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“Can I talk to you?” Stiles looked up, phone still against his ear and stared at Ethan, eyes wide and full of something that Stiles saw made Ethan shift uncomfortably. His pups around him started growling low, barely loud enough for Stiles to hear but definitely loud enough for Ethan to hear. “Look, I need to talk to you, okay?”
“Why?” Isaac nearly snarled and more on instinct than anything else, Stiles reached out his free hand and gently carded his fingers through the curls on the back of Isaac’s head. It did nothing to tone down how pissed the beta was but it grounded him enough to stop his eyes from flashing.
“He’s your alpha, you don’t speak to another alpha during formal discussions without his permission. Does Hale not teach you pups anything?” Ethan was rolling his eyes despite the tension in his shoulders.
“You just remember that there’s only one of you, and I have plenty of wolfsbane,” Allison stared him down but instead of getting angry, Ethan regarded her with a curiosity that intrigued everyone before the alpha nodded.
“And he’s not the alpha,” Scott muttered.
“Can someone start fucking talking to me please?” everyone heard shouting coming from the phone and Stiles winced.
“He’s Hale’s mate,” Ethan said with ease. “Means he’s the alpha too. Now please?” the word seemed to twist as he said it but he managed in the end and Stiles cleared his throat, directing his next words into the phone.
“D, I gotta talk to Ethan-”
“Keep me on the line,” Derek growled and Stiles passed the phone to Allison while Lydia huffed and moved to sit by the now much closer Danny.
“You can’t really talk in private on a bus with three other wolves on board, kid,” Stiles gestured to the empty seat and Ethan stiffened before taking it.
“I told you Ennis was dead,” he started and Stiles waited. “Kali, Morell-”
“Wait, Ms Morell?” Allison interrupted. “Our French teacher?” Ethan snorted.
“She’s not just a French teacher,” he muttered. “She, Kali and Aiden took Ennis to the vet-”
“Deaton? Is he okay? Did they hurt him?” Scott sat up straight, glaring holes in a now very irritated Alpha wolf. Only, it wasn’t Ethan that called him on it.
“That’s it. The next beta wolf or human to open their mouth will have one on one training time with Derek when we get back.” The pups all shifted. “For the entire day.” Even Boyd shrunk back at that threat and Stiles vaguely heard Derek muttering something about his betas losing respect for him because he’s being used as a threat against bad behaviour. “Suck it up Sourwolf,” Stiles said easily, gesturing to Ethan, who’s eyes had widened at the last word.
“Sour wolf?” he asked.
“Move along,” Stiles prompted, not willing to push his luck with Derek too far.
“They took him to the vets to see if he could be treated.” He paused, waiting for one of them to interrupt but when no one did, he nodded at Stiles and continued. “He survived. The vet managed to bring him round and encourage the healing process to start.” He saw Stiles cock his head to the side, eyebrow raised in question. “When I talked to you earlier, it was my brother who told me what had happened. He’s Deucalion’s youngest convert so he’s more sensitive to his presence, especially when Duke’s trying to hide it. Aiden told me he felt Duke before Ennis died, so he drew the conclusion that Ennis was killed by Duke. Kali didn’t feel him and Duke never showed his face to them, coming to them later.”
“He told them Ennis succumbed to his injuries from the fight with Derek,” Stiles concluded and Ethan nodded, uncomfortable.
“Aiden didn’t argue, or tell Kali. So she’s running hot on the intel that Hale killed one of ours - her oldest friend in the pack. Duke is encouraging it and expects both Aiden and I to go along too.”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” Stiles sighed. “I get that you care about Danny and he’s a part of my pack, but is that enough to turn your back on your own pack?”
“I’m not turning my back,” Ethan said instantly, then paused before carrying on. “Believe it or not, when you got him off me earlier,” he gestured to Isaac with a shake of his head. “And questioned me afterwards, you showed me a kindness I haven’t seen since my original pack was strong. You can call it just being you, or just being a good alpha, if you like, maybe that’s what it is, I’m just saying I owed you an explanation and a warning of what to expect. And for you to give Hale a warning that Kali is on the warpath, worse than before.”
“What does Deucalion get out of it though?” Stiles asked the question his pack desperately wanted to ask.
“This one,” he gestured to Scott. “Is going to do something very few have managed before in all our history. And Duke wants to capture that potential and harness it to better his pack.”
“So this has nothing to do with Derek... not now at least.”
“It did. Hale’s a new alpha, a born beta, born to follow, not lead, but he’s still strong - strong enough to grow into his role... Eventually,” he added and Stiles rolled his eyes. “He was supposed to be the easy mark, and then McCall happened. A lone beta acting as an alpha to a pack of humans; the hunter, the immune, the spark.”
“That sounds suspiciously like some kind of prophecy bullshit,” Boyd was the first to open his mouth but Sties didn’t reprimand him because he was right.
“It does, but it’s not. Duke’s very theatrical,” Ethan didn’t sound impressed. “He rallied his pack,” he continued, gesturing again to Scott. “He seemed to entice the Hale beta away from Hale,” a quick glance at Isaac, who flushed, and growled his objection. “And then last night, he stopped Ennis in his tracks.”
“And his eyes flashed red,” Allison said quietly. Scott, who was looking very confused at that moment, groaned.
“My eyes didn’t flash red, they can’t. I’m not an alpha.”
“But for a second, you had the alpha power and you’d done it, not by killing another alpha or inheriting it through blood, but by sheer force of will, trying to protect your pack, your friends, and by extension Hale.”
“You realise I’ve been a part of Derek’s pack for a while now, right? I’m not out on my own.”
“But you look like you are,” Stiles pointed out. “Remember we told you not to change your habits? They saw you as a lone beta and it confused them.”
“It confused them,” Ethan corrected the emphasis.
“Not you?”
“Not recently.”
“I still don’t know why you’re telling me this, why you’re telling us this.”
“I’m not turning my back on my pack, I’m keeping my options open. I love my pack, but it’s not a true pack, Aiden is my only true pack. He’s my priority. That Duke can kill one of us so easily and lay the blame elsewhere is not surprising, but at the same time...” he trailed off and Stiles nodded.
“It’s unthinkable. However,” he said. “It’s how you came to be what you are. It’s how he makes his alphas.”
“It doesn’t matter the minute details of why I wanted to give you this information, it matters that I am. And I may in future, depending on how much it’ll mean mine and my brothers survival. We didn’t want to come here, I’d heard rumours, I’d heard it all, but Duke was adamant.”
No one said anything for a long while until Sties shook his head, seemingly coming back from a daydream.
“STILES!” They all heard Derek shout from the phone and Allison handed it back over.
“Look, I’m not going to go against Duke if it means we stay alive. But we are Alphas. By our nature we do not submit to anyone.” He caught Stiles’ eyes flicker back to Danny and Ethan flushed before smirking. “Within reason.” That said, he got up and moved to sit back beside Danny while Lydia returned to her position beside Stiles.
“You are no longer allowed to do anything without supervision.” Derek grumbled into the phone and Stiles’ shoulders sagged, relieved.
“The next time you leave me behind, take my pack on a suicide mission and then disappear for an entire fucking day, I’m lacing your entire wardrobe with wolfsbane and mountain ash and relegating you to the dog house. Literally.”
“Harsh,” Stiles eyes snapped to Scott and his friend tried to be one with his seat.
There was something to what Ethan was saying. Stiles wasn’t one to make excuses for anyone, let alone a member of a rival, aggressive pack hell bent on destroying his own, but he could almost, almost sympathise with Ethan. He only had his brother that he could rely on beyond all doubt; Deucalion wasn’t about to sacrifice himself for Aiden, neither was Kali, but they all seemed to share the pack bond, to honour one another, to respect one another. While not traditional, the pack of alphas were still, inherently, a pack unit. Stiles honestly believed that the twins, and to a certain extent Kali, were there because they had nowhere else to call their own. Kali, it seemed, had succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and Stiles wouldn’t want to save her even if he had that option. He just wouldn’t.
The twins though... Ethan was slowly but surely edging his way into Danny’s affections and it was making Stiles uncomfortable. Aiden and Lydia, he could handle. He was almost certain that was purely physical, but Danny looked to be getting invested, so much so that he openly favoured Ethan over Stiles and the pack. He’d yet to speak up on Ethan’s behalf during meetings, but Stiles was sure it was only a matter of time. He wasn’t sure what he’d do - or what Derek would do when that happened. The alpha pack went against all his own pack instincts, the traditions taught to him by his parents, his sister, hell, his entire family. They made Derek uncomfortable by just existing.
The Hale family, in Stiles eyes, were another enigma. Rather, one particular part of it.
He pulled the hand he’d still been unconsciously using to play with Isaac’s hair back, rolling his eyes at the whine of protest and opened up his messages.
'Find anything out?' he wrote and hit send, sitting back and staring down at his iPad. He heard Lydia talking to him about the sacrifices and tuned in; it wouldn’t do to ignore the girl now.
‘Maybe’ was the reply he received and he frowned when he got a chance to look at it half an hour later.
It wasn’t a maybe kind of question, he replied and noticed, with a bad, bad feeling in his gut, that the bus was turning into the parking lot of a cheap motel.
Then allow me to clarify, the reply to his text began. I have found something, though I am unsure as to whether it is a concern of ours, but if it is, then we are, for lack of a better word, fucked.
Stiles stared down at the text, the feeling in his gut burning and churning.
'Let me know what you find when you’re sure it concerns our little problem.'
He only hoped he wouldn’t have to find out what Peter had discovered.