"I'll drive."

"You just got stabbed six times and now you want to drive for half a day?" Braeden's voice is sharp and sounds like an even mix of doubtful and sarcastic, but Derek just shrugs with a small smile and takes the keys from her. She doesn't fight to keep them, though she looks like she's considering it.

"I feel better than I have in a long time." It's the truth. He hasn't felt this strong since he gave up his alpha powers, but it's more than that. He feels stronger in every way; physically, emotionally. Spiritually, even. He's more settled in himself, and he knows from the look Braeden gives him that she understands.

He feels whole again, in a way he hadn't thought possible anymore. He'd thought he'd lost some fundamental part of himself with his family, with Laura, with Boyd and Erica. Maybe even with Isaac, a little. But that hollow, empty feeling he'd gotten so used to isn't there anymore. Not really. He doesn't know when exactly it got better, but he suspects it's been happening slowly. So slowly he didn't even notice.

The people he's lost are still gone, of course, and he still misses them — will always miss them, fiercely and deeply — but the wound isn't raw and aching the way it was for so long.

It's healed. He's healed.

Braeden looks relieved at his words and falls into him just a little, leaning her head against the dip between his shoulder and his chest. She doesn't stay there long, just a moment, but it's enough to tell Derek just how hard she's been hit by what's happened. Her heart sounds different to what he'd expected. It's not adrenalin-fast like when he rests a hand on her back after a fight for their lives, and it's not the hard and furious thumping he's felt when she's pressed against him in the bedroom. But it's not the slow, steady beat he knows it should be — the rhythm he's gotten used to when they're alone and he's curled around her. He thinks maybe she's still a little caught up in the last few hours.

"You're tired," he tells her, nudging her towards the passenger side door.

"Probably," she agrees. "Hard to tell right now, though. I'm still kind of wired."

"We haven't slept in thirty-six hours. It's a long drive, try to relax and get some sleep."

"What about you?"

"Don't worry about me."

"I feel like all I've been doing lately is worrying about you," she admits.

Derek would feel guilty over that, but he can't because he's so overwhelmed with the warmth of it. Braeden may be tough as nails, but she cares for him just as much as he cares for her and that's something he'd started to think he'd never find.

"Well I'm alive, and I'm fine. Better than fine. It's my turn to worry about you, now."

"I can take care of myself," she tells him, but she's grinning even as she takes a step back and strengthens her stance.

"Believe me, I've noticed."

He opens the passenger door for her, and she moves towards it with no further protest.

"So, you're not really a US Marshall, are you?" he asks, trying not to smirk.

"I was," she tells him, and there's no lie in her heartbeat. "But I spent too long looking for one person. It's hard to keep a job when part of it becomes an obsession."

"Who were you after?"

She gives a small shrug. "All I know is a code name. The desert wolf."

Braeden sinks into her seat and Derek closes the door for her, trying to place the name. It sounds familiar and he knows he's heard it before, but he doesn't know when, or why.

He crosses around the back of the car to the driver's side, sending Scott a small nod. When he slides into the driver's seat Braeden is eyeing him appreciatively. He ignores the tiny, playful smirk on her face and the way it makes him want to grin stupidly.

It takes less than half an hour on the road for Braeden to kick off her boots and fall asleep. Derek smiles to himself when she mumbles, in a soft and pleased tone, something that sounds like his name.

It's a few hours into the drive when Braeden's scent begins to thicken; becomes warmer, richer, sweeter. Derek knows what it means, had been able to pick out the scent of her arousal even with a human nose, but he's never been so fully immersed in it as this.

Even with the windows down it's a heady thing; dense enough that he can taste it on his tongue, flooding him, overwhelming him.

When his senses were dulled he'd loved to bury his face between Braeden's thighs and breathe her in deeply, but even with his nose nudging at her soft, slick folds the experience had been muted, almost nothing compared to this.

Braeden wiggles in her seat, eyelids fluttering in her sleep, her intoxicating scent suddenly accompanied by a long, soft moan. Derek's hands tighten on the steering wheel until it creaks ominously. If her scent hadn't already given her away, that sound would have. Derek knows that noise well, knows what it means, knows that if he reaches across the gearshift and slides his fingers into her jeans and against her panties he'll find them soaked.

It's familiar, but it's also completely foreign. He's never heard that noise in harmony with her heart rate rapidly increasing in his ears, has never known the way it's followed immediately by hitching breaths, so minute that they're inaudible to human ears.

He's never been so affected, so turned on, in his life.

Derek holds out for as long as he can, tries to focus on the seemingly endless stretch of road in front of him, but he can't. It's not long — not nearly long enough — before he's pulling over, barely a quarter of the way home. The road is deserted, he reasons as he unbuckles his seatbelt. He hasn't seen another car for over an hour and the others had a head start on them, so they won't be driving past or pulling over to check on them. No one will see them.

His cock is so hard and aching that he needs to unzip his fly, so he does, shucking his jeans down over his hips and under his thighs until his dick is free. He's been going commando since his underwear was unsalvageable from his first full shift, and it's a blessed respite to no longer have his erection trapped, straining against his zipper.

Even when he lets out a loud sigh of relief, Braeden continues to sleep. Derek knows she can't possibly stay that way for much longer; not with the little gasps she's making, not with the way her hips are moving in small, restless circles.

"Derek," she whines under her breath. The knowledge that it's him she's dreaming of — that he's the reason she's so turned on — makes his dick twitch. He's leaking a steady line of precome. It tickles as it makes its way slowly towards the base of his shaft, and he's tempted to wrap his hand around himself, to jerk off to the sound and scent of Braeden beside him. But he wants more than that, and he knows that even in her sleep, she does too.

"Brae—" he starts, but his voice is rough and he swallows to soothe the dryness in his throat. "Braeden, wake up."

She's fully alert in an instant, upright and her seatbelt undone, her mercenary reflexes kicking in as her eyes dart around quickly. They fall to rest on his bare lap, on the length of his hard cock and the way he's clenching his fingers tightly into fists on his thighs.

"Oh," she says, voice almost all breath as she licks her lips.

"You were dreaming," he tells her.

She shifts in her seat to better face him, and Derek can tell by the way her breath catches that her jeans rub against her through her panties when she moves.

"Yeah." Her lip curls suggestively. "It started a lot like this, actually."

He's struggling to control himself, to keep his eyes human and his hands claw-free, but he knows without a doubt it'll get easier if he can just touch her. Weeks spent as little more than a human have made him unaccustomed to how much...more...he feels with his senses back online, but he knows he won't hurt her.

"How did it end?" he asks her, fighting the urge to preen when she shivers at his words and stares hungrily at him.

"I don't know. You woke me up."

"We'll have to do something about that," he says, but she's already two steps ahead of him, climbing into the back seat and peeling off her jeans and panties as fast as she can manage.

He knows from past experience that he's too broad to do the same. It's not the first time they've been too keyed up to find somewhere with a bed, and Derek takes a moment to get the half empty box of condoms from the glove box and toss it through the space between the front seats so they land somewhere on the floor behind him. He toes off his boots and socks, leaving them in a pile along with his jeans, and gets out of the car to fold his seat forward and climb into the back.

Braeden is waiting for him in nothing but her tank top and a wicked grin. He can't help but grin back, raising an eyebrow at her bra hanging inexplicably over the back seat. She just shrugs playfully. Her nipples are hard and visible through the thin cotton of her top, and she thumbs at them until he has to stifle a growl.

Her scent is even stronger as he settles into the too small space and he moves her easily, crowds her up against the side of the car until he has the room he needs to shuffle back, to hunker down with shoulders under her thighs, to press his mouth to her opening and his fingers to her hips. He's engulfed by her arousal, so strong to his newly restored nose that he can't help but wonder if this is what it's like to drown. He isn't sure if he can breathe — isn't even sure that he wants to, because she smells so inviting, so all-consuming, and he thinks it would be heaven to let himself be dragged under.

She's so loud, so responsive, and Derek eats her out happily, lets himself enjoy every moment as her hands tangle through his hair and her hips jerk toward him. He's growling and lapping at her, encouraging every grind, relishing in every whimper, mouthing at her clit and fucking into her with his tongue until her fingers are tugging his hair sharply and she cries out, coming apart all over his lips.

He presses a soft kiss to her inner thigh, then follows it with his tongue, trying to catch every last hint of her taste from her skin and then from his own mouth. His skin feels prickly and hot, and Derek's not sure exactly how, but he feels simultaneously sated and hungry. His cock is pressed into the seat of the car, literally throbbing from how much he wants her, but he feels drunk on her scent and her taste. He feels slow and clumsy when he moves, but he eventually manages to shift them both, to twist himself until he's sitting up and he can lift her onto his lap.

Braeden is flushed and her chest is heaving; strands of hair are clinging to her forehead and her heart is still racing from her orgasm. She smells content, but he knows that she can come again, that she wants to come again. He gives her a moment, kisses her deeply but doesn't push any further, letting her take the lead.

They're in her favorite position, one that he loves just as much, sitting up with their chests pressed together and her straddling his thighs. She fits so well across his hips, and his only regret is that her breasts aren't bare for his eyes, hands and mouth to explore. It's not long before her fingers are dragging the hem of his shirt higher and teasing over his abs, her palm swiping over the head of his still leaking dick.

She's kissing him urgently, rocking her hips back and forth to slide her wet heat along his length until he's groaning and fighting back the urge to take control.

Had it always been so intense when he'd had his full senses? He can hardly remember; he'd adapted so well to becoming human. He's never been with Braeden while in possession of his powers. There were others, of course, but that was before, when being a werewolf was all he'd ever known. Now he feels it all so much more intensely than he remembers, every sound so much louder, every scent so much more permeating.

It's overwhelming, in the most delicious way.

Derek's not sure when Braeden managed to grab a condom from the box on the floor, but she's tearing the foil packet open and lifting herself up, rolling it on him smoothly.

"Fuck," he groans, hips jolting involuntarily as she strokes him.

"That's the idea," she says with a chuckle against his mouth.

He's so turned on, so close to the edge, that he knows he won't last long once he's inside her. That's not what he wants, not yet, because he wants to make her come again, wants to feel her tightening in orgasm around his cock. He needs to get her close again, or he'll come long before she can.

"Soon. Not yet."

Braeden looks at him curiously, a tiny pout on her lips and a crease between her eyebrows, but she doesn't resist when he grips her wrist gently, stilling her strokes and pulling her hand away.

He draws his legs apart, forcing her to move with them until she's spread wide open over the space he's created between his thighs.

"I want you to come again," he says, nipping at her earlobe and cupping the back of her neck with his palm. Long, soft locks of her hair slide between his fingers, and he massages her scalp gently. She moans and he can feel the vibrations of it under his lips, where they're pressed to the sensitive skin below her ear.

"I am in full support of this plan," she gasps.

"I thought you might be." He's grinning, his cheek against her neck where she can't see it, but he knows she can feel it.

"Are you just going to talk about it?"

There's a challenge in her voice, so exactly like her that he laughs a little. He mouths at her neck again, savoring the saltiness of sweat on her skin. When she starts wriggling, trying desperately to find friction, he relents and dips his free hand into the space between them to drag the pad of his thumb across her clit.

She gasps and her heartbeat quickens. She's so wet again that he can feel it all over his fingers and palm, can taste it in the air. He's torn between inhaling deeply and trying to block it out; he wants to lose himself in it but at the same time it's getting too hard to resist burying himself inside her. He presses two fingers into her, echoing her groan when he feels her soft, slippery heat around them.

"Der—" he cuts her off with his mouth, kissing her hard and deep. Derek's not sure how much longer he can wait; he needs her on edge and desperate the same way he is, so he curls his fingers inside her and starts stroking firmly. She's pressing down eagerly, and he tries to give her what she's looking for. The angle is awkward, but he manages to find a rhythm, pumping his fingers in and out of her urgently while his thumb slides in wet, messy circles around her clit.

Before long she's moaning heatedly, gripping at his shoulders tightly and he knows he almost has her, knows by her thick, sweet scent, by her hungry sounds, by the thin sheen of sweat on her skin. He eases his fingers out of her, quickly but carefully, and before she can complain he lifts her by her trembling thighs and holds her over his cock.

Braeden responds immediately, putting her hands on him, lining him up with her entrance so that when he slowly lowers her she sinks onto him with ease, engulfing him in her clutching heat. It's too much and not enough all at the same time, and he buries his face in her hair, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist. They're still for just a moment. He can feel her heartbeat thumping against his chest just as easily as he can hear it thudding in his ears, then he relaxes his grip and she begins to move.

She doesn't start slowly, both of them too far gone to draw things out any further than they already have. She's riding him fast and hard, bouncing up and down on his cock so there's nothing left of the world except the sound and scent of them together, the feel of her around him. She's moving with purpose, leaning at the angle he knows works best for her, until he can only rut his hips upward to meet hers, clenching his teeth and fighting to hold back his orgasm. He can't hold out for much longer, he knows he can't, but he's determined to get her there first and so he works his hand between them again. He can't muster up any kind of finesse with how she's moving, but he can give her some pressure, some friction, and he knows that's what she really needs. He pushes the ball of his thumb against her clit, letting it nestle between her folds so that she can rub herself against it. She does, eagerly, and his hand follows her as she lifts and drops her hips, staying close so she can grind against it without pause.

It's next to no time at all — though it feels like forever — before Braeden throws her head back with a drawn out moan and digs her nails deeply into Derek's shoulders. The tension that's been building in her body snaps and she's gasping, clenching hard around his cock. She feels so good around him, clutching and releasing with the waves of her orgasm, and he lets loose, gripping her hips with both hands and driving into her. He only manages a handful of thrusts before he comes as well, so intensely that he has to bite down the urge to roar with it.

Braeden all but collapses against him and he welcomes her weight. They're both sweaty and sated, their skin sticking where they're pressed together but he welcomes that, too. He smiles at the sound of her fighting to catch her breath, and the way her heart is still racing though it's returning to normal, gradually. The scent of them is so thick that he doubts it will ever come out of the upholstery and the idea sends a pleased shiver down his spine.

When they're mostly recovered and their lazy afterglow transitions from sticky cuddles into chaste but affectionate kisses, Derek is struck — not for the first time — by just how beautiful Braeden is. It's not just her looks, though she's absolutely stunning. But it's her strength, her personality. It's everything about her. She's done so much for him, been so much to him, over the past several weeks, and he needs her to know just how much he appreciates her.

"Thank you."

"No, thank you," she tells him with a sly grin, cheeks still flushed and lips still swollen.

"Not for that," he laughs, shaking his head. It's hard to meet her eyes for this, but he does. He needs her to know how serious he is. "Thank you for saving me."

"Oh please," she tells him, slapping his chest lightly and rolling her eyes. He can tell she's playing off something heavy by the way her heart lurches, wonders if she's remembering him looking lifeless on the ground. "I was getting my ass handed to me before the Calaveras showed up."

"No. Not…" he trails off, not sure how to say exactly what he means. He pulls her in closer again, arms around her waist so he can squeeze her meaningfully. "You saved me."

Braeden's eyebrows pull together and she stares at him. There's a crease between her brows and a slight downturn to her lips. Derek wants to kiss both, but it's not the right time.

"Derek, you saved yourself. All I did was care."

Part of him wants to tell her she's wrong, that her caring is the reason he's not just survived, but has grown stronger, but he knows her well enough to know that she would argue. Another part of him — the part of him that feels newer, fresher, brighter — wants to believe her. He thinks that maybe one day soon, he will. He's not there yet, but he's still healing and growing.

He has time, and for the first time in what feels like forever, Derek is confident that he'll get there. It's not the false bravado he's gotten used to hiding behind. He just...knows.

"Then thank you for caring," he says.

"You never need to thank me for that."

There was a time that Derek thought he'd never be happy again, that all hope was gone. But then he met new people, found a new family, and saw the strength and promise in the people around him. He learned how to trust again, how to feel good again, and so much of it came from the people around him; his friends, his pack. Now he finds inspiration in Scott's smiles and overwhelming goodness, in Stiles' persistence against the worst odds, in Kira's bubbly nature and Lydia's sheer force of will. He finds it in Braeden's strength and unwavering support, in the way she cares for him but is still perfectly willing to put him in his place if she thinks he needs it.

And best of all, they've taught him to find inspiration in himself.

"I love you," he tells her. He's not sure if he's in love with her, or if he loves her in an entirely different way, but it's the first time he's said those words to anyone in a very long time, in any context at all, and he means them.

She looks pleased but shy, in direct contrast to anything anyone would imagine of her, and it makes his heart constrict in the most amazing way. Her mouth curls into a small smile, but her heartbeat is rocketing and her breath is still for a moment. And without a single shadow of the doubt or apprehension he's felt with lovers in the past, he knows what's coming.

"I love you, too."