The ghosts were becoming too real, too close. He could even smell them. When they finally were able to snap Deaton out of his reverie he was almost completely gone - the guilt and anger in his eyes only told them that he wanted to go.

He almost feared he had lost him.

But now at least they knew it was magic. Magic had been used to thin the veil even more (or so had Deaton phrased it) so dead spirits could roam freely and contact them.

Scott had tried to reach his mom, The Sheriff, Chris Argent, Danny, even Alex, hoping that none of them had to face a ghost such as Mrs. Morrell was for Deaton. He knew Stiles and Allison were thinking the same, walking by his side.

He needed to finish this as soon as possible. At least all his monsters were alive.

Problem was, he had no clue of what he was looking for. The only clue he had according to Deaton was the darkness in his heart. He didn't want to let it take over. He already was too afraid of everything as it was.

And yet, he knew it had been the thing to bring them here. To the old Hale house.

In the front porch a beautiful girl was waiting for him, a tall brunette dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. He knew who she was, he had seen her naked not a long time ago. When he had dug her body up. Half of it.

Why were they the ones to talk to Laura Hale? Derek and Cora were gone, and he had never talked to the Hales before he became a werewolf. They had no ties to them, like Deaton to his sister.

Except that she only beckoned them and walked inside. With that gesture he understood.

They were not to meet Laura. They were to meet the Hales.

As the Alpha who had claimed their territory.

But then, why Allison? Why Stiles?

Why the darkness?

Outside the smell of the preserve engulfed him. He entered, expecting to smell the scorched wood and the remnants of gunpowder from all the shots that had been fired inside. Or at least some of the wolfsbane Lydia had used to resucitate Peter.

He definitely was not expecting to smell a pot roast in the oven, or the flowers in the foyer smelling like fresh cut lavender, or ashes in the fireplace that was burning with real wood.

Or seeing the house in its former glory, a symphony of woods and rugs and warmth and power.

The house itself felt powerful.

They were waiting for him in the living room. Eleven, he counted. A child barely eight years old, smiling at him with a gap in his teeth. Twins, a couple years younger than him, mischievous. A girl a couple years older than him, evaluating him with her sight. Adults, men and women, all looking at him with different expressions, varying from disdain to mockery to wonder to indifference. What seemed to be the grandmother of the family, a grin in her lips, like she knew a secret none other knew. And in the position of power, Talia Hale.

Scott had heard from Cora and Derek about her. How she had been respected in many circles for her power, her fair judgement, her ability to bring people together. And he could see that everything was true and more. He could feel her power irradiating from her body, even if she was just sitting down, looking at him like his mom did whenever he came home late.

Inside he felt exactly like whenever he faced his mom after coming home late.

"Scott McCall. Allison Argent. Stiles Stilinksi. Welcome."

"Ms. Hale. Laura. I apologize, I do not know anybody else."

"That's alright, boy, it's not like you knew us from before. Call me Grandma Thea. On your right there's Benjamin, Felicia, Rose and little Jack. On your left you have Randall, Phillip, Maria, Caterina and Anastasia."

Each person nodded when their name was announced.

"Thea, may I remind you my wife is the alpha?"

"Randall, she is still my mother."

The old lady stuck her tongue to the man to Talia's right, who looked back in complete defiance. Laura, like most of the present, just rolled her eyes so hard it seemed almost audible. Talia never looked away from Scott.

"Would you like to take a seat, children?"

"Er, as beautiful as this looks, Ms. Hale, I am pretty sure we are hallucinating so we would either be sitting on air or in chairs that would collapse under our weight. I'd rather stay standing."

All of the present laughed at that. He even heard Grandma Thea say something about Stiles not being as stupid as Derek made it look like.

It's a melodic sound. He had never felt he was not loved (except for when the darkness crept in his nightmares) but now he finally understood what Derek had lost in the fire. Why he had been so hell bent into forming a new pack, and why he hadn't taken well when Scott rejected him so often.

Because all he really wanted was a family.

He may still not like the man, but at least now he understood him.

"He still blames himself, doesn't he?"

Laura had directed the question at him. He just nodded. Stiles needed to elaborate.

"Of course he still blames himself about it, don't you guys haunt him? He's always broody and moody and slamming me onto walls and then he lost Erica and Boyd and then of course Jennifer happened so YES he still blames himself about it. About everything."

"Stiles..."

Allison had seen it first, the tear falling from Talia's cheek. The way the expression had changed in Laura's face. Even Grandma Thea was no longer grinning. They were all mourning the fact that just like them Derek Hale had died that awful night seven years ago. The Derek Hale that had been that is.

"Sorry. I'm sorry. It's just... it's sad to look at him, you know. To know him, what little he has let us in, and see him suffer. See him mourn endlessly. I've wanted to ask, was he ever happy? Was he ever really like Scott, like Peter said? Because I'm sure he was lying a lot when he was telling us that story about the girl, Paige, so I can't trust him on that. Did he really got Ennis to bite her?"

"No. That was Peter's story. That's when he lost it - when he lost the girl that was his first love. There used to be a time when he was only foolish and reckless, but not evil."

"I find that hard to believe to be honest. "

"Stiles..."

"What? You find it hard to believe too, I can see it in your eyes!"

Allison and Scott sighed, while most of the Hales looked at them curiously. Except for Grandma Thea and Laura, who seemed like they were trying very hard not to choke on their laughter. One of the guys in the table - Phillip - looked to the girl on his right - Maria - and pointedly asked her something, in a low voice that he couldn't actually hear, but her body language told him that while the answer was affirmative, she also didn't believe it. He wondered what was going on.

"Speaking of Derek, why us? I mean, why are you haunting us, instead of him, or Cora? Is it because they are gone?"

"No, Scott. We are not haunting you. As a matter of fact, we are not haunting anyone."

"Deaton said that what the spell the witches did was basically to allow ghosts to haunt people by letting them crossover."

"That's right. Not just that, but the way the spell was cast it's not supposed to affect you. They want to see you squirm while all your loved ones have to face their ghosts from their past. It's a way to see how powerful you are."

"Oh my god, dad, he'll see mom, I need to call him" all three of them tried to get their cellphones and call their parents, but none of them had it in their pockets "Wait, where's my cellphone? Wait, the spell was not supposed to affect us?"

"Then why are we seeing you?"

"They made the spell so no ghost will haunt you. But they did thin the veil down enough that we could use our own magic and bring you to our little slice of heaven. We simply turned the spell against them and since the Nemeton recognized our intentions as good for you it used its pull to bring you to us."

"Wait, bring us to your little slice of heaven? Are we dead? Am I dead? Oh my god, my dad's gonna kill me when he finds out I'm dead."

"You are not dead, children, you are just unconscious in the porch."

At the sound of her words, all three of them actually sat down on the nearest couch.

"Why?"

"We wanted to meet you. Personally, not through Derek's prayers which are horribly biased and seem to be more inclined to claim that you two boys are morons and you darling are too dangerous to even be alive. Then again my son was always a horrible judge of character. Otherwise he wouldn't have fucked that Argent bitch and we would still be alive."

Scott gaped at her. Somehow she had managed to say all that swearing and still look marvelously royal while doing it.

"So, let's meet. The pot roast should be done by now. Randall, Phillip, why don't you go and get everything ready?"

"Er, is this wise? People are suffering because of the witches spell."

"Ah, so sweet, and yet it's good that you are worried about everyone else. But time-space continuum acts different here: we have time."

"How long will we be unconscious?"

"Not long, girl. Nothing that would be considered dangerous: after all, you only fell asleep."

"Did we?"

"What else would you call this, a food coma?"

She hadn't even finished saying it when they were suddenly seating in the dining room, a feast in front of their eyes.

"If you can make food appear out of nowhere, why go with the theatrics of having stuff in the kitchen?"

"I am a fully trained chef, sweet girl. Part of my heaven is to be able to cook what I want whenever I want it."

"So you all went to heaven. Are in heaven. We are in heaven with you right now."

"Yes, Stiles. You don't mind that we call you Stiles, right?"

"No, I much prefer it, thank you. OK, I get that you wanted to meet us. Why us? Why not just Scott, since he's the Alpha?"

"If this had been only a meeting between alphas it would've been only between Scott and Mom. That would've been boring."

"Besides, it's quite obvious that he's an alpha because of you. You two were the ones that kept him from going Omega, giving him a pack. It all grew up from there."

"Yeah, that's a question I have - how did you guys do it? How did you keep him from going Omega?"

"Er... we don't know? I mean, we didn't do anything special, no chanting or sacrificing virgin blood or anything. Right, Scott?"

Scott frowned. He knew Stiles was joking, but he wanted to give a good answer to the Hales. To him it was pretty obvious how had Stiles and Allison kept him from going omega, from becoming a loner trapped in his own mind, but putting it into words that didn't sound ridiculous was much more difficult.

"I'd say it was because Stiles and I have never done anything apart from each other. Ever since we met we've done everything together: homeworks, classes, teams, sports, games, finding out what kind of girls we like, finding out what kind of food we hate, everything. And I was in love with Allison at that moment. So instead of going within my mind, which is what I wanted to do to keep the wolf from reaching out to Derek, I just reached out to them. To Stiles, to Allison. I guess it also helped that she was my anchor during that time. And well, we had to act like a team, like a pack, if we wanted to reach to the bottom of whatever was going on with Jackson and trying to defend Lydia from Derek and his pack. And then Isaac came to me instead of Derek and according to Deaton that's when it all started."

"Lydia, the banshee?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell her that I'm sorry? I tried really hard to keep Peter from doing what he did, I truly did, but he had attached himself to her mind. No matter how hard I tried I could not stop him. I don't even know if she heard me that night, when he finally won her over. I tried to reach her too, but she was gone."

"Why were you trying to stop him?"

"Because what he did is not natural. I mean, I don't even know who he is or how will he be when finally dies. Think of it as Voldemort: whatever he did to come back left him incomplete, so if he wasn't a complete bastard evil creeper which he was, mind you, I saw him stalking you and stuff, well, now he is, courtesy of his little magic ritual."

"So, if he comes at us?"

"Go ahead and defend yourselves. It's up to you what to do with him."

Scott nodded at Talia. He hadn't done anything about him because Peter hadn't done anything against them yet, but he knew that the man was bidding his time. Never had he been a man without a plan, not even when Cora was dying from mistletoe poisoning. There was always an endgame to be reached, a goal to be achieved, and he had the patience to wait for it.

He would not kill him, unless it was completely necessary.

She nodded back at him, like she had given his approval for something else.

Maybe this whole affair was a test to him, a way for her to determine if the territory was in good hands.

"So, Scott. How do you feel about being a werewolf?"

"Besides the trauma that it was to go through the first transformations? I'm at peace with it. I mean, I didn't want it, I didn't know what was going on and I tried to kill Stiles several times before I got a hang of it. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for him I would have killed him at some point because, and I'm sorry to say it this way, Derek sucks as a teacher."

"Nobody ever saw him taking that career path, son, don't worry about it."

"Kind of a problem when my life was in line, don't you think?"

"Well, he does care about you. He may have been maiming you and mangling you but with no intention to kill."

"So he's Dobby?"

"Who?"

"Harry Potter, grandma, we saw that movie?"

"The little wizard kid?"

"Yeah."

"Thank god they didn't do the werewolves. The way they were written in the books was awful."

"They did, mother, we just died before we could watch the movie."

"Oh."

"What about you, Stiles? How are you liking your life, now?"

Laura did seem a bit too interested in Stiles this whole time. She looked at him, grinned at him, like she knew a secret she wouldn't tell anyone.

"I don't know. It's too dangerous, things keep popping up again and again and again and we can't seem to be able to do anything about it. How did you do it? How did you manage to keep everything at bay?"

"We were an established pack, Stiles. We had a couple of centuries on our back, and we had strategy and resources at our feet. We also had been approved, so there was a certain degree of respect from all supernatural creatures. Your Aunt did much more than destroy a family of werewolves, my dear, she upset a great mystical balance that was in place here."

"I know. I've heard"

"Approved? What do you mean by approved?"

"What mystical balance?"

"Does this mean that you were approved by the Nemeton as well? Then why did we restart it?"

"Not by the Nemeton, no. The Nemeton had been a beacon of supernatural energy and wars had been fought for the dominace of this territory." Grandma Thea's voice was deep and dark now, not the choked laugh that it was before. "The first Hales were strong werewolves and respected members of the migratory movement, so they managed to settle among humans and slowly started calming the territory. When we were fully established and other supernatural creatures were wary of attacking us, but willing to interact and be part of the community, we were visited by a higher power in order to gain legitimacy as the guardians of this territory. It approved us after several trials, and hid the signal of the Nemeton allowing it to wither away so we could actually live in peace. By erradicating every single Hale your aunt didn't just got rid of a few werewolves - she removed the seal from the Nemeton, which yes, had already woken up thanks to Derek, but it was still a weak sapling. Now that the seal is no longer upon it, everything that can take a drink from its power and more will show up. Until you get someone as powerful to be your evaluator, but that would be scary to think of."

"I'm sure if my aunt had known she would not have taken such a risk."

"You know that's not true, sweet girl."

Scott felt Allison's sadness. He didn't even need to look at her.

"Scary? Why, who was the evaluator back then?"

"Death itself."

A light breeze went through the room, turning off the candles that adorned the table. Scott immediately tried to pin point the source, but it had come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Besides, they were supposed to be in heaven: a breeze had to be voluntarily summoned and from the looks of all the Hales, it hadn't been.

"Death itself?"

"Death itself. Which means that unless Death decides to come back again, nothing less than a god will come to evaluate you."