Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts innocuously.

In fact, Stiles doesn’t even notice it.

He’s absentminded enough to easily be wrong about whether he shut his laptop.

He’s opened his window and forgotten about it before.

He doesn’t pay close enough attention to his bed to know the difference between a bad job making it and rumples from use.

He probably accidentally pressed on Derek’s message thread before his shower.

His favorite shirt is likely just waiting to be washed, and hell, who doesn’t feel like they’re being watched sometimes?

It takes well over two weeks for Stiles to start getting antsy.

But if he can forget to close his laptop, he can forget to close out his favorite porn video.

(He never has.)

He can forget he put his meds on the nightstand.

(They don’t leave his desk.)

He can forget he’d left his vibrator under the covers.

(He’s almost obsessive about keeping it hidden.)

He can ignore it all and brush it off as nothing — as being scatterbrained, or tired, or stressed. So he does.

… … …

“Earth to Stiles, hello.”

Fingers snap in front of Stiles’ face and he blinks himself back to attention. His eyes cross to focus on Lydia’s manicured nails before she pulls her hand back at his unintelligible noise of attention.

“Did you hear a word I said?” she asks impatiently, crossing her arms across her chest. As though she doesn’t think her tone or her face gets the point across well enough, Lydia taps her index finger against the arm it’s resting against.

Stiles scratches at the back of his head and shrugs before taking a bite of his sandwich. “Sorry, I spaced,” he brushes off, mouth still full. Lydia scrunches up her nose in disgust.

“Chew and swallow, Stiles, you’re not an animal,” she huffs.

“I resent that,” Erica says mildly, not taking her eyes off the apple she’s peeling. “I may be an animal, but I still have manners.”

Lydia clicks her tongue. “Fascinating. As I was saying, just because there’s been a lull in spooky enemies lately doesn’t mean we should let our guards down. A new one could pop up with no warning and then where would we be?”

“You sound like Derek,” Scott points out.

“If being right means sounding like Derek, then maybe you should be listening to him more.”

Scott grimaces, and Stiles sighs.

“Lydia’s right,” he says under his breath.

“Of course you think so,” Isaac sniggers.

Stiles shoots him a glare, taking another too-big bite of his sandwich. “Fuck off,” he says around his mouthful, though he’s pretty sure he didn’t capture a single English syllable. Lydia gives Stiles a glare of her own and he swallows before saying anything else. “Unlike me and Scott, he actually is your alpha. You should act like it.”

Boyd snorts. “Because you’ve been Derek’s number one fan, of course.”

“I’m just saying, things might go a little more smoothly around here if you guys were a little less growly and a little more pack-y.”

Isaac rolls his eyes. “That’s not a word, dumbass.”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Erica says coldly. “Non-pack members don’t get a say in pack business.”

“We have a truce,” Scott points out, reluctant but factual. “We work together. We’re pack-ish.”

“Not pack, though.”

Stiles finishes his sandwich off in a couple more bites and tosses the plastic baggie at her, ignoring her noise of protest. “I’m just saying. Scott got attacked by a psycho in the woods. You guys chose this. It’s time you acted like it.”

“We do act like it,” Isaac argues, hackles almost visibly raised. Damn werewolves. “We listen to our alpha. Do you?”

Lydia huffs loudly to get her annoyance across before standing. “High school boys and werewolves, for the love of God,” she grumbles as she gathers her books and walks off without so much as a farewell.

… … …

“You’re really twitchy lately,” Scott mentions the next day at lunch. No Hale betas this time, because they’re not in the mood, and they’ll be seeing them at the pack meeting tonight anyway.

“Uh, yeah?” Stiles snorts. “I’m always twitchy, Scotty, it’s part of my neverending charm.”

Scott shakes his head with a sigh. “No, you’re clumsy and flaily. Now you’re twitchy. And you smell anxious more. Is everything okay?”

Stiles darts his eyes around the cafeteria momentarily. He spots the three musketeers at one table, and Lydia and Allison (and co.) at another. Everyone else is just classmates he recognizes, even if he can’t name them all. It all looks normal.

Truth is, though, it doesn’t feel normal, and Scott’s right. For weeks Stiles has felt the uncomfortable sensation of being watched. He’s been brushing it off as being antsy about the supernatural silence lately, but it’s definitely taking its toll on him if Scott’s noticing.

Stiles scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. “I mean, probably? I’m just… Do you ever feel like you’re being watched?”

Scott darts his gaze over to Allison, and Stiles doesn’t bother to sigh. Frankly, he’s impressed the guy lasted as long as he did. They’re only not over there in the first place because Stiles didn’t have the patience to deal with a bunch of jocks today. “Like someone likes you?”

Now Stiles does sigh. “Don’t you think I’d be happy if that was the case? Someone crushing on me is the dream, man. DEFCON 1 levels of awesome. No, like...stalker-y kind of watching.”

Scott brings his attention back to Stiles and shrugs. “Not really. I’d hear or smell them. Do you feel it now?”

Stiles looks around again, carefully, but he really couldn’t say. It’s just this constant nervous buzzing under his skin by now, whether there might be a presence at any particular moment or not. He shakes his head. “It’s the same thing as always. It’s probably just been too long since anything happened, and my brain’s looking for something to freak out about.”

“Yeah, that’s gotta be it!” Scott agrees readily, dimples creasing with his happy, puppy dog smile. “See, everything’s fine!”

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, though he doesn’t really feel it. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”

… … …

Roscoe breaks down again when he’s supposed to head out to the pack meeting and Stiles curses his entire damned life. He also curses literally and kicks a tire in frustration before immediately regretting it and purring apologies at his baby. She doesn’t deserve this treatment.

Unfortunately, Stiles has no idea what broke and therefore can’t even attempt to fix it first. No Jeep for Stiles.

He already knows Scott’s heading there straight from Allison’s, so he’s still on his own for transportation. At least he still has his bike in the garage; he’d flip a shit if he had to walk.

The fresh air is nice, he admits to himself as he peddles. He could do without the extra workout, but the breeze on his skin is nice. Calming. Maybe this is what he’s needed — a nice bike ride to soothe his worries.

Okay, probably not. But it’s nice. Boy, Stiles missed nice.

The rushing air really is like a balm on his skin, soothing the uncomfortable itch of feeling watched. Maybe he really was imagining things. Just getting uncomfortable with the strange calm in Beacon Hills lately. It’s unnatural, so it’s only natural for Stiles to overthink it. Right?

Right.

This is nice. He feels okay for the first time in weeks.

As is the MO of his life, it doesn’t last. Stiles was right, when he so, so desperately wanted to be wrong.

Chapter Text

It’s the pain that wakes him.

It lances through him, ripping him into awareness with a scream that doesn’t come. Swallowed by something forced into his mouth, blocking off his sounds, his airway, mercilessly assaulting his throat.

It’s big, bitter, and Stiles’ hands are immediately flying up to fight it off, off, off.

Strong hands pin his wrists to the ground above his head in a bruising grip. Piercing, even. Like pinpricks digging into his skin. A line of thick needles. Claws.

“Shh, shh,” a voice soothes, breath blowing hot and horrible in his ear. “Just stay, little mouse. Be good.”

What? Stiles will not be good, what the fuck.

He bucks up, desperate, trying to shake them off as if he has any chance at all. He knows he doesn’t. So do they.

They laugh at his efforts. It’s mortifying, and he fights harder. All he gets for it is the one in his mouth pushed in further, choking him, gagging him. If he vomits now, he might just drown in it. Might be the better option.

The claws are everywhere. Pinning his arms, stretching his lips, scratching at his legs.

He might be naked. He’s honestly not sure. Through the haze of terror, the mix of sharp-pressure-burn overriding his senses, it doesn’t even matter. It engulfs him, drowns him, destroys him.

He doesn’t even realize when the pain on his legs stops forming anew until it moves, sharp tips prodding at his asshole for only a moment before pressing in, in, slicing at his insides without care. Or maybe just all the care to make it as awful as possible.

It works. Fucking— fuck.

Stiles has no idea how long he’s pinned there for, shifting and bucking and fighting with no release, no break, no rescue, before the one in his mouth pulls out, spills hot all over his face and neck. He thinks that might be it. The climax of the event, literally and figuratively. If he’s ever been lucky in his short life, maybe—maybe—they’ll leave.

Instead, another enters just as the first leaves, stretching his sliced asshole without hesitation. If the blood provides any kind of lubrication, it’s drowned out by the horrible burning of the cock brushing mercilessly against the open wounds.

There’s no break, no moment to breathe, before his mouth is occupied again, a presumably new set of claws keeping his lips open as they fuck into his mouth, quick and deep and harsh on both ends. Spitroasted like a dead pig. Maybe it’s the foreshadowing of how this ends. A sign to say, Hey! He’s gonna end up the same amount of fucking dead by the end.

Whenever the end is.

Right now, it seems like never.

And, honest-to-fucking-god, Stiles thinks it can’t get worse. Thinks this is maximum level torture, being pinned, double-fucked, sliced up inside and out — there’s nowhere lower to go.

That’s when the piss hits him. And no, it’s not a fucking metaphor.

He might not have even noticed after everything else. Probably wouldn’t have registered such a comparatively meaningless sensation past the agony. Past the fear.

But that must not be good enough. Obviously, they need him to know. Need him to feel it.

His mouth is still stuffed—still stretched open to make space or stop him from biting down—when the view above is blocked by another one. A new one. He knows they’re new because so far they’ve all been more than open about—and unimaginative with—their dicks. There’s no dick for this one, bare legs leading up to an abundance of hair on what is definitely a…female.

For a frozen moment, he has no idea what she’s going to do. She can’t sit on his face while it’s already being fucked, can she? But she doesn’t leave him waiting for long before she fucking pees on him, forcing him to close his eyes against the stream that should be warmer than it is against his already burning skin.

It’s humiliating.

Apparently, humiliation is mouth-fucker’s kink because it’s at that moment that he pulls out, releasing Stiles’ lips to move backward and spill himself across Stiles’ chest.

He’s almost immediately replaced by another, and when the one in his ass finishes, he’s quickly replaced too. Stiles has no idea if there’s an indefinite number or if they’re repeating. Has no way to tell. Doesn’t really matter — either way, he loses track, thinks he momentarily loses consciousness a few times, from the way they block his airway if not from the overwhelming assault of burnslicejabpainpainpain.

He has no idea how many times they rotate, how many splashes of cum cover him before they stop. Leave him empty—finally, though he’s too overwhelmed, too out of it, to appreciate it—for the first time since he woke up.

He thinks it’s over.

It’s the most naive thing he’s thought since they scoured for a dead body in the woods.

Claws press into his chest and slice slowly, carefully, downward.

The scream that rips from his throat could rival Lydia’s, and again, he thrashes, bucks, renewing his desperate attempts to get them off.

They add more hands to keep him still. Confine him as firmly as a straightjacket as another set of claws pierces into his shoulder before ripping away, slicing through his skin four at a time like he’s soft butter.

Then it’s no time before he’s pulled into blissful unconsciousness.

… … …

The pack meeting hasn’t even started yet, but Derek is about four seconds away from kicking everyone out. Or breaking arms. It honestly could go either way if they don’t stop bickering. Is this really what teenagers are like? Is the bickering not supposed to lessen after puberty, or did he just make terrible life choices biting who he did?

Classic Derek Hale luck. Kill your girlfriend, lose ninety percent of your family to murder, bite a bunch of teenagers who refuse to shut up.

“That’s enough.”

He imbues the words with a reverberating growl. Just enough, I am your alpha, and you will listen to me, to get them to stop. It barely works, but barely is still working, and, frankly, Derek will take any win he can get nowadays. And the newfound (if temporary) silence is doing wonders for his rapidly spiking annoyance levels.

“We’ve been here for fifteen minutes already. Has anyone gotten through to Stiles?”

“He hasn’t responded to my texts,” Scott answers, eyes on his phone as if double-checking that he didn’t just miss it in the chaos. Apparently confirming that, he shrugs, dropping the item back in his lap.

No one else has heard from him either, it seems. Derek pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales slowly before straightening up from his perch.

“Okay. Well, if he wants to flake, that’s his business. We’re not waiting anymore.”

As has been the norm quite some time now, no one has anything to input. No strange sightings, no abnormal killings, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s setting Derek on edge, if he’s honest. Nothing unusual is what’s unusual, and he can’t stop waiting for the other shoe to drop right on their heads. Or an anvil. Probably an anvil, knowing his life.

“Did we really wait all this time for nothing?” Isaac groans. “Maybe we should just make something up. Hey, I saw a fish monster down at the lake. Let’s check it out.”

“We’re not inventing fights just because you’re bored,” Derek says. “You want some action, go to the bowling alley. Or spar amongst each other. I’m sure you’re all rusty.”

Shrugging, Isaac gets to his feet, popping his claws and waving them around as if to coax someone into fighting with him. “Let’s do it. Practice. Gotta make sure we stay at peak fighting condition, right?”

Erica scoffs. “Speak for yourself; I’m still amazing.”

With a finely-aged annoyance surpassing his chronological years, Derek lets his head hit the wall behind him. Maybe he’ll luck out and knock himself out. That’ll give him the silence he so desperately needs. They’ll still be talking, but at least Derek won’t have to listen.

“Enough,” he says again. How any of their parents take it, Derek has no idea. Maybe one day he’ll ask for some tips. Hopefully one of them is being allowed to smother them in small doses.

Dreams are what keep you going, right?

“How about this?” he suggests, eyes still closed and head still resting against the brick. “We’re not inventing enemies, but maybe we can find them if we look harder. Go around the preserve and tell me if anything looks, sounds, or smells off. They may not be showing themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not there.”

“Aww.” Isaac pouts. Because he’s a teenager. Derek officially hates teenagers. Derek needs a nap. “I was all ready to spar and everything.”

“Maybe you’ll find a nice oak to sink your claws into,” Boyd helpfully supplies.

Unimpressed, Isaac slices his nails uselessly through the air. “And people have called you a tree before, yeah? Maybe you’re right.”

“You better not be saying what I think you’re saying.”

“Go,” Derek growls, and, finally, the betas listen. Teenagers scramble out of his loft like they’re worried he’ll rip their throats out. A reasonable fear to have. Healthy. Be frightened of your alpha. It’s good for you.

God, he sounds like Peter.

Gross.

Derek pushes himself off the wall with another heavy sigh, heading to the table and pushing the papers around. Aimless. There’s nothing there, and he knows it. Even his annoyance is a little uncalled for. He’s just so on edge. He hasn’t been able to stop that niggling feeling under his skin that something is happening. That something is horribly wrong. Or about to be.

It’s not like they’ve never had quiet time in Beacon Hills. But he always felt like that was just because his mother (and her betas) did their job well. They respected and feared her, and whenever that wasn’t enough, she was strong enough to handle the threat.

It didn’t save their lives, but it saved their town. For a long time.

Maybe he should go around the preserve for a while, too. Blow off some of this antsy energy. He’s not an antsy, anxious person, and he hates this gnawing under his skin. Maybe actually putting his nose and ears to use will calm him down.

But he also doesn’t want to keep snapping at the pack. Or packs. Scott and Stiles aren’t his betas, and he shouldn’t lump them in.

Yeah. He can snap at them all he wants. It’s his actual pack he’ll worry about. With all this nervous buzzing inside, he likely will take it out on them. He is trying to be at least a little bit fair. So instead, he takes advantage of the space in his loft, pulling off his shirt and falling to his hands and feet into a string of push-ups. He doesn’t even get to work up a human sweat before his phone vibrating pierces through the quiet of the loft.

Can they really not handle themselves for ten minutes? he grumbles internally, standing and grabbing the device.

“What is it?”

The heavy breathing on the other end, the way the breathy sound shakes in a way that reminds Derek of when Isaac’s father was killed, immediately puts Derek further on edge. The niggling under his skin becomes an immediate, present feeling of danger.

“What is it?” he repeats more firmly, tugging his shirt back on, ready to go wherever he’s needed.

He can hear Erica curse away from the microphone before she finally responds. “It’s Stiles,” she says. “We caught his scent outside. And a few others, so we’re following it and now it smells like…”

“Like what?” he presses when she doesn’t continue.

“Like blood and… Just co— just get here, Derek.”

And he’s out in a second, barely sparing time to grab his jacket—because he has this indescribable feeling that he’s going to need it for some reason—before he’s moving at double a human’s speed. Maybe triple. It’s not an active thought. He just needs to get out, get the scent, find this stupid human who calls danger to him like a flower calls for bees. He’s the best tracker of them all right now. Isaac has great potential for it, but Derek’s been doing it for so much longer that he’s still going to be ahead for a bit longer. And right now, they need the speed and the skill.

Erica wouldn’t have sounded so shaken if it wasn’t potent. No one would have cared at the smell of a small cut. This is bad. Derek can feel it, and he doesn’t even have a bond with him.

He catches the scent quickly, following the trail of Stiles and blood and—

He almost stumbles at the rest. No. No, he’s wrong. He’s wrong. It’s something else. It has to be.

But Derek is never wrong about that, and he knows it. His steps double time, pausing only to make sure he’s staying on the right path, the smell getting stronger and stronger until—

There.

He howls to let the rest of them know, and they’re with him in seconds. Their reactions are a jumbled clamor of gasps, chokes, complete silence. He doesn’t pay that much attention. All his focus is on Stiles. He looks…

He looks awful.

He looks almost dead.

His body is practically coated in blood, and Derek can’t see it through all the red, but he can smell it. The semen, the urine, all of it. It smells like so many of them. Far more than needed to take down one normal teenager. Five, Derek thinks. The scents all mingle together, and he can’t be sure, not when he’s got much more pressing matters to focus on than standing around and sniffing the air.

On the center of Stiles’ bared chest—bared everything, with how torn his clothes are—is a marking. Carved into his skin like a painted canvas. Familiar. Horrifying.

Derek’s own heartbeat is pounding in his ears, but Stiles’ is weak and thready, and that’s what springs him back into action. He rips his jacket off, wrapping it around the boy—the boy, god, he’s still just a kid—and lifting him into his arms with ease.

He weighs nothing as Derek sprints toward the Camaro, careful not to jostle him.

Has he always been so skinny? Has he always been so weak, so breakable?

So human?

Derek doesn’t even waste time thinking that he’s lucky he’s followed. Just tosses the keys to Isaac, who gets in the driver’s seat without a word as Derek tries to slip with Stiles into the back as quickly and gently as he can.

“Break whatever speed limits you have to,” he orders, not taking his eyes off the human as he wipes a hand across his wet, frighteningly pale skin. The black veins on his arms are filled with an agony that Derek doesn’t know how any human could handle. And, he supposes, he didn’t. Stiles is half-dead at best.

Taking his pain is all Derek can do right now, so he doesn’t stop. It feels unending, but he keeps his hand firmly pressed to his cheek until the car is screeching to a stop outside the hospital. He doesn’t waste any time, nearly tearing the door off its hinges as he jumps out, dying human cradled carefully in his arms as he calls for help. They’re quick to respond, and maybe when they’re calmer, he’ll give them credit for it. Maybe even make a donation. He’s sure that’s a thing. Right now, though, he can’t think about it. Can barely stop himself from baring his fangs when they pull Stiles out of his arms. Has to forcibly keep the instinct to grip tighter, to keep all these strangers away, locked down. They’re going to help him. Derek can’t do anything else, and he knows it. Not for someone without their healing.

He should sit. Can’t bring himself to. He doesn’t know what they do once they pull Stiles out of his eyesight on a stretcher, fussing over him without a second to spare. Even without hearing the barely-surviving thread of his heartbeat, they can tell. Can see how horrible he is. It’s obvious to anyone that his chances are…

Derek curls his fingers into a fist, slow like he’s trying to keep his claws in with the tensing of his finger muscles. Or, he thinks as he feels the pinpricks in his palm, just to hide them.

The others are quick to get to him, crowding the area and being loud. Asking him questions he can’t answer. Questions he can, but doesn’t quite know how.

“Stop,” he says, sounding a lot less forceful than he had in the loft and a lot more… He doesn’t know. Can’t pay enough attention to his own voice to care. Tired.

Surprisingly enough, they listen. He’d probably hear their jaws dramatically snapping shut if they were in a cartoon. All he hears is silence above the noises of the hospital. Beeping machines, clacking computer keys, pens sliding across paper. Talking. Lots of talking happening in hospitals. He focuses, closes his eyes, and tries to zone in on Stiles.

He can’t hear his heartbeat anymore. There are too many around now, and he’s too far away, but he can still hear enough. Getting him to an OR, so surgery. That’s… Is that good? Derek has no idea. It means he’s doing badly, but it also means there’s a chance. Maybe. He hopes.

He’s going to be a wreck.

With one long, deep breath, Derek motions for them to sit — vaguely, not really a gesture anyone should understand, but they do anyway. Somehow. Like they can read it on his face, or maybe just like they’re in sync. For the first time, Derek feels like he’s actually with a pack on more than just technicality.

He doesn’t know whether to sit or stand himself, and he spends a silent moment figuring that out before he decides that sitting will leave him even antsier. The second his ass hits a chair, he’ll want to burst out of it. His skin will keep buzzing, and he’ll be too still to not focus on it.

Is this how Stiles feels? With his constant stench of anxiety, varying only in its intensity and present even on a good day? With the way he fidgets all the time, like if he doesn’t move somehow, he’ll simply burst at the seams?

Derek hates it. If Stiles can deal with this all the time, maybe he’s a stronger person than Derek ever bothered to give him credit for.

“They’re called the Alpha Pack,” he says slowly after much too long a pause. Long enough that he can smell the anxiety on them too, although he probably could before if he’d been able to focus on anything but blood and come and pain. “It’s exactly what it sounds like. A pack of all alphas. I hear there's some kind of a leader. He's called Deucalion. They go around and find alphas they want and…convince them to kill their pack members. To become more powerful and, obviously, join them.”

He takes another breath. Deep. Steadying.

“I guess this was their calling card.”

He doesn’t know what response he expects. Frankly, he doesn’t think any of his own betas like Stiles, save for maybe Erica. Even that he was unsure of by now. They aren’t bad people, and he doesn’t expect callousness in the face of something like this, but getting used to violence is almost necessary for their lives.

(Not this, though. This is beyond. Derek’s been a werewolf for twenty-three years, seen the freshly-burned bodies of his entire family, but he’s never seen something like this.)

It’s probably because he doesn’t know what to expect that it doesn’t come as a surprise. There are no expectations for them to subvert. No expectations for them follow, either. A blank slate, so when Isaac says, “What the fuck?” tone nothing more or less than angry, Derek doesn’t even react.

Or maybe he did have expectations and he’s simply too worked up and too exhausted to do anything about it. Because, if he’s honest, he would have expected Isaac to be scared. And while there is that undercurrent of fear, it’s not what he would have thought. It’s no different than the others. It’s no trauma response. And maybe that’s exactly it. Isaac knows fear and pain more intimately than anyone ever should, especially at his age, but it’s not this. He wasn’t raped. He wasn’t tortured, not in the same way.

He doesn’t know this same pain to be triggered, but he knows enough about pain to be angry.

And Derek just doesn’t have the time to feel it too.

“How do you even know them?” Scott asks, and his pale face is precisely what Derek would have expected, if he were expecting anything. And Derek tries to remember that this is his best friend they’re talking about. His brother-from-another-mother who was attacked and may not live to see the night. May not ever really recover, even if he does. He tries to keep this in mind when the question sounds like an accusation. Like somehow, by having answers, Derek let this happen.

(He did. But he doesn’t have the time to wallow about it.)

“They were around when my mother was alive. Even from before they became what they are, when they were just normal alphas of normal packs.”

He tries to consider just how much he should say right now. He’s conscious that they’re in the middle of the hospital, surrounded by humans who are far too engrossed in their own jobs to pay any mind to the group of teens and their blood-soaked chaperone. Will it help them? Distract them while they all wait for news? Or will it only make them more scared in a moment where none of them will do anything about it. In a way that won’t be conducive to the battle that’s just been started. 

Does he even know much more than he’s already said?

Thankfully or un-thankfully, he’s saved from the decision by Lydia. She sounds almost the same as always, but her voice has a tremble to it, sounds a little raspier, as if she’s keeping herself from crying. But still authoritative as ever. “Scott, call the sheriff.”

Scott looks horrified at the prospect but doesn’t protest, pulling out his phone. He doesn’t bother to step off to the side because they’d hear him no matter where he went, and Derek just tunes him out as he focuses on his own pack. Erica looks like she has no idea how to process any of this. Boyd looks about the same but shows it less on his face, wrapping an arm around her, hand gently rubbing her opposite arm. Isaac still just looks angry, like that’s the only way his own worries can figure out how to express themselves, but he leans closer to them, seeking their comfort just as much as they seek his.

Derek’s glad they have each other. When he bit them, they were three lonely people. Now they’re a family. Now they’re a pack.

Derek almost forgot what that meant, after Laura. After Peter.

“We’ll talk about this,” he says, trying to project a calming presence despite his internal rampaging. “We’ll figure everything out. But first, all of us need to make sure that Stiles is okay and take a few breaths. The alpha pack’s not gonna do anything else right away. They told us they’re here, and they want us to sit and stew in that. And we’re gonna take advantage of that and focus on what needs focusing. Okay?”

And then, once everything is handled, once Stiles and everyone else is okay… Derek’s going to kill them.