Archive of Our Own ^beta

Beacon Hills is a small town. It’s made up of the tiny downtown, Main Street running right down the middle, just like in any one of a thousand other small towns, old shop fronts nestled in beside newer buildings. The older neighbourhoods spread out around it, houses lined up in a mish-mash of architecture which changes from block to block, fading into larger, more modern suburbs which sprawl out up the hills on either side of town. The houses give way to as-yet undeveloped land on three sides and the Beacon Hills Preserve on the other.

It’s a quiet place, filled with more neighbourhood gossip than actual news, small enough that there’s only one high school, and the diner on Main and the bar on 7th are full of small-town regulars every day of the week. It’s a town where nothing much happens, and most people are content with that. Families grow up here, children playing together and then working together as they get older, their children in turn playing and growing up together.

It’s a good place to raise a family, always has been. There’s a sense of community in towns like Beacon Hills, a comfort in knowing that there is always going to be someone, somewhere, a neighbour or a coworker or a friend who you can turn to for help, for advice, for a last-minute babysitter or a cup of sugar or a ride when your car breaks down. It’s a safe sort of town, the kind of place where you can trust folks to look after one another.

Or at least, that’s what John had always believed. Had believed, even, despite the mounting evidence of the last four months that said otherwise. And now that he knows better, he’s not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved to know the truth.

“Werewolves. Seriously.”

John’s aware that his eyebrows are climbing alarmingly high on his forehead despite the way Stiles is looking at him with something like resignation and a little anxiety.

“Yup,” he says, nodding. “They’re real, they exist. Legends come to life, all that jazz.” Across from them, Derek rolls his eyes; Stiles ignores him.

“And your entire family were werewolves?” John says, skeptically.

It’s not that he doesn’t believe what his son and Derek are telling him, it’s just that...okay, so it’s a little that he doesn’t believe it, and a little that he just hasn’t quite wrapped his mind around the idea yet. There’s something niggling at the back of his brain, a sort of feeling like when he’s about to make a breakthrough on a case, that kind of almost-premonition like he just knows that the pieces are all going to fall together any moment now.

“Nearly all of them,” Derek is saying, nodding cautiously. “We had some normal people, some humans, but most of my family were werewolves.”

John looks between the three of them, at Stiles’ pensive face, chewing on his bottom lip, at Derek’s carefully blank face and Isaac’s expression of faint amusement, before fixing his gaze on Derek. “Prove it. Show me.”

Derek stares, looking nervous for a moment; his eyes flicker to Stiles and back quickly. And then he leans forward slightly, eyes closing. When he opens them again, they’re a deep, glowing red. John blinks at him, caught somewhere between fascinated and disturbed, but then Derek’s face...shifts.

John chokes for a moment, lungs seizing in surprise as he gapes, wide-eyed. Derek’s entire face has changed, no longer human but something more animal, like something John would expect to find in a Halloween store, all glowing eyes and angry, ridged brow and massive sideburns; Derek bares his teeth slightly (because there’s no way it’s a grin; it’s too feral for that), showing sharp, elongated canines.

John forces himself to take a deep breath, willing his heart to slow, shock slowly bleeding out of him. Next to him, Stiles is throwing dirty looks at Derek, probably annoyed at him for surprising his dad like that. John has always been amused, if sometimes irritated, about how seriously his son takes his blood pressure, and John’s certain he doesn’t appreciate the sudden strain Derek just put him through, minor though it might be.

Derek seems to take the hint, sitting back and letting his face shift again. The transition is smooth, like ripples almost, his face fading from horror mask to human like some sort of movie special effect. Except John’s watching it happen right in front of him in real time, in reality, because Derek Hale is a freaking werewolf.

Derek’s eyes are the last to change, bright red fading away to Derek’s usual sort of hazel colour, and John realises he’s been holding his breath. He lets it go slowly, still staring at the man across from him.

“Okay then,” John says once he’s sure his voice won’t shake. “I’m convinced.”

Derek stares at him, one eyebrow raised slightly. Stiles makes a disbelieving little noise, and John turns to him, silently questioning.

“That’s it?” Stiles asks, waving a hand vaguely in Derek’s direction. “You’re sold, just like that?”

John raises his eyebrows, gesturing to Derek himself. “What the hell else am I supposed to do with that? I’m a cop, Stiles, I go with the most likely explanation for what I see.”

“Oh my god,” Stiles mutters, tilting his head back against the back of the couch. “Why couldn’t Scott have been like that when I first told him?”

John thinks he might actually be developing specific wrinkles from the amount of time he spends with his eyebrows raised. “And what, exactly, is Scott’s involvement in this?”

Stiles winces, looking up with a sheepish expression. His fingers twist together restlessly. “He, ah. He might be a werewolf, too?” he says, trying for a grin and ending up closer to a pained grimace.

John sighs. “Oh course he is.” He groans, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyes. A thought suddenly occurs to him, and John looks up at Derek sharply. “You didn’t do that, did you? Is that part true, the whole werewolf bite thing?”

Derek hesitates for a moment. “The bite is real,” he says eventually. “But I didn’t turn Scott.”

John narrows his eyes slightly, but doesn’t press. Something in Derek’s tone is setting off John’s cop-senses. He’s not lying, not that John can see, but there’s something he isn’t saying. John lets it go, though; they’ve only just started explaining, after all, and John fully intends to wring the entire story out of them eventually. There will be plenty of time to come back to whatever it is Derek isn’t telling him.

“Okay,” John says, taking a sip of his whiskey. “So Scott is a werewolf. Let’s start with when and how that happened.”

Stiles winces, clearing his throat, and John turns to him, expectant. Stiles fidgets under the scrutiny.

“So,” he says, in what John recognises as his I’m about to tell you something you really don’t want to hear voice. “Remember the night you found me out in the woods looking for Laura Hale’s body?”

Laura Hale had been 24 when she returned to Beacon Hills.

In the days after the medical examiner confirmed her identity, John had often found himself wishing that he’d known she was in town earlier. He’d only met her the one time, taking her statement while she did her best to ignore the burning wreck of her home behind her, the faint smell of charred flesh in the air, the way her brother was hunched, silent and unmoving, in the back of the ambulance.

John had gone back to work after he’d dropped Stiles back at the house, had spent hours talking to his deputies, the fire marshall, the insurance agency. He’d sent off the paperwork that would make Laura Hale an independent adult and her brother’s sole guardian. He’d made calls confirming that Laura’s uncle, the only other survivor, was being seen to and cared for.

He’d offered to put Laura and Derek up in a hotel room until something could be arranged, but Laura had declined, insisting that she and her brother would stay at the hospital with their uncle for the time being.

“Your kid offered us the guest room at your house,” she told him, smiling slightly. “But we should really be with Uncle Peter.”

Later, after he’d come home and had a drink, John peeked into Stiles’ room. He’d been asleep, curled into a tiny ball and buried underneath his covers. John tiptoed closer and bent down to press a soft kiss to his son’s forehead.

“You’re a good kid, Stiles,” he whispered.

A few minutes later, John climbed into bed and curled up around his wife, pressing kisses to her cheeks, and talked.

“I wish they would have taken you up on that offer,” Yelena said when John was finished. “It sounds like they could use someone to look after them.”

John hummed. “Believe me, I considered insisting.”

Yelena smiled at him, brown eyes warm as she hugged him closer. “You’ll make sure they’re alright, John. That’s what you always do.”

“There are three kinds of werewolves,” Derek tells John, “Alpha, beta, and omega.” Stiles and Isaac are nodding along like they’ve heard this all before. And they probably have, John reminds himself.

“The alpha’s the leader,” Derek explains, and John nods. Like real wolves, he thinks. “Only an alpha can turn someone. The betas are below him, or her.”

“And the omega?” John asks, though he thinks he knows the answer already.

“An omega has no pack,” Derek says. “He’s alone, no leader and no one to lead.” There’s an odd twist to his mouth when he says it, something tense and maybe a little angry, though it doesn’t appear to be directed at any of them; it makes John wonder. Derek had certainly been alone when he returned to Beacon Hills, and it was sounding like he’d been alone for a large portion of the time since.

John put the thought aside and eyes Derek carefully. “So you’re the alpha?”

Derek inclines his head, nodding, a slight smile twisting at one side of his mouth. “I am now,” he confirms, making John’s eyebrow twitch higher.

“So you weren’t always?”

Derek shakes his head, looking away. “No. That status can change. I was a beta most of my life.”

“I’m going to put aside the question of how that happened for later,” John says, leaning back and taking another sip of his whiskey. “In favor of making an assumption. You said you didn’t bite Scott, and you said that only an alpha can turn someone. So if it wasn’t you, then I’m guessing there must have been a second alpha.”

Derek winces, almost imperceptibly, but John’s been watching him closely. Derek has a nearly-perfect poker face, never giving anything away, so John’s been paying very careful attention.

Derek shakes his head. “He was the only one. He bit Scott because he needed a pack. An alpha’s strength depends on his betas, the strength of his pack. This alpha was alone.”

“So he decided to go running around the woods biting people?”

“He only bit Scott,” Derek points out, as though that makes it better.

John sighs, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m assuming you’re going to tell me who this alpha is?”

“Was,” Derek corrects softly. He swallows heavily, looking at the ground. “My uncle,” he says at last. “It was my uncle Peter.”

John ignores the deliberate past tense in favor of staring incredulously. “The uncle who’s been comatose since the fire? That Peter?”

Derek nods. “He was healing that whole time. Slowly. But still healing. We—” He cuts himself off, swallowing hard again, face twisting into something strangely sad. “We didn’t know,” he says quietly. “Laura and I. We didn’t know he was healing. We didn’t think he could anymore.”

John frowns. “But he did.”

Derek takes a deep breath, drawing himself up slightly like he’s bracing himself. “Yes. Once he killed Laura. Once he became the alpha.”

There’s a pause, Derek’s jaw clenching for a moment; when he continues speaking, his voice is hard and unforgiving. “He was insane. His body was healing, but not fast enough for him. He had his mind back, what was left of it, anyway, but his body was still weak. He wasn’t strong enough.”

“So he killed her,” John says softly, watching Derek swallow tightly, teeth grinding.

Derek shakes his head, eyes closing for a moment. “He told me later that he’d been burned away,” he says quietly, voice rough. “There wasn’t anything left of him, not his personality, not who he’d been. All that was left was his need to get revenge, no matter what it took. When he killed Laura, he became the new alpha. An alpha heals much faster than a beta, but even with that, there are some things that can’t be fixed. His body healed, but his mind never did.”

Silence falls again. Derek looks worn out, shoulders bent as he leans on his arms, braced against his knees, and stares at the carpet again. Beside him on the floor, Isaac’s face is drawn down in a frown, looking like he’s thinking hard. Stiles, sitting next to John on the couch, has both hands clenched together, fingers twisted and knuckles white, his face quietly angry.

He’d been burned away, John thinks. Not just his face, his side, his back, his arms and legs. Everything that made Peter Hale a person, all burned away in the fire that killed the rest of his family. But he could still heal, slowly, little by little, and that made it all the worse. Because John knew something about being trapped in a body that no longer worked. He had watched his wife grow weaker and weaker, her muscles atrophying and her bones thinning, skin gone pale so you could see her veins, all her energy gone until it was a struggle to even lift her arms.

How much worse must it have been for Peter Hale? No wonder he’d been mad when he finally woke up. He’d spent six years locked inside his own body, inside his own mind, nothing left but flames and ashes.

“It was him,” John realises suddenly. Derek’s head snaps up, eyes focused intently as John continues, waving a hand vaguely. “The animal attacks. Whatever. The victims, they were all connected to the fire. I know that, I did the work myself. It was him, wasn’t it?”

After a long moment, Derek nods. “Anyone who had anything at all to do with it. He hunted them down. Said they needed to pay for what they’d done to our family.”

“But what’s that got to do with Scott?” John asks, trying to get back on track. “He obviously didn’t have anything to do with that.”

Derek shrugs. “Like I said, an alpha needs a pack. Peter had no one. He’d only been the alpha for maybe a day before Laura’s body was found.”

“And me and Scott were right there,” Stiles puts in. “Two defenseless human boys, out by themselves in the woods at night. We were perfect targets. And then you caught me, so Scott was the only option left.” He shrugs, looking bitter. “Peter took it.”

Derek nods, looking vaguely apologetic. “Exactly.” He turns his head just a little, fixing Stiles with an odd look, half-accusing, half...something else that John can’t quite figure out. Stiles clearly understands it better, because he hunches his shoulders, holding up his hands.

“Not my fault!” he protests. “Or, okay,” he amends a second later, “sort of my fault. But it’s not like I knew there was a crazy werewolf running around!”

John rolls his eyes, vaguely gratified when Derek does the same. “Because it’s not like there aren’t already a dozen reasons why running around the woods later at night looking for a body is a terrible idea.”

Stiles makes a face and crosses his arms, but thankfully doesn’t say anything else. John continues.

“So Scott was turned. And I know my son and his utter inability to let things lie where they are.” Stiles makes a vaguely outraged sound, then seems to reconsider when John raises an eyebrow at him, snapping his mouth shut and sitting back further against the couch.

“I would have done my best,” Derek assures him, “to keep them out of it, except I needed their help. And I needed to protect Scott.”

John frowns. “From the alpha?”

Derek shakes his head, taking a deep breath. “No. From the Argents.”

John feel his eyebrows jump as he stares at Derek. “The Argents? As in Chris Argent? As in, the guy who sold my department a dozen rifles last month? As in, Scott’s girlfriend?”

Derek nods grimly. “Yes, those Argents.” He sighs, spreading his hands and looking down at them.

“The Argents have been hunters for generations,” he explains. “They go after anything supernatural, but they seem to specialize in hunting my kind. Some of them, like Chris, operate by a code: they don’t hunt us so long as we don’t hurt anyone else. Most hunters, though, don’t care. As far as they’re concerned, we’re all mindless killing machines who deserve to be put down like animals.

“They came as soon as they heard about Laura’s death,” Derek goes on. “The Argents knew about our family, but they left us alone, for the most part. When Laura was killed, they came looking for what, or who, killed her. They found me and Scott instead.”

“And what happened?”

Derek raises an eyebrow. “I got shot by Kate Argent.”

John stares for a moment. “The same Kate Argent who was killed a few months back?”

Derek winces slightly, gaze sliding away. “Yeah. She must have heard about the alpha and came to check it out. The alpha attacked her car. I was following him, she took a lucky shot, I got hit.”

John looks away, towards the kitchen, awareness dawning. “So when Stiles said he’d helped you before...”

Derek nods. “Scott needed to get another bullet from Kate. He was dating Allison, so he had an excuse to be there. Stiles stayed with me to make sure I didn’t die.”

“Which he nearly did anyway,” Stiles grumbles. “And I nearly had to cut off his arm so the infection wouldn’t reach his heart and kill him.”

“Holy shit,” Isaac whispers, staring wide-eyed between Derek and Stiles.

“Great,” John mutters, closing his eyes and lifting a hand to cover his face. “I’m sure that was fun. You still have both your arms, so I’m going to assume Scott came through?”

“Emergency magic bullet surgery,” Stiles confirms, nodding. “The Argents use bullets with wolfsbane inside them, which is poison to werewolves. Apparently if you burn it, it counteracts the poison, but only if it’s the same kind. Don’t ask me how that works. I’m just glad it does.”

John thinks about the bullets Isaac had pulled apart in the kitchen, the weird grey-green powder inside them, and resists the urge to drain his entire glass of whiskey all at once. Werewolves are real, he reminds himself. Why are you so surprised by magic plants?

“And to think,” Stiles says almost wistfully, “back then I thought that was the worst thing that could happen to me.”

John groans, looking over to glare half-heartedly at his son. Stiles ducks his head, looking apologetic, and John turns his attention back to the conversation. “And then what?”

Stiles shrugs, leaning forward. “And then I did a bunch of research, trying to help Scott. He needed to know how to control it. Derek tried to help, but that didn’t work out too well since we didn’t trust him and he didn’t trust us, especially after we got him arrested.”

“And then you got me eviscerated,” Derek says pointedly, ignoring the way both John and Isaac’s eyes go wide. “That really helped a lot.”

John stares, disbelieving. “Eviscerated.”

Derek turns his glare on Stiles, who holds up his hands, protesting. “That wasn’t my fault!”

“It was your dumbass idea to use the school intercom,” Derek says, crossing his arms.

John groans. “Oh god, you’re talking about the school, aren’t you? The night you got locked in? Which, as I remember, Scott blamed Derek for.”

Derek leans back, crossing his arms tighter and glaring at Stiles. “Scott and Stiles had the brilliant idea to call the alpha to us. I told them it was stupid.”

“That was all Scott’s idea! And it worked!” Stiles protests, looking halfway between proud and annoyed. “I mean, we didn’t really think it through all the way, but it totally worked!”

“Right,” Derek returns sarcastically, “up until he stabbed me through the chest with his claws and threw me into a wall so he could go after you two.”

“Okay, okay,” John interrupts, holding up his hands. “I get the feeling this could take a long time to explain, and while we have all night to get through this, I don’t actually want to be here all night. So. Someone give me the quick and simple version of events.”

Stiles sighs, rubbing his hands together. “The alpha showed up, attacked Derek, then herded me and Scott into the school. Jackson, Lydia and Allison showed up because Allison got a text telling her to meet us there. We couldn’t tell them we were being attacked by an alpha werewolf, obviously, but we had to tell them something. So Scott pinned it on Derek, since he was looking pretty dead at the time.”

Derek huffs, looking away in annoyance. Stiles makes a face at him. “Told you, dude, wasn’t my idea. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it once he’d said it, so.” He holds his hands up in surrender.

John leans back, taking a sip of the whiskey he’d largely been ignoring, caught up in trying to understand everything. So Scott had named Derek, and John and his deputies had gone on a manhunt for an innocent man, wrongly accused by the same people (person, his mind corrects, recalling Stiles’ protests) for the second time in a month.

The manhunt had been called off a week later, once Adrian Harris gave his statement saying that Derek had protected him from someone who’d broken into his classroom. Similarly, Dr. Deaton’s statement, once he’d been released from the hospital after having his head wound tended to, had said that he’d been assaulted by a stranger, who also broke into the vet’s office, and that Derek had happened to be driving by and was trying to get him to the hospital when a large creature of some sort had come out of nowhere, prompting Derek to pull off into the school’s parking lot to avoid it.

Thinking back, John realises, it must have been the alpha both times, searching for answers in the same places John had been. The identical stories, along with the information Harris had given him about inadvertently helping the girl who caused the Hale fire, was what had prompted John to take another, closer look at the information he had on the fire, trying to spot the link he was certain he’d been missing.

The link, as it turned out, was apparently the existence of werewolves.

John sighs, rubbing at his temples. “What happened next?”

Stiles cringes, looking away. “What happened next was the winter formal.”

John remembers the night of the winter formal like a bad dream: in pieces, snapshot recollections of bodies in hospital beds and laid out on blood-soaked floorboards, no real sense of time between them, and the ever-present air of horror and sadness. John remembers looking down at Lydia Martin’s mauled body, barely breathing, and wanting nothing more than to close his eyes and make it all go away, make it all not have happened.

He remembers running into Stiles in the hall outside, finally, hours later, his son all frantic limbs and panic in his face. John remembers stopping him, yelling in his son’s face for a moment before he got himself under control.

John remembers that night as the first time he looked at his son and realised he didn’t recognise the boy standing in front of him.

“The day before, Kate snuck up on me at my house while I was distracted talking to Scott,” Derek tells them through gritted teeth. “Scott got away, but she chained me up in the old tunnels under my house, the ones we used to use on full moons when we were kids, when we were learning to control the shift.”

Derek looks down, hands gripped together tightly across his knees, his jaw clenched and painful-looking. “The Argents know a lot about how to hurt someone like me,” he says quietly, a moment later. “And Kate in particular.”

John swallows, fighting down a sudden surge of anger. “Why? What did she want?”

Derek laughs, a low, humourless thing. “Kate? She didn’t want anything. Not really. She just wanted to make me hurt. I think she saw it as a sort of hobby,” he adds, bitterly.

John stares. Derek’s eyes are downcast, staring at the carpet like he’d burn holes in it if he could. John can’t quite see his eyes, but his expression is hard and pained, something like guilt and maybe a little fear deepening the shadows under his eyes. He looks older than he should, his 23 years sitting heavy on his shoulders.

He looks, John thinks, the same way Stiles did in the weeks and months after his mother’s death, eyes too solemn and face too serious, no longer caught in the crush of immediate grief, but still not used to the way the world seemed emptier now.

“So what happened?” John asks quietly, after a moment.

There’s something grateful about Derek’s expression when he looks up, and it makes John’s heart hurt just a little bit.

“Scott found me,” he says. “He called, I answered. He—” Derek’s jaw clenches, just for a moment as he pauses, swallows hard, and continues. “Something had happened at the formal and the Argents found out about him, so he came looking for me.”

“Peter was trying to find him, too,” Stiles picks up the narration. “But he needed help,” he adds, sounding bitter. “That’s how—that’s why...”

And John gets it, suddenly, the lightbulb going off in his head. “Lydia.”

Stiles nods. “She went looking for Jackson, and instead Peter found her on the field. He wanted me to try to find Derek for him. I guess he figured she was good leverage.”

Stiles’ expression is bitter and guilty and so pained that John can’t help but lean over, wrapping an arm securely around his son’s shoulders. Stiles flinches, almost, just for a second, shooting John a look over his shoulder that’s half-surprised and half-guilty, like he’d expected John to be angry with him.

“That’s why you weren’t at the hospital,” John guesses. Stiles nods, looking down at his fingers, folded together in his lap.

“He pretty much dragged me off the field,” Stiles says. “I didn’t have a choice. It was go with him, or watch him kill her right in front of me. And I couldn’t—” He draws in a stuttered breath and continues, sounding like he’s reciting it, like he’d practised the words beforehand.

“Scott had dropped his phone when he and Derek got jumped by the hunters. I figured Derek would have grabbed it, knowing he was outnumbered and didn’t stand a chance. I told Peter, and he made me run the GPS tracker on it. And then he—” Stiles stops short, swallowing hard, like he’d been about to say something and then caught himself. “Then he ran off,” Stiles finishes, somewhat lamely.

John stares, lost for words. “Stiles...”

“I swear, if there had been anything else, I—” Stiles cuts himself off sharply, voice breaking, turning his head away from the others.

John tightens his arm around his son, turning to try to catch his eye. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “I understand now. It’s okay. You did the right thing.”

Stiles just shrugs, one shoulder twitching uneasily, and doesn’t look up. John stares at him for another moment. It’s Derek who breaks the silence, voice quieter when he continues.

“Scott helped break me out,” he explains. “The plan was to get away and find Peter, figure out what was going on.” He stops, shaking his head.

“I take it that didn’t happen,” John puts in. “So what did happen?”

Derek’s eyes are hard. “Then the Argents showed up.”

John knows he’s hovering, standing outside Lydia’s hospital room like a bulldog, but he can’t help it. The girl had been brutally attacked, deep, ragged gashes along her ribs and what looked suspiciously like bite marks at her hip. And with Lydia unconscious and no other witnesses (or at least none who are willing to admit to being witnesses), John has no way of finding her attacker. There are officers stationed at all the doors, John reminds himself, and two posted in the hallway outside Lydia’s door. If her attacker comes back, the officers will take care of it. It doesn’t stop John from worrying, though.

Stiles has disappeared again, towing Jackson Whittemore along with him, and John doesn’t have the energy or the resources to have someone tail him, to try to figure out what Stiles’ involvement in all of this is. Scott never showed up at the hospital, although Allison did, looking pale and shocked, eyes dull and pained as she stared at Lydia through the window of her room for a few brief minutes before leaving quickly.

The anonymous call comes in just as John is preparing to finally call it a night and go home, sick of examining blood-stained grass and asking questions of teenagers who won’t answer but clearly know more than they’re saying. The last thing John wants to do is make the thirty-minute drive over to the ruined house.

John has only been back to the Hale house twice since the fire, once to deal with a group of homeless hitchhikers who’d taken up residence there, and once to arrest a young man who’d been determined to light the remains of the house on fire again. This time, he’s there to investigate a body.

Kate Argent is a pretty woman; or, she would be if not for the deep slashes across her throat and the blood pooled underneath her. The thick dust around her is relatively undisturbed, plenty of footprints all overlapping and no way to tell who they belong to, but there are no drag marks or any real signs of struggle. She’d clearly died quickly, without much of a fight. A flash of gold catches John’s eye, and he crouches down.

There, around Kate Argent’s neck, is a pendant, identical to the drawing in John’s pocket, the same one worn by the girl who plotted and planned the murder of eight people in this very house.

John stares at her face, her blank eyes, and can’t quite bring himself to feel sorry for her.

“So your uncle killed Kate Argent,” John confirms. “What happened to him? You said Chris Argent had a code, something about you not hurting people.”

Derek shakes his head, clenching his jaw. “He does. Though I think he might have been convinced to overlook it this time,” he adds, “given that he nearly shot Kate himself. Either way, he didn’t really have a chance to do anything about it.”

John’s eyebrow jumps again. “And why’s that?”

Stiles’ shoulders hunch in and he starts fidgeting, very carefully not looking up. “Because, ah,” he winces slightly, “Jackson and I might have. Um. Lit Peter on fire?”

John turns his head slowly, staring incredulously at Stiles with wide eyes. “You lit him on fire.”

Stiles winces again, biting his lip. “Um. Yeah. Might’ve done. Yeah.”

John blinks for a moment, then takes a deep, steadying breath, rubbing a hand across his eyes. “I probably don’t want to know, do I?”

Stiles shakes his head; there’s a sad sort of expression on his face, and John really doesn’t want to know what his own is doing that’s making his son look at him like that. Stiles cringes slightly. “You really, really don’t.”

John sighs, rolling his eyes up for a moment and taking another large sip of his whiskey before turning his attention on Derek again. “So, your uncle got...” he waves a hand towards Stiles. “What happened then?”

Derek’s mouth twists, and he looks away. “Then I slashed his throat.”

Silence follows his words as John stares, not sure if he should be frowning or incredulous. Isaac is looking at Derek with raised eyebrows, but he doesn’t look surprised, so he must have heard this story before, at least in part. Stiles is still turned partly away, but John can just see a sliver of a smile on his mouth, grim and humourless.

“You...” John falls silent, unsure what to say.

Derek sighs, lifting his head to meet John’s eyes, gaze steady and unapologetic. “He was insane,” he says firmly. “I couldn’t let him continue to run free. He’d already killed six people, trying to get revenge for our family. He’d bitten an innocent teenager and then tried to use him against his will. Who’s to say he wouldn’t have bitten someone else? Melissa, maybe, or Stiles?”

Stiles jerks suddenly and makes a quiet, pained sort of noise, turning his face away again. John frowns, tightening his arm around his son’s shoulders to bring him closer. Stiles is worrying at his right wrist, fingers rubbing nervously underneath his sleeve. John reaches over with his other hand, laying it over Stiles’ fingers, stilling them. Movement out of the corner of his eye makes him look up.

Derek is staring at Stiles, gaze flickering from his face to his wrist and back, something tight and angry flashing across his face for a moment before he catches John watching him and he sits back, expression going impassive once more. John watches him for another minute, trying to pick apart Derek’s expression as a thought occurs to him.

“So you killed him,” John says slowly. “You killed the alpha.” Derek inclines his head, encouraging, so John continues. “So you became the new alpha?”

Derek nods and looks down at his hands, clasped together across his knees. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

Derek exhales slowly. “There was a chance,” he explains, “that killing Peter might have essentially cured Scott.”

John narrows his eyes. “How much of a chance?”

Derek’s lips quirk wryly. “Not much of one. It was only a story, I’d never heard of it actually working. And if was just a story, if Scott killed Peter...”

“He would have become the alpha,” John finishes, exhaling heavily.

Derek nods. “So I did it instead.”

John shakes his head, staring down at his whisky. “Why? Sounds like Peter was nearly dead already. You could have just let him die. You didn’t have to take that on yourself.”

Derk shakes his head. “Peter was an alpha,” he explains. “He could have healed. It would have taken time, but we couldn’t just sit around and wait and hope that he was too injured. Besides,” he adds, “Scott was determined to kill him, desperate to go back to being just human. He wouldn’t have waited, he would have stepped up and done it if I hadn’t, and I couldn’t risk that.”

John frowns. “What do you mean, you couldn’t risk it?”

Derek shrugs. “Scott had been a werewolf for less than two months. He was still fighting it, trying to find a way to cure himself of it like it was just a bad cold. He didn’t want it, didn’t want to deal with it, even though he needed to. If he’d suddenly become the alpha, with all that power, all those instincts, the need to build a pack, to make himself stronger...he would have been out of control.” Derek shakes his head, breathing out a sigh. “I didn’t really have a choice,” he repeats.

John leans back, eyeing Derek carefully. “What about you? How did you handle it?”

Derek laughs, a short, humourless sound. “Better than some,” he concedes. “Worse than others.” He shakes his head and looks down at his hands. “It’s easier for someone who’s born a werewolf. We’re already used to it, we already have better control of it than someone who’s been bitten. I had an easier time than Scott would have had at the time. I still could have done better,” he admits quietly.

Isaac makes a quiet noise, ducking his head when Derek looks over at him, questioning. “You did okay,” Isaac says softly. “I mean, you weren’t perfect, obviously,” he goes on, smiling slightly when Stiles jerks his head, snorting, and mutters a sarcastic, No, really, you think? Derek rolls his eyes.

“But you still did okay,” Isaac says, staring up at Derek with wide eyes, a hint of a smile still lingering on his face. “And you’re getting better, so.”

John watches, torn between concern and amusement, as Derek ducks his head and looks away, apparently unsure how to react to Isaac’s statement. John considers asking exactly what doing okay means, but he puts it aside in favour of a slightly more pressing question.

“I’m going to assume, based on what you just said, Isaac, that you’re also a werewolf?” At Isaac’s nod, John turns his attention on Derek. “You did that?”

Derek stares for a moment, silent, then nods hesitantly. “I gave him the bite,” he confirms, quietly. “But not like Peter did to Scott.”

“He told me everything first,” Isaac says earnestly. “He told me about the hunters, that it was dangerous, that there would be things I would have to get used to, things that would make my life harder, things that I had to hide. But he said there were benefits, too. Things it could do for me, make me faster, stronger. You know what happened with my father,” Isaac says, voice gone low and hard. “You know what he did to me.”

John nods; he knows all about Isaac’s father and how he’d treated his son. He’d had his suspicions, of course, complaints filed by neighbours and teachers over the years, but nothing that could be proven, nothing that couldn’t be explained as sports injuries or honest accidents. He remembers the freezer in the basement, the lines of blood where Isaac had clawed at the walls, trying to get out, and he thinks he understands why Isaac said yes.

“I thought it was worth it,” Isaac confirms, like he knows exactly what John is thinking. “The hunters, the danger, all the secrets...it was worth it if it meant he couldn’t hurt me anymore. If it meant that I’d heal, no more bruises, no scrapes, no broken bones. It was all worth it for that.”

John can’t help but smile at the look on Isaac’s face, half proud and half-defiant, like he’s waiting for John to tell him he was stupid, that he should have chosen differently. But there’s something in the way Isaac holds himself, sitting there in John’s living room, that is so different from the boy he’d talked to before. Two months ago, Isaac had been timid and nervous, hunched in on himself with his eyes perpetually trained downwards. Now, even sitting with his knees drawn up, arms folded across them, he’s confident, more at ease with himself and the space he takes up.

“And Derek gave you that,” John says quietly, smiling slightly.

Isaac raises his chin, darting a glance at Derek, who’s staring at Isaac with a slightly stunned expression. “Yeah. He did.”

The Carpenters are a decent enough couple on paper: reasonable income, good reports from CPS and clean background checks by the department. According to their file, Mr. Carpenter is the Business news anchor on the local talk radio station; Ms. Carpenter works as a part-time nanny and occasional babysitter for the children in town. They’ve got two kids of their own, both in college, and a good history with their past foster children.

The woman who answers the door is decidedly average, middle-aged with flat brown hair and bored-looking eyes. The look she gives John is bland and unimpressed, giving his badge only a single, disinterested glance when he introduces himself.

“Yes? What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

“Ms. Carpenter,” John starts, then hesitates briefly. “I’d like to talk to you about your foster son, Isaac.”

Ms. Carpenter squints, expression going sharp. “He’s not in trouble again, is he?” she asks.

“Well—” John starts, but she waves him off, instead beckoning him inside as she moves away from the door and into the living room.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” she continues, before John can say anything more. “Kid like that, growing up the way he did.” She seats herself in an armchair with a rather lurid floral pattern, gesturing for John to take a seat on an equally-floral couch; John eyes it warily while Ms. Carpenter continues.

“That poor boy,” she sighs. “Had too much authority when he was young, so now he doesn’t want any at all. Not that I approve at all of what that father of his did,” she assures John, who smiles weakly back at her. “But I’m not surprised if you’re having trouble with him. We do what we can, of course,” she tells him, giving him what he’s sure is meant to be a reassuring smile, but which just looks rather condescending.

“Some kids, though,” she sighs, shaking her head. “They just want to do what they want to do, and no one can tell them otherwise. I try to keep him here,” she goes on, “but the boy’s like a cat, wants to come and go as he pleases. I gave him a key, so he’s not locked out if he’s not back once Ernest and I have gone to bed, but he’s always out with his friends, staying with them. What their parents must think, I have no idea.” She shakes her head, expression vaguely disapproving, and John forces himself to smile tightly.

“You never did say,” she continues, a moment later. “What’s he gotten himself into this time?”

“Actually,” John tells her, trying his best to keep his voice bland and friendly. “He’s not in any trouble at all.” Ms. Carpenter’s expression goes vaguely incredulous, one heavily-pencilled eyebrow arching skeptically.

“I just wanted to see how he was doing, really,” John says, still smiling vaguely. “Like you said, kid’s had a rough time of it. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t causing any problems here with you. You know how kids can be,” he adds, “pretending everything’s okay even though it really isn’t.”

“Well Isaac certainly seems to be doing just fine,” Ms Carpenter says, sounding faintly affronted. “His school work is fine, and he seems to enjoy his sports practices, and he certainly has no trouble keeping occupied with his friends.”

“So no problems?” John asks blandly. “No trouble with him at all?”

“Not a thing,” Ms Carpenter assures him. “He’s a quiet thing, but he never makes a fuss and none of his teachers have had to call us about anything. He’s been just fine.” She smiles, a self-satisfied thing that looks closer to a smirk. John fights the urge to raise his eyebrows and roll his eyes at the woman that way he’d like to; instead, he keeps his face blank, still smiling blandly.

“Great,” he says. “That sounds great.”

Twenty minutes later, John sits at his desk in his office, staring down at Isaac’s file. There’s a yellow sticky note in his hand, an address and a phone number written on it in Derek’s spiky, all-caps handwriting. John stares at the contact page of the file, then at the sticky note, back and forth. Finally he sighs, dropping the sticky note on top of the stack of papers and leaning back, closing his eyes and rubbing at his temples.

Staying with friends, Ms. Carpenter had said. Except that John knows who all of Isaac’s friends are, now, and he knows where Isaac’s been staying, and it hasn’t been with them until recently.

John can’t blame him; Ms. Carpenter had continued speaking about Isaac like the errant cat she’d compared him to, something which she owed only food and a place to sleep. Her interest in Isaac had been limited to whether or not he was doing his homework and staying out of trouble. She hadn’t even been certain what sport Isaac played, which made John arch one eyebrow incredulously behind her back; as far as John can tell, Beacon Hills has largely forgotten that the high school even offered anything besides lacrosse.

Faced with Ms. Carpenter’s utter disinterest and Mr. Carpenter’s apparent tendency to forget his name entirely (“He just talks to so many people every day, you see,” Ms. Carpenter had explained), John isn’t surprised that Isaac had chosen to stay elsewhere as often as possible.

The problem, John thinks, groaning, is that while Isaac had sometimes stayed at the Boyd’s house, or more infrequently with Erica Reyes, he’d spent most of his time apparently sleeping on Derek Hale’s couch. At least, that’s what they’d told him, but there’d been something hesitant about the way Isaac had said it that made John wonder if maybe Isaac and Derek both had been largely staying somewhere other than where they were supposed to be.

Isaac’s more recent friendship with Scott meant that, after Erica and Boyd went missing, apparently running away together, Isaac had started spending most of his nights at the McCall’s house. Melissa, when John calls her, spends ten minutes ranting about the two boys eating her out of house and home, playing video games until dawn, and leaving textbooks and lacrosse sticks all over her living room when she came home from work.

“So, what you’re telling me,” John says, trying not to laugh, ”is that you don’t mind at all.”

“Shut up,” Melissa grumbles, huffing across the phone line; John can practically see her shaking a finger at him. “You know as well as I do that he’s a good kid. He needs someone, and Scott’s there for him. And if he’s going to keep lavishing compliments on me for my crappy cooking, then I’m damn well going to keep him around.”

Now, John stares down at the file again, head resting against his palm, arm braced against his desk, fingers tapping restlessly against his own cheek while he thinks. Five minutes later, he gives up and gets in his car.

“Why do you care?” John asks Derek, standing in Derek’s kitchen ten minutes later. “He’s not related to you, he has somewhere else to stay even when he’s not at his foster home. You have enough problems of your own to deal with. He doesn’t have to be your responsibility.”

Derek frowns at him, expression vaguely insulted. “Of course he’s my responsibility,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall. “I created him. I gave him the bite. I’m his alpha, and that makes him like family to me. Of course it’s my responsibility to make sure he’s safe.”

John stands there for a long moment, watching Derek carefully. “You really do care,” he says, finally, hating the way it sounds like a realisation, like something he hadn’t already known. “It’s not just duty to you. You really do want him to be safe. You care about what happens to him.”

“Of course I do,” Derek repeats softly. “The others left. Scott has his own pack now. Isaac is the only one who stayed.” Derek looks down then, and his voice, when he speaks again, sounds younger than John has ever heard him before.

“He’s the only person I’ve got left.”

“Erica and Boyd were next. I explained everything, the benefits and the downsides. I made sure they had a choice,” Derek assures John, looking hesitant and apologetic.

“I offered it to them for the same reasons I offered it to Isaac: because it could help them. The bite can cure a lot of things,” he explains, “like Scott’s asthma. It cured Erica’s epilepsy, the one thing she’d always craved but had never been able to have. And Boyd...” Derek smiles slightly. “Boyd just wanted to be part of a family, to know there there would always be someone there for him.”

“So Isaac was the first person you gave the bite to?”

Derek’s expression twists funny, a weird mix of annoyance and frustration and something vaguely guilty as he shakes his head reluctantly.

(John ignores Stiles next to him, muttering, “And cue bitchface...”)

“No,” Derek says from behind gritted teeth, the admission sounding like it’s being dragged out of him. “No. The first person I gave it to was Jackson Whittemore.”

Jackson Whittemore, John thinks. Rich, arrogant, self-centered, school prince and school bully Jackson Whittemore, who his son has been complaining about since the second grade when Jackson shoved Stiles into the mud at recess just for saying hello. John stares for a moment, then groans.

“Tell me you didn’t actually think that was a good idea,” he begs, voice muffled by the hand he’s clapped over his face.

“That’s what I said!” Stiles flails his arm vaguely in John’s periphery. “No one in the history of ever could possibly think that was a good idea, not even Sourwolf over here! But no, he did it anyway!”

Derek rolls his eyes, gritting his teeth and glaring at Stiles like he’d like nothing more than to set him on fire. He opens his mouth to say something sarcastic and biting, but John cuts across him, less interested in the sort of verbal sparring that Derek and Stiles seem prone to (and the fact that this is apparently a consistent pattern is something John will have to consider later) and more interested in getting an explanation.

“I refuse to believe,” John tells Derek, “that you are stupid enough to offer the bite to Jackson Whittemore. And you’ve said that you aren’t like your uncle, which means you didn’t bite him without telling him. Which means he must have asked for it. So the question is: how did he find out?”

“After Scott got bitten,” Stiles answers, sitting forward. “All of a sudden he was, like, completely awesome at lacrosse. Got made co-captain with Jackson. And Jackson didn’t like that, so he started paying really close attention to Scott. Apparently he thought it was drugs,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, somehow he put it all together, figured it out.”

“Let me guess,” John says, rolling his eyes as well. “He saw it as a performance enhancer, so he wanted it, too.”

“Yup,” Stiles says, popping the p. “Even after Scott warned him about the Argents and everything. That actually just made things worse, because Jackson decided if Scott couldn’t get him to bite, Jackson’s plan was to out him to Allison’s dad, who would then kill Scott for dating his daughter.”

“And even after Lydia...?” John stares incredulously as Stiles shakes his head.

“Even after that, and all the shit with Kate and Peter. He just really hated that Scott was cool all of a sudden.”

John shakes his head, turning to Derek with raised eyebrows. “And this is the kid you decided to turn first?”

Derek makes a face. “In my defense, he already knew about us and had already threatened to bring the Argents down on both me and Scott.”

“So you decided turning him into a werewolf was the best way to deal with that?”

Derek shrugs, looking faintly sulky. “I’d only been an alpha for a few hours. An alpha’s instincts are strong, different from a beta. There’s a drive to create a pack, to gain the support of existing werewolves, or create new ones. Jackson wanted it and came asking for it, practically begging. At the time it seemed perfect.”

John groans, shaking his head and raising his glass of whiskey, draining the rest of it.

“So Jackson Whittemore is a werewolf. Great.”

“Well,” Stiles says, sounding hesitant; he cringes slightly when John looks over at him. “Er. He is now?”

John blinks. “You’re saying...he wasn’t a werewolf? Even though he was bitten.”

This time it’s Derek who winces, just slightly, tilting his head and looking sheepish and guilty. “Something like that.”

“So he didn’t turn?”

“Oh he turned, alright,” Stiles mutters darkly, crossing his arms and glaring angrily at the carpet.

Derek sighs heavily, rolling his eyes and looking in the opposite direction as Stiles turns his gaze on him, eyes narrowing accusingly. John turns his head, gaze moving from Derek to Stiles and back, and then finally to his empty glass.

“I’m going to need more whiskey,” he decides.

Stiles has always been interested in all sorts of things, bouncing from one obsession to another with ease: dinosaurs when he was six (“I wanna be a t-rex when I grow up!”), astronomy when he was eleven (the telescope had been expensive, but Stiles had loved it, had loved dragging it into John and Yelena’s room and setting it up beside the window so she could see through it from her spot in bed when she was too tired to move), anatomy and biology when he was thirteen (“I just want to know exactly what the doctors are talking about when I go for a physical, dad, that’s all, I swear.” I don’t trust the doctors not to lie to me again.).

Stiles has always been a smart kid with a brain like a sponge, soaking up every bit of interesting information he comes across. It’s been an issue before in school, in classes where Stiles couldn’t make himself care, couldn’t make himself find the material interesting or weird enough to bother remembering.

But John has never been able to bring himself to be too hard on his son for it. Stiles’ grades have always been good, despite his lack of focus and his inability to stay on a single subject, and John can still remember sitting at the table, trading amused glances with Yelena over dinner as Stiles gave impromptu lectures on his Interest of the Week, punctuating his speech with jabs of his fork in the air, oblivious to the food he was flinging everywhere.

They haven’t eaten dinner together at the table in a long time, and these days Stiles is quiet more often than not, answering questions when John asks, but volunteering no information of his own. His bookshelves are piled with books on mythology, old folktales and legends. His browser history is locked, but more than once John has peeked at his computer while Stiles was in the bathroom only to find a dozen tabs open to websites about monsters and the occult.

At first John had worried, especially as Stiles started to withdraw, becoming more and more absent at home and more and more present at crime scenes and in suspicious places, offering weaker and weaker excuses every time. John had continued worrying, concerned about the sort of trouble Stiles seemed to be getting himself into, concerned that the clues he had kept pointing towards Stiles, concerned that his son could be involved in something dangerous and deadly.

John remembers staring down at the files on his desk, mentally comparing them to the list in his head of all the crime scenes Stiles had been found at, all the times when he’d been mysteriously absent from wherever he said he’d been at the time of the crimes, all the times people had reported seeing his Jeep or Stiles himself in strange places.

It’s starting to make sense now, though. At first he’d thought Stiles’ interest in mythology was nothing more than a new obsession, more intense, maybe, and more dangerous than his previous ones, but nothing more than a passing interest in something cool. Now, though, it’s clear that Stiles has been doing research, trying to understand the world he’d been thrown into, trying to do his part to keep his friends safe.

John steps closer, running a finger down the line of books on Stiles’ shelf: Anthology of Eastern European Folklore, Shape-Shifters: The Search for Identity, Monsters: Fact or Fiction?, Herblore in Medicine and Myth, The Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures, History of Lycanthropy.

John pulls out the last one, flipping pages idly. There are torn bits of paper stuck between pages, long sections full of underlining and highlighting, cramped notes and questions scribbled in the margins, places where Stiles has crossed things out and corrected them. There are bundles of paperclipped printouts stacked neatly on another shelf, more highlighting and underlining, some of it looking more like Scott’s handwriting, and the very occasional all-caps of Derek’s hand.

This isn’t just an obsession, John thinks sadly, looking around. This is his son’s life now.

“Jackson’s a what, now?”

They’ve taken a break so that Stiles could heat up the supreme pizza he’d hidden away at the back of the freezer, and so that John could refill his glass of whiskey while ignoring Stiles’ disapproving glare (although he had caved at the annoyed hiss Stiles made when he tried to pour himself more than two fingers’ worth).

Stiles has joined Isaac on the floor, both of them holding paper plates and carefully cradling heavily-laden slices of pizza over their laps. There’s a third plate sitting on the side table beside John, but he hasn’t touched it yet.

Derek had refused entirely, looking startled when Stiles offered, though he had taken John’s offer of a beer, despite the faintly amused crook to his mouth when he told John he couldn’t get drunk.

Derek sighs now, rolling the bottle between his palms. “A kanima. It’s another sort of shape-shifter.”

“Looks like a giant lizard,” Stiles puts in helpfully around a mouthful of pizza. “A really big, ugly, scary lizard with sharp teeth and claws and a tail it can whack people with.”

“Don’t forget the venom,” Isaac puts in, holding up a finger. John stares.

“The what?”

“Paralytic toxin,” Stiles says blithely, nodding. “In it’s claws. It cuts you with them, right at the back of the neck, and boom. Total muscle paralysis from the neck down. Works just through skin contact, too,” Stiles adds, making a face, “but not as well, wears off sooner.”

John stares for a moment, horrified, than groans, leaning back and covering his face with his hands. “Do I even want to know how you know that?”

“Weeeell,” Stiles says, drawing out the word. “There was that time it attacked me and Derek and Erica at the school and I ended up having told hold up 200 pounds of paralyzed werewolf in 8 feet of water for two hours.”

Derek makes an aggrieved noise and John turns to look at him. Derek’s shaking his head slightly, one hand pressed to his eyes. He sighs heavily and the drops his hand, looking over at Stiles with a glare; Stiles makes a face and goes back to his pizza.

“Wasn’t my favourite moment, either, jackass,” he mutters around a mouthful of cheese and crust. He swallows heavily.

“Scott was at Allison’s house,” he explains, somewhat sullenly. “We knew the Argents had this book, a bestiary. It’s a record of all the things they’ve hunted, and we were hoping it would tell us what this thing was. Scott was supposed to get it and meet us at the school. Only the kanima got the jump on us and knocked Erica out, and then kept me and Derek in the damn pool until we nearly drowned.”

John stares, alarmed, feeling his eyebrows jump and his heart stutter, just for a moment.

Stiles looks up at him, eyes widening suddenly. “But it’s all good!” he assures John hastily. “Scott got there at the last minute, it was all okay.” Stiles’ expression is almost pleading, like he’s only a minute away from begging John to believe him, that everything was fine, that it didn’t matter that Stiles just said he’d nearly died because he’d been attacked by a monster.

And John wants so badly to believe him, to believe that Stiles has been careful, that he’s kept out of the way of anything really horrible or dangerous. But John knows his son. Stiles has always been impulsive, always had a reckless streak that’s gotten him into trouble more times than John can remember. Why should that be any different just because it’s monsters and hunters and not just scraped knees and fireworks in the backyard?

John wants to believe Stiles when he says it’s okay. But the truth is that Stiles has been in danger for months and hasn’t said anything. And there is nothing about that that is okay.

“Tell me something, Derek.”

Derek tilts his head, looking calm as could be, still leaning back against the wall, but John can see the lines of tension on his shoulders, the tense line of his jaw. John stands across from him and crosses his arms to match.

“My son will downplay everything that’s happened in the last few months if it means hiding how bad things have been for him. So I wanted to ask you, without him around to deny anything.” John squares his shoulders and fixes all of his attention on Derek.

“How many times has my son been in danger?”

Whatever Derek was expecting John to ask, it wasn’t that. A tiny bit of the tension leaves his shoulders, only to return a moment later as his mouth twists slightly, expression confused for half a second before he catches himself, letting his face go blank again. He shrugs.

“A lot,” he admits. “I don’t have an exact number. But it’s a lot. The first time he was in direct danger was at the school, when Peter was chasing them, but there have been plenty of times he could have gotten hurt just by being around.”

John blinks, shaking his head, swallowing around the lump forming in his throat. He’d had no idea. How had he not known? Surely there must have been some clue, some sign that Stiles was out risking life and limb nearly every night.

Something must be showing on his face, because Derek’s expression shifts slightly, just a hint of sympathy, maybe, or guilt.

“He was in danger from Scott,” Derek goes on, “in the beginning, before he learned to control himself better. When he shifted on the full moon, his instincts told him to hunt, to go after the closest prey he could find. That was usually Stiles.”

“But not anymore?” John asks, hopefully.

Derek shrugs again. “He’s much more in control now,” he says, smirking just a little, like it’s not quite that simple; part of John wants to ask, but the bigger part of him just wants to get through the rest of this conversation.

“Isaac had the same problem, his first moon,” Derek continues. “When we broke him out of the station. I got between them, so Stiles was fine. Then kanima threatened him at the mechanic’s, and then tried to kill us both at the pool. There’s been probably at least half a dozen times since then that Stiles could have been killed or injured.”

John closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to ignore the apologetic note in Derek’s voice. He takes another breath before he opens his eyes, face turned away slightly, trying to school his expression into something that hides the way he feels like he’s been punched in the chest.

“That’s Stiles for you,” he says, voice only slightly choked. “Never knows when to back off and stay out of trouble.”

The expression on Derek’s face is strangely open, sort of helpless. John catches sight of it out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he’s turned back to face Derek, it’s gone.

“I think you’d have to duct tape Stiles in place to keep him from getting involved,” Derek says, somewhat dryly. “He’d determined to be involved, even if he has no idea what he’s doing. Sometimes he’s even useful,” Derek adds, shrugging slightly.

John doesn’t mean to chuckle, but he can’t quite help himself. He leans back slightly, surveying Derek for a moment.

In all honestly, John isn’t entirely sure what to make of Derek Hale, who cares about Isaac, the last member of his pack, and seems to care equally about Scott, who wants nothing to do with him. He’s somewhat dismissive of Stiles (which rankles, just a little, but John can understand), but more than once John has seen Stiles apparently pull expression and personality out of Derek where John could have sworn there was none before.

John shifts slightly on his feet and tilts his head, questioning. “I understand your concern for Isaac, and even Scott. But what I don’t understand is what your relationship is to my son.”

Derek frowns, opening his mouth, but John holds up a hand, stalling him. “What I mean,” John amends, “is that Stiles isn’t part of your group, your...pack. You have no ties to him. And yet he’s the first person you went to when you needed help. I want to know why.”

Derek is silent for a long moment, expression conflicted, like he’s trying to decide what to say. John lets him debate with himself. Finally Derek sighs, shaking his head.

“I’ll be honest with you, Sheriff,” Derek says. “Your son doesn’t like me and doesn’t trust me as far as he can throw me, and that’s on a good day. On a bad day, he’d happily sit back and let me get killed by whoever’s gunning for me this week. I’m sure he’d be happy to blame everything that’s happened on me.”

He tilts his head to the side, conceding. “Some of that is justified, some of it isn’t my fault at all. I don’t know why he helped me the other day when I’d been shot, or why he held me up in that pool, or why he hasn’t backed away from all of this and kept himself safe.”

Derek shakes his head, looking exasperated. “I don’t want him there. I don’t want him involved in any of this. I don’t trust him and I don’t need him bumbling in and getting himself killed.”

John frowns. “And yet you came to him for help.”

Derek shakes his head, exhaling heavily. “I needed him, and there was no other option. That’s it.”

“But you don’t trust him at all.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “I don’t trust anyone, Sheriff. Not Scott, not even my own betas. So no, I don’t trust Stiles. I don’t confide in him, I don’t ask him for advice, I don’t ask for his help unless I have no other choice. I don’t factor him into my plans except where I have to account for his inability to stay out of things that don’t concern him.”

He turns away for a moment and closes his eyes, sighing. When he turns back, he stares at John with a frown, shoulders hunched together slightly, like he’s protecting himself from something.

“But that’s nothing,” he says, quietly, “compared to how much I don’t trust my uncle, or the Argents, or even Deaton. So when I say I don’t trust Stiles, understand I’m working from a baseline of zero. Peter, the Argents? They’re in three-digit negative numbers.”

“Because you don’t trust anyone by default,” John repeats quietly. He’s beginning to understand.

Derek nods. “Exactly.

John watches him for a moment longer, feeling a small smile creep onto his face. he knows the exact moment Derek sees it because he frowns, confused. John shakes his head.

“Thank you, Derek,” he says, smiling wider. “I think you’ve told me exactly what I need to know.”

He smiles as he turns away, Derek’s words playing over again in his head, about Stiles and danger and the number of times it seems they’ve saved each other’s lives. He hears Derek say, I don’t trust anyone, and hears what Derek didn’t quite say, but what was buried underneath: I trust him as much as I can.

“You said you didn’t initially know this thing, this kanima, was Jackson,” John says, “yes?” Three heads nod. “So how did you find out?”

“There were two options,” Derek tells him. “The first, obviously, was Jackson, since he’d gotten the bite. He said nothing had happened, but we couldn’t be certain.”

“And the other?”

Stiles winces. “Ah. Remember how Lydia got attacked by Peter?”

John groans, and Stiles winces again, but continues. “As far as we knew, the bite either turns you,” he explains, “or it kills you. But Lydia didn’t die, and she didn’t turn, either. If she had, she would have healed and she never would have been in the hospital.”

“Unless she didn’t turn normally,” John concludes.

Stiles nods. “Exactly. I was certain it wasn’t her, but Derek was certain it was, especially after the two days she spent running around in the woods. Derek wanted to kill her,” Stiles admits, throwing Derek a dirty look (John only barely refrains from doing the same thing).

“Luckily for her,” Stiles says, smirking slightly, “Jackson lizarded out, proving it wasn’t Lydia at all, so she was safe. As far as we know, she’s actually immune to the bite somehow. But Jackson was still a major problem.”

John frowns. “Because he’d killed people?”

“Because he didn’t even know it was happening,” Stiles corrects, grimacing. “Which we didn’t realise until we managed to translate the bestiary, which was a bitch and a half in itself. We tried to tell him what was happening, when me and Scott, ah. Kidnapped him. In the van.”

Stiles cringes and John slaps a hand over his face, groaning. “Christ, kid.” He sighs and takes a healthy sip of his whiskey. “Well, I understand it now, at least.” He shakes his head. “I take it that didn’t go well?”

Stiles scoffs. “We’d never get that lucky,” he snarks, rolling his eyes. “He didn’t believe a word we said, and then he broke out, actually. Probably lizarded out in the van and then used all that extra strength to bust out of the van.”

John frowns. “I thought you said he didn’t know what was happening to him? How did he control it?”

“He didn’t. The kanima doesn’t act on it’s own,” Stiles explains. “It has a master who controls it. It’s a weapon more than a creature, meant to be used by people seeking revenge, specifically against murderers,” Stiles concludes, mouth twisting wryly.

John sighs, rolling his eyes. “Lots of people wanting revenge in my town,” he mutters, rubbing at his eyes and shaking his head. “So it needs a master. Who?”

Stiles winces, hard, flinching away slightly. “Remember Matt?”

And yeah, John remembers Matt. Hard to forget the boy who’d shoved a gun in his son’s face, forced him to cuff John to a wall and marched him away with the gun pressed to his back. Hard to forget the kid who’d shot Scott in front of his mother, just to prove a point, just because he could. The kid who’d pistol-whipped him in the head so hard he’d had a concussion when he’d woken up.

Matt, who’d drowned in the river before John could see him locked away.

“Yeah,” he grits out. “I remember him.”

The silence that follows is heavy.

John stares down into his glass of whiskey, his jaw clenched as he tries to rein in the anger he still feels. Across from him, Derek looks like he’s got a white-knuckled grip on the arms of his chair again, face turned away; John thinks he can hear his teeth grinding from where he sits. Isaac stares at the carpet in silence, biting his lip. Stiles sits with his knees drawn up, arms braced across them and his fingers tangled tightly together. He’s breathing carefully, the slow in-and-out that Johns knows means he’s trying to keep himself under control.

“He said he’d drowned,” Stiles says finally, voice sounding hollow. “Some pool party for the swim team at Isaac’s when he was a kid, and they pushed him in even though he couldn’t swim. Isaac’s dad covered it up, told him not to say anything. That’s why he was killing them all off. Isaac’s dad, and the mechanic, and the couple in the woods, and the girl at the rave. All people that Matt used Jackson to kill.”

John doesn’t say anything, just grips his glass tighter and doesn’t look up. He wants to feel sorry for Matt, wants to feel some tiny shred of pity for this kid who’d gone so badly off the rails. But then he remembers the way Matt had smirked and taunted, no apology in his voice, no hint that he was willing to stop what he was doing and try to make it right.

“And then he turned up dead,” John says after another long moment. “So what happened to Jackson?”

Stiles shrugs stiffly. “With Matt dead, the kanima needed a new master. Gerard happened to find him first.”

“Chris Argent’s father?” John asks, grimacing.

The moment the man had come into town, John had gone on alert. Something about the man bothered him, made him careful to keep an eye on him. When he’d become principal of the high school overnight, John had wanted to investigate. But the school board hadn’t lodged any complaints, nor had any of the parents or faculty, and John hadn’t had anything else to go on. It was gratifying now to know that his instincts had been correct.

“So the hunters wanted Jackson?”

Derek laughs, a hard, bitter sort of sound. “They wanted a weapon,” he corrects. “The kanima is faster than us, stronger, too. It heals faster and doesn’t stop even when it’s injured. If the hunters got control of the kanima, they would have had a weapon that could bring down a werewolf more effectively than any gun. And Gerard was determined to get control of it.”

“As far as I can tell,” Derek tells them, leaning forward, “Gerard has never cared about the code. He hides behind it when he needs to have the moral high ground but he doesn’t actually believe in it. When Kate was killed, he took that as an excuse to get rid of the code altogether. He declared war against us. No code, no mercy.”

John stares, brows drawn down and his mouth hanging open slightly. “Christ.”

Derek smiles, wry and bitter. “You can see why it was so important that they not get control of the kanima.” He shakes his head, jaw clenched. “Gerard was already set on wiping us out. Chris was still resisting him, I think. I don’t think he was happy with his father coming in and upsetting everything and throwing the code away. And then Allison’s mother killed herself, and Gerard had another excuse to kill us all.”

John frowns, staring at Derek. “I thought that was a suicide.”

Derek looks down, sighing heavily, and shakes his head. “It was,” he says, speaking more to the carpet than the John. “But only because she was bitten. By me.”

John gapes. “You—what?”

Derk raises his head to look at John,expression pained and guilty. “It was an accident,” he says quietly. “She found out Scott and Allison had continued dating, even though she wasn’t supposed to see him anymore.” Derek grimaces briefly, showing how much he thought of that idea. “Victoria followed Scott and cornered him at the rave. She tried to kill him, poison him with wolfsbane.”

Derek pauses, jaw clenching and hands twitching like he’d like to curl them into fists. “I could hear his yelling, so I went to find him. Victoria jumped me, tried to stab me. We fought, she got bitten and ran away, and I barely got Scott out of there before it was too late.” He shakes his head, looking away.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” he repeats. “It was an accident. But it happened, and she decided to kill herself rather than live as a werewolf.”

John breathes out heavily. “That can’t have been easy on Allison or her father.”

Stiles makes a noise like a cut-off laugh. “Allison lost it,” he says flatly. “She stopped coming to school, she wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even Lydia. She just cut everyone off and started spending all her time with Gerard, planning out her revenge on Derek.”

Isaac makes a noise, sounding faintly wounded, his expression angry. His hands are clenched into fists across his knees. Stiles is all tension, shoulders stiff and fingers twisted tight together, jaw clenched hard. John sighs.

“I take it things went badly.”

“Erica and Boyd left,” Derek says woodenly, voice flat. “Allison and her father intercepted them.”

“Shot them full of arrows, you mean,” Isaac spits out. “And then handed them to her grandfather so he could string them up and torture them for information.”

John stares. His vision goes red, just slightly, and his hands shake with rage. “What.”

“During the game,” Isaac elaborates, voice tight. “I didn’t know. If I had, I’d have gone to find them. Instead I stayed behind to help Scott.” He takes a deep breath and goes on, sounding like he’s forcing himself to keep calm.

“There was another...complication,” Derek adds, hesitantly, sounding like it’s being dragged out of him. “Peter came back.”

John gapes, eyebrows rising painfully high. “He came back?”

“He used Lydia to do it,” Derek says, shaking his head and looking frustrated. “I don’t know how. She’s apparently immune to the bite, but somehow when Peter attacked her, there was some sort of, I don’t know. Some sort of connection that formed.”

“She kept having these freakouts,” Stiles adds, looking troubled. “Hallucinations, that sort of thing. And we were all so busy with everything else that we never took the time to ask her about them. And then it was too late.”

“Jesus Christ,” John closes his eyes and covers his face with a hand, trying to take a deep breath. He lets his hand drop, exhaling slowly, and opens his eyes again. “Okay,” he says, gratified when his voice comes out steady. “Okay. You mentioned the game?”

“Gerard was there,” Isaac explains, nodding. “He had control of Jackson, and he’d made some threat to Scott. I think he was going to have Jackson kill someone. I don’t know if hurting Jackson was the plan all along or whether he somehow fought Gerard enough to turn his claws on himself instead. Either way, it was a perfect distraction.”

John feels the dread settle in his stomach; he knows what comes next, but he still hears himself asking, “Distraction for what?”

“So they could grab me,” Stiles answers hollowly. “Gerard wanted to use me as bait for Scott, since he was sure to come for me.” There’s a faint note of bitterness in Stiles’ voice, but before John can really examine it, Stiles continues.

“They shoved me down in the basement where they had Boyd and Erica, so I could see exactly what Gerard was doing to them. Gerard said they wouldn’t tell him anything about Derek, or that they couldn’t. I think he figured I would. You know, because I’m the weak human who’ll do anything to get away from being hurt.”

Stiles snorts, angry and bitter. John takes a deep breath, focusing on slowly loosening his grip on his glass, knuckles creaking in protest. He tries to draw in another deep breath, forcing himself to stay calm, at least until Stiles is done talking.

“Gerard beat the crap out of me,” Stiles goes on in that same empty voice. “I didn’t say anything. He got a call pretty soon after that, probably about Jackson. So they dragged me back out and shoved me into a car and dropped me off halfway across town so I had to walk the rest of the way back home.”

“But Jackson was dead,” John says faintly. “I know that, I heard them say it.”

Isaac’s mouth twists, smiling wryly. “Not quite. Jackson can be killed, but when he’s the kanima? It’s nearly impossible. He was practically dead, but he was healing by the time they got him to the hospital. Scott and I snuck him out,” he goes on. “Derek said he had a way to try to get Jackson back, to basically cure him.”

John’s eyebrows jump upward. “That’s possible?”

Derek tilts his head. “With the right person? Apparently.”

“Lydia,” Stiles clarifies, seeing John’s raised eyebrow. “After she left, I stopped being an asshole long enough to go find her again and drive us both over to the warehouse Derek and Scott and Isaac had brought Jackson to.”

“There was a fight,” Derek puts in. “Chris Argent went against his father and helped us. I don’t know why.We managed to stall long enough for Stiles to get there with Lydia so she could confront Jackson, try to bring him back.”

Stiles laughs, suddenly, harsh but not entirely unamused. “Witness the great healing power of love,” he snarks. “Literally. It was enough to bring him back long enough for Derek and Peter to kill him. Except then he somehow came back, alive. And wolfy.” Stiles shrugs in response to John’s incredulous look. “We’re still not sure at all how that happened. We’re just sort of rolling with it for now.”

“And Gerard? What happened to him.”

“Ran off,” Derek says tightly, clearing his throat. “We’re looking for him.”

John narrows his eyes; there’s something Derek isn’t saying, going by the speculative look Stiles shoots him, but neither he nor Isaac jump in to elaborate, so John’s forced to let it go.

“And this was all just in the last four months?”

Stiles makes a face. “Yeah, pretty much. It’s sort of a daily thing, really, figuring out who’s trying to kill or maim us this time.”

John opens his mouth, but he has no idea what to say, so he closes it again, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ,” he repeats, faint and choked-out. He raises his glass, draining it a second time. He’s got a headache the size of Alaska, and he swears he can feel his heart trying to pound it’s way out of his chest. He feels exhausted, like he’s just run a marathon.

If this is what the last few months have been like, he thinks, it’s no wonder that Stiles is so perpetually tired, the bags under his eyes nearly as bad as they had been in the months after his mother died. Derek and Isaac don’t look any better, all three of them exhausted, in the way that John recognises from too many long shifts spent overnight at the sheriff’s station. It’s the kind of exhaustion that’s gone past being tired and into mania. It’s the kind of exhaustion that starts feeling familiar, just something you have to learn to live with and work around.

John looks at the three of them, all pale and drawn and looking so much older than they should, and feels something in his heart clench tight and painful.

“You boys have been through Hell,” John says, shaking his head. He rubs at his eyes, thinking for a moment, then waves a hand at Derek and Isaac. “You two,” he tells them,” are going to stay here tonight.”

Derek opens his mouth, probably to protest, but John cuts him off with a stern look. “No. No arguing. You’re still healing,” he points to Derek, “and you both look like you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in ages. So,” he levers himself up carefully, setting his glass aside. The others stand as well, Isaac and Stiles unwinding themselves from the floor, grimacing as they stretch.

“There’s a guest room down to hall,” John says, gesturing. “One of you can take that, the other can take the couch. You get some sleep,” he admonishes, looking pointedly at all three of them in turn, vaguely amused when Derek huffs and looks away, looking faintly embarrassed; Isaac just yawns, already taking tiny, shuffling steps towards the guest room.

John grabs a few blankets and a pillow from the linen closet upstairs, and an old pair of sweatpants for Derek while Stiles cleans up the kitchen and grabs a change of clothes for Isaac. Isaac’s asleep almost the moment he flops face-first onto the guest bed, but John can still hear Derek rustling around in the living room when he heads upstairs, trailing after Stiles.

John pauses at his door and turns, watching Stiles stumble off towards his room, steps wobbling as he finally gives into exhaustion.

John takes a few steps back towards Stiles. “Hey, come here.”

Stiles turns, blinking, and John steps closer, wrapping his arms around his son in a tight hug. Stiles stands there for a moment, then brings his arms up as well, clutching at John with his face buried in his shoulder. They stand there for a long moment in silence. John reluctantly lets him go when Stiles pulls away.

“I’m sorry,” John says softly, hands resting on Stiles’ shoulders as he looks at him, the way he’s leaned out, looking thinner than before, but John can see new muscle in his arms, at least. His shoulders are squared slightly, like he’s gotten used to having to stand tall and solid all the time and hasn’t quite managed to stop.

“God, Stiles, I’m so sorry.” John shakes his head. “I wish you’d—” He stops, unsure what to say.

I wish you’d told me? Except John isn’t sure he would have believed Stiles before now.

I wish you’d had help? Except it wasn’t just Stiles, there were plenty of other people involved, and it had been overwhelming for every one of them.

I wish you hadn’t been alone? Except that’s how Stiles had always been, keeping the things that mattered close to his chest, even as he threw himself into things and off cliffs without a second thought for what could happen.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Stiles whispers, reassuring. “It’s okay. You know now. It’s okay.”

John sighs heavily, ignoring the tears threatening at the corners of his eyes. And isn’t that just like Stiles, to be the one reassuring him when it should have been John’s responsibility all along, his responsibility as a father to keep his son safe, his responsibility as a sheriff to keep the rest of them safe. And he’d failed, pressed too hard on the wrong things and not hard enough on the right ones, and somewhere, somehow, Stiles had slipped away from him, taking on burdens he should never have had to shoulder.

“How the hell have you managed all of this?” John whispers, hearing his voice crack. “I would have gone insane.”

“It’s been a very busy four months,” Stiles replies quietly, giving John a tired smile. “Guess I just didn’t have time.”

John chokes out a weak laugh. “Fair enough, I guess.”

Stiles yawns again, and John shakes his head and pushes him off, herding him back down the hall towards his room.

“Get some sleep, son.”

Stiles grins weakly and turns around, stumbling backwards to give John a salute. “Yes sir,” he mutters. “Sleep. Yeah. I can totally do that.”

He spins around again and disappears into his room, thumping the doorframe with his shoulder as he goes. The door clicks shut softly a moment later, and John turns away.

He changes quickly, mind wandering, and then lies in bed staring at the ceiling, turning everything over in his mind for long minutes before he starts to feel overwhelmed again and forces it all away. He can deal with the inevitable momentary panic as he tries to sort out everything he’s been told, trying to fit all of this new information into his brain, reordering the world as he knows it.

But for now, what’s important is the werewolf downstairs on the couch, the other werewolf asleep in the guest bed, and the one asleep in another house a few blocks down. What matters is his son, just down the hall, who John can only hope will finally be able to sleep, his rest unburdened by the secrets and the weight he’s been carrying around.

What’s important, John decides, is that he wakes up in time to make pancakes, and that Stiles lets him get out the real bacon that’s hidden in the freezer. What’s important is figuring out how Derek and Isaac take their eggs, and whether either of them drinks coffee.

Because this is his son’s life now, and it’s time John started being a part of it again.