Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Stiles and Scott were offered full scholarships to Beacon Heights College in their former hometown of Beacon Hills, returning to their old childhood stomping ground had seemed like the perfect plan. 

In reality, the plan had been far from perfect. 

Over the course of freshman year, Stiles' step-brother-slash-best-friend was turned into a werewolf by a feral Peter Hale, then Stiles discovered he’d inherited a magic spark from his mother, and as a result, he’d gotten mixed up in one supernatural crisis after another.

Including the biggest supernatural crisis of all: Derek Hale.

Stiles never would have predicted Derek and what he came to mean to him.

*~*

“Well, at least this is a new record for shit not hitting the fan.” Stiles raises his voice over the sounds of wind and passing cars rushing through the open windows of the Jeep, even though Scott would be able to hear him anyway. “We almost made it through the whole summer break before Erica and Boyd got kidnapped! That’s practically three months.” 

Outside, grassy mountains blur by. The ocean below the cliffs comes into blue, beautiful view when the Jeep curves around a bend in the road, sunlight dancing over the glittering water. They’re not too far now, maybe twenty minutes or so from Beacon Hills. 

“Are we sure Erica and Boyd got taken by a…a pack of alphas?” Scott asks, bemused. “It just seems like it usually takes us a lot longer to figure out what we’re up against.” 

Stiles drums his fingers relentlessly against the steering wheel. He’s buzzing from a heady mix of caffeine and adrenaline. Only his inner cop’s-son prevents him from pushing the Jeep to its limit and gunning it down the highway. 

“True,” Stiles concedes. “But Derek found their pack symbol around the Preserve right after Erica and Boyd went missing. He thinks the alphas are trying to send a message, he just doesn’t know what it is yet.” 

Stiles is attempting to stay calm and focused, but he’s worried about his missing friends, about how Derek probably hasn’t slept since they were taken. He and Scott have barely slept either. When Derek asked them to come back early from summer break to help search, they’d haphazardly packed their things, said their goodbyes to their parents and San Francisco, and headed for Beacon Hills. 

“Isaac told me their scent just stopped dead in the woods,” Scott mutters, looking spooked, and Stiles strains to hear him over the noise of a truck blaring its horn. “It was like they’d disappeared into thin air. Even Derek hasn’t been able to pick up on it anywhere. It’s freaky.”

“They might have an emissary too?” Stiles guesses. Even if these alphas don’t fit the mold of a typical pack hierarchy, an emissary is still a possibility. “Or at least someone who can use magic? Great, that’s just what we need. Just what I need.” 

“I bet their emissary isn’t half as good as you,” Scott assures him, so sweetly sincere and naive that it warms Stiles' heart. 

“Dude,” Stiles says, shaking his head. “While I can google all the abandoned factories and houses for sale in Beacon County to figure out where the Alpha Pack might be hiding, I doubt there’s any magic I’m remotely good enough with yet to track them down. Or fight them.” 

“Hey, you made us these terrible scent-masking things,” Scott says. “At least they won’t be able to smell us searching for them? That seems pretty badass! It still itches, by the way.” He tugs absentmindedly at the cord around his neck carrying the tiny sachet full of herbs. And Scott’s own sweat. It had been painfully awkward asking the pack to sluice their sweat into glass test tubes at the end of last year. 

“Well, yeah,” Stiles agrees. “My whole spark thing is awesome. No one’s denying that. I just don’t know what else I’m supposed to be doing as Derek’s emissary.” Or if he made the right call agreeing to take on that role in the first place when neither he nor Derek seems to have any real idea of what it entails exactly. 

“Deaton said that agreeing to be Derek’s emissary is a big deal, but it doesn’t have to be permanent,” Scott offers.    

Stiles gives a sarcastic nod as he shifts gears, nudging the Jeep up to eighty. “Good point. I could quit, and we could resurrect Professor Blake to be my replacement since she wanted the job bad enough to start sleeping with Derek. Powerful undead druid with a great ass is a showstopper of a resumé.”

Scott’s face is obscured by sunglasses, but Stiles is sure there’s an eye roll behind them. “I just meant if it’s not clicking, you don’t have to force it, Stiles. This pack thing is kind of a trial run for both of us.” 

Stiles still hasn’t figured out a way to explain to Scott or himself the way the magic inside him sang when he’d said yes to Derek. How it doesn’t feel like a trial for him but something permanent and right...if only it came with an instruction manual. 

He swallows. “Look, I know you’re still not totally sold on the whole pack thing, or Derek, but he’s trying. He buys us beer sometimes. If that’s not personal growth and the equivalent of waving a huge olive branch in our faces, I don’t know what is.” 

The bright green Beacon Hills, 1 Mile sign appears in front of them, and Stiles hangs a right to take the backroads and avoid downtown which will be traffic-choked. Even though Stiles and Scott had moved away when they were thirteen, and despite the circumstances, it still feels like coming home.

“That’s true,” Scott concedes eventually. “He’s definitely better. It would just be cool if he was chiller about Allison, I guess.” 

“You can’t force it, bud,” Stiles says, taking the next exit. “For either of them. They’ve still managed to work together when it really comes down to it. I know Derek doesn’t make it easy sometimes, but her aunt did kill his whole family. Cut him some slack.”

“I’m trying,” Scott says, and Stiles believes him. 

“And besides,” Stiles continues, because he hates it when Scott gets sad, “even if Allison’s not welcome at Derek’s new place—which is, statistically speaking, probably an abandoned public restroom anyway—there are other places you two can hang out. Or are you just worried we’re going to end up rooming with Derek in a half-destroyed gas station men’s room?”

Scott snorts. “I just don’t know if I can handle so much Derek at once, and you get weird around him. Especially since you two broke up. And then it got even weirder after all that stuff with Derek and Jennifer—” 

Stiles inwardly cringes. He busies himself checking his rearview mirrors, and then says with practiced casualness, “What? Okay, one, there was nothing to break up. It was a casual…whatever, and it ran its casual course, and then Derek fell for our evil professor who forced us to awaken a semi-evil tree. Tale as old as time.” Scott scoffs, which Stiles talks right past. “And two, I’m weird around everyone, Scott. Weird is my middle name. Besides, Derek has this way of bringing out the weird in people. Remember how he spent a good month stalking us and then we stalked him back, stooping right down to his level? He’s a terrible influence.”

Stiles figures that if he keeps repeating the 'we were just casually hooking up!' version of events for long enough eventually he'll start to believe it himself too, and he won’t do idiotic things like show up wasted at Derek’s with no recollection of what he said. 

Maybe Stiles’ heart will even stop cracking every time he sees his alpha. After all, pack and friendship aren’t the worst things he could mean to Derek. 

Scott doesn’t say anything, and when Stiles glances over all of Scott’s attention is on his phone. “Is that Derek? Tell him we’re, like, twenty minutes out from the address he gave me. Which could also be a rotting wood shack in someone’s backyard.”

“I’m sure he’s not living in a rotting shack,” Scott says. “And no, it’s Allison. Can you drop me in town?”

“Seriously?” As anxious as he is to get to Derek, Stiles is nervous too. Now he’s supposed to do this without Scott? Not cool. But if Stiles says this out loud, it will undermine everything he just said. 

“I’m not being a dick, I swear!” Scott holds up his hand in protest. “I’m gonna meet her there first and fill her in on what’s happening. See if she or her dad have any ideas about where the alphas might be or if they’ve ever hunted a pack like this before.” 

Stiles tsks. “Derek’s not going to like that.” Admittedly, it’s not the worst idea Scott’s ever had, but it would be kind of nice if Scott could wait, oh, ten minutes or so to meet up with his girlfriend. 

“Derek’ll be fine.” Scott shoots Stiles a sly smile that never fails to charm. “If I bring him some useful intel, he’ll get over it. Besides, you’re our emissary, so if you advise me to do this, it’s cool, right?”  

It’s an interesting, and possibly correct, thought. “Alright, man. Go get your Allison on. Find out what she knows and then report back immediately.”

Scott grins at him. “I’ll be so fast. Like an hour tops.” 

“TMI, Scotty. Jesus.”  

*~*

After dropping Scott off in town, Stiles switches his GPS off. He has a pretty good sense of how to get to Derek’s new place from here, and his stomach swoops at the thought of seeing Derek again after months apart. Without giving it much thought, he navigates back onto the county roads, not registering that they take him directly past the northern edge of the Preserve. 

The sensation that hits him is so sudden, so startling, that Stiles' hand jerks on the wheel, the Jeep twitching across the white dotted lines on the road. 

The Nemeton brushes its fingers against the dark ache in Stiles' chest, a shivery tingle that both repels and tempts him closer. 

“I should be Derek’s emissary,” Jennifer had hissed at him, back when they had finally confronted her. “I should wield the Nemeton’s power. You’re not strong enough.” 

She wasn’t wrong. Stiles still isn’t strong enough.

He turns off the county highway and onto one of the dirt roads leading to the Preserve. The overwhelming smell of pine hits him square in the face. “Fuck,” he mutters, rolling the window shut against the heat and the thick, earthy smell of the forest. He yanks at his gear shift, tires crunching over the rocky dirt road. Deep breaths, he tells himself. The last thing he needs now is a panic attack. 

Strange dreams have been bringing him back to the Nemeton’s stump over and over again. For a frightening, disorienting minute he’s not sure whether he’s awake or dreaming. He counts his fingers, breathes in long through his nose and out through his mouth, and shakes it off. 

Besides, Derek is always right there with him in those dreams, and he’s nowhere to be found now. 

Stiles doesn’t think it’s the darkness around his heart that’s drawing him to the Nemeton. Scott and Allison haven’t been affected like this. It’s something in Stiles that surges and presses forward like a wave, desperate to crash to shore. Something about his magic or being the Hale Pack’s emissary, or both. 

Even in the bright, relentless sun, this stretch of road looks lonely and dark. A strange sensation hits him that he’s only felt a handful of times before. A very specific desire to be near his pack’s alpha, to what feels like safety. 

Stiles drives as fast as he can away from the woods. Towards Derek. 

*~*

The forest gives way to a developing part of town that wants to serve as an extension to downtown. Half-constructed apartment blocks loom over the skyline, with restaurants and cafes on the first floors. 

Pulling up, Stiles peers at Derek’s imposing building. Well, it seems like a step up from an abandoned railway depot; there’s even parking out front. He gets out, and as he’s feeding the meter in an anxious rush, fumbling quarters onto the ground around him, he feels someone watching him. 

He turns to find Derek, arms folded and an odd expression on his face like maybe he wants to laugh or just doesn’t know what to do with his mouth. 

A breakaway quarter rolls to an embarrassing stop between Derek's boots. Stiles winces. “Derek,” he says, hoping to breeze past his clumsiness. 

Derek glances down at the quarter and back up . "Stiles," he replies. 

The last time Stiles saw Derek is a drunken memory from the end of last semester. He can’t remember if Derek was pleased to see him when Stiles showed up at the rail depot at 2 a.m., but he’d definitely let him in.   

All Stiles remembers is that Derek wasn’t there the next morning when Stiles woke up fully dressed—sans shoes and socks—on Derek’s mattress. Aspirin and water sat on top of the shoebox Derek was using as a bedside table.

Stiles has apologized over text already, and he’s considering doing so again now in case there’s any lingering awkwardness, but Derek speaks first. “There’s a parking space in the garage you can use.” He gestures behind him at the building. 

Stiles is relieved, actually. If he can just keep them on safe ground, everything will be fine. Eventually, Stiles' hopes and feelings will become friendlier and less fraught. They have to.  

“Awesome,” Stiles says. He’ll move the Jeep after unpacking. 

“I’m sorry.” Derek’s apology takes Stiles by surprise. “I should have mentioned it before.” 

“It’s cool, dude. You’ve been understandably distracted.” Stiles waves a hand and jokes, “You can refill my quarters at your earliest convenience.” 

Derek looks around. “Where’s Scott?” 

Stiles pulls a face and runs his fingers through his hair. 

Derek raises an impatient eyebrow. 

“With Allison,” Stiles says cautiously.  

Derek frowns, but to Stiles’ surprise, he doesn’t look pissed off. If anything he looks nervous, eyes darting around them. “Let’s go upstairs,” he says as if Stiles is supposed to clock onto something.  

A beat later, he gets it. They might be overheard out here. “Upstairs it is. Can you help me bring up Scott’s stuff?” 

The request eases some of the tension in Derek’s face, and he gives Stiles a small, grateful smile before moving towards the Jeep. 

“I think Scott just wants these two duffle bags,” Stiles says. “Don’t worry about all the containers and shit. We’re not going to totally invade your place while we crash here.” 

Stiles reaches for his own two bags, but Derek grabs those as well. “You don’t have to show off,” Stiles grumbles.

Derek smirks at him. 

Stiles rolls his eyes at Derek’s back as he marches ahead and into the building, not at all slowed down. They step inside the elevator and Derek puts two of the bags down to free his right hand. He punches in a code before hitting the button for the twentieth floor. Of course Derek lives in the penthouse.

They ride up in silence. When they reach the top, the doors don’t open directly into an apartment as Stiles expected, but instead onto a tiny corridor.    

“You’re going to need to unlock the door,” Stiles says, reaching for the two bags before Derek can snatch them up again. “To your penthouse suite,” he adds. 

“It’s not a penthouse suite,” Derek mutters, and Stiles follows him into a massive loft that maybe isn’t a penthouse suite but feels adjacent in a very Derek sort of way. Stiles has to admit the place is kind of cool. There are more exposed beams than there is furniture—a lone couch and armchair and absolutely no TV. Way in the back corner is a spiral metal staircase leading up to another level. 

And there’s a hole. A huge ass hole in the wall. 

Before Stiles can comment on the size of the place (great!) and the quality (creepy and derelict, but sort of stylish—so on-brand!), Derek drops Scott’s stuff by the couch and says, “The loft is soundproofed. We can talk here.”   

“If that didn’t make complete sense given the circumstances, I’d ask if you were threatening me.”

“Who says I wasn’t?”  

Stiles snorts, fully prepared to tease back. Instead, his mouth goes a little dry when he catches sight of Derek, golden in the late-afternoon sun pouring in through the bay windows. Dust motes float between them, catching the light. Their eyes meet, and neither of them looks away. Derek’s near-smile doesn’t quite reach his tired eyes.

Stiles clears his throat, snapping himself out of his Derek haze. “You don’t seem all that upset about Scott going to Allison’s.” 

“Should I be?” 

This feels like a trick question. Stiles squints at Derek and says as much. 

“I’m not surprised by it,” Derek clarifies. “And if you told him it was a bad idea, he probably would have listened.” 

“Maybe,” Stiles says. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s a good idea. Having Allison keep her ear to the ground for us can’t hurt. No one knows how to hunt down a werewolf pack quite like the Argents.” 

Derek pulls a face that somehow manages to capture both begrudging agreement and disdain. 

“So do you have any idea at all why the alphas would have taken Erica and Boyd or what they want with you? Come on, lay all your best theories on me.” Stiles slumps down into the couch. “No, know what? Even the worst ones. Lay those too. Are they angry that Starbucks keeps running mom-and-pop coffee shops out of business? Did you get into a bidding war with them over this loft? Love what you’ve done with the place by the way. Huge step up for you.” 

Derek sits down beside Stiles and tilts his head back on the couch. “I’m going to punch you in the face,” he says to the ceiling. 

“Missed you too, Derek.” 

It comes out more sincere than Stiles had meant it to, and from the way Derek’s body tenses, it doesn’t seem to have gone unnoticed. 

Not for the first time, Stiles wishes life were a video game. With the press of a button, he could revert to the last checkpoint before he made things awkward. Somewhere along the way, many many checkpoints ago, he’d misstepped so badly that Derek hadn’t even wanted to do casual with him anymore. 

He changes the subject and asks a few questions about the night Boyd and Erica went missing, but Derek only repeats what he’d already told Stiles: they’d disappeared a couple of days ago during the full moon when they’d gone off to run together—a euphemism if Stiles has ever heard one—their scent lost in the woods, Derek and Isaac unable to catch it anywhere else, but during their search, they’d found the Alpha Pack’s symbol in the Preserve. 

“I sent Isaac home this afternoon to get some sleep,” Derek says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “We’ll start searching again after we regroup.” 

“We’ll find them,” Stiles replies, because he needs one of them to say it out loud. 

“I hope so.”  

Stiles wants to reach for Derek, to pull him close, but he stays on his side of the couch and keeps his hands to himself. 

*~*

“So what’d you get up to on your summer vacation? Before everything went to hell, I mean,” Stiles asks as he cross-references a few sources on his laptop and draws red circles around three former factories at the northernmost end of town. He’s hoping distracting Derek will ease some of the frown lines between his brows while they work. 

“I don’t have summer vacations, Stiles. It’s just regular life.” 

“We both know that’s a lie. Without all of us on campus, you have no reason to return to your regularly scheduled programming of—” he holds up his fingers and begins ticking them off “—startling us in the locker room, lurking behind the bleachers at lacrosse practice, emerging from the shadows when I walk out of the library, breaking and entering into mine and Scott’s dorm room.” 

Derek rolls his eyes. “You make it sound like I repeatedly did each of those things.”  

“That’s because you totally did!” 

This old ground feels safe and well-tread. It’s not hard for him to find ways to tease and prod at Derek, to make his shoulders relax as he snipes back at Stiles and they continue their work.  

A few minutes later, Derek says, “I meant to ask you earlier. The scent-masking you did for Scott—were you able to do that for all of us?” 

Stiles retrieves a small sachet for Derek from one of his duffle bags.  “Here,” he says, handing it over. “Fair warning, though, Scott keeps telling me it itches. I don’t want to hear your whining too.” 

Derek’s nose twitches, but he nods and mumbles something that Stiles is pretty sure is a thank you. 

“Yeah, you better thank me. This is my masterpiece.” Stiles grins. “Aren’t you happy you gave me your sweat now?” 

Derek pulls a face, but he takes the sachet. 

The scent-masking had been difficult to get right. It was something Stiles had worked on sporadically over the summer. Something they’d already thought might come in handy someday. There’d been no specific recipe for it, so Stiles had gotten creative as he learned the properties of different herbs and metals and materials, and the weighty power of his intent. 

It’s the most complicated thing he’s gotten right so far, and he’d crowed about it to Scott, his dad, and Melissa over and over until they’d each finally had enough, even Scott. It was nice that their supernatural secrets were all out in the open, that Stiles could share that part of himself with his family. 

Derek shoves his hands into his pockets and instead of lavishing Stiles with due praise, he says, “I’m gonna pick up some food. You want anything specific?”

“Dude, you don’t have to grocery shop for all of us on your own. I can come with you and carry my weight.” 

Derek looks oddly uncomfortable like Stiles has just suggested he go to the store naked. “No, you stay here,” he says, almost too quickly. “Keep working. Isaac and Scott said they’d be here soon.” 

“Uh, okay.”

Derek’s acting sketchy, even by Derek’s standards. He reaches around Stiles and pulls his keys out of a ceramic bowl on the counter.  “Do you want anything from the store or not?”   

Stiles considers this, and while he’s curious about Derek’s odd turn of behavior, he also recognizes that Derek is trying to be a good alpha, and make sure the pack is fed tonight. “You got any chips lying around? Donuts? Or pizza bagels? How ‘bout them?” 

Disgust takes over Derek’s face. “No.” 

“That! Get all of that! Please and thank you.” Stiles spreads his arms out so rapidly he loses his hold on his pen. He fumbles to catch it as he adds, “Don’t worry, this place is soundproofed, so the junk food secret’s safe.” 

“Thank god,” Derek says dryly. “Imagine what it would do to my reputation if word got out.” 

Stiles' jaw drops. “Did you just make a joke? Imagine what that would do to your reputation if—” 

Derek is out the door before Stiles can finish speaking.  

Chapter Text

During a break from research, Stiles discovers that one of the loft’s mystery doors leads onto the roof of the building. This seems like a good place to practice magic that he might feel too self-conscious to work on when the others are around, but also kind of a safety hazard. He splits the difference and fetches his supplies, along with some candles from one of Derek’s cabinets. 

In fact, he’s a little surprised that Derek’s not back yet, but when Stiles texts him he gets a reply ten minutes later.

Had to take care of something else, Derek texts. Be back in an hour. 

After confirming that Derek is not enacting some ridiculously stupid plan on his own, he grabs his supply box. He’s fairly certain it’s sandalwood thanks to hours spent on the internet comparing pictures of wood and one long-winded trip to a magic shop in a neighboring town. Stiles has since learned that sandalwood has protective properties. The box had been among his mother’s old belongings, tucked away with dusty books, decks of tarot cards, and a couple of moth-bitten sweaters.

He wishes he could ask his mother about her things. Last year, Deaton had told Stiles about Claudia Stilinski’s own magic spark. Since then he’s felt both closer and farther away from her memory than ever before. Her old belongings taking on new meaning he never would have imagined. 

What you send out you receive back, his mother had written on the margins on her most well-worn book of enchantments. Ask of the magic only what you truly need, she’d written on another page. It will answer. 

The first time Stiles saw one of those notes his heart nearly raced out of his chest. It felt like his mother was speaking directly to him, as if she’d known all along he’d be reading them someday. But neither Stiles nor his father had known what she was capable of when she was alive. For years, her little tarot card shop in a strip mall had been a quaint memory and nothing more, until one day Deaton handed him a few magic books. “Your mother lent these to me,” he’d said. “I never had a chance to return them.” 

It’s warm and relatively bright even as the day drifts into dusk, and the air is still and calm. He pulls blackberry leaf, cloves, and eucalyptus from their jars, placing them into a silver ceramic bowl. Around the bowl, he makes a circle of the candles and uses his lighter to ignite each one counterclockwise, starting from the north. Then he sets the herbs on fire, letting them burn down to ash.  

The next part is always the hardest: identifying the need and asking for it. There’s no place for secrets or sarcasm in magic. It’s easy when it’s a straightforward task, like the scent-masking sachets, where he can visualize and ask exactly what he needs. But with something like this, a vague protection spell, his mind works against him. 

“Keep the pack safe,” he murmurs, squeezing his eyes shut. When Derek’s face inevitably comes to mind, another quieter thought slips out that he would rather stay locked away: keep Derek safe.  

Stiles blows the candle out and the ashes into the air, releasing them along with his intentions.

An hour later, Derek returns as promised with paper bags full of food, which Scott and Isaac tear into with unmitigated werewolf gusto. 

Derek is disheveled in a way that does not align with a simple run to the grocery store: there’s dirt under his fingernails and grime on his face. When Stiles tries to bring it up, Derek just dodges the question and says they need to get to work.

*~*

Dreams of the Nemeton plague Stiles again that night. He’s standing next to the stump, Derek by his side. Stiles' hands are on the ground, and when he asks, the Nemeton’s roots burst up from the dirt beside him. 

Just before dawn Stiles wakes from his fitful sleep and decides to make himself useful. Coffee and doughnuts for everyone it is. 

He heads past Scott and Isaac passed out on the floor and couch respectively. No sounds come from Derek’s lair above them. 

Stiles is already sliding the loft door shut when he sees it.

The outline of a hand splashed across Derek’s front door in dark red paint, and beneath, a jagged spiral in the same deep shade. The paint is still glistening wet.

He slides the loft door right back open and gets everybody up and at ‘em. Breakfast will have to wait. 

“So,” Stiles says ten minutes later to a bleary-eyed pack . He points at the red hand. “That wasn’t there yesterday, right? We got any neighbors into graffiti?” 

Scott wrinkles his nose. “Stiles, that’s not paint it’s—” 

“Blood,” Derek finishes. 

“Gross!” Stiles flails and takes a large step back. But then he squints, getting less disgusted as questions form. “Why didn’t they just make a handprint in blood? Why the extra effort to paint a hand?” 

“They’re symbols,” Derek says. “The way they’re presented matters. The same image could mean different things depending on how the messenger wants their intent to come across.” 

“Okay, so what do they mean?” Isaac asks, crossing his arms. 

Derek gestures to the handprint, “This one means a deal. When it’s drawn in blood it means it’s been broken. And the one below means revenge.” 

Stiles has always secretly liked the way Derek explains things to them. There’s a confidence about him when he gets to teach them about werewolves and their culture and politics. It’s only when the questions dig at half-formed memories, gaps in his knowledge that he never got the chance to fill, that Derek shuts down.

Derek ushers them back into the loft. Scott turns to him, sounding scared when he speaks. “I don’t get it. They know you live here, know we’re here too, but they didn’t come in and attack us or anything?” 

Derek doesn’t answer for a second. “It’s a display of power,” he finally says, his hands clenched into fists by his side. His attention is still trained on the loft door. “Just like leaving their pack symbol where they took Erica and Boyd. They want us to know they’re not afraid of me. That they’re the ones in control.” 

Stiles' stomach twists into knots. They’re being deliberately fucked with, and it makes him feel helpless and furious all at once.  

“They couldn’t have just left a note and told us what they want?” Isaac mutters. Stiles has to agree. Werewolves and their drama. Just write a play and take Broadway by storm, then let everyone else get on with their lives. 

“I didn’t make any deals with them,” Derek continues. “But before—when they had their own packs, real packs—they used to come to my mother for advice.” 

The first rays of sunlight are starting to cut through the loft, painting golden slashes on the ground, and Stiles is reminded that he’d barely slept at all, exhaustion hitting him square in the face. 

“What kind of advice?” Stiles asks, getting the sinking feeling that Derek is on the cusp of something here that they aren’t going to like. 

Derek shrugs and turns back to Stiles. “Territory disputes, alliances, the best times to perform certain rituals. That kind of thing. Their leader, Deucalion, was friendly, polite. I didn’t have much to do with him, and I’m not aware of any deals he had with my mother or any other pack members...” Derek trails off, a look of fury coming over his face that Stiles recognizes all too well.   

“Peter,” they say in unison. 

Scott covers his face and groans. Isaac just says, “I fucking hate that guy.” 

*~*

Another bloodied handprint greets them on the door to Peter’s penthouse.  

“I should have known Peter was involved in this,” Derek mutters. “He left months ago and still manages to be a pain in my ass.” Derek yanks the door open with so much force that it almost comes off its hinges, the splintering wood cracking loudly in protest.  

“Yeah, he’s got a real talent for fucking shit up, I’ll give him that,” Stiles says, stepping inside. The alphas didn’t bother messing with the apartment itself; it’s dusty but pristine. Derek and Stiles are here to tear the place apart for information while Scott and Isaac continue the search downtown. 

Stiles eyes the room. “So where do we start?” 

“Peter was organized,” Derek says, moving towards a computer desk in the back of the wide living room. “If he took his laptop with him, he might have left a journal behind or notes. I remember he used to leave them in books sometimes. I’ll start here, you search the shelves.”

“Oh, gross.” Stiles makes a gagging motion as he heads to the bookshelves lining the walls.  

Derek looks at him.

“Peter’s got a planetary photography coffee-table book.” 

Derek sighs and starts rifling through Peter’s desk drawers. 

Thirty minutes later, Stiles has a pile of books by his feet, and Derek has started turning the rest of the apartment upside down. Stiles definitely heard floorboards being ripped up in the bedroom. 

“I’m not having any luck here,” Stiles says, throwing down a copy of The Art of War because Peter is the worst. He’s moving onto the next book as he starts considering their other options. “Was there a storage unit or somewhere he might have kept some of his other stuff? Somewhere else we could search?” 

A loud crash is the only answer Stiles gets, so loud it makes him let out an undignified yelp and leap into the air in shock. Stiles whips around to find that Derek’s fist has gone straight through the coffee table, splitting it in two. 

“I know the planetary book was pretentious but was that really necessary?” Stiles asks, taking a cautious step towards Derek who is staring down at the broken glass and wood. His knuckles are split and bloody, red dripping onto the floor. Stiles takes another step closer. “Hey, hey, Derek.”

Derek looks at him, and he doesn’t even try to mask the exhaustion and frustration. His eyes flash red, his claws are out.

“I know this seems bad, but we’ll keep going, okay? Erica and Boyd are out there somewhere. This isn’t the end.” 

Derek closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in through his nose, visibly collecting himself. When he opens them, they’re clear again. “Okay,” he says. Another deep breath. He straightens his shoulders, slowly unclenching his fists. “Thank you.”  

“Yeah, no worries.” Stiles shifts back on his heels, feeling awkward. If he isn’t careful, he’s not going to be able to stop himself from touching Derek, to clean up the blood, and care for him in a way that is more intimate than Derek would allow. “There’s a piece of glass sticking out of your hand. I would really prefer not to have to take it out for you, but I will if I have to.” 

Derek starts to examine his hands, but then something else catches his eye. Stiles follows his line of sight to where a book is poking out from the remains of the coffee table’s lower shelf. 

The book is old, leather-bound with gold lettering. There’s a black bookmark poking out of the top. 

“Well, hello,” Stiles says, reaching for the book. 

“Wait, I’ve seen this one before.” Derek moves closer, peering over Stiles' shoulder, so close Stiles can feel the heat through his thin t-shirt. “It belonged to my mom.” 

“What is it?” 

“It’s about emissaries. Their role in the pack. Rituals they can perform.”

Stiles' eyes widen, and he flips the book open to the bookmarked page, the yellowing pages giving off a musty smell. Like the bestiary, it’s written in Latin. There’s a crude drawing of a tall, humanoid wolf—an alpha, Stiles realizes—biting a human man above his heart. The man is smiling, not in pain, but enjoying himself. Goosebumps prickle along Stiles' arms. 

At the bottom of the page, there’s a small word scrawled in cursive. Stiles.  

“What the fuck?” Stiles blinks down at the page. “Am I insane or is that my name?” 

“That’s your name, and that’s Peter’s handwriting,” Derek confirms, an angry edge to his voice. It’s how Derek sounds when he’s scared. 

“Do you know what this ritual is?” He can’t tear his eyes away from the page. “And why my name is there?” 

“I’m not sure.” Derek reaches for the book and examines it. “But if Peter was interested in it, I doubt it’s anything good.” 

Chapter Text

The walk back to Derek’s loft is somber and rainy. Stiles yanks his hoodie up over his head, droplets sliding down the slope of his nose. Derek’s henley darkens with rain and clings to the muscles on his chest and arms.

When they get inside, Derek heads upstairs, and Stiles grabs jeans and a graphic-tee out of his bag. For a second, he wonders if he should change in the bathroom instead of his makeshift bedroom consisting of the couch and Scott’s air mattress. Then Stiles remembers he’s not in a Victorian novel and yanks off his wet shirt.  

A minute later, Derek returns dressed in dry clothes, rubbing a towel over his wet hair. Stiles is pulling on a pair of jeans, and Derek pauses and stares at him for a second before he heads to the linen closet. His footsteps echo in the quiet of the loft.

Stiles zips up his jeans and tugs a fresh shirt over his head. When he pulls his head through, Derek is holding out a towel, not looking directly at Stiles but somewhere just off to his left.

A hot flush runs over Stiles' cheeks as he takes the towel. “Thanks, dude.” He ducks his head and rubs his hair into messy, damp spikes. 

“No problem,” Derek says, sounding like it definitely is a problem. 

Their intimate past hangs awkwardly in the space between them, but Stiles can't exactly help that. Even so, he's pretty sure Derek wouldn't be acting like Stiles is made of radioactive material if it wasn't for the stress he was under. 

He’s unsure of how to get Derek to talk. The route he winds up taking is unsurprisingly graceless.

“Are you okay?” he blurts out.

Objectively this is a stupid question: of course Derek’s not okay.

Derek stares at him warily, which is actually preferential to Derek lying and saying he’s fine. Stiles barrels on. “Look, I know things were rocky at first with you and your betas. But you were getting there. You really were. Before I left for the summer, I don’t know, I felt hopeful that we were all—it was really starting to feel like pack.” He lets the words linger. His heart is beating faster in a way Derek is sure to notice. Stiles hopes he hasn't fucked up by bringing this stuff up.

Derek’s jaw is clenched, but he doesn’t shut the conversation down immediately. And then he unclenches his jaw, hands dropping to hang loose at his sides. “I did too.”

There’s so much honesty in those three words.

Stiles doesn’t look away from Derek. 

“We’ll get them back,” he insists, sounding surer than he feels. “There’s got to be something useful in that book Peter was reading. Something I can use to help us. I’ll start there, and I’ll contact Lydia. There’s never been something we haven’t been able to research our way out of, right?” 

“I hope so,” Derek says. Then, quieter, “Thank you. You’re—I still don’t know what an emissary is meant to do exactly, I didn’t even know Deaton was my mother’s. But you’re doing a good job." He crosses his arms and shrugs awkwardly. "I think so anyway.” 

Stiles opens and closes his mouth a few times, so startled his brain actually shuts down on him. “Oh,” he finally manages. “Sure, yeah, no. My pleasure.”

They both look away. Stiles simultaneously wants this moment to go on forever, to make Derek say more nice things to him, and to move away from the fragility of the moment. He and Derek haven't been this honest with each other since before Jennifer Blake arrived in town. 

Stiles clears his throat. “Anyway, you gonna tell me how you managed to soundproof this place without your awesomely talented emissary? It was magic, right? You didn’t violate any building codes did you?”  

It’s a minute change, but Derek’s lips quirk up. He says, “Deaton.” 

“Did he make you beg?”

“Only a little.”

Derek jerks his head in a follow-me motion, and Stiles trails after him into the kitchen. To his confusion and surprise, Derek pulls the fridge away from the wall.

“Dude,” Stiles says. 

Behind the fridge is a series of unfamiliar symbols etched in purple and black.  

“Wow, I don’t know these,” Stiles says, fascinated. He lets his fingers hover over the symbols, feels soft vibrations fluttering against his skin.

Deaton holds so much knowledge close to his chest, and Stiles understands there are rules around emissaries, their relationships to packs, how much magic and guidance one is allowed to offer them when they’re not standing in that role, but it’s frustrating. He’ll try asking, though; sometimes that’s all it takes for Deaton to teach him, even if it’s in a roundabout way. Stiles just wishes he would offer.

“I’m sure you could learn them,” Derek says. “Maybe in one of the books Deaton gave you. Or one of your mother’s.”

Stiles is hopeful. He wants to learn it all. It’s a long road, but one he wants to keep walking. For the pack. For Derek.

For the parts of his mother he never knew.

But most of all for himself.

*~*

After the stress of the morning, and with no new blood-graffiti or scent trails emerging from the morning's search—though Scott and Isaac declare they aren't giving up yet—Stiles needs to escape Derek's loft. The light from the enormous windows is too miserable beneath an overcast sky, and Derek's silent fretting as he stares blankly at a page in one of Peter's books is too loud for Stiles to concentrate.

Luckily, the Beacon Heights College library is one of his favorite places on campus.

In their second semester, Erica and Stiles had taken a Mythology elective together, and it became something of a ritual for them to do their homework here together. “I had a huge crush on you when we were kids. I was devastated when you moved away,” she had confessed to him once in this very corner.

Boyd had started coming with them towards the end of the year. “Looks like you have a new crush,” Stiles had teased Erica, not missing the way she would stop taking notes and stare longingly at Boyd. 

Stiles misses them fiercely as he settles into their favorite study room, the one with the blue bean bag chairs. He pulls the emissary book from his messenger bag. Instead of flipping through to random pages like he’d done at Peter’s apartment, Stiles starts from the beginning.

His body goes numb when he sees the first page. 

There’s a handwritten note, a dedication, and it takes Stiles a moment to process what he’s seeing. He has to read it about twenty times for it to start to sink in. 

Claudia, 

If you ever change your mind. 

Talia 

Stiles leans back, the bean bag crinkling around him as he sinks deeper down, holding the book aloft, turning it at different angles. The inscription doesn’t change no matter which way he looks at it. He stares and then stares some more, his hands tingling around the frayed edges of the book. 

Had his mother been friends with Derek’s mother? It comes as no surprise that they’d known one another—most longtime members of the community are at least acquaintances—but for Talia to have gifted her a book like this they must have known one another better than that. 

Change his mother’s mind about what exactly? Stiles shivered. Had Talia wanted Claudia to be her emissary? 

From the dates on the notes he’s found so far, Stiles suspects that his mother had stopped practicing magic just before he was born. It would explain why he and his father were totally in the dark about that part of her life. There’s no date on Talia’s note to confirm where it fits into the timeline. 

Stiles gulps down some of the energy drink he’d picked up on his way here, and turns to the second page, hoping that maybe he’ll at least find an answer to one of his questions. 

*~*

Stiles loses himself in the almanac. 

It’s entirely in Latin, and the crude images accompanying various bits of text are often disturbing. Claws seem to feature an awful lot in many of the rituals: alphas digging their claws into the necks of kneeling werewolves; a circle of wolves, and in the center a woman holding up a severed hand with extended claws. 

Then there’s one that stops Stiles short. In this image, the alpha has its claws in a man’s neck, but it’s different from the kneeling one. The human and the alpha are standing close together, face to face, as the alpha cups the man’s neck. It looks tender, intimate.  

It’s times like these where it would have been awesome if Lydia was still here in person to help him figure this stuff out, instead of several emails and an entire ocean away.

The door to the study room opens abruptly, and Stiles opens his mouth to defend his territory before he realizes it’s Allison.

“Hey,” she says, closing the door behind her. “Scott said you’d be here. I’ve been wanting to catch you alone.” 

Stiles puts the book down. “What’s up?” he says. “Did your dad find something?” 

“No, nothing yet.” Allison leans back against the edge of the study room table and shakes her head. “I just wanted it to be clear to you, in case there were any lingering doubts, that I’m with you guys.” She looks at Stiles meaningfully. “Erica and Boyd are my friends too, and I want to get them back.” 

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, because I appreciate the sentiment, I really do. But why are you telling me that? Scott already knows.”  

“Stiles.” Allison gives him an incredulous look. “You’re one of the highest-ranking members of your pack. As emissary, you have the ear of the pack’s alpha. I need to make sure you and Derek know I’m an ally of the Hale Pack.” 

It takes Stiles a moment to process Allison’s words. Again that whole emissary instruction manual would be nice to have right about now because he doesn’t exactly know the protocol for discussing pack and hunter relationships. An idea does come to him, though.  

“Noted, and thanks, Allison,” Stiles says. “Can I make a suggestion?” 

Allison tilts her head at him. “Shoot.” 

“Talk directly to Derek. Formal truces are a thing between hunters and packs, right? I think he’d be open to that and respect you for bringing it to him.” 

Allison considers the suggestion, then nods. “I’ll talk to my dad about it, but that sounds like a good idea. Thanks, Stiles.” Allison heads for the door, but before she goes she says, “Truce or not, any time you guys need me, I’m just a phone call away.” 

“You too.”  

After Allison leaves, Stiles packs the almanac away, his thoughts going back to the picture of the human and the alpha standing close together. He flips back to the page Peter had bookmarked. The bitten men in both images wear twin expressions of ecstasy as their alphas mark them. 

His brain catches on the images, and if he concentrates hard enough, it's almost as if his magic is caught on it too. Stirring, interested...curious, even.

Stiles chugs the last of his third energy drink and tosses the can in the recycling.

He has some scans to send to London.

Chapter Text

It’s been almost two weeks and nothing.

No trace of Erica or Boyd’s scent during any of their searches. No easy spell fixes in Peter's books to find them. Allison and her father haven’t heard or seen any hint of the alphas.

The Hale Pack is running out of ideas. It's as if the alphas have deliberately toyed with them, wound them up tight, and then vanished.

Stiles can’t handle seeing Derek this strung out and exhausted.

As much as Stiles wishes it were the case, it’s not just friendly concern or an emissary worried about his alpha. His concern for Derek is all twisted up in everything Stiles had hoped they could be. At a certain point last year, Stiles believed things were going somewhere between them.

There was this way Derek said his name in bed, like he was awed. Even the very first time when they’d jerked each other off in Stiles' twin bed, still smelling of chlorine after Stiles had held Derek up for hours in the college’s pool while the Jackson-as-the-kanima circled them.

“Oh god, Stiles,” Derek had moaned, voice hoarse, his breath blowing hot against Stiles' neck as he wrapped his hand tighter around Stiles' aching cock.

They’d barely fit in the cramped space together, Derek half-off the edge of the bed. The strain of keeping them both above water for so long had exhausted Stiles' body and his arm burned and threatened to give out on him as he worked Derek’s cock, but no amount of discomfort or pain had mattered. What had mattered was the hot press of Derek’s body against his, the way Derek kept biting and sucking at Stiles' lower lip until it was sweetly sore.

Stiles isn’t sure when exactly Derek had gone from Weird Ominous Werewolf Who Stalks Us to Weird Ominous Werewolf I’m Confusingly Into. He isn’t sure when he’d started looking at Derek and thinking what if you were mine?

He’d been having that very thought as Derek sucked bruises into his neck. Just as Stiles felt his body tensing, Derek stopped long enough to pull himself up and look at Stiles and say his name with such earnestness and longing that it made Stiles' heart stutter.

The way Derek said Stiles' name undid him.

Stiles shook and came all over himself, gasping into the arm he’d thrown over his face. Derek came moments later, rubbing himself and all the stickiness between them into Stiles' belly, and Stiles hadn’t even minded how gross Derek was. He’d just stroked the back of Derek’s head and smiled. 

Stiles had thought there was no way in hell anyone could look in your eyes and say your name like that and not mean it. But Derek had made it clear afterward that this wasn’t the case.

First, Stiles had pegged it as general emotional unavailability. After they’d fought off a group of harpies, Stiles had thought it was a fantastic idea to blow Derek in the Jeep. Again, Derek had said his name over and over, his hands twisted in Stiles' hair. Stiles swallowed him down, and then Derek cradled his face in his hands and kissed the taste of himself out of Stiles' mouth. He was slow and hot and perfect as he took Stiles apart. 

Because Stiles is a gentleman, he’d asked if Derek wanted to grab some dinner while he cleaned himself off with a dirty t-shirt that he’d found under his seat.

Derek had stared down at his hands, looking like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow the Jeep and both of them whole. “Stiles—I’m not—I don’t know—”

Stiles had rescued them both from that fresh hell and told Derek it was cool. “Yeah, I get it. No worries. I’m not going to, like, jump to conclusions here.”

“Okay.” Derek's expression was frozen in a wide-eyed, panicked stare.

Stiles wagged a finger between them. “This? I won’t make it something more than it is.”

Derek had nodded, no protest.

Stiles drove Derek back to his abandoned train depot and shoved his disappointment into a deep dark place inside of him. Whenever they hooked up after that, Stiles reminded himself that Derek never asked him to stay.

If he still said Stiles' name like it was breaking him apart, that was just the sex talking. And the sex stopped as abruptly as it started. Derek didn’t bring it up, and neither did Stiles. 

A month went by, and then Jennifer Blake moved to Beacon Hills with her long pretty curls and dimpled smile, and Stiles had realized perhaps it wasn’t emotional unavailability at all.

Sure, she turned out to be a murderous psycho who tried to kill Stiles' dad, Melissa, and Chris Argent during parents’ weekend so she could siphon power from the Nemeton to do god knows what, but Derek had seemed pretty damn emotionally open to her before that. 

So Stiles has learned to manage his expectations. In fact, he’d be cool if Derek wanted to go back to their fuck buddy routine. If it would offer any comfort to Derek right now, Stiles would jump on it in a heartbeat.

If Stiles is honest with himself, he’d give pretty much anything to hear Derek say his name like that again. 

Even if it didn't mean anything.

*~*

Campus is starting to grow livelier as the new crop of freshmen arrive for orientation. It feels like an alternate universe, one Stiles misses. One he tells himself he’ll go back to when they find Erica and Boyd.

Stiles and Scott are moving out of Derek's living room and into their new off-campus apartment today. He feels like he should be more excited than he is, but he's worried about Derek being on his own. It's clear the lack of progress and the Alpha Pack's sudden disappearing act is weighing on Derek heaviest of all, and Stiles doesn’t want him sinking even deeper into that hole without the remaining members of his pack around.

When Stiles arrives at the loft, he’s surprised to find Scott and Allison already there.

Scott wasn’t due here for another hour...Allison wasn’t due at all. 

“What are you two doing here?”

“Just came to help move your stuff,” Allison answers, but Stiles catches the little look she shoots Derek.

“We were finishing up,” Scott says. “You mind if we meet you at the apartment?”

Stiles wishes he had werewolf senses because he doesn’t think Scott is lying, but he’s got a knack for omitting the truth.

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Text me if you need anything, I guess. I’ll meet you at the new digs.”

Before they leave, Allison stops in front of Derek and offers her hand out to shake. Derek hesitates for a long beat, but then he takes Allison’s hand and shakes it firmly. 

Scott and Derek nod at each other before Scott and Allison leave, and Stiles is trying to keep any smugness off his face because he’s pretty sure he was instrumental in this. 

“What was that about?” Stiles asks innocently as soon as the loft door shuts. Soundproofed lofts are the best.

“She wanted to talk, so we talked.”

“As your emissary, you should probably keep me in the loop.”

Derek does actually seem to consider this. “Fine. We discussed the idea of making a formal truce between our pack and Allison and Chris Argent.”

Stiles nods encouragingly. “Okay, wow, yeah. That’s a big step. A good step. How’d that come to be?”

“You’re not fooling anyone.” Derek crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. “Allison said you suggested it.”

“Oh, come on, Derek! Give me the play-by-play. Let me bask in my emissarial glory.”

“No. And that is definitely not the right use of that word.”

“Whatever. Besides, you know I’m just gonna ask Scott for details later,” Stiles points out. 

“Great. So ask Scott.”

“I’m asking you.”

Derek smirks, heading for the kitchen. “And I’m ignoring you.” 

Stiles throws up his hands. “You’re impossible!”

Derek isn’t suddenly a smiling beam of sunshine, but it’s something. His shoulders are looser, and Stiles feels like he might have actually done something right as emissary. 

If he didn’t think it might freak Derek out, Stiles would point out to him how far he’s come as an alpha. 

*~*

The new apartment is small, but Stiles likes it. They each have their own bedroom and a shared living space.

He turns the back corner of his bedroom into a makeshift workshop and altar, setting up a shelf with different colored candles, jars of ingredients, and potions he’s already mixed. According to his mother’s notes, she’d had a space like this in every apartment she’d lived in. It could help with focus and create muscle memory of the magic. Tonight he plans to cast some protective spells.

Scott and Stiles move the rest of their things in, order a pizza and settle up with some beers. It’s almost easy to feel like two normal college students for a couple of hours. 

“So what did you and Derek talk about earlier?” Stiles asks casually, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. He finishes the last bite of his pizza and licks his fingers clean.

“Allison wanted to talk to Derek about a truce.” Scott grins at Stiles sideways. “She said you suggested it.” 

“I may have insinuated it could be a good idea. We all worked together when Professor Blake was ritual sacrificing people left and right. I figured it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility we could come together as a team to fight against the next evil the wheel of doom landed on this time.”

Scott laughs. “I mean, it’s not perfect, and Derek was…Derek about it. But I think they’re going to work together. Or at least share information.”

“So she’s welcome at the loft now at least?”

“I guess. Yeah.” Scott smiles. Then he gets a look in his eyes that Stiles immediately doesn’t like. “How are you and Derek doing?”

“Uh, we’re good?”

“But there’s no…” Scott raises his eyebrows.

Stiles throws a cushion at him. “If you’re not mature enough to say the word, you’re not mature enough to be having it.”

“You’ve been with him a lot since we got back. I thought maybe you guys would start up your thing again. It helps relieve stress, you know.”

"Whatever last year was, it's clearly long done." Stiles waves a dismissive hand and pulls a face at Scott. "And I'm well aware of how much you and Allison relieve your stress together. I have to live with you."

Scott makes a placating gesture. “Okay, okay,” he says. “I know. It’s just, you’re my bro. I want you to be happy.”

“I’m fine,” Stiles assures him. “And once we get Erica and Boyd back, that’s two more wingwolves in my inner circle. Granted, more Erica than Boyd, but still.”

Scott bumps their shoulders together. He smiles at Stiles like he doesn’t really believe his casual attitude but is willing to pretend it's all cool right alongside him. True bros till the end.

*~*

The next afternoon, Stiles gets a message from Lydia: I’ll call you in five minutes.

Stiles is at Derek’s when the text comes through, having dropped by to pick up some toiletries he’d left in Derek’s bathroom. Definitely not because he'd invented a reason to check in on him.

“Hey, you might want to stick around for this,” Stiles tells Derek who was about to head out on another one of his mysterious errands. At least, that’s what Stiles thinks it must be because he’s gone tight-lipped about where he plans to be.

Derek frowns down at his phone and says reluctantly, “I’ve got twenty minutes.”

Lydia video calls them exactly five minutes later, looking as polished as ever: makeup perfectly applied, not a strand of hair out of place. Stiles attempts to lean casually at Derek’s desk and appear as if he too has his shit together.

Behind her, Jackson skulks around the kitchen—like alpha, like beta—assembling what appear to be ingredients for the world’s most unappetizing smoothie.

Stiles should get the recipe for his dad.

Before he can say a word, Lydia gets right down to business. “How much do you know about familiars?” Her voice is as no-nonsense as ever.

“Uhhh, hi to you too, Lyds.”

She rolls her eyes. “This is important, Stiles. The sections you sent me are tied to some extremely old and powerful magic from what I can tell.”

“I’m...unfamiliar with familiars.”

Derek’s expression turns dark. “Witches can force werewolves under their control using that kind of magic,” he says. “They call them familiars when that happens.” 

Lydia tilts her head, lips pursing contemplatively. “Hm. This translation makes it sound like more of an exchange of powers between the alpha and a guardian. I’m assuming that means emissary in this case.” Her eyes dart to Stiles, and she raises her eyebrows expectantly.

“Is this something you know about?” Stiles asks Derek, trying to puzzle out his blank expression.

“Maybe.” Derek’s expression is guarded. He won’t meet Stiles' eyes. “There are some things I remember my mother and Laura telling me.”

“You know you’re going to have to ask Deaton, right?” Lydia says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Don’t be idiots about this.”

Her tone brooks no room for argument, and Stiles is still powerless against the magic of Lydia Martin’s orders.  

Chapter Text

“I feel you should consider it,” Deaton says, placing his hands on the examination table. His gaze is steady on Derek’s. “Their pack is far stronger than yours. Your options in these circumstances are sadly limited.” 

“I said no.” Derek turns on his heel and heads for the door.

Stiles looks at Deaton helplessly and goes after Derek, who is already striding across the parking lot. 

“Jesus, Derek, wait up.” Stiles knows Derek can hear him, and he’s sure Derek can smell his frustration coming off him in waves. Being a pack emissary is supposed to mean something. He’s supposed to be a trusted, integral figure to the pack, and even though he hasn’t really got a clue what he’s doing, at the very least Derek could talk to him about Deaton’s suggestion instead of simply deciding for himself and storming off. 

“You’re being a dick,” Stiles hisses, and he sees Derek stop, his back stiff.

It’s dark outside, the light pollution obscuring the stars. By the time Derek had finished whatever his mysterious errand was, it had already been late afternoon. The waxing moon peeks through the shifting clouds, a soft glow in the sky, swelling to its full power soon. The werewolves get twitchy around this time, anticipation for the moon’s call putting them on edge. Stiles knows it’s doing him no favors.

He takes a careful step towards Derek like it’ll make any difference if he approaches him with caution. Derek is a bomb Stiles has never been able to diffuse.

“Derek. Come on. Don’t be such a drama alpha.” 

Derek goes to the driver’s side of the Camaro and pulls his keys out of his pocket. “We’re not doing it.”

“We’re not even going to talk about it?”

“What’s there to talk about? I’m not—” he cuts himself off, scowling as he yanks open the driver’s door. “I’m not taking any of your power from you,” Derek finishes. 

“It’s not like that. It sounds like you’d be giving me some of yours too,” Stiles points out. He gets the sense that wasn’t what Derek was going to say, though. He wonders what the actual problem is. “Let’s at least hash this out for real. I left the Jeep at your place anyway.” 

“Fine. Get in the car,” Derek says, tilting his head up and scenting the air. “It’s about to rain.”

Stiles' mind is spinning as Derek drives. Familiars. Power. A partnership. Stiles doesn’t think he has much to offer Derek; his magic is still so new, like a sprouting seedling. But if it’ll give them an edge, lend any strength to Derek, help them find Erica and Boyd, he’ll do it.

He doesn’t know what it would mean to take on some of Derek’s powers, and the thought sends a little shiver down his spine. Deaton hadn’t known all the answers, and Stiles wondered how literal the translation was. He imagined enhanced physical strength, but would there be more to it than that? Healing? Better hearing?

Like all magic, there’s nothing inherently evil about familiars or the kind of magic used, primarily by witches, to bond with one. Deaton had assured them of that. But Derek only knows the terrible stories. Stiles understands why he’d be wary.  

Witches who abuse the ritual are only using the magic in practice, not in the spirit with which it’s intended. It’s meant to be a partnership.

An exchange and enhancement of powers.

As emissary, Stiles could leverage his magic and create a bond between himself and Derek—the alpha of the pack. An advantage that they sorely need. The alphas wouldn’t know about the bond, might underestimate the pack’s power, and make a mistake. The Hale Pack is outnumbered and outmatched, and this would be something.

Stiles breaks the silence, swallowing hard. He’d thought they’d come a long way with Derek trusting him. Aside from wherever he’s been mysteriously disappearing to by himself, he’s pretty forthcoming with information. Being shut out like this feels like they’ve taken about twenty steps back.

“At least tell me why you’re shutting this down,” Stiles says in a low voice, trying to coax rather than coerce. “What am I missing here?”

Beams from a passing car briefly illuminate Derek’s unreadable face. There’s something in the way Derek stiffens, his eyes deliberately not leaving the road to even flick over to Stiles, that gets the gears turning in Stiles' mind.

He blurts out the thing that’s been niggling at the back of his mind since he first saw the way Derek recoiled at Deaton’s explanation of the ritual.

“Derek. It’s not—is it sexual? Is that why you’re so against this? I’d get that. I know we’ve already—”

“Stiles.”

Stiles lowers his voice. “Seriously, Derek. Level with me here. Is this some kind of werewolf mating ritual? I know Deaton didn’t say that, but he doesn’t say a lot of things, so maybe I’m—”

“No, Stiles.” Derek scowls, shooting him a dirty look. They stop at a red light in time for Derek to tip his head back, exasperated, as if he’s praying for someone to get him the fuck out of here. “That’s not how—it’s not like that. But it’s a commitment, a bond.” 

“You said the same thing about being an emissary.”

“This is different,” Derek says firmly. “Permanent. You can’t undo this spell. You’d be tied to my pack, to me, forever.”

Stiles swallows hard because that’s actually the part he’s most okay with here. It scares him how easy, how natural it feels to accept the idea of it. Derek’s the one with the problem.

“Just consider it,” Stiles says. “It’ll make you and the pack stronger, which in case you hadn’t realized we could really use right now. I feel like we’re just sitting ducks for whatever the alphas have planned next.”

The light turns and Derek drives on. Stiles notes that Derek is taking them through the busiest part of town and not through the backroads near the Preserve. 

“You know I’d never, ever force you into anything,” Stiles continues, unable to stop his mouth running away from him. “If I’m okay with making that kind of commitment to the pack, that’s up to me.”  

Derek’s hands flex on the wheels, the way he does when he’s trying not to let his claws out. “It’s not something to be done lightly. It has meaning.” 

“I know,” Stiles says, stung. It means something to him. It means a lot to him. Is Derek under the impression it doesn’t?

“You clearly don’t,” Derek snaps. The red glow of his eyes reflects back at them from the windshield, and Stiles winces. He can feel shockwaves of Derek’s anger through the pack bond as if he’d roared. “If you understood the gravity of it, you wouldn’t want to do this either.” 

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot, and don’t tell me what I want,” Stiles snaps back. He’s so angry he only distantly registers his elbow smacking into the window with a loud, painful crack as he swerves towards Derek. “You trusted me enough to be your emissary, but you don’t trust me enough for this. That’s the real issue, isn’t it? Stop turning it around on me when it’s you.”  

“Fine,” Derek hisses. A fang glints in the shadows of the car. “You want to know the truth? If I was going to bond myself to someone that way, it certainly wouldn’t be you.” 

Sties saw the blow coming from a mile away, but that doesn’t stop it from landing with enough force to knock him over. Stiles keeps his eyes ahead of him, doesn’t blink. The cut is so deep it’s almost nauseating. Deep enough he’s sure Derek can feel it too. 

Stiles forces his voice to stay steady. “I hear you loud and clear. I’ll figure something else out.” 

Derek looks like he wants to say something more, but the sky chooses that moment to break open, rain pelting against the roof of the Camaro. A clap of thunder rumbles through the air, and Derek actually flinches.

Miserable silence hangs over them for the rest of the journey.

When they come to a stop outside Derek’s building, Stiles slams the Camaro door shut and storms off to the Jeep without bothering to go upstairs.

*~*

It’s still drizzling when Stiles cracks the window to his bedroom, a warm, wet breeze blowing in. He’s been trying not to replay his argument with Derek too much, but it’s not working. He needs a distraction from the constant refrain of it certainly wouldn’t be you, and magic is a good one. 

He doesn’t bother lighting any candles since the wind will likely blow them out. Instead, he practices drawing the careful shapes of protection runes with his eucalyptus oil, a homemade mixture he’d learned early on last year. The smell of it had been immediately familiar and comforting, reminding him of his mother. It’s easing some of the twisted hurt and fury that’s been burning inside him all night. 

He’s not practicing on anything serious, just some loose-leaf printer paper. Who knows, maybe it’ll protect him from bad grades this semester. Given the start this year is off to, he’s going to need it.

There's an odd creak behind him, and he flails around to come face to face with Derek.

“Jesus, dude. You know most people knock.” Stiles tries to keep his voice steady as his heart pounds.  

Derek has the decency to look sheepish. Standing frozen by the window as if he’s surprised to find himself there too. “Sorry. I didn’t—” He points behind him. “Your window was open.”

“You’re right. Leaving your window open is the universal sign for ‘come one, come all’.”

Derek sighs and Stiles decides to throw him a bone. He’ll do his part to smooth things over between them since Derek had made the first move in coming here. “Can’t sleep either, I take it?”  

He shakes his head and takes a seat on Stiles' desk chair. Last year, nothing would have been able to ruffle Derek’s over-gelled hair, but now it looks like he's been running his hands through it half the night. 

They fall into an uncomfortable silence, and Stiles fights an internal battle not to break it. Derek came here to say something, and Stiles is going to stubbornly ride the silence out. 

Derek watches as Stiles draws more of the same patterns. Magic loses some of its potency when others are around. It’s something that’s usually practiced in private, but Stiles steadily holds his protective thoughts as he concentrates. 

Derek startles him out of his careful, looping thoughts. 

“I didn’t know if you were going to come back this year,” he blurts.  

Stiles furrows his brow and stops his work. “What?”

“I thought that you weren’t tied to this town.” Derek shrugs, uneasy. “Not like—“ he cuts himself off abruptly and turns his head away. “That you could have transferred to a different university,” he finishes. 

Stiles stares at Derek, trying to gather the thoughts surging in his head into something coherent. 

“I couldn’t have,” Stiles says finally. “It’s my mom. It’s her—our—magic. I feel like maybe it’s been calling me back for a long time. It wasn’t the same for anyone else in my family—not my dad or Melissa, and Scott only came back because we’re bros for life, and he thought the veterinary program was good at Beacon.” There’s no oil left on his fingers or in the cup, but he keeps running his fingers along the rough wooden edge of his bedside table because it’s easier than sitting still. “I used to dream about Beacon Hills all the time. About being back here with my mom.”

He’s never mentioned any of this to Derek before, even though he’d considered it a few times last year. It’s not even a big deal. He doesn’t know why every time he’d almost talked about it, he’d swallowed it down.

“It was the same for Laura and me,” Derek says eventually. He’s looking away from Stiles, out the window, like that makes it easier to speak. “I think it’s part of what brought her back. Even if she hadn’t gone then, I think we both would have at some point.” 

Stiles freezes. Derek almost never mentions his sister, and he’s afraid of saying anything that will break the moment. Stiles can recognize a metaphorical olive branch when he's handed one. Derek’s eyes are still trained on the window as if there’s something incredibly interesting out there beyond the black sky.  

“My mom took Scott and me hiking in the Preserve as kids,” Stiles says, trying not to let on that he’s proceeding with caution. “I think I remember seeing you and your sisters there sometimes.” All the beautiful Hale children. One of them had been around Stiles' age—Cora—and he remembers a brief kindergarten romance between them. 

Derek is watching Stiles now with interest. “I think I might remember your mom. I’m not positive, but she looked familiar.”

“Looked familiar? When did you see my mom?” Stiles runs through his memory of the times Derek had broken into his dorm room last year and the few times Stiles had actually invited him in, but Stiles had never been much of a decorative picture guy. He had a picture of his mom in his— “Dude, did you go through my wallet?”

“No! I found her—” Derek doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Found her what? Jesus, Derek, why are you being so creepy?”

“Her obituary was in the paper,” Derek mutters with a scowl. “I found it.”

“Oh.” 

“I’m sorry,” Derek says. “I was curious.” 

Stiles blows out a long breath. He’d done the same for Derek’s family after the fire. Stiles didn’t think there had been one for Laura. He’d been reading the papers obsessively at the time, and there’d been nothing like that.  

“You don’t have to be sorry. And you think she looked familiar?” 

“Could just be she looks a lot like you,” Derek replies, and that makes Stiles smile. “But, yeah, maybe.” 

“There’s something I want to show you.” Stiles scrambles up off the bed. This is the opening he’s been waiting for. He retrieves the emissary book from his backpack and hands it overly eagerly. “Look at the inscription at the beginning.”  

To Stiles' disappointment, Derek’s reaction is anticlimactic. It primarily consists of Derek’s usual brand of broody silence. 

Derek frowns down at the book. “Peter knew about this.” He turns to study Stiles, considering. 

“You onto something, Nancy Drew?” 

Derek's scowl could melt lead.

“But seriously, what is it?” 

Derek looks uncomfortable. “Before Peter left,” he starts slowly, “I was starting to suspect he was searching for ways to become an alpha again.”

“Like killing you.” 

“Probably,” Derek agrees, mouth still twisted in an uneasy frown. “He seemed really interested in you, your abilities. Said it was for the best you didn’t agree to the bite.” 

“You think that has something to do with Peter’s deal with Alpha Pack? That I do?” 

“Not exactly.” Derek leans back in the chair, lacing his fingers over his stomach and staring up at the ceiling as he thinks. “Peter might have been looking for ways for you to protect him from the Alpha Pack. Whatever he promised them…” 

“Whatever he promised them is why he fucked off,” Stiles surmises.  

“Seems that way.” Derek shifts and gets to his feet, the chair creaking as it moves. “Be careful, Stiles. The magic you can already do is strong. It takes a lot of skill to mask a werewolf’s scent.” Derek lets out a long sigh, looks like he wants to say more. “Just be careful.” 

“You know I trust you, right?” Stiles says after him, in case he’s reading between the lines correctly. He’s still hurt by their earlier conversation, but he’s not angry at Derek anymore. He’s glad he came by. 

Derek shakes his head, expression closing off again. “You should get some sleep,” he advises and slips out the window into the darkness. 

*~*

That night Stiles dreams of the Nemeton again, Derek by his side. Derek bites Stiles' neck, shallow enough to keep him human, deep enough to bleed. Red droplets fall onto the ground around the Nemeton, and from its stump, a new tree begins to grow.  

*~*

Maybe there's another way Stiles can make the ritual or this type of magic work for the pack. Derek thinks it’s worth looking into, so Stiles delves into the world of familiars with unmitigated gusto. Information has always been Stiles' most powerful ally. He enlists Allison and Lydia to check their resources, sends them things to translate, and goes down his own hybrid book-Google rabbit hole. 

There’s a permanent imprint of his ass in the study room’s bean bag chair. 

“It looks like the ritual can only be performed between emissary and alpha,” Allison reports during their regroup with Lydia, who is on-screen, wearing a green face mask, hair up in a towel. She still looks more put-together than Stiles does in his Sunday best. Jackson is lurking around in the background being generally unhelpful. 

Scott and Isaac are “researching”, which seems to consist of mooning over Allison and one another when they think the other isn’t looking. Stiles still does not have time to explore whatever mess is happening in their neck of the woods.

“I’m finding the same as you about emissary and alpha, Allison,” Lydia says, perfectly manicured nail tapping one of the printed pages on her desk. “In most other cases, that’s why the power is abused. It’s an unequal balance. Stiles would just be siphoning power if he tried it with Scott or Isaac, for instance.” 

"What if there was a way to do it between more than two pack members?" Stiles wonders, tapping a pencil against his mouth. "Would that be an option?"

He knows he's clutching at straws here.

“You said it would be really hard to undo it once it’s been done,” Allison points out.

“It sounded like you’d also be more bound to the pack and Beacon Hills. Are you sure you want that?” Lydia asks, tilting her head.

Jackson snorts.

“Just because you two high-tailed it out of here—literally in one of your cases—“ Jackson scowls at him and Lydia narrows her eyes “—doesn’t mean all of us feel that way.” Like he’d told Derek last night, he’d missed this town the whole time he’d been gone.

For all the shit they’ve been through, protecting the Hale territory and joining Derek’s pack have felt right, even when he isn’t sure of his place as emissary.

“What do you even have to do in this ritual, anyway?” Scott asks. He’s pulling tiny, white beans out of a tear in the side of his bean bag and chucking them at Isaac who catches each one with rapid speed. Blech.

Stiles doubles down on ignoring the flirting as Allison joins in. Stiles knows he should be more generous of spirit—Isaac has been struggling without Boyd and Erica. He seems mostly miserable except when Scott is teasing him or smiling at him all adoringly.

“There’s blood and shirtlessness involved, so just another Tuesday in Beacon Hills,” Stiles replies.

“You hate blood,” Scott points out.

“And being shirtless,” Isaac chimes in. Which is. Wow. Okay, maybe it’s true but come on. Look at the men in the pack. One time he went swimming with his t-shirt on, and he’ll never live it down.

“But he likes seeing Derek shirtless,” Jackson says from over Lydia’s shoulder, holding a cup of tea. God, he’s fully acclimated to British culture. Lydia rolls her eyes, extra dramatic against the green goop surrounding them.

“Okay, goodnight, London. Thanks for your help, I think your work here is done,” Stiles says, reaching across the table to shut the laptop.  

Nudity aside, the ritual’s actual steps are truly unappealing. Derek’s reasoning would have hurt a lot less if he’d just said, “Hey, Stiles, I sincerely don’t want to carve symbols into our skin, exchange blood with you, sprinkle what is essentially poison onto said wounds so that they scar and never heal. As emissary, please find an alternative plan.” 

After Allison and Isaac head off, Scott turns serious eyes on Stiles. 

“What?” Stiles asks. 

“How come you don’t seem more nervous about doing a creepy ritual?” 

“Uh, maybe because I’m more concerned with finding any way to get Erica and Boyd back and keep the rest of us alive.”

Scott doesn’t look convinced. “Okay. Just make sure you aren’t just dragging us all down a dead-end just because you want an excuse to get naked with Derek again.” 

Inwardly, Stiles winces. He hasn’t told anyone exactly what Derek said when he’d said no to the ritual. But it certainly wouldn’t be you still won’t leave him the hell alone. 

Outwardly, Stiles throws a pencil at Scott—which Scott bats away easily—and goes back to researching.

*~*

It’s been another week, and he still has no idea who the Alpha Pack are in any tangible sense—“Derek, do you have any pictures of Deucalion. Or, like, a Facebook page for him?” “No, Stiles, I do not have Deucalion’s Facebook page”—and given how easily their enemies seemed to get jobs at their college last year, his paranoia is justified. 

For at least some semblance of protection, he’s enchanted a different medley of herbs for himself and Allison to mask their scents too. It doesn’t really assuage his fears, though. 

By the day of the full moon, Stiles' anxiety reaches a full crescendo.

Stiles nudges Scott and Isaac repeatedly during lacrosse practice, inclining his head towards various new freshmen on the team. Werewolf? he asks by way of bugging his eyes out.

“Yep, you solved it.” Isaac rolls his eyes. “Where our noses failed, your keen powers of observation succeeded.” 

“Remind me why we keep you around again? As emissary do I get some sort of voting rights to kick you out?”

Isaac gives him a mean smile. 

Before he can goad Isaac some more, a dark figure catches Stiles' eye at the edge of the field. “My keen powers of observation actually do spot a werewolf that your noses missed.” He points at Derek. “It’s freshman year all over again.”

While Scott and Isaac head onto the field, Derek slips over to the benches, and Stiles goes to join him. Coach Finstock probably won’t notice Stiles' absence for at least five minutes. He’s too busy yelling at Greenberg.

“The alphas finally left more warnings,” Derek says, staring out at the field. “The same symbols as before, on the front of my building.”

Stiles nods slowly, keeping his eyes on the field but not taking anything in as his mind puzzles over this. “You think they’re planning something?”

"Maybe," Derek says. "You should all be at the loft tonight."

“Okay,” Stiles agrees, trying to ignore the dread and fear churning in his stomach. 

To Stiles' shock, Derek doesn’t roll his eyes or flat out ignore him. Instead, he puts his hand on Stiles' shoulder. “I’ll see you tonight,” Derek says, and then he gets up to leave. “Come as early as you want.” 

But Stiles is fairly certain that even as practice goes on he spots Derek in the distance, still watching. 

Chapter Text

After lacrosse practice, Stiles has a bio lab he can’t skip, which he works through anxiously—tapping his pen when he isn’t taking half-hearted notes or fumbling with beakers. His bemused lab partners pick up most of his slack. All he can think about is the full moon, Derek, and the prickly feeling of dread that grows as the full moon nears.

By the time he ducks out of the lab, it’s just after seven. Students are coming and going, carrying laughter and noise with them. He feels so far removed from it all, and for a second he’s nostalgic for that first month on campus before Scott was bitten and Stiles was riding the high of being invited to lacrosse parties and making flirty friends with the cute girl in the adjacent dorm room. He’s not sure if he’d trade everything about his life, but for a minute he wonders what it might feel like to just be a normal college student. Instead, he finds himself looking up at the sky, considering how much time he has before the full moon rises.

Though he estimates he has about an hour, Stiles heads straight for the loft. Derek had told him to come as early as he wanted, which Stiles knows he wouldn’t have said lightly.

There are a few texts in the family group chat from his dad and Melissa that are embarrassingly obvious attempts to check in on the full moon and werewolves without using any of those words.

Scott had already written back: We’re hanging out with friends tonight. All good. With a lot of smile and wolf emojis.

Stiles types out a quick reply as well. Yeah, I’m headed over now. Leave some pizza for me. And then feels like a fraud for how breezy his text sounds.

He briefly considers calling his dad during the drive to the loft, but his dad hates when he does that, even if Stiles goes hands-free. And Stiles isn’t sure he’d be able to resist filling him in on all his fears, all the unknowns. No reason to jump the gun and give his dad a heart attack over nothing.

When Stiles arrives at the loft, Scott and Isaac are watching a movie on Scott’s laptop. They nod at him, and Scott makes space for him on the couch, motioning for Stiles to join them.

The sound of explosions fills the room, and Stiles isn’t really in the mood.

“Derek’s upstairs,” Isaac says, eyes flicking over to Stiles. Scott lifts his eyebrows at Stiles.

“Thanks,” Stiles says awkwardly and makes his way up the spiral staircase. Halfway up, he pauses. “Speak now or forever hold your peace if you don’t want me to come up, Derek.”

There’s no reply, so Stiles climbs the remaining steps. 

Derek is lying down fully clothed on his bed, reading a beaten copy of Watership Down. The sight fills Stiles with longing.

Derek puts his book down and sits up. “Hey.” 

“Hey,” Stiles says after a beat too long.

“Scott said you wanted pizza. Should be here soon.”

“Scott said I wanted…” The stupid text, he realizes, rolling his eyes. “Whatever, I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. But you better have ordered me something with pineapple.” 

Derek makes a sour face, but nods. 

There really isn’t much space up here, so he sits down at the edge of Derek’s bed, sure Derek will shove him off if he has an issue, but Derek doesn’t react at all.

“My dad thinks we’re just hanging out tonight having pizza,” he blurts out. “I didn’t—Scott and I haven’t told him or Melissa anything about what’s going on.”

“Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”

If something terrible is going to happen to Stiles, there is nothing his dad can do about it. Might as well spare him the worry in the meantime. He tells Derek as much. 

Derek nods. After a long silence, he says, “I would feel the same in your shoes.”

“Well, yeah. You hate telling anyone anything,” Stiles teases.

Derek smiles, but there’s something sad in it, and Stiles backpedals. “You’ve gotten a lot better. I’m just kinda freaking out right now. Do we even stand any chance in a fight?”

“Probably not.”

“So we’ve got no plan if they show up tonight?”

“I didn’t say that,” Derek says. “There are some options.”

“Such as?”

Derek is about to answer when they’re interrupted by the sound of the alarm.

Derek springs off the bed and flies down the staircase in a few dramatic leaps. Stiles races down after him, feet thundering on the metal.

Isaac and Scott are standing, staring at the door, their backs rigid.

“You think it’s them?” Isaac asks. 

“Stay behind me,” Derek says.  

Derek opens the loft doors and steps out into the hall. Stiles, Scott, and Isaac follow behind him. Stiles' heart is pounding, but something feels off. He can hear the elevator clanging as it makes its ascent, and this doesn’t seem like the Alpha Pack’s MO. This isn’t how they’d launch an attack. That knowledge doesn’t bring him any comfort. 

The elevator doors open with a ping, and a dark-haired girl stumbles out. Her eyes are wild, and she’s bleeding from a wound in her stomach, blood seeping around her hands as she pitches forward.

Derek stands frozen in place. Stiles wishes he could see Derek’s face—something is very wrong.

“Derek?” Stiles' voice is sharp and seems to get through to him. He glances back at Stiles before he races towards the girl, catching her as she falls forward. 

Derek scoops her up and carries her into the loft, pressing past Stiles, Scott and Isaac without a word.

“Derek, what’s going on?” Scott asks.

“Do you know her?” Stiles and Isaac ask at almost the same time.

Derek doesn’t answer.

There’s something familiar about the girl. Stiles follows the pack into the loft where Derek lays her down on the couch. Black lines race up Derek’s arms as he crouches by the girl and siphons the pain from her. The blood keeps coming, and she moans quietly.

“Do you know her?” Stiles repeats.

Finally, Derek gives a tight nod, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the girl. Tension crackles in the air, and Stiles feels like his heart is going to explode out of his chest. “Derek,” he prompts again. “Who is she?”

Derek finally looks at Stiles, his eyes red. “My sister.”

Stiles exchanges baffled looks with Isaac and Scott, and Isaac says, “I thought your whole family was killed?”

“So did I.”

It clicks into place for Stiles then, why she looked familiar. “Cora.”

Derek looks at him sharply. “Yes. It’s Cora.”

“She’s a wolf too,” Isaac says, scenting the air. He frowns as he takes a step forward to peer down at Cora.

“Why isn’t she healing?” Scott asks.

“I don’t know,” Derek grits out, glaring at both of them, and they each take a step back.

“Wolfsbane?” Stiles hazards. 

Stiles stands next to Derek, bending forward to—ug—take a closer look at Cora’s injuries.

There might be some sort of poultice he can make on his own, at least to ease the pain, but he needs to know what he’s dealing with first. If a werewolf isn’t healing on their own, there’s some dark juju in the mix. Jennifer had been able to stop Derek from healing, and the memory makes Stiles flinch. 

Derek shakes his head. “There’s no wolfsbane. I’d feel it.” His hand stays on her. Thick black lines run up Derek’s fingertips and up his forearms, slipping underneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. It looks painful, the black lines lasting for a long time, Derek’s skin going sickly pale.

“Do you have bandages? Anything?” Stiles asks.

Derek’s voice is rough like it’s hard for him to breathe through the pain. “Bathroom cabinet.”

Stiles makes a move to go, but Scott beats him to it. Disappearing and reappearing with a roll of bandages with werewolf speed.

“Will this even do anything?” Scott hands the bandages over. “If she’s not healing, should we make sure the wounds are clean, at least?” 

Cora coughs and takes big, heaving breaths. Her body rattles under the strain of them. She opens her eyes, glowing amber. “None of it will help. I can’t heal,” she chokes out. “He won’t let me.”

“Who won’t let you?” Derek asks. When she doesn’t answer he shakes her arm gently. “Cora. Who won’t let you?”

She opens her eyes again and grabs Derek’s arm so hard he winces. “Deucalion.”

“What does that mean he won’t let her heal?” Isaac says. “Can an alpha do that?”

“Yes. An alpha could make his beta stop their own healing,” Derek answers.

Isaac frowns down at Cora. “She’s in his pack?”

Before Derek can answer, Cora speaks.

“He’s coming for you, Derek.” Cora’s voice is hoarse. It doesn’t look like Derek’s ongoing effort to siphon away her pain is doing her much good.

“He wants you to meet him. Then he’ll let me heal.”

“Where?” Derek demands. “Cora, where?” 

She opens her mouth, once, twice, and then she passes out.

*~*

Stiles races down the highway, praying that there aren’t any cop cars lurking around the corner. Not for the first time, Stiles wishes his dad was still on the force here. At least then if they get stopped for speeding Stiles might have an easier time talking their way out of a ticket or a long stop. Not sure how he’d explain the severely injured girl in the back of his car, though.

When Cora starts to heal, enough to ensure she won’t die, she claws back open her wounds. Derek and Isaac are restraining her now so she can’t re-injure herself, and she’s screaming bloody, incredibly distracting, murder. In the rearview mirror, Stiles can see her struggling valiantly against Derek and Isaac’s hold.

The car smells like blood, even to Stiles' human nose.

“How you guys doing?” he calls behind him.

“Just hurry, Stiles,” Derek snaps.

“Yeah, I got that memo, thanks.”

The screaming stops and Stiles dares to take his eyes off the road for a second again. A dire situation flickers in the rearview mirror: Cora ashen, jaw slack, passed out now. Her head rests in Derek’s lap, her feet on Isaac’s. The bandages around her stomach are soaked with blood. 

“Deaton says he’ll be there when we get there,” Scott says from the passenger’s seat, phone screen lighting up with an incoming text. 

“Thank god.” Isaac sounds out of breath.

Stiles bites his lip and presses his foot down harder on the gas. As he accelerates, he hopes that maybe the protection spells he’s cast will get them to Deaton’s in time.

And he hopes like hell that Deaton can help them.

 *~*

Cora is awake again, screaming and thrashing against Derek, who is holding her feet down on the exam table, and Isaac and Scott who are pinning down either arm.

Stiles is so out of his depth here. He’s staying as far out of the line of potential feral werewolf fire that he can on the opposite side of the room, and he’s grateful when Deaton gives him something to do.

“Keep her from harming herself further,” Deaton instructs Derek. “I have something that can help as a temporary measure. Come with me, Stiles.”

Stiles follows Deaton to his back office. The walls are lined with medical supplies, but Deaton heads straight for the back of the room where a row of filing cabinets sit. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a key and unlocks the bottom cabinet. 

“Has Derek changed his mind about the ritual?” Deaton asks as he rummages around, the tinkling sound of glass clinking filling the air. 

Stiles' eyes dart to the door. “Aren’t you worried he can hear us?”

Deaton smiles. “I was able to help him soundproof his loft wasn’t I?”

“Good point.” Stiles leans against the wall and bangs his head back against it, sighing. “Sorry, but I think the ritual’s a no-go.”

Deaton straightens up, holding a small jar of purple liquid. Stiles has the uneasy suspicion it contains wolfsbane.

“Stiles, I told you when you became emissary for the Hale Pack that it’s about more than just using magic to aid the pack. It’s about providing guidance, advising.”

“I get that.” Stiles scowls. 

“It’s a powerful ritual. One that’s worthy of consideration,” Deaton says as he opens the door to the hallway.  

Stiles lets out a long sigh and follows Deaton.

“This will stop her from hurting herself for now,” Deaton explains when they return to the examination room. He injects Cora with the purple liquid, which knocks her out cold. “But you need to break the bond between her and Deucalion.”

“Obviously,” Derek growls. “The problem is how.”

Isaac rests his hands on the examination table. “Earlier Cora said Deucalion wanted to meet with Derek. But whatever he has planned, it has to be a trap right?”

“But we don’t really have much of a choice, do we?” Scott directs the question to Derek.

“No.” Derek looks between all of them. “Whatever he wants, I’ll go alone.”

“Jesus, Derek,” Stiles snaps. “That’s idiotic.” 

“If they kill me, then at least the rest of you have a chance.”

Stiles lets out a harsh laugh. “A chance? We’re your pack. If you think you’re walking to your death, do you think we’re just going to sit here twiddling our thumbs? You know me, I stick my nose into everything.”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “And I stick my nose in with him.”

Scott looks at Isaac, who blinks. “Oh. Yeah. I stick my nose in with them too, I guess?”

Scott nods, satisfied. 

Derek opens his mouth to argue when the werewolves all go eerily still. 

“What?” Stiles asks, but Derek silences him with a glare. 

“They’re coming here,” Derek says. 

*~*  

Derek’s nostrils flare, and Stiles turns to see that Scott and Isaac are also scenting the air.

“There’s at least five of them,” Isaac says, and Scott nods.

“That’s what I’m getting too.” 

Derek shakes his head. “Six. Two of them have very similar scents. It’s common for twins.”

Goosebumps prick up Stiles' arms. “They’re not bothering to hide their scents?”

“No. They want us to know they’re coming.”

“How did they find us?” Scott asks. “We’ve all been wearing Stiles’ satchels.”

“Sachets,” Stiles corrects automatically. “Satchels are the”—he gestures to his arm and at Scott’s blank look and at Derek’s disbelieving one he waves his hand—“never mind, we’ll circle back later. Not important now.”

“They must have tracked Cora’s scent,” Derek grits out. He rests his hands on the cabinet just below the window, back to the room. The veins in his forearms flex as his grip tightens. “They used her as bait.”

Scott turns his best puppy-dog eyes on Deaton. “Is there anything you can do?”

“With the mountain ash barriers, they won’t be able to get in unless I let them,” Deaton says carefully. “But your pack has to decide how you see fit to engage with another pack.”

Scott sighs.

Isaac quirks an eyebrow—he must seriously be getting one-on-one training from Derek in the art of eyebrow communication—at Scott that manages to be both sarcastic and possibly flirtatious despite the circumstances. “Come on,” he drawls, “did you really think now would be the time he handed over a weapon that could take down our enemies without us taking a beating?”

Deaton doesn’t look at all perturbed by the barb. “Pack business is pack business. Because of my ties to Talia Hale, I help where I can.”

“I know, I know.” Isaac sighs.  

Stiles makes a move towards the window to peer out of the blinds like a nosy neighbor. Before his fingers can touch one of the slats, Derek catches his wrist. “Don’t.” 

A little shock shoots through Stiles at the heat in Derek’s touch. Unthinkingly, he leans into it. “Why not?” 

“They’ll be here any second. You need to stay hidden,” Derek answers, still holding onto Stiles. His gaze is intense and unwavering. In the harsh light of the exam room, Derek’s eyes appear grey, and Stiles can’t look anywhere but into them. “And I especially don’t want them to find out what you are to the pack when we still don’t know what it is they want.”

Right. Stiles had forgotten that it wasn’t common for the emissary’s pack to even know their identity let alone other packs, threatening packs. But the Hale Pack was young, run by a young alpha, filled with young, bitten wolves, a young emissary; Deaton had advised that the whole pack knowing Stiles’ role would strengthen their trust and bond. Stiles hadn’t considered that it also might increase the risk of danger to himself. He swallows and nods at Derek.  

“What do you want us to do?” Isaac asks, and that seems to snap Derek out of whatever is going through his mind because he drops Stiles’ wrist.

There’s a long moment where Derek is silent as he considers the question. “The three of us will go down to talk to them. We’ll fight only if we have to.”

“We need proof Erica and Boyd are still alive,” Scott puts in quietly. “I don’t smell them coming.” 

Stiles curses. “But we’d know if—we’d be able to feel if they were dead, right?” 

“Yes. They’re still alive,” Derek says with conviction. 

“Okay so whatever deal Peter made,” Stiles says, “if there’s a way we can honor it or break it with werewolf politics instead of violence, that’s what we’re gonna go with?”

Derek gives a tight nod. “The most important thing is getting Boyd and Erica back.” He looks over at Cora on the table, lying there corpse-like. “And to help Cora.” 

Deaton, who has been quietly observing the conversation until now, says, “Be careful, Derek. Deucalion is not the same man you met when you were a teenager.”

“I’d gotten that impression.” Derek’s voice is flat.

As Stiles watches Isaac and Scott file out the door behind Derek, he realizes that Derek is wearing his leather jacket even though it’s a warm summer night, even though he hadn’t known for certain they’d be facing the Alpha Pack tonight. It means he’d been afraid, still is.

Derek had almost always been wearing that jacket at the start when every day was off to war for him. This is the first time Stiles has seen him put that armor back on in months. Stiles feels two distinct waves of fondness and protectiveness crash through him at once.

He wishes desperately that he was stronger, that he could follow Derek and his stupid leather jacket into battle. 

*~*

Deaton leads Stiles back to the room where he’d gotten the wolfsbane substance for Cora. He opens the window overlooking the parking lot a crack but keeps the blinds closed.

He goes over to the cabinets, using the same key again, and when he returns he hands Stiles two things: a silver canister and a small, oval-shaped mirror, about the size of Stiles' face. It’s nondescript as mirrors go—the makeup mirror Lydia whips out of her purse is fancier.

Deaton gestures to the canister. “Mountain ash.” 

“And let me guess, mirror,” Stiles says, lifting his right hand holding the mirror.

“Yes. I thought you might want to see what’s going on outside.”

“Um.” Stiles looks between the mirror and the window. “I do not think this is going to help me get a visual on them. But I guess I should be able to hear them from here?”

Deaton sighs like he’s disappointed.

Stiles' mind draws blanks for a moment and then in the next, it whirs into gear. “Oh shit,” he says. “You’re trying to teach me something. This is a teaching moment. Okay, I’m on it.”

“Focus your energy,” Deaton advises with a lift of his eyebrows. And then Deaton leaves Stiles sitting alone in the room.

“Uhhhh. Show me what’s happening,” he tells the mirror, holding it higher above his head.

He sees the top of his forehead and the window blinds.

Stiles moves around the room, trying various positions, making different requests of the mirror. He tries to make up a rhyming spell. He tries twists on the classics: mirror mirror on the wall who’s the fairest pack of all. Nothing but his own face and Deaton’s office walls reveal themselves in the mirror.

Stiles slumps down on the floor just under the window and knocks his head back against the wall in frustration. “Mirror mirror on the floor, who’s the suckiest one of all?” He looks into the mirror. “Oh, hey, would you look at that, it’s me.” 

Outside, he can suddenly hear movement, the sound of feet on the pavement, and Stiles’ heart starts to race. He’s going to cave. He’s going to stand up and be an obvious face in the window because he has no self-restraint.

“Derek Hale,” a deep, British voice says from somewhere just below the window. “We finally meet.”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut tight, picturing the hard look on Derek’s face as he says, “Deucalion. What businesses do you have with me and my pack?” He sounds formal in a way that Stiles hasn’t heard before, his voice taking on the deep command of alpha that Stiles doesn’t often hear him use.

Without thinking, Stiles whispers in a blurted rush, “I need to see Derek. To make sure he’s okay. Please just show me Derek.” 

Stiles opens his eyes, slowly focusing on the mirror.

He blinks in shock. In the mirror, Stiles sees Derek in the parking lot, Scott and Isaac standing just behind him on either side. 

“Holy shit.” 

Stiles has an aerial view of his pack. It gives him an odd sensation of being a guardian angel. A really unhelpful guardian angel.

A man steps into view who Stiles thinks must be Deucalion. He’s holding a cane, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and Stiles frowns down at the mirror. If he really is the leader of the Alpha Pack, why does he have injuries that never healed? 

Before Stiles can follow that thread of thought too far, five more figures step into view: three men and two women.

As if she can sense Stiles’ presence, one of the women looks up at him, and Stiles jerks back in surprise when he sees her face. He knows her. It’s Professor Morrell, Stiles’ Mythology professor from last semester. Fuck, he’d almost asked her to be his advisor. 

“We were promised a Hale alpha.” Deucalion gives a faint smile, and the second woman—who Stiles notes with relief is not any professor he recognizes—bares her fangs.

It’s in that moment that Stiles’ general bad feeling ramps up to really really really bad. He scrambles around, reaching for his phone in his back pocket while gripping the mirror in his right hand. The phone fumbles, nearly slipping through his fingers, but he manages to catch it and send Allison a text: ALPHAS CLINIC SOS.

Despite the truce, Derek might be livid with Stiles if the Argents show up, but Stiles wouldn’t mind the extra firepower.

“Promised a Hale alpha by who?” Derek says evenly as if the answer is not abundantly clear.

“Your predecessor. He made a promise on behalf of the Hale Pack, which carries on even if the alpha’s power changes hands.”

“Fucking Peter,” Stiles mutters.

“Why do you want a Hale alpha so badly?” Derek asks.

“There’s a special source of energy in your family’s territory,” Deucalion says. “The Nemeton. With a Hale alpha as part of our pack, we’d be able to harness that power.”

“Fucking Nemeton,” Stiles mutters.

It’s odd that Deucalion is so forthcoming with information. Stiles has dealt with Hales, Argents, and Deaton enough that he just expects anyone involved with the supernatural to be incredibly tight-lipped about everything. The quick divulgence of motive almost makes Stiles more suspicious. It’s unlikely that Deucalion will want to use the Nemeton’s power for something beneficial to society, like improving California’s public school system or creating more affordable housing.

“Oh, yeah,” Derek says dryly. “I’m convinced now. I’d be honored to join your pack and give you control over my family’s territory.”

“If you do not make good on the deal,” Deucalion continues cheerfully, “then we do have a backup plan.”

Teeth bared, Derek takes a step forward towards Deucalion, but the largest of the pack members steps forward between them. He and Derek growl at one another, low vicious sounds. Through his fangs, Derek snarls, “You have two of my pack members. Where are they?”

Deucalion leans casually on his cane, a slow smile spreading on his face as if he’s exchanging pleasantries with Derek. He ignores Derek’s question. “You have a month until the next full moon to decide if you’ll join us peacefully. Kali can be very persuasive.”

And that’s when the female wolf, Kali’s, eyes glow red. With alarming speed, she lunges at Derek.

Scott and Isaac’s faces shift and they drop down to all fours. But before they can leap forward to Derek’s side, they’re intercepted by the three other alphas. Stiles can get a better view of them now; two of them, the smaller ones, are twins…and instead of shifting into their own separate wolf, they press themselves together into one, larger alpha werewolf.

What. The. Fuck. 

The twin alpha slashes at Scott, who does an actual backflip out of their reach.

Isaac doesn’t have the same luck with the largest alpha who has gone after him. The front of his shirt is slashed and blood sprays out of it as the alpha tears into him.

Derek howls, and it’s clear he’d be going to protect his betas if Kali wasn’t lightning quick on her bare feet, the long claws on her toes—gross, Stiles can’t help but think—grip into Derek’s shoulder, ripping out a chunk of skin that has Stiles’ choking on air, his stomach turning as Derek roars in anger and pain.

Adrenaline blazes through Stiles' body. He’s thrown the mirror onto the ground before he can think about it, and his feet are carrying him outside faster than he’s ever run laps in high school gym class or college lacrosse practice.

Why couldn’t Deaton have been a fire mage or something violently useful, Stiles wonders bitterly as he races out of the back office, past the reception area, and through the glass doors. His heart beats wildly, and the canister of mountain ash digs bruisingly hard into his right palm.

It’s disorienting seeing the fight happen right in front of him instead of watching it from overhead. Distantly, he hears both Derek and Scott call his name.

There’s a whir of motion in front of him, a flash of red, as Kali races towards him. Stiles pops the lid of the canister and flicks his wrist in the same smooth motion that he’s thrown a frisbee on the quad a hundred times. Mountain ash flies into Kali’s eyes. She howls, clawed fingers snapping to her face.

Derek leaps forward and knocks her to the ground. His shoulder is still bleeding, and it’s not healing. There are claw marks along his face and through his clothes that aren’t healing either.

“Derek!” he shouts, as Derek viciously kicks at Kali’s ribs, a loud crack ringing out.

It doesn’t keep her down for long. She rolls and leaps up in one smooth motion, not looking the least bit put out by any temporary damage Stiles or Derek caused. She prowls closer, and Derek puts himself between her and Stiles.

“Get back inside, Stiles!” Derek snaps, keeping his eyes on Kali. 

Stiles turns, intending to do what Derek commanded—and that’s what it was, a command, he realizes belatedly. Derek’s voice had carried that alpha command, and it’s still reverberating through Stiles’ chest—when he sees Isaac get lifted into the air by the large alpha, holding him by his neck.

Stiles thinks, panicked, oh my god he could break his neck. Isaac could actually die in an instant, an injury that can’t heal. Terror immobilizes Stiles. He can’t run or look away from the sight unfolding before him.   

There’s a strange moment suspended in time where Isaac drops to the ground in a heap, and the large alpha staggers backward.

It takes Stiles a second to register the arrow protruding from the alpha’s chest. The fact that Isaac is breathing and alive, and the alpha is the one who’s injured. 

“Allison!” Scott shouts, taking the opportunity the distraction afforded him to run to Allison’s side as she walks towards them, crossbow in hand, a hard look on her face.

“Her scent’s been masked like the rest of them,” Professor Morrell says, tone indecipherable as she appraises Allison, her gaze landing on Allison’s crossbow. “She’s human and a hunter by the looks of it. There are Argents living here.”

Deucalion grimaces and tsks. “I didn’t expect you to ally yourself with hunters, Derek. Especially not Argents. That won’t do.” 

The pack gathers around Stiles and Derek. “Are you okay?” Scott hisses as Isaac scrambles towards them. He nods quickly at Scott. 

Stiles kneels on the ground by Derek, his left knee digging into the pavement. Scott, Allison, and Isaac press in closer, and Stiles throws a line of the mountain ash out in an arc in front of him. He thinks, make it a circle around all of us, and when he opens his eyes it’s there, encasing the pack.

Allison is looking at him, eyes wide. None of the werewolves seem to notice. Their focus is entirely on the alphas. Fangs still bared, eyes glowing gold and red.

“Why don’t you just kill me if you want my territory so badly?” Derek snarls, though his voice is strained. Blood drips down his forehead and onto the pavement beside him. The wound on his shoulder doesn’t look like it’s begun healing at all; it’s still a gaping, ugly thing. Bone gleams in the dark, and Stiles tries not to be sick all over himself. 

“Have you ever listened to a recording of a recording?” Deucalion asks.

Derek snarls.

“Can you move on from obfuscating? You’re not deep, bro,” Stiles says. Is there a masterclass on this communication style available online? If so, Peter obviously took the same lessons as Deucalion.

Deucalion ignores him. “The Nemeton’s power will stay at full force with a true Hale alpha. Hale-bitten will do if necessary but Hale-born is best.” 

Derek spits blood onto the pavement. “The only way you’re going to take over this territory is if you kill me.”

“I don’t want it to come to that.” Deucalion taps his cane against the ground. “You’re really quite loyal, Derek. It’s another reason you’d be the perfect addition to my pack. Pity you can’t display the occasional bout of pragmatism.”

“Where. Are. My. Betas.”

“Ah. I can assure you they’re safe and being fed and well-kept. If you don’t take your deal, one of them will become the new Hale Alpha, I’ll make sure of it.” Deucalion takes a step closer to the circle. “As I said, born Hale would be better, bitten will have to do if necessary.”

The alpha Allison shot is still writhing in pain on the ground. Professor Morrell goes to Kali’s side, bending down to check his wounds.

“Deuc,” Kali says. “What are you going to do about the hunter bitch? Ennis isn’t healing. Her arrow was covered in wolfsbane.”

“Patience, Kali,” Deucalion chides. “I know it’s not an easy decision, Derek. That’s why I’m giving you until the next full moon to make up your mind. Either way, this territory is going to be under our control.” He lifts his cane, tilting it in Allison’s direction. Stiles freezes, and he can feel the tension of everyone else in the pack echoing through him. “And if Ennis dies, the Argent girl will die.”

Kali roars, red eyes on Allison.

Professor Morrell moves between the two packs. “Kali, I’ll see what I can do for Ennis. Help me move him,” she says to the twin alphas who have split apart again.

The alphas hoist Ennis up between them, carrying him away. Kali follows, but Professor Morrell doesn’t go with her. Instead, she approaches the Hale Pack, her eyes on Stiles.

Stiles shifts closer to Derek. The mountain ash circle is still intact, but Professor Morrell could break it if she wanted. A bead of sweat drips down his back; he’s hyper-aware of it sliding down each vertebra. 

Professor Morrell bends forward and places a small vial of clear liquid on the ground in front of Derek. “For your sister,” she says, then turns to follow the alphas.

“You have until the next full moon,” Deucalion reiterates before he too takes his leave.

No one moves for a long time.

“Anyone else get the feeling we’re fucked?” Stiles says.   

Chapter Text

Derek is still bleeding as he and Stiles make their way back into the clinic.

“There was wolfsbane on her claws,” Derek explains as Stiles pulls the door to the clinic open. “I’m healing, but it’s slow.” 

“Wolfsbane on her claws? How the hell does that work?” Stiles rubs a hand over his face. The adrenaline is slowly seeping out of him, leaving him weak and drained. He’s not sure if he’s feeling echoes from the rest of the pack too. Even though Derek had told Scott, Isaac, and Allison to go, maybe Stiles can still feel the threads of their feelings from a distance.

“I don’t know.” Derek grunts, hand gripping his injured shoulder. The bleeding is slowing, but it disturbs Stiles to see a lasting injury on Derek. 

Stiles isn’t sure why Derek had let him stay by his side without an argument, and he doesn’t ask.  

Deaton meets them in the lobby and pauses as he takes Derek’s injuries in.

“Traces of wolfsbane.” Derek heads Deaton off before he can ask or offer help. “It’s wearing off—not like the hunters’ bullets. How’s Cora? Is she healing?”

Deaton nods. “Yes, but…”

“Is she still under Deucalion’s control?” Derek grits out.

“I’m afraid so.” Deaton leads them down the hall to Cora’s room.

She’s unconscious on the steel examination table, no longer able to injure herself at least. It doesn’t seem like a restful sleep; her face is ashen and sickly. She looks like a body at the morgue.

Without thinking, Stiles rests his hand on Derek’s arm, well away from any of his injuries. The leather is warm and solid under Stiles' hands, and he wants to pull Derek close to him, to hold him as tight as possible until they both calm down.

It’s only when Derek glances down at Stiles' hand, startled, that Stiles jerks it away.

Flushing, he reaches into his pocket for the vial of clear liquid that Professor Morrell had given them. He holds it up to Deaton. “I don’t know if we can trust her,” Stiles says. “When your enemies offer you a mysterious substance and say it’ll help, it doesn’t exactly breed confidence.”  

Derek moves towards Cora, and he makes an aborted motion like he’s going to reach for her hand but thinks better of it. “So what should we do? We can’t just leave her like this and hope whatever bond he made with her will break on its own.”

It takes Stiles a second to realize Derek isn’t aiming his words at Deaton but at Stiles. It startles him so much that his mind goes blank, and he looks over at Deaton for help.  

“I know their emissary, Marin,” Deaton says carefully. “She wouldn’t have given you this if it was going to hurt Cora further. If she said it would help, it will.” 

Something about Deaton’s tone is off. Stiles gets the feeling that, as usual, Deaton is keeping things close to his chest, but now isn’t the time to press for more information.

“Deucalion wouldn’t have anything to gain from lying,” Derek adds quietly. “If he really wants me to join his pack, this would be a gesture of goodwill, like he said.” He stretches out his hand, palm up, towards Deaton. 

But Deaton doesn’t hand it over. He shakes his head and says, “Stiles should be the one to administer the antidote.”

“Me?” Stiles looks around like there’s another Stiles hiding nearby. “Why me?”

“Think of it the same way you work with mountain ash or a protection spell. The intent to cure her is just as important as the ingredients. It could be used to kill as well as to heal. As the pack’s emissary, you’re in the best position to protect one of its members.”

Stiles darts a glance at Cora, then Derek, who appears more thoughtful than upset. “Is she pack now?”

“I don’t know.” A crease appears between Derek’s eyes. “But I think you can help her. She’s still my family.”

A fresh flood of anxiety washes over Stiles. The last thing he wants is to be responsible for more pain in Derek’s life. 

He has to do this for Derek. Not just try, do. Stiles steels himself, straightening his spine. “Okay then.” He moves to Derek’s side. They’re arm to arm, and it grounds Stiles as he focuses his intent. Derek nods at him like he knows, like maybe he’s feeling it too.

Derek carefully opens Cora’s mouth, keeping her lips open with two fingers. When his eyes meet Stiles', they’re hopeful. Trusting.

Stiles won’t be the reason Derek loses any more family.

He shuts his eyes, imagining Cora’s wounds stitching themselves together. Imagining her eyes opening and the color returning to her face. In his mind, he sees her healed and whole.

Stiles tips the vial into Cora’s mouth, slowly dripping in the liquid so she doesn’t choke.

Nothing happens at first. There’s a long terrifying beat where no one moves and everything is still.

And then, abruptly, Cora coughs and sputters, jerking upright. The cuts along her arm, covered in coagulated blood, now fully heal. She makes no move to hurt herself again.

Her eyes are clear when they land on Derek. “Hey,” she says. “Long time no see.”

*~*

Stiles follows Deaton out to the lobby, giving Derek and Cora privacy while they talk. If Stiles wasn’t Derek’s—and now Cora’s—ride home he’d head back to his apartment to give them more time alone. 

Deaton begins clearing up in a series of busy tasks—stacking stray papers, putting pencils into a holder. Without any pressure, he’s giving Stiles space to start a conversation if he wants to.

Of course Stiles wants to. The questions he has for Deaton could fill a book on a normal day.

Stiles perches on the edge of the desk, hands dangling between his legs. He grabs at one of the stray pencils Deaton hasn’t gotten to yet and rolls it back and forth. “I know you have all these rules you need to follow, but any advice right now would be appreciated.” Stiles can’t keep the note of desperation out of his voice. He has no idea what Derek is going to do about Deucalion’s ultimatum, but he has a feeling he’s not going to like the answer given there are no good options. What Stiles wants to advise is that they rip Deucalion’s throat out and protect Beacon Hills, but that seems like a goal too out of reach. 

Deaton levels him with a sympathetic look. “Stiles, sometimes the answers find you. If you’ve asked the spirit realm for guidance, what you’ve found shouldn’t be discounted.” 

Stiles squints at him. “What?”

“Did Derek explain to you why he was hesitant to perform the ritual?” Deaton asks, picking up the thread of their earlier conversation. 

“Uh.” If I was going to bond myself to someone that way, it certainly wouldn’t be you. “He’s not into the whole bonding with me thing. Like the whole purpose of the ritual? Not on board.”

“Hm.” Deaton frowns. “You’re still a young pack, and there needs to be a strong basis of trust between the emissary and the alpha.”

Stiles bristles. “I thought there was at least a pretty solid foundation of trust at this point. Derek trusted me enough to ask me to be his emissary.”

“Derek is still new to being an alpha, still learning what your role and his role mean. How to unify the pack. The bonding ritual is typically conducted within an established pack by an experienced alpha.” 

Like Talia Hale, Stiles thinks.

“There’s actually something I wanted to ask you,” Stiles says. “The book with the ritual in it…there was an inscription to my mother from Talia Hale. Were they friends?”

Deaton nods. “Your connection to the Hale Pack goes back to before you were born.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a time I thought your mother would be better suited as emissary than me for Talia Hale’s pack. Talia agreed when I proposed it. Initially, it seemed like your mother very much wanted to accept, but eventually, and rather abruptly, she declined.”

Stiles takes a minute to let the information wash over him. Learning that his mother’s secrets ran even deeper gave him an odd, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Deaton looks uncomfortable. This is the expression that Stiles now recognizes as one indicating Deaton is walking some invisible, serious line and about to speak cautiously. “Talia Hale may be dead, but there are still pack secrets that I need to protect and rules I need to follow. When I asked you if you were willing to be Derek’s emissary, I needed to be careful not to influence your decision in any way. Even now, it hasn’t even been a year since you accepted.” Deaton holds Stiles' gaze, his mouth drawn in a serious line. “It’s still taking root. It’s fragile.”

At the word root, images of the Nemeton come to Stiles' mind, all from his dreams. The gnarled roots bumping up from underneath the ground surrounding the stump. He gives his head a small shake, clearing it of those unwanted thoughts. 

“Why did my mom stop practicing magic? I can’t find anything in her notes, and I thought maybe you might have had some idea.” 

“Your mother stopped practicing rather abruptly,” Deaton answers. “She was evasive about her reasons.”

A cold feeling creeps down Stiles' spine. Before his mother had died, when she’d been so ill she could hardly leave her bed—the blue veins bright under her translucent skin—she’d said strange things. One feverish night, she’d thought Stiles was his father, saying, “Noah, it’s been a long time coming. I’ve always known it would get me.”

Stiles pushes the strange memory away and changes tack. “First Jennifer wanted to use the Nemeton, and now the Alpha Pack. What is up with this tree, seriously? Everyone just wants a piece of its evil. Semi-evil,” Stiles amends. 

“The Nemeton isn’t good or evil, Stiles.”

“That’s why I always specify that it’s semi-evil.”

Deaton laughs a little. “No magic is inherently good or bad. The Nemeton is a conduit of magic, of the caster’s intent. The pack’s intent.”

Stiles does the math. If the Nemeton becomes part of the Alpha Pack’s territory…even if Morrell’s intentions aren’t evil, the pack is power-hungry; they’re clearly willing to fight dirty for more. Innocent people might get caught in the crossfires the way the Hale Pack already has. 

“A stable pack protecting the territory, keeping Beacon Hills and the Nemeton safe, will be restorative. In time, you’d be able to channel its energy for good again.”

Stiles swings his legs, tapping them against the desk. He’s about to ask Deaton more about the Alpha Pack and the Nemeton to see what information he can wheedle out of him when two sets of footsteps come down the hallway, and Cora and Derek appear.

“Hey.” Stiles gives a little wave. “You two want a ride back to the loft?” He wonders if Cora remembers him or if he needs to re-introduce himself.

“That would be great,” Derek says, sounding exhausted. “Thank you,” he adds to Deaton.

“Thanks,” Cora echoes and follows Derek out the front door.

“One more thing,” Stiles says before he leaves. “That thing I did with the mirror. Can I do that with every mirror now?” Stiles asks.

“No,” Deaton says. “This one is special.” He doesn’t elaborate.

Stiles presses his luck and asks, “Can it show me anything? Or is it more of a Snow White situation?”

“More of a Snow White situation,” Deaton answers dryly. “Your connection to your alpha is what allowed you to see him. Of course, there are other factors involved. Proximity, strength of the intent, if there are other spells at play that might prevent it from working.”

“Magic that sounds like an SAT math or word problem. My favorite,” Stiles says. But nonetheless, he’s pleased.

*~*

Stiles doesn’t know what it would feel like to suddenly find out the sister you thought was dead is actually very much alive. If Stiles' head is swimming with questions, he can only imagine what’s going on inside of Derek’s. Derek isn’t saying anything and neither is Cora. A disquieting silence hangs heavy in the car. Derek has been staring straight ahead for the entire ride.

“So,” Stiles says, glancing back at Cora in the rearview mirror. It’s nice that this time she’s not trying to slice herself apart. “You’re not dead.”

“Stiles,” Derek warns, shooting Stiles a look out of the corner of his eye.

“What? I’m trying to make conversation in the world’s most awkward car journey. I have no idea what else to talk about.”

“Nothing,” Cora says, wearing an identical expression to Derek. “Nothing would be the ideal topic.”

“Duly noted,” Stiles mutters. “Like brother, like sister.” 

When he pulls up in front of the loft, Stiles fully intends to leave, but Derek stops him, rounding the Jeep and leaning into the open window. “It’s late,” Derek says. The street is empty and silent at this hour, no other passing cars, not even a stray, drunk college student or two. Stiles feels like they’re alone in the world, even though Cora is standing only a few feet away, waiting for Derek to let her inside.

“And that means what?”

Derek huffs out a frustrated sigh. “You could stay.”

“It’s fine. Drive’s not far.”

Derek doesn’t move. It takes Stiles' exhausted brain a minute to catch up.

“Dude,” Stiles says, trying to process this. “Do you want me to stay? Because you know you can just ask.”

“I changed my mind.” Derek rolls his eyes. “You can go.”

Stiles hesitates. The offer is tempting. But he looks behind Derek at Cora standing in front of the doors. In this moment where she doesn’t know she’s being observed, she looks afraid. For a brief second, Stiles gets a sharp flash of the kid he once knew. Maybe tomorrow or the day after he’ll come back and tell her he’s happy to see her again. But tonight isn’t the night for that.

“I’m gonna head home,” Stiles says, trying to keep his voice light. “I’ll check in on Scott and the others.” Even though he’s pretty sure they all went to the Argents’, it seems like an excuse might soften the blow.

Stiles' heartbeat is already erratic thanks to Derek’s offer; if Derek suspects a lie he doesn’t say anything.

“Okay,” he agrees. “Goodnight, Stiles.” But he doesn’t move away from the Jeep, he just keeps looking at Stiles, leaning inside the Jeep’s window. In high school, Stiles' girlfriend used to kiss him through the window just like this. He can smell the leather of Derek’s torn jacket, see flecks of dried blood where the healed skin is exposed.

Stiles is about to do something ill-advised like lean forward and kiss Derek, when Derek says, “Thank you. For everything tonight.”

“Really?” Stiles can’t keep the surprise out of his voice. “I thought you would be pissed I didn’t stay inside.” He thinks for a second. “And that I contacted Allison.”

“Never said I wasn’t. But you were protecting the pack.” 

“I might have made everything worse,” Stiles admits, thinking of the alpha Allison shot, the threat to her.

“We didn’t know if they were trying to kill or threaten us. Like I said, you were protecting the pack. It’s—it means something. You didn’t have to.”

The words make Stiles bristle. It feels wrong, like praising a parent for watching their child. “Yeah, of course. That’s my job. Literally. Don’t get me wrong, dude, I appreciate the gratitude, but I did have to.”

“You don’t, though.” Derek’s voice is firm, his gaze intense. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. You and the others might be better off not sticking around for whatever happens.”

A chill goes down Stiles' spine. What the hell does that mean? 

“Don’t say shit like that,” Stiles insists. “I’m not going anywhere.” He thinks of what Deaton told him earlier that night. About trust. “You need to start trusting me, legitimately trusting me, or I’m never really going to be the emissary for this pack. And whatever you’re thinking of doing, whatever plan is formulating in your stubborn head right now, you better share it with me soon.”

Derek actually looks chastised. “Alright. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He pushes himself upright and walks away.

Stiles blows out a long breath, watching as Derek and Cora disappear inside the apartment building.

*~*

The apartment is dark and empty when Stiles gets back. There’s a hollow feeling in his chest that sometimes accompanies an adrenaline crash, but he realizes as he tosses his hoodie onto his bedroom floor that actually he’s worried about Derek. Misses him. That Stiles feels deeply fucking lonely right now.

Scott offers to come home, but Stiles tells him he’s fine, can’t bring himself to admit to the dark loneliness. It’s too late to call his dad, and he’s too tired to make any coherent sense anyway.

He falls face forward onto his bed. Sleep comes quickly, but it’s fitful. He’s at the Nemeton again.

“Oh my god, what do you want?” Stiles finds himself shouting at the tree stump like it’ll give him answers.

Like in all the other dreams, Derek is by Stiles' side. He looks just as confused as Stiles feels, and Stiles is about to ask him a futile dream-question like what’s going on? Why does this keep happening? But the look on Derek’s face gives Stiles pause. Following the line of Derek’s sight, Stiles realizes that tonight the dream is different.

This time they’re not alone.

Across the stump stand three women under a pale veil of moonlight. Two of them Stiles immediately recognizes. To his shock and horror, Jennifer is standing alongside his mother. Upon closer inspection, the third woman is actually a teenager. A pretty, dark-haired girl.

Stiles wants to ask do you know her? But he can’t speak, his throat constricted. 

When he looks back, Jennifer’s face is distorted. The same face she’d worn when they’d unmasked her.

Stiles' mother motions for him to come closer, and he takes a single step forward towards the stump. His heart feels like a wild, struggling creature. Terror and longing play tug-of-war inside of him.

Derek calls out, “Stiles don’t!” in a distorted voice like it’s coming from far away.  

Stiles jerks awake in a cold sweat.

*~*   

He doesn’t bother going back to sleep. This is one of those days where he’ll be at the mercy of caffeine. He has class at eleven, which he’s tempted to skip, but it’s one where attendance is actually recorded. Who knows, if Stiles doesn’t get killed by Deucalion and friends, he might have even bigger threats to deal with that require the skipping of classes. So he resolves to go.

Not expecting a reply until well after the ass-crack of dawn, Stiles shoots Derek a text checking in on Cora. To his surprise, he gets a reply almost instantly.

She doesn’t remember much, but she’s doing okay, Derek writes.

How are you doing? Stiles asks. 

That reply takes a lot longer to come. The minutes tick by, and Stiles putters around the kitchen, rinsing out his coffee mug before immediately deciding that, actually, he does want another cup right now.

I’m fine. And then a beat later, thank you.

Scott returns to the apartment around nine. He rushes towards Stiles, curled up on the couch with his third cup of coffee and mindless cartoons on the TV, and yanks him into a tight hug.

“Dude,” Stiles manages to say, crammed as he is between the back of the couch and Scott. “I’m fine. We’re fine.” But he hugs Scott tightly too until he feels something poking into his neck. “Oh my god stop scenting me.”

“You smell like you again,” Scott says happily, words muffled against Stiles' shoulder. “Thank god we don’t have to wear those sachets anymore. Wait. Do we?”

“Werewolves are fucking weird. And no. At least at home, it seems kind of pointless now.” Stiles lets Scott hug him for another second before he untangles himself. “How are Allison and Isaac holding up?”

To Stiles' chagrin, Scott steals his coffee mug and flops back onto the couch in a heap. “They’re freaked out. Isaac was heading over to Derek’s when he left, and I’m going to head over after. We feel like…I don’t know. Like we need to be with Derek or something.”

“Well, he is your alpha,” he reminds Scott, plucking his mug out of Scott’s hands and taking a long, pointed sip. “It would make sense if you guys want to check in with him.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it.” 

Stiles isn’t going to push it now, but he suspects Scott’s place in the pack is solidifying. He can feel the bond between them strengthening in a way that’s different from their lifelong friendship, the fact that they’re step-brothers.

“I was going to ask him if he’ll protect Allison,” Scott says. “But I don’t know if he’ll do it if it’s coming from me, you know? You’re his advisor, right? Maybe you can talk to him?”

“Scott.” Stiles gapes at him. “Whether I offer my sage wisdom or not, even you have to realize Derek isn’t just going to let Deucalion or Kali or those freaky twins—seriously, are we not going to talk about how they morphed into one alpha werewolf? Where is the bestiary entry on that is what I want to know.”

“Stiles!”

“Sorry, sorry. Scott, look, Derek’s not going to just let them hurt Allison. They have a truce.”

Scott shakes his head. “It doesn’t mean he’d protect Allison if it came down to it. She’s still an Argent.”

“He will.”

Scott stares at him.

“But yeah of course,” Stiles placates. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

Chapter Text

The road leading to the Preserve is dark. It’s a cloudy night, and the stars and moon are hidden from Stiles' view outside the Camaro’s windows. The inside of Derek’s car is always spotless, and Stiles idly wonders when he gets the time to clean it. It used to feel like such a novelty, to imagine all the little human, normal things that Derek did. Now he realizes his interest in imagining these scenarios is less about the duality of supernatural and natural and just something his mind inevitably wanders to when he’s infatuated. When he was a kid, he’d imagined Lydia doing her homework.

From the driver’s seat, Derek is radiating anxious energy that translates to tight lips and tense shoulders. It’s understandable. Heading to the Nemeton will do that to a guy. Stiles isn’t sure what Derek plans on showing him tonight; he’s as curious as he is freaked out. 

“Cora didn’t want to come along tonight?” Stiles asks, trying to distract himself. He’s having trouble sitting still, feet moving restlessly, kicking against his backpack in the footwell.

“No.”

“Not a big fan of me, huh?”

The last week had been interesting. His curiosity about Cora and whether she had seen Erica and Boyd, and how she’d survived the Hale fire all those years ago had convinced Stiles to skip his afternoon class the day after their confrontation with the alphas.

The first visit hadn’t lasted long. Cora was tired, and her main contributions to the conversation had been to tell Derek that Stiles talked too much—“You can direct that feedback directly to me,” Stiles had said. “Just fill in one of my comment cards.”—and to sullenly allow Derek to explain on her behalf that yes, she had seen Erica and Boyd alive, and no she didn’t remember much else, like where they’re being kept. Neither Hale had mentioned the fire or how Cora had survived it.

Since then, Cora’s mostly silently lurked around the loft or disappeared for hours on end.

“I don’t think she’s a big fan of anyone,” Derek says ruefully.

Stiles shifts so he’s facing Derek, his shoulders pressed against the window. “What do you mean?”

“She was expecting a stronger pack. The only packs she’s ever known, our family’s, her pack in Mexico…they were established. Their bonds were strong, their alphas older.” Derek clenches and unclenches his hands around the steering wheel. He pulls off the county roads, down one of the rocky paths leading to the Preserve, before he continues speaking. “I don’t know what exactly she was expecting, but I don’t think it was me leading a few bitten teenage werewolves around.” 

“Hey, we’re in college. We’re young adults! Also, we hang out with a banshee, a kanima and a hunter too.”

“The banshee and the kanima left,” Derek points out.

“Touché.” Stiles shakes his head. “I’m sorry, though. About Cora. I’m sure she’s a big fan of you, though, dude. Just give it some time.”

When Stiles was young, he used to imagine what it would be like if his mother just turned up out of the blue, alive and fine and everything right again. When he’d learned about her affinity for magic, the futile hope had flared up again. He says as much to Derek now, trying to offer a piece of himself that he rarely shows.

“But if she turned up now, she wouldn’t know who I am now. Not all of me anyway,” Stiles explains, focusing on the lines of the road dashing underneath the car. If he looks at Derek, he won’t be able to keep himself steady, will probably retreat back into jokes or sarcasm. “And like you’re already well aware, it turns out I didn’t know everything about my mom either. It would take time for us not to feel like we were kind of strangers.” 

Derek doesn’t speak for a while, and Stiles does finally look at him then. It’s hard to tell from this angle, but he thinks Derek looks sad. “Parents are always strangers to us,” Derek says. “And Cora—I didn’t know her all that well when we were kids. Laura and I were closer. But I want to get to know her now, and I hope she stays.”

The urge to touch Derek, to show understanding and comfort, is overwhelming. But Stiles doesn’t know if that’s really allowed, if the pack bond between them is strong enough that Stiles wouldn’t be overstepping. That the way they used to touch each other wouldn’t muddle the meaning.

“She will,” Stiles says. “You’re really not all that bad. Sometimes you’re downright enjoyable to be around.”

Derek huffs out a laugh, the lines of his shoulders relaxing. He doesn’t say anything else until he’s parked the Camaro and is unbuckling his seatbelt. “For what it’s worth, I think you amused Cora.”

“You know me, I aim to amuse.” 

Stiles climbs out of the car after Derek. The cool night air hits him, and he takes deep lungfuls of it. He pulls his bag out and hefts it onto his shoulders, focusing on each movement instead of the pull of the Nemeton. This close to it, the magical energy practically crackles in the air. It gives him that feeling again of being both repulsed and compelled. The air smells sickly sweet, like overripe flowers.

They’re parked in a clearing at the outer edge of the woods, scattered trees looming above them. They’ll be heading deeper, into the dense line of trees ahead of them.

Derek senses his reluctance, boots crunching on the twiggy underbrush as he moves towards Stiles. There’s no hesitation as he puts a reassuring hand on Stiles' shoulder the way Stiles had wanted to do for him not ten minutes ago. 

“You don’t have to come with me. If you’re afraid—”

“No,” Stiles says quickly, shaking his head. He’s afraid, yeah, but he’s been afraid for more than a year, and it hasn’t stopped him yet. “No, I’m fine. The alphas have no reason to follow us here and fuck with us. Whatever you want to show me, I want to see it.“

“I didn’t think it was the alphas you were afraid of.” Derek drops his hand, and Stiles misses it as soon as it’s gone. 

“I’m good, man. Really. But thanks.”

Derek takes him at his word. “Let’s go then,” he says and turns on his heels to lead the way. 

Stiles pulls his flashlight out of his bag and follows Derek into the woods.

*~*

They walk for about twenty minutes, the forest getting thicker and denser until suddenly it opens up into the clearing where the stump of the Nemeton sits in the center. Overhead, the clouds have cleared; the stars and the moon are in full view now. 

Stiles follows Derek’s lead, slowly approaching at an angle, like a predator circling prey. Derek is a predator, Stiles reminds himself.

There’s an unnerving silence around them as if the forest is holding its breath. Stiles is going to break it out of discomfort when Derek beats him to it.  

“I’ve been having these dreams,” Derek starts, reluctant. “At first, I thought they were just vivid, but…” 

Stiles goes still. “About the Nemeton?”

“Yeah.” Derek draws the word out, eying Stiles warily. 

“Freaky, sometimes bloody dreams?”

Now Derek glares at him. “Stiles, I’m being serious. Don’t fuck around.” 

“No, dude.” Stiles waves his hands out in front of him. “I’m not messing with you. I’ve been having dreams like that since—you know.“ Since Jennifer’s sacrifices and then Stiles, Scott, and Allison’s own sacrifices had reawakened the Nemeton.

“Me too.” Derek scrubs a hand over his face. “I brought you here thinking that since you were in the dreams with me maybe you’d come here and…I don’t know. Figure something out. Seems stupid now.”

Stiles looks from the Nemeton to Derek, his heart pounding. The magic around it feels stronger, and Stiles swears he can feel it pulsing around his heart, where he imagines the darkness lives.  

“You’ve been in all my dreams too.” 

Derek’s eyes widen as understanding hits him: they’ve been having the same dreams. 

“I’ve been, like, drawn here but too afraid to come on my own,” Stiles continues. “This is the first time I’ve been able to. So no. I don’t think this was a stupid idea at all.” 

He steps closer to the wide stump. Gnarled roots bump up from the ground in heavy ridges that Stiles has to carefully step over. When he inevitably catches his foot on one of them, Derek is by his side in an instant to catch Stiles' elbow and steady him. 

From this angle, a wave of déjà vu suddenly overcomes Stiles. “We were here in my last dream.”

Derek looks disturbed. He jerks his head in the direction where the three women had been standing. “Did you see them there too?”

“Yep.”

“I only recognized Jennifer and Paige,” Derek says. 

“That was Paige?” 

Last year, Peter had told Stiles that Paige’s death had been considered a sacrifice and had given power to the Nemeton. But why had Jennifer been there? And Stiles' mother? Goosebumps prickle along his arms; he gets the feeling he isn’t going to like the answer.

“It was,” Derek confirms. “Was the third woman—was that your mom?”

Stiles' attention snaps back to Derek, perplexed until he remembers the picture Derek had seen of her. “Yeah, that was her.”

Derek gives him a puzzled look. “What’s she got to do with the Nemeton?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

They’re about a foot from the Nemeton now and that feeling of pull and push, and the sickly sweet smell, are both stronger than ever. Stiles is transfixed by the sight of this ancient, weathered stump and all the power thrumming beneath and through it. The beacon calls to him too, and without thinking, he’s reaching his hand out to touch it. 

Four things happen in very quick succession, one after another like a flip book. First, he sees the girl—Paige—crumpled and dying in the arms of a teenage boy. A teenaged Derek. He’s so young, and Stiles tries to move towards him, but he can’t.

The next three things involve Jennifer, and Stiles feels sick the moment she comes into view. 

To his horror, Stiles watches as Jennifer is viciously attacked by a woman Stiles recognizes as one of the Alpha Pack: Kali. The scene shifts. Jennifer alone and dragging herself to the Nemeton, bleeding profusely as she begs it to save her.

And finally, Jennifer, here once again, only this time Peter is with her.

“What’s Deucalion going to do when he finds out you can’t deliver what you promised?” she taunts as she gestures at the Nemeton.

Peter smirks. “I have other plans. I’m sure he and Derek will work something out.”

“Oh really?” Jennifer’s smile is sharp. “I could talk to Derek for you.”

“I can’t let you do that.” 

In an instant, Peter lunges forward, claws ripping into Jennifer’s neck.

Before Stiles can even begin to process what he’s just witnessed—Peter killed Jennifer? Because she knew about the deal Peter made with Deucalion?—his view shifts again. He’s still at the Nemeton, but Peter and Jennifer are both gone.

Then time seems to slow, and Stiles is looking at his mother. A younger version of her that he never knew.

“Mom?” he says, without thinking. But of course she doesn’t hear him.

She approaches the Nemeton slowly, carrying a small blue cloth bag. There’s something off about her. She has the same look on her face that she had whenever Stiles worried her—the time when he was young, maybe seven or eight, and he’d started to cross the street without looking both ways and had nearly been run over. In fear, she’d shouted at him never to do that again, her eyes teary and her voice fierce. Then she’d pulled him tight to her and said, “I’m sorry I yelled, just please be careful. You’re the most precious thing to me.”  

Her eyes are teary now too, her face drawn and anxious, but she walks towards the Nemeton with purpose. When she reaches it, she kneels and unties the cloth, setting it out in front of her like a miniature picnic blanket. Stiles moves closer, peers down at the sight before him, and nearly throws up. 

Three baby birds, their skulls crushed, lie side by side in a neat row on the cloth.

Stiles' mother cuts her own arm and trickles the blood on top of the ground in careful lines. “In exchange for my sacrifice, I request a healthy child in return.”

Ten times Stiles sees this same exact scene play out, and it takes him until the fourth time to realize, a horrible feeling choking him, that his mother is pregnant. His father had told him how difficult it had been for them to conceive, how badly his mother had wanted a child. That’s why we’re so protective of you, kiddo. But Stiles never would have guessed she’d turn to dark magic to get what she wanted.

Stiles wants to grab her shoulders and shake her, to yell: you don’t fuck around with that kind of shit! What you send out with your magic you get back threefold! It was in her books, all her notes, she knew. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t speak.

From a great distance, Stiles thinks he can hear Derek calling his name, and then abruptly there’s darkness.

When he comes back to himself, to the moonlit clearing, Stiles is shaking. The visions are swimming in his head. He can’t focus on one question at a time.

“What the hell just happened?” Stiles pants. He’s winded like he’s been running for miles.

“I don’t know,” Derek says, sounding much the same.

They sit side by side on the grass for a long time. Stiles loses track of how long. All the dreams he’s been having, that Derek’s been having too, feel an awful lot like the Nemeton is trying to tell them something.

*~*

It’s Derek who breaks the heavy silence that settles over them. Stiles' brain flits back and forth as it tries to piece together different parts of the same puzzle, as it tries to come to terms with what he’d seen his mother doing. 

“There’s been so much bloodshed here,” Derek says. His voice isn’t particularly loud, but it pierces through the silence of the forest. “It stops now.”

Cold dread fills Stiles. There’s a note of resignation in Derek’s tone. “What do you mean?”

“If I join the alphas, the bloodshed will stop. Deaton’s talked about balance in Beacon Hills before. If I don’t join them there’s just going to be more bad shit that happens here to our pack.”

“You can’t do that!” Stiles says with so much force behind his words that Derek winces. 

“Why not?” The question is earnest. Derek truly believes that he’s doing what’s best for the pack. Adrenaline-fueled panic bumps Stiles' heart rate up about a million notches. He has to think quickly, has to say something to show Derek why this is a terrible decision.

“You have no idea what they’re planning, and I doubt it’s anything good. For all we know, it’ll still lead to more bloodshed here.”

“Maybe. Or maybe all of you will be safe and Beacon Hills will be under the protection of a strong, stable pack.”

“You think they’re stable? You’re not seriously suggesting that the pack or Beacon Hills—or you for that matter—would be better off under a pack of alphas who’ve been physically and psychologically pissing on you for a month now.” 

“The best thing I can do for our pack as alpha right now is to let them go. You of all people should be on board with this.”

“Me?” Stiles makes dramatic hand motions at himself. 

“For the better part of a year, you told me what a bad alpha I was,” Derek says, tone wry. “So let me be a good one now.”

“Derek, listen to me,” Stiles runs a hand through his hair. “I know this is the topic we dare not discuss, but there was a time when you and I were—” 

Derek looks at him sharply, expression unreadable, and it throws Stiles off for a fraction of a second before he recovers. “You and I were hooking up…or whatever.“ 

“How is this relevant?” Derek asks with a sigh. Stiles hates that he’s pushed Derek to that awkward space again, but he does have a point to make here.        

“Good question.” Stiles rubs his hands together, trying to project more confidence than he’s got. “Glad you asked. During that time you and I talked more than we ever had before. We started becoming, I don’t know, no-longer-reluctant allies? Whatever it was, it was enough that you ended up asking me to be your emissary, and it was enough that I said yes. The way you talked about the pack…it made me realize that all your shitty communication and bad plans and misguided attempts to train the pack with aggression and misery weren’t because you’re a dick, but that deep down you were scared. And you wanted them to survive just like you were trying to do. You’re a good alpha. I think you’re going to be a great one someday, but the thing is you need to stay with our pack for that to happen. Not join those assholes.” 

Derek is staring at him with such intensity that Stiles cuts himself off to let what’s been said settle in the air between them. Despite the speech he’s just given about how he’d gotten to know Derek last year, Stiles can’t read his expression. 

“Stiles,” Derek says finally, “I appreciate that. I do.” And Stiles' heart beats so hard that it splinters into thousands of sharp pieces because these are not the words you say to someone you’re about to agree with. That’s the kind of tone someone uses when they’re about to break your heart. “But the right thing for me to do for the pack, for you,” he gives Stiles a pointed look, “is to leave. If I join them, I have a better chance at keeping Beacon Hills safe.”

“A man on the inside,” Stiles says dully.

“Yes. And they’ll have no reason to hurt any of you if I go along with it.” Derek holds his gaze. “I’ll explain to Deucalion what the Nemeton was trying to show us, that it gave me a warning. No more blood needs to be spilled.”

The memories rush through Stiles' head again. His mother spilling her blood into the dirt, leaving gifts at the Nemeton like an altar. Jennifer’s blood after Kali destroyed her face, Jennifer’s blood later when Peter slashed her throat. A young Derek holding a dying Paige in his arms.  

He doesn’t know if Derek’s right. In fact, his gut is screaming wrong!, but he has no hard evidence to back that up. His voice comes out hollow. “Nothing I say is going to change your mind, is it?”

“No,” Derek confirms.

Stiles blinks hard. His eyes sting, but he refuses to cry. “Tell me you’re not planning on just going to them tomorrow. We need to talk to the pack, to Deaton, about what happens next.”

“Okay,” Derek agrees. “But I’ve made my decision.”

*~*

The Nemeton’s visions swirl around Stiles' head on a never-ending loop. Maybe Derek is making the right call and Stiles is wrong, but his gut is telling him that there’s something more going on.

Derek had dropped him off an hour ago, and though it’s deep into the night now, Stiles is too wired to go to bed. The apartment is quiet, Scott asleep in his room, as Stiles moves around the kitchen. Stiles lets out an indignant yelp as he manages to bump his knuckle against the kettle, burning himself. 

Stiles has the last of his mother’s almanacs open on the kitchen table, and he’s following some of her guidance on divination. The last note in the book is dated almost ten months before Stiles was born, and he tries not to think about what the Nemeton showed him, about what it cost for him to be alive. 

“You don’t drink tea,” Scott says, squinting as he wanders bleary-eyed into the kitchen.

“First time for everything,” Stiles says, pouring boiling water through the strainer over the dried Calea he’d gotten online. It’s supposed to help induce lucid dreaming. If it was a waxing moon, the magic would be more potent, but there’s nothing he can do about that.

He should be more patient with Scott, but Stiles is confused, tired, and frustrated. Derek’s called a pack meeting for tomorrow, and Stiles doesn’t want to break the news to Scott tonight.  

“Seriously, dude, what are you doing? Are you okay? What happened tonight?” Scott’s concern makes it hard for Stiles to hold strong.

“I’m making a sleepy-time dream tea.” Stiles avoids the last of Scott’s questions. “You shouldn’t even be here while I’m doing this, you might mess with my magic mojo.” 

“So I can’t have any?” 

“Dude, you don’t drink tea,” Stiles says. “And no. This is all for me because I’m going to see if maybe I can get an idea of how to handle the Alpha Pack since what research we’ve done so far hasn’t exactly been helpful.”

“What about that sex ritual?”

“It’s not a sex ritual! It’s like a non-sexual, platonic soul-bonding ritual at worst.”

“Yeah, what about that? I thought you were trying to find a way to adapt it.”

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t, and my Google-fu is failing me, so dream tea it is. Now, I’m gonna skedaddle because I’m supposed to channel my intent, and you’re distracting me.” 

“You still haven’t told me what happened tonight,” Scott points out.  

“There’s a pack meeting tomorrow, no spoilers. Night, buddy,” Stiles says, grabbing his mug and scurrying out of the kitchen.

*~*

This is the first time Stiles has attempted divination, and he’s skeptical. He’s already been having creepy visions thanks to a tree stump in the Preserve. How’s he meant to know if any alarming dreams he has tonight have been his doing? 

Still, if magic can really guide him this way, maybe it’ll prove to Stiles that he’s right and Derek is wrong. Maybe it’ll help Stiles figure out a way to fix things. There’s got to be some kind of wolfsbane bomb they can just drop on the alphas or something. Kali might have some immunity to wolfsbane but even she wouldn’t be able to handle that.

But somehow he suspects that Derek is partially right. That the Nemeton was asking for less bloodshed. Not more.

He sighs and rolls to his side, counting his breath until sleep finally takes him.

*~*

Stiles dreams of Derek biting the skin above his heart. He should be in pain, be afraid, but he wants it. Pleasure and strength spread through his body, and he can feel magic flowing through him like his veins are their own telluric currents. 

Stiles is sinking his teeth into the skin above Derek’s heart, Derek whispering his name like a prayer, Stiles Stiles Stiles, when the dream ends. 

The next morning he texts Derek to see if he had any strange dreams, but Derek doesn’t reply. 

Stiles texts him again, fingers flying angrily over the screen: Do you think that maybe you got the wrong message from the Nemeton? He doesn’t mention the ritual, how he can still feel Derek’s teeth marks on his chest. It scares him, how right it felt.

After ten minutes, there’s still no reply, and Stiles throws his phone on the ground.  

Chapter Text

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Cora snaps, eyes glowing yellow as she takes an angry step towards Derek.

Stiles is pretty sure she’s speaking on behalf of the entire pack. He leans back against the wall and shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. He can’t get comfortable. Something in him feels icy and jagged, and since Derek revealed his plan to the pack, Stiles has been rubbing at his chest and shivering.

It’s early evening and everyone is spread out around the loft. Scott and Isaac are perched at the bottom of the spiral staircase, and Cora is sitting on the table at the back of the room. Derek stands facing all of them, arms crossed and defensive. 

The space between the pack feels huge, a gap that can’t be closed. It’s exactly the opposite of where they need to be, and Stiles doesn’t know how to fix it. He sent out an S.O.S text to Deaton earlier but hasn’t heard anything back, and Scott said he’d seen the clinic was closed for the day when he’d gone past earlier.

“Well said, Cora.” Isaac glares at Derek.

Scott’s eyes are on Stiles. “You could have warned me yesterday.” He looks wounded as he turns to Derek. “What if they still plan on killing Allison?” 

“I won’t let them,” Derek says sharply. “The whole point of this is keeping all of you safe. Getting Erica and Boyd out of there. No one has to die. Including Allison.” 

Bullshit, Stiles thinks, and he’s going to say as much, but he’s beaten to it.

“But Derek—“ Scott starts.

“You’re seriously going to join those psychos?” Cora explodes, cutting Scott off. Her face twists in anger, starts to wolf out. “You’re out of your mind, Derek! I’d rather die fighting them than see you do that. When I heard there was a new Hale alpha, a Hale pack, I couldn’t believe it. It was everything I wanted for years. I’m not going to just let you throw that away again.”

Derek’s eyes flash red. “I’m still the alpha of this pack.” Stiles notices he doesn’t say that he’s Cora’s alpha.

“Fine. Give me your alpha spark and I’ll fight them,” she snarls, fangs dropping.

“You know it doesn’t work like that,” Derek says. “You’re not pack anymore, Cora.”

Something that had been irking Stiles was why Deucalion hadn’t freed Erica or Boyd instead of Cora—she would be the more obvious choice to be Deucalian’s next Hale alpha if Derek refused. But Deucalion had needed someone who was actually part of the Hale Pack, and despite the fact Cora was a born Hale, she was no longer part of Derek’s pack.

“So what happens to us after you join them?” Isaac asks, a hard edge to his voice. 

At the same time, Scott’s asking, “Are we going to have to transfer schools? Can we stay in Beacon Hills?”

“You won’t be a threat,” Derek says, looking a little doubtful even as he says the words. “They might let you stay, but you’d be omegas…it wouldn’t be advisable.”

Isaac crosses his arms, raises an eyebrow. “Guess that answers my question. Thanks, Derek.”

“There are other packs,” Derek says in a way that Stiles can tell is trying to be reassuring. “You’ll be happier.”

“Did you tell Jackson?” Stiles asks. “And Lydia?”

“I texted them.”

Stiles scoffs and flings his arms out in exasperation.

Cora suddenly whirls on Stiles, who jerks back, hitting the wall as she advances. She points at him. “What about you? Aren’t you supposed to be his advisor? Isn’t that the whole point of you?” 

“The whole point of me?” Stiles says, outraged, then makes an undignified sound as Cora gets in his face, her fangs glinting.

“Emissaries are supposed to stop alphas from making idiotic decisions.”

“Yeah, you’re kind of sleeping on the job, Stiles,” Isaac drawls.

“Glad to see you and Cora are so on the same page about everything,” Stiles snaps back, sliding sideways to get out of Cora’s line of fire. “And for what it’s worth, I’m not on board with this plan. I could advise until I’m blue in the face, but your stubborn-ass brother won’t listen.”

“Don’t blame Stiles,” Derek says, coming towards them and pulling Cora away. Stiles is surprised to see she lets herself be pulled. He doesn’t miss the sadness in her eyes, starker than any anger.

Derek still has a hand on Cora’s shoulder when the loft’s buzzer goes off a moment later. Stiles is standing closest to the door so he sees it first: Deaton is on the screen, Professor Morrell standing next to him.

*~* 

“What is she doing here?” Derek demands, crossing his arms as he stands between the pack and Deaton and Morrell.

“At great personal risk, I came to offer some advice,” Morrell says.

“Why would you do that?” Derek asks, voice hard and flat. “And why would I trust anything you have to say when you’re working for Deucalion.”

“First of all, you should know that an emissary doesn’t work for an alpha. They’re supposed to work together, a partnership.” Stiles isn’t sure if he’s imagining the pointed way she says partnership as she looks steadily from Derek to Stiles. “Secondly, you can hear me out, and if you still don’t believe me, that’s your call.”

“Maybe we should listen to her,” Stiles says. “Hi, by the way, Professor.”

“Mr. Stilinski,” she says, a wry note to her voice.

“Please. Mr. Stilinski is my father, you can just call me Stiles. So random to see you here out of Psych and in Beacon Hill’s supernatural underbelly. Would you mind sharing with the class how you fit into all of this?”

“Marin is my sister,” Deaton says. Stiles splutters, and even Derek looks startled, shoulders straightening as he narrows his eyes at Deaton. “That's why I think it’s worth your time to listen to what she has to tell you. Like me, she was raised in Beacon Hills. Unlike me, she’s spent much of her time living around the country.”

“I came back last year when I was offered a job at the college. The timing seemed… fortuitous, given the growing interest in the town when word that the Hale Pack was reforming began to spread.” 

“Why are you helping Deucalion?” asks Stiles.

“More importantly,” Cora cuts in, stepping forward with a snarl, “You’re working with a psycho who kidnapped me and two of Derek’s other pack members. Why shouldn’t we just kill you now?”  

“Deucalion was once an honorable leader,” Morrell explains, calm in the face of Cora’s outburst. “I believe that some of that good man remains. I’ve never officially declared myself as his emissary, but I work in that capacity with him from time to time.”

Stiles scoffs. “So what, better you than some other poor schmuck? Or do you think you can help keep him in line?”   

“If that’s the case, I gotta say it seems like you’re not doing too great a job,” Isaac says.

“Something like that.” Morrell smiles in an identical frustrating, enigmatic way to Deaton, and Stiles wants to shout. She turns to Derek. “Alan tells me you’ve decided to join Deucalion. I can understand why you might have come to that conclusion, but standing in as the role of emissary, I should pose some questions for your consideration before joining my pack.”

Scott furrows his brow and glances at Deaton. “I thought emissaries have to keep secrets for the pack?”

“To an extent,” Morrell agrees. “But these are questions any good emissary would ask in order to assess one’s…suitability for their pack. Especially this particular one.”

“Okay.” Derek crosses his arms. “What are these questions I should consider?”

“Mainly whether you know both why and how the Alpha Pack came to be. How Deucalion lost his sight.”

“I don’t remember much about it,” Derek admits. “I know hunters took his sight.”

“Gerard Argent,” Morrell says pointedly, and a ripple of unease goes through everyone in the room. They’re all intimately familiar with the evil Gerard is capable of. “Deucalion believed they had a truce, but Gerard betrayed him. He ambushed not only Deucalion’s pack but killed his own hunters in order to frame the pack and continue the war. He’s the one who blinded Deucalion using flash arrows. Deucalion vowed to find a way to become more powerful, to fight the hunters.”

Stiles flinches. He actually feels a stab of sympathy for Deucalion. Fuck Gerard Argent and his hunter buddies. 

“Deucalion’s not always blind,” Derek says to himself like he’s repeating something from memory. He looks at Morrell. “My mother said something about that.” 

“When he’s taken on his alpha form, yes. The full moon is when he’s strongest and when he’s surrounded by his pack of course.”  

Looking nervous, Scott asks, “What happened to the alpha that Allison shot? He was still alive when we left, so Deucalion shouldn’t have any reason to come after her no matter what Gerard did to him.”

“Ennis is dead, but it wasn’t your friend’s arrow that killed him.”

“Then what did?” Derek asks. 

Morrell tilts her head to the side. “You have to consider how the alphas in Deucalion’s pack gain their power, why they’re stronger than alphas who lead individual packs.”

Stiles and Derek look at one another, and they both get it at the same time. 

“Deucalion killed him,” Derek says. 

“Yes,” Morrell confirms. “Weakness is not tolerated in this pack.”

“Wait,” Stiles says, the implications more sinister by the second as his mind races to catch up. “Wait. Is that what happened to their packs before they all came together to form one fucked up Alpha Pack? They killed them?”

“You were always good at making connections, Stiles. Your papers were always very interesting to read.”

Stiles wants to punch something. “So what you’re not saying is that if Derek joins this pack, Deucalion’s not just going to be super relaxed about all of us hanging around in town or, you know, the world.”

“That’s right,” Morrell says. 

Derek’s face is ashen. 

“What do I do?” Derek asks, managing to keep his voice steady. “If joining Deucalion’s pack won’t save mine, what will?” 

“Brute force generally works well for Deucalion, though as I’m sure you’ve noticed he enjoys some…pageantry.” Morrell raises both eyebrows.

“We noticed,” Isaac mutters. 

“I recommend you look into the rules of challenging a rival alpha,” Deaton adds, glancing at Morrell who nods. “Deucalion, for all his unconventional approaches, still prefers to stand on ceremony.”

“What else?” Derek’s voice is tight like he already knows the answer. Stiles carefully avoids his eyes, but Derek can probably already hear his heartbeat picking up anticipatory speed.

Deaton looks meaningfully between Derek and Stiles. “I suggest you ask your emissary for more guidance and trust his word.”

“So, no pressure then, huh?” Stiles says.

“Do I have much of a choice?” Derek asks, ignoring Stiles.

“There’s always a choice,” Deaton says. “You are just working within a very limited set of them.” 

*~*

The pack leaves Derek alone for a while, letting him disappear up to the roof after Deaton and Morrell leave.

It all makes a sick kind of sense when Stiles thinks about it, and he feels foolish now for not realizing the alphas were misleading them. Misleading Derek. Derek has been misled over and over again, so it’s not much of a surprise that he needs some time to sulk alone.

But after an hour, the pack all look at Stiles, and Cora says, “Jesus, you need to go talk to him already.”

And Scott says, “Yeah, dude, not to be weird about this, but it sounds like you need to convince Derek to do the sex ritual.”

“They’re right,” Isaac says. “Go take one for the team, Stiles.”

“Oh my god, it’s not a—fine. Going. Going.”

When Stiles climbs the stairs and steps out onto the roof, Derek is sitting just to the left of the door, back pressed to the wall.

No one broods quite like Derek. He’s turned it into an art form. The half-moon hangs low in the sky, and Derek’s staring up at it, a light breeze ruffling his hair. His eyes move slowly to Stiles, and he looks resigned in a way that makes Stiles' heart sink. 

It takes all of his willpower for Stiles to choke down the million different thoughts his brain is firing at him at once. He actually bites his tongue so he doesn’t say something stupid like if you aren’t already thinking it, might I suggest doing literally anything we can to avoid the entire pack being murdered? He can sense an opening between them, but any wrong word could snap it shut in an instant.

Derek exhales, his shoulders lowering like he’s contracting into himself.

“I still think it’s a bad idea,” he says but that note of resignation is in his voice too.

“Yeah, I kinda figured.” Stiles gives a jerky nod. “We might be screwed even if we do it anyway. I don’t think this will suddenly give us the power of five alphas. Or four if you count whatever the fuck happens when the twins fuse together. I mean, seriously, what was—”

“Stiles.”

Stiles stops mid-sentence, hands still waving around mid-air. To his surprise, Derek doesn’t look angry.

“I can’t—I could never—“

“I know,” Stiles says, not wanting to make Derek finish that sentence. Kate Argent had already made Derek feel responsible for killing a pack once, Stiles knows there’s no chance in hell that the Alpha Pack could ever make him go through that again. Derek would rather die and Stiles would rather let him than force him to endure that kind of pain and guilt ever again.

“Derek, I know this is a last resort for you, but it kind of feels like the universe is telling us we should give this bonding ritual a shot. I started casting these protection spells, ever since I got back, asking—“ he waves his hand out in front of him “—the universe, or whatever, for help. And then we found that book in Peter’s place, and he’d bookmarked this ritual.”

“I know,” Derek says. “The fact that Deaton keeps pushing it. That Peter was so interested in you, specifically, as emissary.”

“I think it has something to do with what the Nemeton showed us about my mom when she was pregnant with me.” Stiles shrugs. “Maybe I’m more connected to it, or stronger, or something.” 

“I thought the same thing,” Derek agrees. “It feels like there’s a reason for all of this.”

Stiles holds his eyes and nods.

Derek looks vulnerable. In the pale moonlight, the sharp edges of his cheekbones, the hard line of his jaw are softened.

In mythology and folklore, it’s often the case that men who could turn into beasts were revealing their true nature, but Stiles thinks maybe it’s the other way around. That the beasts were turning back into men. Showing how human they were underneath.

Stiles lets out a long breath. “You sure you can do the ritual? I don’t want to force you.”

“I’m fine.” 

“Okay.” Stiles sits down next to Derek on the roof, their knees brushing together. “Then let me ask you a few things. Are you personally afraid of this ritual hurting you or something?”

“I know…” Derek hedges. A long silence. “I know you’d never abuse any power that comes from me, or try to control me. I trust you.”

“That hard for you to say?” Stiles teases, trying to cover just how pleased those words made him.

“Incredibly,” Derek says, giving a wry smile back. “What else do you want to know?” 

Stiles mulls this over, trying to guess at other reasons Derek wouldn’t want to do this, why Stiles would be the last person he’d choose. If Derek’s not afraid for himself, it must be something about Stiles. “I’ll still be human, right?” Stiles asks, scared suddenly. He wonders if his heart skips a beat again the way it did when Peter offered him the bite. “I’ll still be able to use my magic?”

Derek hesitates then nods. “But I don’t know if you’ll be giving up some of it.”

“What do you mean?” 

“These translations are best guesses. The nuance is easy to miss, and I never learned all the details. You might be giving some of your magic to me. Losing some in one area and gaining it in another. I don’t know.”

Stiles tongues at his cheek, thinking. “Huh. I guess I’d be okay with that. Good to know it’s a risk, though. If this is all you’re worried about, I think it’ll be fine.”

Derek shakes his head. “You’re still not getting it. I was serious before, Stiles. When you first asked me about the ritual. I don’t want you to be tied to me or Beacon Hills in ways that are almost impossible for you to get out of. And I don’t want you to feel like—like you’ve gotten the bad end of some deal. You say you understand, but I don’t think you really do.”  

Prickly irritation spikes in Stiles. Derek’s the one who doesn’t seem to get that Stiles is already fucking tied to Derek, to Beacon Hills. It’s mostly annoyance that makes him ask, “Just to be ultra super clear since it sounds like you’re fuzzy on some of the details: is there a chance this will make us, like, mates or something? Is that why it’s almost impossible to get out of?” 

He had gone down some bizarre internet search journeys these past weeks, and maybe that’s what Derek really means by ‘tied to me’, maybe that’s what Stiles isn’t quite grasping. That it’s not a sex thing, but an eternal-love thing.

“Mates,” Derek echoes, eyebrows rising slowly.

“Yeah, will our souls be bonded and all?” Stiles says, voice flat. “Will this ruin me for all others? I’ll long for your body and your body alone. Is that what you’re getting at when you say you’d rather bond with anyone but me?” 

He chances a look at Derek who predictably is scowling deeply down at the floor as if, along with Stiles, it has personally wronged him.

“Mates aren’t a thing,” Derek says finally. “And this ritual can’t draw on something for the bond that isn’t already there.” 

Stiles feels stung. A simple no would have sufficed. Derek didn’t have to twist the knife of rejection straight into his heart. But he swallows it down and says, “Okay good. In that case, dude, it’s like I told you before: I’m already pretty tied to all of this. So if that’s the big issue you have with the ritual, you need to accept that being tied to you isn’t some big tragic, horrible thing.”

Derek stiffens. “Everyone I love gets hurt one way or another. If we try to fight the alphas now, we’ll all wind up dead whether it’s me who kills the pack or Deucalion forcing Erica or Boyd to do it in my place. But I’m willing to fight if you’re sure about this.” 

“Jesus, Derek.” Stiles smacks his head back against the wall. “Despite your very depressing arguments, I’m still in, okay? I’m the guy who was willing to perform lifesaving arm-slicing-off for you after, like, four hours of antagonistic acquaintanceship. I’m the guy who held you up in a pool for hours while you couldn’t move. I’m the guy who saved you when you got trapped in that well on the edge of town when you were fighting those harpies. I know we said we’d never talk about that last one again, but I clearly lied because that remains one of the most absurd things that has ever happened.”  

“Okay, I get, Stiles.” Derek sighs, but he bumps his knee against Stiles'. “And if you ever talk about the well incident again, I might actually kill you.” 

Stiles bumps his knee back against Derek’s. “Fair.” 

“So what happens now?” Derek asks. 

“I need to check the notes Lydia made, but I don’t think it’ll take too long for me to prepare. It didn’t seem like we needed anything outrageous like a unicorn’s dick or something.” 

“That’s good,” Derek says. “I lost mine in the move.”

Stiles snorts. “I thought you wouldn’t start making jokes until after I gave you some of my mojo.” 

Derek raises an eyebrow at him. “How long do you think you’ll need?” 

Stiles contemplates the materials he has, how long it will take to make the wolfsbane oil to stop Derek’s mark from healing, the one Stiles will have to give to him. During their research, Stiles had practiced the steps involved in case they were able to adapt the ritual, so he feels confident he has the materials that he needs and that he can do this right. 

There are papers he’s supposed to be writing, classes to attend, on top of all of this but…he’ll make it work. He always does.

“Two days,” he says.

“Two days it is.” 

Stiles gets up to leave, to start preparing, trying to ignore the odd heaviness in his chest. Now the ritual is a reality, he’s not sure why he’s not more relieved.

Chapter Text

“What if we fuck it up?” asks Stiles. They’re hunched over the long table near the windows at the back of the loft. 

Derek examines Lydia’s translated notes laid out in front of them. “We won’t. It’s similar enough to others that I’m more familiar with.”

Stiles rubs the back of his neck. “I wish I didn’t have to figure out what to say. It’s already going to be awkward enough as it is.” He stares down at the picture of the alpha biting the emissary. It looks like it could be deeply painful, incredibly erotic, or a mix of both. Stiles is having a hard time breathing.

“It will be if you say things like that,” Derek mutters, not looking up from the paper.

There’s no pre-written spell or statement in the book for the emissary. There’s just a line indicating that Stiles needs to say something . The part for the alpha was clearer, simpler. 

Worry must show on Stiles’ face, or Derek must be able to smell the rough edges of a panic attack beginning to form, because he adds more gently, “What kind of thing do you need to say?”

“I don’t know exactly. Lydia’s best guess is that the text means it needs to be something from the heart to cast the spell and seal the deal so to speak.” Stiles runs a rough hand through his hair. “There’s no real guidance on it, and it’s not exactly playing to my strengths.” 

Derek’s brows knit together. “What isn’t playing to your strengths?” 

Stiles flings out his arms. “The heartfelt shit! Finding the truth in the spell for it to work. If I ask for one thing, but really deep down I mean another thing, that’s what gets put out there. Magic is all about intent,” Stiles explains in a rush. 

Derek looks surprised, which is ridiculous. Surely Derek cannot be surprised by the fact that Stiles is not exactly good at speaking from his fucking heart. If the recommendation around spell-casting was to be as sarcastic as possible to get what you wanted, he’d be the strongest emissary this world had ever seen.

“Okay.” Derek pushes himself up off the table and turns his whole body to face Stiles. “What can I do to help?”

Stiles considers this. “I guess maybe tell me again how the ritual will help the pack, help you. Maybe it’ll help center me, get the words flowing in my brain.” He wiggles his fingers in the direction of his head. 

Derek nods and takes a careful step closer. “An alpha that’s gifted power by their emissary, and vice versa, has an advantage. The whole pack will be physically stronger too, more in tune.” He pauses, frowns down at the floor. “We won’t know until afterward what specific power we’ve gifted each other. It varies pack to pack, bond to bond. Packs are usually reluctant to share the details, so I don’t know much more than that. I’m sorry if—” 

“No, no,” Stiles interrupts. “I can work with that.” He shakes out his body like he’s preparing for a fight. Derek’s uncertainty propels him forward. They’re a young pack and they’re fighting blind. The pack needs him to make this work. His alpha needs him to make this work. “This is for the pack,” he says, nodding to himself. For Derek.

Derek is watching him patiently. “Whenever you’re ready,” he says.

Stiles squares his shoulders. “Okay, yeah. I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

*~* 

“After you,” Stiles says. It seems like the gentlemanly thing to do.

“Why after me?” Derek asks, crossing his arms. 

“You love being shirtless. It’s like one of your favorite things.” Derek’s expression remains stony. “Top ten?”

Derek sighs and peels his shirt off, the muscles in his stomach and forearms flexing. Stiles has never gotten used to how unbelievably sexy the sight is. 

Stiles pushes those thoughts out of his mind. They’re not going to do him any favors now. “You excited to have my magic inside you?” he jokes even as his heart threatens to hammer out of his chest in anticipation. 

Derek glares at him. “This is serious. You need to be sure.”

“I’m sure,” Stiles says quickly. 

He tugs his shirt off, trying not to feel totally freaked out about the fact that there’s about to be a lot of touching and biting going on. Cool. No big deal. Just an emissary and his alpha doing casual ritual work to save their pack.

The loft is chilly, and Stiles can feel his nipples pebbling, and damn it this is going to get real embarrassing real fast. Derek clears his throat and makes for the center of the room, where the ritual space has been set up. Stiles trails awkwardly after, trying to ignore the way Derek’s back muscles shift as he walks. He has too many memories of that back. 

They stand shirtless in front of each other, just like in the book’s picture. What the picture had failed to capture was the mix of god I want you and god this is awkward that Stiles is feeling right now.

Stiles has placed white candles in a circle around them, along with a small ceramic bowl filled with the wolfsbane concoction in the center of the circle. He doesn’t have much experience with elemental magic yet, can’t even produce a small flicker of flames from his hands, so he pulls out a lighter and lights each candle counterclockwise, starting with North and ending with West.

The room smells strongly of the rosemary oil Stiles had anointed the candles with. It should be soothing, but Stiles feels so keyed up he thinks he might never be soothed again. Unsoothable. 

“You have to bite me first,” Stiles says, swallowing hard, a heady mix of fear and anticipation making him feel lightheaded. 

“I won’t go deep enough to turn you.”

“Just deep enough to open the connection. I know,” Stiles agrees. “I want you to. I trust you.”

The words seem to catch Derek off guard, an odd look crossing over his face. But then he leans forward, hands gripping Stiles' shoulders. “Ready?” Derek asks, so close that Stiles can feel the words ghosting over his lips. He sucks in a breath and nods.

Derek’s fangs sink down into the tender place where Stiles' neck meets his shoulder, and it hurts at first. There’s a sharp, stinging pain that surges when the skin breaks.

But as Derek presses in deeper, the pain begins to fade until it’s good. Shockingly good, Stiles thinks absently, his mind feeling like it’s starting to float somewhere far away from him. It’s just like in his dream.

Stiles glances down and sees black lines sliding up Derek’s arms, and he understands why there’s no pain coming from the bite anymore.

Warmth sings sweetly through his body, his insides turning to honey. Derek’s hands are solid on his waist. Pain and pleasure intertwine, and though Stiles can feel a slow trickle of warm blood running down his neck, he doesn’t mind.

In fact, his body likes it so much that his dick is starting to get the memo. From that faraway place, he knows he should be embarrassed, that as soon as Derek pulls away and starts the next part of the ritual this is going to be awkward as fuck, but his body doesn’t seem to share this concern.

Stiles rests his own hands on the smooth, muscled skin of Derek’s back, clutching him closer. And—

Oh . Stiles isn’t the only one affected by this.

When their bodies are flush against one another, chest to chest, he can feel the hard, hot outline of Derek’s cock through his jeans. Stiles gasps, stunned, and Derek lets out a muffled moan against his throat, licking at the bite. 

The exchange might not create something that isn’t there, but sex had definitely been between them before, and Stiles starts to think maybe tonight it could be again.

Derek is staring at Stiles' mouth like he wants to devour it, and Stiles, far too ready to abandon his sense of self-preservation, hopes Derek will . 

“You have to mark me now.” Derek’s voice is low. There’s heat in his eyes, and they’re still locked on Stiles' mouth. Stiles licks his lips involuntarily, goosebumps shivering their way across his skin. 

“Right, yeah.” Stiles breathes in and out in long, careful motions like he’s nearly forgotten how. “But how do I—" He’s finding it impossible to form words.

“I’ll keep myself from healing,” Derek says, understanding what Stiles is trying to say.

Stiles bends forward and puts his mouth on Derek’s chest. The taste of Derek’s skin brings so many memories back. Licking a bead of sweat down his spine. Kissing his inner thighs. Licking every inch of exposed skin.

At first, Stiles can’t bring himself to bite down as hard as he needs to. When he pulls away there are indents from his teeth just above Derek’s heart, but no injury.

“Stiles, it’s okay,” Derek assures him. “You need to bite hard enough to break the skin or this won’t work.” His hands come up to cup the back of Stiles' head, pulling him back in. Stiles can’t believe he’s in a position where Derek needs to coax him into biting him hard enough to harm. 

“Come on, Stiles.” Derek’s thumbs rub soothing circles along the back of his neck.

Stiles lets out a faint moan, hoping Derek somehow doesn’t hear it. He bites down hard, thinks about how badly he wants wants wants Derek, wants to leave a mark, wants to give him everything he can. 

When he pulls away, there’s blood, and Derek says, “Good job.”

Stiles flushes, looking away as he dips his fingers into the bowl with the wolfsbane mixture, coating them in the slick, purple oil. He draws his hand closer to Derek, hesitating when Derek flinches.

“Tell me when you’re ready.” Stiles' hand hovers over the injury, waiting.

Derek closes his eyes briefly. There’s no hesitation in them when he meets Stiles’ eyes again. “I’m ready. Go on.”

As the oil makes contact with the wound, Derek gives a sharp intake of breath, face twisting in pain. 

“Tell me if you need a break,” Stiles says.  

“Keep going,” Derek urges between clenched teeth.

So Stiles does. 

The key, as always, is the intent Stiles brings to each step in the ritual. When he brewed and combined the ingredients, he’d known the mixture’s purpose. The intent was not to maliciously harm but to make something permanent, like a tattoo. Something to symbolize the connection between emissary and alpha.  

He draws his finger along the round, ragged edges of his bite, Derek’s skin remembering the shape of Stiles’ mouth. It makes him shiver with want. 

“Are you still preventing it from healing?” Stiles asks.

“Nope,” Derek says, barely a whisper. His hands come up and land on Stiles' shoulders. His eyes are still dark with something that Stiles thinks might be desire. “All you.”

Stiles swallows hard. This is the part he’s most afraid of fucking up. The part where he has to will the spell to work, to envision the outcome, and to shed any self-consciousness he might feel in Derek’s presence. He’s only ever done this kind of spellwork alone before.

But then he remembers: Derek was there the first time he worked the mountain ash barrier when they were trying to trap Kanima-Jackson inside the club. He remembers the excitement he’d felt when Derek arrived, how much he’d wanted to tell him what he’d achieved. All the things that happened after, Stiles pushes out of his mind and focuses on that precise moment: the joy he’d felt at the thought of sharing his success with Derek. 

The air around him seems to shift, and there’s a scent like the earth after rain, like new beginnings.

“Derek, you and I have had a lot of ups and downs,” Stiles begins, locking eyes with Derek. “We didn’t get off to the best start when we first met, and sometimes we still want to rip each other’s heads off. But the thing is you’re my pack, my family, and the only alpha I’d choose to call mine.”

Jesus, Stiles feels like he’s saying his fucking vows or something. He can feel himself redden from his face to his chest. Derek’s eyes are wide, and Stiles is way too exposed, but he wills himself to keep going. 

“As emissary of the Hale Pack, I want to share my magic with you, my alpha, so that our bond will strengthen, and the bonds of our pack will strengthen too. I trust you to use this power to protect, to do no harm to me or others. And I promise to protect you in return.” 

When Stiles finishes speaking, Derek doesn’t move. His eyes are still frozen on Stiles.

“Um, Derek, you need to do the next part.”  

Derek shakes his head, snapping himself out of whatever he was thinking. He leans forward again to bite the other side of Stiles' neck and the pulse points on each wrist. Derek’s hands are shaking as he holds Stiles still to make the final mark above his heart to match the one Stiles gave to Derek. It’s the one that hurts the most, the one Derek can’t relieve like the others. No potion required, just werewolf saliva and intent to make it permanent like Derek’s. Twin scars above their hearts.

Stiles' body seems to want anything Derek will give it, whether it’s pleasure or the sting above his heart. He’s painfully hard in his jeans, and he’d be ashamed if he couldn’t see that Derek is in the exact same state. Derek keeps touching his skin, bitten and unbitten, licking at the marks his teeth have left behind. Stiles may not be totally certain about the translations, but he’s sure that isn’t part of the ritual.

Derek pulls back, and Stiles makes an involuntary pained sound at the loss of him.

“Shh,” Derek soothes, his pupils so dilated his eyes are almost black. “I—I have to say my part.” 

Stiles tries to remember what it is the alpha’s meant to say, but he’s too distracted by Derek to think straight. He only manages a breathless, “Okay.” 

“Stiles,” Derek starts, his voice a low rumble that makes Stiles flush, even though Derek’s only said his name. “You’ve been a pain in my ass since the day we met, and you’ve saved my life more times than I can count. There is no one I would rather have as my emissary.” Derek pauses and shoots Stiles a wry grin. “You’re my pack, my family, and there’s no one else I’d want as my emissary. I accept the gift of your power and offer you a gift of mine in return. I trust you to use this power to protect, to do no harm to me or others. And I promise to protect you in return.”

That wasn’t part of the ritual. 

Stiles feels like his heart might melt right out of his body, so he murmurs, “Hey, that’s cheating you stole my lines.” Derek cuts Stiles off with a tight squeeze to his arm and a stern look. “Shutting up.”  

Derek continues, “Your power is an extension of me, and mine an extension of you. Your blood is my blood. Alpha, emissary, pack.” Each word is spoken with careful emphasis. Those are the only words Stiles has been expecting him to say. 

Derek rubs his thumbs along the marks on Stiles' body, eyes once again dropping to Stiles' mouth. Stiles recognizes that look. 

The kiss still takes Stiles by surprise, Derek’s lips warm and solid against his. Stiles clutches Derek close, pain and pleasure pulsing all over his body into a thrumming, burning want. He runs his tongue across Derek’s soft lower lip. Kissing Derek again feels like the first drink of water on a scorching hot day. That first taste of Derek’s skin was nothing compared to this.

They kiss for a long time until Stiles is so keyed up and hot with the way their hands are roaming each other’s bodies that he has to pull back, has to get more.

“Need you inside me,” Stiles mumbles against Derek’s lips, the words sex-drunk slurred. God, he’s needed it for so long.

Derek had only fucked Stiles once last year despite the heavy hints Stiles had dropped, and he braces himself for rejection.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Derek says, but it doesn’t sound like a rejection. It sounds wistful.

“I think it is.” Stiles presses more kisses to Derek’s lips, coaxing.

Derek pauses, forehead against Stiles', chest rising and falling with shaky breaths. “You sure?” he asks. “We can—I don’t mind—whatever you want.”

“It’s exactly what I want,” Stiles promises, and he pulls Derek’s face back to his so he can get his tongue back in his mouth.

They break apart just long enough for Derek to drag Stiles up the spiral staircase and into his bed. It’s where Stiles has wanted to be for so long that he can hardly think straight. Everything feels like it’s been dialed up to one thousand—the heat in Derek’s eyes, the smell of him on the sheets, how the whole room smells so good. Stiles is watching as Derek starts to undo his jeans when he realizes that he can actually smell Derek as if he’s right next to him on the bed.  

“Holy shit,” Stiles blurts out.

He immediately regrets speaking since Derek pauses, leaving his unzipped jeans low on his hips. “What?”

“I think—dude, I think you gave me super smell.”

Derek studies Stiles' face with interest. “I didn’t realize that could be something I gave you.” He laughs a little and Stiles does too. Derek sits next to him on the bed and touches his face. “What’s it like for you?”

“I don’t know, it’s like—everything smells just sharper. Brighter. I think I can smell—" and his face flushes.

“What?” Derek’s still touching his face. He looks like he might be afraid, eyes wide.

“I think I can smell how much you want this,” Stiles finishes, embarrassed.

“Oh.” Something flickers across his expression. Relief, or maybe something else.

“Come here,” Stiles says, reaching for him. “No, wait. Get your pants off. As bizarre and awesome as this is, I regret interrupting that.”

Derek smirks and does as he’s told. Then he pushes Stiles back on the bed—Stiles manages, somehow, to flail into an inelegant sprawl—and peels his jeans off of him too. The sheets are soft under Stiles' hands and back.

When Derek kneels in front of Stiles and cups his ass, Stiles knows exactly what is about to happen. He’s probably red from the tips of his ears down to his toes, just like the first time Derek went down on him like this. 

“This okay?” Derek asks. 

“Yeah.” Stiles lets out a breathy laugh. “Totally and completely okay.” 

Derek spreads Stiles' cheeks, and holy mother of god, Derek is even better than Stiles remembers. The relentless swipes of Derek’s silky tongue and the way Derek smells like he’s drenched in lust and satisfaction have Stiles' eyes rolling back in his head. Derek eats him out so good it leaves Stiles a squirming, whining mess. 

“Derek, oh my god, Derek.” He thrusts his hips up, thighs splayed as he shamelessly shoves himself onto Derek’s tongue. The hot, wet heat of it overloads all of Stiles' senses. It’s been so long since they’ve been together like this. “Fuck. Can you—” Stiles pulls himself away, and Derek makes a frustrated sound. 

Stiles rolls over and gets on all fours. His voice is hoarse when he says, “If you’re still up for it, I would really really like you to fuck me now.” 

He’s a little afraid that Derek might change his mind. But he feels Derek moving behind him, and when he turns his head he can see Derek rooting around underneath the bed.

“Condom?” Derek asks. He’s holding lube in his other hand. 

Stiles shakes his head. “Not unless you want to.”

Derek hesitates but shakes his head too.

Stiles is already loose and wet from Derek’s tongue, but he doesn’t protest as Derek fingers him open more. He’s always loved the feel of Derek’s sturdy fingers pressing inside of him.

It’s even better when Derek’s cock finally slides into him. Stiles buries his face in the sheets, in the smell of Derek. Magic—the bond—is a fiery pull between them. The sex had always been good, but this is something else.

It can’t create something that isn’t there. Well. It’s a good thing their bodies have always liked one another just fine. A fact that still marvels Stiles. He’s grown into his looks, but Derek is on another plane of existence. It’s easier not to look at him now. Derek’s beautiful eyes would break him, and there’d be nowhere left to hide.

Derek pushes himself flush against Stiles' back, arm wrapping around his chest. He licks at the marks along Stiles' neck, moaning desperately as he does, his hips stuttering.

“You feel so fucking good, Stiles,” Derek hisses, wrapping his hand around Stiles’ dick. “Want to mark up every inch of you. Want to come so deep inside you that you feel me for days.”

“Jesus, Derek,” Stiles half-moans, half-laughs. Derek says the wildest shit when he’s about to come, but Stiles' body responds to it. His balls draw up, and he fucks harder into Derek’s hand. “Yeah, do it. Come on. I love how you feel inside me. Go as deep as you want.”

Derek bottoms out in him, pumping tight and hot as his body goes tense. Pleasure radiates off of Derek, and it tips Stiles over the edge. Four more thrusts and he’s done, coming all over himself and the sheets.

Derek lets out a long low whine. It sounds almost agonized. “Oh, fuck,” he gasps out. “Shit—Stiles.” 

And for a second Stiles is confused, and then he feels a strange pressure building like Derek’s cock is getting thicker. He can feel Derek coming hot and deep inside of him. And coming some more. Stiles' body stretches to accommodate Derek’s girth. He wonders if his threshold for pain has gone up thanks to whatever of Derek’s powers have melded with his own because he’s sure this should hurt a lot more than it does.

If this is what Stiles thinks it is, he’s never going to shut up about it. He’d assumed this was just some fantasy that the erotic shifter community had run wild with, one that he’d admittedly been intrigued by.

He turns to look back at Derek who is breathing hard. There’s a sudden avalanche of foreign smells that Stiles' brain translates as embarrassment and guilt, but underneath there’s still the unmistakable aroma of pleasure.  

Stiles blinks at him. “Well. I can safely say that is a thing I was not expecting to be real.”

Derek apologizes and doesn’t seem convinced when Stiles tells him it’s okay. The scent of guilt still thick in the air. “It feels kind of nice, actually. I’m getting used to it,” Stiles says. “Does it feel good for you?” 

“Really fucking good,” Derek admits, and Stiles can’t help but smirk at him. 

Derek grunts. “I’m going to move you. Let me know if anything hurts.” He braces his hands against Stiles stomach and chest and shifts his weight, rolling them onto their sides. The pressure is a little uncomfortable, but there’s no real pain, and Derek’s warm chest pressed all along his back is perfect.

“Do you need me to take any pain?” Derek asks, his hand curling around Stiles’ bicep in anticipation.

“No,” Stiles says, still surprised. “I’m good. But thanks.”

“Okay,” Derek says, but he doesn’t move his hand away.  

“How long does this last?”

“Twenty minutes to a couple hours.”

Stiles shifts his head, digging it into the pillow underneath him. “Guess we better get comfortable then.”

*~*

While they’re lying linked together, Stiles can’t help but fill the silence. “It’s weird. I feel the same way I do when I’m casting a spell or trying to will something to work and then it does.”

“What do you mean?”

“My body feels like it’s humming right now. Do you feel anything?”

“Maybe,” Derek says. “I don’t know what magic’s supposed to feel like when it’s inside of you. I do feel stronger, though. Physically, I mean.”

“We’ll look into it more tomorrow.” Stiles fights the temptation to roll over and face Derek. Having someone knotted inside of you makes that pretty unfeasible, and he’s starting to feel a tingle of restlessness. “Maybe we can figure out whatever it is I gave you. Magic’s kind of hard to explain. It’s like…I can feel it under my skin, and it’s been there all along but only just coming to the surface now. I guess it’ll be different for you since it hasn’t always been there, but maybe you’ll feel it that way. Or smell it.”

“Smell it?”

“Yeah, it’s wild. My mom mentioned it in her notes a few times. That sometimes if the magic was having a really strong emotional effect on someone, she could smell it. It’s like that for me too.”

“Sounds kind of like chemosignals.” Derek shifts, tightening his arm around Stiles as he moves. His nose tickles the back of Stiles’ neck. 

“I thought the same thing when I read that,” Stiles says, pleased. His eyes are on the half moon and the stars outside the window. It’s peaceful, and Stiles can feel the restless feeling dissipating. His body relaxes into the bed, into Derek, as they talk.  

“I do feel different,” Derek says. “I thought I’d feel weaker if we were exchanging power. That my senses would be dulled.”

“I haven’t exactly cast any spells yet, but I don’t think I feel weaker either. Just different. Maybe it’s more about…sharing. Sharing is caring and all that.”

Laying here, speaking like this, feels too easy. It’s good he’s facing away from Derek and staring out the window because his stupid expressive face would probably give away how content he is in Derek’s arms. 

“I think that makes sense.”

“Right? If it’s something shared between us, maybe that’s why the bond is a permanent thing. Your blood is my blood. Creepy.”   

Derek makes a humming sound of agreement. 

It’s difficult to keep talking let alone thinking while Derek strokes a distracting thumb over the back of Stiles' hand and presses his forehead into Stiles’ hair. As wonderful as this feels, Stiles can’t let his heart get carried away like he did before. Derek’s made it clear how important Stiles is to him, but you can love someone without being in love with them. He knows enough by now to take Derek at his word; the ritual wouldn’t create something that wasn’t already there. 

Stiles slips his hand out of Derek’s, scratching an imaginary itch on his forehead. 

“How much longer do you think it’ll be now?”

“I’m not sure,” Derek says. Then after a beat: “It’s fine if you fall asleep.”

“That’s very generous of you.”

Derek snorts.

Looking at Derek’s real bedside table, the one that has replaced his old shoebox, reminds Stiles of the night before he left for his summer vacation. The warmth between them prompts Stiles to say what’s been on his mind for a long time now. “You know I never really thanked you for taking care of me at the beginning of summer. I know I apologized, but I never thanked you for the hospitality. Letting me crash at your place and leaving me the aspirin in the morning was much appreciated. But it’s been bugging me for months why you even had it handy.”  

He expects Derek to laugh again, but Derek tenses. 

“Stiles,” he says slowly. “You demanded I go pick it up for you. Repeatedly. You wanted to go with me to get it that night, but that was obviously a terrible idea.”

Stiles lets out a weak laugh. “Well. Add that to the list of things I’m sorry for.”

“It’s fine. Your eight apology texts were more than enough.”

“They’d be more sincere if I remembered more of it. I could have sent you a bullet-pointed list.”

“I didn’t realize you didn’t remember it,” Derek says, tone flat in a way that troubles Stiles. Had he actually done something really bad? He’d figured the worst crime he’d committed was annoying Derek outside of working hours. 

“You could fill me in,” Stiles suggests. “We’ve got time.”

Derek shifts behind him, a careful hand on Stiles' waist as he moves. The stretch where the knot is thickest feels strange but not unwelcome. He hates how much he likes having Derek inside him like this. Derek sighs, breath warm and heavy against the back of Stiles' neck. “You really don’t remember anything we talked about?”

“No, dude. By the time I got to you, I was exhausted and drunk enough that it’s all a blur.”

Derek grunts. 

Stiles is starting to get nervous now. “What? What else did I say? You’re killing me here.”

It’s silent for a long time. Stiles can’t bring himself to look back at Derek while he waits, he keeps his eyes on the dark sky. “You told me you wanted to be casual again,” Derek says eventually. “That you missed fucking around with me.” 

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. “Fuck. I’m so sorry I made things awkward. I mean, it was on brand, let’s face it. But still sorry.” He’s grateful Derek can’t see the shame on his face. He can probably smell it, though. “Anything else?”

“You made fun of me for using a shoebox as a bedside table,” Derek says. “Hope you’re happier now.” Derek’s hand appears by Stiles' head as he gestures at the table next to the bed, and Stiles laughs a little. 

“I take it back, I’m not sorry for everything I said.”

To Stiles’ relief, Derek chuckles quietly. “Get some sleep, Stiles.” 

“Well, hey,” Stiles jokes as he squirms around a little, trying to find a better position for his head on the pillow. “I guess one good thing came out of me being a drunk idiot. At least you know I’m cool with casual ritual sex between friends.” 

Derek doesn’t say anything, but Stiles figures from the way he can suddenly smell a sharp spike of irritation that Derek’s rolling his eyes. 

This whole enhanced smelling thing is going to take some serious getting used to. The room still smells faintly like magic—and sex, so much sex, obviously. It smells sweet and bright, a rightness to it in the same way that Scott and the other werewolves had felt the scent-masking magic was wrong.

It’s a mingling of his and Derek’s scent, of the rosemary oils he’d anointed the candles with. Soothing. The whole greater than the sum of its parts. The magic lulls him to sleep, Derek’s arms loosely wrapped around him.  

In his dreams, they’re at the Nemeton again, but they’re not alone. Deucalion and Derek are fighting, Deucalion’s claws going for Derek’s throat. Stiles can feel himself trying to scream, trying to run to Derek.

He jolts upright in a panicked sweat, disoriented from his dreams and waking in a strange bed. Watery light bleeds in through the blinds, making Stiles’ hands glow an odd burning amber on top of Derek’s dark sheets.

Derek’s nowhere to be found.

Chapter Text

“Feel something. Come on, anything you like,” Stiles says, leaning back on Derek’s couch as Cora scowls at him from the table where she’s alternating between eating lunch and reading a graphic novel Stiles loaned her. 

Over the past week and a half, Stiles wouldn’t say he and Cora have become friends, exactly, but they’re something. 

Stiles puts the emissary book down on the seat next to him. He’s been looking for ways emissaries might be allowed to help their alpha formally challenge another alpha. So far it looks like the alpha is on his own, which doesn’t sit well with Stiles. He needs a break, and Cora’s a good distraction while he waits for Derek to get back from another of his demanding training sessions. 

“Seriously,” Stiles insists. “Feel a thing and then let me guess what it is. This could be a game show.”

“If I wasn’t worried about Derek before I am now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!” Stiles asks with sincere indignation.

Cora lifts an eyebrow. “You’re his emissary.”

“You smell skeptical.”

Cora snorts. “Wow, you really are adjusting fast.”

Something about her tone makes Stiles' attention sharpen. “You have some experience with this?”

“A little.” Cora pushes some chicken around her plate, frowning down at it as she thinks. “The pack I was living with in Mexico had an emissary like you. One who performed the ritual. El Lazo, they called it. The linking. I remember the way our alpha explained it: ‘Hay un lazo entre nosotros—there's a link between us.’” She shrugs and starts eating again. 

Stiles likes the way that sounds. El Lazo, he repeats to himself. That’s how he’s been feeling since the ritual when it comes to Derek. Things have been good between them, they’ve been working together in tandem. They’re more at ease around each other than before, which has surprised Stiles. Though admittedly he’d been disappointed Derek hadn’t been there the morning after they’d slept together, Stiles knew he hadn’t done it to be cruel. Later that day, Derek had even stumbled his way through an apology  which Stiles had waved off. It was easier to do that knowing how important he was to Derek. The bond made that clear, settled something in Stiles’ heart.  

They’d just gotten carried away the night of the ritual, and Stiles thinks of it as a farewell to what had been between them before. What’s replaced it is different and beautiful. Maybe even deeper than Stiles could have imagined. He’s almost certain he’s starting to pick up on Derek’s emotions through the bond. The moments are infrequent and fleeting, but intense. Sometimes when Derek and Cora are talking, Stiles is hit by a mix of relief and happiness so strong it knocks him off balance. 

“How long did it take for your alpha and emissary to adjust? To the bond? New abilities?” Stiles taps his fingers against his knee as he leans forward. 

“I don’t know about the bond itself. They didn’t talk much about that. I think it’s kind of…private. I know our emissary adjusted pretty quickly to the powers our alpha gifted him. It’s not as intense as it would be for a bitten werewolf.”

“So I’m not going to have to find an anchor for the full moon?” Stiles asks, only kind of joking. 

Cora stops eating and scowls at him. It’s horrifying how clear it is that she is Derek’s sister. Under different circumstances she would have enchanted him with her broody demeanor and mean looks.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she says. 

“No promises. So what did your emissary get from his alpha? Are you allowed to tell me?” 

“Probably not, but if you tell anyone outside the pack I’ll make you regret it.” She leans back in her seat and flashes her claws at Stiles. “He got enhanced strength and claws.” 

“Fuck, that’s awesome.” Stiles gapes at her. He didn’t know actual werewolf parts were on the table. “I want that. Wait, do you think there’s a chance I might be stronger and I just haven’t realized it yet?” 

“No.” 

Stiles flexes an arm, bicep bulging. “Seriously, I think maybe I’m stronger.”

Cora points at a kitchen cabinet door. “Okay. Try to pull that off its hinges.”

He suddenly doesn’t feel very strong. “Derek won’t like that very much.” 

“Go on. Do it.”

He walks into the kitchen and reaches for the handle on the cabinet door just above the sink. He gives it a hard yank and then another, but nothing gives, not even a little bit. 

“Okay, so, not worried about being too strong then.” He lifts up his hands and tenses his fingers, imagining them transforming into claws. Nothing happens but a slight cramping sensation. “Not worried about claws either.” 

“Nah, I think you’re good,” Cora says, desert dry. Her fork scrapes across her plate as she finishes off the last of her food, saying with her mouth full, “Any idea when Derek’s going to be back? I had a long shift and I want to nap before I go meet up with Isaac and Scott to whip their asses into shape.”

“Waitress and personal trainer. You get your business cards printed yet?”

Stiles pulls out the chair across from Cora and slides into it, ignoring her glare. 

Cora has found a job waitressing at a diner about a block from campus. She said she couldn’t stand just hanging around the loft all the time. Though she doesn’t say it outright, Stiles understands it’s her way of signaling to Derek, to the pack, that she believes they stand at least a sliver of a chance against the alphas. Cora could pack her bags and go, but she’s sticking with them, joins them for all the grueling training sessions Derek is putting his betas through. 

Stiles had dropped by the diner during her late-night shift yesterday, doing homework in the cracked red vinyl seats in one of the back booths while she refilled his coffee. Derek had shown up and sat with Stiles for a while, quietly looking through one of Talia Hale’s old journals. Cora may have even smiled at Stiles once or twice. Progress. 

“I don’t know when Derek’ll be back,” Stiles says, pulling the graphic novel towards him to see where she’s put in her bookmark. He idly flips through the familiar pages. “Hopefully soon.” They have work to do, and he hopes Derek hasn’t pushed himself too far, worn himself out. 

Cora grunts. “Can you smell my anticipation?”

Stiles gives a dramatic sniff. “Nah—you smell kind of…sour? Is that annoyance I’m detecting?”

“Damn. It’s like you were born a werewolf.”

“You’re a delight, has anyone ever told you that?”

“All the time.” She gets up, gathering up her dishes to take through to the kitchen. Over her shoulder she says, “While you guys are exploring your bodies later, can you warn me if it’s going to turn into another bang-fest? I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.”

Stiles splutters, dropping the book back down on the table. “We’re not—it’s definitely not like that.”

“I’m not stupid,” she declares. “Remember I can smell things too, and this place reeked after you did your ritual.”

“No! It was a really intense night, that’s all. We’ve got a totally innocent list of things to do today, okay? You don’t have to flee in fear. Unless it turns out I gifted Derek with the ability to summon demonic spirits, then you can flee.”

“You know,” Cora says thoughtfully, sticking her plate and silverware into the dishwasher. “I’m pretty sure the gifting thing is affected by how strong the bond is.” 

“Are you trying to say our bond isn’t strong enough for demonic spirit summoning?” Stiles jokes. “What happens if the bond is really weak?”   

“If the bond is weak, the alpha and the pack might get a little stronger, but that could be the extent of it. No claws and definitely no demonic spirit summon. The emissary and alpha in my pack had been working together for over a decade.” She tosses him a quick smile over her shoulder and switches the dishwasher on. The machine rumbles to life, and Cora comes to sit back down across from Stiles. “I once heard about an emissary who had elemental affinities she wasn’t even aware of, and he gave his alpha some sort of ice power. She could freeze things she touched. Let’s hope you gave Derek something badass like that.” 

Stiles hopes so too. Hopes the strength of their bond is enough for it to have happened. Derek might be physically stronger now, might be brutually pushing his limits in preparation, but if he had something else, something that Deucalion and the rest of his pack wouldn’t see coming, Stiles would feel a hell of a lot more confident about their chances. 

He folds his arms on the table in warm patches of autumn sunlight and leans forward, smacking his head against the wood. “Shit. Why couldn’t my intent give him ice power? Or telekinesis!” 

Cora gives his shoulder a sarcastic pat. “There there. Derek and I both think it’s probably just a rumor. Your magic manifested in him as enhanced strength so maybe it’ll also manifest as enhanced healing. He’s not going to turn into some werewolf mage the same way you’re not turning into a werewolf. Even if you can suddenly grow claws.”

He makes Cora run through any other rumors she’s heard about the ritual, even if she’s already discussed it with Derek, even if it seems farfetched, and takes notes on his phone.

Stiles stares down at his list once she’s done, a mix of his own ideas and Derek’s, including things they’ve already tried, plus any out-there suggestions from Cora. It’s daunting and they’re running out of time. 

“Worst comes to worst, maybe I’ll be able to smell if Deucalion is really really smug about handing our asses to us.” 

“That’s the spirit,” Cora says, giving him a sarcastic double thumbs up. 

*~*

“We already tried mountain ash twice.” Derek sighs. He opens the loft’s bay windows to let a cool evening breeze in, then comes back over to where Stiles is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room. “I can’t even touch it.”   

“I know but just indulge me.” 

Derek gives him a look. 

“Indulge me one more time,” Stiles allows, getting to his feet. They’re methodically working down Stiles’ list. Even circling back to things they’ve tested before like wolfsbane immunity and rune magic. Derek had dubiously agreed to go down the elemental spark avenue, but ice mage he is not.

Stiles unscrews the lid of the mountain ash jar and pours some out into his free palm. “Stay right there.”  

Deep skepticism is carved in Derek’s face as Stiles starts drawing the ash circle around him. “Don’t worry, I’ll sweep the floors after,” Stiles assures him. “I know you’re exhausted.” 

“Thanks,” Derek says dryly. “That was exactly what I was worried about.”

Stiles flashes him a smile and with one final, performative flick of his wrist, he completes the tight circle around Derek. “It’s just a hunch,” Stiles reiterates. “So humor me here, but I want you to try to leave the circle this time instead of making one.”

Derek levels Stiles with a flat look and pushes his hand out at the circle, thumping up against an invisible barrier.

“Good hunch.”

Stiles snorts. “Don’t be a dick.” Now would have been a nice time to have gotten some of Derek’s physical strength so he could smack him without hurting himself. “I don’t think you’re completely immune and human, just like I’m not completely werewolf now. Cora said she’d heard about an alpha who was able to push through the barrier, not just waltz out of there like it was nothing.” If he’d given Derek physical strength, maybe it could translate into strength against mountain ash barriers too.

Derek tries hauling himself against the barrier, then punching it. At one point he even kicks it, prompting Stiles to call him the Karate Wolf, which goes down like a ton of bricks.

“I think maybe I can feel some give,” Derek says, staring intensely at the spot in front of him. He doesn’t sound certain, and Stiles lets out a long sigh. He feels a sense of outsized disappointment; he’d pinned too much hope on this idea.

“Do you ever wonder,” Stiles says before he can think better of it, “if maybe things could have turned out differently? Like if you’d chosen Professor Blake as your emissary, maybe the power of your love or whatever would have turned her around. I bet she would have given you some sick powers.” 

“I didn’t love her,” Derek snaps. The unexpected force behind his words makes Stiles jerk his head to meet Derek’s eyes. “I was controlled by her. Did you really not get that?”

Stiles blinks at Derek, totally taken aback by this. “I mean. I knew, obviously, she’d messed with all of our heads and lied about who she was, but I thought—I thought it was pretty clear you were into whoever she was pretending to be.”

“No,” Derek says vehemently. Whatever Derek is feeling is strong enough that Stiles can smell the shift in the air, a deeper, darker thing that flashes through their bond. The sensation reminds Stiles of drowning, of water rushing into his lungs. 

Stiles struggles for words, but Derek’s gaze moves away from Stiles like something’s caught his eye, a crease appearing between his brows. He zeroes in on point just in front and to the right of him. A space where if Stiles looks hard enough, he realizes he can spot a faint shimmer, almost like the kind you can see through the exhaust of a car.

Both of Derek’s hands come up, palms open again, but instead of pushing it looks almost like he’s pressing gently at the barrier, just feeling it out. That same sensation of drowning rushes through Stiles again as Derek rears back and strikes out at the shimmer with one of his claws extended.

Stiles’ mouth falls open as Derek slashes through the shimmer and over the line.

“You actually did it,” Stiles breathes.

Derek is looking between his hands, still held out in front of him, and back to the circle with wonder. “Fuck,” he breathes. 

Right away, Derek tries to break through a second time, but he can't. Once again, his claw bounces back as it hits the barrier. 

“Maybe you’re just too worn out,” Stiles suggests. “You’re either training by yourself or with the pack or working with me. Your body might need a nap, dude.” 

Derek grunts but slashes out his claws again, growling when it meets resistence. 

After nearly an hour of this, Derek manages to get through one more time but doesn’t seem any happier. Stiles toes at the mountain ash line. “Dude, that was awesome, okay? You’re taking a break and I'm getting a beer,” he announces. “We can work more later, but at least that’s progress, right?”

Derek shrugs but doesn’t argue.

*~*

Stiles sips at his beer, leaning back on the couch as he studies Derek who is sitting beside him. He’s been trying to figure out a way to pick back up the thread of their earlier conversation. It’s not hard to identify the fragrance of frustration that Derek is emitting or the tension in his jaw, but he needs to understand what happened to Derek. 

Stiles fidgets and picks at the beer label, severing Sam Adams’s head from his body. He chews the inside of his lip before he says, “So, uh, what did you mean before when you said Jennifer was controlling you?”

Derek lets out a long sigh, but he doesn’t seem surprised. Maybe he’s been waiting for Stiles to ask about it, wanting him to. “I meant exactly what it sounds like.” 

“Can you give me more than that?” Stiles says, trying to keep his tone light. “You had to know I was going to ask. Please tell me what happened because I had no idea. You never said anything afterward to me or anyone in the pack as far as I know.” 

“I thought it was obvious,” Derek mutters, shoulders hunched.   

Stiles shakes his head. “How was she able to control you?”

Derek turns his head and looks at Stiles for a long time, body perfectly still. He looks like he’s in physical pain as he tries to force the words out, his mouth twisting. “How do you think?”

Without thinking, Stiles reaches out and puts his hand on Derek’s upper back, between his shoulder blades where his tattoo is. A flicker of surprise crosses Derek’s face and then his body relaxes, muscles loosening under Stiles’ hand. 

“Magic is the obvious answer,” Stiles surmises. He keeps his hand splayed on Derek’s back, feeling it rise and fall as his breath steadies. “Really really powerful magic. The sacrifices must have helped her.”

Derek nods. “You told me you had to find the truth to your spells, the center of them, right?”

“Right,” Stiles agrees with a frown. “But what was her truth?” 

Derek’s eyes bore into him. “It wasn’t her truth. She knew what I wanted, and she twisted it to make me think she was giving it to me. But it wasn’t real. It was—”

Stiles feels like a rug has suddenly appeared beneath his feet and now it’s slowly being tugged out from under him. 

“Oh.” Stiles' gut churns. Derek had wanted love and trust, and he thought he’d found that in her. “But you—when she took my dad and Melissa—you believed me.” His mouth feels painfully dry. “Why didn’t her magic work on you then, when she tried to convince you I was lying?” 

He looks up from where he's sitting and he can remember it all clearly. The darkness of the loft. Jennifer's sickly sweet voice as she pleaded, Derek, tell me you don't believe this. The fear of losing his father, of Derek not believing him, so strong that Stiles had cried. 

But then Derek had looked at him. Do you know what happened to Stiles' father? Derek had believed him. 

Derek's voice draws him back from the memory. “Sometimes there are things strong enough to break through magic that powerful. The same anchors that keep you human.”

Stiles digs the fingers from his free hand into the edge of the couch, the fabric rough against his skin. “I thought your anchor was anger.” 

Derek rubs absently at his chest, hand just underneath the v of his henley, above his heart. “Anger hasn’t been my anchor in a long time, Stiles.”

Stiles' heart pounds.  “What is it now?” 

They don’t look away from one another, and suddenly Stiles feels wrong. Through the bond, he can feel that awful sense of drowning again.

He starts to apologize for pushing Derek too far tonight, for not knowing what happened without being told, but the door to the loft opens then, and Cora steps inside, calling out to Derek. “Hey, I’m starving. Torturing Isaac and Scott worked up my appetite. Stiles, you eating with us?”

After an odd beat, Stiles breaks eye contact with Derek and gets to his feet. “I—uh. No. No, I actually have a paper I need to work on, so I should get going. But rain check.”

The last thing Stiles notices before he rushes out in a blur is that Derek smells afraid.

*~*

On the nights leading up to the full moon when the rest of the pack is training, Stiles finds himself giving in to the Nemeton’s call. Tonight he sits in front of the enormous stump, feeling its magic circling around him, mulling over a conversation he had with Lydia earlier that day. He wonders what advice his mother might give him if she were still here. If he hadn’t cost her everything. They can’t let this kind of power fall into Deucalion’s hands. 

He thinks about how Jennifer used it to control Derek. Guilt has been eating at Stiles. How do you apologize for not realizing someone hadn’t just been lied to, they’d actually been mentally manipulated by magic?

Sorry for Jennifer tricking you, sorry for Kate tricking you, sorry about your unhinged uncle tricking you, sorry if you were afraid the type of magic we used in the ritual would make you vulnerable all over again. I’m sorry for the times you wanted love and all you found were lies. Sorry sorry sorry. Every time he thinks he might say some variation of these words, he remembers the scent of Derek’s fear, how it smelled like the wrong side of the ocean, a salty acidic edge to it. 

If Stiles is onto something with the plan he’s piecing together and they survive this, he’ll figure out a way to tell Derek all of those things. The waxing moon above serves as a loud reminder that they only have two more nights.  

There’s the sound of a twig snapping, and Stiles jerks around, relieved as he catches Derek’s scent, recognizes the way he moves even in the darkness. 

“Hey stalker,” Stiles says, picking at a blade of grass to his side. “I thought you were training.” 

“I was.” Derek looms above him, and Stiles notes that he’s wearing his leather jacket again. “I’m pretty sure I could feel how anxious you were through the bond, and it made it hard to focus.” 

Stiles’ jaw drops. “So I’m not crazy. That’s really happening?” 

“I wasn’t sure at first, but you just confirmed it.” Derek gives him a wry smile. 

“Yeah, you caught me.” Stilles ducks his head and scratches the back of his neck. If only the strongest emotions make it through, Stiles must have been sending off some really bad signals if Derek could sense it. He hadn’t been secretive about his Nemeton visits, but this is the first time Derek’s shown up like this.  

“Why do you keep coming here?” Derek asks, sitting down next to Stiles, facing the Nemeton with him. The smell of Derek grounds Stiles, and he’s still surprised he can untangle it from all the other forest scents overwhelming him right now, especially the Nemeton’s.

“I don’t know. This tree has been, like, communicating with us via dreams and disturbing visions. I figured maybe coming back would help me figure some shit out.” 

Derek says, “It’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“Such high praise from my alpha.” 

The corners of Derek’s lips twitch. “Has it given you any more visions?”

“No, but I’ve been doing some research and a lot of thinking, and I maybe have the start of an idea? I was going to talk to you about it later tonight.” Stiles has been working with Lydia to translate more of the emissary book. When he hasn’t been with Derek or trying to actually keep up with his schoolwork—ha!—or going to lacrosse practice, he’s been trying to find something, anything else he could do, and today he and Lydia may have had a breakthrough. 

“Okay,” Derek says slowly. “I’m listening.”

“I looked through more of the emissary book,” Stiles says. “It’s been bothering me why Peter was reading it. Why he was so interested in me as emissary, why he said it would have been a mistake to bite me. The thing is…what if he knew about my connection to the Nemeton?”

“Your mother,” Derek says, understanding.

“Yeah.” Stiles nods, grateful neither of them needs to elaborate. “If you challenge Deucalion, we have to offer him something that will guarantee the fight is worth his while. A deal. Because let’s face it you have a better chance one on one with him than if the whole pack tries to fight, I know they’re stronger with our bond, but I don’t think it’s enough. We need him to say yes.”

Derek raises an eyebrow, “I take it you have something in mind?”

“I do,” Stiles says. “He wants a Hale alpha. He said having Erica or Boyd kill you is preferable to him than just killing you and taking your power. The book said that my connection to the territory is very close to the alpha’s. So what if—what if we offer him the Hale emissary, along with your power, if he wins and kills you. It might solve the potency issue he was so worried about. Maybe that’s what Peter was so interested in…using me as a way to cover his ass with the deal he fucked up. I don’t know.”  

“I don’t like it,” Derek says immediately.

“Dude…we need something to get him to fight you instead of just siccing Erica and Boyd on you and having them murder the rest of us.”

“Stiles, even if he agrees to this, the chances of me winning aren’t exactly great. If I lose, if I die, I’m not leaving you in a position like that.” Derek glares at him. “Funny how you were so against me joining the alphas, but now you’re proposing you do the same.”

“Well, you’re not going to die,” Stiles says stubbornly. “And if you do then I might as well try to fight the good fight from the inside like Morrell is claiming to do. Like you said you were going to do.”

“Stiles.”

“Come on. There’s got to be something else in the depths of what Morrell told us that we can use to our advantage.” Stiles kicks his feet out at a clump of twigs in front of him. They scratch lightly against the ground.

“She and Deaton gave us the idea to challenge Deucalion,” Derek points out. 

“Yeah, but I think there was more to it than that.”

“I don’t know. You made me stronger like Deaton said the ritual would. Maybe that’s all they meant by it. I doubt Morrell knew I’d be able to get through mountain ash barriers or how that would help. I still can’t make one myself.”

Stiles hums, kicking his feet out again as he thinks. “There must be more I can do besides offering myself up as part of a fucked up deal.”

“Like what?” Derek moves closer, he taps his foot against one of Stiles’ restless feet. 

“The other day I managed to make a powder that burned a hole through my desk,” Stiles says. “Maybe I can do something with that. Or maybe we can try deporting Deucalion. I bet he doesn’t even have a valid passport.”

“Both good options,” Derek deadpans. “Wait. You burned a hole through your desk?”

“Yeah, I was trying something out with poison ivy, it was a whole thing.”

Derek just stares at him like he’s possibly insane.

“Anyway, I couldn’t get it to work again,” Stiles continues sadly. “I guess I didn’t want to burn my desk badly enough.”

“I doubt poison ivy powder, even if it was strong enough to burn a hole in your desk, would do much to Deucalion.” Derek leans forward, resting his elbows against his knees.

“I guess if we get him to accept your challenge I can’t interfere anyway or that kind of negates the whole agreement,” Stiles muses. “It’s mano a mano, right?”

He waits for Derek to agree, but Derek doesn’t. He’s totally still, staring intently down at the ground. Stiles is about to nudge him to snap him out of it when Derek says, “Maybe not.” 

*~*

The night of the full moon is warm, but a light drizzle cools Stiles' skin as the pack silently heads to the Nemeton.

The air smells like wet earth. Stiles is still adjusting to the new intensity of familiar smells, and it’s dialed up tonight. If Derek’s power is tied to the moon and they’re sharing it between them, it makes sense it would be stronger tonight. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining it or not, but he thinks he might feel the tug of the full moon, a pressing in his chest pulling him out into the Preserve with the rest of the pack.

Or maybe it’s just the Nemeton’s sickly sweet magic calling to him all over again.

“You sure about this?” Cora asks, looking between Derek and Stiles.

Neither of them has an answer for that.

They move deeper and deeper into the woods, which are preternaturally quiet. There should be crickets chirping, small animals scurrying through the underbrush, but there’s nothing save for the sound of their feet scraping against the low shrubbery on the ground, crunching twigs, and rocks shifting out of place.

Stiles smells the alphas before he sees them. Thick, powerful scents that drown out the other smells around him. He’s still learning to filter out what he smells, and it takes him a moment before he realizes that he can identify more than just the alphas. 

“Erica and Boyd are there,” Isaac says, relief obvious in his voice. “They’re alive.” 

Stiles can smell the pack’s mix of hope and fear, the alphas’ scents, Erica and Boyd, the Preserve, and it’s so overwhelming that he has to stop moving for a second. 

Derek stops too, moving close to Stiles and waiting as he just breathes. Stiles zeroes in on Derek’s scent until he feels grounded. Derek rests his hand on Stiles' back as they start walking again. 

The thickness of the forest gives way to the Nemeton’s clearing, where the alphas, along with Morrell, are already waiting for them. 

And Erica and Boyd, unconscious, are chained to one of the trees lining the clearing. The twin alphas are standing close to them, guarding.

“Don’t.” Stiles darts forward quickly, getting in front of Derek as he lunges forward towards Erica and Boyd. He makes Derek meet his eyes. “Derek, look at me. You can’t go to them yet. Okay?”

Derek finally looks back at him, red eyes returning to their normal color. He lets out an angry, uneven breath. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Okay.”  

“Derek,” Deucalion says with a malicious smile. “Glad you made it. I’m eager to hear what you’ve decided.”

A wave of fury hits Stiles through the bond, overpowering his own anger, as Derek says through clenched teeth, “I’ve decided that you can fuck off.”

Kali snarls, but Deucalion’s smile only widens. “I have to admit, I’m surprised. Why have you reached that conclusion?”

“Because you lied to me. Joining you doesn’t mean leaving my pack behind, it means killing them.”

“A small price for power, Derek. I thought you would be smart enough to understand that.”

“Why did you bother giving Cora the antidote?” Derek grits out. “And sending her back to me?”

“As long as she wasn’t part of your pack, she wasn’t useful to me. If someone outside of your pack killed you for your alpha spark, the connection to the territory wouldn’t be nearly as strong.” His smile widens. Stiles can feel his and Derek’s rage burning together through the bond. “At least if she rejoined you and you killed her, you’d become more powerful. Not to mention sending her to you was a handy way to get around whatever pesky concealment charms your emissary had cooked up.”

Derek growls, but Deucalion continues on without so much as a flinch.

“You have potential, Derek. The Hale Pack and its territories have always had strong alphas. You just need some guidance. You’ll shed the skin of this young damaged pack and be all the stronger for it.”

“Do you honestly expect me to kill my pack?” Derek clenches his fists.

“I think your options are limited, and that’s what you’ll choose in the end. I find even the most loyal alphas choose their own lives when it comes down to it.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Come now, I’ll give you the carrot first. I can’t imagine that you enjoy playing nice with the two Argents in town. I’ll forgive you for letting one of them shoot a member of my pack once you kill her. You’ll be powerful enough that you can join us as we go after all the Argents and any hunter they’ve trained or allied with in the past. I can smell the anger on you now when I mention them. They got away with quite a bit on your mother’s watch, didn’t they? But I think you know better.”

Derek’s eyes are glowing red, and Stiles can smell his fury—a dark, twisted scent like smoke radiating off of him. “If that was the carrot, I guess Erica and Boyd are the stick?”

“That’s right. If you refuse, we’ll let these two have at you and give us a new Hale alpha. It’s not ideal, we’d much rather have you, but it would do. Kali's dying to hold you down and see which of them will rip your throat out first. We’ve kept them from shifting for the last two moons and the start of this one. They’re so eager for a fight.”

Stiles feels stupid for missing that detail before. They’d been kidnapped at the start of the full moon, then hidden away during the last full moon when Deucalion had issued his ultimatum. He’s never thought before to ask what happens if werewolves are kept from shifting, and he’s afraid to find out.

Derek looks over at him, picking up on Stiles' unease, but likely not realizing the source. Hoping he comes across as encouraging, Stiles nods at Derek. It’s now or never to start setting things in motion, and Stiles prays that every protection spell he’s ever cast is working for them tonight.

Derek’s voice is strong and fierce. “I have a proposition of my own.”

A thin smile ghosts across Deucalion’s face. “Oh?”

“I formally challenge you to control over your pack. Alpha to alpha. If you win, I’ll submit and you can have whoever you want kill me.” Derek squares his shoulders. “But I won’t kill my pack. Even if you win.”

When he’s finished speaking he looks at Stiles, handing over the baton. 

This is it. This is what it’s come down to, and Stiles has to push away all his fear and uncertainty. 

He looks past Deucalion at Erica and Boyd’s slumped forms, over to his side at Scott, Isaac, and Cora, and then finally at Derek. This is his pack, this is his territory, his alpha, and he’s going to fight like hell for them.

“If you accept Derek’s challenge and you win,” Stiles says, keeping his voice as steady and strong as Derek’s, “then you’ll inherit Derek’s powers…along with the Hale Pack’s emissary.” He shrugs and gestures to Morrell. “I’m not as experienced as your current one—what’s up, professor, how you doing tonight?—but that should help with your, uh, potency problem.”  

“You’re a child.” Deucalion laughs. “You haven’t been an emissary for this territory for long enough. Your connection to it would be nowhere near as strong as your alpha’s yet.” 

Stiles clicks his tongue. “I thought you might say that. The thing is I only exist because of my mother’s sacrifices to the Nemeton, so I might be a new emissary, but my ties to this territory run deep. I get visions from that tree. It's kind of obsessed with me.” He points dramatically at the Nemeton.     

He looks at Deucalion expectantly, praying that this gamble pays off. 

Deucalion is quiet for a long minute and then he makes a humming sound. “A very interesting proposition indeed. You know, a formal challenge was how I came to be an alpha in the first place,” he says. He looks over at the Nemeton, its wide, low shape taking up so much spacing in the clearing. “Always good to go back to one’s roots, so to speak.”

“Do you accept my challenge?” Derek asks.

“I accept.”

Chapter Text

It’s clear from the start that Derek is sorely outmatched.

Deucalion is quicker on his feet, moving lightly as they circle one another. Stiles has a pretty good idea of who is playing predator and prey in this scenario.

Scott and Isaac look over at Stiles, and he wishes he could have told them more. But he and Derek couldn’t take any chances that the Alpha Pack would figure out what they’ve planned. 

Cora never takes her eyes off Derek. Every blow Deucalion lands on Derek, Cora’s expression doesn’t change from its stoic, stony facade, though Stiles can smell the fear on her. 

“You’ll know when to do it,” Derek had said. Stiles wants to believe him, believe in the heightened connection between them. He can feel tugs of emotion, and he can pick Derek’s scent out of all the others around him, but he can’t read Derek’s mind. Stiles reaches into his pockets, his right hand slipping mountain ash from a tiny bag into his palm. He has to trust that he and Derek will know when it’s time.

Deucalion’s claws graze Derek’s neck, Derek stepping back just quickly enough that the blow isn’t fatal. Terror chokes Stiles. He’s sure Deucalion is toying with Derek, that there’s a strong chance that he could have landed the killing blow if he wasn’t a predator who enjoys playing with his food. 

It’s a warm night, but Deucalion hasn’t broken a sweat. The full moon’s light is bright enough that Stiles can see Derek’s skin is shiny, that he’s starting to exert himself. His newfound strength is enough to keep him going, not enough to win against Deucalion on his own.

“It’s such a pity you’d rather your emissary come work with me. Such loyalty is rare to find.” 

“Fuck you,” Derek grits out, blood trickling down from the corner of his mouth where Deucalion had landed a brutal punch.

Deucalion’s next hit lands straight in Derek’s chest, thrusting him back into the thick trunk of an Oak tree. A loud crack rings out as Derek makes contact, body crumpling. Derek pitches forward as he gasps out in pain.

An ocean roars in Stiles' ears as he watches Derek stagger to his feet. Stiles rushes forward, and Derek inclines his face, the motion catching his eyes. Derek’s face is contorted, and without thinking, Stiles reaches his free hand out to touch Derek’s shoulder.

It takes a second for his mind to catch up to his body, and it’s only when Stiles feels a burning sensation climbing up his arms underneath the thin sleeves of his shirt that he understands: Derek also gave him the ability to take away pain.

Kali is laughing an ugly, gleeful sound, but everyone else is still and silent on both sides. 

Deucalion moves towards them, eyes burning red. With the full moon and the power of his pack behind him, he can see again. 

“Careful, Derek. Some might think you’re dangerously close to breaking the rules. No interference.” His fangs gleam as he grins. For a moment Stiles thinks Deucalion has realized what’s going on, that he’s taking Derek’s pain, but to Stiles' tremendous relief Deucalion doesn’t seem suspicious, merely amused at what he interprets as Stiles' attempt to encourage Derek. 

A ripple seems to go through Deucalion’s body as he comes closer and he starts to shift, black fur sprouting from his skin, his face and body transforming into a hulking, distorted wolf. The alpha form has freaked Stiles out since he first saw Peter take it.

“Now,” Stiles says, the words barely a breath, praying that even if Deucalion manages to hear them he won’t stop moving towards them.

Derek moves quickly, leaping back as Deucalion advances forward.

And Stiles takes his moment.

In his right hand, he throws the powdery mountain ash, squeezed between his fingers and palm. It’s got to be just right. He focuses all his attention and might on making the circle that forms around Deucalion the tightest prison imaginable. He can feel the pull of the Nemeton, feel how its energy throbs and burns inside of him. In the moment that Stiles releases the mountain ash, he knows with utter certainty that one day he’ll be able to use this energy for more, but for now, this will have to be enough.

Deucalion lashes his claws out, striking at the barrier. It shimmers in the darkness, and he howls, vicious and enraged. He’s all beast now, violently attacking the walls around him.

“Enough,” Kali says. “Deucalion was being generous when he didn’t end your silly little fight and free your betas the minute your emissary started coddling you. But this ends now.”  

The twin alphas move towards Scott, Isaac, and Cora, who shift, ready for a fight. Derek edges towards Stiles, putting an arm out, brushing against Stiles' chest as he eyes the alphas.

But Morrell speaks, stopping everyone.

“They haven’t violated any rules,” she says, her voice loud. It’s enough to stop Kali and the twins dead in their tracks. Morrell turns to Stiles and Derek, expression serious. “Am I right in understanding you’re bonded?”

“Yes,” Stiles calls out, flailing back from the mountain ash circle as Deucalion snarls and snaps at him. Adrenaline courses through his body, the thrill building and pounding inside of him reaching a crescendo as he stares into Deucalion’s red, burning eyes. “You’re right.”

Cora, Scott, and Isaac move closer to Stiles, crowding in close in a protective stance as Kali and the twins watch them.

“We haven’t broken any rules,” Derek confirms, eyes on Deucalion. 

“What is she talking about?” One of the twins asks Kali. But Kali doesn’t answer, she’s staring at Morrell in horror.

“His blood is his blood. He is an extension of the alpha,” Morrell says. “And the alpha an extension of the emissary. I believe you once had an emissary like that, Kali. Your wolfsbane immunity?”

Kali looks as if Morrell has slapped her. Then her lips curl back in a snarl again as she turns to Derek. “Fine,” she seethes. “But there’s nothing stopping me from killing your pack even if you won this with your little game. They’re still weak.”

Stiles says, “I wouldn’t. We have a couple Argent pals kindly hanging out nearby just waiting for our word.” The lie rolls easily off his tongue, his heart not skipping a beat. In reality, it’s just one lone Allison Argent lurking in the woods with her crossbow and a whole lot of heart. “About your wolfsbane immunity, Kali… it’s Kali, right? I hate you, but that’s no reason to mispronounce your name. Anyway, you have some immunity, but I don’t think you’ll want to roll the dice on this particular brand of wolfsbane bullet. You or your twin pals whose names I still have yet to catch. You two look like a Jake and a Luke to me, is that even close? Ballpark?”

Derek steps forward and sticks his claw straight through the mountain ash barrier and into Deucalion’s chest. 

“It’s like giving a shot,” Stiles declares. “My step-mom used to just get me talking and suddenly she stuck the needle in, and it was over. Isn’t that wild?”

“I remember that!” Scott says.

Stiles winks at him. “Thanks, buddy.” 

Deucalion’s body ripples again, shifting back into a human shape. He gasps in pain, clawed hand scratching at Derek’s wrist where it protrudes from his chest. But Derek doesn’t budge. “What are you waiting for?” Deucalion manages. Blood seeps down from his chest onto the ground. The smell of the Nemeton’s magic gets stronger, an insatiable thing. “Kill me. You’ve won with your clever tricks. Well done.”

Derek raises an eyebrow at Stiles. “You change your mind about this?” 

“Nah. Did you?” 

When they’d last met at the Nemeton and devised their plan, Stiles had asked Derek what he wanted to do with Deucalian if they won. “On the count of three, we both say what we’re thinking.” 

“Kill him,” Derek said immediately. 

“Okay, I didn’t even start the count, but I was going to say the same thing.” 

But then they’d both hesitated, heads turning in unison to look at the Nemeton. 

After a beat, Stiles said. “Fuck. We can’t, can we?” 

“No,” Derek agreed, still facing the Nemeton. “Not after what it showed us.”  

Stiles and Derek don’t care if any of these alphas live or die. They care about their pack, protecting them. Right now protecting them means considering what another sacrifice could awaken in the Nemeton and summon to Beacon Hills.

“I haven’t changed my mind either,” Derek confirms. “I’ve heard when an alpha comes close to death, it can take all of their energy, all of their spark to heal. We’ll find out if that’s true, Deucalion.”

“We’re not going to kill you.” Stiles moves to stand beside Derek, shoulder to shoulder. “We just want you to tell your pack to leave, give us back Erica and Boyd, for you to lose your alpha spark, and then get the fuck out of our town.”

“That’s a lot of things, Stiles,” Isaac says.

“Isaac, please, I’m on a roll.”

“We’ll never stop going after hunters,” Kali says, ignoring them. Her eyes are blazing. “Even without Deucalion. Even if we’re not pack.”

“I don’t care,” Derek says. “Kill all the hunters you want, but you won’t kill Allison or Chris Argent.” Stiles doesn’t miss the look of gratitude from Scott at Derek’s words.

“We have an alliance with them,” Scott says proudly. “They follow their code.” 

“Yeah.” Stiles feels the need to back Scott up. Also, he’s amped up on adrenaline. “Chris Argent is mostly guilty of harassing college students and being a dick, but who among us isn’t guilty of the same?” He slaps Derek on the arm, prompting a deep eye roll. 

“You’ll leave my pack and our territory alone,” Derek commands. He shakes his claws inside of Deucalion, who hisses in pain. “Tell them.”

“I’m still your alpha,” Deucalion says to his pack. His eyes flash red. “Leave Beacon Hills.”

“Oh, and by the way,” Cora chimes in, “he killed your other alpha friend. So if I were you, I’d leave him behind anyway.”

Disgust passes over Kali and the twins’ faces. “You lied,” Kali growls at Deucalion.

“He was weak.” Deucalion’s voice is barely above a whisper, body starting to slump as Derek holds him up. “Kali—"

She shakes her head, turning to leave, the twins following her. Stiles gives a little wave to their retreating forms.

Derek rips his fist from Deucalion’s chest. Deucalion slumps forward with a groan. 

“You really think he’s going to wake up from that?” Scott asks as the pack stares down at him.

“I do,” Derek says.

“Great, cool, good.” Stiles looks over at Erica and Boyd, still unconscious. “Now we just have to figure out how to fix our friends.”

*~*

While Morrell undoes Boyd and Erica’s binds and then tips a small vial of liquid into their mouths, Allison comes out of her hiding place in the woods. She makes her way straight to Scott and Isaac, nestling herself in between them, her crossbow still strapped to her back. 

“Are they going to be okay?” Allison asks, breathless. 

Morrell glances at her. “They’ll be fine. They just need a moment. What I gave them will suppress the shift for now, but at the next full moon you’ll need to take extra precaution with them.”

“I will,” Derek says.  

Stiles stands so close to Derek they’re touching from shoulder to hand, and in one final display of courage, Stiles brushes his fingers against Derek. Without any hesitation, Derek grabs Stiles' hand and holds it tight.

Ten minutes or so tick by slowly, the wait feeling eternal. The forest looks so eerie around them, the dark shadows of the trees stark against the brightness of the full moon. 

Erica’s eyes flutter open, and Boyd is not long after her.

“Boyd! Erica!” Their names slip out with joy, relief. Though Stiles is the one who speaks, it’s Derek who reaches them first. He stops before them and then all three are embracing. Isaac races to them next. 

“I didn’t know if you’d come for us.” Erica’s voice is muffled against Derek’s shoulder. 

“Of course I came,” Derek says. “I always will.”

His words send a fierce swell of pride through Stiles. Having all of them together, he can feel the strength of the pack surrounding him. 

“I knew you’d all come for us,” Boyd says, as Isaac pulls him in for a hug. 

Erica punches Boyd’s arm. “Oh my god, you did not.” But then she kisses his cheek. 

Stiles isn’t sure if it’s his moment to interrupt or not, but soon he, Scott, Allison, and Cora are fielding full-body hugs from Erica along with more dignified back slaps from Boyd. 

Boyd puts a hand on Cora’s shoulder. “Glad you’re okay. When you disappeared we didn’t know what the hell happened to you.” 

“We were so fucking worried,” Erica says.  

“These idiots took care of me.” Cora inclines her head towards said idiots. 

“Can I get a round of applause for best alpha Derek?” Stiles asks. “How ‘bout a high five?” He holds a hand up to Derek, who just smacks it away. To Stiles' horror, Derek high-fives Scott instead. “Traitor,” he mouths. Derek grins back, apparently unable to hide his good mood for once.

“Okay, reunion’s over. Now get us the fuck home,” Erica commands. 

Cora grins at Erica. “I knew I liked you.”  

“Hey, guys,” Isaac cuts in. “This is all really heartwarming and all, but one minor detail. What do we do about him?” 

They all turn to look at Deucalion’s unmoving form on the forest floor. 

*~*

In the end, Morrell stays with Deucalion, assuring them that if he dies or ignores the terms of the deal, she’ll let them know. Stiles still does not get what her deal with him is, but whatever, it’s not his issue now. Not his monkeys, not his circus. 

Allison doesn’t stick around with the pack, though Scott asks her to and Derek doesn’t argue. She gives a small smile and says, “Some other time. I think it’s better if I leave the pack to do pack things right now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”  

When she leaves, Stiles sort of gets the feeling that he should too. He’s linked to Derek, and he knows that being an emissary is a meaningful thing…but he still feels a little on the outside looking in at all the werewolves together now. They smell like they belong together, belong to Derek, but Stiles doesn’t know if it’s the same for him. Now that the thrill of the fight is wearing off, Stiles feels an odd numbness creeping up on him.

“Come on,” Derek says, gently tugging Stiles along with him to the gravel parking lot where they left the Camaro and the Jeep earlier. Derek’s hand is hot along his arm, and Stiles doesn’t want him to take it away. “Are you okay to drive?” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good.” And he means it until Derek stops touching him, and that numb feeling comes creeping back. It must be the post-adrenaline crash. 

Stiles heads back to Derek’s with the rest of the pack despite his unease. It’s nice, at first, just being near them all again, having Erica and Boyd back. But the whole time there’s something off. He should feel elated, and a part of him does, but it’s like he can’t quite access it.  

There’s a strange itch underneath his skin, a desire to paste himself to Derek’s side, to stay with him, to touch him everywhere and smooth the lines of his healing skin. He almost does it too. Lingers around the edges of the pack, waiting for a moment where it would make sense to do it. 

That moment doesn’t come. 

The pack spread themselves out, throwing blankets on the floor while Erica takes the couch. Stiles decides that now is probably a good time to excuse himself. Maybe all he needs is to finally get a good night’s rest to get out of this funky mood.  

“You should stay,” Erica says as Stiles edges towards the door. She shakes a blanket at him. 

Pouring a glass of water in the kitchen, Derek flicks his gaze over briefly but doesn’t say anything. 

“No, no. I’m good, thanks,” Stiles says, genuinely grateful for Erica’s goodwill gesture. “Got a comfortable bed waiting for me. I may not have washed the sheets in months, but it beats Derek’s dirty floor.” 

“It’s clean,” Derek says, looking at his glass of water as if it’s an equal partner in this conversation. 

“Convincing.” Stiles slips out the door while Derek ascends the spiral staircase to his bedroom. 

Outside, it’s too early and too late. The sky is a darkened blue, birds beginning to chirp. As he slumps into the Jeep, he feels the same kind of loneliness that he feels after leaving a good party at 5 a.m.—the acute absence of people and music, walking home alone with a hangover creeping up the edges of your brain. 

He’s overwhelmed by the changes in himself. It would be one thing if only his sense of smell was stronger, but when you add emotions into the mix, it just feels like too much tonight. And god, he hasn’t even had time to think about how he took Derek’s pain away. It’s both thrilling and entirely overwhelming. 

He drives home, wishing for things he doesn’t want to name. 

*~*

Exhausted as he is, Stiles is staring numbly at the ceiling when he hears a tap at his window. 

Derek is standing on the low roof, and Stiles lets him in. “Reminder, once again, that doors and knocking are real things.” 

“I knocked,” Derek protests. 

“I’m too tired to formulate an argument. How come you’re here?” 

Derek shifts, looking down at the ground. “I was worried about you. What’s wrong?” 

“I don’t know,” Stiles admits. “Something feels off, and I can’t figure out how to make it stop. Maybe I’m just exhausted, but I didn’t want everyone picking up on it when there are more important things going on.”  

Derek doesn’t look surprised. “Come here,” he says, and without thinking Stiles moves towards him, letting Derek pull him into a tender embrace. His skin is so warm, and he smells like leather, like Derek, like relief. 

“Oh my god,” Stiles realizes, pressing his cheek against Derek’s neck, the stubble tickling his skin. “You were feeling it too. Is this another side-effect of the bond?” 

“Maybe.” Derek holds Stiles tighter to him. His heartbeat is a steady and comforting beat against Stiles' chest. He closes his eyes and tilts his face into Derek’s shoulder. “I don’t know. I just—I need you.”  

“Me too,” Stiles murmurs. “God, you have no idea. I was so afraid it wouldn’t work, that you’d be dead and I’d either be dead or here alone working with Deucalion. Losing the pack, losing you.” 

Stiles closes his eyes and he’s back at the Nemeton two nights before the full moon, Derek saying, “Our bond might be a loophole to the formal rules of challenging another alpha. I don’t know for sure, but it’s the best plan I’ve got.” Even though he’d trusted Derek, agreed to the plan without hesitation, it didn’t mean he hadn’t been scared out of his mind.    

Derek lets out an uneven breath that ruffles Stiles' hair. He smells afraid again. Stiles pulls back, and Derek’s eyes are wide. 

“Hey—hey,” Stiles starts, gripping Derek’s shoulders, ready to offer some words of comfort when Derek silences him with a kiss. He cups Stiles' cheeks between his large hands and kisses him for a long, long time. 

“Can I stay for a while? I’ll go back to the pack later, but I…” Derek trails off, looking at Stiles like he hopes Stiles will understand. 

“Yeah. Please. Of course you can.” Stiles stumbles over all his words, but Derek doesn’t look like he cares. The look of relief on his face mirrors the one on Stiles'. He can’t believe he’s not alone in this, whatever it is. Because he isn’t so sure it’s a pack thing or a ritual thing, but he’s too afraid to hope. 

*~*

When Derek asks to stay, Stiles' mind doesn’t jump to sex. It’s the closeness to Derek that he’s craving.  

But almost as soon as they’re under the covers, Derek rolls towards him, hands on Stiles' face, his neck, the mark over his heart.

“Stiles, please. Can I—can we?” 

The words have barely left Derek’s mouth when Stiles starts kissing him.  

“Hell yes,” Stiles murmurs against Derek’s lips, kissing him over and over between words. “Yes we can. Of course. What do you need? Tell me what you need. Anything.” Derek’s body is so strong and solid underneath his hands, it can take anything it wants from Stiles tonight. All the sensation coming back into his body, lighting him up from the inside out. The link between them surging, pulsing. Hay un lazo entre nosotros, he thinks, from somewhere far away. 

“Fuck me,” Derek says, pulling Stiles close, his legs falling open as he tugs Stiles between them.  

So no, Stiles wasn’t expecting sex tonight, and he certainly wasn’t expecting Derek to be so insistent on Stiles fucking him. Not that Stiles is complaining that he’s got Derek in his bed, as needy and desperate as Stiles is, Derek’s mouth warm and pliable under Stiles'.

He undresses Derek first. He wants to take his time, eat Derek out, suck him, finger him open until he’s a begging, writhing mess, but Derek won’t let him. “Don’t be careful,” Derek says, eyes dark. “Don’t make me wait.” 

“Okay,” Stiles says, rooting around his bedside drawer, pulling out the bottle of lube. He slicks himself, gazing down at Derek with wide eyes. The carved lines of his muscles look like marble in the moonlight. He looks so desperate and gorgeous that Stiles doesn’t know how he’d say no to anything at this point. He leans down and kisses Derek again, slow and filthy, shifting to line himself up, to ease himself in. The room smells like sex, like desire.  

Stiles loses himself to the feeling of being inside Derek. Being with Derek. It’s embarrassing how far gone he is for this man. He doesn’t know how he’ll be able to step back and keep letting him go over and over again. 

He says Derek’s name like a prayer. Derek Derek Derek. And Derek digs his fingers into Stiles’ arms, pulls him down into a searing kiss. If he had a choice, Stiles would stay here forever. 

He rubs his nose against Derek’s neck, licking and nipping at it, moaning. “Jesus, the way you smell right now, Derek.” When Derek used to bury his face in Stiles’s neck, or odder places like his armpit or the back of his knees and just breathe him in, Stiles was cool with it, but he didn’t get it. Now he does. It’s incredible. The way their smells mix together, the way the smell of Derek’s lust and pleasure mixes in with his natural scent. 

He’s close, so close, when he feels it: an odd pressure at the base of his cock and the overpowering urge to rut as deeply into Derek as he can. To root and lock himself inside of Derek—

“Oh my god, oh my god, you—I’m—" Stiles chokes himself off, the waves of pleasure so overwhelming that he loses the ability to speak. His cock swells and Derek clenches around him, eyes going as wide as he looks up at Stiles in shock. 

“You’re knotting me,” Derek says, voice wrecked and breathless. He doesn’t sound remotely horrified like he should, just surprised. He smells pleased. 

“What should I do? Oh my god, Jesus, I can’t stop it,” Stiles gasps out. Derek’s rim is stretched around him, and Stiles remembers when Derek did this to him. He isn’t going to be able to pull out now, and guilt mixes with the sheer intensity of it as he comes and comes and comes inside of Derek. It feels like it goes on for an eternity; Stiles has never come so much in his life.  

“It’s fine,” Derek urges, coaxing him the whole way through. “Come on, Stiles. You’re doing so good for me.”

While Stiles is coming, he can feel Derek working himself on his—Jesus his knot. It’s so fucking good. Beyond anything Stiles has imagined. Derek rocking his hips, telling Stiles to fill him up, god, yes, just like that, just like that, until he feels Derek tense, come splattering on Stiles’s chest, his stomach.  

When Stiles’ orgasm finally ends, his body is jelly, and he collapses on top of Derek’s chest in a sweaty, sticky heap. “Fuck,” he murmurs into Derek’s chest. “Derek, I’m sorry. I know turnabout’s fair play but still.” 

But Derek strokes a hand through his hair. He makes a soft shushing noise. “It’s okay. I don’t mind. I just wasn’t expecting it.”   

“No shit you weren’t expecting it. How did this even happen? When you gave me some of your werewolf mojo this wasn’t one of the things I anticipated.” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Were you thinking about ways to improve my dick while we were bonded?” Other emissaries got claws. Stiles got a knot.   

“Don’t be an idiot.”

Stiles shifts so his arms are bracketing Derek, propping himself up so he can still see Derek’s face. “Do you think it’s because you knotted me that night, some sort of ritual side-effect?” 

“I have no idea.” Derek sighs, sounding exhausted. His expression is shuttered off now, and Stiles can’t figure out what’s going on in his head. But surprisingly it’s Derek who asks, “Are you okay?”

“I’m kind of freaked out, but, uh. I don’t know, I mean it felt incredible.” It’s weird getting used to this new sensation but he likes how tight Derek feels around him. 

“Yeah,” Derek agrees. 

“I can’t believe you don’t want to do that all the time,” Stiles says, tilting his head. “Man, how do you control it so well?” 

Derek flinches. “It’s not—it’s not hard to control most of the time for me.” There’s something Derek’s not saying, but Stiles doesn’t press. Not when Derek looks closed off again, the open look of surprise and maybe happiness gone, leaving Stiles lost. 

“Hey, hey listen. I’m sorry. Please tell me if you’re not okay?” 

Derek’s glare eases, but he still looks sad. “I’m okay, Stiles. Just tired. It’s been—tonight’s been a lot. Come here.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees. He nuzzles his face into Derek’s neck. “You were planning on sleeping here, so, let’s sleep. This isn’t the most uncomfortable position I’ve ever been in. You good?” 

“I’m good.” Derek squeezes Stiles’ hand, pressed on the mark above Derek’s heart. 

Stiles is dozing off, feeling Derek’s heartbeat slow underneath him. His mind is in that half-dream space where he’s running through what he knows. Stiles can’t piece how those things connect to one another. Stiles had wanted to protect Derek, he’d given him the ability to break through mountain ash barriers, made him stronger. Simple. Derek had given him enhanced smell and the ability to take away some pain—and this? 

It leaves Stiles lost. 

Chapter Text

“I need to ask you a question,” Stiles says, sliding into the booth in Cora’s section. It’s been two nights since they fought the Alpha Pack and Stiles...knotted Derek. It’s three in the morning and Stiles hasn’t been able to sleep. 

Cora flips open her notepad and pulls a pen from her apron pocket. “You better plan on leaving a big tip.” 

“Your brother’s an independently wealthy werewolf! What do you need a big tip from me for?” 

She glares at him. 

“Fine. Big tip. And I’ll have the Home Run with extra sausage. Without the side of judgment please,” he adds as Cora’s expression twists in disgust. 

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t eat the sausage here.” 

“Noted. But I’ll risk it.” 

“Whatever. I’m off in twenty. You can give me a ride.”  

“Done,” Stiles readily agrees.

The whole time he eats, he’s thinking about what exactly he’s going to ask Cora. He winds up leaving most of his food, his pancakes, and bacon disintegrating in a soppy puddle of maple syrup. 

By the time he hands Cora her big tip and she clocks out, he still doesn’t really feel prepared. But when she slides into the Jeep, she doesn’t fuck around. “Okay, what do you want to know so badly that you came to talk to me during a shift in the middle of the night?” 

Stiles breathes in deep, preparing himself. “Before I ask you this, I just want to assure you that I tried harnessing the power of Google to answer this and came away with what I can only hope is a lot of inaccurate information.” Both of Cora’s eyebrows lift to her hairline. “Can you tell me about knotting?” 

“Oh my god ew. I don’t want to hear about your and my brother’s sex life, thanks.”  

“Woah woah woah, I’m acquainted with a great many werewolves these days. Who said it’s Derek?” 

“If it’s not I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

“It’s absolutely 100% Derek, you caught me. But seriously, please, just try not to think about that. Just give me the werewolf sex talk that you all get as kids.” 

She sighs. “I don’t know, it’s the usual shit that parents tell kids about waiting for the right person, but for knotting and being knotted or whatever it’s like a step above that.” 

Stiles’ heart stops beating. “What?” 

“It’s not just something that happens every time anyway.” She looks at him meaningfully. “For the werewolf who’s doing the knotting, they have to really care about whoever they’re doing that with. It’s not something you can just force.” 

Stiles’ mind goes into overdrive again. It isn’t something that just happens, or every time Stiles and Derek had hooked up or Stiles had jerked off since the night of the ritual, someone would have popped a knot. 

Derek caring about him isn’t a surprise, but what if there’s more to it? All the things Derek had given him seem to come back to emotions. Conscious or not, maybe Derek wanted—Stiles cuts off the thought. Too scared of being wrong. 

“You smell really confused right now, by the way. I think you should probably talk to Derek,” Cora suggests. “Just a thought.” 

*~*

He parks in front of Derek’s building and just sits there for a while, hands clutching the wheel. He knows the pack is out getting food, that Derek’s in there waiting for him. It’s only early evening, but the rain and fog make it seem later. 

It’s been a few days since his talk with Cora, but he wanted to take some time to let the pack be up in each other’s business, for Derek and all the rest of them to get some breathing space from the fight. 

And he’s been afraid. Really fucking afraid.

It’s been easier this whole time, in a way, to tell himself a story that makes sense. A story where Derek had just wanted to fuck him, where Derek had fallen in love with someone else, where Derek still just wants to fuck him and all Stiles has to do is never talk about it and Derek might not run away. He’s never had to consider that there might be stories Derek is telling himself, stories Derek is living, that Stiles is none the wiser to. 

The ding of an incoming text breaks him out of his thoughts. It’s Derek. You coming up? 

“Well, this is not embarrassing at all,” Stiles mutters, knocking his head against the steering wheel. 

Yup, he texts back. Just getting my affairs in order. 

Derek’s waiting at the loft door when Stiles makes his way upstairs, a fidgety mess. 

“Hi,” Derek greets, dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a grey henley, hair mussed like he was recently sleeping. Seeing him like this, rumpled, human , never fails to make Stiles desperate to reach out and pull him close. 

“Hey,” Stiles says, rubbing the back of his head. “Uh, I have a bone to pick with you.” 

Derek’s expression turns guarded, but he steps aside to let Stiles in without any protest. 

“So, knotting,” Stiles says as walks into the loft. “It means something.” 

Derek switches on one of the lamps, filling the room with golden light. They’re standing facing one another in almost the same place, the same positions, as the night of the ritual. 

“Yes, Stiles. It means something.” 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“I asked you first!”

Derek gives a tight shrug. “I didn’t think it mattered. I knew when I agreed to do the ritual that there was a risk it would make me vulnerable.” 

Stiles frowns at him. “Vulnerable to what? Horniness?” 

“ Feelings. ” Derek says, giving Stiles an incredulous look. “ My feelings for you, Stiles. It was hard enough last year not letting myself get carried away, but when you’re opening yourself up to someone else, bonding yourself with them, it amplifies all the things that are already there.” 

Stiles is stunned. Derek hadn’t been afraid of the ritual because of the familiar magic or because he didn’t trust Stiles. He’d been afraid of what it would reveal.

Something else occurs to Stiles as he’s processing this. “Oh my god. Is that why you were so weird about fucking me last year? You were scared of knotting me?” As he says the words, he immediately doubts them. Derek hadn’t had feelings for him last year. If he does now, they’re new. 

Derek’s face flushes, and he doesn’t deny it. 

“Wait, I’m right ?” 

“I didn’t want to freak you out,” Derek admits. “And I didn’t want you to figure out what it meant.” 

“Why?” Stiles is more confused than ever. It must have been obvious Stiles had been falling for Derek. “If you had feelings for me, why didn’t you want me to know?”  

Derek sighs, and it doesn’t sound angry or frustrated, just sad. “Stiles, just because someone has feelings doesn’t mean they want to act on them.”

Pain blossoms in Stiles’ chest as soon as the words land. “You had feelings for me you didn’t want to act on.” Everything is taking on a whole new look from where he’s standing now. It’s like he’s been studying a map only to find it’s upside down. 

Derek nods. He’s looking at Stiles with pleading eyes like he’s willing him to understand. “I knew it was dangerous for both of us, but especially you. Turned out I was right.” He lets out a humorless laugh.  

Their conversation from before the fight with the alphas floats back to him. “Jennifer?”

“It’s what I was trying to tell you,” Derek confirms. “ You’re my anchor, Stiles. Jennifer figured that out. She knew how I felt about you and twisted it to control me. To make me think I was… devoted to her.” He spits out the word ‘devoted’, and that same awful drowning sensation washes over Stiles again. It’s guilt , he realizes. But Derek has nothing to feel guilty for. It’s Stiles who fucked up.    

Stiles doesn’t know if he’s ever going to forgive himself for not figuring out what Jennifer had done to Derek. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Derek.” The words feel inadequate.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. How I felt was what made me easy prey.” 

Stiles rubs at his forehead. Derek smells like a million emotions at once, and it’s overwhelming. There’s so much he wants to tell Derek, things he’s going to say, but he has to clarify something now before he loses his nerve again.   

“How you felt?” Stiles frowns, looking up at Derek. “Past tense.” 

Derek shakes his head, his mouth tight. His hand goes to his chest, fingertips circling Stiles’ mark where it’s hidden beneath his shirt. “ Feel ,” he says, like the word costs him dearly. 

Stiles’ heart threatens to beat straight out of his chest. This should feel good to hear, but it feels like Derek is ending things with him before they’ve even really begun. “But you don’t want to feel this way?” Stiles hazards. 

Derek searches Stiles’ face with a level of intensity that makes him squirm. “Last year I didn’t. I thought now you were the one who didn’t want to feel that way.” 

Stiles’ jaw drops to the floor. “ What ? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“It’s what you said to me that night you were drunk and you showed up at my place.” 

Oh god. 

Stiles turns away from him, saying under his breath, “I can’t believe you’re referring to the abandoned rail depot as ‘your place’.” 

“Stiles.”

Stiles runs an anxious hand through his hair. “I only know what you told me after the ritual.” 

Derek sucks in a breath and crosses his arms. “I didn’t know you cared when we stopped sleeping together last year. You never made any moves or said anything when I stopped showing up at your dorm, so I didn’t say anything either. But then that night you…told me how badly I’d hurt you. ” Derek hesitates, and now not only is Stiles convinced he’s about to experience heart failure at the tender age of twenty, he thinks he might throw up. “ Then you said you were over it and there was no reason we couldn’t have fun again,” Derek bites out the words. “That you missed ‘fucking around’ with me.”

Stiles feels like he’s been punched in the gut. He lets out a humorless laugh. “I’m an idiot. You know better than to listen to half the things I say.” 

“You weren’t wrong. I get people hurt.” Derek watches Stiles carefully. “It’s dangerous for me to care about people that way.” 

Stiles goes cold. “You didn’t get me hurt. Derek, what happened to you was terrible. When I said that you hurt me, firstly I was drunk and stupid, and secondly, I didn’t realize that you weren’t just run-of-the-mill bamboozled by a pretty face. You were straight-up magic mind-fucked, okay? I don’t hold that against you, you get that right?”  

“I just want you to be happy.” Derek lets his arms drop to his sides. “I’ve always wanted you to be happy, Stiles. I thought it was best if I kept my distance. I never wanted you to be bound to me like this.” 

“Don’t avoid the question.” Stiles jabs a finger in Derek’s direction. “And what about what I want, huh? Maybe it’s like I told you during the ritual. Maybe I wouldn’t pick anyone else as my alpha, and maybe you’re exactly who I want to be bound to even though you think you’re some sort of toxic waste or something.”  

Derek takes a step forward, searching Stiles’ face in surprise. 

His voice is raw when he finally speaks. “Stiles, when I first met you, I didn’t think there was a chance in hell I could be in a relationship with anyone. I thought sleeping with you would be simple, and it wasn’t. Even after I made myself stop, my feelings were still used against not only you and me but the whole pack.” Derek is looking Stiles straight in the eyes, words steady, but Stiles can smell the terror radiating off him, clear as day now. A metallic, bloody tang to it. “I’ve been trying to let you go for so long, and now with the bond, I don’t know how I can. I didn’t think you still had feelings for me. Or that I deserved them if you did.” 

Stiles shifts closer to Derek. He can still smell and feel Derek’s terror clawing through their bond, but there’s something else underneath it now, something sweeter, more hopeful. 

“Even after I knotted you?” 

Derek nods. “Like I said. Just because you might…care for me doesn’t mean you want to be with me.” 

“I never stopped wanting to be with you,” Stiles admits, taking another step closer to Derek. Above his heart, his mark aches. “I thought you were the one who didn’t want anything else. That’s the only reason I ever would have said we should be casual again. Derek, I suggested you have fun, I was clearly not thinking straight at all. I missed you. So fucking much.” 

Without thinking he’s reaching for Derek, hands skimming his waist, trailing up to his ribs and chest to touch the bite. Derek’s skin is warm through his shirt. 

Stiles is so afraid that Derek will turn and run away.   

But he doesn’t. Derek leans in and takes a deep breath. “I can’t make you any promises. I still don’t know if I’m good for anyone, and I can’t stand the thought of anyone using my feelings for you against the pack again, or hurting you like that again. I love you too much for that.” Derek looks as startled as Stiles feels after he says the words.  

“You love me,” Stiles repeats. “That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“I know,” Derek agrees, surprising a laugh out of Stiles. His hands come up to rest on Stiles’s neck, and they’re so close now their hearts are beating against each other.

“It’s not just because of the bond is it?” Stiles forces himself to ask even as his gaze drops to Derek’s lips, and all he wants is to kiss him knowing that Derek fucking loves him. “I can’t. I can’t just be another person that isn’t giving you a choice.” 

“No.” Derek pulls back. Stiles should have just shut his big mouth. But Derek is still touching him, holding him in place. “I already told you, it can’t make something that isn’t already there. And if you ever want to leave the pack, leave me , we’ll find a way.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Stiles says fiercely. “In case it wasn’t abundantly clear, I love you too, you idiot. And even if I didn’t, I love the pack and this cursed town and the creepy tree that needs our pack to protect it, okay? All of it. I’m here to stay. You couldn’t get—”  

And then Derek is kissing him, guiding him towards the stairs, and Stiles knows what this all means. He’s had the werewolf birds and the bees talk now. 

Stiles had always thought that Derek must have been able to smell the longing on him and known exactly what it meant. But he’d fundamentally misunderstood what Derek’s senses were capable of. They were tools you could wield to get a better sense of the texture of the world around you, but they didn’t give you the necessary context to draw the right conclusions. Because Derek smells like desire all over again, and only now does Stiles know there’s more underneath it, has been for a long time. 

*~* 

“So, the only question is who’s knotting who?” Stiles says after they make their way up the stairs and Derek tugs them both down onto the bed. 

Derek laughs against his lips. “Guess we’ll find out.” 

*~*

It’s been two months, and Stiles has still been struggling to come to terms with what the Nemeton showed him about his mother, his own history. Today is her birthday, and Stiles is finding it hard to keep his mind from Going There. 

Logically he knows he didn’t kill her, but that doesn’t always stop the guilty sadness that seeps into him. Both Derek and Scott think he needs to talk to his dad about it, and he will, soon. He just needs more time.  

After lacrosse practice, he mopes around Derek’s apartment, unable to focus on the paper he’s supposed to be working on for his criminology class or the book he’d borrowed from Deaton about cursed objects. 

“Should I try cursing this lamp?” Stiles asks idly, poking at the desk lamp with the butt of his pencil. “I don’t think that counts as evil magic unless it actually starts hurting people, and I’m pretty sure I’d be able to uncurse it, no problem. Or at least beg Deaton for help.”

Derek sighs, puts his book down as he stands up. 

“Come on, let’s get out of here. I want to show you something.” Derek offers his hand to Stiles. 

*~*

Driving into the Preserve doesn’t bother Stiles anymore. The nightmares have faded, leaving just the odd dream for both him and Derek. Things feel like they’re shifting towards something good, slowly but surely. The last time he went into the Preserve, he realized the sickly sweet edge to the magic was fading, that it was starting to smell cleaner. 

To Stiles’ surprise, Derek takes him to the old Hale house. It looks different—imposing as ever and the front is still a mess but not a burned mess. It looks like someone’s bashed it in places—the wood splintered, gaping holes staring back at them. 

“Your house,” Stiles says, baffled. “It’s…re-ruined?” 

On the way there, Derek told Stiles that the times he’s disappeared, not wanted anyone to come with him, he was meeting with contractors here and even doing work on the landscape and the house himself. Stiles just hadn’t realized the extent of the repairs that had already taken place. And that something else had happened to derail said repairs. 

Derek sighs. “It was one of the first things the alphas did.” 

“Do werewolves as a whole not understand that you catch more flies with honey?” 

Derek shakes his head and walks up the front door, taking the time to unlock it even though there are literal holes in the wall. 

As Derek leads him through the house, Stiles reels over the sharp contrast of the remodeled walls, the new kitchen island that’s broken down the center, and the burned walls and broken floorboards in the living room. He wants to say, Oh, Derek, in sympathy, but he bites his tongue. 

Derek makes a motion for Stiles to follow him, and he leads him to a staircase at the back of the hallway. 

“The alphas wanted to show me what they could do. That they could take anything of mine they wanted. Their brand of submission is—was—entire.” 

“Just when I thought I couldn’t hate them more,” Stiles says as he picks his way down the creaky stairs. “Look, I know that we’re past all this and that we have a pretty strong foundation of trust going on, and I’m super in love with you, but are you going to murder me? Because I can’t help but get serious murder vibes. There’s like one creepy bare lightbulb down here, dude.” 

“Stiles.” 

“Shutting up.” 

Derek flicks on another light switch at the bottom of the stairs, and the room is flooded with light. It’s not a decrepit, burnt-out, nightmarish torture chamber. It’s dark and warm and there are sleek wooden shelves lined with glass canisters, jars full of herbs and flowers, ancient-looking books with beautiful cracked spines and golden leaf titles. 

“What?” is all that manages to come out of Stiles’ dumbfounded mouth. 

“It’s for you,” Derek mumbles. “I know it’s not perfect but— I thought maybe this could be your first step towards—” he waves a hand and then lets it fall by his side. He looks shy standing there, face angled away from Stiles, the tips of his ears turning red. 

Stiles steps forward, starts running his hand along all the surfaces and examining jars on the wall. There’s even a roll of tape and a black marker on the desk for labeling. The thought of Derek carefully picking these things out, these little details all for Stiles, fills him with so much love he can hardly stand it.  

“Derek, you know how much I enjoy pointing out when you’re wrong, so please let me set the record straight. It’s perfect.” 

“I wanted you to have a place of your own that wasn’t your bedroom. Or my roof.” 

“Or your bedroom.” 

“Or my bedroom,” Derek agrees. 

In his mother’s notebooks, she had mentioned a few times how important it was to have a space of your own. A proper space. Stiles has never really minded all his makeshift spaces, but this room is special. He can feel it already. 

“I can’t believe you did this for me,” Stiles says, coming back to Derek, kissing him sweetly. 

“You’re pack,” Derek says gruffly. “My emissary.” 

Stiles blinks, trying to ignore the sting at the back of his eyes. “Dude, I know I'm also your boyfriend and all, but you’ve got a bigger pack than just me,” he points out. “They already get jealous of the special treatment I get.” 

“It wasn’t just you. I was going to make something for everyone.” He crosses his arms and looks around as if he can find the words or an escape route around him. It takes a very long time for him to say, “You were the first.” 

“Why?” Stiles teases.  

He isn't expecting Derek to say, “So you’d have a reason to stay.” 

Stiles frowns. “I already told you! I have plenty of reasons to stay.”

“I know that now! It’s not like I started this yesterday.” Then he adds, quieter, “I would have done it anyway.” 

Stiles bumps his shoulder against Derek. “But maybe you would have started with Erica’s indoor spa?” 

Derek snorts. “Something like that.”

It’s only looking back that Stiles can see the full picture. The Derek he’d first met, angry, frighteningly beautiful, and so afraid. This Derek now who has been slowly softening at the edges, like the worn pages of a paperback. He’s still grumpy and acerbic, but he’s also warm and loving. 

Even without the bond, strong and sure between them, Stiles would have learned all these things, grown to love every piece of Derek. But he wouldn’t trade the contentment and joy that surge through the bond now, the clear, sweet scent of happiness radiating off of Derek, for anything. 

Silently, he takes Derek’s hand and leads him back upstairs, out the door, and into the bright, sun-soaked woods.   

Chapter Text

Epilogue

Things aren’t normal, exactly, but they’ve been settling down. There’s been a few issues the pack has had to take care of—a pixie outbreak in the college rec center, an evil witch working out of the back of Stiles’ favorite donut shop. But nothing as life-threatening and terrifying as the Alpha Pack, knock on wood. The lack of creepy visions from the Nemeton is certainly reassuring. Peter’s mysterious whereabouts remain distinctly unreassuring, but they’ll deal with him if he ever slinks back to Beacon Hills.  

Boyd and Erica are still skittish, especially at full moons in the Preserve, but they’re working through it. Stiles helps them ward their apartment, does what he can to help make them feel safer. Cora gets admitted to Beacon for the following fall semester. Jackson and Lydia announce they’re returning next fall too. Scott, Allison, and Isaac become a real, official thing, and Stiles has been enlisted to help Scott explain the joys of polyamory to their parents over the Christmas holidays. Though Derek will be joining them, he has preemptively refused to lend a helping hand. 

Stiles starts to enjoy being an actual college student who can do his homework and go to extracurriculars without fighting for his life every five minutes.

Derek comes to his lacrosse games, and after one match Coach Finstock lets out a low whistle and says, “Stilinski, if you scored as much on the field as you do off, we might actually make it to the playoffs.” 

Magical bonds and the thrill of dating a beautiful alpha werewolf—his alpha werewolf—aside, it’s pretty awesome having a boyfriend who buys Stiles beers and cuddles him when he’s drunk and makes dinner when Stiles is too stressed cramming for a test that he forgets to eat. He still loves the way Derek says his name, whether Derek’s trying to wake him up in the morning when Stiles has slept through his alarm or Derek’s buried deep inside him, knot filling Stiles so good. But Derek seems to like it best when Stiles does it to him, and Stiles would do pretty much anything to make Derek happy.  

Derek is still working on the house, but sometimes Stiles goes and sits in the room that Derek built just for him. He lights candles, works new spells, makes a new tincture or two, but occasionally he just sits there, taking it all in. He feels his magic thrumming inside of him, strong and sure, along with his bond with Derek. Hay un lazo entre nosotros.

What Stiles had said during the ritual is a truth that grows stronger every day. There’s no other alpha he would choose, and there’s certainly no one else he’d rather be linked to than Derek Hale. 

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