DISCLAIMER – I own nothing.
SUMMARY – When seventeen-year-old Mieczyslaw "Stiles" Stilinski is given the opportunity to stay with Mrs Martin and her daughter, Lydia, in Bath, he is hoping for an adventure. Soon introduced to society, he meets Allison Argent, her widowed father, Chris, and her as-yet-unmarried aunt, Kate. He also meets Derek Hale, a handsome young man from a respectable family of Werewolves and his sister, Cora, and must learn to navigate both human and werewolf society. Invited to visit the Hale estate, Lupine Abbey, he discovers the mystery of the deadly Hale fire and sets about discovering the truth behind the unpleasant circumstances.
AN – ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AS PART OF THE NOVEMBER 2017 ROUGH TRADE CHALLENGE WHICH I WAS UNABLE TO COMPLETE IN THE TIME LIMIT DUE TO REAL LIFE COMMITMENTS AND ILLNESS SO WILL NOW POST IT HERE AND COMPLETE IT AT MY LEISURE. This story is what happens when I watch "Teen Wolf" whilst reading Jane Austen novels. It is loosely based on 'Northanger Abbey' but with the typical 'Teen Wolf' elements we all know and love.
A SOCIETY OF WOLVES
PROLOGUE
No one who had ever seen Mieczyslaw Stilinski, or Stiles as he preferred to be known due to his incomprehensible name, in his infancy would have supposed him born to be a hero.
His situation in life, the character of his father and the untimely death of his mother, his own person and disposition, were all equally against him. His father, Noah, was a retired soldier who had come into a tidy income following the death of his own father, Elias, and was much respected in their local community. He had lost his arm in battle, prompting his return to England and bringing about the end of his career, but he could never bemoan the way his life had turned out for it was this injury which had brought him to his wife. Claudia Stilinski, neé Gajos, had been a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, kind heart and, sadly, a weak constitution. She had struggled to bring Stiles into the world and, despite a longing for a large family, no more children had followed. She had not grown resentful however, as some would have, and had instead devoted herself to her husband and son. Her weak constitution was to be her undoing, sadly, and after a long and devastating fight with an illness of the mind, Stiles lost his mother. For a brief time his father descended into grief, locking himself away and drinking more than was healthy, but eventually the needs of his son brought him back to life. In fact the two remaining Stilinski's grew all the closer for it.
It was during this time, with the grief of losing his mother still fresh, that Stiles had made the acquaintances of a boy who would become his lifelong friend, compatriot and brother; Scott McCall. So deep in his grief as he was Stiles could not remember the specifics of the day that Scott and his mother, Melissa, had arrived in the village but had heard from several sources over the years that it had caused quite a stir for one simple reason; the colour of their skin.
Melissa McCall, neé Delgado, was of Spanish origin and had married a British soldier during the early days of the Peninsula War. She and Scott were the first people "of colour" to arrive in the village in living memory and it had taken a while for them to be accepted, although this was not the only reason for the villagers wariness. Melissa was Catholic, as was the common practice in her native country, and as such was still legally married to her husband despite the fact that she had left him after his drinking, a by-product of his years of battle and bloodshed, had grown so out of hand that he had thrown their then six-year-old son down the stairs. However it wasn't this that led to people being wary of her at first; it was the fact that she had taken the position of live-in housekeeper with Doctor Weldon, a single man of no more than thirty. It wasn't until the good Doctor married Harriet Smyth-Weston that the gossips finally accepted that Melissa was as good and honest a woman as could be.
Over the years Scott and Stiles had become completely inseparable despite their different personalities; whilst Stiles could be described as anxious, hyperactive, and curious to a fault Scott could only be described by all who met him as being good-natured, kind-hearted, affable, loyal and above all else optimistic. Stiles was a notorious bookworm; Scott couldn't be compelled to pick up a book, preferring to be outdoors. Stiles, like his father, enjoyed puzzles, and considered his intelligence to be his greatest strength; Scott could be naïvely innocent and trusting, often overlooking highly probable risks. Stiles was instinctively wary of strangers and was slow to trust; Scott would always strive to see the best in people and it was this trait which changed their lives completely the summer they both turned sixteen.
Werewolves had been accepted into society during the reign of Henry V, giving them the same rights as a full-blooded human, and yet Stiles had had no encounters with the lupine race until the summer which changed the course of his life. A woman had come to the village, her clothes tattered, her hair unkempt and a wild look in her eyes. He skin, a deep brown colour, had been covered in healing scratches and everyone had been suitable wary of her as she'd walked through the centre of the village, her claws out and encrusted with what looked to be a mixture of dirt and blood. Everyone but Scott, that was, who had broken away from where he had been stood beside Stiles and had offered the stranger his assistance. Stiles had been completely gobsmacked by the risks his friend was so publicly taking and, in a move he would forever regret, had refused to go with him when Scott had taken the woman home so that his mother or Doctor Weldon could look over her injuries.
Scott was found a couple of hours later by his mother, his skin all but flayed off his body by the woman's claws and a ragged bit mark on his side, so deep that chunks of his flesh were missing. Whilst the villagers, led by Noah, hunted down the woman, an Alpha called Kali who had apparently been driven mad after hunters had illegally slaughtered her entire Pack, Stiles had fought to save his friends life alongside Melissa and Doctor Weldon. It had quickly become apparent to him that his friend should have already died by the time his mother had found him, that his injuries had been slowly healing themselves which could mean one thing; the bite from the Alpha Werewolf had taken and Scott was in the transitioning stage.
Kali had been caught, arrested, transported to the nearest town and had been found guilty of attacking a human without cause and turning said human without consent. The penalty for such crimes should have been death but her mental state was taken into account and, instead, she was sentenced to life imprisonment in Eichen House, a notoriously unpleasant Lunatic Asylum specially designed to hold Werewolves and other supernatural creatures.
It was thanks to Stiles' love of reading that Scott was able to adjust to life as a Werewolf as smoothly as he did. There were still issues to overcome, of course, given that Scott was understandably distressed by what had happened and he struggled greatly with the pull of the moon for the first few months which had led to Stiles literally chaining his best friend up in the woodshed behind his house to ensure that he wouldn't hurt anyone by accident. The physical aspects were nothing compared to the complexities of Werewolf Society, however.
Scott was classed as an Omega, a Werewolf without a Pack, and this meant that he was unable to join any part of the Werewolf Society as he had no one to introduce him, a task which was normally completed by the Alpha of the Pack. This meant that, until he found a Pack willing to accept him, he would be at a social disadvantage as he was no longer a part of Human Society although he was permitted to attend the Assemblies and Balls in town.
In terms of his appearance Stiles was considered to be terribly plain as a child, unfortunately gangly as a youth, before finally beginning to blossom into a handsome young man in the months following his best friends attack. Those who had once called him thin or gangly now referred to him as lean and of medium height, his growth spurt finally having come to an end and leaving him only an inch shorter than his father. His skin, once considered too pale, was now praised for its milky white perfection and the moles which covered his entire body but was particularly prominent on his face, neck and torso, were much admired for their uniqueness. His brown hair, once kept too short to be fashionable, was now of a suitable length for all of the eligible you women in the village to admire greatly and his eternally warm honey-brown eyes were the envy of several of his acquaintances. His choice in clothing could still use some improvements, it was agreed, as he favoured comfort above all else, refusing to bow to the latest fashions but this was sometimes favourable in an eligible young man; they couldn't be too perfect or what would their chosen partner be left with to improve upon? His clothing would be taken in hand by his wife, no doubt, when the match was made. He was, therefore, considered, "pleasing, and, when in good looks, handsome."
No doubt Stiles would have eventually settled down with one of the pleasant young women he had been introduced to at the social gatherings he attended had fate not intervened, sending an invitation for him to join their former neighbours in Bath for the Winter Season.