Derek responds to the incredibly underwhelming declaration of his impending doom with merely a tweaked eyebrow, and Stiles, flustered, babbles to fill the silence.

"I know, right, what a thing to say, but you see, the thing is – Lydia's almost always completely right about these things. Once she got over the whole 'but I don't want to be a banshee' thing and actually started paying attention to her powers, everything got so much clearer and, well, she's been having these dreams about you…yes, Isaac?"

Stiles stops speaking as Isaac puts a hand in the air, like he's asking a question in class.

"I think you lost him," Isaac says, jerking his head toward Derek, who's managed to maintain his impassive expression. In truth, Derek's doing a pretty good job of keeping up, but he's thankful for the respite from Stiles' chatter and a few seconds to marshal his thoughts. He met his fair share of the non-werewolf supernatural community growing up – there was that tribe of nymphs that stayed with them for a summer when their home river was having a dam built in; that disaster with the Ala when he was eight, which humans explained away as the worst winter in New England's last two centuries; the Fae territory 100 miles from Hale land, its border always a social faux pas away from eruption; and, of course, the never-ending rumor of a leprechaun uprising from the vales of Ireland.

Not that Derek believes in leprechauns.

But banshees? Sure, why not?

Derek prides himself on not freaking out during those few seconds of silence. He doesn't know much about banshees – they're really just stories you tell cubs to get them to eat their vegetables – but he's heard that the Wailing Women do, in fact, have extremely prescient foreknowledge of the fates of others. It's not usually blind fortune telling, though – a banshee's powers are strongest for the people she's closest to. Derek and Lydia have obviously never met, so he has to ask: "Who the hell is Lydia? Don't tell me she goes to Greymar, too."

"Stanford," Danny volunteers. "Applied mathematics."

"She's pack, though," Scott's quick to amend. "Banshee and distance aside, she's pack."

"Same with Kira," says Isaac.

"Kitsune, in Japan," Danny supplies.

"And Malia."

"Werecoyote. Also at Stanford."

If Derek had been standing, he would have sat down hard at this rapid-fire explanation of the pack's satellite members. As it is, he just slumps a little deeper in his chair. "Okay, so banshee-girl says I'm going to die. Does she know how?"

Stiles and Scott exchange sideways looks.

"You've gotten a lot of new information today," Scott says slowly.

"Yeah!" Stiles jumps in enthusiastically. "Maybe we can just reconvene next Sunday – you know, give you a chance to soak it all in –."

"You're burnt alive," Tink interrupts loudly, just seconds before Bree slaps a hand over her mouth. Derek's brain immediately starts to go cloudy, and he's only dimly aware of Scott protesting that Tink wasn't supposed to be listening and Tink insisting that she's nearly fourteen for Christ's sake, she's not a little kid anymore –

Derek is twenty-three years old and completely, irrevocably, irretrievably in love with Kate Argent.

Kate Argent. Katherine Argent. Katherine Rose Argent. Even her name is beautiful.

I'm going to tell them today, he resolves, looking at himself sternly in the rearview mirror as he takes a sharp curve on the road back to the pack house. We've been together for a year, and I need to tell them. Yeah, she's from a hunting family, but she loves me and I love her, and once they get to know her, they'll understand. They'll have to understand.

He's so engrossed in his pump-up talk that he doesn't notice it until all six senses kick in at once. He smells it – smoke on the wind, wood and meat and plastic and fabric and metal. He feels it – heat in the air streaming in his windows. He sees it – a billowing spiral of black smoke, half a mile straight ahead. He tastes it – scorched air singeing against his tongue in an explosion of ash and ember. He hears it – the crackle, the roar, and the screams that are destined to wake him up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat for years to come.

And he feels it. In the most animalistic, primal, wolf-driven part of his brain, he feels it.

He now knows how it feels to be hunted.

He takes the last turn so quickly that two of his wheels leave the ground and then he's out of the car – did he even turn it off? or put it in park? – pelting full-tilt across the lawn toward the inferno that used to be the only place in the world where he actually stood a chance of belonging.

He can't get within ten feet of the house. The air is thicker than blood and the heat is searing the top layers of skin away faster than he can heal. He paces frantically, sprinting short distances to try to get a better angle, rage and helplessness threatening to overtake him completely. His thoughts are coming in fits and starts, and he recognizes that he's regressing into the wolf, all pack and help and pack and family and please please please no and then something shatters above him and glass rains down on his shoulders. A large, indecipherable figure catapults through the second-story window an instant, hitting the ground hard and breaking into two pieces.

Cora. Uncle Peter.

Peter drags Cora out of the fire by one arm and deposits her near Derek's feet, and he forces himself to focus on her face and stay. Stay human, stay sane, stay rational, just…stay. She's burned, but not terribly. Her heart is beating. She's breathing. She'll heal.

"Derek!" he finally hears, and then Peter's hands are on his shoulders, claws snick-ing out just enough to break flesh. There's more blood and bone on Peter's face than skin. "Are you okay?"

"Where is everyone else?" he hears himself yell, looking frantically past Peter and starting to try to force his way into the fire again. "My mom and dad, Aunt Sara, Laura, David?"

Peter plants his heels and wraps his arms around Derek's chest to hold him back. "It's too late."

"What are you talking about? We just have to get inside – or maybe they already got away?" Derek's finding it harder to breathe and see between the tears and the smoke and the tight loop of fear secured around his throat that is tightening, tightening, tightening.

"Derek!" Peter throws all his weight forward at once, bulling Derek to the ground and wrestling until he's pinned his nephew against the blackened grass. "It's too late. The fire forced everyone downstairs, to the basement."

"There are windows!" Derek shouts, struggling against Peter's hands. "The hatched windows, just above ground!"

"Locked!" Peter bellows. "We made it to the basement and tried to get out, but the windows were locked from the outside!"

Derek hears Peter continue that he realized Cora was missing and broke through the flames to get to her, but it was too hot and killed whoever tried to come after him. He hears it, but his brain is a million miles away – actually, it's 5.2 miles away, with a stunningly pretty blonde who has a laugh like music, a smile like a secret, and a key to the basement windows of the Hale house so she can sneak in and meet Derek in the middle of the night.

– a hand on his chest, warm brown eyes locking him into place, and long, spindly fingers wrapping around his right wrist and forcing his palm flat over Stiles' heart. Derek snaps back to the present, vision tunneling in and out, and all he can hear is Stiles' calm, even-pitched voice, asking him to breathe and focus on Stiles' heartbeat and breathe and the feel of the boy's baseball tee under his fingers and breathe and heartbeat, breathe and heartbeat, breathe and heartbeat.

"What in the ever-loving fuck was that?" Cole demands, earning him a sharp cuff to the back of the head from Bree and a shushing from nearly everyone else.

"Panic attack," Stiles says quietly, still holding Derek together at the seams with his steady gaze. "I used to get them all the time. You okay, man?"

Derek considers. The faces around him look back with concern and kind understanding and openness and pity, and it builds in a wave that topples his tenuous stability to the ground. Then he's on his feet, out the door, headed to the forest, ready to run and run and run like the guilty fucking coward that he is.


He gets back to his apartment building a few hours later and finds Scott leaning against the side of his Camaro, Derek's shoes resting next to him.

"You left a couple things behind," the Alpha says, straightening up. "Danny hotwired it, so it'll be totally fine. Bring it back to the firehouse sometime and he'll put the wires back in."

Derek nods mutely, raising a hand to take the proffered sneakers. Scott forks them over and shoves his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket. "Look, man, what went down tonight was pretty heavy, and Tink shouldn't have – I mean – crap, where's Stiles when you need him? It was heavy. And a lot to take in."

Derek doesn't say anything.

"It's fine by me that you're here, fine that you don't want to join the pack. But I promised your uncle that we'd try not to let you get killed, and Lydia's pretty worked up about you being in danger. So here." He pulls one hand free and gives Derek a slightly crumpled piece of paper. "Phone numbers and emails for me, Isaac, and Stiles. Anything weird happens, give one of us a call? Pack meeting every Sunday at 7, and you're always welcome."

Scott rolls out his shoulders like he's physically shaking off the Alpha mantle, then starts to walk down the street, presumably back to the firehouse. Derek watches him for a minute, then abruptly breaks into a jog and catches up. If Scott's surprised, he has the good grace not to show it. He stays silent, waiting for Derek to speak.

"What happened with Kate," he begins slowly, not sure entirely where he's going with this or why he feels compelled to explain himself. "It wasn't – I'm not, like, emotionally damaged or anything stupid like that."

"Most of your family was killed by the girl you were in love with," Scott says, the blunt words somehow sounding gentle coming from him. "If you're not carrying around some sort of baggage, then you're a sociopath."

"I just mean…ugh," Derek sighs, letting his head fall back so he can watch the night sky as he keeps in step with Scott. "I'm not a person who freaks out. I'm steady. Controlled. A good man in the storm."

"I believe you."

They're quiet again for half a block or so. It's a nice night, all things considered – clear skies, hazy moon, and Derek can feel the autumn air just starting lead with a biting edge.

"I met Kate, you know," Scott says suddenly.

Derek looks at him sharply. "What?"

"Yeah. Couple years back, when all of this was just getting started. She was Allison's aunt."

Aunt? Kate never mentioned having a niece.

Scott smiles sadly at the sidewalk, clearly lost in memories both good and painful. "You would have liked Allison. Everyone liked Allison. It was impossible not to like Allison."

"What happened?"

Scott lets out a half-growl. "I just met you, dude. Like, today."

"I know that," Derek acknowledges. "But – don't take this the wrong way – your pack has a lot of…triggers. Landmines, almost. I need to know what to watch out for so I don't step on something wrong and blow us all up."

Scott grunts at this and kicks at a crack in the sidewalk. "Short version tonight. You haven't earned the details yet."

Derek nods in agreement and waits. This is good. Getting information, bonding with the Alpha, not talking about himself. This is good. He can handle this.

"Allison and her parents moved to Beacon Hills when we were in high school. We fell in love before we knew that I was a werewolf and she came from a hunting family. We didn't know anything back then – the Alpha that bit me took off, and we just sort of had to make it up as we went along. My boss, Deaton, sometimes helped but was mostly just a mysterious not-always veterinarian."

Deaton, Derek muses. The name sounds familiar, but he doesn't interrupt. Scott guides them around a corner and trails his fingers along a streetlamp before resuming the story. "After a while, Stiles and I figured out that her family were hunters, but Allison still didn't know anything. Then Kate came to visit – she's Allison's dad's sister. Kate and Gerard came to town and everything just kind of…exploded."

"Gerard, Kate's father?"

Scott nods. "Kate's, and Chris's. Allison's dad."

Derek's mind spins. He'd had the unpleasant experience of meeting Gerard a time or two when he and Kate were together, but there'd never been any indication that Gerard had any children besides Kate.

"Anyway," Scott says, starting to talk a little faster. "Like I said, everything exploded, but eventually Chris and Allison started to see things our way. Wrote their own version of the code, stopped hating wolves just for being wolves. Then we broke up, she sort of started dating Isaac, and then she died."

"Wait, what?" Derek blurts, having been completely unprepared for Scott to get to the point so succinctly.

Scott kicks at another crack. "She died. Fighting a demon – one of the tails of a kitsune, if you need to know."

"Fucking hell," Derek says under his breath.

Scott nods. "It nearly broke all of us, nearly tore the pack apart. Chris, Isaac, Lydia, and me – we've never really been the same. You can't go back, you know?"

"We move forward with the marks from those we've loved inscribed on our souls," Derek says automatically.

Scott gives him a startled look. "You're a poet all of a sudden?"

"It's part of a traditional werewolf funeral ceremony," Derek explains. He should know, he said the phrase 15 times over during the mass memorial for his family.

"We have those?" Scott makes a face somewhere between awed and irritated.

Derek squints at him. "You don't know very much about being a werewolf, do you?"

At this, Scott lets out a full-throated growl complete with red eye flash, and Derek's wolf fucking whines and very nearly forces him to his knees. "Sorry," Derek chokes out. "I didn't mean it like that. You seem like a good Alpha and all, it's just obvious that you're missing a lot of the pieces."

Scott cross his arms defensively, eyes still red. "Like I said, we had to figure a lot of it out as we went along. I didn't exactly have a wolfy Yoda to teach me."

"Star Wars?"

"Stiles made me. And coined the phrase."

Derek nods – it makes total sense that Stiles is a sci-fi nerd. "I really didn't mean offense. But there's an entire werewolf subculture across the country – across the world, really. Gatherings, festivals, traditions. It kinda sounds like your pack's been spending so much time fighting for your lives that you haven't had a chance to learn any of that."

Scott visibly brightens, eyes fading back to dark brown. "Could you teach us?"

Derek blinks in surprise. "Teach you?"

"Yeah! I mean, you know all of these things, and you're out here without a pack, and we need – you could be my wolfy Yoda! Unless there's, like, a textbook. How to be a Werewolf in the 21st Century for Dummies."

"No, but there's a Facebook page."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. Some of the people in it are just deranged Twilight fans, but it's the best way to stay in contact and organize the solstices."

"Dude."

Scott's looking at him with such amazement that Derek can't stop a grin from slipping onto his face for a few seconds, but ultimately shakes his head. "I don't think so, Scott. I like you guys – well, you, anyway, and Danny and Ethan seem okay – but I moved out here to get away from all of it. Being a werewolf is what got my family killed."

"Forward with our souls marked by our loved ones," Scott says, butchering the memorial phrase but getting the basic concept right. "Moving forward and running from the past aren't the same thing."

Derek doesn't know how to respond to that, but it sounds like something his dad would have said. His dad had been a bear of a wolf – huge and powerful and terrifying – but the epitome of a man – honest, sturdy, and true to his core. He would have liked Scott. He would have helped Scott.

Maybe he can do this. Show up to pack meetings every once in a while, talk about what he knows of werewolf life and tradition. Be Scott's wolfy Yoda, he thinks with a roll of his eyes. Stiles is going to be the death of him. Royally fucking screwed, honestly.

"You're wrong about something, you know," Scott says, and when he stops walking Derek realizes it's because he's guided them in a full circle, and they're now back in front of Derek's apartment. He's still carrying his shoes in one hand.

"What?"

"Being a werewolf isn't what got your family killed. I met Kate, saw her in action, and everything about that woman fucking terrified me, man. What got your family killed was a crazy bitch with an unfounded vendetta."

That also sounds like something Derek's dad would have said.

"I'll think about it," he says after a beat. "Teaching you what I know, I mean."

Bless Scott's goddamn heart if he doesn't perk up like a puppy presented with a toy. "Really?"

"I don't know everything, and I'm not saying I'll be around all the time. But I'll come to pack meetings when I can, and when I'm there, I'll, you know…share."

Scott hugs him. It's a quick thing – handshake-chestbump-backthump would be a more accurate term than "hug", really – but Scott hugs him nonetheless, and Derek honestly cannot remember the last time someone purposefully made physical contact with him other than the couple mixed martial arts crowds he'd run with back in New England.

"It'll be great, I promise. Anyway, dude, good talk, but it's a school night and I've got a 9AM. See you next Sunday? Unless you see any of that hellish shit Stiles mentioned coming your way, in which case, call. Oh, and Derek – werewolf subculture? Really?"

Derek shrugs. "I'm an English professor."


On Friday, Derek goes on a date.

Her name is Hannah. She's twenty-four, a PhD candidate in the Anthropology department, and he met her at a faculty mixer that Austin, the other young professor in the English department, dragged him to. She's pretty and charming and blindingly intelligent, and she doesn't seem to mind the occasional silence between them. They chat casually through dinner, attend an experimental jazz concert held in someone's attic ("Fascinating," murmurs Hannah. Actively offensive, thinks Derek.), and walk back to her apartment the long way. Derek's in that agonizing moment of trying to decide if he should ask for a second date or just go in for the goodnight kiss when his phone buzzes loudly, startling the both of them.

"Sorry," he apologizes, scrabbling to get it out of his pocket. "Sorry, I could have sworn I turned it off – what the hell?" He stares at the caller ID – Stiles. (Yes, he programmed their numbers into his phone.) Why in the hell is Stiles calling him at 1 in the morning?

He peeks up at Hannah, who's smiling at him. "It's okay," she says. "Go ahead and answer."

"Are you sure? I'm sure it's nothing, it's just these kids I know –."

The rest of whatever weak excuse he's going to make is cut off when she steps forward, rests her hands on his chest, and presses up onto her toes to kiss him. It's short and sweet, and Derek's heart coughs and turns over like the engine of a car that's been sitting in a garage gathering dust for years.

"Answer," she breathes, pulling back. Derek moves with her, but she pushes him away gently and he lets her keep him at bay. "Answer that now, and call me later?"

He nods, too dumbfounded for words, and watches her bounce up the stairs into her building. Then he swipes to answer the call and growls, "This had better be a really big fucking deal, or I'll rip your spleen out of your body and eat it in front of you."

"Charming," Stiles says. "Where are you? I've got an errand to run, and Scott says you're coming with me."


This is how Derek winds up climbing out of Stiles' jeep at five on a Saturday morning in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, Washington. After it became clear that Stiles wasn't going to divulge the destination or purpose of their little road trip, he'd dozed off, expecting to be woken up in twenty minutes or so. But no, Stiles had driven straight through the night, they've crossed state lines, and Derek had only woken up as the passed into Olympic National Forest. Now he blinks owlishy in the pale yellow fingers of dawn creeping over the horizon and shivers – it's cold up here in the mountains, even for a werewolf.

Stiles comes around the back of the Jeep and hands him a sweatshirt – the hoodie Derek smelled on the first day of class.

"Thanks," he says grudgingly. "Are you going to tell me what the hell we're doing up here? Besides severely trying my patience?"

Stiles hauls a duffel bag out of the trunk but doesn't say anything. Derek watches him carefully, assessing the younger man with something perhaps close to concern – but that's only natural, because Stiles looks like hell. He'd looked tired when he picked Derek up, but now, with sunlight throwing his features into sharp relief, Derek can tell that there's more to it than that. The bags beneath Stiles' eyes look like they've been bruised to the bone, he's paler than he should be, and every line in his shoulders speaks to tension and exhaustion. Derek's on the verge of asking what's wrong when Stiles shoves a second duffel bag at him, locks the Jeep, and sets off into the woods. Derek quickly shoulders the bag and pursues, horribly intrigued by this quieter, still-er, darker Stiles.

They hike for forty-five minutes before Stiles speaks. "For the record, I don't want you here."

"Okay, so why am I?"

"Scott thought it would be a good idea," Stiles says, frustration creeping into his voice.

"A good idea for what?"

Derek follows Stiles out of the trees and into a clearing, bathed in dusky blue and rays of pink. His eyes are immediately drawn to the tree dead center in the clearing, and his Yeats, Longfellow, Whitman, Thoreau, and Frost-loving brain starts searching for the right words to describe it, because this is not just a tree. This is a Tree – you could the old Hale house in it five times over, all stacked up on top of one another. If you cut it down – and surely it would be an unforgivable crime against nature to cut down such a Tree – you could make Noah's ark. Twice. It stretches up toward the sky with arms of brown and green and orange and red; plunges roots as thick as his torso deep into the earth, an anchor to the ground and pathway to the heavens all at once. And there's even more – a tingle has set up at the base of his spine, a tingle he's started to subconsciously associate with the non-werewolf magical world.

Stiles interrupts Derek's poetic waxings by dropping his duffel bag unceremoniously to the ground and starting to dig things out of it. Large candles, a coil of rope, bunches of plant clippings, and jars of dust or some other substance emerge. Curious, Derek peeks inside the bag he's carrying, but this one's contents are much more mundane: food and a blanket.

Derek holds in his questions, as it's apparent that Stiles is just going to be standoffish and silent. So while Stiles begins to set up whatever it is he's doing, Derek prowls a wide circle around the edge of the clearing, the tingle in his spine starting to make him uneasy. The tree is so large that he loses sight of Stiles for a while during each loop, and the boy takes a solid thirty minutes clearing his chosen site, arranging the candles and leaves, spreading the ashes, and carving intricate symbols into the dirt with the sharp end of a broken stick. Finally, he walks a circle around the Tree, making a loop with the rope, ties the other end to his right ankle, and resumes his place in the middle of all his candles. Derek stops his pacing and takes up a squat in a good vantage point, off to the side.

After several more minutes' silence, in which Derek watches Stiles sway slightly back and forth from his heels to toes and listens to the wind rustling half-fallen leaves, Stiles speaks.

Or chants. Or sings. Or screams, or whispers, or laughs – it's somehow all of these things and none of them, and it's in a language Derek's known since the day he was born but has never heard before.

The candles and circles of ash blaze up around Stiles. He doesn't seem to notice.

Lines of light spiral up the trunk of the tree. Stiles doesn't seem to notice.

His feet leave the ground and he inches upward into the sky, tethered down only by the rope around his ankle, and he doesn't seem to notice.

Derek's not sure how long the three of them are like that – Stiles, floating twenty feet above the ground and oblivious; the Tree, shooting small sparks in every direction; Derek, transfixed by the scene in front of him. It could be minutes, it could be hours, but when it ends, it does so suddenly that he nearly misses it.

A pulse of light and force blasts out of the tree in every direction, and he just has time to process that it looks like an ever-expanding dome before the shockwave knocks him on his ass. Stiles falls out of the sky and hits the ground hard, unmoving, and Derek stumbles over – he's half blind and deaf from the pulse, and his healing hasn't kicked in yet. By the time he reaches the younger man, Stiles is stirring and groaning.

Derek wants to ask if he's okay, but there's a more demanding question that gets out first. "What in the hell was that?"

Stiles weakly pushes Derek's face out of his line of vision. "Food first, Eyebrows. Then we'll talk."

Derek impatiently gets up, snags the second duffel, and dumps its contents near Stiles feet. Stiles painstakingly confects a beef jerky, peanut butter, and jelly bean sandwich and devours it in two seconds flat, by which Derek is both repulsed and impressed. He chugs about a liter of water, pulls a massive container of cold curly fries toward him, and finally looks Derek in the eye and says, "So, what do you want to know?"

Derek lets out a short bark of a laugh at the sheer absurdity of that question while Stiles continues to inhale food like he hasn't eaten in a week. What do I want to know? I just – I mean – well, obviously, because…

He gives up trying to make his thoughts behave, shakes out the blanket Stiles packed, and sits down. "You're not a Druid."

Stiles grins through a mouthful of fries and marshmallow fluff, which is more than a little disgusting to behold. "Not even a little bit."

Derek nods, pondering this. He steals the remainder of Stiles' beef jerky and chews thoughtfully. "What's the tree?"

"It's a Nemeton. The Druids consider it one of their sacred spaces, but it's really just a power hub that almost any magical anything can use to juice up."

"And that's what you just did." It's not a question – there's no doubt that Stiles looks significantly more alive and healthy now than he did when they got out of the Jeep.

Stiles shrugs and washes a mouthful of food down with a swig of orange juice. "That's part of it. You know the blast?" He makes an explosion gesture with his hands, and Derek nods. "It's a ward. 200 miles in every direction. It lets me know when any supernatural beasties cross the boundary. It's pretty draining to watch such a big area, though, so every couple weeks I come up here and use the Nemeton to recharge."

Derek's math isn't great, but he knows that a circle 400 miles across covers a pretty fucking huge patch of land. And ocean, since they're on the peninsula. "Why not make the ward closer to Greymar and keep it small?"

"The pack aren't the only ones I care about," Stiles says simply, untying the rope from his ankle. Having eaten his weight in junk food, he flops onto the blanket next to Derek and yawns up at the sky. "If you have more questions, ask them fast – I've got maybe five minutes before I fall asleep, and I'll be out until Monday."

"Monday?"

"It takes a lot out of me," Stiles says nonchalantly, but Derek can see the truth in the statement. The adrenaline of whatever he just did seems to be wearing off.

"What was the point of bringing me?" He asks abruptly. "Was this some sort of warning from Scott? Because you're obviously pretty fucking powerful – he's saying that if I screw with the pack, he'll sic you on me?"

"What?" Stiles says, struggling up to his elbows. "Don't be an idiot. That's not Scott at all – Ethan, maybe, or Isaac, or Bree on a bad day, but not Scott. He thought it might help you, I don't know, rest easier at night. Knowing that there's more out there protecting you than a bunch of college students. He also thought you might be more likely to let us help you if you feel like we trust you."

Derek raises an eyebrow. "How does this mean that you trust me?"

Stiles lets his elbows collapse. "Like you said, I'm pretty fucking powerful." There's no pride in his voice when he says this – there's actually a little resentment, if Derek's not totally off his reading-people game. "Once word gets out that you can do things like put up a 126,000-square mile ward, there's no end to the sorcerers and Druids and warlocks and Fae that want to grab you and do all sorts of nasty things to you until you agree to be on their side." A visible shudder runs through Stiles' body, and Derek wonders just how much Stiles has been through in his 20 years. "So you could probably easily make enough money or earn enough favors by selling me out to whatever creepy contacts you may have to set you and your children's children up for life. Or you could just kill me while we're out here, since I'm just a defenseless human."

"I don't think 'defenseless' is a word I'd use to describe you."

"Oh, but that's the best part!" Stiles says cheerfully. "I can't use it to defend myself. If something's coming after me and me alone, it just…fizzles. Last week at the firehouse, if you'd tried to attack me instead of Cole and Tink, you probably would have been highly successful at ripping my throat out."

Derek's silent for a moment, then mumbles, "Shit."

"Amen, Sourwolf. Two-minute warning – you're going to have to carry me back to the Jeep and drive home, by the way. Or, you know, leave me out here in the woods and let wolves eat my unconscious, healing body."

Two minutes? Derek has at least sixty more questions, and that's just off the top of his head. He picks the one that, for some unknown reason, keeps circling back to the top of the list. "Scott wanted me here. You didn't. Why?"

Stiles is quiet for a few seconds. Derek's about to protest the wasting of precious Q&A time when he finally starts speaking in short, careful sentences. "Scott trusts you. And most of the pack will trust you, because Scott does. But I know what happened to your family, and I know you think it's your fault. And I know what that does to a person. I know how unstable it makes you. I know little it takes to set you off."

A minute passes. When Stiles speaks again, it's even quieter.

"It took me a long time to be able to trust myself again, and even now, most days are shaky. So Scott can trust you, but I don't. Not yet. And now, in addition to everything else, I get to live with you having this power over me. One word in the right ear, and I'm dead. Or worse than dead."

"I'm not going to do that, Stiles."

"Sure. Scratch out the symbols and pick up the candles before we leave, okay?"

Derek hears Stiles' heartbeat slow down and his breathing lengthen out as he drifts to sleep. He watches the sun rise properly, chasing shadows back into the forest and warming their little clearing so that as he's packing up the supplies, it's warm enough for him to take off the loaned sweatshirt. As he tugs it over his head, the tag catches his eye: J. Stilinski is scrawled across it in messy permanent marker. Filing that away under "Landmines to ask Scott about Later," he slings both duffels over one shoulder, bundles Stiles up over the other, and follows their trail back through the woods.