It

took him a while to figure it out.

Hell, it wasn't like he had a manual.

He was never meant for this, never intended for this role. It wasn't his nature to lead, to guide or govern or nurture. At least, not the way an alpha should. He knew that, felt it in his bones, and somewhere low in his chest a heavy, leaden ball sat cold and suffocating, the knowledge that he couldn't, maybe ever, be the kind of alpha that his pack deserved, the kind of alpha he would kill to have back in his life.

The kind of alpha that his mother was.

The kind of alpha that Laura might have been.

But this?

This he could do.

And maybe it wasn't orthodox, or… wolfish enough, if that was even a real thing, but it was the best he could come up with. They needed something, some sign of pack, something that brought them together and marked them as the same, something more than the teeth and claws and the painful connection of the bite that bound them.

For the Hale family it had been the Triskele. It was tradition to be gifted with the tattoo on your eighteenth birthday, a day of celebration and ceremony.

Of course, he hadn't gotten his until he'd turned twenty-two, when he'd finally wrung up the miserable courage to beg Laura to brand him with the mark, burn it into his back for him even though he didn't deserve to wear it, deserved nothing more than the pain of the fire that forced the ink into his skin. She'd wept, hugged him close, murmured things in his ear about how she'd been afraid he would never ask, but eventually she'd done it without truly knowing what the tattooing meant to him.

It was something he didn't want to share.

That was his, all that he had left; of them, of himself. It was the Hale's sigil, and even if they were pack, they weren't Hales.

And he just couldn't do it.

So it would have to be something else.

If he was being fair, he really had to credit the idea to Stiles. Always snarky, always mouthing off, Derek let most things the young man said go in one ear and out the other, but this… for some reason this had stuck.

'What is it with you?! All… werewolfy, with your stupid leather jacket and your stupid…face!'

It was a surprisingly good idea coming from the spastic teen.

XXX

First came Isaac.

It made Derek sick to think of what the boy had been through, the pain and trauma he'd suffered at the hands of the family that should have protected and cared for him. It was just so different from what he knew, what he felt in his bones was right as a wolf, the entire concept of pack…

He'd hoped that the bite would change the boy, in more than just his form. Hoped that it would help, make him feel safe, strong. It didn't work so well. He was still timid, afraid, leaping at shadows and flinching when Derek reached out or turned to him too quickly. He wanted so badly as his alpha to promise him protection, to promise that he would never hurt him that way, but he knew that those were promises he couldn't make, and he suspected that the betrayal of such a promise, intentional or not, might break him more badly than not making it in the first place.

Some nights the blonde woke up screaming, shaking and ice cold to the touch, and Derek knew exactly what that was like. He'd gone nights without sleep himself, sometimes for weeks at a stretch, dozing off just to come awake again with a shout in his throat, Laura hovering over him in the dark with teary red eyes as she pinned him down to the bed, his skin slick with sweat as he burned up from the inside out, choking on the taste of smoke and ash.

So he gave him what he could, a defense, a weapon.

"Pick one," he'd said, low and careful, always careful of how he approached the traumatized young man. "One that feels like armor. One that makes you feel strong. Safe. One that makes you feel invincible."

XXX

Next was Erica.

He felt for her. In a way she reminded him of Paige, and that was something he never thought he would appreciate. But she was quiet, intense, different from the rest of the herd even if it as for a different reason. Her disease marked her as separate which marked her as a target, and she should have felt like prey to him, should have felt vulnerable.

He supposed in a way she had.

He'd chosen her because he could give her something, and because he'd known she wouldn't be able to refuse him. Chosen her because like Isaac, like him, she was broken, and a small part of him wanted to be able to fix something. To have something that he could point to and say look. To finally get something right.

But in the end, she had been prey to him.

He'd gone to the hospital and the wolf in him had risen up, raging against his breastbone, and he'd felt a wicked sort of charm pour forth, sinking its teeth into her weaknesses and shaking until she'd given in. He'd felt almost filthy afterward, his hands tingling where he'd curled them seductively around her bare ankles, a sour taste behind his teeth that no amount of blood or chocolate would chase.

He tried to make it up to her.

"Pick one," he'd said, reaching into his painful past to find that voice of a beloved older brother that he'd buried so long ago. "One that makes you feel beautiful. One that makes you feel powerful. One that makes you feel the way you always knew you could, if things were only different, if you only ever got the chance. One that makes you feel the way you always wished you could."

XXX

Boyd was his last.

His last necessity, his last sin.

Because it did feel like sin. His whole life, the bite had been a gift, the moon a blessing, but bestowing it when he felt so little confidence in himself, forcing these young lives to bend to the will of an alpha who couldn't serve them the way he knew an alpha should…

Regardless, he promised himself that Boyd would be the last.

He was selfish in choosing the young man. He did it for himself, for the other betas he'd already turned. Silent, strong, even-keeled, Derek knew that he would bring a calm and a balance to the pack that he himself couldn't provide. His own anchor was anger, something hot and dark and volatile, and Boyd would be the steady presence to cool that, to polish it down and smooth it out.

He knew that the teen had some problems of his own, he did. All of his targets had. Still, it wasn't so much, wasn't so insurmountable that he could really justify it to himself as well as he had with the others. On good days he could say that he'd given the boy a pack, the family he craved so badly. On bad days he couldn't call it that without a violent lurching in his gut and the creeping itch at the back of his neck that told him he knew he was lying.

So he tried to change that. Tried to make truth out of the lie for the quiet, still teenager.

"Pick one," he'd said, short and simple, the way Boyd preferred all things. "One that makes you feel like pack. One that makes you feel like you belong. One that proves to everyone that you have a place. One that proves to you that you have a place."

XXX

Strangely enough, where it began with Stiles it ended with him too.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to Derek. The boy was terribly perceptive beneath his goofball flailing and his defensive sarcasm.

'What is it with you werewolves and your stupid leather jackets?' he yelped in exasperation, making some wide, ridiculous gesture that had Derek ducking out of the way. 'Is it some kind of status symbol? You have to be all matchy-match just to prove you're pack?"

He'd felt a smile tip at the corners of his mouth that day.

Trust Stiles to figure it out, to be the only one to understand without him having to explain…

"Something like that," he'd said softly, biting back the sudden fondness swelling in his chest and threatening to spill out into his words.

'Nah man,' the boy huffed after a contemplative moment, shaking his head with a frown. 'Admit it - you just like walking around in the skins of your prey.'

That time Derek had chuckled.

"Shut up Stiles."

Someone left a prompt about Derek having a warehouse full of leather jackets and taking each of his betas that inspired this piece. I can't seem to find it, so if you know it please let me know so I can link it back!