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The sheets were scratchy and new, and they were keeping Derek awake.
He'd never actually had to lie down in a bed the last two nights. He couldn't remember most of the first night after, and he'd spent the second dozing uneasily in waiting room chairs with Laura at the hospital. Now they had held a funeral and Uncle Peter was in the burn ward. Now it was the third night.
Everyone seemed to expect him to go back to something like real life now, despite what he'd done. Despite his mother and father and brothers and baby sister and aunts and cousin being ash in the ground and his uncle still lingering half-dead in the hospital. He was supposed to sleep now, in this strange room in a strange house with strange people, on these scratchy new sheets. It was probably something he was supposed to be grateful for, now that he was an orphan and a foster kid--new sheets, and a room of his own where he was alone in the dark when it was time to go to sleep.
He couldn't tell anyone that it wasn't a comfort at all. He'd rather have sheets that smelled like people had slept on them before. He'd loved being able to smell that his sheets had been Laura's or Jared's before they were his, that his mattress had been Uncle Peter's first, and then Mark's before it was Derek's, that Cora had taken her naps in his bed sometimes. These sheets smelled like nothing but fabric softener and a whiff of their plastic packaging; the waterproof surface of the mattress beneath smelled like bleach. They probably meant it kindly--at least he knew everything was clean. He couldn't complain, but the poly-cotton blend scratched at his cheek and the striped print, shades of green and gray, didn't quite align with the threads. He kept trying to straighten the pillowcase, but the crookedness was built in. It scratched at his skin like sandpaper, and he couldn't sleep.
And Laura had left him here.
She had to, he knew. Laura was only eighteen, so they wouldn't just automatically give her guardianship of Derek. No one knew she was his alpha. She couldn't kidnap him while she needed to be here looking after Uncle Peter, sorting out wills and money and everything. She had to play by the rules at least for a while, and that meant Derek had to go live with the foster parents.
They were probably nice people. Derek had smelled no weapons on them, no wolfsbane, and no suspicious blank cleanness or sense-deadening perfume that might be hiding them. Laura had come to meet them, but then she had gone away and left Derek alone here with these strangers, and Derek was lying awake in the dark, unable to stop squirming in his uncomfortable new bed.
There was a sound outside the bedroom window, and Derek was on his feet without a thought, ready to fight or run. He could already feel his throat going tight, silencing the scream he should let out to warn the foster parents--
But the shape sitting patiently outside his window was Laura, shifted to a black wolf.
She looked so much like their mother that tears came to Derek's eyes and his breath hitched on a choked-off sob. He couldn't mistake her for Mom--she was obviously younger and more lightly built, and Laura's eyes were more like Dad's even in this shape--but he knew her. He recognized his alpha, his pack, instantly.
Laura tilted her head and made a low, gruff sound, and Derek moved, fumbling at the window latch and pushing it open. Laura didn't even let him back away before she jumped through, tackling him to the bedroom floor and wriggling all over him, scent-marking him everywhere at once. Derek lay still while she licked his face and nuzzled at his ears and hair. He reached up enough to close his hands in the fur at her sides, and Laura allowed him that without reprimand.
After a while, she stood up and turned, jumping easily into his bed, shoving the covers aside and settling down on the mattress. She made a disdainful sort of noise--obviously she could smell the mattress and feel the sheets just fine--and Derek smiled a little as he picked himself up and went over to the bed. She'd moved to the outside edge of the bed, leaving space for him between her and the wall. Derek lay down on his back, turning his head to watch her. He couldn't take his eyes off her. Laura immediately moved in, settling again half on top of him. He could feel her claws resting lightly on his shoulder and thigh. He felt a lick and the faintest touch of teeth at his throat, and then she settled her head on the pillow, letting him tuck his face down into her throat. His cheek was pressed against the scratchy sheets, but Derek barely had time to notice before he succumbed to exhaustion and slept.
In the morning Laura woke him up and looked him sternly in the eye for a few long seconds, then darted in to close her teeth lightly on his chin before she jumped back out the window. Derek closed and latched it behind her, noticing the chill in the room for the first time now that she was gone.
He took a shower, dressed in his wrong-smelling hand-me-down clothes that carried traces of other boys' sweat and crotch stink and unfamiliar detergents. He dutifully ate the wholesome breakfast of off-brand corn flakes with skim milk that the foster mom offered him.
Half an hour after she'd left, Laura knocked on the door and asked permission to drive Derek to school. The foster mom gave a sympathetic smile and agreed, and Derek went and got into the passenger seat of Dad's car, the only one that had been parked far enough from the house not to be damaged by the fire. It smelled a little like smoke, but mostly of family. Derek buckled himself in instead of sliding down into the footwell and pressing his face against Laura's knee.
"Where are we going?" he asked, when they were a block away from the foster parents' house.
Laura gave him a stern sideways look and closed her hand on the nape of his neck. "You are going to class. You will miss zero classes. You will make up your work on whatever schedule each of your teachers gives you. You will not act like somebody who needs forty-year-old foster parents to keep him in line. Got it?"
Derek nodded. Laura didn't let go of the back of his neck.
"Where are you going?" Derek asked in a smaller voice this time.
Laura squeezed. "Not far. I'll formally negotiate an alternate graduation plan--I'm eighteen, in the circumstances they'll let me arrange something so I don't actually have to go to classes most of the time. I have some appointments, and I'll go and see Uncle Peter, but I won't be out of reach of you. If you need me, I'll be there."
Derek nodded, and he knew she didn't mean just today, just while he was at school. She was his alpha now.
She was his alpha, and she didn't know what he'd done.
Her hand tightened again--she must have sensed something about what he was thinking--and she repeated, "Anytime you need me, Derek. I won't be far. Not for you."
Derek didn't have to ask for her; Laura was in the cafeteria during first lunch, which was nearly all freshmen and sophomores. She didn't summon Derek over to her, didn't come and join him at the table full of basketball players who'd been his friends until four days ago and now didn't know what to say to him at all. She was just there, in the corner of the room, letting Derek know he wasn't alone.
She picked him up from school, too, quizzing him about his makeup work schedules and homework. She kissed his forehead before she dropped him off, gripping the back of his neck just like Mom used to do sometimes. Derek's eyes watered a little, but he managed to keep the tears from spilling over.
He went inside and settled down in his room--which smelled a little of Laura now--to do his homework, keeping himself busy until dinner. After dinner Laura appeared again, and the foster parents didn't object to her going to Derek's room with him to help him with his homework. He spent two hours reading The Scarlet Letter with his head in Laura's lap, and didn't remember a thing about it afterward except the smell of his alpha and the feel of her fingers occasionally running through his hair, resting sometimes on his throat.
Laura said goodbye to the foster parents and drove away at nine o'clock, and an hour later she was outside Derek's window, wolf-shaped, and Derek could begin to believe that she had no intention of leaving him anywhere.
Derek had to stay with the foster parents for over a month while Laura convinced social workers that she could support him financially and emotionally. She rented a two-bedroom apartment and took Derek to see it. It was pristine, smelling of nothing, though he could see she'd put enough things around to make it seem like she lived there. She brought him clothes, a few items at a time, socks and underwear first and then new jeans, long-sleeved shirts, gym clothes. It was all exactly what he would have chosen if she'd taken him shopping, all washed in the same scent-free detergent Dad used to use, all smelling like she'd kept them in the car with her for a few days before she handed them over.
She took him to see Uncle Peter. They sat side by side, Derek properly in the semi-comfortable visitor's chair and Laura perched on the arm. She held his hand tight as she said, "The doctors don't think he's going to get much better than this. It's been long enough now that they think--this might be as well as he does."
Uncle Peter wasn't in the burn ward anymore--Laura had flatly refused to take Derek there, saying it was too full of people in pain. He was in a long-term care facility now, and the burns were shiny red scars with just a few open wounds lingering among them. Derek could sense the distress of the body in front of him--pain, agitation, like a trapped animal--but he couldn't sense Uncle Peter at all. The pack bond between them was gone as thoroughly as if he had died. There was something alive in that bed, but it wasn't really Uncle Peter anymore. Derek and Laura were all that was left of the Hale Pack now.
Every night Laura slept in his bed in her alpha form. She took Derek to school and brought him back to the foster parents, and she visited after dinner. Twice she got permission to take him to the apartment overnight, and when she did, Derek slept in his new bed with Laura wolf-shaped and holding him firmly to the mattress.
It was a little more than two weeks after the fire--the moon had begun to wax again, but was still a thin crescent almost lost in the clouds of the afternoon sky--when Derek found himself wanting to jerk off for the first time since before.
He wasn't really thinking about anything; he'd been dozing off over his Chemistry homework, his brain drifting vaguely. He startled sharply awake when he realized he was grinding down against the mattress, already mostly hard.
The little wash of pleasure he felt from the friction made him think of her, and he felt sick with guilt. But his heart kept beating, and his dick stayed hard, and he rocked his hips again and made himself not think of her, or of anything. He buried his face in the sheets and inhaled the scent of his pack--safety and home and comfort, all wrapped up in the mingled smells of him and Laura--while he shoved his hand down his pants and jerked off as fast as he could. It didn't take long.
He washed his hands and changed his underwear after, and then he sprawled back down on his bed and fell asleep on his Chemistry homework for real. The foster mom had to wake him up for dinner, and gave him a soft, worried look as he stumbled sleepily out of his room. She told Laura about it when Laura came over after dinner, and Laura gave him a considering look. Derek managed not to blush only by focusing his hearing firmly on a rerun of Seinfeld playing on a TV in the house next door.
When they got upstairs and there was definitely no way Laura didn't know what he'd done up here earlier, she put her hand on the back of his neck. "So you're alive after all, huh?"
Derek flushed, shrugged, and nodded. He didn't think about anything too much, and didn't say a word. Laura curled up on his bed with him and kept her hand on the back of his neck while she talked him through his Chemistry homework, and that was that.
For the next few days he could smell sex on Laura--not with anyone else, but the hot musk of it was there between her legs and lingering on her fingers. It was nothing he wasn't used to knowing about her, about anyone in the pack, but it made him realize that she'd been without for as long as he had. He also realized that her period was coming up; it always started a few days before the full moon. Laura and Mom and their aunts were all on the same cycle, and when the bleeding started they would go away for a night to have woman-time without the men and kids. Cora had been begging to be included for nearly a year now. Mom had seemed like she was getting close to relenting, but then Cora had had that ripening smell about her that Derek knew from the girls in his middle school class, the month or two before they started.
Cora would never get to go out to the woods with them now, and Laura would never spend another month's woman-time with Mom and Aunt Kay and Aunt Elsie. Derek was almost getting numb to the knowledge that it was all his fault.
Still, he half-expected Laura not to show up, to go off and have woman-time on her own, away from him. But when that night arrived there was a tap at his window and Derek looked out and found Laura standing there in her human shape, wearing black sleep-pants and a dark purple hoodie. Derek let her in, and she went and lay on the bed, turning to face the room instead of the wall. Derek lay down behind her, nuzzling cautiously at the back of her shoulder first, and then settling an arm gingerly over her waist. She curled her hand around his wrist and tugged him closer, so he spooned up tightly behind her and let his hand settle on the soft slight curve of her belly.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, keeping his voice low. He could smell her blood, and it made him want to kill someone or hide.
"Not bad," she said. "Less than it used to. Mom used to take my pain sometimes, but I don't need it now."
Derek rubbed his thumb gently against her belly until the bottom of her hoodie was pushed up a little by the motion. He shifted his hand up a little under it, until his thumb and first finger were touching the soft hidden skin, and then he drew off just the least little bit of pain. It twisted strangely through his belly, a weird dull cramp down low where he'd never felt anything like it before.
"You don't have to, bunny," Laura said quietly, but she didn't push his hand away.
Derek ducked his head down, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. Laura hadn't called him that since he was nine and the kids in his class started teasing him about having rabbit teeth, but it made him feel good now, the same way it did when his mom called him pup. He shifted his hand a little higher, settling two fingers on her skin, and took more of her pain until there was a hot throbbing ache low down in his guts.
"I can share," he whispered. "I can feel it with you."
Laura's fingers skated gently over the back of his hand, but she still didn't push him away.
Three nights later the moon hung full in the sky when Derek opened the window for Laura. She didn't make a sound, just tilted her head toward the backyard. Derek nodded and slipped out the window, shutting it most of the way behind him. He'd left his shoes off, and the ground was cold but not frozen underfoot.
Laura led him through the scant few shadowed places in the foster parents' subdivision, then faster along the county road. He had to run as fast as he could to keep up with her, but she never left him behind, always staying just far enough ahead that he could follow in her footprints. They were in the woods before the moon had moved a finger's width higher in the sky, and Derek stopped to leave his pajamas up in a tree. They were allowed to be naked on full moon nights, once they got into the woods; those had always been the rules and Laura didn't seem to want things any different, waiting patiently as he stripped.
Derek shifted to his beta form, letting his fangs and claws extend and his eyes flash bright. Only when he'd done it did he realize what he was showing to Laura. He'd tried not to show his eyes around anyone but Mom, and she'd helped him keep it secret, but Laura gave no sign of surprise. She rose up on her hind legs and closed her wicked teeth gently on his jaw, and then she hauled him down to the ground with her. Derek struggled a little, enough to make Laura hold him down, but after a moment she let him up, taking off running again, and Derek rolled up to his hands and feet and followed her on all fours, racing through the woods with her.
She led him down unfamiliar paths, and Derek was intent on that, taking everything in, places he'd lived so close to all his life and yet never seen. Every living thing in the woods bolted long before they reached it, but that was all right. This wasn't a hunt, just a run for the joy of running, the joy of being wolves. The joy of being alive.
It struck Derek all of a sudden, between one stride and the next, and he tumbled and rolled awkwardly across the cold ground. Laura caught him before he went too far, but he lay there, stunned, looking up past her at the clear cold sky, the stars washed up by the moon where it hung straight overhead.
There wasn't another sound in the woods but them. The little animals were hiding from them, and nothing else moved. There wasn't one other wolf on their land, wasn't anybody at home looking after the little kids and keeping an eye on the row of crock pots on the counter cooking up egg casseroles and thick oatmeal and gooey apple cake for the morning. They were all gone, all dead, and it was all because of Derek--and yet he was the one who got to run in the woods on the next full moon night, breathing the crisp air full of the smells of leaf mold and skittering animals, protected by his alpha.
Because she didn't know.
Derek tried to curl away from her, tried to hide his face as it crumpled. The first sob felt like his whole body caved in around it; it took a long time for him to finally force it out, a harsh wet noise that broke the silence in the ugliest way. The tears didn't start to leak from his eyes until after, until he heard himself making that awful sound like a combination of retching and coughing. Once he started he couldn't stop, just barking out the awful knot of pain and guilt and grief inside him over and over.
He knew that Laura had shifted back when he felt arms around him. She tried to pull him close, and he struggled away. He didn't want to be comforted. He didn't deserve to be comforted. He thrashed back against her grip and she let him go; he was splayed on his back across her lap, and he arched on every inhale, bending himself backward to bare his belly and throat to his alpha as the sobs shook out of him. He wished he could show her what she'd done as easily, that he could let her see it on his skin, let her cut it out of him like a bad spot on an apple. But he was rotten on the inside. She would have to gut him to do it, tear out his heart.
He didn't really think before he did it, just turned his claws against his chest, trying to let it out, trying to show her. Laura caught his wrist before he could draw blood--he struggled again but she didn't let him win this time, and in a second she had both of his wrists pinned to the ground above his head. He was completely exposed to her, utterly defenseless, and he tilted his head back and sobbed on and on, wailing to fill up the silence of the woods. Tears ran up his temples and into his hair, into his ears. He choked on snot and coughed, but she held him there, bowed over Laura's thighs as he cried.
She pressed her hand down over the stinging scratches, and it hurt at first and then didn't. He looked through blurry tear-filled eyes and saw that he was healing under her touch. When the marks were gone she began to move her hand, sliding it up to his throat and down low on his belly. Derek let his eyes close again, surrendering to her touch, even if he wished she would claw him open instead of being gentle. He should tell, but any time he tried to form words they caught in his throat, turning into high-pitched whines or more choking coughs. Laura made soothing noises and bent over to nuzzle at his jaw.
He tried to pull his hands down so he could cling to her, but she murmured, "Shh, bunny, stay still for me."
He stopped immediately, his arms going limp against the carpet of rotting leaves and pine needles. His sobs got smaller, winding down into a shaky keening, and he felt warmth against his face and realized Laura was licking his tears away. "Shh, I'm here, you're not alone. Your pack is here, we're here."
Derek turned his face toward her, curling his body in, and Laura let him tuck his legs in, pressing his knees to her hips, but she kept his shoulders on the ground, cleaning his face and nuzzling at his throat while he wound down to sniffling whimpers.
"Laura," he whispered hoarsely.
"There you are," she whispered back, and for some reason Derek remembered her saying, So you're alive after all.
"Please," he managed, and this time when he tried to move his hands Laura let him up, let him curl into her and press his hot face against the softness of her belly. She folded down over him--he could feel the weight of her breast on his cheek--and her hand kept moving over him, sweeping up and down his spine, as she cradled him close with her other arm.
"Sleep, bunny," she said softly. "You're worn out. I'm here. Get some sleep."
Derek nodded, his cheek dragging against the top of her thigh, and obeyed.
Laura stayed human-shaped with him all the way back to the spot where he'd left his pajamas, and when he was dressed she pulled him into one last hug.
"I know it's hard," she said softly, pressing him close to her body, guiding him to hide his face against her shoulder and keeping her hand there at the back of his neck. "You're doing such a good job. You're being so brave, Derek, I'm so proud of you. You've done everything I asked you to, and this part is almost over. It won't be long now until you can come home, I promise."
Derek nodded into her shoulder, feeling warmed by her praise even though he thought she wouldn't say any of it if she really knew about him. Even with the secret between him, he couldn't help feeling a little better because he'd made her proud. He clung to her until she gently pulled away from him. He wished he could stay right there with her forever, but Laura took a step back and melted down into her wolf shape to guide him back to the foster parents' house and leave him there.
When she came to pick him up after breakfast, she had an apple turnover for him, still warm in the bakery bag. His eyes prickled again as he took the first bite.
It was a week later that the day came. The moon had dimmed to half itself, already hanging low in the west when Derek ate breakfast at the foster parents' table for the last time. He put on the nice khakis and pale green button-down shirt that Laura had brought him two days before--on hangers, already washed and ironed. He had to wear them with his beat-up basketball shoes; Laura hadn't gotten him new shoes yet.
He rode in the foster parents' car to the county courthouse, where Laura was waiting outside. She looked grownup and trustworthy in a knee-length skirt and sweater, with brown high-heeled boots that came up to her knees.
She frowned at his shoes but said nothing, running a hand over his hair and straightening his collar. She brushed her fingers against his throat as she did, and he tipped his chin up automatically, baring himself to her. She smiled and squeezed the nape of his neck, and then took his hand to lead him into the courthouse, the foster parents trailing after them.
Derek sat beside Laura on a bench for half an hour before the clerk called them to come in and see the judge. It wasn't a big courtroom like on TV, just a little conference room. The judge was a woman in a suit sitting at the head of the table, and Laura walked confidently over to sit at her right, guiding Derek to the chair beside her. The foster parents sat on Derek's other side, and across from them sat the social worker and psychologist Derek had talked to a few times in the last month.
Everyone looked and smelled calm and focused. No one was angry, no one was spoiling for a fight. Derek focused on the steadiness of Laura's heartbeat and barely heard the words being spoken around him, though he paid enough attention to tune in when the judge spoke to him.
"Yes, ma'am," he said steadily, meeting her eyes without hesitation. "I want to live with Laura. She's my family. She's all I have left and it's hard being away from her."
The judge studied him for a moment, and then nodded. "Believe it or not, we're not here to make things any harder for you than they have to be. I find everything in order here; you'll continue to receive monitoring and support from your social worker, but you can go home with your sister today, Derek."
Derek smiled without even trying, and when Laura turned to hug him he sank easily into her arms.
Laura took him out for an early lunch after that, and then made him go to school for the afternoon. Derek kept finding himself smiling, knowing he was going home with Laura, and then feeling awful for smiling. He shouldn't be able to be happy at all--and yet he would be back with his pack, even if it was nothing but him and Laura, and that would be better.
As long as she didn't know what he'd done.
He got through the day somehow, but the repeated whiplash between happiness and horror was exhausting, and by the time he fell into the passenger seat next to Laura at the end of the day he could have fallen asleep right there. He actually did doze a little in the car on the way to Laura's--their--apartment. He woke up to Laura unfastening his seatbelt, and he opened his own door and followed her when she got out of the car. Once they were inside she pulled him into a hug, and he clung to her, shaking a little. When she loosened her grip on him, like she might be about to ask him what was wrong or make him look her in the eye, Derek let his legs fold, sliding down to kneel at her feet, his face pressed against her hip.
She let him stay there a while, just petting his hair while he clung to her thighs, but finally she said, "I know, bunny. But you still have to do your homework. Come on, we can sit on your bed and do it."
"Don't you have," he said, and then realized that he didn't really know what Laura had done every day between picking him up from school and coming over after dinner. "Things?"
"Nothing more important than you," she said, putting just enough exaggeration into her voice to make him smile. He could still hear the truth of it in every beat of her heart, and the way she picked up his backpack and followed him to his bedroom.
It didn't smell as much like them as his room at the foster parents' house, but it was theirs and no one else's, and the mattress didn't crinkle under him. The sheets were softer, too. Derek sat down on top of the covers and took his English book when Laura handed it to him, and he found what he was supposed to read and started through the poems he was supposed to study, muttering the words under his breath to hear the rhythms of them. Laura stayed for a while, looking through his other textbooks, finding his assignments and sorting them neatly, and then just lying propped against the pillows with her eyes closed.
After a while she got up and went into the kitchen, and Derek broke off from writing down the shortest possible answers to the review questions to ask, "Can I help?"
"It's fine, I froze a bunch of stuff, I just have to put it in the oven," Laura said from the kitchen. "Get back to work, I don't want you slacking off on your homework the first day you're with me."
Don't give them any reason to take you away, she meant. Derek returned his focus to the review questions, racking his brain for the smartest answers he could come up with. He heard Laura put out a couple of plates and forks and glasses while the oven preheated in electric silence.
"Chicken broccoli thing or lasagna?" Laura asked a moment later, while Derek was halfway through a paragraph about e. e. cummings expressing freedom through the use of short unpunctuated lines.
"Chicken," Derek replied, because it was Laura's favorite and she would probably want him to be eating vegetables. He didn't mind broccoli. Laura loved it; Cora couldn't eat things that had even touched it, which she got from their dad.
Derek stopped, biting hard on his lip, and a moment later Laura was there, her hand firm on the back of his neck.
"Keep going," she said softly. "You can do this."
Derek nodded and opened his eyes again, and went on writing.
After dinner Derek mostly had reading left to do, and Laura let him lie on the couch with his head in her lap while she read a thick paperback from the library--some fantasy thing with a bunch of lists of characters in the back because there was no other way to keep them all straight. She kept her hand on his throat or the back of his neck, whichever way he turned, and when he finally finished and put down his history book she petted his hair while he dozed.
She was already lying on his bed in alpha form when he came back from the bathroom after brushing his teeth. Derek turned out the lights and stripped down to his boxers. He lay down in the space she had left him, tucked between her and the wall, and Laura shifted over to lie half on top of him, holding him firmly in place. He was asleep almost before she'd stopped moving.
Derek woke up out of a warm doze in the pre-dawn dark, his heart racing into a rabbit-beat as he realized two things at once.
Laura had shifted sometime in the night, and was curled around him naked, her breasts pressed snugly against his back, his butt tucked into her pelvis, her knees right behind his. She had one hand on his chest, and one foot hooked over his ankle.
Derek was hard. Not the casual morning wood he'd woken up with as often as not for the last few years before the fire, but hard like he was already halfway through getting off. His dick ached, pressing against the thin cloth of his boxers, and he couldn't move an inch without rubbing some part of his body up against Laura, who was snuggled up to him so warmly.
Laura, who couldn't possibly not wake up when she heard him wake up and startle like he had.
He heard her heartbeat speed up gently, and she moved a little bit behind him. His dick jerked at the slide of her legs against his, the brush of her nipples against his skin. His whole face went instantly red with shame, and there was no getting out of this situation gracefully. Derek started to push away from her, meaning to go stand under the shower and try to get it over with, but Laura tightened her arm around him.
Derek froze.
Laura let out a sleepy breath that was almost a laugh and brushed her nose against the nape of his neck, patting his chest with her open palm. "It's your bed, bunny. You don't have to get up."
Derek stayed absolutely frozen, but Laura scooted away from him, walking calmly to the door, and Derek watched her go. He'd seen her naked on every full moon of his life, but he'd never looked at her like he was looking at her now, and he could almost hear Kate's laughter. His guts twisted with the knowledge that he was worse, sicker, than he'd ever imagined he was.
When Laura closed the door behind her, he shoved his boxers down and grabbed his dick, which hadn't gone down any as he realized what he was doing and how incredibly wrong it was. He twisted around to hide his face against the sheets, but as soon as he breathed in he could smell himself and Laura--and he could smell Laura's sex, like she'd done this same thing in this same place. He couldn't help himself; he curled down on the bed until he had his nose pressed against the place where it smelled the strongest, and he came over his own fingers almost before he'd had a chance to jerk himself. He lay there panting and listening to Laura's heartbeat--she was in the other bedroom, her bedroom, which she never used.
Derek grabbed the covers and pulled them up over himself like he could hide, and then he wiped his own come on the sheets where he could smell her sex. He lay there breathing it in, trapped in the warm dark under the covers. He was hard again before long, and he jerked off slowly, biting down on his lip until his eyes watered, unable to hold on even to the thought of how wrong he was. He couldn't think at all, couldn't do anything but breathe in the scent of them together, and hear her heart beating nearby, and feel the remnant of her body heat still clinging to him and the bed. He thrust erratically into his sticky-wet fist until he came again so hard it hurt.
He lay there after, dazed, his mind an absolute blank, until Laura tapped on the door. "If you're going again you need to hurry up, you've got school and you definitely need to shower first."
Derek shuddered all over--of course she knew, of course she could hear, but she still sounded unconcerned. She was still going to make him go to school. He thought about refusing, or arguing, or begging, but it would all end the same way, only with more shouting and maybe having to confess to something she seemed willing to ignore for now.
Derek got up, threw the covers over the bed to cover what he'd done, and went to take a shower. Laura stayed in the kitchen and didn't look at him as he went. He scrubbed himself roughly, hurrying through it, and when he came back out wrapped in his towel Laura was sitting at the kitchen table and still didn't look up. Derek went and got dressed in his oldest clothes, the things he'd been wearing on the day of the fire: his loosest pair of jeans, his softest boxers and a faded blue t-shirt, a threadbare pair of socks. He even put on his worn-out basketball shoes, though there were three new pairs of shoes lined up in the closet waiting for him, school shoes and basketball shoes and boots. Laura must have gone shopping yesterday afternoon while he was suffering through his half-day of school.
When he stepped out of the bedroom again Laura was waiting for him. He ducked his head immediately, fixing his eyes on the ground, but Laura put two fingers under his chin, pulling his face up and reminding him so much of Mom that he almost sobbed before she said a word.
"Look at me, Derek," she said softly, and he raised his eyes to meet hers with an effort.
"You don't have anything to be ashamed of," she said, speaking slowly and deliberately. "You haven't done anything wrong."
Derek shut his eyes and tucked his chin down again despite her touch, and Laura's hand slid to the back of his neck. She pressed a kiss to his forehead and then held him there as she said, "We'll talk about this later, but for now you'd better eat something and then we'll get you to school."
Derek was barely aware of anything around him all day. He went to his classes by habit, letting himself be pushed along in the momentum of everyone around him. He broke the surface just enough to go to the library instead of the cafeteria at lunch, hiding out in the stacks. He couldn't bear the thought of putting food into his knotted stomach, and he felt nothing but cold, terrible dread when he thought Laura might be there, even as he wanted nothing but to be near her.
He knew it was wrong; he knew it should be making him feel sick to want her like this, but it didn't. The thing he couldn't bear was keeping another secret from her, and the fear of what she would do when she couldn't ignore it anymore. He couldn't lose her. He couldn't be away from her. He couldn't be alone. He wouldn't survive that.
After school he slipped into the locker room and out through its other doors. He cut across the practice field and into the woods and then he ran. He couldn't think straight, couldn't think at all, just felt buffeted by the memories and images and the endless wanting as vast and dark as the ocean.
The ocean had scared him too, he remembered. He'd swum out a little way the first time, and when he couldn't put his feet down anymore he suddenly realized how huge and powerful the water was, how he could disappear into it without a trace. He'd panicked, flailing wildly, and had gone under twice before Laura caught him and hauled him out. He'd been maybe four years old, so she couldn't have been more than six, but she'd towed him safely to shore by the time their parents rushed over and gathered them both up for hugs and reassurance.
Now it was just the two of them, and he'd run away from Laura, and he felt like he was drowning all over again.
Derek ran through the woods for hours, throwing himself into brambles just to fight his way back out of them, wading into the icy river to numb himself and then running again, falling and getting back up and running and running.
The moon didn't rise until well after midnight, and when it did Derek found himself standing at the edge of the woods, looking blankly at the blacktop of the road. Before he even worked out where he was, or why, Laura pulled up in their dad's car.
Derek couldn't run anymore. He stumbled up to the car and climbed in, huddling in the passenger seat. Laura reached over wordlessly and tugged his seatbelt around him, fastening it with a click right over his arms. Derek didn't move until Laura pulled into the drive-thru. She ordered a double cheeseburger meal with extra-large curly fries and ice water, and when she dropped the bag in Derek's lap and said, "Eat," he couldn't think of doing anything else. The food and the whole huge cup of water were gone by the time they got back to the apartment.
"Shower," Laura said when they got inside, and Derek went into the bathroom and undressed. It was only when he was taking his clothes off that he realized how battered he'd gotten through the course of the day. He'd healed all his scrapes and bruises, but his shoes fell apart as he took them off, and his shirt and jeans were filthy and tattered. His socks were stained brown with mud and blood and had several new holes. Even his boxers had torn in a couple of places and were dirty and damp. Derek left everything in a pile, kicked into a corner, and stepped into the shower to scrub himself clean again. He couldn't summon up the hurried vigor of that morning's shower, and mostly just stood under the spray, rubbing at his skin with his fingers.
He was nearly asleep standing up when it occurred to him to turn off the water and get out of the shower. He could hear Laura's heart beating slowly and steadily outside, and he dried himself off haphazardly and wrapped a towel around himself. When he got to the bedroom she was there, wolf-shaped again. The sheets had been washed, but they still carried the smell of the two of them.
Derek didn't want to be anywhere else. He shoved his towel off and lay down, but Laura didn't move onto him like usual. She stayed on the other side of the bed, and despite his exhaustion Derek couldn't sleep until he scooted over to her, hiding his face against her fur. She didn't push him away, but she didn't touch him, and Derek fell asleep feeling cold for the first time he could remember.
Derek woke up in sunshine this time. He'd cuddled closer to Laura in the night, but she was still wolf-shaped. As soon as he scooted away from her she shifted, sitting up as she did. Derek lay still, his body loosely curled, keeping his head down as he looked up at her.
"Time for a pack meeting," Laura said quietly. She looked tired, her shoulders drooping a little, her voice soft.
Derek winced. Pack meetings were where punishments were meted out when you'd done something wrong enough to require a formal reckoning.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Laura scooted closer, running her hand gently through his hair.
"I need you to tell me what you're sorry for, Derek. And I need to know what you want, I need you to tell me that. I can't take care of my pack if I can't find you."
Derek bit his lip, all his secrets crowding his mouth. "Laura...."
Laura waited, calm and cool, and Derek knew that she wouldn't bend on this.
He looked down. "I'm sorry I ran away," he said quietly. "I'm sorry I made you come get me in the middle of the night. I'm sorry I--I'm sorry for--wanting--"
He was aware again that she was naked, and despite everything his dick stirred a little at her closeness.
"Don't be sorry for wanting something," Laura said gently. "And especially don't be sorry for wanting something when you still haven't told me what it is you want."
"I can't," Derek blurted. "I can't, Laura, I can't--"
Laura was closer suddenly, holding herself above him, and Derek found himself twisting to lie on his back beneath her, tilting his head back to bare his throat. She put her hand on his belly and he arched helplessly into the touch, and he couldn't take his eyes off her breasts, the oddly straight lines of them as they hung down, the pink-brown of her nipples.
"Do you want this?" Laura asked softly. "Do you want me like this?"
Derek met her steady gaze and nodded slowly.
Laura smiled, her whole body flushing warmer with happiness. "Didn't I tell you you didn't have anything to be ashamed of? Derek, have I ever shifted without meaning to since you were old enough to go up and down stairs by yourself?"
Derek blinked, staring up at her. Her hand on his belly started moving gently up and down.
"I've got you, bunny," she said softly. "I know it's scary. I know it's different from how it used to be. But I didn't want you when you were just my little brother, and you didn't want me when I was just your big sister. Things are different now. I'm your alpha, and you are my whole pack. You're my anchor, Derek. You're my everything."
Derek could see it suddenly, how Laura needed him as much as he needed her. All those nights in the same bed hadn't been only for his sake, and neither was this. Her hand drifted lower, right down to where the hair started above his dick, and Derek pushed up into her palm.
"Tell me," Laura said patiently. "What you want."
"You," Derek said, feeling dizzy with something like relief as his dick hardened, and he wiggled just to feel her hand press down and keep him still. "You, all of you, just you, just--just us, just don't leave me alone, please, don't leave me--"
"Never," Laura told him, and she put one of her knees down between his, close enough for him to feel the heat radiating off her skin against his hardening cock. Her legs were spread that way, and he could feel the heat of her, could smell her sex as she got wet. He pushed up helplessly against the curve of her thigh.
"You're my blood and my pack, Derek, you're everything I have. I won't ever leave you. Even if you didn't want this, I wouldn't send you away. I won't do anything you don't want, but I need you as much as you need me."
The rest of his secrets were still there, like a weight in his chest, and before Derek could think he blurted out, "But what if I did something really bad?"
Laura's eyes widened a little, and he heard the jump in her pulse. She hadn't expected that. She looked down at him for a moment, and then she brushed her knuckles gently over his cheek and said, "What did you do?"
She knew, she almost knew, she was so close to knowing, but he couldn't say it. He shook his head a little frantically and his eyes stung and blurred.
"What if I did something really bad," he repeated. "What if it--Laura, what if it was--what if I--would you--"
"No," Laura said softly. "You're my pack. You're my beta. I'm responsible for you, and I'm responsible for the things you do. If you did something wrong it would be for me to make sure you put it right."
Derek's whole body shook with a sob, but Laura's hand held him down, and Laura's whole body above him kept him in place. He hadn't been her beta then, but Mom was dead because of him.
Tears were rolling down his face, cold on his skin, and he managed, "But what if it was really bad, what if nothing could fix it. What if I, what if it was--what would you do, would you send me away?"
His voice broke on the last few words, becoming a distorted whine, but Laura still looked down steadily at him.
"You're mine forever," Laura repeated. "If you did something that bad it would be up to me to punish you, and to do what I could to repair the situation, but you wouldn't stop being my pack. As long as you live you'll never stop being mine."
Derek closed his eyes and sobbed, and his secret seemed to rise toward his skin.
"You don't have to tell me right now," Laura said softly, nuzzling the damp hair at his temple. "But you're going to tell me what you did, and after you do, I'm going to decide what we need to do about it."
Derek nodded, and he already felt like it was halfway over. Whatever Laura decided, whatever way she punished him, whatever she did--she would do it as his alpha. He only had to let her.
"But you're my pack," Laura went on, in between licks that were almost kisses, cleaning his tears away. "And I'm your alpha. I promise you that, Derek. You always have that, forever. And for right now...."
He nodded again under her, and it was enough. Her lips found his, and when he opened to her she tasted like the salt of his tears. She kissed him gently, coaxing him open and taking her time tasting him. He let her do what she wanted, licking back curiously when she paused. He didn't have to worry about being good at it. He didn't want her to wonder where he'd learned how, and she wouldn't care, anyway. He was hers. That was all that mattered now.
Her mouth lifted from his when she moved to straddle him, and Derek looked down between their bodies as her hand closed on his dick. He jerked in her grip, gasping, and when he looked up again Laura was grinning down at him. She shifted lower, and he could feel the wet heat of her, and then she took her hand away and rocked against him, his dick sliding in the slick heat of her folds. There was nothing between them, nothing at all to keep them apart.
"You ready for this, bunny?"
Derek nodded, tipping his head back to show his throat, and he let Laura take him home.