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Chris is twenty when his stepmother gives him his first assignment. It's a milk run, Alice Argent tells him with a nasty smirk, just checking in on a mid-sized pack that holds a territory about a hundred miles south of where his family has settled for the time being. He knows it's meant to be a test for him, a fact compounded by his half-sister Kate informing him before he takes off, in the snottiest nine-year-old voice she can manage, that she could do this herself without breaking a sweat. He ignores the insult, knows it's something she picked up from Alice and Gerard at one point or another, and instead chooses to ruffle her hair fondly as he checks over the miniature arsenal he's bringing along, just in case things go pear-shaped.
Kate pouts at having her hair mussed for all of two seconds before she throws herself around Chris' middle and squeezes tightly. "You'll come home, right?" she says, words muffled by his shirt. He wraps an arm around her shoulders. "Andrew didn't come home."
The mention of his younger brother hits him in the chest, and he shuts his eyes against the sudden wave of sorrow. He wants to tell her that Andrew had come home, well after her bedtime, with eyes glowing amber in the darkness outside their house, but he's not sure he can explain the way their father cut through his torso and then lit the pieces on fire. "I'll be fine," he says. "This pack doesn't have a record of violence. Your mom just wants me to remind them that we're watching."
She nods and pulls away from him. "She's your mom, too," Kate says.
Chris blinks. He takes a step back and gives her brittle smile. "Right. My mom, too."
Right, right, he thinks, can't exactly call a dead woman I barely remember 'mom,' now, can I. There's not even a grave for her.
***
The drive down into California feels both shorter and longer than Chris expected it to. He stops for lunch just inside of Beacon County, is served by a pretty waitress with gold-brown eyes who flashes him a warm smile before she heads back behind the counter to flirt aggressively with a blushing off-duty police officer. The food is more than decent, and he leaves the girl a generous tip that has her whipping her head up to watch him through the windows while he walks across the parking lot to his truck. It's not like he needs the money - he lives at home, doesn't go to school, and while gas prices have been rising lately, he's not using even half of what his father budgeted out for this trip to get there and back. Besides, he thinks as he pulls out of the lot, she'll need a new outfit for the weekend if the way the officer was staring at her indicated anything, and Chris has always been something of a romantic.
There aren't any cars in the driveway when he finally pulls up to the Hale house, and he doesn't see any movement in the yard at all. Chris stops and puts the truck in park. He stares at the house, a large and beautiful but not overly ostentatious structure, and wonders if simply arriving and seeing it fulfills the terms of the assignment. It doesn't, he knows this, but he taps out a rhythm on the steering wheel for several minutes before undoing his seat belt and climbing out of the truck. He pats his hip, though the weight of his 9mil at his side has never been particularly comforting or reassuring. Gravel crunches underneath his feet as he walks up to the front door. He hesitates again in front of it, but just as he raises his hand to knock, it swings open.
He looks down to find a tiny girl and an even tinier boy staring up at him, wide-eyed but seemingly unafraid of him. Both children have dark hair and pale skin and blue-green-brown eyes that shimmer and sparkle when the mid-afternoon sun hits their faces. Judging from the peanut butter smeared across the boy's cheeks and the crumbs at the corners of the girl's mouth, Chris assumes they too have just eaten lunch.
"Smelly," the girl says. Her nose wrinkles up in distaste, and she pushes the little boy until he's standing fully behind her. "Bad smelly."
"Now, Laura," someone inside the house calls, "just because he's a smelly hunter doesn't mean we shouldn't at least pretend to be polite."
In the blink of an eye, there's a boy, a teenager, standing in the doorway next to the children. Chris stares at him, mouth going dry at the sight of a lean body and shaggy brown hair and the bluest eyes he's seen outside of a mirror. The boy sniffs delicately, then smirks and drags his gaze down Chris' body in turn.
"I hope you're a token of good will from that crazy-ass Argent family," he murmurs, looking Chris in the eye again. "If so, I will definitely accept."
Chris feels his face flush warm. "I am not a token of anything," he grits out from behind his teeth. "Just here to check up on your pack."
The boy lets out an exaggerated sigh but doesn't take his eyes off of Chris. "So disappointing. But does the newest little hunter in the clan have a name? That's the real question."
"It's Chris Argent," he replies before he can stop himself, "and what the hell do you mean, newest?"
He gets a wide grin and the smallest glint of sharp teeth at that.
"I may be sixteen, Chris Argent," says the boy, voice purring out from his throat, "but even I'm pretty sure most experienced hunters know to mask their scent before approaching a pack's home, regardless of how innocent their intentions might be." He closes his eyes and inhales, deeper this time, holding the breath for a moment before exhaling slowly and looking at Chris. "You reek of wolfsbane and gun oil and metal."
Chris flushes again, this time from the warm rush of embarrassment and anger. He lets out a huff of breath and tries to rein in his reactions, but it's obvious from the kid's smirk that he's not doing a very good job of it. He never loses his cool like this, not even when his father and stepmother bait him with their expectations and insults, and there's no reason why he should be struggling to control himself now. He grinds his teeth and stares at the children in silence. The little girl, Laura, eyes him seriously and reaches out to tug on the teenager's jeans while the toddler behind her apparently loses interest (or patience, or both - Chris remembers Kate at that age, he's not surprised) and ambles back into the house babbling to himself.
"Uncle Peter," Laura says, "I'm hungry again."
Peter picks her up and glances at Chris. "I think that means you can feel free to leave now," he says. "Laura's obviously done with you."
"And what if I'm not done with you?" Chris asks. He takes a step forward, trying to look threatening.
Peter gives him another heated once-over. "As interested as I am in knowing what you could possibly mean by that," he says, "I'm doing you a favor by telling you to go away. Not entirely sure my parents, who just turned onto the road, are going to be as understanding as I am if they find you threatening their son and grandchildren after visiting their other son and his wife and newborn in the hospital." He shifts Laura from one arm to another and winks at Chris. "But feel free to visit me again sometime."
He shuts the door. Chris blinks stupidly at it for a moment before walking back to the truck and turning the ignition. He pulls out of the driveway and drives down the road in the opposite direction from which he'd come up. He drives around Beacon Hills for an hour, mind very carefully kept blank and not at all on Peter Hale. Eventually he finds the highway again and heads north toward Oregon.
He doesn't tell Alice and Gerard about the Hale children when he gets home, just says that the pack wasn't at home and everything looked quiet. Alice questions him closely, like she doesn't believe him, and he avoids meeting Gerard's eyes all through dinner. They let him go back to his room after he clears the table, matching frowns stretched across their faces. Chris can't tell if their disappointment is because he didn't have to kill even a single wolf, or if it's because he came home at all.
That night, he dreams about Peter Hale and his blue, blue eyes and sharp teeth biting bruises into Chris' collarbone. He wakes up that morning hard and gasping, tugs on his cock in the shower and muffles his gasps with his fist.
He meets Victoria Prescott a year later, her reputation in the hunter clans earning her a place in the Argents' brand new Washington compound. She flirts shamelessly with him and lives up to Alice and Gerard's high standards in a way that surprisingly doesn't bother Chris. A week after their first date, Victoria shoves him into the backseat of her sedan and fucks down onto him slowly, leaning down over his chest and whispering into his ear, "Alice, you know, my father told me - she as good as killed your mother, letting her bleed out and burn like that. You hate her, right?"
"Yes," Chris lets out in a gasp. Her hips rock up and down while he tries to figure out where to put his hands.
Victoria giggles. "Good," she says. "I think the management around this place could use a change, don't you?"
"Yes," he says. He looks up into her eyes, blue and bright and flashing even in the dark, and she grins at him.
"Good," Victoria repeats. "That's good."
***
The next time he sees Peter Hale, twenty or so years have passed, and Chris doesn't even know it's him until Derek tells him exactly what's been going on in Beacon Hills since he returned. They're sitting in his living room, Victoria listening in from the kitchen and Allison tucked away in bed to sleep off the shock of the evening's events. He listens to the story in silence and doesn't say anything for a long time after Derek finishes. Chris idly wonders if Derek remembers him from that day he'd shown up on the Hales' doorstep; scent memory is, after all, supposed to be very strong. If he does, he doesn't let on.
"So that was Peter that Jackson and Stiles set on fire," Chris says finally, "and then you slit his throat."
"Was I supposed to do something else?" Derek asks.
There's a low rumble behind his words that sets Chris' teeth on edge. Chris has never interacted with a new alpha, but he imagines there must be an awful lot of barely-contained energy and rage brewing underneath his skin. I know the feeling, he thinks. He takes several deep breaths and attempts to keep his heartbeat steady.
"No," he replies. "No, I suppose not." Chris fixes a glare on him. "I don't have any quarrel with you, Hale. Don't give me a reason to put you down, and we'll get along just fine." He doesn't mention the fact that Gerard, vengeful and angry over his precious daughter's death, is due to arrive sometime in the next few days.
Derek leaves a few minutes later. Chris thinks about what he's going to say to Allison when she wakes up in the morning. Nothing comes to mind.