Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prologue

After the defeat of the nogitsune everyone takes a week or so off of school to mourn Allison and for Stiles to try to clear his head. It doesn’t really work out so well. Everyone is monumentally stressed out, Isaac the most of anyone. He’s been extremely aggressive as of late and can’t seem to talk to anybody without being downright mean and sometimes getting to the point of violence. He’s got all sorts of emotions bottled up inside of him and they’re all leaking out in the form of rage. He’s much too burdened with stress and anxiety. Were he a human, he would have given himself at least a few stress-induced seizures by now.

Stiles is also being very mean as he tries to deal with the damage he feels like he’s caused. His sarcasm is coming out extra thick and he’s not laughing at all anymore. He’s also barely talking to any of his friends or even his Dad because he feels completely disconnected from everyone. He blames himself for everything that happened and he can barely manage to look anyone in the eye without memories of being the nogitsune showing up and flooding him with guilt.

Kira is very confused. She doesn’t know what to feel about the whole situation. She’s glad that Stiles is okay and that she was able to save the day. She’s feeling guilty because of her mother’s involvement with it all, feeling like that somehow makes it her fault. She’s still trying to get used to all of her kitsune powers and discovering more all of the time. She really wants to comfort Scott, but she feels as if he’s drifting away from her and she doesn’t know what to do. How is she supposed to comfort her potential boyfriend who is mourning for his ex-girlfriend? She’s also mourning the death of Allison. She wasn’t nearly as close as the others, but she had gotten to know her and liked her a lot. She had foreseen a strong partners-in-crime like friendship growing between the two and now all of that is gone.

Lydia is devastated because one of the only people she ever truly made a connection to is gone. Once again she finds herself all alone with nothing but her brains and her pretty face to keep her company. So she reacts to it the only way she knows how. By always looking like she’s ready to walk the red carpet, and maintaining her aloof, condescending attitude to cover the hurt. It appears that she has regressed to the spoiled brat of a girl she had been before her banshee powers were discovered. Of course, this is all just a front because she refuses to show weakness. On the inside she’s more sad, lonely, and broken than she has ever been.

Scott is overwhelmingly sad. He’s a naturally optimistic person and he’s trying to get himself out of his depression by pressing on and being strong for his pack. However he feels like a failure of a person and a failure of an alpha for letting Allison die. His mother is a strong support system and she’s helping him through it, but some days he’s so far gone from his original self that she can’t even recognize him anymore. On those days, he can’t recognize himself either.

Danny is unexpectedly devastated by it all as well. Initially everyone thought he was just feeling the tension from everyone else bleeding into him. Really, he’s been just as hurt and terrified of what was going on with the nogitsune as the rest of them. Even though he’s been trying to keep himself as far from the supernatural chaos that’s been going on in Beacon Hills, with most of his friends so close to it, it’s impossible not to be effected by it all. Even when he turns a blind eye and isn’t even fully aware of everything that’s happening he still feels the brunt of it.
In short, everyone has been upset and blaming themselves, and no one is really handling the success of defeating the latest baddie as any kind of positive.

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

The story starts off on all of the students’ first day back to class. Stiles is dragging his feet as he walks to the Principal’s office after being sent out of class for mouthing off and outright insulting his math teacher. When he gets there, he’s surprised to see everyone except Isaac already sitting there waiting to be spoken to. After a few moments, they can hear someone flipping over a chair in the principal’s office, then Isaac comes bursting out, laughing darkly as he sees everyone. He makes a comment about how apparently none of them could last the whole day without her. They couldn’t even make it to lunch. No one needs to ask who her is.

One by one everyone gets called in. Kira and Danny get sent back to class. Lydia gets sent home and her Dad comes to get her, which just annoys her even more. Stiles contemplates what she did to get thrown out of her mother’s class. It must have been something violent if it made Ms. Martin willing to call her ex-husband for it. He came down to either throwing a book at someone or choking them with her scarf. He can’t decide which one.

Scott asks to go home and the principal obliges. Stiles was almost allowed back to class, but after receiving some dumb lecture about proper attitudes and wasting his intelligence, the Principal makes a comment about he and his friends needing to learn better coping mechanisms for Adalynn’s death. That makes Stiles livid and he shouts at the principal calling him all sorts of obscenities and names because he couldn’t even get Allison’s name right. He also gets suspended.

School policy says that if you’re suspended like Stiles and Isaac were, you have to be picked up by a parent or guardian. Isaac has none, and the Sheriff is busy, so Scott waits with the two of them in the office where they would have to sit for the rest of the day. Isaac refuses to sit and wait, so he argues with the secretary who tries to keep him there despite the guilt trip he’s giving her. Finally he gives up and just leaves. She tries to make him come back, but he shouts over his shoulder, “What are you going to do? Suspend me? Call my parents?” and just keeps going.
As he’s leaving he slams his shoulder into another kid who’s coming into the office. The way he does it, it looks as if he’d gone out of his way to hit the kid who is surprisingly at least 3 inches taller than Isaac. The kid gives him a death glare and pauses to watch him leave, probably hoping to start a fight. But Isaac doesn’t acknowledge him and keeps going. The kid comes in and gives Scott an equally dark glare before skimming over Stiles and continuing on his way.

Outside, Isaac runs into Melissa who convinces him not to leave on his bike. After he makes some comment about not having anybody, Melissa tries to convince him that he’s got her and he’s got Scott. It seems to work and he listens and climbs into the back of her car, but it didn’t really get through to him.

Melissa heads inside and signs all three of the boys out, telling Stiles the Sheriff asked her to get him. She takes them all to her house and tells them that since they interrupted her nap after her all night shift, they could make it up to her by making her dinner for her next one while she went back to sleep. “Make it something good. Go on. Chop chop.”

Scott and Isaac linger around the kitchen, unsure what to make while Stiles digs around the cabinets and fridge, making himself completely at home and grabbing snacks for the three of them before he pulls out ingredients to make pot pies from scratch. He makes Scott do the chicken while Isaac chops veggies and he does the dough.

Isaac and Stiles bicker the whole time, making Scott miserable. Things finally come to a head when Stiles complains about the way Isaac is chopping the carrots too big he needs to make them smaller. Isaac tells him if he has a problem with it he can do it himself. To which Stiles replies that if Isaac weren’t useless he wouldn’t have to do everything himself. This angers Isaac and after debating the merits of chucking the cutting board at Stiles’ head, he decides not to waste the food and just abandons it and sits at the table defiantly.

Even angrier, Stiles chops the carrots himself at expert speed then does the onion just as fast trying to release his pent up aggression. It doesn’t work so he grabs the potatoes and the cutting board and slams them onto the table in front of Isaac to make him at least cut those. The sudden noise startles Isaac and he jumps, leaping halfway across the room. He shoots Stiles a terrified look which quickly turns dark then just leaves without a word. They don’t hear from him for the rest of the night.

Scott yells at Stiles, telling him not to treat Isaac that way and that he’s being an asshat. Stiles initially starts to argue, but then just lets Scott berate him because now he feels bad. Isaac really didn’t deserve it, but there he goes fucking things up again. They continue with the pies in silence, Scott chopping the potatoes and Stiles makes sure to put extra chicken in Isaac’s.
The next day doesn’t go any better, the following week no better than that.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

The following Monday Mr. Yukimura assigns a partners project and he picked the partners. Scott complains because he’s stuck with Greenberg, and when he mentions it to Coach later, Coach just laughs at him. Kira asks her dad to put her with Stiles, but he tells her no. It’s an opportunity to make more friends (read: not werewolves) and puts her with a girl she doesn’t know. Stiles is put with the kid that Isaac bumped into the other day who apparently is new and is having trouble making friends. Apparently the kids at Beacon Hills High aren’t very friendly, this seems to be an ongoing problem.

As they leave the class, Stiles notices the kid—whose name is Griffin–fills out his skinny jeans rather well. He wonders to himself when that became the kind of thing he noticed but doesn’t stop admiring. He really likes the way Griffin’s dark gray Henley fits, and he doesn’t understand the things that Griffin’s shoulder to waist ratio are doing to his tummy. Griffin notices he’s looking so he smirks down at Stiles and winks a big green eye at him. Stiles really doesn’t understand why his stomach does an Olympic gold medal worthy freestyle gymnastics routine. And it doesn’t help any when he walks into an open locker and busts his nose on the padlock and Scott has to catch him and drag him to the bathroom so he won’t bleed all over the hallway.

Stiles spends the rest of the day with an ice pack on his face and doing his best to avoid human contact. It works well enough (or as well as it can when having four more classes and a lunch period to go through) and he makes it through the rest of the day without incident.

The next day, while continuing with his pre-established pattern of avoiding his friends so he won’t have to feel guilty, Stiles is elbow deep in a book in the school’s rebuilt library when Griffin sits down next to him unceremoniously. Stiles gives him a side eye, but he doesn’t say anything so he slumps in his seat and tries to ignore him.

“So…” Griffin starts, “why are you in here instead of eating lunch with your friends?” Stiles glances at him and tries to ignore that his stomach is doing warm ups for part two of its gymnastics routine when he catches Griffin’s eyes peering at him over his book. His eyes are big and almond shaped, the sharpest evergreen and clearest jade hues melding together, with a thin ring of pure gold gleaming around the pupils like little bursts of fire. There was another flaming bronze ring around the edges of the irises, where most people had black. It wasn't immediately noticeable, but it changed the overall look of the eye, making them dramatic and intense. The boy's eyes were almost eerie looking as he observed Stiles with a hint of mischievous curiosity reflecting back at him with the fluorescent lights. Stiles found his eyes simply gorgeous. He could feel himself becoming overwhelmed, almost drowning in them and he had to shake his head to snap out of it and tear his attention away. 

Stiles had gotten so caught up, the sarcastic remark he’d been building up had completely drifted away from him and he found himself scrambling for words to push out into the silence that was just shy of being awkward. He opened his mouth and just spoke, he’d deal with whatever lie he said after he’d said it, as he usually did. The story of his life. Words just come out. Then he’d start with damage control. What he hadn’t expected however was for him to say the actual truth.

“I’m avoiding them because having to look them in the face makes me feel way too guilty.” A horrified expression crept onto his face as his mouth caught up to his ears then finally with his brain. Really? He really just said that? To basically a stranger no less?

Griffin didn’t find the confession to be particularly alarming. He merely tilted his head interestedly and Stiles had to pretend not to notice how much it made him look like a puppy. “Why are you feeling guilty?” Griffin asked, not taking his eyes off Stiles who was now pointedly looking away. Stiles was having too much trouble with his voice, now that he wasn’t focusing on those damned eyes anymore. It was smooth like silk, and deep, vibrating in Stiles’ chest even though he wasn’t speaking very loudly nor was he that close. He could probably come just listening to that voice whispering into his ear. It wouldn’t matter what it was saying. He could be reading the nutrition label on a box of cereal and with the right tone it would still leave Stiles writhing.

Thoroughly distracted once again by the slight tightening of his pants, Stiles couldn’t come up with another lie or snarky retort, or even an insult to make Griffin leave. Instead, he decided to go with the truth. The harsh truth. If nothing else, perhaps it would scare the guy away. “Because I killed my best friend’s ex-girlfriend.”

Griffin didn’t seem affected. In fact he seemed rather intrigued by the idea. He turned his whole body to face Stiles. “Really,” he asked, “How?”

This conversation was taking a really unexpected, really deep and dark turn and Stiles had no idea how he’d gotten there. He kinda wanted to just slam his book down and leave. He knew that if he did, this kid would probably never talk to him again. Something in his chest tightened at the idea of never feeling the full force of those eyes on him again. He started this, he might as well finish it. And if it may have really just been a sad, desperate attempt to hear that sweet, silky voice again, then Stiles was the only one who needed to know that.

“She uh, she got stabbed,” he decided to go with the official version. He may have been playing around with that honesty thing, but he wasn’t an idiot. “Because of me.”

Griffin nodded pensively. “Do your friends blame you for it?” Of course not. They were too good of people to blame him. That just made it all worse. He had killed Allison, and they all wanted to forgive him for it.

“No-”

“Then why are you feeling guilty?”

“Because it’s my fault.”

“Did you stab her?” Stiles whipped his head around and looked Griffin dead in the eye, whiskey brown meeting sparkling emerald.

“Of course not!”

“Then it’s not your fault.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and shook his head, exasperated. But he was definitely not going to explain. “You just don’t understand-”

“No,” this time Griffin shook his head. “You don’t understand.” He leaned forward for emphasis and Stiles did a very good job of not squeaking at the now lack of personal space. “Did you take a knife and force it through her?” Stiles knew better than to lower his eyebrows sardonically and tell him that technically no one did, but that didn’t stop the idea from crossing his mind. Instead he shook his head no again, not taking his eyes off Griffin’s. “Then it’s not your fault. The only person at blame is the person who did it,” he explained. “No matter what any of the other circumstances are, the only reason she’s not here today is because that person decided to stab her. No one else can take responsibility for that.”

Stiles nodded, the words making much more sense this way than they had whenever anyone else tried to explain it him. He let them sink in and they actually calmed his nerves as he started to believe them. But his nerves went right back into hyperactivity mode as Griffin continued to talk, not even missing a beat.

“Much like the way I can’t take responsibility for the way you’re staring at my mouth, regardless of if I’m the one who decided to talk.” Stiles flicked his eyes back up to meet with Griffin’s and he was hit with a sudden sense of vertigo from having them shining back at him from so close.

So close?

Just then it dawned on Stiles that their faces were only inches away from each other. It wouldn’t take much and the two of them would be kissing. He didn’t know who it was that had closed the distance between them, but as he came to the realization that someone did, he could feel his heart pumping into overdrive. He was thankful that none of his werewolf friends were around to tease him for it.

Thinking of werewolves made Stiles think of Derek and he couldn’t figure out why. The image of Derek scowling at him flashed in his head and he jerked back to sit up straight.

Apparently he had closed the distance.

Griffin sat back too, still simpering at Stiles when he pulled his history book out of his bag and dropped it on the table. “Since we’re here…” and just like that the subject was changed and they began working on their project at a healthy distance away from each other. They managed to get a fair amount of work done before the bell rang, but Stiles was certain they’d have accomplished even more if Griffin would have stopped fucking smiling at him.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

Stiles couldn't stop thinking about Griffin. Over the next few days, he continued avoiding his friends and spending time with Griffin. It always started with them working on their history project, but it ended up with them just talking and getting to know each other. Griffin actually managed to get Stiles to laugh when no one else could. He made him feel good when everyone else just made him feel like a fuck up. Weak, defenseless, human Stiles, who went and got himself possessed then screwed everyone in town over. It's not that anyone ever said that to him, or ever tried to make him feel that way. In fact they had all been striving to do the opposite. But he still couldn't look at them without thinking it himself. Spending time with Griffin was giving him an opportunity to heal and allow himself to feel like a person again.

He tried really hard to ignore the feelings Griffin kept giving him whenever they leaned a little too close. Or when Griffin talked for too long and Stiles was enjoying the rumbling in his ribcage a little too much. Or God forbid when he looked at Stiles with those magnificent eyes of his. Seriously those things should come with a warning label:

May cause dizziness, faintness, rapid pulse, clumsiness, and serious questioning of one's sexuality.

Stiles was able to ignore all of those thoughts and any of their implications until he had been working and hanging out with Griffin for nearly a month and their history project was almost done. They had been working on finishing it up in Stiles' room and when Stiles had looked over to him to say they were done for the day, he was suddenly hit with the realization that they would be out of an excuse to really see each other anymore. He wouldn't really have a reason to look into those eyes until he realized he wasn't breathing and had to fight not to pass out. He wouldn't have an excuse to make Griffin talk or laugh so loud he could feel his voice vibrating in the furniture.

Stiles hadn't realized exactly how much he would miss those things until he'd gotten into the shower later that night and he found himself jacking off to the image of Griffin with his lips wrapped around his dick. His Dad wasn't home yet, so he allowed himself to moan Griffin's name loudly as he jerked himself. He pictured Griffin in the shower with him, the water slicking his black hair into his face and over his eyes as he sucked Stiles off. Stiles finally came when he saw Griffin brush his hair out of his face and look up at him with those eyes. Those fucking eyes. Griffin moaned in the back of his throat sending vibrations straight through Stiles' dick and through to his thighs all the way down to his kneecaps and Stiles was coming so hard he could see stars and he thought he lost the feeling in his toes for a second there.

Okay. Maybe he needed to have a serious talk with himself about this.

It wasn't until he was fully clothed (pajama'd) and downstairs waiting for his Dad to come home that he finally sat back and thought about it.

He likes boys.

He likes boys? He thought back to his shower and had to divert his thoughts away quickly before the imagery made him start to feel tingly in all the wrong places. Again.

Okay. Yes. He likes boys. He can deal with this. He thinks. His friends would deal with it just fine, he thought. None of them cared that Danny was gay, so why would they care about him being bi?

Bi. He twisted the word around in his head a little. Bi. Bisexual. He is bisexual. Stiles is bi. He likes girls and boys. Both. Bi. It means 2. He likes 2 genders. And boys is one of them. Bisexual.

He likes boys. It doesn't mean he likes every boy. He doesn't like Scott. Not like that. Although he would never argue that Scott wasn't attractive in his own right. Of course he was. He would have never nabbed a girl like Allison or ever peaked Kira's interest if he wasn't. But Scott was like his brother, he could never be attracted to him like that.

Isaac was attractive. He was very attractive. Stiles would never tell him to his face, but he looked like a fucking Greek god, handcrafted by Zeus himself. But he was far too annoying for Stiles to be outright attracted to.

Danny is attractive. Danny, the Hawaiian Prince was extremely attractive and Stiles was very attracted to him. He frowned a little at the memory of Danny teasing him about taking his virginity. He had been so disappointed to find out he was kidding.

If Stiles was honest with himself, he had really known all along that he was bi. But much like that day on the stairs at Derek's loft, he always changed the subject before he allowed himself to think too hard about it. He never wanted to admit it to himself. He didn't want it to change him. He didn't want it to make him strange, different, not normal.

He admitted it to himself now, though. He was bi, but he wasn't any different. He was still goofy, sarcastic Stiles with too much energy and flaily arms, with his baseball bat and the strange ability to sleep pretty much anywhere he chooses, sitting on the bench at the lacrosse field. He was still the same person.

As far as being normal goes, his best friend's a true alpha werewolf, the girl he spent most of his life obsessed over is a banshee, he's a spark even though he still doesn't know what that means, he died and came back, opened a door in his mind, and was possessed by a demonic fox spirit. Normal bought a train ticket and got the fuck out of dodge a long time ago and it had absolutely nothing to do with his sexuality.

He could do this. He could be bi. He would be just fine.

"Okay," he nodded to himself finally speaking out loud. "Good talk."

Just then the sheriff came through the door. “Hey son,” he called into the living room.

“Bi Dad!” Stiles blanched and his Dad gave him a curious look as he approached. “Uh! I mean I’m hi! I mean, bi Stiles! Wait…” Stiles was panicking and fumbling over his words in way he hadn’t since he was a child. What the fuck? Why couldn’t he just speak? A simple greeting was not complicated. “I’m Stiles. I- you know that. H-y-b-Stiles… is bi! I’m… hello.” Stiles gave up and slapped his hand over his face heaving a deep dramatic sigh. Seriously? What is his problem today?

“You’re… bi?” John asked, walking around the couch to stand by his son who had stood up sometime during all his rambling. Stiles whimpered loudly like a kicked puppy, then dragged the hand down his face and nodded. His Dad nodded back calmly. “Okay.”

“… Okay?”

John clapped his hand on Stiles’ shoulder and nodded again, this time smiling. “Okay,” he affirmed. When Stiles kept looking at him as if he couldn’t understand English and had no idea what was going on, the sheriff rolled his eyes fondly. “It’s fine Stiles,” he explained. “I don’t care who you like, as long as they’re nice to you. I’m not entirely sure why that would be the first thing you would tell me as soon as I got home. But I suppose I would rather hear that than to hear some new dangerous creature had come to town.”

“To be fair, I hadn’t exactly planned to tell you just now. It just sorta came out.” Stiles thought about the sentence and laughed to himself. “I just sorta came out,” he corrected. John was a little surprised to see his son smiling so openly. He hadn’t done so in quite a long while. Perhaps he was starting to return to his usual self. John reached out and hugged his son, happy that Stiles could be happy as well, even if only for a moment.

Stiles sank into the hug, relief washing over him. He really hadn’t planned on any of this moment happening, but he was glad it did. His Dad still loved him no matter what, and if he stopped avoiding his friend he knew they would accept him as well. There was nothing else to be worried about. Not really.

“Stiles?” John asked, face scrunching up curiously as he pulled back from the hug. “You… you aren’t dating Scott are you?”

“OH MY GOD DAD! NO!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 4

Saturday came and Stiles started his day with anticipation boiling in his stomach. He was meeting Griffin at the library, but it was only to complete their project. After today they would be all done and Stiles was worried he wouldn’t get to see Griffin outside of class anymore after it was all said and done. He shoved a sausage, egg, and cheese burrito into his mouth while the news played in the background. The reporter was saying something about a warehouse break in just outside of town. He wasn’t paying any attention until he heard her say the word supernatural, then he whipped his head toward the tv so fast he started to choke. By the time he got his breathing under control, the segment had ended and he’d missed everything she’d said. He figured it was nothing anyways and finished stuffing his face before getting dressed and leaving. He waved at his Dad who had meandered downstairs and was frowning down at the spinach and tomatoes in the burrito Stiles had made for him.

He made it to the library and was surprised to run into Derek there. At first he didn’t believe it was him. He just looked so strange sitting at the table poring over a book. It wasn’t Derek reading that was so strange about it, he did that all the time. The strange part was his ungelled hair, beard scruffier than usual making his face look a little rounder, and the loose shirt and comfortable jeans that had caught Stiles off guard.

Once he thought about it, Stiles realized he hadn’t actually seen Derek in months. Technically he’d seen him through the nogitsune’s eyes a few weeks ago. But the last time he’d seen Derek as himself was when Stiles had woken him up in the elevator of the hospital after the Darach had gotten to him.

Stiles stared at him for a bit, he had almost decided to go approach him when his phone went off. It was Griffin saying he was outside. Derek would have obviously heard Stiles’ phone, but he had no reaction to it. Either he was pretending Stiles’ didn’t exist, or he hadn’t noticed that it was him at all and just chalked the sound up to background noise. Regardless, Stiles figured Derek didn’t want to be bothered. Despite the fact that bothering people was kind of his specialty, he decided to forgo it this time to go find Griffin.

Stiles and Griffin went to one of the tables secluded in the back of the library to work on their project. They were able to stay focused for a while, and Stiles didn’t let last night’s revelation affect him. Very much. They talked about their work and got sidetracked a few times talking about everything else, but they were always able to reign it back in. Stiles found himself laughing and smiling the way only Griffin could make him anymore. He really didn’t want to stop spending time with him.

It came to a point where they were both putting the finishing touches on their individual pieces and they were working in a comfortable silence. Well, mostly silence because they were somehow sitting so close that they kept bumping elbows and every time they did it made the other one giggle quietly. It started off as an accident, but then they were doing it on purpose, making each other laugh. Stiles got Griffin really hard in the ribcage and the grunt he let out shot straight to his dick.

Griffin clutched his side, faking a mortal wound, but when Stiles merely laughed more in response, Griffin stole his paper as revenge. Stiles wasn’t having that, so he stole Griffin’s pen in return. He held it at arm’s length away from him, but Griffin, who was significantly taller than Stiles had longer arms and could still reach it easily. Not wanting to be defeated, Stiles retaliated by throwing the pencil down a row of shelves behind them. He definitely couldn’t reach it now. Griffin faked outrage and they argued for a minute over who would go get it. Relentless, Stiles made Griffin get it.

Stiles wasn’t entirely sure if Griffin had drug his hand along Stiles thigh as he turned out of the chair on purpose. However he definitely was sure of how the contact sent volts of electricity through his leg and right up to his groin. He was about to have a situation on his hands in another few minutes if this boy kept it up.

When Griffin went to grab his pen, he ran into Lydia. She had a stack of books about banshees in her arm and a simpering look in her eye. Stiles overheard her flirting with Griffin, but she couldn’t see him and he didn’t say anything to make himself known. Lydia was laying it on thick and Stiles didn’t really like the feeling it left in his stomach. The girl he’d always liked but was just starting to get over, and the boy he really liked now? It wasn’t sitting well with him in the least. He found himself becoming rather possessive of Griffin, and his heart rate picked up a little. In the back of his mind, he wondered if Derek could hear it from wherever he was.

All of Stiles’ possessiveness and jealousy was seeped right out of him as soon as he heard a single sentence fragment come out of Griffin’s mouth. “Barking up the wrong tree, sweetheart.” Stiles could practically hear the pursed mouth look that Lydia was undoubtedly giving him.

“Well, that’s much too bad,” she let out a little too tightly, clearly trying to force the sweet smile on her face. “You would have been a lovely distraction.”

“Sorry,” Griffin wasn’t sorry at all. He winked at Lydia before turning around and returning to Stiles with his pen. Lydia didn’t try to hide the way she was admiring his ass as he walked away, then she turned away as well.

While Stiles and Griffin had been busy working, Lydia wasn’t the only one to show up at the library. Scott and Kira had come together as well. They came looking for more information about kitsune. Kira was feeling really frustrated as she kept discovering new powers, but she was still wary of asking her mother for advice because of the way she’d handled the nogitsune situation. So Scott thought they ought to try their only other real source of information. Stiles would have scolded him for not just getting on his computer to do it, but Scott figured it would be an excuse for the two of them to hang out together for a while. Besides, there was way too much fanfiction for various anime to sift through online before they could get to anything they should be able to take into real consideration. This way, they didn’t have to deal with all that and could get straight to the real legends.

After Lydia left the section with banshee legends, she ran into Derek as he was putting a book on witchcraft away. She greeted him a little awkwardly as she realized she’d never been alone with Derek before. He realized the same thing but didn’t make a big deal about it. He asked her if she was getting any weird feelings lately. She wasn’t and asked why, so he explained to her about the weird things going on in the news lately. It reminded him a lot of one of the stories that his mother told him as a child. He was hoping to come across the story on his own without having to ask Peter for help. So far, all the books he’d been looking through were duds. More than anything, he’d hoped he was just wasting his time and it was really nothing.

Lydia helped him pick out another book and they brought it to a different table than the one he’d been at before. At this table they could clearly see Stiles and Griffin, but the boys had their backs to them. They were sitting rather close to each other and Lydia found it intriguing. Derek glowered at the pair of them and Lydia found that even more intriguing. She stopped Derek from trying to call Stiles over, explaining how he’d barely been speaking to them since everything went down. She told him that Stiles just needed his space for now and to leave him be.

Derek dropped it and they started looking at the book together. A few minutes later, Kira and Scott ran into them and Derek asked them if they’d known anything about the stuff going on in the news. Neither of them did, so Derek started trying to explain what he thought was happening. Before he’d even finished a complete sentence, Scott realized Stiles was nearby and made to call him over. Lydia stopped him just as she stopped Derek, so they all left Stiles and Griffin alone and began poring over the book together.

At the next table, the boys had finally finished their project and were cleaning up the mess of papers they’d made. As they straightened up, Griffin was telling Stiles a story about something stupid he’d done at the library of his old school in Washington. Stiles wasn’t really listening. He was just enjoying the way Griffin’s voice rumbled in his chest, admiring the way his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he spoke.

Griffin had asked Stiles a question, but he didn’t hear it. Griffin turned back to him with a smile, trying to catch his attention again. But Stiles was already looking right at him. The moment their eyes met, Stiles’ brain went to complete mush and all he could think of was how gorgeous this boy in front of him was. No seriously. He’s fucking beautiful.

Without ever forming a thought or deciding to do so, Stiles leaned forward and planted a kiss right on Griffin’s mouth. It wasn’t really romantic or particularly nice. It was more like Stiles bashing his face against Griffin’s smile than an actual kiss. But their lips met and Stiles could taste his peppermint chapstick and for just a moment that was all that mattered.

Until Stiles’ brain caught up and he pulled away, eyes wide in horror. He didn’t know what happened. There was something fucking about that boy that just had Stiles’ body running off instinct and moving of its own volition without conferring with his brain. “Oh my god.” He breathed, looking back at Griffin, terrified. He was instantly panicking and words just started coming out of his mouth. He wasn’t even entirely sure what all of them were, and couldn’t promise that all of them were even actual words and not just random syllables strung together. It came out meaning to sound something like: “I-I can’t believe I just did that? Wha-why did I do that? Oh-h-h-h my god! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it! How-”

“Well I sure hope you meant it!” Griffin grabbed Stiles by the nape and pulled him in for another kiss, a real kiss. This time was much better, it was all passion and fire, deep and intense, lips melding together and tongues dancing. Stiles clutched at his jacket, and Griffin pulled him even closer, almost into his lap.

Griffin’s phone started to ring and Stiles leaned away just a bit, giving him an opportunity to answer it. Griffin had other ideas though. He followed Stiles’ mouth, pulling his phone out of his pocket and laying it on the table to reject the call without breaking the kiss. When his hand was free again, he put it on Stiles’ waist, dropping the other to his thigh so he could pull him all the way onto his lap.

They finally had to break away to come up for air, but Griffin was cradling Stiles’ head again, keeping their forehead together and their noses touching as they panted against each other. “Still sorry?” Griffin asked voice husky. Stiles laughed and shook his head gently, bringing Griffin’s head along with it.

“What?” he laughed. “I don’t know what that word means. It’s not in my vocabulary.”

Griffin let out a deep sigh. “You have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting to do that,” he panted against Stiles’ mouth.

“I might have some idea,” he replied, reaching a hand up to tangle in Griffin’s hair. Griffin’s phone starts to ring again and he reached over to reject the call again. The whole time he was staring at Stiles’ mouth like nothing in the world was more important. Stiles was glad of it too. The kiss left his head swimming and he was just a bit lightheaded from it all. He wouldn’t be able to take the full force of those eyes on him up close like this. He would probably pass out from the intensity. It was too much. It was all way too fucking much for the library.

Griffin tilted his head to kiss him again. This time it was tender and soft, their lips barely brushing at first. He flicked his tongue out to taste Stiles’ bottom lip before giving it another gentle kiss and taking it in his mouth. He nibbled and sucked at it, making Stiles moan before releasing it and taking his whole mouth again.

Stiles had never been kissed like this before. Slow and sweet and intimate. It was driving him crazy and the situation in his pants was about to make things really awkward for everybody. They should not be doing this in public, but Stiles couldn’t find it in himself to speak up about it.

Griffin let his mouth go and started to nose against his neck, planting gentle open mouthed kisses behind his ear and trailing slowly down his neck. He was right near his adam’s apple when the phone went off again. Griffin growled against his neck as he reached to reject the call again. Stiles shuddered out a moan as the vibrations right against his neck almost sent him over the edge. “Th-th-th-this c-c-could be a prob-blem,” he stuttered out. Griffin continued his kisses until he got down to the collar of Stiles’ hoodie. Stiles could barely take it anymore he had to do something. “Someone is really trying to talk to you,” he tried to change Griffin’s focus.

“Too bad.” He dismissed it.

Stiles scrambled to find a way to make it seem more urgent so he wouldn’t have to outright tell him to quit before he comes in his pants. He was saved by the bell just as Griffin had started in on a hickey right above his collar bone when someone behind them cleared their throat obnoxiously loud. They both turned their heads to the table behind them and Stiles nearly fell completely off Griffin’s lap when he saw who was crowded around it.

“OH MY GOD!!” Stiles flashed just about every shade of red on the color wheel as he slid off Griffin’s lap and back into his chair. “This is not happening right now,” he muttered into his arm as he tried to hide his face.

“Hi Stiles,” Lydia sang to him, the smile on her face was much too genuine. She was getting way too much satisfaction out of his embarrassment. Stiles only whimpered at her in response.

Griffin’s phone rang again and Stiles looked pointedly at it. “You should probably get that,” he whined. Griffin hesitated for a moment, looking at Stiles pensively as if trying to decide whether he agreed with him or night. Finally, he answered his phone and put it to his ear. He made a face as the person on the other line started right in with yelling at him. He stood up, but looked Stiles directly in the eye. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere, they were saying. Stiles obeyed and watched him walk through the shelves where he’d picked up his pen earlier.

Stiles chanced a glance back at the table, and immediately regretted it when he saw they were all still looking directly at him. They were all staring at him with amused expressions on their faces. Well except for Derek, he had his usual grumpy cat look going on. Stiles sighed really loudly, trying to relieve some of the tension in his bones. “So,” he started, “I guess that means I don’t have to bother telling you guys that I discovered I’m bi…”

Scott chuckled at him, “Dude, I’m pretty sure I’ve known that since we were like eleven.” Stiles narrowed his eyebrows at that. He wasn’t even sure he’d ever considered it himself at that point.

“Well that makes one of us,” he quirked a smile at the thought of Scott knowing all along. Of course he did. “It’s a bit of a recent development for me.”

“Really?” Scott asked in disbelief. “You once shouted that you needed someone to sex you right now in the middle of the crowded boy’s locker room.”

Stiles quirked his head to the side as he pulled up the memory. “I did do that,” he nodded pensively. It didn’t seem strange to him at the time. Good lord! Why had it taken him so long to come to this conclusion? It was so damn obvious, he must have been walking around with one eye closed and his head cocked to the side to be able to ignore it for so long.

“So…” Kira started. “Does that mean you’re sexing him now?”

“He almost was,” Lydia muttered under her breath, making Scott grin.

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding us?” Kira finished. Stiles, dropped his head to his lap guiltily, then brought it right back up as he remembered what his lap was doing.

“Uh, no. To both questions.” Lydia scoffed at him. “What are you guys all doing here anyways?”

“It’s actually a coincidence that we’re all here together,” Scott explained. “But we ran into Derek and we’re trying to help him find an old legend about witches.”

Stiles looked over to Derek. He had been silent the entire time, and the way he had his nose glued to the book and his mouth in a thin line almost made it seem as if he was avoiding eye contact with Stiles on purpose. “What are you looking for the legend for?” Stiles asked Derek directly.

Derek sighed through his nose and slammed the book shut, nearly smashing Scott’s fingers. “It doesn’t matter,” he gritted out. “It’s probably just nothing.” Was it Stiles’ imagination, or was he a little scowlier than usual?

Just then, Griffin came back and leaned directly over Stiles, putting a hand on the back of his chair to come in really close. He apologized because his aunt was making him come home immediately and there was nothing he could do about it. He looked Stiles directly in the eyes again (Stiles was starting to realize that Griffin was fully aware of the effect his eyes had and was not afraid to use them against people) and told him he was going to call him later. Stiles definitely believed it, he worried his bottom lip and nodded his head obediently. Griffin flicked his eyes down to Stiles’ mouth quickly, then he leaned in and kissed him goodbye before turning to leave.

“Bye Griffin,” Lydia sang to him. He looked back over to their table and Scott and Kira were waving as well. They were all smiling mischievously at him. All except Derek, who was openly glaring, but Griffin seemed to be the only one who noticed.

“Bye guys,” he told them, then he was gone. When he was gone, Stiles was left all alone at his table. Lydia offered him to come over and join them at their table. But Stiles wasn’t going anywhere. They could use their noses or their imaginations to figure out why.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

It was Sunday night and Stiles was back at home making a late dinner with the news playing in the background again. This time, he was actually listening as the newscaster explained all the weirdness that was going on. Over the past week, there had been a series of break-ins in seemingly unrelated places. Each time, nothing was taken and there was no evidence left behind except that all the windows and doors in the places hit were left open. Everyone was making a big deal because the most recent break in was caught on camera at a well used bank, but there was no one in the video. All of the windows, doors, registers, drawers, and vaults just flew open all on their own at the same time at exactly midnight without setting off any alarms. Then they swung shut at exactly 3 AM. Then open again at 3:33, and that was how they stayed until the police arrived.

The police couldn’t figure it out. They were trying to explain it as some kind of technical glitch in the system. But the similarities to the other break-in was too similar and the previous break in was at a warehouse in the middle of the woods with no electrical security system whatsoever. The local news was starting in with all kinds of outlandish explanations. The most popular one was aliens. Stiles couldn’t decide if everyone making the supernatural leap was because they were all getting dumber, or because they were all getting smarter. He resolved that he would just pump his Dad for information when he got home, then start on some deducing of his own.

His cell phone went off and he almost broke his neck leaping over the counter to get to it. Just as Griffin had promised, he'd called Stiles yesterday. They talked on the phone all night. Then after a few hours of sleep, they spent the day texting. It was the night of the full moon so most of Stiles' other friends were off preparing for their romp in the woods or doing something to keep themselves occupied, so he's had nothing else to do all day. At about noon Griffin texted to say he was stuck spending the afternoon with his aunt, and he'd call later. That was nearly 9 hours ago, so he was desperate to hear Griffin's voice.

It was just a false alarm. It was his Dad calling to let him know they thought they'd had a crack in the mysterious break-in case and had a prediction where the next attempt might be. They were going to stake out the potential spot and he probably wouldn’t be back until Stiles left for school the next morning. Stiles was a little disappointed that he'd have to be eating alone. But it wasn't his first time to the rodeo. He knew how things got.

As he was finishing up the single pot vegetarian pasta he'd been making, someone reached behind him and wrapped their arms around his waist. He jumped so hard he nearly knocked the entire pot over, shouting "Jesus Christ!"

Griffin laughed quietly against his ear and the sound instantly soothed Stiles' nerves, although it didn't do anything about lowering his heart rate. "You'd think I'd be used to that by now," he whined against the counter where he'd slumped. "But nope. Scares me every time."

"Used to what?" Griffin asked, planting a kiss against Stiles' temple.

"Well let's just say you aren't the first person who's snuck into my house through my bedroom window."

"How'd you know I came through your room?"

“Cause I would have heard the door, it squeaks like hell. And like I said, you aren't the first. I know my window is easy to get into. And apparently that lock is like basic level to pick."

"Not that you locked it anyways."

"True. What are you doing here anyways?" Stiles turned around to face him once he'd fixed the nearly overturned pot. Chills shot straight up his spine as he made contact with his eyes. No matter how much he'd been thinking about them all day, nothing could ever prepare him for seeing those eyes in person.

"Well, I said I would call you, but I wanted to see you in person. So I just came over."

"I'm glad you did. My Dad just canceled our dinner plans. Now I have enough food for two people, and no one to eat it with."

"Oh, quite the predicament." Griffin reached both of his hands behind Stiles' ears and he started to massage them gently, making Stiles moan from the sensation.

"Mmmmmm." Stiles closed his eyes in pleasure, allowing Griffin to lean his head back so he could plant kisses on his neck. "You should have dinner with me..." he gasped out.

"Stiles?" Griffin feigned shock. "Are you asking me out on a date?" Griffin bit softly on his Adam's apple and he whined out a strangled affirmative. At that, Griffin pulled away and Stiles whimpered at the loss of contact, already missing his warmth. "Getting to eat your cooking on our first date? How romantic. Tell me you have candles and I may just have to put out."

Stiles had never run to the pantry faster in his life. He scrambled around for the stack of candles that had been kept there as back up for a power outage. He picked out 6, cramming a few under his chin and nearly knocked the entire shelf over as he searched for the lighter. He made a misshapen frown when he curled his upper lip in horror as he discovered it wasn't there.

Griffin laughed at him as he emerged in a frenzy, trying to find the lighter. He deposited the candles on the table then came back into the kitchen, searching the drawers. Griffin kept the smile on his face as he began searching for the lighter as well. He found it on top of the fridge and wiggled it in Stiles' face teasingly. Stiles went to grab it, but Griffin held it above his head. Stiles let out a distressed whine as he reached but failed to get it.

Griffin was a good 5 inches taller than Stiles, which put him at a whopping 6'4". Stiles was not getting the lighter. Stiles, however, was not easily deterred. He darted out to the garage and came back a minute later with an old candlestick holder of his mother's as well as the lighter for the grill they barely used anymore. He tossed Griffin a smug look as he passed him to get to the dining room to set them up. Griffin laughed at him again as he dropped his lighter and went to reach for plates.

They set up the dinner table in an amicable silence. They made it all cute and cheesy. Stiles even dashed out into the rain to steal one of the still blooming flowers from his neighbor's yard. It was probably the most cliché thing they could think of and they were giggling at the silliness of it all, but Stiles was overflowing with nervous energy anyways. He was going on a date. He was setting up for his first a date. A date. Like a real date. Oh my god! He shouldn't be nervous, it's not like he'd never eaten in front of him before.

Finally, Stiles started serving the food and his heart shot into his throat, kicking into overdrive. Their conversation was a little awkward and stilted at first as the reality that this kinda really was a date set in. But Griffin broke the ice with a joke about robbing a liquor store to find cheap champagne, and they easily fell back into their usual rapport. Stiles still felt a little tingling in his stomach, but he had come to the conclusion that he would always feel that way around Griffin. Perhaps he should stock up on Pepto Bismol.

Halfway through dinner, Griffin reached across the table to take Stiles' hand. The movement was so natural that it didn't even create a break in the flow of conversation. Stiles just gripped his hand back, and if he was smiling a little brighter afterwards no one seemed to think it was a problem.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6

After dinner they cleaned the table, Stiles making sure to put his mother's candlestick holder away safely. He set the leftovers aside for his Dad's next lunch, then they did the dishes together. Stiles really enjoyed having someone at the house with him. It reminded him of how much he missed his friends, especially Scott. He decided it was time to stop avoiding them and resolved they would all eat lunch together tomorrow, Griffin included. He should even find some time to bother Derek.

Once they finished up the cleaning, they picked out a movie to watch and Stiles fetched a blanket for them to cuddle under. They watched The Avengers. They both loved it and they'd both seen it a million times. It gave them an opportunity to create the perfect balance between watching the movie, talking to each other about it, and making out a little.

When the end credits rolled, they started making out a lot and it was getting pretty intense. By the time the bonus scene was playing, Griffin had Stiles pressed into the couch with his shirt pushed up to his armpits. Griffin's hands were dancing across Stiles' torso, touching and exploring, getting themselves well acquainted. Meanwhile he had his mouth clamped down on Stiles' neck, alternating between gentle kisses and nips that sent volts of electricity down his spine, and leaving a trail of big dark hickeys on his pale skin.

Stiles was panting and moaning the whole time, making these sweet little sounds that had Griffin's pants starting to feel uncomfortable. Stiles' hands weren't helping any, either. They were doing some exploring of their own, tracing the contours off his back. They were familiarizing themselves with all the muscles there, from the small of his back, to his shoulder blades, even up over his shoulders and tugging at the short hairs at the nape of his neck.

Griffin had managed to give Stiles so many hickeys, all lined up in a single row, that it actually looked like someone had hit him in the neck with some kind of rod or pole. He smiled down at them proudly before bringing his lips to the sensitive spot behind Stiles' ear. Starting there, he trailed tender kisses all the way back to Stiles mouth.

Griffin loved Stiles' mouth. Almost as much as he loved his neck. His neck was a long expanse of pale skin, flecked with a smattering of moles. He could play connect the dots with those moles all night. The flesh was so soft and sensitive there that it coaxed the best sounds out of Stiles. That was almost as good as the act of ravishing his neck in itself.

Stiles' mouth however was a different story altogether. Griffin would have never thought he'd find himself calling a mouth attractive, but Stiles' mouth was just so pretty. And he never left the damned thing alone. He was always touching it, or putting things in it. Perhaps that was what drew Griffin's attention to it in the first place. It was just so hard not to look at it when he Stiles spent the day molesting it to the best of his abilities. He just wants to taste those lips, nibble and suck on them until they turn red and swollen. He wants to abuse that offending mouth, then leave Stiles panting for more. Griffin had once speculated that his lips were specially handcrafted to wrap around his dick. He couldn't wait for the opportunity to test that theory. But he would get to that.

Griffin pulled his shirt over his head, then pulled Stiles forward so he could take his off as well. Stiles gave a sharp intake of breath as Griffin palmed at his erection through his jeans before moving to unbutton them. With them loose, he dipped his fingers under the waistband of his boxers to shuck them both off, but just as Stiles lifted his hips to help, he froze. “Do you have condoms?” he asked.

Stiles almost screamed in frustration as he thought to himself, he never has sex why the hell would he have condoms? But he quickly thought back to a time when virgins were being sacrificed. He’d bought himself a box with an “if you build it, they will come” sort of attitude that never panned out. “Upstairs,” he breathed. “In my nightstand.” Griffin stood up to go and get them and as soon as he’d made it up the stairs Stiles rolled off the couch punching the air in triumph. No more virginity for him! Fuck yeah!

Chapter Text

Chapter 7

Griffin darted down the hallway to Stiles’ room but a frown spread over his face as he approached the door. He pushed it open slowly and was greeted by Derek standing in the middle of the room frowning right back at him. He looked different than he had at the library, hair gelled up, beard reduced to stubble, and wearing his typical too tight jeans and a leather jacket ensemble. Even his eyes looked different without a group of teenagers huddling around him casting shadows on his face. Griffin didn’t immediately recognize him and took an attack stance, thinking he might have been trying to break in. “Who the hell are you?” he snarled, taking a threatening step forward.

“Derek,” he responded standing his ground. He was less than threatened by the teenager but found it almost cute that the kid thought he was intimidating someone just because he was tall. “Where’s Stiles?” he asked boredly.

“Why do you want to know?”

Derek growled at him, the full moon wearing his patience thin. “STILES!” he shouted, knowing the kid was downstairs, heart pounding erratically. Derek could hear Stiles whisper his name in shock before thundering up the stairs.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted back as he brushed past Griffin into the room. He closed the distance between them quickly, but as soon as he was an arm’s length away, Derek reached his arm out and turned his head to the side.

“What happened to your neck?” Derek had a fierce look in his eye that Stiles didn’t understand as he knocked Derek’s hand away gently. At the same time, Griffin stepped in front of Stiles rather possessively. From that close Derek could smell exactly what they’d been up to a few minutes ago. He took a couple of steps back, almost looking cowed when Stiles’ eyes darted to Griffin mischievously and he smirked at him.

“Use your imagination, Derek,” he intoned. “Now, why are you skulking around my room like Batman on the roof of a skyscraper?”

“You need to come with me. Now.”

“No?” Stiles posed his response as a question, as if Derek should have known way better than that.

“I don’t have time to argue with you Stiles. We need to go.”

“No!” Derek fixed him with a look that conveyed that there was serious werewolf business going on and Stiles knew there was no other options. “Why?” he whined in defeat. He’d meant the question more to the universe than Derek specifically, but Derek took slight offense anyways. “Why now? Why do you have to do this to me?”

Griffin looked down at him sharply, “Wait! You’re not seriously going to go with this guy, are you?” Stiles whimpered up at him, apologetic look in his eyes. "Really?" Griffin was incredulous.

"I don't want to," he pleaded. "But the fact that he's here at all means it's an emergency. I would have thrown him out otherwise." Derek cocked an eyebrow at the thought of Stiles being capable of such a thing.

"So you're going to throw me out instead?" The same time that he said it, Griffin's phone started ringing in his pocket. He rolled his eyes and sighed. "I'm going to chuck this thing into a river," he muttered, but didn't move to answer it.

"I'm sorry." Stiles leaned forward to nuzzle against his neck appeasingly. "But it looks like the timing works out anyways." Griffin was obviously not happy about it, but when his phone stopped ringing, he went to Stiles' closet and pulled out a red hoodie to put on. He went back over to Stiles and kissed him first on the neck, then on the mouth, then again on the neck.

"I'll see you tomorrow at school," he looked Stiles directly in the eye and smirked when he could see the goosebumps popping up on his shoulders. With a quick glare at Derek, he turned around and climbed out of the window. Stiles shook his head at him.

"I do have a door you know," he muttered. Stiles waited until enough time had gone by for Griffin to be across the yard before throwing his arms out and glaring at Derek. "You are the worst kind of person!"

Derek rolled his eyes. "Put a shirt on and get in the car!"

"Cock block!" Derek turned around and climbed out of the window himself. "Again! I have a door!"

Chapter Text

Chapter 8

The ride in the car was silent and tense. Stiles was texting apologies to Griffin the entire time. Beside him Derek was fuming. The awkward silence wouldn't have been so bad if not for the fact that the shirt Stiles chose to put on was the one that Griffin had left behind. It was raining too, so the Windows were up and the smell of him was filling up the whole car. The entire time Derek was grinding his teeth in rage so hard it would sometimes make an audible click. Stiles was too busy being mad at him to even realize that it didn't make much sense that Derek should be angry in return.

They arrived at their destination. Stiles recognized it as the way leading to the Nemeton and a pit fell in his stomach. Absolutely nothing good could be going on if it had to do with the Nemeton. He let Derek lead the way and when they got there, Scott, Isaac, Kira, and Lydia were all standing around it. Well, Lydia was near it, but she kept moving around in a small circle trying to get cell phone reception.

With everyone there, Derek explained what was going on. He was now certain without a shadow of a doubt that they were dealing with witches. There was an intricate pentagram design burned into the giant stump with a smattering of individual runes carved in around it. Derek didn't know what the runes meant, but he knew the pentagram was a symbol in witchcraft.

Stiles took out his phone and began snapping individual pictures of each of the runes, and one big one of the entire surface while Derek continued to explain. He said that the recent break-ins sounded a bit like an old legend he'd heard from his mother, but he wasn’t sure if he’d remembered it correctly and their trip to library was no help. From what he remembered of the legend, a coven of witches descended upon a uniquely prosperous town and similar strange occurrences happened. Homes were invaded by an invisible force, but nothing was taken or left behind. Things were just rearranged or found in odd positions. It happened one at a time to 5 different homes.

It was considered to be an omen and bad luck descended upon the families of each house. One by one, each family fell into misfortune. One of them lost all their money, one of them grew spoiled crops and eventually starved to death. Another one came down with the plague, and another one's entire home burned down. The final family however, was a family of werewolves.

As the other four families fell to ruin, the pack relied on their emissary to divert the witch's magic. However, when the magic was diverted it released upon the rest of the town. Slowly but surely, the once prosperous town lost its livelihood and became poverty stricken and destitute. When the town shriveled away, the pack was all that remained.

Thinking the town empty, the coven revealed themselves as they began a ritual to steal the power that had been drained from the town and building up in the other 4 homes that had been targeted. They were going to use the power to energize themselves. The werewolves however had caught on to what they were doing and stopped them, waging a battle in the streets. The battle was hard, the witches were clever and powerful, but with the help of their emissary, the pack was able to defeat them.

When the witches were all dead, the pack took it upon themselves to destroy the 4 homes, allowing the magic to release back into the earth. When it did, the crops began to grow again, the water in the rivers turned clear and the fish returned. The town was returning to its previous state of prosperity. People started to come back and the werewolves took over as leaders. They had saved the town, they had never abandoned it so they figured it belonged to them. They ran the town fairly and were able to bring it well past its previous level of wealth and success. All the while they continued to watch over it and protected it for generations.

Derek didn't know how much of the story was true, or if any of it was true at all. With the similarities to Beacon Hills, he wasn't taking any chances. Something needed to be done, and it needed to be done immediately. They already knew the Nemeton had been restored as a source of power, a beacon drawing the supernatural towards it. That sounded like the power the coven in the legend was after. But judging by the marks on the Nemeton, they had already gotten to it. So that begged the question of why the witches were still going after the town. So far they had already hit the 5 locations like in the legend, but nothing was happening. Derek hoped that meant they still had time to stop them before draining all of the power from the Nemeton.

Isaac asked what it would matter if the witches succeeded. Technically they’d be doing them all a favor by turning off the beacon and returning Beacon Hills to its normal self. Derek explained that he didn’t know much about witches and had never met one. However his mother had known a few and she was terrified of them.

She always put on a brave face, but once when Derek was a child a coven of witches had been pestering a werewolf pack in Arizona and they had come to Talia for help. He’d overheard her admitting to Derek’s father that she wanted to tell them no. She said that they’d be doomed whether she went to help them or not. That was the only time he’d ever heard his mother admit she was scared of something. She left to help them regardless the following day. She had planned to return the week after, but she wound up staying for 3 weeks. The entire pack was tense and worried for their alpha. When she finally did return, she wouldn’t say anything about what happened except to inform everyone that the pack in Arizona was reduced to half, and to say that witches are vile and soulless creatures. If that was his mother’s response to them, then they were a force to be reckoned with and the last thing they needed was more power.

When Stiles had finished taking pictures of all the runes, he’d come away with 60 new pictures on his phone without any doubles. He walked over to Derek, invading his space a little, have long forgotten he was supposed to be mad at him. Derek didn’t frown or threaten him at all either. He just sniffed pointedly, but allowed Stiles within his bubble.

“Wait,” Stiles asked him. “If witches are just a bunch of evil chicks who do magic, what’s the difference between a witch and a darach?”

“Witches aren’t always girls. That’s just a stereotype fueled by popular culture,” Derek clarified. “And honestly, I don’t know. Deaton might. Peter most likely does as well.” Scott and Kira offered to go talk to Deaton about it tomorrow after school. Lydia thought that Mr. Argent might have a little insight on the witch situation as well. If he’d never experienced one hunting, he at least had the bestiary to look through. She offered to go ask him and told rather than asked Isaac to come along with her. Isaac glanced at her, but didn’t argue.

Stiles said that left him and Derek to go ask Peter. Derek hesitated for a moment, glancing at Stiles’ neck even though his hoodie was tightened so much the zipper was bumping his chin and not a single inch of skin was showing. He took a deep breath, still able to smell Griffin through the extra layers of fabric and the moisture in the air. He dropped his eyes to the ground and took a step backward. “It’s fine. I’ll just go alone. You go with Scott and Kira.” Stiles nodded. Derek hadn’t said it meanly or anything, but Stiles couldn’t help but feel a little stinging around the edges anyways.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9

By the time Stiles made it back home, it was just after 3 in the morning. When Lydia dropped him off, he saw that the police cruiser was in the driveway. He walked past it and could still feel the heat radiating off the hood. His Dad couldn’t have been home more than 15 minutes. The jeep was still in the driveway, so the Sheriff probably had no idea he’d even been gone. Stiles debated the merits of climbing through his window. Stifling a yawn, he decided he’d been awake too long and was much too lazy for it. So he started racking his mind for a good excuse to come up with as he unlocked the front door.

By the time he’d made it into the living room, he decided that he should just forgo the lie and try doing that truth thing him and his Dad had been working on lately. The information would help his Dad’s investigation anyways. He approached the couch and saw that his Dad was passed out asleep on it, still dressed in his full uniform. At the very least, he had put his gun away. Lying on the floor next to him was a stack of files that he’d been working on.

Stiles went and unbuttoned his Dad’s shirt. Next he loosened his belt and took off his shoes. He could see his Dad visibly relax in his sleep as he was released from the extra tension. Stiles fetched him a blanket and cut out the light to head to bed himself.

He tried really hard not to snoop in the files just lying there so availably. He really, really did. Those were strictly confidential police records. For official eyes only. Not for him. Nope. Nuh uh. He couldn’t betray his Dad’s trust. That would just be crossi- Stiles couldn’t even finish the ridiculous thought before walking back down the stairs and grabbing the files. He went into the downstairs bathroom to read them where the light wouldn’t bother his Dad.

Stiles only had to skim through the files for a moment to see that he’d hit the jackpot. They were all the reports on the break-in cases. Apparently there was another break-in tonight like the police predicted, but it didn’t happen where they had expected it. That didn’t make sense. The witches already hit their 5 locations, why would they do another? Stiles kept reading and discovered that it happened in the same place as the very first break in. It was an abandoned building just on the edge of town. That made even less sense. They were altering the plan. Maybe they were after something else and the steps just seemed the same as the legend. Stiles didn’t know if that should be a good thing or not.

He exited the bathroom and took the files upstairs where he immediately went about making copies of every single page. In the meantime, he uploaded the pictures from his phone onto his computer and began to do image searches on each individual rune to try and find their meanings. He didn’t have much luck with a lot of them. Nearly half of them had no information on them whatsoever. A good third of the remaining ones had very ambiguous meanings that did more to confuse him than providing any kind of explanation. In the end he only wound up with conclusive meanings for 18 of the 59 runes. 7 of them had only one absolute, definitive meaning. The other 11 had meanings that varied with the situation.

Most of them represented something along the lines of strength or fortitude. A few of them he concluded had to do with prosperity and bountifulness. There were a few that he couldn’t decide which meaning would apply to the situation. He sent those ones to himself in an email so that he could look at them on his phone when he got to Deaton’s later. Hopefully the druid could figure it out. Or hopefully, at least the information he gave them might be able to help Stiles narrow them down.

By the time Stiles had finished with the copies and had gotten as far as he could with the runes, it was already 6:30. He texted Griffin to tell him he wanted to talk before school started and that he would pick him up early. Griffin replied with a selfie. He was in his bed, wrapped in a cream colored blanket glaring at the phone screen sleepily. “K” read the caption. Clearly he was not appreciative of the early morning text.

Stiles just smiled and headed downstairs to return the police files and make breakfast for his Dad before he got ready for school. He threw a forlorn look at his bed before he left, sighing longingly at it. Whatever. Sleep is for the weak anyways.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10

Stiles had picked Griffin up and they were sitting in the school’s parking lot at about 7:30, watching the other kids bustling in. Stiles had asked Griffin about hanging out with Scott and the others at lunch. He liked the idea. His friends seemed pretty interesting, and they certainly seemed funny if Saturday was anything to go by. Stiles still seemed like he had more to say, but didn’t quite know how to say it, so Griffin tried to coax it out of him. That might not have been the best idea because then Griffin got drowned in an explosion of word vomit. They just kept coming out.

He could barely keep up, but was able to pick out a few things like: “Beautiful… I-really-like-you… goddamn eyes… on my couch… fucking voice… and my neck…ohmygooooood… date. Yes. Date me… really happy and you’re the only one that can-”

“Wait wait wait!” Griffin cut him off. “Slow down. Are you asking me to be your boyfriend?”

“Well… yes. Please say yes?” Stiles had so much vulnerability in his eyes at that moment it was breaking Griffin’s heart a little. He was staring into his own lap, unable to bear the intensity that radiated from Griffin’s eyes. “I mean, I’ve never had a boyfriend before—or a girlfriend for that matter,” he was talking with such a small voice now that Griffin should have barely been able to hear him. “So I might not be very good at the whole relationship thing, but could you at least give me a try?”

Griffin reached across the jeep and gripped Stiles’ chin, tilting it upward until he met his eyes. Griffin smiled at him “I would like absolutely nothing more than to be your boyfriend.” Rejuvenated by the yes, Stiles grinned wide and leaned forward to kiss him. When he pulled away, Griffin smirked a little looking at the roof pensively. “Well, I might like world peace and a billion dollars more, but only by a little bit.” He lifted his hand to show a tiny space between his thumb and forefinger. “Like this much.” Stiles snorted and smacked him on the chest playfully before kissing him again.

Griffin looked around the jeep, taking it all in thoughtfully. "Hmm," he pondered aloud. "Have you ever thought about having sex in the jeep?" He was examining it closely, calculating the mechanics of it in his head. It was more curiosity than anything else, but the question came way out of left field and caught Stiles completely off guard.

"Wait, what?" He spluttered. "You mean right now? But there's so many people around and I didn't bring any lube…" Griffin chuckled at him.

"I'm kidding Stiles," he assured him. "Well, kinda. But we can figure that out later. Now let's go before I get anymore brilliant ideas." Griffin climbed out of the jeep, and Stiles stumbled out right after him. Griffin reached for his hand and Stiles took it, lacing their fingers together proudly. He was holding his boyfriend's hand. His boyfriend. It was so exciting.

XxxxxxxxxX

Lydia was in her car, putting her make up on last minute. She hadn't really been sleeping since Allison died. She was waking up every night with the echoes of her own screams thundering in her ears. It wasn't her screaming out loud. No, it was just a memory being relived through her nightmares. She would wake up with stiff muscles as if she'd actually been crouching down over Stiles all night. The image of Allison with her arms splayed wide and her mouth set as a perfect o of surprise had been ingrained into her eyelids from so many nights of seeing it over and over again. She eventually just stopped sleeping, only allowing herself short naps that didn't give her enough time to reach REM sleep. This of course wasn't a long term solution, but it served its purpose for now.

This morning, she had dozed off at her make up table and had found herself running late. She downed a couple of Tylenol for her head then dressed quickly in the outfit she'd chosen last night. She snatched her makeup bag that she'd kept for just such occasions and darted out the door. Now she was covering the bags beneath her eyes and pinching her cheeks to add a little extra perkiness to her blush and give her face some life. She finished her makeup with bright red lips and pulled a brush through her hair. She'd originally planned to put it up, but she was short on time and she would look just as fabulous with it hanging down her back.

Confident that she looked stunning, she put on a pair of oversized cat eyed sunglasses and pulled her purse over her elbow. Feeling her head pounding again, she reached into her bag and dry swallowed a couple more extra strength Tylenol before climbing out of the car and heading to her locker.

She did indeed look stunning, strutting down the hallway in her multi toned silver and gray dress over black leggings and Louboutin boots. With her open turquoise pea coat and Prada purse slung over her shoulder, she looked like she'd walked right off the runway and into the hall. She knew she was turning heads and it felt perfect. She may have lost the center of her world, but that just meant now she was the center all over again.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11

Stiles spends the morning in a rather jolly mood. Lydia however, has a pretty lousy day. Her migraine came back full force halfway through her physics class. She took 2 more pills and snapped at her mother when she told her she wasn’t allowed to take medication in class. In her AP calculus class, she was called on to do a problem on the board. When she got to the front of the class, her head was swimming and she couldn’t focus on the numbers. She had to ask the teacher what the problem said and the rest of the class laughed at her. Of course they were all immediately cowed when she did the problem in her head and announced the answer in under 5 seconds, but for that moment it still stung nonetheless.

By the time they got to lunch, she’d been feeling entirely miserable and had to redo her makeup twice and put her hair up into a hairbow in order to feel better. She waltzed into the lunchroom followed by a noticeable silence and outright stares from boys and girls alike. She relished in it, and it made her feel much better. Nothing could cure a building migraine like the spotlight on her.

For the first time in weeks, she saw Stiles in the lunchroom. He was usually hiding away somewhere with Griffin, in an empty classroom or the library. This time he was sitting at their usual table in the center of the room, although Griffin was still with him. She approached the table and immediately sat down beside Griffin where she could face Stiles. She was completely caught off guard by Stiles’ huge dopey grin. She hadn’t seen him smile like that in a long time. She was actually a little jealous that he had someone to make him happy like that. She did not. Not anymore.

“Hello boys,” she smiled at the two of them. She could feel a tiny pinch behind her right eye, but decided to ignore it in favor of teasing Griffin and Stiles. “So, did you guys learn anything interesting at the library this weekend?” Stiles’ face turned a splotchy red as he sputtered to find something to say. It didn’t help when Griffin gave him a simpering grin, making certain to look him directly in the eye so his stomach would start up on its gymnastics routine again.

“Well,” Griffin piped up, still smiling salaciously at Stiles. "I definitely learned a few things."

"Oh yes," Lydia agreed. "Must have been very educational for the two of you."

"What was?" Kira joined the three at the table, sitting beside Stiles.

"Nothing, really," Stiles tried to downplay it all, but Lydia was determined to embarrass him and Griffin found the entire thing to be funny. Traitor. Scott sat down on Stiles' other side, smiling with his wide puppy grin. Of course he'd heard everything being said, but he was far enough away that he shouldn't have over the din of the cafeteria. But his grin and sparkling eyes were enough to inform Stiles that he also was teasing him.

Isaac sat down on Scott's other side and Danny sat beside Lydia right after. "Oh no," Danny joined the teasing. "Stiles is red. What'd he do?"

"He looks like somebody bit him," Isaac offered.

"No," Lydia clarified. "We're just teasing him."

"Oh, well count me in on that," Isaac gave Stiles a devious smirk. "What are we teasing him about? His sweater?"

"Hey!" Stiles took offense to that. He happened to like his red hoodie. It wasn't the dark one that Griffin had stolen the night before. It was bright red with the words big bad written across the back, on the sleeves, and around the hood. He'd had it custom made the previous summer, but it had gotten relegated to the back of his closet and forgotten about since it was too hot to wear it at the time. He loved the thing though. He found it ironic and quite a bit hilarious. "What's wrong with my hoodie?"

"Well aside from the fact it's ridiculous-" Stiles muttered under his breath that he'd pronounced hilarious wrong. "-You just look silly with it hiked up to your chin like a nun."

"You're one to talk, Scarfy!" Stiles laughed back at him. "I don't think we've seen your neck since Halloween!"

Isaac turned his head away haughtily, as if Stiles was a peasant who needed to learn a little class. "My scarves are stylish yet functional," he explained simply.

"No, no, no," Lydia interrupted their banter before it could escalate into an actual fight as happened so often between those two. "We're just talking about Stiles and Griffin at the library." Kira laughed knowingly, but Danny and Isaac didn't quite get it.

"What, were they studying for their history project or something?" Danny asked, oblivious. Scott turned to smirk at him.

"Oh, they were there for history, but I think they were focusing a bit more on chemistry." Scott waggled his eyebrows at Danny so he would catch his drift.

"Ohhh," Danny nodded. "So does that mean you're finally officially out of the closet Stilinski?

"Closet?" Stiles threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. "Did everyone know I was bi before I did?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Lydia admitted while Scott pat his friend on the back sympathetically. Isaac looked at Stiles a little strangely. This was all news to him. Not that it didn't make sense. He narrowed his eyes a little as his thoughts drifted somewhere else.

"What were you guys doing at the library?" He asked.

"Oh, nothing really," Kira answered him. "Just research."

"Yeah," Scott finished. "We were helping Derek look some stuff up."

"Derek?" Isaac lowered his eyebrows in a bit of confusion. "So you guys were all there?" The "without me" didn't have to be said aloud in order for everyone to hear it.

"It's not like that," Scott tried to ease Isaac's suspicions, seeing the hurt in his eyes. "It was really more a coincidence that we were all there at the same time.

"Of course." Isaac smiled as if he got it, but the hurt didn't seem to fade. Thankfully, Griffin changed the subject.

"So, who is this Derek guy anyways?" He asked. The question had been directed at everyone, but they all turned to Stiles to explain.

"Why are you looking at me?" He asked around mouth full of curly fries.

"Technically you have known him longer than the rest of us," Scott justified, remembering the day in the woods when he'd first met Derek himself and Stiles flipped out, explaining who he was.

"Pfffffft!" Stiles scoffed at him. "That means nothing. He's just this guy we know." Lydia rolled her eyes at the description while reaching into her bag for more Tylenol. Stiles' idiocy was exacerbating her migraine. Isaac saw and counted the two pills she took.

Griffin had noticed Lydia's reaction as well and made a leap, "Did there used to be something between you two?" He asked Stiles. Stiles laughed so hard he started to choke on the food he was still cramming in his mouth.

When he finally caught his breath, he wheezed out "Even if I hadn't just discovered I was bi like three days ago, that would never be possible considering I'm pretty sure he hates me." Scott sighed at his obtuse friend. "No. He'd just gotten really close to Scott and Isaac for a while. Now he hangs around like a lost puppy and we help him out with stuff from time to time." Stiles knew he ought to be ashamed of himself for describing Derek that way. He even knew that if Derek had ever heard it, there would be a cold hard wall with his back’s name on it. But he couldn't really think of anything else to say without giving too many details away. He wasn't about to tell Griffin and Danny that he's Scott's werewolf brother, and Isaac's former alpha. And now he helps them keep Beacon Hills safe from monsters. Or rather tries to keep the town safe. The success of that is highly varied.

"Okay," Griffin accepted Stiles' explanation. "But, why was he sneaking through your window yesterday?"

"Because he doesn't understand the concept of doors," Stiles answered without actually answering. Griffin didn't push it though and allowed the conversation to change directions. He actually really liked Stiles' friends. They all teased each other and busted each other's chops but none of them got offended and they clearly had each other's backs through thick and thin. Griffin found them all quite hilarious, it was no wonder Stiles had missed them so much. He was also surprised at how easily they accepted him into their group.

Lunch found itself being over much too soon and they all dispersed to their classes, each reminding the other of what they needed to do today. Griffin was a little disappointed he couldn't follow Stiles home, but was content with kissing him sloppily in front of the school where everyone could see.

Chapter Text

Chapter 12

Stiles, Scott, and Kira arrive at the veterinary clinic and begin asking Dr. Deaton what he knows about witches. He starts off trying to deter them from the subject like usual, but like usual it’s to no avail. Once Kira tells him that they are 100% sure that they’re dealing with witches, Deaton finally starts talking. He keeps himself distracted by continuing his examinations and making them help. Well, he made Scott and Kira help. Stiles was being his usual persistent and annoying self, so Deaton made him hold a 30 lb diabetic cat named Lucifer that seemed rather determined to live up to his namesake.

Scott told Deaton what Derek said about witches and how his mother reacted to them. Deaton remembered that time well. Talia had sought his counsel before and after her trip to Arizona. Deaton explained that not all witches are evil in that way. In fact most witches live individually and are no different than your average person in regards of how "good" or "bad" they are. However these witches tend to fly under the radar without drawing much attention to themselves. The witches that are heard of the most are the few power hungry groups that make a bad name for all of them. For this reason, it is widely thought that witches are a rare supernatural breed, when in actuality they are probably the most common.

Kira, thinking of kitsune and nogitsune, asked what it was that made a witch turn evil that way. Deaton didn't know for sure, but when discussing it with his sister once, they'd both noticed a pattern. He noticed that witches tended to stay solitary or in groups of three. In areas that were heavily populated by witches, such as big cities or in close proximity to bodies of water (something else he couldn't explain) they would stick together in larger covens of 13. This was uniform in every case. 1, 3, or 13. However the witches who had turned dark and sadistic were never in groups of those numbers. The coven Talia had encountered had 17 members. Deaton had never found any evidence to prove his theory, but he thought that 1, 3, and 13 were some kind of special numbers for witches that helped them balance out their powers. When the balance was out of whack, it left room for the kind of dissent and ambition that poisoned a coven and brought it into darkness.

While trying to detach Satan from his leg, Stiles asked what exactly evil witches wanted with all the power they sought. Did they want world domination or something? Cause Stiles didn't get it. Deaton laughed and said it's more along the lines of: spending a lot of time around people who think they are better than everyone else and encourage you to do the same, tends to turn you into a sociopath and makes you want to prove it. Power isn't necessarily about outright domination. It's more about lording your control over everyone in a more subtle way, like running a successful business with magic, or using it to accomplish seemingly impossible odds. It's more about knowing you're above everyone and feeling it than it is about physically being above them.

Scott asked why they couldn't just buy a big house and drive fancy cars. Deaton laughed again. He didn't know, but he thought it certainly seemed a lot simpler that way. He couldn't explain how a witch thinks, only what he's observed of them. That got Stiles thinking again and he asked what the difference between a witch and a druid was since they could both use magic.

Deaton explained that druids were more attached to humanity because their magic came from the earth and it's all connected. That's why they made such good emissaries for werewolves and other supernatural creatures alike. They may have been ruled by nature, i.e. the moon and the wolf, but they technically lived outside of it. Witches however, drew their magic from themselves. Some were born as witches, but due to their unusually high infertility rate, that was extremely uncommon. Most witches started off as ordinary humans that had their own little spark. They lit their spark, pushing themselves entirely outside of nature, and became witches.

"A spark?" Stiles shouted and it made the Devil hiss at him, but Stiles just hissed right back and the cat was shocked into silence, not used to being challenged and unsure what to do. People don’t argue with him. People give him food. What is this madness?

"Yes Stiles," Deaton sighed. "A spark, just like you."

"So you're saying that I could become a witch?"

"Technically, yes. But I have no idea how. You would have to ask another witch."

"Of course, the only other witches in town are trying to destroy it, and thus would never help me."

"It would appear so. You shouldn't take the idea of being a witch so lightly Stiles. It's a big deal, and it changes everything.”

“Like what? Giving me superpowers and making me awesome?”

“Magic is not something that’s easy. It’s powerful and can be all consuming. Particularly witch magic because it isn’t grounded in anything except the witch itself. You would no longer be human, and you would never be able to undo it.”

“I just want to be stronger. I want to be able to protect myself and the people I care about. No more skinny, defenseless, squishy, human, Stiles.” No more Robin. No more sitting on the bench watching everybody else play.

“I’m certain you do Stiles, but there’s so much more to it than that. Everything comes at a price. Witchcraft is no exception.” Stiles’ mind was already made up. He would find out how to become a witch, no matter what. The determination was radiating off of him so heavily that Lucifer had stopped trying to bat at his face with a clawed paw and instead rolled over in his lap, flashing his huge belly in the hopes of appeasing the fuming human.

Scott tried to diffuse the situation by changing the subject and mentioning the runes they’d found on the Nemeton. It mostly worked, as Stiles handed Deaton his phone to ask about the last few runes he couldn’t decipher. Deaton didn’t recognize them immediately, but he said they looked familiar. So Stiles sent them to him and he said he would check his records to see what he could come up with and get back to them. Stiles asked about the legend Derek told them as well. Deaton didn’t recognize it but said he would look for it too. He warned them not to hold out too much hope for him finding anything, because he didn’t have very much information on witches. The runes were another story because druids could use a lot of them as well, so he was likely to have those.

Kira asked if there were anyways to defeat the witches. Deaton shook his head. The only way to stop a witch was to kill them before they killed you. However there was quite a few ways to do that. Impaling them through the heart was the most common. Burning them was probably the easiest because you could do it from a distance with the right circumstances. Beheading or bisecting them also worked. Also a werewolf or a vampire bite would poison them, giving a drawn out and painful death. They would be able to heal from anything else, though nowhere near as quickly as the wolves did.

Scott was dead set against killing them. He asked if there was a way to at least find them. There were two ways that Deaton knew of. One was a locater spell that he could do, but it would require a belonging of whichever witch they were looking for. The other way was to ask another witch. They always knew when they were in the vicinity of each other, kind of like a built in witch proximity alarm.

Kira pushed, trying to find if there was at least a way to get the upper hand on them, like with wolfsbane for werewolves, or the letharia vulpina for the nogitsune. There was none. “If you want to gain the upper hand on a coven of witches that are determined to wreak havoc… then don’t get in their way.” The 3 teens found his advice less than encouraging.

Deaton had put the last dog he’d been working with back into its kennel and told them that it was time for him to close up shop. Scott had just gotten a call from Isaac at the same time, so he figured it was as good a time as any.

“So wait, when are you going to examine the Dark Lord over here?” Stiles gestured to the cat that was now purring in his lap like a vibrating sack of furry potatoes.

“Oh, I examined him earlier,” Deaton explained.

Stiles dropped his mouth in confusion. “Then why the heck am I holding him?”

“Originally, it was to keep you too preoccupied to speak, but that clearly didn’t work out.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 13

Halfway through 5th period, Lydia’s migraine suddenly hit her full force. She’d been busying herself taking selfies while the rest of the class finished their finals when all of a sudden her head felt like she’d been smacked with a sledgehammer. She dropped her phone and pitched forward in her seat, clutching her head and groaning in pain. The room was spinning with lights swirling around before her eyes, and there was a ringing in her ears so loud she couldn’t hear anything else. She couldn’t do anything but cradle her head on her desk, disheveling her hairbow, until it all subsided enough for her to realize that the entire class was focused on her.

Her French teacher was kneeling beside her, handing her phone back and recommending she head to the nurse’s office. Lydia could barely hear the words, but she snatched the phone and her bag and rushed out of the room anyways. Instead of the nurse’s office, she ran into the girl’s bathroom. She ripped the hairbow off of her head, the tension on her scalp becoming too much to bear, then scrounged around in her purse to find two more Tylenol to choke down. She knelt down, palms flat against the wall, whimpering into it while she waited for it to work.

Lydia opened her mouth to call out for help, but her voice was much too small and broken to carry across the bathroom let alone down the hall. She had meant to call out for Scott, wishing he could come rescue her, but the name that came out of her mouth was much more honest. “Allison!” She cried barely above a whisper. “Allison help! Help me!” She could feel the phantom pain in her knees from crouching beside Stiles in the cramped hallway and the raw, shredded vocal chords from screaming in agony all over again. That was when she lost it.

She couldn’t hold it in anymore, and she began sobbing these loud heavy tears that wracked her whole body. “Allison!” she wailed into the wall between sobs. “Allison!” It had been weeks since she’d allowed herself to cry for her friend. She had forced back every single tear that threatened to come to the surface since the night Allison died and she drowned herself in distractions. Makeup. Designer clothes. Sex. Banshee lore. She’d even gone to Eichen House to visit Meredith a few times. Anything to keep her mind away from the dark thoughts. She thought if she pretended to be okay long enough that eventually it wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t.

Now it was all flooding out in a rush of emotion and physical pain that made her head want to explode. She sobbed into the wall relentlessly, having no idea how long she was knelt there. Finally, she had hit a point where the tears were starting to drain out of her. The sobs became shallower and further apart until she was more gasping than sobbing. As her crying began to ease up, so did the pain in her head. The room began to still and the ringing in her ears faded into silence. It must have been the medicine working.

Finally, she stood up, tears having subsided. She went over to the mirror and saw herself reflecting back in it. Her hair was a mess, her eyelashes were wet and clumped together, and she had mascara running down her face. Somehow she knew she’d looked more like herself in that moment than she had in over a month. She relished in it for a moment. The more she stared at herself, the more sour the moment turned, until finally she decided that she looked pathetic. She was weak. She was ashamed of looking so vulnerable.

Lydia turned her face into a frown, then reached to the faucets to wash her face clean. She redid her makeup, pulled a brush through her hair and styled it with a braid stretching over the top. Once she’d finished putting herself back together again, she looked back into the mirror. She took herself in again and was much more satisfied with what she saw. Flawless. Perfect. The bell rang above her and she instantly snapped a smile into place. Now she was ready to take on the rest of the day.

She only had one class left, History with Mr. Yukimura. She was able to breeze through it without incident. However by the time she met Isaac at the lockers after class, she could feel herself growing lightheaded again. It wasn’t enough to bother her just yet so she pressed on and shuffled him to her car so they could head to Mr. Argent’s apartment.

On the way there, the dizziness kicked up and she nearly swerved off the road a few times. Isaac snapped at her, thinking she was falling asleep, but she snapped right back at him and he laid off. That is until she nearly hit a woman with a stroller when rounding a corner and Isaac had to grab the wheel to get her off the sidewalk. At that point she stopped being stubborn and admitted she maybe wasn’t feeling well. She let Isaac drive the rest of the way.

On the elevator ride up, she finally caved in and took 2 more Tylenol, forcing Isaac to hold the bottle and her water. She caught him looking down at her pitifully as she downed the medicine and glared back at him so hard he visibly recoiled despite the fact that he was nearly a foot taller than her and a freaking werewolf.

When they made it to the apartment, Isaac punched in the security code and they both entered rather unceremoniously without bother to knock or anything. This of course got Isaac thrown facedown into the floor with an arm twisted behind his back while Lydia was greeted with a gun to her face. She rolled her eyes at it, unimpressed and told Mr. Argent to relax before he hurt somebody. Although if the crunching sound coming from Isaac’s ulna was any indicator, he thought it was a little late for that.

Mr. Argent offered them a proper greeting, (and an ice pack for Isaac) but hastily ushered them to the point of their visit. Lydia started in on the questions about witches. Chris informed them that he really didn’t have much experience with them. He fished out the bestiary and brought it into his office for them to glance over on his computer. It didn’t hold much information on witches. Most of the other creatures had at least 2 pages dedicated to them. Witches however, barely had what you could call a paragraph. It mentioned that witches should never be hunted in groups. If you wanted to take one out, it needed to be on its own. It also mentioned that the only way to catch a witch was by the element of surprise. Unlike druids, telekinesis was the one act of magic that all witches could use regardless of the strength of their magic. It was as natural to them as breathing. Because of this, it made it nearly impossible for them to be defeated by any kind of direct attack. The best way to kill one was by using an incredible amount of stealth, or by killing it in its sleep.

Isaac and Lydia didn’t find any of this information to be particularly useful with them knowing Scott would never want to kill them. Isaac contemplated doing it anyways regardless of what Scott said. Chris tried to convince him out of it, insisting that they leave the witches alone entirely while he called up some old hunter friends of his that could get rid of them. Lydia argued that Scott would never go for that either, and Chris almost laughed at the idea of having to answer to a teenage werewolf. When the hell did his life get turned so backward?

Lydia was starting not to feel too well again. She started shaking and was drenched in a cold sweat. Isaac could hear her heart pounding like crazy and the beat was off. Skipping beats and beating out of time. Chris recommended taking her to the hospital. Stubborn till the end, she refused, insisting she only needed to take more Tylenol. She stumbled into the kitchen to get water, needing to clutch the wall to keep from falling over as she was hit with a wave of dizziness and nausea that almost had her on her knees. She somehow managed to get a cup and fill it with water, spilling it all down her dress and peacoat as she took 2 more pills. Isaac tried to get her to sit down, her heart rate was terrifying him but Chris had left the room to call an ambulance and he didn’t know what to do. She stood up and pushed him away, stumbling almost drunkenly. She insisted she was fine and they were overreacting. They just needed to relax a little while her medicine started to take effect. She’d be fine in like 10 minutes.

Without meaning to or even realizing she’d done it, she managed to stumble down the hallway to Allison’s old room. She didn’t need werewolf powers to see that it clearly hadn’t been entered since the night Chris had found Isaac in there, clutching Allison’s ring daggers. Isaac himself was standing at the end of the hallway, not wanting to see the inside of her room again. He could smell her scent wafting out of the room, smell still strong after having been trapped in there for weeks. Lydia stumbled over to the bed, pressing a hand down on it fondly. She could feel tears prickling behind her eyes again, but refused to let them show. She whipped her head back and forth, trying to shake the emotions away, but it was too much for her. The last thing she remembered was her vision tunneling outward and the sensation of falling. She never found out if she’d hit the floor or not.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14

Peter like to consider himself a man who was comfortable in his homosexuality. He wasn’t the stereotypical gay man, although he had his moments. People were often surprised by the fact he was gay, especially considering the fact he like to charm the pants off of women for sport. It never meant anything to him, he just relished in knowing that he could. Regardless of anything Peter knew who he was, and it didn’t bother him in the least. Anymore.

He wasn’t always that way. He of course struggled with it in his youth, as to be expected of someone growing up in the 60s. (He was much older than he looked, but that was a different story altogether.) It wasn’t until the early 2000s that he’d finally dropped all his insecurities, stopped pretending to be someone he was not and came out to his family. Although that this didn’t happen until after his father had died wasn’t a coincidence. For a while in the early 90s, the pressure from his human father to just be as “normal” as possible and “man the hell up” became too much. So he started dating women and tried to assimilate into to the human world, building a “normal” life for himself. He had even gotten engaged and started to buy a house. It wasn’t until Peter’s mother had set him aside and reminded him that he was a Hale that he’d finally pulled himself out of it. He was a werewolf, he never was normal, never would be, and shouldn’t even bother to try. His father just didn’t understand that things don’t work the “traditional” way in the Hale Pack and was taking it out on his only son because it left him feeling emasculated.

During the time he’d been trying to appease his father, Peter slept with 10 different women. Of them, there was only 4 whom he could have impregnated, none of them his former fiancé. Even with the narrowed down list, he would have had to track down all 4 of them to find out which one was the mother of his child. However, as soon as he’d heard the name Malia, he knew exactly who it was.

Peter had an ongoing fling with a mouthy young werecoyote named Leah. She was much too young for him, even for the age he was purported to be. He’d met her in a bar when she’d ducked in to get away from her nagging mother. Their relationship was purely physical and nothing else. To be honest, Peter was sure the main reason she’d approached him in the first place was because he was a werewolf and she wanted to piss her parents off by lording him around in front of them. They’d only been hooking up for a little over a month before they grew tired of each other and moved on. Peter promptly forgot about Leah, and assumed she did the same.

However, the moment Lydia said “Malia,” he knew Leah was the one. She had to be. They didn’t talk much between their sessions of marathon sex, but he did remember one particular conversation. Leah had been complaining about her mother Adalia, and how she was so controlling over herself and her two sisters Evangelia, and Laurelia. She even grumbled that she could see her oldest sister doing it to her own daughter Aaliyah, as well.

Adalia. Evangelia. Laurelia. Aaliyah. Leah. All rhyming with Malia. Peter didn’t think it was any coincidence. When he tracked Leah down, she proved him right. Although she was upset at him showing up out of nowhere demanding answers to questions she swore she’d already told him 7 years ago. Soon after they lost contact she found out she was pregnant. She hid it from her family for as long as she could, but eventually her mother caught on and forced her into an adoption. She didn’t want a filthy wolf to be associated with their pure coyote bloodline. Let her be someone else’s problem. Leah tried to argue that they wouldn’t even know if she was a werewolf until she was born anyways and could still be a coyote. Adalia didn’t care because she would still be a bastard with wolf blood. So she forced her daughter into an adoption agreement with the Tate family. Leah took some token satisfaction in being able to convince the Tate’s to give her daughter a rhyming name like the rest of her family. She never heard from her after that.

Leah threw Peter out and told him she never wanted to hear mention of the child again. Peter already got what he needed. So he took the name Malia Tate back to Beacon Hills and tracked her down from there. With the recent articles about her return from the forest, he easily figured out where she lived and began staking out her house. He didn’t like to refer to it as stalking. It was more observing, really. Of course when he’d been observing her for a week straight and she confronted him about it, she disagreed with him on the semantics.

The sun had been out that morning, but it was still rather chilly, so she was wrapped up in 4 layers of sweat-clothes and lying in the grass in her yard. She was just enjoying the sun, bored because she didn’t have anything to chase. The last time she’d gone off chasing after something for the hell of it, her father had freaked out and began crying because he didn’t know if she was coming back. Since then, she just stayed in the yard and pretended the feel of the grass under her skin was the same as against her fur. Of course it was not the same, but nothing ever would be and she had to just accept that.

She had her eyes closed, a layer of peace settled over her face when she suddenly spoke. “You may as well come out,” she called to Peter who had been hiding behind the tree line. He’d thought he was being discreet. Apparently not discreet enough. “I know you’ve been following me all week. You might as well just tell me what you want and get on with it.” Peter didn’t move a muscle or say a word. “I know you’re there,” sighed Malia, starting to grow aggravated. “I can hear your heart beating and can smell your cologne from here.” She still hadn’t bothered to open her eyes, even so she wasn’t surprised in the least when Peter was suddenly standing right beside her.

“You’ve got quite the ears and nose if you could sense me from all the way over there,” Peter trilled in that slightly sing-song tone of his, but Malia ignored the comment.

“What are you, some type of reporter? ‘Cause I said I didn’t want to talk about it anymore weeks ago. I’m not changing my mind.”

“No I’m not a reporter. You could call me… an interested party.”

“Interested in what?”

“Interested in our similarities.”

“What, did you grow up alone in the forest too?” Peter chuckled at that.

“Not quite. I meant similarities with your nose and ears.” That got Malia to open her eyes. She looked up at him curiously and he flashed his eyes at her. She sat bolt upright and flashed her eyes back.

“You’re…” she shook her head. “You’re not a coyote. You’re a werewolf?”

Peter looked down at the grass rather primly, then with a sigh of defeat, he sat down next to her. “Yes,” he answered simply.

“How come I can’t smell you?” Malia asked rather excitedly. “You don’t smell like a wolf, not like-” she cut herself off knowing better than to reveal another wolf’s name. But Peter already knew where she was going.

“Not like Scott?” he finished for her. He knew from the article that Scott and Stiles had been credited for rescuing her, and wasn’t surprised when he’d been snooping around her room and caught Scott’s scent there as well. Apparently he’d been visiting her with the kitsune and the banshee, trying to teach her to shift back into a coyote. “That’s because I’m a born wolf and learned how to mask my scent as I was growing up. Scott was only bitten less than a year ago and has yet to learn.”

“How do you know Scott?”

“It’s a long story. The short version is: I’m the one who bit him. Though he and the others don’t really appreciate me for it.”

Malia could tell there was a whole lot more to it, but apparently he wasn’t going into that today. “Okay,” she let the subject drop. “What do you want with me so much that you’ve been stalking me for a week?”

“I wouldn’t call it stalking…”

“You were lingering outside my bedroom window for nearly an hour the other day. I may have spent seven years in the woods, but I know what stalking looks like.” Peter smirked at her wit, but answered her question with another question.

“What do you know about your parents?” Malia couldn’t tell where he was going with this but answered honestly anyways.

“I know they adopted me and my little sister. I know my mother is dead.” She flashed her eyes a bit at the last word. “And I know my Dad is traumatized. He wants to know what happened so badly, but how the hell am I supposed to tell him the truth?” Peter hadn’t known for sure what had happened, but he’d read the article. Knowing her family had been “attacked by a wild animal” and judging by the blue in her eyes and the expression on her face, he could make an accurate guess. “Why?”

Peter could hear Mr. Tate’s truck drawing near the house so he stood up without answering her. “Your Dad’s coming.” Malia turned toward the driveway then looked back, but when she did Peter was gone. “It would be best if you didn’t tell Scott I came here,” his voice echoed in Malia’s ears from wherever he had disappeared to.

“What’s your name?” Malia asked without bothering to raise her voice, knowing he would hear her anyways.

“Peter,” he responded.

That had been 2 weeks ago. Peter had come to visit her every day since then, but only when Malia was alone, and he never went inside her house. He had even watched from a distance on the night of the full moon, when Scott and Isaac broke into her house to chain her up until dawn. Malia had found herself immediately warming up to Peter. He told her a lot about what it is like to live as a human and a wolf, wild yet tamed at the same time. He told her what he could, subliminally trying to convince her that she shouldn’t abandon her humanity and be a coyote completely again. He also told her a bit about himself—sparing the gorier details—and they somehow managed to bond over having spent a good deal of time far away from regular society.

Peter was surprised at how much he liked her as well despite being wild and unrefined. She had snark for days, was perceptive as hell, brutally honest, and had a morbid sense of humor. Peter adored the girl and he had no idea what to do with that. In all honesty, he didn’t really know what he had planned to do when he found her, he just knew that he had to. He didn’t have some grandiose plan of revealing his identity and taking her away to live with him where he would shower her in love and they’d live happily ever after, father and daughter together at last. He didn’t know what he would do. He still had plans to maintain, and daughter or no, he had every intention of executing them. He just knew that she was family, and family was the most important to him even if he had a convoluted and backward way of showing it.

Malia’s tutor had arrived and Peter had bid his farewell for the day, heading back into the forest when he’d received a call from Derek. Derek had wanted Peter to meet him at his loft so they could talk about witches. Witches in Beacon Hills? Peter beamed at the sky in glee. Somebody up there sure loved him.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15

The last thing Lydia remembered was her vision tunneling outward and the sensation of falling. She never found out if she'd hit the floor or not. Her vision was blurry when she opened her eyes and the white light around her was blinding. There was a strong pressure in her head and a loud ringing in her ears. Another migraine. She tried to reach for her bag, assuming it was on her nightstand. She received a rude awakening when her arm was jerked back with a sharp pain in the crook of her elbow. She glared down at her arm, trying to force her eyes to focus. It made her head hurt a little more but she thought she could make out an I.V. attached to her. An I.V.? That meant she wasn’t in her bedroom.

She lay back down on the hospital bed and tried to think back to what had happened. Her head was so fuzzy she couldn’t really remember anything after her break down in the bathroom earlier that day. Or she thought it was that day. She could have been out for a week and she wouldn’t know it. Ugh. If she focused a little harder against her migraine she could just barely make out the image of Isaac leaning over her. He looked devastated and he was apologizing. That didn't make any sense either. What the heck would he have been apologizing to her for? Her head was foggy and she must have been screwing up the memories in her mind.

Lydia's eyes were finally adjusting when a doctor entered the room followed by her disgruntled looking mother. The doctor gave her a quick examination before checking her from I.V. He briefly explained what had happened to her, then instructed her to stay in the bed. They needed to keep her overnight to complete her round of medication. In the meantime she needed to fast for a blood test in the morning. He told her she was lucky her friends called the ambulance as fast as they did. Most likely her accidental overdose won't lead to any liver damage thanks to them. But the liver function test was still necessary just to be sure. Then he left her alone with her mother. Her mother just frowned at her silently for a moment, then all of a sudden she started in on her.

Her mother was furious! She couldn't understand what was going through Lydia's head. She didn't understand why Lydia would want to hurt herself that way. What was worse was that she would try to commit suicide in Allison's room. Why would she do something so mean to Mr. Argent. His daughter just died! He didn't deserve that on his h-

"What the hell are you talking about Mom?" Lydia cut her mom off, making her migraine spike by shouting.

"Overdosing on Tylenol? Remember that? Don't act dumb Lydia! We both know what your iq is."

"Oh my god mother! I took too much medicine cause my head freaking hurt! That doesn't make me suicidal! It was just an accident!"

"That's what I had to tell the doctors so they wouldn't put you on 72 hour watch."

"Well great, cause it's the truth!" Lydia's mother didn't believe her and nothing she said would change her mind. Eventually, tired of arguing, Ms. Martin told her she was going home to get some rest and suggested Lydia do the same. When her mother was gone, she tried to relax like the doctor instructed, but due to her migraine it wasn't working so well. She needed medicine, so she pushed the button to call for the nurse. The nurse sure was taking her jolly old time. When she finally came, Lydia saw that it was Scott's mother. She ducked her head in the door, then turned back around to try and tell someone off through whispers. Finally the door swung all the way open to reveal Scott pushing his mother into the room. She was trying to stop him by digging her heels into the ground, but with his werewolf strength it was futile. She just crossed her arms and sighed as he pushed her into the middle of the room, closely followed by Stiles, Isaac, and Kira.

"I tried to keep them out as long as possible," Melissa apologized. "But I'm only one woman against two werewolves, a kitsune, and a Stiles. I didn't stand a chance." They all brushed past Melissa to crowd around Lydia's bed. She told them she was alright and that she didn't mean to make them worry, she was just fighting a really bad migraine all day and wasn't paying attention to how many pills she was taking. A migraine that hasn't gone away at all as she had to remind Stiles when he practically yelled in relief upon hearing she was okay. It caused a sharp pain behind her left eye and she started to beg Ms. McCall for more painkillers. Unfortunately, Ms. McCall told her she couldn't give her any until they knew what kind of damage had been done to her liver for fear they might cause more, or cause some when previously there was none. That made Lydia even more annoyed. When she made a pained whine, Melissa tried to throw the other teens out so she could get some quiet and they actually listened and filed out quietly.

Lydia took the opportunity to take a nap. Despite her head, she did manage to get some sleep in. Unfortunately, that meant she also had a dream. Or rather had a nightmare. The same one she always had. Once again she was crouching over Stiles, screaming her vocal chords raw. The last thing she saw before her eyes flew open was Allison, her arms spread wide and a perfect O of surprise on her face. Lydia woke up with her heart racing and in a cold sweat. There was a quiet ringing in her ears for a few moments, but for the first time in a while, she woke up from a dream without her head throbbing. Her knees weren’t in pain and her throat wasn’t raw either. It’s like it was just a bad dream as opposed to completely reliving the past. She caught her breath easily and soon was completely calm. Now she was at a loss of what to do.

She spotted the clock on the wall and saw that it was 1:00 in the morning. Great. She just had the best sleep ever since Allison’s death despite the recurring nightmare and now she was mostly rested and wide awake. In the middle of the night. Fricken fantastic. She glanced around the room for her purse, but of course it wasn’t there, which meant neither was her phone or her homework. Not that she had any homework left. It was finals week and the only homework was projects that needed to be turned in, and of course she’d finished them all weeks ago. At least double check ing them would have been something to do, or maybe she could have reread one of her textbooks. Hell, she could have at least drawn on some scrap paper or something, but nope. She had zip. Fabulous. Finally she just reached for the remote to the old tv. Obviously there wouldn’t be any quality television on at this time of night. Maybe she could find some infomercials and bore herself back to sleep.

She had flipped through the all of 9 channels (3 of which didn’t even work) when she noticed her door slowly creaking open. She instructed whatever nurse was bothering her that she’d better be bringing water and no she was not turning off the tv unless the nurse wanted to read to her. Instead of a nurse, Stiles poked his spikey head through the door to ask her where her pitcher was at. Lydia frowned at him, surprised he was there then pointed at the bedside table near the foot of her bed. Stiles went to fill it up and returned with a bright smile on his face.

“What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night,” Lydia asked without preamble. Stiles explained that his Dad wasn’t home anyways, the police were staking out another possible break-in location and he couldn’t sleep. Lydia asked what he would have done if she were sleeping, and he pulled his laptop out of his bag and waved it at her. Lydia rolled her eyes and sighed with relief. “Please tell me you’ve got something good on there!”

“That depends on your definition of good,” he smirked back at her. He fiddled around in his bag some more for the power cord and plugged his laptop in. Then he grabbed Lydia by the shoulder and on the leg right above the knee so he could scoot her over enough for him to wedge himself between her hip and the bed railing. She scoffed at him for not just asking her to move, but let him weasel his way in regardless. He propped his laptop up on both of their legs and began scrolling through the list of shows he had saved.

Big Bang Theory.

Doctor Who.

Downton Abbey.

Game of Thrones.

Green Arrow.

The IT Crowd

Pushing Daisies.

Sherlock

Sleepy Hollow.

Supernatural

The Walking Dead.

Etc., etc.

“Seriously?” Lydia asked him. “Do you have any shows that aren’t nerdy?” Stiles thought about it for a moment, then shook his head at her. No. He really didn’t. Unless all the porn he had saved counted. He had the sneaking suspicion that it did not and chose not to mention it. Lydia sighed in defeat and chose Sherlock. At least Bendysnick Crumperdoodles was kinda hot. They started with the first episode and Lydia had the case solved before it was even halfway over. Stiles had her shipping Johnlock even sooner. They made it through the whole 90 minutes watching and discussing the show. By the end of it, Stiles was quite certain that he’d made a Sherlockian out of Lydia and hi-fived himself on the inside. He stopped for a minute to debate whether he should start her on Supernatural, but she practically snatched the laptop away when he started drifting the mouse over. As the second episode of Sherlock started to play, they drifted into an amicable silence, but Lydia’s mind was starting to wander.

It wasn’t that she didn’t find Sherlock interesting. She did. It was just that she hadn’t done anything like this with someone in a while. Since even before Allison’s death because they’d been so caught up with the nogitsune and the alpha pack before that. They never had time to just hang out and cuddle up under the blankets watching tv or movies. Lydia had no idea how much she’d missed it. She leaned her head on Stiles shoulder and told him thanks. When he asked her what for, she told him, but it made him tense up a little awkwardly. She asked him what was wrong and it was his turn to explain.

“Well,” he told her, “I’m actually a little bit mad at you.”

“Why on Earth would you be mad at me?”

“For this.” He gesticulated wildly at the room around them, actually showing how irritated he truly was. “For putting yourself in the hospital! For making us all worry! When Scott got that call, Isaac thought you were dying. Well,” he amended, “You were dying. I almost had a panic attack right then and there.” Stiles sighed heavily and dropped his tone to barely above a whisper. Lydia could really hear the hurt and the vulnerability in his voice as he looked into his lap, unable to maintain eye contact. “I’m just getting real fucking sick of seeing people in hospital beds,” he muttered. “Or worse. Body bags.” This time Lydia had to look away as she let the words sink into her. She hadn’t really thought about it that way. Her mind drifted back to the beginning of last summer when she was standing in Stiles’ room, about to leave to go save Jackson. He’d warned her “Death doesn’t happen to you! It happens to the people around you!” At the time she’d blown the statement off, not really letting it sink in enough to understand it. But this time she understood full well what he’d meant that day.

“I’m sorry Stiles,” she attempted to mollify him. “It was just an accide-”

“Was it?” He cut her off. Lydia recoiled away from him with an incredulous look in her eye.

“Oh no!” she started “Don’t you dare Stilinski. Not you too. I was not trying to kill myself!”

“I don’t think you were,” he placated. “But I don’t think you were trying not to either.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think you were trying to put your life in danger-”

“I wasn’t!”

“I think it was more along the lines that you didn’t care if you did.”

“I-” Lydia stopped mid-word, staring wide eyed at Stiles, mouth agape. She didn’t have a response to that.

“You know what you weigh, how tall you are. You know how much medicine is dangerous for you. You know better than to take too much. Maybe you weren’t trying to hurt yourself. Maybe you were just trying to get rid of your migraine. But you knew you could hurt yourself, and you just didn’t care. That’s why I’m mad at you Lydia. Don’t you think we’ve lost enough people already?”

“I’m sorry Stiles. I really am but it’s no-…” she paused mid-sentence and gave up her argument with a shake of her head, burying her face into Stiles’ shoulder again instead. He could hear the tears building up in the back of her throat as she spoke again. “I just… I’m not strong like everybody else.”

He wrapped his arm around her and hugged her tight. “We aren’t strong either,” he told her. “We just have someone there to support us.”

“I don’t have anyone.” She let the tears fall out, staining Stiles’ sweater. “Allison’s gone. Aiden’s gone. My mother’s no use. I don’t have anyone.” This time she let out a sob and Stiles squeezed her so hard, it must have hurt, but she just hugged him tight right back.

“Are you out of your mind Lydia?” he asked her, smiling a bit at her foolishness. “You have me! And you have Scott. Hell, you even have Kira. She’s just as wrapped up in all of this as we are now. You’re not alone Lydia. Not unless you want to be.” She nodded against him and he stroked her hair, comforting her. They stayed cinched together like that for a while until Lydia’s tears stopped and she relaxed against him.

“Says the person who spent a couple of weeks ignoring all of us,” Lydia continued the conversation as if they hadn’t missed a beat. Stiles laughed a little guiltily.

“Right, but I was possessed by an evil fox spirit and went on a rampage that killed half the town.” He laughed darkly at the memory. He had to approach it with humor otherwise it might send him spiraling again. “One might tend to seek comfort in being alone after such situations.”

“Oh my god Stiles!” Lydia argued. “You didn’t do that! You have to know that.” He nodded at her, to stop her argument.

“I do. I do now. It just took someone telling me to understand that.” Lydia opened her mouth to say that they’d been telling him the whole time, so he backtracked and amended it. “Okay it took someone telling me and me willing to believe it in order for me to understand.”

“Someone with swoopy black hipster hair and hypnotic green eyes?” Lydia teased.

That got a real deep belly laugh out of Stiles. “Well, not specifically.” He wiggled his shoulders to shake Lydia a bit and make her laugh as well. “But I suppose it did help.” Stiles thought about Griffin for a minute. “And his hair isn’t swoopy.”

“Oh yes it is.”

“Not really. It’s a coif. It goes more… up.” Stiles gestured over his head with his hand, making Lydia bounce up and down and giggle more. “And back.”

“Yeah, it swoops up and back. He probably uses more hairspray than I do.”

“But it’s pretty. And it’s soft.” Stiles strummed a finger over his bottom lip absently with a small smile on his face as he thought of his boyfriend. “Yeah, he might,” he admitted quietly. Lydia rolled her eyes at him, still laughing. “But the point is!” Stiles tried to get back on topic. “It’s hard. We’re all suffering for more reasons than one. But we can get through it together. Showing others that you’re hurting doesn’t make you weak. That’s how you stay strong.” Lydia nodded against his shoulder, letting the words sink in and trusting them. “Besides,” Stiles continued. “What in the world gave you the impression you weren’t strong? You’re like the strongest person I know.”

“Oh, yeah right,” Lydia scoffed at him.

“I’m serious. We hang out with a bunch of teenage monsters and beasts for friends and I’m pretty sure they’re all at least a little bit afraid of you.”

Lydia pulled away from him, giving him an incredulous glare. “Only a little bit?”

“Okay,” Stiles corrected frantically, “mostly a lot afraid of you.” Lydia nodded her head in approval before going back and leaning against him again.

“Much better.” Lydia snuggled against him even more, smiling to herself a little. “When did you get so wise?”She asked wistfully. Stiles snickered at her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve always been wise. No one ever listens to me. That’s your problem.”

Just like that the discussion was over and Lydia felt a thousand times better than she had in weeks. She closed out of the episode of Sherlock that they hadn’t been paying attention to and opened a random episode of Supernatural. Stiles tried to argue with her that she can’t just start on an episode in season 8. She needed to start from the beginning to get the full Supernatural experience. She argued back that if she wanted the full supernatural experience she would just go into the woods on a full moon, but went back to season 4 episode 1 so Stiles would stop whining. Lydia watched the whole thing in silence. Not because she was bored, but because she was so into it that she didn’t want to miss anything. At the end of the episode, she asked Stiles if Castiel and Dean wound up getting together in the end. Stiles just smiled mischievously, but didn’t answer so she went back to the season 8 episode she had picked first despite Stiles’ protests. She watched that episode with just as much interest as the first, perhaps a bit more. When the credits rolled at the end, she nodded to herself and said, “So they do wind up fucking?” It was more a statement than an actual question.

Chapter Text

Chapter 16

Lydia had finally fallen asleep after Stiles made her go back and watch the first 2 episodes of Supernatural. He fell asleep halfway through the first one and didn’t wake up until the Sheriff came into Lydia’s room at about 10:30 the next morning. He saw Stiles knocked out, hanging mostly off the bed while a sleeping Lydia hogged the rest of the bed. John thanked Melissa for telling him where his delinquent son was, then grabbed his arm that was dangling down and pulled it hard enough that he rolled entirely off the bed and smacked the ground hard. Stiles hit the ground and immediately jumped, flailing about and muttering nonsense for a moment until he had somehow managed to be standing upright. The sheriff scolded his son for making him worry where he was, then Lydia shooed the three of them out. Interestingly enough, she commanded Stiles leave his laptop.

Stiles asked about the stake out the night before. The Sheriff didn’t want to say anything, but after listening to Stiles badger him through the hospital halls, the whole ride in the elevator, then climbing into the police cruiser and still talking, he finally caved. He admitted that they had been wrong again about the break in location. In fact there hadn’t been a break in at all. The police had no idea why it stopped when it had been going on for nearly a week straight. They assumed it had something to do with the fact that things were different the night before. That caught Stiles off guard. He hadn’t had the opportunity to read all of the files he stole, uh appropriated, and hadn’t noticed anything mentioning differences when he’d skimmed through it that night. Apparently, whatever entity had broken in left something behind this time. It was a necklace with a large pentagram pendant.

A necklace. Necklaces tended to belong to specific people. Stiles flipped out and told his Dad he had to give Stiles the necklace. Obviously the Sheriff laughed in his face when he suggested this, so Stiles finally caught the Sheriff up on what was going on with the witches. With the new information John seemed much more willing to hand it over. However it wasn’t that simple. It was in the evidence lock up. He couldn’t just take it, Sheriff or not. There were procedures he had to go through. There was no way Stiles was going to get it. Stiles assured him that he and Scott would come up with something, to which John replied, “I swear to God Stiles if I have to arrest you and your friends-” but Stiles attempted to assuage his fears by promising they wouldn’t get into any trouble. John knew better. Stiles had that twinkle in his eyes that meant the only reason he wouldn’t get into trouble was because he didn’t plan on getting caught. The Sheriff pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head sighing. His fucking kid… Finally he told Stiles to get out of his car and go to school. Stiles tried to argue that it hardly mattered because he was late already anyways, but the glare he received in return had him backing out of the car quietly.

He dashed home to shower and change, then got to school just in time for Coach’s class. He spent the entire class muttering under his breath what he’d found out from his Dad for Scott to hear. Danny caught him mumbling and gave him a weird look. Stiles tried to play it off, but Danny wasn’t fooled. He just rolled his eyes and kept his thoughts to himself, though. When Stiles started in on a plan of how to break back into the evidence lock-up, he was cut off by Griffin, three rows over. He had been focusing on the worksheet Finstock had given them, when he suddenly turned all the way around and looked Stiles dead in the face. He was giving Stiles a curious look, almost like he just couldn’t believe what he was looking at. Stiles asked him “What?” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but he actually said it loud enough that everyone in the class heard it and stopped to turn and look at him. Griffin smiled at his awkward boyfriend and informed him (loud enough that the entire class could hear) that he just hadn’t seen his beautiful face in a while and he wanted to look at him. This garnered a few aws, and a few scoffs and snickers. Then coach told them to hush it up and keep their canoodling to outside of the classroom. Stiles gave him a little sass back, asking Coach what exactly was canoodling. Could he explain it please? He wasn’t entirely sure what it was. He just wanted to know for future reference, to make sure he wasn’t canoodling on accident or anything. Obviously it was a very serious matter if he wasn’t allowed to do it in class. Stiles really didn’t want to get into trouble. Coach should just tell him what it was. Finstock told him to shut up or he would make him sit next to Greenberg. Stiles told him that wasn’t very nice, and by the end of the class, he was twitching with the effort to not choke himself to get away from the poor kid. Scott and Griffin were grinning at him as they left the room and he told them they were both traitors.

When everyone met up at lunch again, there was a distinctive gap where Lydia should have been. There was another gap where Isaac should have been. Scott told them that he had lunchtime detention because his teacher was being annoying so he knocked over an entire shelf of books to be annoying back. They were having their usual conversations while they ate, but the entire time Stiles was texting Scott and Kira what his plan was for getting the necklace. Basically he was making his Dad get in cahoots with them so he could change the paperwork to say the necklace had been moved to a different building when it wasn’t. Really, he would take it and hand it off to Isaac who would be waiting in his office, under the guise of being lectured about his recent behavior. Then Isaac would take it out and back to Deaton’s office. They would get Deaton to do the spell, then the Sheriff would take the necklace back, then swap the paperwork back. It would be spoken for at all times if anyone was looking for it, though likely no one would. If anyone noticed when it was gone but saw it again once it was back, the Sheriff could easily explain it as a mix up, and say he fixed it himself. No harm, no foul.

It sounded pretty solid to them, and Stiles had texted his Dad who had more or less agreed to it, but told him never to text him details to a crime again. Scott texted the details to Derek and Isaac, meanwhile Danny was texting Lydia who was going to be ready to leave the hospital soon. She appeared to be doing fine, she had gotten to the hospital in just enough time to avoid any liver damage. While all this texting was going on, Griffin asked Stiles if he wanted to hang out after school that day. Stiles was at a loss. Obviously he did, but he had things to do. Technically he’d never really made it up to Griffin for having to throw him out the day that Derek was being a cockblock, either. Stiles spluttered for a moment unsure of what to say, when finally Scott answered for him. He told Griffin he would love to. Stiles turned on Scott asking what the hell. Scott informed him they’d be perfectly fine without him for one night. Stiles was a little reluctant at first, but with Scott and Kira’s encouragement he of course agreed. It made Griffin smile so wide that Stiles couldn’t help but grab his cheeks (just barely managing to quell the urge to pinch them) and gave him a kiss.

At the end of the day, Griffin promised he would get Stiles in just a few hours. There was something he needed to do first. They parted ways, with the others meeting up at the Stilinski house to touch base with the Sheriff. John warned them they needed to tread VERY lightly with all of this, because if they got caught it would be his job on the line, regardless of if they stopped the witches or not. They waited until it got dark, when there would be fewer officers at the station, then the Sheriff left with a fox and two wolves not too far behind. Stiles was downstairs looking over the files he’d pilfered while he waited for Griffin who said he’d be there in the next 20 minutes.

While he looked over the files, he grabbed a red marker and a map, plotting the points where the break-ins had happened and numbering them. There had to be some type of clue with them. Or at least an explanation for why they broke into the first building twice. They even left the necklace the second time. That first building was an empty old slaughterhouse just outside the edge of Beacon County. It had been abandoned nearly a century ago when the surrounding areas started to get industrialized. Now, it was still surrounded by trees with an old dirt road leading to a paved highway not too far away. There had to be some sort of significance to the old building. Stiles pored over the files but couldn’t find anything. He even did a quick google search on the slaughterhouse, but couldn’t find anything of relevance about it. He made a mental note to do a proper search on the area once he got his laptop back from Lydia, then returned to the map.

He was stumped on the whole thing, so he just kept tracing his fingers over the dots he’d made as if the motion would make something suddenly pop into his mind. As he let his fingers flow over the paper almost absently, he let his mind wander to what he’d found out yesterday about being a spark. The fact that he could become a witch was simultaneously the most amazing yet terrifying thing that had happened to him since the night he found out about Laura Hale’s body in the woods. He wanted nothing more than to be powerful, but that fact alone was what scared him about it. He didn’t want to become a power hungry dark witch. He just wanted to protect his friends and family. The balance of magic just seemed so fragile, he had no idea if he would be able to seek out power without going dark.

With the thought of himself as a witch still niggling at the back of his mind, he turned his attentions back to the map and his fingers plotting the points. As his focus returned to the movement of his hand, Stiles realized that there was something strangely familiar about the motion. It was more than just the fact that he’d repeated it at least 50 times in the past 2 minutes. It was something more than that. He reached back out for his marker and put the tip on the dot with a 1 next to it to indicate it was the slaughterhouse or the first place to get broken into. He retraced the movements of his hand with the marker, connecting each dot in order. By the time he got to the 4th location, he already knew what he’d be looking at, but he didn’t have the complete picture until he reached the 5th point and connected it back to the first one.

It was a star. Just like the one in the pentagram. Stiles got up to dig through a few of his drawers to find his compass. He pulled the pencil out and replaced it with the marker, lining it up with the tip of the star at the first point. Holding the marker still, he found what he thought should be the middle—poking a hole in the paper with the pointed end—then shifted the weight of the compass so he could mark a big circle around the star. It matched up perfectly to make a whole pentagram, not that he doubted that it would. The locations of the break-ins made a pentagram? The witch’s symbol? That was definitely something of significance.

As soon as Stiles completed the thought, he heard a knock at his door and he got up to rush downstairs and let Griffin in, leaving the map out on his desk.

Chapter Text

Chapter 17

When Stiles opened the door, he teased Griffin, telling him how shocked he was that Griffin had discovered his door again. He had been so certain he’d lost it forever. Griffin teased back, saying he could easily find it again, and pretended as if he was going to leave. Stiles grabbed him by the arm and drug him inside to the living room. When they got there, Griffin kept going, pushing Stiles down onto the couch and climbing on top of him, straddling his legs. He immediately tipped Stiles’ head back and began kissing his chin and throat. Stiles was still wearing his hoodie, and Griffin didn’t bother trying to unzip it to get to that precious neck. Instead, he brought his kisses up, capturing Stiles’ mouth. Griffin kissed him slow and dirty and Stiles reached up to bury his hands in Griffin’s black hair. They stayed like that, kissing heavy and intense for a while, until Stiles finally had to come up for air. “Not that I’m complaining,” he panted against Griffin’s lips, “but didn’t you have some kind of plans for the evening? Although if this was it, I am so down for that. So so very down.”

“Yeah…” Griffin smiled down at Stiles’ a little guiltily. “About that… Would you be willing to put a pause on said plans? We can get back to it later, but for now there’s kinda something else I have to do.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Stiles teased, kissing him lightly again. “What could possibly be more important?”

“My Aunt?” Stiles pulled back with a surprised frown on his face.

“Your aunt?”

“Yeah. She needs me to take her grocery shopping,” Griffin explained.

“Why can’t she do it herself?”

“Well, she’s blind. She can’t exactly drive herself to the store.” Stiles thought about telling him he could let her try, but didn’t think Griffin would find the sentiment as funny as he did. “You can come with us,” Griffin offered. That made Stiles squint with uncertainty.

“I dunno. She seems a little controlling the way she’s always calling you and making you come back home.” Due to his own nefarious lifestyle, Stiles was having a little trouble comprehending what parenting looked like when the kid actually obeyed the adult. He was highly unfamiliar with such situations.

“Hardly,” Griffin came to his aunt’s defense. “She’s actually pretty awesome. It’s Michael that keeps calling me and making me help him out.”

“Her boyfriend?”

“No. He’s like a caretaker that comes and helps her out with stuff every day. He used to live with her and water her plants, help out with the cleaning, cook, and do chores for her. Stuff like that. Once I moved in he moved out and now he only comes part time. He’s a fucking asshole though. He’s all pissed that his hours got cut so he takes it out on me and keeps calling me to come and do his job for him. This afternoon, my aunt finally got sick of him and fired his ass. But she still needs to go grocery shopping, so I have to take her.” Stiles nodded, understanding. He knew what it was like to feel the need to take care of your family. He knew Griffin’s situation and knew she was the only one he had left. He couldn’t exactly blame him for that. “Come with me. Please?” Griffin pleaded.

Griffin thought Stiles might need a little convincing so he kissed Stiles again. “Please? Please? Please?” he begged, kissing him all over his face and chin until Stiles was laughing at him. “Pretty please? Pretty please with curly fries on top?” Stiles protested more. He wasn’t unconvinced, he more just liked Griffin’s method of convincing him. Besides, he couldn’t let him win too easily. He had a reputation to uphold. Griffin had other ideas. He leaned back a little, tilting his head ever so slightly forward so when he flashed his eyes at Stiles, he had to look up through his lashes just the tiniest bit. He fixed Stiles with his best puppy dog eyes and asked one more time, “Please?”

“Oh no!” Stiles covered his own eyes and shook his head frantically. “No! No! Nope! You do that shit on purpose!”

“Do what?”

“Don’t you play innocent with me!”

“What are you talking about?” The tone in Griffin’s voice suggested he knew exactly what Stiles was talking about.

“No! Don’t you flash those eyes at me with your evil, vampire, compulsion magic!”

“What?!” Griffin tugged his hand down.

“You heard me!”

“Vampire?” Griffin was incredulous. “You think I’m a vampire? Really?”

“Well hey,” Stiles mused. “You’re all broody and mysterious, and you’re completely obsessed with sucking on my neck. It’s totally plausible.”

“Vampire though? Really?” Griffin laughed at the absurdity of it all. “You’re ridiculous. This is not Twilight.”

“No, no. You’re right,” Stiles agreed easily. “It’s more like early evening. Much too late for twilight.”

Griffin rolled his eyes at Stiles and dropped his head down onto his shoulder, growling in mock frustration. Even through the fabric of his hoodie and shirt, Stiles could still feel it rumbling against his skin. That was his weak spot and Griffin knew it. That was fighting dirty. Stiles was still a little too resistant, so Griffin upped his game and nosed at Stiles’ neck until he had his head tipped back again. He clamped his mouth firmly on his throat and growled again, right against it. This wasn’t just a usual growl, though. It was low and guttural, from the back of his throat, deep and primal enough to rival any werewolf’s. The vibrations traveled throughout Stiles’ entire body, leaving goose bumps under his clothes and sending a shiver up his spine that had him visibly shaking for a second. Not fair. Cheating! So cheating! The fact that a sound so wild and almost animalistic as that growl could give Stiles such a visceral reaction was probably something he should have been concerned with, but he filed it away for later.

“Okay, okay!” he surrendered, voice rough and almost panting. He reached up and pulled Griffin’s head up to kiss him a little frantically. It was a deep kiss, but it wasn’t very long. It was enough to be momentarily satisfying and that was what counted. “But I heard curly fries earlier and I’m going to hold you to those.”

“Of course you are.” Griffin flashed all his teeth at him. “So curly fries it is.” Stiles nodded back, accepting the bribe, and definitely not mentioning that he never really needed it in the first place. “She’s not bad at all, I promise,” Griffin defended his aunt one last time. “You’ll probably like her a lot. It’s just the grocery store anyways, it’s not gonna kill us.” Stiles withheld his desire to list off all the seemingly mundane places he’d almost died in (or the seemingly mundane place he actually did die in) and just took his word for it. Griffin climbed off his lap and they left to get into Griffin’s car and go pick up his Aunt.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18

Stiles and Griffin head back to Griffin’s Aunt’s house. On the way there, Stiles recalls when he first went to Griffin’s house to work on their history project. She hadn’t been there and though there were pictures all over all of the walls, Griffin had assured him that none of them were her. He had pointed at a picture in the landing of the staircase and told Stiles that was the rest of his family. He explained how they all died in a car crash 3 years before. He was the only one that had survived it. His more distant relatives had all lost their lives at various times in his childhood as well. Griffin, his Aunt, the cousin he’d been staying with before in Washington, and his older brother by 12 years in Maine were all that was left of the Panselinos family.

Stiles looked at the picture a little more closely. There was 6 kids in the picture for a total family of 8. They all hard dark brown or black hair and all of them except for Griffin’s Dad and one girl had the same intense green eyes as him. Stiles asked which one was him and he pointed to the shortest kid in the picture. With his height now, the idea of a short Griffin made Stiles laugh.

Stiles told him about how once his mother died, he and his Dad were all each other had. It wasn’t exactly the same as losing everyone all at once, but Stiles thought he knew how he felt. He hadn’t said it out loud, but Griffin’s story also sounded mysteriously like a certain broody werewolf that he knew. Griffin told him that his aunt was his mother’s older sister and she was just like his Mom in personality and looks. If his Aunt were younger, they could have even passed for twins. Speaking of young, Stiles pointed out that his mother looked way too young to have six kids. Especially with one being more than 10 years older than another. Griffin just blamed it on good genes and joked that he was actually closer to 25 than 17.

As Stiles came back from his reverie, they were pulling up in the driveway and he could see someone sitting on the porch swing, waiting for them. Griffin hopped out of the car, Stiles following him, and approached the woman who didn’t look a day over 35 despite the white hair at both her temples. He gave her a big smile and asked her how her day was, but she was completely ignoring him. She was staring directly at Stiles with wide curious eyes. They were almost exactly the same as Griffin’s only hers were a pale misty blue instead of his bright green. Somehow that made them seem even more intense and Stiles suddenly found himself intimidated. “Tell me Grif,” his Aunt asked, “who is your sparky friend over there?” Griffin glanced between the two of them before introducing Stiles. “He’s very bright,” she said matter of factly, pushing some of her black hair away from her face. “Unusually bright.”

“He can hear you,” Griffin warned.

“I know he can.” She was smirking at Stiles as she stood up and began walking directly toward him. “You can call me Aunt Dee,” she told him.

“Uh… Hi Aunt Dee,” Stiles stammered a little warily. She sure could see well for someone who was supposed to be blind. With her up closer, he could tell that she had been looking more at the general direction of his chest. When he spoke, he noticed her eyes dart right up to his mouth, locating the source of the sound.

“Yes, I am really blind,” she told him. How did she…“It’s not all part of some elaborate ruse. No. I’m not a mind reader either.” Stiles gaped at her a bit and Griffin rolled his eyes. Show off. “It’s nothing like that Mr. Stilinski. I’ve just been blind for a very long time. I’ve gotten very good at…” she thought about her word choice. “At making educated guesses. I can tell a lot about what a person is thinking based on the tone of their voice as compared to what their saying. Especially in certain circumstances that I find myself in repeatedly. Such as meeting new people.” Stiles nodded at her, forgetting that she couldn’t see it, but she smiled at him when he did as if she could tell anyways. “Now,” she hooked her arm around Stiles,’ spinning him so they were both facing the car. “Lead me to Griffy’s behemoth.”

“It’s an SUV, Aunt Dee,” Griffin protested.

“It sounds like a monster,” she argued, jiggling Stiles’ arm a little to urge him to start walking when he just stood there gawking in confusion. He led her to the Durango, starting to take her to the front passenger door, but she tugged him back. “No, that’s alright. I’ll sit in the back. You can sit by your boyfriend.” Griffin hadn’t introduced Stiles as his boyfriend. How did she know that? “Because I’m not stupid, dear. There aren’t very many reasons why my nephew would want to spend so much time with you that he would bring you along to run errands for me. Conclusions can be drawn easily.”

“This is so weird…” Stiles hadn’t meant to say it. The words just tumbled out of his mouth as he opened the door for her and she laughed at him.

“Oh don’t worry dear Stiles. You’ll find it much more annoying than weird rather soon, if I may say so myself.” She cocked an eyebrow at him then turned to grab the inside of the door. With her other hand, she reached to feel the doorframe and the seat to get her bearings, then lifted herself into the car with practiced ease. She buckled herself in and nodded to Stiles so he’d shut the door. Stiles threw Griffin a look as he walked over to him. He was at a loss at how felt about Aunt Dee. Griffin just smiled back at him.

“Don’t let her freak you out,” he muttered. “She’s just being a little shit on purpose.”

“Did you know,” she called out the front window that was rolled halfway down, “That blind people tend to have exceptionally good hearing?”

“I said!” Griffin shouted, leaning toward the window dramatically. “She’s just being a little shit on purpose!” Stiles could see her laughing through the windshield. She was still smiling when they both climbed in the car.

“You’re grounded for cussing at me,” she told Griffin when he got his seatbelt on.

“Oh no,” Griffin joked as he backed out of the driveway. “Since I’m grounded, I guess I can’t drive you to the grocery store anymore.”

“Just kidding,” she recanted. “Now hurry up. There might still be some fresh mangoes left. Put this beast to work!” They drove to Winston Grocery on the outskirts of town. It was Stiles’ favorite store to go to because it had the largest selection of organic foods in the area. He also liked it because a few years ago when he was running for sheriff, his Dad had saved the lives of the owner’s wife and his daughter, Aniyah. She was just about Stiles’ age and she worked the register now. Whenever Stiles or the Sheriff went there, the Winstons gave them a huge discount. If Aniyah wrung them up specifically, she usually let the sheriff add a little junk food or red meat for free. But then she would also cheat when she weighed the vegetables to keep Stiles from complaining about the food too much.

Much to her protest, Griffin helped his Aunt out of the car. He reminded her of when he’d first come to town and she swung the door open so wide it smacked into a pole. Aunt Dee told Stiles it was his fault for parking his monster that close to a pole in the first place. “It’s not a monster, Aunt Dee,” Griffin told her. “It’s a Durango.”

“It’s a beast,” she corrected him while pulling her collapsible white cane from her oversized purse. She swung it out wide to get the pieces to snap into place before using it to get onto the sidewalk and right up to Stiles. “Did I hit the behemoth?” She faux whispered to him, grabbing his arm again. He told her no and she shook her head disappointedly. “Too bad. Maybe next time.” They continued into the store, Stiles laughing as Aunt Dee kept teasing Griffin. It was all in good fun, though. Apparently she had decided that she liked Stiles, and if that meant he got to be the butt of their jokes, he would take it. It was very important to him that she like Stiles.

Griffin fetched a cart and they began gathering the food according to a checklist in Aunt Dee’s head. Shopping with her was actually an enjoyable experience. They went along laughing and joking. She was whip smart, almost as sarcastic as Stiles was, and totally hilarious. Stiles was starting to get what Griffin had meant when he said that she was pretty awesome. That Michael guy must have been a real asshole to not get along with her. Stiles felt himself a little glad that she’d fired him.

After they’d been in the store for what felt like forever but simultaneously not nearly long enough, it was finally time to ring their things up. Just as they began approaching the lines, a girl with platinum blonde hair cut in a short cropped bob walked behind them. As soon as she did, Aunt Dee span Stiles around to face her. Stiles recognized her as Aniyah, although it was the two red clips keeping her hair back that gave it away. The last time he’d seen her, her hair was long enough to sit on. She kept it swooped over her forehead with a side part, but she always had two clips in her hair on the one side to keep it out of her face. It was the same now, only much shorter and curling around her ears. Stiles called out to her and she turned to see who it was, frowning. Someone else called her from another direction and she whipped her head fast to look at him. Stiles recognized it as her dad, the owner of the store. He urged her to smile and twisted his hand by his cheek to emulate turning a smile on for example. She did the same gesture and he gave her a thumbs up before turning around and heading to the produce section. Aniyah turned back to Stiles and Aunt Dee’s direction, her smile deflating into an annoyed grimace once she was out of her Dad’s line of sight.

When she spotted Stiles, a friendly smile perked back up naturally and she waved him over. “Hi Stiles,” she asked sweetly. “Oh, who’s this?”

“You can call me Aunt Dee. My you’re a sparky little thing aren’t you?” Aniyah brought her eyebrows down just a fraction, not quite sure how to respond to that.

“Uh… sure,” she answered cheerfully.

“I’m Griffin’s Aunt,” Aunt Dee supplied, staring at Aniyah’s face with a pensive smile.

“Oh, who’s Griffin?”

“My boyfriend,” Stiles explained.

“Oh. Ohhhh. Your boyfriend.” Stiles could see the disappointment in her face and the sudden slouch of her shoulders. “Well, where is he? This Griffin of yours. He must be a handsome guy." At that moment, Griffin approached them with the cart, giving Aniyah a dazzling smile and looking her right in the eye.

"I like to think so," he intoned in that deep voice of his. Aniyah looked up at him and her mouth dropped open, her face turning splotchy red. She immediately turned away from him, suddenly paying a lot of attention to the floor tile by Stiles’ shoe.

“Oh… Um… Yes. Well…” she stammered nervously. “A-a-a-are you guys ready to ch-check out?” Stiles nodded and she led them to an empty checkout lane. She logged herself in to the register and began scanning their items. She stopped to look at Stiles pensively for a moment. He smiled back at her kindly and she shook her head as if to clear a thought from it before typing in a code to give them the same discount she gave the sheriff. The entire time, Aunt Dee was switching her head back and forth between Stiles and Aniyah, smiling somewhat smugly at the both of them. Stiles and Griffin bagged up the groceries quickly and Aunt Dee was very surprised to hear the total.

When they were all set to go, Aunt Dee sighed a little sadly, as if someone had shown her their winning lottery ticket and all she got to do was look at it. “Bye Aniyah,” she called over her shoulder. Aniyah waved, unaware the woman was blind and couldn’t see it. She told Stiles to send his Dad her regards and Stiles promised he would. Just as Aniyah was turning back to the register, she caught Griffin’s eye for a brief moment. He winked a big green eye at her and she suddenly lost the ability to walk, tripping over her own legs and stumbling into the register with a loud ka-ching.

Stiles, Griffin, and Aunt Dee all piled into the Durango, but not without Aunt Dee joking about the monster eating up all her food first. They rode home in the same companionable atmosphere as the ride there, although Aunt Dee somehow seemed much happier than before. When they got back to the house, Stiles and Griffin unloaded the Durango (“I told you, it’s a beast monster!”) and Griffin lingered around, asking if Aunt Dee needed anything. She told him she didn’t but if he left, she would be by herself again and he didn’t really want that. After about 10 minutes of lingering she rolled her eyes and told him, “Griffy, I mean this in the nicest way possible. But if you don’t get out of here I’m going to have to reconsider my decision not to slash the behemoth’s tires. Now take your boyfriend and don’t tell me what you’re doing. Just go. Away.” She flapped her hands at the both of them in a distinctive shoo motion and they both got back into the car laughing.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19

Stiles texts Scott to see what is going on while Griffin drives them to their original destination. Scott tells him that they hit a minor delay with Parrish, but they’re handling it. Stiles asks if they need his help, but Scott doesn’t think so. He can continue with his date. He asks Stiles where he was anyways and Stiles looks up to discover that Griffin has taken him to the school. He texts Scott as much, then asks Griffin what they’re doing there. Griffin tells him he has a surprise for him.

They sneak into the school, which is completely deserted and Griffin leads him into the theater room. He’s completely astounded when he sees what Griffin had done to the room. He’d taken a bunch of sheets and curtains and had draped them from the lighting fixtures to create a perfect secluded little area, strongly resembling a giant blanket fort. Overhead there were twinkly lights sparkling down and the floor was lined with electric candles. Against one side was a mattress from the props department covered in satiny sheets and at least fifteen pillows. It was like something straight out of a rom com.

Griffin looked at Stiles with a hopeful smile, wondering if he liked it. Stiles crossed his arms and worried at his bottom lip to keep from smiling too hard. “This is like…” he scrunched up his nose as he started to laugh, “really cheesy.” It wasn’t a malicious laugh at all, he just found the whole thing a bit too cute. “Like nachos bell grande, extra queso.” Griffin drooped his head in mock shame, stifling his own laughter. Stiles cooed at him and went over to clasp Griffins cheeks in his hands and pull him down for a kiss. “No, but I like it,” he said against his mouth. Griffin reached up to undo his hoodie that was still zipped up all the way to his chin, and immediately went for his neck. The long stripe Griffin had left before was mostly faded but still slightly visible. He planted a gentle kiss right in the middle before tipping Stiles’ head back so he could lightly brush his lips on the mole just beneath his jawline.

“Just you wait,” he whispered against Stiles’ skin in a low sultry voice that sent vibrations rocketing through his body. Griffin could feel the tiniest of trembles pulsing beneath his skin and smiled evilly before backing away. Stiles whined and reached for him, making grabby hands, but he kept backing away. He pulled his phone from his pocket and he waved it teasingly before reaching behind one of the curtains to put it on an iHome dock. “Mood music,” he explained. When the song started up, Stiles doubled over laughing.

“Are you serious?” he wheezed out, between convulsions. “Really? Ill Niño? This is mood music?” Griffin smirked back at him, very pleased with Stiles’ reaction.

“Of course it is.”

“Oh yes, because nothing gets me going quite like heavy metal… in Spanish.”

“Hey, this whole playlist is golden. It only gets more romantic from here, I think there might even be a little Hannah Montana on there.”

“Oh my god!” Stiles was in stitches again. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Absolutely not! I told you, it’s golden!” Griffin thought he’d been successful in creating the most unromantic playlist in existence, and was rather proud of himself.

“Yeah, I don’t know if I can do this,” Stiles gestured to the entire room around them. “With Hannah Montana playing in the background.”

“Why not? It’s the best of both worlds.”

Stiles put his face into his hands, chuckling again. “I can’t with you,” he muttered against them. Still beaming with pride, Griffin came up and pulled his hands down. He looked Stiles directly in the eye then took a more serious tone.

“You can do this, though? This is alright with you?” He knew it would be Stiles’ first time and he just didn’t want him to feel pressured into it or anything. Unlike last time, this was something that was intentionally set up as opposed to just happening organically. The last thing Griffin wanted was for Stiles to feel like he had to just because Griffin had gone through all the trouble. Stiles looked up at him pensively, contemplating the thought.

Without any warning, he pushed both his arms out, shoving Griffin onto the little bed. “Duh!” he called out to him as he landed with a bounce. He kicked off his shoes and tossed his hoodie to the side before flopping onto the bed beside him. Griffin barely had a chance to laugh at his neon green socks that were practically glowing in the dim light before Stiles was tugging on his shirt, trying to wrench it over his head. When Griffin shed his shirt, he helped Stiles do the same, then pulled him into a kiss. Remembering something, he pulled back and took Stiles’ phone from his pant pocket. He’d put his own on airplane mode when he turned on the music. He unlocked Stiles’ and put it on silent, sliding it onto the floor. No interruptions. Not this time.

Griffin pulled him into another kiss. This time it was slow and painfully soft, each motion of his tongue sending torturous jolts of electricity through Stiles' body. He took his time with Stiles, reveling in every moment. Griffin's hands were exploring the rest of Stiles, stroking across his shoulders and down his back, dipping under his jeans and into his boxer shorts. Griffin's mouth was keeping Stiles so far on the edge that every touch felt like fire seeping into his skin. Griffin laid back against the bed, pulling Stiles with him so their mouths didn't have to disconnect. Their bodies were flush against each other, Stiles straddling his hips and Griffin could feel his growing erection pressing against his belly button through the denim of his jeans.

Griffin wrapped his hands around his hips, pressing Stiles downward as he pushed up and rolled his hips. The friction made Stiles moan low and just a tiny bit shaky into his mouth, so he did it again. He was driving Stiles crazy and his pants were becoming uncomfortable so he was extremely grateful when Griffin's fingers made their way to his jeans, undoing them and dipping his fingers in. He barely reached in far enough to graze the base of Stiles' dick before he pulled them back teasingly. Stiles worried at his bottom lip with a frustrated whine, before rolling completely off of Griffin and just shucking his pants and boxers impatiently. Griffin sat up to smile at his eagerness and Stiles mumbled something about too many clothes by way of explanation before reaching to untie Griffin's boots. While Stiles worked on his feet, he started on his pants and by the time he had both boots off, his pants slid off right behind them, leaving both boys naked.

Stiles had seen other boys naked before. It was kind of inevitable that you would catch a glimpse you weren't exactly looking for when you spent as much time in the locker room as he did. In none of those instances did he feel the need to take a second look or admire the other boy's bodies. He just turned his head politely as per locker room etiquette and went about his own business without giving it a second thought. But now, all he could do was stare at the boy in front of him, his eyes taking in every inch of him and committing the sight to memory. Griffin was beautiful. No really. That boy was fucking gorgeous. He was absolutely mouthwatering and Stiles just wanted to devour him, piece by piece.

Stiles reached for him and brushed a chaste kiss on his lips before moving downward to lay a kiss on his collarbone. "You're so beautiful," he mumbled against it then moved lower to place another in the center of his chest. "So fucking gorgeous." He left another on his abs. "You're so good," he reached a hand up to palm at Griffin's dick, pressing another kiss against his belly button. "I just want to eat you up." The words had spilled out of his mouth before he had even realized that was exactly what he wanted. He wanted to lick and to taste him, see how much of him he could fit into his mouth. He wrapped his hand around Griffin's dick, testing the weight of it in his hands for a moment before pumping it slowly, pulling his foreskin over the tip and letting it back down slowly. Stiles leaned forward to take it in his mouth but hesitated when he heard Griffin's breath hitch in anticipation. He blinked up at him a little nervously. "I've never done this before," he warned.

"It's okay," Griffin breathed, voice low and husky. "Just do what feels natural. Just don't bite me."

Stiles coughed out a laugh before turning back to the situation at hand. In hand. He leaned down and kissed the head of his dick lightly before licking a stripe up the bottom, tasting him from the base to the tip. He could feel Griffin shudder beneath him, and thought he must be off to a good start. Enthused by the reaction, he gripped the cock by the base and pressed the head between his lips. He sucked it briefly before letting it go to fit more of him in his mouth. He couldn't fit all of him in, Griffin was pretty big. As to be expected considering his height. Stiles was a little disappointed, but judging by the sound Griffin made, he wasn't and that was what mattered. Stiles figured he had plenty of time to practice and get to the fancy stuff later anyways.

Stiles sucked him down hard, bobbing his head up and down while pumping the base with his hand. He had his other hand braced on Griffin's thigh and he could feel the muscles underneath clenching and releasing as he flexed his toes. Stiles must have been doing a good job. The proof was in the pudding when he peeked up at him through his lashes and Griffin had his head tipped back, eyes wired shut, moaning in pleasure. He dipped his head forward, muttering, "That's so good Stiles. So good." He released his dick with a dirty little pop so he could catch his breath and traced a circle on his lips with the head while he panted for more air. He'd seen a girl do that in a porno once, and the guy sure seemed to like it, so he hoped Griffin did. He glanced back up to gage his reaction and saw that Griffin had his eyes open this time. He was looking down at Stiles with his green eyes, too intense even in the low light. Stiles had looked up just in time to see his eyes dilate from tiny little pinpoints to nearly blacking out his whole iris. Watching it sent chills up Stiles spine and he had to reach a hand down to his own leaking cock, dripping precome and thirsting for attention.

Before Stiles had the chance to take him back into his mouth, Griffin reached down and pulled him back onto the mattress, crashing their lips together. Griffin immediately took in Stiles' bottom lip and began nibbling on it. He tugged it gently with his teeth and let it go whispering, "fucking mouth," before kissing him again. He pulled Stiles into his lap and circled his hips, grinding their cocks together. Stiles choked out a strangled moan and Griffin hummed against his neck soothingly. It made him gasp, sending volts of electricity pulsing under his skin.

Griffin reached under the pillows behind him and produced a bottle of lube and a condom. "Top our bottom?" he asked against Stiles' skin.

"Uh," Stiles panted, eyelids fluttering as he tried but failed to think straight. "Top. No, bottom. I mean top. No." He shook his head. "Bottom. Yeah. Bottom."

"You sure?" He sounded indecisive and Griffin didn't want him to make the wrong decision.

"Yeah," he nodded. "I'm sure."

"It's gonna hurt," Griffin warned. Stiles seemed to think about it for a moment, but he put a hand in Griffin's hair and dipped his head to look him straight in the eyes.

"I trust you," he breathed, and there wasn't an ounce of uncertainty in his voice. Griffin nodded and pressed him flat into the mattress, kissing him the whole way down. He leaned back palming at Stiles' dick and stroking it a little before moving downward and grazing a finger over his entrance. It caught Stiles by surprise and sent shivers rippling through his whole body. Griffin placed a kiss on his inner thigh to settle him a bit before reaching for the lube, coating a few of his fingers in it. He asked Stiles if he was ready and received a nervous but enthusiastic nod. Then he smeared a little lube around his hole and slowly pressed a finger in. Stiles sucked a breath in through his teeth at the new sensation. It felt a little uncomfortable, but it didn't quite hurt. Griffin gave him a chance to get used to it before he began twisting and flexing his finger inside of him, stretching him. He waited until his breath was even again before inserting another finger. Okay. That was definitely a little stinging around the edges. He gave him a minute to adjust again then began scissoring him and pumping the fingers inside of him. He could feel Stiles writhing beneath him and the moan he let out sounded a little pained. Griffin reached his free hand up and started stroking Stiles' cock to get him to relax and distract him from the pain while his body adjusted to the new intrusions. He added one last finger and that one actually hurt. It left Stiles whimpering and he clenched against the fingers.

Griffin shushed him and leaned down to soothe him with a kiss on the neck. "Shhh, it's okay Stiles," he whispered against his skin breathily. "I need you to relax. Can you do that for me?" Stiles exhaled shakily, grasping at the mattress as he released the tension. "That's it, baby," Griffin encouraged him. Once his breathing returned to normal again, he spread his fingers and continued stretching him good and wide, pulling his fingers in and out. This time he had Stiles panting and moaning in pleasure. This felt good, and he was reveling in it. But it wasn't enough. Stiles wanted more. He wanted Griffin. Him, not his fingers.

Stiles buried his hands in Griffin's soft black hair and stuttered out his name. Griffin knew what he wanted and withdrew his fingers. Stiles gasped at the sudden emptiness, wanting nothing more than to be full again. Griffin pulled away to grab the condom and put it on, coating it with lube before lining it up with his entrance. Stiles was almost shivering with anticipation and stroking his own dick lazily when Griffin pushed himself in. Stiles cried out as he pressed in slowly, clutching at Griffin's shoulders with enough force that it should have left bruises. When he was fully sheathed in Stiles, he kept still, giving him a chance to adjust again. There was a big difference between 3 fingers and a full sized cock, and it had Stiles whimpering again and taking in shaky breaths as he got accustomed to it.

Finally, Griffin rolled his hips a little, making Stiles squirm and whine. "Is that alright?" He asked him quietly. Stiles nodded almost frantically. It was SO good. It still hurt a bit, but mostly it felt good and the sensations intertwined were working perfectly for him. With the green light, Griffin pulled out all the way to the tip then snapped back in, making Stiles shout. He did it again and kept going, slowly at first but progressively getting faster. It felt good. Really good. He had Stiles whimpering and arching his back, crying out and tugging at his hair and shoulders. Griffin had his face buried into Stiles' neck kissing sucking it lightly between gasps and moans of his own. He had a hand reached down between them, jerking Stiles to the same rhythm as his thrusts.

Griffin could feel a bit of warmth just starting to pool at the bottom of his stomach as he felt his climax coming nearer. He reached down to lift Stiles' hips off the mattress, making it so that he had to thrust slightly downward. He adjusted his angle a few times and after the third time he made Stiles scream out as he saw stars. "Do that again!" He commanded. It took a couple more tries to get the angle just right, but he found it again, crashing into Stiles' prostate. He screamed again, and as Griffin kept pounding right into it, over and over, he opened his mouth and words just came tumbling out. They were mostly cuss words, occasionally punctuated by Griffin's name, with a few "oh my God"s sprinkled throughout.

Griffin's thrusts became erratic as he came close to his climax. He abandoned Stiles' cock in exchange for a near bone crushing grip on his hips. That would definitely bruise. He came hard, stuttering Stiles' name and thrusting through his orgasm, milking himself dry. With all the attention focused directly on his prostate, Stiles was right behind him, coming harder than he had in his entire life. His vision whited out and his whole body tensed up, quivering with the strength of it. It sucked the breath right out of him and he collapsed against the bed, struggling for air. His body was trembling with the aftershocks of it and he couldn't feel his toes. Griffin had collapsed right on top of him, but he was riding his climax high so hard he didn't even register it for a few minutes.

When Stiles came back down to the world of the living, Griffin had already pulled out, cleaned the both of them up, and climbed back into the bed. Once he had mostly recovered, he opened his mouth and the words just started flowing again. "Oh my god. That was incredible. Was it good for you? Cause it was great for me." Griffin barely had a chance to nod before Stiles was off rambling some more. "I like sex. Sex is good. I'm never gonna be a virgin again. Sex is just much too wonderful. I don't know how I did without it for 16 years. We should do this again. We're doing this again. We should do it every day, like five times a day. Oh my god, if we did it five times a day I would be so relaxed I wouldn't need to take my Adderall anymore. Jesus Christ, I'd probably never talk again-" Griffin silenced him with his mouth. He pulled Stiles into a kiss, smiling into it. He laughed a little when he pulled away.

"I don't think anything could make you never talk again," Griffin teased with a fond expression on his face. He wrapped his arms around Stiles and pulled him flush against his body. He was still trembling a little so he kissed his forehead and buried his nose into his hair as they cuddled against each other in the near silence.

“I swear to God! Is that the Spiderman theme song?”

Chapter Text

Chapter 20

Parrish is a good kid. He’s a brilliant officer, and he’s got the best of intentions. He’s just genuinely a good guy. However, tonight he is getting on the Sheriff’s nerves. Under ordinary circumstances, he would appreciate the kid’s effort. He reminds John a lot of Stiles. Or perhaps Stiles if he wasn’t a devious little brat that ran around at night with the supernatural underworld. He’s trying to be helpful in his own little way. But the Sheriff has a plan, and things just aren’t quite working out as prescribed thanks to Parrish’s…helpfulness. Interfering.

As if John wasn’t nervous enough as it is just because of what he’s supposed to be doing, Parrish keeps trying to remind him that he’s off duty and not even supposed to be here. Yes Parrish, he knows he should get some rest. He knows you guys can hold down the fort for the night. He’s certain you could. Just as certain as he is that he should go hang out with his son or go catch some Z’s. Yes. Yes. He knows. Just be quiet Parrish. There are things to be done. Isn’t there some paperwork for him to be doing somewhere? John didn’t exactly want any crimes to happen, but a botched robbery attempt, or a minor break in would be nice right about now. Anything to get the ever helpful new deputy to skedaddle out of the station and give the Sheriff a little peace of mind.

To make matters worse, when Isaac gets dragged in as per the plan, Deputy Parrish insists he be the one to talk to him. John of course disagrees, but the kid is insistent and if he puts up too much of a fight it might look suspicious. Isaac throws the Sheriff a worried look as Parrish drags him away and John mutters under his breath to say something to make Parrish bring the Sheriff over. Apparently Isaac hadn’t gotten the point because whatever he said had pissed Parrish off so much that he threw him in an empty cell and came back grumbling about how Isaac could be such an asshole. Fucking great. Now what the hell was he supposed to do?

He tried calling Stiles. Everyone at the station knew Stiles. They would let him in, no problem and he wouldn’t need any real excuse. He would just be coming for his dear old Dad. Stiles didn’t pick up and John could feel the necklace burning a hole in his pocket. Fucking great. The only thing going right about this little operation of theirs was getting the necklace out of the evidence lockup. The paperwork switch went off without a hitch, and there wasn’t even anyone around to ask about him looking at evidence when he was in his plain clothes and obviously off duty. Ugh. He tried calling Scott and explaining what was going on. That sent Scott into a bit of a panic as well. He didn’t know what to do either. He was never the mastermind of his and Stiles’ ridiculous schemes. It was always evil genius Stiles who came up with plans and contingency plans. Scott was just along for the ride.

This is what he gets for letting a bunch of mythical teenagers convince him to help break the law. John sighed to himself, thinking critically. He was the Sheriff for Pete’s sake. He could figure this out. Usually he’s on the other side of all this, but he can do it. He just needed to think. He also needed to figure out how to get Isaac out of the lock up. He hadn’t been arrested or anything. He was just being held in there until a parent or guardian came to get him. Parrish was probably on the phone with Melissa right now. Melissa! Yes! Perfect! He peeked out of his office window to see if Parrish was still on the phone. He was just hanging it up, so John whipped his phone back out and called Melissa himself. She answered immediately and cut through the helloes to say she was about to be on her way to get Isaac right now. She just need to put her shoes on. Don’t rush her. “About that,” John muttered into the receiver. “How would you feel about helping me commit a crime?”

Less than 20 minutes later, Melissa was smuggling the necklace out of the station in her purse, a cowed looking Isaac trailing behind her. The mission was a success. Not much longer after she left, Parrish insisted the Sheriff go home again. John forced a sigh and pretended to reluctantly agree with him. He certainly did look like he needed a nap anyways. So he left as well and followed Melissa to the vet clinic.

Scott, Kira, Derek, and Deaton were waiting patiently inside. They were all circled around the examination table, tension coiled up inside them like springs about ready to pop. Well, except for Deaton. He was as calm and level headed as ever about the whole thing. Scott was surprised to see his mom come in, but they quickly explained how the Sheriff improvised. Melissa wanted to stay, she was very excited to see some magic. Isaac had filled her in on the witch situation on the ride over. She was worried about the witches, but was proud of everyone for stepping up to solve the problem. She just wanted them all to be careful. She didn’t want any more phone calls in the middle of the night. She glowered at the lot of them, insisting that this be the very last one. Derek asked where Stiles was and Scott told him they said he could have the night off. They hadn’t planned on fighting the witches that night or anything anyways. They just wanted to know where they were. He wouldn’t be missed. Derek raised his eyebrows at that then commanded Deaton to start.

Deaton threw him a dirty look for being so rude about it, but sighed and began anyways. On the exam table was a map of Beacon Hills and the surrounding areas. Two of the corners held a candle each. Beside the map was a paper and a pen. Deaton extended a hand to Melissa and she handed him the necklace. He placed it in the middle of the map and directed everyone to hold hands. There was so many people around him, he wanted to charge the necklace with energy directed at the witch to keep from confusing the spell with too many thoughts flying around. He had Kira and the Sheriff each put a hand on his shoulder because they were standing on either of his sides. They would transfer everyone’s concentrated energies to him, and he would transfer it to the necklace. Kira took Scott’s hand, and John took Melissa’s. She took Isaac’s hand and he reached for Derek. Derek scowled at him and turned to Scott on his other side who was making grabby hands and waggling his eyebrows at him. He rolled his eyes and backed away to the corner of the room. Isaac frowned at him, slightly offended, but Scott reached over and took his hand so it hardly mattered anymore. He stared down at Scott’s hand clasping his in a strong warm grip. Scott never did anything by halves. He would never let a little hand holding scare him away. Scott noticed Isaac looking, and thinking he was uncomfortable about it, Scott smiled at him encouragingly. It’s no big deal. Isaac blinked at him, then turned his head toward Deaton focusing really hard on what he said next.

He explained how they were going to channel the energy. All at once, he wanted them to focus their entire minds upon the necklace, thinking only of it and of the witch who owned it. If they all focused their energies, he would do the rest. He’d draw it out of them and direct it to where it needed to be. But they couldn’t let their minds drift to anything else, otherwise they might compromise the spell. It was very delicate because they didn’t know who the witch that owned the necklace was. So he needed absolute focus from everyone. No matter what else happened, they needed to maintain focus. He counted to three and everyone closed their eyes and began.

Deaton took a couple of deep breaths, placing his hands on the table to form a perfect triangle around the coiled necklace. He could feel their energies and he began drawing them into himself. First Kira, then the Sheriff gasped quietly and threw their eyes open. They could feel Deaton drawing the power out of them. It was like nothing they’d ever felt before, but they were good at keeping their focus and neither of them let their minds wander. One by one, everyone in their little circle could feel their energy being pulled from them.

As it traveled from the others and through them, Kira and John could feel themselves growing lightheaded. The rapid exchange of energy was beginning to overwhelm them and their vision started to turn white and they felt like they were floating. John, ever the professional was keeping his focus with concise precision. Everything else was just background noise like when facing down a criminal in a hostile situation. Nothing else mattered but the perp and the words being exchanged. Nothing else mattered but the necklace and the witch. Kira on the other hand wasn’t so practiced in that area. She could feel her focus slipping, but she didn’t dare let her mind drift anywhere else. Even as she felt the room spinning around her, she thought of nothing but the necklace and the witch with a frantic, almost panicked sense of purpose. Just as she was getting to a point where she could almost feel herself slipping, everything stopped. All the feeling stopped and the sensation of floating away ended like her feet smacking firmly on the ground.

Deaton exhaled heavily through his nose and informed everyone that they were finished. He thought they’d all done a great job and they unlinked hands. Everyone except Kira and Scott. Scott gripped Kira’s hand tighter, sensing her distress lingering in the air once he allowed it his attention. There were a few nervous giggles and oohs and ahs around the room as the intensity of the moment sunk in with everyone. The Sheriff in particular was quite astonished by it all. He liked to call himself reasonably doubtful about all of the supernatural business. He’s more of a see it to believe it kind of person. He didn’t see that, but he felt it, and in many ways that was more groundbreaking. Deaton looked around at the werewolves, humans, and the kitsune. Their amazement was rather precious. He warned them that he hadn’t even gotten to the magic part yet. Melissa looked a bit frightened at that. She couldn’t believe it got more intense than what she’d felt, entirely unaware that she hadn’t even gotten the brunt of it. The vet just chuckled at her, promising that the rest would be easy for them. He would do all the work, they just had to watch.

Derek came back from the spot in the corner he’d made for himself and approached the table. “Alright,” Deaton asked them. “You guys ready for this.” The general consensus was yes so he picked up the necklace and instructed Scott to grab the paper and pen. Deaton held it by the chain with the pendulum swinging above the map, grazing against it gently. He closed his eyes to focus his magic and three things happened at once that left everyone gasping, even the ever stoic and aloof Derek. The lights cut out. The two candles on the corners of the map ignited themselves to light up the sudden darkness. The necklace stopped swinging and hung completely still, chain pulled taut.

Deaton began chanting a spell in Latin “Corpus Saga, ignis et lucis. Ego vestra. Pendulum adductius. Ut inveniam te.” As he said it, the sound of the electricity surging could be heard around the room, despite the lights having already been off. Deaton repeated the last part of the spell over and over. “Pendulum adductius. Ut inveniam te. Pendulum adductius. Ut inveniam te.” As he repeated it, the sound of the magic crackled loudly, startling his audience. Melissa jumped so hard, she found herself clutching at the Sheriff. He wrapped his arm around her instinctively. The thought never even formulated in his head, but he pulled her into his protective hold.

The crackling stopped and the surging of power stopped, flicking the lights back on. Derek looked at the map curiously, waiting for the hint to appear. Scott glared down at it with him, but saw nothing. Just as Isaac was going to suggest that maybe it didn’t work, the pendulum swung outward and began spinning around the map in a circle, the chain still stiff with tension. Deaton’s hand held the end of the chain completely still, tethering it to one spot while the pendulum swung around the map wildly. It drug around the map making it’s circle three times before stopping and doing it again going the other direction and repeating. Once it finished its 13th revolution, it stopped back in the middle for a moment, then shot out to a seemingly random spot.

Deaton ordered Scott to take down the location the necklace indicated. Scott obeyed and Deaton prepared to end the magic, but the necklace moved again. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Deaton looked on a little shocked, and told Scott to record the new location as well. Kira could see by the look on Deaton’s face, that something was wrong. She asked him what was happening, but before he could answer the necklace moved again. Scott recorded the next spot. “This isn’t right,” Deaton warned. The necklace moved 2 more times before returning to the first location. Then the chain went slack and the pendulum swung a more natural small circle. Deaton told Scott he didn’t need to bother with that one because it was gravity pulling the pendulum, not magic that time.

Deaton looked very frustrated. The spell didn’t work. It was only supposed to give them one location. Witches could be powerful, but they couldn’t be in 5 locations at once. Kira suggested maybe the necklace didn’t belong to any one person, but actually belonged to the coven as a whole and it pointed at the 5 different locations they were in. It seemed like a logical explanation, but Deaton shook his head. He had picked that spell specifically because it was designed to find a singular anonymous energy. If that had been the circumstances, it just wouldn’t have stopped spinning. Isaac suggested they try it again. Deaton said they could, but most likely that reaction meant the witches had put a protection spell on themselves to keep anyone from finding them. Derek suggested that if that was the case, wasn’t it possible that they were at one of the locations and the spell was just projecting it to the other 4 to throw them off? It was certainly a possibility.

The Sheriff took the paper from Scott and took a look at the locations written on them. They were written in latitude and longitude. John looked at the map and found the first place on the list. He was shocked to discover he knew exactly where that was. It was the empty slaughterhouse where the first and last break-ins had occurred. He looked at the next location and saw that it was a retirement home. The second location of the break-ins. The Sheriff didn’t need to check to know that the next 3 places would be a mom and pop diner in town, an abandoned warehouse, and a local bank. He did anyways, and was a little disappointed to be right. He knew for a fact that the bank, retirement home, and restaurant were empty, the police had constant surveillance on them ever since the second break in at the slaughterhouse. The witches likely weren’t in either of the abandoned buildings in the woods either. They weren’t under constant surveillance, but they were being regularly checked up on multiple times a day and no one had reported anything suspicious. It was always possible that the witches were working around the police to keep themselves hidden, but there are so many other places they could hide in town and around the woods that the police aren’t looking after that it would just seem stupid to stay in one of those buildings.

It appeared that the spell simply hadn’t worked. The witches were just too many steps ahead of them. Scott apologized to the Sheriff for making him risk his job for a dead end. The Sheriff accepted his apology, but told him he’d do anything to keep the town safe. That was his job, and he’d gotten it for a reason. The Sheriff noticed Scott and Isaac were smirking at him a little suspiciously. He couldn’t figure out why until he looked down and noticed he was still clutching Melissa against his side. They both seemed to notice at the same time and pulled apart a little awkwardly, the Sheriff forcing a cough, and Melissa smoothing out her scrubs. Melissa informed everyone she was late for work and had to leave, but she threatened her boys not to stay up too late. Witches or not, they still had school tomorrow. And work, as she included the Sheriff. With that, everyone filed out, deflated and now at a loss as to what to do.

Chapter Text

Chapter 21

Lydia smacked Danny’s hand away from the radio controls. She was listening to Icona Pop for the third time since they started hanging out together and Danny was losing his mind. “Seriously! If I hear this song one more time I’m gonna crash your car into a bridge!” Danny complained.

“Oh hush,” Lydia flipped her hair over her shoulder playfully. “It’s not my fault it keeps playing on the radio. Besides, this is my favorite song. You’re not going to deny a girl her favorite song when she’s just come out of the hospital are you?”

“You’re gonna guilt trip me the rest of the night, aren’t you?”

Lydia scrunched up her face thoughtfully before flashing a grin at Danny. “Yeah, probably.” Danny sighed and she laughed at him. “Well hey, at least you got a free meal and a shopping trip out of it.”

“Yeah, no complaints there.” Danny reached and turned the volume down. Lydia threw him a glare as she pulled up to a red light and he looked back at her innocently. What? He didn’t change the song. “I am glad we got to hang out though,” he deflected. “It’s been a pretty long time since we’ve spent any real time together.” He didn’t mean for it to, but that had Lydia feeling a little pang of guilt. If she was honest, she had been casting Danny a bit to the side ever since Allison came. Once she’d died, the two of them had grown even more distant as they mourned her loss in their own ways. Lydia was starting to heal, she could tell by the fact that she didn’t feel the crushing feeling of being left adrift and completely alone anymore. She needed to extend a hand out and be a better friend to the others, Danny included.

“Well,” she smiled at him. “We’ve got to do something about that. Tonight shall only be the first of many.” Danny liked that idea. It had always been him, Jackson, and Lydia. So when Jackson left and with Lydia wrapped up in the supernatural, he found himself feeling like he had no place to belong. He was a friendly guy and had lots of friends, but those were his other 2 amigos and he was feeling pretty lonely without them. Thinking that he could at least have Lydia back on some level was comforting. He was a little wary of getting too close with all the werewolf nonsense, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

“I sure hope so. Things have been so weird lately. I’d love for everything to settle down and get back to normal.” He thought of Allison. “Or at least as close to normal as possible.”

“Well, there’s only a couple of days left of school, then we’re on winter break.” Lydia reminded him. “We’ll have plenty of time to hang out then.”

“Ugh, speaking of school…” Danny glanced at the clock. It was just after midnight and he had another final to take tomorrow. Today. “You should probably drop me off at home. We’ve got that calc test tomorrow. Gotta get my beauty rest.” Lydia nodded at him, but called him a weenie under her breath. “Hey!” he laughed. “We can’t all be nocturnal like you and Stiles! Staying up all night watching tv on his laptop.” Danny chastised.

“It’s not my fault.” Lydia turned down a side street to head toward Danny’s house. “Some of us just don’t need beauty rest to stay beautiful.” She fluffed her hair regally and batted her eyelashes. Danny started talking to her, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. The radio had suddenly started ticking and she turned her attention to it, flipping through the stations trying to get it to stop. She kept hearing the clicking, every station that she went to so finally she just shut it off.

“Hey!” Danny called out. She focused back on the road and realized that she missed the turn to get onto his street. She apologized then went to make a u turn when the radio clicked itself back on and started the clicking again. She tried turning it off again, but it didn’t work. She even jerked around with the volume controls, but the clicking continued. Not paying attention, she missed Danny’s street again and started heading back the way they came. “Where the heck are you going?” he asked. She almost didn’t even hear the question.

“What the heck is that?” She asked, frustration thick in her voice.

“What are you talking about?” Danny asked, confused.

“That sound,” Lydia explained, “the clicking.”

“What clicking?”

“You don’t hear that?” Lydia rolled through a stop sign and Danny panicked when the car coming the other way had to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting them.

“Can you please not kill me before my final tomorrow?” Danny shouted. “I’ve got plans for my life!” Lydia had barely noticed it. The clicking was getting louder and she tried smacking the radio through the dashboard to make it stop, but nothing was working. “What are you doing?” Danny asked her. She could barely hear his voice over the noise.

“The clicking!” She shouted back. “I can’t make it stop.”

“Why are you beating the car?”

“It’s coming from the radio!” Lydia made the tires screech when she looked up and swerved around a corner, seeing that she was about to overtake the opposite curb.

“The radio isn’t even on! Be careful!”

“You don’t hear that? It’s so loud!”

“Lydia, I think you need to go back to hospital and get your head checked. There is no clicking sound.” She jerked the car back into the correct lane as she rolled through another stop sign. The sound was so loud now, she had to strain to keep from forcing her eyes shut against the sound. “Pull over Lydia!” Danny shouted. “You’re going to hit something!” Lydia found the nearest dip in the sidewalk, indicating a driveway and turned in a little too sharply, pulling into an empty parking lot. She drove straight through it, shaking her head until she came near the building, then slammed on her breaks, making Danny yell. “Lydia, you’re acting crazy right now!”

She threw the car into park and cut the engine, scrambling out to get away from the sound. Danny got out right behind her. The night outside the car was silent, and the cold air helped clear Lydia’s head and calm her nerves a bit. Danny walked up to her and snatched the keys out of her hands. “I’m driving!” he commanded. She nodded her head silently, confusion written all over her face, when she started hearing the clicking noise again. It was really quiet this time, coming from somewhere far behind her. She turned around slowly to see and realized that she was standing outside the school.

“Are you all right?” Danny asked her. She shook her head, slowly.

“The school?” she asked quietly.

Danny glanced at the building, then turned back to her. “Yeah, the school. Now come on. I gotta take you home. Or to the hospital or something.” She shook her head again.

“Why are we here?” She asked, terror lacing her voice.

“Because you drove us here. Come on, get back in the car.” Lydia shook her head again and started walking toward the door, following the sound. “Lydia, come back here.” Danny didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all. “Don’t go in there Lydia, let’s leave.” She just kept walking. “You know, the last few people to go in the school at night died!” he called after her. “I think we ought to wait until the sun comes up before we go in there.” That didn’t stop her, and he whimpered in frustration. “I’m not going in with you!” He threatened. She had reached the door already and was pulling it open.

“Then go home,” she told him, and followed the clicking inside. Danny waited for a minute, thinking he might just do as she said and leave.

“Ugh!” He rolled his eyes and huffed at her. He crossed his arms and tapped his elbow impatiently for a few seconds before finally giving up and chasing after her. “I swear to GOD if there are any werewolves in there…” he muttered under his breath.

Chapter Text

Chapter 22

Derek drove Kira, Isaac, and Scott back to the Stilinski house with the Sheriff. The five of them headed indoors to try and rethink what had happened tonight. Derek thought they might have still had a chance with his idea. He suggested they go check out the two abandoned buildings tomorrow and go back to take a look at the Nemeton. He didn’t like sitting around and doing nothing. They were fresh out of leads, but they had to do something. Maybe there would be some kind of evidence left behind that the police couldn’t find. A scent, a track they wouldn’t have seen. Something. Anything. Pretty soon bad things were going to start happening in Beacon Hills and they couldn’t just sit around. Scott figured it was worth a try, he felt the need to do something too.

Kira suggested they look at the evidence for the break-ins again. Maybe there was something there already. The Sheriff said Stiles had been combing through it since the night before. He had made copies of all the files and had them up in his room, although he thought the Sheriff didn’t know that. John told them to go ahead and look through it, just try not to mess anything up. He didn’t want Stiles complaining at him when he got back. They all headed up to his room to take a look. Everyone but John. He’d had enough of the supernatural for the night. He was going to bed.

They found the files easily enough, they were pretty much scattered around everywhere. Scott climbed onto the bed and made himself cozy while looking over the files spread out on it. Isaac collapsed to the floor unceremoniously and started looking at anything he hadn’t landed on. Kira poked Isaac until he rolled over and took some of the files he was crushing and sat by the window with them. Derek sat down in the desk chair, but didn’t make to grab any files. He seemed rather distracted by something else.

Kira’s eyes darted around the room and she couldn’t help but to chuckle a little. She said it was a good thing Stiles wasn’t a werewolf, otherwise he’d be pissed with them all crowding around his room, leaving his scent everywhere. Scott laughed and told her he’d probably be pissed anyways. Despite how messy he kept the thing, he hated when people tampered with his room. He called it controlled and categorized chaos. Derek asked where he was anyways and Isaac told him he was hanging out with his boyfriend. “That tall guy, George or whatever?” Derek asked. Kira corrected him, hiding a smirk, but he brushed it off. Isaac laughed, saying Stiles was obsessed with the kid. Probably about as much as he was obsessed with Lydia before. But he seemed a like a pretty good guy and he didn’t ignore him like Lydia did. Stiles hardly knew what to do with himself. Isaac kept going on and on about how much Stiles liked Griffin, and how Griffin was pretty cool. Derek should meet him sometimes. Blah blah blah. Derek wanted to throw a book at him, but he held back the urge.

Finally Derek just rolled his eyes so hard his whole head went with it and span around in the chair to busy himself with something on the desk. In the space where the laptop should have been was a folded paper with big red marks on it. He unfolded it and revealed that the marks were lines to a pentagram. The same symbol that had been carved extra-large into the Nemeton. Kira saw it and asked why the heck did Stiles make it so big? Derek didn’t know. He didn’t get how Stiles’ mind worked. Nobody did, and if Isaac said that Griffin did then Derek was going to pull his tongue out and wrap it around his head. Thankfully he didn’t and everyone was saved the trauma. Derek took a closer look at the paper and realized that it was actually a map of Beacon Hills.

Each point of the star was numbered 1 through 5, with the first one having a 6 next to it as well. Derek didn’t understand. Why would he put a giant pentagram on top of Beacon Hills? Isaac got up to look at the map as well. After looking at it for a bit, he pointed to the point labeled 3. He recognized that location as the restaurant where the third break in happened. He knew it off the top of his head because that used to be his favorite place to get a shake and fries as a kid. Occasionally he’d still go there and the waitress would give him a free shake. That made Scott come and look too. He recognized the point marked 1 and 6 was the first and last location of the break-ins. Kira approached the desk as well. She placed her finger on the one, then followed the path to the 2, sure enough it was the retirement home. She continued along, tracing the star and all the locations matched up in the same manner. That means earlier the locator spell had indicated the pentagram specifically as the witches location, not just the break-in points. If it was just the individual points, it wouldn’t have had to trace the star pattern in order, the circle itself would have been indicator enough because each point on the star touched the outer circle of the pentagram.

So they had a clue after all. The witches were somewhere within the pentagram. Isaac mentioned that still didn’t help much. The pentagram still overtook a huge area of the town. He pointed at where the Nemeton was, Scott’s house, and even the old Hale house. They were all within the circle of the pentagram. Stiles was a genius for figuring it out, but there had to be a way of narrowing it down more. Scott tried to call him again, but still got no answer. Derek thought back to the swinging necklace and the spell. Deaton said the spell was specifically designed to locate one person. A single point. What single point could the entire pentagram be indicating.

“Oh!” Kira almost shouted as she was hit with a sudden epiphany. “We’re looking at it all wrong,” she explained. “We’re focusing on the star, which has five points when we’re only looking for one. But look at the whole pentagram. It’s not just a star. The entirety of the star is within the circle. How many points does a circle have?”

“Only one,” Isaac muttered at the same time Scott told Kira she was a genius. Derek spotted the tiny hole in the center of the paper from where the compass poked through and pointed to it. It was just on the edge of the forest that led into the preserve. Scott recognized the location immediately and his blood ran ice cold.

“Guys,” he intoned in a flat voice. “We need to go now.”

“What are you talking about?” Kira asked. “Go where?”

“That’s the school,” Scott explained. Kira and Isaac glanced back at the map. Yeah, that sure was where the school was. “We need to hurry up!” Scott sprang into action, leading the way down the stairs and rushing outside at werewolf speed. Isaac and Kira were hot on his heels, but Derek was a little slower to react.

“I don’t understand,” he said, not bothering to shout because he knew they’d hear him all the way outside. “Why’s it so important that we get to the school right now?” If the kids had been going to the school this entire time and nothing was going on, obviously the witches weren’t going to try anything there during the day. They weren’t prepared to go after them now, they couldn’t just rush in without a plan of attack. The next words out of Scott’s mouth completely nullified all of Derek’s logic.

“Stiles is at the school!”

He didn’t bother taking the stairs. He leapt right out the window.

Chapter Text

Chapter 23

Stiles and Griffin were giggling and kissing as they cleaned up their little space in the drama department. Stiles had recommended they leave it there for the theater geeks to clean up tomorrow morning, but Griffin insisted. Once they’d finally had everything put away in its proper place, they wandered back down the dark hallways hand in hand. Griffin was smirking at Stiles a little proudly because of the way he was walking. He was a little sore. Okay maybe like a lot sore, and he was still suffering from a minor case of Bambi legs, so his gait might not have been as confident as usual. Griffin thought it was cute and he couldn’t help but press Stiles into a row of lockers and kissing him breathless.

Mid kiss, Griffin suddenly froze. Stiles pulled back to see what was wrong, but he was staring off into space with a serious expression on his face. He tilted his head slightly as if he was listening to something and he wanted to hear it better. Stiles was about to ask him what he heard, but before the words made it past his tongue he heard a loud crash coming from down the hall.

“What the hell was that?” Stiles asked. Griffin shook his head.

“Stiles, we need to go.”

“What? No. I need to find out what that sound is.” There was another loud crash and Stiles turned to follow it. He didn’t make it far before Griffin had his hand around his wrist in an impossibly tight death grip.

“Stiles. This is the part in the movie where we follow the scary sound and get murdered. We should just go.” Stiles just looked at him in shock and shook his head. He knew it probably wasn’t the best idea, but with all the witch business going on he couldn’t just leave it. He needed to see what that sound was. “I will drag you down this hall,” Griffin threatened when he didn’t budge, but Stiles knew better.

“No you won’t,” he told him flatly. He wouldn’t do that. Not if Stiles didn’t want him to. Griffin loosened his grip on his wrist and Stiles pulled his hand away. Of course he did.

“You can come with me or not, but I’m going to see.” Stiles turned around and trotted down the hall in the direction of the cafeteria. (He was still a little too sore for a full on run.) Griffin hesitated, flexing his fingers as he tried to decide what to do. Finally, he cursed under his breath and ran to catch up with him.

XxxxxxxxxX

“Lydia!” Danny chased her down the hall. “This is a really bad idea!”

“Be quiet!” Lydia hushed him with her hand. She couldn’t hear the clicking anymore, but she was definitely hearing the repeated banging. Judging by the look on Danny’s face he was hearing it too. She tried to convince him to leave her again, but he thought she was nuts. There was no way he was leaving her there alone.

“Seriously, if I die because of you, I’m gonna haunt you for the rest of your life!” He threatened in a rushed whisper.

“Do whatever you want, just don’t touch my shoes,” she whispered back unaffected as she tried to locate the source of the crashing. It sounded like it was coming from the cafeteria. She headed that way, Danny reluctantly on her heels.

“I will take one of every shoe you own until the day you die.” Lydia stopped and glared at him. That was horrifically mean. She opened her mouth to say as much but she froze when the clicking started up again. It was louder than ever and coming at a more rapid pace than earlier. She followed it more and it was definitely coming from the cafeteria. As she approached the door, it was so loud she could hear it echoing in her ears.

“You still don’t hear that?” she whispered to Danny, already knowing the answer. He told her no and she slowly reached for the handle with a sobered and slightly terrified look on her face. “Okay. Last chance to get out of here and forget all of this.” Danny told her no. They were in this together now, and he urged her to open the door.

XxxxxxxxxX

Derek pulled up to the school whip fast, making his brakes screech as he slammed it into park and hopped out of the car. The 3 teenagers climbed out after him and took a moment to listen. They were worried but not surprised to hear more than 2 heartbeats inside the school. Stiles and Griffin definitely had company. They rushed inside, sniffing the air to catch a scent to trace to a specific pulse. They listened, but they were all coming from the cafeteria. That meant the boys and the witches were all together. They all rushed in that direction at full werewolf and kitsune speed, making it to the doors in mere seconds. Scott got there a fraction of a moment before everyone else and he flung the doors open without a drop of hesitation. As they all burst in, they froze in place, shocked at what they saw.

XxxxxxxxxX

The crashing sound Stiles and Griffin heard had been tables. It’s not that something was being banged into the tables, it’s more that they were banging into each other. 3 tables were gliding through the air, rotating in their own individual circles. Occasionally, 2 of them would cross paths and skim each other, creating the crashing sound. Stiles and Griffin had managed to work their way through the paths of the tables into a position closer to the center of the room, but still out of the way.

Not very far from Stiles and Griffin were Lydia and Danny. Danny looked absolutely miserable, and Lydia was just shocked. They had made it further in the room without being stopped by a flying table as well and were staring at the same thing the other boys were.

The wolves and the fox made their way toward their friends, dodging the tables. It wasn’t particularly hard, as long as you had the right timing. But if your timing was off, you’d be getting a nice smack. They all 4 made it between the others and crowded together to avoid standing in the path of any of the tables.

They were all silent. Between the 8 of them no one could think of a word to say to describe or even approach what was in front of them.

It was a witch. That much was obvious. It was one witch. She was sitting cross legged on the floor in a circle of lit candles. She didn’t look particularly extraordinary. She didn’t look a day older than Derek, and hardly seemed threatening. She was wearing a plain black t-shirt, hanging off one shoulder. Underneath was a pair of regular skinny jeans. She was barefoot and wearing a flower crown. Stiles recognized them as bach flowers. They aided concentration and their essential oils were often given to children with ADD as an alternative method of treatment. They had never worked on him. Her hair was a dark auburn and braided over one shoulder with another bach flower at the end. In front of her, but within the circle was a large book, tattered and worn. It was sitting open and she appeared to be reading from it. She was staring at the pages in an almost trancelike state, muttering words in Latin that only the wolves could hear. Her arms were extended to her sides, palms up. In one hand was resting what looked like a golden ring. It was just a big golden circle about the size of her palm. In the other, she was holding some mysterious substance. To Stiles it kind of looked like a giant glob of phosphorescent glue. But it was dripping a thin liquid. It was running down her hand and landing onto a flat slab of wood creating a tapping sound. Lydia realized that was the source of the clicking she’d heard.

“Um…” Stiles whispered into the silence. “What the hell?” No one had an answer for him. This made as much sense to them as it did to him.

“This is the witch?” Isaac asked, unimpressed. Well slightly impressed. The table thing was kinda cool. He wondered how she did it when she obviously was focused on something else.

“Witch?” Danny asked in exasperated disbelief. “Really? Witches?” He was nearly shouting, but it didn’t appear to affect the girl at all. “First werewolves, now witches? REALLY? Just can’t catch a break can you?” Danny walked a few steps away, digging his hands into his hair in frustration. “Fucking Beacon Hills…” he muttered. He noticed a table coming right for him and returned to his previous spot. Now everyone was staring at him. Everyone except Derek who was glaring accusingly at Isaac. “Oh, yes.” He sighed, irritated. “Well the cat’s out of the bag now. I know you’re all werewolves.” Stiles stamped down the urge to correct his missed opportunity with the metaphor just as much as the fact that they weren’t all wolves.

“Danny,” Scott tried to diffuse the situation. “Whatever you think you know-” Danny wasn’t having it.

“Oh please, Scott. I’m not stupid.” He gestured around the room. “Besides, this chick’s got tables floating through the air while she chants whatever devil magic under her breath. There’s no point pretending about it now.”

Lydia rounded on him. “How long have you known about this?” she demanded. Danny just rolled his eye at her.

“Somewhere around the time my best friend turned into a giant lizard and paralyzed me and my ex-boyfriend in the middle of a crowded nightclub,” he deadpanned.

“You’ve known this whole time? And you didn’t say anything?” Lydia reached up to punch him in the shoulder. “Technically you’ve known longer than I did!” Derek rolled his eyes at them and decided it was time to step in.

“Seriously, now is not the time to be arguing about this.” He turned and pointed at the witch in her circle. “We need to figure out what the heck she’s doing and get her to stop.”

Kira finally spoke up. “Also, we should consider the possibility that she isn’t the only witch in town. There could be more and we don’t know if they’re coming or not.”

“Oh great!” Danny needed to sit down. He wasn’t ready for all of this. “More witches. Wonderful.”

Stiles was avoiding direct eye contact with Griffin. He could tell that Griffin could tell, yet somehow he seemed quite unaffected by all of this. As if walking in on a witch doing some weird spell and having someone reveal that all the people you hang out with are werewolves was completely normal. You know. Typical Tuesday. He hadn’t said a word about any of it, and Stiles wasn’t about to bring it up. That could be an awkward conversation for later. Instead, he turned his focus on the girl in the middle of the room.

“Hey!” he yelled at her, trying to catch her attention. He got no reaction. “Yoo hoo! Earth to Hermione! Anyone in there?” He reached over the circle and tried snapping in her face. Nothing.

“Maybe that’s not the best idea,” Scott warned.

“But what if she’s doing the spell now?” Isaac asked. “What if she’s draining the towns power as we speak? Shouldn’t we stop her?” He looked to Scott who just looked unsure, so he glanced over to Derek. Derek nodded to Stiles, urging him to keep trying.

“Whooooo!” He called, clapping by her ear. “Yo Sabrina the teenage bitch! Wake it up! ”He stuck a finger out and poked it into her cheek, digging it in until he’d pulled the skin up over her teeth. Still nothing. This was getting annoying. He considered throwing something at her, but the only projectile he had was his phone and he wanted to keep that. Okay. He had to approach this critically. He took a closer look at her and their surroundings. She was sitting in a circle of candles, with a circle of flowers on her head, and a gold circle in her hand, while she made the tables spin in circles around the room. Obviously that meant something. What if he broke one of the circles?

He bent down, legs still just a little too wobbly for him to trust bending over completely, and reached a hand out to one of the candles. He pinched the flame, effectively extinguishing it and breaking the circle. That was when all hell broke loose.

All at the same time, the witch’s eyes flew up and into focus and she shot Stiles a death glare that could have turned him to stone. The three floating tables all fell to the ground with a loud cacophony of crashes, bangs, and thuds. And the flames of the rest of the candles grew bigger, shooting up so high they bathed the entire room in orange light. Stiles shouted and jumped away from the flames so hard that he nearly fell back and busted his ass on the linoleum, which would not have been good. But Griffin caught him and dragged him away from the witch and the circle.

Derek, Isaac and Scott all went into defense mode, bringing out the fangs, claws and glowing eyes. Kira drew her sword and flashed her eyes as well, taking on a defense stance. Lydia grabbed Danny’s arm and tugged him away, going to stand near Stiles and Griffin by the window.

The witch stood up, dropping her ring and goo and pulled the flowers from her hair. She tossed them aside and when they hit the ground, the fire from the candles cut out. She tilted her head predatorily, examining the people around her with the same intense glare she shot at Stiles. “You interrupted me,” she said. Her tone was flat but it was a clear accusation. “I don’t appreciate that.”

Scott tried to play peacekeeper. “We don’t want to cause any trouble,” he said, letting his eyes fade back to brown to emphasize his point. “But we need to know who you are and why you’re here.”

“Who am I?” she smiled at Scott condescendingly. She had the upper hand and she knew it, she was just playing along. “Well, we’ll just go ahead and call me Mariah. As to what I’m doing here. I’m here to suck dry every ounce of power from the beacon that is Beacon Hills. Problems?” Derek growled at her and started to lunge forward. Scott extended an arm to hold him back, and Mariah just laughed. “Oh, I take that as a yes.”

“This is our home,” Scott told her. “We aren’t just going to let you destroy it.” That just made her laugh more. She was really annoying.

“Oh of course you are! Well…” She scrunched her nose up and amended. “I don’t know if let is the right word. But you sure aren’t going to stop me.”

“Why do you even want the power?” Stiles shouted from across the room. “What, do you have an Olympic sized broomstick that needs charging?”

“For the obvious reasons, stupid boy.” She rolled her eyes at him. “To make me stronger.”

“If you can do all this, aren’t you already strong enough as it is?”

“Obviously not,” she sang back to him.

“But why? And what about the others?” Stiles didn’t get it. What did she need so much power for, and why was she by herself? Mariah just rolled her eyes again, growing impatient with him.

“For starters, there are no others,” she explained. “It’s just little old me.” She pointed a finger at her cheek for emphasis. She was working alone? Stiles couldn’t decide if that made the situation better or worse. “As for the whys, whats, whens, and hows… Well, you’re all going to be dead within the next hour, so it hardly matters.” She nodded at them with certainty. That statement changed the entire atmosphere of the room. The lineup of Scott, Kira, Isaac, and Derek, all changed positions from a defensive stance to an attack stance. This was about to be a fight and there was no avoiding it. “Aw.” She cooed at them. “That’s so cute. You think you’re gonna fight me. Oh. Werewolves are just the simplest little things. It’s almost endearing,” she told them.

Everyone in the room flinched at the same time when the book on the floor shot upward and landed right in her hands. She flipped the pages calmly, looking for something. When she found it, her face lit up. “Ah. Here’s the one.” She made as if to read it out loud, but before any words came out, both Isaac and Derek launched forward with their claws out, poised to attack. She dodged them easily, and Scott and Kira came after her next. Scott slashed straight for her throat, but she backed away just in time for him to miss. Kira came in from the left, swinging her katana, but only managing to slice through the air. Mariah was too fast for them.

Across the room, Danny took Lydia by the hand and tugged her out of the cafeteria, trying to make his escape. She didn’t want to leave her friends, but she also didn’t want to draw attention to herself by complaining, so she let him pull her along and out into the hallway. Stiles saw them leave, and thought about doing the same. He wouldn’t be any help in this fight. He didn’t even have his bat. There was no reason for him to stay. Even so, he couldn’t just abandon his friends. So when Griffin tugged his arm and tried to lead him away as well, he had both feet planted firmly on the ground. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not unless Scott told him to.

Scott, Isaac, Derek, and Kira all had Mariah surrounded. She wasn’t smiling anymore, realizing that they were done with the games. She snapped her book shut, then flipped it back open to the last page, reaching in and ripping a handful of them out. Scowling, she started chanting in Latin. This time loud enough that everyone in the room could hear. “Benedicite ignis, et fumus! Sequuntur somnia est! Convertere ad vitam mors terroris conversus charta vitam in mortem!” As she said the words, the pages in her hands began to shine a blinding bright lavender. She threw them into the air and they flew across the room as swiftly as throwing knives. Before the wolves or fox had time to react, she shouted another spell.“Abire in fumum!” And just like that, she vanished into a smokescreen.

The room filled with thick black plumes that left everyone blind and choking. They all took off in different directions, trying to get away and scrambling for air. Without any vision whatsoever, they stumbled into walls and tables, falling down, lost, and trying to crawl away, gasping for breath. If any of them bumped into each other, they clung on to one another and tried to find a way out together. Protecting each other even when they couldn’t protect themselves. Somehow, they’d all managed to make their way from the cafeteria, the smoke spilling out into the halls and slowly dispersing.

Chapter Text

Chapter 24

Derek’s eyes were on fire. He’d made it out of the cafeteria and the giant cloud of smoke, but he could still feel it stinging his eyes, clouding his vision. Even with his werewolf sight he could barely make out the hall way around him. He heard a high pitched keening, almost like a whizzing sound heading straight toward him. He didn’t have time to turn to see what it was, he just grabbed the nearest thing that seemed like a doorknob and pushed, flinging himself into another room.

He noticed a bright lavender light flash past the window in the door and he pressed his back to it, trying to hide while his eyes adjusted. He focused his ears, using his werewolf abilities to hear what was on the other side. Silence. Not even the whizzing anymore. His nose didn’t sense anything either. His eyes still hurt a bit, but after a while his healing kicked in and he could see well enough. His breathing was returning to normal as he replaced the smoke in his lungs with the clean air of the classroom. Once he felt that he might be good enough to fight, he stood up and flung the door open to go and find the others.

When the door came open, he was hit with a wave of nostalgia so powerful it overloaded his senses and nearly made him drop to the ground. He could hear the confident and familiar pounding of a strong heart, pitter pattering mere feet away from him. His nose was filled with the scent of early childhood. Baths with way too many bubbles and sudsy mustaches. Warm sheets enveloping him and keeping him safe in a thunderstorm. The smell of wheezing laughter, tickle fights, and birthday cakes smashed into his eyebrows. He could feel every hair on his body standing on edge as he fought against the wolf within him. The wolf that guided and controlled his instincts. The one that was telling him to launch forward and grasp what he saw before him in a fierce hug and never let go.

His eyes. Derek’s eyes were making up vicious little stories. They were telling him lies, deceiving him in a way he didn’t think possible. There was no way he was looking at anything other than a lie. He shook his head, backing away slowly. It had to be fake. All of his senses and instincts were telling him it was real, but it couldn’t be. She couldn’t be real. It was impossible. She was impossible.

She mirrored his steps, maintaining their distance, maybe even closing it a bit. God! She even walked like her. “This is a lie,” Derek spit at her. “You’re not real.”

“Oh I’m real, D,” Laura called him by the nick name she had given him when they were middleschoolers. She was the only one who’d ever called him that, and she never said it in front of anyone else. He was D, and she was Lo, and it was their very own private little thing.

Derek shook his head again in disbelief. She was dead. Laura was dead. He found half of her body. He buried it in front of their old home and Stiles and Scott had dug it up. Laura was gone.

“You’re fake! This isn’t real! It’s just a magic trick!”

Laura nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. I am just a magic trick.” She took another step toward him at werewolf speed, instantly closing the distance so she was right in his face. “But why should that mean I’m not real?” She flashed her red Alpha eyes at him and before he had a chance to react, she’d wrapped a hand around his throat, lifting him off the ground. Because of their height difference, she had to extend her arm all the way up just for his feet to leave the floor. She frowned at him disappointedly. “Oh Derek,” she sighed as he dug his claws into her hand and wrist, deep enough to send blood gushing down her arm. She was completely unaffected. “You’re such a letdown, little brother. You’re so weak. Mom would be ashamed.” Laura flung him across the room, tossing him into the chalkboard, making it splinter and crack. He smacked into it with a roar, creating an echo across the classroom and down the hall.

He crumpled to the ground with a thud and she closed right in again, grabbing him by the hair and jerking him up to his knees. “You know, she never did love you,” Laura explained as she pinned his arm behind his back, twisting it at the shoulder. “She wanted a litter of girls.” She punctuated the sentence by jerking his arm higher than it should have gone, effectively dislocating the shoulder with a gross pop and he roared again. She let him go and put a foot on his back to kick him into the ground and hold him in place. “Mommy wanted strong daughters to carry on the Hale legacy.”

Derek grunted and kicked his legs, trying to get out from under her. But the weight of her foot was bone crushing, pressing him into the ground with enough force for him to hear ribs pop. Laura was stronger than him. She was always stronger than him. “She thought she was on a roll when she got me,” Laura continued over Derek’s grunts and growls of pain. “But then she got you. A dumb little boy.”

She lifted her foot off his back, and he tried to jump up and attack with his good arm as soon as she let up some pressure, but she blocked him, catching his arm and swinging it behind her back. She held it in place with one elbow and reached back to snap his wrist with her other hand. “She got stupid little Derek! The idiot child!” She stomped down on his thigh with a sickening crunch, forcing his leg out from under him, twisted at an odd angle and he full out howled in pain. “Poor mother,” she let him go and he fell to the ground again. “She was stuck with an imbecile son.” She glared down at him as he writhed in pain on the floor, incapacitated until his broken bones healed. “The pathetic one who went and turned his eyes blue after having to kill his little high school girlfriend.” She circled him calmly, watching him grunt and struggle to move or crawl away. “And let’s not even get started on the epic failure that was Kate.” She hissed the word as if it even tasted sour in her mouth.

“Shut up!” Derek shouted at her, using his mouth where his body was failing. “Shut the hell up! You’re just lying!” Laura kept on talking right over him. Just as she did when they were kids. He hated it. Every time he opened his mouth, she was talking over him as if his words didn’t matter. It had gotten to a point where he just stopped bothering to talk around her at all unless it was strictly necessary. Even then, it was sometimes like pulling teeth trying to get him to speak up. It was one of the few things about her that had always pissed him off, and it carried into adulthood, though to a lesser degree.

“I just don’t think girls are your thing, D.” She stepped over him, straddling his back, and reached down to jerk him up by the hair again. She got a firm grip on his chin with one hand, then wrapped the other around the back of his head. “Your track record is just terrible.” She tensed her arms up, getting ready to snap his neck and leaned closer to whisper to him the last words he’d ever hear. “You probably should have just stuck with boys. They did always treat you better.”

XxxxxxxxxX

Kira pulled Scott down the hall and away from the cafeteria. He had been trying to use his alpha sight to see through the smoke, but it only burned his eyes faster. He was running blind and still gagging on the smoke trapped in his lungs, surprised at how much it felt like an asthma attack. He hadn’t needed to worry about one of those in such a long time he’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

Kira stopped running and he almost smacked in to her. “Where are we?” he whispered, trying to open his eyes past a squint. They stung too much, and he couldn’t open them far before they were watering and dripping down his cheeks.

“We’re in the gym,” she panted back to him. “We’re all alone.” The words had barely made it past her lips before a lavender light came shooting noisily past them and disappeared behind the bleachers.

“What was that?” Scott tried using his alpha sight to see again, but they were barely working. He heard Kira unsheathe her word and let out his claws, expecting trouble. For a second he thought his ears were having issues as well when he heard Kira’s sword unsheathe again, only this time from across the room. The loud clacking of heels on the wood floors echoed through the gym and Kira gave a sharp intake of breath at what she saw. Scott forced his eyes open, fighting to see it too.

He saw a figure walking toward the two of them, but couldn’t make it out to be anything more than a blurred outline. It looked like a female, and it appeared to be wielding a sword as well. He could feel his vision clearing up as the woman took slow steps toward them. Kira moved to stand protectively in front of Scott, crowding into him to urge him to back up. “Kira!” he called to her. “Who is it? Is it Mariah?”

Kira was taking panicked, shaky little breaths and she wouldn’t answer him. Scott had to strain really hard against his eyes to see. Fortunately he was healing much more quickly now and could see the room becoming sharper as he regained his vision. The figure was now close enough to clash swords with Kira. It turned away from the both of them and Kira sidestepped away from Scott to stay directly in front of it. From so much closer, Scott could make out black hair curled on top of her head, and he could see little blue and brown designs patterned across her dress.

He could see the woman shift her position so that her sword was pointing downward, with one arm stretched across her body to grip the hilt near the guard, and the other bent near her waist to steady the sword near the pommel. He squinted and strained his eyes to get a good look at her face. They had finally healed enough for him to see properly and he was shocked at what he saw. “Kira?”

Kira’s doppelganger was standing in front of them, mouth turned down in a frown and glaring at the real one.

“No.” She spoke, not even bothering to turn and look at Scott. “Noshiko,” she corrected. Scott didn’t even have enough time to be startled at the fact before she dashed toward him, swinging her katana upward. She sliced through his body from waist to shoulder, spraying blood across the gymnasium. She got him with enough force to knock him over, but without a moment’s hesitation she swung her leg into a roundhouse kick directly to his ribs. It was powerful enough to send him flying a few feet before he smacked headfirst into the ground. Upon impact he skid a few more feet and smacked into the wall, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

Noshiko span back toward Kira, but she had already launched herself at the doppelganger. She came bearing down on her mother, swinging her katana downward with the added momentum of her jump. Noshiko’s reflexes were quick and she was able to block the attack, the swords clashing together noisily as she knocked Kira out of the air with a sweeping motion. Kira landed on her feet a few yards away from Scott. She chanced a quick glance his way and he was definitely unconscious.

Kira started to panic a little. She was alone in this fight. And she was fighting her mother. They younger version of her mother that looked almost identical to herself. This was really trippy.

Noshiko took a few steps toward her daughter, but she sheathed her sword and allowed it to hang from her side. She raised an open hand at Kira and a circle of fire appeared around her. “What are you doing?” Kira shouted at her. “Stop this now! I’m your daughter!”

“And what a disappointment you are,” Noshiko responded. Her accent was much thicker than it is now and it gave a sort of sinister lilt to her voice. “You think you are kitsune? Fine. Show me your thunder!”

Kira had only ever conjured her thunder once. It was when she used it to repair her sword. It had kind of just flowed out of her that time. She didn’t know how to do it again. The electricity was usually already there when she was able to effect it.

“You can’t, can you?” Noshiko asked, distaste heavy in her voice. “Pathetic. You are no kitsune. But you are no girl either. What does that make you Kira?” Kira was silent. She had no answer to that. “You are nothing.” Noshiko brought her fingers down into a fist and the circle of fire around Kira began closing in on her. Thinking quickly, she used her enhanced strength to kick herself into the air and over the flames. She landed on the other side of the gym with a flip and raised her sword up in defense.

“I am kitsune!” Kira told her mother. “I may not be as powerful as you yet, but I’m learning and together with Scott’s pack I am strong.” Noshiko cracked a smile at that.

“Ah, I see.” Her flames disappeared and she drew her sword again. “You think you are a wolf?” Kira shook her head, but didn’t argue. “Silly girl. The fox among wolves. You will never belong with them.” Noshiko jerked her head over her shoulder, indicating the unconscious boy on the floor. “You will never belong with him. Or any of them. You are an outsider. Gaijin! You can pretend to be one of them. To be a wolf, but ultimately,” she swung her sword over her shoulder, with the point aimed directly at Kira. “You are alone!”

Noshiko launched herself at Kira, swinging her sword wide. Kira blocked the attack, but Noshiko kept swinging the katana. She was relentless, barraging Kira with attack after attack, leaving her no room to recover or counter. Kira was able to block most of it, but Noshiko was backing her into the bleachers. Her leg hit the last row and she stumbled backward onto them, leaving herself open. Noshiko kept swinging, slicing open Kira’s arm and cutting a deep gash horizontally across her stomach as well as a few nicks and smaller cuts all over her legs and arms, with a few on her face.

Finally, the doppelganger stopped her onslaught and backed away. Kira thought she was giving her a chance to recover, but was wrong. Very wrong. Noshiko had only backed up to leave enough space to swing her sword all the way out. She kept her arm extended away from her body as a flame shot out from the guard and spread forward to cover the entire blade. The fire was so hot, Kira could see it turning the blade white. That was all she needed to see before she was scrambling up the bleachers as fast as she could, trying to put as much distance between herself and that blade as possible.

She wasn’t moving nearly fast enough. Noshiko backed up a few more paces and leapt into the air with a running start. She had her katana raised above her head as she flew over the bleachers. She was going to land directly on Kira. She switched the position of her sword in the air so that the pointed end was aiming downward. She was going to use the force of her fall to impale Kira, with heel of her hand on the pummel to drive it in.

Kira raised her sword above her in defense, but she knew it would be no use against the flames. She screamed in terror as her mother bore down on her, closing her eyes at the last second.

She heard a sound like the ripping of paper and… Nothing happened. Her mother should have stabbed her by now. She should be engulfed in flames and dying. She peaked an eye open to see a shadow standing over her. It was Scott. He was bloody and panting, standing with his alpha eyes glowing, and the claws of one hand extended. Kira looked around frantically, but Noshiko was gone. “What happened?” She asked in a panic. “Where’d she go?”

Scott reached down and picked up a strip of paper off the bleachers. It looked like a shred of the paper Mariah had ripped from her book. “I tore right through her with my claws and she just turned into this.” He gestured downward and Kira could see there were more pieces sprinkled over the seats. He reached down to help her up, but winced at the strain on his wound that was still healing. Kira took his arm over her shoulders and helped him down the bleachers and out of the gym into the hallway.

“We gotta find the others,” She told him. He nodded at her as she led him down a hallway, but he froze and turned his head the other direction. “What is it?”

“It’s Derek. I can smell him…” Scott put his nose in the air and took a deep whiff, trying to detect the chemosignals in the air like Derek taught him. “He smells… sad. And terrified.” Determination brimming, Scott turned Kira around and they headed in the direction of the scent. They followed it to a classroom and saw Derek pinned to the ground with a girl crouching over him. She looked like his sister Laura. His dead sister Laura. She wrapped her arms around his head as if to snap his neck and Kira sprang into action to defend him.

Laura whispered something into Derek’s ear, but she was barely able to finish the words before Kira had swung her sword through her, effectively cleaving her in two. Instead of spraying blood, she flashed a lavender light and disappeared. 2 halves of a paper appeared in the air where Kira slashed her and drifted down slowly to land on Derek’s back. She brushed it aside and reached down to help Derek up. She got him on his feet, but with his broken femur, she couldn’t help him walk by herself.

Scott came over and got Derek’s other arm over his shoulder. This made him cringe in pain as he moved his dislocated shoulder. Derek told them to bring him near the wall and he leaned against it. He reached across his chest and situated his arm on the joint properly, growling through the pain. Once he had it where he wanted it, he hopped a few steps away from the wall then used his good leg to launch himself at it. He smashed his shoulder into the wall with a nasty pop and a slight crunch. He’d pushed his shoulder back into place. It still hurt like a bitch, but he was able to use his arm now and it would be fully healed soon.

Scott and Kira helped him off the wall and down the hallway in search of the others.

Chapter Text

Chapter 25

Griffin had been the one to start running, clamping his hand around Stiles’ wrist and dragging him toward the door. When the smoke filled the room and clouded their vision, Griffin ran them straight into a wall and then into an overturned table. His eyes were burning and he couldn’t see. So when they made it out of the cafeteria, Stiles had been the one pulling him along. The smoke had blocked his sight, but it didn’t seem to be burning his eyes the way it did to Griffin who was still stumbling blindly long after they’d left the cafeteria.

Stiles wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to where he was going, he just started moving his legs and headed in a general “away” direction. So he was a little surprised when he found himself at the pool. He glanced at Griffin who was rubbing his free hand into his face and couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu at the situation. At least he wasn’t in the pool. Yet.

Stiles reached into Griffin’s pocket to take his phone, then dragged him over to one of the poolside showers. He turned it on and pushed Griffins head under the water. He’d yelped at first because it was so cold, but he peaked his eyes open under the stream and the water that seeped in immediately relieved the burning. He sighed and rubbed more water into his eyes, soothing them completely. When he had regained his vision, he shut off the water and reached for Stiles’ hand again.

“We need to get out of here. Now.” He commanded, pulling him away from the shower and toward the door to the changing rooms.

“No way,” Stiles objected. “Not without the others.”

“They’re werewolves,” Griffin kept pulling him. “They can take care of themselves, yeah?” Stiles snatched his hand away.

“Yeah, but they’re my friends! I’m not just leaving them!” Griffin gave up. There was no arguing with him. He paced in a frustrated circle, running his hands through his wet hair and sighed.

“You seem to be taking this rather well…” Stiles ventured. Griffin looked at him curiously. “I mean-” He stopped mid-sentence and raised his arms to gesture at… everything. Griffin shook his head as if he’d just realized what he was talking about.

“It’s not the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” he explained. That had Stiles spluttering.

“Werewolves aren’t the scariest thing you’ve ever seen? Really?” Really? “With the fangs and the eyes and the claws.” He curled his fingers into makeshift claws and slashed through the air to demonstrate. Griffin just shrugged at him. What? Stiles gave him the stink eye. “You’ve seen something scarier than that?”

Griffin pulled his fingers through his hair again. “Yup,” he said simply. Stiles’ eye was full on twitching now.

“Care to expand on that?” he asked, exasperation straining his voice.

Griffin opened his mouth to tell him no, not really, but instead he whipped around to face the door they’d just come out of. A moment later, Stiles heard a muffled whizzing sound on the other side. Griffin rushed to his side and stood in front of him protectively as the door slowly swung open. A woman stepped inside timidly. She had whisky brown eyes and a shy smile on her face and she was the singlemost terrifying thing Stiles had ever seen in his life.

Sensing his distress, Griffin crowded into him more, ushering him backward and away from the woman. Stiles took a shallow gasp and it sounded like the air didn’t even make it to his lungs. His eyes were locked on the woman and she grinned at him more, edging her way toward them. Stiles was nearly frozen in fear. “Mom…?” He whispered the word so quietly it was more like an exhale than actual speech. His voice so small and broken, in that moment it set every nerve in Griffin’s body on edge. Stiles reached up to clutch at Griffin’s shirt, subconsciously begging him for protection.

“Stiles…” She called him sweetly. He flinched at the sound of her voice. This was too cruel. His mother? He knew it wasn’t real. It had to be Mariah’s magic. But…“Godzisław,” she called him by his real name. She was the only one who ever did. She was the only one he would let say it, mainly because no one else ever pronounced it right. He even grumbled when his Dad tried to say it, though he pronounced it right as well. “Oh, baby. You’re scared.” She sounded so concerned that Stiles actually got a little pang of guilt in his heart for making her worry.

Griffin reached his hand behind him to grip Stiles’ elbow supportively. It wasn’t until Griffin had touched him that he even realized he was shaking so hard. Griffin’s touch visibly calmed him, but he was still trembling slightly. Klaudia noticed the little exchange.

“Oh sweetheart,” she called to him, gaining a little confidence and stepping even closer. “You think he loves you?” Her sweet smile turned sour and condescending. “He doesn’t love you. How could he? No one loves you.” She took another step forward and Stiles backed up first this time, dragging Griffin with him. “I certainly never did.”

“Shut up!” Griffin shouted at her, but she ignored him and kept closing in on the two of them.

“Scott doesn’t love you either. Of course he doesn’t. You got him turned into a werewolf. You ruined his life. You killed Allison! You know, Isaac hates you for that, too.”

“Don’t listen to her Stiles. You know none of that is true!”

“And so does Lydia. Of course she already hated you anyways. I mean why else would she have ignored you for years?”

“Stiles. You told me that your mother died. She’s gone. This thing in front of you isn’t real.”

“And Allison hated you herself. Annoying Stiles who talks too much and can’t sit still.”

“She’s a lie. Everything she’s saying is a lie.” Stiles and Griffin were backed into the edge of the pool, but Klaudia kept coming.

“With his stupid ideas and his piece of crap jeep.” They started sidestepping the pool, trying to move further and further away, but she kept closing in.

“Don’t let her into your head.” She was close enough to reach out and touch them and Griffin was trying to scramble them away without falling into the water.

“Skinny, defenseless, squishy, human, Stiles. You don’t contribute anything. But that’s not even the worst part.” She slipped a knife out of her sleeve and into her hand. Stiles recognized it as one from his kitchen. The one she was using when she taught him the difference between dicing a vegetable and to julienne it.

“Your mother loves you. She would never say these things to you.” Griffin consoled him.

“The icing on the cake,” she continued, “is that your father hates you too. Oh, he can’t stand you. You wanna know why?” Klaudia’s eyes were cold and poisonous now, all sickly sweetness gone from her voice.

“Your Dad loves you!” Griffin tried to talk over her. “Your friends love you! I-” Klaudia reached out and pushed Griffin into the water with speed and strength much too powerful for a human.

“Because you killed me Stiles! YOU KILLED ME JUST LIKE YOU KILLED ALLISON!” She grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him into the ground. “But that’s alright Stiles,” she said the name like it was a swear word. She wrapped a hand around his neck and dragged him away from the pool’s edge where Griffin wouldn’t be able to reach him too quickly. He didn’t even fight back. “I’m gonna make it all better, sweetheart.” Klaudia slammed him into the wall and drew her knife high into the air. “CAUSE I’M GONNA KILL YOU TOO!”

She swung the knife down, straight at his chest but an arm reached out and stopped her. She turned to look at who had grabbed her, and received a bite to the neck. The bite drew blood that splashed onto Stiles’ face and he gasped in shock. Derek got a better grip on Klaudia and lifted her off the ground. He limped a few steps then threw her body into the pool. She flew over Griffin’s head just as he was climbing out. She thrashed around in the water a bit, screaming and splashing. After about 30 seconds, her screams died off as she vanished in a lavender light. All that was left was a soggy piece of paper shredding apart as it sank into the water.

Scott and Kira rushed to Stiles to see if he was okay. But he was not okay. He had just been confronted with his mother. And she had choked him. And blamed him for her death. And told him his father hated him. And she was gone now. And her blood was on his face. And the room was spinning. And he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe! He was having a full on panic attack. He was panting and trying to catch his breath, but none of the air was reaching his lungs. He was dizzy and shaking. It felt like he was trying to scream and cry at the same time, but all he could feel was his mother’s stranglehold on his neck and he couldn’t get the air through. He was hit with a sudden shock of vertigo that had him keeling over and clutching at the ground, wheezing and struggling to right himself.

Derek was on the ground with him in an instant, shouting. Stiles couldn’t hear a word he was saying. He could have been telling him the secrets to the universe and the key to eternal life, but Stiles’ blood was pumping so hard and frantic in his ears that it all meant nothing. Derek reached for him, lifting his shoulders off the ground and he had panic in his own eyes. He tried to encourage him to breathe to no avail. Scott came over to help, grabbing his arm and trying to talk him through it, with Kira leaned over his shoulder concerned. Stiles had spots in front of his eyes and an incredible pressure in his head. He knew he was going to pass out soon.

Soaking wet and with his hair clinging to his face, Griffin walked past all three of them. He gently removed Stiles from Derek’s arms and clutched him to his own chest, burying Stiles’ nose against his throat. “It’s okay Stiles.” He said, wiping the blood off his face with his wet sleeve. “I need you to breathe.” Stiles felt rather than heard the words. “Just breathe for me, okay.” Griffin’s voice was so deep it sent vibrations through the entire side of his face and shooting through his body. “Take a deep breath,” he encouraged him. The rumbling hit Stiles like a wave of relief. It settled in his bones, calming his nerves. He took a deep breath and the air hit his burning lungs like water stamping out the fire. “That’s it. Just like that. Keep breathing.” He took another breath obediently and reached up to put a hand directly on Griffin’s neck. Griffin took the hint and kept talking. “Good. Good. I knew you could do it. Just keep breathing, okay? I need you to breathe for me. Everything’ll be alright.” Stiles wheezed a few more shaky breaths before he had enough air to be able to relax.

Seeing that he was going to be okay now, Derek stood up and hobbled away from them, not really wanting to watch any longer. Once his breathing was evening out, Scott reached a hand out to clasp Stiles’ shoulder. “You okay, buddy?” He asked supportively. Stiles nodded at him, but didn’t unlatch himself from Griffin.

“Thank God!” Kira nearly shouted in relief. She’d never seen anyone have a panic attack before and to say she was freaking the fuck out might have been the only accurate descriptor to how she was feeling about it. With Stiles getting back to his senses, he was starting to feel pretty embarrassed about it all. Griffin helped him to his feet and kissed him on his head, then again on the side of his face before loosening his grip enough that Stiles could pull away, but he didn’t immediately. Kira and Scott went over to help Derek stand up and give the two a little space.

Stiles reached up to push the hair off Griffin’s face, then planted a delicate kiss on his lips. He whispered “Thank you,” right against his mouth. Griffin nodded into him, then dropped his head onto Stiles’ shoulder so he bury his nose against his neck for a moment. He didn’t kiss it this time, he just nuzzled him briefly then stood back upright.

Stiles wanted nothing more than for this night to be over already. It had started out so well, too. “Okay,” he announced with a sigh. “We need to find the others and get the hell out of here.”

XxxxxxxxxX

Danny and Lydia were halfway down the hall when they heard the explosion. Lydia screamed in panic, but she wasn't getting any feelings as if someone had died, or would be soon. She turned back around to go help, but Danny had to grab her by the collar and drag her to the ground when a bright lavender light went whizzing over their heads. It had nearly gotten Lydia in the face. It kept going until it reached the end of the hall and smacked into the door leading outside. Danny let Lydia go and they both stood up to examine it. They were so shocked by what was standing there that Lydia nearly fell over again.

"Tell me that's not who I think it is," Danny pleaded. "Tell me it's not..." He started to back away, but Lydia was glued to her spot. The figure at the end of the hall started walking toward them, footsteps echoing ominously, yet Lydia still couldn't move. She was paralyzed. Shock? Disbelief? Fear? Anguish? She wasn't sure, she just knew that her head was telling her to grab Danny and run, but her body wasn't listening.

"This isn't happening," Danny kept muttering. "This isn't real. You're dead!" He shouted at the person looming ever closer to them. "You can't be standing here! It's not possible!" Danny was getting frantic now. "You're dead!" He turned to Lydia and grabbed her by the arm. "She's dead!" He told her. "Allison is dead!"

Lydia wasn't sure if it was those last three words he said, or if it was the terror in his voice—perhaps it had nothing to do with Danny at all. Maybe it was the fact that she was now close enough to see the dimples in Allison's cheeks as she gave her a friendly smile. But something in that moment brought Lydia to attention. Their lives were in danger and she needed to get Danny out of there. Right now!

She wrapped an arm behind Danny and span him around, pulling him away. She dragged him along, running down the hallway as fast as her Manolo’s would let her. They were nearing the smoke filled cafeteria again so she whipped around a corner to get away from it. She took him up the stairs and to the end of the hall. They were just about to round another corner when an arrow flew through the air and pierced the locker right in front of them, holding them in place. Danny had to jerk Lydia back to avoid her getting hit again.

They span around to face Allison. She was lowering her bow, the smile gone from her face as she closed in on them again. She picked up the pace to a run, just as graceful and deadly as ever. Lydia grabbed Danny again and swung him past the arrow, forcing him down the hall toward the next staircase leading down. Allison was right on their tails now and Lydia didn’t dare turn her back on her from this close. She slowed to a walk, pushing Danny behind her, trying her best to block the larger boy from Allison’s wrath. He didn’t deserve this. He wasn’t a part of any of this, she had to get him out of there alive.

Allison was close enough now that if she desired she could have reached out and struck Lydia with her recurve bow. She left it hanging at her side and slowed to a walk. They had space to back away, but like this they were essentially cornered. She cracked another smile, this time sour and condescending, before finally speaking.

“Lydia,” she called. “Look at you, trying to protect him.” She shook her head with disappointment. “You don’t actually think you can do that, do you? You can’t protect anyone. You aren’t strong enough for that.” She almost sounded concerned. “You’re just too weak.”

“No I’m not-” Lydia was growing angry, but Allison cut her off.

“Oh yes you are,” she explained. “You aren’t strong enough to protect him. Just like you couldn’t protect me. You can’t even protect yourself.” Lydia clenched her jaw, fury rising. “You want to save people? You’re no hero, you’re the damsel in distress. Oh sure, you get all tingly and you hear things when someone’s going to die. But do you really think that’s helping? At best, you’re a glorified cadaver dog!”

“Shut up!” Lydia shouted at her, not wanting to hear any more.

“Why?” Allison queried, she’d backed them up so far that Danny was bumping into the wall now, observing the entire exchange in awed silence. “Is it because you’re upset that I’m right? Because I am!” She stopped walking, leaving the last few feet between them empty, and raised her voice to start yelling. “You couldn’t save me Lydia! You let me die! With all the effort you put into it and as hard as you tried, you still let me die!”

“I didn’t let you do anything!” she argued back, letting her logic explain away the situation. “You’re not even real! You’re just a hallucination created to scare me! You aren’t dead! You were never alive! You aren’t even really here!”

“Aren’t I?” Allison backed away a few paces, keeping her eyes trained on Lydia. With her free hand, she pulled a ring dagger out of her jacket. “These lockers are real,” she gestured to them, her voice growing progressively louder and more vicious. “This dagger is real!” She scraped it along the lockers as she backed up more, creating a trail of sparks. She snatched it away from the lockers and chucked across the hall with lightning speed. It landed directly in the space between Danny’s shoulder and Lydia’s head. “That wall is real!” She pulled an arrow from her quiver and set it on her bow. “My bow is real!” She aimed it right at Lydia’s chest and pulled the string back. “This arrow is real!” she continued. “And it’s really gonna hurt when I shoot it straight through your heart!”

She released the arrow and it sliced through the air with a muted zip. Lydia tried to push Danny away from her in case the arrow went straight through, she didn’t want him to get hurt. She didn’t have to worry about it because Scott jumped right in front of her and caught the arrow before it could get to either of them.

Lydia let out a relieved breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and looked down the other side of the hallway to see Stiles, Griffin, and Kira with Derek leaning over her shoulder coming up the stairs. They were all rushing toward her and Danny, making a whole lot of noise now that they’d been discovered.

Allison heard all the noise too and span around on her heel, taking off in the other direction. Scott dropped the arrow to the ground and chased after her. Kira went after them, depositing Derek onto Stiles without any warning. Stiles meeped in surprise, but easily recovered and fell into step carrying him as if it was second nature. Carrying the bulky werewolf was just this thing he did. No big deal.

Down the hall, Allison had made it to the other staircase and leapt down, bypassing all the steps and continued running. Scott then Kira came right after, following her example and taking the stairs in one fell swoop. With their supernatural speed, they caught up to her quickly and each made a swing for her. Scott with his claws, and Kira with her sword. They ripped right through her and she disappeared in an explosion of lavender light and tiny strips of paper sprinkling the hallway like confetti.

With Allison gone now, Kira sheathed her sword and took a steadying breath. “Is it just me,” she asked Scott, “or did that feel really awful?” Scott nodded at her, feeling the guilt of killing Allison-but-not-really-Allison, too. They turned back the way they came and went to go catch up with the others.

Chapter Text

Chapter 26

They scoured the school, looking for Isaac. He was the last one left and he was nowhere to be found. They checked every classroom, every hallway closet they even rechecked the gym and ventured into the cafeteria. The smoke was gone and so was any evidence that Mariah had been there. Except the overturned tables. They were still spread about the room in the places where they’d landed. But the candles, the flowers and the goop that she’d left on the floor were nowhere to be seen.

The entire school had been checked and they had no idea where Isaac was. They couldn’t catch his scent anywhere and they couldn’t even pick up on his heartbeat. Danny got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and the color drained out of his face at the idea. “You don’t think-” he started to ask the worst, but Lydia cut him off.

“No!” was all she said. He was not dead. If he was dead, she would have felt it, and she felt nothing. So… no. They all accepted Lydia’s word with finality as they meandered through the library.

“Maybe,” Kira offered warily, “Mariah took him. I mean if he was by himself it wouldn’t exactly have been hard with all the smoke.” The idea filled Scott with dread. He didn’t want to believe that. But their options were looking bleak and he preferred that over the idea of Lydia being wrong.

“We haven’t checked the locker rooms yet,” Griffin offered. It was the first thing he’d said since they left the pool. He was still mostly wet, but he had taken off his coat and his shoes, so his clothes weren’t weighing him down too much and he wasn’t leaving a trail of water behind him. Knowing the library had been a dud anyways, they all scrambled out and toward the locker rooms.

When they got there, they were surprised to discover that every shower and faucet was on, flooding the room so high the water was halfway up their calves. The door leading to the field was wide open and letting the freezing night air in. All the little windows near the roof were broken as well, letting in even more cold air. It looked as if someone had sprayed all the lockers and the walls with water. The entire locker room was frigid and they could see their breath. If Isaac was in here, it would have been no surprise that they couldn’t smell him. The frostbitten air muted the smells so much that they were barely discernible in the room and would never have traveled further than that into the hallways.

They spread out to cover the room more quickly, struggling to scent the air and trying to catch his heartbeat. The sound of the running water drowned out any other noise, so Griffin, who was already wet anyways, went into the showers to start turning them off. He had gotten three of them off before he whipped around to see a figure crouching in the corner, facing the wall. They were dripping wet and shivering, clutching their knees to their chest with their head bent low, shrunk down as small as possible. “Isaac?” Griffin asked. Scott and Kira heard him say the name so they rushed over to investigate.

When they approached the figure in the corner, he stood up slowly and span around to face them. He had a sadistic smile on his face as he turned to look at them and Scott gasped in shock. It was not Isaac. Although he shouldn’t have been surprised to see Robert Lahey standing in front of him. Kira didn’t recognize who it was, but when Scott flashed his eyes and withdrew his claws, she followed his lead and drew her katana as well.

Robert laughed, a dark scratchy sound, as he blinked the water out of his eyes. “What did you do to Isaac,” Scott snarled at him with his alpha voice. It was more a command to speak than an actual question, and it made Griffin turn to look at him with a quirked eyebrow.

“Oh,” Robert started, laughter still in his voice. “That is the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Scott let out a low growl and Kira switched into an attack stance. That just made him laugh more. “Oh, you’ll never find him like that. He could be drowning as we speak. I wonder,” he mused. “How long do you think a werewolf could survive that?” Enraged, Scott launched forward to grab him by the neck and slam him into the shower wall. As soon as he got a grip on him, he vanished into a lavender light and Scott was left gripping a soggy piece of paper, shredding in his hand.

Scott tossed the soppy mess into the water and span around in a panic. They still had no idea where Isaac was! He ran around the room, wrenching lockers open and the others followed suit, searching any place that he may have been crammed into. Griffin was the only one not frantically scouring the room. He turned the rest of the showers off, then continued on to the sinks calmly as if in a sort of daze. He seemed to be concentrating on something faraway, his focus not on the task at hand. Stiles—who had abandoned Derek on a bench in favor of searching coach’s office— noticed how distant he was and asked him what was wrong, but Griffin was ignoring him. He paused in front of the sink he’d just turned off and closed his eyes.

“Griffin!” Stiles called. “Are you alright?” He nodded his head and opened his eyes slowly.

“Hear that?” He asked. He said it loud enough that Stiles wasn’t the only one that heard him. Scott and Kira, stopped tossing things around to try and listen. Danny and Lydia noticed and they grew quiet as well. Stiles took a step closer to Griffin and he could hear it too.

“That sounds like water running,” he offered.

“I turned all the water off.”

Scott pointed upward. “It’s coming from those pipes.”

“Which lead to…”

Kira answered for him. “The girl’s locker room!” Scott didn’t need any more words before he sprinted out the door. Stiles and Kira were right on his heels and Lydia went trailing right after them. That left Danny and Griffin to carry Derek. Derek didn’t look particularly thrilled about it, but Griffin wasn’t necessarily channeling sunshine and roses at the idea either.

Danny grabbed Derek’s arm first and slung it over his shoulder to hoist him up. “C’mon Miguel,” he joked. Derek actually laughed at that, just a quiet chuckle. Griffin went to grab his other arm and glanced between the two of them curiously.

“Miguel?” He asked. He was pretty certain that was Derek. Unless Derek had an equally surly twin brother no one ever mentioned. Derek sighed nostalgically.

“Blame Stiles,” he told Griffin. As if that explained everything. Well, if Griffin knew Stiles as well as he thought he did, then it kinda did explain everything.

When they made it to the girl’s locker room, they discovered it in an even worse state than the other one. It was also overrun with water and freezing cold. However the rows of lockers were all knocked over and arranged to create a tiny empty square in the middle of the room. There was another row that had been placed on top of them, covering the square. Scott had been in the middle of lifting that top row up with his wolf strength and Stiles and Kira were pulling Isaac out from the hole.

He was chained up into the fetal position, soaking wet and barely conscious. Scott tossed the lockers aside and went to wrench the chains off him, but had to snatch his hands back when he felt that the chains had been wrapped in wolfsbane. Scott tried again, with new determination, but the wolfsbane was too strong. It burned through his hands before he could muster up enough strength to wrench the thick chains apart. He didn’t know what to do. None of the humans would have been able to break them, but neither of the werewolves could do it.

Kira reached down to give it a try with her kitsune strength, but a fox is not as strong as a wolf and she couldn’t break the chains either. Lydia was struck with an idea. “The coach!” she shouted. “She keeps bolt cutters in her office for when kids leave their padlocks at the end of the year!” Stiles dashed into the office and rummaged through it for a bit before returning with the bolt cutters. Scott took them and immediately fastened them to the chain. He didn’t even need to apply much force to cut them. Kira and Stiles dashed forward to unwrap him and he unfurled onto the lockers.

“What’s wrong with him?” Danny asked when he didn’t move. “Why isn’t he getting up?”

“I dunno.” Stiles grabbed him by the shoulder and gave him a little shake, but he didn’t react other than to blink slowly. “He’s like, catatonic or something.”

“Stiles…” Griffin started with a hint of a warning in his voice, but Stiles wasn’t listening. He shook Isaac again, harder this time and his eyes flashed golden.

“Isaac, buddy?” He called, shaking him again. “You alright?”

“Stiles!” Griffin was a little sharper this time, but he kept ignoring him, trying to shake Isaac into consciousness.

“Come on Isaac,” he urged. “Wakey wak-ah!” Isaac suddenly jumped, lurching forward and slashing at Stiles with a vicious growl. Fortunately, Scott had noticed the movement a split second before he did it and had reached forward to shove Stiles backward out of his reach just in the nick of time. Stiles went falling onto the lockers and slid off of them gracelessly, landing on his arm. Griffin darted out from under Derek’s arm and grabbed him, pulling him to his feet and further out of harm’s way.

Isaac had completely lost control. He whipped around at Scott, slashing and snarling. He sliced 4 deep lines across his throat and chest that had blood splashing everywhere, and soaking the overturned lockers. Scott clutched his throat, gagging on his own blood with panic wide in his eyes.

Griffin jumped into action, ushering everyone out of the locker room through the door that led to the field. He managed to push Lydia and Danny outside, but Derek wouldn’t come. He hobbled his way toward the others, trying to help subdue Isaac. Stiles tried to grab Derek and drag him out too, but he shouted at him to just go and leave him behind. That was all Griffin needed. He grabbed Stiles’ hand and dragged him out as well, putting as much distance between them and the rogue werewolf as possible.

When Isaac attacked Scott, Kira had launched into action. She leapt forward to push Scott back and stand between him and Isaac. She held her sword out defensively but Isaac smacked it away and slashed at her too. She dodged enough that he only got her shoulder, but he struck out with his bare feet and kicked both Kira and Scott across the room. Derek jumped up behind him and grabbed his arms, trying to restrain him. Isaac was completely gone, acting only on his werewolf instinct and couldn’t hold back an ounce of his strength. So when Derek wrapped his arms around him, he reached back and flipped him over onto his back, slamming him almost completely through the row of lockers beneath them.

Scott tried to use his alpha call to subdue him and return him to his human self, but he could barely get the sound out. Isaac had torn too deep into his neck and he wasn’t healing fast enough to be able to use his vocal chords yet. Kira came back at him with her katana, Isaac caught it in his hands. He gripped it tight enough that he had blood dripping from his palms, but used it lift Kira into the air and slam her against the lockers by Derek. She still had a firm grip on her sword, so he lifted her back up to slam her down again. Still she hadn’t let go, so he lifted her and tossed her into Scott, making them both crash into the wall. With the 3 of them temporarily incapacitated, Isaac dropped to all fours and made a mad dash out the door to follow the scent of the others.

Stiles, Danny, Lydia, and Griffin were running across the field with Danny in the front. Lydia was lagging behind in her heels and Stiles had slowed down to urge her to kick them off. When Griffin noticed Isaac come barreling onto the field, he doubled back and to stand in front of them, making as if to fend Isaac off himself. Lydia took the opportunity to try to catch up to Danny, but Stiles stuck by Griffin. He thought he was nuts! There was no way he was going to hold off a rogue werewolf! What the heck is wrong with him?

Isaac closed the distance between them quickly and Stiles jumped in front of Griffin with his hands out. “Isaac!” he shouted. “Stop! Don’t do this!” It barely made a difference, but Scott stumbled out of the door and tried to shout Isaac’s name again. The sound barely came out, but it was enough for Isaac to hear and it was laced with just enough of the alpha voice for Isaac to slow down. He stopped his attack and instead turned to growling menacingly at the pair, pacing back in forth in front of them. “Isaac,” Stiles tried to soothe him while he backed Griffin away. “Just calm down. You need to find your anchor, okay?”

Stiles was trying to talk Isaac down while Scott, Derek and Kira caught up. If he could just keep him calm long enough for them to reach, then they would be okay. Hopefully. They didn’t look so good. But Isaac was seeing red and he couldn’t hear a single word Stiles was saying. He tilted his head to one side then the other predatorily. He was dripping wet, with his clothes shredded and hanging off him. His hair was sticking up and pressed to his face in places, and he had a thick trail of saliva dripping from his fangs. The whole thing made him look completely manic. He was no longer their friend, he was rabid.

Isaac lunged forward threateningly making Stiles flinch and shout a little. He tossed a glance at Griffin, but Griffin was just rolling his eyes as if he found the whole thing to be rather irritating. Really? Not even a little bit of fear? Just a drop? What the fuck man?

Finally Scott had made it close enough to be helpful, although the blood still pouring from his neck suggested it might not be as helpful as they’d like. Kira was right behind him, with Derek slung over her shoulders. He had an arm wrapped around her back, and with the way they were both wheezing it was hard to tell which one was supporting the other more. Isaac sure did a number on the lot of them.

When the smell of Scott’s blood hit Isaac’s nose up close, he completely lost the thin veil of control he’d had. He shot forward—claws and fangs blazing—going straight for Stiles’ neck. Scott wasn’t fast enough to stop him and Kira and Derek were just a little too far away. Just as Isaac was about to make contact, Griffin reached an arm around Stiles’ waist and span him away, lightly tossing him behind his back. With his other arm, he put his open palm on Isaac’s chest and slammed the werewolf into the ground. Both movements were so fast, the humans could barely track them with their eyes.

Isaac tried to jump back up to attack Griffin, but as soon as he reached full height, Griffin stepped forward eyes glowing red and let out a deep, grating roar that echoed through the entire field. It was so powerful that it even had Lydia and Danny freezing in their places, crouching down a bit out of instinct despite having already been so far away. It made Kira’s knees give out and Derek’s eyes flash. Isaac crumpled entirely to the ground, reverting back to a human and cringing into the fetal position with his arms around his head. The only people who seemed entirely unaffected were Scott and Stiles. Although if Stiles was honest, the only reason he didn’t react was because he was shocked into paralysis.

Scott darted to the ground to comfort Isaac. He could hear his heart rate and knew he was still just on the edge of transforming back. “Relax Isaac!” He croaked, voice still weak and broken. “It’s okay. He’s gone! You’re safe now. You’re with us!” Isaac reached a frantic hand up and grabbed Scott’s wrist in a near bone crushing grip. As soon as his skin made contact, he visibly relaxed. He uncurled his body and released a deep breath as if he’d been holding it since they’d fished him out of the water. His eyes came back into focus and he zoned in on Scott’s throat.

“I did that to you?” he asked in a tiny voice. Scott didn’t answer, but Isaac knew better. “Scott, I’m so-”

“It’s not your fault,” Stiles spoke up from his spot behind Griffin, cutting his apology off. “It was Mariah. She fucked us all up.” Isaac nodded at his words, but his eyes were on Scott the whole time.

Scott helped him sit up and after a few more beats of catching his breath, Isaac looked up to Griffin curiously. Scott, Derek and Kira turned to look at him as well. Even Danny and Lydia had turned back around to approach the rest of them. All eyes were on Griffin.

Chapter Text

Chapter 27

"When did you plan on telling me you were a werewolf?"

"Probably never." Stiles was trying very hard to be patient about this.

When Griffin tried to divert the situation by pointing out that they should at least clean up all the blood spattered around before they left to avoid anything being traced to them, Stiles let him. Especially when no one else seemed to want to jump in on the conversation. They were leaving this one to Stiles. Now the school was blood free, though still thoroughly vandalized and Stiles had even gathered all the shredded pieces of the pages Mariah tore from her spell book. He didn’t think they could be traced to any of them, but he figured he’d find some use for them anyways. Now they were all gathered around the parking lot, the 3 cars pulled up to each other while they waited for an explanation.

“Okay,” Stiles ignored the vague answer, but there was definitely a little twitch in his eye. “But why-” he cut himself off with a frustrated groan. “Why didn’t you at least tell me?”

“I imagine for the same reasons you didn’t tell me your best friend was a werewolf.” That silenced Stiles. “Or that the two of them are as well.” He pointed at Isaac and Derek. “Or that she’s a kitsune and she’s a banshee.” He gestured to Kira and Lydia respectively. Stiles couldn’t argue his logic, but he was just so upset about it that he tried.

“Those weren’t my secrets to tell,” he explained.

“You didn’t tell me that you were a spark,” Griffin reasoned. “That’s not anyone else’s secret.” Stiles narrowed his eyes at him. Okay fine. Stiles didn’t really have an argument, but he still couldn’t help the betrayed feeling he had in his stomach. Seeing it in his eyes, Griffin reached a hand out to comfort him. “It’s not like it’s anything personal. I had no intentions of telling anyone. I had intended on keeping this a secret from the moment I came to Beacon Hills right up until about half a second before I revealed it. It’s just a survival technique.”

Stiles really didn’t want to, but he reluctantly accepted his answer because what the hell else could he say? But the conversation still wasn’t over yet as Derek decided it was his turn to speak up.

"You're an alpha." Derek pointed out. He didn’t say what he was getting at outright, but Griffin knew exactly what he meant. He was intruding on another pack’s territory, and taking up residence no less. That was cause for a challenge and he should either fight for his right to be there, or get thrown out and leave.

"I didn't come here to cause trouble. I came here to go to high school." He looked over to Scott, who looked like a fight was the absolute last thing on his mind. “I’ll leave if you want me to,” he placated. “But I’m not a threat to you, I promise.”

After the way he helped save Stiles and Isaac, and how he helped Danny and Lydia, the last thing Scott thought Griffin was, was a threat. With Mariah still on the prowl, there was no way he would have turned away a helpful ally, even if he’d wanted to. “I’m not going to make you leave, dude,” he said. “You aren’t causing any trouble at all. In fact you saved most of our asses back there. You can stay.” Griffin nodded and turned back to Stiles, who opened his mouth to speak.

"I just have one question," he asked. "How come Scott couldn't tell you were a wolf? He sniffed Isaac out the day after he was bit." Griffin sighed. He was wiped out from all of the night's events.

"Listen," he told Stiles. "I'll answer all of your questions tomorrow." Today. He gestured to the other 2 cars. "I'll answer anyone's questions tomorrow. But it's three in the morning right now. I just want this night to be over." Stiles rolled his eyes impatiently, but he definitely seconded that opinion. He nodded at Griffin then reached to climb in the Durango.

"Alright, alright. Get in this monster and drive me home."

"Not you too..."

Lydia followed their lead and ushered Danny to her car so she could drive him home. "Oh no," he complained. "I'm not sleeping alone after a night like this. We're going to your house." He snatched the keys from her and shooed her from the door. "Yeah, and I'll be driving."

XxxxxxxxxX

Griffin took Stiles home and the entire ride there was spent in awkward silence. Griffin tried to walk Stiles to his door, but Stiles shooed him away. Griffin was having none of that. “I’m not just gonna leave you all alone after a night like the one we had.” Stiles really wanted to appreciate the gesture, but he was too busy pretending to still be upset about being lied to. He told Griffin not to follow him then slammed the door in his face, but Griffin was not one to be deterred.

When Stiles made it upstairs, he was only mildly surprised to see Griffin waiting for him on his bed already. He suppressed a smile before throwing him out again. Griffin told him he was nuts, so he pushed him out the window and slammed it shut, stifling laughter the whole time.

“Fine then,” Griffin told him through the glass after climbing back on top of the roof of the porch. “I’ll just wait right here while you sleep.”

“Cause that’s not creepy at all.” Griffin only smiled in return, but Stiles rolled his eyes at him and turned away. “Whatever. No peeking!” Griffin cocked an eyebrow at him with a smirk. What could he possibly see that he hadn’t seen earlier already? He turned around anyways and sat cross legged on the roof, with his back to the window while Stiles changed. He decided to forego a shower in favor of burying down in his bed sooner, with the comforter over his head. He’d take one when he woke up. Now he just needed to sleep for the few hours he had left of the night.

7 minutes and 36 seconds. That’s how long he lasted. Not that he was counting the seconds or anything. Or the minutes for that matter. Regardless, he lasted 7 minutes and 36 seconds        before he threw all the blankets off himself, strode across the room, flung the window open, hooked his arms under Griffin’s shoulders, and drug him back into his room. Griffin laughed as he pulled his long legs through the window, kicking off the windowsill to give Stiles more leverage. Stiles told him to shut up grumpily and flung the both of them onto the bed. They fell asleep that way, spooning, with Stiles’ arms still wrapped tight around Griffin.

When Stiles woke up, he was alone in his bed and the Sheriff was beating him with pillows. He kicked his arms and legs out, trying to stand up, bat the pillows away, and protect himself all at the same time. Mostly he just tangled himself in his blankets and wound up on the floor.

“What the hell did you do?” John shouted. Stiles made a muffled grunt from his spot with half his face on the floor and the other half wrapped in a comforter. “To the school?” John clarified. “What did you do to the school?”

Stiles took his time righting himself before responding. “Why is it that whenever something happens, you assume that it’s my fault?”

“Because when is it ever not your fault?”

“You know, I resent that sentiment-” John shot him a no nonsense look and he thought it better to shut up.

“What happened?”

“Fine! Fine! But it wasn’t me!” Stiles finally admitted. “It was a witch.”

“A witch? You found one?”

“Yeah. It’s just the one, though. Her name is Mariah and she’s a friggin psychopath.”

“What about the rest of them?”

“It’s only the one. She said she was working alone.”

“What did she do?”

Stiles shook his head at the question. He really didn’t feel like rehashing the entire experience so he gave him the abridged version. “She tried to kill us with her magic.” It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t even a half truth. It was completely honest. That’s exactly what she did.

“Well, where is she now?” The Sheriff would never wish death upon anybody, but that doesn’t mean that if she made their lives easier by just being dead that he was going to be upset about it. However, they had no such luck.

“I dunno. She disappeared in a cloud of smoke, believe it or not. It went poof and everything.” The sound of an explosion could technically be counted as a poof. Kind of. A really loud poof.

John pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. He just wanted all of this witch business to be over with and he hadn’t even met the woman yet. He explained to Stiles that the school was closed for the day while the police investigated. Although he was already building a pretty strong case against the local mountain lions. It seemed pretty reasonable considering the damage done to the locker rooms.

He left his son to go back to work and Stiles stood up to find his phone. He was about to text Griffin, but when he turned back toward the bed, comforters and all, Griffin was already sitting on it with his legs crossed. He startled Stiles so much that he stumbled backward, tripped on the blanket trailing behind him and fell, busting his ass on the floor. He whelped in pain, rolling on the floor and clutching his bottom that had already still been sore from the previous night.

“Ah! My butt!” He whined helplessly as Griffin went to lift him off the ground with a small chuckle. “Don’t laugh! This is your fault!” he accused. Griffin laid him gently on the bed and cradled him in his arms. “I hate you, we’re never having sex again. Just kidding. We should have sex all the time. Like right now, actually. Okay maybe not right now right now, but in like thirty minutes.” He squinted a little, butt still stinging. “Okay, in like an hour and a half.” He gasped deeply as he was struck with an idea. “We should have sex in the shower!”

Griffin laughed at him and his brilliant ideas. “But we still haven’t had sex in the jeep yet.”

Stiles thought on that for a moment. “That can be arranged. The behemoth can be next. We should make a list.” Stiles nodded thoughtfully.

“Does that mean you’re not mad at me anymore?” Griffin dropped his head onto his shoulder and Stiles wrapped his arms around him.

“No, I’m not mad.” Griffin snuggled his nose against Stiles’ neck and placed a few kisses on it in appreciation. “I do still have questions, though.” That was understandable, and Griffin had promised to answer them all. “For starters, I want to know about this neck thing. Is that a werewolf thing, or what?”

“Well, it’s not a vampire thing, that’s for sure,” Griffin teased.

“Hey, I stand by my logic. It was a completely plausible line of reasoning.” Griffin ignored him.

“We should wait to meet up with the others. I know they’ve got questions, and I promised to answer theirs as well.” Stiles agreed and texted the others. Everyone agreed to meet at Derek’s loft that afternoon. It was already 10 o’clock by the time he’d texted them, so Griffin left to go home and change and Stiles showered and got dressed himself. But none of this until after Griffin pinned him to the bed and kissed him until he couldn’t breathe.

When they met up at Derek’s loft that afternoon, it seemed everyone else was there already. They rode in the elevator quietly, and Stiles was a very good boy. He didn’t attack Griffin’s face with his mouth once. Nope. He sure didn’t. Not at all. Okay, maybe a little bit, but that’s not the point. They were both grinning like idiots as they climbed the last few flights of stairs. When they made it to the landing, Stiles tried the door, but it was locked. He whipped out his key and Griffin gave him the oddest look.

“What?” Stiles asked, pausing with his arm still extended toward the door.

“You have a key?” Stiles nodded. Duh. The key was in his hand, wasn’t it? “Why do you have a key to Derek’s loft?” Stiles looked back at him like that was the dumbest question he’d heard all morning. Why wouldn’t he have a key? “I have a key to everybody’s house,” he explained simply.

“You don’t have a key to my house,” Griffin argued.

Stiles smirked at him then switched the key in his hand and waved it at him. No way! He did not! Griffin snatched it out of his hand and pulled his own key out of his pocket to compare the two. They were exactly the same. “What the hell?” he asked. Stiles just laughed at him. “How the hell did you get this?”

“I know a guy,” he responded cryptically before taking his keys back and going to unlock the door. Griffin wasn’t sure which was scarier, the fact that Stiles knew a guy who could sneak up on a werewolf and make a key to his house or the idea that Stiles didn’t actually know a guy and just did it himself.

They made their way inside and greeted everyone warmly. They made themselves comfortable and Griffin tried to ignore the way Scott kept wrapping his arm around Stiles’ neck affectionately. He knew the gesture was subconscious, but that didn’t make it feel any less like a challenge. But Scott was a good guy, and Griffin wasn’t about to fight with him over something so simple just because it subconsciously jabbed at his alpha pride. However he did notice that Derek seemed to be enjoying his response to it a bit much. Curious.

Once everyone was all settled in and Stiles had produced a heaping of snacks and soda that made Derek shake his head in bewilderment as to where the hell he’d hid it all, they finally started in on the questioning. Fortunately Lydia had filled Danny in on all the werewolf basics, so he didn’t have to explain too much of the simple stuff. The question that everyone seemed to be jumping to get the answer to first was the one Stiles had posed last night. How come neither Scott nor Isaac could tell he was a wolf?

The answer was simple enough. He masked his scent. If he wolfed out completely, his scent would be entirely different than it was as a human. It’s something all wolves can learn to do, not just alphas. He was a born wolf so he learned it growing up, like Derek had. Obviously Isaac and Scott hadn’t because they were bitten. Apparently whomever it was that bit them wasn’t kind enough to teach them that before Scott had killed him. That thought sparked a few outbursts of its own.

For starters, Isaac and Scott were not bitten by the same alpha. Secondly Scott didn’t kill his alpha. They didn’t divulge the entire story behind it. That was for another day. This time it was Griffin’s turn to talk. They explained to him that Scott was a True Alpha and that piqued Griffin’s interest. However he reigned it in and continued on answering their questions.

The story of why he came to Beacon Hills was all true. He had been thrown out of his old school in Washington for “things” (Stiles referred to them as shenanigans) and he had a choice: California with his Aunt or Maine with his brother. Obviously he chose the Golden State. He also implied that the things that got him kicked out of school may have had something to do with tensions between himself and the resident pack of the area that had accepted his cousin into it but obviously not him. He’d learned his lesson in Washington though. He just wanted to fly under the radar after that nonsense, which is why he picked his Aunt. She was very good at flying under the radar when she wanted to be. For the record, no she was not a werewolf.

Danny asked about his pack. If he was an alpha, that meant he had a pack, right? He did not. Griffin was packless. Alpha and Omega all in one. It did tend to make things a bit more dangerous for him. More reasons for him to keep to himself. He didn’t really plan on creating one anytime soon either. He just wanted to keep being a high school kid for a while. The last thing he needed was the responsibility of trying to take care of a pack when he was clearly not ready for it and would probably just drive them all into the ground. After that statement, everyone was pointedly not looking at Derek. Griffin definitely noticed. They didn’t know it, but they were answering questions of their own.

Scott was curious how he became alpha. He explained that there was no spectacular story involved with it, it was simply a natural progression. When a family of born werewolves lose their alpha with no clear transfer of power, the alpha gene rises up within the next able bodied member of the family. It is nature’s way of solving its own problems, restoring the balance. Usually it’s the oldest living offspring of the previous alpha or a sibling depending on who’s more powerful. His grandfather was the alpha before, so that would have meant his older brother inherited it. But this time it chose power over age, so he became alpha instead.

Kira was almost pained to ask, but she was dying to know what happened to his family. He told them the cover story: that they died in a car accident. Everyone was piled into 2 big vans on their way back home from their annual pack meeting. Despite the fact that by then the majority of the pack had already been picked off by hunters and all that remained lived in the same area, they still traveled to a particular spot for these kinds of meetings. They were kind of like family reunions, and they were a longstanding tradition. His family was huge on traditions. The official story stated that the two cars crashed into each other and rolled into a ditch, killing almost everyone inside. Any survivors had been severely wounded and died a little while afterward. It happened on a barely used rode winding through the middle of the woods. The vans had been sitting on the side of the rode for 3 days before anyone else drove by and called for help.

What the official story lacked was the detail that they didn’t crash into each other, but were driven off the rode by hunters. Any survivors were pulled out of the vans and killed in the dirt, execution style. The only reason they hadn’t gotten him was because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt and was projected from the windshield. His mother was too, but he landed further than she had so when they went in search for her, they thought she was the only one who’d flown out of the car. He’d been lying in the bushes, virtually incapacitated and forced to watch as his family was killed by Kate and Gerard Argent and their cronies.

Those two names left everybody’s blood running ice cold. They knew Kate and Gerard were ruthless. They knew exactly how twisted they were. It was still a sort of shock to the system to hear exactly how cruel they’d been, outside of their own context. Kira wasn’t quite so familiar with the story, and was tempted to ask, but decided against it. That was also for another time.

Stiles told Griffin that Kate had been buried in Beacon Hills. He told him to feel free to dance on her grave at any time, he’d show him where it was if he liked.

They asked him what he knew about witches. Plenty. He knew a lot of information about a lot of differed creatures. He was never in the running to be alpha. He was however being groomed to be the pack Archivist before his family was killed. He found all the information intriguing and it was a job he would have loved, but it was all moot at this point. He has no pack anymore, and one cannot be the alpha and the archivist at the same time anyways. As far as Mariah herself, he didn’t know any more about her than they did and he didn’t know how to find her.

Well. That wasn’t a lie. He didn’t know how to find her. However he did happen know how to find a way she could be found. Griffin had one more secret to tell. He was hard put to tell it because it wasn’t exactly his secret, but he knew they’d figure it out eventually, and it could only be more helpful than harmful at this point anyways. Griffin knew that Mariah wasn’t the only witch in town, and he knew where the other one was.

Chapter Text

Chapter 28 The Blind Witch

Honestly, Stiles was surprised, but he didn’t find it to be entirely unexpected. Aunt Dee being a witch was easily the most probable thing about their entire situation. Griffin brought Stiles and Scott to his home to investigate, but it appeared that Aunt Dee wasn’t there. Griffin admitted it was all a ruse and led them to a door that looked like a closet. In fact, once he opened it he revealed that it was a closet. He reached a hand up to knock on the inside wall, but before his knuckles made contact, it swung inward to reveal a staircase. Griffin turned around to smirk at the two of them. Apparently she’d been expecting them.

Stiles found the whole thing to be pretty creepy. It was even creepier when the door swung shut and they were engulfed in complete darkness. It was slightly less creepy when he fell down the stairs and had to be caught by Griffin bridal style to avoid busting his ass on the ground again. But the creepy level hiked right back up when he realized all he could see in the blackness was 2 pairs of glowing red eyes. He tried to calm down by reminding himself that it was just a pair of alpha werewolves lurking in the dark. Nothing to worry about. What the hell even was his life anymore when that becomes the thing he doesn’t have to worry about?

“Hello Stiles,” Aunt Dee called out from the darkness. It came as such a surprise that Stiles screamed and flailed so hard, Griffin almost dropped him. She chuckled at him then made a sound that must have been her gently clapping. When she did, they were suddenly engulfed in yellow light as candles lit up all throughout the room. Stiles wasn’t exactly shocked about how the room looked. Honestly it was exactly what he would have expected a witch’s lair to look like, although much larger than he’d anticipated. The walls were lined with shelves, cabinets, and counters. Almost every spot was taken up by a candle, jar of something precarious looking, a plant that looked like it might bite if you tried to pick it, or a book that was probably older than the written language. That wasn’t a stupid metaphor. It made perfect sense. There was one wall that only had a large candelabra leaning against it. It was easily 5 feet tall and there must have been nearly 20 long candles on it, but none of them were lit. In the center of the room was 3 long tables. They each had stools on one side of them, and they were covered in different runes and symbols that were used in witchcraft. Other than that, they were all clean. Except the table Aunt Dee was leaning against. She had a cutting board, a weird looking knife and some kind of root in front of her.

“Tell me dear,” she asked, “who is your werewolf friend?”

“Good to see you again Aunt Dee,” Griffin snarked about his lack of a greeting. She waved a hand at him dismissively before urging Stiles to speak.

“Uh,” he said suspiciously. He still didn’t believe she couldn’t see. “This is Scott.”

“Ah yes, the alpha.” She nodded at them before waving an arm at a row of stools and beckoning them to sit. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” Scott was a little shocked. How did she know they were coming? And who told her he was the alpha? Griffin admitted that he hadn’t told her anything. The only thing he’d mentioned was that he was forced to reveal his secret that night when they got into it with Mariah. Aunt Dee had already known all about the werewolves in Beacon Hills long before Griffin came to town. So when he told her about what happened, and the fact that a witch was involved, she made a leap at what their next step would be, and she was right. As she so often was.

Scott immediately asked for her help fighting Mariah. “I don’t know what you would expect me to do. I’m blind!” She found the idea laughable. Stiles tried to argue that she wasn’t really blind, but she just shushed him. She explained that she couldn’t see things and people, but she did see auras. That’s why it always seemed as if she still had her eyesight.

She couldn’t see Griffin or Scott, but she knew they were werewolves because their auras were kind of orange and it stuck out around their bodies, a bit of like fur. She could also tell they were alphas because within their outlines they were tinged red. Scott was also pure white at his center to indicate he was a true alpha.

She could tell that Stiles was a spark because he was so fucking bright. She couldn’t see his aura as clearly as she could the wolves because he was human and theirs just aren’t so strong. But he’s also a spark, so he’s got a bright light shining out from his center. It’s really big, too. A typical spark has that light, but it only shines about as wide as their hips. His however shone at least as far as the width of his outstretched arms. It was very unusual, though not unheard of. It just meant that he must have come from a long line of unignited sparks and the magic had built up in him. She predicted that if he had a child than that child would start off with a spark at least that big and it would only grow with them.

They asked her what she saw when she was in front of a witch. She found that hard to explain. It wasn’t so much something that she saw as something she experienced it. Their auras crackled and sparked, waxing and waning, constantly moving. Each one felt different and she couldn’t really choose a particular color to describe it. She just knew that Mariah’s aura felt angry and vengeful. Whatever she wanted, she didn’t want it just because.

Stiles asked how they could defeat her, but Aunt Dee’s only recommendation was to kill her. Scott was very against that idea, although Stiles was a little more open to it. Scott insisted that there must have been something that could weaken a witch. There must have been. Aunt Dee smiled at him sadly. Of course there was, but it wasn’t something they should expect to ever get their hands on. That was highly discouraging, but it was nearly the same thing they’d heard from Deaton.

Scott asked about the old legend Mariah seemed to be copying. With Stiles’ help they recounted the entire story and Aunt Dee immediately recognized it. However they had some of the details wrong. For starters it sounded as if the version they were told had been altered to make the werewolves seem like the heroes. The werewolves didn’t stay behind to save the town. When the druids diverted the magic from the pack, they had to pay a sacrifice to be able to match the strength of so many witches. Their sacrifice was that they were bound to the town and physically couldn’t leave.

Another discrepancy was that the story failed to point out the significance of the 5 locations that were chosen. It also didn’t mention that the first location was hit twice to complete the pentagram, the same way Mariah had done it. Each location was chosen specifically because it landed on a telluric current. Of course, in the legend they were referred to as the Veins of Gaea.

Telluric currents weren’t just subterranean electric currents. They also carried magic under the earth’s surface. The magic ebbed and flowed through them, empowering the entire world. It was a widely known fact amongst witches that the earth acts as a neutralizer. You could send any kind of magic into the earth and it nullifies it completely. Of course it would need some sort of magic in itself to do that. The telluric currents carried the magic through the earth the way your veins carry blood through your body. Hence the name Veins of Gaea.

Stiles explained how their recent battle with a Darach had led them to find out about the telluric currents. The Darach was committing human sacrifices on them. Aunt Dee explained how that made perfect senses. Druids and Darachs get their power from the earth. The sacrifices were a bid to gain more power so of course it made sense for them to occur in the places with the highest concentration of natural magic.

It made much less sense for a witch because their magic didn’t come from the earth, it came from within themselves. If they were turning to the earth for magic, they were going against all of their natural instincts. What they were doing was a desperate plea for power. It was usually only sought after for a specific means, but regardless it wreaked havoc on a witch’s psyche and even her physical body. It would turn them guiltless and sadistic, and fill them with a sense of grandeur. It would basically turn them into a sociopath.

Stiles was confused. The way Deaton explained it, he made it seem as if the witch’s darkness sent them on a quest for power when in reality it was the other way around. That made Aunt Dee laugh. Of course Deaton didn’t know what he was talking about. What druid ever did?

Aunt Dee had given them a lot of information. She promised that she would help them in any way she could, but for now she didn’t know what else to tell them. She knew that if they stopped Mariah’s spell last night, she was going to be looking for another opportunity to complete it. They needed to be on the lookout. If she started doing powerful magic in the immediate vicinity, Aunt Dee would be able to tell and warn them. Otherwise, they were pretty much on their own still.

She went back to her root and her peculiar knife. Knowing she couldn’t see, Stiles felt a little weird about letting her brandish the thing, despite the fact that she did seem to be dicing the root with a practiced precision.

“Is it safe to let her do that?” He asked Griffin, who had been pretty quiet throughout their discussion.

“Safer than it would be to try and stop her,” he explained. “You wanna get stabbed? Go ahead, go take it from her.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 29

The sheriff's department concludes their investigation of the school, determining mountain lions as the cause. School opens back up on Thursday and the students breeze through the rest of their finals with ease. Or as much ease as one can have when dealing with the aftermath of their worst nightmares come to life, while still dealing with the emotional turmoil of losing a friend, and all the while stressing about the witch who is determined to destroy the town. Seriously, when did life become this hard?

When their winter break officially started, Stiles, Isaac, Scott, and Kira didn't feel like they were on vacation. It seemed that protecting Beacon Hills became a full time job. Griffin, Lydia, and Danny were having a slightly easier time with it, but that was mainly because they were determined to squeeze every ounce of peace out of their break as possible.

Mariah had run for the hills and not left a trace of evidence to find her by. This left everyone in a panic because they knew she wasn't done yet. The longer it took for them to find her, the more time she had to complete the power draining spell.

Derek kept an eye on the Nemeton, occasionally convincing Peter to keep watch with him. Peter was surprisingly helpful about the whole thing. Usually trying to get him to help was like pulling teeth. Stiles tried to get Deaton to locate Mariah again with the pages he'd recovered of her spell book. This time, the spell truly did fail, and they were left with nothing again.

Stiles particularly was filled with nervous energy from the lack of progress. He was fidgeting and bouncing much more than usual. It got to the point that his dad considered altering his Adderall dosage, but he never went through with it, knowing it probably wouldn't have worked anyways.

Three days before Christmas, Stiles found himself all alone at his house. The Sheriff was busy at work, rounding up some idiots who thought they’d rob a bank for the holidays. Things had fallen into a sort of lull for the past few days, so everyone was spending time with family. With the exception of Derek and Isaac, who were at Derek’s loft throwing some type of a pity party for themselves. Stiles had thought about going to join them, but eventually changed his mind. There was no real reason for it. He just didn’t really want to go. He’d thought about visiting Griffin as well, but Aunt Dee’s new caretaker Lauren was being trained by him. He told Stiles he was more than welcome to come, but warned that he’d either be bored the whole time, or he’d be stuck as Aunt Dee’s slave number 2 for the day. Neither of those things sounded particularly appealing, so he told Griffin that he’d pass.

So there he was. All by himself. Full of energy and with nothing really to do. He’d cleaned his room just to waste some time, but when he did, he realized he’d knocked over a piece on his chessboard and it had rolled on the floor somewhere. He couldn’t find it, so he’d completely destroyed his room again looking for it, only to discover that it was still on the board the whole time. It just wasn’t where he thought he’d put it. He contemplated cleaning it up again, but really didn’t want to. He compromised by shoving everything under his bed and in the closet. He’d figure it out later. Whatever.

He headed downstairs to see if he could find something time consuming to cook. He poked around the fridge but nothing immediately jumped out at him. He started searching the cabinets for one of his mother’s old recipe books. He hadn’t bothered with them for a while. When he didn’t know how to make something he either guessed then hoped for the best, (which actually worked out more often than not, thank you very much) or he looked it up online. Ah the age of the internet. However, this time he didn’t know what he was looking for and figured the pretty pictures in a recipe book would give him an idea.

He couldn’t find any in the cabinets and checked the pantry. None there either. He figured his Dad must have moved them to the garage at some point and headed there next. He’d searched through just about every unmarked box in the entire garage and still couldn’t find any of them. Ugh. Well, he was looking for something time consuming. He was just about to give up when he had a thought. It was a rather obvious idea, really. He looked at one of the boxes marked “Klaudia’s things.” It was probably in one of those. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? He usually spent his time trying to ignore that those boxes were even there, so of course it hadn’t occurred to him to check one.

He climbed on top of the washing machine to pull down a big box on the shelf above it. The box was heavy, so it likely wasn’t full of clothes. He dropped it on the dryer than sat down cross legged beside it. In the back of his mind, he remembered that he’d shoved all his laundry under the bed and should probably go wash it. He shook the thought out of his head, knowing he was just trying to get out of going through the box. It’s just a box. A box of stuff. His mother’s stuff. No big deal.

As he thought of his mother’s things, his mind automatically drifted to the knife in the kitchen. The one he’d been pointedly avoiding using or even looking at since the last time he’d seen it. At the pool. In his mother’s hands. Plunging downward. To stab him in the chest. He recoiled from the memory so hard he nearly shoved the box onto the floor. His arms were covered in goosebumps and his nerves were immediately set on edge just thinking about it again. He knew there was a reason he was subconsciously avoiding those boxes.

The doorbell rang noisily and the sudden sound rattled his fraught nerves so much that he actually did fall off the washer from jumping so hard. He recovered quickly, standing back up and heading back inside to answer the door.

It was Kira. She was carrying a big wooden box and a pair of matching lidded bowls. Stiles allowed her in and asked what the heck she was doing. She explained that she was bored at home, but everyone else was busy with their families. She had been watching the news and knew the Sheriff was busy, so she figured Stiles was probably alone and bored too. She thought she’d come over and they could find something to occupy each other with. Stiles liked that idea, but asked what it was she had in mind, gesturing to the stuff loaded up in her arms.

She set it all down in the living room and revealed that the wooden box was actually a goban. She wanted to play Go? Kira noticed the look on his face and quickly told him that they didn’t have to. It was a stupid idea. She didn’t know why she thought he would have wanted to play Go of all things. They could just play checkers or something. Did he have any playing cards? Maybe they could watch a Marvel movie. He interrupted her flustered ramblings to tell her it was fine. He could play Go. After a few weeks straight of playing against a 1000 year old nogitsune in his mind, he warned that he would probably beat her easily. She laughed and took that as a challenge. She thought she was getting pretty good at it herself.

After shuffling around to find pillows, they both sat on the floor and started the game with Kira going first. It started off a little slowly and they chatted amicably to each other. Stiles was happy for the distraction, it couldn’t have come at a better moment. As the board slowly started to fill up, Stiles started asking Kira questions about all sorts of things. Anything really, to keep his mind away from the brief moments earlier. He asked her what her relationship with Scott was and she didn’t really know how to answer that.

“Well, we aren’t dating, but at the same time we aren’t not dating, if that makes any sense.” Stiles kinda got it. A little bit. Not really. “I dunno, I think we’re just both in a pretty weird place in that regard.” Kira explained. That was more understandable. Pretty much everything was left in a weird place, and the Wicked Witch of the Where-the-Hell-Ever showing up sure wasn’t leaving any opportunities to figure anything out.

Stiles could tell Kira really didn’t want to talk about it, so he asked her a few more questions and she answered them all with ease. She suddenly realized that she was losing, and blamed it on Stiles’ questions, so she started asking him questions of her own. They started off pretty generic, with a few revolving around Scott. Pretty soon, though, she was deviating from standard questions and getting into the deep, juicy stuff. Asking about his past and his relationship with his Dad. Stiles found himself wondering where all of this was coming from, but answered anyways. Kira’s distractions weren’t working, and she was still losing.

On the topic of dads, Stiles asked what hers was up to. Hopefully not putting together any difficult assignments for the next semester. Kira explained that he was out of town until tomorrow. He was visiting his family in Southern California. He didn’t speak to them much anymore because they became estranged when he married a Japanese woman. Apparently things were made worst by the fact that he had always been so interested in Japanese culture, history, and cuisine. Then on top of that, when he married Noshiko, he took her name. They felt like he was rejecting his Korean culture and they found it shameful. Regardless, every year he put his differences aside and visited them around Christmas. Although he found out the hard way that if he tried to bring Noshiko, then they wouldn’t let him inside. So Kira had been stuck at her house with her mother for the past few days.

Not that he was complaining, because he was actually enjoying their game, but Stiles couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t just play Go with Noshiko. Kira admitted that things with her mother had been pretty strained ever since the business with the nogitsune. After dealing with Mariah’s specter, she had been outright avoiding her mother altogether. She just felt like she’d handled the whole thing so terribly. Kira would have never forgiven her if she had killed Stiles. Noshiko should have told Kira about her kitsune heritage too. Keeping that secret wasn’t doing her any favors. If she’d known about it, she could have done more to help.

Stiles reminded her that she’d helped plenty. After all, she technically had been the one to defeat the nogitsune. Sure Scott’s bite had weakened it, but she was the one who’d left him incapacitated and able to be captured. She was the one who’d released his hold on Stiles’ body and kept him from completely draining his life force away. Kira should go easier on her mother. She’d made a mistake with Rhys and she had been trying to fix it in the only way she knew how. As far as keeping the kitsune secret, Stiles was certain she hadn’t done it to leave Kira with a sort of handicap. She was just trying to do what she thought was best for Kira. Apparently she’d been wrong, but that seems to be a recurring theme amongst their group of friends. Adults that lie, and just never seem to know what the fuck they’re doing.

That made Kira laugh. It did seem to be the truth, didn’t it? Noshiko definitely fucked a lot of things up, but she’s trying to help now. Kira should be more forgiving. She’s always been there for her before, she should let her be there now. And she can’t blame her mother for Mariah’s magic. It was meant to be a manifestation of everything she’s most afraid of. Not one part of it was real. Besides, Noshiko is her mother. She only gets one.

Stiles’ advice did make Kira feel a lot better. She smiled at him kindly and he smiled back, but his seemed a bit more devious. He placed one last white stone on the board and looked down at it smugly. They were all out of moves now. Kira glared back at him. She didn’t need to count up the points to know she’d lost. By a longshot. Like really. It was almost embarrassing. Stiles teased her, saying it was too bad he hadn’t put money on the game. Really, what a shame. He could be rich by now. Kira hung her head in shame and he offered to make her food so she would feel better.

She politely declined. It was dinner time by now and she figured she ought to have dinner with her mom. It would be the nice thing to do. Stiles clapped her on the shoulder encouragingly, “That’s the spirit,” then helped her clean up the game. She gave him a quick thankful hug before scooping up her things and insisting they hang out again. Next time she’ll bring pizza. That sounded perfect to Stiles, and he saw her out.

Once she was gone, he was all alone again. He went back to the kitchen to make something to eat. He still wanted to make something elaborate for the sake of doing it, but settled for making a sandwich with lots of toppings, and grabbing 3 or 4 different bags of chips. He went to carry his spoils up the stairs to his room, but as he crossed the living room, he couldn’t help but think of what he’d said to Kira about her mother. She can’t be held accountable for Mariah’s magic.

He turned around and carried his food back into the garage, sitting on top of the washer again. He took 3 huge bites of his sandwich before finally working up enough courage to reach forward and open the box beside him. Sitting right at the top were her old bed sheets. He figured it would be too much to ask that they still smelled like her, but sniffed them anyways, choking and spluttering when he got a big whiff of dust. He set them aside and returned to investigating the contents. He was surprised at how much he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten about the things that were in there. It was more along the lines that he’d never seen them. There were a bunch of notebooks and loose leaf papers, and pressed against the side was a small photo album.

He almost didn’t dare open the album. He really didn’t want to see any new pictures of his mother. Looking at the ones he’d seen nearly every day of his life was hard enough. He didn’t know if he could handle anything new. He took a deep breath and removed the album anyways. At least if he cried, he could get it out of his system now before his dad got home, and nobody would have to know.

He opened it up and was surprised to see a picture of his dad in his deputy uniform. Written on the inside cover in big plain letters was the name “John.” Underneath it was “husband.” Under that was “officer,” and under that was “sheriff” with a big swirly question mark and a smiley face. He turned the page to see a picture of his younger self laughing and reaching up at the camera. He remembered that day. His hair was just a little bit too long, but he didn’t want to cut it. His mother teased him that if she saw it in his eyes just once, she was going to cut it in his sleep. So, being a smart ass even then, he’d stolen one of her hair ties and pulled his bangs into one curly pigtail. Klaudia had rushed to grab her camera and snapped the picture, threatening blackmail for years. He got his first buzzcut the next day. On the opposite page was his full name in the same big plain letters. It was underlined 3 times and beneath it read “NOT STILES!” in all caps. Beneath that, “son,” and beneath that “genius.” He couldn’t help but smile at the thought of his mother thinking him a genius even then. He flipped through the next few pages of family members that had still been alive at the time, all labeled accordingly. He also found a picture of Melissa that was curiously labeled “Melissa, sister, nurse, best mother ever.” After that was a picture of young Scott with his usual big dopey grin on his face as Stiles handed him a popsicle. “Scott, Stiles’ best friend, Melissa’s son, sweetest kid ever, asthma.”

There were plenty more pictures. Not all of them were people. There was also pictures of places in Beacon Hills and the surrounding area that held significance such as their home, the hospital, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Klaudia’s favorite restaurant. For a moment, Stiles couldn’t figure out what exactly this photo album had been for. As he contemplated it for a moment, he was hit with a sudden flashback of the first time his mother had called him Stiles.

She always referred to him as Stiles to other people, simply because it was much easier than explaining his actual name then listening to all the Americans butchering it. But she had never actually called him Stiles. It was right after she had been starting to spend a lot of time at the hospital, but before Stiles had become curious enough to snoop around and find out what was wrong. It was toward the end of the day and he’d been laughing with his mom because she kept forgetting words all day. This time it was refrigerator. She called it “that food box thing. You know, the cold one,” gesticulating to it wildly and trying to laugh it off.

Stiles had corrected her with a smile, then gone to grab the food she’d been asking for. She told him thanks, but she’d hesitated toward the end and called him son. Even then, he’d found it strange. She never called him son. His Dad did all the time, but not his mom. After thinking about it, he realized that she hadn’t called him by his name the entire day. That was strange, most days he had to beg her not to say it in public. Sometimes he begged her not to say it at all, but he knew better than to expect that by now.

He’d gone to set the table for her but accidentally dropped a plate. It shattered on the floor and he immediately reached down to pick up the pieces, but his mother shouted at him. She had obviously meant to call out his name, but stumbled over a bunch of different letters, making an awkward rolling sound in the back of her throat that turned into a frustrated screech. It was enough to make him freeze in surprise, so finally she just gave up and called him Stiles. “Stiles! Don’t touch that!” She had looked so sad and defeated to have to say the word. “I’ll get it. Don’t move.” She rushed to get the broom and when she came back, she looked like she was on the verge of crying. He was really confused, but after hearing her call him Stiles, he knew that his mother had forgotten his name.

He looked at her sadly as she moved around him, cleaning up the mess. When she’d finally gotten it all up, she saw the expression he was wearing and just knew that he understood exactly what had just happened. The color drained out of her face and she looked as if someone had punched her in the chest. Thinking he’d made his mother sad, Stiles rushed to apologize about the plate, but she cut him off with a hug. “It’s okay!” She consoled him. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.” He could tell she was crying on him now and he started to cry too. He didn’t completely understand, but he knew something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong and she was trying to pretend everything was fine. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She kept repeating the words and at the time Stiles thought she was trying to comfort him. Thinking back on it now, he realized that she’d been saying the words more to herself than to him. The album made perfect sense. She had been forgetting her words and that was her way of trying to remember the important stuff.

Stiles placed the little book in his lap and continued rummaging through the box. He rustled through the papers and discovered that there was at least 12 different composition notebooks in there. He pulled one out at random and began flipping through it. It was full of a bunch of notes written in Polish and English. They were categorized with some system that must have made sense to Klaudia, but just seemed random to Stiles. There was everything in the notebook from interesting things Stiles had said that day, to minor alterations to recipes, or even just song lyrics she’d thought of. Stiles had just read through an entire Gerald Levert song with all the pronouns changed to John when he turned the page again and a folded piece of stationery fell out.

He picked it up and unfolded it delicately. The paper was old and flimsy so he was very careful with it. He couldn’t help but feeling a bit like Nicholas Cage unraveling the Declaration of Independence as he did so. He discovered that it was a letter written to him. Judging by the date it touted, it was written while his mother was still pregnant with him. It started off with a joke apologizing about his name. It explained how John was extremely resistant to the one she wanted, but too bad for him. She does what she wants. Maybe he can pull a good nickname out of it. It made Stiles laugh quietly imagining his mother saying that, and it only got funnier from there.

About halfway through the letter it started to turn really sappy and sweet as she went on to describe how much she loved him already. How she would always love him, and don’t tell John but she might love Stiles just a tiny bit more than she loved him. She knew that her love would only multiply exponentially as soon as he was out of her stomach and no longer kicking at her ribcage and punching her in the bladder. It would be super nice if he never did that again. She continued on to say that it would never matter to her if he was gay, straight, bi, transgender, or asexual as long as he always knew that he was hers. That made his heart swell. Additionally, he’d better be a gentlemen to whoever he dated. And if whoever he brought home didn’t treat him right, they ought to know that his father was a cop and knew how to get away with murder. She went on to describe that nothing could ever change the way she felt about him. He would always be her precious baby, even if he got a girl pregnant in high school, was convicted of a felony, or turned into a werewolf. Although she would strongly advise against all of those things. That last one had him laughing out loud.

The letter wrapped up with her reminding him how excited she was for him to arrive and apologizing again for his name. But seriously, he should just learn to live with it because no one was convincing her out of it.

It wasn’t until he saw the little drops fall onto the paper that he realized he was crying. He’d been crying throughout nearly the whole letter and he reached up to wipe away the tears with his sleeve. Okay. He folded the letter up and packed it back away in the box. That was pretty much all he could handle for now. He put the sheets back and closed the box up, moving to put it back in its place above the washer and nearly stepping on his sandwich in the process.

When he climbed back down, he somehow felt a bit lighter. He hadn’t realized how his run in with Mariah’s specter had been weighing down on him so much. After reading the letter he felt so much better about it. Nothing anyone could say or any lies anyone could tell would take away the fact that his mother cared so much about him. He had already known that, but now he was reassured and felt confident about it. He made to go back inside, but stopped as he realized he hadn’t put the little photo album away. He thought for a moment about climbing back on top of the washer, but just shoved it under his arm before grabbing his food and heading back upstairs.

Chapter Text

Chapter 30

The final days leading up to Christmas were mostly quiet. There was no progress with finding Mariah and after the botched bank robbery attempt, it seemed even the ordinary crime settled down for the holiday.

Christmas morning at the Stilinski house went the same as usual. They exchanged gifts while eating breakfast in the living room. The only major differences were that Stiles kept sending selfies with his presents to Griffin and the Sheriff received an assortment of wolfsbane bullets from Chris Argent.

Additionally, John ventured to ask Stiles where it was he got all his money to buy his gifts because as far as he knew, Stiles’ only job seemed to be making John’s blood pressure spike, and he certainly wasn’t getting paid for that. Stiles avoided the question by offering him more bacon. Did he want sausage too? He’s got orange juice too. The kind with the sugar added. Ooh la la. And he was thinking about making steak for dinner. Or maybe fried chicken. With like, a salad though. Or not, whatever.

John rolled his eyes and let the subject drop. As long as he wasn’t dealing drugs. That was what mattered. Although, he was holding him to that steak. He brought it up, he was stuck with it now.

XxxxxxxxxX

In the McCall household, Isaac was woken up bright and early to help make tamales. He didn’t exactly mind. It was his first Christmas without his father and although it was all weird and new, he found himself enjoying it. Things were always so simple and easygoing with the McCalls, he strongly preferred it to the stiff, strained Christmases he was used to. When they exchanged presents, he was surprised to have received any at all, but was happy that Melissa liked the necklace he’d gotten her and that Scott liked the lacrosse playbook.

XxxxxxxxxX

At the Martin’s, Lydia was very pleased with this year’s haul. Her room was filled with boxes. Name brand clothing, designer shoes, haute couture jewelry, certificates for customizations for her car, etc., etc. She was busy documenting it all on Instagram and texting her sister while her parents argued in the living room.

XxxxxxxxxX

At the Yukimura’s Kira was getting along much better with her mother. She still couldn’t bring herself to take things 100 percent back to the way they had used to be, but she was doing her best and her mother certainly seemed to appreciate her for it. They spent their morning exchanging gifts in their pajamas, and Noshiko offered to make breakfast. Mr. Yukimura didn’t think that was a good idea and rushed to make it himself before she could insist. The last time he’d let her cook, it took them 3 weeks and a whole lot of money to remodel the kitchen. They didn’t need to experience that trauma again. Especially considering this house was still pretty new.

XxxxxxxxxX

At around 3:30, Danny was in the middle of creaming his sister at the new game she got for her Xbox 360 when he received a mysterious group text from Stiles. He paused the game to read it, but she snatched the controller from him and handed it off to their kid brother and she started cheating. “Kokahele ia paka!” he cursed at her in Hawaiian. If he tried to take the controller from Andy, he’d start crying and they’d all be in trouble, and Naomi knew it. She laughed at him deviously as she continued to cheat. Bitch. He gave up and chucked a pillow at her head, calling her a sore loser before heading up to his room (that he had to share with Naomi while she was back from college! Thanks a lot parents for converting her room into a home gym! They couldn’t have waited until she graduated?).

He read the message, it was directions for a plan to converge upon Derek’s loft at around 8:30 and to bring food and the ugliest Christmas sweater they owned. He promised if anyone wasn’t there by 8:31 that he would be waiting outside their house by 8:39 prepared to drag them out by the scruff of their necks and if they wanted to go all canine on him he was bringing a roll of newspaper and a shock collar. They could just guess which one he was going to use to convince them. He received a series of disgruntled compliances and a remark from Lydia about not owning anything that was ugly, then sent a response of his own. He realized that the only person who hadn’t received the text was Derek. Stiles was up to something fishy.

XxxxxxxxxX

The clock struck 8:31 exactly when Derek realized Stiles was coming up the stairs. He almost got up to lock the door, but figured it hardly mattered now that he knew Stiles had a key. He had to shake him down one day to get that from him. Not that a key ever really stopped anyone from coming inside anyways. Maybe he should move. He sighed and snapped his book shut as he heard a trail of footsteps coming behind Stiles and just knew that whatever he was up to, he’d invited everyone along. Fabulous. Couldn’t he just spend his Christmas in subdued silence? This was the first Christmas he was spending without Laura and the last thing he wanted was a bunch of noisy teenagers pestering him and stinking up his house.

When Stiles slid the door open, it took every ounce of self-control he had in his body not to laugh so hard he threw up. “What the fuck are you wearing?” he asked, standing up. He was doing really well at not laughing, but Stiles could tell he was smirking with his eyes and grinned back goofily before stepping inside.

“Merry Christmas!” he called. He jumped down the three steps and clapped his hands above his head forming a perfect Christmas tree with his sweater. It was green and wrapped in tinsel in just such a way that it looked like it wrapped around the sleeves and traveled all the way to the bottom. It was covered in little balls to serve as the ornaments, and he had a golden star on top of his head that he lifted up to be the star on the tree. Beneath his tree sweater he was wearing the most flamboyant pair of jeans Derek had ever seen in his life. He imagined they were meant to emulate wrapping paper but they just looked ridiculous. They were candy apple red with a pattern of bright multicolored ornaments and Christmas lights printed on them. Stiles walked right up to him merrily, getting within his bubble. He wasn’t touching him, but he was definitely closer than necessary, although Derek really hardly noticed he was in his space. Stiles was grinning up at him, but Derek had to turn his head away to contain himself. He couldn’t even look at this fool. “Like my outfit?” he asked, completely reveling in Derek’s reaction.

“Where did you even get that monstrosity?”

“I dunno, I think I got it from a thrift store or something. I don’t really remember. I just found it in the back of my closet.”

Derek rolled his eyes so hard his whole head came with it and he allowed himself a tiny little smirk. One would have thought he’d given Stiles a puppy judging by his reaction. “It should have stayed in the back of your closet,” Derek huffed. “Please tell me it doesn’t light up.”

Stiles looked at Derek as if he was a freaking genius. “I didn’t even think of that!”

Derek spared a glance past the ridiculous star he’d put back on his head to see the others coming in, loaded down with food but also wearing ridiculous Christmas sweaters. Although none of them were anywhere near as ridiculous as Stiles’ was. He didn’t think that was possible. He spotted Griffin wearing a pair of reindeer antlers and it suddenly became a lot easier to hold back his smile. “I can’t with you,” Derek shook his head and walked away toward the others. “What are you all doing here?”

“Ask Stiles,” Danny quipped. “Can I take this off now?” he begged, tugging at the tropical Santa riding a red surfboard on a wave of hibiscus flowers that was printed on his sweater. “I mean I’m sure my Tutu was happy to see me wearing it, but this thing is stupid.”

“No!” Stiles reprimanded him. “You keep it on! All of you!” He pointed at everyone, but Lydia especially. Her sweater wasn’t Christmasy, it was more wintery, and it was so big it was more like a dress. She wore it slung off her shoulder with black leggings and a pair of Uggs. It actually wasn’t ugly at all, she looked quite fashionable. She wasn’t lying when she said she didn’t own anything ugly, but she complained about it the whole way up the stairs anyways.

Stiles turned around to take a big piece of Tupperware away from Griffin and opened it, showing it to Derek. Inside was a cake with white icing and the words “Happy Birthday Derek” spelled out across the top in Stiles’ sloppy handwriting. Scott came over to peek inside and was taken aback by the message.

“Today’s your birthday?” He asked stunned. Everyone else looked over surprised, they were all wondering why they didn’t know that. “Oh, I didn’t know!”

“That would be because I didn’t tell you,” Derek explained. “I didn’t tell anyone.” He rounded on Stiles. “How did you know?”

“I have my ways,” he answered cryptically, heading to put the cake on the counter in the kitchen.

Griffin smirked at Stiles. “You know,” he told Derek. “He said nearly the same thing when I asked him how he got a key to my house.”

“He has a key to your house too?” Scott asked. Stiles is unbelievable. “Is there anyone whose house you don’t have a key to?” Stiles thought about it as he rummaged through Derek’s cabinets and began pulling out drinks Derek didn’t remember buying.

“I don’t have a key to Kira’s house,” he said pensively. “Or Danny’s yet.”

“Yet?” Danny asked while unloading his food on the counter. “Why? Why? Just… why?”

“Hey,” Stiles defended. “Not everyone’s got werewolfy powers and can just climb through whatever windows they want. Some of us need to take the easy route.”

“Why do you need to be in our houses anyways?”

“Well, how else am I supposed to keep up with these hooligans?” Derek muttered something about Stiles being the only hooligan in the room that only the werewolves could hear and they all started laughing. “Hey!” Stiles scolded. “No werewolf powers!” Derek crossed his arms and threw Stiles his patented Grumpy Cat Frown, so he changed the subject. “So, you hungry?”

“I ordered a pizza,” Derek lied. “Now get this crap and your stupid sweater and get out.” He pointed to do the door, but nobody was listening.

“You’re not going to be by yourself on Christmas,” Stiles explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And you aren’t eating pizza. You’re eating steak.”

“Why am I eating steak?” Derek scrunched his face in disbelief.

“Because I made steak, Derek. Keep up.” Duh. Derek rolled his eyes one final time and gave up. There was no point arguing with him. Of course, he could physically remove enough of them to get the point across and make the rest of them leave, but he figured it wasn’t worth the trouble. Besides, Stiles may be an idiot with boundary issues (seriously, he really needed to get that key back) but he had managed to pick Derek’s mood up a bit. Although he’d never let him know that.

Stiles started warming up and doling out food and he commissioned Griffin and Lydia to help him. Which really meant that Griffin and Danny helped while Lydia made the plates look pretty and took pictures. They really did have a cultural hodge podge of dishes with things like tamales, kalua pork, and some Japanese dish that was delicious but made Kira laugh when everyone tried to pronounce it. Derek was the only one to get it right, but Lydia got it pretty close. Eventually she gave up and just told them to call it chicken.

Someone had brought an mp3 dock and after a brief argument over whose music they should listen to, Lydia vetoed everyone, hooked her phone to it and started playing Icona Pop. (But she only played it once, so Danny didn’t threaten to gouge his ears out.) Pretty quickly they had themselves a little party going. Even though Derek acted more exasperated at them than anything, they could all tell that he was actually grateful that they were there. He may have even been enjoying himself a little bit. Just like a tiny bit.

Once everyone was stuffed to the brim and either chatting or dancing to the music, Derek stole away into the kitchen to grab a drink, and maybe just a little more of the kalua pork. Stiles noticed and followed him, leaning against the counter near him. “See,” he asked, bumping his elbow with his own. “Isn’t this better than pizza by yourself?” It really was, but Derek didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

He shrugged. “Yeah, sure. I guess so.”

“You guess so?” Stiles wasn’t having that. “I’m awesome, Derek! Just accept it.” Derek shook his head, the tiniest hint of a grin peeking out.

“You’re… something.” He bumped Stiles’ elbow back.

“Something awesome.” Derek just huffed out a laugh at him. “Admit it. You’re glad we’re here. You should thank me.” Stiles nodded at him. “Go ahead. Just say it: ‘Thank you Stiles. You’re so awesome. I think you’re the awesomest person in the world. In fact, I think we should just rename you Awesome. It’s so much easier to remember and people will quit asking you what your name is.’” Stiles looked up at him expectantly, then raised a hand to his ear when he didn’t say anything and just looked at him like he was an idiot. “Go on,” he urged.

“You are the most ridiculous person I have ever met in my life,” Derek responded, making Stiles laugh. “But thank you,” he added seriously. That caught Stiles off guard. He hadn’t actually expected him to say it. Stiles caught his eye and he looked at him with a smaller smile. He actually looked quite touched by Derek’s words. Derek’s eyes softened in return and he opened his mouth to say something else, but changed his mind at the last second, reaching to pull the star off of his head instead. “So can you take these stupid clothes off now?” he complained. “They’re giving me a headache!”

“Hey!” Stiles looked affronted. “I like my stupid clothes.” He snatched his star back. “Besides, I didn’t bring anything else.” Just then Griffin entered the kitchen laughing, having clearly heard at least the tail end of their conversation.

“I did,” he offered. “I knew he was going to try and wear that all night.”

“But your clothes don’t fit me,” Stiles argued.

“We’ll figure something out,” Griffin smirked at him.

“Please,” Derek reached an arm out and shoved Stiles toward Griffin. “Take him away.” Stiles and Griffin both laughed as he reached out and caught him. “Those pants are so loud, they’re making my ears hurt.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 31

Griffin had indeed brought extra clothes. It took a good deal of squirming and neck kisses to convince him, but he’d eventually gotten Stiles into a plain black sweater with the sleeves rolled back. He had to promise that the next time he took Stiles’ pants off that he was going to blow him so good that he cried in order to get him into a pair of dark wash skinny jeans. He still wore the star on top of his head, though. Griffin had to leave him with something.

The sweater was definitely Griffin’s, but Stiles swore the jeans must have been new. Either that or they were Aunt Dee’s. They fit way too well to be his. In fact they fit really well. Like, really well. Danny had to do a double take when he watched Stiles and Griffin walk out of the bathroom together. Seriously? Since when did Stiles have a booty? He covered up his staring by complaining that Stiles changed, but he wouldn’t allow any of them to. Stiles argued that it was against his will, he wanted to keep being a tree. Lydia seemed to be paying particularly close attention as he walked across the room as well, but he didn’t notice. Griffin did and he couldn’t help but to grin smugly. As the two of them filed into the main area of the loft, both Scott and Isaac jerked their heads toward them when they caught the scent of alpha entering the room. Derek, however was pointedly ignoring the both of them and examining the cake Stiles made as if it held the keys to the universe between its many fluffy layers.

Misunderstanding, Stiles thought he must have wanted a piece and trotted over to him merrily. He stepped right into his bubble, like he always does, and reached across him to pull a knife from the block. Derek’s mouth snapped shut into a firm line and his eyes flashed blue before he took a few steps backward instinctively. All the sensors in his head said “Alpha’s property. Back off!” and that’s exactly what he did until he realized what he was doing.

Stiles noticed him recoiling from him and asked what was wrong. Derek’s response was cut off by the sound of Lydia gasping loudly and dropping to her knees with her hands clapped over her ears. She moaned in pain at whatever sound she was hearing and everyone rushed to her side to see what was wrong.

All of their voices sounded far away to her and they were warped as if she was underwater. Overshadowing their voices was a sound like thousands of leaves rustling over each other at the same time. It was so loud that it burned her ears and she wanted to scream in pain. She could feel herself growing nauseous and she had butterflies built up under her diaphragm as she fought against the sensation. Finally, she gave in. The noise was too loud and she couldn’t take it, so she opened her mouth and let loose a screech that had all the werewolves in the room ducking and covering their ears protectively. Even Danny, Kira, and Stiles clutched their ears against the sound.

Finally, she stopped and the rustling was gone. Instead, she heard a hundred voices whispering over each other. They were saying something, but she still couldn’t understand them because they all talking at the same time. “I can’t hear you!” she told the voices. “One at a time,” she commanded them. She stood up and walked across the room toward the source of the voices. Stiles and Scott tried to ask her what she was hearing, but she waved them away as she realized what she was walking to. She found herself in front of the mp3 dock. She cut the music off, and the voices stopped.

Danny tried to ask her if she was okay, but stopped when the dock turned itself back on. There wasn’t any music playing this time and Lydia could hear the voices clearly now. They were chanting in unison. Chanting a name. She gasped as she heard it and span around frantically to repeat the message to the rest of the room.

“Mariah!” She shouted. “Mariah’s coming!”

The words barely made it out of her mouth before a sound like splintering wood rang out through the loft. A circle of flames suddenly rose up from the floor in the middle of the room and a thin smoke began spilling out from inside of it. A hooded figure started rising from the floor, slowly revealing itself. Scott, Isaac, Derek, and Griffin rushed to the forefront, pushing Danny, Lydia and Stiles toward the door. Kira dashed across the room to retrieve her sword from her bag and thanked her lucky stars that she’d started taking it with her wherever she went ever since their first incident with Mariah. She unsheathed it quickly and ran to take her place near Scott, poised and ready for an attack.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Mariah cooed as she was fully manifested from the floor. She dropped the cloak off of her back dramatically and it vanished into the ground as she revealed a sexy Santa costume underneath. “Sorry!” she laughed at them jovially as if she’d just come for a chat as opposed to ruining their day and possibly trying to kill them. Again. “So sorry, I couldn’t help it. You see, I just love a dramatic entrance.” She scrunched her face up in false chagrin at them big and raised a hand. “Guilty as charged… But you see,” she continued, “You guys robbed me of that last time. So I figured I better do it up big for this one.” She nodded at them condescendingly, making the auburn bun on top of her head bounce up and down. “Go on,” she urged them. “Tell me. What did you think? Did you like it?” The only response she got was a growl from Isaac and Derek each, and Kira changing from a defense position to an attack stance. She simply laughed again. Good Lord, she was annoying. “I’ll take that as a no. Touchy…”

Mariah stepped out of the circle and the line of defense around her all shifted positions to be closer. “Now, now,” she scolded. “Don’t be like that. It’s Christmas time. I come with good tidings. Tis the season of giving, right? I thought I’d give you all a present.”

“We don’t want anything from you!” Stiles shouted from his spot near the door.

“Well, you stopped my spell before and have since been actively trying to get in my way, so… Too late for that!” She smirked at them evilly and shouted a spell. “Daemon lupus inimici sanguine festum ex inferno!”

As soon as she opened her mouth, the entire front line launched right at her, swinging claws and sword. They all swung right through her and continued to the other side as if she wasn’t there. She flickered in and out of view like a hologram with the transmission interrupted and laughed at them all again. “Oh, come on! You’ve gotta give me a little more credit than that!” She reached downward to grab something beneath the floor and outside of the view—or rather outside of the scope of whatever projection spell she’d been using—and rose back up with the cloak in her hand.

She tied it back on and her spell started taking effect. Another cloud of smoke arose from within the circle of flames and another, much larger figure began rising from the floor. It was covered in fur with the head of a wolf and glowing red eyes. It had humanoid arms with clawed fingers and canine legs sticking out of a pair of denim trunks. Its fangs were razor sharp and dripping with saliva as it roared viciously at them.

“Merry Christmas, bitches,” Mariah sang at them. She snapped her fingers and disappeared like a light along with the flaming circle, leaving behind no trace of ever having been there. Except for the monster alpha that was huffing and growling at them. That was definitely still there.

Chapter Text

Chapter 32

Scott turned his head toward the humans near the entryway and instructed them to run. They darted out the door, but apparently that wasn’t the best choice. The alpha leapt over the others’ heads and went right after the humans, following them out the very same door. They all chased right after it, Griffin cutting right to the front. The humans were rushing down the steps, but the alpha was still on the landing. Griffin leapt into the air and kicked the anthropomorph over the ledge, sending the both of them falling down the stairwell.

Derek and Scott jumped down the stairs behind them while Kira and Isaac ushered the humans back inside the loft. Stiles led them up the spiral staircase to the roof and Isaac and Kira followed the others down the stairs.

The stairwell was only 3 floors high because it only led to the elevators as opposed to the other one, which led all the way down. So Griffin and the alpha were nearly unfazed by the fall. The alpha threw Griffin into a wall and stood straight up, but Scott and Derek were right on their heels and were able to strong-arm him down the hallway toward the elevators.

Griffin recovered quickly and followed them, joined by Isaac and Kira. Scott and Derek were able to slam him bodily into the wall, sending cracks and splits up the drywall and making a ding sound as he hit the elevators down button. He pushed them right back off and they went flying halfway back down the hall.

Isaac and Kira closed in on him quickly and came swinging their claws and sword. Isaac was able to land a few lacerations on his chest, while Kira sliced a deep gash into his forearm as he went to protect his face. Griffin came in behind them and punched the alpha so hard in the face that his head slammed into the metal doors and they could hear bones crunching.

The alpha roared at them again, this time it was strong enough to echo off the walls and it brought the betas to their knees. Kira knelt down to it instinctively as well, but Griffin and Scott were unaffected. Griffin reached his arm back and punched him in the face again, effectively cutting off his roar. He had hit in just the right time that the elevator doors swung open and he fell inside. Scott and Griffin darted in after him and the doors slid shut behind them before anyone else could get in.

Kira looked at the numbers on the wall above them and saw the number 1 light up as the arrow began to slowly swing toward it. Derek raced to the stairwell leading down and beckoned the others to it. Kira sprinted ahead of them and without hesitation, leapt over the railing and went plunging straight down the middle. She oriented herself mid-drop so that she was falling diagonally and would land on the railing a few floors down instead of careening all the way to the bottom. As soon as her feet made contact, she pushed off the new railing and leapt down a few more floors to the next one with a little flip. Derek copied her and shot down the stairwell in the same manner. Isaac was a little more hesitant, but followed their lead, jumping down on the railings, skipping the mid-air flips.

As quickly as they descended the stairs, Derek and Kira made it to the bottom floor before the 3 alphas. They rushed to the elevator with a few more seconds to spare before the alphas came bursting through the doors in a cacophony of growls. Isaac joined them right after and the 5 of them were able to corral the anthropomorph into the parking garage.

When Griffin and Scott emerged from the elevator, they were both sporting a fair amount of cuts and gashes. Their ugly sweaters were shredded and hanging off them, and they were covered in blood. Griffin had a deep bite mark on his upper arm, but the alpha was sporting 3 or 4 of his own. The others had only caught a glimpse, but the inside of the elevator was destroyed and covered in nearly as much blood as the boys were.

Getting the alpha into the garage turned out to be a near fatal mistake. As soon as he found himself with all the extra room, his ability to fight all 5 of them off increased exponentially. He was better able to avoid their punches and swinging claws when he had more room to dodge. His attacks and bites became more powerful when he was able to put more momentum behind them. He punched, slashed and clawed at all of them, overwhelming them easily.

The alpha sliced open Derek and Isaac’s chests with the same wide sweeping motion. The gashes were deep and they collapsed to the floor, bleeding profusely and struggling to breathe. Griffin ran straight toward the alpha, but was easily swatted away. Right behind him, Kira was flying straight at him. While Griffin was in the alpha’s face, Scott had lifted her off the ground and used his werewolf strength to throw her directly at him, sword first. But the alpha was too fast. He dodged out of the way at the last second and grabbed her by the leg, flinging her across the parking garage and crashing into a cluster of cars, setting off multiple alarms.

Scott started to bum rush the alpha, but was slashed back and sent him flying into a support beam. His back snapped between his upper shoulder blades and he crumpled to the floor, paralyzed from the neck down.

Griffin was the only one left. The alpha rounded on him and roared loud again, making the betas eyes flash a second time. Griffin roared back just as loud, keeping the betas eyes lit. The alpha stepped back a little at the response. He wasn’t actually intimidated by the sound, more just surprised at the fierceness of it. The alpha roared back again and Griffin retaliated in kind. They stayed there for a moment, having a roaring match, each one trying to intimidate the other into submission. They kept taking steps toward each other until they were finally in each other’s faces.

They were at a bit of a stalemate, neither backing down and neither overpowering the other, so the alpha swung an arm out and clobbered Griffin across the face. It sent him flying, but Griffin recovered quickly and came back with a butterfly kick that sent the alpha straight to the ground.

The alpha got back up just as quickly as Griffin did and swung wide with his left arm, like he did to get Isaac and Derek. Griffin dodged to the right, but that was exactly what the alpha wanted him to do. When he leapt to the right, the alpha came swinging his snout the opposite direction and Griffin slammed his neck right into his mouth. He clamped down with a scissor bite and lifted him into the air, thrashing him back and forth. He was biting deep, all the way to the bone, and blood was gushing out and spraying everywhere.

Griffin roared in pain, losing his control and starting to wolf out. Before it could reach further than his brow, a shot rang out and the alpha let him go. He dropped to the ground and reverted back to his human face as he hit the concrete. He turned around to see who had shot the alpha and was shocked to see Sheriff Stilinski standing near the entrance to the parking garage.

The shot was enough to wound the alpha, but not enough to stop it. It turned around and started running at the Sheriff. Thinking quickly, John reached down for the small off duty gun he kept in his pant leg. When he had been called in to Derek’s building for a disturbance that sounded like wild dogs fighting, he immediately loaded the pistol with some of the wolfsbane bullets Argent had gotten him for Christmas. He fired two of those shots at the anthropomorph closing in on him. The first one hit, but the second one missed. The wolfsbane however, was enough to deter the alpha and send him running the opposite direction. He took off out the exit of the garage and disappeared into the night.

When he was gone for a few moments and didn’t appear to be coming back, the Sheriff grabbed the radio on his shoulder and reported in to the station that he’d scared the animals off, but wasn’t able to get a good enough look to see how many there were. He was building a cover story already. He mentioned that at least one of them was definitely injured and they’d destroyed a lot of property. So the station said they were sending back up to come take statements, and animal control just in case.

If everyone thought the blood spattered everywhere belonged to the dogs, then no one would ask questions when Derek and the teenagers were perfectly healed too soon. He just hoped that nobody found a reason to test the blood, then they might run into trouble. Maybe he could convince them to get Deaton to do it if they did. Either way, that meant he had to get them out of there and fast.

He ran up to Griffin, who was bleeding the most, but Griffin stood up, insisting he was fine and told him to help the others. Derek and Isaac were next in line, crumpled on the ground together, Derek still gasping. The Sheriff helped Derek up just as Stiles, Danny, and Lydia came running out of the elevator. They had heard all the roaring and the gunshots from the roof. When they saw the alpha run out of the garage but that no one was following it, they headed straight to the elevator.

They were all shocked to see the Sheriff there, but he told them to get the others back up to the loft as discreetly as possible and he would question them about what happened later on. Danny went to rouse Kira. She was a little woozy, but able to walk on her own. Isaac needed help off the ground, but could manage walking with a limp. Griffin was able to lift Scott with his good shoulder and carried him to the elevator. That left Danny and Stiles to carry Derek while the Sheriff waited for his back up.

Chapter Text

Chapter 33

Stiles was running himself ragged bouncing around Derek’s loft, trying to take care of everyone at the same time. He was running back and forth getting hot water to clean everyone’s wounds, chasing after anyone who moved with cleaning supplies so Derek wouldn’t have to worry about bloodstains everywhere, and applying antiseptic liberally so no one could get an infection. After a while, he considered just pumping it into the air vent and kicking it on high so it would get everybody at the same time.

He personally thought he was doing a really good job handling all the blood. He didn't pass out at all and only gagged like 6 times. It was a bittersweet improvement. Likely the only reason he was able to do so well was because he'd built up a tolerance after dealing with all the damage the nogitsune caused. He didn't think he'd ever be completely okay with sell if the blood and gore. But he wasn't losing his shit over it anymore, and he supposed he ought to just accept that as a plus.

Kira seemed to be the only one from the fight that wasn’t bleeding, but she clearly had a concussion so he kept trying to make her talk and asked her questions so she wouldn’t fall asleep before her head healed.

He didn’t know what to do with Scott. He was able to help most of his wounds so that all they needed was time to heal. But he was at a loss as to what to do for his broken spine. Derek assured him it would heal as well, but there was a lot of nerve endings and whatnot in there that would take a long time to recover. He would need at least another 24 hours before he regained full range of motion. For now, he just put him flat on the bed, and told Derek he would just have to deal with the smell. Although, he wasn’t entirely sure if the floor would be better since it was stiff and would hold his spine in place.

Derek was breathing better and sitting upright on the couch. He kept trying to refuse Stiles’ help, telling him he’d be fine in a few hours and to leave him alone, but Stiles was having none of it. They actually devolved into a staring contest for a while. Derek glaring at him while he glared back and kept leaning closer to his chest to apply the antiseptic. Stiles eventually won, as Derek knew who would. He wasn’t even sure why he bothered fighting with the kid. When Stiles wants something, he is a determined little shit and he gets what he wants. Like when he wants to get Derek arrested, or when he doesn’t want to leave despite the threat of danger.

Isaac was probably doing the best out of all of them. His wounds had finally stopped bleeding and he was able to get up and help Lydia give water to the other healing supernaturals. Eventually, Stiles told him to stop and drink his own water. He commanded him to just sit until he was fully recovered. Isaac did as he was told, but as soon as Stiles turned his back, he flipped him off.

All the while, Griffin was sitting cross legged at the foot of the bed, silently watching Stiles puttering around the loft. He had finally stopped bleeding from his neck and shoulder, but the huge teeth marks were still there, bruised and welting. When Stiles came by to clean the neck wounds, he just let him and thanked him quietly.

If Griffin was honest with himself, he was rather surprised by Stiles’ reaction. It wasn’t that he was expecting him to just flip out or anything. He was just surprised at how naturally it came to him to take charge and care for the pack. He spent time consoling and offering comfort to everyone. He even spent a little time with Lydia and Danny despite the fact that neither of them were hurt and they were just trying to follow his lead. Obviously he wasn’t a medical expert or anything, but he supposed he didn’t need to be considering they would all be perfectly fine by morning anyways. Most of them, anyways.

He was also a little surprised at how much he was touching everyone. He supposed it was most likely just a Stiles thing. He was always a very tactile person with his friends. But watching as he went around grabbing, and touching, and stroking, and massaging, and clutching at everyone in the room made Griffin wonder if it wasn’t more deliberate than he led on. Stiles was getting his scent everywhere and on everyone. He might not have known it, but that was very much an alpha thing. He was scentmarking everyone and they definitely all seemed to be taking comfort from it. Except for Derek who kept trying to shoo him away. Although Griffin was certain that it had more to do with the fact that Stiles was still wearing his shirt than a lack of effectiveness of the technique.

Griffin himself was trying not to make too much physical contact with Stiles either. He desperately wanted to, but knew that if he got Stiles wrapped in his arms, he was going to lose it and wouldn’t be able to let him go. Right now, that wouldn’t be the best for either of them, particularly Stiles who was keeping himself very busy doting on everyone else.

After a while, things settled down a bit and Stiles was able to relax again. That isn’t to say that he was relax, but he had the opportunity. Everyone was exhausted and pretty much just fell asleep where they were. Only Stiles, Griffin, and Kira were awake, although Stiles suspected that Derek was just pretending. Kira was keeping herself awake by playing Candy Crush on her phone, and Stiles had bought her unlimited lives so she wouldn’t be able to stop. She had migrated to the bed beside Scott, but he was snoring quietly beside her.

When they were alone—or as alone as they were going to get—Griffin settled down into the nest of blankets and pillows Stiles had made for himself on the floor. They were near a similar nest where Danny, Lydia, and Isaac were sleeping. Stiles had seen that Lydia and Isaac were spooning and thought it was too cute that Isaac was the little spoon. He had went to find his phone to get blackmail material, but he’d found blankets first and just gave up, crashing nearby. They were far enough away that Griffin could talk without disturbing them. However it didn’t really matter much, because he didn’t exactly have anything to say. He just sat down beside Stiles and pulled him into his lap. He buried his nose into Stiles’ neck and just stayed that way for a while, basking in the concentration of smell there.

Stiles closed his eyes and relaxed into him, allowing himself to be held. “You know you scared the shit out of me, right?” he muttered after a while. Griffin nodded against him, but otherwise didn’t move. “You were covered in so much blood, I thought you were going to bleed to death right there. But you were standing up just fine. Then you went and carried Scott upstairs. I couldn’t believe it.”

“I’m more durable than you think,” Griffin muttered against his throat. This time, Stiles nodded against him and buried a hand into his hair. They sat cuddling up close like that for a while, exchanging no words and just listening to the steady rhythm of the rest of the room sleeping.

After a long time, Stiles finally spoke up again. His voice was small and he sounded like he was choking back tears. “What are we going to do?” he asked. He wasn’t really asking Griffin, more asking the universe as a whole. “How are we going to stop Mariah when she’s this powerful? She can destroy us emotionally, and she can destroy us physically. How are we supposed to beat that? What the hell are we going to do?” He leaned downward to rest his forehead against Griffin’s. “How are we all going to survive this?” he whispered.

Griffin didn’t have an answer for him. He reached up and placed a hand along Stiles’ jaw, pulling him down into a kiss. It was tender and slow, but there was passion and need burning behind it and it left Stiles’ lips tingling afterward. It wasn’t lusty and intense, a rush of heat and sexual energy charging the both of them. No, it was more intimate and gentle, comforting. It was Griffin reaching out and saying “I’m here. It’s okay.” Stiles melted right into it, parting his lips and letting Griffin breathe a sense of peace right into him.

Eventually, Griffin had to let his mouth go to allow him some air. He leaned back down to leave more gentle kisses on his neck, tipping him over so they both fell flat onto their makeshift bed. Stiles wrapped his arms around him, holding him tight against himself. “Don’t go anywhere,” he was begging silently. They stayed that way a while longer and that was how they wound up falling asleep, Griffin’s nose pressed against his favorite spot, and Stiles clutching the alpha to his chest.

Chapter Text

Chapter 34

Stiles knew what he had to do. He had mulled it over in his head for a few days while they waited for Mariah or the alpha to show back up. Honestly, he’d already made his mind up about it weeks ago. Now, he figured he was just wasting time.

He waited until he knew Griffin would be out talking to Scott. He really didn’t need any commentary from the peanut gallery. He just wanted to do it. He used his key to get into their house and immediately went looking for Aunt Dee. He didn’t find her on the bottom floor, so he headed straight into her lair without bothering to check upstairs. He turned his phone’s flashlight on before he reached up and knocked on the closet wall. The door opened immediately, and he went down the stairs without hesitation.

“Well, hello my dear sparkly friend,” Aunt Dee’s voice floated from the darkness. Stiles knew it would be coming at some point, but he jumped from it anyways. At least he was at the bottom of the stairs already and didn’t have to worry about falling down them this time. He whimpered by way of greeting and Aunt Dee clapped her hands to brighten up the room with candles. “Well, well,” she said pensively, a smirk playing across her face. “You are here, and Griffin is not. So I suppose that means that you are here to ask me about sparks and witches, yes?”

Stiles nodded, forgetting that she wouldn’t see it. “That would be correct,” he agreed. He began to approach the table she was sitting at, but she stopped him with a raised hand and pointed at something behind him. He turned around to see a cabinet open up.

“Bring me those off the bottom shelf, please Mr. Stilinski.” He looked at the contents of the cabinet and saw a whole bunch of different things in it.

“Which ones do you want?” He asked her.

“All of them.” What? He shrugged and reached into the cabinet, pulling things out and setting them beside her while she put the book she was reading away. He came out with a pot, a bowl with a lip on it for pouring, an aerosol can without a lid, a bag full of chunks of something white, a potholder with a decorative pentagram on it, a scale, a thermometer, a spool of some kind of thick string, an electric burner, a bag of tiny wooden sticks, and a weird thing that looked like a metal graduated cylinder, and a spoon.

“That’s everything,” he told her. She nodded then instructed him to pick a vial of his favorite color from the top shelf. He dug around for a bit, but finally came away with an ethereal, bright blue color.

Aunt Dee instructed him to plug in the burner and boil some water. While the water warmed she had him weigh a specific amount of the white stuff and put it into the bowl. He noticed that the white stuff was chunks of wax and realized she was having him make a candle. He double boiled the wax, watching the temperature carefully with the thermometer, and stirred a drop of his dye in. It turned a rich, light blue, exactly as he liked. She walked him through the rest of the steps for preparing the mold, and adding the wick. Then finally, he poured the wax in and left it to sit. She beckoned him to the next table, insisting they not bother the wax while it sets.

Stiles had to admit, he was a little confused. If Aunt Dee knew he came to talk about sparks and witches, why was making a candle the first thing she made him do? She informed him that candles were very important to witchcraft. Some witches might try to argue otherwise, but those witches were fools. Never take advice from a fool.

Stiles decided it was time to stop beating around the bush and cut straight to the point. He asked her how a spark became a witch. She explained it simply “By doing magic.” Perhaps she misunderstood. He reformed the question, specifying how did he become a witch? She repeated her same answer. “By doing magic.” Okay… How did he do magic? “By just doing it.”

“What?”

“I do believe that Nike fellow had the right idea.”

“Just do it?” Stiles asked, exasperation leaking out of his eyes and making them twitch. Aunt Dee nodded affirmative. “So I become a witch and do magic… by just doing magic?”

“Absolutely.”

“How the hell does that make sense?” he shouted. She extended her arm out until she’d landed her hand flat on his face. She felt around it curiously for a moment, then poked him in the eye for yelling at her. He shouted his discontent and backed away from her warily as she elaborated.

“Magic is infinitely simple, yet equally complex. The basest of a witch’s magical skills are telekinesis, manipulation, and manifestation. There are many other things a witch can do, but these things are what’s hard wired into our DNA, and come naturally to us. In order to do one of these things, you simply do it.” Stiles still wasn’t quite following. “You think about doing it. You believe you can do it. Then you just do it. Simple.”

“So basically, what you’re saying is that I can just will myself into becoming a witch?”

“That is essentially what I’m saying, yes.”

“If that’s the case, then why can’t anyone just do it?”

“Because not everyone has all the ingredients.” She reached an arm out toward the far wall with the candelabra on it. The candle at the highest point in the middle, lifted from its place and flew across the room to land upright in her grasp. She brought it toward him and put it approximately level with his face. “What three ingredients do you need to start a fire?”

“Heat, fuel, and oxygen.” He remembered from school. Probably chemistry class. He hoped it wasn’t. Something just didn’t sit well with him about the idea of actually learning anything from Mr. Harris.

“Correct,” Aunt Dee continued. “The heat is your spark.” When she said the word spark, the candle lit up, but not with a flame. It was flickering in and out with a white light, sizzling and sparking like a firecracker. “It’s constantly burning, quivering with light.” With her other hand, she reached out and tapped him on his chest. Well, she hit his ribcage first, then adjusted to the center of his chest. “The fuel is in here. A witch’s source of all magic. Your life force. All that’s left is the oxygen. That’s what the magic is. It’s in the air all around you.” She reached her arms out to demonstrate. “It’s in the trees and the plant life. In the bodies of your friends. Humans and supernatural alike. It’s in the cement, in the metal, things that are living and things that are dead. Everything holds magical properties. When you ignite your spark, you’re taking those things together and bringing them into yourself to create the flame.” When she said the last word, the candle stopped sparking and turned into a flame. “And how do you do that? You just do.”

She blew the candle out then brought it back near Stiles’ face waving it a little to indicate she wanted him to take it. He took it from her and looked at it curiously. “Light the candle.” Aunt Dee told him. He told her he didn’t have a lighter, but she shook her head at him. “No, what did I just say? How do you start a fire?”

Stiles kept looking at the candle pensively. He didn’t think he could do it, so she explained it to him a little more. “Manifestation is the most difficult of all the base magics. There are multiple levels of it, but the easiest thing to manifest is fire because we all start off as sparks. Starting a fire is usually the way a new witch ignites their spark. Or if a person doesn’t know they’re a spark, that’s how they find out.

“However igniting your spark can be done via any of the three base magics. It’s usually not telekinesis because as a new witch, it doesn’t start off under any type of control. It’s still a possibility, but we try to avoid it because it’s so much more chaotic. It’s also rarely done with manipulation, or at least not intentionally. Manipulation requires more magic and can drain you out if you aren’t used to outputting so much at once. It’s also the subtlest of the 3. It can happen on accident and you may never know. It usually is something small, like changing the color of a coffee mug, or turning the face of something upside down. When it does happen, it’s usually while the spark is in an altered state of mind. It’s easy to fully convince yourself of something like that when you’re high.

“If you want to become a witch, this is the easiest way.” She gestured to the candle again. “Think about doing it. Believe you can do it. Then just do it. Light the candle.”

Stiles did as he was told. He tried to focus on the magic in the air and around him like she described. He thought to himself, light the candle. He can light the candle. Just light it! He did his best to focus the energy onto the wick and make a flame appear. But nothing happened. He drooped his shoulders in defeat and sighed. “Nothing,” he explained, in case she couldn’t tell.

“Yes, I know.” She smirked at him knowingly, as if she hadn’t expected it to work in the first place. “For starters you’re trying too hard. When it happens, it will flow much easier than that. I could feel so much tension in the air I was worried you might take a dump on the floor.” Stiles dropped his head in exasperate shame. “And you’re too skeptical. You don’t think you can do it, so you won’t. You have to believe it will happen with every fiber of your being. The tiniest hint of a doubt and that’s all it takes for the entire thing to fall apart, and the magic won’t work.”

She reached out for the candle and when he placed it in her hand, she didn’t bother closing her fingers around it. It immediately shot across the room and right back into its spot in the middle of the candelabra. She pointed to the shelf over her left shoulder and directed him to the book on the bottom shelf, the last one on the right. He stacked it on the counter and she directed him to 3 more throughout the room. He stacked them all on top of each other, but she laughed at him darkly. “Oh no, my dear,” she warned. “You’re going to be taking those home and reading them.”

Stiles’ mouth dropped nearly to his chest and he made a distressed strangling noise in the back of his throat. Wonderful. Homework. She waved him away, telling him he was free to leave, and he sauntered away with his load.

When he placed his foot on the bottom step, he turned back around to face Aunt Dee. “How did you ignite your spark?” He asked. She smirked back at him deviously.

"I set my father's face on fire," she explained simply. Stiles stared blankly at her, knowing there was a story behind it. When she heard he still wasn't moving, she figured she ought to elaborate. "The Panselinos family is very traditional, and very narrow minded about said traditions. I was a human born into a pack of werewolves. Everyone knew automatically that I was a spark, those are the only circumstances under which two werewolf parents can produce a human child. But humans are not allowed in the family. I grew up knowing that I had a choice. Receive the bite at 14, or ignite the spark and be excommunicated.

"Well, I use the word choice very loosely. Since I'm a spark that means I'm as close to infertile as one can get without actually being infertile. So I couldn’t fulfill my womanly duty of bearing more werewolf children, cause that’s all women are good for.” She sneered that last part sarcastically. “That meant I basically had no value in the pack. Less than omega. An omega is at least a wolf. I wasn't even that. So by choice, I mean the alpha—aka dear old Dad—told me I was getting the bite, and there really wasn't anything I could say about it.

"On the day of my 14th birthday, I stood up to my dad and told him I didn't want the bite. He said too bad and cornered me in my room. So when he leaned in to bite me, I lit his face on fire. There was nothing he could do then. Funnily enough, he was more upset about me becoming a witch than he was about the fact that I’d mutilated his face." She shrugged, story over. But Stiles was still curious.

"That's why you came to Beacon Hills? They excommunicated you?" She shook her head.

"Nah, that didn't happen until much later. My mother convinced my Dad to compromise and he kept me around long enough to marry me off at 19. I didn't come to Beacon Hills until after the accident killed the rest of my family. Including my husband. It's just as well, though. I probably would have killed him myself if I had to live another day with that chauvinistic pig!" She smiled merrily in Stiles' general direction and he made as if to leave again, but stopped and turned back around with a pensive look on his face.

“Wait,” he queried. “If you were born a human to two werewolves, how come they didn’t just assume your mother lied about who your Dad was?” She coughed out a light laugh and pointed to her eyes.

“Panselinos genetics. Nobody else has eyes like these.” Stiles frowned thoughtfully, thinking of Griffin and the family portrait he’d seen upstairs.

Chapter Text

Chapter 35

It had been another 72 hours and no one had heard anything from Mariah nor the alpha. Stiles had hoped it just died from the wolfsbane bullet, but Derek wasn't so optimistic. He knew that the Sheriff had missed a shot, and if the alpha was able to track down the bullet then he could just be lying in wait for Mariah's next orders. Stiles told him not to bring that negativity into their atmosphere, but Isaac was equally wary of the possibility. He told them to keep their pessimism to themselves. Everyone was so wound up waiting for the other shoe to drop already, and neither one of them was helping. New Year's was coming and if they couldn't figure out something soon, no one would be joining in on any festivities.

Stiles busied himself by reading through the books Aunt Dee had given him. One of them was about initiation rituals for new witches, and the dynamics of a coven. It also explained a lot about why witches didn't have any type of established hierarchy or leadership. One passage that particularly interested him was talking about specializations.

Each witch specialized in a particular kind of magic. Upon discovering that specialization, they tended to master it completely and mostly abandon all other magic. For that reason, you could have a group of witches with the same level of magic, but they wouldn’t all be able to do the same spells. Stiles wondered what his specialization would be. For that matter, he wondered what Aunt Dee's was.

Another of the books focused on the act of doing magic. It explained the importance of a spell book and gave different methods of keeping one. Although it emphasized that it should be done in a way that suited the witch who wrote it best. It explained the different types of spells and gave a basic analysis on how to compose one and how to decompose one to find a way to reverse it.

The last book was explaining witch anatomy, biology, and psychology. It talked about all the different things that separated witches from other supernaturals and was surprisingly scientific. It went into detail about what changes occur within the body when a human ignites their spark. It also explained the psychological changes that a spark goes through and even delved into why witches that used the earth to fuel their magic often turned into sociopaths.

Stiles was busy reading up on the significance of the numbers 1, 3, and 13 on a witch’s psyche when he received a text message from Scott. He reached over his bed to grab his phone on the nightstand when he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. He screamed and flinched so hard that he fell off his bed and slid to the floor. Griffin reached down to help him up, grinning at his boyfriend’s jumpiness and sat them both back on the bed.

He plucked the book from Stiles’ hand and made a face as he recognized it. “My Aunt gave you this?” he asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t say she gave it to me,” Stiles reasoned. “More like lent or borrowed… Why?” He reached up to take it back but Griffin leaned out of his reach and buried his nose in it, closing his eyes and sniffing the pages deeply.

“If I concentrate hard enough I can still smell my childhood within these pages.” Stiles frowned at him, he couldn’t decide if it was sweet or creepy. He reached forward again and gently removed the book from Griffin’s face. As he placed it in his lap, Griffin’s eyes flew back open. His pupils were constricted to pinpoints, making his whole eye appear to be filled with that fierce green and sending chills up Stiles’ spine. Those fucking eyes. The Panselinos eyes. “Why did my Aunt give you my books?” Griffin asked quietly, indicating the other two on his desk.

“Your books?” Stiles asked. Why would a werewolf have a whole bunch of books on witches?

“Yes,” Griffin explained. “They all belong to the Panselinos library, which belongs to me. Not just because I’m the alpha. Like I told you before, I was being groomed to be the pack archivist. I grew up in that library and everything within it was predetermined to be mine.”

“But why would a wolf pack have books about witches?” Stiles voiced aloud the question in his head. Griffin shook his head.

“We have books on everything. My family is nearly as old as werewolves themselves. Ours is the single most extensive library on factual supernatural history in existence. It encompasses all species, not just werewolves.” Wow. That actually sounded pretty incredible. All species? Stiles would have loved to get his hands on that.

"So..." Stiles smirked at him. "You're going to take me to go see it sometime, aren't you?" Griffin reached over and pulled Stiles into his lap so that he was straddling his hips.

"Perhaps I could," he teased. "But you're getting all this wonderful knowledge out of it. What am I getting out of this deal?" He buried his nose into Stiles' neck and planted a kiss there.

"I dunno," Stiles slid his hands up the back of Griffin's shirt, tracing the muscles. "I think I might be able to work something out." Griffin laughed against his neck.

"You think so?"

"Oh yeah." He brought his hands around to his abs and they slowly made their way upwards. "Maybe we can set up some kind of installment plan." Griffin hummed against his skin approvingly at the idea. The rumbling travelled through the tendons in his neck and shot straight to his dick, making him shiver and his pupils blow wide. "Oh... God. You know, monthly payments or something."

"Really," Griffin trailed kisses up his neck and behind his ear. "Would you like to make a deposit right now?" He growled right into his ear and Stiles could feel it grating in his chest. It sent waves of electricity racing through his body all the way to his toes and he was digging his fingers into Griffin's skin.

"Oh dearGodJesusandMotherMary yes!" Griffin abandoned his ear and headed straight for his mouth. Before he made contact, he froze. Stiles whined a little frantically. Why the hell was he stopping? Griffin frowned at him them turned his head to the side. A moment later, Scott climbed in through the window.

Stiles screamed in frustration. "I will give you everything I own if you just go back outside!"

"Dude!" Scott completely ignored him. "Why didn't you answer your phone? I was worried! Mariah and that alpha are still out there! I thought they'd gotten to you or something!"

"So you came after me? It was like 5 minutes!"

"It was more like 10, and I was on my way already anyways."

Griffin cleared his throat. "Did you need something, Scott?" He asked. "Or did you just come to enjoy the show? Cause if that's the case, then I should inform you that tips shall be greatly appreciated."

Scott shook his head at him in confusion. "I don't have any money on me," he replied. Of course, out of all the things within that sentence, that would be the thing he responded to. "I wanted to know if you wanted to come with me to go visit Malia. The full moon's coming up, and I wanted us to help her with her control some more."

Stiles actually did want to go. He knew that Scott and Lydia were visiting her during those few weeks when he was avoiding everyone. He himself hadn't seen her since they were both patients at Eichen House. He thought he might actually like to see her again. But...

"Can this wait for like an hour?" Scott started to shake his head again. "45 minutes?" Stiles tried to compromise. "30 minutes? 15?" Scott kept shaking his head and shrugging at home apologetically. "Why do you hate me?"

"Mr. Tate is going to be gone for just about an hour and a half, so our opportunity to get over there is getting smaller every moment. Griffin can come too. I’m sure he could probably teach her a thing or two himself. Lydia and Kira are coming too."

“I hate all of you,” Stiles deadpanned. “None of you are my friends.”

“Whatever,” Scott rolled it off and turned to jump back out of the window. “Hurry up if you’re coming.”

“Well I wanted to be coming…” Stiles muttered when he left. Griffin chuckled and kissed him quickly.

“We can go if you want,” he said, pressing his nose against his cheek.

“I don’t want to go that badly.” He wasn’t sure if that was a lie or not. He did want to go, but he wanted to stay right where he was as well.

“Yes you do,” Griffin disagreed. He lifted Stiles up and moved the both of them from the bed. “Come on,” he said as he set him on the floor. Stiles whined in resistance. “I’ll drive. And I’ll give you a hand job on the way.”

Stiles sighed “Okay,” then followed him out the door obediently.

Chapter Text

Chapter 36

Griffin made good on his promise. A little too good actually. Stiles wasn't paying attention to where they were and Griffin didn't know the way and just kept turning so they wound up getting a little lost. Fortunately Stiles knew Beacon Hills like the back of his hand and was able to get them back on track. They wound up arriving only 3 minutes after Scott and Kira had. Lydia rolled up a few moments after, and she had Danny with her.

Stiles had filled Griffin in on the basics surrounding Malia while they found their way to the Tate’s house, so when they arrived he had some idea of what he was getting himself into. He didn't get the full details, just the important stuff. She was a werecoyote. She was trapped in an animal's body for 8 years. Scott turned her back human, but she still didn't have control over her transformations. So Scott had been helping her out and trying to teach her control, since she helped them out with the last baddie before Mariah.

When they got there, she was outside, laying fully clothed in the muddy grass outside of her house. As a coyote, she hadn't particularly cared for mud or rain. As a human, she would do just about anything to feel closer to the nature. That included peeing outside despite her father's requests or occasionally eating raw meat. She knew that as a person, she should find both things to be disgusting. But they were familiar to her in an ever unfamiliar world. They were like creature comforts. Although if her Dad kept trying to push that nasty frozen meat crap on her, then she may have to give that one up.

She didn't bother moving as they approached, but she did greet them all. “Hello Scott, Kira, Lydia...” she sat up as she noticed a few unexpected scents. “Stiles? And who are you?” She pointed at Danny and Griffin. They introduced themselves and she nodded before dropping back into the mud boredly. “Ready for another lesson?” She asked Scott. She really wasn't optimistic. She hadn't exactly been making great improvements before and they hadn't seen her in a while. “Honestly, I think you should just let me stay a coyote again. Society isn't all it's cracked up to be. It'd be easier on everyone,” she rationalized sarcastically.

"When you learn how to control the shift," Scott compromised, "you can make the decision for yourself. Now come on. Our time is running out." She sighed heavily then sat back up, standing and leading them all to the back yard grumpily. She was covered in mud and it was matted in her hair, but she hardly cared.

They spread out amongst the back yard and immediately went to work. Scott told her to show him what she could do. She scrubbed her hands together and cracked her knuckles in anticipation. "Okay," she tried to force some excitement out of herself. "Here we go." It wasn't really working. The first thing she did was whip her claws out. Her eyes glowed dark blue and a growl built up in her chest. She got her fangs out and her entire face shifted to a coyote. She was doing well, but this was just about the point that she lost control last time.

It had taken a lot of time practicing with Scott and a thorough amount of cheerleading from Kira and Lydia to get her to the point where she could take on the full body of a coyote. But once she did that, she lost all control and needed Scott to turn her back and bring her back into a human's mind.

Before it happened, Scott could see the warning signs. Her pupils were dilating, she was subconsciously clenching and unclenching her hands, and the growl in her chest was growing feral and wilder. He could see the skin on her neck and wrists starting to crawl as her whole body prepared to turn into an animal. That was when Scott stepped in. he crowded in front of her and started in with a quiet roar. It wasn’t enough to bring her all the way back, but enough to snap her back into the right mindset.

Her face returned to a human and she dropped to the ground, sighing hard in defeat. “See!” She complained. “I’m even worse than last time!”

“You’re just out of practice,” Scott reasoned with her. He approached her with his hand extended to help her up. “That’s our fault, really. We haven’t been here to help you, but we’re here now. Please. Let’s try again.” She flared her nostrils angrily and reached her hand up to smack his away. At the last moment, she thought better of it and instead pushed it away gently.

Seeing her reluctance, Stiles thought maybe he could help. After all, he did teach this very same thing to Scott without any prior knowledge. Okay mostly he just got Scott’s ass kicked and pelted him with lacrosse balls. He wasn’t sure he could do that to Malia, but at least he had something to start with. And they had figured it out that time, so clearly he was on to something.

He approached her, but as soon as he was in reaching distance she glared up at him like she was going to punch him again. He raised his hands up in surrender and took a step back. “I’m backing up!” he informed her. “Look… just… maybe I can help!” He tried to explain. “It can really just be a bunch of trial and error. When I taught Scott his control I was really just making it up as I went along. I don’t think there’s any one way to do it, you just have-”

“Wait!” She cut him off. “You taught Scott about control?” Scott nodded proudly and Stiles laughed.

“Of course I did,” he explained. “What? Did you think he taught himself?” Stiles scoffed as if that was that most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Scott wasn’t sure if he should be offended by that or not. Malia stood back up and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Okay then,” she nodded. “Since you’re the expert, why don’t you give it a try? Walk me through it.”

“Uh… Well,” Stiles scratched the back of his head nervously as he realized all eyes were on him now. “Tell me what your anchor is.” Malia shook her head and Stiles watched as a piece of grass fell from it and drifted to the ground.

“That’s the problem. I don’t have one.” Stiles couldn’t believe that.

“You have to have one.”

“No. I tried everything. My dad, my mother-”

“Your sister?” She locked eyes with Stiles sadly for a moment before dropping them and shaking her head.

“Well, that’s obviously what the problem is.” Stiles thought about it. “There has to be something.” He crossed his arms and scratched at his chin pensively. He knew what Scott’s anchor was. Or what it originally was. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was now. He knew Isaac’s anchor was Scott, although he was pretty sure Scott didn’t know that. He glanced over his shoulder at Griffin as he realized he had no idea what his anchor was. He resolved to ask him later then returned his thoughts to the issue at hand. Hm. He knew Derek’s anchor was “Anger…” he said aloud.

“We tried that already,” Malia explained. “It was probably the least effective of all the methods we tried.” This time Stiles shook his head.

“No, not you. Derek.” Malia raised an eyebrow at him curiously and he continued talking. “Derek’s anchor is his anger. Maybe we’re looking for something too specific. It doesn’t have to be a person. Your anchor could be something more abstract.”

“Like an emotion?” Scott offered.

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. “Maybe.” He looked at Malia scrutinizingly. He saw the mud stains on her clothes, and the grass and leaves sticking out of her hair. “Oh!” He gasped as he was struck with an idea. “Take your shoes off!” He gestured to her feet.

“What?”

“Yeah,” he encouraged her. “Take ‘em off. Let’s see those piggies.” She glared at him for a moment again as if she was debating the merits of throwing them at him. She just shrugged, letting her hands fall and clap into her thighs before reaching down and removing her shoes and socks. “Okay, now close your eyes.”

“Okay,” she obeyed. “But no funny business.” Stiles scoffed at the implication.

“Shouldn’t I be telling you that?” he snarked back. She didn’t say anything in response, but smirked up at him before clamping her eyes shut. No one else seemed to get their little inside joke. "Okay, now I want you to begin your transformation, but you have to watch your heart rate."

"Back up first," she urged. He was standing too close, if she lost control she might attack him. He waved her off, insisting he'd be fine. "Okay," she replied. "But if I rip your face off it's your fault, not mine." She started her transformation again, the same as before. Claws first, then fangs, then her whole face. This time she was able to let it reach her whole head. Her eyes glowed dark blue, the hair on her face grew wilder—thicker eyebrows, long sideburns, and a deep widow’s peak. Her ears elongated as well and were covered with long brown hair that hung down and blended with her actual hair.

"You still in control?" Stiles asked.

"Yeah, I am." She sounded really surprised by the fact.

"Good," Stiles nodded. He saw her wriggling her toes in the muddy grass and knew his idea was working. "You feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"The earth?" Malia nodded. "Focus on the feeling of it between your toes and in your hair as a human. Nothing else feels like it, right? Not even the same as a coyote? That’s the beauty of it for you. You get to feel both." She agreed with him. "Use that feeling to ground you. Use the earth as your anchor. Now," he clapped his hands and rubbed them together eagerly. "I want you to go full coyote."

Malia reluctantly agreed, reminding Stiles of her warning about ripping his face off. She took a couple of steps back and Griffin took a few cautious steps toward Stiles just in case. Stiles gave her an encouraging pair of thumbs up and she rolled her eyes at him before refocusing on the issue at hand. She did like he said, focusing on the earth and the unique way it felt as a human. She used it to tie her to her humanity, then she let completely go, turning into a coyote easily.

She shook herself free of her clothes then trotted around the backyard for a while. Danny was amazed by it. He thought the whole thing was fascinating. He kept going on and on about how it was so cool. Could any of the wolves do that? How about Kira? Kira didn't know for sure but doubted it, and Scott told Danny that none of them could do it either. When he looked a little disappointed, Stiles pointed out that Derek's mother and his older sister Laura could, so it wasn't like it was impossible. It's just that none of them were strong enough.

Malia approached them again and Stiles put a hand out cheerfully to greet her. Griffin warned him that might not be the best idea, but he kept walking closer anyways. He brought his hands to her head to pet her, but before he got a single finger onto her fur, she lifted her head up and bit him. It didn't draw blood. In fact it didn't even hurt. It was more to surprise him than anything. It definitely got the point across effectively. Why would he stick his hand out to a wild coyote? Especially one that just got finished telling him she might rip his face off.

The bite did catch him by such a surprise that he jumped nearly a foot into the air. However, he did not squeal. He definitely didn't squeal all high pitched and girly. Nope. Danny and Lydia weren't laughing at him either. Not at all. None of that happened. Nope.

"What was that for?" Stiles asked her while rubbing his hand dramatically. "That was just rude. Completely rude!" Malia rolled her coyote eyes at him then padded closer. She came right up to him and brushed against his leg so hard he fell over. When he hit the ground, he could have sworn he heard her snickering. "Okay, now you're just being a bully." That time she definitely scoffed at him before prancing away teasingly.

Now that she was a full coyote and with complete control, she definitely seemed a lot happier. She pranced around the house a few more times before finally dashing into the woods, calling back to them to beckon them to follow her. Now that she was back on four legs, all she wanted to do was run. Scott corralled Kira into chasing after her and they disappeared into the woods playing tag for a while, leaving Griffin, Stiles, Danny, and Lydia in the yard.

They found a dry spot to sit in by the porch and Griffin began questioning Stiles about how he knew how to do that. It was just like he’d said. When Scott was first turned he didn’t have any control and tried to kill Stiles a few times, so Stiles used his awesome brain power to figure it out himself. Nevermind that the main reason may have been to circumvent Derek’s attempts at teaching him the same thing. That was beside the point. He told the story of stealing the coach’s heart rate monitor and pelting Scott with lacrosse balls. Griffin found himself a little impressed at his boyfriend’s ingenuity. Lydia and Danny got quite the kick out of the story as well. Imagining Scott tied up with balls flying at his head had them all in stitches.

Stiles admitted that he was glad the earth as an anchor thing worked out, because he was pretty sure if he suggested the lacrosse idea to Malia she’d probably punch him again. That caught Griffin’s attention. Again? Oh yeah. That also was a thing that happened. Malia definitely hadn’t been grateful for their interference, but perhaps she’d forgive them now that they’d helped her gain some control.

Griffin’s eyes darted to the forest’s edge above Stiles’ head and a moment later Kira and Scott came dashing into the yard, a human and fully naked Malia was hot on their tails. “You’re doing so much better,” Scott praised Malia while pointedly avoiding looking at her. “Now we just gotta make sure you can make it through the full moon and you’re all set to go.”

“Thanks so much!” She was positively gleeful as she came to grab her clothes. “I was worried I’d never get to be a coyote again.” Without warning, she ran up to Stiles and threw her arms around him in a hug. Stiles turned beet red and froze in his place, not exactly sure what to do. How does one respond to being given a naked hug by a girl when standing next to their boyfriend?

“Um… You’re welcome?” He was looking at the roof above the porch. Oh no, a spider. There's some grey clouds coming in. It looks like it might rain soon. Oh look, trees. “This isn’t awkward at all,” he muttered. “Nope. Not even a little bit.”

“Awkward?” Malia snarked back sarcastically as she pulled away and went to put her clothes on. “Why would it be awkward? I mean the last time we saw each other was when we were making out in a basement, then you didn’t speak to me for almost 2 months. I don’t see how this could be awkward in the least.” Well, that wasn’t exactly Stiles’ fault. Or it wasn’t at first.

“What?” Griffin asked incredulously. He didn’t seem bothered by the idea, he looked like he found it funny more than anything.

“Oh yeah,” Malia continued. “Didn’t Stiles tell you? We made out in the basement of the insane asylum we were both admitted to, about ten feet away from the dead body of the guy that was possessing him on the other side of the wall. It was totally romantic.” Stiles seemed slightly taken aback by her sarcasm. He had thought it was romantic at the time. However, when she put it like that…

“Insane asylum?” Griffin asked. Stiles just shrugged at him, unsure of how to elaborate. “And you were possessed? There’s a story in there somewhere.”

“A long, scary… sad story,” Stiles nodded.

“Care to expand on that?” Griffin used Stiles’ own words against him.

“Uh-” Stiles was spared having to answer by Griffin raising a hand to silence him. He’d heard the sound of a truck pulling into the long driveway. Mr. Tate had come back early and it was time for them to make a quick exit before he saw all of their cars. Malia offered them all hasty goodbyes and pointed them to a path through the woods they could take without having to pass her Dad in the driveway. They scrambled around the house just in time to miss him, and Malia dropped back into the mud in the same spot she was in when she left. If she was smiling a hell of a lot harder than she was when he’d left, then her father needn’t know why.

Chapter Text

Chapter 37

It started raining on the way back home and Stiles allowed the sound of the raindrops on the windshield to fill the silence while he avoided talking about the nogitsune. He knew Griffin wouldn’t make him if he didn’t want to, but he also knew he couldn’t avoid the topic forever. He would tell him the whole story eventually, maybe even soon. Just not right this second. Or in the next second. Or like, tomorrow.

By the time they pulled back up to the Stilinski house it was pouring rain and starting to get dark. Stiles scrambled to the door to avoid getting too wet, but his scrambling backfired when he slipped off his porch and landed in a big puddle of mud. Griffin rushed to help him up but he slipped too and landed right on top of him. Stiles laughed at him and called him a failure as a werewolf. Wasn't he supposed to have awesome reflexes or something? Griffin retorted that werewolf grace could only do so much. He imagined if he were a human he'd be just as clumsy as Stiles. Stiles argued that he wasn't clumsy. He liked to think of it as gracefully bankrupt. That had them both laughing.

They tracked mud all the way through the house and into the garage, avoiding any carpeted spaces to make clean up easy. In the garage, Griffin took his time undressing the both of them to start a load of laundry, and kissed Stiles until he was dizzy and couldn't remember how the washing machine worked.

Once they were down to the only clothes they had that weren't muddy, (i.e. their boxers) the garage was much too cold so they headed upstairs. Stiles scrounged together some clothes for the both of them and declared that he was taking a shower. When he'd made it to the bathroom all alone, he turned around and asked Griffin if he was coming. He screamed and jumped so hard he fell over when Griffin turned on the shower behind him.

“I swear to God!” he shouted, heart pounding. “You fucking werewolves are gonna take 10 years off my lifespan!” Griffin helped him off the floor with a smirk and a sarcastic apology. Stiles called him a liar and pulled him in to kiss the stupid grin off his face.

Griffin cinched them in at the waist, bringing their bodies flush against each other and lowered a hand to the seat of Stiles boxers, scooping up a nice handful and squeezing. Stiles moaned into his mouth and reached a hand up to his hair. He could feel through the fabric that Griffin was getting hard already and that only made him harder in response. He dipped his fingers into Griffin’s boxers and teased around his cock, stroking up the sides gently and circling the head. Griffin stuttered out a shaky breath at the stimulation before pulling away just enough to free himself from his cotton prison then do the same for Stiles.

He led the two of them to the shower and turned them so that Stiles was mostly under the water. He drew his hands up Stiles' sides, his neck, then settled one into his hair, freeing some of the mud that had resided there. He tilted his head back and latched his mouth onto Stiles' neck, kissing and sucking on it lightly.

With his other hand, he reached down between the two of them and grasped both of their cocks in his fist. He pumped them up and down lazily, not wanting to bring them to climax just yet, but definitely getting Stiles' to moan and buck his hips involuntarily. He pressed Stiles into the shower wall and growled against his neck. He could feel him shiver beneath him at the vibrations and smiled against his skin. He led a trail of kisses lower down his neck and onto his chest. He kept going further and further until he had to let his own dick go to kneel downward. Finally, he was down on his knees, stroking Stiles off and tracing kisses from his hip bone down the v of his pelvis.

Stiles' breath hitched when he made it to his cock at last and placed a delicate kiss on the head. He licked a circle around the hole, then leaned down to take him into his mouth. He started sucking right away and had Stiles gasping and clutching at the wall for purchase. He gave up and buried a hand into Griffin's black hair. With the other, he reached up to his mouth and bit down on a curled finger to stifle his moans.

Griffin absolutely loved this. He loved having Stiles at his mercy this way, and Stiles certainly seemed to be enjoying it himself. He was completely unraveling in Griffin's hands. Well, his mouth. He took him all the way to the back of his throat, pressing his nose flat against Stiles' skin, and moaned against him. Stiles bucked his hips involuntarily again, cursing between shallow, broken breaths.

Fuck. That was so good. Griffin almost had him coming right there. This was starting to seem a lot like a fantasy Stiles had. If the fantasy was anything to go by, he wasn't going to last much longer and the warmth pooling in his groin wasn't disputing the idea. He panted Griffin's name and reached his other hand down to help slick his wet hair back, giving himself a better view of his face while he sucked him off.

“You look so good like this,” he panted, voice thick. “So good.” Griffin looked up at him, intense green eyes shimmering as he stared right into his whiskey browns. He felt Stiles shudder beneath him and thought he could tell how close he was by the speed of his heartbeat. Either he was close or he was about to have a heart attack. Griffin felt that he would be rather proud of himself, either outcome. He gave him a wink at the same time that he hummed against him again and that was it. Stiles was done for.

He came with a shout and Griffin took his whole load, sucking every drop into his mouth. That perfect mouth. That red, swollen, fucked out mouth. He pulled off with an obscene pop, giving Stiles a pleased smirk before leaning over the drain to spit. Stiles helped him up and pulled him into a kiss. It was deep, and passionate, and filthy, and he could taste his own seed on the inside of Griffin's mouth. It was everything he needed right now.

He reached down and stroked Griffin off while he kissed him, holding him in place with a firm hand on the back of his neck. Griffin panted and moaned against his mouth as Stiles brought him off. When he got close to his own climax, he pulled his mouth away and buried his nose into the crook of Stiles' neck, nibbling and sucking the skin of his shoulder. He dug a hand into Stiles hair, and wrapped the other in a bruising grip around his waist while rutting his hips, fucking into his hand. He stuttered out a broken moan when he came into Stiles' hand. He bit down on the juncture of his neck, growling low, deep in his chest. It was hard enough to leave a stark imprint of his teeth that might last a few days, but not enough to break the skin.

The bite left Stiles breathless, and it almost had him hard all over again. They panted against each other for a while as they cooled down and caught their breath. Griffin took a moment to reach up and stroke a thumb across the mark he'd made and cover it in kisses while Stiles rinsed the come off his fingers.

He grabbed the soap and the sponge and began lathering Griffin up. He washed his entire body and his hair, then Griffin did the same for him. Griffin was wrist deep in Stiles' hair, smiling fondly and enjoying the faces he made as he massaged his scalp. Suddenly he was hit with the realization of how much he cared for the boy in front of him. It was like a punch to the gut, powerful enough to knock the breath out of him. He really cared a lot about Stiles. No. He really fucking cared about him.

“I love you,” Griffin told him simply. Stiles nearly didn't hear him over the sound of the water running over his head, but he stopped and looked him dead in the face, right in the eyes.

“What?” he asked as little disbelievingly.

“I said, ‘I love you,’” Griffin repeated. Stiles felt his heart shoot up into his throat and looked up at him, so touched he could have cried. He opened his mouth to say something back, but was cut off by a sharp shake of Griffin's head. He didn't want to hear him say anything. He didn't need it. He just wanted to get the words off his chest and that was all. He didn't need anything more for the moment. He went back to rinsing the last of the shampoo from Stiles' hair and Stiles beamed at him, channeling every ounce of sunshine in the world.

They made it out of the shower and dressed in Stiles’ clothes, laughing at how high his pajama bottoms were flooding over Griffin’s feet. They headed downstairs to clean up the mud they’d forgotten about and put the laundry in the dryer, then Stiles made something quick for them to eat. They finished it and went back up to his room, starting a game of chess to pass some of the time away.

Griffin was surprised to discover he had 2 chess sets and one of them was in the middle of a game, on a shelf with sticky notes on most of the pieces. Each note had the name of someone on it. He recognized most of them as the people they hung out with at school and Derek. He also recognized Allison’s name, himself, Aunt Dee, and Mariah. There was one labeled Argent, which he found curious because there was a separate one named Kate. There were a few names he didn’t recognize, such as Peter, Ethan, and Jackson. He also noticed that except for the hunters and the names he didn’t recognize, there were no humans on the board.

He asked Stiles about it while they set up the other board and he gave him a simple explanation. He used it to label and explain all the supernatural related things they interacted with in town. Griffin supposed it made sense enough, however he was rather curious about the different colors. He could tell pink was werewolves, but the others he wasn’t so sure about. Stiles told him purple for hunters, yellow was a kanima, blue was druid/darach, green was kitsune, and silver was witches.

“But wait,” Griffin was confused. “Allison is purple.”

“Allison Argent,” Stiles explained.

“I thought she was your friend?”

“She was, she was a hunter too. She wasn’t like the other hunters. She especially wasn’t like her aunt, Kate. She and Scott actually used to date.”

“Did she know?” Stiles nodded.

“She sure did. Her family knew too and they didn’t want them together. Naturally. She went completely against them and dated him anyways.” Griffin frowned, confused by the idea of an Argent and a werewolf together. Romantically? Stiles could see his confusion and elaborated. “She didn’t really know about hunters and werewolves at first. She found out because she saw Scott transform when trying to avoid being killed by her Dad.” He went on to explain how she actually did go all crazy on them after her mother died and Gerard manipulated her. She blamed it all on Derek and went after his pack. Once all the kanima stuff ended (which Stiles pointedly did not explain) she realized how much she was being manipulated and both she and her father stopped hunting and actually became their allies in many ways. He wanted to mention how much they helped with the nogitsune, but he really didn’t want to go into that story yet.

“Hold on,” Griffin was a little confused. “How was her mother’s death Derek’s fault?” he asked, picking up a white pawn and moving it to e4.

“He bit her, and since she was a hunter, she killed herself before she could turn.” Stiles moved his own pawn to e5.

“Derek was an alpha?” Stiles nodded at him while he moved his knight to f3. He remembered that of course Griffin wouldn’t have known that. He’s managed to fit in so well with their group that it’s easy to forget that he only knows as much about their past as they tell him. And they have told him surprisingly little so far.

“Yup,” he thought for a moment then moved his knight to c6. “Derek Hale, alpha extraordinaire gave it up to save the life of his sister, believe it or not. It wasn’t exactly a bad thing cause between you and me he was a pretty crappy alpha at the time.”

“Wait what?” Griffin nearly shouted. “What’d you say about Derek?”

“I said he was a crappy alpha,” Stiles was a little shocked by his response. “It’s okay, it’s not like it’s a secret or anything. He knows he was no good at it.”

“No! Not that!” Griffin shook his head. “You said Hale. Derek is a Hale? As in Talia Hale?” He glanced down at the board and moved his bishop to c4.

“Yes,” Stiles was confused. “That was his mother. You didn’t know he was a Hale?” Stiles wasn’t entirely sure what was garnering this reaction. He moved his bishop to c5.

“I had no idea! I thought they were all dead,” he laughed somewhat darkly. “I imagine he has no idea I’m a Panselinos either, otherwise he’d probably hate my guts. Although I suppose it’s still a possibility.” He muttered that last part as he moved a pawn to c3.

That just confused Stiles even more. “Why the hell would he hate you?” Knight to f6.

“You mean aside from the obvious?” Griffin smirked at him knowingly, but Stiles didn’t get what he was implying. “Nevermind,” he said quickly. “The Panselinos pack and the Hale pack hate each other. They always have.” Pawn to d4.

“Really?” That was news to Stiles. From what he’d heard from Peter, the Hale pack was pretty widely respected. Then again since when did he start trusting what Peter said? “Why do they hate each other? That sounds so crazy.” Stiles captured his pawn with one of his own.

Griffin chuckled humorlessly. “Depends on who you ask, really. According to my grandfather it’s because they stand against everything we are. My father told me it was all because of some generations old land dispute that we lost and just never got over. My mother told me it’s because they tried to claim the title of most powerful pack in North America just because they’d had a series of particularly powerful alphas.” Pawn to e5.

“I’m assuming that meant that they weren’t?” Knight to e4.

“Of course not. 4 powerful alphas don’t just eliminate thousands of years of pure werewolf bloodlines.” Bishop to d5.

“Thousands of years?” Stiles frowned at the thought, thinking of what Aunt Dee said about traditions running deep in their family. His knight took a pawn at f2.

Griffin nodded. “I told you earlier, my family is nearly as old as werewolves themselves. We’ve been looked to as a sort of authority for other werewolves since we came to America from Greece. Even before that, actually. However, somewhat recently, other packs have been turning to the Hales more because of the strength of their alphas.” He frowned at Stiles’ knight, then scanned the board for a few moments more before capturing it with his king. “I suppose my family’s been pretty offended by their position being threatened.”

Stiles nodded at him, understanding but not necessarily agreeing with the sentiment. “So do you hate the Hales?” he asked before capturing a pawn on c3 with one of his own. “Check.”

“Hardly. From reading through my family’s histories, I’ve learned that we have a tendency to hold unnecessary grudges. So I try to save all judgments to be made for myself.” He moved his king to g3 to get him out of check. “I wouldn’t hate anyone just because of their last name.” He chuckled quietly. “But I don’t think the Hales shared that sentiment.”

Stiles frowned, thinking of Derek holding a prejudice like that. He didn’t think it likely, but it didn’t sound impossible either. “What makes you say that?” He captured a pawn on b2 and Griffin glared at it.

“Well, technically our packs did come to a truce when I was a kid.” He kept examining the board, but all he came up with was a frown. “Talia and a few other pack members came up to our home in Washington to work something out with my Pappous. I didn’t actually meet her, but my Mom and Aunt Dee did and they said she seemed much less than impressed with what Pappous had to say.” He sighed in defeat then moved his bishop to take Stiles’ pawn. “Although, in her defense, I’m pretty sure he was being an asshole. He was pretty sexist to be honest. I think he thought he was going to talk to one of her brothers, since they both came along.”

“Brothers?” Stiles had no idea she had more than one. He knew a lot of people had died in the fire, but he never did know who they all were. He just knew that there were humans and children in there as well as wolves. He moved his knight to e7.

“Yeah. They were identical twins,” Griffin explained. “They spent pretty much the entire time in the library with my mother and I. Peter was their Archivist, so he was having a field day amongst all the books. Arthur was Talia’s second in command. He kept complaining that she’d told him to let her handle it alone because she wanted to appear more competent. So I’m pretty sure he was just there following his brother around.” Knight to g5.

Stiles’ jaw fell slack in shock. “Peter?” he asked. “Peter Hale?” Griffin nodded at him curiously. That would be the one. “Peter had a twin? I can’t believe that! Two of them? I can barely handle one!”

“You’ve met him before, then?” That was an under fucking statement.

“He’s the one who bit Scott!”

“You’ve gotta be shitting me? He survived the fire too?” Stiles nodded at him, still a little incredulous. “Did Arthur and his son survive too?” Stiles had to shake his head solemnly. “That’s too bad. Peter loved the crap out of AJ. The way he went on about him, you’d have thought he loved him more than Arthur did. I mean, I only saw them for about 3 days but I probably learned more about AJ in that small time frame than I did about Peter, Arthur, and Talia, and he wasn’t even there.” Griffin looked off into space a little disbelievingly while Stiles used his knight to take Griffin’s bishop at d5. “I can’t believe he’s still alive-”

“Well, not for a lack of trying,” Stiles cut him off.

“What do you mean?”

“We tried to kill him-we did kill him-Derek killed him.” Stiles kept talking over himself, but Griffin looked horrified.

“Why the hell would you do that?” Stiles didn’t get why he was so upset about this. Peter was not a good person. Perhaps he was when Griffin was a kid, but he needed to get him to understand that was not the case anymore.

“Well,” he explained. “After he killed Derek’s sister—his niece—to steal her alpha powers, he bit Scott, then went on a murdering rampage through town and attempted to kill basically everyone I know. The only good thing he ever did was to kill Kate Argent.”

“I don’t believe that!”

“Well, I certainly believed it when I lit him on fire with a Molotov cocktail and Derek slashed his throat. That’s how Derek became the alpha.”

Griffin didn’t understand. “I thought you said he was alive.”

“He is. He basically brain-raped Lydia into performing some weird ritual that brought him back to life on the worm moon.”

Griffin sat there in disbelief. He couldn’t believe the Peter he’d met as a child could do any of those things Stiles had described. Certainly he was a little sassy and sarcastic, but he hardly seemed so twisted. He just shook his head at the chessboard before moving his knight to take a pawn at f7.

“I don’t know what he was like all those years ago,” Stiles explained. “But all of that is gone now. The fire completely fucked him up.” Thinking about it with this new information, it did make a lot of sense how much the fire had traumatized Peter. He’d not only lost his entire family, but he lost his identical twin. He literally lost his other half, as well as the child that he loved like his own. And to make matters worse, he didn’t just lose them, but they burned to death right in front of him. It didn’t justify any of the things he did, but it certainly explained them. He castled his king, leaving his last queen open.

Griffin took it, putting his knight at d8. They sat in silence for a while, each stewing over the new information they’d just received. Stiles brought his bishop to f2, calling check again. He wanted to steer the conversation away from the Hale pack and the Hale vs Panselinos rivalry, so he changed the subject to the next thing on his mind. Well, the third thing. Sex was always the next thing on his mind, but they’d kinda done that already.

“I don’t suppose that Panselinos library would have any gems that could tell us how to defeat Mariah?” He asked.

Griffin ran a hand through his hair pensively, then absently wiped his hand on his shirt since his hair was still wet. “I’m certain there are plenty, but without the use of a spellcaster, it’s all moot anyways.” He moved his king to h3. “Of course, we could always just kill her,” he added optimistically. He knew Scott would never go for that, though. Not with being a true alpha and all. He would always take the high road and do what he felt was best at heart.

“Well, we could have a spellcaster…” Stiles trailed off while contemplating his next move. Griffin thought about that comment in conjunction with the books Aunt Dee had given him meant.

“Wait,” he frowned. “You aren’t honestly considering igniting your spark?” The way he asked the question made it seem as if he found it to be the dumbest idea in the world. Stiles was slightly offended by that.

“Of course I am,” he argued, sliding a pawn to d6. “Check.”

“You would give up… everything—your humanity—to become a witch? Why?” Pawn to e6.

“Why not?” Stiles meant the question to be more rhetorical than anything and cut Griffin off as he started to give an answer. “It would mean more power. It would mean being able to protect myself. It would mean not having to hide up on the roof while everybody else fights.” Knight to f4. “Check.”

Griffin could admit that those were legitimate concerns, but he didn’t think becoming a witch was the answer. “If you become a witch, you can’t reverse it. You’ll never be able to be a human again.” King to g4.

“I know that!”

“You’ll never be able to become a werewolf!”

“I don’t want to be a werewolf! Not even a little bit.” Knight takes pawn at e6. There was a time not very long ago when such a statement would have made an uptick in his heartbeat. Not today. Stiles was more certain of the fact now than he was of the fact that he was currently human. Griffin wasn’t entirely sure why those words cut him straight to the core. He certainly hadn’t expected to hear them, but even less than that did he expect them to hurt so much. He dropped his eyes to the chessboard to avoid having to look at the certainty in Stiles’ eyes.

“You would never be a member of Scott’s pack…” he said quietly. Knight takes knight at e6. The “or mine” was left off the end but Stiles heard it anyways and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He’d never considered the fact that being with Griffin long term meant he’d have to choose and he really didn’t want to think about it right now. There was something he did know for sure, though.

“I’m already a member of Scott’s pack.” Griffin frowned at him.

“No you aren’t,” he disputed.

“How come I’m not?” Bishop takes knight at e6. “Check.” That made Stiles a little angry. In what way was it possible the he of all people wasn’t a part of Scott’s pack? He wanted to hear the logic behind that.

“You’re not a werewolf,” Griffin explained simply. “A human can’t be a part of a wolf pack. Neither can a witch.” King to g5. Stiles immediately thought of Aunt Dee and the story she’d told him about her father’s treatment of her being born a human into a wolf pack. That made him even angrier.

“Says who?” Stiles nearly shouted. “Scott’s a true alpha. He can have a human in his pack if he wants.” He slammed his rook down onto f5. “He’s got a banshee and a kitsune in his pack, and you’re trying to tell me he can’t have a witch? Check!” He did shout the last word.

Griffin rolled his eyes in frustration. He wasn’t trying to make Stiles mad, he was just trying to be honest. “That’s completely different. A kitsune and a banshee can serve a purpose in a pack. They could both serve a purpose in a fight. Even if they didn’t, genetically they could each produce werewolf offspring. A witch can’t do that.” King to g4. “A witch can’t produce a werewolf and they can’t act as an emissary. There’s just no place for a spellcaster in a wolf pack.”

“That’s bullshit,” Stiles argued. “So what you’re basically saying is that the most important factor to consider when building a pack, is one’s ability to produce more werewolves?” Pawn to h5. “Check.”

“It’s not like it’s something personal, Stiles. It’s just pack dynamics. A pack is only as strong as its members. There’s no place for anything outside of that.” King to h3. Stiles kept thinking of a certain phrase Aunt Dee said when describing the Panselinos pack. Narrow minded in their traditions. He definitely understood what she meant by that.

He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t believe any of that,” he forced himself to speak calmly, not wanting to yell at Griffin. “If a group of people can come together under mutual respect and admiration for an alpha, and work together—protecting each other and supporting each other—then why can’t that be a pack?”

“Because it’s werewolves. It’s supernatural. Things can never be that simple.” Stiles agreed that things were never simple where supernaturals were involved, but that didn’t abate his anger at all. He pushed his rook to f3 and called checkmate, containing himself very well and not yelling at all.

He didn’t know what it was about the idea that he didn’t belong with Scott that made him so angry. It had been Scott and him since the beginning. It had been forever and it would be until the end. He held a sense of security with that. The thought of somebody threatening that security kind of made him want to punch something. Of course he wouldn’t punch Griffin, but he thought about tossing the chessboard across the room. He settled for slamming the pieces down as he put the game away, then tossing it haphazardly on the shelf. It helped a little bit.

Griffin was a little angry as well, but for reasons way left field of what Stiles’ were. Mostly he was just mad at himself for getting Stiles so angry. He was still a little hurt that Stiles so adamantly refused to become a werewolf. He wouldn’t have tried to pressure him into the idea or anything, he just never thought it was even a question of if he wanted to. He thought it was more a question of when he wanted to. To hear the idea shut down so completely really threw him through a loop.

He reached out to take Stiles by the hand and draw him close. “I’m sorry Stiles,” he pulled a hand through his hair soothingly and rested his forehead against his. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.” He went to tilt Stiles’ head back and plant a kiss on his neck like he usually does and that was when Stiles lost it. He snatched his hand away and turned his head the other way, stepping back so he was completely out of Griffin’s grasp.

“No!” he shouted. Actual yelling this time.

“No?” Griffin was taken completely by surprise.

“No!” Stiles affirmed. “First of all I know that neck thing is a werewolf form of supplication. No!” Griffin flinched at the outright refusal, but Stiles was not done yet. “Secondly, how dare you? I care about each and every one of them! I would fight for all of them! I would do anything to protect them!

“I’ve had to contend with all kinds of monsters that go bump in the night! I’ve risked my life to save Derek, more than once! I almost sawed off his fucking arm to save him! I would do just about anything for Scott! I would jump off a cliff if he asked me to because I trust him with everything! I orchestrated a break in at the police station to remove incriminating evidence of Kira being a kitsune! I broke into a packed nightclub to track Danny down and try to save him from a Kanima. I nearly got myself killed by a psychopathic Peter trying to protect Lydia! I helped to break Isaac out of jail on the night of his first full moon and was almost killed by him for the trouble!

“I’ve lied to police officers and FBI agents and stolen police equipment! I’ve done things that should have gotten me arrested! I’ve had a restraining order put on me! I locked myself up in an insane asylum! For them! For all of them! To protect them! I almost killed myself for them! I’m not even going to mention the time I actually did die and the fuckery that caused!

“All this for them! And more! God fucking knows more! How dare you! How dare you try to tell me I’m not a part of that pack? Because I’m a human! Because I want to be a witch!

“They’re all I have! Them and my Dad! They’re all that fucking matters! How the hell dare you try and tell me that I’m not one of them? I’m not good enough? That I don’t matter?” Stiles was so pissed he was visibly shaking now and all the yelling was making his head hurt. “I may not be some pureblood werewolf, and I may not be capable of producing werewolf offspring, but I fucking matter! Griffin Panselinos! I’m just as much a part of their pack as any of the rest of them, and that’s all there fucking is.”

“Stiles! That’s not wh-”

“I think you should just go home,” he cut Griffin off before he had the chance to try and defend himself. He wasn’t even yelling anymore. He said it completely calmly. “Like, I just don’t even want to look at you right now I’m so mad.” Griffin just stared at him in shocked silence. He’d never seen Stiles just blow up on someone like this. It was freaking him out a little. When he didn’t move, Stiles pointed toward the door. “I swear to God if you don’t get out of my room I’m going to go get the wolfsbane from my closet and shove it up your ass!”

Griffin sighed through his nose then reluctantly headed out of the room. Stiles strained to listen until he heard him go all the way down to the garage to fetch his clothes and his shoes, then finally headed outside and started his noisy monster of a car. He waited until a full 10 minutes after he’d driven away before sitting down on his bed, pulling his knees to his chest, burying his face in his lap and just sobbing.

He couldn’t believe he just screamed at him like that. Like, what the hell even happened?

Chapter Text

Chapter 38

It was about 3 o clock in the morning and Stiles hadn’t slept a wink. He’d stopped crying a while ago, and now he just kept switching spots around his room, bouncing his leg frantically. He’d tried texting Griffin about 17 different time, each time starting a different message. Sometimes he was yelling still. A few times he was apologizing. Once or twice he even told him never to speak to him again. He didn’t send a single one of them.

He tried texting Scott as well, but couldn’t get a word down. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to hear, he just wanted to get this frustrated, spastic energy out of his chest. Eventually he realized it was probably too late to be texting people for non-emergencies anyways. He’d tried watching tv on his laptop to distract him, but nothing worked. Not even season four Supernatural.

When his Dad had finally made it home, he went downstairs to make him food and try to talk with him for a distraction. It worked for a little while, but John was so tired after he finished eating he conked out on the couch. Stiles ushered him upstairs and was out of distractions again.

So now it was after 3 and he didn’t know what to do. Finally he just grabbed his jacket and his keys and went to get in the jeep. He turned the music up as loud as he could take it and just drove. He had no idea where he was going, but he had a full tank of gas and it was something to do.

45 minutes later he’d driven all up and down the streets of Beacon Hills and through the preserve. He’d gotten out and walked his way to the Nemeton.

He stood staring at it, arms crossed and still stewing. Finally he sighed heavily and went to go sit on it, legs crossed in the middle. “Why am I even here right now?” he asked out loud, tracing one of the runes carved near his shoe. “What happened with today? It started off so well. Now I’m pissed off at my boyfriend, stressed the fuck out, can’t sleep, and I’m sitting here talking to a tree.” He rolled his eyes and knocked on it absently. “You’re not even a real tree. You’re a stump. A stump I have nightmares about. And that I had to die to find. And that got me possessed by a fox. And that’s now attracting witches that I have to deal with. You know, I kinda fucking hate you!” He scrubbed his hands down his face and tried to scrape the “so fucking done” from his eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

Stiles screamed so loud it echoed through the trees and did a backflip off the stump to hide behind it. He heard a familiar sigh of exasperation and peeked over the edge. Derek was standing on the other side with his arms crossed, frowning at him.

“Jesus Christ, Derek,” he sighed as he stood up. “Fucking werewolves. Remind me to put a bell on you!” Derek just rolled his eyes at him and repeated his question.

“What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night.”

“No? Really? I thought it was 4:39 in the afternoon. I had no idea. I should probably go to bed, huh?” Stiles threw him a glare then went to sit back down on the Nemeton. “What are you doing here?”

Derek huffed at his sarcasm and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’ve been checking on the Nemeton every now and then since the incident with the nogitsune.” Stiles frowned at that. “That’s how I fund the runes carved into it. Ever since Mariah’s attack, I’ve been checking it every night. Sometimes multiple times a night. Now, you gonna tell me why you’re here?”

Stiles threw his hands up into the air in an exaggerated shrug then dropped them back down into his lap. “I have honestly no clue. I couldn’t sleep. I got in my car. And I wound up here.”

Derek nodded and went to sit down beside him. “Why can’t you sleep?”

Stiles glared at him for a moment, but kept his mouth shut. He turned to look at the trees while he debated whether or not to tell him the truth. Instead, he opted to answer his question with a somewhat related question. “Were there humans in the Hale pack?”

Derek didn’t understand the sudden change in topic, but imagined it must have had something to do with his issues. Then again, this is Stiles here. It may have nothing to do with anything. “Yes,” he answered. “My grandfather was a human. So was my father. I had a younger brother that was human and a couple of cousins. Why?”

Stiles glared at him again and straightened his back. That answer just made him angrier. “Why!” he shouted it so forcefully it didn’t even sound like a question. Derek was confused. He wasn’t asking him, directly. It was more a question directed at Griffin, but he wasn’t there to receive it, so Derek had to suffer Stiles’ rage. “Just- fucking!” He threw his hands up again in frustration. He couldn’t even compose a sentence properly this was so fucking ridiculous. He went completely limp, sagging onto Derek’s lap before rolling off the stump and hitting the ground with a thud. “I can’t even…” he muttered.

“What is wrong with you?” Derek was seriously worried about the sanity of the teenager.

“Why do you hate the Panselinos pack?” Stiles asked, not moving from the ground.

“What?” Derek was so lost. Stiles was all over the place right now. “What do you know about the Panselinos pack?”

“That they’re assholes!” What is he even talking about? Derek had never mentioned them, and he doubted Peter did. He must have heard about them from Griffin, but what in the world could they have been talking about that led him to bring the Panselinos pack up? Derek put two and two together and was struck with a sudden realization.

“Griffin… Panselinos?” he asked. Stiles made a frustrated strangled sound that seemed to be an affirmative. Derek almost couldn’t believe it. He’d thought they were all dead. Although now that he mentioned it, the story Griffin told him about his family’s death had sounded vaguely familiar. He couldn’t place it at the time and figured the Argents could have used that method on plenty of other packs anyways so he promptly forgot about it. “That’s a shock,” he frowned a bit. “Although it kinda does explain a few things about the kid.” Derek shook his head and got back on topic. “Why would I hate him, though?”

“Don’t your families have some sort of rivalry or whatever?” Stiles asked.

Derek scoffed. “I guess so, but they’re both dead now. It hardly matters at this point.”

“Why?” Stiles asked again. “Why did your family hate them?”

“Honestly?” Derek sighed as he thought back to all the reasons he’d heard listed off through his childhood. “Mainly just because they hated us. They were bigoted and stuck in their backward, archaic traditions and concepts of what a pack was. They were the oldest, purest line of werewolves and because of that, they were genetically different to your average werewolf. More than that, they were arrogant about it. They acted superior, like they were the absolute werewolf authority, and their traditions were the only right way to be a werewolf.

“They hated us because we produced some of the most powerful alphas in the country. Much more powerful than them. Compared to them, we were also a really young pack, which pissed them off even more that we should be so strong. Then to make matters worse, we were a matriarchy and we allowed human members in our pack. We pretty much represented everything that they were against, so they hated us.

“Bear in mind this is all old stuff. It’s not like it was going on between my mother and their alpha. In fact, they called a kind of truce between the families. But a piece of paper and a handshake don’t just eliminate generations of built up animosity.”

Stiles nodded, clearly still irritated, but remained silent. Derek wasn’t used to this. He didn’t know how to handle silent Stiles. “Why are you asking about this?” Derek tried to get Stiles talking. “What did Griffin say to you?” Stiles ignored him again and asked him another question.

“Earlier you said Griffin being a Panselinos explained a few things. What did you mean?”

“Oh,” Derek scoffed. “I just meant how strong he seemed to be. Like in the fight with that monster alpha. He was able to get the thing to stop fighting just by roaring at it. It just led into a screaming match, but they were pretty equal in strength. It also kinda explains why he waited so long to reveal that he was a werewolf. Even after everyone else revealed the truth and all of our lives were in danger, he still kept it completely to himself and had every intention for it to stay that way. It’s like an old school ‘every-man-for-himself’ survival technique.”

Derek sighed, thinking he probably shouldn’t say what he was about to say, but he was going to do it anyways. “It also explains why he’s so ridiculously possessive of you.”

“What are you talking about?” Stiles frowned up at him.

“For example, like how he’s always scentmarking you.”

Stiles sat up and glared at him. “What?” he repeated.

“He’s always covering your neck in his scent, and leaving marks all over it. He dresses you in his clothes, and glares anytime one of the other wolves gets too close to you. Honestly, I’m not surprised you didn’t notice the way he stared down Scott that first day you brought him to the loft and Scott kept putting his arm around your neck. He looked like he wanted to leap across the room and attack him.”

“No,” Stiles argued, reaching his hand up to the bite mark on his shoulder. “It’s not like that at all…” he trailed off, not entirely convinced of that himself.

“That’s exactly what it’s like. It’s not like he’s doing it maliciously or anything. He may not even realize to what extent he’s doing it. It’s pure instinct, but that’s the point I’m trying to make. The Panselinos pack has way more wolf in them than human. They’re raised to feed off and live off of those animalistic, caveman-esque instincts. An ordinary werewolf wouldn’t feel the need to cover you in his scent that way.”

Stiles returned to silence again as he pondered that thought. It certainly made a lot of sense. Scents. Wow, did he really just make a pun? Whatever, it all hardly mattered. It was completely beside the point, and nearly irrelevant to what had him so mad in the first place.

Derek could see there was obviously still something wrong with Stiles, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it. “Griffin said something that’s bothering you, didn’t he? What did he say?”

Stiles sighed heavily and glanced up to Derek. He looked mad, but Derek could see the hurt in his eyes. “He said that I’m not really a part of Scott’s pack because I’m human. And that if I became a witch, I never could be. A witch would serve no purpose in a pack since they’re not a wolf, they can’t be an emissary, and they can’t produce werewolf children.” His tone was so bitter, Derek had to fight the urge to purse his own lips.

Derek scooted forward on the stump and put both of his legs down so that he had one on either side of Stiles. “Did you tell him to fuck off?” he asked quite seriously. That made Stiles huff out a laugh.

“I told him if he didn’t get out of my room I’d shove wolfsbane up his ass.”

“Good,” Derek nodded. “That’s complete bullshit and you know it. It’s that backward, traditionalist thinking. You’re more a part of Scott’s pack than any of the actual wolves ever were.” Stiles nodded. He definitely agreed with that statement. “Besides, you know none of that crap matters to Scott. You can be… the abominable snow man and you’d still be a part of his pack. That’s what matters.” Stiles laughed at the reference and Derek smiled in return to see him happy.

That didn’t solve Stiles’ problem of what to do about it, but hearing those words definitely made him feel better. He dropped back to the ground and saw that the sky was starting to light up. It was going to be dawn soon. “So…” he started. “You said you come here multiple times a night? Do you ever actually sleep?”

“I take naps,” Derek joked, making Stiles chuckle. “I sleep probably about as much as you do.”

“Oh, so then no, you don’t sleep at all?”

“You sleep and you know it.”

“Only when I’m not staying up all night, driving around town and talking to evil trees.” Stiles was hit with a sudden realization and he sat bolt upright, smiling at Derek.

“What?” Derek asked. Him smiling like that could not mean anything good.

“I think this is the most you’ve ever spoken to me in the entire time I’ve known you, and you didn’t threaten me or cause me bodily harm once. This is a new record.”

Derek laughed and put his head in his hands. “I think this is the most I’ve spoken to anyone without threatening them or causing them bodily harm in my entire life. I should probably threaten to rip your throat out with my teeth or something before it gets weird, shouldn’t I?”

“Aw, but we were doing so well.”

They bantered back and forth like that for a while as the sky grew brighter and brighter. It was surprisingly nice being able to talk to Derek. And to think, Stiles thought he’d hated him.

It was sometime near 5:30 and Stiles was laying down on the ground again. He was staring up into the sky when he realized that he could still see the moon out of the corner of his eye, even while it was almost sunrise. It was just above the horizon and slightly to the side of being directly aligned with the Nemeton. He looked at it closely and made a guess as to how many days he thought it might take for it to reach that spot. He guessed 2, but didn’t think the path would be just right. It would be just slightly off center. He thought that was quite the coincidence. The full moon was in 1 more day. It would technically be the morning after, but the full moon would still be in the sky at the time.

Out of the corner of his other eye, he saw that the sun had finally passed the horizon and the tiniest bit of it was glaring in his eye. In a few more minutes, the whole thing would be shining on him and it would be just to the side of being straight across from the moon.

2 days away from being perfectly aligned.

Stiles gasped loudly, cutting off Derek’s sentence saying how they should both get some sleep. Derek stood to see what was wrong with him and Stiles hopped up a second later. The way he’d gotten up, he was standing so close to Derek that he was not just in his bubble, but was standing nearly flush with his body. He was so excited, he barely noticed. Derek did, but he couldn’t back up because the tree stump was behind his legs, trapping him.

“Derek,” Stiles asked. “In that legend you told us before, do you remember what time it was when the witches drained the town?”

Derek shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “I don’t remember. I’m not sure if it even says. Why?”

“I think Mariah is going to drain the Nemeton at dawn in two days.”

XxxxxxxxxX

Griffin’s house was the absolute last place Stiles wanted to be right now, but he needed to talk to Aunt Dee. He definitely was not a coward or anything, but he brought Scott with him. Not as a buffer to keep Griffin from wanting to bring up their fight or anything. No, nothing like that. He was there to help. Yup. He was helping. That was Stiles’ story and he was sticking to it.

Stiles fiddled around with the cassette player for a little while so Scott could get out of the car first and he’d reach the door before him. That meant Stiles could stand behind him when Griffin answered the door. He imagined Aunt Dee would probably see him coming first, but he knew Griffin would notice when he got closer and would easily beat her to the door.

He was right. Griffin wrenched the door open before they even made it to the porch. Scott was going to wait to be invited in, but with enough prodding in the back, he brushed right past Griffin with an apologetic look on his face and they walked straight inside.

“Uh,” Griffin frowned at Stiles’ hands when he saw the way they were digging into the back of Scott’s sweatshirt. Hm. Maybe Derek was right. “What are you guys doing here?”

Stiles left his hands there, ushering Scott toward the closet. “Where’s Aunt Dee?” he asked.

“She’s in there, but-” Stiles didn’t let him finish his sentence. He rushed to the closet and flung the door open, stepping inside and pulling Scott with him.

“I don’t know what this is about,” Scott tried to explain over his shoulder. “He just woke me up and dragged me out here.” The wall swung inward and Stiles hurried down the stairs, only stumbling twice. Okay, he stumbled once, and fell once, but Scott caught him by the arm so he’s not counting that. The candles flicked on and Aunt Dee sighed at them, seeming slightly irritated. Apparently they were interrupting her breakfast.

“Well, someone is in quite the tizzy,” she said around a spoonful of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. “Have a seat Stiles.” She pointed at the stool across from her with her spoon. Stiles didn’t listen. He walked right up to her.

“I need you to-” He cut himself off when he felt that he was sliding backward on the floor. Aunt Dee had raised a hand up to halt him and she was pushing him away with her telekinesis.

“I am so serious, Stiles,” she explained. “You are way too worked up right now. You’re flashing every color of the rainbow and a couple of colors I’ve never even seen before. You need to relax.” She jerked her spoon toward the chair again and he rolled his eyes, but went to sit down.

“Can you help us now?” he asked frantically, tapping his leg impatiently. Aunt Dee put a finger to her lips to hush him and took another bite of her cereal, crunching noisily.

“What’s wrong?” Griffin asked, but Aunt Dee pointed her spoon at him next.

“You hush too!” she threatened. “You’re flashing half as many colors as he is. I can’t take the both of you. It’s too early in the morning for this.” She pointed at Scott. “You! What is the problem here? You’re the only one not freaking out about something.”

“I don’t know what the problem is, only Stiles does.” Scott apologized. Aunt Dee rolled her eyes at him then turned back to Stiles.

“Fine. You tell me. But talk quietly. I am not a morning person.” Stiles sighed as if he’d been holding his breath all morning and was only just letting it go.

“Remember the legend we asked you about before? The one Mariah’s copying? Do you remember what time it was when the witches drained the town?”

“No I don’t. I don’t think the version I heard ever mentioned the time. Why?”

“We know that Mariah’s going to use the Nemeton to drain the town.” Aunt Dee actually didn’t know that, but she knew what the Nemeton was and it made sense. So she nodded, urging him to go on. At sunrise in two days, both the sun and the full moon are going to be shining directly onto it at exactly the same time.

“Oh,” Aunt Dee frowned, understanding. “The power of the sun and a full moon together would lend even more strength to the Nemeton. If she succeeds at that time, she would walk away with more than enough power to turn Beacon Hills into a barren wasteland. She could blow it and the surrounding areas completely off the face of the planet! Adding that to the power she already has, she’d be almost completely unstoppable.”

“That explains why she’s been taking so long to do the spell,” Scott spoke up. “She finished the ritual to complete the pentagram on the last full moon. She’s been waiting this whole time and messing with us because she’s stalling.”

“But wait,” Griffin cut in. “What was she doing at the school the night we first found her?”

“She must have been charging the spell,” Aunt Dee explained. “She’s obviously using the power of the full moons to aid her spellwork. But the magic isn’t just going to remain by itself for an entire month. It would dissipate into the atmosphere if left alone that long. She must have been trying to get it to hold in place.”

Stiles shook his head. “But we stopped her that night. She didn’t finish the spell. She made a point of reminding us so when she attacked us on Christmas.”

“What was she doing when you stopped her?”

“She was chanting,” Griffin answered. “She was sitting on the floor with her spell book, some weird goo, and a big golden circle, with flowers in her hair. She was in a sort of trance, just chanting the spell.”

“The goo was glowing?” They all nodded at her and Aunt Dee pursed her lips distastefully. “I know the spell. If that’s the point she was at, then you didn’t stop her so much as cut her off. It still worked, but she probably didn’t finish. Fortunately, with the spell she chose she couldn’t have continued it at a later date. It would have had to be done all at once. Unfortunately, if she’s still aiming for the next full moon that means she’s going to have to do something to rejuvenate the magic and keep it from dissolving when the time comes.”

“How would she do that?” Scott asked.

“Any number of ways. A large fire, a powerful electrical current, draining the energy out of the plant life, human sacrifice, using the glowing goo we mentioned to bring some dead things back to life, or drawing the life force of another supernatural. To a witch that’s creative enough, the list is nearly endless.”

“Nothing like that has happened lately,” Stiles disputed.

“That just means she has more time, and hasn’t done it yet. You have to stop her before she does. If you do that, then her entire plan could be foiled.”

“But how are we going to find her?” Scott asked.

This time Stiles spoke up. “I think I have an idea.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a handful of shredded papers, slapping them onto the table and sliding them toward Mariah.

“We tried that already with Deaton,” Scott piped up, shaking his head. “They didn’t work.”

Aunt Dee raised a hand to silence him, staring at the papers like Stiles had just handed her gold. “Stiles Stilinski, you are a complete fucking genius,” she breathed. Scott frowned, he didn’t understand.

“I don’t get it. They didn’t work. How are they helpful?”

“That—my dear Scott McCall—is because Deaton is a druid. To him, these are just blank papers. To a witch,” she picked them up delicately and tossed him a mischievous smile. “These are everything.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 39

“So explain to me why I’m not doing anything for New Year’s again?” Lydia asked, lips pursed pensively.

“For the third time,” Stiles huffed, putting down the book about runes he’d borrowed. “Aunt Dee is going to do a spell on Mariah to find her-”

“But Deaton did that and it didn’t work,” Lydia argued.

“She’s not doing the same spell. She’s doing something completely different.” Lydia squinted at him in disbelief, but waved her hand to urge him to continue.

“When she finds her, she’s going to send the others to fight her-”

“But they haven’t been able to defeat her in the past. Why would it work now?”

“They aren’t meant to defeat her. They’re just meant to keep her too preoccupied to notice what I’m doing-”

“Which will be?”

Stiles rolled his eyes at her. Was she seriously just not listening this whole time? “I’m going to be at the Nemeton, altering the runes so that when she tries to do the spell on New Year’s, it doesn’t work.”

Lydia nodded at him, understanding. “But if it was so easy to stop her spell this whole time, why didn’t we just alter the runes in the first place?”

“Because we didn’t know what the runes meant, let alone how to alter them properly. Even if we did, it hardly would have mattered because she still would have had time to go back and fix them without interrupting the spell.”

“But now you do know how to do it? Can you even do it? You’re still just a human.”

“Yes. They’re just runes. Literally anyone could use them as long as they understood them. I’d understand them a lot better if you stopped asking me questions and let me keep reading.”

“Okay, okay,” Lydia raised her hands in surrender. “But why can’t I go to any parties again?”

“I told you Lydia. You can if you want to. There’s no point ruining everyone’s holiday.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “One last question. What about the monster alpha that may or may not be dead?”

Shit. He hadn’t thought about that.

XxxxxxxxxX

“How are we going to lure the monster alpha out of the way? The one that might not even be alive?” Isaac asked skeptically.

“With a giant steak!” Stiles threw his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know! We’ll think of something!”

“I really don’t like this plan,” Isaac complained.

“It’ll work!”

“I really don’t think it will.”

“Just stop being so negative! It’s going to work!”

XxxxxxxxxX

“Yeah, I don’t think this plan is going to work,” Stiles dropped his head into his hands in defeat.

"It might," Kira tried to cheer him on. "I mean, Mariah never fights us herself anyways. She'd probably just send the alpha after us if he isn’t dead already. Then we won't have to worry about distracting him."

“But if she does that, then she won’t be distracted enough for me to get away with changing the runes unnoticed.”

“Well, maybe we can distract her some other way.”

“Like how?” Kira made a face and shrugged at him.

XxxxxxxxxX

“I know how!” Stiles shouted loudly at his book.

“What are you talking about?” Danny asked without bothering to look away from the circuit board he’d been fiddling with.

“I know how to fix our problem!”

“What problem?” Stiles had burst into his room randomly, prompting a brief argument about boundaries and house keys before sitting down on his bed and opening his book. He offered Danny no explanation other than that his room was quiet, then sat there reading in silence for 45 minutes. After a while, Danny had just turned around and gone back to what he was doing. He had no idea why he was there, what was going on, or what he was talking about.

“The problem with the monster alpha.” Danny just stared at him blankly, waiting for the rest of the explanation. “Okay, not the alpha. He’s still gonna be there. If he’s alive, I mean. But I figured out how to eliminate the issue of distracting both of them at the same time.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Stiles frowned. Why the heck not?

“Didn’t Lydia tell you the plan?”

“Nope.” Dammit Lydia! “I haven’t spoken to her since yesterday.”

“Fine, whatever. It doesn’t matter. The plan’s changed anyways. Well, I mean, it’s the same, but my part’s different.”

“And that would be…?”

“The runes! I figured out how to change them in a way that Mariah won’t notice.”

Danny finally put the phone down and turned his attentions to Stiles. “I’m really not following you. You’re going to have to start from the beginning.”

XxxxxxxxxX

“And you’re sure it’s going to work?” Derek asked. He was sitting in the desk chair, pushed closer to Stiles’ bed and Stiles was sitting on the bed cross legged with his book on his lap.

“Unless this book is lying to me, it should. And if it is lying to me then we’re all fucked.” Stiles laughed darkly at the idea. “But I think I’m going to put my faith in the Panselinos library this time.”

“That wouldn’t exactly be a mistake,” Griffin’s voice floated into the room from the windowsill. “I’ve put my faith into it my whole life, and it’s never steered me wrong so far.” Derek frowned at him, annoyed that he’d managed to be snuck up on.

“I think that’s debatable,” Stiles muttered under his breath, knowing it hardly mattered. He could have shouted it at the top of his lungs and the werewolves would have both heard it just as well. Griffin ignored his comment.

“Can I talk to you?” he asked.

“Well, you’re talking to me right now,” Stiles snarked back. “So why yes, I imagine you can.” Griffin looked up at him through half lidded eyes with a kicked puppy look on his face. He was doing it again. Trying to manipulate Stiles with those damn eyes. It was a good thing Derek was right there, or Stiles would have caved like a spineless noodle. Those eyes were his fucking weak spot, and Griffin was playing dirty. Instead, he ducked his head into his book and used every ounce of his will power not to look at Griffin.

Sensing that things were about to get awkward—more awkward—Derek decided to give himself an out. Standing up, he offered “I think I’m gonna give you two some space-”

“No,” Stiles contested at the same time Griffin asked please. Derek really did not want to be in the middle of the following conversation, but Stiles was giving him a death glare. “Sit down,” he ordered. Derek sat back down with a quiet sigh, a little shocked that Stiles was being so forceful with him. What ever happened to the days when the kid was afraid of him? He was kinda missing those days right about then.

“Stiles,” Griffin urged. “We need to talk about this.”

“No, you’re right,” he agreed. “We do need to talk about this. I should tell you about the plan I came up with.” Stiles was not ready to have the conversation they needed, mainly because he had no idea what he wanted to say. Until then he would stick to his usual method of avoiding the issue until it went away. Historically, that never really worked out for him. But if there has to be a first time for everything, this situation would sure be a great time to be it.

“Stiles-”

“I found a way to alter Mariah’s spell with the Nemeton. I can do it in a way that she won’t feel the change, but I need you guys to distract her after a while so she won’t realize I’m up to something.”

“Stiles-”

“If I wait until tomorrow afternoon then that’ll be enough time for it to be effective, without her noticing and going back to reverse it. If it’s allowed to last for at least 4 hours after I start, undisturbed, then after that she won’t be able to stop it.”

“Stiles-”

“It’ll be enough to stop her from rejuvenating the magic from the pentagram in time to use the full moon. And it’ll continue working after that so she won’t be able to start the process all over again next month. We just need to keep an eye out until then to make sure she doesn’t rejuvenate the magic before I can mess up her spell. And make sure she doesn’t stop me.”

“Stiles, we really need to talk about last night!”

“I don’t want to talk about last night! I don’t have anything to say about last night!”

“Then what does that mean about us, if you won’t talk to me?”

“I don’t know, Griffin. I just don’t fucking know right now! I’m only emotionally equipped to handle one crisis of my life at a time, and—assuming you won’t kill me—Mariah is just slightly more urgent at the moment!”

Griffin gave up. If Stiles wouldn’t talk to him, there was nothing he could do. He threw Stiles a hurt look then turned around out the window to leave.

“Wait!” Stiles called. He froze in place, to hear what he had to say. “Are you coming tomorrow? Your Aunt is doing her spell at 3:00. That’s when I’ll head to the Nemeton. You guy’s will just have to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t come after me, then distract her if she does.”

Griffin turned his head slowly back toward him. He looked as if he were about to say something, but then his eyes traveled further to look at Derek curiously. Derek was facing away from him. He was looking at Stiles. Griffin tilted his head by the tiniest bit and Stiles turned to look at Derek too, wondering what he was looking at. Derek was just sitting there, looking back at him. When Stiles turned back to the window, Griffin was gone.

Chapter Text

Chapter 40

“Dad!” Stiles was on the borderline of whining while his father loaded the clip of his gun with wolfsbane bullets. “Can you please just stay out of this?” He kept ignoring him, as he had been doing for the past hour and a half. Okay. Let’s be honest. He’s been doing that since he learned how to speak. This was not a new situation for the 2 of them. “Dad! I just don’t want anything to happen to you!”

“And you think I want something to happen to you?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Of course not! But you’re not involved in this. You don’t have to risk your life for this!”

“I’ve been involved in this from the beginning, Stiles. There’s no going back now. If you guys are going up against this witch and her ‘monster alpha,’ then you’re going to need all the firepower you’ve got. In fact, you should have called Argent in on this one.”

“We can handle this on our own. The alpha might not even be alive. There’s no need to bother Mr. Argent with this. Or you for that matter.”

“You’re not bothering me.” John loaded the clip into his gun and slid it into his holster. “I’m going with you guys on this. Just accept it. Besides, if everything goes according to plan, then I’m just going to be sitting around at Melissa’s house being bored anyways.”

Yeah, but since when did anything ever go exactly according to plan for them? With their luck, they’d be trying to hold off the monster alpha for the entire 4 hours while Mariah just laughs.

Stiles put his face into his hands. He was really regretting telling his Dad about their plan. He just wanted him to be in the loop. He didn’t want him to be in the front line. Was it too late to go back to the whole secrecy and keeping his Dad uninvolved thing?

XxxxxxxxxX

Scott’s house was the most centrally located in town, so at around 2:30 Scott, Isaac, Kira, Derek, John, and Stiles were all sitting around the living room, antsy with anticipation. Melissa left for work soon after, but only after instilling a good amount of fear into all of them about her house remaining in the state she left it in.

At 2:37 Danny and Lydia showed up. Lydia pretended like she was annoyed about missing some party to wait around for Stiles to write on a tree, but judging by the look on Danny’s face, she wouldn’t have missed this for the world.

At 2:41 Griffin arrived. No one but Derek knew about his fight with Stiles, so everyone else was happy to see him there. Kira even teased him for taking so long. He explained that the reason it was taking such a long time was because he had to deal with Aunt Dee, who was being particularly annoying.

“I heard that!” Her voice drifted from inside his coat. He rolled his eyes and pulled a tablet out, telling her to be quiet. He had been skyping her. Apparently she found the idea to be stupid, but he thought it would be the fastest way to contact them once she finished the spell since she couldn’t text and couldn’t dial the numbers on a touchscreen phone. Griffin had tried to teach her how to use the voice control to start the video call, but she was being difficult and wouldn’t listen to him. Finally, he just gave up and called himself, keeping her on the call the whole ride over there.

He’d had it set up so that they could all watch as she performed her spell. They were a couple of minutes early, but since they were all there, they figured she could get started now. Griffin put the tablet on the coffee table and everyone crowded around it, Lydia sitting on Scott and Danny’s laps to get a front row seat. Aunt Dee warned it wasn’t going to be some spectacular show or anything. Or at least not for them. She was going to see a wonderful display. She couldn’t even remember if they were going to get any colors at all.

They did get colors. It may not have been a “wonderful display” by any means, but it was enough to awe the non spellcasters. Aunt Dee had the papers folded up into different sized origami stars and placed them in a shallow bowl. She reached around her to grab a few ingredients. A handful of what looked like red sand. 7 drops of a green oil. One end of a long string with the other end tied to her wrist. And a pinch of some dried flowers. She muttered the spell “Ostende mihi,” and the entire bowl erupted into dark red flames. The flames faded through every color of the rainbow in order, until they cycled back to red again. Then they traveled along the string all the way to Aunt Dee’s wrist. Aunt Dee’s hand shot up all on its own grabbing a pen and scribbling on a piece of paper she had sitting out for herself. It rewrote the same thing 3 more times then drew a quick circle around it.

Aunt Dee read what she’d written. It was an address. It sounded vaguely familiar to most of them, but only the Sheriff knew off the top of his head where it was. It was the slaughterhouse where the first and last break-ins had occurred. Stiles found it ironic really, that it should all end exactly where it started.

The slaughterhouse was in the forest, but it was nowhere near the Nemeton, so Stiles would have been perfectly fine at the giant tree stump. Everyone wished him good luck and he prepared to leave. He asked his Dad if he wanted to come with him, but John wasn’t falling for it. He was going to be where he would be most useful, and watching his son carve indecipherable squiggly lines into a tree was not the most helpful place for him. Well, it was worth a try. Stiles reminded them all that even if they took up the entire 4 hours, they needed to make sure Mariah was kept away until he was finished. The time could start and finish before he was done, but the spell would be meaningless if he didn’t completely change all 60 of the runes.

He bid them all farewell and wished them safe, barely even sparing Griffin a look, then headed out the door. There was no way Griffin was going to be able to live with that, fighting or not. He leapt up and practically teleported across the room, snapping the door shut before Stiles could make it outside and crowding up into his space. Stiles span around and glared at him, prepared to give him an expletive filled commentary on his actions. But he locked eyes with Griffin. And he was way too close. And fuck! He couldn’t think anymore! Those damn eyes were too intense and they caught him way the fuck off guard. Goddammit!

“Be careful, Stiles,” Griffin warned. Stiles wanted to be mad at him still. He really fucking did. In fact, he was still mad at him. On the inside. But the look in his eyes was so warm and soft, and filled to the brim with concern and caring. He kind of just wanted to kiss him. Like, he really just wanted to kiss him. Shit! Shit-shit-shit!

He leaned back and melted against the door a little bit, looking up at Griffin. “I’m gonna be fine,” he said softly, glancing at his mouth. He was not going to kiss him! “You be careful. You guys have the hard job.” Griffin leaned downward and rested his forehead on Stiles’, bringing their mouths even closer. Fucking A.

“I’ll keep your Dad safe, okay?” Stiles reached his hands up and pulled Griffin’s mouth down to his in a kiss. That was simultaneously the best and worst thing he could have possibly said. Stiles had pulled him down so hard, he had to brace himself on the door.

“You promise?” He whispered after pulling away.

“Promise.” Griffin nodded, then kissed him again briefly. He let him go and he turned around and left. When the door shut, he heard him whisper that it didn’t mean he wasn’t still mad at him. He said it so quietly that the others would had to have been actively eavesdropping to hear it. Griffin went to sit back down with a smug grin on his face.

XxxxxxxxxX

Stiles drove straight to the Nemeton with his book and all the carving tools he’d loaded up in the jeep earlier on. He immediately set about changing the runes. The first one he did was the pentagram. He retraced the entire thing, then added a small symbol on it in just the place to indicate it was right side up when it was actually upside down. The simple act of doing that reversed the entire spell. The Nemeton would no longer draw magic from the telluric currents to be channeled into Mariah. Now it would draw the magic from Mariah to be channeled back into the earth.

With that finished, he set about reversing all the others. Most of them were much harder to alter than the pentagram. A few of them had to be scraped off entirely and completely recarved into the wood. He was expecting to finish in an hour then to just be hanging around until their time wound down. When he’d warned the others about making sure they waited for his signal, he hadn’t actually expected them to actually need that advice.

It took him forever to finish. By the time he had, his palms were red and sore from gripping the tools and 5 of them were broken, 3 beyond repair. He’d taken the skin off of 3 fingers, at least 6 of them were bleeding, and he’d removed no less than 15 splinters during his time working. He was so glad to be done, he never wanted to see the Nemeton again.

It was no later than 3:15 when he’d finally started carving. Now it was nearing 8:00 and the sun was almost completely set. He tried calling Scott to inform him that he was finally finished, and to see how things went on their side, but his reception had been going in and out. Currently he had none. He did see that he’d missed a message from them. It was less than 30 minutes old and it was stating that they weren’t at Melissa’s anymore, and Mariah wasn’t at the slaughterhouse either.

XxxxxxxxxX

Despite being bored out of their minds, everyone was rather glad that they merely had to sit around for a few hours. They were thinking things were going fantastically. They hadn’t heard anything from Stiles, but they knew he was out of range so they figured he was okay. Aunt Dee helped as well by informing them that he was near enough to her house that she could just barely see his light shining. If anything happened, she ought to be able to tell.

At about 7:30, they decided that their 4 hours was up and a wave of release washed over everyone. Now they just had to wait for Stiles to finish. He sure was taking long. Perhaps someone should go out there to meet him and help him out. They probably should have sent someone out to help him anyways, even though he was the only one who could understand the runes.

It was barely 5 minutes later when everyone’s worries about Stiles’ time management skills were overshadowed by news from Aunt Dee. Mariah was on the move. Everyone crowded around the tablet again while they waited to discover where she was going. The red flames dictated a new address to Aunt Dee.

1000 Preserve Rd in Beacon Hills. No one recognized it. None of them even knew there was a street in Beacon Hills called Preserve Road. Almost none of them. Derek’s blood ran ice cold. He knew exactly where that was. In fact, most of them did. That was the mailing address to the Hale House.

They all piled up into the Durango because it was the only vehicle that could seat all of them. Well, almost. They were 1 seatbelt short, but no one mentioned it to the Sheriff, and if he knew already, he was keeping it to himself. Scott shot a text to Stiles on the way there, updating him on their location. He didn’t get a reply and figured he must have still been in the woods. He silently urged him to hurry up so they didn’t have to stay there for long.

When they arrived, Mariah was sitting on the porch, wrapped in a warm peacoat, but in a dress that showed off her legs, certainly making her cold. She greeted them all warmly as if they were old friends. “Happy New Year’s my dears,” she called to them. “Come to spend the holiday with me again?” She winked at them, referencing the “present” she’d given them on Christmas. They were actually wondering where said present was. He was nowhere in sight or hearing. “I think we could start a new tradition, what do you guys think?” Mariah continued playfully. “Oh, and nice to meet you Sheriff. I do believe my puppy quite enjoyed the gift you gave him. He would absolutely love to return the favor.” So then he was alive after all.

“What are you doing here?” Derek spat. He felt like her mere presence was disrespectful to his childhood home.

“Oh, you know. Just checking out the real estate,” she teased. “Must say, I love what you’ve done to the place. It’s very…” she thought of the word, nodding when she chose the right one. “Rustic. Or perhaps post-apocalyptic would be more accurate.” She snickered at him.

“I must say,” she went on, standing up and descending the staircase to approach them. “I did miss you guys a lot. I almost regretted giving you guys a gift that was so… to die for,” she winked again. “But apparently I had nothing to worry about. You all are a lot more difficult to kill than I originally thought. You’re a feisty bunch!” She shrugged her shoulders and laughed as she said it. “I’ve been doing a little research on you as well,” she waved a finger at them. “And you are quite an intriguing little mix of characters.”

She was talking a lot. Under other circumstances, Scott would call it a distraction and launch forth into an attack. He couldn’t do that this time because he was still waiting for Stiles. He let her keep talking as they stalled for time. Derek however was a tad more perceptive about it all. Certainly they did need Stiles’ signal, but Mariah was a bit of a mastermind. She wasn’t just going to stand around talking while she could be killing them off. That meant she was stalling for time too. But what the hell was she waiting for?

“First off we have Scott McCall.” Scott growled as she said his full name and she narrowed her eyes at him with another condescending smile. “A true alpha, this one,” she explained to everyone as if they weren’t all perfectly aware. “Now that is something. The world hasn’t seen one of those in generations. Pretty powerful stuff, yeah.”

She turned her sights on Derek. “Now you! You are something special yourself. A former Hale alpha. The former alpha of the pack that has produced some of the strongest werewolves in recent history. Granted you weren’t one of those particularly strong pack members, but we can’t win them all can we? No the interesting thing about you is the former part. It’s a short list of former alphas that are still alive. A defeated alpha must be killed, but no, no, no. You aren’t one to follow the status quo are you? You’re not an alpha anymore because you gave your powers away in order to save your baby sister.” She turned to the others with a falsely sympathetic frown. “Isn’t that sweet?” she asked them before turning back to Derek. “That’s so sweet. You are just one selfless person aren’t you? Of course one could argue that you just did it out of guilt after being the cause of the rest of your entire family dying, but tomay-to tomah-to.” She raised her hands in a balancing scales gesture, then turned to Kira.

“And over here we have a fox amongst wolves. Now that is a strange occurrence my dear.” Both Scott and Derek growled at her and Kira swung her sword into an attack stance as she continued speaking. She choked back a laugh at their discomfort, but otherwise didn’t address it. “A baby fox at that. Aren’t you just the least bit worried that they’ll turn on you? I mean it is scientific fact that they’re only loyal to their own kind after all.”

She completely skipped over Isaac, smirking at him maliciously to rub it in that she didn’t find him important enough to address. “Now here, we have the waaaaaaaaailing woman.” She drew out the first syllable, then proceeded to wail at Lydia mockingly with her hands on her cheeks like the Screamer. She ended it with a dark laugh. “See the thing about banshees is that everyone finds it so novel to have them around. Yet they aren’t actually good for much. They can only detect a death when it’s certain to happen, and what use is that? But you go Lydia,” she raised an invisible pom-pom at her. “You work that banshee pride.” She snapped a finger at her and rolled her neck sassily, laughing again when Lydia offered her a slew of cuss words to rival any 10 sailors on a bad day. “Ooh, down girl,” she teased.

This time she turned on Griffin, offering him a strange expression that was hovering between confusion and admiration, but still with that hint of humor she seemed to perpetually maintain. “Then there’s you back there. The veritable Prince of Werewolves: Griffin Panselinos. I must say, you are quite impressive. You’re probably stronger than the rest of them put together.” Almost the entire group turned to face Griffin after that remark. Could he really be that powerful? He ignored them all and continued to stare down Mariah. She laughed at their reaction. “Ha, but apparently they didn’t even know that. Why are you keeping secrets, Panselleenos?” She put the emphasis on the “E” instead of the “I,” pronouncing it correctly instead of the way people usually do. Griffin learned a long time ago that it was mostly pointless to correct people because they just kept doing it anyways, so he hadn’t heard it pronounced that way by someone other than his aunt in a long time. It sounded almost vulgar coming from her and he wanted to snatch the name right out of her mouth.

“Then we’ve got our humans hanging out in the back. The Hawaiian lacrosse star, and the Sheriff. By the way Mr. Stilinksi, you can put the gun down. Shooting me is not going to kill me. It’s more annoying than anything.” He kept the gun trained on her. She shrugged it off. “Aren’t we missing someone?” She looked around, trying to find the missing person. “Where’s the annoying, freckly one?”

Just then, the wolves heard the sound of the jeep driving toward them. He was still far enough away that Mariah shouldn’t have noticed, and the humans certainly didn’t. But if he was coming here, that meant he was done and they didn’t need to stall anymore. Scott signaled for them to launch forward and attack, but like always she was much faster than them.

She disappeared, then reappeared between Danny and John. They both stepped away from her warily, but she ignored them. “Oh there you are!” She called out into the dusky forest without missing a beat. She reached a hand upward as if she were lifting something in her palm. Off in the distance they could see a dark figure rising high into the sky. The humans couldn’t see what it was, but Kira and the wolves knew it was the Jeep. Mariah twirled her fingers in the air and it came flying toward them. “Thought you could sneak up on me, didn’t you? You’re just so darn bright,” she spoke to him as if he could hear her. “I can see you from a quarter mile away.”

As the jeep came closer and everyone in the clearing could see exactly what it was (as well as the wolves hearing Stiles freaking out) John stepped forward and put his gun to Mariah’s head. He pushed it against her with so much force it was tilting her head to the side. She just smiled about it. Everything was so fucking funny. “PUT IT DOWN!” John shouted at her, removing the safety.

“Okay,” she complied merrily. She flipped her hand over and the clearing erupted in screams and shouts as the jeep careened toward the ground. Everyone was shouting at once and she couldn’t hear a single thing any of them were saying, but the general consensus seemed to be to pick him back up. She turned her hand palm up again, chuckling at all of them when the jeep began floating again and the clearing fell to a subdued silence. “Boy, I sure hope he’s wearing his seatbelt,” she joked. “That kid is going to have one hell of a case of whiplash.”

Everyone came to form a tight circle around Mariah, hoping to trap her. Claws and fangs were extended all the way around, and Kira had her sword extended beside her neck. She was close enough that a single wrong move and she could cleave her head right off. Mariah was still smiling at them all as if even now she had the upper hand.

“Bring the jeep back down to the ground safely,” Scott commanded through gritted teeth. She laughed at his word choice. Well he did learn his lesson, didn’t he?

She uttered the spell “Nec lucem,” so quietly that it was barely above a whisper and dropped her hand to her side. The jeep floated down to the ground slowly, landing softly about 10 feet away from the house. Griffin, Derek, and Scott all rushed straight to it, trying to open it and get Stiles out. Stiles was inside panicking. He was struggling with his seatbelt, he couldn’t get out. None of the werewolves could open the doors either. Derek tugged on the handles so hard he pulled one completely off. Griffin gave up on the handle and tried wrenching the door off completely. It didn’t work, he only managed to leave behind some gnarly hand-shaped dents. Scott tried breaking the window. The glass shattered but it didn’t fall away and Stiles stopped struggling to get out. Instead he started whining and berating them for hurting his baby.

Mariah laughed at their feeble attempts to free him. She raised a hand up to Kira’s katana, sticking a finger out and scraping it against the pointed end, drawing blood. She snickered at them as she watched the blood drip down her finger and into her palm. “Wolves are just so darn predictable aren’t they?” she asked no one in particular.

John rounded on her and raised his gun back to her head. “Let him out!” he ordered her.

“I’m not sure if that’s the best idea,” she argued. “It’s actually quite safer in there.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Isaac spoke up for the first time since they arrived at the Hale house.

“I’m just saying,” Mariah explained. “I think everybody’s about to be a little preoccupied to be worrying about Stiles and the jeep.” Using Mariah’s words as a cue, the front door of the house swung open and a tall figure stepped onto the porch. It was the monster alpha. He cracked his knuckles and his neck ominously before letting his eyes glow red and growling to catch everyone’s attention.

The three wolves abandoned the jeep and headed straight to the porch, bypassing the stairs and leaping right onto it. Isaac and Kira were right behind them. John turned his attentions to alpha as well, aiming his gun right at his chest. Mariah took advantage of his distraction, reaching forward and touching her bloody finger to his forehead. “Dormio,” she whispered and he fell to the ground unconscious. She span around and did the same to Danny, muttering her spell again.

On the porch, Derek and Scott rushed the alpha the same way they did in the hallway the first time they fought. They fell right through him and immediately realized their mistake. Of course he wasn’t really there! They would have smelled him, or heard his heartbeat in the house if he'd been there the whole time. Deducing that this was all just a distraction, Kira and the wolves span back around to face Mariah. They had turned just in time to hear Lydia scream as she reached out and tried to catch Danny before he hit the ground.

Wasting no time, they all surged forward together attacking Mariah all at once. They should have known better. Their fights always end this way. They all come at Mariah at once, but she is able to evade them easily. This time is no different. Before a single one of them reaches her, she shouts another spell. The same spell she’d used on them when they’d first met. “Abire in fumum!”

The entire clearing was instantly filled with huge plumes of black smoke, burning everyone’s eyes. The area was filled with screaming and roaring as they all fought to get away. Scott and Griffin stayed behind, using their alpha vision to try and see through the smokescreen. They were only able to maintain their sight for a few moments before their eyes were burned too much and they were blind as well. It was just long enough for them to see that Mariah was completely gone. Danny, John, and the entire jeep were gone with her.

Chapter Text

Chapter 41

Oddly, Lydia was the only one who wasn't blinded by the smoke. She couldn't see through it at all and it still choked her, but it didn't burn her eyes. Once she escaped the cloud, after coughing a few times and getting some clean air into her lungs, she was perfectly fine. She called out to the others and one by one, they followed her voice to safety.

Griffin informed everyone that Stiles was able to wash out whatever residue the smoke left in their eyes with water the last time, so they should find some to reclaim their vision faster. Derek knew where a stream was nearby. It was small and wasn't always there, but it had been raining lately so it should be. He gave Lydia directions of how to find it, so she had everyone line up and hold hands while they followed her so no one would get lost.

Kira held Scott's hand and clutching his other one was Isaac. Griffin had his other hand and Derek had a painful looking grip on Griffin's wrist. Lydia took Derek's other hand and led the way. They found the stream quickly, even in the dark and soon half of them were kneeling on the ground with their faces in the water. Lydia helped Isaac get water into his eyes because every time he tried, he reflexively clenched his eyes shut and couldn't get himself to open them and let the water in.

Once they were all good and wet, and had perfect vision, the official panic started to set in. It hit Griffin first. He just kept repeating the word shit. Shit! Shit! Shit! His heart rate shot through the roof and he started to freak the fuck out. Scott was right behind him, pacing with a devastated look on his face. Kira followed behind him, trying to calm him, but was just adding to the tension in the atmosphere. Lydia was all wound up already, and the panicked energy was freaking her out more. So she snapped at all of them to shut up. Panicking wasn't going to find anybody.

The only ones who seemed calm at all were Derek and Isaac. Isaac just kind of watched the scene play out in front of him with an aloof sense of serenity. Derek seemed more like he was taking it all in stride. Levelheaded and calculating. Focusing on a solution instead of the problem. He tried to settle everyone's nerves by telling them that Mariah probably only took the Sheriff, Danny, and Stiles to get the rest of them to back off while she finished. But Stiles altered the spell already and their time was up. They just needed to find out where she took them before she found out she couldn't do it. But Griffin and Scott knew better.

Griffin told them that it wouldn't be spoon enough. He explained that since they stopped her that night at the school, she needed another burst of power to get the magic to hang around long enough. It would be like jumpstarting a dying battery. They still didn't fully understand, so Scott clarified. An extra boost of power, such as a human sacrifice.

That brought the panic back. They were all too familiar with human sacrifices. Derek growled at them to snap them back to attention and nipped it in the bud. He ordered Griffin to contact his Aunt and get her to find Mariah again. Once they did that, they could sort out a plan of attack. Griffin tried to Skype with Aunt Dee, but he had no signal. He said that from where they were, it would probably be faster to just go back to his house than to wander around until he had a stable connection.

They headed to the car and was glad to see the smoke was gone from the clearing already. The ride to Aunt Dee’s was very short. Much shorter than it should have been because Griffin sped off before all the doors were shut and had the petal to the floor the entire time. They rushed right inside and straight down to Aunt Dee’s lair, Lydia lagging behind as she fumbled with her phone to see in the dark. When the candles flashed on they could see that she was still sitting beside the shallow bowl, with the string wrapped around her wrist, but the flames were gone and she was busying herself with something else.

“My my. Such an eclectic collection of energies,” she said calmly, foregoing actual introductions. “Would I be correct to assume something went wrong somewhere? Stiles is gone.” She pointed out, answering her own question. “Mariah took him. You need to know where he is.” Without further prompting, the string on her arm lit up in red flames again and she span back to her table to write the new address. Scott, Griffin, and Derek crowded around her to see. She began scribbling words right away, but they quickly discovered that it wasn’t an address. It was a message.

“What’s it saying?” Lydia snapped when none of them read the words.

Griffin read it to them, practically spitting the words. “‘Sorry friends, but did you really expect some cut rate basement witch to be able to track me down? You should know this by now. Ten steps ahead.’ X O X O smiley face. I’m gonna kill her.” That last part was Griffin’s own venomous words.

“We should go to the slaughterhouse,” Derek instructed. “That’s the last place we knew where she was-”

“Did you just hear that message?” Griffin argued. “She knew exactly what we were up to this whole time. That means she let us see that she was at the slaughterhouse and that burnt out house. For all we know, she was never even actually at the slaughterhouse! She’s going to kill Stiles! We don’t have time to be chasing dead leads!”

“I get that!” Derek defended. “She’s going to kill all three of them, and we don’t have time to be standing around either. This is the only lead we have to go on so we have to take it!”

“Not necessarily! She needs the sacrifices to rejuvenate the spell because we stopped her when she was at the school. Wouldn’t it make sense for her to have taken them there?”

“But we don’t know that either! We also don’t know if she even knew we were watching her earlier. For all we know, she could have just done this. We already have an arrow pointing in her direction, why go running the opposite way?”

“Both of you shut up!” Aunt Dee reached up and smacked each of them in the back of the head. Derek growled at her and she smacked him again. “Take me to Stiles’ house!” She commanded.

“Why?” Griffin asked and she smacked him again too.

“We don’t have time for stupid questions! Just go!” She shooed him toward the door hurriedly and everyone filed back up the stairs and to the Durango. They raced to the Stilinski house just as fast as before. As a true testament to the seriousness of the situation, Aunt Dee didn’t complain—not once—about all the noise the SUV was making as the hemi roared loudly the entire way.

Once they arrived, everyone piled out of the car and Scott prepared to scale the porch and climb through Stiles’ window to let them in. Rolling her eyes, Aunt Dee waved her hand and brushed him off with her telekinesis. She called him a fool. A big truck full of people just pulled up to the Sheriff’s house in the dark and now he wants to climb through the window? Does he know what the term “breaking and entering” means?

She grabbed the nearest person to her—which turned out to be Kira—and used her as a guide to get to the door. Reaching for the handle, she whispered a spell. “Recludo.” The door unlocked and she entered, beckoning them in behind her. She had Kira lead her to Stiles’ room and they all crowded in to see what she was doing.

Her eyes began to glow bright green. They looked a lot closer to Griffin’s eyes but were less of a jade color and more bright emerald. She was altering her second eyesight so that she was able to see the outlines of everything in Stiles’ room that had a particularly close tie to him. They lit up in the same ethereal blue color he’d made his candle and the light cast shadows on the things around them, giving her a near complete picture of his room. She could make out his bed, which was the most obvious but least useful thing to be seeing. She could also see what she assumed was a laptop on his desk. It was glowing the brightest of anything in the room. She could make out a chess set on a shelf and near it was a tall stack of notebooks. The notebooks weren’t glowing, but some pages inside them were. Only they were glowing green, like magic. Like pages of a spell book.

Aunt Dee walked right to them—shoving Isaac out of the way—and grabbed them, accidentally dropping a few loose sheets onto the floor. She couldn’t see what they said, but the others in the room could. They were runes, handwritten by Stiles. There was pages and pages of them, written multiple times and in varying sizes as he practiced getting them right. She dumped the notebooks onto the floor, making all the green pages spill out. There had to be at least a hundred pages.

“What are these?” She commanded. “What do they say?” Derek answered her and she smirked a little at the boy’s dedication. She placed a hand out in front of her, palm up. The papers flew up from the ground, stacking themselves neatly on her hand. When the last one landed, she clapped her other hand on top of it and shushed the rest of the room preemptively. They hadn’t actually been making any noise as they watched her work, but she wanted it to stay that way.

She was going to use a spell to find Stiles with those pages the same way she used Mariah’s spell book pages to find her. However, she didn’t have any of the rest of her ingredients, so she had to add some more words to her spell and throw a lot more magic into it.

“Quod perierat, sit amet metus dapibus placerat. Puer qui dicit, mea sunt haec. Oppidum aliquod occultus. Quaeram ubi sit invenire. Ostende mihi!”

The entire stack of papers were engulfed in the same red flames that tied Aunt Dee to the bowl earlier. However this time they were different. They were huge and blazing wildly, crackling and popping, waxing and waning, and casting brilliant shadows across the room. They were giving off thin plumes of multicolored smoke that filled the room with the warm scent of berries and something unknown that invoked images of baked goods.

Aunt Dee’s irises were glowing brighter and brighter, until finally they looked blindingly white. Suddenly, her whole eyes flashed red, sparking and pewtering out, back to their usual ice mist blue. The flames disappeared with a sound like glass shattering and a powerful gust of air erupted from their place, blowing through the room. It tossed hair and clothes back, knocking things off shelves and turning the room into complete disarray. All at once, the wind stopped and Aunt Dee slammed the stack of papers onto the ground, adding to the mess.

“Fuck.”

XxxxxxxxxX

One minute, Stiles was panicking about the monster alpha showing up. The next, the jeep was surrounded in white smoke and he couldn’t see anything. He heard a short hiss and a click echo throughout the cabin and the glass from the broken window finally crumbled and fell on him. He removed his seatbelt and hurriedly climbed from the car to try and help the others, dusting glass from his sweater. Before he made it very far, he felt something metal click around each of his wrists and he flew backward, slamming into a wall. It knocked the breath out of him and he wheezed as he slid downward, crumpling to his knees.

The smoke dissipated around him and revealed his location. He wasn’t at the Hale house anymore. He was in an old warehouse. It was empty and—judging by the amount of rust everywhere—abandoned. There was a series of floodlights strapped to the support beams and walls. They were brightening up the dank room he was in, leaving wires and cords hanging and strewn about haphazardly. Wait. He took a closer look around him. Long rows of stalls. Chains and hooks dangling from an apparatus strung along the roof. Scrapes and claw marks along one of the walls, all leading to a double door with an elaborate locking mechanism. Stiles didn’t need to see anymore to know that he was in the slaughterhouse. At least it didn’t smell like blood and death.

“Mariah!” He called out to the empty air around him. “Mariah! Why did you bring me here? Where are you?” In response, the jeep slid out of the way and out a pair of huge doors to his left. Mariah was standing in its place. Beside her, Danny and the Sheriff were lying unconscious on the ground. Stiles tried to run to their side protectively, but only made it 2 steps before he was jerked back by his wrists. He looked down at them and saw that he was manacled to the wall. “Let me out of here!” he shouted at her.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” She waved an arm and the bodies at her feet went flying through the air. A pair of manacles wrapped around their wrists and they were strapped to the walls as well. “Tell you what? I’ll let you out when it’s time to kill you. Be back in an hour!” She waved at him cheerfully then strode out through the big doors with a bit of a skip in her step.

Stiles called out to her, telling her to wait. Come back. If she didn’t get her ass back there right now! He would what? He had no idea, but it sounded threatening at the time. When he got no response he turned his attention to the people chained up beside him. He couldn’t reach either of them, but if he stuck out his foot far enough he could kick at his father’s leg. He called out to them, trying to rouse them, but nothing was working.

What was he going to do?

Fuck!

XxxxxxxxxX

Aunt Dee was pissed. How was Mariah this powerful? She hadn’t even drained the magic from the Nemeton yet! How would she even know to block Stiles from this kind of magic? She could have figured out he was a spark easily. But how would she have known that he was unknowingly fusing his magical energy into his practice pages for the runes like a spell book?

“So what does this mean?” Derek asked. “You can’t find him?”

“No,” Griffin answered for her coldly. “It means she needs to try harder.”

“Griffin-” she tried to argue, but he cut her off.

“TRY HARDER!” He flashed his eyes at her and his entire aura spiked red like flames. Under ordinary circumstances she would have pinned him against the wall to put him in his place, but she didn’t want Stiles or the others to die any more than he did. So she blamed it on the stress of the situation and the full moon, and let it fly this time. She’d get him back for it later, though.

With a sigh of defeat, she rolled her sleeves up, revealing a pair of silver chains wrapped from each wrist to above her elbows. Each chain was dotted with red jewels the size of a dime spread about 2 ½ inches apart. There could have easily been 60 jewels between both arms. She reached a pair of fingers beneath the first 2 coils and began to unwrap them slowly. As she pulled them off, the others could see that the chains left imprints in her arms as if they had been there for a long time.

Isaac shuffled the way he was standing and leaned against the shelf. When he did, he’d bumped the shells with his shoulder and caused a few things on it to rattle. Lydia gasped at the sound. “Stop!” she shouted. Everyone turned to look at her and Aunt Dee froze, halfway up her forearm. Lydia rounded on Isaac. “Do that again!” she commanded. He looked at her curiously but obeyed, making the shelf rattle again.

When it shook, all the pieces on the chess board rattled as well, but that wasn’t what Lydia was hearing. She heard voices. Lots of voices, all speaking at the same time. It wasn’t like on Christmas when the banshees were trying to warn her about Mariah. The message seemed much less urgent, but she still couldn’t understand it. “Do it again.” She heard the voices again and walked closer to try to hear better.

“What are you hearing, dear girl?” Aunt Dee asked quietly, wrapping her chain back around her arm.

Lydia raised a hand to Isaac so he’d rattle the shelf again. When he did, a rook fell off and clattered to the ground noisily. As soon as it made contact, Lydia clapped her fingers over her ears at the loud screaming that echoed off the floor. Hesitantly, she reached a hand up to knock another piece off. This time she heard chains rattling together. She knocked another piece onto the floor, then another, and another. Each time she heard a different sound. Loud banging. A heavy metal door slamming shut. A loud clank like the deadbolt on a door being locked. She kept knocking the chess pieces over until she only had two left, getting more sounds. Voices shouting, the crack of a whip, heavy footsteps, machinery grinding together, liquid splashing on the ground. The sounds were building a picture of something.

Lydia grabbed the last pieces, the two queens. She threw the white one on the floor and the noise it made cleared up any confusion as to what was being indicated. It was more screaming, but this time it sounded desperate and wild. It wasn’t a person, it sounded more like a cow. “The slaughterhouse,” she told them. “They’re at the slaughterhouse.”

“How do you know that?” Griffin asked, not convinced. Lydia opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought about his lack of confidence, but Scott cut her off.

“Because she’s never wrong,” he assured. He led everyone out of the room and Lydia gave Griffin a smug grin.

Aunt Dee waved an arm to indicate she needed someone to help her, and Lydia hooked her arm to lead her down the stairs. Before she got too far, she turned and tossed the black queen back into Stiles’ room. She didn’t see what it landed against, but she heard the sound it made and whipped her head around.

That didn’t make sense. Why would she hear that sound at a slaughterhouse? Especially one that was ages old and had been long abandoned. That couldn’t have been a sound from the past. Could it have been from their future like most of her other visions?

“What did you hear that time?” Aunt Dee asked, gently tugging her back toward the stairs to remind her they needed to hurry. Lydia got back on track and guided her down the stairs, answering her question a little worryingly.

“A gunshot.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 42

Mariah said she’d be gone for an hour, but it was actually closer to 2. When she came in, she was carrying a box. She dropped it on the ground unceremoniously and Stiles was able to see what was inside of it. A lot of rope, 3 hammers, and some wire. Oh shit. Stiles was not ready to be a human sacrifice. Oh no-no-no-no.

“Uh!” he started talking. Saying words, saying anything to try and stall her. He opened his mouth and words just came out. “You can’t kill me! I can’t be a sacrifice cause… I’m not a virgin! Right! Yes! I’m not a virgin anymore! Nope! Neither is Danny. And that guy is my Dad, so he’s really not a virgin. Although I try not to think about that. So yeah, sorry. I don’t think this is going to work out. I think, maybe you should just let us go. You know, better luck next time-”

“You don’t have to be a virgin to be a sacrifice, Freckles.” She smiled down at him with ersatz sweetness. “You just have to be dead. Now please stop talking.” That wasn’t about to happen.

“Ya know, I don’t even know why you need to be more powerful. I mean, you’re already strong enough as it is. You were able to do this whole spell over the town. I mean, wow. That’s pretty strong. I mean, in the legend, it took a whole bunch of witches to do what you did. There’s only one of you. Don’t you think that’s powerful enough? I mean, what exactly are you gonna do with all that power anyways? What could you possibly be planning to use it on? I think you’re just being greedy. And greed isn’t a good look for you.”

“If you do not stop speaking, I will kill you first,” she said calmly, pulling the rope from the box. Apparently it was 3 separate cords. Stiles grew silent. For about 13 seconds.

“Well, if you’re killing me anyways, it hardly matters now does it?” Mariah huffed at him, wishing she’d brought duct tape. “I just don’t understand what all this is for. There’s always a reason for everything. I just can’t figure you out. What’s going on in your head, Mariah? What makes you tick? I mean, I’m dying for all this, right? They least you can do is tell me why.”

“You really wanna know? That bad?” Well, duh. “If I tell you, will you stop talking?”

“Probably not,” Stiles gave her the honest answer. “But I promise to think at least about it.”

Mariah sighed heavily, knowing that was probably the best she was going to get. Buy was she going to enjoy slitting his throat when the time came. “Revenge, Freckles,” she answered simply. “Revenge.”

Stiles waited a beat, but it seemed like she wasn’t going to continue. “C’mon, you gotta gimme more than that. Revenge? That’s like a blanket term for-”

“For my mother,” she admitted it as if it physically pained her to have to keep hearing his voice. “Revenge for my mother.” Stiles opened his mouth to ask why, but she made a gesture as if she wanted to strangle him and he stopped, then she kept going. “Not many witches are capable of having children. It’s highly uncommon, unlikely even. But it’s not completely impossible. My mother was one of those few lucky witches that could have a child. That was me.

“It took her a long time before I came around, but she always really loved children, so she adopted a few sparks before me. There was thirteen of us in total, including her. I was the last one.

“I grew up believing that my mother was the most powerful witch in the country, possibly the world. Everyone was afraid of her. She was a benevolent witch, but that kind of power is something that only a fool wouldn’t be terrified of.”

“Who would be stupid enough to piss her off?” Mariah glared at him, but kept going.

“Apparently, I was wrong. My mother was the second most powerful witch. Our coven was very old. So old that we had to move around a lot to keep the locals from getting suspicious. We had just settled into a new home up north when we discovered that we were on the territory of some dumb werewolf pack. They wanted us off their land, we told them they could fight us for it. Of course, we were able to chase them away easily, but those wolves didn’t take too kindly to being defeated. They were friends with another witch and they sent her after us.

“We weren’t worried about her. A single witch against the thirteen of us? Child’s play. So we had our guards down, no defenses. She overpowered us like it was nothing. When we still refused to back down, she killed three of my siblings with the blink of an eye just to prove a point. My mother was devastated, we all were. So we left, and my mother swore revenge.

“About fifteen years later, we came back into contact with the witch. By then, my mother had grown immensely with power. So had the rest of us. When she came into our territory, we attacked her right away. But we still weren’t strong enough. She overpowered us again and killed my mother, but not before she was able to put a spell on the bitch that permanently wounded her.

“After that, she went into hiding. My siblings and I swore revenge on her. We promised to grow in strength so that we’d be powerful enough to kill her. 3 years ago, we encountered that witch again. She either didn’t recognize us, or pretended not to for the sake of her cover. But she was weaker. Exponentially so. Weak enough, that my mother could have defeated her if she were still alive, but my siblings and I weren’t strong enough on our own.

“I tried to convince them that if we drew more magic from the earth, then we could do it, but none of them listened to me. They told me that drawing from the earth would destroy us from the inside out. But, I had been doing it for years and there I was! They just didn’t want to get our revenge. They were more worried about themselves, and staying alive!” At this part, Mariah was growing angry and starting to spit the words viciously. “But I was only thinking of our mother! Of our brothers and sister who died at her hands! What about them? They were destroyed! Didn’t they deserve some retribution? Wasn’t that the least we could give them?

“So I killed the others! I drained my other eight siblings of all their magic, and I killed them! If they didn’t want their revenge, fine! They were gonna help me get mine!

“Even with all of their magic flowing through my veins, I still wasn’t strong enough! So I turned back to the earth. I kept drawing more and more power from the Veins of Gaea. Then I found this little place! This wonderful, magical, shit heap of a place. There’s so much magic flowing through this hellhole, it’s fucking stupid! And now, I’m going to drain it all away. No matter how hard you and your canine friends try to stop me, I’m doing it!

“I’m gonna kill you, then I’m gonna drain the town through that ugly stump of a tree, then I’m gonna kill your little friends, and then I’m gonna get my revenge!”

Stiles let the story process for a while as she fiddled with some of the hooks hanging on the apparatus on the roof. “Wait,” he asked. “What was the witches name? And how are you even going to find her if she’s been able to hide from you for so long?”

“Her name is Delphine. Once I’ve got the power from that beacon, I’ll be strong enough that nothing will escape my magic. She won’t be able to hide from me much longer.”

With that, Mariah was finished talking. She came over to Danny, wiping the smudge of blood from his forehead and he sprouted awake. He barely had enough time to scream obscenities at her before she’d used her telekinesis to tie him up. He struggled against the ropes, but nothing helped. Stiles tried to talk to Danny, to calm him down out of fear of what she might do. She lifted him with an ease that suggested she was using magic to assist her and carried him to the first of the 3 hooks she’d been arranging. She latched him onto it with the coil of rope around his mid back and pushed him with so much force that he slid through the rows of stalls and smacked right into the double doors. He cried out as he hit his head on the rusty metal, smearing a bit of the blood on the door.

Mariah saw that he’d stopped, and smirked evilly at him. “Oops.” She waved a hand and the doors unlocked and flew open. She did it again and Danny went soaring into the other room, groaning in pain.

“Mariah!” Stiles realized he was out of time and started panicking, trying to reason with her. “Don’t do this, okay? Don’t do it. This Delphine witch isn’t worth it. She’s a piece of shit and you know it! She’s not worth all of this! Enough people have died because of her, you don’t need to kill anyone else!” He may as well have been talking to himself with as much effect as it was having, but he kept trying.

She completely ignored him and reached down to wipe the blood off the Sheriff’s forehead. She tied him up as he awoke, just like she did with Danny. When she hooked him up on the chain, she gave his legs a pat down to see if he was carrying an extra gun. He was. She removed it from his calf and aimed it at him.

“Freckles, if you don’t shut the fuck up, I will shoot this man in the chest.” Stiles stopped mid-word. “Very good. Now be a good human sacrifice and stay that way!”

“Sacrifice?” This time John spoke up. “Again with this? You couldn’t kidnap me for something original? I’m really starting to get sick of you supernatural creatures tying me up.”

“What the fuck?” Mariah was just about done with Stilinski bullshit for the day. “Did he get it from you or something? I swear the next time anyone says a word, I’m putting a bullet through you!”

Just then, the doors leading outside flung open and Griffin rushed into the room, the rest of them hot on his trail. “Stiles!” He shouted frantically as he saw him chained to the wall.

Mariah made good on her promise and pulled the trigger. Stiles screamed as his Dad was shot in the chest. The bullet tore through the rope and it unraveled around him, dropping him to the floor with a heavy thud. Stiles struggled against his chains uselessly, trying desperately to get to his Dad, bleeding on the ground.

“How did you assholes even find me?” Mariah screamed, all pretense of false friendliness out the window. Griffin ignored her and ran straight for Stiles. He tugged on his chains, managing to get one manacle off before Mariah flung him across the room with her telekinesis. He flew all the way to the far wall, smacking into it bodily and sliding down it, cracking his head on the cement.

Scott, Kira, Derek, and Isaac rushed to Mariah, chasing her into the other room and Lydia went to the Sheriff. “He’s alive, Stiles!” She informed him. “He was only shot in the clavicle, the bullet went straight through. He’s going to be okay.” She wrapped an arm around John and helped him to stand up, assisting him to the wall where he could sit upright. “That fall didn’t do you any favors,” she told him, “but you should be fine if we get you out of here quickly.” John was in too much pain to really want to talk, but he was perfectly conscious and nodded at her, understanding.

Griffin had made it back to them, bleeding from the back of his head. He reached to Stiles’ other hand, but before he could grab it, a noisy and familiar roar echoed through the slaughterhouse. It was the monster alpha. He came in through one of the doors lining the wall.

Griffin jumped in front of Lydia protectively. His eyes darted around the room, gaging the best route to get her somewhere safe, without leaving Stiles and the Sheriff unprotected for too long. It seemed like his best bet would be to get her into the room with Mariah and the others, but he had no idea if that would be any safer. In fact, it was probably more dangerous.

Realizing the same dilemma, Lydia decided to solve the issue for him. “Cover me long enough to get me into the other room,” she ordered.

“I don’t know if it’s safe in there,” he argued.

“Neither do I, but in there at least she’s preoccupied. Right now, I’m just getting in the way of you being able to fight freely. Besides, I’ll go find Danny. Then we can get the three of them out together, okay?” Griffin nodded and began edging toward the double doors. Lydia stayed behind him, moving closer as well, until finally they had their backs completely to the doors. She turned around and ran straight through them. The alpha tried to chase after her, but Griffin tackled him to the ground before he’d made it far.

They wrestled around on the floor, snarling and snapping at each other. Each taking turns pinning the other. The alpha tore right across Griffin’s body, knocking him onto the floor. He leapt up to turn on Stiles, but right before he made contact, Griffin had caught up to him and got his arms around his waist. He locked his hands at the alpha’s stomach and bent backward, flipping them both upside down and slamming his head into the cement. Putting his hands on the alpha’s back for purchase, Griffin threw his legs to continue the backflip. When his feet hit the ground, he grabbed the alpha in a headlock and stood him up, swinging him bodily across the room. He slammed against the wall, crashing through the bricks loudly.

Griffin ran straight back to Stiles, reaching for his manacled hand, but Stiles snatched it away. “Wait!” he pleaded. “Get my Dad out of here first!” Griffin looked at him like he was nuts. “Get my Dad!” Stiles urged. “Take him out of here, and get him to safety.”

“What?” Griffin couldn’t believe his ears. “And leave you here, chained to the wall?” There was no way he was doing that. He reached for the chain, using his wolf reflexes to catch it when Stiles tried to snatch his arm away again.

“No! Stop!” Stiles pushed him away before he could get a good enough grip to wrench the metal off. “Save my Dad!” He ordered frantically. “Save him first!”

Griffin thought Stiles was being ridiculous, but didn’t get the chance to say so. While he was distracted, the alpha had come back through the hole in the hall and grabbed him by the back of the neck. He lifted him off the ground and swung him across the room, slamming him head first into a support beam. He hit it so hard that in addition to splitting the beam, Stiles heard a sickening crunch as Griffin’s skull cracked against it. The alpha dropped him and he smacked the ground with a thud.

He tried standing back up, gripping the beam for support, but he’d hit his head too hard. The damage to his head was too severe and effecting his brain. He couldn’t grasp the beam. His fingers kept twitching and twisting around on his wrist. He couldn’t raise his head above his shoulders at all and his legs were wobbling beneath him, trying to move in every direction at once. Finally he tripped himself and fell to the ground again, body going limp. He had blood pooling in one of his eyes and he was staring off into space, blankly, arms curled up under him and fingers still twitching, trying to grab something.

“Griffin!” Stiles panicked. Fuck! This was bad! He was not okay! Would he even be able to heal from a brain injury like that? Stiles was distracted from the thought when the alpha turned back on him, roaring loud enough for Stiles to feel it in his bones from across the room. When Griffin spoke and he felt it in his bones, Stiles quite liked it. When the alpha did it, it filled his body with an ice cold terror, freezing him in his place.

The monster alpha raced toward him but was only able to close half the distance before being tackled to the ground again. Stiles felt a wave of relief wash over him as he saw Derek straddling the thing’s chest, punching him. He was wailing on him, punching him over and over. Blood was splattering everywhere but Derek didn’t stop until the alpha fell limp, either unconscious or dead.

He got up and ran back to Stiles in an attempt to free him, but he snatched his hand away, just like he did to Griffin. “No! Save my Dad first!”

“Stiles!” Derek tried to argue, but Stiles cut him off.

“Please!” He had so much desperation in his voice. “Take my Dad out of here!” he begged. “He’s going to die of shock in here. Get him out of here! Please Derek, it’s my Dad!” There was so much panic and sadness in his eyes, Derek couldn’t do anything but obey.

He kneeled down, slinging the Sheriff over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “I’ll be right back!” he promised, then ran out of the room at werewolf speed.

Chapter Text

Chapter 43

When Mariah dashed into the other room, Kira, Scott, Isaac, and Derek were right behind her. She’d put up so many spells to keep her location hidden that she hadn’t built a contingency plan for them showing up. How the hell did they find her? She’d put so much work into protecting herself from that basement witch and the druid that she was caught completely off guard. She wasn’t used to that. When she said 10 steps ahead, she wasn’t joking. She had planned everything, from leading them to the old Hale House to distracting them and getting away with the humans. She hadn’t planned on Freckles showing up late, but it worked in her favor anyways.

Wait, why was he late? They seemed to be waiting for him. Shit! Maybe she wasn’t as many steps ahead as she thought. They had been up to something too and she had no idea! But what did they do?

She realized that she’d run herself into a corner and would have to take a wall out to escape. She couldn’t teleport over a long distance again, not so soon after having just done it. That was high level magic. If she did it again she wouldn’t have enough strength to draw the energy from the Nemeton. Although if she didn’t kill those humans in the next upcoming minutes, none of that would matter anyways.

She span around to face the teenagers. She couldn’t use powerful magic, so she’d have to fight them head on this time. At least she would only have to hold them off long enough for her monster alpha to come and take over for her. As if on cue, she heard him roar loudly in the other room. Perfect.

The wolves and their pet fox came rushing at her all at once. Just like they always did. Did they not learn their lesson earlier? She couldn’t disappear, so instead she engulfed herself in a ball of flames, far enough away from her body not to burn herself, but close enough that the wolves wouldn’t see it until they were too close. She had singed them all pretty good, but they’d managed to back away in just enough time to avoid serious burns.

That was weird. The fire seemed to zap a lot more out of her than it should have. Sure, it was manifestation, but it was just fire. She must be weaker than she thought. At this rate she’d drain herself of too much energy before she even made it out of the slaughterhouse.

The wolves tried a new tactic and started coming at her one at a time in rapid succession. She dodged a swipe from Scott, and Isaac came right in behind him, forcing her backward. Kira came in behind her and swung her sword wide. As Mariah leapt backward to avoid the katana, she landed right in the path of Derek’s claws. He managed to cut her across the face, batting her halfway across the room. Well, shit. They were getting better at this.

She recovered quickly, standing up and managing to avoid a swipe by Scott, but just barely. She decided to rely on her fire again, building a fireball in her hand and launching it at Kira and Isaac. They leapt out of the way, but it hit the wall and burst, spreading fire all around. Behind her, Derek was coming again and she span around to shoot another one at him. This time, he was moving so fast she just full on missed, lighting the far wall on fire. What the hell? Since when were these assholes faster than her?

Frustrated, she created 10 fireballs at once, sending them all in different directions. Surely she would get somebody. One of them grazed Isaac’s arm, leaving him with a nasty red mark. Another caught Kira’s shoe on fire, but she was able to stamp it out quickly. Most of the rest of them missed, lighting various things in the room on fire. There was one last fireball that was heading straight for Lydia and Danny. She’d snuck in behind them unnoticed and had helped Danny down from where he’d been hanging from a chain in the corner of the room, teetering on the brink of consciousness. Scott noticed and leapt in front of them, taking the impact full on, shouting as his entire torso set ablaze.

The others rushed to his side. He stopped dropped and rolled and they chased him, helping to smother the fire quickly. Mariah took advantage of them all being distracted and in the same spot. She extended her arms to her side, calling “Turbine venti.” A gust of wind picked up, spinning around the room. It picked up speed, causing the flames to grow and follow the wind. They were starting to form a tunnel in the center of the room about 10 feet off the floor.

Without warning, the wind stopped and the flames abandoned their tunnel. What? Mariah dropped her arms in surprise. What the hell was going on? She raised her arms again and said her spell louder. “Turbine venti.” The wind barely even moved this time, stopping before it had made a full revolution around the room. Why the hell wasn’t her magic working? “Turbine venti!” she shouted. This time nothing.

With the help of his friends, Scott stood up, chuckling mischievously at her. “I bet you’re wondering why your magic isn’t working.”

“What did you do?” she screamed viciously.

“I didn’t do anything. Stiles did.”

“Freckles? What did he do to my magic?”

“He reversed your spell. I didn’t think it would work this fast, but instead feeding you the power from the earth, the Nemeton is draining your power and feeding itself.”

“That’s not possible,” Mariah whispered, dumbfounded. How the hell could he have done that? When? She was struck with a sudden realization. When he’d come late before, he must have been coming from the Nemeton. “It doesn’t matter!” She screamed. “I’ll just turn it back again! You can’t stop me! I won’t let you sto-”

She was cut off by the sound of beeping. The beeping was urgent and familiar, like an alarm going off on a smartphone. She reached into her pocket and removed an iPhone, unlocking it and cutting off the alarm. It was 11:17. It was too late. The magic from her pentagram had completely dissipated now. The sacrifices wouldn’t help now.

In the back if his mind, Derek heard Stiles shout Griffin’s name, sounding terrified. He looked toward the door worried, and a moment later, the monster alpha let out a roar that had his eyes flashing. That didn’t bode well for Stiles. He glanced to Scott who gave him the go ahead, and he darted out of the room to help.

Mariah was pissed! Not only had she missed her opportunity for revenge, they were draining her powers as well. She was going to kill them! These fucking kids were ruining everything! They needed to die!

“You little bastards!” she laughed maniacally at them. “I’m gonna burn you all!” As she shouted, the flames in the room picked up, climbing up the walls and reaching across the roof. “I’M GONNA BURN THIS WHOLE PLACE TO THE GROUND!” The room filled with smoke and it was getting hard to see. The flames spilled through the double doors, crawling over the walls and spreading throughout the building.

The wolves needed to stop her and get out of there now! They all turned their full focus onto attacking her. They got her surrounded again, but this time they came after her one at a time. Each taking turns swinging claws and swords until no matter which way she turned, she had something come at her. She took hit after hit after hit. Getting slashed along her arms, her legs, her stomach, and her face. She wasn’t fast enough to dodge them anymore. She was running out of power to use. Finally, Kira swung her sword, slashing right across her throat. It wasn’t nearly enough to take off her head, but it was enough to cut right through to her vocal cords.

Mariah grabbed her bleeding neck and let out a strangled screech. She lashed out and flung everyone throughout the room with her telekinesis, slamming them into walls and holding them there. She tried shouting at them again, cursing and screaming. Nothing was coming out. Each attempt at speech just led to more blood pouring from her neck. No! No! No! They can’t do this! They can’t do this to her! They can’t!

Figuring she had nothing left to lose, she reached up into her hair and removed her hair tie, tossing it to the ground. Her hair swung over her shoulders wildly and her eyes glowed emerald green. She released all of her reserve power, holding absolutely nothing back. She channeled as much of her magic as she could into the fingers clutching at her neck. She couldn’t strengthen the magic with her words, so she wasn’t able to fully heal her torn throat. But she was able to fix it enough that she could speak again, even just a mumble. That was all she needed.

“Abire!” she croaked out. She disappeared in a flash of green light, dropping her captives to the ground noisily.

“No!” Scott shouted, coughing into the smoke. “She got away!”

“We’ll deal with that later!” Lydia shouted back. “Now, we need to get away!” Kira and Isaac scooped up Danny, untying him the rest of the way and helping him walk. They all rushed to the double doors, but were stopped when a piece of the roof collapsed, cutting them off. Now how were they going to get out?

XxxxxxxxxX

After Derek had left with the Sheriff draped over his back, he ran at top speed down the dirt road that led to the freeway. It was late at night on a holiday, and no one was on the road. He cursed quietly and tried to focus his ears. He was searching for a sound. Any sound to indicate someone was nearby enough to ask for help. He wasn’t hearing anything and after a while he was starting to silently beg. He didn’t know if he was begging God, or fate, or just begging John not to die, but he was frantically pleading that someone would come along.

In answer to his prayers, he heard a car coming. Thank God, or Buddha, or Ozzy Osborne, or who the hell ever! He took off running toward it, hoping to meet them halfway. He hadn’t yet figured out what exactly he was going to say to the random person driving down the road to explain why he had a bleeding policeman slung over his back, but he figured he cross that bridge when he got to it.

Someone must have been really on his side that night, because he didn’t need any excuses. When he came close enough to the car, he saw that it was Melissa McCall. She slammed on her breaks when she saw him and he dashed right up to her, wrenching the door open. “What the hell happened?” She screamed, in a panic.

“He was shot!”

“The witch shot him?”

“He needs help! I think he’s going into shock.” Derek placed him into the car and he moaned painfully.

“What about the others? Scott and Isaac? And Stiles? Are they okay? Is everyone okay?”

“They’re gonna be fine,” Derek placated. “Mariah’s weakened pretty bad. We’ve actually got the one up on her this time. I think we’re going to win this.” Derek smiled at her optimistically. “Now go! Get him to the hospital. I gotta go back and help the others.” Melissa nodded at him and he backed away as she flipped the car around, speeding off back in the direction she came.

Satisfied, Derek dropped to all fours and booked it back to the slaughterhouse as fast as his legs would carry him.

XxxxxxxxxX

Once Derek took his father, Stiles slid down the wall. Relief washed over him like rays of sunshine, snuffing out the rains of anxiety building up in his chest with the strength of a hurricane. His Dad was taken care of, now he could worry about himself. And Griffin who was still laid out on the ground, but had ominously stopped twitching. He had better not be dead! He was going to kick his fucking ass if he was dead!

Stiles barely had a moment to fear the thought before a whole new fear struck right through him. The monster alpha started to stir. Oh shit. Oh no. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. No-no this was not happening. He debated whether to sing the thing a lullaby in the hopes of putting it back to sleep. It shook its head, flinging blood from its face, and huffed a deep, grating breath. Oh shit. Fuck-fuck-fuck. It stood up slowly, turning toward Stiles with blood dripping from its snout menacingly. Oh man!

“Nice alpha,” Stiles placated. “Nice, sweet alpha. You don’t want to hurt me.” The growling suggested otherwise. “Oh, shit. How am I gonna get out of this one?” Stiles looked around for something to fend it off with. Something, anything. Nothing was in arms reach. Fuck! Come on! Nothing? Not even like a stick or something? Stiles really didn’t want to die like this!

The alpha closed in on him, growl turning wilder with every predatory step forward. He tugged at the chain on his wrist, pressing against the wall and willing it to open up behind him. Now would be a great opportunity for that magic thing to kick in. It would be a great fucking time to just do it! Any moment now!

The alpha swung his clawed hand back and slashed right at Stiles. He covered his face with his arm and closed his eyes, not wanting to see. The claws slashed at his arm with enough force to cleave the manacle off his arm, but just barely broke the skin as it scratched him. What? He should have been ripped in two, but he was barely grazed.

He peeked his eyes open to see and was surprised by what he saw. The alpha had a pair of arms around his neck, holding it back. It had been pulled back just in time for its arms not to reach. Thank god! It must have been Derek! The arms rearranged themselves on the alpha’s neck so that each hand had a firm grip on a different side of its head. With a nauseating pop, the arms jerked and the alpha’s head twisted on its shoulders. Its eyes flashed red, then the arms snapped its neck back the other way and they flickered out completely. The alpha went limp, dead.

The arms released the body and it slumped to the floor. Stiles gasped as their owner was revealed with a pair of glowing red eyes.

“Peter?”

Chapter Text

Chapter 44

“Hello Stiles,” Peter smirked at him.

“What are you even doing here?” Stiles asked incredulously. “Not that I’m complaining!” he added. “In fact, thank you. Thank you so much, you just saved my life! But what the hell are you doing here?” Stiles hadn’t seen Peter since the day at the hospital when they had Cora in the back of the ambulance. To say that he was shocked to be seeing him at all—let alone there—would have been the understatement of the century.

“Well, I heard that your little wicked witchy had a pet alpha and I just couldn’t stay away.” Peter stepped over the body, closing in on Stiles.

Stiles was trying to tell himself that it was just Peter. He saved his life. He helped them out last time. He wasn’t all bad anymore. Stiles had been left alone with Peter before, and except for a few empty threats, he was mostly harmless. He didn’t have anything to be afraid of. Except, in that moment, Stiles was more terrified of him than he was when Peter had been actively threatening his life. Every hair on his body was standing on edge, and every fiber of his being was screaming to get away. Peter kept closing in on him until he was crowding his space, and Stiles realized he was trapped. Not that he would have been able to outrun him anyways.

Stiles swallowed nervously. “Well, I guess he’s not a problem anymore.” He looked over Peter’s shoulder, to his left, to his right, at his shoes. Anywhere to avoid his predatory glare. There was a loud crashing to their right as the roof collapsed in the other room. Oh no! The others were all in there!

“You’re all alone,” Peter pointed out, snapping Stiles’ attention back to him. He chuckled softly at him. “You seem scared, Stiles.”

“What? Nope.” He tried pointlessly to lie. “I’m not-not scared.” He shook his head bravely. “Not me…”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Peter stepped back, and Stiles exhaled, unaware he’d been holding his breath. “I could teach you to be better at it. If you want.”

“Uh, sure. Maybe.” Stiles agreed, thinking it the safest route to take their conversation. “In the future,” he emphasized. “Maybe some time you could do that... In the distant future…” The fire had been pouring into the room, sneaking across the roof. Debris started to fall and Stiles could tell it wouldn’t be too much longer before the roof fell above them as well. He also noticed that Peter was looking at it pointedly, with a deep frown on his face. “The fire,” Stiles ventured. “It’s making you nervous isn’t it?”

“That’s very astute of you Stiles. You always were very clever.” He turned his devious smile back on him. “That’s the thing about you. You’ve got one hell of a mouth on you, but you’re quick as a whip. Not too much unlike myself. You’d make a great werewolf. You’d be a dangerous beta and a magnificent alpha if given the chance. I wouldn’t want you as my enemy.” He reached down and snatched Stiles’ arm. He pushed his sleeve back, revealing the pale skin of his wrist and bringing it toward his mouth, flashing his eyes red. “What do you think? Wouldn’t you want to be on my side?”

Stiles tried to rip his arm away, but of course Peter was too strong. Peter was too strong when he wasn’t an alpha. “I don’t want to be a werewolf!”

“That’s what you said last time,” Peter disputed. “And last time you were lying.”

“Am I lying this time?” Stiles looked Peter right in the eye, with more confidence then he thought he’d had in his heart at the moment. No matter how scared he was of Peter, he knew he didn’t want to be a werewolf, and there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt to be presented.

“No,” Peter sounded disappointed. “I suppose not.” He let his arm go. “I guess I won’t bite you. I wouldn’t want to turn you if you were unwilling. Not you.”

“But Scott?” Stiles scoffed.

“Oh Scott was bitten out of necessity, but I don’t have that right now. With you… It’s like I said. You would be a dangerous beta, and I wouldn’t want you as my enemy. If I turned you and you didn’t want it, you would turn against me. Fight me, try and kill me even. No, I learned that lesson with Scott. I wouldn’t do that to you Stiles. I respect you too much.” Stiles was shocked to hear the words, but couldn’t say that they weren’t relieving. “However, that does mean that I’m going to have to kill you.” Okay. Not so relieving anymore.

“What? Why?” Yeah, what happened to that respect?

“You see, I’ve got a bit of a plan going here. One that requires my current status being kept a secret-”

“I can keep a secret. I won’t tell anybody, honest.”

“See you say that, but didn’t we just have a discussion about you being a terrible liar? So the best solution here is to just kill you. Tie up my loose ends. You can understand that.” Peter nodded at him.

Shit! Stiles just couldn’t catch a fucking break today! He was not dying today, goddammit! He was literally against a wall and had no other defense system. Avoiding this option wasn’t going to work, so he had nothing left but to use his words. He couldn’t just spout off at the mouth this time. No, he had to choose his words a little more carefully.

“Peter,” he whispered. “You don’t have to do this. What do you get out of this? Huh? How does killing me benefit you? For a secret? No. I don’t think so.” Peter wasn’t buying it, but he smiled at his effort. Okay, another tactic. “I know about Arthur. And AJ.” Now Peter was openly scowling at him. “Why are you doing this? Why do you need this power? For them? For revenge? You already got your revenge. You killed Kate. You killed all the people that helped her get away with it. You killed Laura too, but Derek got his revenge for that. He doesn’t hate you anymore. Keep working with him and he might even grow to respect you. You don’t need this. All that, and now you’re the alpha again? You’ve got all your bases covered. Everything’s even. Nice and square. You don’t need to do this, it would just tip the scales out of your favor.”

Stiles smiled at him encouragingly. Peter looked back pensively, actually considering his words. Stiles did have a point. Or did he? He shook his head, expression turning sour again. “No. Not all my bases are covered,” he disputed. “Yeah, I got my revenge against Kate. I did. But Kate isn’t the only one who burned me.”

Stiles’ heart dropped to his stomach and he felt like he ought to throw it up. He shook his head, trying to come up with a good enough defense against it, but he had nothing. “Peter…” he whispered again. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Jackson is still in London. Maybe I’ll have to a make a trip over there sometime. I have always wanted to visit England. Such a rich history. Then things will be square.” He drew an invisible square with a pair of taloned fingers. “But for now-” Peter didn’t bother finishing his sentence. He reached a clawed hand out and tore right through Stiles. He ripped him open, shredding his skin diagonally from shoulder to opposite hip, cutting across his stomach and a few jagged lines into his chest.

Stiles was so shocked, he didn’t even scream. For a moment it didn’t hurt. He was too surprised for it to hurt. He couldn’t believe it. He was going to die. Peter had killed him! He slid down the wall, leaving a thick trail of blood behind him, gasping for breath. He couldn’t even cry. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs for that. He looked up at Peter, horror in his eyes, and Peter just smiled down at him.

The roof started creaking and a big piece of it fell down about 5 feet from Peter. That was much too close for his liking. Looking at Stiles’ wounds, he knew he wouldn’t last much longer. If he didn’t bleed out first, then the flames would certainly get him. So he winked at him deviously, then ran off at alpha speed, leaving him to die.

Peter was gone for about 30 seconds when the pain finally hit. It was like nothing Stiles had ever felt before. His blood was pounding in his ears and he felt like he’d be sick. It was so excruciating he couldn’t move. He could barely breathe and he certainly couldn’t get any words out to call for help. He sat there, gasping and struggling for breath while his own blood pooled in his lap and spilled onto the floor. There was so much blood, and it was making his legs warm, but his torso was so cold.

Chapter Text

Chapter 45

Derek rushed into the slaughterhouse, peering through the fire. He saw Griffin still splayed out on the floor. He saw the alpha in a different spot than he’d left him, with his neck all twisted around. He was dead, he could smell it. But that wasn’t all he was smelling.

“Stiles!” He ran straight to him and nearly his whole body was stained red. “What happened? Who did this to you?” he asked, panicking.

Stiles tried wheezing out the name. “P-p-p…Pe- Pet-”

“Peter? Peter was here?” Derek asked, surprised. Stiles nodded at him gently, unable to get anything else out.

Another piece of the roof fell down beside them, reminding them of the state of the building. “We have to get the others! This place is going to fall down around us.” He knelt down, wrapping Stiles’ arm around his neck on the side of the good shoulder. He slid Stiles’ fingers under the collar of his shirt, keeping skin to skin contact. He wrapped his arm underneath him, sliding his own hand under his shirt to place his palm flat against the skin of his back. Very slowly, he sucked his pain away. He couldn’t take too much too fast, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to help him out of there. He lifted his legs so that he was carrying him bridal style, then turned toward the double doors.

Shit! The doors were blocked! A piece of the roof had fallen, covering it. Something heavy crashed against it, sending cracks through it. Another crash and it was starting to open up. One last crash and Isaac barreled through, completely wolfed out. Kira came behind him with Danny’s arm slung over her shoulders. He was bleeding from the head and likely concussed, but still conscious and limping along beside her, coughing from all the smoke. Lydia, then Scott came behind them, all freezing as they approached and saw that Derek was holding Stiles.

They erupted in a symphony of Stiles’ name and begging to know what happened. Derek insisted they do this later. They needed to get him out of there. He instructed Scott to grab Griffin off the floor and told Isaac to help when he started kicking his legs wildly and moaning. They rushed out of the slaughterhouse and toward the Durango. It wasn’t locked, but no one had the key. They searched Griffin’s pockets, but he didn’t have it. He must have dropped it somewhere during the fight.

Isaac offered to go back inside to look for it, but as he approached the door, another piece of the roof came down, blocking him from getting inside. Stiles needed to get to a hospital and fast, so Derek sent Kira to call an ambulance. Reception out there was spotty, so she had to run all the way to the highway to get enough signal. The ambulance was on its way quickly, but it was New Year’s Eve and midnight was only a few minutes away. They didn’t know if they’d make it in time.

They moved away from the building and the smoke, settling under a tree not very far from where Kira had made her call. Griffin was starting to heal from his brain injury and was regaining control of his limbs. He still couldn’t stand and speech was as of yet beyond him, but he wasn’t twitching anymore and was able to maintain an upright position. Or at least sit back up when he tipped over.

Stiles wasn’t a werewolf. He wasn’t healing. He wasn’t going to. He was pouring blood down Derek’s shirt and arm, wheezing and struggling to catch his breath. He was sputtering and choking for a moment, gurgling and spitting up blood. All they could do was wait for the ambulance, but his heartbeat was so weak and it was becoming clear that he wasn’t going to last much longer. Derek sat down on the ground, cradling Stiles in his lap. He pressed his chin against the teen’s forehead, creating another point of contact to drain some of his pain away.

“He isn’t going to make it Derek!” Scott panicked. “There’s gotta be something we can do. There has to! I can’t lose him! He’s my brother! I can’t!”

“Scott, there isn’t… I don’t know.” Derek’s voice was so small and broken, but he didn’t know what to tell him.

“Wait! What about Cora! You gave up your alpha powers to save her. I could do the same!” Scott was so hopeful, but Derek could only frown back at him.

“I don’t know if that’s going to work, Scott. Cora’s a werewolf. She already has healing powers. What I did just gave her enough of a boost to heal herself. Stiles doesn’t heal that way. Besides, it could kill you too. Then you would both be dead and it would be all for nothing.”

Scott shook his head, determined. “I have to try, Derek. I can’t give up on him! I won’t! Tell me what to do!”

“You’re a true alpha right to the core, Scott McCall,” Derek complimented his bravery. “Are you sure you want to give that up? Or your life?”

“If I wasn’t willing to give that up, I wouldn’t be worthy of being a true alpha. Tell me what to do.” Scott was more calm and calculated in this decision than he had been the entire night. This was Stiles, there was nothing he wouldn’t do.

Following Derek’s orders, he sat down beside them and gripped Stiles’ hand, taking more of his pain away. When he did, Stiles sighed and visibly relaxed against Derek, even pulling the hand out of his shirt and combing it through his hair. Derek leaned his head into it, without breaking the contact between his chin and Stiles’ forehead.

Wanting to help too, Isaac climbed on the ground with them and slid his hand up his pant leg, taking even more pain away. Danny came forward and grabbed his other leg, Lydia grabbed his arm just above the elbow, and Kira came around and gripped his other arm, placing her hand near Scott’s. The three of them knew they couldn’t actually draw his pain away with the wolves, but they wanted to support Stiles too, and the physical contact could be comforting.

Although he couldn’t manage to get the words out, Stiles was so thankful for all of them. He loved all of the people around him. Even Isaac whom he fought with all the time. He loved that fucker too. And they loved him as well. He could feel it flowing into him. He wasn’t in pain anymore. They were taking too much of it away. There was none left.

In fact, they were taking so much away that he actually felt rather amazing. It was causing him physical pleasure. It was quite euphoric, really. He could still hear his blood pounding in his ears and his body was still so cold, but all the hands on him were making him warmer. They were amazing for trying, but he knew he was going to die like this. He just wanted to say thank you so much. He tipped his head back, looking up at the stars. Derek nuzzled against his chin to maintain contact and he smiled at the feeling of his stubble on his face.

Behind him, Lydia’s phone started beeping, counting down the last minute until midnight. At 57 seconds, Lydia gasped loudly, eyes watering and panic building in her voice. She gripped his arm a little tighter, crying “No!” She could feel it. She could feel his death building up in her chest. She couldn’t see it, but she knew that feeling. It was the same one she’d gotten that day, crouching over Stiles at Oak Creek right before Allison died. It was the same feeling that had been giving her nightmares, taking over her life, and consuming her. Until the boy laying between all of them taught her that she didn’t need to suffer alone.

At 51 seconds Scott tightened his grip on Stiles’ hand. He pushed against his limits, drawing the black lines from Stiles beyond his breaking point. He’d reached the moment Derek warned him about, the point where every fiber of his being was warning him to stop, but he kept going, drawing on his alpha strength to feed into Stiles as he replaced his pain.

At 49 seconds Stiles gasped as he felt the power flowing into him. It was like he was being filled up with a robust, golden light. He felt it flowing through his body and all of his senses were heightened. Was this what it felt like to be a werewolf? He could see particles from the tree floating through the air, gliding gently toward him. He could feel Derek’s heartbeat pounding against his ribcage and pressing into his own chest. He could smell the smoke from the burning building behind them. He could smell the trees, the spray in Lydia’s hair. He could smell his own blood. It was everywhere and overpowering everything. There was just so much. He could hear crickets chirping on the other side of the highway. He could hear tires on the pavement down the road. A car was racing toward them. A big car, like a van. Maybe it was the ambulance.

At 35 seconds, he looked up at the tree above him, peering at the stars between the branches. If this was the last thing he saw, he would be okay with that. It actually looked kind of beautiful like this.

At 29 seconds, he caught an unnatural movement in the trees and adjusted his focus to it. There was a person in the tree. Not just a person, it was Mariah! She was glaring down at the group of them, muttering something in a quiet, broken voice. He honed his ears in, catching her words. “Like a dark cloud casting a shadow over the night, suck your lives away and feed your souls into darkness. Close your eyes one final time. No sleep. No dreams. No breath. No life. Only death. Only death.”

She was chanting a spell down at them, repeating it over and over. It was meant to kill them! All of them! He couldn’t let them die! He had to do something! But what could he do?

At 17 seconds he was about to open his mouth to try and warn the others. He felt a sudden surge of power inside of him as Scott forced every last little bit of his alpha strength inside of him.

12 seconds and he was struck with one last brilliant idea. He knew what he could do. He knew how he could save them.

At 9 seconds, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scott’s eyes flash from red to gold and he knew this was his last chance. After his alpha powers ran out, there wouldn’t be anything left to hold him onto the feeble scrap of life he’d been clinging to.

5 seconds. He focused all of his attention and energy on Mariah. He was going to save his friends, he couldn’t let them die. He wasn’t going to let them die.

2 seconds. He opened his mouth and took a painful breath.

0 seconds. He said one word.

“Ignite!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 46

Aunt Dee was sitting in her basement, listening to the ball drop and wringing her hands nervously. She almost regretted making the others bring her home before heading to the slaughterhouse. She just wanted to know what was happening. Maybe she shouldn’t have let them do this on their own. What if they couldn’t handle it? Ugh! She needed to know what was happening!

She heard Ryan Seacrest leading the count down from her tablet and when they got down to zero, she was bombarded with a huge explosion of color, distracting her from her worries. It wasn’t fireworks on the screen. She wouldn’t have seen that. Rather it was coming from behind her, where she knew her candelabra to be.

The whole thing exploded in a bright, ethereal blue, taking up the entire width of the candelabra and reaching all the way up to the roof. It faded to a darker, pure blue. Like the primary color. The light shrank down, fading to purple then red, cycling through all the colors of the rainbow as it grew smaller and smaller. By the time it had shrunk down to the size of a normal flame, it had gone through the whole rainbow 5 times and landed back on blue. It returned to the ethereal blue it had started off as, before flickering out.

When the colors shrank down smaller, she was able to tell exactly where the light was coming from. It was coming from the center candle of the candelabra. It was coming from Stiles’ candle.

Aunt Dee smiled big. Now she knew they were going to be okay. She slid off her chair merrily and guided herself to the staircase. Walking behind it, she pulled a book from a hidden bookcase. She opened it up and muttered a short spell to reveal that there was actually a hole in the center. In the hole was a group of silver chains for jewelry. She pulled one out and warmed it in her palm with excitement.

Shifted through the whole rainbow 5 times, huh? She reactivated her spell and put the book back, taking the chain to the table with her and feeling around for ingredients. She had work to do, and she needed to hurry up.

XxxxxxxxxX

At the stroke of midnight, Stiles said the word “ignite.”

In that same moment, something burst into flames in the tree above them. Not long after, the screech of tires could be heard on the pavement of the highway as an ambulance sped toward them. They stopped at a safe enough distance away and two paramedics exited the vehicle. One of them rushed to their side, ushering everyone away from the tree. The other lagged behind, taking some time to call the fire department about the tree and the building behind them.

Scott was so confused. He had no idea what just happened, but he was glad the ambulance was there. The female paramedic scrambled to get the stretcher from the back and urged Derek to put Stiles on it. Everyone else let him go and Derek placed him down, but he didn’t want to let go. Scott imagined with the lack of contact that he was in complete pain again, of course he wouldn’t want to let go. Stiles reached his arm out to Derek, grabbing his shirt and whimpering. His grip was weak, so the paramedic was able to pull him away easily, but as soon as Derek was out of his grasp, Stiles started screaming.

The male paramedic started asking questions about what happened. Derek jumped right in explaining that someone lied to them, saying there was supposed to be a rave in the slaughterhouse. When they got there and found it was empty they went to leave, but realized they’d lost their keys. While they were looking for it, a red haired woman came up and set the building on fire. Before they were able to get out, Danny fell and hit his head and Stiles was attacked with some sharp weapon. They couldn’t tell what it was, and the woman ran off into the woods. So they came out and called the ambulance.

While Derek was telling his story, the fire department and the police showed up. Stiles had to be rushed off to the hospital and the others were kept for questioning. Derek insisted that Kira and Lydia were waiting in the car the whole time and didn’t see anything. He also said that Danny was hit so hard in the head that he couldn’t really remember anything either. They all played along and a second ambulance was even called for Danny. Which was good because he probably needed it. The police separated the wolves as they questioned them, trying to catch them in a lie. They could still hear each other talking though, so they were able to corroborate each other’s stories perfectly fine as each one embellished and filled in the blanks.

When they were asked about Griffin—who was able to stand and talk now, but stumbling around and slurring his words so much no one could understand him—they gave the same simple answer. He was drunk. Considering it was New Year’s, the police believed it easily. Also considering how huge he was on the few moments he was able to stand up properly, no one bothered to question his age. They made him sit in the back of the Durango until everyone was finished.

Before leaving, the paramedics had mentioned seeing something in the tree burst into flames. They were able to act as witnesses as proof that none of the teens or Derek had done it. The thing in the tree suddenly fell out of the tree, and the firefighters rushed to put it out. When they approached, they discovered that it was a body. Judging by the amount of red hair falling from the branches still, it was the unknown woman Derek had indicated. Aka Mariah.

With no evidence to suggest foul play, but witness statements to suggest she’d set herself on fire, the police were forced to let everyone go, but warned them not to skip town. A tow truck came to take the Durango, followed by news crews and a small crowd of rubberneckers. The police drove the teens to their respective homes, but Derek insisted he didn’t need a ride. Once they left him alone, he took off into the woods, looking for something else entirely.

Chapter Text

Chapter 47

Upon arrival, Stiles was taken almost immediately to emergency surgery to get sewn up. When he was wheeled into his hospital room after he left, Aunt Dee was already waiting in there for him. Fortunately for her, neither of the nurses who wheeled him in were Melissa McCall so she had no trouble convincing them that she was supposed to be there. She didn't even have to use any coercion magic. It was really no wonder Beacon Hills Memorial was probably the least safe hospital in the state of California, if not the country (possibly the world). They should probably just tear the place down.

As soon as she was confident they'd been left alone, she used her walking stick to find her way to his bedside. She pat him on the head and he didn't stir, still being affected by the benzos they’d given him to keep him unconscious. Fantastic. She pulled her hands down lower, stroking the sides of his face and down his neck until she found his bare shoulders. The one shoulder was covered in gauze to protect his freshly woven stitches.

She slowly peeled back the gauze to reveal said stitches and felt around until she had a finger resting on the small gap between two of them. With her finger properly aligned, she dug it in to the space, pressing hard and drawing blood. Stiles sighed shakily and stirred, feeling the pain through his drug induced slumber. She dug harder, making blood spill all over his chest, soaking his gauze and very nearly tearing his stitches.

When she'd gotten her finger pressed in so deep that his skin surpassed her knuckle, she decided she was satisfied and reached her free hand into her pocket and withdrew a long silver chain. She pressed it into the blood spilled on his chest and dipping it into the space that her finger had made. She coated the chain in his blood, staining it completely red.

She grabbed his wrist and wrapped the chain around it slowly, chanting a long spell, repeating it three times. Once for every time she wrapped it around his wrist. When she'd gotten to the end, she pressed the two pieces together and with a small flash of green light, they were connected completely and secured on his wrist.

When the spell was done, there was no more blood residue on the chain and it had completely changed. It was no longer a chain link, but instead a series of inch long, rectangular plates. Each group of three was connected by tiny hinges that left them room to turn and swivel both directions. Between each group of three was a small red gemstone that fit the two sides together like a bracket, allowing each side to turn back and forth, but otherwise limiting the movement. There were 5 gems total. Aunt Dee leaned over to Stiles' ear and with just a hint of coercion magic, she ordered him not to take it off. All finished. She pulled a wet nap from her other pocket and wiped the drying blood off of her hands. She reached around the hospital bed and pushed the nurse's button before grabbing her walking stick and exiting the room.

XxxxxxxxxX

Even when in a drug induced stupor Stiles couldn't keep his mouth shut. Only about a third of what he was saying made any sense, but the words just kept pouring out anyways. Thanks to a certain nurse who held a level of seniority, The Sheriff and his son had been placed in the same room together. So when Scott, Lydia, and Griffin were finally allowed into his room, they were surprised to see Stiles chattering away sleepily to his father in what sounded like complete and utter gibberish. He sure was yammering away, though. John was definitely heavily medicated as well and kept responding as if he understood every word of it. He at least, could be understood.

He kept telling Stiles that it was okay, he'd be fine. Getting shot was no big deal. It's not like John had never done it before. Oh whoops, Stiles didn't know that? Well, now he does. It was years ago. Don't worry about it. He's fine now, stop worrying. Fine, he won't eat red meat for a month. Whatever he says, just relax.

Scott and Griffin came to sit on either of Stiles' sides and Lydia at his feet, offering him and the Sheriff greetings. Stiles smiled at all of them, but suddenly stopped speaking. Griffin reached down to hold his hand, blinking curiously at the bracelet he found there and Stiles gasped really loudly. Fearing he'd hurt him, Griffin let go and asked if he was alright. Stiles reached back for him with a giant smile and started spouting off at the mouth again. This time in English.

"You're so pretty! I can't believe it! Oh my god! Scott," he let Griffin go so he could smack Scott a couple of times. "He's so pretty!" Scott laughed and agreed with him, glad his friend was cheerful and at least not in any pain. "I mean look at him! Look at that face! He's gorgeous. He's even prettier than Lydia!" Lydia scoffed at that and flipped her hair over her shoulder, muttering that he must be really high right now. No one was prettier than her. "Look at his eyes! They're beautiful." He reached back over to put a hand on Griffin's face and Griffin held his fingers in place, chuckling low in the back of his throat.

"I'm glad you think I'm prettier than Lydia. Although I'm not certain Lydia appreciates it," Griffin winked at her teasingly and she pursed her lips at him. Whatever. She was fabulous.

Their conversation went on much like that. Stiles was too medicated to really talk about much. Eventually he fell asleep mid word, clutching Griffin's hand to the side of his face and talking about who knows what. He kept going back and forth between English and whatever gibberish he'd been speaking before so none of them could really follow along.

They left him alone and let him sleep. Later that evening, Stiles received another visitor. It was probably 1 in the morning and the Sheriff was out like a light, however Stiles was awake again and in a little bit of pain. He had called for a nurse, but she couldn't give him any more medication than he already had because he’d reached his limit. Any more and he’d be in overdose territory. For now he was just stuck.

He was surprised to see Peter visiting him in the hospital. Almost as surprised as Peter was to find out that he'd survived. Peter had expected to walk in on the boy sleeping and to kill him while he dreamed. Perhaps he would have smothered him, maybe he would have put something in his IV. He hadn't made up his mind yet and figured he'd decide once he got there. What he hadn't expected was to walk in and for Stiles to smile up at him as if he were happy to see the man who'd tried to kill him barely 48 hours before.

"Oh, Peter," Stiles reached a hand out to him and Peter warily came over to take it. "Thank God you're here." Stiles took his hand immediately and Peter looked down at him curiously. "Go on," Stiles urged, shaking Peter's hand when he didn't do anything. "Don't be stingy. You're a walking talking painkiller with none of the side effects. Help a dude out." Peter was confused by Stiles' behavior, but took some of his pain away regardless. He did it slowly so it could last longer before the transferred pain overwhelmed him. Stiles sighed in relief and relaxed into his pillow. "Thanks man, you're a lifesaver."

"So," Peter ventured a question. "Do you remember what happened?" Stiles shrugged the one shoulder and shook his head.

"Not even a little bit." He wasn't lying. Peter had listened for a tick in his heartbeat, but there was none. He glanced over his chart to see what kind of meds he was on. He had been given a kind of benzodiazepine for his surgery which Peter knew could cause minor memory loss. Hmm. Perhaps he wouldn't have to kill the kid after all. If he didn't remember what had happened, then getting rid of him wasn't strictly necessary just yet. Maybe he could even spend the time trying to get him on his side. He'd meant what he told him before. Stiles would make a great werewolf.

"That's too bad." Stiles shrugged the one shoulder at him again. He supposed it didn't matter. He was alive and the threat was gone. That was the important part. "Well I'm glad you're alright." Peter wasn't lying either. "I can't stay. I just came by to see how you were doing." To this Stiles whined. His human painkiller was leaving too soon. Bah humbug. Peter left him alone again and he tried to fall back asleep.

He woke up again sometime the next afternoon. Kira, Scott, Isaac, and Danny had come to see him not long after. They asked him how he was feeling and tried to get him to explain what exactly happened. He still couldn't remember. He didn't remember a thing after his Dad got shot. It was like he'd heard the gunshot, then everything faded to black and he was in a hospital bed.

They chatted merrily for a while, catching him up on what's been going on. Apparently he'd been fading in and out of inebriated consciousness for 2 days. Danny had been in and out of the hospital already with a mild concussion. He was better now, but had a few stitches in his skull and oh the tetanus shot he had to get! Stiles tried to say they could be stitch-buddies, but Danny wasn’t going for it. They reported that Malia did very well on the full moon, which was great news, but everyone had still felt bad for not being able to help her through it no matter how much she understood. She did decide to stay as a human with her dad for now, and that left everyone relieved. Isaac may have seemed a bit miffed about not being including in their visits to Malia, but he didn't say anything so no one else brought it up. Most mysterious news of all, Derek went missing immediately after being questioned by the police and no one had seen or heard from him since.

When Stiles woke up again, Griffin was sitting beside him, resting his head on the mattress near his hand. He was dozing quietly with the early morning sun shining down on his face. It was the first time Stiles had seen sunlight in the New Year. And it was shining down on Griffin. He reached his hand up to stroke the hair out his face, caressing his cheek and making him stir.He peeled his lids open slowly and immediately locked eyes with Stiles. Holding his hand against his face tenderly, he gave Stiles a soft smile.

"Hey," Stiles smiled back at him.

"Hey yourself," he kissed his fingers. Without further preamble, Griffin reached to put his free hand into Stiles' hair and launched into an apology. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm an idiot, okay? You are important. You're so important. You could be a human, a witch, or a were-donkey for all it matters. You are a part of Scott's pack and I'm a jerk and a fool for not seeing it and worse, trying to take that away from you. Just please forgive me." He dropped his head so that it was resting on Stiles' knuckles, and his next words were barely above a whisper. "I thought you were going to die, and I just love you so much. I love you, Stiles. I just couldn't bear the thought of losing someone else that I love. It would be like losing a body part. That feeling, that's what a pack is, and I realize that now. None of that other crap matters. So please? Can you please forgive me?" He tilted his head up and fixed Stiles with a pleading look.

The sun was shining right on him, so his pupils were constricted to pinpoints. His eyes were intense and greener than anything Stiles had ever seen. He could get lost in those eyes, adrift in an endless pool of warmth and jade, accompanied by nothing but the sounds of his own fluttering heartbeat. Looking at him like that, it was hard to think of anything else. He could feel the rumble of his deep voice vibrating through the bones in his hand and sending trails of goosebumps spiking up his arm.

He was doing it again. The way Griffin’s fingers were laced through his hair was intimate and very comforting. However Stiles couldn’t help but notice that they also kept him from turning his head away and breaking eye contact. He blinked slowly, sighing through his nose. Griffin was giving him that damn puppy dog look with those fucking eyes and he knew exactly what he was doing, but there really wasn't anything he could do about it. He just couldn't resist those eyes. He never could and probably never would. He swore it would be his downfall one day. Besides, if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t really even mad at him anymore.

He ran his hand up Griffin’s arm and tangled their fingers together, leaning forward to give him a kiss. Before he made it halfway there, he froze, wincing as he strained the stitches in his chest. He wheezed, and collapsed back onto the mattress. "Okay, you're gonna have to come here and kiss me." Griffin chuckled and stood up, leaning forward to place a delicate kiss on his lips. He turned his head slightly as if to place a kiss on Stiles' neck, but hesitated as if asking permission. Stiles turned his head to the side, exposing his neck and giving Griffin the all okay.

XxxxxxxxxX

Stiles had been out of the hospital for 4 days. His Dad had still been there, so he was staying with Melissa, Scott, and Isaac. If Stiles hadn't been nearly incapacitated the entire time (and thus mostly incapable of breaking things with his flailing), poor Melissa may have lost her mind with those three under one roof. At one point she had been so done with Stiles and Isaac's arguing that she readjusted Stiles' sling and added a few straps so that he was tied to a computer chair and pushed him into a closet. She then threatened the other 2 that if they let him out before he stopped talking that they'd be cleaning the house top to bottom with their own toothbrushes and wouldn’t be getting new ones.

Stiles had been in there for less than 2 minutes, but he got the point and played nice, ignoring Isaac’s joke about coming out of the closet again and sucking up to Melissa the rest of the day. He didn't even badmouth Isaac's cashmere scarf that he was wearing indoors. Nope. Not once. Even though the heater was on. And he wasn’t even going anywhere. He just had it on like some ridiculous fashion statement. The jerk was probably just wearing it because he knew Stiles found it dumb but wasn’t going to say anything. Asshole. But no, Stiles was on his best behavior.

John was being released that night, so it was Stiles' first time being home since the day he was kidnapped. He was very displeased about the state of his room, and even more upset about his chessboard having been disturbed. He tried to put it back to the way it was, but couldn't remember where all the pieces were. He also noticed the black queen was missing. He gave up and just put all the pieces in their original places, prepared to start a new game. He scoured his room for the last piece, neatening it in the process.

As he was maneuvering around his room, he noticed that his stitches were feeling a little weird. At first it was just a mild itching. But it kept growing in intensity until they were pinching at his skin painfully. They shouldn't have been feeling that way. Any new changes should have come on gradually, this was rather all of a sudden.

He took his sling off, (the one he didn't technically need in the first place, and he’d only been given to make him keep his arm still) and removed his shirt, approaching the mirror on his wall. He took a close look at the slash marks on his shoulder and across his stomach. Strange. The wound looked almost completely healed. The skin was sealed together and the stitches were thread through scar tissue. That was impossible. The doctor predicted recovery time as at least 6 weeks if he didn’t rip his stitches open. There was no way it should have healed that fast.

Yes there was. Stiles suddenly remembered the night he was attacked. He remembered Mariah and the monster alpha. He remembered Peter and his spiel about wanting Stiles as his beta. He remembered how shocked he was when Peter tore into him, and the euphoric feeling as he lay dying in Derek's arms. Everyone around him had a hand on him, sucking the pain away, supporting him down to the last moment. The people he cared about. The pack. His pack. He remembered Mariah chanting in the tree and igniting his spark to kill her.

That's right.

He ignited his spark.

He wasn't a human anymore. He rushed to the desk and grabbed an exact-o knife. He took it back to the mirror and carefully cut all of his stitches. It took almost 20 minutes to get them all without stabbing himself. After cutting them, he wiggled then around a bit, making them sting and start to bleed. Once they were loose enough, he pulled the threads out. Each one hurt like a bitch, and by the end he was dripping blood down his stomach.

When he got the last one, he cleaned the blood off with one of his shirts and looked back into the mirror. He was healing. It was quite a bit slower than the way the werewolves healed. But he was definitely healing. He could see the tiny holes closing up and being replaced with scar tissue.

Well, shit.

He backed away from the mirror, clutching the starting point of the slash marks on his shoulder in disbelief. He stopped and sat down when his legs hit the bed, trying to let it sink in.

He was a witch now. He wasn't a human anymore. He could do magic. Real magic. Like actual magic what the fuck!

He felt that he'd sat on something and reached under his thigh to pull it out. It was the missing chess piece. He stared at it pensively for a moment while a few gears turned in his head, whirring and clicking as he processed a heavy thought. Calmly, he stood to walk across the room and take a silver sticky note from his desk drawer, printing his name across it with a black pen. He affixed the silver paper to the chess piece and returned it to its spot on the board with a final and resonant click.

He was officially in the game.

Chapter Text

Epilogue

Aunt Dee was sitting on a stool, reading a book in her darkened lair (as Stiles liked to call it). She was deeply absorbed in her book, pulling her fingers along the bumps and ridges quickly, with practiced hands. It was highly engaging. Of course it was. Aunt Dee wrote it. It should be nothing less.

She was speeding through an entry about her first time mentoring another witch. It had happened long before she'd lost her eyesight. She had mentored many young sparks and witches, but none after she'd lost her eyesight. She wasn't entirely sure if she could. How could she judge a fledgling witch's progress if she couldn't even see it?

She had been so excited to discover that Stiles was a spark and was even moreso when he revealed he wanted to ignite his spark. At the time it hardly seemed such a daunting task. Now that it was staring her in the face, she found herself apprehensive for the first time in a long while. Aunt Dee didn't scare or intimidate so easily. The last thing she wanted to do was to leave the poor teen high and dry. Although many a witch came into their own without any mentors at all. Stiles was genius level smart even if he nor anybody else wanted to see it. She figured he'd do just fine on his own.

She pulled away from her book, crossing her arms and stroking her chin pensively. She just didn't know if she could do it. If there was just a way for her to know with certainty that she would be able to help him properly, then she would do it with no qualms whatsoever.

As if the fates had been standing around, waiting for her to ask herself this question, she immediately received her answer. She heard it before anything else. A sudden cracking and a tiny poof behind her as a single candle on her candelabra lit itself. It wasn't a spectacular show through her vision the way Stiles' had been. It was just exactly what it would have been expected to be. A brief flash of white light replaced by a red-orange glow that faded to golden brown, then to darkness.

Aunt Dee pulled her book back toward herself and pressed her fingers to the pages with a mischievous smirk on her face. Okay. Fine. She would do it.

XxxxxxxxxX

A/N

Wahhhhhh! I'm done! Now what do I do???

Well, since I'm here... I would love to give a shout out to Mulder200 and astrospace for being awesome people who commented on basically every chapter, and for being my unwitting cheerleaders throughout this entire process. Every time I couldn't update like 7 times a day, I felt like I was really letting you two guys down specifically.

I would also like to dedicate this first installment to these two songs. The first one became my kind of theme song for Stiles and Griffin's relationship. Their relationship has literally nothing to do with the content or message of the song whatsoever, but that didn't stop me from playing the song on repeat throughout my entire writing process to the point that I can no longer hear it without thinking of them. The second song, I only discovered about a week ago. After alternating between that one and the first one for a while, I came to the sudden realization that this song fits quite perfectly with the scene where Stiles was dying, although it fits a lot better with the Sterek endgame in mind. When I was writing that scene and the song came on, I started singing the words and the way they fit literally had my eyes prickling with the start of tears. I didn't actually cry, cause real men don't cry (ignoring the fact that I am a nerdy female who screams when she sees spiders) but I could feel them coming on.

Anyways. I'm all done now and I feel like my life is at a crossroads. Oh well. Off to write the sequel. *spins away in slow motion while flower petals fall*