"We've got a serious problem!"
Derek looked up from the maps spread over the table in front of him and glared at Isaac and Violet with red eyes.
"Really?" he snapped, "I hadn't noticed!"
Violet flinched back from the Alpha thrum in his voice, her twin sister Lily moving to her side from her position against the wall.
Derek swallowed, reeled in his anger. The girls were still fairly new to the pack, only two years, and they still quavered when he barked just a little too loud. When Isaac's fiancée had requested the bite and her twin had followed suit he had consented, but at the time he'd hoped that the timid females would grow a little backbone. They had, mostly. Of the two Lily was braver, but they still shook in their boots when he snapped his teeth in their direction. Dropping his eyes back to the maps, flicking through them, he gave both betas a minute to collect themselves, to put on the masks they pulled when they wanted to put up a good front. They were both good at that. They could fake out any lesser wolf, but he knew better.
Around him he felt his pack shifting, felt Peter move from his side to Lily's, felt both males take the girls into their arms. They were all there, all gathered in the restored Hale House after the fiasco of last night; Scott and Allison, Erica and Boyd, Lydia too, all of them. Except maybe the one who mattered most in this moment.
Derek felt his mouth twist in a sneer.
He didn't have time to go there right now.
"Did you check on the Sheriff?" he growled in Isaac's direction, and he felt the lanky blonde shift on his feet.
"He's still alive."
Derek's relief was tempered by the fact that the man was turning.
He'd smelled it in the blood that had streaked his leather jacket as he'd rushed the man to the hospital the night before, his mind consumed with a crushing sense of failure.
"We need to find that alpha," he snarled quietly, mostly to himself, his eyes scanning the maps once again. "If we can bring him to John…"
"It might be more than just an alpha."
Derek's head snapped up and he quickly circled the table, stalking halfway across the floor towards Isaac, his second in command even above Scott and Peter. The once troubled teenager had grown into a strong, intelligent adult, and had developed a mind that could unravel a psyche quicker than any shrink Derek have ever met.
"What's wrong?" he asked, and something cold settled in the pit of his belly.
"We swung by the hospital, like you asked," Isaac said, and Violet nodded in agreement, her knuckles white where she gripped her fiancée's hand. "We caught Scott's mom on her way down to check on him. She said he'd been all right, but then he got worse. Said his pulse was elevated, he was having trouble breathing…"
"He's fighting the bite?" Derek asked, and the cold shot all the way down to his fingertips. If the Sheriff rejected the bite, he was going to die. He wasn't like Lydia, or Jackson, wasn't something else that could fight it off.
"I don't…"
Derek snapped out of his thoughts, raised an eyebrow at the sight of Isaac's nervousness and confusion.
"Derek there was another wolf there."
"What?" Derek hissed. "How many?"
"I don't, I don't know, maybe two? I could really only smell the one, but there was something else, something like…"
"Like a witch," Violet said.
Derek switched his attention to the quieter girl, waited, knowing he'd get it out of her faster if he didn't try to drag it out.
"It was," she began slowly, "It was like ashes. Like the smoke from candles. Or from…" She swallowed, looked up at her alpha with blatant fear in her wide blue eyes. "From a fire."
Derek felt his mouth fall open, had to suck in a breath that he'd forgotten to take while he waited for the world to stop shifting underneath him.
"Could you tell who it was?" he finally choked out, turning his back on the pack and moving back to the table, leaning over it as he tried not to panic.
"No," Isaac replied. "I don't… I don't know."
"Well which is it?!" Derek snarled viciously, turning on him with flashing eyes and teeth gone long and sharp.
"I don't know!" Isaac bit back. "It wasn't the alpha that bit John. Definitely at least one wolf, but… I don't know, something. There was something there that was like… like I knew it. Like I'd smelled it before but can't remember…"
"Someone from the alpha pack?" Scott suggested, all innocence and helpfulness. He'd never lost that, even after it all, that simple, puppyish quality that had never quite endeared itself to Derek as much as it had to everyone else.
"None of them would risk being in my territory without my permission," he replied off-handedly. "Not after the way that mess ended."
"What would they want with the Sheriff?" Allison asked, and Scott grabbed her hand in his as if to reassure her that it wasn't anything bad.
Derek shook his head. Of course it was. This was Beacon Hills. As soon as you thought everything was under control, some dark thing raised its head again.
"Allison! Lydia!" he commanded, and both girls leapt to their feet, stances strong and ready. "Get to the hospital. Guard that room. Anyone shows up you call us. Erica, Boyd?" Turning back to the maps, he circled off pieces of the town with one hand as his pack crowded around him. "Take the western quarter. Isaac, Scott, the north. Peter, you're with me." A token protest went up but he silenced it with a wave of his hand. "I want the twins going south," he explained, taking the time to soothe ruffled feathers on the protective males that had grumbled his way. "Violet and Lily can search the preserve. I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to get this close, so they'll be fine. But check!" he warned them firmly.
"You're looking for any wolf that isn't pack," he reminded them. "Any wolves. Anybody finds anything, they call the rest of us. And if it's the alpha, don't engage."
Derek glared at each of them, his face grim.
"Don't forget, we want him alive."
XXX
"So this is the famous Beacon Hills Preserve," Pheelan murmured as he and Stiles walked back up through the woods, back towards the car as the snow started really coming down. "The place it all started."
A smile quirked at one side of Stiles' mouth, and he shrugged deeper into his sweatshirt, pulling his hood up tight around his ears. "About a mile south of it, but close enough."
"Seems like a good place to run," he said carefully.
"Sure," Stiles agreed casually. "When there aren't pissed-off alphas and kanimas and psychotic teens leaving bodies all over the trails."
Phee chuckled under his breath, moved closer to Stiles' side as they both hopped easily over a rotting log. They were weaving their way slowly between the trees, Stiles' eyes just good enough in the dark that he could move without tripping over his feet. When he'd finally accepted that he wasn't just an ordinary human, accepted that he was a counterpart to a werewolf pack, his senses had heightened, sharpened. They weren't anywhere near a wolf's, but they were far better than they had been, his sense of smell in particular better than he'd ever imagined it might be. He knew it was the Hale pack that he was scenting, striping paths through the woods even though he couldn't tell who was who. He did, however, have a nasty suspicion that the strongest scent, the one that was like coffee and peppermint and clean, pale sawdust, the one that seemed to burrow its way into his chest and get stuck there, belonged to the pack's alpha.
He could've asked Phee.
The werewolf would have answered.
But it would have felt cruel somehow, and so Stiles just tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the snowflakes that were drifting down around them, fat and wet and white. They weren't sticking, and tomorrow there'd be no sign that they ever were, but while they lasted they were pretty enough. They were getting closer and closer to the Hale House as they walked back to the main road, and the closer they got the more tense Stiles became. He wasn't even sure if the house was still standing, let alone if the wolves were actually staying there, but he didn't see any reason to take the chance and so he tried to steer them on a parallel course. If Phee sensed the others, sensed Stiles' discomfort he didn't mention it, just followed along at his heels, trusting him to take the best path out of the woods.
Five minutes in from the road, Stiles stopped in his tracks.
"Ok, I can't hold it anymore," he groaned, stepping towards the base of a heavy oak. "I gotta take a leak."
"You really think it's a good idea to start marking in their territory?" Phee asked flatly.
"This isn't about scent marking," Stiles insisted, "It's about the eight cups of tea I…"
Stiles' hands froze on his belt buckle, his head snapping to the left, eyes searching in the dark.
"Incoming. Nine o'clock," Phee murmured, slipping in close behind him, two steps back and to the left as Stiles turned in the direction he'd nodded.
"Wolves?"
"Two. Betas, females both." Pheelan lifted his head, scented the air, and Stiles did the same, but he couldn't pick up anything over the smell of the snow and the cold, dead trails already crisscrossing through the trees. "Twins?"
"Great," Stiles muttered. "Think they can do that fucked-up body-blend thing?"
He didn't look back to see if Phee responded. He didn't really need an answer. He could handle whatever came at them, he knew that, except that in some ways he couldn't handle any of it at all. It hurt somehow to know that the pack had grown in his absence, taken in new members when he hadn't been allowed that privilege…
A short way off a twig snapped, and two thin, fragile-looking girls with dark, mahogany-colored hair stepped out of the trees, their eyes glowing gold in the dark.
"This is private property," one of them snarled, showing her fangs. "You're trespassing."
Stiles smirked coldly, remembering a similar conversation years ago with a werewolf much scarier than these two.
"Last I knew," he drawled easily, "Private property didn't start for another two hundred yards."
This time both girls snarled, crouching forward in fighting stances. Behind him Phee rocked back on his heels, the picture of insolent relaxation, and Stiles hoped that wearing the wolf's sweatshirt might mask his scent enough to cover up the fact that he was human. At least these particular wolves wouldn't recognize him, he had that going.
"Claimed territory then," the first wolf hissed. "Alpha Hale is not pleased."
Stiles snorted, making them flash their eyes and show their teeth. "Alpha Hale," he snickered. Hilarious. Even if hearing his name again cut. "Still a pretentious son of a bitch then?"
"Hah!" Behind him, Phee barked a short laugh, grinned lopsidedly and pointed at Stiles with thumb and forefinger. "Son of a bitch."
Stiles smirked over his shoulder.
He'd thought it was pretty funny too.
The girls didn't. They whipped their heads back and forth, roared with bared teeth, danced anxiously on their feet, but they were eyeing Pheelan nervously and Stiles was fairly confident that the Omega's massive size would at least have them thinking twice before they attacked.
"Not looking for a fight," he warned flatly, but his tone held ice and flint. Looking for a fight, no. Ready for a fight? Always.
Hell, if it had been one of the others, he might've enjoyed it.
Not these two.
"Then what are you looking for?" the second wolf growled, speaking up for the first time. "A Sheriff perhaps?"
At the mention of his father Stiles felt his hands go cold, felt his tattoos burn and he knew that something dark glinted in his eyes. A chill wind picked up out of nothing and began to whistle through the trees around them, the earth rolling and quivering under their feet, and both girls yipped as they were thrown violently to the ground. Hunching low, they scrabbled backwards and away from Stiles, cowering from what they didn't know.
"You and your pack stay away from the Sheriff," he warned, his voice low and deadly, dark with a poisonous edge that threatened to strike. "He's not your concern anymore."
Slowly, the rumbling and shaking of the rock and soil under their feet settled and Stiles felt the energy that had grabbed hold of him let go, and it was all he could do to keep from slumping into a puddle. The two were-girls scrambled to their feet, clutching at each other and darting terrified glances into the darkness around then, their bodies shaking as they stared at Stiles with something akin to horror.
"Run along home now, little flowers," he sneered, for the shadows had whispered names in his ears.
They didn't need a second invitation.
Casting frightened glances back over their shoulders, they took off at a dead run towards the Hale House as though demons from hell were nipping at their heels.
"Oh and tell your Alpha," Stiles called after them, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Tell your alpha not to be such a fucking sourwolf!"
