Archive of Our Own

It doesn’t look as much like a war zone as it feels. In fact, Derek is pretty sure the high school parking lot has looked a lot worse than this in recent years. There are a few cars parked haphazardly, some of them dented, one or two with a few bullet holes. The Jeep is idling in front of the steps, its driver-side door standing wide open. Otherwise, there’s no sign of the desperate battle that had played out just a few hundred feet away inside the school. The blood on the hallway floors probably hasn’t even dried yet, but the facade looks no different than ever.

Derek isn’t made of stone anymore, and yet he still feels stiff. That might just be in his head. He rolls his shoulders anyway, stretches his neck from side to side, and tries not to think about Monroe slipping through their fingers. They’d won tonight. He doesn’t want to taint the victory by acknowledging that loss just yet.

The others are spread out across the lot in twos and threes: Lydia and Jackson sitting close on the steps, catching up, while Ethan absentmindedly plays with Jackson’s hair; Malia and Peter standing together, too far away for Derek to hear whatever words they’re exchanging; Chris and Rafael back to back, both on their phones with whatever contacts they have, one attempting to head Monroe off at the state line with the help of the scant handful of hunters that are still on his side and the other smoothing ruffled feathers at the federal level; Stiles and his father, hugging like they have been for what seems like an hour already.

The only person alone is Scott, finally released from his mother’s thorough medical examination—and even more thorough hug—off to the side, looking over everyone else like if he looks away for even a second, they’ll disappear. With his recently torn out and regrown eyes, Derek figures that’s not an unreasonable feeling for him to have.

Scott doesn’t seem to notice Derek’s approach, too caught up in his vigil. He startles when Derek says his name, but relaxes just as quickly and offers him a weak but genuine smile.

“Hey,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

“How are you?” Derek counters.

Scott shrugs. “Just tired.”

“I’m not surprised. Healing an injury like that burns through a lot of energy.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Scott turns back to the lot, eyes hopping from pack member to pack member in a never-ending cycle.

“They’re all okay,” Derek points out. “Everybody’s fine.”

The tight line of Scott’s shoulders loosens just a bit. “I know. I just… It doesn’t feel like it’s over yet, you know?”

Derek huffs a small laugh. “Yeah. I know. But it is. As soon as Chris’ people get their hands on Monroe—and they will—it’ll be done.”

Scott lets out a long, slow breath. He’s still got blood on his face, little bits smeared where his mother’s handy wet-wipes didn’t reach. He looks every bit as tired as Derek felt after the worst of his various life-threatening injuries had finished closing up, like he could just crawl into bed and sleep for a century. Or like he would, if only restful sleep wasn’t such an unlikely prospect after everything he’s seen.

They’ve all seen too much.

Derek tucks his hands into his pockets, shifting to stand beside Scott and bump their shoulders together. “So, what’s next?”

Derek can feel Scott’s sigh.

“Damage control,” he says heavily. “The Anuk-Ite may have been the driving force, but that doesn’t mean Monroe’s people didn’t have legitimate concerns, and we can’t just let that go. The supernaturally enhanced fear may be gone but the normal fear is still there, especially after all this. We can’t just ignore it. We’ve got to talk to the—”

“I meant for you.”

Finally tearing his eyes away from his pack, Scott frowns at Derek. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Derek says slowly, “aren’t you supposed to be starting at UC Davis soon?”

Scott grimaces, gaze skittering away. “Yeah, like…now, actually. Pretty much right now. But I don’t see how I can go when there’s still so much to do here.”

When Derek doesn’t respond immediately, he rushes on.

“I mean, I can’t just leave, can I? Not now. I know college is a big deal, and it’s my dream program, and it’s a miracle that I even got in considering how much school I missed and how much it messed up my grades. But the whole town is a mess! Everything is so fucked up right now, and that’s my fault. And Liam! He’s just starting to get his feet under him! He’s not ready for his alpha to just take off and leave him alone to deal with all this by himself. I have to stay to—”

Derek’s hand on Scott’s shoulder pulls him up short. Derek doesn’t say anything at first, just waits for Scott to turn and look him in the eye.

“First of all, this isn’t your fault,” he says, his tone leaving no room for argument, even when Scott looks like he might offer one up. “Second… Scott, you can’t let this be your whole life. You can’t put everything else on hold for it.”

Scott swallows hard and shakes his head. “I can’t leave my pack or the town unprotected either. I thought I could. I thought maybe I could go to school and get a job and have a semi-normal life, but after all this—”

“Scott, the town is far from unprotected,” Derek argues, nodding toward the little clump in the middle of the parking lot. “Chris, the Sheriff, Parrish, Deaton, even your dad. They’re all pretty good at what they do. And they’re not going anywhere.”

“Okay, yes,” Scott says, “but what about Liam? He needs pack. He’s still pretty new to the whole werewolf thing, and Malia can only help him so much, if she even stays in town, and she doesn’t really have the patience for it anyway, and—”

“I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Scott looks almost as surprised as Derek feels to hear those words come out of his mouth, but as soon as they do, Derek knows he doesn’t want to take them back.

“But,” Scott says, “what about you and Braeden? Weren’t you two…?”

“We were,” Derek tells him. “And then we weren’t. It was good for a while, and it ended well. We just…had different goals, I guess. She’s not one to settle down, probably ever, and I have had more than enough of life on the run.” He shrugs, hands in his pockets. “I could stand to come back and help out, if you need me to.”

Scott is staring at him, looking far more disbelieving than Derek feels is warranted, but maybe it’s less to do with Derek himself and more to do with things never working out well for Scott. “You would really do that?”

Derek has to smile. “Why not? I’m not wanted by the FBI anymore—thank God for that—and, besides, Beacon Hills is my home too. I’ve had my time in the world, but I always intended to come back eventually. Now I can hold down the fort for you where the pack is concerned, and you can have your turn out there.”

There’s a long few seconds where Scott searches for words. When he doesn’t find any, he just throws his arms around Derek in a tight hug. Derek laughs but doesn’t hesitate to hug him back. And when Scott mumbles a cracked “thank you” into his shoulder, Derek just squeezes a little harder.

Eventually, Derek pushes Scott back, nodding over his shoulder. “I think you’ve got someone waiting for you.”

Scott turns to find Malia, having lost Peter sometime in the last few minutes, hovering a ways back. They both smile when they lock eyes, and Derek doesn’t know when exactly that became a thing, but judging by the whiff of relief and happiness he catches on the breeze, it’s a good thing. And he’ll take as much of that as he can, nowadays.

He leaves the two of them to themselves, wandering his way through the parking lot with the vague intention of going back to the loft, seeing if it’s still habitable after so long standing empty. A snatch of conversation catches his attention before he makes it halfway.

“—really don’t think they’ll want me coming back,” Stiles is saying, a hand scratching at the back of his neck. “I did sort of duck out halfway through a high priority op to abscond with the unsub and disappear into the night, so I figure I fucked any chance I had at the whole FBI-as-a-viable-career-path thing.”

“Yeah,” the Sheriff sighs. “Even McCall and his contacts can’t salvage that one.”

Derek grimaces, a leaden feeling in his stomach that he wishes he wasn’t so familiar with. The Sheriff heads off toward Chris and Melissa, patting Stiles on the shoulder on more time as he passes. Derek waits until he’s out of earshot before moving forward to lean against the Jeep’s hood. “I’m sorry.”

Stiles whirls around with one hand hovering somewhere between fending off the potential attacker and clutching his chest like the drama queen he is at heart. When he sees it’s just Derek, he slumps back.

“Jeez, dude, don’t do that.”

“Sorry,” Derek chuckles. “And…I’m sorry.”

Stiles gives him a weird look. “That’s the third time you’ve said that. Wanna tell me what for?”

“I might have eavesdropped a little,” Derek admits. “You blew your internship for me.”

It’s not like Derek didn’t realize at the time that Stiles was taking a huge risk, helping him. Stiles spent months worming his way into an operation an intern had absolutely no business being involved in—and God knows how he even managed that in the first place—only to very deliberately sabotage the entire thing to help Derek escape. Honestly, it’s a miracle he didn’t end up arrested.

But Stiles just waves it off. “Nah, it’s— I mean, yeah, but it’s probably a good thing, really.” At Derek’s raised eyebrows, he says, “The FBI is all about procedure, you know? It’s all rules and regulations and protocols. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t really do all that well with protocol. Something tells me I would’ve washed out anyway. This just saves me time. And hey, I can still put ‘interned at Quantico’ on my resume.”

He winks, finger-gunning in Derek’s direction.

Derek resists the urge to roll his eyes, but that leaden feeling lightens a little bit when nothing about Stiles’ manner or his scent indicates that he’s lying. “Well, I guess that’s something, at least. And you can still make it back in time for finals.”

“Oh God, don’t remind me about finals when I’ll have missed a solid two weeks of class by then,” Stiles groans. “That’s gonna be a nightmare.”

“Sorry,” Derek finds himself saying again, not quite sure why. It isn’t like Stiles wouldn’t have come back without him. The pack was in danger, and Stiles will always come back when the people he loves are at risk.

Stiles gives him another of those odd looks. He turns to lean against the Jeep’s door, crossing one foot over the other, and says, “What you should really be sorry about is leaving me to drive all the way back to Virginia by my lonesome. You know how depressing that’s gonna be? Almost a whole ‘nother week in the car by myself! Who’s gonna torture me with their terrible music choices this time?”

“I guess you’re just going to have to torture yourself,” Derek says solemnly. “You’re a big boy, I think you can do it.”

It’s ridiculous, but it earns him a laugh. Stiles ducks his head down, toeing at the asphalt. When he glances back up, his eyes are narrowed. It only takes him a few seconds to work out the puzzle this time.

“You’re staying here, aren’t you?” he asks. “For good, I mean. No more going out on the road.”

Derek can’t bring himself to be surprised. He just nods.

Stiles nods back, lips pursed. “Good,” he says. “That’s good. The betas could use someone nearby who actually knows what they’re doing, and I know my dad likes being able to consult with you when he needs to.” He scuffs his shoe across the ground again. “You’ll, uh…keep an eye on him for me, won’t you? My dad? Maybe text me an update or two?”

Privately, Derek thinks that Noah doesn’t need any looking after, but he also knows that saying so won’t make Stiles worry any less. So he nods again. The last of the tension leaks out of Stiles’ shoulders, a small smile making its way onto his face, and Derek finds himself returning it. His comes out a little sly.

“I’m not monitoring his diet, though.”

Stiles makes an indignant noise, which Derek ignores in favor of turning back in the direction of the main road. He calls, “Well, what good are you, then?”

“Have a safe trip,” Derek throws back. His smile stays firmly in place as he leaves Stiles grumbling half-heartedly behind him.

Derek is working when the knock comes. He isn’t expecting anyone—he rarely gets visitors anyway, at least not ones that don’t call first—but he puts aside his laptop and makes sure he’s presentable before getting the door.

He finds Mason with his hand raised, ready to knock again, and Liam, half-hidden behind his friend. The two of them freeze and look at him with wide eyes like they hadn’t been prepared for him to actually answer.

Derek stares back at them. “Can I help you?”

“Oh,” Mason says blankly. “Uh…”

After a moment of awkward silence, Liam nudges Mason in the back. “Scott sai—”

“Right, Scott was saying that—”

“—and Lydia would—”

“—but then she isn’t—”

Completely lost, Derek holds up a hand and the boys stutter to a halt at once. He says, “Try that again. Maybe just one of you.”

Mason is the chosen spokesperson, if the look they trade is any indication. He takes a deep breath and produces a book, heavy and obviously old, from his shoulder bag.

“We were looking into something,” he tells Derek. “Not anything critical or imminently dangerous! Just, you know, research. I like research.”

Derek has long since figured that out, so he nods for Mason to continue.

“Right, well… It’s in Aramaic. And I don’t know Aramaic. And usually I would ask Lydia for help, since she knows things like Aramaic, but she’s in Boston now and way too busy with all her classes and her projects and her independent research and everything, so—”

Liam cuts into Mason’s ramble. “Scott said to ask you. He said you know lots of languages.”

Derek raises his eyebrows; he’s not sure how Scott even knows that about him, considering how rarely he’s had a chance to use any of his linguistic skills in the last few years. Stiles, at least, has heard his Spanish, and he’s brushed up on his Korean since Ken realized he could have someone to chat with, but it’s been a while since he’s had any opportunity to employ his knowledge of dead languages.

He holds out a hand and, after a second of hesitation, Mason passes him the book. Flipping the pages carefully, Derek has to wonder where the kid got it. Maybe from Argent’s library. The paper is delicate and crumbling at the edges, the ink spidery and bleeding, hard to read in spots. But most of it is legible and, luckily, in a dialect he’s familiar with.

Derek is halfway back to his work table before he realizes Mason and Liam are still frozen outside his door like the frame is made of mountain ash. Or like they think Derek is going to eat them for setting foot in his home without an explicit invitation. It’s a very strange contrast to Scott and Stiles and their tendency to just come right on in. But then, Scott and Stiles had never looked at him quite like this, even way back in the beginning, like they’re waiting for permission.

It’s the same way they look at Chris and Noah and Melissa. At the adults.

Considering Derek is almost twenty-six, it probably shouldn’t be so weird to be considered one of the adults.

He gestures for the kids to come inside and they finally stumble through. He leaves them to hover by the door and settles back down at the table. Forgoing the laptop in favor of notepad and pencil, Derek starts writing out the gist of the text, leaving the finer points to pick apart after. A lot of it looks like it’ll be up for interpretation anyway.

Half of the first page is mostly translated—with as much confidence as he can claim in this case—before Mason sinks into the chair across from him, moving slow like he thinks maybe Derek won’t notice. Liam hovers behind him, fidgeting nervously. Derek remembers that he’d sort of menaced the kid once in the locker room. It was at Scott’s behest and for a good reason, but apparently Liam is still a little skittish around him.

“So you do know Aramaic?” Mason asks.

Derek gives him a look, slowly dragging his eyes down to the half-translated page before him and back up to Mason’s sheepish face.

“Right,” he says, “stupid question.”

Derek snorts. “Yes, I know it. It might be a little rusty, but I think it’ll serve. I can always email my preliminary translation to Lydia, get a second opinion, see if she disputes any of it.”

“You don’t have to do that!” Mason blurts out. “It’s not like we don’t trust your skills or anything, I was just—”

“It’s never a bad idea to have two sets of eyes,” Derek insists. “And, you know, you don’t have to be so nervous. It’s not like this is an imposition. It’s sort of what I do.”

Liam shifts closer, leaning over to see the screen of Derek’s abandoned laptop, which is pointless considering it’s gone dormant by now. “Like, for a living? I thought you were rich.”

“Yes and yes,” Derek says with a wry half-smile. “I have plenty of money to live off of, but I also do freelance work as a translator in a number of languages. I’d get bored otherwise.”

“How many languages do you speak?” Mason asks eagerly.

“I speak six fluently, but I’m proficient in five more that are no longer spoken.”

Mason’s eyes go wide, staring at Derek like he’s the coolest thing on the planet. “Intense.”

Derek turns back to the book to hide how that makes him smile. He manages a few more sentences before there’s a loud clatter and he turns to find Liam over at his bookshelf, cringing, with a wooden bookend on the floor by his feet. Liam immediately stuffs his hands in his pockets, face going pink.

God, he’s so young. He looks like a child about to get thoroughly scolded by his mother, and it makes something in Derek go tight and painful to remember that Liam’s already fought and lost and gotten plenty of blood on his hands. Derek thinks that Liam is probably seventeen, he’s not quite sure. And he knows that any seventeen-year-old will argue until they’re blue in the face about how grown up they are, but they’re wrong. They’re always wrong.

He still remembers Scott’s face when they’d first met, barely sixteen, scared out of his mind and fighting not to show it. A fresh-faced, buzzcut Stiles with a bone saw in hand, trying desperately to talk himself into using it. They would’ve claimed adulthood too, at the time, and Derek would’ve ripped them to shreds for it.

Derek would have said the same at sixteen, idiot kid that he was, and he did rip himself to shreds. He spent years doing just that, destroying himself over naive mistakes that any idiot kid would’ve made, believing he should’ve been mature enough to know better. And maybe that’s the biggest mistake he ever made.

He’s never really thought of himself as one of the grown-ups before, but now, next to Liam’s grabby hands and Mason’s wide-eyed enthusiasm, he finally feels like one. He’s got almost a decade of experience on them, he realizes with a start, and whatever dubious wisdom that’s afforded him.

He promised Scott before he left for school that he would keep an eye on them. Now he promises himself that he’s going to take care of them too. They’re just kids. Dumb, soft, know-nothing kids with their entire lives ahead of them. He’s going to treat them better than he ever treated Scott and Stiles and the others—far better than he’s treated himself. They deserve to have that room to grow, to be young for just a little while longer.

It’s too late for him, but it’s not for them. He can still do right by them.

He tells Liam to put the bookend back on the shelf, shaking his head as Liam almost drops it again in his haste to comply. Then Derek kicks out the chair beside him in invitation, pretending not to notice how hesitant Liam is to take it, and turns the page.

Derek is just kicking off his dirt-caked boots when his phone rings. He leaves the boots by the door, ready for the next time he takes Liam for a run/training exercise in the woods, and squints down at his cell. The name “Argent” is on the screen—Scott made sure that Derek had all the relevant numbers as soon as he finally got a new phone, his last one lost somewhere in a river in New Mexico with a bullet embedded in it—and doesn’t know what to make of that.

After a few rings, he decides that it would probably be unwise to ignore it.

“Is there a problem?” he opens with, unable to think of any reason Chris would call him, of all people, short of an emergency.

“Good morning, Derek,” is Chris’ response.

Derek is rolling his eyes before he realizes. “It’s three in the afternoon. Why are you calling me?”

“No problem,” Chris says. “At least, not yet, I don’t think. Just a rumor about some trouble brewing a ways north of here. My intel’s not great—I don’t have a lot of friends left in the hunter community there—but it sounds like it’s worth checking out. I thought you might want to come along.”

Derek pulls the phone back to verify that it’s still Chris Argent he’s talking to. When the display confirms it, he frowns. “Why would you offer that?”

There’s a rustle of cloth on the other end of the line, maybe the sound of a shrug. “It’s still Hale territory.”

Derek’s first instinct is to point out that, really, it’s not anymore, considering he’s the only Hale living on it and the presiding alpha isn’t a Hale at all. But Chris knows that. He’s also fairly certain that Chris doesn’t need any backup, especially not on what will probably amount to a recon mission or a chat with the locals. He’s more than capable of handling any and all of that alone.

But he called Derek anyway, to keep him informed and give him the option of being involved. Derek thinks back to what Chris had said to him in South America, about the Hales being Beacon Hills’ protectors. At the time, he sort of assumed that Chris was saying it to convince him to come back, but there’s no convenient excuse this time. The open acknowledgement of his heritage, of his family’s investment in this land—it’s a sign of respect.

He’s maybe more surprised by it than he should be at this point, but he finds himself standing a little taller. He doesn’t let himself second guess before he says, “When do we leave?”

The station is less busy than Derek has ever seen it, but that can only be a good sign. The deputies he passes are relaxed, idly filling out paperwork or shooting the shit around the watercooler. A few of them nod at him. Jordan waves from the far corner of the bullpen and Derek smiles as he waves back.

The receptionist lets him through without blinking, probably because she’s new enough not to have been there for his various arrests and accusations of murder. The last receptionist would’ve at least called back to get Sheriff Stilinski’s okay before letting him in the door, but that receptionist had resigned after getting stabbed by a demonic shadow ninja. Apparently, that had been one bizarre life-threatening incident too many for the poor guy.

Noah has his feet kicked up and a donut in his mouth when Derek lets himself in. He freezes mid-chew seemingly on instinct but, seeing who it is, picks right back up again.

“Are you here to tell me how your field trip with Chris went?” he asks around his mouthful. “Or are you here to spy on me on my son’s behalf again? I know he’s got you calling him about me.”

Derek drops into one of the empty chairs in front of the desk. “A little bit of both.”

Waving his half-eaten donut around with a definite air of defiance, Noah says, “I’m fine, thank you very much. And you can report that back to Stiles the Dictator, posthaste.”

Derek ignores that in favor of filling him in on the situation up north. Their trip wasn’t very exciting, just a long car ride with the radio tuned to classic rock and a strained conversation with a local hunter who didn’t seem to like Chris very much and obviously liked Derek even less. They didn’t bear witness to any trouble, and the hunter didn’t admit to any, so they left with little more than a bad feeling about the whole thing.

Noah groans and stuffs the rest of his donut in his mouth. “I hope it’s just a hunter pissing match,” he says. “That’s something Chris can handle without the help of me or any of my deputies.”

The newest batch, he means, most of whom have only been here for a few months. Derek has heard plenty from Jordan about breaking them in—and trying to subtly figure out if any of them already have knowledge of things that go bump in the night or if they’re going to freak out and fall apart at the first sign of anything weird. After losing so many in the last few years, both to supernatural violence and then to Monroe’s influence, Derek can’t blame Noah for wanting to keep his officers out of the line of fire for as long as possible.

“That’s probably all it is, but if he needs backup, I’ll handle it myself,” he promises. “I think Stiles will thank me for that anyway.”

Noah makes a face and pulls his feet off the desk, letting them fall to the floor with a heavy and emphatic thump. “Stiles,” he says with an eye-roll that his son would be jealous of, “is a nag.”

Derek fights back a smile. “I’ll tell him you said that.”

“Go right ahead,” Noah says. “No, really! Go ahead, give him a call right now. I want to hear your report on my behavior.”

Already chuckling, Derek digs his phone out of his pocket and punches in Stiles’ number. He puts it on speaker, much to Noah’s amusement. Stiles answers on the third ring with an absent-minded, “Yo, wolfman, what’s up? Make it quick, though, I gotta get to class by one.”

“I just thought you’d want to hear how your dad’s doing. I looked in on him earlier.”

Noah raises an eyebrow. Derek raises one back.

“Yeah!” Stiles says, much more engaged this time. “How’s he doing? Does he look tired? He missed my call, night before last, and I figured he was either sleeping like he should’ve been or still at the station like a total workaholic, and, yes, I acknowledge my own hypocrisy when I say that. Was he eating fast food earlier? He’s not supposed to have fast food, it’s bad for his heart.”

“He looked just fine to me,” Derek says. “And there was no fast food anywhere in sight.”

It is not a lie, but Derek pointedly eyes the Krispy Kreme box still open on Noah’s desk. Noah just watches him, eyes narrowed, practically daring Derek to tattle on him.

“Does that mean that he was eating healthy food or that he wasn’t eating at all? Because if he wasn’t, then I’m gonna have to—”

“Stiles, your father is fine,” Derek insists. “You don’t have anything to worry about. Now, hurry up before you’re late to class.”

Stiles lets out a gusty sigh. “Fine. I’ll ask him about it when I call him later. Thanks for checking in, though. It’s good to know he’s got someone looking out for him when I can’t be there to do it myself.”

Noah’s smug look fades into something gentler, a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. It brings out the laugh lines around his eyes, ones that Stiles is already inheriting.

“You got anybody looking out for you over there?” Derek asks. “You know he worries about you too.”

“My roommate keeps bitching at me to go to sleep before two because my lamp keeps him up. Does that count?”

Noah drops his head into his hand, shoulders shaking with barely restrained laughter.

“Sure, Stiles,” Derek says around a laugh of his own. “Let’s say that counts. But only if you actually take his advice.”

“Hey, I do! Sometimes, at least.”

“Uh huh, sure you do. Go to class.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going. Next time you see him, tell my dad to eat a vegetable sometime.”

“Will do.” Derek swipes to end the call, tucks his phone back in his pocket, and says to Noah, “Stiles says to eat a vegetable sometime.”

“Yes, thank you, Derek,” Noah says, the sarcasm so thick that Derek is reminded yet again just how similar he and his son are. Stiles may look more like his mother, but he and his father are cut from the same cloth and it never shows more than when the snark comes out. Except, possibly, when they’re fretting over each other. But even then, it’s a very close race.

Derek is not caught off guard by Malia bursting into his loft unannounced, but that’s only because she makes no effort at stealth and her stomping footsteps could be heard a mile away. The heavy metal door slams open and Malia plants herself in front of Derek, either not noticing or not caring that she’s interrupting his quiet afternoon.

“Make Peter leave me alone.”

Slowly, Derek deposits his TV dinner on the coffee table and leans back on the couch. “Is he bothering y—”

“He left a car in my driveway,” Malia announces. “A brand new, sparkly, fancy, stupid expensive car.” She makes a disgusted noise, arms flying. “I didn’t ask for a new car! Didn’t ask for a new father either! I’ve already got one of those and it’s not Peter. I call him ‘dad’ one freaking time, for evil-fighting purposes and so we don't all literally die, and suddenly he thinks we need to bond and he keeps trying to buy me stuff. I don’t want his stupid stuff, Derek, make him go away.”

Derek stares at her for a few seconds to make sure she’s actually finished. When she stares right back, half-furious and half-imploring, he runs a hand over his face. “What makes you think I can control anything Peter does?”

“You’re his family,” Malia insists. “Not me. If he wants to bond with anyone, it should be you.”

That’s a mildly alarming prospect. “I don’t want to bond with Peter.”

“I already have a dad,” Malia says again. “Peter and I may share blood, but that doesn’t mean anything. Not really. Just because Peter smells like family doesn’t mean he is.”

Derek’s next words get stuck in his throat as Malia’s hit him and he stops to look at her. Really look at her, like he hasn’t thought to in a while. The truth is, he can see a lot of Peter in her, no matter how much she would hate to hear that. It’s there in the eyes, in the shape of the brow, in the stubborn set of the jaw if not the cut of it.

But he can see his own mother there too, in the curve of her nose. She’s got the same shape of mouth as Laura, the same bone structure as Cora. Derek thinks that, if he looked closely, he could find a little of himself in her as well.

“Do I?” he finds himself asking.

Malia frowns. “Do you what?”

“Do I smell like family?”

Her mouth opens, then closes. Her nostrils flare around a breath. She swallows.

“Yeah, maybe a little bit,” she admits, slow and tentative, like she’s not sure she trusts the words even as she speaks them.

He can’t blame her for that. For all that they’ve both accepted their relation to Peter, this is the first time they’ve openly acknowledged that they share blood too. It’s been a long time since Derek has had a cousin—he had a couple on his father’s side before the fire, but neither of them had made it out. He’s not even sure he’s allowed to call her that, or if Malia would object.

She doesn’t look angry, though, not like she was about Peter. She’s picking at the loose threads on the frayed cut off of her shorts, still frowning at him like she doesn’t know what to do with him. But she hasn’t left. That has to mean something.

Derek clears his throat, tearing his eyes away. “I’ll talk to Peter, try to get him off your back.”

The heavy moment broken, Malia suddenly throws herself down on the couch beside Derek with a huff, shoulder bumping his. “Thank you.”

A little taken aback, it takes Derek a moment to rally enough to say, “I can’t guarantee anything, but—”

“Why did you never just get rid of him?” Malia asks, blunt as always. “He’s a menace and a threat to the pack. Killing him seems pretty reasonable to me.”

Her dark eyes are wide and earnest, her question completely genuine, and Derek has to laugh despite what a completely inappropriate reaction that is. He laughs a lot and by the time he turns back to Malia, she’s got a helpless half-smile on her face and a crease in her brows that says she thinks he’s a little nuts. It makes her look even more like Laura; she used to give him that face all the time.

“I tried that once.” He shrugs. “It didn’t stick.”

Malia rolls her eyes. “Clearly.”

“But mostly, it’s just that…” Derek stops, fighting down the stubborn clench in his chest.

In the end, he doesn’t have to say it. Malia says it for him: “He still smells like family to you too.”

Then, without any further ado, she snatches Derek’s abandoned TV dinner off the coffee table and digs into it, wiggling around to make herself more comfortable on his couch.

Derek lets her, partly because he has plenty and can always make himself another one and partly because he doesn’t want her to leave. This close, the warm, familiar note to her scent is stronger, settling around him like the patchwork blanket his grandmother always had draped over the back of the big armchair in their living room. It’s cleaner than Peter’s scent, muddled as his is by whatever the hell he did to himself with that resurrection. Not as strong as Cora’s, but present nonetheless.

And sitting here together, knowing that just because Malia rejects Peter doesn’t mean that she has to reject him too?

It feels good.

The bad feeling up north was right. One of Chris’ few remaining contacts in the area pulls through in the end, alerting them to a handful of young omegas who tried to take refuge in the woods only to find the hunters there even less hospitable than the ones in their hometown. By all accounts, the omegas aren’t feral, despite their lack of an alpha, and they aren’t the ones instigating the violence.

It’s the hunters that are the problem and it’s the hunters Derek and Chris end up fighting, the omegas cowering behind them and flinching at every gunshot.

They make it out, all of them, stopping in their mad dash as soon as they cross the city line in the hopes that the other hunters won’t follow them back into Argent territory—even Monroe’s continued, if distant, influence can’t make them that bold, not with the Argent reputation being what it is, and not when Monroe’s people were so effectively ousted not too long ago.

When half an hour goes by with no sound of running footsteps or growling engines, they deem it safe to stop. Lucky, because Derek’s got two bullets lodged in his side and one in his shoulder and the wounds can’t close properly until those are taken out.

He collapses back against a tree with a grunt, though he does manage a reassuring smile for the teenager who’s been helping to support him for the last ten minutes. The girl looks scared out of her mind, but she didn’t flinch away from the blood when she rushed forward to take his arm, so he thinks she’ll be a pretty solid beta for whatever pack she ends up in.

“Derek, how are you doing?” Chris calls over to him from where he’s been looking over one of the other omegas, making sure none of the hunters’ bullets were wolfsbane.

“Don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing,” Derek says, “but I’ve been worse.”

Chris shakes his head, gives the omega one last glance, then takes the girl’s place at Derek’s side. In a second, he’s got a cloth and a knife in his hand, slicing what’s left of Derek’s bullet-hole-riddled shirt out of the way to get a better look at the damage.

“We need to get these out,” he mutters, more to himself than to Derek. “Here, move up.”

Derek is feeling a little light-headed from blood loss at this point, so it’s not hard for Chris to maneuver him. It takes a few seconds for it to sink in that Derek’s got an Argent at his back with a knife in hand, but once it does, Derek’s a little surprised to find that he’s not worried. He wasn’t worried earlier either, in the midst of a firefight, outnumbered three to one with Chris as his only backup.

In the heat of the moment, he trusted Chris Argent. And Chris pulled through.

Unfortunately, Chris is pushing now, fingers digging into the open wound in Derek’s shoulder until he can get a hold of the bullet there. Derek grits his teeth against the urge to scream a little because the youngest of the omegas—fourteen, at most—looks like he might throw up. The burning pressure lets up as the invasion retreats and Derek lets out a heavy breath.

“One down,” Chris says grimly.

“If I’d known I was going to get shot at today, I would’ve brought Liam along,” Derek grits out, sort of joking and sort of not. “Let him get a little more field experience.”

But Chris says, “Absolutely not,” with no room for argument. “He’s just a kid. We’re not putting him in any more danger than we need to.”

Derek can’t bring himself to disagree, not after his own revelations on that particular subject. Liam is a strong beta and a fierce fighter when it comes down to it, but he’s got a soft heart and he deserves to keep it for as long as he can get away with it.

He wouldn’t have had the breath to argue anyway as Chris dives in for the next bullet, his free hand pressing down on Derek’s good shoulder to try and keep him steady. Derek’s bitten off cry makes Chris wince, but he doesn’t stop until he’s found what he needs and pulled it free, dropping the blood-smeared bullet to the forest floor.

“Malia, then,” Derek pants. “Should’ve brought Malia. Jordan. Someone.”

“I almost called the Sheriff,” Chris says. “But I figured, just a few hunters, we could handle it ourselves. Which we did, I’ll point out.”

Derek gives him a dirty look, which Chris doesn’t acknowledge, too focused on his task of tending to Derek’s wounds: the third time he’s taken it upon himself to do so. Chris was the one to pick the glass shards out of his back after the explosion in the sheriff’s station, when Derek had taken the blast for him, and he dug the bullet out of Derek’s leg after Kate had shot him down in South America.

He goes for the third bullet now, as single-minded and unhesitating about the messy task as he was then. Derek only makes it through without losing consciousness because the previous two wounds are already starting to close up. He still ends up swaying, kept upright only by Chris’ hold on him.

Head spinning, all Derek can think of is, “Probably a good thing you didn’t call Noah. Stiles would’ve read you the riot act.”

“Stiles can read me whatever he wants,” Chris says, flippant, like he couldn’t care less. But there’s a hitch in his movements that gives him away; that was exactly why he didn’t call Noah first. Chris knows as well as anyone else how vulnerable humans are in conflicts like this, especially ones without his very specific training. And he knows how afraid Stiles is of losing his father, the only family he has left. It’s always been there, in every word and every action, and Chris has never needed the late night texts Derek sometimes gets, full of nightmare-panic, to see it.

Derek hates those texts. But he always answers them, even if he has to get out of bed and drive across town to listen for Noah’s continued heartbeat, because Derek understands better than most what it is to lose everyone. To be the last one standing. It’s a heaviness that he lives with every day and always will, a soul-deep emptiness that aches no matter how much time has passed or how much good he’s found in the intervening years.

He sees that heaviness in Chris too, in the careful, methodical way he handles his tools and the tight clench of his jaw as he strains to keep his focus. It’s in the way he watches over the pack, this gaggle of misfit kids that his daughter gave her life for, shielding them as best he can and training them when he can’t. Even in the way he tends to Derek, gentling his touch as he wipes the blood from the slowly healing skin.

A childless father doesn’t stop being a father. He just finds more children to care for. And, as much of a part of the pack as Derek is—and as much of a fatherless child as he will always be—he still never expected that Chris would count him as one of those children.

But Chris cups the back of his neck now, squeezing a little, and it’s such a warm gesture. Derek’s dad used to do the same thing. He hasn’t thought about it in years.

“You okay?” Chris asks, watching him closely with those sharp eyes of his. This might be the first time that sharpness hasn’t felt like a threat.

Derek swallows thickly and nods. “Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”

He doesn’t thank Chris, and Chris doesn’t expect him to. The hunter just gives him one more look-over and a smile, small but warm, before releasing him. Derek watches as he moves off, back toward the youngest of the omegas, offering him a bottle of water and a granola bar he produces from somewhere on his person. Then, Derek leans his head back against the tree and lets his eyes slip closed.

Scott calls while Derek is neck-deep in translations for a very demanding client. He’s on a deadline, and Scott doesn’t immediately try again when he doesn’t pick up, so he figures it isn’t anything urgent. It can wait until after he’s gotten through the last six pages of this manuscript.

By the time he’s finished, head swimming with French idioms that are a bitch to put into English, he’s got a text from Scott that just reads [call me??]. The question marks are both confusing and concerning, so Derek does. Scott doesn’t even wait for a greeting.

“Why is Peter on my campus trying to buy me lunch?”

It takes a moment for Derek to comprehend that sentence, and once he’s got the words sorted out, it still doesn’t make any sense.

“Peter is where and doing what?”

“Peter is at UC Davis,” Scott reiterates, sounding just as baffled. “He showed up outside my bio class this morning and offered to buy me lunch.”

Derek sinks back into his chair, scratching at an eyebrow and wishing he’d stopped to make coffee before calling Scott back because his brain feels too much like mush to deal with this. “Did he say why?”

“I didn’t have much time to ask. I had another class to get to. And I still have another class to get to, and then at least four hours of homework to do. I’ve got finals coming up, Derek! I don’t have time for whatever Peter’s up to. I barely have time to eat lunch at all, much less with Peter!”

Derek sighs and wishes, not for the first time, that his uncle was not his uncle. “I’ll find out what’s up with him,” he promises. “Just go to class, Scott. And for God’s sake, stop and eat something, will you? Even werewolves need food.”

“And students need to not fail their classes.”

Derek snorts but doesn’t protest. He remembers his own college years and how much nagging Laura had to do to make him take care of himself. Of course, there were other contributing factors to his lack of self-care back then, but the course load itself was plenty all on its own. He wishes Scott luck and lets him go.

Then he wishes himself luck as he pulls up Peter’s number in his contacts. Surprisingly, his uncle picks up on the second ring.

“Why, Derek,” he says. “How nice to hear from you. You really should call more often. It’s been weeks!”

“Two weeks, to be exact,” Derek recalls. “Since I told you to stop harassing Malia. And now I hear you’re lurking around the UC Davis campus?”

“Lurking is a bit of a strong word, don’t you think?”

With an expansive roll of his eyes, Derek says, “When I told you to bother someone other than Malia, I did not mean go bug Scott during finals week.”

Peter huffs. “What, I can’t want to bond with my alpha? He is my daughter’s boyfriend, after all. We should have a relationship.”

“Scott’s not your alpha,” Derek informs him, no room for argument in his tone. “You’re not pack.”

Peter makes a wounded noise. “Now that’s just mean.”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes again lest he pull a muscle, Derek heaves himself to his feet, already making a beeline for his coffee maker.

“Leave Scott alone,” he says. “Leave Malia alone. In fact, just leave all of us alone! Go buy another new car or something.”

“You know, this isn’t a very good way to treat your allies.”

“Don’t make me kill you again.”

There’s one more enormously put-upon sigh and the call disconnects. Shaking his head, Derek texts Scott that if Peter shows up again, he’s got both Derek and Malia’s full permission to kick his ass. Scott texts back a long string of emojis that Derek is too tired to bother deciphering, but it makes him smile anyway.

The school year ends in a flurry of exam-related panic on all fronts and Derek has never been so grateful to have already graduated. Admittedly, he enjoyed being in an academic setting and might have gone back for another degree if shit hadn’t hit the fan when it did, but if there’s one thing he doesn’t miss, it’s the stress of finals.

But everybody makes it through. All final exams are finished, all classes successfully passed, and the founding pack members are free to return home for their summer holidays. If only the holiday could actually be spent relaxing by the pool. Sadly, things are never that simple.

Monroe has finally gathered enough of a force to start making real noise again. It’s not the sort of noise that makes the evening news—no more militia uprisings taking over government buildings and arming the townspeople for revolt, thankfully—but it’s more than enough to reach their ear in Beacon Hills. More than enough to make them nervous.

Derek spends the first few weeks of the break traveling, seeking out old family friends that he hasn’t had contact with since before the fire. His mother was a well-respected leader and she had a large network of friends and allies among other packs, connections that have lapsed since she died; Laura wasn’t in any sort of position or condition to try and maintain them.

But Scott needs allies, now more than ever. When the danger was concentrated in Beacon Hills, he could make do with his pack and occasionally Satomi’s, but this is a movement on a grander scale, Monroe’s influence stretching as far as eastern Montana according to their last reliable intel from Chris’ contacts. If ever there’s a time for inter-pack cooperation, this is it.

The Langley pack is glad to hear from him—they’d assumed he was dead years ago—and they’re more than happy to reinstate their alliance right away. Monroe is a joke, according to the Hart pack, and it’ll all blow over so why are they making such a fuss about her? Talia had some kind of falling out with the Babineaux pack, apparently, long before the fire, but they’re open to speaking with the young McCall alpha they’ve heard so much about. The Finley pack are willing to ally with them, but only if Peter isn’t involved, and Derek is left wondering what the hell Peter did to piss them off. Derek is practically chased out of the Gutierrez pack’s territory; they don’t want anything to do with the powderkeg that is their region, not that Derek can blame them for that.

All in all, it’s a mixed bag, but Derek returns to Beacon Hills with a handful of phone numbers and a decent amount of hope for their prospects.

By the time he gets back, Scott and Stiles and Lydia are all there, and all a little banged up from some sort of skirmish that Derek missed. Chris assures him that everyone’s alright and the issue has been resolved. For now, at least. He doesn’t beat around the bush when he says that more will be coming as long as Monroe is out there, rallying for her cause.

Thankfully, he says, she’s not getting as much traction as she expected to. Without Gerard’s clout and financial backing, she doesn’t have nearly as much pull with the wider hunter community as she did at the start. And with someone like Chris—from a prominent family and with years of exemplary conduct under his belt, regardless of recent scandals—pulling all the strings he can and calling in every favor he has to counter her, she’s only getting the most vehement and the most disenfranchised of the bunch. Her message is too aggressive by now for even the more moderate hunting families to back.

Apparently, while Derek was gone, Chris had taken Scott down to Mexico and the two of them managed to get even Araya and the Calaveras on their side, which strikes Derek as nothing short of a miracle.

The whole pack is still riding the high on that victory, and Lydia has opened up her pool for a party. To celebrate, she says, and to remind them that this is supposed to be a vacation.

“I refuse to go all of summer break without getting at least one tan, Monroe be damned,” she declares. “And if I can’t go to the beach, then this will have to do.”

Derek is there before he even realizes he’s being talked into it, standing by the pool, staring around and feeling a little out of place. He’s pretty sure that the last time he was in a pool, he was paralyzed and there was a kanima stalking around the edges. It’s a little surreal to be here now, a slice of pizza in hand and laughter all around, but this is definitely a step up from last time, so he’ll take it.

He ends up on the lawn chair next to Lydia, laid out in her bikini and sunglasses, watching the others horse around in the water. Stiles is up on Scott’s shoulders, shoving wildly at Liam on Malia’s, both of them trying to knock each other over. Mason is keeping score from a safe distance, perched on the edge with Corey. Jordan, Noah, and Chris are all hanging out by the snack table, sipping beers and chatting contentedly enough that it’s probably not about the Monroe situation for once.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not long before Liam wins. Stiles goes head first into the pool, sending big splashes in every direction, only to come up spluttering and laughing a few feet away. A few drops find their way to the lawn chairs and Lydia makes a noise of vague annoyance.

“Stiles, do try to contain yourself,” she sighs. “If my legs end up streaky because your splashing washed off my tanning oil, I will be most displeased.”

Scott calls back an apology on Stiles’ behalf since Stiles is now being held underwater by a delighted Malia for some reason, and Lydia just shakes her head.

“Idiot,” she says, fondness seeping through her exasperation.

“You’re the one dating him,” Derek points out around a mouthful of pizza.

Lydia glances over at him. Or, at least, Derek assumes she does. It’s hard to tell with the big sunglasses. “You’re behind the times, sweetheart,” she says. “We broke up.”

“Seriously?” Derek frowns, thinking back through all the times he’s spoken with either of them or Scott in the last semester. He’s pretty confident he never heard anything about this. It doesn’t surprise Derek that Scott wouldn’t mention it, since he’s been drowning in schoolwork, and Lydia’s always kept her business to herself, but why wouldn’t Stiles have told him? Stiles told him a lot nowadays. “When did that happen?”

“About a month ago,” Lydia informs him. “Don’t feel bad you missed it. It wasn’t some big thing.”

Considering how long it took for the two of them to get together, Derek has a tiny bit of trouble believing that. Stiles was in love with Lydia from long before Derek met either of them, and what he heard of Lydia’s distress when Stiles was erased by the Ghost Riders was pretty compelling. Theirs was a hell of a love story, all put together.

But Lydia doesn’t smell very upset when Derek risks taking a discrete sniff. Though there’s a hint of sadness on her, it’s drowned out by the contentment of the moment and the tang of her tanning oil. And Stiles is still horsing around in the pool, currently in a splash fight with Mason, laughing uproariously. Derek hasn’t smelled any heartbroken scents on him either, the few times they’ve come into close contact in the last three days.

“Was it—” Derek starts to ask. Then he shuts his mouth, because it’s really none of his business and he has no right prying into their personal affairs.

Lydia just laughs a bit. “It’s okay,” she says. “You can ask.”

“Sorry,” Derek says, ducking his head. “I guess I just have a hard time imagining what could possibly break you up. You two were a long time coming.”

“It just wasn’t working out for us. Long distance is always a struggle, and with everything else that’s been going on…” She gives a shrug, somehow elegant even while lying down. “Maybe if we weren’t at schools across the country from each other, we would’ve made it work. Maybe if things weren’t such a mess on the Monroe front. Maybe if we’d just made up our minds a bit sooner. There’s a lot of maybes, honestly.”

It’s hard to tell with the glasses, but Derek is pretty sure that she’s watching Stiles. There’s a quirk of a smile on her red lips, small and indulgent.

“I think we just…missed our window.”

“And you’re both okay with that?” Derek asks.

She tears her eyes away from the pool, levering herself up to reach for her drink instead. “We were good friends before,” she says briskly, “and we’re good friends now. I think I’ll always love him at least a little bit, but there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

Derek sips at his own drink. Stiles is up on Malia’s shoulders now, grappling with Mason, who looks like he has no idea how he ended up on Scott’s shoulders but is regretting it with every fiber of his being. Stiles has his head thrown back in a laugh, open and exuberant, and the sound carries.

“No,” Derek says, a smile tugging at the corner of his own mouth. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

The older pack members are back at their respective schools for less than a week before a band of hunters rides through town, guns blazing. They’re not particularly smart, but they’re riding high on whatever rhetoric Monroe has fed them and their shiny new perceived license to kill, and it’s a pretty intense fight that ends with Chris calling in his less savory buddies for cleanup.

Then Derek has to make a call he’s not looking forward to.

Scott answers already sounding a little harried, despite classes having just started, but it only takes a few words for Derek to have his full attention.

“What do you mean, Liam’s hurt?!”

“He’s going to be fine,” Derek says. “It was just a few of Monroe’s most expendable lackeys out for a joyride. It’s all been taken care of.”

Scott clearly isn’t listening. There’s the distant sound of something hitting the floor, a flutter of papers, the rustle of clothing.

“If I leave now,” he’s saying, “and speed really bad, I can be back in like an hour! Let me just get my—”

“What? Scott, no.”

“My beta got shot, Derek!”

“Your beta werewolf with advanced healing abilities caught one bullet to the arm,” Derek corrects him. “It will be healed up and gone before you could even get here, no matter how much you speed.”

Scott makes a high pitched noise of frustration, something between a groan and a whine. “But I should—”

Derek cuts him off, firm and unyielding. “No, Scott, you should not skip out on the two more classes you still have today to rush back here for a minor injury from an even more minor skirmish. Your mom just finished looking him over, and even she says that he’s going to be fine.”

There’s a long moment of silence and Derek imagines he can hear Scott’s teeth grinding as he fights the impulse to jump on his bike. Finally, a squeak of bed springs signals Scott’s surrender.

“I just—” He sighs. “I should be there. My betas shouldn’t be fighting anyone without me, especially not Liam! He, more than anyone, is my responsibility. But I’m here, reading up on rates of cell oxygenation while he faces off with hunters by himself.”

“He’s more than capable of handling himself in a fight,” Derek reminds him. “And he wasn’t by himself. He had half the pack at his side.”

“That’s not the point!”

“Then what is?”

It takes a minute for Scott to find the words, but what makes its way out is, “I just feel like I’m abandoning my pack.”

Derek isn’t particularly surprised by that admission, though the crack in Scott’s voice makes something in him ache sympathetically. He lowers himself gingerly onto the couch, mindful of his own healing bullet wound, and leans forward on his elbows.

“Scott,” he says. “You are not abandoning anyone by having a life outside of the pack. My mom had a day job too, you know, and she had to go to college to get it.” She wasn’t the alpha while she went to college, nor was there a hunter uprising going on at the time, but that isn’t the point Derek is trying to make so he leaves that out for now. The point is: “You’re allowed to want some things for yourself.”

Scott lets out a weak chuckle. “That’s what Stiles keeps telling me.”

Derek isn’t surprised by that either. He shakes his head and says, “Well, you should listen to Stiles more often, then. He’s a pretty smart guy.”

“I’m so telling him you said that.”

It’s a threat that he will not hesitate to follow through on, and one which is guaranteed to earn Derek at least one phone call of gloating, but he finds that he doesn’t mind too much. At least Scott doesn’t sound a second away from dropping out of school to come back and take up residence at Liam’s bedside through his nonexistent convalescence anymore.

He promises at least three times to keep a close eye on Liam, just in case anything goes wrong with his healing somehow, and to text Scott if there’s any hint of more trouble. Derek probably won’t do it, though. Not unless things really look bad. Scott may not prioritize his own prospects over the pack—a trait Derek can’t even complain about because Scott wouldn’t be half the alpha he is if he did anything different—but Derek does, and he’s going to make damn sure that Scott gets the full college experience.

He deserves that much, after all the shit he’s been through.

Derek was not wrong about Scott following through on his playful threat. It’s barely three hours later when Stiles’ name pops up on his caller ID, and Derek takes a moment to brace himself before accepting the call.

“So,” Stiles says, smug as anything. “I hear that I’m a smart guy. Tell me more.”

Derek turns a page in the book he was quite contentedly reading a moment ago, naively holding out hope that he will get back to it soon. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late, your secret is out.”

“And what secret is that?”

“That you have the utmost respect for my massive intellect and acknowledge me as the indisputable brains of this operation.”

Derek can’t hold back a bark of laughter. “Regardless of my acknowledgement, I think Lydia might fight you for that title.”

A contemplative hum comes across the line. “You have a good point there. But Lydia ‘Literal Genius’ Martin is an outlier and should not be counted. Therefore, I stand by what I said.”

“Whatever you say, Stiles.” Derek turns another page despite not having read any further. “I take it you talked to Scott?”

“Obviously,” Stiles says with a laugh. “How’s Liam? I’m willing to bet he’s doing better than Scott about the whole ‘getting shot’ thing.”

“He’s a little shaken up,” Derek admits. “But he’ll be alright. Nothing for anyone to come rushing home over. Scott hasn’t changed his mind about driving back, has he?”

“Nah, he was just going into his evening class. He’s worrying—of course, because that’s what he does and nothing could ever stop him—but you talked him down. Hopefully he will sublimate his mother hen instincts and get all his homework done early so that he can get a full night’s sleep for once!”

The chiding tone is a little rich coming from Stiles who, according to his father, has always had the absolute worst and most inconsistent sleep schedule on the planet. But Derek can’t blame him too much, not when he’s half-tempted to drive up to UC Davis himself to make absolutely sure that Scott is getting enough sleep and eating three meals a day.

“He can’t already be pushing himself too hard,” Derek says, his book forgotten. “School’s been in session for like four days.”

“You underestimate Scott McCall," Stiles declares. "You should've heard the lengths I had to go to to keep him from signing up for volunteer hours at the local animal shelter when he's already taking six classes and a lab. That boy will work himself into the ground if he doesn't have adult supervision."

"Is the adult supervision in this scenario supposed to be you?"

"Oh, ha ha, we've got a comedian over here."

Derek smiles, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. It’s in contradiction to all the manners his mother ever tried to instill in him, but he’s an adult now and he can put his feet all over his own furniture if he pleases. “I’ll be here all week.”

That earns him a snort of laughter. Then there’s a thump and a squeak—probably Stiles flopping down onto his shitty dorm room bed—and a moment of uncharacteristic quiet. Derek’s never been afraid of silence himself, but it’s not Stiles’ MO. He’s only ever quiet when he’s got something on his mind. Derek absently taps his fingers against his thigh, waiting for Stiles to get his words in order.

“Thanks.”

Derek cocks his head, a useless inquisitive gesture considering Stiles can’t see him. “What for?”

“For talking Scott off the ledge,” Stiles says. “And I know you’re the one who talked him into going out there in the first place. His habit of overworking himself aside, I think it’s good for him. Not to mention you holding down the fort in Beacon Hills. I know Scott feels so much better about everything knowing you’re there. He would’ve fucking teleported back to town today if you hadn’t been.”

The ridiculous mental image that produces isn’t quite enough to distract Derek from the blossom of warmth in his chest.

“I don’t think even a true alpha could manage that,” he says.

“Probably not,” Stiles concedes. “But still, just— Thank you. For looking out for Scott.”

The “when I’m not there to do it myself” goes unspoken, loud and heavy with the weight of distance between them all. Derek knows how much Stiles hates being so far from home—the dozen text messages on his phone hounding him for updates on Noah is plenty of evidence—but Scott being at UC Davis all by himself, with no backup and no support and too far away for Stiles to offer his own, is a special kind of torture for him.

“I’ve got his back,” Derek promises. And he can hear the smile in Stiles’ voice when he says, “I know you do.”

Braeden stays in contact, which is nice. She’s not much for chitchat or shooting the breeze, but she does call Derek sometimes to catch up. Other times, she calls with information. Her jobs take her all over the country—and occasionally out of it; she’s got contacts throughout South America—and she keeps an ear to the ground for anything that might affect the McCall pack.

This time, it’s rumors of hostile hunters gathering on the Nevada border, intent unknown. It might be an active threat, it might be nothing at all, but if Braeden considered it significant enough to pass on, then Derek considers it worth a follow-up.

He takes Chris with him, which has become more of a regular thing than he ever would have expected possible. If someone had told him three years ago that an Argent would be his first call for backup in a potentially dangerous situation, he would have laughed in their face. Or, more likely, tried to kill them because they couldn’t possibly be anything but a threat themselves to suggest such a thing.

But now Chris is checking over his guns, counting his rounds, running through his pre-hunt checklist and leaving the responsibility of monitoring their surroundings and taking stock of the situation to Derek because he trusts him to do that. Derek keeps an eye and an ear out, listening for footsteps or engines or anything out of the ordinary for a rest stop on the side of a highway halfway to Carson City.

His other eye is on his phone.

“Texting Stiles?”

Derek looks up at Chris, apparently still focused on his guns despite his question. “Liam,” he says. “He’s running patrols tonight, wanted to know if there was anything he should be on the lookout for. I told him he doesn’t need a checklist from me anymore; he knows what to do.”

Chris nods, chambering a round. “His confidence has grown,” he notes. “Won’t be long before he doesn’t feel the need to ask at all.”

Derek isn’t sure if he’s looking forward to that day or not. Liam isn’t his beta, exactly, but he’s spent the last several months training with him, more closely than he ever got to with Scott or the betas from his disastrous attempt at being an alpha. There’s a bittersweetness to seeing him grow into himself. Scott hasn’t said as much in words, but he feels the same. Even Stiles gets a little proud papa about Liam’s progress nowadays.

Speaking of.

“Why did you assume I was texting Stiles?”

Chris shrugs. “Just seems like you’re texting him a lot nowadays.”

Derek tucks his phone back into his pocket. He’s briefly distracted by a man at the next gas pump giving them the stink-eye, which is entirely unwarranted considering he can’t even see their guns from where he is; the van’s open back doors block the view from most angles. But the man is almost certainly not a hunter, judging by the posture, and he moves off without issue.

“I promised I would keep him updated on things,” Derek says. “You know how he gets when he doesn’t have all the information.”

“Don’t I ever,” Chris mutters, more to himself than anything, but it still makes Derek chuckle. He stows his rifle back in its case and closes it up, slipping the whole thing into the back and slamming the doors shut. “How’s he doing, anyway? School going alright?”

Derek climbs into the passenger seat, reaching for the radio dial preemptively because Chris has shit taste in music.

“Okay,” he says. “Well, mostly. I think he’s freaking out a little bit over what he’s going to do with his life. He doesn’t like the idea of regular law enforcement—and not just because being a deputy would mean working directly under his dad—and obviously the FBI is no longer on the table.”

Chris makes a thoughtful noise. The engine purrs to life and he signals politely before merging into the traffic outside the rest stop. There a few minutes down the road and halfway through the Eagles song on the radio before he speaks.

“I’ve been thinking of hiring Stiles myself,” he says. “In a consulting capacity.”

Derek turns away from the blurry scenery outside his window with a raised eyebrow. “Consulting?”

“Stiles may not work particularly well with others,” Chris says, a wry twist to his lips, “and he may not be capable of following rules. But the kid is one hell of a detective, and a pretty solid researcher too, when he puts his mind to it.”

“He is definitely that,” Derek says, thinking back to the wall of newspaper clippings and computer printouts and hand-drawn diagrams that graced Stiles’ bedroom walls, covered in pins and color-coded string. Last he saw it, it made Derek’s head spin a little trying to make sense of it, but Stiles navigated the evidential chaos with ease.

“He wouldn’t be a hunter, really,” Chris amends. “Though, to be fair, I’m not sure I count as a hunter anymore. At least, not by traditional standards.”

If the traditional standard is “hunting down supernatural creatures indiscriminately under the guise of protecting the public”, then Derek has to agree with him there. That’s certainly the standard Gerard set, and Kate, and Monroe. It’s been a long time since Chris fit that mold.

Derek’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out to see a text from Stiles and can’t stop himself from glancing Chris’ way. Chris isn’t looking at him, but he’s got a half-smirk on his face anyway. Derek puts his phone away without checking the message, just on principle.

“I think Stiles would enjoy that,” he says instead.

He can picture Stiles in his place, laptop open on his knees, fingers flying at the speed of light as he searches for this and compiles data on that, talking a mile a minute in Chris’ direction because he does his best thinking out loud. It would probably drive Chris up the wall, but Derek’s willing to bet they’d have an answer by the time they got where they were going.

Derek can imagine himself, too. In the backseat, quietly laughing at Chris’ growing ruefulness over having brought Stiles along at all. Or maybe Derek where he is and Stiles in the backseat, leaning forward periodically to chatter at them both, reaching for the radio dial and getting his hand slapped.

Yeah, Stiles would definitely enjoy that gig. And Derek’s not all that surprised to find himself thinking that he would enjoy it too.

Things are quiet for a while. The hunters Braeden warned them about are gone by the time Derek and Chris get there, and there’s no sign of anyone else either. Araya has some run-ins near the Mexican border, but they come out in her favor and Monroe’s people are sent scattering. For a few months, not even Chris’ most far-flung contacts have much to report and the town is calmer than it’s been in a long time.

Liam, Mason, and Corey actually get through their whole last semester of high school without a single incident. By Beacon Hills standards, it’s practically a miracle. Only Scott makes it back for their graduation—Lydia and Stiles are too far away for the trip to be worth it—but there’s plenty of congratulations passed around, not to mention a lot of good-natured bitching about how good these youngsters have it and back in my day, we fought two monsters on the way to school, uphill both ways.

It isn’t until Derek is leaning up against the railing of the Dunbar’s deck, drinking a cold beer and listening to Noah lament his son’s workaholic tendencies, that he remembers GWU should have finished their spring semester by now.

“Case in point,” Noah says. “Stiles has already signed up for a full load of summer classes.”

“He’s not coming back at all?” Derek asks, hiding his disappointment in another sip. He knew that Lydia was staying in Boston for the summer—she has some kind of high profile research project attached to a big name he’s never heard before—but he’s been expecting Stiles to roll into town any day now.

Noah shakes his head. He doesn’t have a beer of his own and the red solo cup of Coke in his hand dimples under his fingertips.

“Doesn’t do anything by halves, that one,” he says. “All or nothing. And he says Scott works himself too hard.”

Derek raises his beer in a sardonic toast. Noah huffs a laugh and clinks his cup against it. Then he drains the rest of his drink in one long swallow and claps Derek on the shoulder.

“You should go have some fun,” he says, jerking his head back toward where the rest of the pack has dug out a bunch of old lacrosse gear from the Dunbars’ storage shed and is attempting to scrimmage. It’s not going particularly well, mostly because Malia doesn’t know half of the rules and isn’t making any effort to play by the ones she does know.

Derek shakes his head, though. “Lacrosse isn’t really my game.”

It’s true enough—he’s always been a basketball guy—but he’s got another reason. As soon as Noah shuts the sliding glass door to the kitchen behind him, Derek pulls out his phone. Even with the time difference, he doesn’t think it’s too late to call.

Stiles answers with a muffled, “Sup?” and Derek is willing to bet it’s because he has a writing utensil in his mouth.

“You know, you keep telling Scott to take care of himself,” Derek says, “but you don’t take your own advice very well.”

There’s a clattering sound. Probably Stiles spitting out the writing utensil because his next words are clear.

“I’m taking care of myself just fine, thank you very much!”

“Another full course load for summer?”

“Plenty of people take summer classes, Derek. It’s not like that’s unusual or anything.”

“Never coming home is,” Derek points out. “You didn’t come back over winter break either. Or spring break. Your dad hasn’t seen you in a year.”

None of them have, he doesn’t say. He turns to lean against the railing, back to the sad attempt at a lacrosse game that’s quickly devolving into a wrestling match between Malia and Liam that can’t possibly end well. He can hear Scott laughing around his halfhearted attempts to split them up. It sounds different without Stiles’ laugh alongside it.

Stiles sighs. “Look, would I rather be there? Of course I would. I hate being so far away from you guys. But this is a great program, and one of my only free ride options. And the faster I graduate, the sooner I can come home for good.”

Derek considers pointing out that he would be happy to pay Stiles’ tuition to any university in the country, but he has a feeling that offer wouldn’t be appreciated. Instead, he drains the last of his beer and sets the bottle aside.

“Just…don’t work yourself into the ground,” he says finally. “Your dad is worried about you. And, clearly, Scott isn’t the only one who needs adult supervision.”

“Oh, are you the adult in this scenario?” Stiles asks. “Gonna come supervise me?”

There’s a teasing lilt to his tone that calls back to their phone call from months ago. It makes Derek smile.

“Yeah,” he says, “maybe I am.”

“Well, I guess I better eat something, then,” Stiles sighs, like it’s some great burden. “Before my supervisor gets on my case for skipping dinner.”

“You probably should. I hear the guy’s a real hardass.”

And there’s the laugh Derek was missing. It may sound a little different over the phone, but it still blends in fine with Mason’s shout as Corey lifts him off the ground and Malia yelling about fouls as if she even knows what qualifies.

A fresh beer plunks down at Derek’s elbow, already opened. Chris is walking away by the time Derek looks up at him, hands in his pockets and an easy swagger in his step. Derek almost calls him back, but Stiles is saying something now, a complaint about his roommate and his microwave etiquette, and Chris is forgotten before he reaches the stairs.

It’s another twenty minutes before either of them think to hang up.

Ogham is a bitch of a language to translate, and not just because Derek is seriously rusty. It’s old enough for everything to be questionable. Every turn of phrase has six potential translations, each noun twelve possible meanings, figurative language and idioms all over the place.

It doesn’t help that his head still hurts something fierce and his whole body aches.

The trill of his ringtone hits him like a nail to the skull and he nearly knocks the ancient book off the table in his haste to grab the phone and make it stop. He answers the call without even checking who it is and growls out, “What?”

A huge, gusty breath crackles in his ear.

Derek pulls back to squint at the screen. “Stiles?”

“Yeah, I just—” Stiles pauses, just for a second. “I heard from Scott. About the fight. He said you were—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but Derek’s stomach throbs anyway. It’s mostly healed over by now, but even ten hours isn’t enough to completely get rid of a wound like that. It’s the worst he’s had in a while, enough to have Liam calling Scott in a panic because he still isn’t sure what werewolf healing can and can’t handle and if he needed to risk taking Derek to a hospital.

In the end, they didn’t. Malia was running off the last of the threats by then, so Chris wrapped Derek up enough to keep everything in place and drove him back to the loft. Derek stuffed as much food as he could manage in his mouth and then slept for eight hours. By the time he woke up, there were at least no exposed organs anymore. He probably should have called Scott with an update then, but the thought didn’t cross his mind. He isn’t exactly at his best and brightest right now.

He glances down at the scribble-covered notepad in front of him; maybe now isn’t the time to be doing this.

“I’m fine,” he tells Stiles, shoving the notepad across the table.

“Dude, Scott said Liam made it sound like you were fucking ripped in half or something! How can you just be ‘fine’?”

“Stiles, you’ve seen me heal from worse. Remember that attack at the school? When Peter nearly ripped my spine out? You legitimately thought I was dead. Two days later, I was on my feet and successfully outrunning police cars.”

Stiles makes a strangled noise of frustration, or maybe he just doesn’t like being reminded of that whole ordeal. Derek doesn’t either, really. It wasn’t exactly pleasant. That time, he’d dragged himself off into the woods behind the school when he’d regained consciousness, fighting to stem the bleeding until he was healed enough to get somewhere safer, then passed out for twelve hours and woke up to the news that he was a murderer and a fugitive.

Honestly, this time was a lot better. He had pack members to watch his back and take up the slack against the enemy, someone with triage experience to dress his wounds and keep an eye on him, and a home to convalesce in. What a difference a few years can make.

Not to mention—

“Were you worried about me?”

It’s a stupid question, honestly, but Derek can’t help asking it. Maybe it’s just because his head is still pounding and he’s not thinking clearly, or maybe it’s just for the indignant sputtering noise it earns him.

“No!” Stiles says immediately. “No, of course not! I mean, well…maybe…” He makes another of those strangled noises, this one in defeat. “Okay, yes! Yes, I was worried about you, you jackass, so just tell me that you’re okay and shut up about it.”

Laughing makes Derek’s stomach throb. He winces through it, shifting into a slightly more comfortable position on his chair and wishing he’d opted to do his translating on the couch instead.

“I’ll be fine,” he says again, less snappishly than the last. “I promise, I’m okay.”

“Okay. Good. Keep it that way.”

That should be the end of it, proof of life received and reassurances issued, but there’s no click of disconnect. There are a few seconds where they both linger, unsure of how to break the awkwardness of the moment but unwilling to hang up just yet. Derek’s eyes fall on the book and its cramped, spidery text, blocky illustrations in every margin.

“So have you heard of these things?” he finds himself asking.

Stiles clears his throat. “Uh…what things, exactly?” he asks haltingly. “Scott was a little light on the details.”

Even though Stiles isn’t there to see it, Derek raises a skeptical eyebrow. Scott’s not one to leave things out, especially not when talking to his best friend, whom he knows is driven crazy by not being fully informed in every possible way. Derek’s willing to bet that, in reality, Scott did try to explain in full and Stiles was either not listening or hung up on him before he was finished in his haste to check on Derek. That the latter might be true tugs at something in his chest, pulls another smile to his face.

“We’re not quite sure,” he says. “Nothing hunter-related, for once, for whatever that’s worth.”

Stiles snorts and Derek can just picture the exaggerated eye roll that surely accompanied it.

“We haven’t been able to dig up a whole lot about these creatures,” Derek tells him. “Just a few old books, but translating is slow going so far.”

“Well, hey, gimme what you got. Our library’s mythology section actually has some legit resources—not just the old fairy tales, but, like, actually reliable lore, can you believe that?—so maybe I can find more info on ‘em there. If not, I’ll do some of my legendary google-fu for you.”

Obligingly, Derek reads off what he’s managed to decipher so far, and passes on the tidbits that Chris and his bestiary could provide, and Stiles is off to the races, talking a mile a minute as his keyboard clicks and clacks in the background.

Derek sets the book aside and carefully transfers himself from table to couch, sinking back into the cushions gratefully. He resettles the phone in the crook of his shoulder to combat a twinge of pain in his chest and his eyes slip closed. Exhaustion is dragging at him again, reminding him that he’s still in recovery from what could easily have been a life-threatening injury, but he doesn’t want to hang up yet.

He falls asleep with Stiles chattering in his ear, and when he wakes the next morning, the call history shows that Stiles stayed on the line for two more hours.

The receptionist at the station smiles at him and calls him by name now, and Parrish isn’t the only deputy who waves as he walks past. He’s been here often enough in recent years that visits without handcuffs outweigh the incidents with. He doesn’t get a single suspicious look as he shoulders open the sheriff’s office door, hands full of takeout bags.

Noah doesn’t notice his presence until the takeout bags plunk down on top of his case files. He blinks like this is the first time he’s looked away from the page in an hour.

“Derek!” he finally says. And then, much more excitedly: “Lunch!”

Because he values his fingers, Derek does not try to get in between Noah and his cheeseburger. He just settles down in the chair across the desk and pulls his own lunch—a much healthier grilled sandwich—towards him. If he positions his fruit salad near enough for Noah to reach, it’s only strategy. He knows that if he asks Noah for one of his french fries, Noah will grudgingly propose a trade, and once Noah remembers that fruit actually tastes good, most of the salad will go to him and the fries will be forgotten.

Derek waits until half the bowl is empty before he says, “So what’s the case?”

Noah hums around his mouthful and tugs a file out of the cluster that covers his desk. “Right, the case. I knew I was paying you for something.”

“Other than food delivery?”

Noah makes a face at him. “Just read the file, will you?”

Derek does, chuckling under his breath. A quick skim of the papers is all he needs to get the gist of the case; a few months ago, back when the sheriff had finally put him on the payroll in an official capacity, it would’ve taken some deciphering, but he’s more than familiar with the form layout by now.

Noah gives him a verbal rundown anyway because, like his son, he thinks best out loud. A case of burglary, shaken but tight-lipped parents, and a four year old who claims the intruder’s eyes glowed blue. Possible werewolf, he says, and would Derek have time to come sniff around the house a little?

Derek snorts. “I’ll try to find time with my busy schedule,” he says, tossing the file back on the desk and taking up the last of his sandwich. “I might have to shuffle some things around, cancel my massage appointment, but I think I can squeeze it in.”

Noah shakes his head and pops another grape in his mouth.

“Text me when you want me to come by.”

Official business now concluded, Derek pushes himself to his feet. He’s just turning for the door—cleanup is Noah’s responsibility when Derek brings the grub—when Noah clears his throat.

“So,” he says, nonchalant as anything. “How’s Stiles doing?”

Derek pauses, frowning. “You should know that better than me,” he points out. “He’s your son.”

“And yet Stiles texts you a lot more than he does me.” Noah raises an eyebrow at him, lips quirked up in a half-grin. “What’s that about?”

Derek wants to say that there’s no way that’s true, but he’s gotten six messages from Stiles today alone. Instead, he snatches up the discarded fruit salad bowl and tosses it in the trash. He throws out the fast food bag too, just for good measure; Noah’s always terrible about his cleanup duties anyway.

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s nothing.” And when this is met with a flat, knowing look from Noah: “There’s nothing going on with me and Stiles!”

Noah’s deadpan expression cracks and he chuckles. He heaves himself out of his chair in the direction of the door. As he passes, he drops a hand on Derek’s shoulder.

“I know there’s not, son,” he says. “But you ever think maybe there should be?”

Derek stares at the text on his phone, bottom lip caught between his teeth and Noah’s words in his ears. Stiles had sent him two winky face emojis, a thumbs up, and “dude call me when ur done with ur french stuff, Jen did a thing u’ll get a kick out of!!”

Derek doesn’t know how long it’s been since Stiles started doing that, sharing anecdotes about his classmates and telling him about his day. Much less when he started keeping track of Derek’s schedule, both the police consulting and the freelance translating. It’s been a while, probably. Too long for it to suddenly feel significant just because of Noah’s insinuation.

Normally, Derek would have followed Stiles’ instructions by now and called. Stiles would be regaling him with another of Jen’s wild stories—last time, she “accidentally” pantsed their instructor and got kicked out of class for the day—but now Derek’s finger hovers over the reply button. It’s been stuck there for ten minutes already.

He’s never wondered before what it means that he’s been looking forward to this call all day. That he always looks forward to Stiles’ calls. Before today, he’s never scrolled back through their chat history and reread dozens of messages, wondering if Stiles meant this or that text to be as flirtatious as it sounded and if Derek is an idiot for not noticing the first time he read it. There’s innuendos in here, for God’s sake! Big ones that apparently flew right over his head.

He’s so far resisted the urge to scroll back even further, but that hasn’t stopped him from mentally running through every conversation they’ve had in the last few months—hell, the last few years—and rethinking everything he thought he knew about their relationship.

Damn it, Noah.

Derek tosses his phone on the coffee table with a huff. He’s saved from his own impulse to snatch it up again by the clomping of heavy footsteps in the stairwell.

Malia lets herself in like she always does, metal door clanging shut in her wake, and tosses herself down on the couch without so much as a greeting. Head suddenly in Derek’s lap, she demands, “What’s up with Peter?”

Derek frowns down at her. “Is he bothering you again?”

“No,” Malia says. “I haven’t heard a peep from him in months. That’s the weird part. He’s never left me alone this long.”

“I would think you’d be grateful.”

“Oh, I am,” Malia assures him. “But it also makes me nervous. Is he scheming?”

“Running, more like,” Derek says with a snort. He kicks his feet up on the coffee table, knocking his phone further out of reach and fighting back a smirk. “He pissed off the Finley pack again. Don’t ask me how. But we haven’t heard any gloating from their alpha, so I assume they haven’t caught him yet.”

“Are they out to kill him?” Malia asks. Her brow furrows, not enough to look concerned, really, but maybe a little put off by the idea.

“Probably,” Derek says. “We know Peter, though. He’s pretty damn hard to find, let alone kill. Chances are, he’ll worm his way out of it like he always does. He’ll be back.”

“Huh.” Malia taps her toes against the couch’s arm rest, restless and impatient. Derek only has to wait another minute for her to suggest, “Wanna go for a run?”

Derek grins. “Don’t need to ask me twice.” He heaves her upright by the shoulders, ignoring her noise of protest. “Just keep your clothes on until we get to the preserve, will you? Parrish almost had to arrest you last time.”

Already halfway to the door, Malia rolls her eyes. “We can’t full shift in clothes,” she grumbles. “He knows that.”

“Sadly, the laws about public indecency don’t make allowances for supernatural creatures.”

“Well, they should. At least around here.”

Privately, Derek agrees, but he just shakes his head and throws an arm around his cousin’s shoulders. It’s been a while since he’s gotten to run as a wolf—there aren’t many opportunities to use his full shift nowadays, especially not in the city—but even if they had run the whole preserve that morning, he would still jump at the distraction.

He leaves his phone behind on the coffee table. He’ll call Stiles tomorrow, once his jumbled thoughts have straightened themselves out.

“It seems like they’re gearing up for something,” Chris says, tapping a finger on the map between the two densest conglomerations of red pins. “From Severo’s intel, and Marissa Finley’s, Monroe’s men have all pulled out of the region and fallen back to here.” He taps another spot, further west.

“Theo’s report matches up,” Scott says. His skype feed is a little blurry, but as long as he can see the big picture, he won’t let Derek buy him a better laptop. “He’s run most of the western quadrant in the last few weeks and he hasn’t seen Monroe’s forces anywhere past Tucson. She’s gotta be up to something.”

“What else did you get from Marissa?” Derek asks.

Chris leans back against his desk, arms crossed. “Not much.”

“Anything about Peter?”

Chris shakes his head. “They haven’t seen hide nor hair of him in weeks.”

“Has anybody?” Scott asks. He sounds almost worried, despite everything. But then, Scott has made friends with the guy who literally killed him that one time, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to Derek that Scott can still be concerned for Peter’s safety.

Honestly, Derek’s starting to get a little concerned too, as much as he doesn’t want to be. Peter isn’t the type to disappear, at least not quietly. He doesn’t really do quiet. He has too much flair for that.

“I haven’t heard anything about him from any of my people,” Chris admits. “But I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually.”

“Dead or alive,” Derek mutters. He isn’t sure which would be better for the pack, and he’s even less sure which option is more appealing to him personally.

Nobody chooses to respond to that bit of pessimism. Chris rolls up his map, pins and all. He reaches out to shut the laptop, but Scott says, “Wait, Derek!”

They both pause. Derek nods that he’s listening, but Scott hesitates. His eyes flicker between Derek and Chris, a grimace on his face.

“Oh,” he says. “Uh…”

“Spit it out, Scott.”

“Well…” With another glance at Chris, he sighs and says, “Have you been avoiding Stiles? He says you’re ducking his phone calls.”

“What?” Derek makes himself laugh. “Why would I be doing that?”

“That’s not a ‘no’.”

Derek flushes; he suddenly wishes he had never taken the time to clue Scott in on verbal avoidance techniques common in werewolf circles. It seemed necessary if he was going to be parlaying with other pack leaders, all of whom had plenty of experience with monitoring heartbeats to spot lies in people they didn’t yet trust, but of course it would come back to bite him in the ass like this.

When Derek doesn’t respond immediately, Scott sighs again. “Just call him sometime, will you?” he says. “He thinks you’re mad at him and he won’t stop bugging me about it.”

The Skype feed disconnects. Derek shuts the laptop harder than he probably should considering it doesn’t belong to him, but Chris doesn’t complain. The hunter just watches him with that obnoxiously stoic, hard to read face of his. It makes Derek’s metaphorical hackles raise.

“Quit looking at me like that.”

Chris doesn’t. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Avoiding Stiles.”

Derek snatches the rolled up map off the table and stuffs it into Chris’ bag for him, shoving aside four guns, a mini-crossbow, and a stun baton to make room.

“Of course not.”

“Uh huh.”

Derek makes the decision not to acknowledge that Chris clearly doesn’t believe him anymore than a werewolf would. His resolve lasts as long as it takes for him to run out of weapon rearranging options. The second his hands are free, he gets another glimpse of that face and he crumples.

“Okay, fine, maybe I am.”

Chris’ expression doesn’t change in the slightest. Of course it doesn’t; he already knew what the answer would be. He says, “Why?”

Derek collapses into Chris’ desk chair, head lolling back. “I don’t know. Noah opened his big mouth and made things…awkward.”

Maybe that isn’t the right word, but Derek’s not sure he has a word for the itchy, unsettled feeling that’s plagued him for the last week. All he knows is that it’s Noah’s fault. Before that one sly comment, Derek was perfectly content with the way things were, or he’d thought he was. He had thought he knew where he stood with Stiles, and where he wanted to. Now everything is different and he doesn’t know anything.

“Let me guess,” Chris says. “Noah thinks you should date Stiles.”

“Let me guess,” Derek mimics. “You do too?”

Chris shrugs a shoulder. Derek groans and Chris has the gall to laugh at him. Even kicking him in the shin doesn’t make him stop, probably because Derek doesn’t bother to put any force behind it. Chris just slides along the desk’s edge until he’s out of easy range.

“I don’t see why that’s a problem,” he says, once his mirth has passed. "Do you not want to date Stiles? It certainly seems to me like you might. You do a lot of smiling when you talk to him.”

“I—” Derek rubs a hand over his face, then lets it fall heavily into his lap. “I don’t know that either.”

“Are you sure about that?” Chris asks. “Or are you just avoiding it because you’re scared?”

One thing Derek can say about Chris Argent: he doesn’t beat around the bush and he doesn’t pull his punches. Derek grits his teeth against the uncomfortable squirm in his gut. It’s been a long time since Chris has been any kind of threat to him, but no amount of trust between them will ever stop Chris’ looks from being so piercing, like those little needles collectors use to pin butterflies in their cases. Derek’s never liked being pinned down.

“Well, it’s not like I have a great track record where relationships are concerned.”

It’s a low blow and he knows it. When Chris drops his head, a new tension in his stance, Derek almost apologizes. For all the mistakes Chris made once upon a time, Kate wasn’t his fault. He was no more responsible for Kate’s actions than Derek was for Peter’s.

But Chris just raises his head again, very deliberately relaxing, and says, “Things worked out pretty well with Braeden.”

Derek unclenches his fists—he didn’t notice making them in the first place—and shakes his head. “It didn’t last.”

“Not all relationships are meant to.” Chris smiles, a thin, bittersweet thing with the ghost of his wife behind it. “That doesn’t mean we never start any.”

He doesn’t wait for Derek to respond, which is probably a good thing; Derek doesn’t know what he could say. He doesn’t squeeze Derek’s shoulder like Noah did either. Chris just gathers up his things without another word, bag hitched over his shoulder and laptop tucked under his arm, and heads for the door.

At a loss, Derek follows. He lingers in the hall as Chris locks up, hands stuffed in his pockets, listening to the muffled sounds of all the other apartment dwellers. The couple next door are watching a movie together, the one down the hall washing dishes and laughing. They both sound happy.

Chris maintains the silence until they make it to the parking lot. He tosses his bag into the back of his car and says, “I’ll keep an ear out for news of your uncle. Let you know if I hear anything.”

Derek nods and then hesitates, his keys in hand. “You’re not going to tell me to call Stiles?”

Clambering into the driver’s seat, Chris tosses Derek a grin. “You don’t need me to tell you what to do. Besides—” He revs the engine. “—Stiles graduates in a couple of weeks. If you don’t call him by then, I have a feeling he’ll track you down himself.”

Derek doesn’t have a chance to call Stiles. He means to, honestly—not that he’s figured anything out, really, except that he misses Stiles—but Chris and Scott were right about Monroe’s people and it’s only a few days before everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

It starts with Peter.

One second, Derek is poring over a stack of manuscripts with Mason, trading bits of translation and speculation back and forth over the crowded table, and the next, the peace of the afternoon is being thoroughly broken by a commotion on the stairs. His door crashes open to reveal a heavily bloodied Peter being half-supported, half-dragged through by a grim-faced Liam.

Manuscripts forgotten, Mason rushes forward with a frantic, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What happened?”

“Found him in the woods,” Liam grits out. “Near the city line. Tried to take him to Melissa, but he said here first.”

Derek takes his uncle by the shoulder, eyes scanning for signs of damage; mostly bullet holes, from what he can see. The burn in his nose tells him that at least a few of them are of the wolfsbane-laced variety, a crusting of black blood in various spots confirming it, but if Peter is still conscious then none of the poison has reached his heart just yet.

He turns to tell Mason to fetch the emergency kit, but Mason is already disappearing into the bathroom, so Derek turns his attention back to his uncle.

“Peter. Peter!”

It takes a few seconds for Peter to focus in on Derek’s face, but he musters up a bloody smile. “Ah, nephew,” he pants. “So good to see you. It’s been too long.”

“What the hell happened? And where have you been?”

Peter huffs as if Derek is being rude in skipping the pleasantries. “Quite a long story, I’m afraid.”

He grimaces as Mason comes crashing back into their little huddle, shouldering Liam out of the way and jostling Peter’s various wounds. Derek lays a hand on a patch of Peter’s skin that isn’t covered in blood, his veins turning black as he siphons off some of the pain. Peter slumps a little, eyes closing.

Derek gives him a shake because, as much as he knows healing requires rest, they also don’t have time for the only person with information on an undisclosed threat to fall asleep right now. “Give me the condensed version, Peter, come on.”

When Peter grudgingly forces his eyes back open, they’re dark and steely.

“Long story short?” he says. “They’re coming.”

They get the full story out of him somewhere between the initial attack and the second wave.

Apparently, when Derek had forbidden him from harassing anyone in the pack, Peter had grown bored. Fancy cars can only entertain him for so long, after all, and the other packs tolerate his presence even less than the McCall one does. With nothing else to do and no particular scheme in mind for once, he’d traveled a bit until he’d run into Theo, doing some “surveillance” along the border to Arizona.

Derek has never felt the need to get details on what, exactly, Theo’s brand of surveilling entails, but he has to admit that it’s netted them far more (and more specific) intel than most of their contacts manage through their more above board means. If Scott hasn’t put a stop to it, he figures it can’t be too unscrupulous.

Just unscrupulous enough, evidently, to intrigue his uncle. Bored with his material things, having annoyed his own pack and pissed off several others, Peter decided to try his hand at spycraft because why not?

Mason gapes at Peter over Melissa’s shoulder, momentarily distracted from his morbid fascination with werewolf healing. “You infiltrated Monroe’s organization?”

Liam, equally horrified: “For fun?”

“For the pack!” Peter objects. “There was nothing I could do here to help the cause, but I saw an opportunity to contribute elsewhere and I seized it.”

From across the room, Derek snorts. “Please,” he says, tossing aside his own blood-soaked bandage. The wound underneath is mostly healed by now, but it won’t be long before the next attack. “You just wanted to see if you could.”

Peter’s face is the picture of offense. “I brought you valuable intel, did I not? I risked my life playing hunter for months—a very tedious endeavor, I’ll have you know. Do you realize how hard it is to pretend to be human when you’re so much more than that? All that effort, plus forewarning of a major assault that very well could have killed you all, and this is the thanks I get?”

He’s got a point with that, at least. Monroe’s been training her people well, no doubt passing on every lesson Gerard ever taught her. Without advance notice, they would’ve incurred losses, there’s no question about that. And now, with Peter’s intel, they know that this was only a first strike, a test of their defenses, and that more are incoming.

“Scott’s on his way,” Derek says. “He’ll be here in half an hour. Araya is calling in her people to help shore up our boundary to the south, and I’ll be calling around to our allied packs to see how many fighters they can spare us.”

“I already got in touch with Crissie Langley,” Chris says, striding in to drop a second med kit at Melissa’s side. She doesn’t stop to acknowledge it beyond a quick glance, but his hand on her shoulder does make her smile a bit. “A dozen of hers will be here before too long. The Finleys are willing to help out too, but you—” He points a finger at Peter. “—have to stay out of their sight.”

“Fine by me,” Peter says, letting his head fall back against the couch that was once a nice green and is now probably ruined, what with all the blood stains; Derek’s surprised it lasted this long. “I’ve done my part. Now it’s your turn.”

Liam makes a face, and Melissa jabs her suturing needle in with a bit less care than she normally would. Derek doesn’t blame them; he’s got plenty of personal experience with Peter ducking in and out of fights as he pleases. But Malia texts him an update on the gathering force just over the city line, and he gets the feeling that Peter won’t be able to stay out of this one forever. His uncle may be a selfish coward on the best of days, but his protest of “for the pack” wasn’t entirely a lie. It never is.

And the pack needs all the help they can get for this one.

Derek’s not sure who among them has the harder job: the shifters and hunter allies on the front lines, facing down the people with guns, or Noah, Jordan, and Rafael, struggling to keep the whole thing under wraps and provide reasonable explanations to the people not in the know. They’re going on three days of gunfire, their saving grace being that most of it has taken place in the abandoned warehouse district.

It’s a minor miracle that no civilians have wandered through and gotten caught in the crossfire. Though, after how wide Monroe and Gerard had cast their net a few years ago, it’s likely that plenty of the local population are aware of the conflict and are just wisely choosing to turn their backs on it. If that’s the case, Derek can’t help but be a little grateful. Better they look away than take up arms in Monroe’s name again.

Derek will also admit to a smidgen of resentment. With a bullet in his shoulder and two half-healed stab wounds in his back, he wishes the average townsperson was as eager to take up arms in a defensive capacity as they were to light the torches and polish their pitchforks. As it is, he’s got Scott at his side and Malia mostly out of sight halfway down the alley, pinned down by gunfire from a dozen of Monroe’s men. A handful of wolves from the Langley pack are trying to outflank them, but the hunters aren’t stupid and they’ve got sentries posted at every angle of attack.

While they wait for either the signal or more screaming, Scott digs the slug out of him. “No wolfsbane!”

Derek thinks he’s shooting for cheerful. Not the best silver lining they could ask for, but also not the worst. He rolls his shoulder, feeling the burn of his healing kicking in.

“How’s Liam’s group doing?”

Scott’s attempt at a smile falls away. “Holding their own.” He checks his texts again. “He and Corey have pushed them back by a few blocks, and Chris thinks they can take back the quadrant if Theo can make it in from the west with the Babineaux guys.”

A smattering of gunfire signals Malia’s dash across the alley. She slides past them unscathed and ducks behind the sturdy metal door that is their cover. “Man, do these guys ever run out of bullets?”

“Not yet,” Scott says, cringing as another volley proves him right. “But they have to eventually, right?”

Derek’s not so confident about that. The odds are good they’ll have to just resign themselves to taking a few more hits if they want to make any forward progress. It’ll slow them down and hinder their fighting, but he has hope that these newbie hunters are better trained in long distance weaponry than they are in hand-to-hand combat, so if they can just get close to them—

A bullet embeds in the metal just shy of Derek’s left ear. Malia curses fluently as another ricochets and catches her in the thigh. It takes an inconveniently long two seconds for Derek to realize that these bullets came, not from the direction of the hunters they’ve been facing off with for the last twenty minutes, but from behind them.

Derek echoes Malia’s sentiment with twice the vehemence. Scott hauls Malia behind him, trying to get a look at the wound without either of them getting shot again, but that’s not an easy feat with foes on both sides. With nowhere else to go and nothing else convenient to hide behind, Derek digs his claws into the siding of the warehouse. With a wrench that nearly tears his shoulder out of socket, he manages to rip a sizable piece of it free and slam it down at their backs.

Wrist deep in Malia’s blood, Scott says, “Good thinking.”

“It won’t hold up long,” Derek tells him. Already, the material is denting under the force of the assault, and with makeshift blockades on either side of them, they’re even more pinned down than they were before. “What now?”

Malia snarls as Scott finally pulls the bullet free. “Now we go out there and rip those fuckers apart.”

“I really don’t like the seven-to-one odds we’ve got going on here,” Derek bites back. “Where the hell are the Langleys?”

As soon as he says it, a howl rises up in the distance. The gunfire from the front shifts its aim, the hunters there more concerned with the new incoming threat. It might’ve been an opportunity if the hunters at the rear didn’t choose that moment to double down on their assault, a hoard of semi-automatics making everything around them echo like the most deafening kind of bell.

It’s interrupted by the rumble of an engine. There’s a squeal of tires, the thump of impact, and a lot of shouting. Some more shots ring out, the engine growls again, and then there’s nothing but footfalls leading away from them.

The three of them exchange confused looks. They don’t have much time to question before the metal siding of their hiding spot gets shoved aside. Stiles is wearing a bulletproof vest and a self-satisfied grin. He’s got a gun in one hand, but he holds out the other to Derek.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

The stunned silence is broken when Scott snorts. “Dude, seriously? How long have you been waiting to say that?”

Stiles’ grin widens. “My entire life, Scottie, my boy. Now, come on, hurry up! I’m pretty sure they’re regrouping.”

Without further ado, Scott drags Malia upright, taking most of her weight when her leg refuses to support it. Together they stumble out into the alleyway to where the Jeep is idling, doors open. After the small army that occupied it a moment ago, the alley feels disturbingly empty, like it’s just trying to lull them into a false sense of security.

Stiles still has his hand out. His smile takes on a sly tilt. “This feels familiar, doesn’t it? Me rescuing you. It’s almost like old times.”

Derek shouldn’t be able to laugh at a time like this, but he does. Stiles tends to bring that out in him. “If you say so.”

He takes Stiles’ hand.

The fighting lasts for six days. Nearly a week of sprinting from one place to another, facing off with hunter after hunter after hunter, trying to hold the line against a force that dwarfs them in numbers.

But they do it.

Derek isn’t there for the final confrontation with Monroe. He, Liam, and a pair of Langley betas are playing the most unpleasant game of tag the Preserve has ever seen, driving out the last of the men who had set up camp there. By the time they’re confident no one is left, he has a text from Scott saying that it’s over. A little anticlimactic, honestly, but Derek has had enough danger and drama in his life that he will never turn his nose up at an anticlimax.

He makes it home in the wee hours of what his phone informs him is a Thursday morning; he lost track somewhere between the back-to-back all-nighters and the gut shot that knocked him out for nine hours while he healed up. Getting his sleep schedule back on track is going to be a bitch after this.

He’s planning on faceplanting into bed and sleeping the clock around—back on track can start tomorrow night, thank you very much—but he rolls open the door to find Stiles thumbing through the books on his table. He feels like he should be surprised, but he’s not. Nothing Stiles does surprises him anymore, up to and including showing up in the middle of a firefight to save Derek’s ass when he’s not even supposed to be in town.

Stiles doesn’t look at all contrite at having been caught breaking and entering, but that’s par for the course with him. He just flips his current tome closed, shoves his hands in his pockets, and says, “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Derek shuts the door with a clang and pulls off his shoes. They’ve got a pretty decent amount of blood on them that he’ll have to scrub off if he ever wants to wear them in public again. He thumbs at a smear of it, chipping off a few flakes because that’s easier than acknowledging the elephant in the room. “What are you doing here?” he asks instead. “It’s almost four in the morning. I would’ve thought you’d be asleep by now.”

Stiles shrugs. “Way too wired to sleep,” he says. “I’ll crash hard later, probably, but for now I’m wide awake. I figured I’d come check on you, make sure you’re okay. It’s been so hectic, I feel like I’ve barely seen you since I got here.”

“Hectic’s one way of putting it,” Derek mutters. He drops the shoes, though, and obligingly holds out his arms to showcase his undamaged person. “I’m fine. Exhausted and more than glad it’s over, but fine.”

“Good,” Stiles says with a definitive nod. “Let’s keep it that way.”

Silence falls, broken only by the distant traffic outside the window and the scuff of Stiles’ shoes against the concrete floor as he sidles closer. Derek resists the urge to shuffle his feet too, hyper-aware of the distance between them. It’s a lot less than the three thousand miles he’s used to, and maybe still a little more than he wants. He really has missed Stiles.

Finally, he breaks.

“I didn’t call.”

Stiles scratches at his cheek. “Uh, no. No, you didn’t.”

Afraid he might actually be blushing, Derek ducks his head. He’s glad for the dark and Stiles’ weak eyes. Sadly, those don’t dampen the awkward clear of his throat or his failed attempt to speak. He should’ve expected that; if he knew what he wanted to say, he would have called by now.

Stiles doesn’t wait long, but he’s never been known for his patience.

“Look, Derek,” he says, hands back in his pockets and shoulders hiked up to his ears. “If I’ve been coming on too strong, or if you’re not interested, then just say so. I’m a big boy, okay? I can handle rejection if that’s what’s coming to me. But I’d rather you—”

“No!” bursts out of Derek’s mouth, and apparently his decision has been made. It was probably made a long time ago, no matter how much he argued with Chris and Noah (and himself) about it. “No, I’m— I’m not rejecting you.”

Stiles’ face opens up, eyes unshuttering and downturned mouth finding its smile. His hands fly out of his pockets into a much more characteristic flail through the air. “Then why the radio silence?”

Derek can’t say that he doesn’t know this time. Stiles isn’t a werewolf and he wouldn’t hear the lie, but his eyes are sharp and shrewd. They’ve always seen more than they should. Besides, it’s 4 AM and he’s too tired to overthink this. They say honesty is the best policy, don’t they? And, honestly, it’s pretty simple.

He shrugs. “I saw where it was going and I panicked.”

Stiles’ eyebrows flew up his forehead. “You just figured that out? Dude, I've been flirting with you for like two years! Am I that subtle?”

Derek laughs; as if anything about Stiles could ever be described as subtle. “No,” he says. “I’m just an idiot.”

Stiles is close enough to touch now, and he does. With confirmation of interest acquired, he doesn’t hesitate. His palm is wide and warm against the nape of Derek’s neck, his body a long line of heat against Derek’s front, and it feels good. Even in the last few weeks, Derek hasn’t really let himself imagine this, what it would feel like to touch and be touched by Stiles. He’s been missing out.

“I don’t think I’d go that far,” Stiles says. “A little oblivious, maybe.”

“A little?”

Stiles’ attempt at diplomacy falls apart, a grin breaking through. “Okay, a lot oblivious,” he says. “You seriously didn’t notice? Like, at all?”

Derek grimaces. “It’s really obvious in retrospect.”

“I sure hope so. I mean, dude, how could ‘gonna come supervise me?’ be anything other than a blatant come-on? That was practically a gilded invitation into my bed.”

Derek groans and lets his head thump down on Stiles’ shoulder. His hands find Stiles’ hips and hold on. The rumble of laughter in Stiles’ chest is a pleasant vibration against Derek’s when he presses closer.

“I retract my earlier statement,” Stiles says, tugging lightly at Derek’s hair to get him to pick his head up. “You are a little bit of an idiot.”

“I know,” Derek says. “But what can I say? You snuck up on me.”

“Probably the only time I’ll ever sneak up on a werewolf,” Stiles muses. “Mind if I put that on my resume?”

“I take it back. Clearly, you’re the idiot here.”

Stiles is laughing when he kisses Derek. It might be the best kiss he’s ever had.