Chapter Text
He did not know where he was.
That wasn’t entirely true; he knew these woods, had been raised in and thrived in them, first by mother and father then by older sister when the elders were gone. He had been reared alongside nieces and nephew, had enjoyed them with family and first love, had mourned in them when first love had died in his arms.
He had family in these woods, a life; he had lost family in them, a living nightmare of burning flesh and the scent of pain and fear and rage and death death death—
But that had been… earlier? Years past? He did not know, because he did not know how he was here now.
He’d had some awareness, some knowledge that he had somehow lived when his family had died. He had somehow been aware of niece and nephew leaving, fleeing from where they had been harmed, and he did not fault them. He’d been briefly — too briefly — aware of his sister’s death with a sudden flux of raw power surging through his veins, yet when it had knocked him into darkness and he resurfaced it had fled.
That was how he knew, in an abstract sense, that he must have died for even a moment; the alpha power slipped endlessly down the family line, from one to the other, from mother to sister to himself and likely to niece. So he did not fault the alpha stealing away the only beta capable of fleeing to a safer place; were he capable, he would have fled.
But…
But he was still weak, still uncertain of many things. He let his inner wolf deal with things, sleeping when instinct told him it was safe and waking when pack was near to keep him in that state of safety.
Because even though niece and nephew had fled, he still had pack close by.
There was the ex-hunter, who had been a presence his sister kept close. The one who had been married to a teacher he remembered liking, who he had mourned upon her death. There was the pup, an active little thing whom he remembered took after his own mother’s features even with hints of his paternal heritage. The pup and ex-hunter were not of blood to each other, but were a family of two. Both registered as pack to his instincts, both left him feeling safer when they were around.
There was a man who smelled like the ex-hunter, possibly another ex-hunter, possibly family to the former. He only arrived with his maybe-brother or the pup or both, never on his own. He never paid much attention, really, letting instinct keep track of everything, but it felt like the new not-hunter — a lawyer, maybe? Instinct whispered just kind helper sometimes — was just as much pack and safety as the other two.
Sometimes a woman came along, one he did not know from the time before. She had a kind voice, and she came with a girl-pup. The two pups tended to talk among themselves, and lowered their voices when the adults were talking to have private chats. That’s how he knew the pups were both friends and rivals and family to one another in all but name.
But none of that really mattered at the moment.
Right now, he was in the woods and he should not be there.
Right now, he should be in his room and safe, or he should be closer to the edges of town while in the woods. The other times he had been out of his room, out trying to evade That Nurse who made his instincts scream to get away, he would find himself somewhere behind the ex-hunter and pup’s house or on rarer occasions in the tree line behind the home the not-hunter and woman and girl-pup called theirs.
He should not be so close to where most of his pack had burned.
“Uncle Peter?”
He turned slowly, brow furrowed in confusion. He almost recognized that voice, but not quite. Almost as if time had changed it slowly, while he had not been there to notice it. Which made sense, because the only voices he’d heard changing over time were those of the pup and girl-pup, maturing slowly with time and increasing in sarcasm if that was possible.
The woman he saw standing at the tree line looked familiar but not. She looked like a younger version of his sister, how she had looked when she was still only mother to two young pups instead of the three she would have in her life, but the woman’s eyes weren’t right. The color was closer to the man who his sister had loved but never wed, only because neither wanted to move their packs from the territories they called home, the man who visited as frequently as he’d dared until the night he’d abruptly vanished from their lives.
Those eyes were the ones his eldest niece bore, different from those that had filled the Hale family but beautiful and bright and so very grey.
“Uncle Peter, what are you doing here?” the woman — Laura, alpha, this was Laura — asked, moving from the trees and drawing closer to him. “You shouldn’t be out, the sheriff said you’ve been almost catatonic since the fire.”
He blinked at her slowly, not quite understanding the words she was saying but knowing somehow she was talking about his safe room and the ex-hunter who was pack.
Laura frowned as she rested one hand on his shoulder, nostrils flaring slightly as she scented him. “You really aren’t that aware right now, are you, uncle,” she said quietly, almost to herself and not truly a question. “How did you even get out? I know there’s night security in the long term care ward, and Dean would have mentioned if you were doing this frequently…”
He didn’t answer, because Laura didn’t expect one. He wasn’t even sure he could answer her even if he wanted to. All he knew about these sort of nights was that his instincts said to get out, to roam, to check on the pack, and that the window was open on those nights so he could easily follow the instinct.
Because the window was almost always closed, and even when it was open the screens were locked in place, except on nights like this one.
Laura was still talking, saying something about taking him back and making sure he was settled in. He wanted that, wanted to return to the safety, because his instincts were abruptly howling at him to take his alpha away from this place where their family had burned and suffered and died screaming. He nodded his head, agreeing immediately as his niece took his hand in hers and smiled warmly.
The smile left abruptly as a sound broke the moment, the sharp crack of gunfire. The stench of death, of wolfsbane, filled the air around the two of them, and Laura staggered against him. He whined and tried to hold her steady, but just the scent of the poison made him too weak to keep on his feet. The pair collapsed to the ground, Laura dragging in harsh breaths. He did not see where his niece had been shot, but he could tell that the aconite was acting too quickly for him to even attempt to get help before she died.
He wanted to howl, to mourn; Laura was going to die in the same place that the rest of their pack had been burned alive.
A hand latched itself to his neck, claws digging in deep and dragging his attention to the woman draped over him. Laura’s eyes were blazing red, black blood dotting her lips. She was trying to speak, or maybe she was speaking; he couldn’t hear if she was over the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears.
More words formed on Laura’s blood-spotted lips, and he could almost tell what they were. Then her eyes flared red again as she dug her claws deeper, dragging a growl of pain from him as he felt his own eyes flash in reply. The claws held for a moment, the red draining away in his niece’s gaze to be replaced with yellow-gold before fading. The gold and the life left at the same time, only flat grey meeting his gaze as the body that had once been his alpha fell limply against his own.
Instinct howled in his veins once again, only this time it was different. Run, it screamed, get away. Find the pups. Guard. Keep safe. Danger. Danger is here. Keep the pups safe.
With a howl that was equal parts mournful and enraged, Peter Hale slipped into the full shift for the first time in his life and fled. Behind him, Laura Hale’s body — intact save for the single gunshot wound to the back, black blood covering the denim jacket she’d been wearing — lie abandoned on the ground.