The Waking

Part 1

Her fingers swept through her closet, traced the line and texture of the fine clothes, the silks and linens and labels that once defined her but now were just window dressing. And none of it relevant. Not today.

Instead she turned her attention to the high chest of drawers; a pair of jeans, a black pair of boots with knotty buckles and a dark shirt. The black leather jacket with the mandarin collar and after a moment of hesitation, the gloves. It would be cooler by moon rise.

It was January, her first semester home from college. She was staring at a raging bonfire in the middle of the frozen woods, wondering how she had gotten there and worrying how she would get home. The tips of her fingers were blue with cold as she squatted to warm them, hoping maybe if she stayed still someone would find her before morning. Someone did.

He watched her from across the fire, finally slipping quietly to her side and taking one of her frigid hands in his own. He might have been considered handsome, if he didn't inspire terror in its purest form in her. He had a strong jaw and those incredible Hale cheekbones. Tonight, the dimple in his chin was covered by the light goatee he grew to make himself appear older than the whelps in his pack. As soon as she saw his eyes, she knew exactly what had happened. She would know those eyes, even if he had been in wolf form. Especially in wolf form.

She dipped her head and scowled. "You."

"Me. Again." He had the grace to at least play the part of penitent with a dip of the head and a downward cast of his eyes. "I apologize," he said, rubbing his warm hands over hers in a brisk motion, "I'll try to be more specific in my compulsion next time. Hat, gloves, scarf...can't have you catching your death of cold, now can we?"

"You're an asshole," she replied.

"Among other things." His head nodded in acknowledgment, then almost seemed to pout as he considered her. "You've grown into quite the lovely young woman, haven't you?"

She flipped her long red hair over her shoulder and tilted her head to regard him with condescending tolerance. "I've always been a lovely young woman, thank you."

"You were always a lovely girl. But you've grown...up."

"You're starting to sound like somebody's creepy old uncle," she smiled, a terse upward jerk of her lips that indicated no actual amusement whatsoever. "Oh wait, you are somebody's creepy old uncle."

Her teenage vanity had, in the intervening years, given way to a wolfish pragmatism so she left her make up sparse, her hair a simple straight braid trailing down her back. She had tried cutting it once, in college, and they hadn't said anything. Wolf code for disapproval. Stiles had said she looked adorable which was just as bad. Now the long red strands hung nearly past her waist. She suspected someday she would be like a white haired lady Godiva, tramping through the woods with leaves and brambles going unnoticed until she looked as wild and unkempt as any proper harbinger should be. In the mean time, she maintained a certain level of decorum for the sake of her professional life. Predicting the dead, favoring the victor, holding the metaphysical space didn't so much pay the bills as get you a luxury suite in the Beacon Hills psych ward. So she squandered her family's wealth and played at being a theoretical physicist, collecting awards like Stiles collected bowling trophies. It was, technically, cheating. If she sat still, let her mind slip into the cracks between her human world and the place the Morrigan inhabited, all the secrets of the universe practically did a jig for her. It was the mental equivalent of anabolic steroids, she supposed, but it would have been selfish of her to be stingy with her gifts. At least that's what she told herself in the many long lonely nights she spent awake, just her and her insomnia.

She noticed, on occasions like these, when the pack's emotions ran high and their wolves were near the surface, that the ridged white scars on her rib cage ached. It wasn't painful, exactly, more like an electric current looking to complete the circuit. That part of her that would never have a physical form reaching out toward its kin.

His tongue flicked along the scars and suddenly her skin seemed too small to contain her. She choked and gasped as he traced each one in turn, the only man she ever let touch them let alone see them. She reached over her head and gripped the headboard to keep from pushing his hands away as he splayed his palm over her rib cage, his fingers taking on the contours of the claws that put them there. If she had been wolf, she would have whimpered and crawled to him on all fours, ears back in submission and tail poised in invitation.

He growled. He actually growled as he flipped her over, his breath a warm chuff on her neck as he nuzzled her, hands maneuvering her hips into position.

"You better not be sprouting fangs back there," she said, her voice cross even as she leaned into him. "Wow," she muttered, "this position is taking on a whole new meaning."

"I've got better control than that," his voice was warm on her ear, his body hot as he angled himself across her back, his own hips coming into alignment with hers.

"Control, huh," she bit her lip against a smile, turned her head to stare over her shoulder into eyes that glowed a hot Alpha red. "How much control?"

They all had control, she knew, but she trusted his so much more than she trusted Peter's. Even more than she trusted her own.

She didn't know how long she stood in the entryway staring at the key to her SUV, but day had dimmed to gray twilight. She felt, for a moment, the shadow of him with her. Many hims, and once or twice a her, wrapped Lydia in a tight psychic cocoon. While Lydia knew Alphas were just as often female, it had never occurred to her that they would also seek out her particular brand of gift giving. Not until the first one had come to her, the woman tall and shockingly blonde and Lydia had been unable to say no.

"I'm a good Alpha, but I'm getting old," she had said. She laughed nervously, like a blind date revealing their income. Something that couldn't be easily changed but shouldn't have to be apologized for. "Well, not that old, but old enough that other packs think they can come pick my bones."

She had stared at Lydia in that way the wolves had of taking someone's measure before she took a deep breath and verbally rushed forward.

"Grant me your gift of sovereignty so that I can hold my territory a little longer. Until my daughter is old enough to lead." Lydia could hardly turn down such a reasonable request. So she hadn't. But encounters like that were a one time occurrence, a pebble in her stream of consciousness. Her encounters with the Hales were more like surfing a white water rapids. It was Titanics and icebergs and ripples the size of continents.

A last glance in the hall mirror showed a woman in her late 20's with red hair pulled back severely from a round, pretty face, but nothing more. From behind her there was no glow of wolfish eyes, no flash of dark choppy hair, no scruff on a face far too delicate to be so dangerous. She closed her eyes and slid into that moment between the first breath and the last to make sure it was her own fear of being found out that put the Hale pack Alpha in her front hallway. All that came to her was the weeping power of the one who was dying, like water leeching through rock, and her own guilty conscience. She was the Hale family banshee. Someday she would feel all of them wash over her in one way or another, but tonight was not Derek Hale's night.

It had been twelve years since the power had come to her like a lover stealing through her window in the dead of night. It had brought ten years of sticks and leaves and blood and bonfires. Ten years of breathless lovemaking in the stark elegance of a spartan bed in a spartan loft. Ten years of being the little banshee passed around at the party until Lydia Martin had grabbed the power of the Morrigan by the throat and forced her to submit. She was done being used, even by herself.

"Why do you let them use you like that," he asked, dabbing gently at the fresh blood over her eye.

"I don't 'let' them do anything. It just...happens." She tried to twist away from him but he gently caught her chin, turned her face to his.

"I won't even pretend to get this hold they have over you, but the Lydia Martin I know has never let anything 'just' happen to her. Even that night," she saw him swallow hard, as though he could swallow the memory itself, "Even that night I found you on the lacrosse field, I saw how hard you struggled. You fight," he grabbed her chin again when she turned her face away, "you fight even when you don't have to."

She had wanted him to scream at her, have one of his Aderal fueled hissy fits. She expected him to be loud and angry and tell her with broad sweeping gestures that "this is the last time, I swear to God Lydia, the last time" like every other time before she had called him crying and angry and he had ridden to her rescue in his patrol car like a knight with bubble gum lights. The calm was unnerving.

She leaned forward and pressed her head against his shoulder, the cheap fabric of his uniform jacket itching against her skin. He sighed and wrapped his arms around her. She tried not to shudder when he grazed the places that really hurt.

"I should arrest them," he said quietly, after a moment. "I can do that, you know. I have handcuffs."

"On what charge? Consensual supernatural sex?"

He pushed away from her and stood up, flinging his arms in the air in frustration. One hand came to rest on his gun belt, the other pointed at her.

"This...THIS isn't consensual." His hand sketched wildly in the air, like he was coloring her in. "Look at you. Jesus freakin' Christ Lydia, look at you!" She couldn't see herself, but had seen herself on other full moons, mud in her hair and scratches on her bare skin. It had started in high school with a two day walkabout and now happened whenever the pack needed a little psychic boost. A little witchy energy. The wolf would call. And she would come. And her favor would guarantee him victory. Derek would send her home in a cab with apology in his eyes. Peter would send her home with blood on her clothes.

"This isn't from him." She gingerly touched her eye. She wasn't lying, that particular injury was from her own carelessness. The others, beneath her clothes, oozing and aching, were a different matter. "I just need to learn to watch where I'm going in the dark." And perhaps learn what every fairy tale taught every child from the time they could pick up a book; don't go in the woods at all after dark.

"What you need is to find somewhere they can't find you. Work some of your mojo and create a psychic restraining order or something."

The leaves crunched under her feet, her breath plumed in front of her nose even as she resisted putting on the gloves. Cold hands were such a human concern when she was surrounded by beings whose fur always warmed them just beneath the surface of their own skin. She walked through the grove, each tree in winter sleep but the Nemeton. It dozed, a capricious beast on a long chain. She walked past each inch of ground that had tasted her blood and Peter's seed, feeling its awareness on her. A subtle shift in the currents of power, a ripple unaccounted for, a slip stream of scorn.

She could sense the others as she approached. Like hearing familiar voices in a crowd, she could pick each one out of the buzz of supernatural white noise. Derek's pack, and Scott's. Even Stiles, whose energy looked like a manic Jack Russel terrier running circles around the agitated wolves, but felt like cool, clear days in the quiet woods. She would need him tonight, and most likely deny herself his comfort. She knew they could insulate each other against the grief of the packs, but she would take far more from him than she could give. That had always been the nature of their relationship.

She had tried leaving. Had tried hiding with Jackson in London, had tried research at CERN in Switzerland, had tried an internship in the remotest parts of East Bumblefuck, Australia but she had either felt something inside of her withering, like a flower longing for the sun, or that same something had called to the local packs like some kind of metaphysical dog whistle. She enjoyed a good romp as much as the next girl, but choice was not something she was willing to give up. The inevitable full moon festivities finally sent her to ground with the two lovers who at least put forth the veneer of courtesy. They all wanted a piece of her, and some were determined to take it in chunks.

Peter wasn't unskilled or uncaring. She'd had more callous encounters with boys at college, in the backs of cars and pressed up against the cool tile of the sorority house bathroom. It was the casual acceptance, on both their parts, that he would call and she would come that infuriated her.

"Do you know what tonight is?" he asked that first full moon, that January she had found herself cold and afraid in front of a bonfire in the woods. He slowly twirled a strand of her hair around his finger, fascinated by the play of light and shadow on the long strands.

"The night before you get served with a restraining order?"

"It's the Wolf Moon," Peter was always a firm believer in the ignore it until it goes away school of thought, so he pressed on as though he didn't hear her. "Traditionally it's our night of initiation. But," he shrugged, his mouth forming that almost pout again, "that hasn't happened since the fire. Nowadays everyone is off trying to be human, going to college, pretending to be real boys and girls. Meanwhile, they're neglecting their duties here." His voice took a hard edge, no longer playful, barely restraining his anger, "To their pack. To their territory. The magic is weak, little witch, with only me holding our territory."

She had been trying to ignore that little detail about herself, like a blemish she thought no one else would see if she didn't acknowledge it herself. That link to their world that Peter Hale had kindled in her with a bite, that she couldn't sever no matter how hard she tried. He had flayed her open and something else had crept in to replace the life that had flowed out.

First it had been the banshee. Then the power matured and she had become the Morrigan. She should have become some frightful creature, but she was still only a pretty red head with excellent fashion sense and an uncommon interest in physics, math, and dangerous men.

The banshee made her a Geiger counter for death, but the Morrigan took her banshee power and magnified it through a kaleidoscope. It became her ability to influence victory, to draw power from the telleric currents into herself and act as a conduit for the energy that sparked a wolf's 'Alpha-ness'. The Morrigan's power is what made her a highly sought after commodity. Hunted, even. And because the Morrigan was a sexual creature, there was only one way to transfer the power. That had been just an added bonus, until word got out about the Hale banshee. Then it became just an added bonus for anyone else. For Lydia, it was a liability.

Lydia felt the power flare up inside her whenever there was any conflict that might require her intervention. Her spider sense was all about sex and violence. Usually she tried to hold it at bay with visions of sines and cosines, like a teenage boy asked to go to the blackboard in the middle of a Selena Gomez fantasy. A girl sometimes had to play hard to get, even when she felt like she had just downed a tab of supernatural Ecstasy with a Viagra chaser.

He angled himself in front of her and took her other hand, cupping it between his own two and blowing warm breath on it, never taking his eyes off hers. It was uncommonly chivalrous from a werewolf whose moral compass tended to spin with the direction of the wind.

"You know there are a dozen ways to kindle magic in the land. I could rip your throat out right now, let your life bleed out at the Nematon and that would sustain us for years."

Her already pale skin blanched and Peter laughed. A short, hard, mirthless sound. "But, that would be short sighted of me. And messy."

Collecting herself, Lydia jerked her hands roughly away from him and tossed her hair back, out of his reach. "You have no idea." The offhanded way she could discuss her own brutal end used to startle her at first, but she had spent the past two years learning to tap the secrets he had unwittingly given her the key to. Killing her would assure a prosperous year for him and the stragglers of his pack, maybe even protect them for a decade or more, but it would be killing the golden goose. Allowing that much energy to bleed back into world all at once would require a balance, an offering on Peter's own part. Killing the Morrigan had consequences. Whether he gave it willingly or the Universe took it from him was irrelevant to Lydia. She was satisfied knowing if it ever came down to it, karma was her bitch.

Ahead of her, the house was a dim silhouette surrounded by the solemn comfort of trees. Restored to some of its old dignity, it was a harbor for a pack that was learning to live in a new kind of world. While she lived and worked her magic here, it was, for all intents and purposes, hallowed ground to the wolves. Protected space. Her gift ensured there was always a Hale on Hale land, or at the very least a champion to protect what was theirs.

On the porch, she caught the glint of metal, a flicker and shine that winked at her at an even pace from one end to the other. When her foot falls were close enough for a human to hear, Stiles turned to her, his arm extended to support himself against the porch rail, the other resting habitually on his belt buckle. They stopped and stared at each other in awkward silence, his mouth a thin, tight line, his deputy's badge reflecting the moonlight. There was something ancient in his eyes now and it made him look sad. Haunted.

His hands traced circles on her bare shoulder. She looked at the moon filter through her window to glint off the newly minted badge tossed and forgotten on the desk, the shoes kicked to the four corners of the room, his uniform shirt hanging off her lampshade. She lay in his arms, oddly calm, and knew Stiles was tracing Druidic glyphs on her without even realizing it.

It had been a mistake. She knew that the moment he slid into her. She knew it the moment she felt his tongue slip between her lips and he had cupped her face like it was something fragile. She knew it as he backed her toward the bed, each step like a question mark that hung between them until she was on her back and his hands were already up her skirt and inside her panties even as he raised himself on one elbow and looked into her eyes. Really looked at her, pressed his lips to her ear and asked "Are you sure?" It had been a mistake to nod assent because if she had said yes, the tears would have started and not stopped until every Alpha of every pack was dead. A cock between her legs was a small price to pay to keep her friends safe, and Stile's cock was the only one who never wanted anything more from her than her. It was a mistake, she knew, as he moved gently inside her, because it would be a bitter memory every full moon that her Alpha called and she went to him.

It had been a mistake at twenty one and it was still a mistake at twenty three when his lips finally found the bruised and scabbed flesh left by the full moon and he had stopped his slow and unhurried rock toward her climax, his tongue sliding over his teeth as he tasted the blood on her.

He rolled off with a sigh, the distance between them profound as he pulled her against him, tucking her head under his chin and holding her against a chest that had filled out in adulthood to solid and masculine proportions.

"I won't be that guy, Lydia," he had said. His fingers traced, up and down, thumb to finger and around in complicated patterns.

"I have loved you since I was eight years old, but I won't be just one more guy who uses you." She felt the upward sweep of his fingertips, a downward motion of his thumb and wondered what he was tracing. Was it protection? Love? Regret?

"Did Scott call you?" His hand left the porch rail to scratch nervously at the back of his neck. The hundred or so voicemails she hadn't returned hung like a huge white elephant between them. Stiles had the tenacity of Job, and she knew that even if she had to let him go, getting him to let go of her might take more magic than the both of them had, combined.

She cocked her head at him, eyes huge in the cast off light from the house as she waited for him to mentally catch up.

"Oh, right, yeah. I guess no one needed to call you, huh?" He turned toward the door, back to her, uncertain whether he should invite her in, realizing it wasn't his place to, and then realizing it didn't matter all almost simultaneously. "I guess, I guess if you're here, that's it. Then?" He looked uncomfortable, more awkward than usual. Lydia didn't know if it was her presence or his place at a death bed vigil that brought back some of his teenage mannerisms, but even standing still he seemed to vibrate. He looked unsettled and caught in his own skin.

"I, uh, I don't suppose," he turned and looked at the door again, swiveled his head around to look at her a moment before his body caught up. "I don't suppose you're here to, uh, to help him? Are you?"

She mounted the stairs, aware of each scuff of her boot on the tread, each consciousness holding vigil behind the door, and the dying man in the parlor whose energy was slipping like a waning moon.

"I," Stiles began as she mounted the last step to come level with him, "I don't know what I'm supposed to tell them. I'm an Emissary, and I don't have any answers."

"Deaton?" she asked. She didn't sense him, and doubted he would come. He had been trying to step aside as the Hale Emissary for years, and had no love for Peter. He would consider this a life skills lesson for Stiles. Deaths happened in packs all the time, though not usually from a wasting illness. He would have mixed his potions and prayed to his gods, as a favor to the Hale family, but in the end it mattered as much as leaves tossed in a fast moving stream.

Stiles shook his head. "Nothing. But, I think he considers Peter to be a waste of fur, honestly."

She smiled, a rueful upward turn of her lips, before bowing her head against his. There was apology in both of their eyes. "You don't need to tell them anything. I've got this, tonight." She approached the door, looking at him over her shoulder before putting her hand on the door knob, "It's the Wolf moon, after all."

Peter bowed his head, his hands clasped in front of him as he balanced on his haunches.

"I'm obviously going about this all wrong." He raised his head and tried to smile at her, but it came off as mocking. Lydia would know, she spent most her life mocking the world around her, too. The only difference between his mockery and hers was that while he wanted to be smarter than everyone else around him, she knew she was.

"You might consider at least dinner and a movie before suggesting blood play," Lydia tossed her hair again and tilted her head at him, her contempt obvious. "In your case dinner, a movie, and a small expensive car."

"Listen to me, Lydia," He ignored her again, his voice taking on the urgency of a man running out of time. Lydia considered it the equivalent of a boy crashing and burning in front of his frat brothers. She'd seen enough of those, had been the cause of enough of those, to be well versed with the signs.

"I'm listening," she said in an almost sing song voice, "But all I hear is blah blah blah." She focused on a point just beyond the fire, realizing she was warm now, her power like a furnace slowly stoking inside her.

He grabbed her arm, pulled her to face him. She looked him in the eye, pursed her lips and slid her gaze around him as though he weren't there. His hand tightened on her and she flicked her eyes back to his, now glowing blue and reflecting the fire light. It wasn't so much a redirect of her attention as her challenge to him to hurt her more. The power of the Morrigan swelled inside her, and he felt it, glancing quickly at his hand where it gripped her arm before staring at her face again.

"Listen. To. Me." he punctuated each word with a little shake. "There are," he paused, his head moving back and forth as though searching for the right world, "There are things out there. Things that know our power is scattered, that know I'm not the true alpha on this land, that know I'm like a head with no limbs. Scott, and Isaac, and Cora, and all your furry little friends will come home from playing dress up in their human skins and find nothing." He hissed the last word, as though it were too horrible to be spoken aloud. "The Nemeton will be razed and my pack, YOUR pack, will be scattered like ashes. All I need," his voice took on its more normal cadence, as though he realized that once again he was trying to catch a fly with vinegar instead of honey. "All I need is the grace of the Morrigan, your favor, to hold the land until Derek or Scott get back."

As he explained to her the gravity of the situation, he moved more and more into her personal space, until he barely needed to lean forward to press his lips to her ear. "I've been inside your mind, being inside your body would be, anti-climactic, I think."

"That's hardly a selling point," she answered, turning her face to the moon. "Besides, you would have left me for dead."

The house, quite honestly, had been impossible to rebuild. They had left the porch and the facade but stripped the timbers behind it to the foundation and started over. Sometimes, if she caught a draft just right, Lydia thought she could still smell the charred wood.

He lay in what would have been the side parlor in the original house, his face unchanged from the first time she saw him; handsome, frightening, all swagger and teeth stalking her from across the lacrosse field while she stood there wearing a pretty party dress like a shroud. It had been twelve years since his attack had burned out part of the human in her and left something else confusing and terrifying. It had not been just twelve years but twelve hard years by anyone's standards. Still his werewolf metabolism had kept him as unaged as Dorian Grey even as he stood with one foot over the threshold of death.

His eyes snapped open when her scent entered the room, tracking her with a predatory intensity, but he lacked the strength to do anything else. Not even give her one of his sardonic grins. Lying on a couch, his spirit a small desiccated thing, he could still strike a chord of terror in her little banshee heart.

She felt Scott come into the room behind her, his energy like a boulder in an eddying stream. She let it fill her before sending it back to him, bolstered and heavy with power. She was not Scott's banshee, and his standing as a True Alpha had given him a power that seemed incompatible with hers. It was a small blessing she was thankful for since it had managed to preserve her friendship with Allison all these years. Instead, she could roll around in Scott's energy like a dog in the grass, sharpen it, change it, and give it back to him a little stronger for its brief association with her.

The McCalls and the Hales were full, strong packs now. But the other members would be in their homes living their human lives tonight. It was this, the inner circle, who managed the death of one of their own. She felt Cora, back in the kitchen, like sensing a deep, wide quarry. Isaac was with her, a cool reflective lake. He worried Lydia the most, never suited to be an Alpha, barely a beta, if his pack floundered he would be condemned to the life of an Omega.

Derek. Derek was the cliffs standing before the ocean, equally holding it back and being eroded by it. She breathed in his power and it skittered along her spine to tingle in places best left unmentioned in polite company.

"Well," she said, marching purposefully across the loft, her high heels clacking against the wood floor. "This at least is an upgrade from rolling around in the leaves." She tossed her pocketbook on the couch, stared at it a moment to assure herself nothing would soil it, and kicked off her Manolo Blahnik high heels. Derek's eyebrows quirked when she went from a leggy 5'7" to 5'3" in .2 seconds.

"Have you even HAD sex in the middle of the woods in January?" She paused, considering who she was talking to, her bright red lips pursed together in a mew of thought. "Of course you have. That's not the point, the point is, it's cold, and crunchy, and I don't enjoy it. So," she scanned the room then made a beeline to inspect the bed. "I hope you at least changed the sheets."

He watched her, probably uncertain whether to be amused or aggravated. "You left the door open," he said.

"I know. It's heavy. I didn't want to break a nail." She looked at her perfect manicure, buffed off an imaginary piece of lint and waited.

His face settled on bemused as he walked past her and slid the door closed himself with little effort. She raised her eyebrows at him when the lock snicked into place.

"I have a pack," he explained, "Who don't always respect my privacy." She shrugged, but it was a fair enough reason to be locked in with Derek Hale. It would have been unfortunate, too, if Stiles decided to take this night to come rescue her or something. But she knew where he was on these full moon nights. Sitting in his living room with a bottle of Jack and a scowl.

Inside her, the Morrigan was a tempest trying to break free. She wondered if this is what it felt like for Scott and the others, when they couldn't control their wolves. Sixteen cups of coffee and an ounce of meth. She made herself slowly work her blouse free of her waistband in a show of measured control.

"So, how does this work," she asked, giving the mattress a quick bounce and smoothing out the wrinkles in the comforter. It looked clean enough, and he'd had enough decency to pull the comforter up in a mock attempt at making the bed. She wondered if he hid his dirty socks and underwear under it, too, like any other self respecting bachelor. "We just bump uglies and POOF," she surged to her feet and flicked her fingers in front of her face to mime a small explosion, "You're the alpha again?"

"You have a poetic way with words," he said, crossing the room after what seemed a long and needless assessment. Even if he didn't find her particularly attractive, and really, he'd have to be gay not to, she thought, she was all there was. There was no second string Morrigan, no plan B, just Lydia Martin and the power that was breaking along the surface of her skin like an encroaching storm surge. The Morrigan approved. She knew this Alpha, was eager to take his power from the interloper and give it back.

"What's more important," he said, his voice softening, "is how do you want this to work." His six foot frame suddenly filled her space and she swallowed, uncomfortable with the heat coloring her cheeks.

She turned back to the bed, fluffed a pillow. "You don't have to romance me. You're already a shoe in for the part."

He reached over her and took a hand, stopping her fussing. Turning her toward him, he slid calloused fingers along her jaw line until they cupped her face and tilted her head so she could see his eyes. They stared at each other, looking for some sign of what this was, what they were outside of the vortex of their power. His lips came down, softly, slowly, waiting for her acceptance or denial. When they touched, she sighed against him, gripping the seams of her skirt so her hands wouldn't fly up and crush him to her. He nipped lightly at her lip as he drew back.

"Did Peter tell you to do that," she asked, knees shaking.

"Peter said you don't like to be kissed." He still hadn't let go of her face, his thumb slowly stroking her cheek bone.

"So then why did you kiss me?"

"Because I think you don't like to be kissed by Peter."

Peter's power leaked off him in sickly waves, a poisoned well running dry.

"I, I don't know what we can do," Scott said behind her. "I didn't even know we could get sick. And Stiles," he lowered his voice, took her elbow and moved her deeper into the room, as though three feet of space and a few spare inches of drywall could protect their conversation from werewolf hearing. Nevermind that the fact that Stiles was the McCall pack Emissary was the worst kept secret in Beacon Hills. "Stiles says it isn't poison, and if it is, it isn't anything he's ever seen, heard about, or read about before. And if Stiles says it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist." Scott lowered his voice even more. "He even spoke to Deaton, and we all know his opinions on that."

"I know," Lydia agreed. It wasn't a poison of a kind they could find and neutralize. It was the venom of a wrathful goddess. She went to Peter, tucked the comforter around him, settled on the couch next to his long and solid frame and brushed a hand over his hair in an almost maternal gesture.

"Are you comfortable?" He barely nodded. "Good," she replied, "I'm not unkind. This doesn't have to be horrible. I know what I'm doing." And his eyes widened in understanding as she smiled.