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“This is all your fault!” Erica snapped as she came into the loft and slammed the door behind her. Derek looked up from his book and frowned at her.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Harassment classes, really Derek, really?” She waltzed over to him and leaned in with a glare. “I know what harassment is!”
“Ah,” Derek nodded. “Phase two is in session then?”
“In session then, he asks,” Erica snapped. “Yes, it’s fucking in session! I only worked for four hours and one and a half of them was taken up by these stupid video’s talking about harassment! They’re mandatory! For the whole town! Why did you dating have to cut into my money so horribly?” One hand reached into her pocket and she pulled out a wad of cash. “I only made fifty bucks!”
“You made fifty dollars in two and a half hours?” Derek said with a shake of his head. “What are you giving those customers?”
“Blow jobs under the tables, what do you think? Come on, I should have made at least seventy today. I don’t ask for miracles, but I do need the money.” She groaned and flopped down on the couch next to him, a small cloud of dust rising as she did so. “And you need new furniture. This stuff sucks. Did it come *with* the loft?”
Not allowing himself to sneeze, Derek shrugged. “Yes?”
“Oh, eww, you don’t know who’s been on this thing!” she cried out, hopping up and off of it quickly, wiping her clothes with her hands. “That’s disgusting.”
“No one has died, peed, pooped, fucked or drooled on this couch,” he said as he returned his gaze to his book and flipped a page. “Although you’re right, and I should dust the thing or maybe get it cleaned.”
“How do you even know all those things?” Erica asked as she wrinkled her nose and stared at the couch in horror.
“Scent.” Derek looked up at her in confusion. “Can’t you tell by scent too? You have the ability.”
“You know what else I have the ability to do? Make money! You could have at least warned me the classes were going to start or something.”
Rolling his eyes, Derek closed his book and put it down in his lap. “I didn’t know when that part was going to take effect. I knew the Sheriff planned for the classes to be done, but it’s not like he tells me everything he does when he does it. Relax, I don’t think anything else is going to cut into your money.”
“There are more plans?” she asked. “Anything else that might cause me annoyances?”
Derek thought things over for a moment. The article, the harassment classes, close watch on the town, yeah, that was it pretty much. “I don’t think so. Not unless you plan on harassing me or Stiles,” he said with a big grin. “If you don’t, we’re good.”
“Of course I don’t plan on harassing Stiles, and you could fight me off if I started harassing you so I’m not worried about that.” She shrugged and gingerly sat back down on the couch. “So tell me, fearless leader, how are you holding up?”
“In what sense?” he asked, fiddling with the cover instead of looking at her. There was so much going on and he just wanted to ignore it for a while.
“In the freaking out sense? You know, fight to the death, going to probably die sense.”
“Honestly?” Derek frowned and looked away from her and out the window. “I’m trying not to think about it.” It was easier to do that than to think about how everything could go wrong.
“That’s not healthy, just so you know.”
“I’ve got my best people doing the best they can to find out anything that might help me,” he said as he took a deep breath to stop his heart from picking up a pounding pace. “That’s all I can do for right now.”
“You know that Stiles isn’t going to go quietly to Deucalion, right?” Her voice was soft and gentle but the words still grated on his nerves. Derek wasn’t going to let Deucalion take Stiles, he’d kill Stiles himself first.
“Good.” He bared his teeth, still blunt but the meaning was clear enough. “I won’t let him take Stiles.” There was that flood of pain and anger that blossomed from beneath his rib cage to rip through his chest again. He felt his eyes go red, the colors of the room changing accordingly to the new sight. “I won’t.”
*
“This better be good,” Derek said, crossing his arms as his Uncle came out from the shadows. “You’ve been gone forever.”
“Well it’s not easy, is it, to delve into the pasts of people who want to hide what they’ve done.” Uncle Peter lightly thumped the manilla folder in his hand. “This took a lot of negotiating.”
“I don’t care if you had to cut off your fingers, I need to know if any of that is useful,” Derek said, irritation clear in his narrowed eyes and the inpatient tapping of his foot.
“It’s useful if any of them still have human emotions,” Peter said with a shrug. He put the folder down on table. “Kali has a weak link, we hope, but Ennis, not much at all on his end. The twins were Omega’s, following behind a pack that didn’t really want them. They killed their pack, which is how they got their Alpha status, but funny enough, they got it when they were merged together. I suspect only one of them is really an Alpha, the other is Alpha by proxy. Unless, of course, they bit the throat out, then they’d both be Alpha’s.” He walked to the windows and leaned against them, looking out. “Interesting idea, isn’t it?”
“Deucalion?” Derek snapped, losing patience with his Uncle’s half useful sentences.
“Ah, Deucalion, he’s a difficult person to get a read on. You know, it was because he wanted to stop fighting that he ended up blind? Interesting fact, it was Gerard Argent who caused the massacre of Deucalion’s pack. Not just Deucalion’s pack, but also damaged Ennis’ pack and Kali’s. Gerard was a bad, bad man.” Peter said the words as a mumble, one hand lightly dragging across the glass in front of him. “You really going to fight him?”
“I don’t have a choice.” Derek finally moved over to the table. There was something about his Uncle that just really bothered him. Besides coming back from the grave, and the fact that he killed Laura, it was like his Uncle was too still now. When Derek had been younger his Uncle Peter had always seemed to be moving, active. Now it was like Peter just hung out in a corner and watched. It was never good when Peter watched, because he was learning things that way, and Derek had never been able to understand how Peter knew so much. It was unnerving.
“Yes you do, you could kill your pack and take your place at Deucalion’s side. That’s always an option.” The words were said carelessly, but Derek knew that Uncle Peter was weighing each word before speaking it.
“It’s not an option. I don’t want to be that kind of Alpha. Besides, I lost you once,” he stumbled over the words as he looked down at the table. “Just because I don’t like you doesn’t mean I want to kill you again.” Not when his Uncle was so weak, when he knew that Peter needed the pack just as much as Derek did.
“The first time was a necessity,” Peter said with a nod. “You had to do it, I was still crazed, desperate to take vengeance, an animal more than a human. It was a good thing, what you did. I don’t begrudge you that victory, however shallow it was. I mean, I was burned alive, again, before you took my power.”
“Uncle Peter,” Derek said as he felt the betrayal in his Uncle’s words. “I -“
“Don’t apologize Derek,” Uncle Peter said, turning around and looking right at Derek. Derek didn’t lift his gaze, but he felt the weight of his Uncle’s eyes on him. “You did the right thing. I commend you for it. You’re not doing the best job at being an Alpha, but you’re trying. I *need* you to be the Alpha, I can’t imagine that power going to anyone else but a Hale.”
Derek finally looked up and met his Uncle’s glowing blue gaze. “Then what are you saying?” Derek finally asked.
“I’m saying that I’m not going to let my only relative die because of some stupid Alpha who thinks he knows everything there is to know about a Hale. I’m saying that I’ll help you learn the Alpha Shift.”
Standing tall at that, Derek frowned at his Uncle. “You will?” It was something Derek was having a very hard time doing, something he hadn’t managed to actually successfully complete.
“I will. And you’ll be in my debt, and I’ll collect sometime. Fair?” Uncle Peter raised his eyebrows and the blue faded completely from his eyes. It was never a good idea to strike a deal with his Uncle unless you knew exactly what you had to give up. In this case, there was only one thing he wasn’t willing to barter with.
“You can’t have Stiles,” Derek said. Uncle Peter crinkled his nose.
“I don’t want him,” Peter said and Derek nodded.
“You can’t hurt him,” Derek pressed.
“I don’t want to…” Peter tilted his head to one side then nodded. “Okay, sometimes I really do want to hurt him. Fine, I won’t hurt him, I promise that my favor will have nothing at all to do with any harm coming to Stiles, nor will it have to do with me bonding with the idiot boy.” There was an underlying sting to Peter’s words and Derek had no idea why it existed, but he’d finally gotten a good enough promise.
“Fine. It’s a deal.” Derek could really use that advantage in a battle against Deucalion.
“Good.” Uncle Peter held out his hand and Derek took it, shaking firmly. “Of course if you’re too much of an idiot and can’t master the shift than the contract is null and void. Fair’s fair.”
“When can we get started?”