Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Nice ride,” Chris said as he slammed the door of his car shut.

When he’d seen Derek Hale at a nearly empty gas station this late at night, Chris had veered off his course to drive up behind him. It wasn’t proper intimidation protocol—he should’ve had backup, for one—but he was armed and the timing was right. Derek was alone and a good target for Chris’ investigation into who the Alpha running around Beacon Hills was. Chris took a moment to size him up, wondering what would unnerve him best into giving some sign of who the Alpha was. He couldn’t help noticing that Derek was a handsome man, but he tucked that knowledge to the back of his mind. Kate had always liked flirting with her targets; Chris preferred dealing with them directly.

Derek had already noticed him, though he hadn’t even stopped pumping gas at the sight of a hunter. “You too. That’s the latest model, isn’t?”

Overconfident, Chris thought. Or perhaps he hadn’t realized who Chris was—but no, Chris had to smell of gunpowder to a werewolf. It had been so long that he’d dealt with weres that Chris wondered if he wasn’t overconfident himself to arrive in Beacon Hills on the tail of a murderous Alpha. But it wasn’t as though he’d had much of a choice.

“And that’s your deceased sister’s Camaro,” Chris replied, walking forward and running his fingers along the side of the car. The sister was probably the way to go with Derek, although Derek had a whole list of tender spots for Chris to dig into. “Aren’t you worried about meeting the same fate? It would be a shame for the Hale name to finally die out completely.”

“Nice to know you care,” Derek huffed. With a glance at the display, he removed the nozzle from his car and tucked it back in its holder. It seemed as though Derek wasn’t taking him seriously, which made one of them a fool. Maybe both of them. Before Chris could speak, Derek continued with, “Why are you even here?”

“To prevent more innocent people from dying,” Chris told him. It was a truth. “Too many people have died in this town. I’m going to put a stop to it.”

Derek leaned against the Camaro, looking like for all intents and purposes he was confident that Chris wouldn’t pull a gun on him. He wasn’t wrong; everything Chris had found in the weeks since he’d arrived pointed toward Derek being neither being the Alpha nor working with them. He was only a young man who’d come looking for his sister and found her dead, and Chris hated that his years of being semi-retired had made him soft enough to care.

“This is the part where I’d say you hunters are all the same, but that would be a lie. I did some research of my own, you know,” Derek said, crossing his arms. “You were responsible for putting down the wendigo in Ontario last year.”

“It had been eating children for nearly a decade,” Chris retorted. “Don’t tell me you have sympathy for it because of your shared claws and fangs.”

“None. But this is your first hunt against a werewolf in twelve years. Ever since your wife died from an Alpha’s bite, you’ve haven’t hunted anything except the worst of our kind.”

The gas station lights flickered. Derek’s eyes didn’t bear a hint of supernatural color, but Chris found it hard to look away anyway. He wasn’t surprised Derek knew about Victoria; it seemed as though everyone did, though nearly no one brought her up with him. After twelve years, her loss wasn’t a constant ache in his chest, but his heart twinged anyway. Derek wasn’t completely correct. Victoria had died, but it had been a suicide rather than a death from the Alpha’s bite. She’d died in Chris’ arms. There hadn’t been another path for her, as steeped in Argent ideology as they’d both been back then. She’d told him to get over his grief quickly and guided his knife and ordered him to push. Victoria had never believed in making things easy for people, not even herself.

“Are you saying I should’ve gone on a crusade against all werewolves?” Chris asked, amused despite himself. Victoria might have wanted him to; she’d always been so much more bloodthirsty than him. But he’d been left with a six year old daughter who needed him and he’d let Kate take his revenge for him. He’d closed the door shut on a hunter’s life and bought a house with a white picket fence that only let the occasional hunt through. But for all that he’d closed the door, his father and sister spent years trying to make themselves spare keys.

Kate never seemed to understand that he had a kid to take care of. When the Argent matriarch said to go to Beacon Hills to take control of the situation until she arrived, Chris hadn’t been able to get out of it. It was rare that Kate truly ordered him to take a hunt, but for whatever reason, Beacon Hills was different.

Derek raised an eyebrow. He really was much too attractive. “I’m saying you could’ve, but instead you grew some morals and made a life for yourself.”

And there it was, the realization that— “You’re going to fuck up my perfectly good life.”

Derek’s lip curled up in something that wasn’t quite a smirk, but it was close. “Six years ago, your sister killed ten members of my pack and left my uncle comatose. There were a few others involved—some knew about us, some were just paid off—and your father helped cover it up afterward. I have proof of everything.”

White noise buzzed in Chris’ mind, not unlike the moment Victoria had told him she was going to die. Now it was a different woman, a different target… And a different man who’d heard the news. Twelve years ago, Chris had lost his wife and realized he couldn’t loose his child. A child who, if Chris died, would be handed to the Argent clan and receive the same training that Chris had gone through as a child. Worse, even, since Chris had been trained to be a soldier. Allison would’ve been trained to be a leader. Neither Argent clan path was kind or full of the happiness he’d tried to create for her.

Twelve years ago, Chris didn’t know what he would’ve done. Now, he met Derek’s eyes and said, “Show me your proof,” and knew with a twisted sort of certainty that Derek wasn’t lying.

Derek’s proof didn’t leave room for doubt.

Chris spent two days going over the mountain of evidence that implicated his father and sister, each piece leading to an end that spelled nothing good for the Argents. Only Chris had escaped the mess by virtue of not being a complete and utter sociopath.

She didn’t mean to, Chris thought, and a hysteric laugh escaped his lips. Murdering ten people wasn’t something than happened by accident. Fuck, Kate, why?

He wondered if he could stop Derek.

He wondered if he should.

On the morning of the third day, he gave Derek a call. Allison was at school—or out with that Scott boy, but Chris knew his daughter could take care of herself and he didn’t have time to care about a schoolyard romance—so Chris felt no compunctions about inviting Derek to his home. It was far too big for their family of two, but Kate had been the one to finance everything. An Argent hunt meant Argent money. Maybe she had trusted Chris to hide her secret if he ever found out. Maybe it had just amused her to fill Beacon Hills with Argents. It had been a long time since Chris last understood his sister’s thought process.

Arriving soon? he texted as he waited for Derek to arrive.

One week, his little sister, his leader replied. Blueberry pie?

Of course.

Chris considered punching the wall, but he just closed his eyes and rested his forehead in his hands. He was still in the same position when the doorbell rang.

“Come in,” Chris murmured.

Derek’s hearing didn’t fail him. His footsteps were quiet but audible as he walked through the house and to the kitchen counter. Chris didn’t see it, but he heard Derek pull out a matching stool and sit down next to him. He was only inches away, his presence unmistakable. For a few moments, neither of them spoke, but Chris was too practical for long fits of drama.

“I believe you,” Chris said. It was obvious, but he still needed to say it. Maybe saying it would make it feel real instead of like a horrible nightmare. He raised his head from his hands and finally met Derek’s gaze.

Maybe it was due to the warm morning light, but Derek’s eyes were softer now than the other day. “I know.”

Chris wondered what Derek found in his scent or his heartbeat to make him so sure. Fuck, he didn’t know what made Derek go to him in the first place with this. If Chris were a worse man, if he were more loyal to his family than to his own interpretation of the Code, he would’ve warned Kate and Gerard and every Argent on the west coast. He could’ve spun a story of a lying werewolf in love with a hunter who wouldn’t have him. It would’ve been so easy.

Instead, Chris let his phone read his fingerprint and slid it over to Derek. The recent texts were stark and final on the display. One week. “What are you going to do?”

“She won’t stop,” Derek said, scrolling through. “And no jail cell will be able to hold her when your father has so much influence with the force and the prison network.”

“He operates a private prison himself,” Chris agreed. No matter what scenario he envisioned, it was all such a horrifying mess. “If you succeed, my father will come to Beacon Hills.”

“I’ll be ready.” There was such a fierce determination in Derek’s eyes.

Chris almost believed him. “You’re one man. Gerard and his best team have taken down whole packs who broke the Code. What makes you think you’ll be any different?”

“I don’t have much to loose,” Derek huffed, his voice more wry than anything else, even though his grief was once again fresh. “I don’t even have a pack. The new Beta, maybe, but… He’s young and stupid.”

“And the Alpha?” Chris asked.

“I don’t think he can be reasoned with, but I know how to stop him,” Derek said, his voice quiet. “I’ve always known, I think. What are you going to do?”

“I need to see Kate. Before everything, I need to ask her why.” Logically, it didn’t matter, but logic had been thrown out the window as soon as Chris began to grieve for a death that was still a week away. One way or another, Kate’s days as the matriarch of the Argent clan were over. Derek wouldn’t have it any other way and Chris had no alternative to give. None that could be weighed against the violent deaths of Derek’s pack and not be found wanting.

“There’s no reasoning with sociopaths,” Derek told him, but he didn’t press. “Can you raise your gun against her?”

“I don’t know,” Chris said, the truth digging into him like glass. “But I need to see her.”

Derek nodded. “Ask Allison if she wants to spend next weekend at a friend’s. When Kate arrives, you’ll be ready for her. And so will I.”

“Are you so certain I won’t turn on you after hearing her side?” Chris asked. He could feel the beat of his heart under his skin, steady and sure. He needed to hear Kate’s side, but he knew there was little she could say that would make him change his mind.

Derek’s eyes flashed, the unnerving blue gone as quickly as it had appeared. “I am. But if everything goes wrong tomorrow, there’s still one more person I can count on to want Kate dead, even if he can’t be trusted for anything else.”

*

After, Chris found himself sitting down on the steps of the old Hale house without a care for the soot and dirt that would cling to him. The sun was beginning to set just past the treeline, and the sky was beautiful and red. His jacket was too light for the winter chill, but Chris couldn’t seem to move to get himself to somewhere warm. Allison was still safe at Lydia’s. There was nothing urgent to force him to move. When Derek sat down next to him again, he was closer than he had been only a week ago. They sat side to side, shoulder to shoulder.

Some of Derek’s warmth penetrated Chris’ cold. Enough for him to be able to say, “I feel like I failed her.”

“If it helps, by that logic, I failed all of my siblings,” Derek said, his words quiet but steady.

“How much therapy did it take for you to say that?” To joke about it, even if the humor was dark as night. Chris didn’t think he’d be able to think of Kate without his entire heart aching for at least a decade.

“A lot,” Derek replied. There was something rueful and honest to his tone, so much so that Chris finally met Derek’s gaze. Sitting so close, Chris didn’t have far to look. There was still some soot on Derek’s cheek from the way Peter had pushed him aside to go after Kate. “I’ll probably need some more.”

“An effect of killing your uncle,” Chris agreed, closing his eyes for a long moment. He could still see the the blood in Kate’s hair. Their original plan had been to ambush Kate at the Argent home. Chris had gotten his answers from her, but she’d fled at the realization that Chris wasn’t going to enthusiastically support needless murder and had betrayed her. Plan B, as Chris had found out, was Derek calling up the hospital and asking a nurse to bring a phone to his uncle’s ear. Kate brought reinforcements; Derek brought Peter, who managed to do what he and Derek hadn’t. He’d also come for Chris, his rage unending, and even more Hale blood was spilled in Beacon Hills. Derek took everything Peter had taken from Laura. “Do you regret it?”

“I don’t know. I miss the man he used to be before the fire burned everything but revenge out of him,” Derek said, the same grief Chris felt reflected in Derek’s eyes. But there also was hope and determination there, the kind that could only exist with the knowledge that Derek had lived through loss once and would do it again. “I miss my sister and my pack. But I’m alive, and you’re alive, and I’m never going to apologize for that.”

“I’ll never ask you to,” Chris said. He would mourn Kate with every desperate, complicated emotion he felt, but it was his own burden to bear. “For as long as I stay in Beacon Hills.” It was a question, a promise.

“You could stay forever if you wanted.”

Grief still lay heavy in his heart, but Chris did want. It was insanity, plain and simple. A hunter and a werewolf. Victoria would roll over in her grave, and Kate wasn’t even in a grave yet, and Chris brushed his fingers against Derek’s jaw anyway. “I’ll stay.”

When Derek slowly leaned in to kiss him, a question in his eyes, Chris didn’t move away. He didn’t close his eyes to a single thing.