Derek sat on the roof outside Scott's room, watching him struggle with homework. Everything in his being wanted to spare the kid the pain he was feeling with every reflexive grab for the cell phone that resulted in an empty inbox. Allison had become his anchor and without her steady presence, or at least the possibility of it, Scott was drifting. Derek hunkered down for another long night of watching the kid in a futile attempt to escape his own brooding, something he decided ran in the Hale line. Still having no idea how he was supposed to break the news to Scott that he was his true father, Derek was left in a melancholy self loathing. He allowed Scott to believe for a few weeks that he had bitten him because in reality it was his fault that his son was now cursed. If the Alpha hadn't smelled the Hale bloodline in the boy, he most likely would have made it out of the woods unharmed. Also having taken away Scott's only remote chance at a cure, good reason or not, Derek couldn't blame the last Hale for hating him. Unfortunately, this didn't leave him in the greatest position when it came to breaking the news to the boy. It was almost miraculous that Scott joined the pack but they had a long way to go before Scott truly trusted him. Their new truce was so much more than Derek could have hoped for that he was disinclined risk destroying it with the truth right now.

"I can feel you brooding out there. If you're going to distract me, you might as well come in and tell me why."

Derek huffed and climbed through the window. He wasn't about to tell Scott the real problem, so he settled on something that was bothering both of them. "I went to see Jackson."

Scott frowned. "I'm guessing it didn't go well." Derek snarled out a negative and moved to his regular seat in the room. "What happened?"

The older man closed his eyes against the onslaught of guilt for his other dismal failure. He could still hear Jackson's snide tone when he said he wouldn't be a minion and Derek could shove his pack if he thought he wasn't going to take Scott down a peg. Given his precarious feelings toward his newly discovered son, Derek hadn't handled the threat to Scott very well and had perhaps been too enthusiastic in beating Jackson into submission. He could still see the broken body under his hand as he sank his teeth into the back of Jackson's neck, forcing surrender. When he finally went limp with a whine, all of Jackson's fire had disappeared into a puff of terror. He recoiled from Derek as if he was a monster. Truly believing that a pack was a family, a unshakeable support system for all its members, Derek balked at the idea one of his pups was terrified by him. Jackson needed that support as much as any of them, but his flinch when the older man picked him up to carry him home was telling. He worried, as he bandaged the meek teenager, that Jackson was lost entirely to him. The disapproving look on Scott's face as he relayed the story magnified his fears all the more.

"Will he heal?"

Derek frowned at the accusation in his son's voice. "Physically, yes."

Scott sighed and rubbed his eyes. He had been guilty of thrashing Jackson mere hours ago in and effort to protect the weaker pups so he didn't have much room to condemn. He knew that Jackson's defiance before the Alpha would have disastrous results, but he was hoping that it wouldn't come to the beating that Derek was suggesting. Sighing, he closed his books and rubbed his eyes. "I'll check on him tomorrow."

Derek wasn't sure how much that was going to help considering Scott was Jackson's major bone of contention, but it was the job of the Prime to look after the health of the pack and Derek wasn't going to prevent him from doing so. "Where is Stiles?"

Scott allowed the subject change, anxious to think more mundane thoughts. "Picking up his car from the shop. Erica did some damage when she attacked him with part of the engine." Derek growled, having not heard the story about the attack at Boyd's house. "I handled it."

Derek took a deep breath and nodded. He wasn't sure what he was thinking when he turned a pack full of teenagers. He thought they would be easier to deal with than fully opinionated adults, but he forgot their overly hormonal drama. He'd be lucky if he made it through the year without premature gray hairs. "You pups are going to be the death of me."

Scott smirked and kicked his feet up on the desk. "Well you did pick the most broken people you could find." Derek couldn't argue with the accusation so he reclined in the chair and started to flip through one of Scott's magazines. Rolling his eyes at the Alpha, Scott turned back to his Chemistry lab report.

.


.

Stiles stood in the auto body shop cursing Erica and her anger issues. She was way too hot to be so sinister. The mechanic was fleecing him and he was about ready to call his dad to come arrest the guy for extortion. A smile curved his lips when he thought of another solution. Lifting his phone, he dialed a number. "Scott! I need a favor."

"What?"

"This guy is trying to rip me off. He yanked half my baby's guts out for no reason." Stiles scowled at the man's back again. "I need you to come wolf out on him and," his sentence died abruptly when he saw a shadow slither over the roof of his Jeep. "Ah, Scott. That thing from Isaac's house. Does it have a tail?"

"Yeah, why?"

"It's here." Stiles heard yelling in the background of the call and was fairly sure that Scott was talking to Derek.

"Don't move."

There was a snort of disbelief from the human. "You're kidding, right." He wasn't anxious to sit around and wait to be slaughtered.

"Derek and I are on the way."

Stiles heard the reassuring squeal of tires through the phone as he watched the creature close in on the man under his car. "Hey, behind you!" He reached for the door handle, his hand slipping on something slimy as he watched the lizard-like body swipe at the back of the mechanic's neck. Stiles felt his body go numb as he dropped to the floor, his phone clattering a few feet from him seconds before the other victim did the same. "Scott? Can you still hear me?" He couldn't make out words, but there was a warbled sound of voices coming through the speaker. "Something's wrong. There was slime on the door and now I can't move. You have to hurry." Stiles' eyes tracked back to the man watching with horror as the hydraulic lift started to lower. He could hear shouting from the phone, but it was drown out by the terrified shrieks of the man watching his death in slow motion.

"Stiles!"

The teen had never been happier to hear Derek's voice in his life and he gave a very brief thought to how many traffic laws that Derek broke on the way. "Over here!" His eyes were frozen, watching as the lift continued, inching dangerously closer to crushing the mechanic with his Jeep.

"Stiles, what happened?"

"I'll be fine, go get the mechanic."

Derek followed his eyes to the scene in the garage. The creature was pacing on the other side of the door, watching the pair carefully but not advancing. "Scott's going for him."

"Bad idea, Derek." Even as the words were out of his mouth, the creature spun toward the new target entering the bay. Scott managed to fling the mechanic out of the crush zone before a set of claws sliced across his chest. "Scott!"

Derek paused in his effort to pull the teen under the cover of the counter, watching his only son drop to the ground before being flung head first into a vertical milling press. "Stiles?"

"Go!"

Derek didn't wait to be told twice. He jumped through the glass window and skidded across the oily floor in front of his child, his body enlarging to his alpha form. With an angered snarl he grabbed an air compressor, flinging it at the creature and backing it away from the three bodies lying in around the garage. The creature shrieked at the cold burst of air from the tank bursting and studied the larger predator carefully before turning and skittering out into the night with an injured gait. Derek waited for a moment, senses alert to make sure the creature wasn't trying to flank him before turning and stalking over to the mechanic desperately trying to get his numb body to react to the flight response. He hovered over the stench of fear, sniffing it in before his features melted into the only slightly less terrifying beta form. "You were attacked by a couple of druggies looking for cash and you never saw us." The scared mechanic nodded his head, an embarrassing puddle forming beneath his leg. "And you're fixing Stiles' car for free. It better be floor model ready when he picks it up." Derek growled again for good measure before pitching the phone over to the guy and grabbing Scott's limp body. He kicked open the shop door, careful not to touch anything. "Can you move?"

Stiles could tell from the look on his face that Derek was not about to carry both of them, especially with sirens sounding in the distance. Only half a mile from the precinct, they didn't have a lot of time to get out the door before his father showed up. "I can manage." He awkwardly hefted his body off the floor and staggered to Derek's car, shocked when he was handed the keys.

Derek put Scott across the back seat and crawled into the passenger seat, leaning over the head rest to assess the beta's injuries. "Don't you die on me Scott. I'm not losing my son too."

Positive he wasn't supposed to hear the whispered words, Stiles felt his eyes bulge out of his head as looked at the man leaning over the seat. A honk of a passing vehicle brought his eyes back to the road and he tried to concentrate on not getting them killed on the way back to the subway station. While he regained feeling in most of his body, the arm that came in contact with the venom was still paralyzed up to the shoulder and he was sure Derek would not take that into consideration when he killed him for trashing the Camaro.

"What was that thing?"

"It's called a Kanima." Derek growled. "It's supposed to be a myth."

"But Scott will be okay, right. He's got super wolf healing."

Derek shook his head in distress, "I don't know. Whatever this venom is, it's affecting his healing like wolfsbane. The slashes aren't healing." He felt the engine growl louder as Stiles slammed down on the gas in his concern.

"This day really sucks!" It was telling that Derek didn't even bother with a retort.