Red Wolf, Werewolf
Derek moves back to Beacon Hills with his sisters when news comes of his uncle's death. Besides being a werewolf, Derek now has to deal not only with the talkative son of the sheriff that he is quickly developing feels for, but also the strange red wolf that hangs around on the preserve without a pack. Sterek. Werewolves can become full wolves during the full moon.
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Chapter One
Derek was running through the woods, the full moon high in the sky above, when he saw it. An unfamiliar wolf.
Laura, the alpha, was a large but sleek wolf with fur a mixture of grays and light browns. Cora was thin, smaller than Laura by half, and the color of dessert sand blended with rich soil. Derek himself was bigger than his alpha, with fur so dark it looked black in the night but cocoa brown in the sun except for a rust colored patch on his chest. This new wolf was not of the Hale pack.
It didn't smell like a Hale. It didn't look like a Hale. But it was in Hale territory. It didn't smell like a werewolf, but werewolf or not, it had no business being here.
Derek abandoned his free run and took off after the unfamiliar canine. It bounded over fallen logs, mounds of earth, and roots as if it knew the land. Derek's size gave him enough edge to take away any advantage the other wolf had though. He could step over some things the other wolf had to hop to clear.
Despite his werewolf speed, it took Derek fifteen minutes of darting around trees and over rocks to finally tackle the other wolf to the ground. It yelped at the contact and went down without a fight. Now that it wasn't moving, Derek could see it better in the moonlight through the branches.
It was burnt red all over with a white underside and a sprinkling of medium brown fur down the center of its back. Derek stood over it and bared his teeth, ears flicking back. The red wolf rolled over onto its back, baring its belly and neck to Derek in a show of submission and trust that caught him off guard. Then its lips pulled back as it panted out a sound not dissimilar to laughter.
Derek's ears flattened and he growled. Wolves didn't laugh.
The red wolf stopped laughing and bent its head to gaze up at him. Its eyes were a deep brown color that drew to mind the hot cocoa Laura made for him in winter or the fertile earth of the forest. There was a smile hidden in those eyes that a wolf's mouth could not form. Its tail thumped against the ground and it pawed at Derek's chest like a young pup would.
Play with me.
Derek snorted and growled again, a low noise of warning. The red wolf let out a snort of its own, mocking him, and pawed at him again.
Play with me.
Derek had no intention of playing. This wolf was on Hale territory. It wasn't part of his pack. He wouldn't play with some random wolf in the woods just because it was the full moon. It wasn't pack.
The red wolf wiggled around on its back, its legs hitting Derek's with each roll, and its tongue hung out the side its mouth. With a mischievous glint in its eyes the red wolf pawed at Derek again, a final request for play time. Then, in a blink, it had rolled back onto its feet and darted out from under him.
Before Derek really knew what he was doing, he was giving chase. The wolf abruptly changed course, sliding behind a wide tree. When Derek turned to follow, he found the wolf waiting for him. It tackled him to the ground, its small frame barely enough to knock Derek over. Its teeth latched on to Derek's back and gnawed playfully, again like a puppy. Derek kicked at it and rolled them over, grabbed the red wolf's neck gently and shaking it. The red wolf yipped happily and returned the gesture, then rolled out of Derek's grasp and invited Derek to run again.
This wolf wasn't pack. Derek shouldn't be playing with an unfamiliar wolf. He should find his sisters and run with them tonight, with the moon full above them and making their emotions run wild.
With a short bark, Derek jumped up and lunged at the red wolf. It barked back, its voice not as high as Derek had expected out of its small frame, then laughed again. And so they took off running again, chasing and biting and playing, with the light of the stars and the moon shining down upon them.
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Derek was exhausted. It felt like he morphed down the stairs instead of walking, and then he was pouring himself a cup of coffee and sitting at the kitchen table without really taking in what he was doing. Only after he was halfway done with his coffee did he notice Laura sitting across from him at the table. She had a bowl of banana chocolate grain cereal in front of her, half eaten, but had abandoned it in order to level a hard stare at her brother.
"What?" he asked, glad his voice didn't croak the way it felt it should.
Her hazel eyes narrowed. "You ditched us last night. On our first full moon since coming back home, you left. Why?"
Why? Derek took another long sip of his coffee while he thought. Why had he split from them? He remembered they were running together. Then Laura and Cora had taken off after a rabbit or something and Derek had...he'd just kept running, in the opposite direction.
With a shrug he answered, "I didn't feel like eating fast food."
Laura frowned. "Derek, this isn't a time for jokes. We were really worried about you." She shook her head, dark brown hair flowing easily around her shoulders. "If someone had caught you, shot you? Or if you had gone into town, or just come across a hapless hiker, and lost control for even a minute? Derek that would be it. You would be gone. And I couldn't bare that. Neither could Cora. Not now."
Not now. Not with Uncle Peter's funeral only days behind them.
He sighed and looked down into his cup, now almost empty of coffee. "I know. But I didn't see any people. I kept to the deep woods all night."
For a long moment, silence reigned in the apartment. Then Laura let out a deep sigh and spooned up some more cereal. "I suppose it's alright, this time." It was forgiveness and a warning all in one. She didn't want him running off on his own again.
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Cora started classes at the local college a week later, Criminal Justice track. Laura got a job at the local library, just like back in New York. Derek got a job at the auto shop in town. They did their best to appear normal to absolutely everyone, even themselves.
Except sometimes Laura used her sense of hearing to listen in on conversations and heartbeats in the library and catch kids trying to be sneaky on the computers or stealing books. Cora was more athletic than her classmates, stronger, faster, recovered more quickly from attack. And Derek could lift a car to get at a problem spot instead of adjusting the machinery for a difference of a few centimeters.
So they really weren't normal at all, but at least there were no hunters in town, and at least they kept their differences small and easily overlooked.
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The next full moon, Derek took off before Laura or Cora were home in the afternoon. He spent the waning hours of the day wandering in the deeper forest, keeping an eye out for the red wolf he'd seen last month. He couldn't find anything - not a den or scent or tracks.
Then the moon rose and Derek gave himself over to the transformation. He didn't have to, it's not a requirement as a wolf. He could stay at home watching TV or go grocery shopping if he wanted to tonight, but he would rather take a run. He was aggravated from wasting his afternoon searching for an animal he obviously hallucinated and needed to burn off the tension before he could go home and chew out Cora for walking too heavy or something equally as small.
Only five minutes had passed when Derek spotted a blur of red fur in the pale light of night and he stopped dead in his tracks. The red wolf's ears perked up and it jolted to a smooth stop, head twisting sideways to look at Derek. Immediately, the wolf's tail began to wag back and forth, slow but deliberate. It bounded over to him and bumped his cheek with its muzzle in an overly familiar gesture of hello. And while Derek should feel offended - they barely knew each other, they weren't family or friends - he felt himself loosen up instead. The tension in his body drained away.
He hadn't made the wolf up. It was real.
The red wolf loped several feet away and then turned around and dropped its head down between its front paws, leaving its butt in the air. It made a sound between a bark and yip, something Derek couldn't imitate, and wagged its tail. This time, Derek didn't waste any time hurrying to play along. He may have been tired the next day after last time, but he had also never had so much fun.
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"So," Laura began as she dished out dinner two nights later. She gave Derek a noticeably smaller portion of chicken than she gave Cora or herself, but he didn't dare complain. He'd run off on his own again with no warning, disobeying his alpha.
"So?" Cora asked when her sister didn't continue.
Laura didn't answer until she was seated at the table with them. "How's everything going?" she asked. "We've been here just over a month. Has anything interesting happened?"
Cora rolled her eyes. "It's Beacon Hills," she said. "It's a quiet town where nothing ever happens."
That wasn't quite true, they all knew. After all, their family had burned to death in this town. But that was ten years ago, and nothing nearly that exciting had happened in this town since. That was another bonus to coming back.
Laura rolled her eyes and began cutting her food. "Come on, nothing interesting has happened in class?"
Cora's mouth clicked shut almost audibly and Derek turned his attention from his chicken to his little sister. There was a faint blush on her cheeks and her heart was beating a tad too fast to be considered normal.
"Cora?"
She glared at him. "What? It's nothing. Nothing interesting has happened."
Now Laura was giving her an almost leering smile. "Aw, Cora, come on. Don't be like that."
"There's nothing. I go to class, the teachers drone, and then I come home. That's it," the youngest Hale insisted. It was futile. Both her older siblings could tell she was lying.
"You don't find any of your classes interesting?" Derek asked. "Maybe you should switch majors."
Cora growled, a noise better fit for a wolf than a human. "Alright, fine. Something interesting." She glared at her meat. "There's...There's a really annoying guy in one of my classes."
While it was obvious that hadn't been what made her blush, both Derek and Laura agreed via a look to let their little sister get away with the change of subject. For now.
"Oh?" Laura prodded.
"Yes." Cora sighed, put upon, and explained. "He's apparently the son of someone at the police station, so he already knows a lot of the material. And in class he's always raising his hand and asking if there's any way to do this or that without it being illegal or if there's a loophole to some law to allow someone to get away with something. And every 'hypothetical situation' either sounds like he came up with it right on the spot it's so crazy, or like he's been planning it since he was in kindergarten and is just fine tuning the specifics."
Laura wore a small smile. "That sounds interesting. Are you sure he wants to be a police man and not a con man?"
Cora groaned and stuffed a huge chunk of chicken in her mouth, then spoke around it. "He doesn't want to be either, that's the annoying part. He's in the class willingly, even though it has nothing to do with his major."
"What's his major?" Derek asked. He was so glad he wasn't taking college courses anymore. He hated school.
"I have no idea and I don't care," Cora retorted after swallowing. "Now can we switch subjects? This guy literally makes my class days hell and I don't want him ruining my dinner too."
Laura laughed. "Maybe you could figure out what kind of car he drives. Then if he comes to Derek for a fix, Derek can get revenge for you."
Derek tried to ignore the way Cora seemed to actually be considering it.
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A week later, Derek met Cora's annoying classmate. He only knew this was the same guy from Cora's class because she had said he drove the only blue Jeep in town, and the wrecked vehicle was definitely an eye catching pale blue old Jeep.
"And yeah, then this deer comes out of absolutely nowhere and of course hitting it would be really bad, right? So I swerve to avoid this I swear to God fourteen point buck and I not only ran into a pot hole, tearing one of my tires completely off, gone, took a trip to Monte Carlo wish I could join it, but then I like, hydroplaned without water, right off the road and into a tree. A pair of them, actually."
The guy looked barely legal, his hair artfully messy and barely long enough to be so, with dark brown eyes and freckles. He was wearing plaid, plaid, and a t-shirt underneath. His car had been brought in via tow truck about eight minutes ago and Derek had watched the young man tumble in an uncoordinated mess from the truck, only saved from a pitiful face plant on the asphalt by his grip on the truck door.
The Jeep was halfway to totaled, but fixable, with dents and scrapes all over it, not to mention a few missing parts - like a tire. It looked more like someone had taken a metal bat to it, a set of keys or something else sharp, and then taken the front passenger tire and let the air out of the other three. So the story Derek had been listening to for the past eight minutes was complete bull, but Derek had to give this kid props - his heart barely skipped a beat the entire time, his voice was confident, and he wasn't sweating. He was an Class A bullshiter.
"Are you done?" Derek asked in a monotone when the guy paused to breathe.
He nodded. "Yeah, yep." He took a breath. "It was the single most terrifying moment of my life."
And that was an outright lie Derek could've heard a mile away. Only now did the kid seem at all nervous that Derek wouldn't believe his false story. Only when he was done did the look on his face seem to beg Derek not to question it. Just fix the car and move on.
Derek sighed. "I'll tell you what," he began. "I'll fix it good at new, with a discount even, if you can show me where the accident happened."
Heart jumping, the guy nodded. "Okay, yeah, yeah, sure. I can...totally do that."
Derek rolled his eyes. "What's your name?"
Hunching his shoulders and looking up through his lashes, the guy said, "Stiles." And strangely, that was when his heartbeat and scent were the most scared.
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After Derek drove Stiles out into the middle of nowhere and Stiles pointed out a pot hole and parts of a broken headlight on the ground, Derek followed through on his deal. He still didn't believe a deer or trees were the cause of the damage, and he had no idea what Stiles was doing that far out in the woods in the first place, but it wasn't his job to worry about the kid so he let it drop.
But after that, he started seeing Stiles every day. He'd told Stiles the repairs for his Jeep could take a week at least, probably two, but the younger male showed up at the shop every afternoon after his classes to hang out and watch Derek work - even when it wasn't on his car. And Derek learned firsthand why Cora thought he was annoying: he never stopped talking.
"So then I tell Scott it's pink eye and he doesn't believe me, right? And so I asked him if he'd been playing with the class hamster before he rubbed his eyes and he says 'yeah, how did you know?' and I'm like 'Cause you've got pink eye, numb nuts.' Of course I didn't say 'numb nuts' because we were eight. I think I called him poop face or something because it fit the situation and it made me laugh for six minutes, no joke."
"It wasn't even my fault, but of course the deputy didn't believe me when I told them it was a guy with two arms and hair, not me, so they booked me. I mean, I wasn't in handcuffs, which frankly is surprising considering the amount of times I've found myself on the inside of a jail cell, but they stuck me in the back of the cruiser and drove me all the way back to the station. Then as soon as they locked me in the cell they got a call about someone pulling the exact same stink bomb stunt at a house two streets over from where they picked me up. Even when they found the guy, proving me completely right, they didn't let me out of the cell. I honestly think the cops here like seeing me behind bars which, ok, to each their own, but I'd rather not be part of some of their creepy fantasies thanks, especially not since I was only fifteen at the time and most of them are old enough to be my parents. Ew."
"There was a time when Scott and I, okay mostly I, decided it would be a great idea to go fishing in the middle of winter. I mean, the river was almost frozen it was so cold, but we were determined. And it was worse because neither of our families fish so we didn't have any fishing rods or gear and we were just splashing around in this freezing water trying to grab fish with our bare hands. Honestly that's not even the dumbest thing I've ever done. I've gone out looking for dead bodies in the middle of the woods at night, or snuck up on cops during stakeouts, or cheated in Harris's chemistry class, god that was the worst day of my life. I don't know if you ever had chemistry with Mr. Harris while you were at school here years ago, but if you've spent more than five minutes in his vicinity you know what I'm talking about. The man is a nightmare. I swear he woke up every morning, looked himself in the mirror, and thought "Today I'm gonna make Stilinski's life hell." I know he did. I could see in his eyes. His cold, dead, heartless eyes."
"Seeing dead people is weird. It was not the most fun I've ever had at a Halloween party. Like I honestly regret drinking the punch. I must've drank a lot less than everyone else though because it wore off pretty fast and after that it wasn't too bad, cause I got to watch everyone else trip from here to Milwaukee and that was actually kind of entertaining. I mean, it meant I was running around keeping people out of the pool and dumping the punch and getting people to the bathroom all night, but I actually sort of liked that. It made me feel useful and heroic. I've also never had quite that deep a conversation with Jackson before, though I think he thought I was his mom who died in a car accident when he was a baby. I'm not even sure he remembers it because he's never brought it up, even to threaten me with castration if I told anyone."
The other guys in the auto shop joked that Derek had a puppy that kept following him to work, or that Stiles was one of many in town joining the "Derek Hale Fan Club" and that the shop was lucky no one else had decided to hang around as well. The more Stiles talked, the more Derek learned about him, and the more Derek didn't like the way his coworkers were talking about Stiles like he was a pet.
Within a week, Derek knew that Stiles had had a long standing crush on a girl named Lydia Martin but that it had faded when he turned thirteen, and that she had gone off to some prestigious university immediately after graduation; that Stiles was almost obsessive about his father eating healthy but binged on curly fries himself and often brought some with him to share with Derek whenever he took a break; and that Stiles' best friend was an asthmatic named Scott who was a mushy romantic with a lot of relationship issues, among other things.
Derek wasn't sure what to make of Stiles. He liked his silence and Stiles was noise, but after he got over the shock of just how much Stiles could talk it wasn't so bad. Derek hadn't reciprocated in any of their 'conversations' so Stiles didn't know much about him in return, but Stiles didn't seem to care. He asked questions but then quickly retracted them or started in on another story when it became clear Derek wasn't going to answer. Derek worked slower when Stiles was around too, unable to use his wolf skills to speed things along while he always had eyes watching him. So there were pros and cons to getting the Jeep repaired quickly.
He would miss the curly fries when he was done.
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tbc