A/N: Diverges from canon right after Scott was bitten in the pilot. This story pulls from all four seasons of canon, but incorporates things in different but familiar ways. I'm putting a trigger warning here for the whole fic, as it will contain references to and discussion of an offscreen non-con situation between Scott and Kali that is highly relevant to the overarching plot. (The situation was NOT initiated by Scott, just to be perfectly clear.)

Chapter 1

New York City streets were difficult to navigate in the best of circumstances. More so in the midst of a torrential downpour, while seeking a place not on any known map. Rain came down in heavy sheets of cold, wet misery, painted a baleful orange by the glow of streetlights. The few pedestrians still homeward bound hustled towards centrally heated brownstones and low-rise tenement buildings. Heads down and skittering across the pavement, they framed a stark contrast to the lone Japanese woman striding through the dark.

Noshiko Yukimura turned a corner without even a glance up to check the signposts. It would have made no difference anyway - these streets were wholly unfamiliar to her. The last time she'd been in this part of town, it had all been forested woodlands. Her only road map this night was the silent thrum of energy cascading outward from some nearby source, each pulse timed to the rhythm of her own heartbeat.

A very nearby source, she realized suddenly. Noshiko paused, waiting for the next ripple of energy to rush over and through her. She retraced her steps half a block once it did. A soft ceaseless crash of raindrops on asphalt muted the normal cacophony of city nightlife. The shadowed alley she entered swallowed even that. All that remained was the slow dripping of the roofs' gutters. Her footsteps left no echoes.

"Hey lady, you lost?"

She ignored the man hunched by the dumpster in a leather jacket two sizes too big for him. Swept her eyes instead down the length of the alley, graffiti-stained concrete flanking a bare brick wall at the far end; a lone lamp above the dumpster washed any hint of color out beneath a sickly yellow haze. Nevertheless, the tug she'd followed three miles across town ended in this singularly unimpressive locale. The pull on her spirit had vanished the moment she'd stepped into the alley.

Noshiko sighed. It wasn't that she was in any way surprised by her surroundings, but she could admit to being a tad disappointed. It'd been over three hundred years since she last had cause to seek out Herne. Was it really too much to hope for that his tastes would have evolved even slightly since then? All that power, utterly wasted on a boor with no sense of theater whatsoever.

"Yo lady, I said, are you lost?"

No, you asked, not said, Noshiko corrected as she finally turned her attention towards the man lurching her way. She winced a moment later. Oh mother Inari, marriage to an academic was clearly taking its toll.

With pale skin and greedy eyes atop a scraggly brown beard, he shambled towards her with a peculiar kind of stutter step that reeked of bravado. If she was about to endure something as unbearably tedious as a mugging right outside of Herne's establishment, she was going to have words with her old friend. And not the ones she'd already intended.

The degenerate stopped short of her though, eyes squinting first before widening in surprise. "Hey, why aren't you wet?" He peered around her in search of a nonexistent umbrella, raked a second look up and down her perfectly dry black ensemble. Stumbled one bravado-free stutter step back. "You're not wet. Not even a little."

Mortals. Place a supernatural amongst them with claws and fangs bared and they'll chalk it up to unseasonable Halloween festivities. Give them one odd, inexplicable detail to fixate on, and they're running for the hills.

"It's an easy enough trick, if you know how," Noshiko said. She allowed the barest hint of her amusement to elevate the corners of her mouth, then spread her hands wide. "Would you like to see another?"

Magic uncoiled slowly in her gut, a long-slumbering dragon blooming forth from her belly. It peeled shadows from the walls and swept up steam from the grate in the ground a few paces distant. Wove them together in a twisting mess of gaping jaws and sinuous intent that loomed above her and between them until he was scrambling, falling backwards into a puddle, crab-walking through the mud and gravel. Only then did he find his feet and race off into the night.

A flick of her wrist banished the illusion and settled her magic back into the pit of her stomach. It did nothing for her unease. She remembered when that sort of thing used to be fun, the effortless whimsy of glamours that could put entire Faerie Courts to shame. Now it felt akin to pulling a muscle. She'd grown…rusty, to adopt a modern colloquialism. The past two decades had made her far too complacent.

It had felt so harmless at the time. The novelty of a stint in suburbia had appealed to her, just one more game of dress up in a long, long lifetime dedicated to staving off boredom in any way possible. It'd been the 90s. It was either that or the grunge movement and frankly the latter had just seemed exhausting.

But then Ken had wanted a child, and she was so enamored of him and his calm acceptance, his endless curiosity. And it had been so long since she'd last dared to try, last hoped that this one might be different, this one might last. Might be eternal. Like her.

And now. And now Noshiko didn't know what she'd been thinking. How she could have possibly allowed herself to be so naive, to become so attached? She knew better, or at least she'd once known better. But here she was, practically useless in her present state and reduced to begging for help from wolves of all creatures. She could not bury another child. It had been three hundred and fifty years since the last time, but she was not ready.

Even an immortal can be crushed beneath the weight of enough mortality, no matter that its not her own.

Noshiko stalked towards the end of the alley. A plain red door had appeared in the far wall once freed of the presence of human eyes. It hadn't been hidden by illusions previously so much as it had simply…not existed. It wasn't a place for humans, but any supernatural being in the city could let it find them if they cared for it to. And right now, Noshiko cared for it to.

She cared too much. That was the whole damnable problem.

Her knuckles conveyed her frustration when they rapped on the door. The djinn they conjured conveyed nothing. His skin gleamed like burnished copper, backlit by the glow of unseen braziers where it peeked out from under his T-shirt. Even the air around him grew dry and parched, and had Noshiko allowed any of the rain to touch her, it would have effervesced from the mere heat of his presence. At least Herne's staff understood theater.

Noshiko let her eyes fill with foxfire. The djinn stared back impassively.

"No violence is allowed within these walls," he said at last. His voice was the rasp of desert winds across ruins. A nice touch.

"None is intended," she assured him. There was an uncomfortable pause as he stared straight through her, viewing her heart's fire and weighing the sincerity of her words. She fidgeted for the first time in decades. The problem with djinn: they saw too much and gave away too little. Finally he nodded and stepped back. The door swung soundlessly open. Noshiko shrugged off her overcoat and tossed it at him as she passed.

"My thanks. Be a dear," she threw over her shoulder as she walked into the club, gratified by the faint shock that flickered across his face. Served him right for staring too long at her intents.

The door closed shut and a wall of sound buffeted her, courtesy of the siren crooning out a power ballad from the stage. It took her a moment to find her bearings. The club - far larger than the spatial limitations hinted at from outside - was packed wall to wall with a crowd that appeared to stretch from their late teens to late twenties at most. But when dealing with the supernatural, 'appearances can be deceiving' is a truism, not just a platitude. She didn't look half a century of her own nine hundred years herself.

And no one here was human.

Noshiko breathed in deep, allowing herself to drink her fill from the well of power saturating the room. There was more of it within these four walls than she'd been exposed to in the entire last twenty years combined. It was enough to make her dizzy, almost intoxicated from the sensations of being this close to this many beings all reeking of magic and the supernatural in their own ways. She could lose herself in a place like this.

Possibly why she'd spent so long avoiding it.

Probably why she shouldn't have. Growing roots was for trees.

As far as epiphanies go, that one came far too late, and so she threaded her way through the crowd. Hobgoblins and barghest on one side, a trio of encantado on her other. Two sylphs blew across her path like tumbleweeds, all streaming blond hair and long limbs tangled up in one another. She found her first wolf lounging on a couch on the far side of the stage.

Young, male, hair an undecided mix between brown and red. A naga on his right arm, forked serpent tongue teasing his ear; an undine on his left, flowing up and around the side of his body as though a river forming itself to the contours of his shore. Even amidst his flirtations, the young wolf's eyes never stopped tracking across the room, every now and then flickering a cold shade of blue. They paused on Noshiko, visibly registering her as someone worth noting before moving away. Interesting. And perceptive.

Her own eyes kept to an equally steady search across the room, settling on a small gathering of tengu where they clustered around a table. A girl held court at the center of them - light brown hair and flushed red cheeks, head thrown back as she downed another shot with a yip of victory. Her admirers celebrated her with a rousing cheer. Not a wolf, that one. No doubt the coyote that was said to run with their pack. Laughing, the girl tossed her hair and cast her eyes in Noshiko's direction. They flared vivid blue as the girl dipped her head with a smirk, one trickster's greeting to another.

The push and pull of the gathered multitudes didn't allow one to remain stationary for long. She let it catch her up and sweep her past the two teens, carrying her to the back of the room. The stage drifted past, a raised dais of shining steel and chrome that dominated the central space. Three men on guitars and a four armed drummer were massed behind the petite blond siren claiming the spotlight. She wore tattered jeans and a black T-shirt that screamed ODYSSEUS CHEATED in garish pink letters. Her face screwed in a vicious snarl at odds with the melody resonating up to the rafters. Its power was blatantly seductive, unearthing long buried heartstrings and yanking them with a total lack of subtlety or finesse. The moment her magic felt Noshiko's attention captured by the song, the room dropped away, replaced by fields of white. The temperature plummeted, the air crisped with the promise of snow, and it was as though Noshiko had never left the mountain she'd first called home. In the span of seconds, her head and heart contrived nine centuries worth of false memories, all centered around a sense of static contentment.

Rude.

Sufficiently rattled, Noshiko pushed her way free of the crowd and up to the far back wall. Perhaps there was more reason than one she'd kept herself from places like this for so long. But this trip wouldn't be for nothing. There was the alpha, behind the bar just as she'd been promised. As young as the two from his pack, but with a bearing to his shoulders that belied his youth. He poured draughts from the tap, efficiently shuttling two beer steins down the length of the counter even as he kept his attention on the kallikantzaros settled atop of a stool in front of him.

She hung back to study him further, preoccupied as he was with his customer for the moment. The diminutive brute snarled something and flailed long, hairy limbs, almost falling from his perch. In response, the young alpha planted his arms wide on the bar and leaned forward, speaking firmly but low enough that even enhanced senses couldn't separate his words from the chaos around them. Whatever he'd said, it was nothing the drunken wretch wanted to hear. He raised on his hind legs and seemed poised to climb on top of the bar when the alpha slammed his hands audibly against the counter. His eyes flashed blood red and he let out a growl that cut straight through the music. All noise and motion ground to a halt, save for twin answering growls echoing from further back in the room. Noshiko didn't have to look to know the wolf and coyote were on their feet, their own eyes a bright shining blue. She did wonder idly if there was ever any need for the djinn bouncer to manifest within the bar, and if not, how that affected his benefits package.

The kallikantzaros wilted under all the attention, though she had a suspicion he wouldn't have been keen to continue his protests even if he were only faced with the alpha's red glare. Dropping from his stool, he scuttled off into the shadows, and the club's merriment resumed without skipping another beat. Nothing they all hadn't seen many times before, no doubt.

Noshiko swept in to take the empty seat before anyone else could stake a claim. The lingering stench wrinkled her nose despite her best attempt at decorum. "A kallikantzaros who can't hold his mead," she said as she settled herself comfortably. "Now there's a cliche."

The alpha had moved on to polishing a row of empty glasses, and he quirked his lips in a smile. Despite his best attempt at decorum as well, she suspected.

"There are worse ones he could be," he said. "What can I get you?"

"Actually just a few minutes of your time, if you don't mind. Not without compensation of course." She drew a flush envelope from inside her jacket and slid it across the bar. "Hopefully five thousand will be sufficient."

The werewolf froze and flicked his eyes from the envelope to her before resuming his chores at a much slower pace. Whatever good humor he'd regained after his confrontation had vanished in an instant.

"I think maybe you're in the wrong place."

"People keep saying that," Noshiko agreed lightly. "I assure you though, it's hardly ever true. You are Scott Delgado, correct?"

He nodded once, still wary. Wiped a dishrag along the length of the bar while studying her. "Can I ask who gave you my name?"

"I honestly couldn't say."

"Right."

It was a wonder she ever bothered to tell the truth. No one seemed to believe her even when she did.

"I know what their name was. But that was a good two hundred years ago and I never bothered to ask what they were calling themselves these days. I heard it from several sources actually. You're all any of us old folk seem to be talking about."

"Remind me to give my publicist a raise." Scott walked a crate of mugs to the other side of the bar without taking his eyes off her. Despite his obvious caution, she'd chosen the right approach. Her chatter was relaxing his tension ever so slightly, though he kept visible distance between himself and the envelope. No doubt to stave off even the presumption of temptation.

"So like a True Alpha," she mused under her breath, though of course he picked up on that as well.

"You sound like you're speaking from experience." He narrowed his eyes over a rising frown as he contemplated her. Crossed his arms over his chest, highlighting the twin black bands of a tattoo around one bicep.

"I may have known one or two in my time," Noshiko admitted. "Its been a long while since the last one I met though. That was…hmm, the sixties, I think?"

"I was told it'd been almost a hundred years since the last one."

"Such a sweet boy," she beamed at him. "I meant the 1760s."

That startled a bark of laughter out of him. Distrust still clung to him like a slowly dispersing fog, but his intrigue was obvious.

"Perhaps we can discuss that as well," Noshiko said. She tapped the envelope with a red painted fingernail. "I promise, I simply wish to discuss a possible business arrangement. Nothing illegal, nothing immoral. The money is yours whether you accept my offer or not, all I ask is that you hear me out."

"I'm well acquainted with the owner of this place," she added when he continued to hesitate. "Herne will vouch for me, and you must know that's not a claim anyone would make in here if it weren't absolutely true."

"You mean Henry," Scott said.

"Of course I do," she agreed, and refrained from rolling her eyes at the hulking behemoth eavesdropping in a booth across from the bar. Honestly, what was even the point of hiding his true nature if he insisted on remaining the most conspicuous person in sight at all times? Henry. Absolutely ridiculous.

Still, her name-dropping served its purpose, and the boy nodded, decisively this time. "There's a back room through that doorway over there that we can use. I'll meet you there in a minute." Scott gestured at a gloom drenched corridor before drawing the attention of one of his coworkers. "Tania, I'm going on break, watch the bar?"

A brown skinned dryad in a mesh tank nodded at him, oleander blossoms shaking free of her leaf-green hair at the movement. Scott slipped by her and out from behind the bar, stopping by Herne - no, Henry's booth. The envelope of cash remained exactly where she'd left it on the bar top. Noshiko sighed, and scooped it back into her jacket. No sense in leaving it lying around for someone else to pocket. Honestly, if she didn't have desperate need of it, she'd find such unflinching moral fortitude incredibly dull. What were they teaching children in school these days?

It came as no surprise when the other young wolf and coyote fell into step on either side of her while making her way to the backroom. (Though she could have done without the boy's attempt to see down her shirt.) Noshiko cast a glance over her shoulder before following them down the darkened corridor. Scott still stood by Herne's booth, but his attention was on the stage. She wondered what he saw when he allowed the siren's magic to do its work.

The three of them had just set themselves down in identical red high-backed chairs when Scott joined them. He took a seat between his two packmates, directly across the small round table from her. The air with which he regarded her was endearingly serious, and she suppressed an inappropriate smile. The venue and occasion brought to mind a few scattered memories of the 1920s, forcing her to fight off a wave of nostalgia. Ahh, now there had been a decade to remember.

"This is Aiden, and Malia," Scott said, indicating the wolf and coyote flanking him. "And I'm sorry, I never caught your name."

"Noshiko Yukimura."

"So you're a kitsune," the other boy - Aiden - said bluntly. She allowed an eyebrow to raise in mild surprise. Her aura was far too controlled to reveal her nature without her knowledge.

"What gave me away?"

"It was a lucky guess," Malia said. "You're Japanese, and he's kinda racist."

Aiden scowled at his packmate. "Bite me, Coyote Ugly."

"Get neutered first."

Scott held up a hand and the two quieted, shifting back into their seats. The boy with more of sulk than the other. "I'm sorry. They don't get out much."

Malia snorted and blew a lock of hair away from her eye. Noshiko bit back a smile at their charade. Oh, she had no doubt their antics were rooted in their youth, but they were not nearly so young as they played at here. Not with the way their eyes never quite relaxed even when casting jibes at each other, with how one of the three always kept their attention trained on her while her attention was on the other two. Their contemporaries probably fell for it often enough, seeing the inexperienced children they wanted them to see. Her own youth, however, had been in a time when twelve year old emperors ruled the world and child brides were led home by their husbands upon the first advent of puberty. She knew how little the candle of age mattered when next to the fire of actual experience.

And there was fire in these eyes. All three pairs burned when they turned to her as one.

"Now, I'd like to hear this pitch that was worth five thousand dollars just for the chance to make it."

"Five gee's, are you kidding me?" Aiden leaned forward. His eyes gleamed, and not for supernatural reasons. "Damn, Scott, why are you the one always getting Indecent Proposal-ed by older women -"

He silenced himself, jaw snapping audibly shut. Noshiko didn't get the reference (all pop culture tended to blur together after a few centuries) but made a note to look it up later based on the effect it had. Malia had risen half from her seat, fangs visible and growling at the pale beta wolf, who looked like he was about to sink through the floor. Scott had gone completely rigid, an impenetrable wall slamming across his face and locking back any hint of emotion.

"That reminds me." Noshiko spoke into the uncomfortable silence, not quite sure what had been said but with a suspicion as to its significance. She drew the envelope back from her jacket and tossed it onto the table, a peace offering and distraction all in one. "You left this on the bar."

Malia took the bait and pounced on it, riffing through its contents with unabashed glee. Her alpha frowned and made to reach out towards it, but the coyote snatched it out of reach.

"You, I will bite," she warned, and a weight tangibly lifted from the room when Scott closed his eyes and shook his head, smiling. The beta wolf finally straightened, color returning to his face though he still cast apologetic glances towards the other boy.

Now that had been no performance.

"The business you wanted to discuss," Scott finally prompted again, when the silence tarried too long.

Noshiko pursed her lips and produced a slim folder. Flipping it open, she slid a photograph across the table. All three leaned in to study it without a word.

"This is my daughter, Kira," Noshiko said. "She's eighteen, a student at St. Margaret's Academy in Manhattan. I'd like to hire you and your pack to protect her."

"Not really our scene," Aiden said doubtfully. "Is this like, an added security detail for her super sized birthday bash kinda thing, or protection from someone in particular?"

"The latter."

"Yeah, we're going to need more than that. Right, Scott?"

The alpha said nothing for a moment, still studying the photograph. Malia and Aiden exchanged glances before turning back to her.

"Yeah, we're gonna need more than that."

Noshiko studied her fingers, laced together on the table in front of her. This was not a conversation she'd looked forward to having, for all that she'd known it would be inevitable.

"A long time ago I made an enemy of another of my kind, though a different type of kitsune than myself. This one was a spirit of the Void, a nogitsune," she explained. Scott raised his eyes, head cocked to the side. Probably listening to her heartbeat, trying to discern a lie. That trick had never been particularly effective where tricksters such as herself were concerned, but he didn't need to know that.

"I eventually managed to strip him of his corporeal form and trap him in a prison of sorts. This was over seventy years ago, and should have contained him for seven times that with ease. But somehow, I'm honestly not sure how, he has managed to break free. And he has made it…known to me, that he is within reach of my daughter, and means to use her to seek his revenge on me."

Noshiko took a breath and spread the rest of the folder's contents across the table. Class schedules, friends, emails, texts, every piece of her daughter's life that could be captured in digital form. Some distant corner of her mind winced as Kira's specter railed at the invasion of privacy, let alone the indignity of sharing it all with complete strangers. But a living daughter was worth weathering the accusations of any number of guilt-born apparitions, and she ruthlessly quashed her misgivings as she continued.

"The nogitsune is a master of possession and illusions. He could have inserted himself into Kira's life by now in any number of ways, and I don't doubt that he has. I can provide means for you and members of your pack to attend Kira's school. From there, you'd be best positioned to figure out how the nogitsune has placed himself. And from there, destroy him."

Silence greeted her proclamation.

"Oh is that all," Aiden drawled. Malia made a moue of distaste.

"Ewww, school. I'm not going."

The alpha said nothing as he continued to pore through the contents of the folder. It took an effort to rein in the unease that was now making a resurgence. One would think nine centuries would be enough to teach anyone patience, but Noshiko Yukimura had never grown accustomed to waiting for anything. She was not a person one said no to. Certainly not a teenage wolf, even if he was alpha to a pack of runaways and delinquents. Resentment blossomed and spilled a bitter aftertaste into the moments steadily ticking by. Supplication apparently was not a look she wore with dignity.

Of all the things she had considered when plotting this course of action, she had not considered he might say no.

"I've had nine centuries to amass several lifetimes' worth of wealth," Noshiko said, forcibly calm and free of any ire. "I can easily ensure you never want for anything after this. Just do this one thing for me."

"Do me one little favor, said the ancient supernatural being." Aiden rocked his chair back on its hind legs, pondering. "That's never ended badly for anyone."

This time, a snarl almost escaped her. The wretched little beast had the gall to smirk.

"Why us?"

Scott's question startled her, so timed as it was to the rhythm of her internal tirade that she actually wondered how much he really did perceive from her scent, her heartbeat. He watched her steadily, giving no clue to his own thoughts, and a measure of respect trickled back into her awareness. It had taken her three times as long as he'd been alive to craft as impassive a facade as he sported now. Perhaps it had been longer than she'd thought since she'd last encountered a True Alpha. She'd forgotten they tended to be as precocious as they were dull.

"You defeated this nogitsune before, trapped it in some kind of cage," he said. "What's stopping you from doing the same thing now?"

"I am not what I once was. Time takes its toll, even on immortals. Too many centuries spending magic frivolously. Too many spent hoarding it to the point of rot." Noshiko shrugged helplessly. "The power needed even just to ferret out the nogitsune's host would be more than I can afford to lose now."

She needed something to fall back on, after all. If worst came to worst, and she was all that stood between him and her daughter…she couldn't face him empty handed.

She would not bury another child.

"You're centuries old and apparently know all kinds of creatures as old and powerful as you," Scott persisted. "Why us? You couldn't find anyone else more experienced, more knowledgeable?"

"No one I could trust," Noshiko said. "I told you. I've known True Alphas. And I know the nogitsune. I know how he and I are alike - both tricksters, both deceivers. His greatest weapons are lies, temptation, guile."

"Other tricksters will always see the lie before the truth," she articulated slowly, glancing at the coyote. Malia stared back unflinching. "We take it for granted that all others lie as easily we do ourselves. And so in any given moment, we're absorbed in unweaving a tangle that exists only in our own minds."

Scott nodded thoughtfully.

"From what I've heard told about you, from what I've seen tonight, the nogitsune won't know how to approach you," she finished. "He will know how to lie to you, he will know how to hurt you. He won't know how to use you. Because he has nothing to offer you, nothing you want. All he has are lies."

"And you're not lying to me now," Scott said as much as asked. "Centuries old, a trickster by your own words, but I can expect that just because your heartbeat remains steady, you're telling the absolute truth, right?"

Oh, but this boy saw better than she'd ever imagined. Noshiko smiled ruefully. "I could lie to you, its true. I suppose all I can ask is that you believe me. How human of us, don't you agree?"

The alpha cracked a smile of his own, but his contained no more humor than hers.

"But we're not human, are we?"

"No," she said. She heard the note of wistfulness in his voice, saw the way his betas both ducked their heads quietly. This was as good a place to ply her trump card as any. "I know you have a son of your own. How one Alpha tried a different approach to securing the power of a True Alpha for her pack. The boy's mother -"

"We don't like to refer to her that way," Aiden growled.

"I usually just call her Dead Bitch Walking," Malia supplied.

"Oh I like that. Simple. Catchy."

Scott silenced them with a glance.

"Your point?" He asked. There was a noticeable edge to his voice, but otherwise his mask remained intact.

Noshiko spread her hands. "The nogitsune is not a foe I can vanquish on my own. Kali is."

He absorbed that silently. His eyes drifted back down to the photograph sprawled amongst the other contents of Kira's life.

"Your daughter. Is she human?"

"I don't know yet. Its years before I expected to know for sure."

She reached across the table and laid her hands atop his. Scott looked up, surprised by the contact and her breath caught ever so slightly in her throat. She hadn't expected how young he would look. Hadn't expected it to remind her of how young she'd been, when she'd born her first son so very very long ago.

How could it possibly still hurt this much nine hundred years later?

"Give me those years, young alpha, and I will see to it that your son gets the same. I swear it. No child should ever be hunted simply because of who their parent is."

"No child should ever be hunted period," Scott growled. She smiled sadly at his vehemence.

"Neither of us is powerful enough to make as grand a claim as that. Let's settle for what we can."

He nodded and reclaimed his hands, making another quick perusal of the file. "I'd like three other members of my pack with me at the school. You can make that happen?"

Noshiko straightened. And just like that he'd made a decision and on to business, eh? Ah, the speed of youth. His packmates shifted to attention at his sides.

"I just need names and ages to start. It will take a few days to get everything together."

"Myself, Malia, Brett and Liam," Scott rattled off. "Make Malia and I seniors, Brett a junior and Liam a sophomore. Just pick some last names yourself, less chance of pinging some profile somewhere. Even Delgado won't work if I'm going to be in some school database."

"I should be there too, or at least take Ethan," Aiden protested. "Liam and Brett will be useless. They're too busy comparing dick sizes to be any help ever."

Scott held up a page from the file. "You noticed the school uniforms, right?"

The other boy took one look and flopped back with a snort. "Yeah fuck that, I'm out."

"Seriously?" Malia groaned. "Okay, we need to ask for more money. Scott, make her give us more money."

"How do you get more than unlimited money?" Aiden asked. He looked at Noshiko for confirmation. She stared back, bemused. "That was what the deal was right? We all heard it? Unlimited money, basically. Can we get that in writing?"

The alpha shook his head, sighed and stood. "How do we get in contact with you?"

"Use this email address." She slid a business card across the table. "My husband is aware of my true nature and the nogitsune. Our daughter is not. We would prefer to keep it that way as long as possible, though of course if revealing the truth becomes necessary to ensure her safety, there's no decision to be made."

Scott nodded, gathered her file and pocketed the card, the other two rising beside him. "We'll be in touch then. I'm sorry to leave so abruptly but its getting late, and the club's shutting down."

"And you have a child and a pack to get back too. I understand."

"And you never came back from break," Aiden muttered. "Tania is gonna be pissed."

The two betas' banter trailed off as they drifted into the hallway. Scott lingered in the doorway.

"Where was the nogitsune imprisoned before he broke loose? Was he in New York this whole time?"

Noshiko shook her head. "No, my family and I only moved here a few years ago when my husband took a teaching position at Columbia. I originally buried the nogitsune beneath a druid's oak in a small town in California, back during World War II."

"What was the town's name?"

She blinked, taken aback by the unexpected intensity behind his question. "Beacon Hills, why?"

Tension thickened in the doorway around him as palpably as a sudden pressure change. There was something of significance at play here beyond what she could see, but she was at a loss as to what exactly that might be.

"And you have no idea how the nogitsune got free?"

"No. I don't see how it could have, based on the way it was imprisoned. My only conclusion is that someone somehow let it loose, perhaps knowingly, more likely not."

The alpha swallowed convulsively. His voice came out disturbingly hoarse. "How long was it in Beacon Hills, do you think? After it got free? Before it came here."

Noshiko shrugged. "I couldn't possibly venture an estimate. It could have been days, it could have been years. I'd be more inclined to guess the former. The nogitsune feeds on chaos. Its been content to bide its time here in New York, as it has a larger goal in mind. But in a place like Beacon Hills…"

She paused, contemplative. "Let's just say if the nogitsune had been inclined to tarry in Beacon Hills for any length of time, it most likely would have made the news."

Scott mulled this, though she had no idea what insight he hoped to glean from any of that. "Does any of this hold some significance for you?"

"Not at all," he said, visibly forcing a contrived farce of a smile to his face. It couldn't have rung anymore false if he had said it around a mouth full of fangs. "Its just you never know what information might be useful. Goodnight Ms. Yukimura."

"Good night, Scott," Noshiko called softly after him. She remained alone in the dark, the wan fluorescents overhead having dimmed automatically with his departure. Herne's not so subtle way of kicking everyone out, no doubt.

The True Alpha, a creature of much vaunted honesty and moral integrity had just lied to her. Why? To what purpose and what did it mean?

Or, she was forced to consider as her own words came back to haunt her, was she simply perceiving a tangle that existed only within her own mind?

Noshiko sighed and made her way through the darkness, out the hallway and across the large (now empty, echoing) main room. Only a few stragglers remained, the band packing up their instruments, a vodyanoy mopping up a spill in the corner. She emerged outside into the cold, brisk chill of the four am hour. Dawn was still a ways away.

She lingered in the alley, just beside the elusive red door that was sometimes there, sometimes not as the few still inside emerged one by one. They each cast her an odd look as they left. It wasn't the kind of place one hung around after the party ended.

She'd never much been one for introspection, else she might be forced to read some deeper meaning into that.

Finally, it was just her and the door. And then it was just her and Herne, no, Henry, his vast bulk filling up the space beside her. No one exceptionally noteworthy in this guise, just a large, overweight bald man in a thick black coat. Not noteworthy but always noticeable. He'd never learned how to be someone you overlooked. At least not the way he studiously overlooked her now.

Henry reached up to the corner of the door and peeled it away from the wall, the wood losing shape and dimension as it came loose, til it was nothing but a sheet of red fluttering in the wind. He rolled that up and the thick tube became a gnarled oak walking stick. The space the door opened to was banished for another day, back to wherever it was that unwatched places go. It would reappear wherever he decided to open the door tomorrow night, if he decided to open it at all.

"I keep meaning to place a NO LOITERING sign outside." Henry finally deigned to glance at her from beneath thick, bushy beetle brows. "Its just there's so rarely a need for it."

Noshiko tilted her head and smiled. "It would have been rude to come all this way and leave without even saying hello."

"No ruder than just showing up out of the blue after three centuries and roping my favorite bartender into one of your games," he sniffed. "Not so much as a phone call in advance."

"But Henry," she protested lightly. "How would you even recognize me otherwise?"

He shook his head and shuffled down the alley, leaning heavily on his walking stick. She offered her arm at his other side. He took it with a grumble.

"It's 2014, Noshiko," he said when they paused to allow him a moment's rest. "Not sure if you missed the memo, but it turns out the world's actually round, not just a big flat gameboard for you to move pieces about at your whim."

"The world's whatever we choose it to be," she countered. "You understood that once."

He snorted. "Follies of a misspent youth."

She pulled away as they reached the alley's mouth. He could call a cab from here, she thought, overwhelmed for a moment by the struggle it took him to sidle past her to the curb. We are none of us what we once were. Lightning flashed overhead, and for the briefest of seconds the shadow he cast loomed large and proud on hind stag legs, antlers branching from his head up to the sky.

"You've grown boring in your old age, my friend," was all she said. "Do yourself a favor and at least buy an aggressively inappropriate sports car. I'm told it helps."

She set off down the sidewalk through the rain, smiling ever so slightly when his voice rang out behind her.

"Always good to see you, Noshiko."

The sour note in his baritone declaring it anything but.

But then, if old Herne himself could pick up sarcasm at this late hour, there might yet be hope for all of them.

For now, dawn was coming fast, and she had moves left to make before this night was through.

And she hadn't even started baking for tomorrow's PTA meeting.