Chapter Text
He was going to kill them. String them up by their feet and tear out their throats. He was going to do it. This time. This time for sure.
“Give it up, asshat!”
“You first, buttmunch!”
“Buttmunch? What are you, twelve?”
The clock on the entertainment cetner’s display blinked back at him: 7:30 on a Sunday morning.
“Who ate the last of Cocoa Puffs!? I was seriously looking forward to my morning fix…”
“Derek did it.”
“Derek.”
“It was Derek!”
“You’re all filthy, flea ridden liars,”
7:30. On a Sunday. Peter was going to slaughter them.
At that moment, something heavy plopped onto his legs with enough force to make him grunt. Said involuntary noise morph into a low growl as he opened his eyes fully and glared at the young woman sitting on him.
“Morning, sunshine,” Laura grinned as she tousled his hair.
“Get off me,” he glowered, probably too drowsily to be effective, so he closed his eyes again and snuggled back into the pillows dismissively. “And it’s Alpha-sunshine,” he corrected, “Show some respect.”
She punched him in the gut, not especially hard, but plenty hard enough; it hurt dully. “You do know your bedroom is soundproofed from the rest of the house, right? It’s almost like Grandad had werewolves in mind when he built the place.”
“Hmm.”
“Just like, even.”
“Hmmmm.”
She poked him in the rib, right over the spot she’d punched. Since she was an alpha, the tenderness was slow enough to heal that his grumble was only mostly for show.
“Go to bed, Peter.”
“Just give me five minutes.”
“Or you could just go sleep in an actual bed for five hours. It’d do you some good.”
“Probably,” he admitted.
He felt his niece shift her weight from nearly crushing his knee to solidly settling on the couch with her legs thrown over his thighs. Her sigh was quiet, he almost didn’t catch it beneath the continued bickering coming from the rest of the house. He’d become all too familiar with that exact sigh over the past ten years though.
“I sent Erica and Isaac for the grocery run yesterday.” She made the statement with forced casualness that instantly had him alert, even if he kept his eyes closed stubbornly. “Guess who they ran into in the produce department.”
Peter stayed silent. He had a feeling he didn’t want to have this conversation. It was Sunday.
“Fucktard!”
Someone roared in the other room.
Peter sighed and finally resigned himself to being awake. He blinked his eyes open and met Laura’s serious eyes. “It’s Sunday,” he told her blandly.
“I know.” She had the grace to look sorry, at least.
The house trembled as a pack of young wolves went rampaging through. Peter thought he caught sight of blonde hair streaking by over the back of the couch a moment before the back door was slammed open. The pups traded insults and snarls and good-natured taunts that faded into the distance. Peter and Laura were alphas though, so they could still hear the nonsense long after the house had quieted around them.
After a long, tense moment where it was just them in the main house, Laura finally caved.
“Marin’s back in town.”
Peter sat up to glare at her expectantly. “Visiting her brother, I assume?”
Laura stared back. “She’s staying with him, yes.”
“And?”
“And she made quite the impression on Erica and Isaac. You’re expected to come calling. It’s apparently nonnegotiable,”
One day. One fucking day. He raced around this town and the surrounding territories all week, on so little sleep and even less down time, and the one day he’d set aside to recharge was being hijacked by the damn Council and their damn druids. Peter hated druids.
Peter wouldn’t ignore a summons though, unofficial as it may be. He’d been doing this job long enough to know better.
The last time he’d given the Council the middle finger, he had been young and fearful and stubbornly ignorant of is his own traumatized frame of mind. He’d had two options only: he could fall in line and do the job right, or he could waste away as a lone wolf while his pack was dismantled. The threat had been very real. It still was. They had nearly taken his pack from him then, or what was left of it anyway.
Even now, ten years later, Peter couldn’t think of anything worse. It took a special find of animal to survive as lone wolf, and even Peter’s damaged psyche had known he wouldn’t cut it.
Alan and Christopher had been the only reason he hadn’t fallen down that hole. They’d voted to give him more time, they’d voted compassionately in his favor. They had given him a second chance to salvage the remains of the Hale Pack, and Peter had snatched the opportunity with all the desperation and eagerness of dying wolf thrown a bone. Maybe the analogy hadn’t been far off.
Peter sighed and flopped back onto the couch. “It’s Sunday,” he whined.
“… yeah.”
Laura whined, a soft, uncertain sound that would have suited her animal form better. That was the great thing about Laura, she always knew where he was at in his mind and she always had his back. Maybe it was because she was the only other alpha in the pack, maybe it was a side effect of her being his Second and his official heir. The reasons didn’t matter though, the result was the same:
Ten years ago, she’d been an adolescent pup of an annoyance he’d barely had time for; now, she was the rock-solid support behind his every move and the extension of his own mind and will. Peter hadn’t been the only one who’d had to step up.
“You should shower. I’ll raid the leftover breakfast foods and have coffee ready for you. All you have to do is meet me in the car,” she spoke as she hopped to her feet with forced perkiness and a competence that was startlingly convincing to anyone who didn’t know her intimately, who couldn’t recognize all the bravado. Peter hated when she did that; it reminded him of his sister so damn much, and that hurt still.
Rather than deal with the lingering pang of decade-old grief, Peter got to it. Fifteen minutes later, he was showered and dressed and more-or-less awake as he slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes.
Ten additional minutes, three oatmeal bars, and a large helping of coffee later, and he was fully aware as he led Laura up the stone path leading to Alan Deaton’s front door.
They never knocked. Marin saved them the need by opening the door before they’d even reached the landing. A small smile, possibly fake, possibly enigmatic, tilted her lips. Peter hated druids.
“Let’s get this over with,” Peter grumbled, sliding past her.
“Hey, Marin,” Laura said, cool and polite, as she followed him in.
“Good morning, Laura. Alpha Hale.”
“What’s brought you to Beacon Hills?” Peter asked bluntly.
He could trad smarmy small talk and covert double entendres with the best of them, but druids had a nasty habit of turning that sort of game into a genuinely infuriating mess of mind games that more often than not led to lies of omission and outright petty or intentional confusion. Marin and her brother Alan were especially adept at this. It was the whole reason why Peter avoided dealing with his Council-sanctioned emissary despite the solid second chance the druid had gifted him so long ago.
“There’s no need to be so defensive, Peter,” Alan said in lie of greeting as he entered the room with an honest to god tea tray. “We all want the same thing here.”
Peter rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. Yes, a defensive gesture, but he felt justified. “Interesting, considering I have no idea why we’re here to begin with. Just what exactly is it you think we all want?”
Alan’s smile was at least genuine, he thought, even if it was the slightest bit secretive just like his sister. “The health and happiness of your pack, of course,”
“Of course,” Peter agreed, only a little sarcastically.
The Council largely only involved themselves with creatures who were causing trouble, either directly or indirectly. They had intervened when the Hales had been burned and turned from a flourishing pack of twenty-nine to a beaten and scared five, three of which were pups, the fourth hardly much older at the time. The Council had named Peter the head of the Pack, for lack of any other option and spent the following three years whipping him and Laura into the meanest semblance of authority figures.
They’d backed off to the periphery of town once the Hales proved they could keep control of their wolves without incident. This had meant Alan Deaton and Christopher Argent became the only Council presence in the pack’s territory, their official babysitters. They only stopped watching them like hawks once Peter had found his footing and he and Laura discovered themselves able to take on the full responsibilities of a Council-recognized pack.
The day Peter gave his first Alpha Bite and welcomed Isaac Lahey to the pack was the day Chris finally let him off the leash with a proud smile and a literal pat on the back. He’d announced his retirement the very next day. When Boyd and Erica join the pack so shortly before Isaac presented as an omega, Deaton hadn’t retired, but he began limiting himself to the role of mildly curious neighbor and nothing more.
Collectively, the pack saw Deaton perhaps once every other month, and usually it was just Isaac and Derek. That was the way Peter liked it.
He did not like the Council showing up unexpectedly. Not at all. For any reason.
“Good news then,” Laura said, her cheerfully competent persona in full force as she grinned, “Everyone’s healthy and happy. We’re good here.”
Laura didn’t like druids either. The fact was possibly Peter’s fault.
Alan’s smiled turned the slightest bit condescending. “Are you now?”
Marin tilted her head as she sidled up to Peter, peering at his face unnervingly, “The bags under your eyes suggest otherwise, Alpha,”
Peter resisted the urge to step back and smirked down at her. “Well, I am managing a territory meant for a pack four times the size of what I’ve got,” he pointed out cockily.
He deserved to be cocky though, and they all knew it. Peter wasn’t the strongest Alpha, but he was damn clever, more driven than most, and, above all, he was competent. He was successfully managing a massive territory with an alarmingly small pack, and that was only the case because Peter wasn’t willing to start Biting strangers or accepting every cast-off and stray wolf to pass through.
Oh. And because the Council was absolutely and utterly unwilling to allow his pack to relocate to a smaller, more realistic territory. It was something to do with the pact between earth magic and the specific wolf lineage. Peter didn’t care, that was Council business and well above his paygrade.
“You’re also fostering a pack of adolescences and omegas,” Alan added, oh so unhelpfully.
Peter’s spine stiffened and beside him Laura bristled. “They are perfectly able, and more reliable than any adult wolf you’ve tried to pawn off on us.”
“Even our omegas,” Peter added.
“Especially our omegas,” Laura defended.
It was a good point. Omegas were the least physically impressive dynamic, even among humans, but in a wolf pack they were crucial. They were the heart of a pack, the comforters and soothers, and they encouraged harmony and peace within any given group of wolves, even opposing packs or lone wolves. Omegas were the traditional homemakers and child bearers, sure, but they were so much more.
They were sanity and safety and happiness on an instinct, animal level.
But the Council were not animals. They weren’t wolves, but humans, even the magically gifted ones. Humans never did appreciate omegas like they should, and unfortunately it showed in inconvenient ways at times.
“Derek is in his mid-twenties and still unmated,” Alan said somberly, as if they needed the reminder, “In fact, his only recent dating attempts have been unmitigated failures and far and few between,”
“No shit,” Peter growled, “Beings abused and having your family slaughtered by the only sexual partner you’ve ever known will have that effect.”
“Yes,” there was real, deep sorrow in his voice when he acknowledged that, “but he is still an omega, with omega drives and instincts,”
Peter put a hand on Laura’s wrist before she could lash out. He knew how short her fuse was when it came to her brother, justified as it was, and while his own hackles were up, he couldn’t quite tell if the anticipation of a threat was based on anything real. They hadn’t come as far as they had by reacting before they’d gathered the information to act on.
“What’s your point?” he asked pointedly.
Deaton’s gaze was sympathetic but determined, “You’ve given Derek the time and space to heal and you’ve done an admirable job, Peter, Laura. But Derek’s forward progresses has turned stagnant in recent years. You’re not helping him anymore. You’re enabling him to stay stagnant.”
The defensive anticipation vanished under the righteous anger and Peter felt his eyes blaze alpha-red.
“No,” Laura growled, her own eyes burning bright and claws out. “You can’t take him. You won’t.”
“No one wants to take Derek anywhere—” Marin interjected.
“Bullshit!” Laura snapped, “Do you think we’re a bunch of dumb dogs? You think the packs don’t talk to each other about how the Council trades in omegas among supernaturals even though humans have outlawed that shit for nearly century!?”
“I beg your pardon?” Deaton sounded honestly alarmed.
Laura ignored him. “He is my brother,” she snarled, “and our omega. We won’t let you hand him off to the first Alpha wolf willing to pay up,”
“That’s not—”
“Your brother has needs his littermates can’t meet,” Marin spoke over her brother in a cool, loud voice that was utterly unmoved. “He needs to mate and he needs to make his own den. And you, Peter, as his pack Alpha need to give him that opportunity. And Isaac too.”
“Fuck tha—”
Laura shut up as Peter put himself between her and druid. He stepped right up to Marin, the toe of his loafer touching the tip of her shoe, and glared down at her till she had no choice but to crane her head back to meet his eye and avoid hitting her nose on his chest.
“How. Dare. You.” His voice was more wolf than man. “You come into my territory, preaching about the wellbeing of me and mine, and in the next breath try to damage that by pulling us apart.”
“Peter,” Deaton said cautiously, “It’s not like that—”
“Who do you think brought me here?” Marin interrupted again, voice quiet but not in the slightest bit cowed. If anything, she sounded angry. “Do you think this was Alan’s idea? It wasn’t.”
“I don’t give a shit who’s idea it was. It ends here.”
“It was Cora’s,” Marin stated.
Peter froze, alarmed at the steadiness of truth in Marin’s heartbeat.
“Bullshit,” Laura breathed, stunned.
“Cora called us,” Marin said, unrelenting. “Her and Malia. You didn’t notice, did you?”
He stepped away from her, suddenly uneasy. “…Notice what,”
“Malia,” the moment he backed off, she crossed her arms and unlike when he did it, she didn’t seem particularly defensive. She seemed confident. “Your own daughter presented nearly a month ago, and you’ve been so busy micromanaging your territory that you didn’t even notice.”
“What,” he snapped tonelessly.
This is what happened when he passed out on the couch after an eighteen-hour day chasing pixies and negotiating with visiting wendigos. He must still be asleep. He was having some sort of dream where his waking nightmares were sneaking into his subconscious in subtle and disturbingly unexpected ways. That had to be it.
“Malia’s omega.” Marin reiterated. “She’s been hiding it with incense burning and some light spell casting. Cora figured it out because she noticed Malia was skipping pack meals more often to prevent you from noticing and decided to investigate,”
“Apparently,” Deaton said slowly, “Derek and Isaac each gave up a dose of their Heat-meds to help her. Cora found out, and she brought Malia to me. Peter, I’ll be honest, when they walked through that door, I really wasn’t expecting to be so… disappointed.”
“I repeat,” Peter said quietly, maybe a bit numbly, “What?”
“You’ve always looked out for your family, Peter, especially after Talia passed and you took on the extra responsibilities you weren’t prepared for. You’ve always done your best by them, and it’s been impressive,”
The way that complement fell off felt like being gutted. “But?” he hissed.
“Peter… I understand your desire to maintain this peace you’ve managed to carve out for you all. But Derek isn’t the only one unwilling to change. Your pack is changing, their needs and desires growing as nature intended, and you’ve been ignoring it.”
Peter squeezed his fists to keep from screaming, and the bite of pain in his palms made him realize his claws were out. His chest felt tight. It felt like the world was wobbling beneath his feet even as he double checked his balance.
Behind him, Laura was… silent. Stunned.
Marin, of course, had no problem finding words. “You’re dangerously out of touch with the omegas in your pack. You’re supposed to be helping them find mates and find their own packs, and instead you have all three of them bending over backwards to stay in a pack that doesn’t satisfy them because they’re afraid of what will happen to you if they leave.”
“You’ve done your healing,” Deaton’s tone was far softer and kinder than his sister, at least, but no less devastating, “Both of you. You’ve come so far, and you’re the better for it. And so are Derek, Cora, and Malia. You’ve done well with them. But just as welcoming Isaac, Erica, and Boyd into your family was a necessary step in that process, so is this.”
“It’s time to let go,” Marin told them firmly, “None of you needs a pack based on shared grief any longer. You have three omegas who need to leave the nest, and only three adolescent betas to help you build from there and maintain your territory.”
“Malia….” Aura whispered, sounding lost and betrayed. “She’s really an omega?”
“She is,” Deaton assured.
“And… she didn’t tell us.” Laura’s face crumbled and Peter didn’t know how to deal with the wet gleam in her eyes. “Derek, and Isaac, too. None of them told us. Not even Cora. She just went straight to the Council.”
“She’s just fourteen,” Peter murmured to no one in particular. “She probably didn’t know what she was doing,”
“Probably,” Deaton inclined his head, “Which is fortunate. If she had known, it’s likely she would have followed the omegas’ line of thinking and left things as is until something unthinkable happened.”
He wanted to argue. He wanted to remind them that his pack was happy, dammit, growing pains excepted. He wanted to scoff and roll his eyes. He wanted to yell and rage at them, to chasing them off his land and keep them as far from his precious pack as possible.
Peter didn’t do any of that. Instead, he thought about the constant, nagging bickering that had become the regular soundtrack of their home at some point without his noticing. He thought about Derek and his sullen moods, how his nonverbal periods had been getting longer and more frequent again. His mind raced over details of every interaction he’d had lately with his daughter, his only child from an irresponsible fling in his youth and a large reason he hadn’t immediately buckled under the weight of Pack Leader the moment it settled on him at the tender age of twenty-three.
For the first time in at least a few years, Peter felt like a failure.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Marin’s words were direct, unrepentant, cool and factual.
Numbly, Peter realized he knew that tone of voice well. He was used to speaking like that himself. It meant there was no room to talk back. It meant there would be no negotiating.
“The two of you are going to go home and touch base with your pack. You will explain in no uncertain terms that all three of your omegas will be mated off within the next year one way or another.”
Laura paled. “A year!?”
Peter put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. He closed his eyes and took a breath. “Anything else?” he asked softly.
“Peter!” Laura protested.
“Is there anything else,” Peter repeated, a little louder and a lot more firmly.
Marin raised her chin and the tiny uptick of her mouth looked victorious. It made him want to gut her. “Yes, actually. While you’re helping your omegas find what they need, the Council wants you to do a little soul searching for your own: it’s time you took a mate, Peter.”