for her shoulder. “I know this must be so hard for you honey, being thrust into this when you’re not ready for it, when you’re so unprepared.”

There’s a ripple of murmurs through the room. Allison narrows her eyes, covers her grandfather’s hand with her own, then with one swift movement, breaks three of his fingers. He cries out, dropping his bag and cradling his hand to his chest. “Know your place, boy.”

“You little bi-,” he cuts himself off, but not fast enough. Anyone who’d been surprised at her actions, had thought them excessive, doesn’t anymore.

“Carol, Fiona,” she says.

Her aunt and cousin come forward, roughly pulling his arms behind his back and kicking his feet out from under him. Fiona wraps the chains around his wrists, and he tries to pull away from them, but it’s fruitless. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention?” Allison asks, syrupy sweet. “You’re on trial for breaking the code. You aided Kate in massacring the Hale pack, putting not only our family but our reputation at stake.”

“It’s what needed to be done!” he snaps, and holy shit, is he serious? Allison looks at her parents, because it really cannot be that easy. “It was for us, of course it was. You have to finish it, it’s time to do it again. This new Beacon Hills pack is just as bad as the last one, we have to take them out while we still have the chance.”

“Uh,” Carol says, wide eyed. “No need for a trial, I guess.”

“Straight to punishment it is,” Allison says, “since he’s been so kind as to confess his transgressions.”

Gerard’s face goes through a series of emotions. “Now, hold on there.”

“Tie him up, gag him, and throw him in the back of a truck,” she orders. “And grab my aunt’s body from the freezer.”

She doesn’t want to do this. No part of her wants this, even the part that hates him. But it has to be done, and she only gets one choice to do it right, to prove to everyone what kind of matriarch she’s going to be, what kind of hunter she’s going to be.

~

Laura hadn’t wanted him to go with her.

Beyond her being his alpha and so he has to listen to her – which is seriously not as effective as he knows she’d like it to be, but come on, she’s his sister, like he’s going to listen to her all the time – he doesn’t want her to go alone. She’s already done so many things alone, shouldered so much for him, and this just feels like one more way he’s letting her down. But she’d insisted that she to talk to their uncle alone.

He’d offered to wait up for her, at least, but she’d just shaken her head, “No, don’t, I don’t want to worry about you being up, worrying about me. Just – just do something fun while I’m gone, go to the movies, or a bar, or something.”

That didn’t sound fair at all, but she’s his sister, his alpha, and his best friend, so he listens.

There’s nothing good at the movies, so he goes to a bar.

He doesn’t realize until he’s inside that it’s a gay bar, and when he does, he has to bite back a grin. Laura will get a kick out of him ending up in a place with go go dancers if nothing else. He doesn’t go to a lot of gay bars because he only really goes out with his sister, which always ends up being more trouble than it’s worth, since she’s always surrounded by a crowd of boys and girls as soon as she walks through the door, and he ends up so preoccupied on keeping an eye on her, that he can’t really flirt with any of the pretty people giving him attention. But Laura’s not here now, and he is, and she said to have fun.

He’s not great at having fun, not alone. He really wishes normal alcohol did anything for him, or at least that he wouldn’t draw a lot of concerned stares if he just chugged an entire bottle of whiskey, but that doesn’t seem likely. He can smell there are other wolves in this place, maybe they have something? Or he could stop being such an uptight loser, as his sister would say, but he doesn’t think that’s going to happen.

“Hey,” someone says, and then there’s a hand on his elbow tugging him around.

His smile freezes in place when he realizes he’s looking into soft amber eyes and pale skin with a scattering of moles. “You’re too young to be here,” he says. He’s barely old enough to be here. Then he flushes. “Uh, Alpha Stilinski.”

He doesn’t look mad. Derek wonders if he ever gets mad if his pack isn’t in danger. It doesn’t seem like it. “Call me Stiles. And I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Uh,” he says, unexpectedly tongue tied. He can fake confidence easily enough, he knows how to smile and hold himself so people pay attention to him. But he’s not comfortable with himself, not comfortable in his body, and it’s so clear that Stiles is. He wonders if that’s what comes from being an alpha from birth, from needing to have the level of control that it took Laura months to master even from childhood. Stiles is an alpha, and Derek’s here on his sufferance, so he should really probably do something besides stare at him.

But Stiles only smiles, leaning in close even though he doesn’t have to, they’re werewolves, they can here each other just fine even with the pounding music. “Where’s your better half?”

“Talking to our uncle.”

He expects for this to be the point where Stiles get mad, or upset, or at least drops his smile, but instead he just goes, “Ah.”

Derek waits, but when nothing more is forthcoming, he says, “I can’t imagine it’s going well.” He really wishes Laura would let him be there. It just doesn’t feel fair to make her deal with all this on her own.

“I imagine it’s going as well as Peter wants it to go,” he says, and Derek pulls a face, because, yeah, that’s probably right. Stiles curls his hands in the front of his jacket, and tugs him forward with an alpha’s strength, so Derek has no option but to nearly go stumbling into him. “Want to dance?”

“Uh,” he says, because yes, he does, but also Stiles is seventeen and an alpha, and he’s not sure if those two things cancel each other out, of if they just make the whole thing worse overall. They’re not enemies, obviously, it seems like Stiles doesn’t have a problem with them being here, even with everything, but what if he’s just like that with everyone? “Do you do this often?”

“Seduce older super hot werewolves from out of town?” he asks, and Derek feels his ears warm, because that really wasn’t what he meant at all. Stiles shrugs. “You’re not the first. But I do think you may be a special case.” He takes a step away. “But no pressure if you’re not interested, that’s fine too.”

He feels the loss of warmth when Stiles steps away. “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.”

Stile’s eyes gleam, and Derek feels like he’s lost some sort of tactical advantage here, but he can’t make himself mind too much. Losing to Stiles seems like it’ll be a lot of fun. And hey, if he can make out with Stiles to distract him the next time his sister does something dumb and impulsive, that’s just a bonus.

Stiles hooks his fingers through Derek’s belt loops to tug him closer, and he really can’t bring himself mind. He’s trying to frown, but he can feel that he’s doing a terrible job of it.

“STILES!” He’s ripped away from Derek, and he finally notices the rest of the pack rushing toward them through the crowd. Lydia had just been the one to get to them first. She ignores Derek, her eyes wide and her skin pale. “Stiles, we have to go, right now.”

“What’s wrong?” he demands, instantly hardening and focusing.

“What’s wrong is you need to check your phone,” she snaps, “We’ve gotten a bunch of messages from the visiting wolves. Argents are heading into the forests as a group, and they’re carrying a lot of lighter fluid. I’ve already texted the rest of the pack.”

Derek’s stomach drops. “The preserve. They’re going to burn down the preserve.”

Stiles curses and is pushing through crowd, out of the club, and Derek watches him go, because it’s not his place but he desperately wants to follow, to help, even though he knows he’s not welcome.

Lydia stares at him for a long moment, then says, “Well, are you coming or not?”

~

Allison has to give it to this Beacon Hills pack. She’s barely gotten the chance to set everything up when they come bursting into the clearing. She’d thought that they’d have to wait around.

Stiles is front and center, red eyes ablaze. “What the hell do you think you’re-” He cuts himself off, and he’s smart, it’s fairly obvious what she’s doing. “What the hell.”

The rest of his pack follows, and the Hales are there too, so that’s good. She glances around her, and now that Stiles is here, the rest of the wolves that she knew had been tracking them show themselves. Well, kind of, she actually just sees that she’s surrounded by a couple dozen pairs of eyes glowing from the trees.

Good. She wants as many witnesses to this as possible.

“You said snapping my aunt’s neck was mercy,” she says, voice even and clear, so that they can all hear her. They all have super hearing but it doesn’t hurt to be sure. “And it was. But I’m not merciful to those who betray me and sully my family’s name I’m not merciful to those who harm innocent people.”

“Holy shit,” Lydia breathes. She thinks Peter even looks impressed. Allison swallows, and pushes down her fear and her regret. Her family is here. They helped her do this. She’s Matriarch now, and that means she has to make the tough decisions from here on out.

She reaches into her pocket and takes out a matchbook. They all flinch. Laura says, “Are you really – you’re going to–”

Allison looks behind her, and the sight there is just the same as it was last time she checked.

A funeral pyre. With her aunt’s body laid down in the center, and her grandfather, alive and struggling right next to her. He’s gagged and tied to a stake, rope keeping him in place. The smell of the lighter fluid covering the both of them is thick in the air.

She strikes the match, and hold it lit between her thumb and forefinger. “You said justice would be burning the perpetrator alive while their family watched.” She makes sure she’s looking Stiles in the eye as she tosses the lit match over her shoulder.

The heat of the flames rushing across the pyre, burning her aunt’s body and killing her grandfather, is a heavy weight against her back. She doesn’t look away until her grandfather stops screaming, until he’s either dead or close enough.

“My grandfather admitted to aiding my aunt in setting fire to the Hale house,” she says, and doesn’t even allow her voice to catch. “I am the Argent Matriarch, and I will not tolerate senseless killing. But I do think the supernatural does need to be policed, to be kept in line.” She holds out her hand. “I want more than an alliance, Alpha Stilinski. I want a partnership.”

For long moment no one says anything, no one moves, and the only sound is and popping and sizzling of flesh.

“You know,” Stiles says, “you could have just, like, called.”

“I’m the Matriarch to the oldest living werewolf family,” she says, “even if you were willing to accept my word, do you think they would?”

She doesn’t have to clarify who she’s talking about it, Stiles immediately looks around to the wolves that are hiding just out of sight and rubs the back of his head. He looks toward Lydia and Peter, and Allison feels her respect for him rise just for that. There are too many leaders who are too weak to feel comfortable letting others see them asking for help, but Stiles isn’t. “Thoughts?”

“She’s just as much of a psychopath as her aunt and grandfather,” Peter says, “but I’d rather have her working with us rather than against us.”

“She just burned her grandfather alive,” Lydia says, “the least we can give her is a chance.”

Stiles turns to face his pack, and no one else offers up anything else, so he turns back to her, grabs her hand in his, ands shakes it. “Partners, whatever the hell that means. You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”

“Yes,” she says, because they’re all crazy, what kind of messed up person chooses this life, clearly there’s something wrong with all of them.

Scott waves at her from over Stiles’s shoulder, and this is so not the time for so many reasons, but she winks at him anyway.

Okay, so she’s kind of psychopath. But why deal with the trauma and fear and uncertainty crawling their way up her throat when she can flirt with a cute werewolf? Priorities.

~

John hates sitting at home and waiting. But at least he has Melissa. As the only completely human, none ability having members of the pack, they’re the ones that get left behind. Which, he really takes issue with that, because he’s the only one of them with a gun. But, well, someone has to stay behind with Melissa.

The front door slams open, and they jump to their feet. The pack spills in, smelling faintly of smoke and burned meat.

“I need a drink,” Alan says immediately. Peter claps him on the shoulder and then heads for the kitchen, probably to get that drink.

“I need therapy,” Boyd says instead, sitting down heavily on the couch. Erica sits on his lap, and Isaac kind of falls against them. The other half of the couch gets taken up with a tangled pile of Jackson, Danny, and Lydia.

“But she’s cool, right?” Scott insists, “in a completely terrifying, super messed up kind of way?”

Melissa asks, “Wait, are they part of the pack now?”

John turns his head to see what she’s looking at, and Laura and Derek are hovering uncertainly in the doorway.

Stiles shrugs, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. “That’s up to them.”

Well, John had kind of expected this to happen. The rest of the pack doesn’t exactly look surprised either.

“Excuse me?” Laura asks, shoulders hunched.

“Diane has alphas in her pack, I don’t have any problem in doing the same,” he says. “This isn’t Hale land anymore. I’m the alpha, this is my pack, and Beacon Hills is mine. But if you want to be part of that, if you want to once more call Beacon Hills home and be part of its pack, you’re welcome here.” He leans forward and says seriously, “If you want to be mine, I’ll take you.”

John knows thinks won’t be that easy, that they can’t be that easy, but that Stiles will do everything he can to make it work. The only thing that’s up in the air is if Laura will meet him halfway.

Laura’s eyes flash red, then she looks to Derek, who won’t look at her at first, and then when he does, just flickers his gaze to Stiles and back. She sighs. “I’d like to come home, Alpha. Please.”

Stiles pushes off the wall to walk across the room so he can grab her by the back of the neck, and John’s not imagining the way her whole body relaxes when he does that. “Welcome to the pack.”

Peter walks back in with three drinks in his hand. “What did I miss?”

John grabs one of the drinks. “Forget you, what did I miss?”

“Well first off, we’re friends with the hunters now, and Allison is like, in the top five of scariest people I know,” Stiles begins.

“In a hot kind of way,” Scott insists.

John thinks he’s going to need to sit down.

“Don’t worry,” Peter says, eyes sparkling. “It’s all kind of horrible, but it’s good. More than good. It’s going to be great.”

~

One Year Later

~

“This is easily the strangest group I’ve been apart of,” Diane says, looking out onto the field in the center of the preserve. It’s the first week of summer, and it’s filled with a mix of werewolves from the five closest packs, emissaries, and hunters, playing what a drunk person might attempt to describe as soccer. “And keep in mind, I grew up in the fae court.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. At some point they should probably be proper leaders and go make a nuisance of themselves, but for now they’re content to sit back, drink, and watch.

“Surely we’re not that bad,” Allison says cheerfully, taking demure sips from her beer. “Isn’t it nice to be able to send hunters after wayward omegas and missing pack members instead of having to call in favors with other alphas?”

“Isn’t it nice to have werewolves on speed dial whenever you’re hunting something with big teeth and sharp claws?” Taika asks.

Xavier laughs. “Okay, but that weird dragon dinosaur thing was pretty cool. Thanks for letting me keep the teeth.”

“Thanks for keeping it from biting my head off,” Allison says. “That really would have put a damper on things.” She cups her hands to shout, “Dad, put your back into it! You’re disgracing the family honor!”

Chris looks over to scowl at his daughter, and receives a soccer ball to the head courtesy of Laura, which sends Isaac into a giggling fit. Lydia cheers from the sidelines with Melissa and Alan.

Derek breaks off from the game, running over to them, and Lisa sighs. “You got yourself a nice one there, Stiles. I think I could do my laundry on his abs.”

“It’s his eyebrows that do it for me, personally,” he confides.

They’re all still laughing when Derek makes it over to them, and he’s scowling like he knows that they were laughing at him specifically. “Are you going to join or are you just going to stand there and look pretty?”

“I’m very good at looking pretty,” Stiles says.

Derek rolls his eyes. “Come on, Alpha, your pack needs your help.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” he sighs, dropping a quick kiss on Derek’s mouth as he passes, just to see him blush.

He puts on a burst of speed, steals the ball from one of Lisa’s wolves, and slam dunks it into the basketball hoop. He really doesn’t understand what kind of game they’re playing, because that’s very much a soccer ball, but whatever.

His pack cheers, while the other packs and the hunters are booing him, and Stiles grins.

He could get used to this.