She had learned to name all the moons like some sort of grisly catechism. That had been April. The Pink Moon. By the Milk Moon in May, her flower boxes and wide beds started budding and by June, the Strawberry Moon, they were in full bloom. She sipped her tea on her patio and absently fingered the purple petals like caressing the garments of an old and familiar friend. She considered going to Paris for the spring, but there was an ache in her, an urgency that she channeled into work.
She was still hurting. The wound Peter had left on her at the Nemeton had healed remarkably quickly, but Stiles had cut her deeper with his words. He had been a constant in this never ending free for all and for the first time since the flood lights had blinded her on that empty lacrosse pitch that she had christened with her blood, she felt alone.
She was barely sixteen again, taped to a chair and being garrotted by her English teacher and feeling the first trickle of power, feeling it for the first time with the knowing it was something 'other' than her. It was something foreign and yet still a part of her, like waking up one morning and realizing puberty had struck with breasts and hair and an extra inch of height. Only this had a harder learning curve than a training bra and starter heels.
She was being garrotted by her English teacher who was lecturing her on the meaning of sacrifice. Despite her terror and confusion and her connection to something she barely understood and couldn't control, the one thing she could sort out of the chaos was that her friends were coming to rescue her. Even if they hadn't, she would have died knowing she wasn't alone. She would have died knowing they were defending her just as fearlessly as they defended each other.
By twenty eight, she had finally learned what Ms. Blake had been trying to teach her. Had learned it so well, in fact, she could have added another PhD. to her name. Her friends would defend her to the death, but could not save her from herself. She would have to give something up for the greater good. For their greater good and her own. It was a bleak realization as she sat in the summer sun, surrounded by the constancy of theorems and equations, and slowly slid her finger over the ignore button on her phone.
Lydia had that shaky, not quite real feeling she always experienced when she worked. The physical world stopped existing for her as she let her mind slip into that place between what was real and what was possible. Papers piled around her weighted down against the summer breezes with stones from her garden, her coffee cup, a tree branch. Her patio table had become an altar to nature and paper as she unlocked the secrets to the universe.
She felt him before she heard him. It was a low rumble in the periphery of her attention. The crunch of gravel under the tires of the patrol car an insult to a peace otherwise punctuated only by the dim hum of summer.
She put her pencil down, shook out her hands and tried to acclimate to the feel of reality again. She was still trying to shake off the buzz when he got out of the car and stood there, watching her with his hands clasped on the roof and a grim set to his mouth. Without saying anything he turned his head away and squinted into the sun. She waited.
"Doc Martin," he said in a long, drawn out way reminiscent of Westerns and good ol' boys.
"Officer," she answered. "Is there a problem?"
"Deputy," he said, looking at her and tapping his badge, "Deputy. And as I'm pretty sure I would know if you were dead or something, as we're pretty much joined a the metaphysical hip, I'm assuming you've broken all of your fingers, since you haven't picked up the phone in," he glanced at his watch, "about two months."
She smiled. He hadn't called her 'Doc' in years. He was trying to mend fences. She always called him Officer, he always corrected her. It was familiar and ordinary and it ached because it shouldn't be this easy anymore.
She waggled her fingers at him, and as an afterthought picked up her foot from where it rested on the garden chair in front her to wiggle her well manicured toes. "Ten and ten," she said.
He sighed and looked at the ground. Scuffed the dirt with his toe. Looked back at her. She could imagine hearing him count to ten.
"Then why aren't you answering the phone, Lydia." He sounded tired, a tone that was just two ticks shy of exasperated. She was used to exasperating him. Exhausting him was something new.
"I was working." She indicated the table strewn with notes only she could make sense of.
"You don't completely check out when you work. I mean, you do," he walked around the car and leaned back on the hood, arms crossed, "but you usually come up for air more than once every sixty days."
She squinted her eyes at him, smiled in spite of herself. "You've been counting, haven't you?"
"Sixty eight days, ten hours, and," he looked at his watch again, "forty three minutes."
"You're wasting your time in the police department," she answered. This was warm, comfortable, navigating the prickly barbs of friendship. She could do this. She could do this forever and she would only have to pay for it with her body and a little bit of her soul.
"Yeah, well, somebody's got to hide the bodies, right?" He looked at the ground again, uncomfortable. "I was worried about you, Doc. And," he pushed off the car, then leaned back again, crossed and uncrossed his feet at the ankles as he tried to look casual and failed. "And I'm sorry."
She should have left it at that. Told him apology accepted and sent him on his way, but almost of their own volition her legs withdrew from the chair and she patted the seat, inviting him into her space. ...Said the spider to the fly.
He gazed at her a moment too long, turned away and kind of flailed a hand in her direction. "You should probably put some clothes on first."
She looked down at her robe. Sitting in her own yard in the middle of nowhere she hadn't bothered to get dressed this morning. She quirked her mouth to the side. "Oh, I suppose so." Tightening the sash around her she stood up and motioned that he should follow her into the house.
"You don't even know what's going on, do you?" he said as the screen door banged shut behind him.
"Nothing new. I would have felt it," Lydia bent to scratch a Siamese cat between the ears when it sauntered out to great her.
The cat closed her eyes in apparent bliss before squinting at Stiles as if to say, "You again."
"No, you would have felt a disturbance in the Force if there was something foreign in our territory. What we have going on is more like bipartisan leadership." He tried to pet the cat, but she swished her tail at him and walked in the other direction.
Lydia stopped. Peter.
"He's causing trouble, isn't he?" She asked.
Stiles frowned, head bobbing back and forth on his neck like a rooster for a couple beats as he looked for the right explanation. "Trouble is what you would call running out of gas on a deserted road in the middle of a snow storm. Trouble is more like, say, losing your cellphone with nude selfies on it. Trouble might even be what you're in when you say something really obnoxious to your best friend." He winked at her. "What we're talking here is more like," he paused, struggling to find the right analogy, "a fucking Death Star landing in your backyard." He stalked into the kitchen and opened her fridge. "A big fucking Death Star on steroids. Yeah, that kind of trouble." He looked at her in disbelief. "All you have are wine coolers in here."
"Aren't you on the job?"
"I'm always on the job," he groused. He snatched a water instead and chugged it. "Scott has me multitasking more than the Titan supercomputer."
He took another long draw from the bottle, the plastic crackling in the quiet air as it collapsed, his eyes watching her over the rim. The sound skidded painfully along her already frayed nerves.
"So, since Thing 1 and Thing 2 can't play nice, and Thing 3," he motioned at her with the nearly empty bottle, "can't pick up the phone, I have been sent by my Alpha," he used the water bottle to make a circle over his head, as though to indicate an omnipotent Alpha presence, "to see if you can," now he looked down, uncomfortable again. "If you can help sort this thing out."
"There's a reason I haven't answered my phone, Stiles." She said it slowly and carefully. Something was starting to stir in her, an awareness, a pressure slowly building towards detonation.
He continued to watch her over the lip of the nearly empty water bottle, his gaze a heavy weight that made her pull the neck of her robe closed and tug the hem lower around her thighs. He put it down on the counter and turned to get another from the fridge. He got through half of that one before he spoke again. "If you had answered your phone, you would know what's going on. Derek's pack is leaving, Lydia."
She tasted the adrenaline rush, a hot copper rush along her tongue, like blood. And the Morrigan started to rouse.
Stiles didn't notice, going back to the fridge and foraging, speaking to her with his back turned. "Well, they're not really 'leaving' him, he's sending them to Cora, for their own protection. But, it's weakening him, so," he tried to speak to her over his shoulder, but his voice echoed off the hollow valleys of cold bottles and root vegetables, his effort at nonchalance failed again. He straightened, leaned against the counter like he had his patrol car and cracked the lid on another bottle. "Put on something nice, because you've got a date tonight." He raised the water in mock toast before putting it to his lips.
She flinched like he had hit her. She knew he wasn't trying to be mean spirited, even as he grimaced at his own words, his whole face wrinkling from forehead to lips. She could see how unhappy he was, and knew how dire the situation would have to be for him to be on her doorstep delivering a message for the Hales. First, he was the McCall Emissary. This should have been Deaton's job if it was anyone's. But they all knew that if she was being as intractable as she was, she would have gone in the house, locked the door, and left him to return to his pack with bad news. Second, he was Stiles. He had made it clear years ago he would help her pick up the pieces of her life, but he wouldn't help break her. Her attempt to overpower Peter had created an immeasurable shift in balance if Stiles had shown up on her doorstep to push her into Derek's bed.
The war on his face was brief and futile as he gave in to his anger, the only real defense he had against her. He snapped, "Look, I'm not your pimp. Just, answer your damn phone. There's shit going on that we all have to deal with, even you." He stopped and lowered his voice. "Especially you, since you created our current funhouse freak show."
Stiles' contempt was like a worm that burrowed into her, writhing just under her skin until she wanted to scream with the ache of it. She wanted claws and teeth so she could hunt something, rend flesh and bone and shake off this feeling that was slithering into her limbs, flowing into the spaces of her mind where she had been at peace with her work not an hour ago. She wanted to run feral and naked in the woods, mate savagely under the moon with her face turned toward the sky and her limbs cool in the dust of her ancestors. Maybe Stiles saw it, too, because he took a step back and put his hand on his gun.
She ached from a hole deep inside herself. Lydia knew these couldn't possibly be her thoughts, but she could feel the skin ripping under her fingertips, the deep wet ache of hard sex, and the loamy feel of the warm earth under her back. Sometimes it was so hard to find herself buried beneath the Nemeton and the Morrigan. She was a small voice in a deep, wide hole they both seemed to be burying under sex and pain. It was death by inches, and Stiles hurt her even when he didn't mean to.
Against all better judgment, and none of it her own, she padded on light feet towards him. He moved away from her until he was hemmed in by the L of the counter top on one side and the sink on the other. She shouldn't be doing this, she thought, pressing herself along the tall length of him. They had agreed years ago this was a bad idea. Something else in her disagreed.
"Uh, Lydia," he looked frantically side to side, "what are you doing?"
"Doesn't it bother you," she crooned, as she canted her head and slid her hand along the back of his neck to pull him towards her, "to be the wolves errand boy when you could have all my power for yourself?"
She pressed her lips to his, a long, slow, lingering kiss. He tasted like cold, clear water as he stood a moment, unresponsive, before letting the water bottle clatter and bounce to the floor and holding her tightly to him. Kissing him was like kissing that sixteen year old boy again, and for a moment she could pretend she was somebody different, something simpler. Until the Morrigan reared up inside of her and the thought drifted away like a dream.
His hands slid into her hair, tangled in it as his tongue found hers and struggled for dominance. She hummed in delight.
"I don't want your power," he rumbled against her mouth, his hands sliding down the thin fabric of her robe to grab her by the hips, "I just want you." He picked her up and pivoted, setting her on the counter top and bracketing her with his arms on either side of her head.
She explored the inside of his mouth, ravenous, as her hands fought with the buckle on his gun belt. Thwarted, the Morrigan would have ripped it off him if he hadn't dipped his hands between their bodies to make short work of it. His knuckles grazed her slick center as he released the buckle and she sucked a quick breath in, pulling the air from him. He chuckled at the unusual sensation of his air being stolen from him as she heard the heavy thud of the belt and everything attached to it land in the sink.
The more mundane belt she could manage, and it clinked and clattered as her small hands worked blindly on slipping the leather from the buckle to hang open loosely against his pants.
He paused as she popped the button open on his pants, even as his hands gripped the counter tops until his knuckles were white. "What are we doing, Lydia? We agreed a long time ago this was a bad idea."
"We were young and stupid," she said, the soft vrppp of the zipper punctuating her words.
"So now we're what? Old and stupid?" He shuddered as she reached into his underwear to caress him with soft fingers. He was long and hard, the tip of him already peeking out from the waistband of his briefs.
"Tell me you want me to stop," she said, flicking her tongue out to graze his lips. Inside, Lydia was already screaming "STOP", but she wasn't in control anymore. She could feel the power spindling around her, and knew the Morrigan served one purpose. To share power. But Stiles was human. Stiles was human. Her power to him would be like surfing the currents of the sun.
He groaned as she gripped him harder, her thumb slipping across the head in little circles. He shook his head. "No, no I don't want to stop. God, Lydia," he rested his head against her shoulder, his voice husky and cracked, "don't stop."
She wrapped her legs around him. "Tell me we should stop and you can walk out that door right now." The Morrigan was a magpie and Lydia snarled. This wasn't a choice. But Stiles was so lost in the sensation he didn't even see the brief struggle that flickered across her face before she pulled herself forward on the counter and angled herself toward his length.
He stopped her with a hand on her thigh, his thumb sliding into the thick russet curls at her center to whirl little figure eights inside the pink folds. She was wet and hungry for him and gripped him angrily with her legs, trying to pull him into her.
He stayed her with a gentle hand. "Give me a minute. I've dreamt about this every fucking night for years. It's not going to be a quickie."
Lydia sighed. This is what she wanted. Derek was a capable lover, and over the years they had developed an affection for each other, but she knew if it weren't for the Morrigan, neither would warm the other's bed on their own. And Peter was...Peter. He was a grudge fuck she couldn't shake. Her own personal snake in the grass. But Stiles was the lover she was meant to have, when she had learned to find peace with herself.
His long, elegant fingers circled and probed while he never took his eyes off her face. She could see him memorizing ever twitch and sigh, to put up like one of his little glass jars full of magic and lore. And then the pad of his thumb brushed her at just the right angle with the right pressure and the orgasm caught her without any warning. She gasped and clutched his shoulders and he shoved into her, thrusting deep and sighing loudly against her neck.
When the energy hit him, he looked shocked. He pulled out and stumbled back, taking a moment to right his pants before she hopped off the counter in pursuit, holding his mouth to hers and breathing the rest of the power into him, even as she frantically sought to take it back. She could ignite that spark of magic in him, she could fan it until it was an inferno. She could kill him with it.
Lydia screamed, a long keening wail that would bring safety and protection. Only this time she needed it from herself, not for herself. Her cat, who had discreetly turned her back on the activities in her kitchen hissed and shot from the room. Stiles lay on the floor turning a clay color as the breath caught in his chest. She considered running to his car to find his asthma inhaler, even as she knew he hadn't needed it in years.
His brown eyes shined feverishly as he clutched at her with one hand and his chest with the other. His skin felt dry and hot to the touch.
"Oh my god oh my god ohmygod," she cried. "Please please please breathe. I'm so sorry." She cupped his face in her hands, watching the light in his eyes peak and start to wane.
Not knowing what else to do, she kissed him again, and tasted her own power. Unable to hold it all, like an overfilled cup it leaked off him. She knew the feel of it, closed her eyes and imagined it coming back to her. Like reversing the flow of an electric current she pulled it back into herself, breathed it in like she had accidentally sucked the air from his lungs a few minutes before. Slowly, she felt his skin cool under her touch, the light in his eyes dim to something glassy and human again.
Outside her screen door, she saw Peter and Derek standing like bookends just at the border of her field of flowers.
Stiles had pushed himself into a sitting position in her hallway, gasping for air, but breathing.
"What the fuck was that," he finally managed to whisper. He was shaking and sweaty, moisture slicking his face in a sickly sheen.
She ignored the question, braced his arm around her neck and leveraged him to his feet. "I think Scott will be here any minute. They'll help you get home, and, and I'll call your dad," she hung her head, wanting to cry. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Did you just try to kill me?" he asked, his voice cracking at the absurdity of it. She maneuvered him through the doorway, bracing her door open with her back.
"Not intentionally. I swear." She led him to the end of her yard, where the flower beds ended and Derek and Peter waited. Her head ached with the overload of her own power, and she needed to get Stiles gone before the Morrigan cooked up some other horrible sexual experience for all of them. Possibly all of them at once.
"What happened," Derek asked, taking Stiles' weight from her. "We heard you scream."
"Now, see," Peter said, taking Stiles other side, "I told you, I know that scream, and it's really nothing to worry about it. If you don't know that scream, you're doing something wrong."
Lydia and Derek gave him scathing looks and said "Shut up!". Stiles tried to lift his sagging head and agreed weakly. "Yeah, shut the fuck up." Peter shrugged, indifferent.
"I," she didn't know how to explain this, "I didn't mean to." She was mortified at her own lack of control, and confused at what in Stiles could have put him on the Morrigan's radar. She wanted to crawl into bed for a week and stay there, drifting through plenary equations and surfing algorithms.
Derek looked sad, and a little worn. Lydia noticed the ragged edge of a wound peeking out of the collar of his shirt, and he was careful to take Stiles on the opposite side. Peter looked blandly amused as he adjusted Stiles' weight around his own shoulders. He breathed deeply and cocked his head at her, his mouth pulling into a lopsided grin as he took in her gaping robe and the unmistakable scent of sex and magic in the air.
"So, will you be stopping by the house later or will you two be skulking off to that loft of his," he said with a mocking interest. "After you and my nephew spend some quality time together, he and I have a little family discussion to finish."
She had stomped half way back to her house before she realized the gravel was biting into her feet and she hadn't righted her robe yet. She tightened the sash hard enough to leave a friction burn across her middle, and then because it was the only thing she could think of to do, she turned and flipped Peter off.
"Well," Peter said, unconcerned by the turn of events, and leaning across Stiles to talk directly to Derek, "I see you're getting sloppy seconds tonight."
It had taken the lion share of the summer for Peter's power to burn itself out like a star collapsing. It made him insufferable on the best of days and downright unbearable on the worst. The betas in the pack made themselves scarce, the omegas made themselves invisible. Many of them went to live temporarily with Cora's pack in Michigan. It was especially hard for Isaac, who enjoyed Cora's attention when she visited her brother, but had to accept that an Alpha couldn't have an omega mate in her own pack. And it made Derek slip into Lydia's bed more and more often on the pretext of drawing enough energy to evenly match Peter.
Stiles finally stopped leaving weekly messages for her, messages she never returned. And as the heat of summer slipped into the cool torpor of fall, she woke on the night of the Harvest moon with the taste of blood on her tongue and visions of death in her eyes.
Fendi slid out from under the bed, regarded her with wary eyes before hurrying from the room in the disinterested way only a cat can.
"Coward," Lydia said as her feet shakily found the floor, her hand fumbling for her phone on the bedside table. She stopped, took a deep breath, and flexed her fingers before trying to pick it up again. This time her fingers connected with the cool square of her cellphone and she quickly scrolled through her contacts to press Derek's number with a trembling finger.
His voice mail message had never been personalized so she left a message with the automated voice that informed her she had, in fact, reached the number she was calling.
She dialed Scott and got a message that greeted her with a cheery "You've reached Scott McCall. If you're friends and family, you know what to do. If you're trying to reach the McCall Sports Medicine Clinic, please call my regular business line during regular business hours. Have a nice day." Lydia left the same message on his voicemail that she had Derek's, then after a moment of hesitation tried Allison's number. She got through the first couple syllables of Allison's voicemail before hanging up without leaving a message. She paused over the last number in her short list of contacts before setting the phone down on the bed and standing up. Even if he could forgive her for nearly killing him, she hadn't forgiven herself. She did a couple yoga stretches to shake off the last of the dream before padding her way into the bathroom for a drink.
The cat thudded and mewed from somewhere near the living room and Lydia swallowed quickly to yell "Stay off the counters, Fendi!"
She looked in the mirror. She hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep, her eyes puffy and rimmed with blue. The dream had been bloody and frightening. And carnal. Fully awake now she realized she ached all over, like she had gone six rounds in Derek's bed, but without the satisfaction. Something horrible was coming to visit the Nemeton and the boys needed to know about it. The Morrigan rolled over with interest as Lydia thought of Derek, like a dog being offered a bone. Maybe she should take a shower and drive over there if he wasn't going to answer his phone. She looked at the clock. 2:06. She grimaced. She could get out the door by 2:30. Be at Derek's by 2:45. Be on a flight to Milan to update her winter wardrobe by 9 am. Whatever this thing was, she didn't want to be around for it. She turned toward the linen closet and screamed.
"Oh for the love of God, Lydia, you'll bring the neighbors," Peter said calmly, reclining in her bedroom doorway, "And after I went through all this trouble to get you alone."