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Peter threw the magazine down onto the desk in front of Laura, not believing the innocent look on his niece’s face for a second.
“You’re not using it,” he said bluntly, sitting down then getting back up again.
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? He’s not a member of the Hale Pack and therefore cannot be labelled as ‘Hale’s Spark’ for one,” he said, the words making him feel possessive.
“Oh please! Stiles has been a member of the Pack for months now – just because you refuse to acknowledge it doesn’t make it not true,” she replied, leaning back in her seat and looking at him with shrewd eyes. “I know you would prefer to see Stiles as just a kid who happens to have a few handy powers and hangs around with us, but Uncle Peter, some of us have removed our blinkers.”
“He hasn’t passed his Spark Tests,” Peter said, stalking over to the windows and staring blindly at the view.
“You missed the celebration because you were dealing with that Chimera in China.”
“You’ll be putting a target on his back – everyone wants a Spark in their Pack. And if they can’t have one for themselves, they’ll have no issue with removing him from the playing field.”
“Uncle Peter – I don’t know how to tell you this, but Stiles has been doing emissary work for us for – God, I don’t know how long. He already has a target on his back. To be frank, I would have thought it would be the job of the left hand to keep himself aware of these things,” Laura said, giving him a smirk that was classic Hale and made him want to punch a hole in the glass in front of him.
Internally scrambling with the new information – he really should have known all of this but had made a concerted effort to stay away from anything regarding Stiles for so long that it appeared he was out of the loop – he made a last-ditch attempt.
“I can’t imagine the Sheriff is happy with his son being plastered all over a magazine looking like that.”
“Like what?” Laura picked up the magazine and examined the cover. Stiles was staring directly into the camera, arms over his head, looking like – well, like Stiles. “I don’t get it.”
“I know sex sells but do you have to have him looking like that?”
“Oh my God, you think he looks hot!”
“Laura – “
“You do!”
“We have an image to maintain – we don’t want to become the equivalent of supernatural skin magazines!” Peter protested, grabbing his copy of the magazine back from Laura.
“Speak for yourself – I can’t wait for you to see the cover we’ve done with the Sheriff!”
“With – you’ve done a cover with Noah?”
“Hell yeah! We covered the LEO Awards and he was there, looking rather hot, with Lydia’s Mom!”
“As a favour – “
“Nope! If you don’t like it, you need to tell Stiles!” Laura smirked again.
“Goddamn this family!”