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"You're not the Alpha anymore, Derek!" Cora growled the words, her own eyes flashing yellow, her posture defiant.
"I'm still your older brother, though," Derek shot back, unwilling to budge.
They'd been away from Beacon Hills for months, travelling without a specific direction -- at least one that either of them would say out loud -- when Derek got the message. It wasn't a plea to come back, it wasn't a request, but the words were urgent enough that he made a decision without hesitating.
"I have to go back, Cora," he said, almost pleading.
Something is happening in BH. Stiles is … not himself. That was the extent of the first text message that Derek got from Scott, the last person he'd expected to hear from after everything.
"You can't just command me to go, Der," Cora said, though her tone was a little softer, her defiance weaker when he showed her the message. "I know you feel like you need to go back, but I can't… I don't want to go back there."
Derek nodded weakly, understanding her reasons a little after the talks they had on the road. She'd told him how Beacon Hills stopped feeling like home a long time ago, how it was him whom she'd stayed for as long as she did. He knew where she'd been since the fire, the small pack in South America, hidden from most of civilization, far away from humans who weren't born into the pack. He'd heard the stories of her childhood, how she'd been kidnapped by the hunters and then saved from them by a passing pack that got her to safety. Derek knew, though neither of them said it, that eventually their travel would bring them there, to the only home that Cora knew.
He didn't plan on staying with her, though he didn't know just yet how he'd leave her behind. There was still Peter, but with their complicated history, Derek didn't have quite the same attachment as he did to her.
"You can't make me go, Der," Cora said with finality.
"I know," he replied. "But I know I have to go back."
"If it was anyone else, would you?"
And that is the prize question, Derek thought. Would he go back if any other pack member would be in that kind of danger? Would he immediately assume danger to begin with?
"I don't know," he admitted after a while, feeling Cora's eyes on him.
"Bring me home, Der," Cora told him softly, reaching for his hand. "Bring me home, and then go save the little shit."
"Well, that sounded like someone else here trying to be the Alpha and giving orders," Derek said, but he followed it with a chuckle.
"Someone's got to," Cora smiled. "Otherwise you'll never have the guts to tell him how you feel."