Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stiles spent the last period of the school year jiggling her leg and tapping her pencil. She caught her classmates’ glares and ignored them. She didn’t know if she’d be able to get out of her class in time.

The bell rung.

Stiles burst out of her seat, shoved her bag over her shoulder, and booked it. She made it to the school’s entrance and spotted who she was looking for.

“Isaac!” she shouted, sprinting to catch up to him.

He turned towards her, already looking mildly annoyed. “What?”

“I’m not trying to bother you,” she said, stopping several feet away from him and holding her hands up. “Just wanted to ask a question.”

Isaac didn't look any less annoyed, “Then ask it.”

“Where are Erica and Boyd?” she asked. “I haven’t seen them at school at all since everything went down.”

“They left,” Isaac said, then turned away and started walking.

“What do you mean they left?” she asked, following after him.

“It means they left,” he said. “Even before everything went down.”

“Before?” she asked, stopping. She then realized Isaac is still walking and caught up to him again. “They can’t have left before.”

“What would you even know about it?” Isaac asked, still not stopping.

“I saw them,” Stiles said.

Isaac finally stopped and turned back towards her. “When?”

“Just before everything went down.”

“Where?” he asked, taking a step towards her she wished she didn’t find so threatening.

Stiles glanced around them, at all the students trying to leave, celebrating the end of the school year. They weren’t paying attention to them, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still overhear them.

“At the Argent’s,” she said, keeping her voice down. “They weren’t exactly in a position to leave.”

Isaac grimaced, “We need to talk to Derek.”

“We?” she asked, gesturing between the both of them. “Don’t you mean you?”

This could be a pleasant surprise after how difficult it was to work with Derek and his group before. Or maybe a really unpleasant one.

“Nope, you’re coming,” he said and started walking again. “Where’s your obnoxious Jeep?”

“My Jeep is not obnoxious,” she retorted, following after him. “Aren’t you supposed to be following me?”

“No,” he said.

He ended up finding her Jeep without her help, and she wondered if he could smell her on it or something.

“Alright, so where exactly is Derek these days?” she asked as she unlocked the doors. “Please tell me he’s not back to hanging out at his old burnt out house.”

“Nope,” Isaac said, getting into the passenger seat. “We got a place near downtown.”

“Near downtown? Really?” she asked, surprised at the choice in locale. “Like away from the Preserve and nature and all that?”

“Yes,” he said, shooting her an annoyed look.

She resolved to try to be more quiet as she finished buckling in. Then she asked, “You got any directions to this place other than just near downtown?”

He gave her one word directions, but hey, if it worked, it worked. They arrived at some towering, old brick building in one of the more depressing areas of the city that hasn’t exactly recovered after the recession.

“This place?” she asked as she parked her Jeep. She wasn’t sure how comfortable she felt leaving it in the parking lot here. The whole area looked half abandoned.

“Yes,” he said tersely before getting out of the car and slamming the door shut.

“Okay,” she said, following him out. She made sure to lock her car before following Isaac into the building.

She remembered a lot of horror stories about werewolves and teen girls, but usually the girl didn’t know about the werewolves beforehand. Still, she kept her eyes peeled and her ears open. It didn’t seem like there was really anyone else in the building as they made their way up to the top floor.

Isaac led the way to this big metal sliding door that opened right as they approached, revealing Derek. He looked about as annoyed as Isaac had. “What are you doing here, Stiles?”

Stiles looked to Isaac to explain, but he returned an expectant look. She shifted on her feet and said, “I wanted to talk about Erica and Boyd. I hadn’t seen them in school, so.”

Derek didn’t look impressed.

“Isaac said they left before we finished dealing with the Kanima, except I saw them in the Argent house before that.”

Then Derek looked interested and also angry. “And you didn’t tell us earlier? Where exactly were they in the Argent house?”

“Scott said Allison said they got released, and the Argents were leaving so I thought they would be okay, but then they didn’t show up to school, and I thought they might not be okay, and Isaac said that they’d left—,”

“Stiles,” Derek interrupted. “Where were the Argents keeping them?”

And Stiles knew what he was really asking and sucked it up and told him. “In the basement. Strung up with live wires and their mouths taped shut.”

Derek looked murderous. He took several deep breaths then asked, “And what were you doing in the Argent house, Stiles? How were you able to see them?”

“No reason,” she said, and she knew she had said it too quickly. She willed herself not to move her hands at all, to not rub at her fading bruises.

Isaac tilted his head back as he looked her over. “You have bruises.”

“So?” she asked. “Everyone gets bruises. And I’m a pretty clumsy person, you know, and just human. Don’t heal as fast as werewolves do.”

Except now Derek’s looking at her closely, too. “You didn’t fight the kanima. You just drove your Jeep into it. You shouldn’t have any bruises.”

“Well, I do have bruises,” she said with a shrug. “It’s whatever.”

They looked at her, and she could tell they both knew she was lying. 

“We stopped Isaac and Scott from looking for you so we could deal with the kanima,” Derek said, looking uncomfortable. “I’m sorry.”

“Who’s we?” she asked because it’s something other than her bruises to talk about. Or the fact that Derek just apologized to her of all things. She could contemplate that fact to death later.

Derek hesitates. “Me and Peter.”

“Wait, Peter?” she asked. “Like, your murderous uncle Peter? That we all killed and know died because you became Alpha, that Peter?”

“Yes, Stiles,” he said, moving back toward annoyed which was much more normal, “That Peter. Didn’t you see him after you hit the kanima with your Jeep?”

“He was there? I was a little busy with the whole—,” actually she didn’t want to talk about Jackson having his dick out while he turned into a werewolf, “Not the point, are we not concerned about the fact he’s not dead now? How’d that even happen?”

Derek glowered. “Yes, we’re concerned. He won’t tell me how he did it. Pretty sure it was some kind of ritual, but that’s not what we need to discuss right now. What happened to Erica and Boyd?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “They were still strung up the last I saw them. I don’t know what happened after that. I thought they went back to you until Isaac said they left.”

Derek didn’t say anything, just continued to glower. Even Isaac was going a little scowly, and he cast a glance over to Derek before looking down.

“Well, are you going to say anything?” Stiles asked.

“We’ll look into it,” Derek said and started turning away.

“What? That’s it?” she asked. “Isaac drags me out here and I tell you about them being in the Argent’s and all you’re going to say is you’ll look into it.”

Derek looked like he’s considering it then nodded. “Yes. It’s not your problem.”

Then he turned to walk back to the big metal door.

“Dude, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but anytime you have a problem it becomes Scott’s problem which makes it my problem,” she said, following him.

“Not this time,” Derek said. “Scott made it very clear that I’m not his Alpha.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked. “If there’s something else out there attacking werewolves, don’t you think the rest of us should know about it?”

Derek turned back to face her. “It’s pack business. My pack, specifically. Which you aren’t a part of.”

Stiles stared at him, flabbergast for a moment, arms spread out as she tried to find something to say to that level of stupidity. “We’re all in the same city. Anything supernatural going on is going to end up affecting all of us. It’ll be way easier if you just tell us what’s going on. I’ve helped you out before.”

“Not this time, Stiles,” he said, shaking his head. “Go home.”

She didn’t leave, and played the one card she thought she might have. “Don’t you think you owe me one, you know, considering.”

Stiles didn’t pretend to know exactly how Derek’s moral compass worked, just that he has one, and this time, it was enough to make him give her an assessing look, even if he seemed extremely annoyed that he was doing it.

“There are alphas in the area that may have taken them,” Derek admitted.

“Alphas? As in plural, more than one?”

“Yes, that’s what the ‘s’ means, Stiles.”

“What are they here for and why would they take Erica and Boyd?” she asked. “You don’t think, do other werewolf packs attack each other, and like, mean to kill them?”

“They’re here because there’s a new Hale alpha here,” he said. “And I suspect they would have taken them just because they’re my betas. So really, it’s none of your business. You’re not part of my pack so they won’t have any interest in you.”

Stiles didn’t see that lasting. “Why do you think they would take them over doing anything else?”

“It’s not your business, Stiles,” Derek said. “Why do you even care?”

“Because I’m not stupid enough to think this won’t spread to the rest of us,” she said then ran her hand over her mouth because she was going to hate saying this part. “And I wasn’t able to get them out of the Argent house myself.”

And now she wanted to puke. Why couldn’t she at least have done that right? One thing, it was just one thing.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but Derek seemed to look a little sympathetic towards her.

“As far as we can tell, the alphas are recruiting,” he explained.

“They’re testing you, that’s why you think they’d be taken over anything else,” she said. “You think they want to see if you can get them back.”

Derek nodded. “Being a capable alpha means protecting your betas. If I can’t get them back, I won’t be good enough for them.”

“Let me guess, they don’t just want meat heads who can fight,” she said. “Which is why they didn’t start a fight or kill them.”

“No, according to Peter,” he said, tilting his head. “They prefer to escalate.”

“And kidnapping two betas is where they want to start?” she asked. “Yeah, there’s no way this wouldn’t have spread to the rest of us.”

If Stiles had thought there had been any kind of sympathy in Derek’s face, it certainly wasn’t there now.

“No, this stays with me and Isaac. I told you because I owe you, but I don’t owe Scott shit,” he said. “He made it very clear that I can’t work with him.”

Isaac stepped into place at Derek’s shoulder, not that Derek would need extra muscle for just little old human Stiles. It didn’t make sense.

“I thought we all worked together on the kanima and Gerard and we were past this,” she said, confused. She’d been there at the end. They’d all been there, working together.

“No,” he said. “Scott had his own plan. We’ll no longer be working with him.”

“You don’t think that’s a bad idea?” she asked, then gestured out towards the city beyond the building’s walls. “There’s alphas, plural of them, out there. That’s a little bit more than just one kanima. Shouldn’t we be working together on this?”

“No,” he said, and she swore there was a hint of growl in his voice. “We won’t. Scott chose to act on his own. He’ll get nothing from me.”

She gaped at him for a moment then asked, “What the hell am I supposed to do then?”

“Go home,” he said again. “This isn’t your problem.”

“You know what? Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “I’m gonna go home and sit on my ass and when it eventually blows up and you need help, I’ll tell you I told you so.”

Derek didn’t look impressed so she stomped away back to the stairs. She muttered to herself, “Probably have to end up saving your ass again. Better not fucking be in water this time.”

She got out to her Jeep and right as she was pulling the door shut, that was when it hit her that Derek and Isaac knew what happened. Maybe not the details, but they knew that Gerard took her and hurt her. That she couldn’t defend herself from an old man. Couldn’t help Erica and Boyd either. Probably would figure out the beating was a message to Scott if they haven’t already.

At least they didn’t know that it was a message Scott never received. He never asked her about the bruises. If he’d put two and two together on it, he’d never given her any indication of it.

She needed to get out of here. She shook herself, put her key into the ignition and peeled out of the building’s parking lot.

Chapter Text

After werewolves and a kanima and everything else, sitting around while Scott’s at summer school was torture with how boring it was. The whole multiple alphas and Erica and Boyd kidnapped and held somewhere by them was also not doing great things for Stiles’ general sense of doom. She literally could not sit still any longer. She really wished she’d built up more hobbies than sitting on the bench for lacrosse and dragging Scott out in the middle of the night to look for bodies because she could barely make it through a movie right now. All she was left with was wandering around on foot because she didn’t exactly have the kind of gas money needed for hours-long distraction even after returning the gifts she’d gotten for Lydia.

“Stiles.”

She jumped, flailing as her heart tried to go into overdrive. She spun around to find Isaac standing behind her. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to sneak up on people?”

Isaac shrugged.

“This is Derek’s influence,” she said disdainfully. “Popping up out of nowhere, scaring the shit out of people. What do you want? I thought Derek didn’t want me involved.”

Isaac gave her a skeptical look. “Thought you were snooping around.”

“Snooping around what?” she asked, gesturing to the lack of everything around her. “I’m minding my own business taking a walk.”

“A couple blocks from where we live?” he asked.

Stiles took a closer look at the skyline around her. She spotted the building Derek and Isaac now lived in not very far away. “I forgot you lived there.”

“So you’re actually just out for a walk then,” he said, but he still looked a little skeptical about it.

“Yeah, actually,” she said, “What, am I not allowed to walk downtown anymore?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Okay, am I free to go then?” she asked, gesturing in the direction she’s been walking in.

Isaac looked down, and Stiles decided to wait him out. He took a step forward, looking around as he asked quietly, “You did research for Scott, right?”

“Yes, I did research for Scott,” she said at a normal volume. “It’s not exactly a secret. What about it?”

Isaac shot her an annoyed look. “We can’t find a lead on Erica and Boyd. I don’t trust Peter. I’m not sure Derek does either.”

“So what do you want me to do about it?” she asked. “Google pack of alpha werewolves?”

“Never mind,” he said, walking away.

It wasn’t like she had anything else to do or any better options to fix that sense of doom so she followed him. “No, hey, I can help. I just need to know what you’ve been doing so I have some place to start.”

Isaac gave her a considering look, like he wasn’t sure she was serious.

“I just need a direction,” she said, “because pack of alpha werewolves really did return nothing, I already checked.”

Isaac smiled before tamping it down. “Well, first, I’m getting food, and then we can go talk to Derek.”

“Food?” she asked, pulling out her phone to check the time. It was close to dinner time. “I could get food. You really think Derek won’t get mad about me helping?”

Stiles texted her father that she was getting dinner with friends as Isaac shrugged.

“I don’t know that he has a choice. We followed their scents from the Argent house, lost it in the Preserve, and nothing since.”

“That can’t be good,” she said.

“It’s not.”

He lead the way into a little pizzeria, the only decent looking place in the area. He picked up a couple of pizzas already packed into boxes, and Stiles quickly bought two slices to take with her to have as dinner.

“So are you each eating a pizza?” she asked as she follows Isaac out. She’s known human teen boys to eat entire pizzas by themselves if pushed.

“Yeah,” he said. “All the supernatural stuff takes up energy so you gotta eat more.”

Stiles tilted her head in acceptance. Made sense to her. She wondered if Scott had noticed at all. He’d never said anything, but she remembered him complaining about being hungry at lunch all the time last year before he started bringing more food.

She started eating one of her pizza slices on the way over.

“Aren’t you gonna wait?” he asked. “You’re gonna run out of food while we’re eating.”

“But I’m hungry now,” she complained with her mouth half full.

“Whatever,” he said.

She did have to stop eating to keep up with his longer legs though.

Just like last time, Derek opened the big metal door as they were approaching it.

“Stiles, what are you doing here?” he asked, glowering down at her.

“Isaac said you needed research help,” she said, completely unrepentant in throwing him under the bus about this. “He said you don’t trust Peter.”

Derek shot Isaac a sharp look. Issac shrugged. Derek sighed, dropping some of the annoyance in his expression.

“If you’re gonna help,” Derek said, doing his best to tower over Stiles again. “You cannot tell Scott about this. If any of this gets back to him, you’re out. How much have you told him already?”

Stiles shook her head. “Nothing. I haven’t even seen him since we talked. He was busy with Allison leaving, and now he’s in summer school.”

“Aren’t you always together?” Isaac asked.

“Well, we aren’t now,” she said because she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to be forced to admit that Gerard may have damaged her relationship with Scott, that the old man had stolen any part of their victory over him.

“Alright,” Derek said, grudgingly. “You can help.”

“Food first?” Isaac asked hopefully, holding up the pizza boxes as he entered the apartment.

Derek looked from him to Stiles and her half eaten slice. He sighed. “Fine. Pizza first.”

Stiles followed Isaac in since Derek didn’t seem to want to move, and the apartment was basically empty. Don’t get her wrong, the giant practically two story window in the back wall was fucking amazing even if you couldn’t see anything out of it because of the grime. Stiles would love to have a room this big and impressively evil villain lair-like. But it was still empty. Derek must have seen something on her face because he warned her, “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything,” she said.

The furniture must have been freebies of some kind as it’s all chairs and worse for the wear. The table looked like somebody’s home made mess up, and she was kind of surprised it didn’t fall apart when Isaac set the pizza boxes on it.

“It’s a work in progress,” Derek added. “This is temporary.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

He gave her a look like he knew she was non-verbally judging him. She walked around him to take a seat beside Isaac. Stiles started eating her pizza, but Isaac waited until Derek started eating before he ate.

Stiles finished eating her two slices first. “So, what have I missed?”

Derek gave her an evaluating look then answered, “We followed Erica and Boyd’s trail from the Argent house out into the Preserve. We think they were cutting across it to head to the next town on the far side, but the trail ends halfway through. We think that’s where the alphas picked them up. At least one, maybe more of them, knows how to cover their tracks. There were no signs of footprints, no scent, nothing. We’ve been circling out from where the trails stop, and we’ve covered the whole Preserve at this point. They’re not there.”

“If they can cover a trail, how do you know they’re not there and just covering them up?” Stiles asked.

“You can’t. You can cover a trail, where someone used to be, pretty easily. You can’t cover up where someone’s staying, especially if they’re captured and there all the time. Not for this long, not outside.”

“Okay, so that leaves here and any surrounding towns for where they might be hiding them, somewhere indoors?” she asked.

Derek nodded.

“What do you need my help for then? It’s not like I got a better sense of smell than you guys,” she said.

He made another sour face. “We would need you to research here and the other towns for where they could be keeping them. Are you aware of building materials with supernatural properties?”

“Like more than mountain ash?” she asked. “Not really. I’d have to look it up unless you have a list handy.”

“I can get you one after,” he said, gesturing to the greasy pizza they’d been eating.

“So just look for what buildings are made of supernatural stuff here and in other towns?” she asked.

“Yes, I know some, but if you research more it’ll at least give us more places to start sniffing around,” he said.

Stiles paused. “You know, if they can’t cover up the place they’re keeping them, they might be moving them around. Cover up each place after they’ve left.”

Both Isaac and Derek grimaced.

“We know,” Isaac said.

“That’s why we need to know how many places they could possibly be keeping them, if any of them help either with hiding them or keeping them,” Derek said, “If they’re moving them rather than keeping them in one place, that means there’s more chances they make mistakes. Either Erica and Boyd are able to escape, or they can’t cover their tracks fast enough and we find them.”

“Alright,” Stiles said. “Sounds like it’s gonna take a couple library trips to get the kind of stuff you can’t get online. Maybe even have to visit some historical societies, but I can do it.”

Isaac looked painfully hopeful at that. Derek, however, didn’t look nearly so optimistic.

“How long will it take?” Derek asked.

“I don’t know how difficult it will be to get the information, but having a list of materials would be nice.”

“Alright, I’ll get you the list.”

After Derek finished eating and cleaning his hands, he wrote out a list by hand for her. Stiles kept getting glares for trying to look over his shoulder. She swore he was holding in a sigh.

“Here,” he said when he’d finished, holding the sheet out to her.

His handwriting was surprisingly legible, bordering on nice. It was a long list with little notes by almost all of the materials to describe what they do. She made a little impressed frown at it.

“I’m surprised you even know that much,” she said, carefully tucking the page away.

Derek was back to scowling at her. “Why wouldn’t I know it?”

“You didn’t know anything about the kanima.”

He shot her a very unimpressed look. “I’ve never seen a kanima before. I’ve lived in buildings.”

“That doesn’t mean you’d know all the properties of all the materials,” she said. “I live in buildings too, and I don’t know all that.”

“You know asbestos is bad for you,” he points out, “Werewolves have to know if a material is bad for them, too.”

That was a really good point actually. “Does Isaac know all that?”

“Some,” Isaac answered then sighed. “But I guess I’m going to know more after this.”

“Not nearly as much as I will,” she said, heading towards the door. “So what, I come back in a week or something with updates?”

“Fine,” Derek said. “Just keep Scott out.”

“I got it,” she said. She didn’t say it won’t be a problem because Scott never saw her anymore. Right now, this was more important. Scott wasn’t the one in danger.

She went to open the big metal door and nothing happened. She tried harder to just as little effect. She heard Derek sigh.

“I haven’t oiled the door yet,” he said.

Stiles stepped out of his way, and he pulled the door open. He annoyingly made it look effortless.

“You should get on that,” she said, trying to fight down that feeling of being trapped that had sprung up just a little bit at the back of her mind. “Think we’d all prefer me being able to get out on my own.”

He didn’t respond when she left, but that wasn’t surprising.

She didn’t start on the research right away right away, but she did start the next morning right away. She pretty much had to go back to basics. Like she knew stone, brick, and wood for walls and framing. Plaster or drywall for the walls then paint or wallpaper. Tiles, wood, linoleum and more for flooring. Copper or pvc for pipes. She knew shingles go on roofs, but she didn’t know what they were made of. She didn’t know specific materials, and Derek’s list was very specific.

She recognized some types of stones and woods and can guess what they’re used for, but a lot she didn’t know at all. Derek’s notes were only on their supernatural properties. She had no idea how they were used in making buildings. She started there.

The stones and woods were what she expected, no surprises that they’re used for exteriors, walls, or flooring. Some of the materials are used more decoratively like mosaic work. A lot of the others are things that could be put into adhesives or fillers.

At first, Stiles had no idea why Derek would know something as minuscule as what goes into wallpaper adhesive. Then she considered how wallpaper could cover an entire room and if you used mountain ash on the windows or doors, and then it became a much more reasonable concern if you were worried about getting trapped anywhere.

Once Stiles finished with all the research into the little details, she stared out at her sea of notes and printouts and went, “Shit. This is gonna take so much longer than I thought.”

She showed up at the end of the first week back at Derek and Isaac’s building with a giant stack of the most relevant information. She struggled getting it all the way up the stairs because there was no way she was trusting the elevator. She was huffing and puffing by the time she stepped in front of the apartment’s door.

Isaac opened it for her without her even knocking which was fantastic because there was no way she’d be able to get a hand free with the giant brick of paper she was carrying.

“You have,” she struggled to get out, “no idea…how much supernatural shit…goes into buildings.”

Isaac reached out to take it from her, but Stiles clutched it to her chest and leaned back.

“No, my notes. Mine.”

Isaac pulled his hands back and stepped aside to let her in.

“What have you found?” Derek asked.

“If I set this down will that break?” she asked, nodding towards the table by all the chairs.

“Yes, use that one,” Derek said, pointing to a much more stable looking large metal table at the back of the room near the big windows. It was new. To the apartment, definitely not in general.

“Excellent,” she said, making her way over as quickly as she could and heaving her brick of research onto the table. It thankfully did not collapse. She shook out her arms, “Okay, I found a lot, but have not gotten to like what buildings they’re in yet. I wanted you to pick which ones you thought would be best to focus on.”

“Out of all of this?” Isaac asked.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m saying I need a more precise direction,” she said, laying her hand on top of the brick. “If I just went around finding all the buildings that have any of this stuff in them, we’d all just be here forever.”

“Alright, show me what you’ve found so far,” Derek said, stepping up to the table and crossing his arms.

“Okay,” Stiles said and started separating the brick into piles she’d marked by folding the corners of the sheet that started each section. It had taken her so long to put everything together in any kind of order. “Exteriors, one for roofs and the other for walls, flooring, interior walls, adhesives, fillers. And this guy.”

She sets out one last sheet by itself. “This can be in certain kinds of glass.”

“You actually do research,” Isaac said, looking over the spread of information.

“Yeah, of course, that’s what I said I’d do,” she said defensively.

“Good work, Stiles,” Derek said, leaning in to start reading.

“Oh, you give compliments now?” she asked.

Derek gives her a sharp look before turning back to the research.

Isaac, however, turns towards the door. “Derek.”

Derek sighed and turned towards the door as well.

“What is it?” Stiles asked.

“Peter,” Derek answered without so much as looking at her.

Stiles tried to swallow down the fear that climbed the back of her throat. She still remembered Peter offering to bite her far too clearly. The big metal door slid open, and Stiles still flinched at the sound despite the warning it was coming.

“Ah, Stiles,” Peter said, walking into the room all smug and smarmy. “Have you changed your mind?”

“No,” she said, knowing exactly what he was referring to.

Derek, however, turned to look at her. She avoided his gaze.

“I should have known it was you when Derek said he had someone looking into supernatural materials,” Peter said, still smiling as he approached the table.

“What is it?” Derek asked, already becoming short with Peter.

“I finished all the buildings you told me to take a look at,” he said, folding his hands in front of him and looking at Derek like he was waiting for his next orders like a good little boy. Like he wasn’t scheming something.

“So start the next ones,” Derek said.

“And which would those be?” he asked.

Derek rattled off a list of buildings. Stiles even recognized some of them. They were all historical buildings in the downtown area. Ones that are probably made of the stones Derek had listed.

“Very well,” Peter said, smile still on his face. “I’ll sniff them out.”

Just before he left, he looked over to Stiles. “Nice to see you again, Stiles.”

Stiles glared back at him. “No, it isn’t.”

Peter only smiled before making his way back towards the big metal door, no qualms about showing his back to them.

“New rule?” Isaac asked quietly.

“New rule?” Derek asked.

Isaac looked over to Stiles. Derek followed his gaze then turned back to Peter and announced, “New rule.”

Peter faced him, and this time the smile was gone. “What rule?”

“You’re not allowed in here when Stiles is here,” Derek said.

Peter’s eyes flicked to Stiles again, but Stiles hadn’t told them to do this. She didn’t look away.

“Alright,” he agreed, tension leaving the room. “See you around then, Stiles.”

Peter left without another word, shutting the door behind himself. Derek and Isaac listened with their heads turned towards the door for a time then turned towards her.

She said, “You know, I don’t know that that fixed anything.”

Saying seeing her around sounded like a threat to find her somewhere outside the apartment.

“It fixed one thing,” Isaac said. “If you’re here it means he stays out.”

“Can’t you just cut him loose?” she asked Derek. “That’s a thing you can do as an alpha right?”

“I could,” Derek said. “But I don’t like the idea of him running around unsupervised.”

“Right,” she said with a pout because that really was a good point. He got up to shit like coming back from the dead when left alone.

“And he’s still my uncle,” he said then he settled his hands on the table, leaning in towards her. “What was he talking about before? About changing your mind?”

Isaac looked just as interested. Stiles squared her jaw because she didn’t want this messing up whatever careful balance they now have when Scott was already a mark against her. She needed something to keep her occupied, she needed to help Erica and Boyd, fix her fuck up. She also didn’t want it coming out from Peter instead of her.

“He offered me the bite,” she said, “I told him no.”

Derek straightened up, frowning down at her. “He offered you the bite?”

“He said he liked me,” she said, which she still found super creepy. What was with these old guys being interested in her?

“And you didn’t want it?” Isaac asked.

“No,” she said because she wasn’t lying no matter what Peter had said. “Not from him.”

“And from me?” Derek asked.

Stiles stared at him, not sure if he was seriously attempting an offer or curious or some insane third thing, and looked away, shaking her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

She couldn’t risk leaving her father behind. She couldn’t do that to him.

“Alright,” he said, backing off way more easily than she thought he would. Then again, Peter had backed off, too. “Back to work then. I think you should focus on exteriors. Walls, specifically.”

He started rifling through the papers and pulled out a few to put on top before setting the stack down again. “These.”

“Okay,” she said, quickly starting to organize her research again. “Can I leave the rest here? I’ll need more space.”

“That’s fine,” Derek said.

She started organizing what she was taking with her and what she was leaving. “Do not mess any of this up. I don’t want to have to look it up again.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said.

“You should come by more often,” Isaac said, like it’s a totally normal and casual thing to say. “We could get you food.”

“We’re not feeding her,” Derek told him.

“Do you even have a kitchen?” she asked.

“It’s in progress,” he said, crossing his arms like that could intimidate her at this point.

“We can still do take out,” Isaac said.

Stiles gave him a look as she finished piling her stack. “You just want to keep Peter away.”

Isaac shrugged unrepentantly, “This is the best way to keep him away from you, too.”

Stiles considered that very seriously. “It’s a definite maybe.”

Chapter Text

Somehow, Stiles kept finding herself at Derek’s every couple of days. It wasn’t really a mystery. Scott still hadn’t shown up with summer school and missing Alison keeping him busy. Any time her father called her to tell her he wouldn’t be home for dinner, well, it was easier to just take her latest research over to Derek’s.

She brought over a list of buildings with the materials Derek had asked her to look for, and Derek made sure there was enough food for her from wherever he and Isaac decided to get take out from after smelling every suspicious nook and cranny.

There was just one issue.

“It’s unlocked,” Isaac called out from the other side of the big metal door. 

She tried the handle, and once again, it didn’t budge. “I still can’t open the door!”

She heard movement, and then the door slid back to reveal Derek.

“You don’t need to yell,” he told her.

“Then maybe you should oil the door, and I wouldn’t have to yell,” she said. “Why are you all gross?”

Derek proceeded to wipe the sweat off his forehead with the hem of his grimy t-shirt. Even his abs were sweaty and gross. “Demo.”

“Of what?”

“The bathroom.”

The bathroom deserved it. She’d taken one look at the apartment’s bathroom and decided she would go before she left. She was about 90% sure the shower was an active health hazard, too.

“You don’t only have one bathroom do you?” she asked.

“No, we have another on the upper level,” he said.

“Then why is there a full bath down here?”

Derek gave her a very unnecessarily judge-y look.

“Are we doing food now?” Isaac asked, stepping out of the bathroom and looking just as grimy as Derek.

“Maybe you should get clean first,” Stiles said because she’s sure he’s not sanitary. At least the main room’s still mostly unscathed. There was a toilet in a garbage bag as well as some other bulging bags, but they were all securely tied and set out of the way.

“I got dibs,” Isaac said, raising his hand.

Derek gave him an annoyed look, but said, “Be quick. We still have to pick up food.”

“Got it,” Isaac said before bounding up the spiral staircase.

Stiles started peeking into the destroyed bathroom. The toilet was obviously gone, but so was the tile on the walls and the linoleum flooring. Just the sink, its cabinet and the tub were left.

“I’m gonna order pizza, what do you want?” Derek asked.

“Huh?” she asked, pulling away from the bathroom. “Oh, veggie.”

He made a face at her, but still called and put in her order along with meat lovers for both him and Isaac and was finished by the time Isaac was back downstairs. Derek went up, and Stiles started laying out her research on the metal table. She had printouts of significant buildings she’d been able to find made of the stone she was researching, as well as of the areas where residential buildings tended to be made out of it.

Isaac sighed as he looked over it. “There isn’t an easier way to do this?”

“You can’t filter on building material on google maps unfortunately,” she said. “Why are you taking out the bathroom now? Shouldn’t you still be looking for Erica and Boyd? Are you even allowed to make these kinds of changes to an apartment?”

“Yeah,” Isaac said, “If you own it.”

“You own it?” she asked.

“Well, Derek does.”

“Then why was he living in an abandoned rail car?”

Isaac shrugged. “Takes time to get the paperwork approved, I guess.”

She frowned because that actually made sense. “He could have gotten a motel room.”

“With three newly turned betas?” he asked.

“Right,” she said with a nod.

Derek came back down completely clean, and glanced over the papers before looking to Isaac, “It’s your turn for pick up.”

“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll be back.”

Stiles watched him open the big metal door with envy. Then she turned to Derek, “You seriously bought the whole building?”

Derek shrugs. “Depressed real estate prices.”

“And how do you know how to demolish a bathroom?” she asked.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “I grew up in a house full of werewolf kids.”

“Yeah,” she said because that was definitely one way to end up with a bunch of broken stuff you needed to learn how to fix. “My dad won’t even let me handle the tools.”

Derek looked over the papers on the table then over Stiles. “Finding instructions is definitely more your speed.”

She frowned at him. “Is that a compliment or an insult? I can’t tell.”

Derek shrugged.

“It’s a compliment then. I can totally find you a youtube video on how to put a toilet in.” she said.

“I can do that myself,” he said. “Focus on the buildings.”

And then Derek was reading what she brought over, and she didn’t have anything to do.

“You need a couch,” Stiles complained.

Derek made a noise of acknowledgment that meant he was definitely not paying attention to her anymore. She groaned and leaned onto the table instead. She didn’t know how long she was waiting for Derek to finish reading when the door opened.

“Food,” she cheered, heading straight for the boxes in Isaac’s arms.

“You’d think you were the werewolf,” Isaac said, offering the boxes towards her.

“Hey, wait, these are all the same size,” she said, picking up the one marked veggie. “Did you get me a large like you?”

Derek made the same acknowledgment noise. Stiles rolled her eyes. That was what she got for not paying more attention while he was ordering.

“Can’t you eat it for leftovers?” Isaac asked, setting out the other two boxes on the rickety coffee table.

“Not if my dad eats it first, and he’s not supposed to have pizza,” she said, taking a seat beside Isaac.

Then Derek came and joined them, either drawn by the smell or having finished reading.

“So what’s with the demo?” she asked. “You’re supposed to be finding Erica and Boyd.”

“We’re getting faster at checking buildings,” Derek said. “Isaac’s really improving in his scent tracking with all the practice.”

Isaac practically preened at the compliment.

“I’m not going to be able to research any faster,” Stiles said. “ This isn’t the kind of thing internet types keep track of online. I think once I’ve passed exteriors I won’t even be able to find what’s in any residential buildings.”

“I know,” Derek said, and he doesn’t sound happy about it. “So we have to do something else with our time. Making the place nice for when they come back is what we can do.”

“Did they actually live with you before?” she asked. “It wasn’t clear to me.”

“No, but they spent a lot of time with us,” Isaac answered. “It’s not like the rest of their families would get being a werewolf.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” she said, wondering if Scott ever worried about that. She knew and his mom knew, but they weren’t werewolves. Yet it was her and not Scott that was here.

“Am I gonna get recruited for the remodeling?” Stiles asked when they’d finished eating.

“No,” Derek said. “Not until Erica and Boyd are found. It’s more important you keep doing the research.”

“Right,” she said with a nod, standing up with her half full pizza box. “You gonna let me out?”

“Yes, I will get to oiling the door,” he promised like he had every dinner before that.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said.

He pulled the door open for her, and she moved to head down the stairs.

“Stiles,” he said.

She turned back.

“You do good work,” he said then added like she didn’t know, “With the research.”

She stared at him not sure if it was an apology or a thank you, but it was definitely not just a compliment. Derek didn’t do compliments. “No problem,” she told him.

Because it wasn’t. Not to find Erica and Boyd and bring them home safe. This was a better use of her summer than anything else she could be doing.

He nodded, and she went home.

The next night, her father was home for dinner, and she ate with him. She made sure to eat her leftover pizza for lunch before he could get to it.

“So which friend is it you keep having dinner with?” he asked when Stiles was least expecting it, and she froze with a forkful of food in her mouth. “If it was Scott, you would have said Scott.”

She finished chewing, trying to give herself time to decide what to say. She told him the truth. “Isaac.”

“Isaac?” he trailed off.

“Lahey,” she answered cautiously.

He gave her an evaluating look, and she still didn’t know what to expect from him. “He lives with Derek Hale, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said, still cautious, still not sure what his angle was. They both knew that Derek and Isaac had been murder suspects before.

Her father sighed. “I want you paying for your own meals with them.”

“What?” she asked, completely thrown by the path the conversation was taking.

“I know Derek has inheritance and insurance money, but he still doesn’t have a steady income as far as I’m aware,” he said. “I don’t want him paying for your meals. I cover your meals, okay?”

“Yeah, that’s,” she stumbled over her own words, still confused. “I’ve paid for my own food. Most of the time.”

“Well, now you’re going to pay for it the rest of the time, too,” he said.

“Okay,” she agreed. “How do you even know about Isaac and Derek?”

Her father grimaced. “We missed Isaac’s father, and we never caught the arsonist that started the Hale fire. Or who murdered Laura Hale. There’s not much I can do for them in a professional capacity beyond what I did to ensure Isaac got emancipated rather than sent elsewhere in foster care. But I can keep an eye out for them, and make sure I cover your meals.”

“You’re not,” she shrugged, “mad or whatever, that I’m hanging out with them?”

Her father sighed. “I know they were suspects in the past, but I don’t think they’re bad kids. They’ve been through a lot. That’s no reason to prevent you from being friends. I also trust you to come to me if there’s ever a problem of any kind, alright? You’re not a therapist. There’s things you won’t be able to fix.”

“Alright,” she promised. And she totally would if it weren’t always going back to werewolves. “Derek’s not really a kid though, is he?”

Her father gave her a look. “To you, absolutely. He’s an adult. For me? He’s twenty. He might legally be an adult, but he’s a kid.”

“A legal adult is still an adult,” she argued.

“He bought an entire building on the edge of downtown that needs a lot of fixing up and isn’t that close to anything.”

Stiles opened her mouth then wondered why she was even arguing about this. “Whatever. I’m still gonna be an adult in less than a year. I promise to make better real estate purchases.”

Her father looked horrified, and she couldn’t keep from laughing.

“How about you focus on which colleges you want to go to,” he said.

“Sure, I can do that,” she said. After they find Erica and Boyd.

Her dad was home for the next few nights in a row which was nice even if there was a lot of college talk she wasn’t ready for at all. It also gave her some time to find a few more buildings for Derek and Isaac. She had to spend a day in the stacks at the library but she got the info she needed, taking pictures on her phone and printing it out later.

That also gave her an idea. She got two giant maps, one of just Beacon Hills and one of Beacon Hills, the Preserve, and the surrounding towns, and she got to work.

She headed to Derek’s with her haul the next time her father couldn’t make it home for dinner.

“So I had an idea,” she said after Isaac opened the big metal door because they still haven’t oiled it like they said they would even though they were now remodeling the place.

“Okay?” Isaac asked, not as enthusiastic as he should be.

“Yes, a good one,” she said, crossing the room to dump all her things on the metal table. “Do you have anything to put things up on the walls with?”

“Maybe, I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, could you go look or something?” she asked, busy unfolding her map. “We’ll need a lot, preferably removable.”

“Here,” Derek said, dropping a rather battered looking thing of scotch tape.

“But what if you need to take it down?” she asked.

“We’ll deal with it then,” he said. “Show us what you’ve got.”

“Okay, okay,” she said and since it’s tape, tried to put the maps up on the glass window rather than the exposed brick. 

Derek plucked the tape dispenser from her hand.

“Hey!”

“You’re putting it too low,” he said.

“I was not,” she insisted, and when she saw where he was placing it asked, “How the hell am I supposed to reach that?”

He shrugged and finished taping up the top of the map of Beacon Hills. He stopped, stepping back and looking it over, “Are these-,”

“Yeah, I started color coding all the buildings that I’ve researched so far,” she said, gesturing to the buildings she’s highlighted. “It’s just one color because you’ve had me researching all the different materials that can trap werewolves so that’s all the borders of the building in yellow so if we get as far as like roofs or interiors or something we can put an indicator in them so we can see where everything of a certain type is.”

Derek reached out, tapping three different sections of the map. One was the oldest part of downtown and the other two were historical areas that were much smaller. Well, as historical as buildings got in California. “These three. If they’re moving them, it’ll be within one of these three. Moving between any of those three sections would be much more risky.”

“Only if they wanted buildings with exteriors that would help them keep Erica and Boyd,” Stiles said with a nod. “Or if they kept them in Beacon Hills at all.”

She pulled out the second map. Derek taped it up next to the first, looking over the map of the larger area that she had color coded.

“There’s only three of us, and we don’t have complete information yet,” he said. “For now, Isaac, Peter, and I will watch these three areas here in Beacon Hills at least at night when it would be easier for them to move without attracting attention.”

Derek turned to Isaac, and Isaac nodded.

“And me?” Stiles asked.

“You’ve already gone through the common exteriors,” Derek said. “I want you to switch to interior materials. I’ll pull out which ones I want you looking for.”

“Okay,” she agreed even though she was getting antsy again, wanting to do more than trawl libraries.

Derek set aside the tape as he went off to find the research she’d left. She picked it up and taped down the bottom corners of the map. She went to put the tape down and found Isaac staring at the map of Beacon Hills.

“What?” she asked, looking between Isaac and the map.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. He kept his eyes on the map.

Derek came back with a stack of papers. It wasn’t the full brick she had brought in the first time she’d started researching, but it was a pretty good chunk of it. He started rifling through it, pulling out a page every so often then continuing through. When he finished, he pushed the larger stack aside and the small pile he’d made towards her.

“Start with these,” he said. “They’re also good for holding werewolves. We’ll see if there’s any overlap, and if not, we’ll move to interiors that help with hiding werewolves.”

Stiles nodded, pulling the little pile towards her. “Got it.”

She looked at Derek and Isaac, and they’re both looking past her at the maps Derek had taped up. Isaac looked a little hopeful, but Derek still seemed his gruff sort of serious.

“This is gonna take longer you know,” Stiles warned them, starting to flip through the papers and see which materials she’d be dealing with. “Exterior materials are way more accessible.”

Derek nodded, but Isaac looked concerned.

“Just do what you can,” Derek said. “It’s better to get some information than to go in totally blind.”

“Alright, I was just warning you,” she said. “I can start tomorrow but right now I’m starving.”

Derek turned to Isaac. “Your turn to pick up take out.”

Isaac sighed but he doesn’t argue. He just headed out the door.

“Do you just say it’s his turn to be funny?” Stiles asked. “It’s always his turn to pick up the food.”

“I pick up food plenty,” Derek said.

“I’ve never seen it.”

“You’re usually not here when I do it.”

Stiles rolled her eyes and changed topics. “And what about the door? You gonna actually do something about that?”

“Yes, I can oil the door,” he said, sounding more aggrieved than he had any right to. She was the one who couldn’t get the door open! Getting it fixed meant they don’t have to open it for her anymore.

The first thing Derek did was get a chair and a tool box, and that was when Stiles got the sense this is all about to go wrong for her. She watched with growing concern as Derek took the door off the wheels and the wheels off the track. He set the door down on the floor, but he brought the wheels over to her.

“I thought I wasn’t doing reno,” she said, but held her hands out for the wheels anyways.

She dropped one, and Derek gave her an unimpressed look. “Whoops,” she said.

“You’re the one who wants the door fixed. Just find a tupperware and fill it with vinegar and put the wheels in to soak through dinner. They’re both in the kitchen. You can scrub the rust off after,” he said, and he wasn’t smiling but she swore he was enjoying this.

“Fine,” she grumbled, scooping up the wheel she’d dropped.

“And open a window,” Derek called after her as she makes her way to the kitchen.

“I got it,” she said, dropping a wheel again. She left it to get the rest safely onto the counter.

She hadn’t really been in the kitchen before, but she could see why Derek wanted to reno. Not a single cabinet door was straight, and they’d been painted the ugliest yellow Stiles had ever seen. That paint was also peeling off. The counters were extremely damaged as someone had clearly left hot things on the laminate counter when they really shouldn’t have. It also looked like they’d cut directly on the surface, too, which gross.

Stiles ignored that, and of course found the giant jug of vinegar in the last cabinet she opened. She at least found the tupperware in the first one. The only food she found in the process were like nuts and dried fruit which seemed weirdly health conscious with all the pizza they ordered for dinner.

In any case, she got the deepest tupperware filled up with vinegar and set the wheels in. She then opened the only window in the kitchen, and she barely even got it to open because it was about as bad as the big metal door.

She went back to the main room asking, “Now what?”

She found Derek scrubbing the hell out of the top track. He stopped to turn and look at her.

“You can scrub the bottom track if you want,” he offered.

Okay, he definitely had to be fucking with her.

“Absolutely not,” she said because she is not gonna get covered in the drips of whatever the hell Derek was scrubbing off the top track.

“Then wait for Isaac,” he said, turning back to the door’s track.

Stiles huffed and headed towards the free chairs to take a seat. “You really need to get a couch.”

“I’m doing the door for you,” he said.

“You should be doing the door for you,” Stiles argued.

Derek didn’t respond, just kept scraping at the track.

“What happened to the door?” Isaac asked when he appeared in the doorway.

“Stiles wants the door oiled,” Derek said, jumping down from the chair he’d been standing on. Stiles was impressed it survived.

“I guess that explains the vinegar,” he said, coming through with the pizza.

Dinner did not get her out of having to scrub the door’s wheels afterwards. At least Isaac got stuck with cleaning out the bottom track and not her.

Chapter Text

Stiles showered twice, practically scrubbing herself raw each time. She still didn’t know what happened between Derek and Scott, but if Derek wanted nothing to do with Scott, it was likely Scott wanted nothing to do with Derek. Which meant he would want her on his side and not Derek’s. Which meant she couldn’t smell like Derek and Isaac from having dinner with them the night before when he came over for the first time since school had ended.

She heard the door bell ring and dressed as quickly as she could, shoving her wet hair back as she went. She kept forgetting to get it cut and half felt like she should grow it out at this point. She pulled open the door and grinned. “Hey,” she said, trying to reel it back in to normal and away from over excited puppy.

“Hey,” Scott said, stepping over the threshold. “Use enough soap?”

“What?” Stiles asked, a hundred lies on her tongue.

“You smell like the inside of a bath and body works,” he said.

“That’s literally the best thing to smell like,” she said. It wasn’t her fault the only thing her aunt got her for gifts was bath and body works.

“Not when you’re a werewolf,” he said, grinning.

“I think you’ll live,” she said, shutting the door behind him. “So what’s up? How’s summer school?”

He grimaced. “Worse than regular school. I’m so far behind on everything and it moves at a faster pace, all I do is homework and reading all the time. My head feels so stuffed I can’t think.”

“That sucks,” Stiles said. She had so much practice fitting her schoolwork in around procrastination and deadline motivation that all the werewolf shit taking up her time had only made her feel like less of a lazy shithead because at least she had a real reason to have not started sooner rather than just mindlessly watching the next episode of TV. Her grades had stayed where they were. If anything, she was way more efficient at research papers because she’d gotten way more practice at the research part.

“You have no idea,” he said. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been good,” she lied because Derek said she couldn’t involve him. “Nice to be out of school and no murderous lizards running around.”

There were only kidnap happy alphas running around now.

Scott wandered further into the living room, glancing around. “Seems pretty clean for over a month of summer laziness.”

“I’m not spending all my time here,” she said with a scoff before realizing she shouldn’t have said that. She spent so much time either in her room or at Derek and Isaac’s or now at libraries and archives all to find Erica and Boyd. She couldn’t tell Scott any of that. She should’ve said she’d cleaned for him. That would have been believable, right?

“Really?” Scott asked, amused. “You’ve found something more interesting than movies and cheesy popcorn.”

“You know I can’t have that in the house anymore,” she said. The popcorn had been a replacement for her dad’s potato chips, but it wasn’t much help if he still ate way too much of it.

“Okay, video games and whatever health snacks you’ve been feeding your dad,” he said, still amused.

She shrugged, scrambling for an explanation that didn’t have to do with any werewolves of any kind. “I’ve been taking walks, wandering around.”

She had been doing that before starting to look into supernatural materials so it wasn’t a total lie.

He frowned, “You really think that’s alright?”

“Why wouldn’t it be alright?” she asked then shrugged. “It’s not like there’s a kanima or Gerard out and about.”

“There are still werewolves,” he said.

She almost retorted that the alphas probably have no idea who she was and didn’t care anyways. Except Scott didn’t know about any of that. “You know you’re a werewolf right?”

“I’m not like the rest of them,” Scott said as he dropped down onto the couch.

She frowned at him, wondering what he meant. He definitely wasn’t different from Isaac, Erica, and Boyd. Aside from the fact he didn’t have an alpha.

“So, what do you want to do?” he asked.

“I dunno,” she said, sitting on the couch next to him. “What do you want to do?”

“Dunno,” he said, “What did we do before werewolves, hunters, and kanima?”

“Uh, lacrosse,” she said even though they had never done that together, just sat on the same bench at different times. “Don’t remember what else. It’s all a blur of fur and fangs.”

“What did we do with ourselves? How much free time did we have?” he asked, smiling.

Stiles shrugged. Certainly not anything meaningful. “I don’t know. More than we needed if I decided we should go look for bodies.”

The atmosphere broke, the mood dropping. Scott frowned, and Stiles tried not to feel guilty. It was not her fault. Peter was the one that bit him. Kate burned down the Hale house before that. It wasn’t her fault. Most of this would have happened even if she hadn’t dragged him out to the Preserve.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Scott said glumly. “Could use some of it back now though.”

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed, trying to rescue the fumble. “Feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

Scott winced. “Yeah, sorry, like I said, summer school has been insane.”

That wasn’t really what Stiles meant. “Yeah, sounds like. It’s okay. School’s important.”

Scott then got his kicked puppy look.

“What?” she asked, getting defensive.

“You were lying when you said it was okay,” Scott said. “I’m really sorry about all the summer school stuff.”

She couldn’t say she was fine again if he’ll think it’s a lie, and she didn’t know how to say that this was not about summer school.

“Stiles,” Scott complained, pulling her into him with a hug. He might be a werewolf now, but he still smelled like Scott.

“Let me go,” she said, pushing at his arms because he wasn’t supposed to get away with this.

“No,” he said, not genuinely firm, just mock stubborn. “I know you, Stiles. I’m not gonna let you do this.”

“I’m not doing anything,” she complained, trying to twist loose, but not very seriously.

“That’s the problem,” he said, resting his head on top of hers. “You didn’t tell me you were feeling down.”

Stiles gave up the struggle. Scott’s hugs were very good, warm and comfortable. She got he was making a general point that she needed to use her words when she was having problems, but sometimes it would be nice if she didn’t have to spell it out for him.

“You’re gonna squish me,” she said because she couldn’t just do nothing.

Big mistake as it made Scott give her an actual squeeze.

“No, let me go,” she complained.

“Not until you’re better.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted before making exaggerated squished noises.

“Fine,” he said, releasing her.

“Air,” she said, taking as deep a breath as she could.

Scott rolled his eyes. “I barely squeezed.”

“Said the werewolf,” she said, sitting upright.

“I really didn’t–,” he started then tried again. “I’m gonna be better, Stiles. Things have settled down now, I’m more used to things, I’m gonna be better. I’m gonna keep up with my schoolwork, and I’ll be a better friend. You’ll see.”

But things weren’t settled. An alpha pack had kidnapped Erica and Boyd. They wanted to test Derek. She did hours and hours of research. And Scott didn’t have any idea because he did something to make Derek refuse to work with him. They’ve had such a bad track record this past year. Scott was gonna find out, probably not from her because she wanted to help, wanted to know what was going on, and instead of doing the smart thing and fixing up things with Derek so they could work together, he’d get offended and try to do his own thing when he didn’t know what was going on.

“Yeah, I’ll see,” she said.

He smiled and didn’t say she lied.

They ended up deciding to watch Inception. Her dad had gotten it from the library because he’d missed it in theaters, but she was pretty sure it was due soon and he hadn’t seen it yet. Scott cannot stop asking questions, but Stiles hadn’t seen it before either so she kept telling him to shut up. It was a good movie, but Scott had to leave after. He still had homework, and his mom was expecting him to get his chores done before dinner.

She gave him a hug goodbye before he left.

Her dad called half an hour later to let her know he wouldn’t be home for dinner. She sighed after she ended the call. Then she got up to straighten out her research to take to Derek’s.

She hadn’t lied about this part of the research taking way longer. She had found the best and most methodical way to check for interior materials was to go building by building. She’d get every record she could get her hands on between libraries and archives and the historical society on the building and check what she found against the list Derek had pulled out for her. She’d only finished going through one building, and she had no idea what she’d do when she ran out of historical buildings that would have accessible records.

Still, she took what she had and got going, arriving at her usual time for dinner. She knocked on the door.

“It’s open,” Isaac called through the door.

Stiles still marveled that the door actually opened when she pulled on it.

“What have you got?” Derek asked.

They’d apparently moved onto tiling the bathroom floor. They were almost finished with it as far as she could see with Derek kneeling in the doorway and blocking the view. The tiles she could see past his head were more traditional than she would have expected as they were small mostly white and a few black hexagonal tiles. She kind of liked it, though. They looked good with the brick walls even if the walls in the bathroom weren’t brick.

“Some stuff on interiors,” she said.

Derek shifted back to sit on his heels and turned half towards her He frowned at her. “You saw Scott.”

“Yeah, didn’t tell him anything, though,” she said. “I just didn’t want to shower again.”

Isaac audibly sniffed the air.

“You are not subtle,” Stiles told him.

Isaac pouted. “I know, but it’s hard to tell with all the bath and body works.”

“Bath and body works is good,” Stiles insisted.

“Not in that quantity,” Isaac said with a scoff.

As Stiles went to argue with him, Derek interrupted, “You really didn’t tell him anything?”

“No,” Stiles said. “He doesn’t even know I’ve seen you. Why do you think I’m doused in honeysuckle?”

Derek stared at her for a moment. She made a face back at him. Then he nodded. “Alright. Let’s pack up, Isaac.”

“Got it,” Isaac said, and he started cleaning up a tile cutter and all the little cut off tile bits as Derek scraped off the excess mortar from the trowels into the tub. Derek closed the tub then started putting it along with the trowels and extra tile spacers all in a neat row beside the bathroom door and other packs of tile. Isaac set the tile cutter and the open pack they’d been working from beside the rest.

“Can we get Italian?” Isaac asked as they cleaned. “Like real Italian not pizza.”

“I’m down for that,” Stiles said, going to raise her hand then nearly dropping her research and having to catch it. She could get stuff with cream sauce since there’s no risk of her father getting any.

“Fine,” Derek said, not even that obstinate about it. He was probably as tired of the pizza they kept getting as she was.

Derek called in the order, and Stiles decided to get fettuccine alfredo with chicken and broccoli while Isaac got a chicken dish, and Derek intentionally and willingly ordered a dish with eggplant in it.

“So, what have you found?” Derek asked, turning to Stiles as they had plenty of time to talk before they needed to pick up the order.

“Alright, so, interiors,” she said, heading over to the map.

The first building didn’t have a lot of the materials that Derek had listed, but she told them the ones it did have. Then she went over the pros and cons of different ways of marking them on the map. She finished her little speech, putting her research back in order and found both Isaac and Derek frowning at her. She looked between them, but they didn’t say anything.

“What?” she asked, close to snapping.

Isaac looked directly at Derek. Derek glared back at him, but Isaac stood up straight from where he’d been leaning on the metal table and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. A pretty clear ‘I’m not touching it.’

Derek sighed, crossing his arms as he turned back to Stiles. “Are you alright?” he asked, sounding like it was as difficult as pulling teeth to get out.

“I’m fine,” she said, no idea why they’re even asking.

“You were weird when you gave the research,” Isaac said, an edge of defensiveness to his tone.

“I was not,” she said. Then she adds. “I’m just hungry.”

“Alright,” Derek said, pulling out his phone. “I need to get the food anyways. Don’t burn the building down.”

“We won’t,” Stiles and Isaac said in unison.

Derek headed out, and Stiles went back to straightening out her research, still considering what the best way to mark the map would be.

“Look, I know you don’t like not telling Scott, but it’s important,” Isaac said. “Derek has reasons to not tell him. Good reasons.”

Stiles wasn’t upset about not telling Scott. She wasn’t even upset at all! Still, Derek had been vague when he’d first said he wouldn’t work with Scott. “What reasons?”

Isaac shrugged, hands not even leaving his pockets. “If Derek wants to tell you, he’ll tell you. I won’t do it.”

Stiles glowered at him. “I hate mysteries.”

“It’s not a mystery,” Isaac said. “Scott’s a dick.”

“Just because we disagreed with Derek about turning you and Erica and Boyd and what to do with the kanima–,”

“He’s a dick,” Isaac interrupted, not even raising his voice. He sounded uncaring, like it was a well known fact he read off a wikipedia page.

“He is not,” Stiles insisted hotly.

Isaac held up his hands, still in his pockets. “You already knew we didn’t like him when you joined.”

“Not really,” she said. “It sounded like another stupid dick measuring contest. Derek doesn’t like that Scott wouldn’t automatically listen to the big bad alpha so now he has to put him back in his place.”

Isaac’s eyes flashed gold, and Stiles took a step back.

“It is not a dick measuring contest,” Isaac said slowly. “If you knew what he did then you wouldn’t say that.”

“Then just tell me what he did,” she snapped

He shook his head. “That’s Derek’s decision.”

“What?” she asked. “Too much of a good little beta to make up your own mind?”

“Shut your mouth,” Isaac seethed at her. “I’m not doing it because I’m his beta. I’m doing it because I’m his friend. Or do you always go around telling Scott’s secrets?”

She said nothing for a moment, wondering what the hell Scott did that got this sort of reaction. Whatever it was, he’d done it to Derek. “I don’t.”

Isaac gestured towards her, hands still in his jacket pockets, in a there you go sort of motion.

Stiles frowned and she turned back to the table, aware of Isaac silently watching her. They didn’t speak as Stiles worked out a legend for each material on scrap paper and painstakingly transfered her results all onto one little building.

She stepped back to look at the final product. There were so many empty buildings left. She could be at this forever. They’d never find Erica and Boyd. Not unless they got really lucky and the alphas made a mistake moving them.

Derek returned, pushing the door open a little rougher than necessary after the oiling. Stiles could hear him slow down as he approached them. “What happened?” he asked cautiously.

“Nothing,” Stiles said quickly.

“I told her Scott was a dick,” Isaac said, blasé rather than vicious like he’d been before.

Derek set the take out on the table. He shrugged and told Stiles unsympathetically, “He is a dick.”

Stiles grit her teeth. “We can’t eat here, not near my research. I’ll kill you if you get it dirty.”

“Alright,” he said, picking the bag up again. “No need to be so territorial. It’s still my place.”

“If you spent as much time as I did on it, you’d be the same way,” she said, straightening her papers one last time before following him and Isaac to the more rickety table and its accompanying chairs.

No one said anything for a while as they started eating. Derek kept looking between Stiles and Isaac, but Stiles refused to say anything. The whole argument had been dumb.

“We should get a TV,” Isaac said eventually.

“Even if we got a TV, we wouldn’t be able to watch anything on it,” Derek said tiredly.

“If you’re getting everything second hand anyways, might as well get DVD player,” Stiles said, “Then you can get stuff from the library.”

Isaac pointed to Stiles, “See?”

Derek shot Stiles an exasperated look.

“Just saying,” Stiles said before shoving a forkful of noodles in her mouth.

“Come on,” Isaac said, “We’ll have something to do to chill out besides stare at the half finished bathroom.”

Derek gave him a disbelieving look. “I have books.”

Stiles laughed, trying not to spew her noodles at Isaac’s offended expression.

Chapter Text

They were past the halfway mark of summer, but Stiles’s research was only slowing down. She’d started with the most famous of the historical buildings, and they had been slow going with all of the information available. The ones she needed to research now have almost nothing on them. Stiles tried to suggest going to visit the historical buildings in person exactly once and didn’t even finish her sentence at the look Derek gave her. Which was fair. Going to areas where an entire pack of alpha werewolves might be as a tiny, puny human was terrible strategically speaking. Even if she did make sure she only smelled of honeysuckle and peach.

She, however, was getting desperate. Her anxiety was picking up again, and she kept staying up trawling the internet even though she knew what she was looking for wasn’t going to be on there. Derek looked more and more grumpy at dinner, and Isaac more stressed. Stiles was pretty sure Isaac had even lost some weight. The bathroom was almost finished as well since they didn’t have more information on where to look. Stiles just knew someone was going to do something stupid soon.

Her phone buzzed. It was from Isaac. Can you come over now?

Stiles sighed. Her dad already said he wasn’t coming home for diner. Yeah she sent back.

She packed up what little she had and headed over to Derek’s. The door was unlocked for her, but only Isaac was in the living room.

“What’s up?” she asked, a little wary. “Where’s Derek?”

“Out,” Isaac said, standing up and moving towards her. “I need to ask you something.”

“Okay,” she said, even more wary.

“What do you know about Peter?” he asked. “I know he offered you the bite, and I’ve seen him around, but Derek won’t tell me anything more. I want to know what Derek won't tell me.”

“He’s a massive dick,” Stiles answered, walking past him to put her measly few pages of research down on the table. “Did Derek tell you he killed Laura?”

“Laura as in his sister Laura?” Isaac asked cautiously.

“Yep, that is in fact the one,” she said, pointing to him. “He did it just to get her alpha powers and take out his revenge, and like I get it, Kate Argent is the fucking worst, and Peter did get burned alive, I still don’t think that means you kill your niece over it.”

“That’s messed up,” Isaac said.

“Right?” she asked. “And that’s just the beginning. So he killed all the people involved in the Hale fire, bit and turned Scott, tried to kill and turn me, mauled Lydia, and messed with Derek and then Derek killed him to become the new alpha. Wait, did Derek tell you Scott wanted to kill Peter because he wanted to turn back to human? That he thought killing the alpha that bit him would turn him back?”

“No.”

“Okay so Derek kinda stole the kill to make sure that couldn’t happen.”

“It couldn’t. That’s not how it works. It only goes one way,” Isaac said. “And that’s the Hale Alpha. It’s been in their family forever. If Scott had taken it after everything they’d been through…”

“I get the picture,” Stiles said. She was really starting to see how Scott potentially turning back to human was not worth the risk of Scott becoming an alpha. That could have been very bad. “Why are you asking about Peter anyways?”

Isaac took a deep breath and said, “I think Derek’s going to ask him for more help.”

“Help?” Stiles asked. “What do you mean help? Peter can’t help.”

“I know, but,” Isaac made a helpless gesture. “We’re starting to run out of summer, and you’re working kind of slow–,”

“That’s not my fault,” Stiles said. “I can’t make information appear if it’s not there.”

“I know,” he said. “But we’re trying to find kidnapped people. We should be fast.”

“I know, but Peter won’t be any help,” she said. “You can’t trust a word that comes out of his mouth. We spent months trying to figure out who he is and how to kill him and he’s figured out how to resurrect himself, and I’m sure that took something terrible and creepy and awful. He’s the bad guy, Derek knows that right? I get he’s family–,”

“Stiles.”

“But there is a line you have to draw in the sand–,”

“Stiles.”

“And Peter only knows how to play hopscotch with it.”

The door to the apartment slid open to reveal Derek with a bag of groceries.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Stiles,” he said dryly.

“Am I wrong?” Stiles asked. “Every time people don’t listen to me, bad things happen.”

Derek gave her a flat look. “We’re already using him. This is just a little bit more.”

“And I already don’t like how we’re using him,” Stiles said. “What if he’s just lying about not seeing Erica or Boyd or the alphas, huh?”

“We can hear when people lie,” Derek said dismissively.

“He’s a manipulator, though,” Stiles said. “He doesn’t need to outright lie because that’s too easy. He doesn’t have a reason to help you or us or keep anyone alive. Peter knows you, and you’re giving him an opportunity to know Isaac and me.”

“He knows who I was,” Derek corrected her. “He’s too weak to make a move with an alpha pack so close by, and if they’re who I think they are, they already don’t like him.”

“Wait, you know them?” Stiles asked, holding up her hands. “You couldn’t have, like, lead with that forever ago when you first brought them up?”

“One of them. I didn’t remember him until I started thinking about bringing in Peter,” he said, setting the groceries on the table. “There was one pack I knew of growing up that had lost everyone but the alpha. His name was Ennis. That’s all I know about him.”

“That’s it?” Stiles asked. “That’s nothing!”

“Kids don’t meet other alphas,” Derek said sternly.

Stiles considered what she knew about animal behavior when they lived in social groups like packs. “You know what? Totally legit rule. I approve.”

“That’s why we need Peter,” he said. “He knows Ennis. He might also know the others.”

“And what if he lies about all of them?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“We incentivize him.”

“With what?” she asked. “Promise he gets to kill you when this is over?”

“No,” he said.

“Then what?” she pressed.

He gave her a look like he knows she won’t like it.

“No,” she warned him.

“Power,” Derek answered. “A test to officially join the pack.”

“No!”

“You don’t need to yell,” Issac said, annoyed.

“I’m not yelling,” she said before taking a breath and lowering her voice. “I’m just saying this is a terrible, terrible idea.”

“He doesn’t want anything else,” Derek pointed out.

“It’s not worth it,” Stiles said. “This is like begging him to kill you so he can go back to being a murder alpha.”

“Look,” he said, facing her and staring her down. “I wanted your research to work, but we have nothing. If we can’t get info on the buildings, we need info on the Alphas. Peter is all we’ve got.”

“You can’t just sacrifice yourself to your uncle to get them back,” she said. “If you go down—,”

Peter won’t care about them. Not any of the betas, not as people. He’d care about Stiles, in maybe the worst way possible. Peter would run circles around Scott and destroy everything in the process. With the hunters gone, the only thing in the way was Derek being the Alpha. He might not like Scott, but if refusing to work with him was all he did, Stiles had no problems with that.

“I’m not sacrificing anything,” Derek said sternly. “I’m not letting him become Alpha. If I let him think we’ll let him join, he’ll think he has access to power. We’ll get what we want.”

“If you let him get any closer, you’re giving him an opportunity to kill you,” she countered, trying to sound as even and as adult as he did, like her heart wasn't racing at the thought.

“It’s not your decision,” Derek said. “You’ve been helping, but you’re not part of the pack.”

Stiles turned to her only other option. “Isaac.”

Isaac shrugged awkwardly. “We are taking too long. We don’t know when the Alphas will get tired of us.”

Stiles shook her head and took a step back. “I won’t do it.”

“Stiles,” Derek said.

“I won’t work with Peter,” she said. “If you pick him, I’m leaving.”

“We’re not letting him into the apartment, and he’s not really going to join the pack,” Derek said. “We’re only baiting him. It’s all we’ve got unless you can think of something else.”

“Let me think then,” she said and started to pace. She dragged her hands through her hair like that would stimulate thoughts.

“You have no other contacts?” Stiles asked.

“They abandoned us after the fire,” Derek answered. “We’re still tainted.”

How cruel, but what else would anyone do if hunters had destroyed an entire pack?

She kept pacing. She slowed. She sat down on the couch. “I can’t think of anything else.”

Derek nodded. “Neither can I.”

Stiles didn’t return to Derek’s apartment for a while. She buried herself in the research, in libraries and historical societies. She organized it and reorganized it. She made notes on the most likely buildings. She still didn’t get any faster. The new school year drew closer and closer.

She finally stopped by Derek’s again with her stack of research, far smaller than she wanted it to be.

“How have you been?” Isaac asked.

“Fine,” she lied. No one called her on it.

Stiles looked around the main room. There was no sign of Peter. The bathroom was finished. Derek was at the back of the room by the metal table and their taped up maps. She dropped her research onto the table with a thud.

Derek said, “Thank you.”

“It’s for Erica and Boyd,” she said. Then she noticed the new pages taped up to the windows. “This Peter’s info?”

Derek followed her gaze. “Yes, I wrote it out and stuck them up.”

The first page had Ennis in all caps across the top. Birth date and age came underneath. He was middle aged, but Stiles was sure that didn’t slow down alpha werewolves. The physical description started with ‘big ugly brute’, but continued on to more useful information. He was white, brown hair buzzed short, brown eyes. The height estimation put him taller than basically everyone. His only notable ability was apparently his strength, but there was a little addition that he shouldn’t be underestimated as only the brawn. It finally ended with a little history.

In 2004, eight years ago, before the Hale fire, Derek would have been twelve or thirteen, old enough to remember something, Ennis had stopped by Beacon Hills. His pack had killed two hunters, Argents was written in parenthesis, and he’d wanted advice from other alphas now that the hunters had killed one of his young betas. Derek had written ‘Mom said he had a right to avenge his beta.’

Then in 2005, and Stiles read it as ‘before the fire in 05’ if Peter knew about it, Ennis’ entire pack had been killed. No info on how. Then in bullet points it added, ‘not family’ and ‘Emissary included.’

“What’s an emissary?” Stiles asked.

“An emissary is a representative of another person or group—,”

“I know the definition, Derek,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What’s it mean for werewolves?”

“A werewolf pack’s emissary is a druid—,”

“Like, Celtic religious leaders? That kind of druid?” she asked. “Or the modern pagan kind?”

Derek shot her an unamused look. “Do you want me to answer or not?”

“Go ahead,” she said, holding up her hands.

“They were originally Celtic, but that’s not a requirement these days,” he explained. “What is a requirement is that they’re humans who have studied the supernatural. Not all werewolf packs are as integrated as us. Druids would act as advisers for navigating human society and help avoid attracting hunters’ attention. They could also help us with anything we couldn’t do like handle any materials on that giant list I gave you.”

“Got it,” she said with a nod. “So, do you have an emissary?”

“No.”

“But your mom used to have one?”

Derek scowled. “It was Deaton.”

“Seriously?” she asked. “Then why aren’t you using him?”

“He should have contacted Laura after the fire, but he never did,” he said. “I can’t trust him, especially since he’s helping Scott.”

Stiles wanted to ask so badly about what had happened with Scott, why Derek refused to have anything to do with him, but Derek had tensed. His voice had gone cold.

Besides, the alphas needed to be the priority here. “Got it. No emissary for you.”

“Yet.”

“Yet?” she asked. “You have a new guy in mind?”

Derek and Isaac both looked at her like she was incredibly stupid.

“What?” she asked.

“Not a guy,” Derek said.

“Okay, girl then—wait,” she said, taking a step back. “You’re not thinking me, are you?”

“It’s only a possibility right now,” Derek said.

“How is it a possibility at all?” she asked. “I’m not even a druid.”

“Not yet,” he said. “But you’ve been involved from the beginning. You know the situation already. You’ve been doing the research.”

“Wasn’t there like an adviser’s bit in that whole emissary job description?” Stiles asked, making a gesture to reference it. “What about that bit? You don’t listen to me. Remember the whole Peter thing we just went though?”

Isaac winced, but Derek only raised an eyebrow at her.

“What?” she asked because an eyebrow didn’t actually explain shit.

“I let you try to come up with an alternative to using Peter. You agreed we were out of options.”

Stiles narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you been giving me emissary tryouts or something?”

Derek almost cracked a smile. “No. I only thought about it after we started getting info from Peter.”

“Sure,” she said as if she didn’t believe him, but she did for the most part. She can’t imagine Derek wanting to pick her as emissary at the start of the summer. Lately? She could believe the Peter thing was at least a little bit of a test.

She turned to the other pages. The next one read Kali. Similar age to Ennis. Shorter than him, but definitely taller than the average woman. Mixed race, light skinned with long dark hair. Agile fighter, not a brute like Ennis. She’d been part of the issue with Ennis’s beta in 04, but Derek had only written ‘neutral’ about her opinion. Kali’s pack, also not her literal family, had died earlier than Ennis’ and sometime before 05 according to the sheet. Emissary included.

Deucalion came next, and the name seemed super fake and pretentious. Stiles would put money down on him changing it after turning or becoming alpha. He was older than the other two alphas, shorter than them, too. Fighting style unknown. He’d apparently argued for peace in 04 and had somehow ended up blinded. His pack died the earliest, were also not his family, and emissary included.

“What’s with the star?” Stiles asked, pointing to the star like an asterisk over Deucalion’s name.

“Peter thinks he might be leading the alpha pack,” Derek said. “He’s the oldest, and Kali and Ennis both deferred to him in 04.”

“And these guys?” she asked, shifting her finger over to the last page which only had ‘Thing 1 and Thing 2’ written in the center of it.

“We have no idea who they are,” Derek said. “They’re new.”

“New to the pack?” she asked. “How do you even know they exist then?”

“Three isn’t much of a pack so it’s a good bet that the other three would have wanted it rounded out. Our best guess is someone joined from a pack that was annihilated out east. The only bodies they didn’t find were a pair of twins.”

“How does Peter even know that?” Stiles asked. She didn’t even know where to begin to find other werewolves.

“That was his job,” Derek said.

“His job?”

He nodded. “For my mother.”

“He kept track of the other werewolf packs?”

“And their motives.”

“So what’s their motive for this?” she asked. “They banded together after all their packs got killed, what? Thinking they’d be safer that way?”

“Or for power,” Isaac said. “That’s Peter’s theory.”

Stiles rolled her eyes. Of course it was. “Does that even make sense for Deucalion? It said he argued for peace. That the kinda guy that wants power?”

Derek tilted his head. “He already had power. He was an alpha. He could be the kind of guy that thinks he can make the world better if he just had a little more.”

“By recruiting alphas?”

Derek shrugged. “It would make sense to a lot of werewolves.”

“Wait,” Stiles said, looking over the sheets again. “All their packs got killed, even the newer two. They didn’t leave them.”

“We don’t know that they didn’t abandon them first,” Derek said. “An alpha abandoning a pack is a good way to end up dead. Except for the twins. We’re not sure if they were alphas before the killing or how they could both be alphas now. We could be missing a killed alpha for all we know.”

 “Still a good chance all us betas end up dead if Derek gets recruited,” Isaac said sourly.

“I won’t,” Derek argued.

“No,” Stiles said. “Well, yeah it’s really likely everyone ends up dead, but if they want all the betas dead or just don’t care if the betas survive for the alphas to join up, why aren’t Erica and Boyd dead? They could have had it all over and done with in the Preserve, but they didn’t. Taking and hiding them takes more effort, and they’ve been holding them for so long at this point. Killing them would take way less time.”

“So?”

“So we’re missing something. What do they need Erica and Boyd alive for?”

Isaac cleared his throat. “Maybe they aren’t alive.”

“Then why don’t we know about it?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to threaten you with their bodies rather than a symbol if they had them?”

“Now you think they don’t have them?” Derek asked.

“No, I think they have them, but they’re alive so no bodies,” she said. “Maybe they do want you to get them back as a recruitment test, but I don’t think that’s the best explanation if all the betas end up dead. Can you think of anything that can explain this?”

Derek shook his head. “Nothing beyond a loyalty test to the alpha pack post recruitment. I told you why it would make sense for some werewolves to make a pack all out of alphas, especially after the fire, but it only makes sense for alphas and these pack killings were before the fire. Most werewolves are betas. It would be destabilizing to encourage alpha packs as a solution to surviving hunters as there would be betas that would be scared enough to try to take it, especially in packs like the ones these alphas had where they weren’t families and all adults. Parents and siblings wouldn’t want to abandon their children or younger siblings to get killed.”

“Maybe they’re just a group of traumatized alphas coming together,” Isaac suggested.

“Sure, maybe at first, but they’re recruiting now,” Stiles said. “This isn’t some love-y dove-y power of friendship story. It’s not like they recruited Laura after the fire which honestly would have made way more sense time line wise with the first three. No, they showed up now and kidnapped Erica and Boyd. Never tell him I said this, but if you look at it that way, Peter might be right. If they waited so long to start recruiting like this, they probably want power. We just don’t know why now.”

“But you said kidnapping takes a lot of time and effort,” Isaac said. “I still don’t get why they would do it.”

“Stiles is right,” Derek said, frowning at the maps. “We’re missing important information, why keep them alive, why now, why do any of this. Like I said, alpha packs aren’t a good solution for most werewolves. I don’t know how they’re made, and neither does Peter. Alphas shouldn’t be able to accept other alphas into their pack.”

“You have limits on who you can accept into packs?” Stiles asked.

Derek nodded. “We’re supernatural, not just part wolf. You can’t just be friends or family and call yourself a pack. It shouldn't work to have more than one alpha in a single pack. They should reject each other, but somehow they didn't.”

Stiles heaved a sigh. “This is way too complicated. We don’t know where they are or how any of this works. We’re going to have to be really careful once we do find Erica and Boyd because we don’t know what to expect except that it’s going to be super bad because they’ve had months to figure this out.”

“And if we fail,” Isaac said, “That’s me, Erica, and Boyd all out of the picture.”

Derek glowered at the maps. “No pressure.”

Chapter Text

“Ready?” Scott asked, enthusiastic and cheerful after making them stretch like they were legit athletes.

“No,” Stiles said, squinting in the early morning sun.

“Come on, you’ve gotta do conditioning,” he said. “Only a couple weeks ‘til sports start. It’ll be fun.”

She groaned. “I don’t like this new and reformed you. What happened to being lazy and sitting on the bench?”

“Exercise is good for you,” he said. “And it’s good to be well rounded.”

“What if I don’t want to be well rounded? And to forget school’s about to start?”

“Hey, you didn’t have to do summer school this whole time. You don’t get to complain,” he said with a grin.

Stiles scowled. No, she just combed libraries and historical societies for information on building materials. Schoolwork was easier.

“Let’s go,” Scott said, patting her on the shoulder before starting a jog.

Stiles sighed and followed after him. Maybe doing conditioning with a werewolf would help her be able to escape a pack of kidnapper alphas. Probably not, but she could pretend.

Scott was only okay as a running partner. No matter how many times he checked over his shoulder to make sure they were on pace, Stiles was always a few feet back. She was out of shape and breathing hard only jogging, and he could comfortably run at a far faster pace.

Stiles tapped out two thirds of the way through their planned run which was honestly better than she expected to do. She braced herself on her knees and tried to get her breath back.

“You good?” Scott asked, jogging in place beside her like an asshole.

“I’m fine,” she eventually got out. “I’m outta shape.”

“That’s why it’s called conditioning,” he pointed out.

“No shit,” she said, forcing herself back upright.

“You can walk the rest of the way,” he offered.

“If you start doing circles around me, I’ll kick your ass,” she told him as she started walking.

“I would never,” he said, exaggeratedly.

He did one circle around her and let her punch him before he stuck to basically jogging in place beside her as she walked. She did at least jog the last little bit of the route.

“Alright, time for cool down,” he said.

“Are you serious?” she asked, wiping away her sweat. “Do you even need to do that?”

“Good habits,” he said with a grin. “Gotta keep up flexibility, too.”

“Alright, whatever, let’s just do it,” she said, dropping into cool down stretches with him. Then she got a little annoyed that she actually felt better afterwards. “Remember when I used to be faster than you?”

Scott pouted. “That was only cause I had asthma. I would’ve been fine if I could’ve breathed.”

“And? You’re only beating me now because you’re a werewolf,” she said.

“Thanks, I get it, Stiles,” Scott said sourly. “Me working out the whole summer doesn’t matter.”

“Are you serious, dude? It’s a joke,” she said. “How was I supposed to know you’d been working out?”

Yeah, Scott had more biceps than he had pre-bite, but she was pretty sure he had them before the summer, too. It’s not like he said anything to her about it. All he’d done was ask her if she wanted to do her conditioning with him.

“It’s fine,” he said, brushing it off.

“Seems like it’s not,” she said. “You just got pissed at me for pointing out you’re a werewolf, which you are.”

“I’m not mad,” he retorted.

“Uh huh,” she said, walking away. She wanted to go home, chug water, take a shower, and have breakfast. “It’s such a big problem for you to have super strength and speed.”

“Being a werewolf isn’t just strength and speed,” he said. “It’s not all perks, and you should know that since you had to try to keep me from killing anybody on the full moon. Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?” she asked, because they were a ways away from Scott needing that type of help. Hell, he was always rejecting that type of help from Derek, and now Derek didn’t even want anything to do with him.

“Anything,” he snapped. “I’m stuck like this, Stiles. There’s no way back. I have to always stay in control, all kinds of supernatural shit and hunters are out to kill me and my mom—,”

“I have to deal with all that shit, too,” Stiles interrupted. “But I don’t get the nice little bonus of a supernatural healing factor.”

“Well, if you want it so bad, why don’t you go ask Derek for it?” he asked, gesturing towards the Preserve. “I’m sure he’s still giving them out to any teen that asks.”

“Fuck off,” Stiles said. “You know not everyone lives after they get bit.”

“See? You don’t even want it. Why can’t you get that I don’t want it either?”

“You want it when you can show off to Allison,” she snapped. “But not for anything else.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Allison isn’t even here anymore.”

Stiles scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I’m going home.”

“What? Stiles!” he called after her as she walked away.

“Figure it out, Scott,” she said as she headed to her Jeep to drive home.

She chugged her water, took a shower, and started making herself breakfast, still pissed about her argument with Scott. That he still hadn’t said anything about her bruises. That he’d wanted to rescue and protect Allison and his mother, but he hadn’t done it for her. Some little part of her remembered that Derek had said he stopped Scott from rescuing her, but Scott should have come for her anyways, and he hadn’t. Why was that the one time he’d listened to Derek?

She huffed as she finished her cereal. She set her bowl down a little too hard in the sink, but since nothing broke, she let it be. She went back to her room, print outs and copies spread all over the place. Why had she gone running with Scott when she still had all this to deal with?

She halfheartedly organized her papers. She’d taken a dip into researching wolves for how packs worked, and for trauma psychology, if there were ever any cases of guys surviving massacres and deciding the right thing to do was get more power and start kidnapping people. She hadn’t had much luck on either pursuit. Actual wolf packs didn’t seem to line up with how Derek talked or even her own observations of werewolves, and as far as she had found, survivors tried to prevent the things that happened to them from happening to other people. It left her nowhere with trying to figure out what the alphas were up to.

Her dad was home for dinner, and she could tell he was watching her. He asked, “Everything okay? Did you finally start on your summer school work or something?”

“Huh?” Stiles asked before remembering that she did actually have summer school work to get done. Eh, she’ll do it next week. “No, um, kinda got into a fight with Scott.”

“Really?” he asked. “That’s not like either of you.”

Stiles shrugged awkwardly. “Well, I don’t know. I know he had summer school, but I feel like he cares more about Allison breaking up with him and her family moving away than, like, hanging out with me or whatever.”

“Oh, Honey,” he said, sympathetically.

“I mean, I just, last year was hard with all the stuff that happened with school, and I feel like,” she sighed. “I feel like I can’t talk to him anymore? Like if I said something, he wouldn’t care and talk about Allison or whatever else.”

She got it for when the kanima was running around, but Scott didn’t know the alphas were here. It still felt like he was a million miles away.

Her father took a deep breath and said, “People change, especially as they’re growing up, and high school is a difficult time for everyone. Scott has started dating, and you might, too. A lot of people get wrapped up in their partners when they’re first starting out. It’s easy to let go at first, and you understand it’s the honeymoon phase, but if it’s going on for so long, yeah I can see why you’re upset. You can try talking to him again, or maybe you’re just growing apart a little.”

Stiles shoved her food around with her fork. “I guess.”

“It’s up to you,” he said. “But I’m here for you, whatever happens.”

“Thanks,” she said, meaning it.

He made her watch a movie with him rather than letting her disappear up into her room.

Scott texted her when the movie finished. Sorry abt earlier didnt mean to get mad still on for conditioning tmrw?

Stiles sighed, wondering what she was supposed to do. She probably should get in shape, and not just for sports. Whether she needed to do it with Scott was a different question. He’d been her friend for basically her whole life. She should give him the benefit of the doubt after all the shit werewolves and kanimas had brought into everything.

Okay she sent back, already regretting having to wake up to her alarm.

Stiles met Scott at the same spot as the day before, and she ignored his kicked puppy look. She wasn’t usually very good at keeping that up, but she could put in some practice now.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

“Let’s go,” she said, starting to jog. It took barely a second for Scott to get in front of her again.

She tried to ignore the looks he kept sending her as she ran, but he was always in her line of vision. She couldn’t keep up the running though, not making it any farther than the day before when she had to drop down to a walk. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk rather than on Scott. They stopped in the same place as the day before and started stretching.

“I really am sorry about yesterday,” Scott said. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad like that. It’s not your fault I’m a werewolf. And for not coming over more this summer. That’s not your fault either.”

Stiles straightened out of her stretch. “You think that’s what I’m mad about?”

Scott hesitated. “Isn’t it?”

“It isn’t,” she said. “It really, really isn’t.”

“Then what is?” he asked in complete confusion.

Stiles considered what to say, what was really bothering her, and felt like her throat was clogged. It wouldn’t come out.

She found questions on her tongue instead. What had he done to Derek? Why wouldn’t he work with him at all? But if she asked, Scott would have to know that she was talking to Derek. Would Scott ignore her more if she told him? She wasn’t sure.

She got to her feet.

“Stiles?” Scott asked.

“Just leave it, Scott,” she told him and started leaving.

“What? Where are you going?” he asked, standing up. “You didn’t finish your cool down.”

“I gotta go,” she said, heading for her jeep.

“Why?”

“Got something to take care of.”

“Like what?” Scott asked. “Why are you acting like this?”

“I’m not acting like anything.”

“Then why are you leaving again?” he asked. “I just asked you what was wrong.”

“Whatever,” Stiles said, pulling open the door of her jeep. “It’s not anything worse than what you’ve done.”

“What does that even mean?” Scott asked.

Stiles shook her head. She got into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut. She drove back home. She drank more water, took a shower, ate some food. She organized the information lying around her room. She worked on finding more information about what some of the historical buildings were made of. She gave up quicker than she should. Her thoughts weren’t staying together.

Her dad called to tell her that he wasn’t going to make it to dinner. She told him it was fine. She left with a few sheets of paper to take over to Derek’s by the time it was close enough to dinner it wouldn’t be weird.

She knocked on the big metal door.

“It’s unlocked,” Isaac said.

“Why don’t you guys ever open the door anymore?” she asked as she pulled it open.

“I thought the whole point of scrubbing it clean was so you could do it yourself,” Isaac said.

She quickly saw why they hadn’t opened the door themselves. They were in the middle of grouting the tile they’d put up in the walls of the bathroom. She turned and headed for the metal table. She laid out the papers in front of her. She started transferring her meager findings on the map, only half registering the sound of Derek and Isaac cleaning up from the grouting. She stared up at the map, willing some sort of pattern to leap out at her, something that would point to the perfect spot to store away two beta werewolves, but there just wasn’t enough information.

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and nearly jumped when a warm hand touched her forehead. She leaned away from Derek’s hand. “What are you doing?”

“Checking to see if you were sick,” he said, pulling his hand back.

“What? Why? It’s summer,” she said. “Who gets sick in the summer?”

“Humans,” he said.

“I’m not sick,” she insisted.

“You do seem off,” Isaac said. “Normally you tell us every little thing you’re doing.”

“I do not,” she said.

Derek tilted his head.

“I’m not sick,” she repeated.

“You smell off.”

Stiles tried to smell her pit. “I don’t smell anything. I swear I showered and put on deodorant this morning.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I know you did. It’s not your deodorant.”

“Then why are you telling me I smell off?”

“Because you do,” he said. “You’re either coming down with something or you’re stressed.”

“Can’t imagine why’d I be stressed,” she said. She got that her anxiety was off the charts, but it has been this whole time. They hadn’t found Erica and Boyd any other time this summer so it shouldn’t be any different today. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?” Derek asked.

“Why do you refuse to have anything to do with Scott?” she asked.

She saw Isaac freeze out of the corner of her eye.

Derek clenched his jaw and crossed his arms before answering. “I told you. He made it clear he didn’t want me to be his alpha.”

“How?” she asked. “How did he do that?”

Isaac cleared his throat. “I’m gonna—,”

“It’s fine,” Derek told him.

Isaac nodded then left the apartment as fast as he could without drawing on his supernatural abilities. The big metal door slid shut behind him.

“It’s bad enough Isaac has to leave?” she asked.

“He thinks we’re going to start yelling.”

“Why would he—,” she stopped, remembering about Isaac’s father. “Okay, fine, if he doesn’t want to be here, he doesn’t have to be. He wouldn’t tell me anything anyways.”

“Of course not.”

Stiles huffed. “Can’t you just tell me what happened? I really thought we’d figured shit out with the kanima so something else happened that night. Something Scott did.”

Derek studied her for a moment. “Why do you want to know?”

“What?”

“Why do you want to know what he did?”

“Because it matters.”

“So you can tell him what’s going on?”

“What? No, that’s not,” she said, and shook her head. “It matters.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s my fucking friend, or he’s supposed to be,” she said. “He invited me to work out with him to get in shape for school sports, and I don’t know if I can do it because he’s acting like everything’s fine, like we’re still us, but we’re not. It’s not fine. He left me to Gerard, and I don’t think he even knows. So. I need a reason to say no.”

“Wait, what do you mean he doesn’t know?” Derek said, uncrossing his arms.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” she snapped, roughly wiping under her eyes.

“You didn’t tell him you got caught by Argent?”

“I didn’t tell you,” she pointed out.

“Scott’s a dumbass,” he said. “He wouldn’t know if you didn’t tell him.”

She shook her head. “No, no, you said that you stopped him from coming to me. So unless you’re lying, he knew something was wrong, and he never once asked me about it after.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek said, looking pained.

“Just tell me,” she said, looking him right in the eyes. “Did he do something like that to you? It matters.”

“He didn’t abandon me,” he answered. “Just used me.”

“Used you?”

“Like a weapon. It worked, but it doesn’t need to happen again.”

“What—,” she started then decided she didn’t want to know the details. “Fuck.”

She punched the metal table, but wouldn’t you know? The table was made of metal, and she was still a puny human. She hissed in pain, clutching her hand.

“What the fuck do I do?”

“Give me your hand,” Derek said, holding his hand out.

“Not my hand,” she said. “About Scott.”

“What about him?” he asked, taking her wrist and pulling her hurt hand free.

“I mean what do I do about him. I don’t think I can just be friends with him, but come on. You’ve been here for long enough. If any werewolf shit happens, it’s gonna happen to all of us, and if we don’t tell Scott anything, you know he’ll swoop in like an idiot to do what he wants—,”

“Think you both do that.”

“Hey,” she complained, even if it was true. “But come on. I can’t just let him die. I don’t have to be friends with him, but I shouldn’t just leave him blind when it comes to the alpha pack, right? Every one of their packs get massacred.”

“Scott isn’t my pack.”

“Do you really think they’ll care?”

“No, not if he interferes.”

“And he will, you know he will. So what do I do?” she asked, looking up at Derek.

“I don’t know. Having Peter to deal with is enough for me.”

“Right, I’m sorry,” she said. “You know if I could find a way to make it so we didn’t have to work with him, I’d do it, right?”

“I know,” he said. He was still looking down at her hand.

She looked down as well and then saw black snaking up his hands. “Oh, what the fuck.”

She tried to jerk her hand back, but he kept a gentle hold on her wrist.

“Easy, your hand isn’t healed,” he told her then let her go.

The black disappeared.

“What was that? Isn’t that like dying kanima goo shit?” she asked.

“Dying kanima goo shit?” he asked, amused.

“What? You got a better name?”

“I don’t know for the kanima, but this is pain transference.”

“Pain transference?” she asked, flexing her hand and feeling the aftermath of punching metal. “That’s a thing werewolves can do?”

“Yes,” he said. “It doesn’t heal, but it can numb the pain, calm you down. Seemed like you could use it.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

“Well, your hand isn’t broken,” he said then sighed. “Stiles.”

“What?”

“I think you should stop hanging out with Scott. You’ve been stressed both times you’ve come here after seeing him.”

“And if he gets himself killed?” she asked.

“I’m not saying do nothing if it comes down to it. You wouldn’t do that and I wouldn’t ask you to,” he said. “But he’s not your responsibility. You’re helping us with the alpha pack. We can take care of it ourselves. Just keep helping us, and they won’t get to him.”

She took a deep breath, mulling over his words. “And you don’t think we’ll ever need him for anything?”

“I can’t trust him, not with me, not with my pack,” he said then added. “Not with you.”

She studied his face. “You’re the one that stopped him.”

“And I’m still sorry,” he said. “If I’d known where you were, I’d have gotten you out myself.”

She wasn’t sure about that. She didn’t think he would have at the time, or maybe he would have, but over bad blood with the Argents and not for her. But now?

He looked like he was making her a promise.

She nodded. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

Isaac returned with dinner, Chinese from somewhere nearby.

“Please tell me you got chow mein,” Stiles said. They hadn’t gotten Chinese that often so he could have not remembered what she liked.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling a carton out and setting it in front of her.

“Yes,” she said, dragging it towards her.

“Thought you didn’t want food by your precious research,” Derek commented, glancing over to the maps.

“I don’t,” she said, picking the carton up off the table. “I’m taking it over there, and you should, too.”

“I got you beef and broccoli,” Isaac said, shaking the bag.

“I know, I can smell it,” Derek said, following them.

Stiles took a seat around the make shift coffee table, and Isaac started setting out plastic forks and napkins from the bag. Stiles nabbed one and opened her carton to dig in.

She was two bites in, and Derek had just sat down when her phone rang. She pulled her phone out, checking the ID. It wasn’t her dad. It was Lydia. She nearly choked on her noodles.

“You good?” Isaac asked.

“Lydia’s calling me,” she said, holding up her phone like it was going to explode.

Isaac smirked down at his food, but Derek asked, “Are you going to answer that or just stare at it?”

Stiles set her food aside and answered the call, trying to sound normal. “Hi, Lydia.”

“Stiles,” Lydia said in a way that normally spelled disaster. “I think we need to have a chat.”

“About what?”

“Werewolves,” she answered pointedly.

“What about ‘em?” she asked, glancing over to Derek.

He was staring at her phone like he could shoot lasers from his eyes at it.

“Everything,” Lydia answered. “Jackson hardly knows anything, and his family’s moving to London so he’s not exactly the world’s greatest source of information.”

“Jackson’s leaving for London?” Stiles asked, trying to catch Derek’s eye.

He shook his head, but she didn’t know if that meant he didn’t know he was leaving or he just didn’t want to talk to her about it.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Lydia asked, irritation clear in her voice. “So I thought to myself, who always seems involved in the weird stuff that happens around here?”

“Uh,” Stiles stalled.

“You, Stiles,” she said sharply. “I want answers, and you’re going to give them to me.”

“I am?” she asked, trying to get Derek to give her a hint on how to handle this, but he was back to glaring at her phone.

“Yes, Stiles, you are,” Lydia said, no room for disagreement.

“Tell her we can meet her,” Derek finally responded. “Somewhere she’s comfortable.”

“We can meet you,” Stiles offered up quickly.

“You can leave Scott at home,” Lydia said.

“No, not Scott,” Stiles said. “Derek and Isaac.”

Lydia was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want to see them either.”

Her voice wasn’t quite as hard as it had been a moment before.

Stiles frowned. “They might have more answers for you than I do.”

“I’m not stupid, Stiles,” she snapped. “I’m not going to meet two werewolves on my own. We’ll meet human to human.”

“Okay,” Stiles said, shrugging towards Derek.

He motioned for her to continue talking.

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Lydia said. “After lunch. My place.”

“Okay, sure,” Stiles said, and then Lydia hung up on her. “What just happened?”

“You got invited over to Lydia’s,” Isaac said blandly. “To talk about werewolves.”

“Do we still not know what she is?” Stiles asked. She’d been sure the whole time that Lydia was not the kanima, but Derek had definitely thought it for at least a little bit.

“No, we do not,” Derek said, annoyed.

“But you know about the other stuff that’s been happening with her, right?” Stiles asked. “Like the running away from the hospital and screaming at artificial ice?”

“I was keeping an eye on her through Jackson after he stopped being the kanima,” Derek said. “She hasn’t had any other incidents since then. Surviving a bite, but not changing at all isn’t supposed to happen.”

“So what? You think she’ll eventually up and die or up and try to kill us kanima style?” Stiles asked.

Derek shrugged. “Or a third option no one’s thought of. It’s still better to know what’s coming than have it spring up on us.”

“So you knew Jackson was moving away?” she asked.

Derek nodded. “I offered him what I could between all of this with the pack of alphas, but I can’t stop his parents moving and I don’t think he’s a good fit for this pack anyways. His best bet is to find another alpha who can help him better.”

“I supported it,” Isaac said, raising a hand like they were in class.

Stiles can’t blame him for not wanting Jackson in his pack even if the kanima stuff hadn’t happened. “And now I’m going to be taking over keeping an eye on Lydia?”

“Yeah, ideally, if she trusts you,” Derek said.

Stiles shrugged. “There’s nothing you’ve got that I can offer her in terms of information at all? Nothing on why she’s not a werewolf?”

Derek shook his head. “I’d have already told her if I knew.”

She sighed, leaning back in her chair. “How does this town have all the weird shit happen to it?”

“We’re just special that way,” Isaac said.

Stiles rolled her eyes and snagged her chow mein to start eating again.

The next day, she made only a little progress with her research before lunch. She texted her dad she was heading over to Lydia’s, and if he was surprised by that, he didn’t say. He only warned her he might be late for dinner. She sent a confirmation then got ready to go.

She sent a text to Lydia before she grabbed her keys and headed out. She didn’t know why, maybe it was just anxiety, but she half expected something to pop out at her on the way over to Lydia’s. Nothing did. She parked on the street and walked up to the front door and rang the bell, trying not to think of the last time she'd been there. It wasn't working at all.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before the door opened to reveal Lydia herself. "Come on," she said brusquely, moving aside to allow her in.

"Um, okay," she said nervously even though she had been at Lydia's house before.

"We don't have all day," Lydia told her when she finally made it over the threshold. She slammed the door shut and stormed off towards the stairs. She turned back. "I said come on."

Stiles jolted and scurried after her.

"Like I said," Lydia said as she opened a door revealing a very put together bedroom. Stiles' bedroom could never look like this. "Jackson wasn’t exactly a font of information so I’m going to need some answers from you."

"About what?" Stiles asked dumbly.

Lydia shot her a flat look. "About what's been going on around here with werewolves and everything else. I deserve to have some answers. I've been bit and used and ignored, and no one will actually tell me the truth."

Stiles grimaced, feeling the weight of her guilt hit her. She'd gotten so used to keeping secrets, acting like everyone was on the outside when it came to werewolves. But Lydia had been bitten. They'd used her on Jackson without really explaining. She wasn't on the outside.

"What do you want to know?" Stiles asked.

"Everything," Lydia said. "Start from the beginning."

"Beginning where?" she asked. "Is it alright if I sit?"

"Yes, go ahead," she said, gesturing to the chair at her vanity while she sat on the edge of her bed. "And from the start of everything that happened this past year."

"Well, that actually starts with the Hale fire," Stiles said.

"The Hale fire? What does that have to do with anything?"

"It has a lot to do with what happened," she said. "I don't know everything everything, but I know a lot."

"It's better than nothing, go," she said, motioning for her to cough up the info.

Stiles took a deep breath and started the very long story, though she stopped before she hit the alpha pack. Lydia paid complete attention, asking for clarification whenever she didn't understand or Stiles went off track. At the end, she was quiet for a few moments.

Then Lydia said, "I think I used Derek to resurrect Peter."

"You—I'm sorry what? Run that by me again?" Stiles asked, trying to figure out how this could have happened.

"I was...seeing things," she said and explained how these dreams and visions had built up and up after she had been bit. "I felt like I was hypnotized or something. I can't remember exactly what happened until it was like I woke up in the Hale house and both Derek and Peter were there. I ran. It was too…freaky.”

"Oh my God," Stiles said rubbing her eyes harshly. Was that what had happened at the ice rink? "We might have fucked up so bad. We need to talk to Derek like asap."

"What, why?" Lydia asked, scowling. "I'm not letting him in my house."

"His apartment then. It’s just downtown."

"Uh, no, I'm not going to some strange man's apartment," she said, offended.

"There's a pizza place near it—,"

"In the worst part of town?"

"God, fine, Lydia, what about my house?" she asked. "Is that safe enough?"

She considered it. Then she crossed her arms. "It's acceptable."

"Alright, I'm calling him," she said, pulling out her phone and dialing.

Derek picked up right away. "What happened?" he demanded.

"Relax, nobody is dead," she said and she could hear Derek sigh. "Lydia just has a few things you really need to hear so we should all meet at my place like right now."

"Alright," he said warily.

"It is bad news, but like important bad news that might help us in the future, but no one is dead or dying right now,” she explained. Then she added, "Do not bring Peter."

"Me and Isaac'll be at your place as soon as we can," he said. "Peter won't know."

"Okay, great, see you in a few," she said, hanging up.

"Is that how you always talk to each other?" Lydia asked.

She looked amused in a way that made Stiles uncomfortable.

"I don't know. We don't talk on the phone much," Stiles said then gestured towards the door. "We gotta go."

"Fine," she said then led the way out of her room. "Let's go."

Lydia made a face when she climbed into Stiles' Jeep but said nothing. Stiles drove carefully back to her own house. They had to wait around fifteen minutes for Derek and Isaac to arrive.

"Nice place," Isaac said, looking around as he walked in.

"Thanks," she said, feeling like everything had taken a turn for the surreal.

"I brought food," Derek said, holding up a bag, and Stiles suddenly realized that actually explaining everything to Lydia and answering all her questions had taken all afternoon, and she was hungry. 

"You did not just bring—,"

"It's healthy," he said calmly, offering it out to her.

She took it to peak inside. It was salad. They were boxed salads from the grocery store so they doubtlessly had unhealthy dressing, but still healthier than take out. "I'll grab dressing and forks, hold on."

She set the bag on the dining table as she made her way to the fridge.

"Can I help?" Derek asked, following Stiles into the kitchen while Lydia and Isaac seemed to be trying to ignore each other in the living room.

"I guess you can grab forks?"

"And those are where?" he asked.

"Top drawer over there," she said, pointing to it before opening the fridge. She pulled out all the dressings they had since she didn't know what anyone liked and they were all healthy.

"Dad said not to let you buy me dinner, but I guess that's a little shot tonight," she said, trying not to drop the dressing. Unless she should pay for Lydia's, too?

"Wait, your dad said to not let me buy you dinner?" he asked, sounding a little offended. "Why?"

"Something about you not having a job," she said. She didn't understand why he was offended now. He hadn't had any problems when she'd paid him back if he ordered.

"But I have money," he said, sounding confused. "I deferred school so I could figure out transferring, why would I get a job?"

"You're in school?" she asked, setting the dressings on the table.

"Technically not right now, but yeah," he said as he placed the forks down. "Everything exploding to pieces all over again makes it really hard to concentrate on schoolwork."

"What about the rest of us? We're actually in school," she pointed out, grabbing napkins for all of them.

"It's high school, Stiles," he said. "That doesn't take any effort."

"For some of us maybe," she said, thinking of how Scott's grades had tanked. "What's your major anyways?"

Derek scowled, putting the salads in front of each of the chairs. "I haven't picked one yet."

"Shouldn't you have one already?"

"No because I deferred last semester so I haven't had to."

Stiles considered him for a moment, standing beside her dining table and trying to fold up the bag he’d brought the salads in. "Maybe don't pick one of those extrovert ones like marketing or whatever."

"Marketing?" Derek asked, offended again. "I am not going into marketing."

"Then again, you did convince three high schoolers to become werewolves so maybe I'm wrong," she said with a shrug.

"That's not marketing.”

"Okay, okay, are we gonna eat or what?” she asked, looking around the doorway at Lydia and Isaac who were pointedly looking at opposite sides of the living room.

“Of course,” Lydia said, stiffly polite as she walked over.

Isaac followed more slowly.

"Okay, we all know each other right?" Stiles asked as they all sat down. The packaging sounded too loud as she opened it.

"Yes," Lydia said tersely, popping her salad open without making a huge amount of noise.

"Yeah," Isaac said a moment after, opening his salad as well.

"Okay," Stiles said. "Then Lydia, why don't you explain the Peter thing to Derek."

Derek immediately turned scowly before facing Lydia. "The Peter thing?"

"Right," she said slowly then reexplained everything she had told Stiles about resurrecting Peter as they started eating. "So do you know what causes any of that? Stiles didn't know."

"No, no idea," Derek said, shoving his salad around like the leaves might give him an answer. "It's obviously something death related if you could bring him back, but I don't know anything that’s triggered from a wolf bite like that."

"Death related," she repeated, unimpressed. "Thanks for that."

"You probably had something going on already if you're not a wolf now so it's not actually from the bite. It might have just kick started something that was already bound to happen," Derek answered before he actually started eating again.

"Okay so that's one problem half solved, but," Stiles said then trailed off as she wasn't sure how to bring up the alpha pack.

"What's the other problem?" Isaac asked.

"Well, would Lydia be considered pack since she was bit by Peter and resurrected him?" Stiles asked.

Both Isaac and Derek sighed heavily.

"Pack?" Lydia asked. "Why would being pack matter?"

"You're not pack," Derek said firmly. "We'd both have to agree to it for you to be pack, and you won't want to become pack because a pack of alphas is trying to recruit me right now."

"And all their packs aside from the alpha end up dead," Isaac added.

"I'm not joining," Lydia said then she scowled at Stiles. "You didn't want to mention this earlier?"

"I thought we were keeping it secret," Stiles said defensively.

"Only from Scott," Derek said.

"Wait, you keep secrets from Scott?" Lydia asked.

Stiles shrugged awkwardly. "Maybe."

"I've apparently missed a lot," Lydia said before taking a prim bite of her salad. 

“It’s complicated,” she said, focusing on her salad and trying not to feel like she was suddenly overexposed.

“Do you really eat like this?” Isaac asked, pointing his fork at his own salad.

“Sort of,” she said. She and her dad should eat like this more often.

“No wonder you eat with us so much,” he said.

“How often do you guys eat together?” Lydia asked.

“Don’t answer that,” Stiles said.

“Stiles is helping us to get Erica and Boyd back from the alphas,” Derek said. “So sometimes we eat together.”

Lydia looked at Stiles.

“What?” Stiles asked defensively.

“Nothing,” Lydia said before changing topics. "What's the plan then? I don't want to join your pack, but I don't want to be out of the loop either."

"We can just text or whatever," Stiles said. "Because I'm guessing you don't want to be seen hanging out with us when school starts."

"Not particularly," she said, wrinkling her nose.

"Tell us if you have any more visions or if you discover any other powers," Derek said. "It'll help us figure out what you are."

"What you are," Lydia repeated, shaking her head. "I can't believe this is what I’m dealing with.”

"You can also call in any emergencies," Derek added.

She looked at him sharply. "I just said I don't want to be in your pack."

"If you don't want a rescue, don't call," Derek said. "But it's better if you have it just in case."

"I'll send her your numbers," Stiles said, pulling out her phone and texting Lydia their contact info.

"Whatever," Lydia said.

"Hey, we're helping," Isaac said. "You're the one who wanted info. Not our faults we're not Jackson."

Lydia's face hardened. "Don't talk to me about Jackson."

Isaac leaned forward, but before he could say anything there was the sound of the key in the lock. Everyone turned towards the door though Stiles caught Derek looking over at Isaac from the corner of her eyes.

"Sorry, I'm late," Stiles’ father said as he entered then he slowed down as he spotted them all. "There are four of you."

Stiles nearly went off on a tangent to explain herself in a way that didn't involve werewolves when she saw the brown bag in her dad's hand. "No, Dad, you're not supposed to have fast food."

"I got the chicken sandwich no mayo," he argued. "And I got you curly fries."

It was pathetic how easily she was bribed by curly fries. She sighed. "Fine."

"Can I have some of your fries?" Isaac asked.

"No," Stiles told him.

"So what's going on?" her father asked as he joined them in the dining room, gesturing at the full table.

"Summer coursework," Lydia said with a sigh as if she were exhausted by everything. "Stiles and Isaac are going into the history class I took last year so I was giving them some help with the assignment and advice on the teacher."

It was an amazing lie. Stiles had a track record of getting off topic on her history homework. Her dad would totally believe it.

"Oh, the AP one right?" he asked.

"Yeah," Stiles said. He had remembered correctly, but this would probably be easier if he hadn't.

"And Derek?" he asked.

"I'm the excuse to take a break," Derek answered, smiling the way he had for the secretary he'd been trying to charm that one time. "I just brought the food. Good to see you, Sheriff."

Her father nodded. "Good to see you doing well, but salads?"

"Stiles said you guys eat healthy," Derek answered. "I didn't want to break any rules."

He chuckled. "The food rules are for me, not you guys. Are you guys finished? I didn't mean to interrupt."

Stiles glanced over to Lydia.

Lydia nodded. "Pretty much. We were at a good stopping point when Derek brought the food. Stiles can text me if anything else comes up."

"Alright, good," Dad said.

"I'm done," Isaac said after shoving the last of his salad into his mouth. "We can leave whenever."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Derek said.

Stiles tried to muffle her laugh, but Isaac shot a look at her. Derek sighed and got up from his seat to take his and Isaac’s salad container to the sink.

“You don’t have to do that,” Stiles said, half getting out of her seat.

“It’s fine,” Derek told her, rinsing them quickly. “It’s not a big deal. Where’s your recycling?”

“End of the counter,” Stiles’ father said, pointing to the bin with its blue bag.

Derek tossed the cleaned containers in.

“Thanks for the study session,” Isaac said a little awkwardly as he got up from the table.

“Yeah, no problem,” Stiles said.

“You gonna drive me home?” Lydia said, gathering her bag.

“Uh, sure, if that’s okay, Dad?” Stiles asked.

“I get home, and you immediately abandon me,” he said.

“Sorry, when you said late, I thought you meant late late,” she said. Usually when he said late, he meant a few hours later than this.

“It’s fine, kiddo,” he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “Drive safe.”

Then he leaned in to kiss her head.

“Dad!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop embarrassing you,” he said, pulling away.

“Don’t clean up,” she told him as she grabbed her keys. “I’ll do it when I get back.”

“Alright, I won’t,” he said, taking his usual seat at the table.

“Bye,” she said before heading outside with the others and shutting the door behind herself.

“I’ll give you updates and do translations,” Lydia was saying to Derek with her arms crossed. “But don’t involve me in anything else.”

“That’s fine,” Derek said.

“Good,” she said then turned away, walking towards the Jeep. “Come on, Stiles.”

“Coming,” Stiles said, jogging after her. She shared a look with Derek as she passed him. He didn’t seem to be impressed with Lydia or with Stiles helping her, but Stiles shrugged back at him. Lydia was definitely involved so there was no going back.

Lydia was quiet on the trip back to her house, frowning out of the wind shield. It took her a moment to realize that they’d parked.

“Have a good night,” Stiles said as Lydia got out of her car.

Lydia shot her an indecipherable look then slammed the door shut behind herself. Stiles waited until she made it inside before pulling away.

She made it home to find that her dad had finished eating, and he’d cleaned up for Stiles. “Dad, you didn’t have to do that.”

“It was just two little containers,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”

He’d left her fries out for her so she scooped them up to take a seat next to him on the couch. He’d put on some workplace comedy, and it was perfect for eating curly fries to.

“Sorry for cramping your style,” he said.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I should have paid more attention to the time. It’s not like it was hanging out for fun anyways.”

He nodded. “It’s good you’re hanging out with more people.”

The fries seemed to turn cold and gross in her mouth. She had to take a breath before she could finish chewing and swallow them without choking. “Yeah.”

Her dad sighed and put his arm around her shoulders. “You’re a good kid. You’ll get through this.”

He didn’t mean the alpha pack or whatever was going on with Lydia. He only meant her deteriorating relationship with Scott which he thought was a normal, teenage, high school thing. But she wanted it to be about all those other things. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m your dad. I’m always in your corner.”

Chapter Text

“Hey,” Isaac said a little awkwardly.

“Hi,” Stiles said warily.

“Uh, I know you said you were doing it with Scott, but if you wanted an excuse to avoid him, I could go running with you?” he asked, barely even looking at Stiles.

Stiles actually had several texts from Scott sitting on her phone about when they could next workout again. She’d blown him off once, and was waffling in her responses to him now.

“You’re a werewolf,” Stiles said. “You don’t need to do conditioning for school sports.”

“No, but I need to do the opposite,” he said with a sigh. “Derek says I run too fast for a human. I need to slow down if I want to do cross country and blend in, and well, you’re the only human I know that can help with that.”

Lydia definitely wouldn’t do it. If she was human.

“You know I’m like, out of shape and stuff, right?” Stiles asked. “I’m not like peak physical form or anything.”

“Yeah, I probably need to be in that range,” Isaac said. “I was barely on the team for cross country before this. I won’t draw attention if I’m about the same again.”

“I would say something about cheating, but Scott’s already gone so beyond that,” Stiles said. “Sure, whatever, let’s do some running.”

“Really?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, I mean why not?” she asked. “I should be getting in shape for all this supernatural stuff anyways.”

“Cool,” Isaac said, trying to seem unruffled, but nodding his head a little too much.

“We can just meet up wherever in the morning. Is it safe in the preserve?”

Isaac nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure Derek will keep an ear out for any calls.”

“He won’t come too?” she asked, finding herself a little disappointed.

He shook his head, “Didn’t sound like he wanted anything to do with it.”

When Derek returned with dinner, Stiles asked, “How come we’re not good enough for you to work out with?”

Derek looked confused.

“Running,” she said. “For cross country. Well, for Isaac. I’m still doing field hockey.”

“I don’t run,” Derek said firmly, setting the pizzas down on the coffee table.

“Why not?”

“Weight lifting’s enough,” he said. “If I want to do cardio, I’ll use a row machine.”

“Okay, God, I didn’t know you were some sort of gym rat,” she said.

Derek shrugged. “It’s good for your health, and I don’t run when I don’t have to.”

“What about when you need to run from alphas?” she asked.

“I don’t run from alphas,” he said, offering her a smirk.

“Very cocky,” she said. “As your emissary try out, I advise against it because that sounds like a recipe for getting us all killed.”

“Emissary try out?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “That’s what I’m doing here and with Lydia, right?”

“Sure,” he said. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Anyways, me and Isaac are going to have all the fun without you tomorrow,” she said, putting a hand on Isaac’s arm because she couldn’t really reach his shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Isaac?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding resigned now more than anything. “So much fun.”

Stiles grinned at Derek like Isaac been genuine rather than sarcastic.

“You do that,” Derek told her, looking amused as he set the take out on the coffee table. “How about for now we just eat?”

“I’m down,” she said.

Stiles felt like crap getting up the next morning to run with Isaac, but she kinda deserved it. She really needed to get off her summer sleep schedule with school approaching. She dressed for running and grabbed herself a water bottle. She drove out to the preserve to meet Isaac. He didn’t look any perkier than she felt.

“Why are we out here if we both hate mornings?” she asked him.

“Sleep schedule,” Isaac said. “Derek’s cut my hours searching and said to run in the mornings.”

“So does him being alpha mean you always have to listen to what he says or do you just do it anyways?” she asked.

Isaac shook his head. “I don’t have to, but he’s usually right. And bullheaded.”

Stiles laughed. “Yeah, you got that right.”

“Ready?”

“No, but we’re here so we might as well do it.”

She started off more jogging than really running. Isaac sped ahead of her then dropped back and then it got weird as he basically watched her rather than the trail as they ran.

“Are you gonna do that the whole time?” she asked breathlessly when she had to stop to take a break.

“I don’t know how else to keep pace with you,” he said. “I could do it from a few steps behind?”

“No,” she said, waving him off and trying to get another breath in. “That’s creepier. Don’t do that.”

“Got it,” he said with a nod.

He was nice enough not to say anything about her stamina as she waited for her heart rate to come down. She started up again, and he followed along. They finished their loop back at the Jeep.

“You know what?” she said, barely able to get in enough air to speak.

“What?” he asked.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said as she scrounged around for her water bottle.

“Yeah?” he asked. “You’re okay to do it again?”

She chugged the water then had to pant for a few more seconds then she was able to say, “Yeah. We can.”

“Okay, good,” he said with a slight nod of his head.

“Great,” she said, swallowing another mouthful of water. “I need to shower. Don’t tell me how bad I smell.”

Isaac tilted his head.

“What?” she asked.

“There are worse smells.”

She stared at him. “Is that like a compliment?”

Isaac shrugged. “People have different scents. Yours isn’t so bad.”

“Thanks?” she asked. “I think?”

Isaac nodded to her then started jogging off back towards town.

Stiles took another drink of water and decided their dinners were more normal. She hauled herself into her Jeep and drove herself home. She got into the shower, but once she was out again, she laid back on her bed still in her towel. She felt wrung out from the running. She hadn’t thought she’d pushed herself, but maybe she had.

She fell asleep before waking up and actually getting ready for the day. She went back to her research, checking out the Beacon Hills Historical Society. They always seemed so happy someone under fifty had shown up. She still didn’t have that much more information to bring Isaac and Derek that evening, though.

Then she found herself in a new routine. She still did her research and had dinner with Derek and Isaac when her father worked late, but she got up earlier to run with Isaac. She came home and showered then started on her summer school work and even started looking at application requirements for nearby universities. Scott continued to text her, and her stomach twisted at how easily he accepted her lie that she just wasn’t good enough to keep up with a werewolf.

Because running with Isaac was totally fine. It wasn’t really a workout for him, but he jogged silently beside her. He didn’t even have to look to keep pace with her after a couple sessions. He never said anything about her having to slow down or take breaks. It was chill, and completely different than that last run with Scott.

“It’s nice being a werewolf,” Isaac said randomly one day as Stiles was chugging water beside her jeep.

Stiles nearly choked on the water.

Isaac continued, not bothered by her spitting a mouthful of water on the ground. “I mean, it really sucks at the beginning, but it’s good now.”

“What is this?” Stiles asked as soon as she got her voice back. “A pitch to get bit? I already told Derek no.”

The thought of fangs at her wrist still made her go cold.

“No, no,” Isaac said, looking shocked she’d even asked that. “We do need an emissary, and Derek really wants you to be ours, and you don’t—we needed—you’re not like me or Erica or Boyd.”

“Okay?” she asked, no idea where he was going with this.

“Derek doesn’t really get it,” Isaac said, looking out into the woods. “It’s all normal and boring to him because he’s always been this way.”

“And you think I do?” she asked. “I’m still human you know.”

“No, you won’t get it either,” he said. “It’s not really about that. You were worried when we got bit, right? That it would be bad for us?”

“Yeah,” Stiles admitted. “I’d seen what it’d done to Scott. I didn’t want Derek to just be…using you.”

Isaac nodded slowly. “I’m telling you even with the kanima and the alpha pack, this is good for me. I like this. I like running in the woods, knowing I could go faster, smelling everything, having a pack. I couldn’t do this if I was still human.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s good.”

She hadn’t known Isaac as well as the little she’d known Erica and Boyd before they’d been bit, but she felt like she could tell anyways. He was away from his piece of shit father. He’d grown more confident through learning new skills and Derek’s praise. He was better even with all the danger.

Then Isaac looked at her, his eyes flashing gold. “Scott’s not like us.”

Stiles tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

“He didn’t get asked which yeah sucks for him,” Isaac said then shrugged. “But he wasn’t like us. He might have been as much of a loser, but he’s more like you than us.”

“What are you saying?” Stiles asked.

Isaac shrugged a little awkwardly. “He was the wrong person to turn. Not as bad as Jackson, but it’s still true.”

Stiles instinctively wanted to argue against it. Scott had been her friend for so long and defending him had become second nature. She couldn’t really argue against this, though. She’d seen how he used his abilities. How he’d treated Derek, before and after he’d become the alpha. There was a reason he was sitting on the outside on this.

Stiles toyed with the cap of her water bottle. “I know.”

“Sorry,” Isaac said.

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

“We still on for tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course,” she said. “I don’t get all the wolfy stuff, but it is actually kinda nice being out here. When you’re not trying to get killed anyways.”

Isaac grinned. “Good.”

“I’ll see ya,” she said, getting into her Jeep.

He offered her a wave before jogging away.

They only had a few more days of running together until their respective sports started the week before classes did.

“Are we still going to go running once sports start?” Stiles asked him. “I mean, I’m fine with it, but I’m not doing cross country.”

Isaac nodded. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

Stiles looked over to the other end of the apartment. Derek was standing in front of the maps, most likely trying to scowl them into submission. She sighed. She was totally running dry on useful information. It was just too hard to find. She was going to have to take apart the buildings herself to figure out what they were made of.

“What do we do when school starts?” she asked.

She glanced back to Isaac when Derek didn’t answer. A muscle in Isaac jaw twitched from how tightly he clenched it.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I feel like we’re out of time.”

“How long can they hold them for?” she asked. “How long until Derek fails their test?”

“We’re not going to fail,” Derek said, turning away from the maps and joining them around the coffee table.

“Derek,” she said.

He gave her a look, almost like he was pleading with her to let him have this. She sighed, looking away. “I can’t do any more than this,” she said. “All the wells are dry.”

“It’s alright,” Derek said. “We can take it from here. The alphas will slip up soon.”

Stiles was starting to think that they might not.

She was restless the next few days without any research to do and the last of her summer work completed. Looking up college applications only made her anxiety spiral more. The sense of doom was crushing her. She was grateful for field hockey starting so she had something new to focus her attention on.

She showed up only a couple minutes late and practically sprinted from her Jeep with her gear to join the team. The other girls didn’t really pay her much attention. She wasn’t exactly friends with any of them seeing as she always ended up warming the bench.

“Alright, ladies, let’s go,” Coach Hutchinson called to them, clapping her hands. “We got warm ups to get started. Don’t forget we got the mile run at the end!”

“Yes coach,” a few of the girls called back, but most people just got lined up on the edge of the field. The freshmen looked at everyone else to figure out what was going on.

“Forward lunge to the mark,” Coach shouted, pointing to the line she’d laid out with cones before she blew her whistle.

The first girls started across the field. Stiles was third in her line. They continued warm ups with reverse lunges, lunges with twists, high knees, skipping, butt kicks, and lateral shuffle. Stiles was surprised she actually did feel warmed up. Normally, she always felt like she was already a mile behind her teammates by this point.

Then they moved to shuttle runs which Stiles hated since it involved sprinting across the field. When the coach blew the whistle, she ran as fast as she could there and back. She wasn’t the first one back, but she found she was okay afterwards. She wasn’t panting so hard that she needed to brace herself on her knees.

“Good,” Coach called as they finished. “Time for dribbling.”

They all picked up their equipment as the Coach set up the field. She ran them through a few different drills before switching up to passing drills. Stiles felt more like the freshman than she did her fellow seniors.

“Alright, get some water then we’re doing the mile run,” Coach called.

Stiles grabbed her bottle, dropping off her stick. She chugged some water then tossed it back down. She followed her teammates and lined up with them on the inner lanes.

“Remember, four laps, ladies,” Coach said. “Just do your best to run the whole way.”

She whistled and they started their laps. Stiles wasn’t running as fast as she had for the shuttle runs, but she found herself drifting towards the front of the group. Despite the lack of practice for a mile run specifically, it was still easier than her runs with Isaac. This was all flat ground in a simple loop. She came close to dropping to a walk at the end, but she pushed herself to finish at a run.

“Stilinski,” Coach called.

“Yeah?” she asked, wiping the sweat off her forehead and trying to get her breath back.

“Good work on your conditioning,” she said. “Get a little more practice in with your dribbling.”

Stiles stared dumbly at her for a moment before giving her a thumbs up. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

“Nice job,” Sarah, one of her teammates for the past three years who was usually one of their top scorers, said.

She was looking right at Stiles, offering her a fist. Stiles blinked at her. Then she got her head together, tapped her knuckles with hers, and said, “Thanks, you too.”  

Sarah smiled. “Think we’re going to have a good year this year.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Did you like join a gym or something?” she asked.

Stiles shook her head. “Just picked up running.”

“Oh, where?”

“The Preserve.”

“Seriously?” Sarah asked, shocked. “Damn, no wonder you can run now. You have to be able to run fast if you’re going to go in there.”

Stiles laughed. She’d tell her it wasn’t really that dangerous, but Sarah didn’t have her own werewolf to run with.

“Hey, if you ever want to practice like dribbling, passing, or whatever,” Sarah said with a shrug. “I’ll let you know when me and the girls are meeting up.”

“Yeah?” Stiles asked, telling herself to keep it cool and act like a normal person who had friends other than Scott. “Sure. You got my number?”

“Yeah, I got the phone tree from whenever. It hasn’t change has it?”

She shook her head. “Nah, still the same.”

“Cool, I’ll text you sometime this week,” Sarah said and then Coach was yelling at them to pick up the cones and get their gear off the field. Sarah even waved goodbye to her as she left.

Stiles felt a little stupefied driving home. She might not be on the bench this year.

Oh shit, she might not be on the bench this year. She needed to practice before she did something stupid. They had another team practice again in a few days. She was going to have to actually use the field hockey net they’d set up in the backyard then never touched again.

“How was practice?” her dad asked her that night over dinner.

“Good,” she said. “I might actually get off the bench this year.”

“Really?” he asked. “Congratulations. I know you’ve been running. It’s good it’s paying off.”

“Thanks, but now it means I gotta work on dribbling,” she said with a sigh.

He laughed.

“Dad,” she complained.

“What? Sports are good for you,” he said. “Good to get exercise and work your muscles. I know it hasn’t been fun on the bench, but you’re getting something out of it now. You keep putting in the effort, wanting to practice and improve, you’ll get your chance to shine now.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, kiddo,” he said, raising his water glass in toast to her.

In the morning, after she and Isaac finished her run, she asked, “You started cross country, right?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“How’d that go?”

He grimaced. “Coach is on my ass.”

“Already?” she asked. “For what? It’s been one practice.”

“I know,” he said with a sigh. “I kept towards the back like I used to, but I guess he could tell it was too easy for me. He wants me to push myself.”

“So what are you going to do? Pushing yourself means you’re going to outrun everybody.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d try to fake it, but I can’t fake getting sweaty or something like that.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” she said. “You gonna tell him you’re just doing it for fun or what?”

“I don’t know, maybe, I guess,” he said.

“Well, you’ve got time to think about it, right?”

“Right.”

Stiles groaned, running a hand over her face. “I can’t believe school is starting. I don’t know what we do for Erica and Boyd. Is Derek just going to have to keep looking on his own?”

“Or with Peter,” he said.

“Ew,” Stiles said with a shudder. “Don’t remind me.”

“We’re stuck with him for now,” Isaac said. “I’m gonna head out.”

“See you,” she said heading for her Jeep.

She really, really hoped Derek was right about the alphas slipping up, but with their luck, they might find two bodies the day after school started, and she really, really didn’t want that to happen.

She got home to find a text from an old friend who’d got districted into a different high school. She hadn’t heard from Heather in a while, but that was probably Stiles’s fault having been so busy with werewolves and kanima and hunters. Used to be they texted pretty regularly and met up when they could.

Heather had sent her hey my bday party’s the Saturday after school starts, my house at seven, hope to see you there ;)

Stiles frowned at the text. Heather knew she always came to her birthday parties. Had she done the wink on accident?

Stiles text her back of course I’ll be there.

Then she shoved her phone away, wondering how she was going to tell Derek and Isaac she’d be missing dinner.

Chapter Text

Hey can I ask for a favor?

Stiles frowned down at the text. Scott had backed off from texting her after they stopped running together. Now he wanted a favor? She sighed as she texted him back.

What kind of favor?

Damn her curiosity. She couldn’t even act like it wasn’t going to get her killed when nearly everything that had almost killed her resulted directly from her wanting to check out a dead body.

Just a ride

She tapped her phone against her forehead. Why was she doing this?

To where?

A tattoo parlor

Stiles made a disgusted noise. You know I can’t do needles.

You don’t have to watch just take me there

Why can’t your mom do it?

She’s busy during the only appointment I could get :(

Stiles sighed. She paced one way then the other. She’d talked about this, to her father and to Derek and Isaac. She shouldn’t do this. She shook her head.

She texted, when and where?

It wasn’t like it was werewolf related. She could offer him a ride to the tattoo parlor and have that be it. Nothing more had to happen.

That was how she found herself pulling up to the McCall house that evening after eating dinner on her own for once rather than with her father or Derek or Isaac.

“Hey,” Scott said with a big smile like everything was all normal still between them.

“Not that I really care,” Stiles said as Scott climbed into her passenger seat. “But why now?”

He shrugged. “I told you, this is when I was able to get the appointment. I got directions,” he said instead.

She sighed. That wasn’t what she’d meant. “Alright, lead the way.”

He gave her directions, and she followed them all the way to downtown. It wasn’t that far from Derek’s apartment, and she really hoped they didn’t somehow run into each other. At best it would be awkward, at worst, there’d be a werewolf fistfight in the street.

“There it is,” Scott said, pointing to a shabby building with neon signs in its windows.

“It looks sketchy,” Stiles commented as she pulled into its parking lot.

“It’s a tattoo parlor, and I checked its reviews. I wouldn’t have gotten my mom’s permission otherwise,” he explained as she parked.

“This better be worth whatever hideous disease you’re about to pick up,” she said.

“I’m a werewolf. I’m pretty good on the disease front,” Scott said, getting out of her Jeep and shutting the door.

“Good for you,” she barely even whispered under her breath before getting out as well.

She hung back as she followed him into the parlor as well as when he talked to the receptionist. She stuck close to the wall, keeping her eyes on the art made by the tattooists rather than the chair. The line work was detailed and crisp. She got that part of tattoos, but she just couldn’t deal with needles especially after getting her ears pierced. Never again.

“Come on, Stiles,” Scott said, nearly making her jump.

“Coming,” she said, following him farther into the parlor. “Do you really need me here for this?”

“Waiting chairs are back here,” the tattoo artist said, pointing to a couple of chairs on the back wall.

“Thanks,” she said automatically and took a seat in one of them. It faced the work station with the tattoo gun sitting right on top. She stood back up.

Thankfully, there was other artwork hung on the walls back there. “You getting something like this?” Stiles asked, gesturing to an ink drawing of a lizard man without looking back at Scott.

“Nah, I’m keeping it simple,” he said. “Two black bands.”

“Why? If you’re going to have to deal with all the pain and healing, why not really make it worth it?” she asked.

She paused. After a collection of different Celtic knots, she found a black triskele. She placed her fingertips on the bottom of the frame, like she needed to keep it still. It was more intricate with thinner lines to make up the spiral than the one she’d seen on Derek’s back between his shoulder blades. It was also simple, arguably only one line to Scott’s two. 

“This is what I want,” Scott said confidently.

“Hm,” she murmured, following the line of the triskele with her eyes.

She jumped as the tattoo gun turned on. She turned towards it and instantly felt both nauseous and light headed.

She blinked up at the pierced face of the tattoo parlor receptionist. Stiles could still hear the needle.

“How you feelin’, hun?” the receptionist asked. “You might have hit your head when you dropped.”

“Sorry,” Scott said.

“I’m okay,” Stiles mumbled.

The receptionist helped her to her feet and guided her to the front of the building, away from the sound.

“I’m gonna get you some water,” she said, patting Stiles’ shoulder before ducking behind the desk. She came back with a plastic water bottle.

“Thanks,” she said.

She took a deep breath before twisting the cap off. The water tasted plastic-y, but it helped. She felt a little more awake and aware, a little less nauseous. She shook her head, shoved her hair out of her face, and leaned back in the chair. She tried not to listen to the needle, taking a sip of water whenever the pit in her stomach grew too large.

Finally, the needle stopped. Stiles sighed.

Scott came back around to the front with bandages around his arm. He finished paying, and Stiles thanked the receptionist again before booking it to her Jeep. She was never doing this again, not in a million years or for a million dollars.

She glanced over to Scott in her passenger seat and saw him fussing with the edge of the bandage, “You good?”

“Kinda burns,” Scott said, pulling his hand away then going right back to messing with it.

“Yes, you just had your skin tabbed about one hundred thousand times with a needle,” Stiles pointed out, finishing buckling up.

“Yeah, but I don't think it's supposed to feel like this.”

“Please, don’t,” Stiles warned him.

“No, it's definitely not supposed to feel like this,” he said, picking at the bandage.

“No, no, no, no, Scott! Don’t!” she begged, looking away before her curiosity and need to see the car crash got the better of her.

She watched as Scott ripped away the bandage and the solid black bands of ink in Scott’s skin faded like dye dispersing in water.

“No, no, how?” Scott asked frustrated. “It healed.”

Stiles sighed. “Oh, thank God. I hated it.”

Scott glared at her.

She shrugged. She wasn’t sorry. She’d just cracked her head on the floor for that and still had to drive what was going to be a very whiny Scott back home.

“Don’t just shrug,” Scott complained. “This was important.”

“Really? Two black bands was really important to you?” she asked. “That’s what’s important?”

“It’s not the bands. It’s what the whole tattoo represents,” he argued.

“Oh yeah, what’s that exactly?”

“It’s a mark, a sign. I was going to get a tattoo at eighteen,” he said.

“Yeah, I know, you asked me if I could check if a Chinese character actually meant brave,” she said. As best as she had found it had actually translated to rice. “That at least says something, though.”

She pulled out of the parking lot and headed towards Scott’s house.

“Yeah, that was a horrible idea which is why I didn’t do it. This one’s different,” he said. “It’s a reward.”

“It’s a reward? You got stabbed a thousand times with a needle as a reward?” she asked. “For what?”

“For not calling or texting Allison all summer. Even when I really wanted to, even when it was so hard not to sometimes,” he said. “I was trying to give her the space she wants. Going on four months later, it’s still hard.”

“What?” Stiles asked, not sure if she was about to hurl or scream. “That’s what you rewarded yourself for? You gave yourself a treat for not talking to the girl who broke up with you and asked you to leave her alone?”

“Yeah—,”

“You think you deserve a reward for that? For not being an asshole to one person?” she asked.

“What? That’s not what—,”

“Yeah, yeah it is,” she said. “You listened to what someone else wanted for once, and you decided to treat yourself over it.”

She glanced at the speedometer. She was way over the limit. She pulled over, pulling abruptly into street parking and slamming the brakes. She shoved the gear stick into park.

“Woah, Stiles, what the hell?” Scott asked. “What is up with you lately?”

“What’s up with me?” she asked. “You really wanna know? You didn’t seem to give a fuck all summer when you were so busy trying not to talk to Allison.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “You’re not like suddenly jealous now or something, are you?”

“Yeah, man, of fucking Allison because at least she’s not dealing with your bullshit,” she snapped.

“What the hell are you talking about? Why are you so mad at me?”

“Tell me, Scott, did you ever really care about me?” she asked. “Or was I just a place holder until you were able to switch to the more popular crowd?”

“No, never, of course I care,” Scott said, holding up his hands. “You’re my best friend.”

“Really? You’re my best friend, huh?” she asked. “If you’re my best friend, you gotta know me pretty well, right, Scott? So, hey, why don’t you tell me something since you know me so well, do you remember those bruises I had after we fought the kanima?”

“Yeah,” Scott said warily.

“So, Scott, since you remember them so well, what were those bruises from?”

“Uh, fighting the kanima, right?” he tried.

“Nope, I didn’t fight the kanima. I wasn’t there. I just drove my Jeep into him at the end,” Stiles said, giving him a tight smile. “So tell me, Scott, since you’re my best friend, where were those bruises really from?”

Scott opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came out.

“You don’t know?” Stiles asked, mock sympathetic. “If you’re my best friend, how come you don’t know? Is there are a reason you don’t know? Was there something you never did in the last four months while you were so busy restraining yourself from talking to Allison with all your might?”

Scott finally looked worried. “Wait, Stiles, what were those bruises from?”

Stiles clenched her jaw, controlling the urge to hit something, anything, but most of all Scott. “Gerard. It was a message for you. Too bad you never got it.”

“What, Stiles, when?” he asked. “After you were taken? I was going to come get you, but Derek stopped me.”

“Yeah, and then you forgot all about it and acted like everything was fine.”

“No, no, I seriously just thought it was the kanima that had done it,” he said.

“Wow, you really care so much about me, you didn’t even think to remember if I was actually in the fight or not,” she said, shaking her head. “You know what? Get out.”

“What? Get out?” he asked.

“Yes, get the fuck out of my car, Scott. Find your own way home. Never ask me for a fucking favor again,” Stiles said. “I can’t believe I ever thought you were my friend. You piss me off so much. Go fucking hang out with your stupid lacrosse buddies when school starts and don’t talk to me ever.”

“But Stiles, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Scott pleaded.

“Get out,” she snapped.

“No, I’m not gonna go until we talk about this. This is serious.”

“Yeah, it’s serious,” she mocked. “You seriously need to get out of my car or else I’m gonna call Derek.”

“Derek? Why would you call Derek? He’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Maybe not, but he’d definitely be able to drag you out of my car,” she said, gesturing towards the passenger door.

Scott shook his head. “No, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t even answer me anymore.”

“Yeah because you’re you Scott,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But Derek will come if I call him. He promised.”

“Why the hell would he promise you that?”

“I don’t know, maybe he gives a shit about other people, have you ever thought of that?” she asked, channeling Lydia. “Get out of my car before you cause a scene.”

“No, we need to talk about this. It’s not fair for you just decide to do this to me without talking about it,” Scott complained.

“Not fair?” Stiles asked, not caring about the way her voice went shrill.

There was a knock on the glass.

Scott turned around in his seat, and Stiles leaned forward to see around him. Derek stood outside the passenger door, scowly face and leather jacket on despite the warm night.

“What?” Scott asked. “We’re busy.”

Stiles lowered the passenger window.

“He bothering you?” Derek asked Stiles.

“Yeah, a lot,” she told him then unlocked the Jeep.

Derek pulled the door opened and gestured towards the sidewalk.

Scott stayed firmly put in his seat.

“She asked you to leave,” Derek said.

Scott remained in the seat.

Derek’s eyes flashed red. “Don’t make her ask again.”

Scott slowly unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed down from the Jeep. Stiles could hear a deep, grumbling sound just on the edge of her hearing coming from him. Derek stared him down, using a slightly louder growl. Scott glared up at him, but he looked away first. When his eyes flicked over towards Stiles, Derek closed the door almost all the way and took a step in front of it, physically blocking Scott’s access to it.

“Walk away, Scott,” Derek said, voice perfectly even despite the growl underneath it.

Stiles couldn’t see Scott’s expression, but after a moment, he turned and walked away in the direction of his house. Derek stopped growling. Stiles let out a breath and slumped back in her seat, watching Scott’s back as he walked away.

“You alright?” Derek asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. It’s your car,” he said.

She looked over to him, and he was still standing on the sidewalk. “You can come sit.”

Derek glanced around before opening up the door and climbing into the passenger seat, shutting the door behind himself. He put up the window.

“I just meant that I knew I said I wasn’t going to really hang out with Scott anymore,” she said quietly.

Derek shook his head. “I get it. Peter didn’t used to be like this. He was always smart, but he didn’t used to be…mean. He used to be my uncle.”

She nodded. “Thanks. How did you even know we were here?”

“I was heading out to check out the historical buildings, and you weren’t exactly quiet,” he said. “Isaac went on ahead.”

“Do you need to go? You don’t have to sit here with me,” she said, pushing herself more upright.

“Are you good to drive?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, doing her best to smile, but her hands were shaking.

She caught Derek glancing down at them before looking back to her face.

“You’re not supposed to drive upset,” he said.

“I’m not upset,” she lied to a werewolf who can sense lies.

“Let me drive you home,” Derek said.

“No way, I don’t let anyone drive this car,” she said, leaning forward to wrap her arms around the steering wheel like she could hug it.

“Your dad’s not going to want you staying out this late,” he said.

“He doesn’t know,” she told him. “He’ll be working for another few hours.”

He frowned at her. “You ate alone?” he asked, sounding offended.

She looked over to him, and he even looked perturbed.

“Yeah,” she answered.

“Why didn’t you eat with us then?”

She shrugged as best she could while hanging over the steering wheel. “I knew I was going to be doing this with Scott.”

Derek shook his head. “I’ll buy you curly fries if you let me drive you home.”

“No, my one weakness,” she said, mostly sarcastic, but a little bit honest.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I’ll even get you a large.”

“Bribing, really? You’re not even supposed to be buying me food,” she said.

“No, I’m not supposed to buy you dinner. I can get you some fries,” he said.

She frowned and turned to face the windshield.

“Come on, think about it. All the potato and the salt and the grease and the crispy texture,” he said.

He didn’t change his voice at all. It was funny to hear him try to tempt her in his typical deadpan.

She grinned. “Fine you win, but just this once. It won’t work a second time.”

“Yeah, I doubt that,” he said, getting out of the passenger side.

Stiles sighed and forced herself to open the door and climb down, leaving the keys in the ignition. She felt wobbly on her feet. Derek got to her side before she was barely past the door.

“You sure you’re alright?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said with a nod. “I might have fainted in the tattoo parlor.”

“Stiles,” he said sternly as he reached out for her.

“I’m fine,” she said, but it didn’t stop him from checking her head. “Ow.”

He’d found the tender spot. The way it suddenly stopped hurting at all, and even her shakiness got better meant he had to have started using pain transference. “Better?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, even attempting a slight nod.

“Good,” he said, moving out of her way.

Stiles walked around to the other side then settled into the passenger seat, buckling in. Derek took a second to adjust everything and get familiar with her Jeep. Then he put it into drive and took the first turn. He brought them to a local burger joint that had the best curly fries of anywhere in town, but no drive through.

"You wanna stay here?" he asked after he parked, offering the keys out to her.

"Nah, I'll come," she said, taking the keys from him and getting out. Her legs felt less shaky.

Derek led the way into the restaurant, and they found a decently long line inside. It might be after a typical dinner time, but there were more than a few groups of teens. Stiles looked over the menu even though she was only gonna get the fries. The line moved fairly quickly, and Derek stepped up to the cash.

"You want anything to drink?" he asked her.

"Nah, I'm good," she told him.

He nodded then turned back to the woman manning the cash. "Hi, can we get two orders of curly fries, one large and one small, and also a small coke?"

"You drink soda?" Stiles asked, trying to bite down on a smile.

Derek shrugged. "Only once in a while. It's a lot of sugar."

"Why not get diet then?"

He shook his head. "Tastes weird."

The woman at the cash gave their total, and Derek paid. She handed over their receipt with their number.

"Thanks," Derek said, offering her a polite smile.

"You're welcome," she said, smiling back.

Then Derek headed over to the farthest wall of the waiting area, put his back to it, and crossed his arms. He didn't scowl, but his eyebrows made it look like he was glaring anyways. Stiles joined him, leaning back against the wall beside him. No chance she looked anywhere close to intimidating with him right next to her.

She zoned out against the background chatter. After passing out from a tattoo needle, this seemed like a pretty good recovery for the night. She should maybe double check her head when she got home. Derek hadn't healed her after all.

Derek moved, and Stiles hurried to push off the wall and follow him up to the counter. He grabbed their order, the guy who brought it out already heading back into the kitchen before Derek could say anything to him.

"Come on," Derek said, using his head to motion towards the exit.

Stiles got ahead of him to hold the door open. He gave her a nod of appreciation as he passed her.

"Can I drive now?" she asked.

“I gave you back the keys,” he said. “But I thought we could eat first.”

“Sure.”

She smiled, and jogged ahead to take the driver's seat, leaning across the passenger seat to push the other door open. Derek managed to climb into the seat without dropping anything. He passed Stiles' fries over to her then closed the door.

"Sweet, sweet curly fries," Stiles said, shoving herself down into her seat to eat them like the little gremlin she was.

"They're actually not sweet at all," Derek said. "That's kind of the point."

Stiles laughed too hard to be able to even start eating the fries he so kindly bought her. She caught the smug smile that flashed across his face before he straightened out his expression.

"Sweet as in they're nice," Stiles said before finally stuffing her first fry into her mouth. "Seriously, so good."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," he said.

"You can't tell me what to do," she said before shoving more fries into her face.

"What if it falls out while you're talking?" he asked, tone completely serious.

Stiles had to try not to choke as she laughed. She had to calm down, finish chewing, and even coughed once before she was able to ask him, "Are you trying to kill me?"

"No, why would you even think that?"

"I nearly just died eating fries," she exclaimed.

"Maybe if you didn't talk with your mouth full that wouldn't happen," he said before popping a single fry in his mouth.

Stiles giggled. Hanging out with Scott used to be like this. Well, not exactly like this. Scott couldn't do deadpan to save his life, but she used to laugh like this with him, nearly choking on fries and all. She sighed.

"You good?" Derek asked quietly. He never used to do that.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good," she said, chewing on the end of a curly fry. Then she blurted, "Scott wanted a tattoo. As a reward. For not talking to Allison all summer."

Derek turned towards her, his eyebrows furrowed.

"Yeah, I'm glad it disappeared on him. It was so stupid. It was just two black bands on his arm," she said, rolling her eyes.

"He...wanted a reward for not talking to a hunter?" Derek asked slowly.

"She broke up with him before they left and asked for space," she said, and as Derek's face turned judgy she nodded, "Yeah, I know right?"

"You know what it takes to make tattoos permanent for werewolves?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No, what?"

"Blowtorch."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Maybe we should help him make it permanent."

"I would," Derek said. "But not for rewarding normal shit people should just do."

"Yeah, fair," she said, then glanced towards Derek's back. It wasn't facing her so it was more like looking at his shoulder, but close enough. He'd gone through getting stabbed a billion times and then blowtorched for that one tattoo. She bit down on her lip.

"You can ask," he said.

"Ask what?"

He gave her an unimpressed look.

"What's so special about the triskele?" she asked.

Derek sighed, taking a sip from his coke. "It's a very old symbol. Lot of people think it's Celtic, but it actually goes back to the Neolithic. It was used a lot in ancient Greece and Rome, but often it was three legs around Medusa's head. The spiral one is more common with the Celts, but a lot of versions are also used throughout medieval Gothic architecture. Lots of werewolves use one variation or another as their pack symbols."

"But what does it mean?" she asked.

"There's lots of meanings," he said, eyes on the dashboard. "This spiral one is the Hale pack's symbol. But I picked it for birth, life, death."

"Because of the fire?" she asked gently, prepared to not receive an answer.

He nodded tightly. "Gotta believe birth still comes after death."

He met her eyes. There was no flash of alpha red, but she could still see his green eyes clearly with the yellow light of the street lamp in the parking lot.

"We'll find Erica and Boyd," she promised.

He faced the windshield, expression hardening.

She frowned, leaning back in her seat. She picked up another fry to eat. It had cooled enough it didn't taste quite so great anymore.

Chapter Text

After Stiles finished a handful of her fries, she tucked the box into the cup holder and cleared her throat. "Ready to head back?"

"You're actually going to take me in the wrong direction," Derek said, and he sounded normal, for him anyways.

"You don't have to escort me home," she told him.

"It's fine. A little exercise never hurt anyone," he said then took a sip of his coke. "Especially after having junk food."

"I thought you didn't like running," she said, buckling up and turning on the engine.

"For working out," he said as he buckled up as well. "It's fine for getting around."

"You're gonna burn up in that jacket," she said, pulling out of the lot after a car drove past. 

"I'll be fine," he said.

"Sure," she said, about to tease him, but paused as she looked at the car in front of her. "Is that Lydia's car?"

"I think so."

"Why's she coming from this direction?" she asked. "Her house is not that far from mine."

She caught Derek leaning forward out of the corner of her eye.

"Why's Allison with her is the better question," Derek said.

"That's Allison?" Stiles asked, coming to a stop behind Lydia at the red light. "Why would she come back here? Why would her dad ever let her come back?"

She leaned as far forward as she could with the steering wheel in the way, trying to peer through the back window with no light in the other car’s interior. She could barely make out dark wavy hair on Lydia's passenger. "Are you sure it's her?"

"It's her," he said, an edge of a growl to his voice.

"Well, let's not go all attack dog right now," Stiles said. "I'll go home and ask Lydia about the details, let you know what I find."

Derek huffed, sitting back in his chair. "Fine," he said, but he didn't sound happy about it.

The light turned green. Lydia accelerated, and Stiles had to follow her since this was her way home, too. Stiles spotted movement on the road and tensed. Lydia slammed on her brakes, brake lights flashing bright red in the dark, and Stiles could hear the thud and crack of something heavy hitting and breaking glass. Stiles swerved hard to the right to avoid the car, stepping on the brake with enough pressure to engage ABS, and the pedal shuddered underneath her foot.

She shifted the Jeep into park and turned on her hazards as her heart beat in her ears. She unbuckled, and heard a second seatbelt click. She nearly fell climbing out of the driver's seat. She didn't bother shutting the door as she saw a giant buck with its head through Lydia's windshield.

Lydia and Allison were both screaming as they scrambled out of the car. They thankfully didn't look any worse for wear.

"What the fuck was that?" Lydia screeched, gesturing at the deer with both hands.

"You guys okay?" Stiles asked.

"Fine," Allison even though she sounded like she had a frog in her throat and she'd gone pure white.

"This isn't right," Derek said.

"Derek?" Allison asked, frowning. She looked to Stiles. "Where's Scott?"

Stiles shrugged. "Don't know, don't care."

Allison stared at her, jaw slack.

"I told you, you missed a lot," Lydia said. "But right now, I'm more worried about the deer in my windshield. I saw its eyes right before it hit us. It was like it was crazy."

“It wasn’t crazy,” Derek said, not dismissive, just serious. He stepped closer to the deer and the hood of Lydia’s car. “It was terrified.”

“Of what?” Stiles asked.

Derek looked around, moving his head slowly as he scanned. Stiles glanced up towards the moon. It was waxing, not yet full, but close. Could it be the alphas?

“I don’t know,” Derek admitted.

“Well, what do we do?” Lydia asked.

“Call state patrol,” Stiles said.

Everyone turned to her, looking at her like she was crazy.

“What?” she asked, then gestured to the car. “It’s a deer in a windshield. It’s not supernatural as far as anybody can tell. What you do is you call state patrol, you take pictures of everything, and you report an accident to your insurance. Does no one pay attention in driving class?”

“Not everyone has a cop for a dad, Stiles,” Derek said.

“Fine, but I’m still calling state patrol,” Stiles said, pulling out her cellphone as she walked towards the side of the road where it was safer. Her dad had made her memorize it and put it on her speed dial. Someone picked up right away. “Hi, I want to report a collision with a deer?”

The woman on the line guided her through the whole process with Lydia. Derek took photos of the damage to the car for her. Allison stood off by herself near the Jeep, watching everything.

Patrolmen eventually showed up. They spoke to everyone, and Deaton of all people showed up to collect the deer. Derek glared at Deaton the whole time while Deaton politely ignored him and did his job. A tow truck arrived to take Lydia’s car to a mechanic though it wouldn’t be looked at until the morning. Stiles got a call from her dad because apparently someone had snitched to him that she’d been involved in a collision. She told him she was fine then ended up driving Allison back downtown to the building she and her dad were apparently staying in now. It looked nicer than Derek’s from the outside at least. Then she drove Lydia home.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you home?” Stiles asked Derek again.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “Though I’m not sure you should have driven this much considering you passed out in a tattoo parlor not too long ago.”

“I’m fine, I swear,” she said. “Now I am going to make you walk your wolfy ass home.”

“I think it’ll survive,” he said, still deadpan.

Stiles tried really hard not to laugh. She drove home, parking in the drive way and turning the car off. Derek didn’t get out right away, and neither did she.

“You sure you’re okay?” Derek asked.

“Huh?” she asked. “Yeah, I told you, I’m fine. Made it home safe and sound and everything.”

“Okay,” he said, getting out of the car.

Stiles sighed and got out as well, locking it behind her. Derek waited on the sidewalk until she was in the door before he started walking back towards downtown.

“There you are,” her dad said, rushing towards her to wrap her up in a hug.

“Hi, I’m fine,” she said, patting his back.

“I’m not,” he said, pulling back to look her over. “I nearly had a heart attack with state patrol calling me telling you were in a collision.”

“I wasn’t. I swerved like I did in all those defensive driving courses you made me take,” she said. “My Jeep did not touch a thing.”

“Lydia and Allison are okay?” he asked like he had when he had called her.

“Yes, no injuries, just a little spooked from having antlers come flying at them.”

“Okay, correct me if I’m wrong,” her dad said, giving her that look he got when he was pretty sure he’d gotten something wrong. “Allison moved away, right?”

“Yes, that did happen, but for some reason, she’s back,” she said with a shrug. “Didn’t know until I saw her just now, and I wasn’t about to go interrogating her.”

“Strange, but it’s a free country,” he said, frowning. “You want any water or something?”

“Yeah, water’s good,” she said.

She had some water then went up to bed, telling her father goodnight. She slept horribly, and once there was daylight, she was up, ready for school, and at her computer looking up statistics on car crashes involving deer.

Eventually, she heard footsteps outside her door. She asked, “You know how many vehicle collisions last year involved deer? Two hundred and forty-seven thousand.”

Her dad groaned. “Oh, God, please go to school.”

“But that's crossing the road,” Stiles said. “This one last night came right down the middle.”

“I'm not gonna beg you,” he said.

“Okay, good. I'm impervious to your influence, anyway,” she said, barely looking up from her computer.

“Would you consider a bribe?”

“You couldn't meet my price.”

“Extortion?”

She shrugged. She had done plenty wrong or illegal things, but there was one flaw in his plan. “You got nothing on me.”

“Yeah...” he said with a sigh.

Then her chair started moving. “Dad, what are you doing?”

She kept trying to reach for her keyboard until he pulled too far, and she fell off her chair. “Ow.”

“Sorry, but you need to go to school,” he said, staring down at her with his hands on his hips. “Don’t make me carry you to the cruiser. I will turn the lights on if I have to drop you off.”

She groaned as she got to her feet. “That’s so embarrassing, though.”

“Then I suggest you make your own way to class,” he said, picking up her backpack and handing it to her.

She huffed, but took her bag from him. She headed downstairs and drove herself to school, only remembering that she didn’t have breakfast halfway there. She groaned but kept going. She parked and headed into the building.

Then someone grabbed her elbow, and she nearly smacked them in the face before she saw  it was Isaac.

“Were you going to hit me?” he asked, guiding her out of the flow of traffic and to a less used hallway.

“No,” she lied.

Isaac gave her a sharp look. Then he glanced around and took a step in closer to her. She took a step back and ran into the lockers.

“We found the alphas,” he said in a low voice.

“What?” she asked then lowered her voice as well. “You did? How?”

“Spotted them coming out of that old, empty bank downtown,” he said. “I was far enough away I don’t think they could smell me, and I booked it right away.”

“Them?” she asked. “All of them?”

He shook his head. “Twins. The two alphas we don’t know anything about.”

“Well, yeah, process of elimination,” she said.

“We’re going to head in there before nightfall,” he said. “You need to get all the information you can on the bank as soon as possible.”

“What? Like tonight? Tonight’s nightfall?”

He nodded. “It’s been months. We can’t just leave them there for longer.”

“Isn’t it like the full moon tonight or tomorrow?” she asked.

“Tonight, but what does that matter?” he asked. “We’re trying to get them out before moon rise, and I can control myself just fine.”

“It’s not just about that. Doesn’t the timing seem too convenient to you?”

“Convenient for what?”

“For the alphas. We’ve been looking for them all summer, doing research and sniffing around all night, but now you spot two of them the night before the full moon when Erica and Boyd who don’t have the best  control? I think it might be a trap.”

Isaac shrugged. “Does it really matter whether it is or not? We’re going to get Erica and Boyd out as soon as we can. If you think it’s a trap, you better get as much information as you can on that bank.”

Stiles sighed. When was she even going to have time for that? “I’ll do what I can.”

“Stiles?”

She turned to see Scott at the end of the hall, looking at her and Isaac with a confused frown.

“Isaac?” Scott asked.

“Bye,” Isaac said then walked away from them, barely even sparing Scott a glance before turning.

Stiles took a breath and readjusted her bag because she had to pass Scott to get to her first class. She had to go halfway around the building, but she made it to her English class on time but no teacher. She was slightly surprised to see Lydia in her class, but it wasn’t as if they’d never had English together before, though that had been back in freshman year. She took the seat next to Lydia, and she didn’t even look up at her.

“Hey, Lydia,” she said then caught sight of a large bandaid on Lydia’s hand. “What is that? Is that from the accident?”

Lydia sighed and looked over at her. “No,” she admitted. “Prada bit me.

“Your dog?”

“No, my designer handbag,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Yes, my dog.”

"Has it ever bitten you before?" Stiles asked.

Lydia shook her head.

Stiles leaned in towards her and kept her voice down. "Okay, what if it's, like, the same thing as the deer? You know, like, how animals start acting weird right before an earthquake or something?"

"Meaning what? There's gonna be an earthquake?" she asked, annoyed.

"Or something. I just... maybe it means something's coming. Something bad," she said, unable to shake the feeling. This was not just her anxiety getting the best of her. Her anxiety didn't make a deer run into Lydia's windshield.

"It was a deer and a dog," Lydia said, "What's that thing you say about threes? Once... twice...we don't have a third."

"Maybe," Stiles said. "Isaac spotted the alpha werewolves last night and it's a full moon tonight."

Lydia turned into her chair to glare at her. "You didn't want to start with that?"

"I—," Stiles was interrupted by her phone buzzing.

She glanced to the front of the room. The new English teacher, someone named Blake according to her schedule, still wasn't there yet. She pulled out her phone to check her text. Someone could be dying.

The text was from a number not a contact, and Stiles didn't recognize it. She frowned. It didn't read like it was from anyone she knew either.

"The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds," a woman said, the exact words that were in the text Stiles had received, "and the tranquil waterway, leading to the uttermost ends of the earth, flowed somber under an overcast sky, seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness."

The woman speaking had come to stand at the front of the classroom. She had dressed professionally with a blouse and knee length skirt and nude shoes, her hair pulled back from her face in a half up style. She was prettier and younger than the average teacher at the school. She was going to get eaten alive.

Then she held up her phone. "This is the last line to the first book we are going to read. It is also the last text you will receive in this class. Phones off, everyone."

Stiles didn't do as she asked, only double checking her phone was silent before putting it back into her pocket. This Miss Blake lady was definitely getting eaten alive. Still, Stiles tried not to zone out as the teacher went over her classroom rules and the schedule for the school year.

Then Miss Blake started passing out The Heart of Darkness. Stiles turned towards the window to watch as she handed a stack of books to the first column of desks. There were a lot of birds outside. They also seemed to be getting bigger. Stiles used her pencil eraser to poke Lydia's arm.

"What?" she asked in a whisper as she took a book and passed the rest back.

Stiles nodded towards the window. Lydia turned and froze. There were murmurs starting to go around the classroom.

"What's with all the chatter?" Miss Blake asked. Then she looked out the window. "Oh, God."

Then a bird hit the window with a horrifying thwack. Stiles jumped, and several kids shrieked or yelped. A second bird hit the window and then a third, the glass cracking. Everyone started scooching their desks back from the window.

The glass shattered, and birds came streaming in. Everyone started screaming and running away, Miss Blake shouting for everyone to get down. Stiles slid down from her seat to crouch on the ground, hands covering her head and neck.

"Lydia!" she shouted over the noise. "This way!"

She risked glancing up to see Lydia crawling over to her. She grabbed her arm to guide her. She crawled down the row of desks then over towards the door, trying to ignore the brush of feathers or anything harder.

A bird flew into her face, and she yelped, smacking it away with her free hand. She pulled Lydia with her through the door. Then she stood and ran, bringing Lydia along. They moved deeper into the building, away from the windows and doors that led outside, but other people were poking their heads out of other classrooms at the noise.

“What the hell was that?” Lydia demanded.

“I have no idea,” Stiles said.

Eventually, the screaming stopped. Stiles didn’t see any birds making their ways through the halls. Then a security guard came through, telling everyone from Miss Blake’s class to head to the nurse’s office. Stiles went with Lydia and the rest of their classmates. It beat having to sit through English class. Maybe.

“You okay?” Stiles asked Lydia as they waited to be checked out.

“Fine,” she said, working on fixing up her frazzled hair. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’ve got marks all over your face,” she said, pointing to her cheek.

Stiles pulled out her phone, finding scratches on the hand she’d smacked the bird with. She quickly used her phone to take a photo of herself. She grimaced at the cuts on her face then shoved her phone back away before she got punished for having it out.

Stiles was one of the first students to get pulled into the nurse’s office. Everyone with her also had cuts on their hand and faces. The nurse went through disinfecting and bandaging everything. After that, they were sent to the library since there was glass all over the classroom. Stiles itched to start looking up the abandoned bank downtown, but she couldn’t do it with everyone else there and the librarians going around checking up on people. In other circumstances, it would be nice, but right now she needed privacy to conduct her research.

Apparently, a flock of birds flying into a classroom wasn’t enough to send people home so Stiles had to go to her other classes. Her next one was economics. Unfortunately, Scott was also in it. She picked a seat as far away from him as she could and ignored the pleading looks he sent her.

Eventually, her lunch period came around, but she went to the library instead of the cafeteria. She logged onto one of the school computers and started looking up the only historical and abandoned bank she’d found over the summer, Beacon Hills First National Bank. It was nearly as old as the town. The stone the building was made out of didn’t have any magical properties that helped keep werewolves in, but some of its roofing materials did. The more important thing was that vaults seemed like a pretty good way to hold a pair of betas who weren’t so hot at keeping their heads screwed on right during full moons.

She pulled up the records she’d found over the summer and had to stare at the screen for five seconds to not start printing out reams of paper on a closed down bank in the middle of the school library.  

“Stiles.”

She blurted out something like ‘gah’ as she knocked the mouse to the floor. She leaned over to snatch up the mouse and set it back on the pad. She turned to face Isaac.

“Can you not stand like that?” she asked. “I have to crane my neck.”

Isaac sighed and sat down in the chair next to her. “I wanted to check if you were okay, but I guess you’re totally fine.”

“Aw, you were worried about me?” she asked before turning back to the computer. “Do you actually have something to talk about or can I keep doing my research? I’ve got a lot to do before you and Derek try rescuing anybody.”

“Derek’s going to be mad,” Isaac said.

“What? About what?” she asked, eyes still on the screen. “I’m doing the research.”

“No, not that,” he said. “That he couldn’t fight the birds.”

Stiles laughed. “That would have been hilarious.”

“Maybe,” he said, slouching down in his chair and sticking around instead of leaving when she worked, not doing anything more than slowly turning a full rotation one way and then back the other in his spinning chair.

She went down a rabbit hole about the break in before the bank closed since they’d gotten into the vaults. She found news articles and court reports and anything else that had information on the thieves’ tactics.

The bell rang for the end of lunch. Stiles quickly closed everything and logged off the computer. She grabbed her bag and got to her feet to face Isaac.

“I have to print everything out then I can meet you at Derek’s place,” she told him.

“You know I live there, too, right?” he asked, walking out with her, bag slung over only one shoulder.

“Yeah, so?” she asked.

He sighed, turning in the opposite direction than she needed to go for math class.

“Okay then,” she said and headed to class.

Stiles had absolutely no focus that afternoon, blueprints of the bank running through her head instead. She booked it as soon as the final bell rang. Field hockey practice wasn’t until the following afternoon so she could make a quick pit stop home for this whole rescue Erica and Boyd situation.

Stiles spotted Lydia heading in her direction through the parking lot and slowed down. “Hey, Lydia, what’s up?”

“Is it true you’re dating Isaac?” she asked, without any other sort of greeting as she matched Stiles’s speed.

“Huh?” Stiles asked intelligently.

“Because I didn’t think you were into him,” she said then frowned. “Though I guess he is kind of cute in a string bean kind of way.”

“What?” Stiles asked then shook her head. “Don’t be mean to him, and I’m not dating him.”

“Then why are you defending him?” she asked.

“He’s my friend. You do know how friends work, right?”

“Ha ha, of course I do,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Who’s even saying we’re dating?” Stiles asked. Normally, the rumor mill didn’t have anything to do with her, but Isaac had been in the mix ever since he’d been bitten and stopped slouching all the time.

Lydia shrugged like it was unimportant. “The whole cross country team.”

“What? How?” Stiles asked. “You know what, whatever. I’m busy. If anyone asks you, tell them I’m not dating.”

“Sure, I’ll let them know you’re on the market,” she said with a prim smile. “Bye, Stiles.”

“Wait, Lydia, that’s not what I said,” Stiles called after her, but Lydia kept on walking. “That’s not what I said.”

Stiles groaned but got into her Jeep. She had bigger things to deal with than school gossip.

Chapter Text

Stiles dropped by the historical society for everything she could get her hands on regarding the bank’s floor plans then went home to print off all of her other research. She had everything she needed in a little over an hour. She drove over to Derek’s, carting everything up all the stairs. The metal door to the apartment opened as she approached it.

“Come on,” Isaac said. “We need to be quick.”

“Got it.”

“What’d you find?” Derek asked as Stiles crossed the apartment to reach the metal table.

“A lot which is good for us if we want any element of surprise,” she said, dropping everything on the tabletop. She moved aside the printouts to spread out the blueprints she’d gotten from the historical society. “We’ve got all the floors of the bank and even some information about the materials it was built with and  we’ve got how someone else broke into the vault since we’ve got no reason to believe they’re not keeping them in there.”

“Show me,” Derek said.

“Okay, you see this?” Stiles asked as she flipped to the page that showed the bank’s roof.  “This is how they got in— it's a rooftop air conditioning vent, leads down inside into the wall of the vault, which is here. Okay?”

Derek and Isaac both nodded.

“One of the robbers was lowered into this shaft,” she said as she flipped pages to show a side view of the building. “Now, that space is so small, it took him about twelve hours to drill into that wall, which is stone, by the way. Then, throughout the rest of the night, they siphoned the cash up to the guys back on the roof through that one little shaft in the wall.”

It was a brilliant little plan if time consuming.

“Can anybody actually fit in there?” Isaac asked then gestured between himself and Derek. “We’re not exactly the smallest guys.”

“Yes, you can, but very, very barely or I’ve really guestimated your sizes wrong,” Stiles said. “Oh, and they also patched the wall, obviously, so we're gonna need a drill of some kind. I'm thinking maybe a diamond-bit or something.”

“Look, forget the drill,” Derek said.

“Sorry?” Stiles asked. “What do you mean forget the drill? The whole plan is the drilling.”

Derek gave her a unimpressed look. “If I go in first, how much space do I have?”

“What do you think you're gonna do, Derek?” she asked, flabbergasted. “You gonna punch through the wall?”

“Yes, Stiles. I'm gonna punch through the wall,” he said, like she was the one being ridiculous.

“Okay. Okay, big guy, let's see it. Let's see that fist. Big old fist. Make it, come on. Get it out there. Don't be scared, big bad wolf,” she said, motioning like she was beckoning him forwards.

Derek continued to implacably stare at her, but he did reluctantly put up a fist.

Stiles then held up her hand flat as a board in front of Derek’s fist. “Okay, see this? That's maybe three inches of room to gather enough force to punch through solid stone wall.”

“I’m not punching you, Stiles,” he said. “Just imagine an overpowered one inch punch. I can break the stone so long as it doesn’t have any magical properties.”

Stiles sighed, dropping her hand. “No, the walls don’t have anything, and neither should that shaft. It’s just the roof, but it’s a sealant and not covering the entire thing. You still haven’t actually proved you can punch through stone.”

“I’m not about to start breaking shit in my apartment just to appease you,” he said, lowering his hand.

“So you’re just going to go in there and get stuck in a shaft?”

“No, I’m not going to get stuck, but if I do you can come tell me I told you so. How’s that?”

“Not very good if you wind up dead,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Well, I won’t so problem solved,” he said.

“What about the problem of getting back up?” Isaac asked, making a grimace. “I don’t really want to get stuck in a little shaft with two betas that can’t control themselves on the full moon, and I can’t climb straight up walls.”

“Rope?” Stiles suggested.

“You won’t need any rope,” Derek said to Isaac. “You should be able to climb out since you can span the space because it’s a shaft not a wall, but we don’t know what state Erica and Boyd will be in. We may need rope to get them out, and the sporting goods store should have climbing rope.”

Isaac nodded.

“That works,” Stiles said.

“Do you know how to use it?” Isaac asked. “Like repel them up or whatever it’s called?”

“No, but we can get away with brute force and lift them out,” Derek said.

“Okay, okay,” Stiles said, pulling out her phone to check the time. “So best case scenario, you get rope right away and make it over to the bank and are able to sneak into the shaft without fighting the alphas. Derek can break the wall like we swears he can, and you get everyone out before nightfall. What do we do if it’s not best case scenario?”

“If there’s no rope in store, we can do it without it, but it’ll be more difficult if Erica and Boyd can’t climb,” Derek said.

“You really think you could carry someone out of a tight space like that?” Stiles asked. “No, you need the rope.”

“I’m more concerned about the fighting alphas bit,” Isaac said, clearing his throat. “I’m just a lowly beta, remember? And we’re out numbered.”

Derek let out a slow breath. “We retreat if there’s more than two, don’t let them know where we were headed or lead them back here. We go to the preserve. That’s still Hale territory. I know it better than anyone.”

“So less than two?” Isaac asked.

“We still fight if we have to and get Erica and Boyd out,” Derek said.

“And what if it takes too long to break through the wall?” Stiles asked. “They hear you or the moon rises before you can get to Erica and Boyd?”

“It’ll be bad if they find us in the shaft,” Derek said. “The only way out might be through. There’s no way they’d come behind us, we’d be able to claw them from below. Our best bet is getting into the vault and finding another way out.”

Stiles shuffled through the layers of the blue prints. “This is the vault. The vent is the weakest point, it’s why the robber’s targeted it. This might be the only other one.”

She pointed to a section of vault that faced an interior corridor inside the bank where due to some of the more fanciful design decisions, the wall was a little thinner there. “It’ll take you out into the main building. You’ll have room to fight, but so will they.”

“If it’s after moon rise,” Isaac said. “What do we do? Leave them there? I don’t think I can handle one beta on a full moon by myself.”

“We stop,” Derek said. “We keep them from getting out, and keep them safe.”

“Uh, speaking of moon rise, what’s the plan once you get them out?” Stiles asked. “You can’t lock them up here.”

“I can,” Derek said. “You know how to use mountain ash, right?”

“Yes, you’ve seen me use it,” she said.

“Then you can set up a circle for us.”

“With what ash?”

Derek turned and left for the kitchen, coming back with a full sack a little larger than the size of his hand. He set it down on the table in front of Stiles. “That should be plenty.”

“You keep that in the kitchen?” she asked, opening the sack to double check it really was mountain ash. She poked it with her finger. Felt the same as the last ash she’d used.

“Better down here than upstairs,” he said. “And I don’t have that much storage in the main room.”

“That’s true,” Stiles said, looking around. He only had tables and chairs so far, no media consoles or shelves or cabinets.

“Anything else?” Derek asked.

Isaac shook his head.

“Be quick,” Stiles said. Then she added, “Be safe.”

“Oh yeah, it’s super safe going up a pack of alphas,” Isaac said sarcastically.

“We’ll do our best,” Derek said. “Just have the ash ready for Erica and Boyd.”

“Sure,” she said, picking up the bag.

“If we’re not back by two hours after dawn, assume everything went wrong,” Derek said.

“Cheery,” Stiles told him.

“I’m just warning you,” he said as he and Isaac started heading towards the metal door. “Also, there’s leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry.”

“You guys have leftovers?”

“Sometimes,” Isaac said.

“We’ll see you soon, Stiles,” Derek said as he pulled open the door.

“See you.”

They both walked out and Derek shut the door behind them.

Stiles sighed, slumping back against the table. It was good her father was working late tonight, but he would definitely get suspicious if she wasn’t home when he got back. She was for sure getting grounded into infinity if this actually took all night.

She pushed off the table and started moving the furniture back so there was an empty space in the center of the room. She picked up the bag of mountain ash. She reached in and grabbed a handful. She repeated her actions outside of the warehouse with the kanima. She let the ashes slip from her fingers as she walked slowly in a circle, focusing on the barrier she needed it to become. She stopped with an almost two foot gap in the circle, wide enough for two werewolves to make it through. She tipped the last of the ashes in her hand back into the bag and shut it.

She looked around. Her part was done, and all she could do was wait. She sighed. She didn’t even really have homework yet to occupy herself with.

She poked around on the main floor. The bathroom was really shaping up. They had the new toilet in now. The kitchen looked extra awful in comparison. She checked through all the cabinets again. It was the same as the last time she’d looked. Most were empty, but there were some health snacks, tubberware, and cleaning supplies, including the vinegar she’d used before. She took some of the trail mix with her.

There wasn’t a bookshelf in the main room, but Derek should probably get on that soon. There were several stacks of books piled up along the wall in the back corner. There didn’t seem to be any one type. Fiction sat in the same pile as non-fiction, paperbacks on top of hard covers, and old worn in books beside books so new they may not have ever been read.

She spotted a copy of Pride and Prejudice at the bottom of one of the stacks. She gingerly pried it out from underneath. Stiles stood by her nerd cred reading and watching mostly sci-fi and fantasy, but sue her for liking Keira Knightley. She’d had to read the book in ninth grade, and she’d torn through it.

She opened the front cover, revealing the yellowing pages. She took hold of them, riffling through them and debating if she should pick a spot and read or start from the beginning or something else. Then she felt a jump in the pages. There was something inside it.

Stiles flipped through the pages more slowly to find it. It was a laminated bookmark, blue and green in an art nouveau style. At the bottom in the center was a gold capital letter L.

Stiles quickly shut the book. This wasn’t Derek’s. She carefully put the book back right where she’d found it at the bottom of the pile, avoiding doing any damage to it. She let out a breath and backed away. No more snooping.

With the books off limits, all she had were her own notes and print outs and maps. They’d figured out where the alphas were so they didn’t really need them anymore, but Stiles looked over them anyways. She kept glancing out of the window, watching the sun chart its way lower across the sky. She paused to get herself dinner out of Derek’s fridge, but she didn’t trust their sketchy looking microwave to not blow up and ate it cold.

She set her bowl in the sink and went back to the metal table. She flipped through the bank’s blueprints and all the information she’d gathered on it. She glanced over the list of materials used in the construction. One stuck out to her as odd.

Hecatolite.

She’d seen it before, and it was listed for use in the walls of the vault. She sifted through all the papers to find the one that Derek had originally written up for her. She found it, but it wasn’t one of the ones he’d marked for her to look into. Derek’s little note next to it only said scatters moonlight, but what did scattering moonlight do to werewolves?

She glanced out the window. The sun was setting, sending golden rays out over Beacon Hills. She glanced back down at the list of materials, searching for the amount that had been used on the project. She had to find a pencil and do the math to double check, but it was enough for all the walls to be made out of the stone.

Stiles’s stomach sank. She pulled out her phone, dialing Derek. It rang and rang, and she stood up to pace in front of the windows even though they didn’t face in the direction of the bank.

The call connected.

“This isn’t the time,” Derek said quietly. “We’re almost in, but we’re pretty sure the twins are somewhere on the roof.”

“Do you know what hecatolite does?” Stiles asked, matching his volume. “You only wrote scatters moonlight.”

“Yeah, it scatters the moonlight, doesn’t let it come through, but you need a ton of the stuff for it to have any effect on a werewolf,” he said.

“Like enough to cover every wall of a bank vault?” she asked.

Derek breathed out, phone mic crackling. “They haven’t felt a full moon, any moon, in months. It’s going to overwhelm them, supercharge them.”

“This is why they kept them alive,” Stiles said, her whole body going cold.

“They went through all this to kill me and Isaac?” he asked. “Just to make it darkly poetic or something?”

“No,” Stiles said, shaking her head. “It’s the other way around. I think those other packs, all those betas…they all got massacred because the alphas put them down themselves. They want you to kill them. They want you to think you have no choice, but to do it. That’s why they showed themselves now. Derek, the sun is going down. You don’t have much time.”

“We gotta go,” he said quickly. “Be ready for us.”

He hung up.

Stiles took a shaky breath. She put her phone back in her pocket. She picked up the bag of mountain ash and walked over to the circle she’d started, but hadn’t completed. She glanced behind herself as the sun sank below the buildings. Night was coming. She flicked on the lights and started pacing.

The daylight faded away, street lamps coming on down below. Stiles continued to pace. “Come on, come on, come on, Derek, come on.”

She walked the width of the apartment once. Twice. Three times.

The metal door slammed open.

“Go, go!” Isaac shouted, physically dragging a bedraggled Erica towards the circle. She was growling, teeth bared, and eyes bright gold. He shoved her into the circle then turned back towards the entrance.

Derek struggled to haul Boyd through the door. He also growled, eyes gold like Erica, but he seemed to be hunched protectively over the side that Derek wasn’t holding onto. Isaac walked right past Boyd. Instead, he took hold of some shorter, dark haired girl Stiles had never seen before.

“Who’s that?” Stiles asked, eying her warily as she growled at Isaac

“Hold on,” Derek said, having an easier time shoving Boyd into the apartment and towards the circle with Isaac taking care of the other girl. Derek pushed Boyd in, blocking off Erica’s exit before she could slip out of the circle.

Isaac pulled the other girl forward, and Derek guided her in more gently than he had Boyd.

“Close it,” he commanded, pulling his arms back.

Stiles took a breath, grabbed a handful of the ash, breathed out, and threw it down at the open gap on the floor. She opened her eyes, and the ash had completed a perfect ring and more.

“You separated them?” Derek asked.

A line of ash ran from the perimeter into the center then split in two to rejoin the larger circle again. The barrier had separated Erica, Boyd, and the new girl from each other into their own little sections.

“I figured we didn’t want them hurting each other either, right?” Stiles asked with a shrug.

Derek nodded. “No, it’s good. Good work.”

“Thanks,” she said. “You guys were really cutting it close.”

“Yeah, I never want to do that again,” Isaac said with a sigh, dropping down into one of the chairs that Stiles had moved to make way for the circle.

“Did the alphas follow you?” Stiles asked.

Boyd roared as he fully transformed, interrupting anyone from answering her. Stiles startled back a few steps. He charged at the barrier, but fully rebounded off it. He roared again and swiped at it with his good arm to no effect. The new girl tested the barrier more tentatively, sniffing and growling, reaching out with her claws instead of swiping at it. Erica paced, her growling like a low rumble as she glared out at the three people on the outside.

“No,” Derek said, loudly enough to be heard over the others. “I couldn't check as well as I wanted, but I didn’t hear anything as we left. If they wanted us to kill the betas, no need to follow, right?”

“No, not really,” she admitted. “So the girl?”

Derek got a strange look on his face as he looked at the girl. “Cora.”

Stiles waited, but he didn’t add anything else. She looked over to Isaac, but he shook his head. “Cora? Got a last name with that?”

Derek slowly looked away from Cora to face Stiles. “Hale. She’s my little sister.”

Stiles glanced at Isaac again, and he looked as confused as she felt. She turned back to Derek. “No offense, but didn’t your whole family die in that fire aside from you, Laura, and Peter?”

Derek nodded slowly, running a hand over his jaw. “Yeah, I don’t know how she made it out, but it has to be her. It’s her scent. I don’t forget scents.”

“Did she say anything about it?” Stiles asked.

“She was a little busy trying to tell us to save ourselves before the moon got too strong for chit chats,” Isaac said, sounding hollowed out.

No one said anything as the three trapped betas continued to growl in discontent with their confinement.

“Can we trust that?” Stiles asked, checking on Cora again. She was scenting the air, sniffing around again. Then she caught Stiles looking at her. She bared her teeth and growled.

“What do you mean can we trust it?” Derek asked, scowling.

“How do we know that she’s the same sister you remember?” she asked. “It’s been six years. We don’t know how she survived, or how the alphas got a hold of her.”

“They served her up to be slaughtered by her own brother,” Derek snapped.

Stiles scowled. “We still don’t know what happened with those twin alphas. What if they killed their alpha before all the other betas? How do you know the alphas weren’t setting her up for that?”

“She’s not Peter,” Derek said, walking towards her.

Stiles didn’t back down, lifting her chin. “How do you know that? Peter isn’t how he used to be. You said yourself you aren’t who you used to be. Why is she different? It’s been six years.”

“She’s a kid, not any older than you,” he said.

“And you want me for your emissary,” she said. “A thing I didn’t even know about a year ago. I’m asking you to at least consider the possibility. You’re an alpha now. This isn’t about just you. If you’re blindsided like with Peter, we’re all screwed.”

Derek clenched his jaw. He glanced over to Cora safely inside her barrier then slowly looked back to meet Stiles’ eyes. “Then accept the position.”

“What?” she asked.

“Someone should be suspicious of her, and you are. Take the position. Be the emissary,” he said.

Stiles couldn’t look away from his eyes, the hint of red in the irises. She needed him to take her seriously. She had gotten in too deep a long ago. “Alright. I accept.”

He nodded, tension dissipating from his face and the red fading from his eyes. “Good.”

“What, no welcome speech?” she asked.

He rolled his eyes, and she could look away again. “No, Stiles, there’s not a welcome speech for joining a pack.”

“Damn,” she said with a sigh.

“Yay, new pack member,” Isaac said unenthusiastically. “Can I shower?”

Isaac and Derek were both still covered in rock dust and who knew what else from breaking into the bank vault.

“Sure,” Derek said.

Isaac pushed himself up out of his chair, turning towards the stairs.

There was a clap.

They all froze. Even the betas trapped in their little bubbles quieted, shifting on their feet.

There was another clap, and footsteps approaching the entrance to the apartment. A woman appeared in the doorway, still giving them slow claps.

“Excellent work,” she said, lowering her hands with a patronizing smile. “I really thought you’d come out of this with a few more scrapes.”

Stiles stared at her. “Miss Blake?”

“Hello, Stiles. It’s so nice to see you outside of class,” she said, paying no mind as all the werewolves growled as she took a step forward.

Chapter Text

Miss Blake didn't look much like the bright eyed and bushy tailed femininely dressed teacher from that morning. She'd put her hair up in a simple braided crown rather than leave it hanging loose, and she'd wiped off her make up. She'd traded out her blouse for a plain black shirt and leather jacket, and her pencil skirt and heels for dark wash jeans and boots. She had definitely not come to play around or be messed with.

"You know her?" Derek asked, and both he and Isaac slowly moved forward, putting themselves between Blake and everyone else in the room.

"Barely," Stiles said, trying to keep her voice down. "She's the new English teacher who's class got attacked by birds."

Derek scowled.

"It's excellent work," Blake said, casually like this was a normal conversation. She walked further into the apartment as if she were oblivious to Derek and Isaac's growling. "Really, very impressive for a beginner, and I'm assuming no formal training."

Stiles followed the line of Blake's eyes to the barrier holding back the three betas. "Are you talking to me?"

"Yes, of course," Blake said, smiling at her. Then she turned to Derek. "I apologize for not introducing myself earlier and intruding on your territory, Hale, but I needed to be sure you'd survive so as to not waste my time."

She then sneered, her features twisting into something ugly and derisive. "The last alpha I approached is how we ended up with those brutes of a pair of twins."

"Okay, so we passed your test, now what?" Isaac asked, dropping the growling.

"That is the question," she said as if she were actually quoting Shakespeare. "Forgive me for being direct, but I'd prefer we be quick about it. I want to kill Deucalion. I don't have the power to do so as I am on my own. I have two options. I can either join a strong pack or, and I'd prefer not to, but it's my last resort, I can perform the five-fold knot sacrifice ritual."

Derek shook his head. "You're insane."

"No, I'm not," Blake said firmly and evenly. "You should understand me best of anyone. What happened to my pack was very similar to yours, but it was no hunters. It was Deucalion."

She practically spat his name as if it were venomous.

"And yet I didn't sacrifice fifteen people about it," Derek said.

Stiles needed to look this ritual up as soon as possible in case people started going missing.

"No, I heard your uncle took care of that," Blake said.

Both Derek and Isaac shifted forward, and Derek gave a warning growl.

"Oh, don't worry. I can't work with Peter Hale," Blake said. "He's been raised. He'll never be able to offer me the power I need, and he'd be too much trouble by far even if he did have it."

"But you want to work with us?" Derek asked.

"Of course," she said. "I understand that your pack isn't full strength right now, but the Hale alpha line is the oldest on the continent. Besides, Deucalion is patient. We have a year or two to make improvements. Longer if the rumors are true."

"What rumors?" Stiles asked.

Blake smiled kindly at her, but it looked wrong after all her threats. "About there being a true alpha here."

Derek scoffed. "You are definitely off your rocker, Ma'am."

"I didn't say I believed it," she pointed out. "Just that it matters that Deucalion does. He likes collecting interesting powers and abilities. A true alpha would be a crown jewel so to speak, but a Hale alpha is a pretty close second."

"What the hell is a true alpha?" Stiles asked.

"Superstitious bullshit," Derek said.

"They're so rare no one's really sure," Blake said to Stiles. "But they're powerful."

"If they were real, my family would have come across them at some point in history," Derek said. “They don’t exist.”

"Well, unless they were all in your family," she said. "True alphas are supposed to be able to fully transform into wolves."

Derek rolled his eyes. "Mom and Laura could both do that. It didn't give them any special powers."

"This is a philosophical debate," Blake said, making a dismissive hand gesture. "What matters is that the rumor will keep Deucalion here and patient which only serves our purpose."

"We haven't agreed to anything yet so don't go talking about our purpose," Derek told her.

Blake's eyes shifted over to Stiles, and she tried not to shiver.

"What about a little extra incentive then?" Blake asked as she turned back to Derek.

"Incentive?" Derek asked derisively.

"You don't have someone to train Stiles, do you?" she asked. "If you accept my proposal, I can train Stiles as we prepare to face Deucalion."

Stiles tried to catch Derek's eyes, but he refused to look back at her. 

"Why on earth should I trust a druid willing to use a five-fold knot sacrifice ritual to teach her?" he asked.

"You would keep important information from her?" Blake asked. "Just because she would learn it doesn't mean she's guaranteed to use it."

"I'm right here," Stiles said, waving her hand, but she was ignored.

"It's not about what she'd do. It's about what you'd do," he said. "And that didn't sound like a guarantee about her safety and well being."

"I've told you. I need a pack to face Deucalion as I'd prefer not to resort to the ritual," she said, treating Derek to a stern look. "Limiting her abilities would be limiting my own, and I can't risk that if I'm going to kill Deucalion."

Derek shook his head. "There are ways to hurt people that don't 'limit their abilities' as you put it."

Blake smiled, almost proudly. "Very well. If I'm accepted into your pack and to teach Stiles,  I will behave as is appropriate for a teacher in the state of California. I promise I will look out for her best interests as my student."

"Better," he said. "But not a slam dunk. This needs to be discussed as a pack."

"And how long will you make me wait?" Blake asked.

"Thought you said Deucalian was patient, what's the rush?"

"Deucalian is patient, but I am not," she said. "I'd prefer we move before the alphas."

"A week," Derek said, no room for argument. "Now, get out."

"Thank you," she said then cast one last look at Stiles. "I'll see you in class tomorrow."

With that, she turned and walked out of the apartment, no sign of fear at showing her back to two werewolves on a full moon. Stiles waited until they both stopped cocking their heads to listen to the stairs.

"Okay, so how are we feeling about the up front threatening? Good? Bad? Was the alpha paint job better?" Stiles asked as Derek went to shut the door.

"Stiles," Derek said, sounding tired as the door clanged shut. "Not now."

"I'm just saying, I feel bad about it. I feel better about cryptic messages by paint, and the fact she wants to teach me is both interesting and creepy," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "I should totally drop out of English, right?"

"If you can, but I'm not sure it'll do much. She knows who you are," Derek said as he sank into a chair. "Go shower, Isaac."

Isaac glanced around the room, looking from Derek to Stiles then spending a long moment on the growling, transformed betas. “Well, if we’re safe for the night,” he said then headed up the stairs.

Stiles doubled checked the mountain ash barrier even though Boyd was angrily swiping at it to no effect. Then she sighed and turned back to Derek. “You know we’re totally not going to be able to ignore her, right? Fifteen dead people is pretty bad.”

“And you’re not going to be one of them,” Derek said, shooting her a sharp look.

“That’s not the point, Derek,” she said. “Is she any worse than Peter?”

“Yes, Peter’s still weak, and we know him,” he said. “This Blake lady is a fully trained druid, and she’s out to kill people.”

“And Peter isn’t? Look, this might be our best option. She wants to kill Deucalion, we want to kill Deucalion, enemy of my enemy, let’s all kill Deucalion,” Stiles said, holding her hands apart then smooshing them together.

“The enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend either,” Derek said sourly.

“But look, she’s here, the more we know about her, the safer we’ll be so let’s just take advantage if she wants to teach me,” she said.

“That’s a huge risk,” Derek said.

“I’m already at risk of death from the alphas. It’s a little late for the concern.”

“No, Blake is extra risk. You shouldn’t be taking it.”

“Okay, so what other brilliant plan do you have to keep Blake or the alphas from killing anyone?” she asked, motioning for him to take the stage.

He glowered at her.

“She just wants a power boost. I say we give it to her then point her right at the alphas,” she said, making finger guns. “It’s the best way to get them taken care of, and we don’t even have to put ourselves in the line of fire. All I have to do is learn a little from her, and I can even try fact checking it if it makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t,” he said. “You’re not going to be able to find good sources off the internet, Stiles.”

“Worth a shot,” she said with a shrug. “Anyways, I need to head out because I’ve already been here too long. I can be back here bright and early to let the puppies out.”

“Alright, just text me when you get home,” he said, forcing himself out of the chair.

“I know how to drive,” she said.

“Full moon,” he argued as he walked her to the door. “Humor me.”

“Fine,” she said.

He pulled the door open.

“You know I can do that myself now, right?”

“Go home, Stiles.”

“Tell Isaac I said goodnight,” she called as she started down the stairs.

Only the clang of the door shutting answered her. She made her way out of the building and to her car. She drove herself home, texting Derek as she walked in the door.

“You’re cutting it awful close with curfew.”

Stiles jumped, banging into the front door. “Jesus, Dad, warn people before you sneak up on them.”

Her dad shot her a skeptical look from his spot in the arm chair that had a clear view of the TV and the door.

“Yeah, sorry, dinner went long,” Stiles said, shutting the door behind herself.

“Everything okay?” he asked, gesturing towards a free seat on the couch.

“Yeah, fine,” she said, darting as she crossed in front of the TV before sinking down onto the couch. “We just got busy talking. Why?”

“It’s a little late for you, and you look a little off,” he said.

She picked up her head to give him a look. “Thanks. Just what a girl wants to hear.”

He held up his hands. “You asked.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” she said. “I gotta get up early though.”

“What for?”

“I promised Lydia a ride to school with the whole deer thing, you know,” she said.

Her father seemed slightly suspicious, but he said, “It’s good you’re getting along better now and that you’re helping her out.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good,” she said then pushed herself up off the couch. “I better head to bed. Have a goodnight.”

“Sleep well,” her dad.

“Don’t stay up too late,” she warned him as she rounded his chair.

“I won’t,” he said, but he probably would.

She headed upstairs, getting ready for bed and making sure to set her alarm clock. She woke crazy early and grumpy. She rushed through her morning routine and headed out the door. Sunlight broke over the horizon as she drove towards Derek’s apartment. She parked and climbed the stairs, knocking on the door when she arrived.

The door slid open to reveal Derek sipping from a mug. “Morning.”

“Oh my god, is that coffee? Can I get some?” she asked.

“Only after you release all the betas,” he said. “I only have sugar and creamer.”

“You put creamer in your coffee?” she asked.

“Some, but Isaac puts coffee in his creamer.”

Stiles chuckled as she followed him into the room. Issac looked half awake with a bathrobe wrapped around him and his hair a bird’s nest. The other three betas were all passed out asleep on the ground. They looked even worse in the daylight, dirty and greasy.

“We’re all good to turn them loose?” Stiles asked quietly as she approached the barrier.

“Yeah, they’re fine now,” Derek said.

She knelt down and broke the line of mountain ash so it scattered apart. She stood back up and turned towards Derek. “You’re definitely going to need to vacuum that. Anyways, coffee?”

He nodded, walking over to the kitchen. She followed him. He grabbed down a yellow mug, another second hand find most likely since it didn’t match his burgundy mug in any way, and poured her a cup of coffee. There was enough left for at least one more cup, but someone would have to brew another pot if everyone wanted some.

“How do you take it?” he asked.

“Little creamer, lots of sugar,” she said.

He nodded then put in only two little spoonfuls of sugar.

“No, Derek, I said a lot of sugar,” she said.

“What do you need that much sugar for?” he asked.

“To rot my teeth,” she said, making grabby hands. “Either put more sugar in or let me do it. Don’t take all morning.”

He sighed and put in another spoonful. “Happy?”

“Barely, but that’s more than you can say.”

“You think I’m not happy?”

“Like in general or this morning?” she asked. “I can see an argument for this morning with all the success of saving everyone rushing to your head, but not in general.”

Derek took her yellow mug and held it away from her.

“No, my caffeine,” she pleaded. “I haven’t even put in the creamer yet.”

“Can you guys stop being weird?” Isaac called from the other room, but not too loudly. “They don’t need to wake up to that.”

“I’m not being weird,” Stiles said then held her hand out for the mug.

Derek sighed and handed it over to her.

“Thank you,” she said then poured in a splash of creamer. She slurped her coffee. “Still a little bitter, but we can move on.”

Stiles headed out back into the main room. The second girl, Derek’s sister, Cora, started moving. She squinted against the sunlight then sat up.

“Good morning,” Derek said quietly.

“Thought you were dead,” Cora said, her voice hoarse like she’d been screaming all night. “When I heard you were alive, this isn’t how I thought it would go.”

“Me neither,” he said.

Cora glanced warily between all three of them.

“Cora, this is Stiles and Isaac,” Derek said.

Stiles gave her a nod then took a big gulp of her coffee since it wasn’t even that hot.

“Yeah, Boyd and Erica told me about you and this new pack you’d tried to start,” Cora said.

Derek grimaced and didn’t say anything in response.

Erica groaned, rolling onto her side.

“We can talk more details later,” Derek told Cora.

Boyd sat upright without a sound.

“Where the hell is this?” Erica asked, voice just as messed up as Cora’s.

“Derek’s new apartment,” Isaac said.

She glanced around blearily. “It’s nicer than the train.”

“Thanks,” Derek said dryly.

“What’s with Stiles?” Boyd asked, turning to face her.

“What do you mean what’s with Stiles?” Stiles asked.

“He means why are you here,” Erica said as she sat up. “And where’s McCall?”

“Don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Don’t care.”

“Oh,” she said with a little laugh. “Have a little lover’s quarrel?”

Stiles cleared her throat. “More like a friendship break up.”

She took another gulp of coffee to avoid having to explain anything more.

“McCall’s the other one right?” Cora asked. “The one Uncle Peter turned that you’ve been having problems with.”

There was a harsher edge to her tone as she said ‘Uncle Peter,’ and Derek just ever so slightly flinched.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Isaac said. “He’s a dick, just in case they left that part out.”

“No, they told me. I thought Stiles was supposed to be one, too,” Cora said, looking Stiles over. “But this whole place smells like her.”

“I spent all summer looking for you so you could be a little nicer about it,” Stiles said, gesturing towards the maps still taped up to the glass.

She slurped her coffee as all three of the betas got up to take a look at the maps. Cora turned back to Derek.

“Did you make her the emissary?” she asked him.

“What’s an emissary?” Erica asked.

“Druids that join wolf packs to give them advice about dealing with humans and do the stuff we can’t,” Isaac said.

“Yes, Stiles is our emissary,” Derek answered Cora.

She looked disgusted. “What the hell? She’s a kid. What happened to Deaton?”

Derek clenched his jaw. “She’s older than you are, and she knows the situation here. We can’t trust Deaton. He’s working with McCall.”

“What do you mean? He was turned by one of us,” Cora argued. “He’s part of our pack.”

“No, he’s not,” Derek said, a growl underlining his words as his eyes flashed red. “He will never be part of this pack.”

Cora took a few steps forward, trying to get into Derek’s face. “No, you don’t just get to flash your eyes and make declarations like that. You’re not Mom.”

Stiles set her coffee on the rickety table, moving to Derek’s side and clenching her fists. “Hey, back up or I’ll put you in a new ash circle, and then you really won’t be able to do shit.”

The ash trickled through her fingers, collecting in her palm. Isaac stepped into place beside her.

Cora shot them an offended look then turned to Derek like she expected him to tell them to back down.

“Like I said, you don’t know the situation here,” Derek said. “McCall may have been turned by a Hale alpha, but he’s not one of us and neither is Deaton.”

“If Stiles abandoned him, he did something really fucked up,” Erica said as she got to her feet. “He’s not worth fighting over. Trust us.”

Boyd stood beside her and nodded.

“What the fuck is going on?” Cora asked, the anger gone from her voice. She sounded totally hollow and her hoarse voice close to breaking.

“We can explain, but it’s a lot to go over, and we need to get some other things done first,” Derek said. “Erica and Boyd need to get to the police so their families can be notified, and I’m sure everyone could do with showers and food.”

“I’m good with that,” Erica said, rubbing her dirty hands off on her equally dirty jeans.

Cora nodded slowly. “Yeah, okay. That sounds good.”

Stiles checked the time. They had maybe an hour before school started, and she’d be seeing Miss Blake again.

Chapter Text

Stiles left for school while the others were still getting ready, otherwise she would have offered Isaac a ride. She headed straight for the office to try and change her schedule, but they wouldn’t let her if she didn’t want to go down a level in English, which she didn’t.

“This sucks,” she complained as the bell rang, and she had to head to Miss Blake’s class.

She got to the class just to see a note on the door telling her to go to a different classroom. She huffed and made her way there. She wasn’t the only one late, but Lydia was already in her seat looking perfectly put together as always.

Stiles took her seat, facing the front of the classroom and Miss Blake. She was back in her teaching outfit, blouse and pencil skirt and heels and all. She barely even looked in Stiles’ direction all class as if nothing had happened. Stiles couldn’t stop herself from jiggling her leg and her pencil. She tried to get out of the class as quickly as possible, but a hand caught her arm.

She jumped, turning to see Lydia, “What?”

Lydia pulled her out of the class and down the hall. “What is with you? Why were you staring at Miss Blake like she might jump you?”

“She’s a druid,” Stiles said quietly as she checked the surrounding area, but Blake wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “And not one of the nice ones.”

Lydia frowned at her. “You don’t just mean some new age pagan, do you?”

“Unfortunately not,” she said. “She’s not so into nature and smoothies, more like human sacrifice and killing werewolves.”

“Killing werewolves?” Lydia asked. “Sounds like you would be in the clear then, not so sure about everyone else.”

“Did you not hear the human sacrifice part? Besides, she only wants to kill one in particular, the leader of the alpha pack. She’s using teaching me to barter her way into Derek’s pack for a power up.”

She narrowed her eyes at Stiles. “How exactly do you know all this?”

“She showed up last night after we got Erica, Boyd, and Derek’s sister Cora away safe from the alphas.”

Lydia stopped walking and treated Stiles to an expression like she thought she was extra stupid. “You didn’t want to tell me any of this earlier?”

“Didn’t get a chance. I was trying to get switched out of this class away from the crazy, evil druid,” Stiles said, waving a hand back towards the classroom, “but they wouldn’t let me.”

“Well, she doesn’t want to kill you which is what’s important,” Lydia said then flounced off to her next classroom.

“Sure,” Stiles said, holding up her hands uselessly. “We’ll just not be concerned at all about what she could possibly try teaching me.”

She stalked off to her next class. She survived as best she could with boredom setting from the lack of suicidal birds and research to find Boyd and Erica. Now she had to actually pay attention in class and try not to imagine what exactly had gone on with bringing Erica and Boyd to the police and to their families.

After class, she had field hockey practice. Isaac caught her on the way to the locker room to get changed.

“Hey, after practice, we gotta go to Derek’s,” he said.

“We do?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, like it was obvious. “We’ve got to talk about, you know, everything.”

“Oh, this is a thing we’re gonna actually keep doing? Talking and sharing information?” she asked. “Okay, I’m very into that, I’m totally down. I’ll see you after practice.”

“Okay, good, see you,” he said, giving her a friendly pat on the shoulder before heading to the boy’s locker room with the other cross country guys.

Stiles got ready for practice and headed out to the field with her teammates. Her dribbling continued to be her Achilles’ heel, but Sarah was nice enough to offer her tips and even practice with her a little between the team drills.

“Would you want to meet up Saturday to practice?” Sarah asked Stiles after practice ended with coach telling them all about their good work.

“Ye—wait, my friend’s birthday party is then, what about Sunday?” Stiles asked. 

“I can’t make Saturday either,” another of their teammates said.

“Okay, got it, we’ll do Sunday this time,” Sarah said.

“Cool, see you then, I guess,” Stiles said, heading for her jeep, but still feeling a little mystified about what had happened. People other than Scott and werewolves and occasionally Heather had invited her to do shit. It was only practice, but still, she practically had a full social calendar for the weekend by her standards.

She got a text from her father that he’d be late for dinner as she headed to her Jeep. She tucked her phone away and drove to Derek’s. She pulled open the door to Derek’s loft and found everyone there except for Isaac.

“Where’s Isaac?” she asked, looking around the dead silent and completely tense room.

“Not here yet,” Derek said from where he stood on his own in the middle of the room. “He should be here soon.”

Cora sat alone in the second hand arm chair. She looked like she might have been crying with red, puffy eyes, but was trying to pretend she wasn’t by glaring at everything. Erica and Boyd sat close to each other on the couch. Boyd looked the same as he always did, unimpressed and quiet. Erica, however, had gone back to her old look before she’d been bit. She had on no make up, her hair pulled back in a low pony, and a baggy shirt over ill-fitting jeans.

“Hey,” Erica said, giving her an acknowledging nod.

“Hey,” Stiles said back. “I get waiting for Isaac to talk, but do I need to wait for him to get food? I just got out of practice, and I’m starving.”

“No, go eat,” Derek said, gesturing towards the kitchen.

“Anyone else want something?” Stiles asked as she headed over, as if this were all normal or she was talking to her dad. “No? Okay, more for me.”

She checked the fridge first, and of course no leftovers because why would there be leftovers when wolves were around? Then she checked the cabinets and found pistachios and protein bars. She grabbed one of the bars and the bag of nuts and headed to the living room. She paused, looking over the seating situation. Sitting on the couch would put her close to Cora who might try to kill her, and sitting on the table would probably break the thing. Not that it didn’t deserve an undignified end, but she didn’t want splinters in her butt.

So she did the next best thing and just sat straight on the floor so they were somewhat in a circle.

Derek sighed. “Stiles, what are you doing?”

“Sitting down and eating pistachios,” she said, opening up the protein bar first. “You want some?”

“No, I don’t want pistachios,” he said.

She shrugged, chowing down on the bar. She could have used some water, but she’d left her gym bag down in her Jeep. She finished the bar and started in on the pistachios, cracking open the shells. She glanced up. Everyone was looking at her.

“What?” she asked. “I asked if you guys wanted anything and you didn’t say anything.”

Boyd rolled his eyes, and Erica offered something that was almost a smile. Cora glowered at her like she was trying to enter a scowling competition with Derek. She’d lose, but still.

“Isaac’s coming up,” Derek said.

“Got it,” Stiles said, cracking open another pistachio and setting the shells with the wrapper to throw out later.

A few moments later, Isaac entered the apartment. “Oh, pistachios.”

“Yeah, you want some?” Stiles asked, holding up the bag.

“Sure,” he said, tossing down his back pack and gym bag to sit down on the ground next to Stiles. He grabbed a handful then asked, “What’d I miss?”

Derek sighed again. “Okay, Erica and Boyd have been to the police station. They were both reported found to their families and questioned about their disappearance.”

“We said we ran away,” Erica said. “Which is true, but it’s also kinda hard to explain getting caught by hunters or alpha packs so.”

“Meant less questioning, too,” Boyd said.

“So you’ve seen your families, and they let you out again?” Stiles asked. “No offense.”

“My mom thinks I’m sleeping,” Erica said.

“At like five?” she asked, checking the time on her phone.

“Yeah, said I was tired,” she said with a nod.

Stiles looked to Boyd for his answers, but he just raised his eyebrows.

“Okay, and Cora?” Stiles asked.

“It’s a mess,” Cora said.

“Short story, we’re blaming a miscommunication after all the deaths,” Derek said. “Relatives in South America took custody thinking Laura was dead, but didn’t report it correctly. Long story, it’s going to be a while to try and get Cora’s records to get her enrolled in school again.”

“Wait, South America?” Stiles asked.

Cora responded to her sharply, but not in English.

“I don’t speak Portuguese,” Stiles said.

Cora rolled her eyes.

“Why would you want to get enrolled in school?” Isaac asked before popping a pistachio in his mouth.

“I’m not getting home schooled and letting Derek teach me math,” Cora said.

“Screw you, I passed calculus,” Derek said. “I just sucked at proofs in geometry.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Besides, I need to blend in, be normal or whatever. Homeschooling just makes you weirder.”

Her attitude was spot on for an annoying little sister, but Stiles preferred to keep her throat than say that out loud to her.

“Got it, so we’ve got Cora working on enrolling, are Erica and Boyd all set for school?” Stiles asked.

“I don’t think I’m ever set for school,” Erica said, using her fingers to make air quotes on set. “But yeah, we’re good to go back.”

“Next step is the whole Blake situation then?” Stiles asked.

“Who’s Blake?” Boyd asked.

“Evil English teacher,” Isaac said. “You were a little wolfed out when she showed up.”

Boyd shot him an unimpressed look.

“She’s a druid, a former emissary,” Derek said, arms crossed as he spoke. “Deucalion took out her pack so she wants revenge, but she needs more power to do it.”

“So she wants to join the Hales,” Cora said bitterly.

“Or she’ll use the five-fold knot sacrifice ritual,” Derek said.

“Is that the one where you kill a bunch of people for power?” she asked.

“Fifteen, to be exact.”

“Great, just what this town needs,” Erica said, looking unimpressed and sounding tired.

“She also offered to teach me emissary stuff,” Stiles said.

“There’s no way she can be allowed to teach you anything if that’s what she’s willing to do,” Cora said.

“Or I guess I could go learn from Deaton then,” she said.

“No,” Derek said, swiftly and sternly.

“I wasn’t gonna,” Stiles said, holding up her hands.

Derek shook his head then turned to the group. “Ideally, we let Blake deal with the alpha pick so we don’t have to risk anything ourselves, but even if we have to work with her or this all falls through, we’ll need a stronger pack to fight the alphas. Right now, you three aren’t even in the pack. Your choice to leave severed the bonds between us.”

Boyd and Erica shared a look.

Cora scowled. “I didn’t choose. I had to survive. I didn’t know you were even alive.”

“You know the reasoning doesn’t matter in cases like this,” Derek told her then turned towards Boyd and Erica. “The strength of the pack lies in its bonds. I focused on your control when you first turned, and you’ll need to keep working on that especially after this last full moon, but because we’re trying to boost a druid, you have to work on your relationships with all of us in order to rejoin.”

Cora rolled her eyes. “We get it, Derek.”

“I don’t,” Erica said with a frown. “What do you mean work on our relationships? Go to couples counseling?”

“No, I mean become friends, get to know us better,” Derek said. “You three had time together in the vault, but Cora has never spent any time with Isaac or Stiles, and Stiles…didn’t always see eye to eye with us before.”

“Very diplomatic,” Stiles said, giving Derek a thumbs up.

Derek gave her a flat look. “As I was saying, we haven’t all really gotten to know each other individually or as a group, but if you want to join our pack, that’s what you’ll have to do.”

“Yeah, we got it, we’ll do it,” Cora said as if it was something she’d heard a million times before. Then she looked expectantly over to Erica and Boyd, but they didn’t meet her eyes.

Erica clenched her hands together then shared a look with Boyd. He nodded to her.

“We’ll think about it,” Erica said quietly.

Cora frowned.

“That’s fine,” Derek said. “We’ll figure out something else out for you if we have to.”

There was a moment of silence.

“What happened to Jackson?” Boyd asked.

“That was the kanima or whatever guy, right?” Cora asked.

“Wow, you’re so lucky you never met him,” Stiles said, and Isaac tried to muffle a laugh.

“Stiles,” Derek said.

“Okay, shutting up,” she said, cracking another pistachio and eating it.

“Yes, that’s him,” Derek said. “He reverted to a proper werewolf, but his family moved to London so I told him how to find a new pack there that will hopefully suit him better.”

“Feels anticlimactic,” Erica said.

“It really wasn’t in the moment,” Stiles said then had to not think about Jackson being butt naked in her Jeep’s headlights. Then her phone buzzed. She pulled it out to check the message. “Oh, I gotta get going.”

“Not gonna stay for dinner?” Isaac asked.

“Nope, gotta meet my dad,” she said, gathering up her shells and wrapper. She dunked it all the in the nearest trashcan. “I guess I’ll see at least some of you tomorrow at school.”

“We should go, too,” Erica said, getting to her feet.

“See you,” Boyd said, standing and heading for the door.

Stiles grabbed her things, following Erica and Boyd towards the exit. She looked back, trying to get Derek to come over using only her eyes. 

Derek sighed, uncrossing his arms to join her. She slowed as Erica and Boyd headed down the stairs. Then she pulled the door closed behind Derek, grabbing his arm to lead him away from it. She wasn’t quite sure even this would be enough.

“You don’t find the South America thing suspicious?” Stiles asked as quietly as she could.

Derek shook his head, leaning in towards her to speak quietly. She still had to turn her head to hear him. She stood close enough to catch some kind of scent coming from him. It was kinda nice, actually.  

“No, we have relatives in Brazil, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen any of them.”

“Seriously?” she asked.

“Yeah, a cousin a generation ago moved there, decided to stay, had his own family and pack so,” he said with a shrug. “Mom used to keep in contact, but that was forever ago.”

“Can you at least let me check whatever paperwork comes through is real?” Stiles asked.

“You don’t think the school will check?”

“Please, for me?” she asked, putting a hand over her heart.

He huffed, something that could have almost been a laugh if they were talking any louder. “Alright. You can look so long as you don’t destroy anything.”

“I would ne—,”

He gave her a stern look.

“Deal,” she said, grinning at him.

“Don’t you need to get going?” he asked.

“Yes, bye,” she said, pulling away and returning to a more normal volume.

She sped down the stairs eventually catching up to Boyd and Erica as they walked down at a normal pace. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Erica said.

“You guys are seriously going to consider the offer, right?” Stiles asked. “Things are different now, promise.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Erica said, searching Stiles’s face as she came to a stop. “Do you really think this can work? That we can all just be friends after everything?”

Stiles shrugged. “We’re all loner, misfit types, and some of us even come with, you know, dead relatives. What could possibly go wrong when we have so much in common?”

“Huh,” Erica said.

“What?”

“Guess that explains why Scott never got along with any of us,” she said. “He tries so hard not to be the loner, misfit type.”

Stiles blinked. “He gets along with me.”

Erica tilted her head. “Does he?”

Stiles swallowed. “You put on the popular girl costume, too, you know.”

“But I knew it was a costume,” she said. “I looked the part, but I know what I really am.”

“A werewolf,” she said.

A smile flickered across her face. “A freak. Becoming a werewolf just changed which kind I was.”

Stiles frowned.

“Let’s go,” Boyd said, walking down.

Stiles let them get ahead of her, waiting to go down and out to her Jeep. She drove herself home. She got back to her dad already having the table set.

“Sorry, I’m late,” she said as she sat down with him.

“Good news,” her dad said with a grin. “Your classmates Erica and Boyd are back.”

Stiles put on as big of a grin as she could. “That’s great.”

“I can’t talk details of course, but their families were so relieved,” her dad said.

“I’m sure,” she said. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

“Alright, alright,” he said. “Just tell me how school and practice went.”

She did.

English class continued to be weird for the rest of the week. She kept waiting for Miss Blake to say something weird and potentially threatening to her. Maybe even just something about druids and magic, but she never did. Then again, Stiles did make sure to leave the class as fast as she could and book it to her next one.

She didn’t catch sight of Erica or Boyd outside of lunch, and Boyd had reclaimed his table to sit totally alone. Erica was back in her popular girl costume, but she only ever bought a drink before leaving the cafeteria to eat somewhere else. Stiles left them alone to make their decisions and joined her field hockey teammates because that was surprisingly still going well. Her conditioning was still holding up, and she actually got included in conversations with her teammates. It just kinda sucked that part of the conversation was teammates asking her if she broke up with Scott and was now dating Isaac when she’d never dated either of them.

Her father also made it home in time for dinner, and the night before Heather’s party, Stiles showed him the necklace she’d picked up to give to Heather between practice and dinner.

“It’s very pretty,” he told her.

“You barely even looked at it,” she complained.

“No, I did, it’s a little flower on a chain,” he said. “It’s nice.”

“What kind of flower?”

“A daffodil?”

“Seriously, Dad?” she asked. “It’s a lily.”

“I’m not a botanist,” he said. “So take it with a grain of salt. I think it’s a very nice gift.”

“Fine,” she said, and actually managed to remember to wrap it properly before the party.

Chapter Text

Stiles couldn’t sit still the whole of Saturday, and nearly turned around as she left for the party. “Alright, whatever, we’re doing this,” she said to herself as she kept driving. “You don’t need Scott or anyone else to come with you to your own friend’s party.”

She nodded, and drove herself to Heather’s house. She rang the doorbell, and the door opened, revealing Heather in a little dress and wedges with her hair done up rather than the t-shirt and jeans Stiles had thrown on.

“Stiles, you’re here!” Heather practically shouted, enthusiastically hugging Stiles.

“Hi,” Stiles said, awkwardly hugging her back.

“It’s so good to see you again,” she said, looking Stiles over from head to toe. “You grew your hair out. It looks good.”

“Thanks,” she said, running her fingers through her own hair. “Uh, hey, where do the gifts go?”

She held up the little wrapped jewelry box.

“Oh, just on the coffee table, and you can grab something to drink in the kitchen,” she said, gesturing first to her living room and then down the hall to the kitchen.

“Thanks,” Stiles said and headed deeper into the house.

The doorbell rang again as she set the present down. She grabbed herself a coke then returned to the living room where the other guests were. Pizzas were set out near the pile of gifts, and that just looked like a disaster waiting to happen, but Stiles didn’t see a better spot for either one.

She grabbed some pizza and tried to talk to Heather’s friends from her high school. They only said a few words to Stiles before moving on and talking about teachers they all knew and Stiles had never heard of.

“Everyone’s here,” Heather announced after a while. “I’m gonna grab a drink and be right back.”

She turned up the music when she returned, and a few people moved the furniture back to start dancing.

“Budge over,” Heather said to Stiles.

Stiles moved over as much as she could on the couch to give Heather some room, but Heather didn’t seem interested as she sat down nearly on Stiles’s lap. Heather started playing ‘translator’ for her, telling her what the teachers and other students were like. She laughed loudly whenever Stiles cracked a joke about any of her stories, leaning into Stiles’s side as she did so.

After a while, Heather put her hand on Stiles’s thigh as she put her mouth near her ear and said, “Hey, there’s something I want to ask you about.”

“What is it?” Stiles asked, moving towards her.

“Not here,” she said, standing up and motioning for Stiles to follow.

Stiles did, and when Heather set aside her soda on a side table, Stiles quickly chugged the last of hers and set it aside, too. She followed her up the stairs to her bedroom. It hadn’t changed much from the last time she’d been up. She still had a floral duvet cover and lacy white curtains and plain blinds and her little writing desk for her computer. The only new additions were new posters of musicians for Adele, Lady Gaga, and Kesha.

“Alright, so what is it you wanted to talk about?” Stiles asked. Maybe this time it wouldn’t have anything to do with werewolves or druids or kanima or whatever the hell else happened around here.

Heather took in a deep breath and clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “This is gonna sound a little weird because we’ve been friends for a long time, but you’re still into girls, right?”

Stiles blinked. This could not be where this was going. “Yeah, still into girls.”

“Well,” she said, a teasing grin coming to her face as she stepped in towards Stiles. “It’s my birthday, and I don’t wanna be a virgin any longer so I thought maybe that could be my birthday gift.”

“Being a virgin?” Stiles asked.

Heather laughed. “No, sex.”

“With,” she gestured to herself. “With me? Not a guy?”

“No,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not risking pregnancy to test out sex. No thanks.”

“That’s a really good point,” she said.

“So?” she asked, putting her hands on Stiles’s shoulders. “Would you be okay with that?”

“Yeah, would I be okay with that? I believe so, yeah, um,” she babbled, trying to set her hands on the right spot on Heather’s waist. “Okay, no, yeah, very...”

Heather gave her an encouraging nod.

“Wait, do we need protection still?” she asked. “Cause I can’t get you pregnant.”

She laughed. “I don’t know. Have you slept with anyone yet?”

“Uh, no, I haven’t really, uh, done that yet,” she said then cleared her throat.

“Then I think we’re safe,” Heather said then pressed her lips against Stiles’s.

Stiles froze.

“Well, come on, kiss back,” Heather teased.

“Yeah, okay,” Stiles said, shaking her head before doing her best to return her kiss

Heather started pulling up Stiles’s shirt, and they broke apart to get it off over her head.

“Still going around in sports bras?” Heather asked, tossing aside Stiles’s shirt and kicking off her wedges so she was shorter than Stiles.

“Uh, yeah,” Stiles said, glancing down at her black Nike bra. “Sorry, I didn’t know we were doing this.”

“It’s okay,” she said. Then she tilted her head. “Did you start working out?”

“Kinda,” Stiles said. “I actually made the field hockey team this year. Turns out conditioning works. Who knew, right?”

Heather giggled. “Not that I’m not happy for your sports career, but you wanna test out if the conditioning also works on me?”

Stiles couldn’t stop a little bubble of a laugh. “That was a really bad come on.”

“Whatever, just finish getting undressed,” Heather said, waving a hand at her like that would make her go faster before unzipping her own dress.

Stiles kicked off her shoes and peeled off her jeans and socks. Heather had already started on her bra.

“Underwear, too,” Heather said.

“Yeah, I got it,” Stiles said, taking a breath and then just pulling off her bra and panties. Heather had seen her before so really, what was the issue?

“Okay, you actually look good all athletic now,” Heather said, coming up to Stiles’s side and running her fingers up her arm. “Ready?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Stiles babbled as Heather guided her towards her bed.

Stiles got home a little late, but her father let it slide. When he asked how Heather was, she’d squeaked out she was good then fled up to her room.

She couldn’t sit on it for long. The next day, mere moments after waking up, she called Lydia.

“Stiles—,”

“You’ve had sex before, right?” Stiles interrupted. “Are you supposed to feel different after you have it?”

“Why are you asking me this?” Lydia asked, sounding put upon.

“Who else am I supposed to ask?” Stiles asked. “Scott’s a virgin even if we were talking. My Dad? Not a chance in hell.”

Lydia sighed long and loud into the phone. “No, you don’t really feel any different. Sex is just an experience. I guess it can be life changing for people just like any other experience, but it doesn’t actually change you. Just don’t be stupid about it and get pregnant or something, obviously.”

“Uh, no, I’m in the clear on that,” she said. “I slept with a girl.”

“Huh,” Lydia said with what almost sounded like interest.

“What?” Stiles asked defensively.

“I thought you might be into big, beardy types,” Lydia said.

“Big, beardy—why would you even think that?” Stiles asked. “And I can be into more than one thing. That’s what being bi is all about.”

“Goodbye, Stiles,” Lydia said then hung up.

“Rude,” she said, but set her phone aside then flopped back on her bed.

She’d had sex, but she was still the same Stiles she ever was.

Supposedly.

She spent the rest of the morning trying to research the five-fold knot sacrifice ritual since she hadn’t made much progress on it earlier then went out to meet her teammate’s at Sarah’s house with all her gear. She swore everyone was going to be able to tell what she’d done with Heather. She nearly bit her tongue after saying hi to Sarah, attempting not to blurt out something weird about the night before. Maybe an apology.

Thankfully, she shut up and smiled just in time for Sarah not to shoot her any looks. She led Stiles through the house to the backyard, and Stiles told herself to act totally normal. A few of her other teammates had arrived before her, set up around a goal in the back corner of the yard.

“Hey,” they called out.

“We’ve got a few more people coming, but feel free to warm up or whatever,” Sarah said, heading back towards the door.

Stiles got set up, and passed the ball back and forth with Lilly until they were all assembled. It wasn’t really like practice with coach. Like yeah, they dribbled and did passes and practiced shots, but everyone took their time and talked through everything. Stiles ended up in a long side bar conversation with Maddie about Star Wars which she’d never done with Scott because he’d never even seen it no matter how many times she’d told him to. The best part was definitely all the little trick shots and slick moves the other girls taught her. Stiles categorically was not good at them, nearly messing them all up, but she at least knew what the steps were to practice them.

She headed back home sweaty, but not very tired. She showered quickly to be able to eat with her dad, and told him all about her practice with her teammates.

Her dad smiled at her. “Good. I’m glad you’re getting along better with your teammates and learning some new things. All your hard work is paying off. You should keep it up. I’m proud of you.”

Stiles tried not to beam too hard. She was seventeen not twelve. She didn’t need her dad’s approval for what she did. “Thanks.”

“Just make sure you stay on top of your school work and applications,” he said.

“I’ll get it narrowed down to five school this week, how’s that?” Stiles asked.

“Only five?” he asked, squinting at her.

“Well, I’m not going out of state so that’s a no for most schools already,” she said with a shrug.

“You shouldn’t limit yourself,” he said.

“I’m not, I’m doing what I want,” she said. “I want to stay in California.”

But also out of state tuition was crazy. A sheriff’s salary wasn’t anything to scoff at, but a ten thousand dollar difference wasn’t nothing either.

“Alright, if that’s what you want,” he said, holding up his hands.

“It is,” she said then grinned. “We’ve got the best weather.”

And the wolf pack she was now the emissary of. 

After dinner, Stiles had to rush through all the homework she’d forgotten about before hand, and when she finished it was too late to start on any college applications. She left it for the moment and headed to bed.

Stiles tried to show up to school late to avoid her English class, except her dad was home in the morning to mush her out the door and off to school. She grumbled her entire drive there. She grabbed her backpack and hopped out of her Jeep and slammed the door shut. She paused before turning towards the building.

On the other side of the lot sat a very familiar Camaro.

Stiles took the steps two at a time. It honestly sucked she didn’t have super sniffing powers. She could use them right now as she tried to spot dark hair or a leather jacket in the school hallways. She rolled the dice and walked in the opposite direction of her English class.

She made her way to the school’s office as the bell rang for first period. She peeked into the windows and finally spotted Derek with Cora at his side. Derek nodded at whatever the secretary said then turned away from the desk. He frowned as he caught sight of Stiles. Cora followed his gaze then scowled and crossed her arms.

Stiles backed up as they came towards the door.

“What are you doing here, Stiles?” Derek asked as he opened it. Both he and Cora had the little visitor name tags stuck on their shirts.

“I saw the Camaro in the lot and wanted to make sure everything was okay,” Stiles said. “Usually someone has to be dead or dying for you to show up here.”

“Not this time,” Derek said. “I’m just working on getting Cora enrolled in school.”

“How’s that going?” she asked.

Cora glared at her.

“Horrible,” Derek answered. “Go to class, Stiles.”

“I’d really prefer not to,” Stiles said. “My first class is with Blake so.”

Derek raised his eyebrows at her. “Go to class.”

Stiles huffed. “Shouldn’t I be avoiding her?”

“You couldn’t get out of her class so act like everything is normal for now,” Derek said. “Shouldn’t you know about how not to escalate situations as the sheriff’s kid?”

“That’s hilarious,” she said. “I’m pretty sure cops usually escalate situations, not calm them down.”

“Goodbye, Stiles,” Derek said, motioning for Cora to go ahead of him.

She shot Stiles a scathing look as she passed, but went without argument.

“Bye,” Stiles said and waved lamely as Derek left without looking back.

She sighed and headed to class.

Blake gave her an official warning for being late, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary from any other teacher who didn’t like it when Stiles was late. She did her best to pay attention to class, but ended up reading ahead as Blake lectured.

“What were you late for?” Lydia asked as she caught up to Stiles on their way out from class.

“Nothing,” she said. “I spotted Derek’s Camaro and found him in the school’s office. He’s trying to get Cora enrolled, and that’s it.”

Lydia pouted.

“Are you mad something dangerous isn’t happening?” Stiles asked. “I thought it was a good thing no one was bleeding or dying.”

“It is,” Lydia said sourly as she plodded off towards her next class. “But I thought it might be something important.”

“Education isn’t important?” she asked, keeping up with her.

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Of course it is, but it’s not important on the whole werewolf alpha pack whatever the hell Blake is front.”

“Druid,” Stiles said. “Pretty sure she’s still just a normal, old druid.”

“Whatever,” she said, waving her off. “I’ll see you later.”

“Bye,” she said then headed off to her own class.

It was starting to feel a little weird without Scott in class. They used to have a few together, but after needing to take summer classes, he was no longer in any of her classes. It was probably for the best given the current state of their relationship, but her main excuse to not pay attention as well as favorite distraction was gone. She had to come up with other things to entertain herself through dry, slow lectures.

If she ended up with a bunch of triskele’s in the margin’s of her notebooks, that wasn’t anybody’s business but her own.

After class, she was back to field hockey practice. Her passes weren’t magically amazing after one extra practice session at Sarah’s, but she did chat more with the teammates who had come so that was something. Coach reminded them about their first game on Friday before they all headed out.

Stiles drove herself home, finding a text from her dad about getting back a little late, but not too late for dinner.

Then she got a text from Isaac. Hey are you coming over for dinner? Feel like we could use another person around to even things out

Stiles switched back over to her chat with her dad. She could go for a little bit. She didn’t have to eat anything while she was there.

Coming she texted Isaac.

She returned to her Jeep, and drove towards Derek’s. She fiddled with the radio, trying to find some hype music for what was sure to be a great dinner conversation. She parked outside the building and took the stairs two at a time since she couldn’t stay all that long.

She pulled the metal door open then heard Cora shouting, “Aren’t you going to do something?”

Stiles paused in the doorway. She half turned back towards the stairs, but there was no way she could make a clean get away. They had to have heard her. Maybe it was best to not act like a total eavesdropper.

She peaked into the apartment, but no one was in the main room.

“I am doing something,” Derek said, sounding tired.

“I mean like going after them, not trying to sign me up for school!”

“You’re a minor, you need to go to school—,”

“That’s just paperwork,” she snapped. “We need to fight them!”

“We’re working on it,” he said.

“Yeah, I can really see that,” she said sarcastically then scoffed. “I came back for this?”

“Cora,” he said, maybe a little exasperated.

“I can't believe I got my ass thrown in a vault for three months for you,” she said spitefully. “All those rumors I heard, a powerful new alpha, one of the Hales! Building a pack! Do you know how long I waited to hear something like that? Do you have any idea how it felt to find out you were alive?”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Derek said, voice still calm and even.

“You’re supposed to be an alpha, but you’re not like mom at all!”

Cora darted out of the kitchen, crossing the main room to dash up the stairs. A moment later, the sound of a door slamming came from the upper level.

Stiles waited for anything more then cleared her throat. “Uh, hello?”

Derek walked out of the kitchen, arms crossed but not especially scowly. “What are you doing here, Stiles?”

“Isaac texted me,” she said. “I really didn’t mean to hear anything. I can totally forget all about it and pretend it didn’t happen.”

“You’re not going to forget it,” Derek said, lowering his arms.

“No, probably not,” she said. She took a breath then said, “For what it’s worth, I don’t think what she said about your mom was fair. She had a whole pack and family and a real emissary and everything, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t done anything. You found Erica and Boyd.”

“They let us find them,” Derek said.

“You put in the work and got them out,” she tried.

Derek lowered his head then looked up at her, “You and Isaac might have helped.”

“Is that a compliment?” she asked, putting a hand to her chest. “Is it just me or has that been happening more lately? Is this what being a pack’s actually like?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “It’s just you.”

There were light footsteps on the stairs, and Isaac appeared and not Cora. He joined them and quietly said, “Maybe if we all go now, we can go get dinner in peace while she hides out there.”

Stiles put a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle her giggles.

“No, we’re not doing that,” Derek said. “Don’t be mean to her.”

“She’s being mean to everyone,” he argued.

“She’s gone through a tough time.”

“I didn’t have the nicest of years either.”

“I can’t go for dinner anyways,” Stiles interrupted, using her phone to check the clock. “Dad’s gonna be back in time to eat.”

“What did you come here for then?” Derek asked.

“Isaac asked,” she said, tucking her phone away. “That’s the job, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” Isaac said with a nod.

Derek sighed before turning to her with something that looked like smile. “If that’s what you want to call it, sure.”

Stiles smiled back.