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Sun peers through the shattered shutters of the abandoned Hale house, and so does Derek. Dust dances around the living room, nothing like the grand, ballroom-like space he used to know and inside, a teenager sits morosely on the couch, kicking his feet at irregular intervals, like a knee-jerk reaction from staying in place for too long.
The couch squeaks loudly when the boy leans back into the worn leather, covering Derek’s deep intake of breath that rattles through his chest and the thick, matted black fur there. The teenager rummages between the cushions and pulls out a bag of Doritos, but stills as though he sensed Derek, somehow.
He lets go of the bag and the rustle of plastic echoes in the room.
Soon after, Derek’s growl does too. The door creaking is the stranger’s last warning.
The teenager tenses as Derek stalks inside, glancing at the front door from the corner of his eyes, and the werewolf slithers in, a shadow more than a beast prowling the worn wooden floors of the old Hale house. Neon blue light flashes in the wolf’s eyes, and the growl echoes again, a rumble like thunder through the narrow opening of the front door.
The floorboards crack ominously under the weight of Derek in full-shift, black fur flaring into a mane around his neck, and the slate wood floor wails with each step he takes. The boy scrambles to his knees, the leather squeaking in protest again. Blood rushes to his ears as he jumps over the back of the couch and bolts out of the living room. He skids around the bottom of the stair with Derek giving chase, holding onto the banister to right himself, and sprints towards the back door.
Despite the acrid stench of fear overpowering the ground floor, and the growling echoing behind him still, no sound breaks past the teenager’s lips. He stumbles in his hast to get away, reaching for the doorknob, and flails some more with the angry scrape of claws digging into the floorboards behind him, losing his balance.
He slams the door open and falls over the doorway, dissolving into a mess of black, white and orange fur — paws Derek realizes, before a fox runs off on all four into the forest.
The teenager turned fox knows the forest well. He slinks through familiar tunnels among the vegetation, distancing Derek and rounding some of the bigger trees until he’s out of sight, and his scent vanishes.
Derek claws at the dead leaves and dirt beneath his own paws, eager to track the fox down, but there is no catching up now and he sits on his haunches with a dejected sigh, rolling his eyes at the canopy spreading like tendrils of fire over his head. So much for coming back here and figuring out what happened to Laura, it only brings back bad memories and more trouble than Peter, back at the hospital, is really worth.
Their uncle showed signs of regaining consciousness soon according to the doctor, so Laura insisted to go on her own and visit him in Beacon Hills, but Derek can’t be bothered to stay in yet another unfamiliar motel and be on the receiving end of platitudes all day long at the hospital and in town, so he elected to crash at the Hale house instead. He turns on his heels with that in mind, trekking back to the abandoned house, and ignores the distressing absence of Laura’s pack bond between them.
~
Moonlight seeps through the window and streaks down the floorboards like tears. Derek rubs his face into the cushion of the couch, trying to overpower the unfamiliar smell ingrained in the leather. It pervades the living room and the closet beneath the stairs, and he can’t quite settle down in what used to be his house, and is now a kitsune’s den.
If it weren’t for the trinkets stashed in the cupboard beneath the stairs, Derek would have assumed the boy was just a werefox, but few shapeshifters would have found a home in an abandoned house. Especially this one, so Derek can only assume the boy is either possessed by a fox spirit or recently grew into his powers as a true kitsune.
Derek stands up again to turn around a couple of times before falling back on the couch, still in wolf form. He sighs deeply in the empty living room. The house smells foreign, and he has every intention to reclaim his territory, but the scents of his relatives are long gone and the only thing he can still sense are the heat of the fire and the burning smell of ash going up in smoke.
The pungent smell of the fox is almost a reprieve from it all by the time Derek dozes off and his eyes roll up in their sockets with dreams of the boy.
The teenager found an ancient stump in the preserve. No animal nests in the roots of the Nemeton, but the fox presses a black snout in the loose soil at the base of the tree. He digs out grass reed gathered in a human skull, the bone stark white against the twilight shadows that creep into the depths of the forest.
Pushing his black and silver head into the skull easily enough, the fox flattens his orange ears on his head, his tail crackling with energy already as he balances his magical core on the furry tip. The white orb glows gently, a second moon in the dark, and light floods in, drawing energy from the Nemeton until the kitsune slumps over the stump, human again.
Derek wakes up with a start.
He knows where the boy is now, and stretches reluctantly, his back popping, before climbing off the couch and heading outside. He glances at the moon, but doesn’t howl as he starts running, heading straight for the kitsune. The preserve parts for him in the dark and paves the way to the Nemeton as though answering his silent call to catch up with the trespasser at last.
Derek tracks the boy down, curled up among the roots of the ancient tree. He growls in warning, towering above the kitsune and blocking any attempt to escape until the teenager cowers beneath him. Satisfied that the stranger won’t run off this time, the werewolf lets the fur ripple off his body as he stands up on two legs, reverting back to the beta-shift.
It wouldn’t do to look too friendly.
“Who are you?” Derek all but barks.
The teenager relaxes slightly and sits up, although he makes no move to get away with the bright blue eyes strained on him. Looking up at Derek, the stranger purses his lips and waits a beat too long before answering.
“Stiles,” is all he says, and Derek growls again. “Just Stiles,” the kitsune reiterates.
“Well, Stiles, this is private property and I don’t want to see you around the house again.”
“If you say so,” Stiles replies, shrugging.
He crouches, as though readying himself to pounce, and Derek takes a step forward, revealing sharp fangs and matching claws in the light of the moon. Stiles rolls his eyes but stays put, tilting his chin up to hold the blue flare of Derek’s eyes.
“Fine,” the kitsune sighs. “You’ll have to step aside if you want me gone, though.”
Derek huffs and lingers a bit longer than necessary before moving to the side and letting Stiles go. The teenager stands up and with one last glare at Derek’s naked form, retreats out of the preserve, leaving Derek to head back to the Hale house.
~
Stiles shows up at the house again with the first lights of dawn. Derek pulls off the couch with a groan, throwing on a pair of jeans on his way to the front door. He steps through with a hand over his eyes to squint at the teenage boy shuffling his feet in the dirt, not quite daring enough to step up on the front porch.
“What are you doing here?” Derek asks, a growl building up in his throat.
“Wow, you’re cute when you’re not in the beta-shift,” Stiles blurts out, and immediately raises his hands defensively as he backtracks. “Not that you’re not attractive when shifted but-”
He trails off, sensing that whatever he says won’t do him much good. Derek crosses his arms over his chest. Stiles doesn’t back down completely though, stepping a little closer to the front porch and the preserve lights up in shades of gold and rust behind him, not unlike the colors of the kitsune’s fur when he turns into a fox.
“I said you’re not welcome in my territory,” Derek reiterates when Stiles remains silent.
“You see, that’s the thing. I live here,” he gestures to encompass the whole preserve. “In Beacon Hills, I mean,” he amends. “We will run into each other at some point and I can’t exactly move to a different city on my own. I’m in high school, I still live with my dad. You have to allow me around, and at least tolerate my presence in the preserve.”
“Just stay away from the house.”
Derek goes to turn around, not willing to bargain any more than that, when Stiles scrambles up the porch, reaching out to grab him. The teenager’s nimble fingers barely brush the werewolf’s arm — a spark bouncing off his skin — before Derek spins around with a furious roar, eyes flaring blue in warning as he slaps Stiles’ hand off his arm.
“Stay away from me!” Derek growls, revealing sharp, glinting fangs.
Stiles recoils like he’s been burned, but doesn’t get a chance to run off this time.
A dark blur flashes across the clearing and snatches Stiles up, sending the teenager rolling with a black, deformed monster curling over him. Derek stumbles down the front porch in shock, instinctively coming to Stiles’ help, but the thunderous growl echoing all around and angry red eyes burning holes into Derek make him pause.
“Peter?” he asks as a long forgotten bond tugs at his heart strings.
Where Laura’s bond grew cold, this one snaps into place and heats up almost painfully as the monstrous alpha attempts to assert dominance over Derek. Stiles bucks under Peter as Derek stays put, frozen in place with the pack bond raging within his chest, and Peter slams the kitsune back into the dead leaves and dirt of the clearing.
“Fuck off!” Stiles cries out, batting the clawed hands off him.
It does little to stop Peter from reaching down to tear Stiles’ jeans apart and grab a car key with a set of keyrings from his pocket. A lacrosse helmet dangles from the keyrings until Peter rips it off and Stiles screams like the alpha broke one of his bones. It’s even worse, Derek realizes, when a white orb flickers to life in Peter’s palm, the kitsune’s at the alpha’s mercy.
“Not so feisty now, are we?” Peter asks through a row of fangs.
Stiles goes still and slumps down like a puppet whose strings have been cut, suddenly subdued, and watches with wide eyes.
“What do you want?”
Peter straightens up above Stiles and keeps a sharp, clawed hold on the kitsune’ wrists, the boy’s fingers still outstretched to retrieve his magical core. The alpha turns towards the preserve with the sun bearing down on the short, dark fur that covers his monstrous full shift and stands up warily. Each of his steps leaves heavy imprints on the ground as he starts dragging Stiles out of the clearing where the Hale house used to stand proudly and barely stays up nowadays.
“Heal me,” Peter replies with a glance over his shoulder as the bulging muscles and black coat deflate to reveal the burn victim Derek couldn’t bear the sight of these last few years. “The Alpha spark gave me the boost I needed to snap out of my lethargy for good and not just on full moons, but I can’t regenerate like I used to. You will fix my face if you want your magical core back.”
Derek can’t bring himself to take a step forward, still half-shifted, and the realization dawns on him with the sun hanging above the treeline in a bloody inferno of uncomfortable truths. Years ago Derek, distraught and grieving, may have fallen mind and body to Kate Argent and her murderous schemes, thus condemning his pack and family to die in a fire, but Peter…
Peter severed the pack bond between Laura and Derek, the only thing they had left, just because he could.
~
Derek shows up at the Nemeton again with the last lights of dusk. He tracked Peter down easily — the pull of an unruly alpha hard to ignore as his sole pack bond — and moves with the shadows in the eerily quiet preserve, not even a bird singing overhead. He finds Stiles by a body of water on the edge of the clearing, keeping at a safe distance from Derek’s uncle.
Derek creeps closer, glad for the dark shirt he threw over his shoulders before giving chase, and glances around carefully before revealing himself. If Stiles notices him, the teenager doesn’t say anything, as for Peter, he prowls the distance between the water side and the Nemeton with a pout, not caring much for Derek’s presence.
Peter juggles the glowing white orb between his scarred hands, and Stiles shivers every time his magical core nearly falls out of Derek’s uncle’s lax grasp. Watching him carefully, Derek notices the water doesn’t reflect the boy’s lanky frame but rather, the slender, fox red outline of the kitsune.
“What’s taking so long?” Peter asks Stiles, fingers clenching around the white orb.
“Where do I start?” Stiles snarls back. “I’m not actually a healer, this kind of spell is quite complex and I need to focus which I’m terrible at on a good day but you keep messing around with my magical core so I’m finding it rather difficult to simply do the thing!”
“Peter, let him go,” Derek says then, stepping out of the shadows. “We can figure out a way to heal you, getting more betas perhaps, or finding a witch…”
“I don’t trust witches!” Peter talks over him, stalking across the clearing. “You can join me and be my beta, but it won’t be enough and the ones I bite either die or reject the bite.”
Peter trails off, but Stiles glances up with a look of horror on his face, tears trapped among his eyelashes and eyes widening so far it must hurt.
“You’re the one that attacked Scott when we were looking for the other half of the body! You killed him! Lydia and Jackson, it’s all your fault!”
“What body?” Derek repeats, almost too afraid to ask, the words crawling past the knot in his throat.
“The girl, they found the lower half in the preserve and we were looking for the upper torso when…” a sob cuts Stiles off abruptly.
“How many people did you kill, Peter?!” Derek turns to his uncle, eyes flaring blue.
“Just two,” the alpha replies, nonchalant, tossing Stiles’ magical core back and forth.
Derek chokes out a sob that echoes on Stiles’ side of the clearing as they mourn their loss, Derek’s sister, and someone akin to a brother to Stiles. Peter, standing proudly on the Nemeton, rolls his eyes, and the glowing white orb in the palm of his hand, unaffected by the path of destruction he leaves behind.
“The girl is a banshee, it runs in the family, and the other boy rejected the bite, although I can’t for the life of me figure out why,” the alpha muses aloud.
Derek tenses, memories of a dreadful night among the roots of the Nemeton flashing through his glowing blue eyes. He crosses his arms over his chest, almost gathering his lost love in his embrace again, and he’s back there for a moment hugging Paige to his chest as she bled out, oozing black blood like poison.
His gift, supposedly a cure to most ailments, turned into a curse for once.
Now, Peter demands to be healed as he holds Stiles’ magical core in the palm of his hand. Derek can’t let that happen, can’t let Peter hold onto either the kitsune’s power or the alpha spark, so he throws himself at his uncle with an irate howl.
The beta-shift takes over his body, impulsing more strength into his clawed hands and feet, but Peter merely backhands Derek away, sweeping him off like nothing with just a flash of blood red eyes. Derek rolls to the floor with dead leaves swirling around him and dirt smeared over his face, baring his teeth.
It only makes Peter laugh as the alpha’s jaw snaps open a lot wider than it should, full of fangs that belong more among sharks than wolves.
Pushing on his hands to get back up, Derek goes to charge his uncle again when something shifts in the alpha’s posture. Peter widens his stance and lowers his center, shoulders drawing back as a howl builds up in his chest and echoes in the clearing until Derek’s ears are ringing and he cowers from the forceful call for submission, the alpha asserting dominance over him.
“Stop!” Stiles cries out with his hands thrown over his ears, staring at his magical core in Peter’s hand. “I’ll do it, I’ll heal him, just stop before he crushes it to pieces.”
As he speaks, Peter’s face starts to change. His eyes too, flicker, altered by some unseen force that the alpha doesn’t seem to notice as the marred flesh over his right cheek smoothes out until it turns plump and shiny.
By the time the skin stops moving, Peter regained his youthful appearance. He steps off the tree stump of the Nemeton as he pushes greasy, overgrown strands of hair off his face to reveal rugged looks and piercing blue eyes.
“I feel like myself again, at last,” Peter sighs, delighted.
Stiles doesn’t grace him with a reply, stepping forward and over a heap of twigs to beckon him imperiously. Something odd swells in Derek’s chest then, light and powerful, not unlike the glowing white orb still clutched in Peter’s hand as his uncle reluctantly relinquishes Stiles’ magical core. The kitsune pockets it instantly.
All it takes is a second for Peter to realize that the alpha spark is gone.
Derek needs a little longer to catch up.
“What did you do to me?” his uncle screeches, launching himself at Stiles in a flurry of dead leaves.
The kitsune side-steps him easily now, “I am a trickster. I cannot create for or from nothing, I have to trade, and so I did. Your wish was granted, for a price; the alpha spark.”
Peter growls, leaping forward once again, when the new warmth in Derek’s chest bursts into a deep rush of power and his eyes bleed red. He howls, out of instinct more than desire or necessity, but the call of an alpha stops Peter dead in his tracks.
Derek’s uncle cowers in the dirt as he submits to the pack bond between them, the one that finally snapped into place and feels right, nothing like the distorted, dominant dynamic Peter tried to inflict on Derek. Still weak and recovering from his psychic injuries despite the newly healed body, Peter is somehow compelled to do Derek’s bidding.
“That’s right, he’s the alpha now,” Stiles mocks Peter, a smirk stretching on his lips. “You’re not going to hurt anyone in this town ever again.”
~
Rain sneaks up on them from a clear sky — a sunshower. The preserve seems to bask in a brighter rust and golden glow than usual with the gentle rain, leaves rustling wetly and worn wood softening to let more bugs crawl in. They tied Peter to a nearby tree, sturdy enough to hold the werewolf as long as he doesn’t struggle.
Peter doesn’t.
Derek sits on the ancient stump of the Nemeton with his head in his hands, Stiles perched beside him as Derek figures out what to do with Peter. Derek’s uncle can’t be trusted, but Derek can’t fathom what is left to do if he elects not to let Peter roam freely.
Release him into the police’s custody to serve the proper sentence for his crimes?
Derek could make it happen, Peter would submit once again.
Hell, Peter could start spurting nonsense about werewolves in a room full of humans who aren’t in the know. Derek’s uncle would end up with a hunter putting him down, be it in prison or a mental institution.
Still, it feels right for Peter to face the consequences of his actions.
What does it mean for Derek, though?
Shouldn’t he, too, be locked away after letting a hunter into his pack’s den?
The uncomfortable truth doesn’t sit right with him. There wasn’t any trial after what Kate did, not like it would with Peter and so the strain of guilt relies on Derek’s shoulders only. He’ll never know what justice would have made of his involvement. With the preserve as the only witness, his secrets are for nature to keep and pass judgment on when he returns to the earth.
He used to like it that way, not willing to burden Laura with his guilt, but now…
Derek looks up with his mind torn, lukewarm raindrops falling over his face instead of the tears he never let himself cry. Stiles kicks one leg out beside him, subdued and running a hand through his damp buzzcut, and sighs heavily.
“What are you going to do, big guy?”
“I don’t know,” Derek admits. “If I could let the deputies do their jobs…”
“The Sheriff is in the know,” Stiles says unexpectedly. “He could make sure the trial goes smoothly as far as supernatural matters are concerned.”
“Really?”
“Actually, Dad has been looking into the Hale fire recently. Said he had a lead, something about a woman with a grudge against werewolves?”
“Kate,” Derek breathes out, and Stiles frowns, but doesn’t ask.
Derek’s grateful for it. Any questions, worse, any acknowledgement or compassion would have snuffed out the kindle of hope burning alongside the alpha spark in Derek’s chest. Overhead, the sky brightens up once again, the last droplets of rain clinging to his eyelashes as he breathes in slowly.
Stiles isn’t just a kitsune — another supernatural being who knows what Derek’s life is really like. Stiles is the Sheriff’s son and it changes everything.
Derek can make it through this. He could even move on, perhaps.
“It means a lot to me that Scott’s death won’t end up as a cold case. It’s my fault he ended up in Peter’s bloodbath,” Stiles says instead.
“I’m sorry,” Derek whispers, glancing at Stiles as lukewarm rain washes over them both.
“I’ll put in a good word for you too. You tried to save me, after all,” Stiles adds.
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Thank you,” Stiles smiles weakly, and visibly shakes himself before asking, waggling his eyebrows. “Do you know what else would be right?”
Derek sighs, he knows where this is going, and still… “I guess you can stay.”