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The door wasn’t locked when Derek got home from work, so his husband and their six-year-old son should have been there. As he wandered through the house, he listened for heartbeats that weren’t there. His nostrils flared; their scents were recent and happy, so Derek wasn’t too worried. He made his way through the entire house, pausing in the room they used as a library and smiling down at the copy of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox that Stiles had been reading to Luca.
He regretted missing out on storytime, but a customer had come into the bookstore at the last minute, and he hadn’t wanted to rush them out and risk losing a sale. They ended up not purchasing anything, but Derek was hopeful they would return. Exiting the library, he frowned, worry beginning to creep in as he realized his family was nowhere to be found in the unlocked house.
Hurrying down the stairs to grab his phone, he froze when a strange sound carried in from the backyard. A moment later, the house shook, and Derek thought that there was an earthquake for a moment. His concern for his family grew. He raced through the kitchen and out the back door when he heard another sound, almost like a low moan.
He threw open the back door, freezing when his eyes took in the sight in front of him. Standing at the edge of the trees that lined the backyard was the biggest ox that Derek had ever seen. If the size and the unnatural blue color weren’t enough to tell him what had happened, his husband’s large grin definitely would.
“Hi, honey,” Stiles called out. “How long have you been home, snookums?”
“Terrible pet names? Really?” Derek said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Where’s Luca?” He followed Stiles’ gaze up, gasping when their son’s smiling face appeared from between the beast’s horns. Relief flooded him that Stiles hadn’t turned Luca into the big blue ox, at least.
“Pa!” Luca called, waving a hand and drawing the ox’s attention to Derek. The beast leaned down and huffed out a breath that sent Derek back a few steps. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Pretty sure Babe’s a ‘he,’ Pup,” Derek said. “Do you think you could come down from there now?”
“But we were going for a walk!” Luca argued, and Babe took a step forward, the ground shaking when he did.
Derek turned to Stiles, who managed to look ashamed while still biting his lip and fighting hysterical laughter. “You need to fix this before Babe knocks the house down. Did you not learn your lesson with Johnny Appleseed?”
They both let out a groan at the memory of the mass amount of apples they’d ingested the year before; they still had a hard time even thinking the word without feeling ill. “I just wanted Luca to get an idea just how big Babe was,” Stiles explained. Derek fixed a glare on him. “Alright, stop, put the murder brows away!”
He muttered an incantation under his breath, moving his hands. Light generated around them, and when he laid them on Babe’s leg, the only part he could reach, the ox began to shrink and fade from blue to grey, the coat becoming shaggier the smaller the ox grew. Within a few moments, Derek was looking down at his son, just barely, sitting on the shoulders of a large Irish Wolfhound.
Luca was burying his face in the dog’s fur. “What a good boy,” he said. “My good boy!”
Derek returned his gaze to his husband. “Stiles?”
Stiles shrugged his shoulders and held his hands out wide in front of him, shaking them slightly. “Surprise! We got a dog!”
Derek turned and headed back into the house without a word, but a loud woof and an attack from behind sent him face-first toward the ground. Only his werewolf reflexes saved him from injuring his face. Rolling over, he found the dog standing over him, tongue lolling out, and Luca laughing from beside him. “He’s mine, Pa! He’s my Babe!”
Sighing in defeat, Derek reached up and scratched between the dog’s ears. “Welcome to the family, Babe.”