Chapter Text
When Derek pulls into the Beacon Hills Long Term Residential Home, Stiles finally gives into the gathering storm that’s been growing in his gut and tells Scott, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“What?” Scott says in response.
Stiles just sighs. “Never mind.”
After all, it’s not like he can really explain why he has a Bad Feeling about walking into the Beacon Hills Long Term Residential Home. And especially not to Scott who is, as always, both blissfully unaware of pop culture and woefully lacking in self-preservation instincts.
For once, though, Scott persists. He leans in close and asks, “Is this, like, one of those omega things?”
“Seriously, Scott? For one thing, not everything is an ‘omega thing’ and secondly, there’s no need to use that patronizing tone of – ”
“Shut up,” Derek growls from the front, where he’s been leading the charge down the cold, clinical white hallways. Stiles has let him lead, mostly because it’s incredibly disorienting to see that the long term home hasn’t changed a whit and partially because he has no desire to reveal why he knew exactly where they going the second Derek turned down the road.
Just because Derek wears his trauma literally on his sleeves – Stiles will be cleaning ash out of his Jeep for weeks – doesn’t mean Stiles has to.
Scott awkwardly pats Stiles on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll be in and out in a flash.”
And yep, that’s Patented 100% Scott McCall. Always optimistic, even when they’re surrounded by dying people.
Literally, as it turns out, because Derek takes them into one of the rooms.
“What are we doing here?” Scott asks.
“Dude,” Stiles hisses, because he’s not a werewolf and even he can realize that there’s someone in the room with them. The person might not be moving, but he’s definitely there.
“Oh,” Scott says. “Uh, who is he?”
“My uncle,” Derek says, and Stiles’s already churning gut levels up like a dial being turned on a blender. “Peter Hale.”
Because, yeah, everyone knows the Hale House went up in flames. Everyone knows that almost all the Hales died a horrible death in the fire. Everyone knows that there was only one survivor.
But it turns out that knowing that Peter Hale was burned alive is a little different from seeing a Peter Hale who was burned alive.
There are horrible burns on half of his face, for starters. His body looks thin and frail, even though the nurses have wrapped him in layers and robes. And his eyes – his eyes are vacant, like no one is home. Like his mind went away during the fire, and never quite came back.
“Is he . . . like you?” Scott asks awkwardly into the silence.
Derek’s face twists. He looks away from his uncle, like he can’t bear to look at him. Guilt, Stiles would bet; Derek’s got enough of it to fill the whole room, and still have extra for the hallway.
“He was,” Derek says roughly. “Now, he’s barely even human. Six years ago, my sister and I were at school, and our house caught fire. Eleven people were trapped inside. He was the only survivor.”
One out of eleven – Stiles’s mind automatically does the math. A survival rate of nine percent. Even for humans, that would be tragic. For werewolves, who Stiles has seen up close and personal can heal a literal bullet in their arm, it must be horrific beyond belief. Especially since Peter still bears the literal scars from that trauma. And, hell, probably the metaphorical ones too whenever he comes out of his coma.
If he comes out of his coma.
Derek and Scott start arguing about the Argents. Stiles rolls his eyes and tunes them out. Neither of them will convince the other: Derek is drowning in his own guilt too much to be even the least bit persuasive and Scott’s been lost ever since Allison waltzed into their classroom. Lost causes, honestly, the both of them.
But Peter Hale – now, that is definitely not a lost cause.
Stiles drifts closer, automatically cataloging the room as he goes. The bed is neat, the desk is neat, the table is neat. Peter’s clothes are clean and fresh. His wheelchair has no dust or rust, so it’s getting some use. But it’s all so very bland. There’s no personality. Even Stiles’s mother, when she’d been losing her mind at the end, had shown some personality: bedsheets she preferred tucked a certain way, cards and papers spread out on the table, jacket hanging off the wall. Peter has nothing. If Stiles didn’t know who he was, he would’ve guessed that Peter Hale was a comatose John Doe, his room is that bland.
His scent, on the other hand, is not bland.
Stiles takes a deep breath and tastes the rich notes of tangy wine and smoked meat. And then he finds himself taking another breath, and then another, and then another, until he’s one step away from Peter and realizes exactly why Peter smells so appealing.
Peter is an alpha.
Stiles cocks his head. Derek is a beta, and Scott had remained a beta even when he’d gone all furry, so it’s not like Stiles had assumed werewolves didn’t have secondary gender. But it is interesting that Peter is an alpha. He can’t imagine what it must have been like to be an alpha but not the alpha, given that Derek has said that his mother was the alpha. Usually when two siblings in a family both present as alphas, it doesn’t go well; they are driven to fight, fight, fight, until one triumphs and gains dominance over the other. It even has a name: Cain and Abel Syndrome.
He’s pretty sure Peter didn’t set the fire, though. Cain and Abel Syndrome rarely leads to death. It just causes a lot of property damage and irritation.
Stiles is brought out of his musings by a sharp voice demanding, “What are you doing? How did you get in here?”
Which, right. Rule number one: be aware of your surroundings. Stiles had forgotten, apparently.
Then again, from the looks on the faces of Derek and Scott, they hadn’t noticed the nurse coming in either, and they have werewolfy senses, so Stiles is perfectly happy to blame them.
“We were just leaving,” Derek grits out, and then he stomps away.
“Yep, what he said!” Stiles chirps. And then he grabs Scott’s arm and drags him away before he can ask anything stupid. “Dude, what’s the point of your, you know, furry senses if you can’t give us an advance warning?”
“It’s not my fault, it all smells like chlorox wipes and hand sanitizer in here,” Scott protests.
“Excuses, excuses.”
When they pile into the car, Derek looks ready to gear up for another round of Argue-About-Argents, so Stiles clears his throat and intervenes because he really doesn’t want to spend the entire car ride home listening to Scott wax poetically about how beautiful and clever and nice Allison is.
“Soooooo your uncle and your mom – that must’ve been fun when you were growing up.”
Derek gives him the side eye. “What?”
“You know. Alphas. Dominance fights. Growling – literally, in your case, wolf man.”
“What are you talking about.”
“Well, if your mom and uncle were both alphas – ”
“Peter’s a beta,” Derek interrupts.
“Uhhhh,” Stiles says, because he may not be a werewolf with a Bonafide Built-In Rabbit Detection System, but he knows an alpha when he smells one.
Derek keeps talking though. “We don’t present randomly like you do. Our genders reflect our rank in the pack. Only the alpha presents as alpha. Everyone else in the pack was a beta.” Derek’s face twists. “Until – Until the fire. Then Laura became the alpha. She was – It was. Not a good time.”
Stiles can sympathize with that. His presentation had sucked: he’d been horny as hell, thirsty as beached fish, and hungry enough to eat a whole elephant. And it given Jackson and the other bullies more ammunition to sneer at him, because look at that, Stilinski is useless for knocking someone up and for getting knocked up. The joys of being a male omega: all the junk with none of the utility.
He’d still punched Jackson for the remark, though. On the bright side, his father, after hearing what had happened, hadn’t done more than just sigh and take him home. And teach him how to punch correctly.
Stiles is still utter crap at punching. But he’s an omega, and he can certainly pinpoint someone’s secondary gender by scent. Literally the one benefit of his gender is that omegan noses are way more sensitive than betas and alphas.
So: Peter Hale is an alpha. And he had been a beta before the fire. And werewolves’ secondary gender reflects their status in the pack.
“Scratch that,” Stiles announces, “I have a really bad feeling about this.”
“Are you sure it isn’t an omega thing?”
“No, it is not an omega thing!”
Stiles is coming back from a very nice shower and rifling around in a pile of clothes when someone says, “You must be Stiles.”
It is not his father, or Scott, or Derek, or anyone else who should be in his room.
Stiles whirls around, clutching at his towel, and sees two glowing red eyes, which is definitely a sight straight out of a horror movie. It does not at all help when those two glowing red eyes start moving forward, and Peter goddamn Hale steps out of the shadows, smirking at Stiles like a supervillain about to deliver their confident monologue about the whole world being doomed due to their infallible villain plot.
Also: red eyes. Stiles knows what red eyes means.
“Oh my god,” Stiles stammers. “You – You’re the one who – Oh, my god – and that means – Oh my god I’m gonna die.”
“That’s not nice,” Peter says, and what the hell, he actually sounds somewhat offended.
“Um, you turn into a giant monster with red eyes and fangs,” Stiles points out. “And you’ve killed, like, three people. Including your niece!”
Peter’s face twists. It’s not rage, but neither is it guilt. It’s like Peter has no idea what emotion to feel. Which honestly is not helping with Stiles’s panic, because a killer who thinks he’s conflicted is way more likely to cause collateral damage. Especially of the Stiles-variety.
“You think I killed Laura on purpose? One of my own family? One of my own pack?”
“ . . . Are you saying you tore her in half by accident? Because like. I know you’re strong. But surely it takes a bit of effort to rip someone – ”
“My mind,” Peter interrupts, “my personality, they were literally burned out of me. I was driven by pure instinct.”
Stiles swallows hard. “That’s, uh. Not really the argument I was hoping you’d make. Um. Given I’m, uh, just a squishy human.”
And just like that, those red eyes flicker off like someone flipped a light switch. Peter rocks back on his heels, as if only just realizing how far he begun to lean forward and loom, and he takes a deep breath.
“I don’t want you dead, Stiles,” he says quietly. “I want understanding. I’m . . . curious.”
“Can your curiosity wait until after I’m dressed?” Stiles asks hopefully.
“So you can call your father? Or worse, my nephew?” Peter shakes his head faux-mournfully, and only then does Stiles realize that Peter has his phone in his hand. “No, Stiles. I wasn’t bitten yesterday.”
“Pretty sure the saying is ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’”
Peter’s eyes flash with amusement. “Not for my kind.”
“Okay, sure,” Stiles babbles, because he’s not about to debate werewolf traditions with the murderous alpha werewolf in his bedroom. “Sure, sure, whatever you say.”
“I told you I didn’t want you dead, Stiles.”
“Then you want . . .?”
Peter tilts his head. “How did you know I was the alpha?”
Stiles stares at him.
Peter looks calmly back.
“Seriously?!”
“It’s a simple question – ”
“You broke out of the catatonic-and-geriatric care ward in the middle of the night when hunters are in town hunting werewolves and then broke into the sheriff’s house because you wanted to know how I guessed that you were the alpha?”
Peter flicks a dismissive hand. “I’ve been getting in and out of my room for weeks now. And I’ve been evading Argents since I was born.”
“Sheriff’s house,” Stiles feels compelled to repeat.
Peter makes a show of looking around. “And you have so many things that could stop me? You didn’t even lock your window.”
“That’s because Derek keeps – you know what, no, actually,” Stiles says. He levels a finger at Peter, who, goddamn it, looks more amused than anything. “You broke into my room, buddy, you don’t get to ask the questions here.”
“I think these mean I do,” Peter says, and flashes those glowing red eyes again.
“Unless you can, like, hypnotize me with them, no, they don’t.”
“Are you forgetting what they mean?”
“Uh, definitely not. But if you want an answer out of me, you’re answering a question first.”
Peter raises an eyebrow. “What makes you think I’ll agree to that?”
“You were curious enough that you broke out of the catatonic-and-geriatric care ward in the middle of the night when hunters are in town hunting werewolves and then broke into the sheriff’s house,” Stiles says promptly.
Silence falls.
Well, silence from Peter. Stiles can still hear his own damn heart pounding away like a jackhammer set to level infinity, and also his fingers are starting to cramp from how tightly he’s clutching at his towel.
“ . . . You really are an interesting one, aren’t you, Stiles,” Peter says finally. On the bright side, he doesn’t sound homicidal. On the not-so-bright side, he doesn’t sound like he’s giving up either. “Very well. What’s your question?”
Stiles takes a deep breath. He’s only got one shot. He might as well take it.
He asks, “Why Laura?”
Peter’s eyes flare bright red. His fingertips gain claws – actual claws, the kind that look sharp enough to slash throats and tear open guts. He actually snarls, and Stiles’s entire body goes on high alert, because that is the sound of an apex predator.
“What,” Peter growls, and that is an entire jaw of fangs. Sharp fangs. Fangs that look like they could rip out his throat in two seconds or –
Stiles makes himself look away from the fangs. “I said, why Laura? She was your sister. Your alpha. More importantly, she was another werewolf. Surely three werewolves who actually know what they’re doing against whoever you’re trying to kill would be better than, uh, well. Scott. Don’t get me wrong, I love Scott! But the dude went running in the woods and came back with rabbit blood all over him and the first thing he asked me is if he ate them raw or not.”
Peter’s face does a little spasm. It would be funny if Stiles wasn’t still, like, sixty percent worried that Peter might give into his instinct and kill Stiles anyways.
Then Peter looks away. Those red eyes fade away; those claws retreat. Peter says, more to the wall than Stiles, “It was a mistake.”
“ . . . Ooookay?”
“It was a mistake,” Peter repeats, and now he looks back at Stiles with a gleam in his eyes that says he’s definitely done some compartmentalization and rationalizing. “But I don’t regret it. She left me – she took Derek and she abandoned me. They were my pack, and they abandoned me. They left me here, alone and undefended, where any hunter could have found me and killed me with a push of a button. Where I had to spend years in agony slowly healing, cell by cell, without my pack’s support. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To feel your entire body on fire and there’s no relief, no cure, nothing. And then, when I finally healed enough on my own to begin walking our land again, I find Argents on it. She didn’t deserve to be alpha. She didn’t protect her pack. She didn’t protect our territory. And she didn’t avenge our family, our pack.”
By the end, Peter’s chest is heaving and his voice is fraught. With rage, yes, but also grief.
And Stiles – Stiles understands.
Stiles takes a deep breath. An answer for an answer is only fair. “I knew you were the alpha because I could smell it.”
Peter raises an eyebrow. “Interesting. I thought I had hidden my scent. My dear nephew certainly hasn’t noticed, after all.”
“Beta noses aren’t as sensitive as omegan ones.”
“Ahhh,” Peter breathes. He inhales deeply. “So that’s why you smell like that. You’re an omega.”
“Are you gonna be creepy about that?” Stiles asks warily. Because he isn’t getting that kind of vibe from Peter, but, well. He’s seen the stats. He knows what happens to omegas, and that it can come from anyone.
“You think so lowly of me?”
“You’re the one who came in here blathering on about how you were following pure instinct!”
“I do not blather,” Peter objects, sounding insulted. “And my instincts would lead me to kill you, not knot you.”
“ . . . That’s, uh, really not what I wanted to hear.”
“For werewolves, alphas lead, betas follow,” Peter says. “And omegas . . . omegas are the lone wolves. The rogues. The desperate. Usually they’re the ones who go feral and have to be put down.” He pauses. “That used to be part of my duty under Talia. I was the Left Hand: I kept the secrets, buried the bodies, did all the . . . dirty work.”
“Soooo,” Stiles says, “what you’re telling me is you’ve always been sketchy as hell?”
Peter gives him a sly grin. “Your father used to give me an awful lot of tickets. But he never did manage to pin anything on me. Just like he’ll never be able to pin anything on the Argents, either.”
It’s like a bucket of cold water has been dumped over Stiles. “So that’s why you’re just killing all of the accomplices.”
“Yes. And you are clever, Stiles, it’d be a shame to snuff that light, but,” Peter flicks out his claws again, “I’ll do whatever I have to. And I do mean whatever. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Crystal clear,” Stiles says. “I pinky promise not to get in your way.”
“Excellent. Then if you’ll excuse me,” Peter says, making his way to Stiles’s window, “I have a chat with a bus driver that I’d hate to miss.”
“Wait, you’re just going to. Leave?”
Peter pauses with one foot on the windowsill. He looks at Stiles, and under the moonlight, his scars look a lot less terrifying . . . and honestly, a lot more tragic.
“I told you I didn’t want you dead, Stiles,” he says quietly. “I wasn’t lying to you.”
And then he launches himself out of Stiles’s window.
Stiles rushes over and looks out, but it’s no use. He can’t see much beyond shadows and grass, even with the moonlight, and Peter probably started running at werewolf speed the second he landed. There’s no way Stiles could see him, much less catch him.
Not that it would do any good even if he could. It’s not like he can tell his dad that Peter Hale, the catatonic patient in Beacon Hills Long Term Residential Home who’s actually a werewolf, climbed into his window and simultaneously threatened and praised him.
Stiles sighs and rubs at his eyes. Then he shuts the window, because even if it won’t stop a werewolf at least if they have to open it, he might hear the noise. After that, he gets dressed, because his fingers really are cramping from holding up the towel. And then he goes for his phone to set an alert for news of a recently murdered bus driver –
Except his phone is gone.
“Oh, you utter – ”
“Hello, Stiles.”
Stiles flails and falls out of his computer chair. It’s not exactly the first time he’s done that, so he knows how to fall without hurting himself, but it also doesn’t tend to leave the most graceful impressions. His father tends to roll his eyes. Derek had given him the Eyebrow of Judgement.
Peter, apparently, finds it amusing, because he smirks.
“Will you stop that?!” Stiles demands, hauling himself upright.
“You should be more aware of your surroundings.”
“What are you, Yoda?” Stiles grumbles. “Also! You totally stole my phone!”
“Yes, I did,” Peter says, sounding not the least bit guilty. “It was useful.”
“And you had to be certain I wouldn’t call Derek.”
“That too. Never settle for doing one thing when you can accomplish two,” Peter says. “But I’ve gathered what I need to. I don’t need it anymore.”
And then Peter just. Holds out his phone to him.
“ . . . You’re giving it back to me?”
“I understand that teenagers are very attached to their phones nowadays,” Peter says, still holding out the phone. “And won’t your father question why you don’t have your phone?”
“Dude, he asked me, like, the second I came down to breakfast without it.”
“Don’t call me dude.”
“I’ll call whatever you like, you window-creeping phone stealer,” Stiles says. “And, uh, you can keep it. I already got a new phone.”
Peter blinks. For the first time he looks genuinely surprised, which, point one to Stiles.
“It’s just, you know, I already told my dad I broke it, so it would be really weird if I suddenly had it again and it wasn’t broken,” Stiles explains. “Also, my new one supposedly has really good ratings for being hard to break, better than that old one, so honestly it probably suits me better.”
“Clumsy even when werewolves aren’t climbing into your window, are you?”
“Shut up. Anyways, I can’t take it back, and I imagine you can’t just walk into a phone store and buy a phone considering you’re supposed to be, you know, catatonic, so you might as well keep it.”
Peter looks at him for a long moment. Then he must come to a decision, because he nods and pockets the phone. “Reasonable arguments. I’ll accept.”
“Cool. You, uh. You gonna leave now?”
“Why, Stiles, are you kicking me out?”
“If I thought I could kick you and actually hurt you, I would,” Stiles informs him. “But also, this essay is due tomorrow morning and I have only one page written, so . . .”
Peter cocks his head. For a minute Stiles thinks he’s going to refuse, but then Peter says, “You’ve spelled Desdemona wrong in the third paragraph.”
“What the – ” Stiles whirls around and looks at his sad half-written essay and, sure enough, there’s a telltale red squiggly line under his misspelling of Desdemona. “Crap. How the heck did you even see that?”
“Werewolf,” Peter says, flashing those red eyes again, probably just because it amuses him. “Also, I have a Master’s in English.”
“You,” Stiles says slowly, “have a Master’s? In English?”
“A lot of lawyers do, you know, I’m hardly alone.”
“You were a lawyer?”
“What, did you think we spent all of our time howling at the moon and hunting rabbits in the woods?” Peter asks, sounding amused. “We had to pass as humans, Stiles. We went to school, we got jobs.”
“I thought the Hales were, like, rich. Like, don’t-ever-have-to-work-a-day-in-your-lives rich.”
“Doing nothing gets boring eventually. And I made some useful connections during the course of my work. Being able to whisper in the right ears helps – ”
“When you’re a furry creature of the night?”
“I was going to say, when you’re trying to cover up for a dozen young wolves who haven’t learned proper control yet, but I suppose that argument works too.”
Stiles breathes out a sigh of relief. He hadn’t thought that joke would piss off Peter enough to rip out his throat, but he just hadn’t been able to resist. His father had always joked that Stiles’s mouth would one day get him into trouble. And to be fair, his mouth brought Peter to his doorstep, but so far all Peter has done is given him some heart attacks and taken his phone, so if that’s all the trouble Peter will bring, Stiles will take it.
“Good luck with your essay, Stiles. I look forward to our next conversation.”
“Wha – next? What do you mean, next?” Stiles demands, but Peter is already gone.
“You know, you really should lock your window.”
“PETER!”
“Hello again, Stiles.”
Stiles levels a finger at him and gets back up off the floor. “One day,” he says, “one day I’m going to fall and crack my head open on the floor and it’s going to be all your fault when that happens – ”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I would catch you before that.”
“Or – wild thought – you could just stop climbing in my window!”
“Hmm. No.”
“I’m gonna start locking it from now on,” Stiles threatens, even though he’s pretty sure that if Peter can bust out of a school classroom, he can break a flimsy window lock.
Sure enough, Peter scoffs, “Like that would be able to stop me.”
“Motion-activated taser?”
“Sweet boy, do you even have a taser?”
“Uh, no. But I could get one! Benefits of being the sheriff’s kid, you know.”
Peter looks politely disbelieving. “And do you know how to use a taser?”
“I’m a quick learner!” Stiles says. “Besides, it can’t be that hard. The end with electricity gets shoved at the bad guy, easy peasy.”
“You,” Peter says, “would make a terrible hunter.”
“Hey!”
“Stiles, in my world, that’s a good thing. Although you would benefit from learning how to defend yourself. It’s a useful skill.”
“And, what, are you volunteering to teach me?”
Peter cocks his head. “Are you asking me to?”
Stiles thinks about it – Peter with his hands on Stiles’s hand, Peter pressed up against his back showing him how to stand, Peter’s scent heavy in his nose and on his skin – and then quickly stops thinking about it. Instead, he rallies his brain and asks, “Could you even teach me? Remember, I’m a squishy human. I don’t heal when things break the way you do.”
“Of course I could.”
“Coming from the arrogant supervillain in the room, that’s not exactly the highest vote of confidence. Have you ever taught a human?”
“Yes.”
“Wait, you have? Who?”
A pained look crosses Peter’s face. He looks away and says, very quietly, “Not all of the Hale pack were werewolves. Some of us were human.”
“ . . . Oh,” Stile says weakly. Because honestly, he’d been thinking more along the lines of a coworker or colleague or friend. He’d never thought about the fact that, maybe, not all of the people who burned in the Hale house fire had been wolves. And, well. Not that Stiles approved of the Hale fire, but he had thought: “I thought hunters went after werewolves. Only werewolves.”
Peter’s lips curl up in a vicious smile. “I’m sure that’s what they want outsiders to think. But to a hunter, anyone who associates with a monster is a monster too. When they target a pack, they don’t stop with the wolves. Everyone dies.”
And in a horrible sort of way, it makes sense. After all, if they’d left the humans alive, how would they stop them going to the police? Even if the survivors never revealed the werewolf bit, there would still be the pile of gruesomely murdered dead bodies. And Stiles can totally see how a hunter who’s already willing to murder someone whose only crime is having fur and fangs could cross the next line and murder an innocent human whose only crime is being related to the fur-and-fangs person.
Criminals his father have put away have murdered for less, after all.
On the bright side, the revelation does make Stiles’s next action a little bit easier.
Stiles takes a deep breath. “I have something for you.”
Peter goes very, very still. “What do you mean?” he asks, and his voice is full of wariness, like he thinks Stiles has any chance of hurting him.
In answer, Stiles heads for his bureau and digs around in his underwear drawer. It’s totally a cliché place to hide something, but because it is, his father never bothers to look in there. Plus his father would be looking for, like, drugs, and Stiles would never be stupid enough to mess with them.
Or if he did, he’d do it outside of his house.
“Here,” Stiles says, and holds out the files he carefully, secretly copied from his father’s office. “Files on some accomplices I know you haven’t found yet.”
“What makes you think I haven’t?”
“Uh, they aren’t dead yet?”
“ . . . Fair,” Peter allows. But he still doesn’t take the files. “But why do you have them? And more importantly, since you know I will kill them . . . why give them to me?”
“My father is investigating the fire again. He already was suspicious back then, and right now, you’ve made things extra suspicious so he’s looking into it again. But we both know he’ll never be able to bring them to justice. Especially since he doesn’t know about the whole, you know, furry bit.”
“And?”
“And they burnt down a house of innocent people. They should face justice. If the only justice they’ll face is you, then, well. I think they deserve it.”
“Are you sure? Not that you can stop me, of course. I’ll find out who they are even without you. But this will be on your conscious, Stiles. Can you live with that?”
“If it had been my family,” Stiles tells him, “if it had been my dad, I would want to rip them apart with my bare hands too.”
Peter takes the files.
As he pages through them, Stiles clears his throat and asks, “Does this mean that I, uh, get a get-out-of-being-mauled-alive free card?”
To his surprise, Peter gives him a look. “Stiles,” he says in, what the hell, what Stiles can only describe as a chiding voice. “I told you I didn’t want you dead. I meant it. I’m a man of my word.”
“You’re a werewolf,” Stiles reminds him.
A faint smile flickers across Peter’s face. “To be a werewolf is to be both man and wolf. And until my nephew and your friend Scott understand that, they’ll never be able to unlock their true potential.”
“ . . . Yeah, that might take a while for Scott. Maybe like. A decade. Honestly, it might better if you just leave him out of your whole vendetta and all – ”
“I’m an alpha. I need a pack. And my betas will need me. Scott will help me.”
“Uh huh, sure.”
Peter tilts his head. He lowers his foot and steps towards Stiles, which is definitely not what Stiles wanted. Stiles hastily backs up, but unfortunately behind him is the wall, so he doesn’t really have anywhere to go.
“Well, if you’re so sure Scott won’t help me,” Peter murmurs, “what about you?”
“W-What?”
“Do you want the Bite?”
“What do you – ”
“The Bite,” Peter repeats. He takes Stiles’s hand, easily ignoring Stiles’s efforts to pull his hand away, to where it would only take a slight turn of his head for Peter to sink his fangs in. “If it doesn’t kill you – and it might – you’ll become like us.”
“What, like a – like a werewolf?”
“Yes, a werewolf,” Peter says, rolling his eyes. “Would you like me to draw you a picture?”
“Wait, could you actually draw – ?”
Peter rolls his eyes again and ignores him. “You would become stronger. Quicker. Powerful. That first night in the woods, I took Scott because I needed a new pack, but . . . it could’ve just as easily been you.”
Stiles gapes at him. He knows that Peter must have been in the woods already when they got there, that Peter must have seen them both. And yet he’d somehow never followed that thought to its logical conclusion: that in another life, maybe, Peter had bitten him and not Scott. That he could have been a werewolf, not Scott. That he could have been the guy scoring goals in lacrosse and able to heal wounds in a second and run as fast as cheetah, not Scott.
That he could have been Peter’s beta, not Scott.
“Yes,” Peter asks him, “or no?”
It’s tempting. Stiles can’t deny it. As a werewolf, he could be the popular guy at lacrosse like Scott is now. Maybe Scott would even listen to him for once.
But there is just one teeny, tiny problem.
Stiles raises his chin. “I don’t want to be like you,” he tells Peter.
Because Peter – for all of his confidence and suave and charisma, for all of his speed and strength and power – is still Peter, the man who killed his own niece and threatened his own nephew, the werewolf who has savaged at least five people and will likely maul two more once he finishes reading the files, the monster who chased down Scott in the woods and bit him. His body might have healed from the fire, but Stiles is pretty sure Peter’s mind never will.
For a moment, he thinks Peter will bite him anyways.
Then Peter lets him go.
“Okay,” is all he says.
Stiles blinks. “You – that’s it?”
“We don’t bite the unwilling.”
“Scott,” Stiles feels compelled to point out.
Peter waves a dismissive hand. “I had no choice with Scott. I needed a beta for power; any human would have done. But, you, Stiles . . . If someone is unwilling, it can cause the Bite not to take. I’d rather not risk that on someone like you.”
“Oh,” Stiles says, and thinks vaguely that he shouldn’t feel flattered about a compliment from a murderer.
But, of course, Peter can’t let anyone else have the last word. “Also,” Peter says with a sly smile, “do you know what I heard just then? Your heart beating ever so slightly faster over the words I don’t want. You can lie to me all you want, Stiles. But you shouldn’t lie to yourself.”
And then he flings himself out of Stiles’s window, because he’s just that dramatic.
Stiles calls him some very bad names and, for good measure, stomps over to his window and locks it.
The next day, Stiles comes home and finds his father dead in the kitchen.
“Well, hello, Stiles,” Peter purrs when he picks up. “This is a surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Stiles says nothing. He can’t do much of anything, he finds, except stare. He’d barely been able to fish out his phone with shaking hands, and he doesn’t remember dialing Peter’s number – he thought he had called emergency services, but he must have dialed Peter because Peter picked up –
“ . . . Stiles? What’s wrong? Stiles, talk to me.”
Stiles opens his mouth but no words come out. What can he possibly say? How can he possibly say anything? To say anything makes it real, it means that this isn’t some horrible dream or hallucination – but this can’t be real, he can’t really be in his home staring into the dead eyes of his father, collapsed on the floor like a marionette with his strings cut –
The tenor of Peter’s voice changes. The sultry purr drains away completely; now Peter is all business. “Stay where you are, Stiles,” he orders. “I’m coming to you. I will find you.”
Stiles should find it reassuring. Or maybe alarming. He had locked the door behind him and his window is still locked, but Peter hadn’t seemed concerned about it. And there’s the fact that his house is a mess, because his father’s blood is on the floor and the walls, and Stiles – Stiles should clean that. He shouldn’t let anyone see their house in such a mess. It’s not what his father would have wanted.
But he can’t move. He can’t speak. He can’t do anything, except kneel there on the cold floor and cling to the phone.
He isn’t sure how long he stays there. The sun slips away, and his knees begin to ache, and his fingers start cramping around his phone, so time must pass. At the same time, though, his father remains unchanged and unmoving, as still as though he’s sleeping, so maybe time isn’t passing at all. Maybe time has frozen. Maybe the entire world went still the minute his father died, and Stiles just hasn’t noticed yet.
And then someone wrestles the phone out of his hand, and suddenly time resumes.
“Stiles!” someone says, in the tone of voice of someone who has been saying it over and over again. His father used to use that tone of voice.
But when Stiles turns his head, he doesn’t see his father. He sees a wool coat, and a buttoned shirt, and red eyes –
“Peter,” he says numbly.
“Yes, good, Stiles. It’s me.” Peter’s nostrils flare as he sniffs the air. “Are you hurt?”
Stiles shakes his head. The movement feels so difficult, as though his head suddenly weighs a thousand pounds. “No. I – I came home – after.”
Peter inhales again. “I don’t smell anyone but you and your father inside the house. Whoever did this, they must have been outside.” He looks up and around – and then he grimaces. “Wolfsbane. They were taking no chances.”
Stiles follows Peter’s line of sight. It’s easy to see what Peter was looking for: a bullet buried in the wall, in the perfect finishing trajectory after it had gone through his father.
Although: “Wolfsbane?”
“I can smell it,” Peter says lowly, the words more of a wolf growl than human speech. “Yellow wolfsbane. Very rare, very expensive. Very deadly.”
And just like that, Stiles’s brain finally restarts. The pieces begin to click together, click-click-click, like a puzzle finally taking shape: the investigation into the Hale fire, the hunters in town, wolfsbane bullets meant for a werewolf – or, perhaps, someone feared to be an ally to werewolves.
“An Argent did this.”
Peter’s hands tense around him, and Stiles realizes the words came from his own mouth. But Peter does not dispute it.
“Yes, most likely,” Peter agrees quietly. “I’m not sure why, though. I know your father was investigating, but they had no way of knowing he was beginning to suspect them. And they usually avoid attracting attention by going after law enforcement.”
A memory swims up, his father getting ready as Stiles ran out the door, hey kiddo I might be late home tonight, I’ve got an interview with Adrian Harris.
At the time, Stiles had made a face and demanded to know why, his father had laughed and teased that it was official business and therefore off-limits and didn’t he have a lacrosse game tonight, and Stiles had made a face and bargained for his father to tell him all the details later when he got home. And then he’d left: slammed the door and turned the lock and got in the car, all without so much as saying goodbye.
His last moments with his father, and Stiles hadn’t hugged him, or told him he loved him, or even said goodbye.
“He was – He was set to interview Harris today.”
“The chemistry teacher?”
“Yeah. Not sure why, he wouldn’t tell me. But it must have made the Argent, whoever they are, nervous.”
“Kate.”
“What?”
“Her name,” Peter says, eyes bright red, “is Kate Argent. She’s dear Allison’s aunt.”
For a moment, Stiles is able to set aside his grief and his shock, because: “When did we find that out? Wait, how do you know that?”
“That’s not important,” Peter says dismissively.
“How is that not – ”
“What is important,” Peter continues, blatantly speaking over him, “is that Kate was the one who set my pack’s house on fire. And for all of her skill at killing werewolves, usually her arsonist tendencies are more geared towards burning a few dead bodies as opposed to burning down an entire house.”
“And Harris . . . is a chemist.”
“Exactly.”
Stiles digests that for a long moment. The idea that a hunter had approached a chemistry teacher – and Harris of all people, ew – for help. The idea that his chemistry teacher had helped a hunter burn down a house of innocent people. The idea that his father may have been so close to actually solving the Hale fire, even though he hadn’t known about werewolves.
And now his father never will, because Kate Argent killed him the second she thought he might uncover the truth.
Stiles takes a long breath. Lets it out. Then he does it a few times more, because his guidance counselor had always said that breathing exercises would help focus the mind and settle the body. And the exercise does help, to be fair. Just probably not in the way Miss Morrell probably intended.
“Peter,” Stiles says, “yes.”
Peter looks at him for a moment, one eyebrow raised. Then he gets it.
“But first,” Stiles continues, “we’re going to kill Kate Argent.”
“My dear Stiles,” Peter purrs, his eyes bright alpha red and his hand warm on Stiles’s waist, “it would be my absolute pleasure.”
Stiles gives Harris and Kate about two or three minutes to get all riled up before he storms in. It’s better for their plan if both Harris and Kate are off-kilter, and the more he can get them confused, the better it’ll be for when Peter sneaks up behind them.
To his credit, Peter had been a little worried when Stiles had suggested being bait. It had been touching, in a small way, to get confirmation that Peter – for all that he is hell-bent on getting vengeance no matter what – does care for him. But Peter can’t be the person who barges in, and if they let Harris and Kate talk too long they’ll both realize that the other person didn’t actually text them and they’ve been set up. Harris they can get anytime, but if Kate slips away, she’ll be damn near impossible to catch again.
So: Stiles.
“Watch your back,” Peter tells him. “Harris might hesitate to hurt a human boy, but Kate won’t.”
“You watch your back,” Stiles retorts, mustering a courage he barely feels. “Kate’s gonna be on the lookout for fur and fangs. She won’t see me coming.”
Peter rolls his eyes. “Save me from arrogant humans,” he mutters. But then he leans forward and rubs his cheek against Stiles’s, like a wolf scenting a pack mate. “Don’t die. That would be very inconvenient.”
“Oh, I’m glad I rank as inconvenient.”
And then Stiles gets out of the car before his mind catches up with his body.
Harris and Kate are having a very loud argument. It echoes all up and down the air outside of the burnt shell of the Hale house that Peter had said would be perfect for an ambush, and Stiles had definitely agreed with that assessment. There’s no one this deep in the preserve who could hear them, so Peter and Stiles will be free to do whatever they need to.
In this situation, just a light case of murder.
Stiles takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and flings the rusty old door open as hard as he can. It doesn’t quite fly outwards as dramatically as he had hoped, because it’s old and half of its hinges are burnt away, but it does make a lot of groaning and creaking noises, so he can see both Harris and Kate’s heads snap over to look at him.
“You!” Stiles yells, and makes sure to level his finger at Harris. “What did you do to my dad?”
“Stilinski?” Harris says, blinking rapidly. “What the – How did you – ”
“What,” Stiles repeats, stomping closer with every word, “did you do to my dad?!”
“I didn’t say anything about your grades this semester, you little – ”
“You think I care out my grades right now?!” Stiles yells, putting every ounce of his rage and grief into his voice. “My dad is dead! What did you do to him?”
Almost immediately, the temperature in the room changes. Harris’s annoyed expression goes chalky white with fear and his scent goes bitter-rotten lemon. Kate goes from watching with a little smile on her face like it’s a polo match to going still as a lion that’s sighted prey.
Or still as a deer, trapped in headlights.
“I – ” Harris sputters. “I didn’t – I just – I just sat down and he asked me some questions, that’s all I swear – ”
“You were the last one to see him! Don’t tell me that’s all that happened!”
“I swear, I didn’t – ”
“Tell me what happened or so help me god – ”
“I didn’t do anything – ”
Out of the corner of his eye, Stiles sees Kate sliding into the shadows against the wall. Then, step by step, quiet as a snake sliding through the grass, she makes her way towards the door, keeping her movements subtle and small. Stiles has to give her credit; if he wasn’t devoting half of his attention to watching her, he might not have noticed her slipping away.
But he is, and Peter is devoting all his attention to her, and Kate. Well. Kate’s too busy smirking at Harris to pay attention to what she’s walking into.
There’s a short, high-pitched scream and then the whole house rocks as though something had slammed into it.
Something – or someone.
And Stiles knows Peter has gotten Kate. He drops the yelling, because it’s really making his throat hurt, and offers a grim smile to Harris. Not that it helps; if anything, Harris just backs up faster when he catches sight of Stiles.
“Thanks for confirming that you were an accomplice to Kate,” Stiles tells him, keeping his tone light and casual. “I mean, we were pretty sure you were, but this’ll help the case.”
“You – I – accomplice – we?”
“We,” Stiles confirms, and that rusted old door creaks and groans and shudders as Peter shoulders his way inside. He’s in full alpha form, all fur and fangs and bright red eyes, and even Stiles has to admit he’s a pretty intimidating sight. He looks more monster than wolf or man.
And Harris – well to Harris’s credit, he runs.
Unfortunately, a werewolf is much, much faster than any human, and then the house shakes again when Peter grabs Harris and slams his head into the wall just as he had with Kate.
“See, I told you it would work,” Stiles can’t resist telling Peter.
Peter turns on him and bares his fangs. Stiles knows that Peter still has his mind, he can see the intelligence gleaming in those red eyes, but his heartbeat goes through the roof anyways, because that is an apex predator and Stiles’s body knows it.
Good thing Stiles has long since learned how to master his body with his mind.
“You know, when I was picturing a werewolf, gotta be honest, I was picturing more, you know, wolf,” Stiles says. “Not half-crouched-over-man-covered-in-fur.”
Peter gives him a look of supreme irritation. It’s helpful, actually, since Stiles is able to let the rest of that fear go. If Peter is still coherent enough to both recognize an insult and hold himself back from attacking Stiles for said insult, then Peter is still his ally. He isn’t foolish enough to think that he has nothing to fear from Peter, but right now, they’re united in a common goal.
“You don’t even have a tail,” Stiles muses. “And what’s with the eyebrows?”
Peter growls at him.
“Hey, you can’t blame a dude for wondering.”
Harris comes to with a gasp. It probably has something to do with Kate screaming downstairs, because even the floor can’t muffle the sounds coming out of the downstairs tunnel, but Stiles just keeps playing on his phone, maintaining his air of supreme boredom.
“What the – Who – Stilinski!” Harris says, yanking at the ropes Peter showed Stiles how to tie around his arms. “Stilinski, untie me right now! Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll be in – ”
“For uncovering an accomplice to premediated murder?” Stiles says coolly.
Harris pales. “I didn’t – I didn’t know – ”
“Because someone asking you how to, oh, dissolve a body with acid was surely asking out of the purity of their heart?”
“It was just – just a theoretical thought exercise. A hypothetical! Like in class, you remember, we went over hypotheticals in class – ”
“Hypothetical,” Stiles repeats, dragging the word out syllable by syllable. Then he makes a show of looking around their surroundings: the ash covered floors, the charred walls, the burnt out windows. “I think you need a refresher on what the word ‘hypothetical’ means. Because Kate smiled at you and bought you drinks and twirled her hair, and you told her how to burn down a house without leaving a trace, and then a week late, a house burns down. And look at that. The arson investigator couldn’t find a trace of how it started.”
To his surprise, Harris doesn’t get slump in guilt or lash out in defensiveness. No, Harris says, with perfect confusion, so perfect it can’t possibly be faked: “Who the hell is Kate?”
Stiles stares at him.
Harris stares back.
“Oh my god,” Stiles groans. “You didn’t even know her name?”
“We had a lot of drinks, okay? A lot. And this, this was before I got sober, so I really – And she was paying attention, actually paying attention, not staring at me with that vacant expression you little idiots give to me day after day after day – ”
“And yet you never went to the police.”
“And out myself as an accomplice?” Harris exclaims. “That would have ruined my teaching career!”
Stiles gives him a look. He’s not really sure what his facial expression shows, but whatever it is, Harris gets a little paler.
“And – And I didn’t know her name! Like you said. I had no idea who she was. How could I even have helped the police find her?”
“Well, you could have started with a description. And this,” Stiles adds casually, and pulls out the sketch of Kate’s necklace that he had found in his dad’s files.
Harris swallows hard. Stiles can literally see his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “I – I gave that to your father. I told him what it was. I didn’t try to hide it.”
“Only when he dragged you into an interview. If he hadn’t come knocking, I bet you never would have said anything.”
Stiles looks around the house again. All of his life, he’s only known it as the burnt out shell. He can’t imagine what Peter feels when he sees it, since Peter has memories of when it had been a vibrant home full of people.
“Ten people died here,” Stiles tells Harris. “Some of them were children. But yeah. Your teaching career. That was more important.”
Harris’s forehead wrinkles in confusion. He might be idiotic enough to get tricked by a hunter, but he’s not that stupid. Stiles can see him parsing Stiles’s words. And sure enough, the next words out of Harris are: “ . . . But the Hale fire killed eleven people?”
“I’m afraid the report of my death was an exaggeration,” Peter says, melting out of the shadow like the horror movie monster he is.
Harris screams like a baby. Stiles rolls his eyes and says, “Seriously?”
Peter shrugs. “It’s not every day you get the chance to say it.”
“ . . . Fair.”
“Are you finished with him?” Peter asks, nodding at Harris, who’s looking at Peter with an expression of pure pants-wetting terror.
Stiles looks at Harris for a long moment, and then he nods. “Yeah.”
Because he could sit here all day long and rail at Harris, but in the end, Harris was an accomplice to murder. And he kept his mouth shut even after an entire family had died. Which – that alone would have earned him Stiles’s ire. But then Harris had had to go and tell Kate that the sheriff had had some questions for him.
Just to save his own skin. And no deeper reason than that. Occam’s razor.
Peter looks down and searches his eyes. But he must see or smell that Stiles is telling the truth, because he just nods and holds out his hand. Stiles takes it, and together they turn to leave.
“W-Wait! Wait! You can’t just leave me tied up here!”
“You graduated from West Point,” Peter says without turning around. “Untie yourself.”
“But I – I didn’t know – Wait, the necklace, the sketch with the necklace!”
“What about it?”
“The symbol on it, that’s the symbol the woman was wearing, the woman was talking to me,” Harris says desperately. “That woman – She was just here – She’s the one you want, not me! She’s the arsonist!”
Stiles turns around. Harris’s face lights up with hope.
“Murderer,” Stiles corrects coldly. “Arson happens to property, Mr. Harris. What Kate did, what you did – that was murder.”
And then he shuts the old burnt out door on Harris’s yells.
“Is she dead?” Stiles asks.
“Hmm. Almost.” And when Stiles raises a questioning eyebrow, Peter explains, “I thought you would want to see it.”
And Stiles – Stiles hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t thought of wanting to see the light leaving Kate’s eyes. All of his focus had been on catching her. But now that Peter mentions it . . .
“Good thought,” Stiles says, and lets Peter help him down into the tunnel. “What is this place?”
“An escape tunnel,” Peter explains. “Our ancestors built it when they built this house. They knew hunters would come one day, and they wanted us to have a secret way to escape.”
“How did Kate find out about it?” Stiles asks, because he can put two and two together and come up with four.
Peter’s face spasms. “Her usual way: charm,” he replies, which definitely doesn’t answer Stiles’s question. “You’ve got a pretty face, Kate. Even I have to admit it.”
Stiles looks down at Kate’s formerly perfect hair, her formerly gorgeous clothes, her formerly beautiful face. It’s all covered in blood now. Well. What’s left of it, anyways.
Kate gurgles.
“Did you slash her throat?”
“More like I targeted her vocal chords. Can’t scream if you can’t speak. And her screams would have been delicious, Stiles, don’t get me wrong, but I felt this was . . . poetic.”
“Smoke inhalation?”
“Kate laced her accelerants with wolfsbane. It was ingenious, I’ll give her that. The smoke was almost as agonizing as the flames. It’s not quite the same, but . . . I’ll take her getting a taste of what it’s like to be unable to breathe.”
“You going to finish it now?”
“Yes. Unless . . .” Peter looks at him, a sly smile on his face, one that Stiles can tell is at least a little forced. “Unless you want to help me, sweet boy?”
Stiles thinks about it for a minute. Kate’s basically half dead already, so she’s no danger to him if he gets close. And they’re not planning on leaving their evidence behind – or much evidence at all – so nothing will tie him to this. If he wanted to march over to Kate’s gasping body and stomp on her face, he could, and he bets Peter would only smile more because he’s a creeper.
But: “No,” Stiles decides. And when Peter’s smile dims a little, he elaborates, “I want you to do it. I want to be sure.”
Fortunately, Peter accepts that explanation.
A moment later, Kate’s last breath ends on a wet gurgle when Peter rips her head clean off.
It’s kind of gross, and Stiles flinches back from the spray of blood, but almost all of it ends up on either the tunnel walls or Peter. Which Peter doesn’t seem to mind, if the way he continues to crouch over Kate’s dead body is any indication. Maybe being a werewolf gives one immunity to being grossed out by yucky innards and gross blood.
When Peter is still crouching over her a minute later, though, Stiles frowns.
“Peter?”
Peter doesn’t answer.
“Peter,” Stiles says a little more urgently. “We have to go. We have to finish the plan – ”
A vicious snarl interrupts him. Peter turns his head, his face gone feral and twisted and his eyes bright alpha red, and Kate’s skull creaks in his hands as he squeezes. Strangely, he looks more like Stiles would have assumed a werewolf might look in their shifted form: half human with human features, half wolf with fur on said features.
But his eyes – they are a monster’s eyes.
“Peter,” Stiles says softly. “She’s dead. Your family, your pack – they’ve been avenged. It’s done. Let’s finish the plan.”
A glimmer of recognition sparks in Peter’s eyes. Just a small glimmer, though. And Stiles really needs the full human part of Peter right now.
So he says, “Seriously, what is it with you werewolves and your eyebrows when you’re shifted?”
Peter blinks. Then he scowls, and the fur melts away like shadows before the dawn. He drops Kate’s head, pushing himself to his feet and brushing off his hands.
“What is it with you and eyebrows?” Peter grouses.
“What is it with you and having weird ones in werewolf form?”
“They are not weird.”
“Dude! They totally are!”
“Don’t call me dude.”
As it turns out, a burnt out husk of a house is pretty good fuel for a fire.
The Hale house burns for a second time, and all of its secrets burn with it.
They hold the sheriff’s funeral over the weekend. It’s a well-attended affair; Beacon Hills might not be a major city, and until the Argents had descended the most exciting bit of crime had been a bank robbery years ago, but Sheriff Stilinski had still been well-liked and well-admired.
Stiles sits at the front, in an itchy too tight black suit, in the front row, just as he had for his mother’s funeral. Except this time, he’s alone, because his father is no longer around to sit with him.
Someone gives the eulogy. It isn’t Stiles, because all of the adults have been treating him like spun glass ever since he came from the preserve to find basically the entire police station at his house. They wouldn’t even let him see his father’s body. It makes Stiles wish that he had been able to say goodbye, but he takes a small amount of comfort that his father’s murderer is nothing ash and bone fragments.
A very, very small amount.
Afterwards, what seems like half the town comes up to give Stiles their condolences. The mayor tells Stiles that they’re going to commission a plaque to honor his father. The principal says they’re going to start a scholarship fund in his father’s name. And so on, and so on, and so on.
Stiles just keeps his face tight and politely shakes hands with everyone.
Tara is one of the last in line. She hugs him, which is nice. She also tells him that they’ve closed both his father’s murder and the Hale fire, which is nicer.
“We traced the bullet to the gun that killed your father. We’re pretty sure a woman named Kate Argent was responsible.”
Stiles lets tears fill his eyes, lets his lip wobble a little, like he’s six and not sixteen. “Kate Argent? I’ve never even – why would she want my dead dad?”
“Because,” Tara hesitates and then plows ahead. “Because your father had been investigating the Hale house fire. And he’d built a pretty substantial case for her as the suspect. We found all of his notes in his office for Kate and her accomplice.”
“Are you going to arrest her now?” Stiles asks, interjecting as much teary angst into it as he can.
“The others don’t want you to know, but . . .”
“Tara, please. He is – He was my dad.”
Tara sighs. “No, because she’s deceased. Looks like she and her accomplice got into a fight. Something went wrong and the whole house went up. That’s why you saw firetrucks heading into the preserve.”
“The Hale house?” Stiles lets his eyes widen in confusion. “But why would they return there?”
“You know how criminals are, Stiles. Some of them are really messed up. They like returning to the scene of the crime. To gloat and all that. Serves them right; all of their gloating just got them dead.” Tara gives him a concerned look. “You going to be okay, Stiles?”
“Sure,” Stiles says. “Melissa dropped off some food, and the bills are paid until the end of the month, and – ”
“You, Stiles. We’re talking about you.”
Stiles drops his gaze. His eyes wander to the grave, which is now being covered in fresh dirt. His father is buried next to his mother, as they both wished. Soon the tombstone will be updated with both of their names. There’s technically room for a third, but. Well. Stiles isn’t sure he’ll still be around for that.
“I have to be, don’t I?” he tells Tara, forcing a smile. “Gotta keep living.”
It’s obvious she doesn’t buy it, but Tara contains herself to ruffling his hair and giving him another hug. “See you around, kiddo.”
“See you.”
Stiles shakes hands and accepts condolences from a few more people, but then the line finally ends and he is, at last, free to walk away. The parking lot is thankfully empty too, so no one looks weirdly at Stiles when he hops in his Jeep and doesn’t immediately drive away.
Instead, Stiles checks his phone. There are no new notifications. Part of him isn’t surprised at all; part of him is angry.
Stiles takes a deep breath and calls Scott.
It takes two calls, but Scott finally picks up. He’s got the puppyish edge to his voice that tells Stiles that Allison must be near. At least he picks up, though. When Melissa had come to drop off food for Stiles, she’d come alone, and when she’d said Scott and I are so very sorry for your loss, the words had been stilted in the way that people talk when they’re saying a lie because they think it’ll be easier for you to swallow.
“Hey, man, how you been?”
“Hey, Scott.”
“What’s up?”
Stiles smiles mercilessly into thin air, even though Scott can’t see it. “Oh, you know. Just calling to check in.”
“Oh, I’m good, I’m with Allison, she’s really having a hard time since – ”
“And,” Stiles continues, as casual as he can, talking right over Scott, “just wondering why you didn’t come to my dad’s funeral.”
What Stiles is expecting is: Oh no, I’m forgot. Or Wait, that was today?! Or even just an I’m sorry.
What Stiles gets is: “I was going to come, I was, I promise, but – you know, Allison, she’s so torn up since her aunt died, I’ve been coming over as much as I can to help her in any way I can, and I really couldn’t leave her.”
“Uh huh. Couldn’t even spare two hours, Scott?”
“She’s having a really hard time, Stiles,” Scott repeats, in that patient voice he uses when he thinks Stiles isn’t listening to him.
Which, to be fair, sometimes Stiles isn’t. Sometimes Scott has stupid ideas, like just turn the other cheek to Jackson, and so Stiles tunes him out in order to formulate a proper plan that will make Jackson regret, say, stealing Scott’s inhaler at recess because he thought it was funny.
But this isn’t recess anymore.
“Two hours,” Stiles says softly. “Just two hours.”
“Allison – ”
“I’ve known you since kindergarten, Scott.”
“But Allison – ”
“I’ve always been there for you.”
“But Allison really – ”
“Would two fricking hours really have been too much to ask for? Even your mom managed to get an hour off work to come.”
If Scott had already been defensive, mentioning Melissa makes his defensiveness go through the roof. “I wanted to come, okay? But I really didn’t feel safe leaving Allison. She loved Kate so much, you know? Really looked up to her. I – Look, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll come over tomorrow and we can, we can crash on the sofa and play Mario or something, okay?”
“Sure,” Stiles says, biting down his more caustic response of how exactly do you plan to make up for missing my dad’s funeral. “And what happens when Allison is sad tomorrow, Scott?”
“Well, I’ll be there for her,” Scott says, in a tone of voice that all but screams obviously.
“So in other words. You’ll want to come. But you won’t. Because you’ll be with Allison.”
“She needs me right now, Stiles.”
“I needed you, Scott! I needed you today! I needed my best friend at my dad’s funeral! They buried him, Scott, and you didn’t even come to say goodbye!”
“Whoa, whoa, no need to yell,” Scott says, which is when Stiles realizes that his voice has been rising throughout this entire conversation. “Let’s just – Let’s just take a step back and take some deep breaths and cool down, yeah?”
Stiles takes some deep breaths. It does not calm him down.
“Look, I messed up, okay? I admit it. But there’s no need to get overly emotional about it. I already said I’d make it up to you.”
Stiles can’t stop the bitter laugh that escapes. Or that caustic response. “And how,” he snaps, “do you plan on making up for missing my dad’s funeral? You know, something that happens, oh, once in a human life?”
“I already told you, I’ll come over tomorrow and we can eat some food and play some games. Don’t get all omega about it.”
The whole world freezes. It’s like that first moment Stiles had stepped into his house and seen his father’s body on the floor: his heart stops, his lungs freeze, his body goes still. There is nothing in the world but what is in front of him: Scott, and a phone, and –
“What did you just say?”
“I said, don’t get all omega about it.”
“Which means, what, exactly?”
“You know . . . emotional. Oh. Is it, um. Is it your, uh, your omega time?”
Stiles doesn’t remember hanging up, but he must, because he blinks and the screen is black. Stile doesn’t remember driving home, but he must, because he blinks and he’s no longer at the cemetery. Stiles doesn’t remember going inside, but he must, because he blinks and he’s in the living room.
He is also not alone.
“Stiles?” Peter asks, concern written all over his face.
And Stiles breaks.
When he comes to, his nose runny and his eyes wet and his voice feeling raw, Peter is still there. Peter is curled around him, actually, like a wolf protecting its mate, blocking out the outside world. He must know that Stiles is conscious again, but he doesn’t do anything except to keep stroking Stiles’s back.
“I want to leave,” Stiles says. “And never come back.”
Peter goes still. “Are you sure?”
And honestly, until Stiles had spoken them, he hadn’t been. But he’s sure now.
He nods. “There’s nothing for me here now. I – I was already planning to sell the house. Too big for one person. And I’m not going back to school with – with her there.”
Peter doesn’t ask who. He doesn’t have to. It’s kind of nice, having someone who knows Stiles well enough to understand him.
“Then we’ll leave,” Peter says, as though it’s as easy as that.
Stiles peers up at him. “What?”
“Then we’ll leave,” Peter repeats. He brushes a hand over Stiles’s hair. “Did you really think I’d abandon you?”
“But Beacon Hills – this is your territory – ”
“It was my territory,” Peter corrects, in a voice so carefully neutral that it’s almost flawless. But for the fact that Stiles can smell that sharp acidic grief in his scent. Peter can’t hide it, not when Stiles is basically nose-first against his chest. “Beacon Hills is lost for the Hale pack. It’s been lost for a long time. I’m not so blind as to ignore the truth.”
“You’d – You’d really be okay if another alpha just showed up and set up shop?”
Peter snorts. “I was comatose from six years, and not one pack settled here. And even if they come now that Kate is dead . . . the Argents live here now. If any pack is foolish enough to try and make a treaty with them, then they’ll deserve it when their house burns down next.”
“Okay, so – so we leave,” Stiles says, and he can’t deny the way his stomach settles at the thought of having Peter with him. “When?”
“No better time like the present.”
Which. That is faster than Stiles was prepared for. But then again, he has no interest in sticking around to land in foster care or going back to Beacon Hills High, so: “Okay. Where to?”
“Wherever you want,” Peter says. “I hear up north is nice. More territory, less hunters.”
“You better not be about to suggest Forks, Washington.”
Peter’s eyebrow goes up. “Do you have a grievance against Forks that I am unaware of?”
“Oh, man. We are so watching Twilight when – well, when we have somewhere to watch it.”
“I eagerly await it,” Peter says in a dry tone. “Come on, let’s get you packed and make ourselves scarce before a deputy ‘happens’ to pass by on patrol and wants to check on you.”
“Wait. I want something else too.”
Peter looks at him. His gaze is clear and expectant. Thoughtful. Stiles can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like that. Like he had their full and complete focus and attention.
Stiles takes a deep breath. “I meant it. What I said before. I want the Bite.”
“You wish,” Peter says, looking at Stiles like he’s the moon, stars, and sun combined, “is my command.”
“Leave it.”
“It itches.”
“Leave it. Your healing will kick in soon enough and then you’ll be fine.”
Stiles looks up from where he’s fiddling with his wrist. Peter had carefully dabbed it clean and wrapped it with a bandage, but he’d bitten deep with his fangs; Stiles can still feel the bone-deep ache of it. But only just, because Peter had next put his hand over Stiles’s arm and did a weird black vein thing that had made all the pain fade away like someone had sucked it up with a vacuum.
Peter is driving, because – as he had rightfully pointed out – people would be on the lookout for Roscoe. Stiles is a little sad to be leaving his Jeep behind, but Peter had promised that he’d have it shipped to them as soon as they settled somewhere, so Stiles can live with it for now.
Stiles leans back and says, “You sound super confident that the Bite will take.”
“It will.”
“But you told me sometimes it doesn’t.”
“But it will for you.”
“But if it doesn’t, what happens?”
“Stiles.”
“Peter,” Stiles says, mimicking Peter’s voice exactly.
Peter sighs heavily and changes into a different lane. “When the Bite doesn’t take, it gets . . . messy. We call it bite rejection.”
“How messy?”
“Think black ooze from every orifice – and I do mean every – as your cells reject the change and begin to die. Eventually, you’d drown when your lungs filled up. Unless someone granted you a merciful death first.”
“Gross,” Stiles says. “I vote for that not happening.”
“It won’t.”
“How are you so confident?”
Peter smiles. “You were born to be a werewolf, Stiles. Your strength, your cunning, your loyalty. You’ll be a glorious wolf once you turn.” Then he pauses. “Also, I can smell the change starting in you. It’s slight, but the scent is . . . very distinctive.”
“What?” Stiles yanks his arm up and sniffs at his armpit. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Well, you’re not a werewolf. Yet.”
Stiles flops back against his seat. “Well, I wish the change would happen faster,” he says. “What, uh. What will I be once I change?”
“A beta. My beta,” he amends, and there’s no missing the sheer pride in his voice.
“Oh,” Stiles says. “So I won’t – I won’t be an omega anymore?”
“No. And if you don’t like it, I’m afraid your only other choice is to hunt down an alpha or challenge me,” Peter says silkily.
“Pass. I just. I never considered not being an omega before.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to miss your heats.”
“Nope,” Stiles says, popping the second syllable with relish. His heats had been annoying, leaving him with too much laundry, too many aches, and too many knowing smirks from his classmates once he got back. He won’t miss the desperation or the slick or the post-heat trifecta of nausea, hunger, and thirst at all.
He does wonder, though, if people will treat him differently now. If they won’t be so quick to brush him off when he says he wants to work for the FBI. If they won’t be so expectant that he’ll be the one cooking at every meal.
Betas might not be at the top of pyramid, but they’re steady. Dependable. Responsible.
Although: “Derek once said that an alpha needed at least three betas for a pack,” Stiles says, carefully keeping his gaze straight ahead. “If we’re leaving Derek and Scott behind . . . does that mean we need to find two more people?”
“No,” Peter says instantly, as though the very thought is poison.
“But won’t you be weakened?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But for right now, I don’t see any problems with it being just the two of us.”
And that – that’s new too. Someone wanting Stiles. Someone wanting him, and only him, and no one else.
Stiles basks in it. He’s sure his scent is giving it away, but he’s too happy to try and figure out how to cover it up. He can always ask Peter to show him how later, anyways.
“Me and you in a pack of two,” Stiles says. “Sounds good to me.”
FINIS