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Pack gatherings were something that annoyed him at times and the one held on the longest day of the year always felt if not wrong, not completely right. The Hale pack didn’t celebrate the Solstice, as other packs did, it was really just an excuse for a get together and barbecue. And it didn’t help that this year there seem to be more kids running around than usual.
While he didn’t completely dislike small children, he didn’t exactly like them either. Their scent was never quite right. It wasn’t until they got older that they took on the pack's scent. While fundamentally he knew that was the way it should be, young kids should have the scent of their parents first and pack second it was still something that made him twitch just a bit.
His Uncle Daniel said it indicated that he was, with the correct training, going to be the Hale Pack’s next Left Hand after Daniel retired, of course. There was no passing of any sword via challenge in the Hale pack something that, on the quiet, he wasn’t quite certain was right.
Challenges made the pack stronger and showed that the leadership could defend the pack. A challenge didn’t have to be to the death, and in fact in most packs it wasn’t. These days, the challenge was more often about proving that the challenger was the best person for the pack. But it was a winner takes all. As it should be, these things shouldn’t be hereditary.
If an Alpha’s word was law and the Left and Right hands were to guide the Alpha, they should have to prove that they had the pack’s best interests at heart.
Then there were the magic uses in a pack, those that were a pack’s Emissary and those that used their magic as a gift to the pack. Like Claudia Stilinski, whose gift was protection of the Nemeton.
And then there was the Hale pack Emissary who stunk and not in a nice way either. It was something that he couldn’t work out, just that Deaton did. And nobody seemed to be willing to listen to him about it either, for instance the way Deaton looked at Claudia made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
He might only be sixteen, but he wasn’t stupid and something wasn’t right.
A tug on his hand chased his worries away for a moment as Mischief, or Stiles as the kid was just beginning to demand he was called, always made him smile. There was something sweet about this little person, kind of sarcastic in that way that a six-year-old who was still repeating what he heard could be, but still sweet. Maybe it was because he wasn’t exactly pack, so his scent wasn’t wrong, or maybe it was the kind of friendship they had built. The trust that this kid had in him, where the pack kids often looked at him sideways, moving away as if they knew something was different about him.
That level of trust was something was unusual and really kind of nice.
“Come on, you gotta see before it goes again.”
Stiles hauling him towards a tree near the edge of the clearing, that he could have sworn wasn’t there five minutes ago, wasn’t exactly surprising as such. The kid would be a trouble magnet in a few years, and even Stiles pushing his hand against the tree wasn’t that strange.
That he could feel the tree seeming to say hello. Now that was odd.
A sudden scream, that might have been rage, had him moving so fast that as he pulled Stiles behind him he scratched his hand against the bark, causing him to bleed slightly. And the greeting he felt became triumph so blinding that his knees gave way.
“What have you done?”
Deaton’s voice died away as all he could feel was silence and the sweet pleasure of a new bond that rested among the ones belonging to his pack.
“Mr Deaton, you’re not allowed to hurt my tree…” Stiles voice was bleeding as much fury as a child could.
“…and now Peter and Mommy will look after it better than you ever did.”
And then there was the amusement of an ancient, whatever it was ringing in the back of his mind as a sweet six-year-old kid laid down the law.