Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Scott has dreamed of this before. 

It’s only to be expected, really. Anyone asked about Scott McCall, whether they know what a True Alpha is or not, will tell you that Scott is always more worried about the people he cares about than he ever is himself. 

Allison Argent is his first love. She has stubbornly, unrelentingly thrown herself into the dangerous world they live in from even before she understood what was happening. Whenever he has tried to keep her out of it, she has refused, and he has both suffered and benefited from the outcomes. He will never do it again, he tells himself. He respects her too much to try to save her life by denying her the chance to be the repentant heroine she strives to be. 

And so he dreams of moments like this one.

Moments when he fails.

But this time, it’s no dream.

The air is thick with the scent of blood - Isaac's mostly - but cutting through that is a sharp scent he has only encountered when the twins triggered Isaac's transformation in the school's supply closet, and his claws dug two deep grooves into her forearms. 

Allison.

He knows it by scent before he knows it by sight, but he does not understand what it means before he reaches the entrance to the tunnels under Oak Creek, and watches through a chain link fence as an Oni's sword draws back from Allison's chest like it is being pulled from a still-living scabbard. 

In the tunnel behind him, the banshee wails. 

Allison staggers backwards, arms thrown out to keep her balance, still on her feet, and for an instant, Scott tells himself it isn't that bad. And then, as he throws aside the door, she falls. Even with a burst of speed, he only just keeps her from hitting the ground. 

A part of him that is attuned to the broader battle around him feels its end. The Oni fade into puffs of acrid black smoke, absent one of their number. The Nogitsune wearing his best friend's face slinks into the shadows. Isaac collapses to the ground, curling into a ball, his body trying to heal. Kira stands frozen, katana arrested halfway through an uppercut against a now insubstantial foe. Noshiko looks on in horror at what she has wrought, both sixty-eight years ago and in the present day. 

None of that matters. An Oni might drive its sword through his heart and he may never have noticed. 

thump-thump.

thump-thump.

thump-thump.

At one time, Scott knew Allison's heartbeat better than his own. But there is something different about it this time. It is slowing, and after feeling the deputy slip away, he knows what that means. 

It's so like her to ask if Lydia is safe even as she's bleeding out in the ruins of an abandoned internment camp. 

They have that in common, Scott and Allison. The one time they didn't, Allison was lost to Gerard, consumed by a need to hurt someone the way she was hurting. And she had. Erica, Boyd, Isaac. And she would have killed Derek, even lying helpless on the ground, if Jackson had not been there to stop her, to keep the then-Alpha alive long enough to give Gerard what he really wanted … and to give Scott a chance at out-gambiting the master of the battlefield. 

Despite the pain she must be feeling, all he smells is her relief, cutting through the cloying metallic odor of his love's heartsblood. 

He squeezes her hand, trying to draw out the pain, but there's nothing to take, and fear rushes through his body as Allison tells him it doesn’t hurt. 

This isn't fair. It's not fair for Allison Argent to die at seventeen. 

She's wrong, he thinks. It's not perfect. It's so far from perfect, or right, and he has to do something-

Time slips away, like the blood through her fingers. Like her very life.

"I'm in the arms ... of my first love - the first person I've ever loved! The person I'll always love..." 

Her voice gets raspier with each passing word, but even as blood gathers at her lips, brilliant red against her porcelain skin, she finds the strength to carry on, and nothing could wound him deeper. 

"I love you Scott - Scott McCall."

He can feel her slipping away, can feel her acceptance of her fate. 

Instinct drives him. A kind of desperation and possessiveness he does not like or approve of. Allison is pack, has been since the start, and she is his.

But Stiles had been given a choice between death and the Bite. He has no right to choose that for Allison, no idea if it is too late in any case. 

Yet just this once, he gives in. 

Just this once, he decides to be selfish. 

"I'm sorry," he tells her, and his vision goes red as he bites down on her shoulder, driving his fangs deep, willing it to be enough. Blood fills his mouth - her blood - and he nearly gags.

"... my Dad -" she says, then her body convulses. 

Not everyone survives the Bite. In saving her, perhaps he has merely prolonged her suffering. 

thump-thump.

thump-thump.

thump-thump. 

Her eyes roll back in her head, and her hand falls to the ground. 

thump-thump. 

thump-thump. 

He looks up to see Isaac, his first Beta even before his eyes had turned Alpha red, crawling towards them, staring at him in wonderment. 

"I had to," Scott says in answer, desperate to explain. "I couldn't-"

Isaac's eyes, clouded with pain both physical and emotional (he had heard every word, of course he had) say that he understands. 

Scott can only hope Allison is so forgiving, if she wakes. 

If.

Another familiar scent joins those around him, and his heart sinks. He looks up and sees Argent's gun hand shake, his .45 clatter to the pavement as his eyes take in his daughter's mangled shoulder and the blood still clinging to the Alpha's fangs. 

"McCall-" he gasps in horror, though not anger. " Scott-"

The young Alpha pleads for mercy, for understanding, for forgiveness. "She was dying." 

(she still is, it's a race against time, the Bite versus her mortal wound, and no one can tell who will emerge the victor)

thump-thump. 

thump-thump. 

Argent takes in the rest, her bow fallen to the ground, her hand still clenched against her abdomen and darkening jacket, and what little blood is left in his face drains away. "I see," he replies, suddenly out of breath. 

There's no anger. He was sure there would be anger. 

"She's lost a lot of blood," Scott points out. Coward. "She needs a hospital."

Behind him, the gate creaks open, and Lydia stumbles out, dragging an unconscious Stiles with her. "I thought-" she gasps. "I felt-"

"You might still be right," Argent says tightly. He surges forward, and Scott rises to hand his daughter over without the slightest hesitation. He can't leave yet, there is work still to be done. He blinks and Argent is running, carrying Allison like a sleeping child. 

Scott feels a hand on his shoulder. "You really did it," Lydia says with astonishment. Isaac has recovered from his shock to catch Stiles before he falls again.

"Did I save her?" he asks desperately, looking back at her. 

Lydia shakes her head, frustration and grief pressing her lips together. "I don't know."

Scott lets a long breath out, and hears the squeal of Argent's SUV tearing out of the lot, disappearing into the night. 

Then he gets to his feet. His features are human, but his eyes still glow red as he turns his gaze on the woman who started all of this, holding her shell-shocked daughter in her arms.

"What now?"

“You forgot about the scroll. The Shugendō scroll."

“... change the host.”

“You can’t be a fox and a wolf .”

Chapter Text

Chris lets out a heavy breath as he lowers the crossbow. He has to trust the kids inside to get the job done, but his battle is over. 

One of the twins, Aiden, he thinks, lies sputtering on the ground in the arms of the other, black bile running down his chin. Chris failed to get his last shot through, and the regret and guilt he feels shocks him to the core. The wolf’s grief tears at his own soul, and he is made all too aware that he came close to losing the last of his family worth a damn, and may still. 

Isaac is gone, running into the building with the triskele-inscribed box carved from the wood of the Nemeton his father had torn down. 

He’s a good kid, Isaac, wolf or no. Not his first choice for Allison, but he can learn to live with it. 

A vibration in his jacket pocket catches his attention, and he drops his crossbow to the ground in his hurry to pull it free. He knows it can only be from one person. About one person. 

He is ashamed by how his hands shake as he swipes the 'answer' screen without even looking at the caller ID. "Hello?"

"Chris? This is Chris Argent, right?"

"Melissa-" She sounds like she is in pain, but still moving. 

"Okay, great, just had to be sure, I'm using Rafe's phone." She takes a deep, strained breath.

"Melissa are you-"

"Doing much better now, not sure what all of you did, but everybody seems to be healing. Gonna be a hell of a time explaining away this one. Not the point though - I need you to get here as soon as possible … and Scott too, I think."

Chris's heart skips a beat. "Allison?" he asks, his voice a gasp. 

Melissa’s voice is much quieter as she replies. "She's alive, Chris. And she's awake, but she's not … doing well. I locked up her room when the ninja guys showed up but she barricaded it closed somehow, and I can't keep trying to get in without drawing attention we don't want."

She was bitten by a werewolf, Chris thinks. Of course she's not doing well. Then his mind catches up with his thoughts. Werewolf…

Newly bitten wolves are as dangerous as they come. Unused to their senses, their strength, their heightened instincts and intensity of feelings. More than half of the werewolves he had put down in his long career were less than 48 hours old, the blood of their family, friends, or random passers-by spattered across their hands and faces. 

Scott McCall has done this. To his daughter. 

He breathes in heavily, closing his eyes. Compartmentalize. Focus. Prioritize. 

The first thing he needs to do is see to her safety, and the safety of those around her. 

"Chris? Are you still there?"

"I'm here," he replies, looking over the tragic tableau in front of him with a sense of renewed detachment. The wounded twin is gone, and the other former Alpha weeps openly, Derek kneeling beside him. There is nothing more he can do now. With an apologetic look at Derek, he runs.

“Oh God, I fainted, didn’t I? We’re all alive?”

“Yeah, we’re okay.”

Chris is getting a bit too used to seeing Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital in a state of bloody disarray. The confusion this time seems to be at the number of seriously injured people who are up and walking again, their wounds closing on their own without a single stitch. It is possible they have finally reached the day that denying the impossible things happening in this town will no longer be viable, but that’s a problem for tomorrow.

He is intent not to add another tragedy to explain away. Moving with purpose through corridors with the walls and floors still smeared with blood, he makes his way to the elevator and with a calmness he scarcely feels presses the button for the third floor. 

Melissa is there when the doors open again. Her ex-husband, looking utterly overwhelmed by all of this, stands behind her. The nurse turns as she catches sight of him. “Rafe, I think you should go check on the other floors, make sure everybody is out of danger.”

She waves off his dazed protest, and Chris stares him down. “This is a private medical situation,” he says, only ironclad certainty in his voice. “I assure you everything is under control.”

Maybe on another day, Rafael McCall may have argued about leaving his recently wounded ex-wife alone with a former murder suspect, but fortunately for all involved, it is not this one. “I’ll call you when I’m done,” he says to Melissa, who nods impatiently, then waves him into the elevator. 

The second the doors close, Melissa sags, wincing.

“Are you alright?” Chris asks, alarmed. 

“Fine, fine. Hurts a bit, I just didn’t want him to know that and give him an excuse to stick around.”

“I got here as fast as I could,” Chris says. “What’s going on?”

“This way,” Melissa gestures hurriedly, looking back over her shoulder the whole time.

Standing before the door to the hospital room, the first thing Chris notices is the spider web of cracks in the bowed-out viewing window, from something hard and heavy hitting the inside with some force. He tries the door, and the handle drops, but the door is clearly wedged closed. 

“Like I said,” Melissa explains, again checking to see they aren’t overheard, “it’s barricaded from the inside. And I can’t-”

What can best be described as a pained yowl emanates from within the room, and Chris feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, while Melissa flinches. 

“... yeah, she’s done that a few times,” the nurse explains, looking utterly exhausted. 

Chris closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Allison,” he calls. “Allison, it’s me. I need you to open the door.”

Silence answers him for a moment, and then the scrape and clatter of bedpans and instruments being kicked around. Chris grimaces and takes a step back. He is going to have to do this the hard way. 

Pulling the handle down, he slams the heel of his boot repeatedly into a spot just above the bottom corner of the blocked door, and something gives. He strikes again, and again, until something crashes to the ground and the door falls open. The lights are flickering inside, and he reaches for his gun on instinct before his eyes fall upon the bedraggled figure of a teenage girl in a hospital gown, curled into a ball and pushed up as far as she can manage against the bolted down hospital bed. “Stop,” she moans in a familiar voice.

“Allison,” Chris tries again, forcing himself to pull his hand away from his holstered weapon. Maybe it will be his end, but he won’t kill his own daughter, not like this. “Allison, can you hear me?”

“I hear everything, Dad,” she snaps, hands pressed over her ears. Her defiance fades in the face of fear. “What-what’s happening to me? I don’t-I don’t remember.”

At the pain in her voice, there is a part of him that wants to walk out of this room, find Scott McCall, and wring his neck, teenager or not, Melissa’s son or not.  And that’s the part that is content to be merciful.

“Allison,” he says carefully, approaching with palms up. “Allison, look at me. Please.”

With a shuddering sob, she does, and Chris feels like he's been punched in the chest. Her eyes are golden, her ears poke just free of her tangled hair. But when she looks at him, her features, though torn by fear and grief, are human. 

She can’t control the change, he thinks. She’s fighting it. 

She’s alive. He has to remember that. 

“Dad?” she begs, sounding so young and broken.

“Allison…Allison, you were hurt, do you remember that? You were stabbed. By an Oni.”

Her eyes flicker back to brown and she nods wordlessly. Good, her short-term memory isn’t too badly scrambled, that will make this much easier. “Allison, you … Scott bit you. You’re … you’re …” 

He can't get the words out. All he can see is the knife plunging into Victoria’s chest as her eyes flash a brilliant, damning gold.

“A werewolf,” Allison says, and there’s so much contained in that response. Relief, confusion, wonder, fear, anger, worry, sorrow… 

“That’s right,” Chris says. “I’m …” What is he going to say, sorry? How can he be sorry for her when she is alive and he has not been left alone in this world. It’s the wrong thing to say, he thinks. 

Nothing in his hunter training has prepared him for this conversation. He viscerally rejects the idea of treating her like any other new turn, assuming hostility and ensuring the protection of civilians and himself, in that order, before anything else. 

“Why?” she whispers, but she knows the answer, he can tell. 

“Because he didn’t want you to die,” Chris answers simply. 

She shakes her head. “Everything hurts so much. I can’t think. How could he … why would he …” She sounds betrayed, as if she had made her peace with her fate, only to be dragged back against her will.

McCall, what have you done?

“Allison…”

“I can hear so much. I think … I think I can hear your heartbeat, and mine, and Melissa’s - and I know it’s her because I can … I know somehow - and other people, and I’m not even sure they are even all in this building, and I can hear people saying things they don’t want other people to hear and they're scared, everyone is terrified and it’s just … there's so much blood." 

Her body is wracked by sobs, and he kneels before her, pulling his daughter into his arms, letting her collapse into his chest. The gown exposes part of her shoulders, and the skin that had been torn and raw the last time he had seen her is now flawless, completely healed. He wonders if the wound that so nearly took her life is gone as well. 

He struggles for words. 

“I’m alive,” she says softly, hiccupping. “I’m alive and I … I want to be alive, I didn’t want to die, not like that, but I …”

It is a relief to hear it. Allison suddenly looks up over his shoulder, and Chris follows his daughter's gaze to where Melissa is moving into the room and closing the door gently behind her, pressing a finger against her lips. “They're doing rounds again, checking on the patients that were already here,” she explains. “We don’t need them noticing anything - well, anything more than they already have.” She shakes her head. “Allison, sweetie, are you ok?”

Allison freezes against him, and her eyes must flash gold, because Melissa gasps and takes a step back. “Oh no. Oh honey I knew what it meant that your wounds were healing but-” Chris turns to pull Allison to her feet. “Do I need to call Scott, right now?”

Allison winces at the very thought, and Chris tries to remember that not only did Scott McCall save his daughter’s life, but that the boy’s own mother, a half-healed laceration across her thigh and blood drying a rusty brown on her scrubs, is standing right there, trying to help. It is a lot more difficult than he would have liked. He sighs. “It’s up to you, Allison, but I think … it might be for the best.”

Allison takes a shuddering breath, and he is so proud of her when she nods slowly. “Please.”

“You got it, sweetheart,” Melissa replies. “He’ll fix this, I know he will.”

He had better, Chris thinks darkly. 

“Mom? Mom, we’re okay, Stiles is okay, it’s gone, the Nogitsune is gone.”

“Scott - Scott I need you to get to the hospital right away.”

“The hos - is it Allison?”

“She’s awake, honey, and she needs you.”

Scott can't exactly say he’s surprised when, not for the first time, Chris Argent grabs him by the front of his shirt and slams him into a wall hard enough to hurt, super healing or not. “McCall,” he bites out. “Scott.”

“How is she?” Scott asks, though he dreads the answer. 

Allison's father looks worn to the bone by worry. “She doesn’t know what’s happening to her - she knows she’s a werewolf - that you bit her, but she doesn’t understand the rest - the sounds, the smells, the emotions." He sighs, closing his eyes. "Scott, Allison woke up and the hospital was under attack, blood spilt everywhere, people terrified and frenzied. She’s stuck in a panic response, and I can’t get her out of it.” He grimaces, but his clear blue eyes lock on Scott’s. “I’m trusting that you can. You saved her life, Scott, and I will never forget that. But you … you need to fix this.”

“I will,” Scott vows. “No matter what, I will. And I’m sorry.”

“Don’t … don’t apologize,” Argent says, letting his grip slacken. “Don’t apologize for saving my daughter’s life. Just … go in there. Go in there, and see her. Help her.” He steps back and  pushes the door open.

Scott has known from the minute he stepped onto this floor. Cutting through the cloying aromas of dried and drying blood is the scent of newly turned wolf mixed with scents that belong only to Allison: strawberry shampoo and gunmetal and what he has been trying not to identify as Isaac Lahey for his own emotional well-being, because the first thing he had noticed when they had showed up together to save Lydia was how much like the one the other had smelled, and he has tried to avoid thinking about what sorts of things lead to that intimate comingling of scents because honestly that is just none of his business, and besides, he probably smells a bit like Kira Yukimura except only Isaac would know that. 

Well, before, at least. Now? Now it is different.

Scott is an Alpha. And now he has a Beta.

He had Isaac, the first wolf to join his pack, even before it could be called that without a hint of irony. (you're not an omega. you're already an alpha, of your own pack) At this point Derek is pack, and try as he might to stay at a distance he had still felt the dull pain of Aiden's loss before he smelled the poisoned blood, and he knows what it meant.

(losing a pack member is like losing a limb, cora said)

But this is different. Allison is his, now,  in a way he is not sure she won't forever hate him for, and a way he never wanted. Because she is not his. They aren't together, he knew that when the Nogitsune showed him what could have been in Allison's closet and it rang so wrong. She is with Isaac, and Isaac knows better than to ever try to claim her as his own. 

"Scott?" she asks. But it’s not a question anymore, is it? She hears his uncertain footsteps, his heartbeat, his breathing. She smells him, even if she doesn't entirely understand how she knows what smells make up Scott McCall.

He remembers those first days. And he remembers being terrified. 

He will not let her suffer that. At least not alone.

"Allison," he says, stepping in and squaring his shoulders. "Allison, I'm sorry, but I need you to tell me what's happening to you. What you are feeling."

"Wait," she says, holding up a hand. "I mean, yes, I will, but - is Stiles safe? is Lydia? is the Nogitsune? is … is Isaac?" she rushes through the last as if she fears the answer.

"We're okay," he says, giving her as sure a smile as he can. "The Nogitsune … it's trapped again, in a box made from the Nemeton. The Oni are gone - your Dad and Isaac figured out the secret you did, that silver arrowheads can destroy them. You'll have to forge some new ones, I guess." He sees her smile genuinely at that. "And we all-" he starts, but, no, not all. "...Aiden didn't make it."

"Oh," Allison says, tilting her head in uncertainty, and he does not blame her for feeling conflicted. She closes her eyes. "Scott, I can't … I can't switch it off. Tell me how to switch it off!" 

The last words come out angry, and Allison's dark eyes flash an utterly alien gold, brighter than any he thinks he's ever seen. And he feels his own eyes flare in reply, and she stiffens and her ears poke out of her hair and slender fangs drop from her lips and this isn't helping at all. 

"Allison," he says, trying not to howl it the way he wants to, the way his wolf tells him will calm her or at least quell her, because her father is right outside and he's armed and already looks like it is taking effort not to shoot Scott in the face. "Allison, stop," he growls.

To his relief (and regret), she does. The change is arrested, and she looks down at the floor from where she sits atop her hospital bed, bending forward with her hands on her knees, hands that just a second before were tipped with razor sharp claws.

"You have to find an anchor, right?" she asks frantically, eyes flashing again. Sweat shines on her forehead, the effort of controlling the change written on her face. "That's … that's how this works?"

Scott is already feeling out of his depth. "Yeah, yeah it does," he agrees. "But just slow down, you're on, like, step 26."

"Guess I'm precocious on the werewolf stuff as well as the hunter stuff, huh," she says, almost cracking a smile. "Always getting ahead of myself."

"It's fine," he says, flashing a grin of his own, eager to see her return it. "There's not really a textbook or, at least, if there is, Derek didn't use it."

Instead, she grimaces at the reminder. "Pain, right? Pain makes you human?"

Of all the things for her to remember… Scott holds up his hands. "Allison, tell me how you are feeling. Then we'll get to the rest."

"Right," she says, forcing herself to take a breath. He risks coming a bit closer, but she doesn't pull away from him, so that’s good. He's not sure what he would do if Allison was afraid of him again, like she had been the night Peter killed Kate and Derek killed Peter. 

"There's so much blood," she says. She frowns. "But … but it's quieter now, how did you..?"

Scott grimaces, knowing the answer instinctively, and just as instinctively knowing how little Allison will care to hear it. "I'm your Alpha, Allison," he says simply.

"Oh," Allison replies, and as expected she does not sound happy about it. 

Scott scrambles to elaborate, seeing the storms of rebellion in her eyes, as well as detecting the scent of her discontent. "But I'm … I mean you … you don't need me - of course you don't, but -"

"What if I do?" she snaps, and her eyes stay gold this time. 

Shit.

"Focus, Allison," he tells her, trying to remember what he figured out more by trial and error than by any help from Derek. "Focus on what is immediately around you. What you can see, what you can touch."

"Okay," she says, pressing down on the bed, grounding herself. "Okay."

"Just because you can hear everything going on three rooms down doesn't mean you need to, okay? Same goes for scents."

She nods, her eyes are brown again, and he breathes a sigh of relief. A puzzled wrinkle in her brow suggests she picked up the chemo-signal, but does not know what it signified. They'll get there.

"Okay. Right,” Allison exhales, then looks up at him in bewilderment. "How did you do this, back then?" 

"Uh, with difficulty. And Stiles … though I'm not sure I got this kind of sensory overload thing?" Scott is already feeling off balance trying to coax his new Beta, who happens to be a hunter and his ex-girlfriend, through all the changes she’s experiencing, and it isn't even the full moon. He imagines trying to explain this to some kid who didn't even know about werewolves, and wonders how badly he would screw that up. 

"Maybe it's the hunter training," Allison suggests cautiously, and it is as good an explanation as any. Scott is certainly not inclined to argue.

"Yeah, it could be."

Her senses her anxiety spike and looks up into her dark brown eyes. Allison's lip shakes slightly. "Scott?"

"Yeah?" 

She shakes her head, then meets his gaze. If conflicted had a scent, it is all he can smell. "I don't know how - how I feel about you doing this.” She swallows. “I'm glad you saved me, I am - I can't let my Dad lose anyone else, or Isaac, or…"

Me, Scott thinks, though feeling undeserving of mention. “But it’s not what you wanted,” he says, closing his eyes. “I understand.” He fights the urge to apologize - he does not think Allison wants his apology; like her father, she wants him to fix this, but the truth is he does not really know how. Becoming a True Alpha seems easy by comparison to guiding Allison, his Allison (or at least formerly so) through the beginning stages of a life it is beyond clear she never wanted, knowing all the while that it is his fault. 

Allison looks at him, and there is both a fury and a desperation in those eyes that makes him reconsider everything he has done. Scott meets her gaze without flinching. “I’ll help you. I won’t make - I won’t let you do this alone. Not the way I had to.” 

His ex-girlfriend nods, apparently content with that. “And the rest?”

Scott hesitates. “I think we should leave the rest for another time. If it makes you feel any better, I’m also going to be walking Malia through all of this, when I have a moment … if you want to come along?” It occurs to him that she might want more privacy until she is more confident with her new … condition.

“Malia,” Allison repeats. “The werecoyote we saved and then Stiles found in Eichen House?” After a moment, she shrugs. “Sure, why not?”

It is not the most enthusiastic response she could have given, but he hopes that it will at least be better to have some company. He might have appreciated that when he was first turned.

Allison worries her lip. "Scott?" 

"Yeah?"

"How long … how long do I have before-"

Scott understands immediately. "Before your first full moon?"

A wordless nod.

"12 days," he says. Her face falls; he is not sure if she expected more or less time. "I'll have you ready, I promise."

"12 days," she repeats slowly. "12 days until the full moon."

"I won't let you hurt anyone, Allison, I swear."

The newly bitten wolf in front of him tilts her head in a distinctly un-Allison manner. "And what if I hurt you?"

"I'll heal," Scott says simply, unbothered. "You've seen it before, and that was when I was a Beta."

"Like me." Allison's voice is dull and lifeless, and he hates it. Hates being the cause of it.

Scott sighs. "Like you. and Isaac, and Derek now."

"Glad I have company," she laughs, but there is little joy in it. "I um, can't say I think it would be a good idea to have Derek around. I know he - we talked about this and I'm not -" She grimaces. "I'm just already having trouble remembering that."

He has no objections there. "Yeah, no Derek."

Allison looks relieved, if slightly guilty about it. 

There is a soft knock at the door, and Scott belatedly recognizes the scent of IsaacandAllison as the other half of that couple hesitantly inches inside. 

"Hey," his housemate says nervously.  "I wasn't sure-” His nostrils flare, and he immediately looks at Allison, blue eyes widening. “Oh wow, you really are a werewolf."

"Yup," Allison says, popping the P. Isaac looks lost for words. 

"I'll uh, give you some time to catch up," Scott says awkwardly, but is sure to brush past Isaac with a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Positive physical touch is important with his friend, he's learned, especially when he is afraid his Alpha is unhappy with him. Scott had forgotten that when Isaac first expressed interest in his ex-girlfriend and the way Isaac had shied away from him despite the smirks had left him feeling pretty awful.

"Scott!" he hears as he reaches for the door.

He turns back without hesitation. He could never refuse her. "Allison?"

She bites her lip again, a nervous tic he has not seen for some time. "It's not your fault." 

Scott struggles to reply when he knows that no matter what she says, it really is. "I'll talk to you later, let me get everyone else filled in."

The hurt in Allison's eyes stings.

Chapter Text

Scott is exhausted the day after. It is a school day, but he is pretty sure his Mom had no intention of holding him to that. She is on shift at the moment, but she has never before failed to get him up and moving when he threatened to sleep in because of some supernatural adventure or video game marathon with Stiles. 

He drags himself out of bed sometime around around noon, stumbling downstairs for a belated coffee, trying to rally. Isaac isn't in his room, though that does not necessarily mean his friend is at school, either. Especially if Scott has not made sure to drag him there. 

Having determined he is really alone in the house, Scott plops down on the couch. He’ll  kill some time until Mom comes home, maybe make up a bit of reading or study for that history quiz he has … Thursday, maybe? Scott is definitely a better student this year than last, but he can’t claim a Lydia-level mastery of his entire academic schedule. 

A couple hours later, Scott wakes up, a comic book glued to his face. The house is empty except for him, so at least no one else is there to witness his embarrassment. 

One of the downsides to being an Alpha werewolf is the keen sense of smell, and he absolutely reeks. Dragging himself upstairs he pulls himself into the shower, trying to keep his mind carefully blank under the spray. Still, there is something he had missed, something he'd forgotten. 

Scott is throwing a shirt on when he hears the crunch of gravel and the engine of an approaching car. It sounds like … Lydia's? Two voices then become audible, one unmistakably that of Lydia Martin, and the other…

Oh. 

That’s what he had forgotten. Shit. 

Scott frantically pulls on a pair of jeans as the chatter continues outside, prying his phone out as he comes downstairs to see three missed calls and five text messages from Kira.

He said he would call her last night, didn't he, after he got back from seeing Allison. 

Scott pulls the front door open and finds Kira, hand raised to knock and looking extremely startled. And pretty. Always pretty. 

"Hey," they say in unison, both wincing. 

"I uh, just wanted to come by," Kira says, shrugging her shoulders nervously. "Since, you know, you didn't call last night? and weren't in school?" She freezes. "That's okay, right? I'm not really overstepping boundaries or something?"

"No, no it's fine. I uh, just got out of the shower."

"I can tell," Kira replies with a slightly manic grin. Right, his hair is still wet. She fidgets. "Uhh…"

Get it together, Scott. "Sorry, yeah, come in. Mom's at work and I don't know where Isaac is, I um … wasn’t feeling up to school. Yesterday was…a lot."

"Stiles wasn't there either," Kira says as she comes into the house, Scott closing the door behind her. "Probably catching up on a lot of sleep."

"Sure hope so," Scott says. Things suddenly feel extremely awkward, like there isn't enough space for the both of them, which is ridiculous, obviously. "You want to come up to my room?"

Kira looks uncertain for a moment. Something is off, something is really off. Kira does not generally give off strong chemo-signals, and he wonders if it is a kitsune thing, but her anxiety is palpable. He had thought they had gotten around that, finally, after they kissed and fell asleep together. Maybe it is just the absence of the life-or-death struggle with the Nogitsune. It feels like they had all been waiting for the other shoe to drop since Stiles got out of Eichen House. And it had, in a way he could never have anticipated. 

Stiles separated, Lydia kidnapped, Allison…

Allison a werewolf. 

"Scott?" Kira asks, looking worried. 

"Oh, right, yeah." She probably is expecting him to lead the way through his house into his bedroom, after all. 

As Kira catches up, Scott takes the opportunity to kick some laundry under the bed. He really needs to clean his room. 

He turns around as she stands in the doorway, eyes wide. "I'm sorry I didn't call last night," he says, finally remembering. 

"Oh. Well, you must have been busy with um, everything," she says. "It's fine." 

He does not have to be a werewolf to know she is lying. 

"Kira, it's not."

"No, it's not," she agrees, then seems shocked at her own daring. "I mean…"

Scott sighs and sits down on the bed, leaving space for Kira. She does not take it, although her eyes briefly settle on the bed beside him. 

"Scott, I need to talk to you about something."

"Okay," Scott replies, increasingly confused.

"No, I mean," Kira starts, then stops. "You worked on this with Lydia," she says under her breath. Scott pretends not to hear, but he has a sinking feeling about this. 

She looks up. "How is she? Allison, I mean."

Kira is as hard to follow as Stiles sometimes. "Oh uh, she's … well she's …"

"A werewolf?" Kira adds helpfully. 

"Yeah. I don't … I don't know what she - what I - " He pauses. "It's complicated."

"I can imagine," Kira says with a nervous smile. "That's … that has to be a real change for her. Nearly dying like that, and then you … yeah." She frowns. "Scott, I was worried about you last night. Like, a lot. I mean, you bit the Nogitsune, and who knows what that might do to you, and then you ran off to see Allison before we could … talk." 

"Yeah," Scott says, rubbing the back of his neck. "Sorry about that."

"I'm sure it was a lot, seeing her - seeing Allison like that," Kira says sympathetically. "You said she's okay?"

"Confused, scared maybe," Scott admits. "I left her with Isaac and snuck out before her Dad could shoot me."

Kira freezes. "Is that - is that likely?" Sometimes he forgets how new she is to the madness of Beacon Hills. That would sound pretty alarming to someone who only knew Chris Argent as Allison’s slightly stand-offish father.

"No," Scott says quickly. "I don't think so," he amends. "He just needs me to help her."

"Because you're her Alpha?"

"Yeah," Scott says, sighing. "That's gonna be really complicated." Kira doesn't reply, and he looks up, concerned. "Kira, are you okay? I'm really sorry I didn't call, I just … there was so much going on I don't even remember falling asleep and-"

"Scott."

He meets her eyes, and sees the tears shining there. He watches her, expectantly. She wanders toward his desk, then spins on her heels as she reverses course. 

Kira's hands channel her frustration as she paces around Scott's bedroom. Finally, she stops. "Scott, I know you have feelings for Allison, like, present tense. And she clearly has feelings for you." She holds up a hand when he tries to object. "Like, big, big Feelings, capital F, the kind of feelings you see in movies, not real life. And I-" her voice breaks slightly. "I don't want to compete with that. It's not fair to ask me to compete with that."

Scott's mouth feels dry. "Kira…"

She sighs, and sits down beside him, keeping about a foot between them. "Look, we sort of rushed into all of this." She looks down at her hands, then back up at him  taking a calming breath. "Maybe…maybe we can try just being friends? Would you do that for me?" 

How can he possibly refuse? "Okay," he says, his heart sinking. "Friends."

"Friends," she agrees. 

Two days after that night, two days of barely leaving her room, hiding from the sounds and smells that have gone from background noise to the most demanding pulls on her attention, Allison is forced to admit she is not going to be able to do this on her own. She needs someone who understands what she is going through. 

Isaac comes as she knew he would, opening the door to her apartment with a nervous smile and pointing at his phone and her most recent text message. "Hey."

"Hey," she says, giving him a small smile. 

Things … do not go well from there. 

Sometimes it feels like the harder Allison tries to hold her life together, the more it crumbles and falls through her fingers. 

She won't cry. She won't.

For about an hour, Isaac has clearly been talking around something in a way that reminds her painfully of Scott. 

Finally, it comes out. Why, when she asked about Werewolf Stuff, both in the hospital and after he brought her home, and in the days since then, he ignored her texts or just blatantly changed the subject. 

And when he puts it this way, Allison can't even find it in herself to even be angry with him. 

"Allison, I care about you, you know that," he continues, sounding and looking desperate, but determined. "But what you said - you don’t feel the same way. And now that you’re - I can't be your anchor, like you were Scott’s, like you want me to be. Not after - after all you said." He turns away from her as he finishes, and she feels a chill in the air. She's always cold since the Nemeton.

There are tears in his eyes when Isaac turns back, and the sheer grief for what could have been rolling off of him is overwhelming.

"Isaac, we just -" she protests, thinking of their night together just days ago: how different things were than with Scott, and how she really, really likes that. The idea that it may have been their last as well as their first…

"I know," he says, so quietly it breaks her heart. "But … I can't get those words out of my head. You were … you were dying , and all you could think of was Scott."

(i’m in the arms of my first love. the first person i ever loved. the person i’ll always love.)

She can't say anything to that. What is there to say? He's not accusing, or damning, just stating a fact and its implications, and that makes it so much worse. Her voice is very quiet as she asks. "Isaac, are you breaking up with me?"

It is strange to be on the other side of this. She doesn't like it, the feeling of having something that helped hold her life together stripped away. 

Isaac looks at her helplessly. His distress is palpable even to her untrained senses. This isn't fair to him. Scott had bitten her, but she had said those things, and she could not unsay them, even knowing that those moments were not her last.

(i love you scott - scott mccall)  

"You should go," Allison says miserably, suddenly unable to look at him without wanting to claw his oh so apologetic face off. "I need … I understand, I'm not mad at you-"

"Are you mad at Scott?"

Allison wilts. "I don't know," she answers honestly, looking down at her hands. Two days ago, there were claws there. She hasn't been able to get them back since Scott … did whatever Alpha thing he did. Not that she has really tried. 

"I'm glad you're alive," Isaac says, and God, why does he have to be so nice about it. It's like Scott all over again. The men in her life are too damn nice, too understanding for all she puts them through. 

"Me too," she replies, and thinks she means it. 

Chris isn't expecting much when he makes a brief trip to the liquor store to pick out a few bottles of wine. He is out the door just before closing and shutting the rear hatch of his SUV when he sees her reflection in the back window, flanked by two Calavera bodyguards. 

Chris sighs as he turns around slowly, empty hands raised. "Araya."

She is not visibly armed, of course, but it always pays to be careful with a Calavera. The older woman meets his gaze. "My condolences for your loss, Kristof."

Chris clenches his teeth. He isn't ready for this conversation, which is why he hasn't answered the phone when she reached out.

"Allison's not dead," he says, keeping his voice level. Even if he's barely seen her since he brought her back from the hospital, miraculously healed and yet still wounded deeply.

The woman clucks her tongue. "Isn't she? I thought the code was quite clear on this, but I am getting up there in years. So go on. Explain."

"She's not even eighteen," Chris says, figuring it a good place to start. "She can't vote, she can't order a drink, she can't even serve her country yet."

"The youngest I knew to take the hunter's way out was fourteen, miho."

"That was his choice," Chris bites out. "That's not Allison's."

Araya looks almost pitying. "Your wife was a fine woman. And she is remembered as such, because she followed the rules set in place since before I was born … and that was some time ago," she says with a wry smile. Then she is not smiling. "There are no exceptions. Ours is a brotherhood, Kristof. Our word is bond." 

"It's not your decision to make," Chris insists. "And I won't make it for her."

Araya nods. "So it is she I should be talking to, then?"

Chris's blood runs cold at the tone of her voice and the implications of her words. "You wouldn't dare."

He feels foolish as the words leave his mouth, and Araya laughs at him openly. "I would, tonto. But I'm feeling generous. You do understand, don’t you, that your daughter is not my only … concern here in Beacon Hills? Even before this, a new Alpha, a teenage boy, with a pack of three wolves and several … others is not something that I am used to overlooking.”

“Scott’s a good kid,” Chris insists, and finds he believes it. “He had a chance to become an Alpha by killing an Alpha, and he refused. He’s never spilled human blood, and he has had many chances to do so.”

“He bit a human without her consent,” Araya says pointedly. “I believe that qualifies.”

Chris shakes his head. “You know it’s not that simple.”

“Ah yes, this storied romance between a wolf and a hunter. I have heard something about this. I also heard that it ended.” Her tone is mocking, unsurprisingly, but also slightly melancholy.

“Well, you know teenagers,” he shrugs. “These things are always messy." Chris meets her eyes. "McCall cares about her, and she was dying. He did what he could to save her, and in so doing, save the only family I have left worth mentioning. How can that be held against him?”

Araya’s eyes reveal a great deal she is not saying. Then she straightens. “Tread carefully, Kristof. Your family legacy carries some weight among us, though considerably less than it did because your madman of a father betrayed everything he stood for out of personal ambition.”

I’m well aware of that, Chris thinks, but does not say. Yet another consequence of Gerard losing his goddamn mind. Instead, he says “I have this under control.”

“I hope so,” Araya replies coldly. “If you do not, the next time I come to Beacon Hills, I will not do you the courtesy of asking.”

As she leaves, Chris tries not to feel like he just lost a very important battle.

When he gets back to their apartment, he finds his daughter in tears.

Chapter Text

They meet in the preserve, the only place they really can use for something like this. Scott notices that the decaying, burned ruins of the Hale House are taped off, with a notice from the Beacon Hills city council that the structure will be demolished as unsafe in two months.

He wonders if he should tell Derek. He wonders whether Derek will attempt to stop it, or whether he will be content to bury that place and its memories alongside his family.  

All that aside, this is a place the both of them know intimately, and it is well away from any prying eyes or innocent bystanders. The sheer number of animal attacks in Beacon Hills tends to dissuade all but the most daring of joggers or idiotic adventurers from coming anywhere near this place. The sort of idiotic adventurers that might, for instance, stumble into the woods on a midwinter school night to look for the missing half of a dead body.  

Allison stands in front of her car as he brings his bike into what was once the Hales' driveway. She has to have known he was coming, but it is not until he dismounts that she looks up in recognition. He's dismayed to see the dark bruises under her eyes. She hasn't been sleeping well. 

It's a week until the full moon. They have a week for her to get ready, and he's not sure he won’t have to chain her up somewhere safe, the same way he had been, and also Derek’s Betas.

He can not imagine she will be thrilled by the suggestion.

Scott has seen or spoken to Allison on maybe two days since that night between school (she is still home ‘recuperating’ from the aftermath of an attempted car-jacking, according to her father) and the fact that she is very clearly avoiding him, missing the study dates that double as unofficial pack meetings. But apparently the claws came out at dinner last night with Chris, and her father insisted she arrange to meet him the next day. 

So. Here they are.

He had considered inviting Stiles and Malia (who is making pretty good progress at the shift, and slightly less progress with her impulse control and morals), but figured that Allison would appreciate the privacy. As he approaches her, he is second guessing that decision.

“Hey,” Scott begins. “I hear things got a little heated with your Dad last night?”

Allison blushes fiercely, looking at the ground. “There may have been some damage to the dining room table.”

Scott's smile is more of a grimace. “None to your Dad though, right?”

She shakes her head vigorously, and he can smell the anxiety roiling off her in waves at the very thought. But her heartbeat is steady. “No. No, he’s fine. I didn’t - he’s fine.”

Scott nods slowly, trying to get a read of where she is with all of this. “Good. That’s good. How are your senses? Like, still too much to think sometimes?”

“It comes and goes,” Allison admits. “Seems to be tied to my emotions, like everything else.” She groans. “It’s like I have the worst period ever. I get angry and irritated at the dumbest things." She looks away from his encouraging expression. "And then I forget how strong I am.”

“That’s all pretty normal,” Scott says, ducking under the CAUTION tape around the Hale House to sit on the landing. He gestures for Allison to join him. "Still getting headaches? Isaac mentioned something.”

“Sometimes,” she admits, folding up with her chin on her knee and staring into the woods, her features suddenly downcast. “I’m restless. Really, really restless. I’ve tried going for runs but I can feel my control slipping and I-” He can't see her eyes, but her voice breaks.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re not doing that badly, you know?” Scott says, reaching out to gently touch the back of her hand where it's splayed beside her on the weathered timbers. “I should have known you would be your own worst critic about this.”

“Scott, how on earth did you play lacrosse like this?” she bursts out, shaking her head.

Scott fights the instinct to push her bangs out of her eyes, and then her question sinks in. 

Oh. They never really had this conversation, did they? “Well um, remember that time you followed me into the locker room after my first game, and found me in the showers?”

Her brow wrinkles in confusion. “Yeah, I -wait,” she says, eyes widening, hand coming up to cover her mouth. “Oh my god, you shifted, didn’t you? I knew I was being watched, but then I saw you standing there and thought I had to be imagining things! You said you’d gotten light-headed.” 

Scott shrugs, trying not to remember the way he had crouched atop the lockers, ready to spring and rip and kill. “That wasn’t completely a lie but um, yeah. I guess I’m really lucky you turned out to be my anchor. You brought me back.”

Allison pales. “Scott, if - just how many times did you almost attack me when we started dating? Before I … knew about everything?”

Scott winces. “I mean, the school, when I locked you guys in.” She nods, apparently that much she has figured out after the fact. “Uh, there was that time in the locker room, and then um, after you broke up with me, you were out on a full moon with Jackson, remember? And um, my - I thought,” he shakes his head. Better to just admit it, Scott. “I thought I saw you making out.”

“Making out?” she says, incredulously. “With Jackson?”

“Hey, it was a full moon, and you were mad at me-”

“Because you kept sending me pictures of us!” she protests. “Why were you doing that anyway?”

Scott rubs the back of his head. “I was being an idiot. And I needed to get something from you.”

Allison frowns. “Get something from me?”

“Uh, your necklace. You know, the one Kate gave you, the wolf? I needed it because, because well, long story, Derek and I saved Mr Harris from Peter, and he mentioned this pendant that Laura Hale had asked about, and we had a sketch of it and-”

“It was hers,” Allison finishes. Then her forehead wrinkles. “Wait a second, Scott - Didn’t you find that at school?”

Once, he may have lied, but he isn’t sure just how well Allison can read skips in his heartbeat. “Um, well, if by ‘find’ you mean, ‘stole’ and ‘school’ you mean uh, 'your room,’ yeah?” He still can't meet her eyes, suddenly finding his sneakers absolutely fascinating.

Allison is quiet for a moment. “Scott, my parents were hunters.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“And you knew that. You said my Dad shot you on your first full moon, the night of that party.”

Scott glances up. “Yeah.”

Allison shakes her head, laughing despite everything. She is still so beautiful and his heart aches. “You broke into a house where hunters lived to steal a pendant ?”

Scott holds up his hands defensively. “It was evidence in a murder investigation!” He grins at his own recklessness when she laughs again, “besides nobody was home, it wasn’t like the other time.”

“Other time?” Allison asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“We’d uh, just found Laura Hale’s body - well, the other half of it - buried … right over there, actually,” Scott says, pointing. “Apparently it’s traditional to bury a werewolf with a wolfsbane wreath - yeah, I don’t get it either,” Scott admits at her confused look. He has never asked Derek about that, for obvious reasons. “But, uh, Stiles brought it with us, in the Jeep, and I started feeling really off …”

“Because of the wolfsbane,” Allison clarifies. 

Scott suddenly finds himself intensely grateful that he never had to have this conversation while Allison was a human, because it occurs to him this all sounds pretty … worrying. But he also figures that giving Allison a more honest baseline of where he started might be helpful, or at least encouraging. And lying to her isn’t really an option anymore, even if he has gotten better at it. Still … “Look, long story short, I freaked, lost control, got the hell away from Stiles and kinda … ended up on your roof?”

Allison seems to be trying to remember something, then it abruptly dawns on her, and she covers her mouth with a hand again in retrospective horror. “That day Dad hit you with the car in the driveway, the first day you came over…”

He finds himself blushing. Of all of the near misses, that one might still be the most embarrassing. “Yeah … “

Allison hides a laugh behind her hand, then lowers it and frowns. “What stopped you that time?”

Scott thinks about it, then remembers, "I saw myself, reflected in your window.”

Suddenly sober, Allison looks at her hands. “You saw a monster.” Her voice is so quiet he almost misses it.

Scott grimaces. “I didn’t want to hurt you, you know that.” Allison nods wordlessly in reply. “But I wasn’t always - it wasn’t always something I had control over. I got lucky.”

“I think I’m the one who got lucky,” Allison corrects him, shaking her head. “Pretty unbelievable to find out you were nearly mauled to death by your boyfriend and just … didn’t know. Sorry,” she says, as his face falls. 

“You’re not wrong,” he says, shrugging. As difficult as his life has been to this point, there were many opportunities for it to go much worse. 

“There was so much I didn’t know,” she says softly. She looks suspicious. “Anything else from those early days you haven’t mentioned before?”

There is one thing. Something he has not thought about for a long time. And he really does not want to talk about it. “No, don’t think so.”

Allison tilts her head slightly. “You’re lying.” Her tone isn't angry, or disappointed, she sounds almost … sad.

Scott sighs. “You sure picked that up fast.”

“I told you, I'm a fast learner,” she says with a strained smile. “But seriously, Scott.”

He fights off the rising panic. “It’s not important. I wouldn’t - it won’t be a problem for you,” he says. I’m not Peter, he thinks, and even as he knows it to be true the idea that he could do what his Alpha had done to his own Beta makes him feel sick to his stomach. 

Allison’s hand reaches over, her fingers slotting between his perfectly. “Scott, you can tell me, I promise. What could you possibly say at this point, I mean - you do know I figured out you kissed Lydia, right? That’s not news to me.” She grins teasingly and he feels a familiar flutter in his chest.

Scott laughs. If only it was that. “Stiles was so mad. The whole reason I went there was to see if Lydia was interested, like … sexually …”

Allison looks a bit lost, and possibly hurt. “In you?” 

He waves his hands frantically. “No, no, in Stiles. What um…Lydia kissed me first, you know!” Scott isn’t sure why this is so important to clarify even after everything that has happened. 

Allison rolls her eyes. “Oh, I guessed that much.”

“Hey!” Scott protests, defending the manhood of his younger self. “I’m - assertive! Even then! It could have been me kissing her!”

Allison laughs. It’s a beautiful sound. “Sure. Anyway, you were about to tell me something.” Her expression turns serious again. “Scott, please …”

Scott's throat feels dry as he tries to find the words. “Peter was … I don’t know. I’m still not sure even now how much control he had, how much was 'instinct' and how much was like, on purpose. He'd have me and Derek believe that it was all spontaneous but-”

“It’s Peter,” Allison says with a faint growl. “Yeah. I can’t imagine having him as an Alpha.”

Scott stands up all of a sudden, surprising even himself. But he … he can't be sitting down for this. He has to explain, and he has to do it well, and he needs space to think.

“Scott?” 

“One of the ways that an Alpha creates a pack bond, especially for bitten wolves, is to … hunt together. And Peter, he had a list.”

He senses her shock and realization. “Hunt … the arsonists? All those murders, those attacks… they were - that was his revenge for the fire?”

Scott looks back at her and nods. 

“And - and he tried to get you to help, didn’t he? Oh, Scott.”

“I didn’t,” he says quietly, turning back toward her as she slowly gets to her feet. “The bus driver - I was there when he was attacked. I can’t really remember what happened but I know that I didn’t listen - I didn’t attack him.” He turns away from her sympathetic gaze, cheeks heating in shame even so.

Allison approaches him slowly, like she's afraid he'll run. He feels embarrassed, somehow violated all over again, even more aware, through his new relationship with Allison, how wrong it all had been. And it occurs to him that he had never … talked about it. Not with Allison, not with Stiles, and complaining to Derek doesn’t really count - they didn’t have that kind of relationship back then. 

He keeps his back to her, trying to hold his composure. He feels her place a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Scott.” Her voice is quiet, but questioning.

“I wouldn’t. Just like at the school,” Scott says, just above a whisper. “I wouldn’t let him turn me into a monster.”

“And you didn’t,” she says, and he can hear the tears in her voice, and can sense her sadness and desire to comfort him, and he both loves and hates the very idea. “You didn’t, Scott. You could have given in, you could have hurt someone, you could have hurt me. But you didn’t.”

“You got lucky,” Scott echoes her. He suddenly wishes he was anywhere but here, having this conversation. This was a terrible idea, to do this with just the two of them. They were friends now, and he's okay with that, but it feels like they were suddenly back to the beginning of the school year, but worse, because he couldn't just give her space.

Her voice is pleading, and it's been a long time since he heard her sound like this. “Scott, please look at me. Please.”

He does. He could never refuse her anything. There are tear tracks on her pale face, but her mouth is set in a determined line. “You’ve never told this to anyone, have you?”

“Stiles,” Scott says. “I told Stiles everything back then but he - he didn’t really get it?" He sighs. "It was like … like this crazy adventure that was terrifying but also like - fun and exciting. But it was more than that. My body wasn’t mine. I woke up in the woods more than once because Peter called to me, to hunt, or run with him, or whatever, I don't remember most of it, besides the bus. And then, at the school - he made me transform." He's starting to feel short of breath. "He sent me after you, and Stiles, and Lydia, and Jackson - he wanted me to kill all of you, and I-”

“That fucking bastard,” Allison bursts out, practically snarls, startling him, as well as some nearby birds. “God, Scott, I knew what he did to Lydia but you …”

“I would never,” he says hurriedly. “I’d never do that to you. I’m not that kind of Alpha.”

Allison smile is sad. “I know you wouldn’t.” She looks at him then, as if asking for permission, and then steps forward and folds him into a warm hug. “I’m sorry, Scott. I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’m okay,” he says, though his eyes burn slightly. “Really, I’m over it.” The urge to fall into her arms is overwhelming, but … he can't. Not anymore. He has to be strong. 

Allison pulls back, and he can sense how unsatisfied she is with that. But perhaps because she can now pick up the scent of his anxiety, she simply nods. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed-”

“No. No it was important,” Scott says, and means it. He clears his throat and takes a few steps back. “But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to test your shift.” 

Allison inhales deeply, nodding. “So where do we start?”

“Claws first,” Scott says, back to familiar ground after working through this with the werecoyote. “Can you bring them out?”

Allison looks down at her fingers as if she doesn't recognize them. “Sometimes.”

Scott meets her eyes, and flicks his claws out. “It’s pretty simple, probably the easiest part of the shift.”

“Easy for you to say,” she grumbles, but she closes her eyes and tries to mimic the motion. Nothing happens, and she growls in frustration. 

“Your eyes,” Scott says. 

“Yeah, that seems to be the thing that happens the most,” Allison says, sounding weary. “It makes me nervous to go out in public.”

“It’s different for everyone, you know,” Scott says gently. He clears his throat, meets her eyes. “Try again.”

Allison closes her eyes and lets out a breath, like she is about to take a shot with her bow. And then she flicks out her claws on her right hand. She looks down and grins. “Hey!”

“See, you’re catching on. It took Malia like, six tries. Now the other one.”

It takes a couple more attempts, but Allison happily shows off two pairs of razor-sharp claws, glistening in the late afternoon sun pushing through the trees.  

“So, claws, check. And eyes.”

Allison nods.

“Now, can you get rid of them?”

Allison frowns. “Oh. How do you do that?”

Scott freezes. “Um, I usually think about my anchor or, well when that wasn’t working, I’d use pain. I … I wouldn’t recommend that.”

Allison looks up anxiously. “Scott, I don’t have an anchor.” He can sense how upset she is about that. He scrambles to help.

“Is there anything that like … reminds you that you are human? That you aren’t the wolf? Your dad maybe?” 

Allison closes her eyes, mouths something, but her claws remain. She huffs in annoyance.

“What was that?”

“Our new code,” Allison says, frowning. “It’s … it’s how I closed the door in my mind, from the Nemeton sacrifice. I thought about my code, and my hands stopped shaking, and I was able to knock out Malia’s father before he could shoot her.”

Scott frowns. “That sounds … like an anchor.”

“But it’s not working !” she growls, and her eyes flash gold. “See?”

Something else occurs to him, and he tries to swallow his pride and hurt feelings, but right now, Allison is the one who matters, the one who needs him. “Isaac?”

Allison laughs, and it is not a happy laugh. “I guess I didn’t tell you." Her smile is brittle and her brown eyes glisten with unshed tears. "Isaac broke up with me. Turns out hearing your dying girlfriend tell her ex-boyfriend that she loves him and will always love him can be a bit hard to take when you've just gotten together.”

Scott feels a burst of sympathy, thinking of Kira. (maybe we could try being friends) “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

Scott is a bit hurt by the insinuation. “Yeah, you two seemed happy together.”

Allison blinks, like she was expecting to catch him in a lie. He isn't sure how that makes him feel, but it isn't good. “Oh.”

Don’t ask if I was jealous, he begs silently. Don’t make me admit I still love you.  

Even if it is plain to everyone, including her father. 

And Isaac, evidently. Poor Isaac.

Allison looks at him speculatively. “And um, Kira?”

Scott sighs. “Yeah, we’re just going to try to be friends.”

Allison winces. “Did I..?”

“I don’t know,” Scott answers honestly. It's not the loss of what they had that hurts, its the promise of what could have been. He imagines it's much the same for her. “But I think it was just … more than she signed up for. She said it wasn't fair, and she was right.”

Allison kicks at the ground. “So we’re both alone now. Because of me.” She looks up before he can say anything. “Don’t deny it, Scott.”

He might have argued with her wording, but it's ... it's not untrue. But even so, he can't... “Allison, with everything you’re going through, it’s not fair to ask you to deal with any of … that. So, I won’t. I promise.”

His ex-girlfriend looks at her feet again. “Okay,” she says quietly. Scott tries not to hear the disappointment in her voice.

In the end, pain does the trick. As Scott pours water on Allison's calloused hands so she can scrub the blood away, he tries not to feel like he has failed her all over again.  

Scott comes to Derek Hale's loft the next day because, despite how clumsy the older man's mentoring had been (chasing him through a parking garage comes to mind), Scott had ultimately turned out okay for a wolf bitten without the slightest warning. And he also comes to Derek because he can be absolutely certain that if he has done something wrong, the former Alpha will not hold back.

Derek, sitting cross legged on the floor, shirtless for some reason, does not hold back.

"You know, when I first heard what you had done, I didn't believe it. At least until I heard it from Isaac, because you know that kid can't hold anything in. And then I just wondered how you could possibly be this stupid."

Derek's undisguised scorn has Scott struggling to keep eye contact, True Alpha or no. "Derek, let me-"

"Explain?" he finishes, getting up off the floor of the loft and reaching for his muscle-tee. "Explain how you bit an Argent, even after what happened the last time? Explain how you bit a trained hunter, knowing full well the consequences for her?" 

Scott's voice is quiet. "She was dying, Derek."

The older man is unmoved. "And if you ask me - which you are, you should have let her die. Jesus, Scott, I know you two have a history but this - this is insane. You have to know that."

Scott sighs. "Tell me about it."

Derek does not relent, and in fact looks even more irritated at his response. "You bit Chris Argent's daughter. As your first Beta."

Scott tries to head him off. "I know this won't be easy-"

Derek scoffs, and Scotts really feels like he is the Beta all over again. "Scott, if you were to come to me and ask, of all the people I know, who would make the worst Beta, I would have chosen Allison without a second thought."

That stings. "She's learning, okay?" Scott says defensively. It is not untrue, at least. Her control has improved, even if it is abundantly clear he needs to find some place that is safe, secure, and most importantly isolated for his first Beta's first full moon. And he needs to find a way to keep her and Malia separated, or at least one of them will not live to see a second one. They have seen each other exactly once since that night and Stiles was just short of physically dragging the werecoyote out of the Stilinski's living room like she was a cranky toddler by the end of it.  

Derek shakes his head, looking at Scott, at his Alpha with withering pity. "You don't get it. Of course you don't, you never-" He growls, walking in a tight circle as Scott crosses his arms. "Allison wants to be an Alpha, Scott. That's what she was raised to be by the Argents: a leader. There is a part of her that will either try to take Alpha status from you, or reject your authority entirely, just like you did, except I don't see her putting together her own little group of friends to ground her. And then she becomes an Omega.” He snarls in frustration. “She's not your little girlfriend anymore; she's a threat. To you, to me, to all of us !" Derek’s eyes flare blue. "There are hunters in town. Hunters besides the Argents. What do you think they are saying to Allison's father right now? What do you think they are urging him to do?"

Scott feels a cold sweat break out on his forehead at the thought. "He wouldn't."

"He killed his own wife, Scott," Derek says, surprisingly gently. "I don't think you know what he's capable of."

"Allison's mom decided she'd rather die than turn," Scott says, defensive. "She left her husband and daughter alone after she tried to kill me for being with Allison."

"That's right," Derek says, but there is no sympathy or validation in his tone. "And now that daughter is not only a werewolf, she's your Beta. She's your responsibility. A girl who shot my pack full of arrows and stabbed Isaac because I was involved in her mother's decision to die. That's who you turned, without asking her."

"There was no time," Scott growls. "I was nearly too late as it was."

Derek sighs, and the look in his eyes turns from cold fury to a kind of resigned sadness. "Cora said Peter told Stiles about Paige. Did Stiles tell you?"

"Sort of," Scott replies, not sure where this is going. 

"I was heartbroken when I - when she died," Derek admits. Then he meets Scott's eyes. "But some people are better off dead than living as wolves. Even if she had lived, even if she survived the Bite, she probably would have died with the rest of my family, or she would have fallen to the hunters." He shakes his head. "I just hope you haven't made the same mistake. Or worse."

Scott tries to let the words go. Derek will never be entirely … objective when it comes to Allison or any of the Argents, and he has good enough reasons for that. Anger is Derek's anchor, and while Scott could never live like that, he hasn't endured what Derek has. Nobody can have gone through that and come out all that … well adjusted. 

"The full moon's in under a week," Derek says pointedly. 

"I'm aware. 5 days. I've got a plan."

"Chain her up in the basement?"

Scott bites back a curse at the dismissive tone. "Well, it worked for me, at Isaac's." He decides not to mention how they will also be trying to survive the first moon of a girl who spent eight years as a coyote.

Derek scowls. "You understand what you have to do if she gets loose, don't you?"

Scott shakes his head. "It won't come to that."

"And you need to be prepared if it does," Derek insists. 

Scott crosses his arms. "Okay, what are you suggesting?"

"Pain makes you human," Derek says, and Scott feels his stomach revolt.

"I'm not going to - I won't hurt her. I won't be like Peter," he spits, thinking of his conversation a few days earlier. The whole thing still feels raw, but he has a feeling Derek won't be as sympathetic as Allison had been. 

"My uncle was psychotic," Derek says flatly. "He wanted to make you into a killer." 

"And he didn't."

Derek nods. "You're right. Because I was there to stop you."

Scott scoffs. "Don't give yourself that much credit, Derek, I figured out a lot of it on my own."

Derek looks a bit abashed, which is not an expression Scott can really remember seeing on the older man. "I sucked as an Alpha,” he admits quietly. “Even before I became an Alpha. You don't need to remind me of that. I tried to be someone I wasn't, and people got hurt. People got killed."

Scott has no desire whatsoever to get into that. "You did what you could."

Derek shakes his head, clearly disagreeing with that assessment. "We're not talking about me, Scott. We're talking about the times you almost tore your girlfriend - your hunter girlfriend - into bloody pieces, and I had to step in to stop you."

"She was my anchor," Scott says, and the surprise on Derek's face as he doesn't hear a lie makes Scott wonder how many basic aspects about his first few months as a wolf Derek still knows nothing about because he just never bothered to ask, even when they weren't running for their lives from his insane uncle or Kate Argent. 

Derek gives him a challenging look. "Is she still?"

Scott shakes his head. "After the sacrifices - the Darkness that Dr. Deaton talked about … it wasn't working anymore. I lost control of the shift, like I hadn't since before ... so my mom told me to be my own anchor."

Derek raises an eyebrow. "How can you anchor yourself?"

Scott tries to put it into words. "I remember who I am. How I became an Alpha without killing anyone, who helped me get there, and what they mean to me." He shakes his head, impatient. "I don't know how, but it works."

Derek accepts that, but does not relent on his earlier point. "Scott, you might have to hurt her to stop her. Like I said, she's not inclined to take orders, and that's going to get a lot worse on a full moon."

"I'll handle it," Scott says a bit pleadingly, meeting his gaze.

"You'd better," Derek replies, not yielding an inch. 

Chapter Text

Scott can feel the moon beginning to pull as they arrive at the Martin lake house. He grits his teeth at the sensation, and remembers who he is, and how he got here, and who got him here. He's still very, very on edge, but at least he won't be wolfing out while he tries to assure his two newest charges that they are actually going to get through this. Allison clearly hasn't slept well in days, and Malia appears to be regretting ever coming out of the woods.

As agreed in advance, Malia will be confined to the Martin's windowless basement with Stiles waiting just outside with a taser and his trusty baseball bat, and at Allison's request, Lydia will reluctantly be waiting upstairs with one of Chris Argent's overpowered cattle prods in case Stiles needs backup, or Scott needs to be called in. Allison will be secured in the boathouse built into the base of the promontory the house sits on. It's a bit more isolated, and sound will be lost over the lake if things get heated.

Scott takes one last look at Stiles and Malia, whose eyes have begun glowing an electric blue, as her maybe boyfriend hurries her down the stairs. He tries not to wonder if he's saved Stiles from the Nogitsune only to get him mauled to death by a werecoyote, but his best friend would have it no other way. It seems he and Malia had reached a certain understanding during his brief time in Eichen House, even if Scott does not fully understand what that entails. 

Even so, Scott thinks about staying to make sure everything is ready, but as he opens his mouth to offer, Allison growls lowly beside him.

They are officially out of time, which Scott should have anticipated given how much shorter the days were in December in northern California.

At least there isn’t another Alpha out there calling Allison to the hunt, because if this is how she is with Scott there to keep her under control, he can only imagine how she might have been with Peter’s bloodlust echoing through her mind. Allison is a good person, no matter what she says, but she's more predisposed to violence than Scott ever was. 

Allison once told him, after she got back from France, that her father and mother's wishes to keep her out of the supernatural world until she was older aside, she had been deliberately trained as a hunter from childhood. Gymnastics and archery aren't unusual activities for a certain kind of girl, but generally they would start a bit later than the age of seven. It just took until she was seventeen to put all the pieces together. During his Summer of Improvement, Scott read a book about volunteer doctors in central Africa. The anecdotes about child soldiers resonated to an extent that still makes him a bit uneasy.

Scott herds an increasingly agitated Allison towards the lake. Someone follows them, and he scents Kira. Allison continues on ahead, almost vibrating from the energy of moonrise. Scott looks at her, then back at the kitsune. “Stay with Lydia,” he tells her. "I'll watch her. Stiles might need more help if Malia gets loose."

“I don’t think-” she begins.

Scott sighs. He doesn’t have time to have this conversation. “It’s not … it’s not going to be good. I can handle her alone.”

Kira shakes her head stubbornly. “No, you can’t. And since Isaac went to wait it out with Derek, I’m all that’s left.” He notices the sheathed katana hanging over her shoulder. She has not come unprepared, and maybe the kitsune has a point about not leaving Scott and Allison alone. 

They are nearly there anyway, Scott's backpack weighed down with chains to the point where he fears it might break open. Allison is looking straight ahead, saying nothing, but he can detect the scent of her growing anxiety - and anger. 

“Fine,” he relents. He has a feeling he will regret this, but there is no time. 

Allison must be very distracted because it isn’t until she wrenches the door open that she turns back, her eyes golden and furious. “What’s she doing here?” Allison demands, and it comes out as a growl. 

“I’m his back up,” Kira says, her voice remarkably steady in the face of the outright hostility from his Beta. 

Scott hurries her further inside. “Come on, we need to get you chained up before the moon gets any stronger."

Her angry expression fades at his reminder, and Allison nods, breathing heavily. “I can feel it Scott - God, how can you stand this?”

“It gets easier,” he promises, and means it, even if Allison clearly doesn’t believe him. 

Wary of Allison’s athleticism even before she became a werewolf, they’ve bought a new set of chains. Well, Stiles had, and he wouldn’t tell Scott where exactly he had found the firm but supple leather cuffs attached to the end of a set of long chains that are clearly meant to hold back guard dogs. Allison whines and drops to all fours beside one of the supports holding up the wooden roof, so he decides it is as good a place as any. There are already hooks and ropes attached for boats to be lifted above them, and he gives one a hard tug. It doesn’t budge, and the beam seems firmly set into the floor.

Allison growls again at Kira, who has backed off, looking uneasy but determined. It will have to do. 

Quickly, he and the kitsune secure the cuffs on Allison’s wrists, and cross a pair of chains tightly across Allison’s chest at her urging, looping them again over the boat hooks secured in the beam.

Allison is fully transformed now, and the sight of his ex-girlfriend with lupine features - a long, narrow nose, heavy brows, glowing yellow eyes, and razor-pointed fangs is seriously unnerving. You did this, a voice says accusingly, and he tries to shake it off. He is feeling the pull of the moon himself, and closes his eyes and takes a grounding breath.

I’m Scott McCall. I’m Melissa’s son, Stiles, Lydia, Kira, Isaac, Malia, and Allison’s friend. I’m not a monster. I’m not a killer. I’m Scott McCall…

“Scott!’ Allison snarls, interrupting his centering mantra. Her lunge tests the strength of the chains, and they groan in protest, but do not give. When his eyes open again, they glow red, and Allison whimpers and stops trying to reach him. He's anything but gratified.

He can’t do this, he thinks desperately. He can’t be an Alpha, Allison’s Alpha. Kira is in danger, not just from Allison, but maybe even from him. “Kira, you need to get out of here, now,” he says through a mouthful of fangs, without looking away from Allison, whose golden eyes blaze with fear and fury.

“But-”

He wheels on the other girl and snarls, and the terror on her face breaks his heart. "Now.”

The young kitsune swallows, but stands her ground bravely. “I’ll be outside. Just outside,” she promises, and quickly exits, grabbing her katana.

Scott prays she won’t have reason to use it on either of them. 

He turns back. Allison still looks frightened, but anger is overtaking the fear. “Allison, I need you to focus. Remember, you’re human. You’re not a wolf.”

“Yes, I am,” she says furiously. “I am what you made me.”

The words hurt. He remembers his second full moon, when he’d tormented Stiles about his feelings for Lydia. He'd said a lot of things, and he had not meant them. Stiles still hadn't looked at him the same for days. “I’m sorry, Allison,” he says, wishing he could fix all of this somehow, but still have her here, whether she was with Isaac or even not in Beacon Hills.

It's the thought of never seeing her grin again that makes him feel like his ribs are cracked open.

“Sorry ?” Allison scoffs, uncaring of his silent struggle. “You’re sorry ? You took my life away from me, Scott! Peter bit you, and didn’t give you a choice. And I didn’t get a choice either!” she pulls hard on her restraints, and the wooden beams creak under the strain. “Despite everything you told me, everything you went through, you made me a monster.” She spits on the ground. “You should have just let me die.”

Scott digs his claws into his hands, blood welling up, and the pain brings him back. He wipes his bloody hands on his dark jeans. “You don’t mean that,” he says, trying to sound confident. Allison’s heartbeat is so elevated he can barely tell if she is lying or telling the truth. He suspects she does not know either. 

“How would you know, Scott?” Allison says cruelly. “It’s not like you’ve asked me about it. How I felt. Whether I hated you.” The fury on her face tells him that a part of her absolutely does.

Scott swallows hard. He has to be strong for both of them. “You don’t hate me,” he says. 

Allison laughs, but it turns into a pained moan. “Don’t I? Don’t flatter yourself, Alpha. Maybe I loved you once, but that was before you did this !” she snarls, waving a clawed hand in his direction. “I never wanted this. You know I never wanted this, and you did it anyway! Because you're selfish. Because you couldn't bear to let me go.”

“Allison-”

“Go,” she snaps after a minute of tense silence. “Go hang out with your new girlfriend. I don’t want to see your face again until I stop feeling the urge to claw it off.”

This is so not going the way he had hoped. An optimistic part of him had wondered if Scott could be Allison’s anchor, the way she had once been his. But it seems that all he can do is remind her she is no longer human.

He tries not to feel hurt by that; he doesn’t have a right to feel hurt by that.

“Okay,” he yields, raising his hands. The least he can do is respect her wishes. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

“GET OUT !" she screams, and it turns into a howl. The entire boat house shakes from the force of her lunging at him, wood groaning and the steel of the chains whining in protest. Like he expected and dreaded, she’s strong. Maybe stronger than him, with so much anger to draw on. 

Scott forces himself to turn his back on his new Beta and obey her wishes. He closes the door as she shrieks her rage and pain, cursing loudly.

Cursing him. 

Kira is waiting outside, sheathed katana sitting across her lap. She winces at the sound of Allison’s fury, only slightly muffled by the wooden door. “I’d uh, ask how things were, but I could kinda hear most of it. Are you - are you okay?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Scott says, trying to tune out Allison’s howling and snarling from inside the boat house. It’s a struggle. “This isn’t about me.”

“Yes it is,” Kira says, disbelieving. “Scott, of course this is about you! She’s - she’s your Beta! Your first one.”

“Don’t remind me,” he says, settling on the ground next to her, trying to not feel guilty about taking comfort from her presence. 

“You saved her life,” Kira says, animated. “She was dying, and you saved her.”

And she hates me for it, Scott thinks miserably. There's another series of howls and curses, and this time he does catch his name, and Stiles’. He can only hope his friend is having better luck with Malia. A part of him is terrified he will find his best friend and brother’s savaged body (and maybe even Lydia's) when he goes to check on them in the morning, and he almost gets up to go look. But he can’t leave Allison, even if she doesn’t want to see him. 

It is literally the least he can do.

“Your hands,” Kira says abruptly, sounding alarmed. “Is that blood?”

“Mine,” he says. “I had to - I lost control.” He closes his eyes and growls. “She made me lose control.”

Kira scowls. “That’s the moon talking, Scott.” And she’s right, of course. 

For a moment he allows himself to mourn what might have been between them. He has to admit, though, it is nice to see her a bit more confident around him. Maybe they really can make the friends thing work? He hopes so, at least. He can use as many of those as he can get.

They keep chatting for a while. Scott asks how things are going at home with the whole ‘your mother is a 900-year old supernatural creature’ thing, Kira asks about the science homework and how exactly lacrosse works. Words flow easily between them, like they’ve been friends for years. It’s a world apart from their stilted conversation a few days ago.

He likes her, there's no way around that. He likes her sense of humor, her optimism, her conviction hidden under all that self-doubt and worry. He can see the incredible woman she’ll become.  

Just not with me.

Maybe four hours pass before he realizes that Allison has been … quiet for some time. He can still hear her heartbeat, pounding away inside. But it is a bit suspicious. The moon is at its apex right now, the pull on his mind is stronger than it has been all night, and he's had to do his centering exercise a three times in the last ten minutes when he's felt his heartbeat spike.

If that's what it's like for him, it must be agonizing for her.

And yet he can’t hear thrashing around or crying out or calling to him or anyone else, like he could earlier.

Scott wonders for a moment if she’s just passed out in exhaustion, but he's learned not to trust when things start getting easy. So quieting Kira with a small wave, he focuses his heightened senses and hears what sounds like chains grinding against wood, quietly, but regularly. 

Allison had told him something else about her hunter training once - how after she had stopped a hunter from killing Isaac on the boy's first full moon, her Dad had effectively kidnapped her from a gas station, thrown a bag over her head, and taken her to the burned-out Hale House, where she was bound to a chair opposite her father, warnings of the consequences of a werewolf's bite as a hunter playing unnervingly over speakers as her father apparently struggled to break free, before revealing the whole thing was a cruel ruse, and also a traditional challenge.

Her test had been to escape with only a broken arrow to saw through the ropes, and it took her about two and a half hours, which was apparently quite respectable.

Of course, that had been when she was human …

Scott feels the blood drain from his face as he realizes just how bad an idea it had been to leave a hunter-turned-werewolf unattended on her first full moon.

“Scott?” Kira asks, sensing his panic. 

He swallows. “Stay behind me, and wait outside, but get ready. I think she’s trying to break out.”

Kira looks bewildered. “Are you sure? I don’t hear anything and it's been hours.”

Scott turns back to her. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about," he says tightly, and her eyes widen in understanding. 

As he gets to his feet there is a scream of strained metal, splintering wood, and a loud ‘snap’ as something gives under tremendous force. And underneath it all, a roar.

He hates being right.  

Without hesitation Scott races inside, nearly losing his balance as the door gives in and he skids to a stop. 

Allison is still secured to the beam, just, but one wrist, slick with blood, is free, the empty cuff lying discarded on the ground behind her. She has slipped out from one of the two chains pinning her in place, in the process tearing loose one of the screwed-in boat hooks they had been wrapped around, splintering part of the vertical beam and potentially threatening the integrity of the entire structure.

(you might have to hurt her to stop her)

Her glowing golden eyes swing towards him as he enters, and for a moment as she snarls at him, he doesn’t even recognize her. “Allison,” he says, moving closer. “Allison, I need you to calm down.”

(allison wants to be an alpha, scott)

His Beta's only response is another fierce snarl and an attempt to eviscerate him with her free hand which he ducks away from just in time, her claws flashing past inches from his belly. For anyone else it would have been a fatal mistake.

When he looks in her eyes Allison is feral. Her fury is wordless and animalistic.

Omega, his wolf names her; damns her. He rejects it, letting his eyes flare red. 

“Your name is Allison Argent," he says, putting all the authority he can into his voice without shifting. "Your father is Chris. Your mother was Victoria. Say it with me.”

“My mother is dead,” she says, anguished, and at least he has her speaking English again, that has to count for something. “Derek bit her, and then she abandoned me!” she sobs angrily. “She left me, because of our stupid Code!”

“You have a new Code now, remember?” Scott says, inching a little closer. If he can just get her to calm down for a minute, thirty seconds even, he may be able to seize her flailing arm and get it back in her restraints and maybe wrap the chain it all the way around the base of the beam where it's concreted into the floor. The leather on the cuff is ripped apart, probably by Allison’s fangs, and the exposed metal has rubbed her wrist bloody before she had managed to get out of it, but of course there's no visible injury. “What’s your new Code? Allison, what's your new Code?”

“Nous protégeons,” she gasps, “ceux qui ne pe - peuvent pas se protéger eux … eux-mêmes.”

“That’s right,” Scott says reassuringly, taking another step forward, hands held out, palms empty. “You protect those who cannot protect themselves. That’s the kind of hunter you and your Dad decided to be. Ones who protect, not ones who hunt the innocent just because of who and what they are.”

“I’m the hunted now,” she mumbles, then looks up at him, eyes blazing. “I’m the monster. I’m what they need protecting from, Scott! I’m the monster. I'M THE MONSTER!"

Her anguished shriek turns into a howl, and the boat hook holding her restraints secure shears away from the beam with an echoing crack of splintering wood, freeing her other hand and rocking the entire building on its foundations.

Shit. Shit. SHIT.

Scott darts forward to pin her in place but she catches him across the chest with her claws, causing him to reel backwards in shock and pain, blood soaking his shirt. He feels the shift overtake him, instinct kicking in with the moon still high in the sky and he moves to block her again, a howl building in his chest that he tries to swallow down and stay in control. 

Allison uses the momentary reprieve to slip free of the last chain around her middle and lunges, fangs bared, spitting in rage.

She hits him like a missile, driving him to the ground, jaws snapping, claws sinking into his shoulders, drawing more blood. His head bounces painfully off the floor of the boathouse, leaving him dazed and pinned under her in a way that is distinctly less enjoyable than it had been in the past. 

He can’t get a grip to roll, not without hurting her, maybe breaking one of the arms pressing his shoulders to the ground, claws digging into his flesh. Instead, he roars in her face, and like she has been physically struck, she recoils, rolling off of him, dropping to all fours as he pulls himself to his feet.

“Allison,” he growls. “Stop.”

But in an instant her fear has turned back to fury. “Make me!” she challenges with a scream. “Be the Alpha, Scott!”

Scott shakes off the transformation. No, not like this. He is better than this. “Allison, please.”

Something shifts in her eyes, and he has not quite figured out what he is seeing when she launches herself at him again. This time he manages (just barely) to keep his footing and take some of the force from the impact of an enraged werewolf nearly as tall as he is.

But this time, instead of attacking, she wraps her arms around him, one still dragging a chain from her useless restraints. There’s something different but strangely familiar about her scent, but before he can work it out, Allison slams their lips together in a vicious, bloody kiss, fangs and all. 

Scott is frozen, trapped between pushing her away and pulling her into his body, at least until he hears the creak of the door; Kira enters, presumably drawn by the sounds of fighting. 

He shoves Allison away from him, her fangs catching on his lip, drawing blood, and he looks back to see Kira standing in a ready position, unsheathed katana gleaming in the moonlight reflecting off the lake. 

“I really, really don’t want to hurt you,” the kitsune says, teeth clenched. “But come near me, and I might not have a choice.” 

Allison turns on her. “You, his little fox,” she spits. “This is your fault.”

“What?” the other girl says, retreating a step.

“Your mother,” she growls. “She called the Nogitsune. She killed all those people, and hurt Stiles, and got me stabbed. If you hadn’t come here, none of this would have happened. I would still be human , not - not this…”  There are furious tears rolling down her face.

“You’re still Allison,” Scott says quietly, wiping the blood away from his mouth. “You’re still Allison Argent. You don’t have to be a monster.” He spares a glance at Kira, but it is too late to stop. “And I lo-”

“Don’t say it,” she growls, head shaking back and forth. “Don’t you dare say it after what you did.”

“Allison,” he says, stepping closer. If he can just get his arms around her again, maybe…

“Get out of my way,” she warns.

Scott shakes his head. “You know I can’t do that, Allison.”

“I can’t be here,” she wails through clenched teeth. “I can’t be here with you.”

“Do you want me to get Lydia?” Kira asks quietly. 

The sudden reminder of the other girl's presence just seems to upset Allison further. She is jealous, Scott realizes with a start. Even if he and Kira are only friends, she thinks of the kitsune as a threat.

(foxes and wolves tend not to get along, and not just in fables and stories, noshiko says gravely)

At the time, with him and Kira getting closer, he had brushed it off as the bitterness of a long life filled with tragedy.

But maybe it was true. It is only that Scott wasn’t the wolf in the saying. 

Would bringing Allison’s best friend here help in a way that Scott’s presence clearly is not? Or would he just be putting Lydia, who is as fragile as any human, in danger from an Allison that is just barely holding onto her humanity?

Before he has a chance to decide, Allison charges him again.

He steps back to brace himself, but instead of hitting him in the chest as he expects, she kicks out and catches him in the side of the knee, buckling his leg as she nearly dislocates the joint. He stumbles in pain, dropping to the ground as the healing kicks in, and she leaps over him in an impressive feat of athleticism, dashes past a startled Kira, and carries on straight through the window, crashing through glass and shattered timber frame and vanishing into the night. 

The only noise is the gentle lapping of the lake against the dock and Scott's heavy breathing.

“Fuck,” says Kira, eloquently. 

Following Allison is not actually that difficult, as she is making no effort at all to conceal her tracks, crashing through the underbrush and leaving abundant signs of her passage. He has just picked up her scent again when he hears a pneumatic ‘thump’ and the sound of crackling electricity, followed by a canine yelp and a body crashing to the ground. He rounds a tree to see Chris Argent, face grim, lowering a net gun. 

Unable to meet his eyes, Scott hurries past the hunter into a small clearing where Argent’s daughter is flailing and tangled, screaming in rage, her shift disrupted by the electricity pulsing through her body. “Allison !” he roars. 

This time she stops struggling and looks up at him with wide, golden eyes. 

He comes closer, and growls low, keeping her pinned in place with his gaze, her fury turned once more to fear, and he fights the urge to let up as she shakes in terror. Finally he grabs her firmly by the shoulders and tears the net free before pushing her unresisting body against a tree and holding her. “Allison, you need to stop !”

She gasps, tears running down her again human face. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats, over and over, hysterical. “I hurt you, I’m sorry, I can’t - I can’t stop it. Scott tell me how to stop it, please,” she begs, her chest heaving. 

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Scott tells her, loosening his grip, letting her feet touch the muddy ground. With one hand he brushes her sweat-soaked bangs aside, tips her chin so she meets his eyes. Hers are a dark brown, ringed red with crying, bruised with a lack of sleep. “You never need to be alone, Allison. Wolves aren’t meant to be alone.”

Allison stares back at him, mouth moving but no words coming out.

Scott can sense Argent lingering some distance away, not coming any closer, but not leaving either, for which he is grateful. 

It’s up to Scott. It was always up to Scott, to her Alpha, and he has been so worried about keeping her and everyone else safe by locking her up that he has not had the time to think about how she might be feeling about all of this. How afraid she is, as well as angry. 

How alone Allison has made herself in order to protect those around her.

He will fix that. He will make her feel understood, and not alone. He will not allow her to become an Omega. 

Scott lets go of her shoulder, and she collapses against him, sobbing. “I’m sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm - I’m scared, Scott. I’m so, so scared. I’m not like you, I’m not strong,” she mumbles miserably into his collarbone. 

That has to be the stupidest thing he has ever heard her say. “Allison, I’ve never met someone as strong as you, okay? It’s not all about strength. I told you how hard it was for me, remember? But I got through it because I had people helping me. You have people to help you too." He locks his gaze with hers. "Let them help you, please.”

Allison doesn’t respond as he wraps a gentle arm around her and leads her out of the clearing. She sags against him, on the verge of passing out as the adrenaline finally wears off. Scott lifts her off the ground and into his arms, tucking her head against his bloodied chest. The wounds are already healing, the perks of being an Alpha. They will probably be gone by morning. 

Argent is waiting for them about halfway back to the boathouse, a heavy duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a taser hanging on his belt. He meets Scott’s eyes and nods. "Scott."

“Thank you,” Scott says, quietly, trying not to wake Allison, who snuffles against his chest. 

“And thank you,” Argent says in return. He smiles wryly. “I had a feeling I might be needed out here tonight.” He looks at his daughter in Scott’s arms, a father's tender care in his weathered features. “Can you take it from here?”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “Yeah, I think so. The worst is over, I think.”

Argent reaches down to pick up a bag on the ground. He gets to his feet and turns, a familiar smirk on his lips. “Scott, do you know the first lesson we teach trainee hunters is?”

“How to escape being tied up? Yeah I uh, kind of forgot. She just … she really didn’t want to see me, and by the time I realized what she was doing, it was too late.”

“That’s my daughter,” Argent says, with a strange note of pride. “Take care of her, Scott. I’m trusting you. And I don't trust easily.” 

Scott certainly knows that. “I know - I mean, I will. Lydia will get her home once we’re done here.”

Argent nods, satisfied, and walks off into the night. Within thirty seconds, he can't catch a scent or hear any sign of the hunter's passing. 

“Is he gone?” Allison whispers against his collarbone, a few minutes later. 

Scott starts. “You heard that?”

“Some of it,” she admits shyly. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I can - I can smell the blood. And I know I did that.”

Scott can’t lie to her. “It’s okay. I’m already healing. And I’ve had a lot worse.”

“I remember,” she says softly, and he thinks of waking up in a filthy men’s room of a highway rest stop, his clawed-open side expertly stitched up, Allison’s eyes wide with concern in front of him, her pulse racing.

He knows she’s thinking of the same thing. 

“I guess having Kira there wasn’t the best idea,” he says with a wince. 

“I could hear you talking,” Allison says, her voice barely a whisper. “And I, I just got so angry, and had to get out of there, somehow. I don’t even know where I was going, I just had to be away.” Her voice is thick with tears. “I’m sorry, I know you aren’t together, I know it’s not like that, but all I could smell was the two of you and imagine what you were doing out there, doing to each other.” She sighs against him. “Like me and Jackson, I guess.”

Scott nods, seeing no reason to belabor that particular point. “Do you want me to let you down?” He is wary of patronizing her, treating her like a child just because he has been at this longer. 

She is quiet for a moment. “No, it’s okay. I missed this.”

He feels his chest warm at her words. “Yeah, me too.”

When they get back, the first traces of morning creeping across the horizon, they find Lydia standing beside Kira, looking like a ghost. Scott lets Allison down in time for her to be swallowed up by the banshee’s embrace, then walks over to Kira, who winces.

“Yeah, okay, maybe you were right about me being there,” she says, sounding guilty.

Scott laughs. “Are you joking? I don’t want to know what might have happened if it was just the two of us there. She’s strong.”

“No kidding,” Kira says, returning his smile nervously, then it drops. “Lydia’s not happy about the mess you made of the boathouse, by the way.”

Scott grimaces. Things just keep getting more complicated. 

He just hopes things went better for Stiles and Malia. 

“You let her get out?” Malia says scornfully as Stiles undoes the restraints that she had not managed to break free from in her first full moon in human form for eight years, though the collection of scratches and gouges in the floor and walls around where she was restrained is testament to how that was by no means easy. “You’re an Alpha.”

Stiles sighs. “Malia, what did I say about-”

“This is different,” the werecoyote says dismissively. “That’s manners. This is about pack.”

“Coyotes don’t have packs,” Stiles points out. 

“Actually,” Lydia interrupts, “small groups of females sometimes hunt together and raise their young." She pauses, looking over Malia. "But I imagine you didn’t do that.”

“Wolves do,” Malia says, ignoring her. She wrenches her other wrist free, rubbing it gently. “I saw enough of that.”

Stiles frowns. “There aren’t any wolves in California, Malia.”

“Not many,” she corrects. “But I didn’t always stay in Beacon Hills. I saw a few, I just kept my distance. They didn’t like me.” 

“Can’t imagine why,” Lydia says under her breath. 

It’s testament to how focused Malia is on Scott’s failure that she does not seem to notice. “You’re her Alpha. You’re mine, too, but you bit her. You should be able to control her.”

“Hey, she got caught, she’s sleeping in Lydia’s car now, Scott healed up, everybody’s fine,” Stiles says, trying to play peacemaker. 

“Only because her dad was in the woods. Because he knew Scott might not be strong enough to keep her there,” Malia says scornfully. “If he wasn’t there, who knows what could have happened.”

“Can we not have this conversation at the ass crack of dawn?” Stiles asks rhetorically. He is roundly ignored.

“Pack is complicated, Malia,” Scott says, trying to not lose his patience. It has been a very long night, and he's eager to get home before dragging himself to school. “It’s been a really hard transition for her.”

“Being a human was a hard transition for me!” Malia says indignantly.

“Yes, and that’s why you ended up in Eichen House, remember?” Stiles says. “This is a bit like that.”

Malia growls, but it’s half-hearted at best. She's exhausted. They all are.

Chapter Text

The sun is still low in the sky when Scott idles his bike into the McCall’s driveway, takes off his helmet, and heads inside. Or, he would have, except that his friend, Beta, housemate, and Allison’s ex-boyfriend is standing on the porch in the cold, looking down at his feet. 

“Isaac?” Scott says, worried and more than a little guilty. It had been the other boy's choice to wait out the full moon away from the others, but Scott was his Alpha.

He could at least be a better one to Isaac than he had been to Allison last night. 

“Hey,” the blonde says softly. His hands are jammed in the pockets of his leather jacket, and despite dressing like the cocky kid given a new lease on life that he’s been for most of the time Scott’s known him, little of that bravado or confidence is visible right now. He smells nervous, and tired. 

“How uh … how was the full moon?” Isaac stares blankly, and Scott backtracks. “I meant what I said, you know, you could have come by the lake house even if you didn’t want to see her-”

Isaac tilts his head, amused. “Scott, you know she would have known I was there by scent, right? I didn’t want to make things harder on you guys. And I’ve had a pretty good lock on all this full moon stuff after the first one.” The cocky smirk is back. 

“So you’re okay? Where were you? You said you might go see Derek?”

Isaac grimaces. “Yeah, I popped by his loft, but the vibes were … not great. It felt like Peter was trying to test Derek’s patience like it was a sick game. So I came back here.” He looks nervous all of a sudden. “Melissa was out, she told me she was, I promise I would never have hurt-”

“Hey, hey,” Scott says, reassuring him. “I know you wouldn’t. You’ve got an anchor, you’ve done this before. I trust you.”

Isaac is definitely listening for a lie, which breaks Scott’s heart a bit, but he doesn’t hear one and relaxes somewhat. “Thanks.” He glances up, nostrils flaring. “Hey is that blood? Yours?”

Scott nods sheepishly. His shirt is torn by Allison's claws and soaked in blood from long-healed wounds. “Yeah, I forgot to bring a change of clothes to the lake house and Lydia finally got rid of Jackson’s old stuff. Figured I’d duck upstairs and get changed before school.” 

“You’re going to school?” Isaac asks, sounding a bit incredulous. 

“So are you, man,” Scott says, and Isaac groans in displeasure. “Isaac, I know you’ve missed at least two days of school this week, and cut class a few more times. We just want you to stay in our year with us.”

Isaac rolls his eyes. “Okay, Dad,” he snorts. He tilts his head. “So who did the damage? The coyote?”

Scott sighs heavily. If only. “You know who.”

Isaac’s eyes go wide. “Oh damn. Are you okay?”

“I’ve had better nights, a few better full moons actually,” Scott says wearily. “She got out. Her dad was there to clean up my mess, and I got her back just as the sun started coming up." He grimaces. "Did you know that hunters are trained by being tied to chairs with rope, and that the skills they learn kinda work on chains when combined with a werewolf’s strength?”

Isaac blows out a breath. “Why am I not surprised she’s even scarier as a werewolf?”

Scott considers making a joke about Isaac dating her anyway but somehow it feels like a bad idea, especially because it’s kind of his fault that they aren’t together anymore. “If Allison doesn’t at least kinda scare you I usually figure something’s wrong,” he says instead. 

“With her, or with you,” Isaac says, smirking. “I'm uh, glad she’s got you to help her with this, though.”

Scott sighs. “I’m not entirely sure she feels the same way.”

“She’ll come around,” Isaac says, though he’s clearly not eager to continue this conversation, and why would he be given everything that’s happened? He makes to head back into the house. 

“Hey, Isaac.”

“Yeah?” Isaac’s tone is casual, his expression one of detached cool, but none of that can fool Scott. He’s worried. He’s really worried, and Scott thinks he knows why. 

“You’re still part of the pack, you know that, right?”

The other boy freezes, and Scott knows his guess was accurate. At least he’s not completely useless as an Alpha. Okay, be careful here.

Isaac turns back, looking …distressed? “I - I thought so, yeah?”

Scott makes sure to meet his eyes. “We just - we had to make things easier for Allison last night. I want,” he swallows, “I don’t want you to feel like you have to be alone on full moons. Or ever! If you want!” He sounds pretty desperate by the end.

God, some True Alpha he is. 

Isaac purses his lips. He’s still listening for a lie, and it hurts, that Isaac doesn’t feel like he can trust Scott to be completely honest. “I meant what I said,” Scott continues. “You know, back when we um, talked about Allison.” After he’d thrown Isaac into a wall twice, he thinks, holding back a grimace at how immature and thoughtless that had been given Isaac's history. 

His Beta just looks confused now. “Scott, I - we broke up. I broke up with her.” He shakes his head. “That’s not - that’s not important anymore.”

“It’s not about Allison,” Scott insists. “It’s about me trusting you, and you trusting me.” Hell, why not just go all in with honesty, it seems to be all he’s doing these days. “You … you’re my Beta, if you want to be, at least. You’re part of the pack. You belong with us, no matter what’s going on - or not going on - with Allison. Isaac, you were - you were the start of the whole thing. You leaving Derek and coming to me. You’re important.”

Isaac smirks. “Well, I already knew that. My sob story keeps your mom off your back when your grades slip, haven’t you noticed?”

“Asshole,” Scott grumbles. Serves him right for trying to have a heart to heart with Isaac Lahey. “Get back inside, I call the first shower.”

Allison groans and rolls over. Something or someone is insistently rapping their knuckles on the Argent's front door, and with her new senses, even the ear plugs she has started wearing can't let her tune it out. 

Moaning in displeasure, Allison throws on an old hoodie, zips it up (her father's; she likes that it smells like him), and stumbles toward the door. 

She opens it with a quiet growl. 

Lydia stands before her, in a cute jacket and skirt with a new green scarf that brings out her eyes, makeup absolutely pristine, utterly unfazed by her best friend's less-than-friendly greeting. Allison, currently a shambling mess of bed-head wearing her Dad’s laundry, looks up at her blearily. "Lydia?"

The banshee gives her a critical once over. "Okay, you're going to let me in, get in the shower and throw some presentable clothes on, and I'm taking you shopping."

Allison blinks as Lydia pushes past her without waiting for an answer, helplessly moving aside like the other girl is a force of nature, an immaculately presented tidal wave. The banshee takes a seat at the kitchen table, pulling out her phone, saying nothing about the rather conspicuous gouges in the wood that Allison really hopes her Dad plans to re-stain so she can sit down for breakfast without being reminded of the scent of her father's fear when she reacted badly to his increasingly blatant suggestions she needed to talk to Scott.

What she had learned when they met up, about Peter, she is still thinking about. Scott had been so fragile when he told her those things. She has never seen him fragile. Dejected, depressed, traumatized, angry, even suicidal that horrible, horrible night. But never like if she touched him he might come apart in a way she could never mend. It horrifies her, that Scott has just … never talked about that, with anyone, not even Stiles. That they had all gone on with their lives.

And then I used that against him, because I was angry, Allison thinks gloomily. She's not proud of what she said that night. Scott is obviously doing his best, and in return she tried to hurt him the way she had been hurt. It's a bad habit of hers.

Even if nothing I said was exactly a lie.

Allison finds herself staring into her bedroom mirror, expecting her eyes to flash gold and frowning as they remain stubbornly, unremarkably brown. Her hair looks like a rat’s nest, and it’s going to take more than a bit of conditioner to get it back to where it was before, but she does what she can in the shower without leaving Lydia waiting for too long. 

Lydia is sitting on her bed when she comes in toweling her hair, the banshee scrolling through something and occasionally typing out reply messages. She gives Allison a once over. “Better,” she says, pursing her lips. “I can work with this,” she declares eventually.

“Lydia, we really can … “

“Allison.”

“Yes, Lydia?” She's got that tone again, the one you argue with at your peril.

“This is the first time I have spent entirely alone with you since both of us nearly died. I am absolutely not letting you go outside - in public - looking anything less than stunning. My reputation is on the line, after all. I can’t be seen with just  anyone these days.” She glances at her nails with exaggerated concern. “Besides, what are major life changes good for if not a bit of wardrobe revision?” 

Allison finds herself smiling more broadly than she has since she woke up in the hospital, able to hear the heart monitor of the old woman three doors down and smell the day-old coffee sludge in the dirty mug in the nurses’ break-room. 

After they swing by a Starbucks drive-thru for breakfast and some desperately needed caffeine (her new status has apparently not altered her that part of her body chemistry), Allison drives them to the new mall north of the preserve just off the interstate, the replacement for the derelict complex to the south of the town which had once seen a pitched battle between the Alpha Pack and her friends, a pitched battle where her intervention had prevented a very bad situation caused by Hale recklessness from getting a whole lot worse. 

The first time Scott’s eyes had flashed red.

At the time she doubted what she was seeing at a trick of the light, but now she knows better.

It was the first spark.

She can keep her senses pretty focused while she is driving, between Lydia’s constant chatter, the familiar noises of the Toyota her Dad bought for her upon their return to Beacon Hills (though she has not previously been aware the right rear brake pad is slightly larger than the others and one of the cylinders squeaks a bit when she goes around a corner at over 20 miles an hour and oh that’s what a gear change in an automatic sounds like) and the ability to limit the perceptible smells by keeping the windows closed and air recirculating.

It isn’t until they park and make their way into the concourse that she has to stop and bury her nose in Lydia’s hair and scarf until she can cope with the noise and smells and … feelings? That aren’t hers? Chemo-signals, maybe, she remembers hearing, she thinks - that are abruptly all around her, and she begins to regret absolutely every choice she’s made since she woke up including opening the door for Lydia in the first place. 

But Lydia's scent is … grounding her, somehow. Not an anchor, or at least she doesn’t think that’s what it means, but the familiar notes of designer shampoo and sandalwood perfume give Allison something to focus on while around all these new smells. Lydia is an absolute champ about it too, doesn’t even give her a strange look when Allison pulls away, ducking her head in embarrassment. 

Once she’s no longer going to wolf out or have a panic attack in public, her best friend is hauling her through the mall, and the blessed normality and extravagance of shopping with Lydia Martin consumes the next couple hours. 

It’s strange, the way that just running around a mall with her genius and fashionable best friend makes the horror that she nearly died two weeks ago - and the relief that she hadn’t - clearer than it’s been since she passed out in Scott’s arms in the ruins of Oak Creek. 

Lydia is utterly shameless in passing off every single bag they’ve acquired to Allison, because of course it’s almost effortless to balance and carry things now. This is one part of being a werewolf she doesn’t mind in the least. 

The thought drops the smile from her face. Werewolf. She’s a werewolf. Scott - her ex-boyfriend Scott, her Alpha - bit her and made her into a werewolf. 

She orders a burger at the food court, and finds herself wondering if she might have gotten a salad like Lydia if not for that fact. Does being a werewolf lead to craving meat? Scott - well, Scott’s diet when they were dating was as awful as most teenage boys (Stiles is better since he has been trying to keep his dad eating healthy), but she also never knew him before he was bitten, so she doesn’t really have anything obvious to compare it to. 

Lydia eats politely in front of her. They’ve found a table away from most of the crowds which provides both privacy and a bit of relief for Allison’s senses. 

She swallows. “Are you going to ask how it went?”

Lydia frowns. “Allison, I was there when Scott brought you back. I saw the state of the boathouse, and we are going to need to figure out what to do with that - the mess that Malia made in the basement is going to be hard enough to explain the next time Mom comes by.” 

“Oh, right.” Maybe there is a part of her that tries to forget that anyone but Scott and her father had to witness what the full moon had done to her - or wishes it were the case.

She is still … frustrated, with how all that went. They were all fortunate her Dad was waiting out there, just in case but … what if he hadn’t been? How long would it have taken Scott to track her down? 

Who or what might she have come across in the meantime?

He shouldn’t have let it happen, she thinks. He’s scared, whether it’s of her or of hurting her or both, she’s not sure, but it can’t happen again. 

“I could have probably been more helpful with you instead of babysitting Stiles and his coyote,” Lydia says mildly. “Not like there was much to do but hope those restraints he came up with held up.”

Allison looks down at her half-eaten burger. “I didn’t want you to see me like that. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

Lydia does not say a word, just hums slightly and keeps eating. It’s as effective as a fifteen-minute rant, and even more uncomfortable. 

“He shouldn’t have left you alone,” the banshee says finally. “That was stupid. Wasn’t he listening when you told him about your hunter training? The first thing you learned was how to escape being tied up, unsupervised, and what does he do on your first full moon? Tie you up, and leave you unsupervised!”

Lydia's indignation on her behalf is rather touching.

“I - what was your idea?”

Her friend thinks for a moment. “Well, we could always have sedated you.”

“Lydia!” 

“What?” she says, indignant. “You haven’t found an anchor yet, you’re a little escape artist because of your training, and you weren’t planning on doing anything until morning. You would still be exposed to the full moon, which should make the next one easier. Or not - Stiles says Scott was a lot worse on his second full moon, but that was probably because you had just dumped him.”

“You were pretty insistent I’d done the right thing,” Allison reminds her, and gets the unusual sight of Lydia looking bashful and smelling embarrassed in return. 

Lydia puts on a brittle smile. “I think we can say that a lot of us were making some very, very poor decisions that week.”

Allison rolls her eyes. “Alright, I’ll drop it. It came up, you know, last time Scott and I talked before the full moon. The whole ‘making out in Coach’s office’ thing, I mean. I get it: you were trying to make Jackson jealous, because he was flirting with me to get in Scott’s head, and I know you like bad boys,” she teases. “And that’s the closest Scott will ever get, I understand.”

“That’s…entirely beside the point,” Lydia sputters. Then she pauses, frowning as she senses that they are moving beyond silly reminiscing. “What is it?”

“It's just-” Allison starts, not sure how much of it is hers to tell. “He told me a bit. About what it was like back then, when he was bitten. About what - what Peter was like, as an Alpha.”

“Pointlessly cruel and incompetent, I imagine,” Lydia says with a deceptively casual air. 

“Scott … nearly killed me, you know," Allison says under her breath, honestly still reeling a bit over how close it had been, with her none the wiser until her Dad had him pinned between two SUVs the night of the Winter Formal. "More than once. Peter bit him and just left him alone out there, trying to figure out how it all worked. He wanted Scott to join him, to hunt down the people responsible for the Hale fire. And - and he didn’t care if Scott was willing, or not. Or who he hurt along the way.”

Lydia is very quiet for a moment. “I might know something about that,” she says delicately. 

Allison nods, not trusting her words. 

“It’s different though, because it was Scott.” The banshee's tone isn’t bitter, even if the words might sound like it. 

“Lyds, I didn’t mean -”

“Allison,” the strawberry blonde says firmly. “I did not say that you were arguing, or even implying, that my experience was less traumatic or worthy of concern. But you’re used to thinking of me as vulnerable, don’t deny it,” she says, with surprisingly little venom. “You’re not used to Scott being like that.”

“Besides that night at the motel.” Allison shivers at the memory. She doesn't think she'll ever get the sight of Scott's utterly deadened eyes and a stench of gasoline that was overpowering even to her human senses out of her head. “I've never seen anything like that. It was like - it was like he was ashamed, but also afraid ? I’m still figuring out how to … smell emotions, I guess is the best way to put it. There’s an instinct to it, a part of my brain that will sense something and think sad or angry or worried without me really knowing why.”

“Chemo-signals,” Lydia says confidently. “A form of olfactory sensory acquisition used by complex vertebrates to communicate without spoken language or audible signaling. Molecules of chemicals produced by the brain and expelled by olfactory glands or respiration are captured by the mucus of another animal's olfactory glands, which acts as a solvent that conveys those chemicals to the receiver's brain. There’s…more to it, in terms of the biochemistry, but the areas that can detect and transfer those chemical markers are much more dense in canids, with about 170 times more receptors than humans on average. Werewolves seem to develop certain characteristics of canids, adapted to human anatomy, but as far as I am aware there are no peer-reviewed studies on werewolf olfactory systems, so I suppose I’ll have to go on observable evidence.”

“Yes,” Allison says, more than a little intimidated. “That - that sounds right.”

“Of course it sounds right,” Lydia says haughtily, taking another bite of her salad. “I’ve been doing my research.”

“For me?” Allison asks, feeling rather touched. 

“Who else?” Lydia says. Then she pauses. “Well, to be completely fair, Stiles got me started, but his notes were just … incomprehensible. I really think that he should see another psychiatric specialist and ask about getting his medication adjusted, but I doubt he would ever agree, especially after his time in Eichen House. And he hasn’t read a college-level biochemistry textbook. Twice.”

“Few have,” Allison says, smiling. She's no slouch at school, but Lydia is something else. She's only still in Beacon Hills, and not changing the world at MIT, for them. For her pack. 

“We’re getting distracted,” Lydia says, waving a hand, and Allison notes how she changes the subject from Stiles. She’s really not sure what’s going on there, and she suspects Lydia isn’t any more certain. “You’re scared, Allison.”

Allison scowls. “I’m not scared,” she replies, almost on instinct. 

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Of course you are. Anyone would be.”

Allison groans, shoving the remnants of her burger away to dramatically bury her head in her folded arms on the table. “I don’t feel like myself, Lyds. Like, is this my life now? Barely holding in my anger and fear and trying not to hurt everyone around me? Trying not to hate Scott for making me like this?”

Lydia hums. “Some degree of anger is probably justified there, though I can’t pretend to be unhappy with you still being alive.” She swallows, suddenly serious, and Allison looks up over her crossed arms. “I screamed for you, Allison. And you lived. Which I’m intensely grateful for, but I don’t know what that means.”

Neither does Allison. She looks back down at the table and resumes hiding her face from the world. “I kissed him,” she mumbles into her elbow. There can be little doubt who she means. 

“Oh,” Lydia says, sounding mildly interested. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Allison sighs, and her nose twitches when her inhale brings back the faded scents of the barely cleaned dining table. “It wasn’t - it wasn’t a good kiss. Like, not that Scott’s bad or anything - he’s not - but there were … fangs involved.” She looks up again, hoping not to see Lydia’s disapproval. The other girl is poised, with a mostly neutral expression, so she continues. “I think I was trying to distract him, to get away from him … and Kira.”

“Ah,” Lydia says simply. Allison feels herself getting annoyed at how dismissive she sounds. 

“It’s … it’s not like that, at least I don’t think so? They aren’t-”

“You’re allowed to be jealous, Allison. Especially since Isaac dumped you after what was a very traumatic experience.”

“I don’t want to be like this,” she groans, sitting up in her chair and leaning her head back, closing her eyes. “I hate not being in control of myself, of my body. I do enough irrational things without the influence of the moon making it all worse.” And now this is what I am, she thinks miserably. Because Scott saved me. 

“Allison, when was the last time you went shooting?”

“What?” she asks, caught off guard, her eyes snapping open.

Lydia looks thoughtful. “When was the last time you even picked up your bow? Or your daggers. Or that chain thing Isaac kept talking about when you weren’t around?”

Her mouth is dry. “I, um … not since, not since that night.”

Lydia is trying to look sympathetic, Allison can tell, but she smells exasperated. “Why?”

Allison looks back at her across the table and her half-eaten lunch, suddenly feeling very exposed, despite the anonymity of the busy food court. “I, well … I guess - I just-” Her mouth closes, then opens as Lydia watches with undisguised impatience. “Things are different now,” she says finally, and knows it's not nearly good enough an answer. 

“When did you stop being a hunter?” Lydia asks, and it’s such a simple question, but it burrows past every single one of her defenses and leaves her feeling like a complete moron. 

“I guess … I guess I still am. I’m just also…” the Hunted, she finishes in her own mind. Or maybe it’s the other way around, judging by her first full moon. 

(i’m the thing they need protecting from. i’m the monster.)

Lydia’s sympathy is more genuine as she concedes, “I know this isn’t how things … usually go. I know that, I do. And I get that it’s scary, to have these abilities, and senses, and things happening to you that make you wonder if you can even go on living the way that you did before, or if this stuff is your whole life now.”

Yeah, you would, Allison thinks. Of all of us, you would. You went months having no idea what was happening to you, even after the kanima. And all you got was a name, not a mentor or an example. 

Lydia sighs, picking at her salad. “I think you understand where I’m going with this. I’m going to give you that much credit. I’m also not going to be too hard on you, even if there’s a part of me that is still very mad at you three for not telling me anything even when my life was in danger.”

Guilt curdles in Allison’s gut. Lydia hasn’t brought this up in a while beyond the occasional smart remark when everything that happens back then comes up in conversation. It’s probably kinder than they all deserve, but it turns out that Lydia is very much capable of magnanimity when she wants to be.

If only then. 

“Don’t apologize,” Lydia says. “That’s not the point. The point is that you are acting like you really did die that night. Like my - like that scream-” she’s getting choked up, and that alone shocks Allison into action, reaching across the table to grasp her hand. 

“Lydia, I’m still here. I don’t … you screamed for me, but I lived. Scott-” she swallows, “Scott saved me.”

Lydia takes a deep breath. “Then you should act like it,” she says, her green eyes suddenly hard. “You should stop living like you died that night, and what you are now is something completely new. Sure, it’s more … complicated-”

Allison laughs, she can’t help it. “Complicated ?”

“It’s not wrong,” Lydia protests. “You’re still you. You’re just a bit … more. But you are acting like you have to start all over. What did Scott do after he was bitten?”

“He made the lacrosse team,” Allison says without thinking. 

“Yes,” Lydia agrees. “He used his new supernatural abilities, including his sudden lack of asthma, to do something he - and Stiles - had been trying to do since they were freshmen.” She smiles wryly. “And he even got a girlfriend out of it.”

Allison smiles at the memory of those days, despite everything that's transpired since.

“My point,” Lydia says, accentuating her words by angling her fork at Allison. “Is that Scott went and did the things he wanted to do, was the person he wanted to be. And it didn’t come without difficulties,” she says, heading off Allison’s objection. “But he didn’t try to be someone else entirely.”

Allison nods. Lydia’s right.

Of course she’s right.

“So, we’re going to get out of here, drop off all these things at your place, get your bow, and you are going to drag me into the woods so you can feel a bit more like yourself. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” Allison says. “Sounds very good.”

When Allison gets back to the apartment, after she drops off Lydia with a hug that she’s a bit afraid may have left bruises, the sun is sinking below the horizon.

It was … a good day. Their shopping trip had, as promised, turned into an impromptu archery session in the preserve, and after Allison had nearly fallen over from just how much easier it was to draw her bow with werewolf strength, she thought it was possible her aim at distance had actually improved. Lydia certainly seemed impressed.

Allison found herself grinning so widely her face was still sore.

Most important of all, it was a calming experience. Her claws stayed put the whole time, even when her eyes flashed gold in frustration. 

It was hard to call it anything less than a resounding success, and Allison truly felt like herself for the first time since the Bite. 

Feeling like that also made it a lot easier to think of Scott without all the pain and anger and regret that had been plaguing her every moment since he had carried her out of that clearing, his shirt soaked with blood - blood she had shed in her desperate attempts to escape. 

The smell had been almost overpowering, but eventually the scent of what she now knows to be Scott McCall had broken through, and it felt like she could breathe again.

It sort of feels like that right now, after this day of rediscovery and reflection with one of the most important people in her life.

Hearing the sound of the tumblers falling into place in the lock, she opens the door, and the smell of home surrounds her - the cheap laundry powder they use, the remnants of last night’s roasted chicken, now tucked away for leftovers, the slightest hint of gun oil, her Dad’s evening glass of wine, the fading scent of the get-well flowers Stiles had bought her.

But she smells something else, something discordant. Anxiety. As she walks towards her bedroom, bow slung over her shoulder, she hears her father shifting in his office chair before he speaks, “Allison, can I talk to you for a moment?”

“Yeah, sure,” she says. She inhales instinctively, and the acrid stench of worry and maybe even fear makes her frown. “Is everything alright?”

Her father’s heartbeat is steady. “That’s what we need to talk about.” 

He gestures to her to pull a chair from where it leans against the wall, and she does, facing him across his great desk inscribed with the five-fold knot. It’s covered in what looks like insurance paperwork. She spots the letterhead of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, even upside-down, and winces. As a freelancer, she’s not entirely sure what her and her Dad’s health insurance looks like. It’s not something that has ever occurred to her before. Perks of staying out of the fray and her friends being self-healing werewolves, she supposes. At least they never had to pay for the surgery that she had been scheduled for. 

“So?” she asks. 

“Well, before I get to that, how was your day?”

She rolls her eyes, but goes along with it. “Good. Went to the mall with Lydia, even drove myself - a few hiccups, but nothing dangerous. We talked, Lydia convinced me I should go shooting to feel a bit more like myself, we swung by here, grabbed my bow and quiver, and headed out into the preserve.”

“How’d it go?”

She breathes out. “A bit of adjustment was needed. Turns out even a long draw is really easy when you suddenly have exponentially more muscle strength and improved reflexes.”

Her father smiles. “Yes, I can imagine. Fortunately improved balance comes with the rest.”

She nods. “Yeah. It went well. I’d like to get a few more rounds in, but I think I’m as good as I was, if not better.” She closes her eyes and exhales. “And I felt like myself," she repeats. It's important.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” her father says, then takes a deep breath, and the scent of anxiety gets stronger. “Allison, we do need to talk about two nights ago. I’m sorry, but it’s important, more than you know.”

“Thank you for being there,” she says quietly. “I - I don’t know what would have happened, if you hadn’t been. Scott tried, he really did, but this wasn’t easy for him either. And I didn’t help. I,” she paused, swallowing. “I wanted him to hurt, like I did.”

Her father nods in understanding. “To be expected. This isn’t something you wanted, or something I wanted for you, but Allison,” he sighs. “I know it’s hard to forgive Scott. There’s a part of me that still wants to-” he cuts himself off, but Allison can finish the sentence. “You’re alive. You’re alive, and that’s what matters.”

Allison smiles slightly. “Yeah, I think today I finally started to accept that.” 

Allison’s father can only smile gently, but she smells his relief. It seems Lydia isn’t the only one she has been worrying with her recent behavior. Then he frowns and looks her straight in the eyes. “It can’t happen again, Allison, I need you to promise me - swear to me - that it won’t.”

Allison frowns. “What can’t happen?”

Her Dad sighs heavily, then reaches into a desk drawer and draws out a spent shotgun shell. Still visible is a stamp, a distinct silver grinning skull insignia she’s not familiar with. The severe expression as he sets it down in front of her tells her it’s important. All she can smell is the spent cordite and her father’s sweat, but she doesn’t really know what else to be looking for, as it were.

“This was inside the newspaper the day after the full moon. It’s marked with the sigil of the Calaveras, a very old and very powerful hunting family based in northwest Mexico. Araya Calavera, who has led the family longer than I’ve been hunting, paid Beacon Hills a visit a couple of weeks back. She had some questions. Questions about Scott McCall.”

Allison feels the pit in her stomach turn to lead. “What kind of questions?”

Her father meets her eyes. “Our family has long been linked with Beacon Hills, even before-” he pauses. “Kate’s actions were not the first time that our family visited this part of California, or even the first time we crossed paths with the Hales, as I believe Gerard told you. We left because of what had happened, because of the suspicion around it, and because the pack there had been destroyed or scattered. That’s why we moved so much when you were younger. When the Hales returned, so did we. And now,” he sighs. “Now they are gone again. But they took several of us with them.”

Allison tilts her head. “Is this about you ‘retiring’?”

“It’s about a lot of things,” her Dad admits. “And no small part of it is what Gerard did. Being bitten as a hunter is bad enough. Actively seeking the Bite … it’s a stain on the family, on our family. And it’s a sign that the Argent line is not what it once was.” He spreads his hands wearily. “The reality is that we might be the last of that line. You've met your cousins, and they are no hunters. Gerard had one brother who died in the 70s, my mother lost a sister to illness and a younger brother to a wendigo, and only part of your mother’s family, the Hearses, was ever involved in supernatural affairs. And she…” He breathes heavily, unable to finish the sentence.

Allison nods, trying to shake the tears from her eyes. “It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay.”

“Maybe one day,” he says, almost wistful. “Maybe one day it will be, Allison.”

Her father doesn’t cry easily - even when her mother had taken her own life he had remained almost unnaturally stoic and composed. But she can see the shine in his pale blue eyes. He clears his throat. “Anyway, back to the Calaveras - they are the largest intact hunting family left on the west coast. There’s a handful of the Flints left in the Cascades, some Crocketts in Texas, and last I heard some of the Johnsons were seen passing through Reno, but they seem to mostly be operating east of the Rockies. And then there’s us, and some of our hired hands, but a number of them - you remember Hudson and Lawrence, right? - abandoned us after Gerard, and one of our local recruits was killed by Jackson.”

Her dad reaches for a half-full tumbler of what smells like one of his favorite whiskeys. He doesn’t drink often, seemingly even less than he did when her mother was still alive, so it’s a bit of a surprise when he downs it. “Allison, I don’t know how, exactly, but Araya knows you escaped two nights ago. They must have had someone tailing you, even after our …talk.”

“Talk?” Allison asks. Something about how her dad is acting is making her very nervous.

“It wasn’t much of a talk,” her Dad says. “More of a courtesy visit … God, I need to be less sober for this.”

“Dad."

Her father looks at the empty glass, studying his own reflection. “She asked me why you were still alive. Why you hadn’t-”

“Why I hadn’t taken my own life, like Mom?” Her father doesn’t answer. “Did they expect that I would?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. Araya can be very hard to read.”

Allison looks at up at him, feels her heartbeat quickening, and tries to breathe, closing her eyes, which she knows may have just flashed gold by the way her dad tenses. “So, what, she just expected me to get out of the hospital and shoot myself in the head? Just like that?”

“Before your first full moon, yes,” her Dad confirms grimly. “That’s usually how this works, when an Alpha bites a hunter. Obviously the circumstances here were … unusual.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Allison says, angrily wiping away tears. “I’m not - I won’t.”

“I know, Allison,” her father says with certainty. “I would never ask you to. Your mother - Victoria made her own choice, and that was her right, even if I sometimes wish she had made a different one. And you’ve chosen to live as a werewolf, and your situation - being part of an established pack with a number of in-the-know friends - gives you the best chance to make that work. You even have an Alpha.”

Allison looks down at the table. “He couldn’t stop me,” she says quietly. “I even told him at one point, ‘make me,’ and he wouldn’t." She looks up at him. “He loves me too much to hurt me, even when it’s called for. He’s afraid of turning out like Peter. It makes him weak.”

Her father sighs heavily, reaching over to pour another finger of whiskey. “I might not put it that way, but it is something I was concerned about. You lost control, and he would not do what was necessary to subdue you, so you ran.”

Suddenly he slams his tumbler on the desk, whiskey splashing onto the scattered paperwork. Allison starts. “And it can not happen again, Allison. That’s what this is: a warning. To you and to Scott. If you -” Her father looks so, so tired. “If you hurt an innocent, Araya is going to bring her family up here, and she is going to wipe out every single wolf in Beacon Hills. And I can't guarantee she'll spare Lydia, Stiles, or the Yukimura girl if they get in the way. That is what this," he holds up the spent shell, "signifies.”

“Dad,” she whispers, covering her mouth in horror. 

Her father shakes his head, looking miserable. “I’m sorry, Allison. The only other option is that we leave Beacon Hills entirely, and never come back.”

“We can’t,” she says, the realization hitting her as the words come out. “Dad, my pack is here.”

“Yes, yes it is,” her father says gravely. “And taking you away from that pack, from your Alpha, is the best way to ensure that one of these days I will have to put down my own daughter, and I-” her father’s voice breaks. “-I can’t do that. I’d rather put a bullet in my own head, do you understand?” He’s shaking now, Allison can’t recall ever seeing her father like this, not even after they lost her mother. 

Allison nods wordlessly. 

“I need you to make this work,” her father says, almost pleading. “I need you to keep control on the next full moon, and I need you and Scott to sort out your issues at least enough that you can stay in one place, and he can do what is necessary to keep you in line.” Her father rubs his hand over his eyes. “God, I can’t believe I just said that about my own daughter.”

“I know what you mean,” she says quickly, because she doesn't like it either. “I get it. I promise, Scott and I will work this out. I’ll have control by the end of this month, one way or another. Dad, please look at me,” she begs. 

He gets out of his chair. “Come here.”

She does, and he pulls her into an embrace so tight she feels slightly faint. She’s squeezing back just as hard. “I can’t protect you,” he says over her shoulder. “God, Allison, I wish I could, but this is out of my hands now.”

“It’s not your fault,” she mumbles into his collarbone. “It’s not your fault. I’ll do it, I promise. I’ll make it work.”

“I know you will,” he says, and the pride in his voice makes her cry all over again.

Chapter Text

Allison texts Lydia as she is making her way through some bacon and eggs to ensure that even if she is driving herself to school, she will not be facing the rest of her first day back alone. And when she pulls into her parking space, still a little bit wired from the still-unfamiliar experience of driving a car with her newly enhanced set of senses, her best friend is waiting for her in the chilly winter morning, a steaming mug of coffee gripped in two pink fluffy faux-fur mittens. She waves, and ducks inside her car again as Allison gets out of hers. The smell hits her before Lydia’s fully out of the car.

“Oh my God, you absolute goddess.”

Looking very pleased with herself and the praise, Lydia produces a second steaming mug. Allison stole the last bit of her father’s coffee before she left, but she is not nearly caffeinated enough with all the sleep she has missed recently. 

“Well, it’s your first day back after a near-fatal carjacking,” Lydia reminds her dryly. “I thought you shouldn’t face the unwashed masses completely unfortified by cappuccino.”

“You know me so well,” she says with a grin, taking the cup from her best friend. The warm and familiar smell helped calm her nerves a bit, and she leans against her car for a moment, closing her eyes. 

She opens them to see Lydia give Kira a friendly wave as the other girl escapes as quickly as humanly possible (or as fast as a kitsune can, perhaps) from her father’s car and conversation. Everyone knows on some level that Kira and Mr Yukimura are related, but it’s no good for her social standing for it to be obvious. Allison waves as well, but Kira is already high-tailing it into the school building, leaving their History teacher behind looking bemused as he gets his briefcase out of the trunk. 

Things are … strange, between Allison and the kitsune, that is. Kira saw her, saw what the moon did to her, was even forced to draw a sword on her.

Allison doesn’t know the girl very well, really: the only one who has spent much time outside of school with her is Scott. 

Though we did fight off possessed werewolves together, she muses. Allison supposes that made them friends, of a sort.

It’s not that she objects to getting to know Kira better, or doesn’t like her, it’s a lot … pettier than that, at least in her opinion, and she tries to tell herself it is more than just simple jealousy and insecurity as her mind provides images of pretty little Kira Yukimura rolling around with Scott outside the boathouse where Allison was chained up like a dog. 

None of that had happened, no more than she had made out with Jackson a year ago.

But why did it still feel so real, even if she knew it to be a moon-drunk hallucination? 

Lydia’s watching Allison with what her nose tells her is increasing concern, and Allison realizes she’s been staring at the place where Kira disappeared into the school for at least fifteen seconds. 

“Sorry,” she says, looking at the ground and feeling her cheeks burn. “I just …”

Lydia lays a hand on her arm. “It’s okay, Allison.”

Allison nods back nervously, still not meeting her eyes. “We should probably get inside. Only a few minutes until the bell,” she says, smiling nervously.

Lydia raises an eyebrow, but wordlessly begins leading them through the thinning crowds of fellow students, fellow students who suddenly exist to Allison in a way they never have before when she could only see and hear them.

And man, some of the freshman and sophomore boys really exist now that her nose is doing the noticing, a truly noxious combination of bad hygiene and overcompensation for the same with a discordant melange of  various deodorants, aftershaves, and even a few colognes, which makes her think weirdly of Jackson. 

Allison’s just getting her bearings again, chasing the scent of Lydia’s shampoo, when her friend turns to her, and the feeling of déjà vu is ... something else. 

(they call it a fugue state, which is basically a way of saying ‘we have no idea why you can’t remember running through the woods naked for two days’)

“Ready?”

(but personally, I don’t care. I lost nine pounds)

Allison swallows. “Yeah, I think so.”

(are you ready for this)

“We can take another minute, or you can do your grounding exercises, or whatever you need.”

(please. It’s not like my aunt’s a serial killer)

“No,” Allison nods. “No, let’s do it. I’d rather not be late to class on top of everything else.”

Lydia nods and pushes the doors open. A wall of noise greets them: lockers slamming, heels clacking on linoleum, whispered and not-so-whispered conversations … and then eyes turn towards her, and most of it … stops.

She abruptly wonders how the hell Lydia did this, but her friend is pulling her along, not letting her do her wolf-in-the-headlights routine for long enough to attract more attention. 

She’s getting enough as it is.

Hey, argent’s back / hey look who it is / Didn’t she get stabbed or something / Didn’t she used to date mccall / Some gang violence thing, my parents have been really paranoid when they saw the news story / yeah they broke up but i saw them kissing in a classroom once /shit I heard she was dead / No way it was that simple, you know she hangs out with those lacrosse kids / she’s been out like two weeks / isn’t he with that new girl, k-something / i mean remember how her aunt killed all those people, maybe it’s like that / can’t believe lydia martin hangs out with them now / dude are you saying she murdered people / argent started it, but i guess she likes them / she’s the one who got stabbed genius / mccall’s still captain of the lacrosse team, it’s not like a huge step down / i heard she was in the hospital for a week / yeah but stilinski’s always there / god this town is so weird, remember the mountain lion / she’s not the same without whittemore, wonder what happened to him / i heard her dad’s this crazy survivalist guy, always walking around armed to the teeth / okay but i bet she was doing something crazy / she pulled out a crossbow in the locker room once, i shit you not / moved to Paris I think, they said he went crazy and killed somebody / like somebody attacked her / a crossbow? What the hell is her childhood trauma / that’s gotta be a cover story / no it had to be medical or something, they took him off the field during the final and he almost died / honestly no wonder somebody tried to kill her, that’s psycho shit / it’s gotta be something to do with the police station, do you remembering hearing about the bomb / and now argent almost bites it, being around martin must be bad luck / her dad probably thinks the government’s out to get them or something / BOMB, what the fuck man how do i miss all this shit / hey is she looking over here / yeah those people scare the fuck outta me / dude do not say that word that loud in a school / no way, she can’t hear us … right. Oh god i think she did / she’s pretty scary too, and like, not in a hot way / is that really your take away from this conversation / look out ellen she’s coming for you next / you know what they say about crazy chicks in bed / man we’re gonna be late for english … wait shit, isn’t she is that class / that is so not funny will / uh i think tate heard you / well see if you can find out, you know stilinski’s always talking in class / it’s a little funny / uh get out get out, GET OUT

Allison is broken out of the haze of conversation by the sound of somebody off to her right getting slammed into a locker by a pissed-off looking Malia Tate, who must also have been catching some of the things Allison was hearing.

Stiles is right behind Malia, forcing himself between the jock - Henry, maybe? he’s on the lacrosse team but not a friend of Scott’s - and the barely restrained werecoyote who apparently doesn’t like hearing gross comments about her friends any more than Allison likes hearing them about her.

Malia backs down with a final growl at maybe-Henry and Stiles leads the girl away with a hand on her back, making eye contact with Scott who’s standing really close to Kira and no, nope, no way, she doesn’t need that too and God how long was she standing there because Lydia stinks of worry (though she would never put in those terms) and she thinks she smelled Isaac a little while ago but she hasn’t seen him yet and would really prefer to keep it that way this morning.

And fuck, are people always talking about them like this? Like they are freaks and criminals? Has Scott heard them this whole time? Why doesn’t he tell his friends any of these things? And what about Isaac? “Allison.” You know he’s probably used to rumors with everything, especially after his Dad died and then he showed up wearing a bunch of leather. “Are you there?” Wait, did that girl just call me a skank, what did I do to deserve that? Have they been doing that for months too and I just didn’t know? 

“Allison.”

Allison jumps and winces when she turns to look at Lydia, who looks and smells pissed. I knew this was a bad idea, Lydia whispers under her breath, as if Allison can’t hear every word. 

And then it’s like she’s put in ear plugs or turned the volume of the world down somehow and she wonders what’s changed and she sees Scott coming towards her, eyes full of concern and she hates him a little bit for how she can’t do this on her own and wonders darkly if a part of him likes having her that dependent on him. 

Stiles is apparently unaware of all of her internal turmoil. “Uh, can someone explain why Malia just went after Aaron Thompson, I’m pretty sure she popped a fang.” 

Oh, that’s his name, Allison thinks. “She overheard him say something. About me.”

“Something..?” Stiles asks, and she sighs. 

“Something rude.”

Stiles ohhs in understanding and wisely shuts up. 

“Are you okay?” Scott asks. Kira is standing just slightly behind him, over his shoulder, something she tries not to notice. 

“Fine,” she says, because if she says it enough, it might start being true.

Turns out the morning bell is a lot louder to werewolf ears. 

They are covering Jack London’s The Call of the Wild in Mrs. Walsh’s English class next term, it turns out. To Scott, it feels a bit on the nose. Stiles almost laughs, but not quite, and he can’t see her since she’s behind him but he thinks he hears Allison roll her eyes in exasperation. 

Stiles would have laughed a few months ago. Laughed loud enough, probably, that Mrs. Walsh would have stopped the class and asked if he had anything to contribute, before he somehow managed to make her so uncomfortable that she left him alone, maybe with a warning if he was unlucky. 

But Stiles still isn’t quite … Stiles.

He’s diminished somehow, like the Nogitsune took a bit of Stiles with him when it separated their forms and ran off with Lydia.

He worries about his best friend. He worries about Allison, who looks kind of dazed and definitely covered her ears at one point like she was trying to block out sound. And he guesses she heard some pretty awful stuff with her new ears based on how Malia went after Aaron, given that he wasn’t sure Malia even liked Allison.

They really were lucky her claws didn’t come out. Scott’s actually kind of proud of the werecoyote. Stiles jokes a lot about ‘progress,’ but that interaction ending without bloodshed definitely counts. 

Kira’s worried about something too, but she thinks he’s too busy for her to say anything, and unfortunately she may not be entirely wrong. Lydia also gave him a look that suggests that she wants to talk to him about something, probably alone, and it’s even odds as to whether it’s about Allison or Stiles. The idea that Lydia Martin would be paying that much attention to him would have been a dream come true for his best friend only a year ago, but since then there have been secrets and sacrifices and bombs and evil fox spirits and it’s like one of those cursed monkey’s paws that Stiles talked about at one point, as well as the fine points of the ethics around them, because Stiles doesn’t really know how to stop reading a wikipedia article, or the ten other ones it links to. 

They had a quiz on Heart of Darkness a couple weeks ago as Mrs. Walsh attempted to pick up for Jennifer Blake, who had been mysterious dismissed (due to being a serial killing dark druid who was also probably dead).

Scott kinda feels for their teacher, who is still trying to cover the same material they were assigned before the term started, even if she is definitely more excited about starting her own unit.

He did okay on that quiz, he thinks. Certain parts of that book have stuck with him, for sure. 

Isaac’s in school today, Scott made sure of it, but the other boy made himself scarce as soon as Lydia and Allison got there. Hopefully he’ll still be here for lunch; Isaac can only skip so many classes before he gets held back, troubled orphan or not.

Man, being a pack Alpha feels a bit like being a mom sometimes.

Honestly Mom might make a better Alpha than me. 

He abruptly wishes he had gotten a chance to meet Talia Hale. 

Stiles’ leg is twitching, but he’s trying to hide it, and if Scott wasn’t a werewolf he would probably never know. Stimming, his best friend called it, and Lydia explained …well something that ended with it’s a soothing action, right? And Stiles agreed, looking grateful and that was that. 

Honestly at this point Scott’s happy to notice it, Stiles has been weirdly static in the week following the showdown with the Nogitstune. This qualifies as him getting back to, well, if not normal, closer to it. 

Allison sneezes behind him. She’s definitely having trouble adjusting to all the smells of high school. Scott doesn’t remember the time when he was struggling with the same thing all that fondly, and he’s pretty sure his senses were never as attuned as Allison’s. He should probably talk to her later; she looked pretty shaken before class, despite her protests, and he could smell the panic. Allison never panicked, at least not when every other person there wasn’t also panicking. 

Scott’s just not sure if his help and advice will be welcome. He hasn’t seen her since Lydia drove her home after Friday’s full moon, and Allison wasn’t very forthcoming when he texted her, and while Stiles talked him out of calling her, he clearly texted Lydia because the banshee had dropped a text to him explaining how the girls had gone to the mall and then gone shooting in the preserve and Allison seemed to be doing a lot better. Lydia  also implied that Allison had told her some things, which Scott was not bothered by because, well, if anybody deserved to know that Scott had been put through hell by Peter Hale, it was Lydia Martin. 

They should have talked about it. Why haven’t they talked about it?

Because until Allison, you never told anyone about it.

It had hurt when she threw some of that back at him on the full moon, though he understood that she didn’t mean to compare him to Peter, that she didn’t think they were the same.

(i didn’t get a choice either)

Which is why it was up to him to get her through this. Somehow. If she would let him.

He closes his eyes, already feeling a headache coming on.

Sorry Mrs. Walsh, but Shakespeare’s got nothing on Beacon Hills. 

Stiles feels a bit guilty that he’s enjoying Allison being the center of attention for once. 

He knows he’s not okay, no matter how many times he says it. His Dad had to lock away some of his files, the ones about the bombing at the sheriff's  station and the attack on the hospital and Stiles thinks that’s a bit unfair because he should probably be aware of the terrible shit the evil fox spirit was up to while it was wearing his skin like a suit.

3 dead from an electrical accident in the hospital parking lot, 1 seriously injured who made a remarkably quick recovery from third degree burns all over his body, the Beacon Hills Tribune article says.

6 dead, 4 seriously injured at the Sheriff's station. Suspect had been apprehended by federal authorities, no further information available, pending results of the investigation. 

3 dead at the Hospital; 2 more dead at the Sheriff’s station. Gang violence with some kind of masks. A lot more people hurt, but less seriously than it appeared at first, maybe the blades were blunt or something.

(he remembers the razor-sharp tip of the ninjatō piercing his shirt and pressing just gently enough to not break the skin even as his hands shake in a strange dream world filled with snow and and bug ninjas and haunted fountains)  

Proximate cause, Stiles thinks grimly. Then he remembers Lydia telling him, in one of her more unguarded moments, that sometimes you are just a victim when the supernatural is involved, and it’s okay to be hurt about that, but it’s also okay to not blame yourself for things you never decided to do. 

He tries to hold to that wisdom in the dark hours of the night when he begins to wonder just how many lives he has to save to balance out the scales.

They are moving into studying the Cold War in Mr Yukimura's class, Scott's off at Algebra, and Allison has…Art, he thinks? He's not sure if any of the rest of the pack are in that period with her, but he really hopes so. Malia’s got Chemistry with Isaac, assuming the delinquent wolf hasn’t taken off because he panics at the sight of his newly wolfy ex-girlfriend. 

And boy, wasn't that just the icing on this very shitty cake. His ancient psychotic doppelganger had hijacked the mythical Japanese spirit-bug warriors and when Allison was smart enough to figure out that silver could kill them like a poison, she had been fatally stabbed in return. Fatally, at least, until Scott did something out of desperation he still could not entirely believe, even though he had seen Allison's eyes flash gold on the full moon more than once. 

He's selfishly grateful Scott was that desperate. He's not entirely sure how he would live with himself if he was the reason Allison Argent, the love of his best friend's life, was dead - because he had been possessed and then after being set free given himself back over to save someone who until recently was a total stranger. Even if Scott would forgive him if he explained, because Scott was too damn kind and understanding for his own good. It just turned out the prospect of losing Allison overrode those selfless impulses. He's impressed Chris Argent hasn't taken a shot at Scott, just for old time's sake. 

Stiles certainly considers Allison a friend, and he trusts her with his life, and maybe even more importantly, with Lydia's life, even if he's starting to think they aren't meant to be (that kiss aside) and honestly that's okay because Malia is pretty cool, if slightly terrifying (Stiles' type, apparently) and being friends with Lydia Martin is pretty good by itself. He loves Scott, and even kinda loves Allison by extension, and he tolerates Isaac well enough, and Kira's pretty great, but God is it nice to have someone in their little Scooby Gang capable of keeping up with his brain. 

The Red Scare, Stiles thinks absently as Mr Yukimura writes down some new information on the board. Sounds like a bad band name for the Alpha Pack. 

He sniggers at that, at his own cleverness, and Lydia looks weirdly relieved, even if Mr Yukimura looks at him questioningly for a minute before continuing on his lecture.

It’s not not interesting exactly. Stiles likes History, even if he tends to go down more specialized rabbit holes without the slightest prompting. But there have not been all that many things that could hold down his attention since the sacrifices and what followed. 

It’s called hypervigilance, Ms. Morell (Ms. Morell who turned out to be Deaton’s sister and the emissary to the goddamn Alpha Pack and has been scarce since she showed up to hand Stiles some illegal drugs to give them a bit more time to combat the fox spirit crawling beneath his skin) had told him, what felt like a decade ago.

The persistent feeling of being under threat.

At one point, the threats had been external - towards his Dad, Scott, Melissa, Lydia, and him.

Now it is much worse. Now he finds himself wondering what the Nogitsune has left behind, whether he can really be free of a malevolent fox spirit that delights in chaos and fear. Whether one day he will wake up somewhere he doesn’t remember arriving with blood on his hands or bomb components in his gym bag.

The Nogitsune used his problem-solving, obsessive brain to make a seamless jump from the 1940s to 2011. Scott, God love him, could never have done half the stuff that the Nogitsune did with Stiles' hands, and Stiles' mind. Of course, Stiles could never do what Scott can do with his bare hands or claws … or lead all of their friends into a trap to destroy them so effectively as the True Alpha could. Maybe they got lucky after all.

Scott’s easy - Stiles and Scott have always been together since Scott was a weird asthmatic introvert and Stiles was an unmedicated bundle of knees and elbows. Scott will follow Stiles anywhere, and Stiles will do the same.

(if we’re gonna do this, then you’re just gonna have to take me with you ) 

Stiles has hurt so many people, and he can't even do them the courtesy of remembering it.

That he can't remember does not make him feel any better, does not lessen the guilt - not when he chose to take on this Darkness, as Deaton put it, to find his father, hoping in vain he would be strong enough to deal with the consequences, the way Scott and Allison eventually had. 

Stiles’ ability to read had come back after he managed to problem solve without it and get Lydia off that animal trap without the jaws snapping shut around her leg. His knowledge and control of his own mind and body has not, and he still isn’t entirely sure - maybe never will be - that he can ever be completely in charge of that again.

It makes him a liability, at least if he's right. 

But what is he supposed to do about that, exactly? Kill himself? Run away from Beacon Hills, leave his Dad behind? Scott will never forgive him, any more than he would forgive Scott for doing the same. And Malia seems to be using him as an anchor, if not as a werecoyote than as a human being, which is probably unwise on her part but they are, as he takes pains to point out every time he sees it, making progress.  

No, it seems like despite everything Stiles is needed here, and if people have to look past a bit of a body count, so be it.

He wishes that such unconditional support and faith made him feel something other than in need of a shower to scrub the rest of the blood from his hands, and maybe his skin while he’s at it. 

He wonders how Jackson deals with it, being the instrument of some fucked up kid's deluded revenge. Apparently some of the families of his and Matt's victims have been raising a stink lately, unconvinced by the story that pins all the deaths on a kid who was found floating in a river, drowned.

At least Jackson didn't know his victims. At least Jackson got an explanation and a catharsis, a chance to be reborn after he allowed himself to die. 

Stiles increasingly believes all he got was a stay of execution.

A hand drops onto his shoulder. Gentle, flawlessly manicured, smelling of some designer hand cream with notes of things he can’t even name. The hand of Lydia Martin, the object of Stiles’ affection since the third grade, when he saw her reduce a bully to tears and solve a quadratic equation in the space of thirty minutes while looking devastatingly pretty.

(Scott made so much fun of him, but he had a crush on Lisa Sykes in the year above them, so Stiles had something to punch back with)  

To third grade Stiles Stilinski, the idea of Lydia Martin, his then and now platonic ideal of an (age-appropriate) woman, showing worry and affection for him would be both unthinkable and strangely thrilling. 

To the blood-stained junior Stiles has become, it’s not quite that miraculous.

“Stiles?” she asks, with a humiliating gentleness, like she’s afraid of breaking him. They used to talk to Lydia that way, he thinks. Afraid that exposing her to the supernatural secrets of this town might get her hurt, might get her killed. 

(if you die, i will literally go out of my freaking mind)

“Hey, sorry,” Stiles finally replies, getting to his feet, pushing Lydia’s hand off his shoulder. “I guess class ended, huh?”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “You were just sort of staring at the board, not moving. Are you okay?”

Stiles thinks about saying he’s fine, but Lydia’s smart, so smart, and she’ll know he’s lying, without any need to listen to his heartbeat. “I mean, are any of us fine at this point?” he asks tiredly.

Lydia scowls at him. “Well if you’re going to be like that, forget I asked.” And at the disgusted look on her beautiful features he wants to take his cynical and nihilistic sentiments and shove them right back down his throat.

She’s halfway to the door when he finds his words. 

“Sorry, that … that was dickish of me,” he says, clambering to his feet and hurriedly shoving his notebook and pens into his backpack. “That wasn’t cool.”

Lydia nods, but it’s not as scornful a reply as he anticipated.

Boy, if Lydia Martin was losing her edge, they were really in trouble. 

“It’s lunch now, right?” Stiles asks, genuinely unsure. 

“Yeah,” she replies, sounding distracted. “I was going to go find Allison, see how she’s coping with everything. See you with the others?” 

Our little pack meetings. “Course, wouldn’t miss it.”

She gives him a slight smile, then turns on her heels and strides out of the room with purpose. 

Stiles looks at the board. He can read it, he’s just entirely sure he understands it. 

It’s a little too cold for their normal lunch-time meeting place outside, so Scott’s friends, or pack, Kira supposes is the right term, meet in one of the larger tables tucked away into the corner of the cafeteria.

Kira sometimes wonders if people think she’s in a gang. At least she doesn’t have to explain why she’s hanging out around this particular group of mixed troublemakers and high achievers to her Dad, that would make this even worse. 

Everybody’s tucked in to lunch, Kira staring down at some leftover teriyaki chicken stir fry her Dad had made them last night, hardly his finest culinary effort (so scott as a native californian i suppose you’ve eaten at some superb sushi restaurants), but anything her Dad makes always tastes a little bit better, because she’s a sap like that. 

Allison is poking at a salad with palpably increasing frustration and possibly despair. Allison’s not even really a salad person, that Kira's noticed, preferring sandwiches of various descriptions.

Not that she’s spent a ton of time noticing her … good friend’s ex-girlfriend’s eating habits or anything, that would be weird, she just ... picks up these things sometimes. Maybe she can attribute it to the kitsune thing, though she’s not sure what a fox is going to do with this information and okay maybe she is just paranoid, but going by recent events she might have a reason the whole time. 

Lydia was the one to break it to her that Scott and Allison had history, about a week after the incident at the power station with Barrow that quite literally jump started her journey into the realm of the supernatural. It was kind of her, really, but made her wonder if it was the banshee’s way of telling her to back off.

But then she saw Isaac and Allison dancing closely at the blacklight party and saw them kiss a few times and Scott started looking at her like that and then her Mom, who far from being an interior design specialist taking a bit of time off work for her own projects turns out to be a nine hundred-year-old magic fox spirit oh and guess what you are too kira and did i mention i unleashed an evil fox spirit into the world that possessed the dead body of my ex-in-more-than-one-way boyfriend in nineteen-fourty-three.

And that fox spirit, that Nogitsune, possessed and used Scott’s best friend since childhood to sew mayhem and death for weeks and it was apparently all its doing that Barrow shot a whole town power grid’s worth of electricity into her in the first place, and it took control of her Mom’s army of demons (more normal things in the Yukimura family) and stabbed Allison Argent in the chest and then- 

...and then Scott chose his ex over Kira. 

That's not fair, she tells herself, frowning down at her lunch, which has become less appetizing after that trip down memory lane. Among other things, the kiss she had witnessed on the night of the full moon after a really wonderful few hours of rambling conversation with Scott that had her wondering if she might have made a big mistake letting him go had not looked … enjoyable, or even entirely consensual, what with the fangs and the blood and the weird power plays and the werewolf girl torn between trying to escape and ripping Kira’s throat out … though if she is again honest with herself there was a lot more of the former going on.

Allison didn't look angry to her. Allison looked scared.

It's just that Kira remembers feeling very, very small when she heard Allison’s dying confession in the ruins of Oak Creek, in the arms of the boy Kira might have just started to let herself fall for. As if whatever brief flicker of mutual attraction Kira and Scott shared could never compare to the emotional supernova of two teenagers from warring tribes like some kind of dollar-store historical romance and she had told herself she was going to let this go and focus on being the best friend to Scott she could be, because that's what she asked him to do, wasn't it?

So. Internal crisis over, time to end some of this terrible awkwardness. “So does anybody have plans for Christmas?” she asks. That’s safe enough, right? Break’s only a week away and it’s on her mind because her parents bought their tickets to see Auntie Yoon and her cousins and her father’s mom and dad out in New York City.

Kira has never been really close with her cousins (and she only has the one set, given her mother’s whole being a fox spirit born in 1200 AD thing) since her Dad moved around so much before he got his tenure at Columbia (and she is increasingly aware that his sabbatical teaching high schoolers in Crazy Magic Town, California might not last forever but hopefully they’ll at least let her finish out high school, right? She finally has friends who are like her, and not just because they are weird nerds, though Stiles certainly qualifies). 

“Stiles’s Dad is taking us camping,” Malia says excitedly. “I’m not totally sure where we’re going, but if I’m right I think I ate a really fat beaver there once.”

Okay, maybe they are not all like her. 

“Delightful,” Lydia says under her breath, not that such a thing means anything when there are now four sets of supernaturally-enhanced ears at the table, though poor Allison seems to be trying to shake loose something in her brain at the moment. 

“It was,” Malia agrees, and Kira’s not totally sure but she thinks the werecoyote might be messing with the banshee, rather than just not reading the subtext. “They don’t taste the same when they’ve been cooked.”

Or possibly not, because she looks absolutely rapturous at the idea. 

“Yes but they are much healthier for humans that way,” Stiles reminds her helpfully.

“I don’t get sick,” Malia says, frowning at her maybe-boyfriend. There is something going on there, but sometimes it looks more like a fight than a relationship.  

“Yes, but I do, and so does my Dad, and it’s nice to share a meal once in a while. Did you ever do that?”

Malia pauses in genuine thought. “I ran down a deer with two other coyotes once,” she says. “It was an old one though, very gristly.”

“Can we please talk about something else,” Isaac says with a whine. He’s sitting across from Kira, in other words as far away from Allison as possible. 

“Sure, where are you going?” Malia asks. 

Isaac shrugs, affecting his usual nonchalance. “Don’t really have anywhere to go.”

“Don’t be silly, Isaac,” Scott says with a warm smile. “You’re spending Christmas with us." He grins like he's twelve years old as he says, "Mom’s getting a tree and everything!”

Isaac looks touched, which explains why he immediately goes sarcastic. “What kind of tree?”

“The … Christmas kind?” Scott says, clearly not following. 

Kira half expects Lydia to launch into an explanation of the different species of fir trees or something equally impressive, but she just continues to eat her lunch, her stomach apparently a bit stronger than everyone else’s.

Lydia Martin is just … goals. Kira’s not sure if she wants her or wants to be her but she’s so ridiculously smart and devastatingly beautiful and honestly they are all so attractive, this group she’s joined, how is it possible, she feels incredibly frumpy by comparison. 

“I think the plan had been for Dad and I to go out of town for the month, maybe visit my mom’s family in Wisconsin, but I don’t think that’s happening,” Allison says, sounding a bit down about it. “I guess we’re just staying around, so if people want to do movie marathons or something, let me know.” 

“We’ll only be gone a few days,” Stiles says. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“My mother has decided I need to be out of Beacon Hills for a bit,” Lydia says airily. “Her sister has been trying to get us to visit out in Virginia for a few years now and I think she finally wore my mom down, and as a good, darling daughter I can’t exactly say no. But I did get her to agree we’ll be home by New Years, because my friends and I are organizing a big New Year’s Eve party at the lake house, aren’t we?” she says, her smile extremely forced.

They all find themselves nodding without meaning to. Lydia’s just kind of like that sometimes. 

“Derek’s gone again,” Isaac says conversationally. “I went by the loft and it was completely deserted." 

“Well that’s not ominous,” Stiles grumbles around a mouthful of potato chips. 

“Something feels weird,” Scott admits, and about half the heads at the table (including hers) swerve towards Lydia. 

“What?” the banshee demands.

“Do you, you know, feel anything? Sense anything? Detect an unrest, an unquiet-”

“No, Stiles,” Lydia says testilly. “I don’t sense anything, for the first time in months, and that’s why I agreed to go with my mother and get the hell out of here for a bit.” 

“Can you take my Dad with you?” Scott grumbles in the direction of the table.

Kira’s seen the tension between Agent McCall and his son and she has to admit she has not been particularly impressed, even before she heard about how Scott's father treated Stiles and the Sheriff. 

“Is he still hanging around the house?” Stiles asks. 

“Can’t get rid of him,” Scott confirms. “He definitely wants to stay for Christmas. Means I have to be a lot more careful at home.”

“You could bring him in on everything,” Malia suggests, as if that is a wise course of action. “He has a gun.” Even better. 

“My Dad has a lot of guns,” Allison says, and it’s testament to this group and what they get up to that such a statement is not met with more alarm. “And he’s a lot more use against the kind of things that we usually need them for in Beacon Hills.” 

Scott, who had sort of inadvertently implied that Chris Argent had once tried to shoot him with one of those many guns, is nodding along and Allison is looking gratefully at him for approving of her own father - a werewolf hunter - having such a deadly arsenal. 

On second thought, maybe that’s a relationship she is better off steering clear of. 

Lydia Martin is many things: Allison’s best friend, a fledgling banshee, a future shoo-in for the Fields Medal, way too good for this town and not good enough for her friends. She’s also, at this moment at least, an idiot. 

She had to tempt fate, didn't she? She had to say aloud, for the world to hear, that she hadn't had any feelings or omens or whatever and so it was definitely safe to leave Beacon Hills for a bit (which for the record, she is still doing, if anything she is more excited to get the hell out of this place for a bit, much as she loves her friends, her pack).

Anyway, because she tempted fate, she's pulling up to a gated complex that is definitely not her home or Allison's apartment, and she's looking down to see, written on her wrist in her own neat handwriting:

Meredith

Allison's a great friend, really, for just … rolling with this. At some point when they started heading towards the coast, it was clear to both of them that banshee stuff was happening, and they might as well follow it through because ignoring it tended to get even more people killed. 

God sometimes Lydia hates banshee stuff. Her specialty is Math. Math has answers. It can take a while to get there, there may not even be available solutions right now, or it could be a range as opposed to a single number. But there is an answer, somewhere. There are rules. It is societally acceptable to be good at it (well, if you aren’t trying to be the queen of the school and avoid the stigma of having a genius level IQ and letting people know about it). 

Banshee stuff is the opposite of all of that. She doesn’t know the rules; no one seems to know the rules, even Peter, as wise as he plays when he thinks he can get something out of her. Various banshees seem to function in different ways, use their powers differently, and they are so rare that every one of them is a mystery in and of themselves. Being vaguely mysterious is something Lydia is quite good at, but it’s an act. Inside she prefers to know what’s going on, what she’s choosing to show the world and what she’s holding back. Her high-achieving but emotionally maladjusted parents have been good for teaching her about that, at least. 

Jackson understood all of that without having to talk about it explicitly. It was probably why she stuck with him, and ultimately why she fell in love with him. The fear that no one else would really understand her, that she had to talk about her feelings and anxieties and fears and flaws or she would come across as an unapproachable bitch or ethereal ideal set on a pedestal of her own making.

He’s broken inside too.

Some things do not need to expressed with words, even for someone with as advanced a vocabulary as Lydia Martin. And Jackson is smart. He likes to pretend otherwise, and so did she, but she knows. And equally, she knows that he never actually bought the bubble-headed cheerleader act, but it was a comfortable lie they told one another, one of many.

When Jackson turned on her the way he had, blaming her for his failure to achieve some goal (becoming a werewolf) and implying something was wrong with her (she was immune), or worse, that she did it out of jealousy and spite, it emotionally crippled her.

And then Allison, her best friend of several months (easily a record for Lydia) was acting so weird and evasive, and her friend's relationship with her lacrosse captain boyfriend seemed unnecessarily complicated and fraught, and then Stiles was just sort of … around, and she knew he had a thing for her, though she has to admit the pile of gifts in his room was somewhat unexpected, at least before she knew Stiles, and his habit of planning for every possible contingency. 

“Lydia, you don’t have to go in,” Allison says gently, laying a hand on her arm. “We can turn around and leave, deal with this another time.”

“No, we can’t,” Lydia replies, with a weariness born of experience. Ignoring banshee stuff never ended well. The entropy of the universe proceeded no matter how much she paid attention to or ignored it, she was just even less prepared to cope, or even do something, if she wasn’t listening. 

If only a supernatural death detector came with a user manual. 

Ironically, the closest thing Lydia might have to a guide, or a mentor, or an example, is the name written on her wrist. Meredith.

A longtime resident of Eichen House, an orphan, who had been recruited by Scott and Stiles to communicate with her when she was taken by the Nogitsune, and they had learned through her where Lydia was (coup de foudre) and that she under no circumstances wanted them to look for her, because she knew, she felt the scream building in the back of her throat for a week and knew, somehow, that it was for someone she cared about. So she told them to stay away, but of course they didn't listen.

And she screamed for Allison.

Yet Allison is beside her right now, brown eyes filled with concern.

She’s not dead. 

She’s not human either.

No. No, if her senses, if the currents and background vibrations of the universe that only she and a handful of other madwomen in the attic could perceive or even try to make sense of were telling her she needed to be here, she had to go in. She had to see what Meredith had waiting for her. This had to be the other banshee calling for her, right?

She wishes she had the ability to answer the psychic phone call, if that's what this is. 

“If you could get through your first day of school,” Lydia says, a certain edge in her voice. “I can go in there, and find Meredith, and figure out what the hell it is that brought us here.”

Allison tilts her head. “You’re going to need some way to get in, you know that, right? We’re not Meredith’s family, or even her friends. They won’t just let us in.”

“No,” Lydia says with a sigh. “But Stiles says at least some of them can be bought off.” She has five hundred dollars burning a hole in her designer purse. She does not intend to start there, but it gives her some options. 

Options are what she needs right now. 

Getting into Eichen House, and getting access to Meredith ... is pitifully easy. 

Allison isn’t sure how Eichen House operates, if they have county funding or are an entirely private institution, but evidently the pay rates are low enough that a high school student with a wallet full of cash and a sense of entitlement can get access to one of the more infamous residents without all that much trouble. Allison really hopes no taxpayer money is going into this place, which feels a lot less like a hospital and a lot more like a prison. 

And now she’s alone in the waiting room, because apparently Lydia’s bribe is only enough to buy entrance for one of them, and Allison told Lydia, repeatedly, that she would be fine and will just wait out here for her to get back. 

The orderly that had first come up behind the receptionist as the middle-aged blonde was explaining in a very tired voice how not just anyone could barge in and demand to visit a resident, at least without a court order, a tall, strangely cadaverous man with a name-tag reading BRUNSKI, had stayed behind after making most of the liquid assets in Lydia’s purse vanish into his pockets.

And that name did sound familiar, and if she was remembering the context, it was not because Stiles was commending his bedside matter. Also he seemed to have a very strange, long-standing rivalry with Coach Finstock based on their rather heated altercation the first time Meredith had come looking for them. 

Allison would have been entirely content to sit and stay nothing, reflecting on the rather uncomfortable conversation she had after her last period with Mr. Bennett, the new principal of Beacon Hills High School, who had heard some ‘disturbing things about the involvement of the Argent family in the running of the school’ and while he was sympathetic to her need for physical and psychological recovery from ‘her ordeal’ he was equally firm that she would not be given special treatment.

Allison hoped her utterly bewildered expression had conveyed how likely it was she would request, much less demand, such a thing. 

The damage her mother and grandfather had done to the reputation of the Argents was almost as profound as that done by Kate, a known serial killer. If Allison wasn’t bound to Beacon Hills by forces not entirely within her control, her Dad’s suggestion about leaving and never coming back would probably be the only logical course of action. 

“Argent, huh?” the orderly - Brunski, apparently - growls, giving her a once over that leaves her feeling in desperate need of a shower. “Not the first Argent I’ve seen coming through here.”

Allison is mildly curious as to what her Dad has been doing coming to Eichen House, but is considerably more interested in not talking to the orderly any longer than is possible, because she’s starting to feel her fingernails itching just by being within a few feet the man. “I don’t know anything about that,” she says, playing up her ignorance. “I’m just here waiting for my friend.”

Brunski’s eyes are glittering unsettlingly, and he clearly wants to pry further, but mercifully the door to the reception area opens, and Lydia comes out, her expression revealing nothing but a sort of polite disinterest. “Allison,” she calls out. Allison stands up without bothering to excuse herself, and walks over to her friend. “All ready to go?”

“Yes,” Lydia replies, with a withering look at Brunski. “We’re done here.” She extends an arm, and Allison takes it, and the two girls leave the reception building and continue through the gate and neither one says a word until they are both seated in Lydia’s car.

“I don’t like it there,” Allison says. Lydia doesn’t respond. “Lyds?”

“Meredith wasn’t expecting me,” Lydia says carefully.

“Okay,” Allison says. “So, why has that got you so shaken up?”

Lydia sighs, closing her eyes. “Because that’s twice now. Twice where my senses have done something and I’ve been wrong about what it means. I feel like instead of gaining understanding I’m going backwards. I hate this.”

Allison frowns. “What did she say, exactly?”

Lydia presses her lips together. “That she didn’t call me. But…she said that I should listen. That’s it. She wouldn’t say anything else.”

Allison can entirely understand why her friend is just about ready to … well, scream, though she finds herself rather fervently hoping it won’t be in here. Then she remembered what her best friend had just said. “You said that it was twice, now? Are you talking about when you led everyone into Eichen House when Stiles went sleepwalking?”

“No,” Lydia shakes her head. “No, that actually made sense, given that the Nogitsune’s original host was rotting behind the drywall in the basement. If the Nogitsune was possessing him, being led to the original host, rather than to Stiles, is entirely within a reasonable realm of error. It wasn’t that.”

“So what was it?” Allison asks.

Lydia turns to look at her, trembling. “Allison, I screamed for you.”

“Okay, and I’m still here, just a bit … different.”

“But why ?” Lydia asks, sounding desperate. “Why did I scream for you? Banshees predict death, they don’t predict people turning into werewolves. So … what if I was wrong?”

“About why banshees scream?” Allison asks.

“About whether I was screaming for you then … or whether your-” Lydia swallows, “your death is still coming. If I thought Meredith called me, but she hadn’t called me yet, what if … what if-”

“You felt me die early.”

Lydia nods. 

They are both very quiet as they drive back to Beacon Hills. 

Chapter Text

Lydia's first aware of the world when she hears an increasingly insistent buzzing, cutting through the regular patter of rainfall on the roof of the Martin house. 

Her first thought is that it's still dark outside and it's not fair to ask her to be awake on a weekend. Her second is about the dream she just had, standing in gently falling snow in a strange world half way between Beacon Hills High School and the private garden of a yakuza boss, looking at her best friend, Allison Argent.

Her best friend, Allison Argent, who was standing over Scott McCall's crumpled body, blood up to her elbows, her eyes glowing a pulsing red. And standing behind her, clapping slowly in approval, the thing wearing their friend’s face. 

It won't happen, she tells herself, forcing her eyes open. Her gaze catches on the small patch of damp on her bedroom ceiling that Mrs. Martin has somehow never gotten around to fixing - well, calling in someone else to repair.

Lydia has a certain kind of clairvoyance, yes, but it has not yet manifested as prophetic dreams.

And the - it’s gone. We beat it.  

Besides, she's never believed in fate.

Lydia's just worried about her best friend and their Alpha. The idea of Allison falling victim to her new feral instincts in a tragic way is an unsurprising if unpleasant thing to dream about, and it was almost an afterthought after a series of less coherent scenes.

Just basic REM sleep, interrupted. 

Speaking of which…

Lydia rolls over in bed, her back protesting slightly, and grabs her phone from her bedside table. She squints at the brightness of the screen against the darkness of her bedroom, expecting to see a notification or ten from Stiles, inevitably suffering from insomnia or caught up in a research binge that's turned into an all-nighter. 

Instead, her notifications read: 2 MISSED CALLS FROM SCOTT M

It's 5:13 AM. The first call was at 4:43 AM.

Lydia is instantly more awake. While Stiles might blow up her phone for considerably less than world-ending circumstances, Scott usually respects her privacy. As if on cue, her phone begins vibrating again, and she swipes the screen to answer. "Scott?" Her voice is thick and hoarse with sleep, and she abruptly remembers that she and her mother are leaving in four hours' time for San Francisco to catch their flight to Norfolk.

"Uh, hey Lydia." His voice cuts through the sound of falling rain. So he's outdoors, wherever he is. 

And she has a sneaking suspicion she knows exactly where. Lydia sighs heavily. "You're outside my house, aren't you?"

There's a brief pause. "How did you know?"

"Because I can hear you aren't indoors and if you just wanted to tell me something over the phone you would have texted me and let me wake up at a normal hour,” she grumbles, rising from her warm bed with great reluctance. “Front door or my window?" she asks, throwing on one of her more substantial bathrobes. She's damned if she'll put on real clothes for this.

"Window. Can you uh, let me in? It's a bit cold out here."

"It's raining in the second week of December before sunrise, of course it's cold," she replies testily, knotting the robes and hastily capturing her hair in a rough ponytail. She's not wearing any makeup but on the other hand it's Scott, he'll probably barely notice. "Just give me a second."

"Sure."

There’s a muffled ‘thump’ of something landing on the roof as she moves to the window, looking out into the near-darkness and briefly spotting a pair of glowing red eyes. In any other situation, this is the start to a horror movie, she muses, wondering what it says about her life that she is utterly unfazed by the sight of an Alpha werewolf awkwardly perched in the lee of her roof. Grabbing a towel from the closet, she lays it down in front of the window and then releases the latch, before stepping back. A soaking wet Scott McCall slips through, and after closing the window she gestures for him to stay put, then finds another towel and carelessly throws it in his direction. He snatches it out of the air, of course.

“Stay over there until you’re not dripping, McCall,” Lydia says as he makes to follow her. “I don’t need you tracking mud on the rug.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, looking embarrassed. It’s a look that suits a sixteen-year old asthmatic to whom Lydia Martin would never give the time of day, not the first True Alpha in known memory. Sometimes she has trouble reconciling these two versions of Scott McCall, unsurprising given that she’s known of him far longer as Stiles’ goofy tag-along than anyone worthy of her attention, let alone care.

It’s not even been a full twelve months since Scott was bitten. Since all of their lives changed forever, for good and for bad. Sometimes it feels more like decades have passed. A year ago Scott McCall trying to get into her house before sunrise would have been cause to call the police, rather than to warn her friendly home invader not to drip on the carpet. 

There’s a part of her that would take it all back. Go back to a world where her biggest concern was what elite college far, far away from Beacon Hills she would be attending, what was the right combination of hair and makeup that would recapture Jackson’s wandering attention while not making her look like a skank, and how she could get away with no longer pretending to be average in Math because it physically pained her to act like she did not know how to solve differential equations with her eyes closed.

A world where Stiles Stilinski was a weird, slightly stalker-y loser who she vaguely remembered from middle school as one of the only ones who could keep up with her in class, but otherwise wrote off. Where Scott McCall and Isaac Lahey were people she saw once in a while and nothing more. 

But such a return to relative normality would also mean giving up Allison Argent. And that’s something she cannot bring herself to even consider, especially given how near she came to having no choice in the matter. 

Losing Jackson had been hard. Coming so close to losing Allison, when the other girl had been trying to rescue her, (ignoring all her warnings because of course, how could she not, it was who she was) - that had nearly broken her. 

Lydia expects Scott will eventually ask her if he made the right decision in biting Allison. And when he does, she’ll have to restrain the urge to slap him for daring to question whether Allison should still be alive in her presence, because it certainly has not come without complications, and his reservations and doubts make perfect sense in that context. 

Scott’s mostly dried off now, and even took off his shoes like a civilized person who hadn’t just climbed through her bedroom window. Maybe there’s hope for him after all. “Okay, Scott, I’m going to assume this is important. It had better be important.”

“I had to see you before you left,” Scott says, and the breathless desperation in his voice gives her pause. “It’s,” he swallows. “I know you’ve been wanting to talk to me.”

Of all the- “Yes, Scott, at school, not here, in my house.” 

“I’ve been busy,” he says, and it’s not wrong, Scott’s grades had started to slip while he struggled to save his best friend. And this after her three closest friends had died and come back to life lacking control of the things that made them who they were - Scott's control of his wolf and his own senses, Allison's coordination and mental clarity, and Stiles' ability to fully discern wakefulness from sleep. Now that they can all breathe for just a little while, she knows Scott’s been trying to make up for a few failed pop quizzes and missed homework.

Lydia’s oddly proud of him, honestly. Scott might not be at Stiles’ level, much less hers, but he’s not stupid. He’s wiser than most teenage boys, even if that’s an extremely low bar, and if he works at it, he can pass the science pre-reqs for the vet program at UC Davis, which would be very convenient as she has made the executive decision that she will be spending the proverbial ‘best years of her life’ at Stanford University, because honestly the very thought of leaving these idiots to fend for themselves while she’s at MIT or in Europe somewhere gives her hives.   

Scott shakes off the last of the water in his hair - and she can’t help but think it, try as she might - like a dog. The thought brings a smile to her face, which Scott apparently catches somehow as his expression turns puzzled. 

She shakes her own head. Bemused as Lydia might be by their Alpha, she has a damp seventeen-year old boy in her bedroom (and she didn’t even get laid last night) and she's leaving town in roughly four hours. “Was this really necessary?”

“I did call you,” he points out. “Just before I left the house, to make sure I couldn’t just have this conversation over the phone.”

“What if I’d been … entertaining ?” she asks, though who, she’s not entirely sure. Lydia’s not really doing the random hookup thing at the moment, and Aiden’s …well, gone.

It’s something she has been dealing with mostly in private, not needing to overload Allison, and now she regrets that. There’s a part of her that feels like she should not be mourning one of Boyd’s killers, even if she was wrong, and he wasn’t a bad guy and she’s never really going to fully forgive herself for not telling him otherwise while she had the chance.  

Scott looks at the carpet. “I uh, would have known.” His nose twitches and Lydia bites back a curse. Werewolves.

“Right,” Lydia says shortly. The less said about that the better. The less she thinks about what Scott might or might not be able to detect about her private activities (because she isn’t a nun), also the better. “Scott, it’s still dark outside, and you are in my bedroom. Why?”

He blows out a breath. “Because I need to talk to you about Allison, and you need to talk to me about Stiles, and I’d rather bother you now than interrupt you finally getting a break from all this stuff.” His eyes, brown now, are earnest as ever. Scott can be annoyingly perceptive sometimes. 

Lydia sits back on her bed. “My mother is a heavy sleeper, but she also knows I went to bed alone last night,” she warns. 

“I can keep it down,” Scott says, and he means it, unlike Stiles, whose volume tends to escalate without his awareness the more worked up he gets. Scott presses his lips together, clearly uncertain where to start. “How is she, Lydia? Like, really? In terms of what you feel comfortable telling me, I mean,” he adds hastily.

“You mean … does she hate you?”

Scott looks so lost when she says the words, and she instantly regrets it. But it’s barely past five in the morning, she’s in her bathrobe, she hasn’t showered since yesterday morning, probably missed getting some of her makeup off before she went to bed, and her hair is a mess - Lydia barely let Jackson see her like this, and she was sleeping with him. She thinks she’s being quite civil under the circumstances. 

Do not think about ‘puppy dog eyes,' Martin.

Lydia sighs. “No, Scott. She doesn’t hate you. I don’t think she knows how to hate you. She’s hurt, though. I don’t think I really have to tell you that.”

Scott shakes his head slowly. “I had to-”

Ah, here we go. “Stop,” she says, holding up a hand. “Mc-Scott, you saved my best friend’s life, and spared me having to live knowing she had died trying to rescue me. There are no circumstances under which I need you to justify that decision, do you understand?” Her voice is hard by the end, but she manages to keep her anger at him entirely verbal.

Scott nods, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Lydia wonders if she might be the first person to unambiguously agree with his decision, possibly even including Stiles. “Thank you,” he says, and he sounds almost guilty. 

“You’re welcome,” she replies simply, because she can’t deal with those emotions right now. It’s too damn early, and she’s already second guessing giving into her mother and leaving Beacon Hills for the other side of the country for over two weeks when her werewolf best friend’s first full moon was a near disaster and they are only weeks away from her second, Stiles is barely functional and increasingly withdrawn, Isaac and Kira are both nursing broken hearts, and Scott is trying to hold everything together and she just knows something bad is coming, in her banshee bones. Her turn now. “So. How’s Stiles?”

Scott smiles wistfully, and she raises an eyebrow. “Sorry! Just - just imagining his face a year ago if I told him you knew his name, let alone would ask how he was doing and like, care about the answer.”

Lydia sighs wearily. “Yes, yes. I did actually know who he was, by the way; his stalking behavior wasn’t nearly as subtle as he thought it was. I had to stop Jackson going and punching him a couple of times. That’s not the point.”

Scott’s face falls. “I don’t really know. He says he’s fine, but he’s lying, everyone can tell. He smells guilty all the time, he’s scared - of himself, I think - and I’m not sure how much he and Malia have actually talked about it, or anything, really. I’m worried he’s taking the whole thing with Allison as an chance to get away from us.”

Lydia nods, feeling validated and yet none the happier for it. “Yes, that’s about what I thought. Invite him over more during break. You two used to hang out all the time, right? Well, get back to it! Let him bring the coyote if he wants.”

Scott frowns. “Her name’s Malia.”

Lydia groans. It’s too early for her complicated feelings about Stiles fucking Stilinski, especially after she was kidnapped and tormented for a full day by a millennia-old Japanese demon wearing his face, speaking with his voice.

Trying to mess with her, to deepen her despair and dread. To make her cry and scream and fall apart emotionally. All the while luxuriating in that pain and discomfort like the insatiable monster it was. Invading her physical space, making her skin crawl, feeding her growing anxiety about what this thing might do to her with Stiles' hands if it got bored or unsatisfied with her reactions, calibrating them as carefully as she could to avoid anything like that, thinking against her will of Peter fucking Hale the whole time. And all the while trying not to think about how she might be about to lose someone very important to her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

That’s another set of things she has not allowed herself to think about enough. And yet she has avoided thinking about it, despite her intermittent nightmares, because she's not entirely sure her sanity would survive the process, and she can't fall apart on her friends now.

Lydia shakes it off, but from his expression Scott clearly picked up on her distress with his damn super-senses. “Whatever. I shouldn’t have to tell you how to be friends with Stiles, of all people." Too harsh, be nice, Lydia, he's trying. "But- thank you. For the update," she says lamely. "I don’t know that I’m less worried but at least I’m not second guessing myself about it constantly.”

Scott’s nose twitches again, and she dreads what’s coming next. Fucking werewolves.

His voice is tentative, almost pitying, and she hates it. “Lydia, are you okay? Like, a lot happened to you, and with Allison … have you talked about it with anyone?”

Goddamn you, McCall. She fights the impulse to throw him out right there and then. He’s her friend, and he’s trying to help - he’s just also got an ability to see through her lies and deflections and worst of all he actually cares to do so. Lydia has not had many people in her life who would care to see through the persona she projects. Sometimes she thinks having friends like that might be overrated.

“I’m processing,” she says, which isn’t untrue - there's no lie for his ears or his nose to detect and ruin her morning further. “I should probably not be doing it alone as often. I’ll talk to Allison, I promise.”

Scott nods. “And I’ll bring Stiles over more, make sure he’s not getting totally lost in his own head.”

Alpha and banshee stare at each other for a long, silent moment, the only noise the patter of rain and their breathing. To her ears, at least.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Lydia asks. Because so far everything they’ve discussed could easily have been said in a series of text messages, and she's gotten pretty good at reading Scott McCall too. 

“I’m worried about Allison.”

“Obviously.”

“Lydia…”

The banshee sighs. God, it would be so much easier if she didn’t care. “Yes, okay. What can I tell you? What do you want to ask so desperately at,” she checks her phone, “5:30 in the morning?”

“I don’t know how to be her Alpha,” Scott admits in a quiet voice. 

Lydia blinks. She wasn’t expecting that. “Why are you asking me, and not Derek?”

“Because Derek doesn’t like Allison. And because I did.”

“And?” Scott can be exhausting sometimes. 

He meets her eyes, to his credit. “He said I had to hurt her.”

Lydia sees red for a moment in an entirely different way, her fury at the former Alpha for framing it like that and at Scott for taking him at face value absolutely incandescent, before regaining her composure. “She has to respect you,” Lydia says, feeling like she knows where this is going. “As more than just her friend.”

“And I don’t know how I can even ask that,” Scott admits. “I know you think I did the right thing, but I never gave her a choice. She didn’t want this.”

Lydia closes her eyes, tries to remember she cares about this idiot, more than she ever expected she would. “It doesn’t matter what she wanted or didn’t want,” she says, maybe a bit bitterly, so what if she is. “It’s done." She meets his gaze. "I can at least tell you she doesn’t regret still being alive, and that you two need to work this out.”

Scott nods, then looks at the ground, nudging the towel with his foot. “Derek said Allison wants to be an Alpha, that she’s … she’s not suited to be a Beta. To be my Beta.”

Point to Derek Hale, Lydia grants silently. “And you know he’s right.”

Another nod. She’s getting irrationally annoyed at all the nodding. “Well, Scott, you’re a True Alpha. You didn’t get here by playing by the normal rules. There is no way you two can’t work something out that’s a little bit ... different than the usual. Something that you can both live with.”

Lydia might not have the nose to smell it, but she practically feels the weight lift from her friend’s shoulders at her words. “Yeah,” he says, like it’s a revelation. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t have to do this Derek’s way, or … or-”

“Peter’s,” she says, and fights down a shiver at even speaking the name aloud. “Allison told me what you guys talked about. She told me what he did to you, what he made you do for him.”

Scott pales. “Lydia, I know-”

“Scott,” she groans. “Not now. Another time, I promise, but not now.” She’s heard all the apologies she cares to about what she suffered, about what they kept from her despite all the life-threatening danger, and the massive cost they all ended up paying for trying to keep her safe. She’s not inclined to milk that right now. “The point is, I do understand, better than most, about not wanting to be … shaped by that man.”

Scott nods wordlessly. This time she cannot bring herself to resent it. 

“You can do this. Is that what you needed to hear from me so badly? You can do this. And Allison can do this. You two care too much about each other to not give it your all, and yes, Scott, she cares.”

“I know,” he says softly, and she remembers hearing about the gasping confession that led to both of their breakups and feels a bit foolish for thinking Scott didn’t. 

“Lydia…” he trails off. He's trying to read her, or something. 

She’s not having it. “Scott?”

“Are you okay? ” he asks again, quieter this time, but somehow it resonates in her mind on a very different frequency.

She wants to be honest. She doesn’t want to lie to him, and not only because he’ll know she did.

“No,” she admits, her voice barely even a whisper. “Everything with Allison, with Stiles, with … with Aiden,” she makes herself say, because she’s done hiding this, no matter how much she wants to. “It’s easier to not think about it, and then you bring it up while I’m here in my bathrobe and it’s dark outside and I-”

She’s crying. Damn it. Scott makes a hitching motion as if he’s not sure whether to approach her, so she takes the decision out of his hands and rises from the bed, walking into his shoulder and wrapping her arms around him. “How do you do it?” she asks into his collarbone. “How do you see Stiles and not see it, too?”

Scott stiffens, and she has her answer before he says a word. “Oh."

Well, at least she feels a lot less alone all of a sudden. Lydia was not at the animal clinic when the Nogitsune had been subdued the first time, but only after knocking out Kira and shoving a sword through Scott’s intestines and ripping the pain out of him in some kind of perverted catharsis. But she has noticed his uneasiness around his best friend since. She wondered if it was because of Allison, but no, maybe his dreams are a lot more like Lydia's than she thought, and that really is oddly comforting. 

The Alpha's clothes are still pretty damp, but he’s warm and solid against her, so it bothers her less than it might. She closes her eyes, letting herself take comfort from someone else for once in her life and not thinking of it like a failure of self-reliance. “I’ll be okay,” she promises.

“Lydia,” he starts, his arms belatedly coming up to rest gently against her back. It's oddly charming, how he didn't seem to know if it was allowed. 

“I’ll be okay,” she says again, willing him to believe it just as she does. Reluctantly she lets go and takes a step back, blinking her tears away. “Scott, you should probably be going. It’s going to be light soon, and Mom’s an early riser.”

Scott looks a bit lost for a moment. It strikes Lydia how this is one thing she’s quite experienced at - getting reluctant boys out of her bedroom before dawn with her mother none the wiser. Even if this might be different than all those before it in one key respect.

For a second, just a second, she lets herself consider it. He’s Allison’s, she thinks almost immediately, eyes flicking over his crooked jaw and handsome profile before she can stop herself. Or Kira’s, or whoever else’s. Besides, you’d probably strangle him in his sleep with the amount of worrying he does. 

Scott’s senses are, thank God, evidently not well enough attuned to pick up on her brief moment of curiosity. That would truly be the last thing in the world she needed. 

“Yeah,” he says, looking at the window, and the hint of daylight starting to peak above the horizon. “Yeah I probably should. I’m sorry, I mean, I probably could have just-”

“Scott,” Lydia says, gently taking his hand (warm under hers; Scott runs a high body temperature, though she's not sure if it's a werewolf thing or a Scott thing). “It’s okay. I understand." She forces herself to admit it. "And maybe I needed this too.”

From where he's on one knee getting his shoes back on, Scott grins up at her with that silly, crooked-jaw grin of his, and yeah, she understands why Allison never got over him. “Really?”

“I’ll kill you if you tell anyone,” she retorts, feeling her cheeks warm. “But yes, between the two of us. Now get moving!”

Scott rises to his feet, leans forward, and hugs her again, but then he’s opening her window and ducking back onto the roof, looking around and listening, before he drops out of sight. Lydia closes the window and cleans up the towels, including the one Scott was standing on. It was a good call, there would have been muddy footprints everywhere she did not want to explain to her mother. 

Then she laughs, out loud, because what else is there to do when that just happened. 

And of all the things, that’s the one that gets her. “Lydia?” her mother’s muffled voice calls through the wall of her bedroom. 

“Nothing,” she says, loudly enough to be heard. She climbs back into bed, pulling the duvet over her. “I’m going to catch a bit more sleep.” 

She doesn’t hear Natalie Martin’s reply. 

Chapter Text

“Hey, are you ready to go?”

Scott had not quite known what was meant when someone said someone or something was a ‘godsend’ until Isaac Lahey, his friend, Beta, and in this case, savior, came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. 

Scott’s father, looking slightly ridiculous with his sleeves rolled up from where he had been attempting to fix some of the leaks in the roof (it is the least he can do with how much time he's been spending here), looks rather annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of bonding with his estranged son. Scott's dad doesn’t like Isaac, hasn’t since his Beta joked about being an orphan just before Allison gassed a room full of federal law enforcement.

Scott’s subsequently been told in no uncertain terms just how lucky he is that that little stunt did not result in criminal charges. Rafael McCall knows that Scott and his friends ultimately saved Melissa and Chris and the Sheriff, even if he does not have the slightest clue how all that happened, and with Stiles’ Dad finally in the know, they were able to obfuscate (make unclear, obscure, or unintelligible) the truth of the events around the lunar eclipse and the battle between a Darach pretending to be his English teacher and the Alpha of Alphas. 

Scott understands that his father is trying, and so does Mom. He just desperately wishes his father might try to reconnect with his son at any other time than when he’s juggling a new Beta (who is also his ex-girlfriend who totally kissed him on the full moon, even if it was part of an effort to escape) and the aftermath of a series of traumas that he cannot even begin to explain to his gene donor. It’s not fair to ask his mother to send her ex-husband away, not when he’s actually on good behavior and really seems to have kicked his drinking problem. But God, this is a bad time. 

“Scott, can we-”

“Sorry," he says, not at all sorry. "I said I would go see Stiles and the others once they got back from camping!” Scott explains hastily, pushing past the visibly exasperated FBI agent. “We’ll definitely continue this conversation when I get back though, promise!”

Isaac laughs low enough that only a werewolf can hear him, and Scott has to wrestle the smile off his face. No need to rub it in that he’s totally bailing and has only been half-listening to his dad in the first place. 

“Scott-”

The Alpha of Beacon Hills is tying his sneakers and shrugging on a denim jacket when the parent whose feelings Scott actually cares about walks into the front hallway in her scrubs, looking frazzled and reeking of stress. "Mom, is everything okay?"

"What?" Melissa asks distractedly. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine, sweetie, we're just very short-staffed today because the new Director and a few of the department heads are going to this big charity auction fundraiser thing, something about victims' families, I honestly didn't catch the specifics." 

Scott's father takes his opportunity to contribute. "It's being organized by some members of the town council for the families of the people killed last year by that student, Matt, was it?"

"Oh," Scott says, not expecting to her that name, of all things. "That's nice, then." He means it, but he's suddenly very aware of Isaac, whose abusive father was Matt's first victim. Somehow he doubts any of that money is going to his Beta.

Though apparently Argent offered to help his housemate with some paperwork concerning selling the Lahey house, which was thoughtful. The McCalls happily provide a roof and food, but some things are a bit beyond Scott and his mother. On the other hand, Argent's experience with bureaucracy of all kinds seems endless.

"It is," Agent McCall agrees, with what could in dim light be mistaken for a smile. "Nice to see the community here coming together after all the tragedies this town has seen."

Aaaaand any interest Scott had in learning more has evaporated with his father's unasked-for involvement. "We should be going," Scott says to Isaac.

"Say hi to Stiles and the Sheriff for me," Mom says automatically, double checking the contents of her bag, which Scott's nose can tell includes her 'classic' leftover sandwich, featuring some roast beef and assorted greens. "Will anyone else be there?"

"Uh, Malia, and the two of us and um, maybe Allison?"

"Argent ?" his dad asks, as if he needs an answer to that question. He plows onwards despite getting mostly confused looks from his ex-wife and son. "She was involved in an assault case, I heard, though no charges were filed. That's your ex-girlfriend, right?"

Scott definitely never told Agent McCall he and Allison had been involved, and he wonders if Mom had let it slip without realizing the complications it might create with her painfully by-the-book ex-husband. 

"You know Allison, Rafe," Mom says, sounding annoyed at his obviously rhetorical question. "Her father brought her in after it happened -  nothing too bad, some superficial wounds and normal shock," she explains smoothly. "Still no news on those car jackers though."

"A common theme with the Sheriff these days," his dad murmurs, and maybe if his son wasn't an Alpha werewolf no one would have heard him. Scott fights off the impulse to bite back at him, gives his Mom a quick hug and kiss on the cheek, and leads Isaac out the door into the falling snow as quickly as possible. 

It isn't quite a White Christmas, Scott thinks, remembering one of his Mom's favorite songs, but snowfall in Beacon Hills is rare enough that two days before could probably be said to count.

Isaac walks beside him, clad from the waist up in knitwear, including a sweater that Mom had actually knitted herself. Isaac only made a cursory effort to hide his tears at the gift, and Scott's mother had given him a hug worthy of a werewolf. 

Naturally, his friend's sarcasm levels have increased noticeably, clearly trying to make up for showing genuine emotion in front of other people. Scott glances at his first Beta, who is looking up into the sky with poorly-disguised childlike wonder, and wonders if there might ever come a day Isaac might feel less self-conscious displaying any kind of vulnerability. 

(isaac looked broken that night at oak creek, reeling from allison's confession, the pain of his wounds, and the shocking revelation that the huntress they both loved was not invulnerable after all)

The boys take another right turn, and three driveways down the street Scott catches sight of his best friend's battered and battle hardened jeep sitting beside the Sheriff's cruiser. He's glad to see Stiles' dad taking a bit of time off work, especially given his own father's unwelcome interest in the unsolved cases (which were mostly solved, actually, the solutions just involved werewolves, kanimas, and other things that could not be easily hauled in front of a jury).

Isaac trails behind nervously as Scott makes the familiar trek to the Stilinski's front door, rapping a knuckle on the dark wood. To their slight surprise, it's not a Stilinski who answers.

"I thought I smelled you two," Malia says with a nod. The werecoyote is drowning in one of Stiles' old flannels, and her hair is a bit shorter than it was the last time he saw her in school. It suits her, Scott thinks. He also thinks she's wearing eyeliner (Lydia's influence, no doubt) … and Stiles' deodorant. She's wearing some very fluffy socks he hasn't seen before. He wonders how things are going with her stepfather these days. Apparently Henry Tate was satisfied with Marin Morrell's assessment that Malia had recovered from her mental break after she was found living in the woods, and she is officially staying with him while Scott, Stiles, and Lydia all try in the own ways to coax her into just sticking to their cover story.

"It's cold," Malia says when neither of them immediately reply. "You should come in."

She moves aside to let them in before she closes the door with maybe a bit more force than required. Scott shares a knowing look with Isaac. There's snow melting in his curly dark blonde hair, and Scott thinks he looks a lot more like the 17 year old he is. 

Hostess duties fulfilled, Malia leaves them without another word. Once they've hung up their jackets and taken off their shoes, Scott and Isaac follow her into the living room.

Scott has been picking up her scent since the door opened, and even before that he somehow knew he would find her here, but nonetheless there's a part of him that's thrown off by the sight of Allison sitting on the couch, legs folded up underneath her. She waves nervously at both of them, for presumably different reasons. Isaac still seems unsure how to behave around her and Allison is, to be honest, not any better. 

Scott has not seen much of Allison since Christmas Break started either - Argent did end up taking her out of town for a few days, and the talked-of movie marathons have not taken place, though he's roped Stiles and Malia into a few hours-long Halo contests and started to see a little bit of light return to his best friend's eyes when he absolutely 'kicks Scott's furry ass.' 

Also, Malia's broken two controllers. She does not lose gracefully.

Eyes flicking again to Allison, Scott hopes she has at least been keeping up with Lydia - his early morning visit to the banshee has left him newly concerned that none of the pack are actually talking to one another, and he’s seen where that lack of communication can lead. 

(the music pulses like something alive and Allison’s eyes shine with tears as Scott angrily tells her to stay out of his way)

Scott closes his eyes.

(a crossbow bolt is centered on his chest, still as death, and Allison’s eyes blaze with cold fury as she tells Scott to stay out of her way)

The Alpha of Beacon Hills will have to lead by example. Admitting that what happened with Peter still haunts him is a start, he supposes. 

Scott has struck up a somewhat halting conversation with Malia, and Isaac is standing around looking like he’s about to bolt if someone (her, probably) looks at him wrong, so Allison makes her way into the kitchen a minute after Stiles comes skidding into the room, a bit visibly annoyed with the werecoyote for not actually telling him that company had arrived. This sparks another argument about the limits of human senses and coyote manners. 

Allison’s still not sure if they are actually together or not, and she suspects the same is true of them. The difference between those two and Allison and seemingly everyone in her life not named Lydia is that they seem relatively content with that ambiguity. 

She really does need to talk to Isaac at some point. They were actually getting to be friends, even if a lot of that interaction was, in hindsight, a function of their strong attraction to the each other. Allison thinks the fact that he was her ‘emotional tether’ for the Nemeton sacrifices should mean something, and the thought scares her, because what if she screwed this up? What if her dying confession being for Scott, not Isaac, ruined all of their chances at happiness? 

She’s catastrophizing, she knows it. Allison's still seventeen years old (though eighteen is coming up quickly), she’s a junior in high school, the odds she has met the only person she could ever spend the rest of her life with are miniscule, the odds that one missed opportunity to be with someone she’s known for barely eight months will be the only one she gets even more so. And yet Allison has just been reminded, in the most brutal way possible, that the odds of her living to see twenty, let alone her having a happily-ever-after with someone she hasn’t met yet, are by no means sure. She would be dead if Scott had not chosen to bet that she would be better off as a werewolf than in the ground, despite the risk of her dying in even greater agony if the Bite had not taken.   

“So, Allison, you’re looking a bit better.” Sheriff Stilinski’s voice has a bit of a question in it, but he’s smiling, out of uniform and nursing a steaming mug of what her nose tells her is decaf. 

“Yeah, definitely feeling better,” she agrees. That much is certainly true. The last time the Sheriff saw her was probably when she was lying unconscious in the hospital. 

Stilinski clears his throat, evidently not sure how to approach this. “And the uh, werewolf thing?”

“Oh, that,” Allison says nervously. “Yeah I’m-it’s-I’m getting used to it, I think.”

“How about your father? I imagine this has been a bit of a shock to the system.”

Has it ever. She opts not to tell the Sheriff about the Calaveras’ threats; Stiles won’t thank her for getting his father in the middle of all of that. “He’s … adjusting,” Allison says delicately. “We both are, really.”

“Well, I obviously can’t imagine what that’s like, and I’d rather keep it that way, no offense.”

Allison forces a smile. “You don’t have to worry about me. Scott’s the only one capable of turning people left in the town.”

The Sheriff pales slightly. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-I’m still pretty new to all of this stuff, remember. I keep telling Stiles he has to be patient with me.”

“Better that you know though, right?” Allison asks. 

Stilinski blows out a breath. “I’m not sleeping quite as well as I used to,” he jokes. “But it’s nice to have some kind of explanation for all the animal attacks and other things that happen in this town. And, well, one of my unsolved cases is constantly around the house these days instead of in the woods, so I count that as a win. Even if she's still learning to use the door and not Stiles' window.”

Allison has to smile at that. She’s not sure what to make of Malia, and the werecoyote does not seem to care that much for her (though the other girl did dent a locker with Aaron Thompson for objectifying her, so there may be some potential there). “Definitely. How uh, how was the camping?”

Stilinski rubs a hand over his eyes. “Stiles had to remind Malia that humans don’t go to the bathroom in the woods in front of other humans, but otherwise it was pretty good. It’s nice to get away from Beacon Hills once in a while. Might try again in the spring when it’s a little warmer though. You and your family do much camping?”

“Not really. We did go out to a cabin that my aunt and uncle owned in Minnesota one time,” Allison says. “We moved around a lot when I was younger, but it was always house to house. Dad was really good at finding bargains." 

“That part of the hunter training as well?” At Allison’s puzzled look, he waves it off. “Nevermind, bad joke, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Allison says politely. 

“Oh, were you looking for something before I started talking your ear off?” Stilinski asks, suddenly aware of the awkwardness Allison had been trying to avoid from the start. She remembers how she fell apart in the elevator over the stress of Isaac's injuries, her father's evasiveness, and a bunch of other things, and Allison appreciated it at the time, she really did, but she still doesn’t know the Sheriff all that well, and he’s had a … contentious relationship with her father, and her mother and grandfather before that, not to mention Kate. 

“Not really,” she admits. “I was thinking of getting a glass of water but I was mostly trying to uh, just take some space.”

Stilinski frowns. “Is everything okay?” Then he shakes his head. “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t pry. I’ll get you something to drink,” he says, opening one of the kitchen cabinets. 

“It’s okay,” Allison says, and mostly means it. “It’s um … just personal drama. Teenagers, you know?” she says with a half-hearted laugh.

The Sheriff nods knowingly. “Oh yeah, that I do. Best of luck with that. Here you go,” he says, handing over the glass. “I should probably go lie down for a bit before dinner. Good to see you, Allison.”

She waves lightly at him as he leaves, then closes her eyes and slumps against the counter.

And then she picks up the approach of a a very familiar scent, and her entire body stiffens in response. 

Allison opens her eyes to see Isaac’s baby blues staring back at her. “Oh, hey!” she says, as if she’s surprised to see him there. 

“Hey,” Isaac says. He looks down at his feet, and then up at her. “I uh, haven’t seen much of you lately.”

“Yeah," she says, trying to pass it off as happenstance for some reason. "I’ve been busy, you know?”

Isaac shrugs. “It's okay, I’ve been avoiding you too.”

She can always count on Isaac not to beat around the bush. Sometimes the trait is less endearing. 

“It’s fine,” she says. “I … things didn’t end like we hoped, and it’s not, um, always easy to be friends after that. But I’d like to,” she adds, trying not to sound too desperate. 

Isaac’s face goes strangely blank. “I’m not sure,” he says after a moment. “But maybe we can? Eventually?” There's a hint of optimism there, hidden under Isaac's cloak of detachment.

“Eventually,” Allison agrees. It’s probably the best she is going to get out of this conversation. “Uh, how have things been with the McCalls?”

“Scott’s dad is an ass,” Isaac replies bluntly. “But Melissa’s doing her best, and it’s been a while since I got to decorate a tree.”

“She actually got you to decorate a tree?” Allison says, raising an eyebrow. “Was there a bribe or threat involved?”

Isaac snorts. “Have you ever tried saying ‘no’ to Scott’s mom?”

“Point,” Allison concedes. “She’s got her ways.” 

She regrets how little she’s actually been able to talk with Melissa McCall. A few times after she and Scott officially started dating after the night of the Winter Formal, before her father caught wind of what was happening and ambushed them on the overlook.

(it's the first time she's been truly scared of her father, and the terrified, desperate look in Scott’s eyes as he stares into the barrel of the Desert Eagle will haunt her nightmares for months)

At that point they had to hide from everyone, not just her family, so the only times she was at the McCall house was when Scott knew his mother was working a late shift. She had distantly hoped that her stabilizing friendship with Scott might give her more opportunities, but instead the last time she had seen Melissa Allison was barely cognizant of her presence, existing in a muffled roar of unfamiliar sounds and scents and fear until…

Until Scott arrived, and everything got quieter. Because he was her Alpha, and that was something he could do, and something she could not easily do without him. 

Allison broke up the second time with Scott for a lot of reasons - the broken trust between them (mutual, it turned out), her need to find her equilibrium after everything that happened with Gerard (Scott threw her off balance completely, but she no longer counted that as a positive), and her resentment at being taken for granted (which in hindsight wasn’t even that grounded, Scott was just as lost and scared as she was).

(it was the night outside the hospital when I threatened your mother, wasn't it?)

In hindsight (and only in hindsight), she found Scott’s lies and omissions completely understandable. He wasn’t shutting her out because he did not trust her, at least that wasn’t the real, underlying reason. He was scared, because his mother was caught in the crosshairs of a war that she did not even know was being waged, and he was forced to make a deal with the devil to keep her safe. It was incredibly low of Gerard to blackmail Scott with the life of the person he cared for more than any other, more than her, even, though she knows Scott would rather tear himself apart than chose one of them over the other. Par for the course for the Argent's former patriarch, as she had learned, to her sorrow. 

(when it comes to survival? i’d kill my own son)

Son of a bitch.

“It’s um, it’s been good though,” Isaac finally says. “It’s nice to have a place to belong, you know?”

You belonged with me, she very much does not reply. 

“I do,” she says instead. “Despite everything, I’m glad we have our … pack.”

"Yeah."

They stare at each other for an excruciating ten seconds or so. 

Allison breaks first. "Isaac, please, I'm sor-"

"Allison, don't."

She blinks. "What?"

Isaac looks down at his feet. "Don't apologize."

"Isa-"

"I can't." He blinks away tears furiously. "I can't be your friend right now, not yet, at least. I need you to respect that."

(i need time to get back to friends)

Allison swallows, forcing a smile despite feeling like she's going to throw up. "Yeah. Yes, of course. Whatever you need."

The other werewolf eyes her warily, but he smells relieved. "Right. Thanks." She notes the slight inhale and twitch of his nose as he seeks his own insight into her state of mind. 

Joke's on him, I don't know if I'm telling the truth or not! 

When Allison gets back to the living room, Malia is wandering around with her arms waving animatedly, evidently catching Scott up on their camping trip. Stiles is occupied with his laptop, and as she comes closer a window opens on the screen and displays a welcome sight. Stiles sits back on his haunches, looking pleased.

"Lydia!" Allison finds herself crying aloud, and waves frantically at the screen. She hasn't realized until now how desperately she has been missing her best friend, though they have been texting and got a couple of short calls in last week. Virginia Beach is apparently completely unremarkable, but even as Lydia complained about her boredom, Allison could hear how badly she needs this break from Beacon Hills. Besides, Allison knows for a fact Lydia brought a half dozen of her trashiest, most saccharine romance novels (the ones she likes to pretend belong to her mother) in addition to her physics textbooks. 

"Allison!" Lydia's tinny voice calls back with just as much excitement. "Oh and you too, Stiles, nice job sorting this out."

Malia moves behind Allison and looks over her shoulder distrustfully. "I don't understand video calls. Why not just do a normal call? It's not like you can read expressions that well, or pick up scents, and the audio quality isn’t as good.”

Stiles stares at her less like she's his girlfriend and more like he's a puzzle he is trying to solve. “What, so you can hear if somebody’s sneaking up behind the person you’re talking to?”

Abruptly, Scott laughs. “Dude, remember when Derek-”

Stiles shakes his head. “As if I’ll ever forget, that was unbelievably messed up.”

Malia tilts her head, eyes back and forth between the boys before settling on Stiles. “When Derek what?”

Allison has heard this story, and puts a hand over her mouth, laughing so hard it turns into a snort, which gets everyone else going. Well, except Malia, who still looks annoyed at being left out. 

Stiles puts a hand on his probably-girlfriend’s shoulder. “Very, very long story, but Derek seemed to think that showing up when Scott wasn’t expecting it and chasing him through parking garages and breaking into his bedroom counted as training.”

Malia frowns. “Teaching you to sense threats before you can see them is valuable, it saved my life more than once.”

“Scott wasn’t living in the woods, Mal.”

“No, he was just being chased by werewolves,” the werecoyote replies. She looks at Scott, her expression serious. “I think it was good training.”

“You would,” Lydia mumbles, soft enough to not be heard by most people but, again, werewolves. 

Stiles manages to shorten the argument and pulls Malia away with the promise of sugar cookies, leading her to the kitchen. This leaves Scott and Allison alone with the video call, Isaac standing a healthy distance away, looking very out of place and Allison feels guilty about that but also does not know what to do. 

Allison turns to talk to Lydia when she hears a very loud buzzing. Well, loud to her ears; it takes Scott two rings before he’s finishing his phone out of his jeans. He opens it without checking the caller ID. “Hey, were you able to get away?” he asks. 

Allison tenses when she hears Kira’s strained voice answer him. “For like, five minutes, I’m sorry, I know I said I would call like, four times now.”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” her Alpha says, sitting back on the couch with a lazy smile that makes her insides clench. “It has to be nice to have that much family around you for Christmas.”

“Nice is not how I would put it,” Kira’s tinny voice replies. “But it’s certainly different. Is everybody there?”

“Yeah, yeah - well, Malia and Stiles aren’t here right now, but Isaac and Allison are, and Lydia’s on Skype.”

“Shit, I should have thought of that.”

“Is that Kira?” the tiny image of Lydia asks.

“Hi Lydia!” Kira practically yells through the speaker of Scott’s phone, loud enough to cause static. 

Scott winces. “Okay, maybe we ought to try this another time - but it was good to hear from you!”

“Yeah, shit, my Mom’s calling for me anyway. Bye guys, see you in a week!”

Allison feels her shoulders relax slightly as the kitsune hangs up, and tries to tell herself it's because of the artificially amplified vocal range and her new werewolf hearing and not something a lot more personal. She glances over at Scott, who leans forward and begins asking Lydia about what's she's been doing in Virginia. He's earnest as ever, and when he laughs at something she says, Allison almost finds herself leaning her head on his shoulder. She freezes when she realizes what she’s doing. 

Unlike Kira, Lydia seems to have entirely escaped her family's attention, so they go on for some time, with Allison shaking off her unease and falling into an easy rapport with her best friend. Scott gets up to talk to Isaac and the Sheriff, for which Allison is grateful, both for the space from her exes and also for someone trying to make Isaac feel welcome when they the fact that he probably doesn’t is entirely her fault. 

Stiles returns with Malia, and the two of them argue over what to put on the TV as Scott passes out snacks. His fingers brush Allison's as he passes a bowl of peanuts (apparently Malia likes them, so Stiles bought an industrial quantity) and their eyes meet, and Allison feels a familiar and not particularly welcome fluttering  in her chest, like she’s just gotten into her first class at Beacon Hills High School and some cute boy is tapping her on the shoulder and holding out exactly what she needs with a dopey grin she can’t help herself but return. 

Scott looks away first with a worried expression on his face that makes more sense when she sees that Malia’s claws are out. Evidently her argument with Stiles got a bit heated. One of them won, because the Charlie Brown Christmas Special has just started playing on the big TV. They all say their goodbyes to Lydia and settle in.

In the end Malia ends up practically in Stiles’ lap, with Scott and Allison sharing the other half of the couch, albeit with a healthy (and to a not insignificant part of her psyche, frustrating) distance between them. Isaac’s curled up in the Sheriff’s armchair, eyes fixed on the screen. Allison tries to pay attention to the familiar words and story, but her attention is inevitably drawn to the two werewolves: the way they laugh, and smile, the scents coming off of them and the way that while she can tell Isaac’s only passingly familiar with the special, Scott is practically mouthing the words along with the characters. She doesn’t remember Scott mentioning this being one of his Christmas traditions, but she supposes it might have just never come up. Last Christmas, the Argents were still in San Francisco. 

As the credits play, Malia growls and digs out her own phone from her jeans, slightly squishing an audibly protesting Stiles. Her scent changes when she answers, and Allison’s not sure what she’s picking up, exactly. She still has a lot to learn as a wolf.

There’s a brief, tense conversation, and the werecoyote hangs up with a sigh. 

“That was Dad,” Malia says. “He, uh - I promised I would make dinner with him tonight. You know, like, bonding... father and daughter type things.” She sounds conflicted at best. “He’s trying. And I should to. Try, I mean.”

Stiles rubs a hand on her back. “Do you want me to come with?”

Malia sighs. “He’s driving over to pick me up, says he’ll be there in five minutes or so. I forgot to check my text messages. Again.” She gets to her feet, and Stiles follows her with an apologetic glance at the rest of them, talking in low tones Allison tries not to overhear. It’s sweet to see Stiles helping Malia with something that’s obviously troubling her this much, and Allison supposes that’s hardly surprising as Henry Tate did have her institutionalized barely two weeks after finding out she was alive. 

Isaac’s disappeared, and she’s embarrassed to admit she doesn’t know if he went home or for a walk or to the bathroom. In any case, the only people left in the living room as the music plays over the last part of the credits are her and Scott.

And there is definitely something she has been meaning to share, because apparently calling and talking to Scott like a normal person is beyond her capacities right now. “Scott, there’s something you need to know. It’s hunter related.”

She has his attention instantly, as she knew she would. Allison explains the delicate situation with the Calaveras, with the warning that they delivered to both of them, and she senses Scott’s growing unease and anxiety as she finishes. “Dad said he can’t protect me anymore,” she admits quietly, her eyes downcast by the end. 

Gentle but strong hands reach out to take hers. She can hear Scott’s heartbeat like a drum solo in her head. “Allison, we’re going to figure this out, okay?” he says, so softly that it kind of breaks her heart. 

“We have to,” Allison says, echoing her father’s words. “I didn’t - I know things went badly last time, and I think it’s because we didn’t communicate well enough. I don’t want to ask-”

“No,” Scott says, shaking his head. “No, I messed up. I won’t do it again. We’ll do this together.”

She nods. “Okay,” she almost whispers, willing herself to believe it. “But we have to be careful.”

Scott is shoved hard into the cushions of his mother’s couch, and Allison’s mouth crashes into his with all the subtlety of a thunderstorm. His blood is up, and so is hers (and so are other things) and there’s a voice in his head telling him this is a very, very bad idea but Allison’s tongue is in his mouth and this time there aren’t any fangs and she’s solid and warm and heaving above him and God has he missed this, missed them.

Her right arm moves down his side to slip under his t-shirt, nails trailing teasingly along his ribcage as she sprawls out above him, held up now by one hand, an excited hitch in her breath. His hands are still over her white sweater, but it’s probably not going to stay like that for long, because Mom left for a night shift an hour ago, and his dad is finally off doing FBI shit and not hanging around pretending to be a father, and then Allison rolls her hips against him and when he groans she pulls back and favors him with a grin that’s absolutely sinful. 

With a wicked smirk on her swollen lips, Allison sits back on his legs, hands trailing down his chest. And he’s so drunk on endorphins and nostalgia that he doesn’t realize what she’s doing until her nimble archer’s fingers pop the button of his jeans and she reaches for the waistband of his boxers, daring fingers grazing the skin under them.

Scott makes a noise that is frankly a bit embarrassing as he pushes her hands away like they are on fire. “Allison, no! We - we can’t -”

“Why not?” she whines petulantly, and her brown eyes are dark and hooded with desire. He can smell her excitement, and he realizes with a little thrill that she can probably smell him too.

But -

“We- we need to talk about this,” he gasps out, trying to find leverage to get out from under her.

There’s only one problem - Allison’s almost as strong as he is now.

With another sultry grin, her hands grab his as they flail against her, fingers wrapping around his wrists and shoving down, pinning them above him as she arches into him, her groin grinding achingly against his. “I don’t want to talk,” she says, closing her eyes with a sigh, and maybe half a year ago he would have just followed his hormones but the way she’s holding him down is reminding him of how a few weeks ago he held a sobbing, terrified Allison against that tree after dragging her from an electrified net.

“Allison, stop,” he growls, and he’s pretty sure his eyes flash red for a moment. 

He expects that to be the end of it. 

It’s not. 

“Why, Scott?” she asks, her voice breathless, her eyes now burning gold. Smirking, Allison rolls her hips into his again, harder but also slower this time, and he can’t hold back a moan at the contact, which only serves to convince her he does want this. “Haven’t you missed me?” She leans down to whisper in his ear, “I’ve been thinking about this for weeks.” At the words Scott feels a chill run down his spine and his skin breaks out in goosebumps, but it’s not the good kind. 

With a grunt of exertion, Scott gathers his strength and breaks her grip on his wrists, pushing her up and off of him with enough force that she topples off the sofa entirely and hits the floor with a solid ‘thump.’ The impact seems to break her out of whatever animalistic frenzy had taken her over. Her face pales to bone white as she puts her hand over her mouth, shaking, eyes blown wide. “I’m sorry,” she gasps. “I’m so -Scott, I didn’t-”

“It’s okay,” he says, and it’s not, but he needs to keep her calm, because Scott can sense her growing stress and her fingernails are looking a bit pointy and he really does not need her to wolf out in his living room, especially when his jeans are still half-way unzipped. 

“I don’t know why I did that,” she says in a whisper, shaking her head. “I just … I wanted it, I wanted you, and it was like I couldn’t hear what you were saying … or maybe - maybe I didn’t want to..?” She sounds absolutely horrified at the thought. Scott knows Allison - she has always been good about consent and boundaries, at least after she figured out that Scott had never done any of this until he met her. 

This kind of - that’s never happened before. 

Before he can say another word - to comfort her or confront her, he's not sure - there’s a  rapping on his front door, and he’s surprised to realize that he didn’t actually hear Stiles and Malia arriving in the jeep even though they are hardly being quiet. Both Scott and Allison jerk violently at the noise, and Allison’s mouth moves but no sound comes out and then she’s rolling away from him, looking a bit sick to her stomach. With a sigh he gets to his feet and hurries to the door, trying not to smell the shame and hurt rolling off his apparently-still-ex-girlfriend.  

Malia looks even more impatient than usual, and Stiles trails after her, trying and failing to hold back a grin and wait is that a hickey …

Before he can look closer at his best friend’s neck, his best friend’s apparently-now-girlfriend pulls him into the house past a dazed Scott. Stiles manages the impressive trick of kicking off his sneakers while being towed into the living by a determined werecoyote. 

Then Malia stops, and Scott turns to see her take a deep inhale, eyes locked on Allison. “You smell like each other,” she says, like it's an accusation, and Scott fights the urge to run into the night like a coward. He second guesses that decision when Isaac comes downstairs from his room to investigate the noise and god he probably heard that and he’s definitely going to smell that and how the hell is he supposed to explain himself to his first Beta.

God he sucks as an Alpha. He was way too tough on Derek back in the day, he decides. He should apologize the next time he sees the older wolf. 

Malia mercifully does not inquire further when she notices Isaac, so maybe Stiles really is making progress after all. 

Allison won’t meet his eyes as he tries to reassert order. At some point before all of that, they had agreed to share the news about the Calaveras with the rest of the pack, or at least the members who were in Beacon Hills, with Kira and Lydia still out of town. 

Scott takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, and then opens them again, and based on the reaction of his pack, they flickered red. A part of him is pleased by their sudden silence, while another is dismayed at how easy it was to command them. Allison, Isaac, and Malia all have their eyes fixed on Scott.

Show time, Alpha. “There’s something we need to talk about. The next full moon is coming in a little over a week - and there’s something I need to tell you before it gets here.”

He nods toward Allison, who still can't quite look him in the eyes. “There are going to be hunters in Beacon Hills when the full moon rise next. But they aren’t hunting us - our pack - yet.”

“But that could change,” Stiles says, focus setting in. “What do you know?”

“And why haven’t you told us?” Malia demands.

“One at a time,” Allison grumbles, and all eyes shift to her. Scott’s grateful for her support but also feels a bit annoyed at her exasperated tone. 

“There’s a Hunter family from Mexico, the Calaveras. They were in Beacon Hills a few weeks ago - watching and asking questions, I guess.”

“What kinds of questions?” Stiles asks, eyes narrowing. 

“Questions about Scott,” Allison says wearily. “They want to know what having a teenage True Alpha leading a pack actually means.”

“Which kinda makes sense, honestly,” Isaac says, shrugging. “I mean, think of the body count from the last year. If I was a hunter I might be pretty worried too.”

“How can we get rid of them?” Malia asks immediately.

Scott glances at Allison, who is looking at her lap again, clearly not all there with the rest of them. “We can’t," Scott says. "Not without starting a war.”

“So the plan is what,” Stiles says with a frown, “to convince them we aren’t a threat? That they can leave us alone?”

“Something like that,” Allison mumbles. 

Scott bites back the urge to rebuke her. The Alpha... presence, for lack of a better word, is getting very testy around his new Beta right now, and he does not like it in the least. “Like I said, they're watching us. And they know Allison broke out last full moon, and they aren’t happy about it.”

“I can’t imagine they're thrilled you bit a hunter either,” Malia says to no one in particular. Scott and Allison both wince anyway. 

“That’s part of it, yeah,” Scott admits, rubbing the back of his head. “The rules for hunters that get bitten are…” he trails off, not quite able to say it aloud.

“We’re supposed to take our own lives, before our first full moon,” Allison finishes. “And, obviously, I chose not to.”

“Are we worried they might try to remedy that?” Stiles asks, his leg bouncing up and down until Malia lays a hand on it.

Allison shrugs. “They might, but it’s a lot less likely if we all stay out of trouble. They did send my father something. A spent shotgun casing with their insignia. It was a warning.”

Stiles purses his lips and nods. “Yeah, can’t argue with that.”

Malia scowls. “So what are you saying, Scott?”

“That we have to be careful,” he replies heavily. “You and Allison have to get your shifts under control so we don’t have a repeat of last time.”

Allison smells … embarrassed? Ashamed? Malia seems to pick up on it too. 

“What will you do if one of us does?” Malia challenges.

“I’ll stop you,” Scott says, and puts all of the authority and resolve into his voice he can without triggering his shift. He looks over at Allison, who has begun shredding the ends of her sleeves with her human nails. “No matter what it takes.”

Malia nods, satisfied. “Good.”

But Stiles frowns. “Why didn’t you tell us this before? Why wait until now?”

Scott doesn’t really have an answer for that, beyond Allison only told me four days ago, and he is not going to compromise the progress they have made by throwing her under the bus like that. “We didn’t need the rest of you worrying about something out of your control. I-we’re telling you now because it’s close enough to the full moon that I want you all working on this, whatever role you’re going to play.”

Before the last few months, Scott knows Stiles would have fought harder. He would never have accepted that he didn’t need to know something, much less agreed with someone saying it. It gives Scott very little comfort to see him nod and otherwise stay quiet.

“So uh, the Lake House again?” Isaac asks, raising a hand. “Can I actually be there this time?”

Scott frowns. “Of course, Isaac, we talked about this." He meets each of their eyes in turn. "I want the pack together. We’ll keep an eye on each other. We’ll be each others’ anchors, and we’ll get through this without anyone getting hurt.”

Stiles grimaces. “Look, I’m going to say it: what if they won’t leave us alone?”

“We fight,” Scott says simply. “Beacon Hills is our town, not theirs.”

“Araya Calavera is ruthless, but she’s reasonable,” Allison says, finally shaking off whatever she had been turning over and over in her mind. “My father says she can be trusted to keep her word. But she isn’t known for giving second chances. And she has a lot of allies. More than us.”

“Not like we have that many allies to begin with,” Isaac drawls unhelpfully, “it’s not that impressive.” Allison and Scott both glare at him, and he wilts.

“We have enough to get by,” Scott says, trying to sound more confident than he feels. “We don’t have enough to win a war. So we’re not going to fight one unless they give us no choice. Everybody clear on that?” 

No one - especially the werecoyote - looks happy, but no one argues either. Scott takes the win for what it is. On to other business... “How are things coming along?” he asks Malia.

The werecoyote’s face lights up for the first time since she arrived. “Actually really well! We - Stiles and I - worked on some breathing exercises for managing the shift.” She grins at her apparently-boyfriend, and the corners of Stiles' mouth even turn up in something approximating a smile.

“She’s definitely getting better,” Stiles agrees, patting her on the knee. “Not uh, ready to go without the chains on the full moon or anything, but you know, progress is progress.” 

Malia nods eagerly. “What about you?” she asks Allison, just a little bit pointedly. “Are you going to stay put this time?”

Allison scowls, instantly defensive. “I’m going to try.”

“We’re going to try,” Scott amends. Allison viewing this as her sole responsibility was exactly how they got in this mess to begin with. Allison bites her cheek hard enough that he smells blood.

“Do or do not, there is no try,” Stiles mumbles under his breath. At the blank stares he shakes his head in dismay. “I can’t believe I’m friends with this many people who still haven’t seen Star Wars.”

Isaac raises a hand. “Uh, I have.”

“You don’t count.”

"That hurts, man."

Before the two can start bickering again, Malia interrupts. “Trying’s not good enough, you said it yourself,” the werecoyote says. Her eyes bore into Allison. “Have you actually made any progress?”

“Malia,” Stiles tries, but she silences him with a glare.

Allison shrugs, though she is visibly tense. “I still have trouble transforming,” she admits. “So I haven’t had that many opportunities to practice going back and forth.”

Malia nods, then rises to her feet, and Scott has a very, very bad feeling about this. “I can fix that.”

Isaac stares. “You can?”

“Yeah,” Malia says. She cracks her neck from side to side. And then her eyes flash blue and she’s lunging at Allison with a snarl.

Allison is on her feet in an instant, effortlessly meeting the werecoyote's attack with a combination of a hunter’s skills and a werewolf’s strength and reflexes. Malia careens into a side table, sending a lamp crashing loudly to the floor.

“What the fuck?” Allison yells after a couple seconds of shocked silence. There’s hair down her face and claws on her fingers, and her eyes gleam a furious yellow.

“Malia!” Scott growls. 

“It worked,” Malia says stubbornly, and Scott's patience with her is hanging by a thread. Stiles gets to his feet and grasps her by the shoulders, but she’s unfazed. “Now shift back,” she tells Allison.

Allison looks murderous. “Are you fucking insane ?” she snarls.

“Seriously, what the hell are you doing?” Isaac says, his eyes also gold. He's scared, and Scott can hear his heart racing. Fuck, that may have hit close to home. “Are you trying to get someone hurt?”

“You're going too easy on her,” Malia retorts, arms crossed over her chest as Stiles gently tries to lead her back to the couch. She meets Allison’s eyes. “Come on, do it. You shifted, you can shift back.”

“It’s not that easy,” Allison growls, showing fang. She looks over at him, eyes pleading. “Scott…”

“No,” Malia says, not backing down as she breaks free of Stiles and advances on Allison again. “Leave him out of this. You don’t want him as an Alpha anyway, it’s obvious. So do it yourself.” 

Allison absolutely reeks of anxiety over the top of her anger, and she looks seconds away from either completely falling apart or trying to rip the werecoyote’s intestines out with her bare hands in the middle of the McCalls' living room, and he’s 99 percent sure that Allison won’t allow herself to break down in front of Malia and Isaac, so option two is a lot more likely.

She’s trying though, Scott can hear her muttering a familiar bit of French under her breath. But she isn't shifting back. 

“What the hell is going on here?”

The voice is not one any of them are expecting, but as Scott spins around, standing in the entryway, closing the front door behind her, is none other than Lydia Martin, hands on her hips and green eyes alight. “I leave you alone for two weeks and…”

“Lydia,” Allison gasps, cutting off the rant. His ex is frightened, not comforted, her eyes growing wide as the banshee moves towards her, completely unfazed by Allison's claws and dental accessories. The new wolf's voice trembles as she says, “Stay back, I don't...”

She trails off, and Scott realizes that her voice sounded … normal. Sure enough, her fangs are gone, her sideburns retreating into her skin, her features smoothing out as he watches. 

Allison sags like a puppet with its strings cut, stumbling sideways into Scott’s instinctively outstretched arms. He steadies her by the shoulders and meets her eyes for a moment, but she pulls away roughly. “I’m fine,” she says. She glances down at her round fingernails. “I don’t know why that worked.”

“Is Lydia your anchor?” Isaac asks. It's a reasonable guess. 

Allison's brow wrinkles in thought, but then she shakes her head. “I’m … I’m not sure.”

Lydia shrugs, apparently unbothered. “Well, you could certainly do worse," she says with comfortable arrogance.  "How do you know what your anchor is, anyway?” Lydia directs this question at Scott. 

“I - Stiles and I figured out that Allison being around me, touching me, stopped the change,” Scott says slowly. “And then when that didn’t work, after the Nemeton - Mom told me to be my own anchor, and I … made it work. It’s complicated.”

Lydia looks expectantly at Isaac, and Scott winces, because he knows what Isaac’s anchor is. “Lydia, we don’t-” he starts.

“My dad,” Isaac says with a shrug. At her look, he smiles sadly. “He didn’t always lock me in a freezer.”

Lydia purses her lips. “You... should probably talk to someone about that, but you know what, if it works...” Her intense green gaze falls on Malia.

“I don’t have an anchor yet,” Malia says, crossing her arms with a frown. “We’ve figured out it’s not my dad-” Surprise, Stiles mutters under his breath. “-but I don’t need an anchor to stop the change if the moon isn’t full, I just have to focus.”

“Advantages of spending eight years as a coyote, I guess,” Stiles says. He pauses as Lydia's eyes land on him. “We’re working on it. And making progress!”

The banshee looks skeptical, Malia looks unhappy at not being believed, and Scott can see another fight breaking out in the near future. “You are,” Scott says as Lydia opens her mouth. “They are,” he says, addressing the banshee. “Just trust them, okay?”

Lydia hums but does not argue.

“We should tell her about the Calaveras,” Allison says in a low voice. 

“The who now?”

Allison handles the explanation this time, as Scott is focused on trying to keep the fragile peace as he moves to check on the fallen lamp. The bottom is a bit cracked, but it’s possible that Mom won’t notice right away. They’ve had that one for as long as he can remember, but it’s not an heirloom or anything; he’s pretty sure she bought it at Target. It could have been worse, is what he thinks. A lot worse.

Lydia looks pale when Allison finishes filling her in. Then the banshee's eyes narrow. “And you really didn’t think to mention this sooner?”

“I didn’t-” Scott begins, feeling very tired. 

“No, not you,” Lydia snaps at him. She turns sharply back to her best friend. “Allison, what were you thinking?”

“I-” she stumbles. “I didn’t want to worry everyone,” she says quietly, pushing her thumbs through the holes in the ragged ends of her sleeves.

Lydia sighs. “We’re going to have a bit of a chat about all of this when you get back to mine - and yes, you’re coming, this is not a question. Are we done here?” she asks. “I told my mother I would only be twenty minutes or so while she unpacked.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming back?” Scott asks, still feeling somewhat off balance. 

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Well, I did tell one of you.” 

Allison looks appropriately chastened, and Scott sighs, closing his eyes. They have to keep talking to each other, or someone is going to end up hurt, or worse. At least Lydia’s back, he thinks. Even if Allison can’t or won’t be honest with me, she can talk to someone.

Really though, not telling him that one of their packmates was coming back into town early? That was more than just an oversight or forgetfulness. What is going on with her?

“I um, should probably go then,” Allison says hurriedly, and goes to grab her bag. Scott moves to stop her, but thinks better of it. He still feels Stiles’ eyes on him, burning with curiosity bordering on suspicion.

“Merry Christmas, I guess,” Lydia says with a shrug. “Hope you all had a good one.”

They are out the door before Scott realizes he can still faintly taste Allison in his mouth.

And that they might have a problem.