Scott protects his humans. He's their Alpha. He's taken a bullet for Stiles, jumped between Allison and an SUV, taken so much for the sake of pack, because this pack is so much more than power multiplied and shared. It's Allison's dimples and Stiles' sleep talk and the knowing look that Melissa gives Scott. It's touch, comforting, sexual, still new enough to be fragile. It's three people held together with stubbornness and desperation.
Scott's been there with a laugh and a kiss when the exhaustion in Stiles' eyes gets too heavy. He's brought Allison back from the edge of an arrow with a wink and a night spent with her tucked safe between the two of them. He knows that his smile and his hands keep this human pack at peace better than any threat of Derek's. Scott holds their darkness back with his own light until they're cracked and shaking but still whole.
Today it's different.
Today he can't stand in front of his pack because he can't stand at all. There's wolfsbane vapor in the air and in the bullet in his thigh, wolfsbane rubbed into the cuffs around his wrists, and wolfsbane growing up the wall behind him. It's agony every breath-in and shuddering relief ever breath-out, for hours, and Scott isn't sure if he should hope that his lovers are running toward him or away.
Allison. Stiles. The names circle in his head with each downbeat of his heart, pounding so loud he almost misses the footsteps outside that join it. There's no mistaking the door flying open, though, and Scott would recognize the two people behind it anywhere.
Neither of them are wolves, but Scott swears he hears Stiles growl anyway. "Fuck. Allison -"
"Get him out of here." Not even Allison's voice shakes. "I'll take care of."
Anything. She'll take care of anything, but Scott knows that take care means kill, because sometimes language is funny. He chokes on a laugh. The wolfsbane fogs his head. Maybe more than he thought, because between one blink and the next Stiles has the cuffs off and Scott slung over his shoulders. Scott does his best to hold on as Stiles drags the two of them upward, out of the bunker and into the light.
"We've got about a minute," Stiles says, when they hit the tree line and turn around to wait. Allison's got about a minute, he means. Scott holds his breath. At the forty-five second mark she staggers out and falls into Stiles. The three of them go down together as the ground shakes, into a pile of limbs that belongs in a bedroom. They stay there for hours to watch the fire burn.