When Stiles had woken up that morning, his biggest concern had been figuring out how to pack his life into the steamer trunk and two suitcases he was allotted by the Center for the next few years of his life, until his training ended a few months after his eighteenth birthday. He'd been resenting the discouragement of bringing many of his own clothes, the Center preferring to issue uniforms and accessories made with Sentinel-friendly fabrics and dyes.

Stiles still couldn't figure out how Lydia had managed to ship a full wardrobe up with her, a wardrobe which—if rumor was to be believed—rotated with the seasons. Stiles had barely found room for a pair of tube socks—mismatched, but who pays attention to socks?—after he'd finished packing his comics, laptop, and other must-have items. But since he also didn't want to spend the next two years of his life parading around in what amounted to scrubs in varying shades of muted neutrals, he was going to have to find some room in his luggage for some jeans and a few t-shirts at the very least.

Stiles had, in fact, been dourly mulling over the situation while driving home from the store in his Jeep when Derek Hale had hit him, and in no version of any scenario Stiles had been contemplating had he anticipated that the remainder of his afternoon would involve sitting in a zoned Sentinel's lap, trying to establish basic eye contact with an insanely grumpy, mostly-wolfed-out, former hometown hero.

Oh, Stiles remembered Derek now, though he'd been so scattered just after the accident that he would have been hard pressed to identify his own shoes.

Derek Hale, lacrosse captain extraordinaire. Derek Hale, best looking kid in a family of ridiculously attractive kids. Derek Hale, everyone's unattainable crush. Derek Hale, victim of statutory rape and predatory Guide drop. Derek Hale, who had quietly disappeared from Beacon Hills shortly after the trial and only recently had it been circulating with the neighborhood ladies that he'd been seen around town again. Derek Hale, subject of a thousand wild rumors and tall tales, spoken of in murmurs only when his family was well out of hearing.

And, apparently, Derek Hale: driver of a stupid, stupid black Camaro who had decided Stiles' arm was his private property. Charming.

"Stiles?" Mr. Hale's voice cut through Stiles' disjointed thoughts.

"Yeah?"

"Has he looked at you yet?"

It hadn't taken long at all to move Derek so that Stiles could gingerly alight in his lap, seated as far out on Derek's knees as he could be without various pieces of car digging into his back. That part of the process Derek seemed contented to assist with. But trying to catch Derek's thousand-yard stare and get it to focus on Stiles instead was proving a much harder task.

"Not...really," Stiles called back, as loudly as he dared; Derek had been growling lowly at every noise above a whisper for most of Stiles' imprisonment, though thus far there had only been involuntary twitching around Derek's eyes and mouth when Stiles and Mr. Hale had been forced to raise their voices to hear one another. "His pupils are moving a bit, but nobody's home right now."

Mr. Hale gave a grunt of acknowledgment, then lapsed into silence for a moment, as though deciding on which new tack to take.

"Okay, Stiles?"

"Still here, Mr. H."

Derek's father snorted in amusement at that, but shuffled a bit closer to be able to better see into the cab of the car.

"Stiles, I need you to listen to me."

"Okay," Stiles drawled slowly, looking at the man crouched a few feet away on the pavement. He didn't much like the sound of where this was going.

"Derek has imprinted on you. And it doesn't look like we're going to be able to just pull him out and mitigate the initial bond that way. Derek's going to be stuck until you complete the bond with him."

Stiles sat, dumbfounded, as he tried to process what the Alpha Guide was saying.

"Stiles, do you understand what I'm telling you?" Mr. Hale asked gently, concern lacing his voice while his soothing presence hovered politely at the edges of Stiles' juvenile shields.

"I—yeah, I understand, but..."

"Stiles," the Guide broke in softly, his voice filled with a somber reverence that seemed completely out of place surrounded as they were by fire trucks and emergency crews and tow trucks and a growing crowd of milling bystanders at the edges of the police perimeter. "Will you, Guide, take my son, a proud Sentinel and a worthy beta of the Hale pack, into your care? He will serve with you in the interests of the Hale pack, and offer protection and bounty to you and yours. What is your answer, Guide?"

Stiles knew the bonding rites in a vague sense, recognized the formal query of initial bonding for what it was, but he had expected this moment to be so much further off, if it ever came at all. That morning, Stiles had only had potentialas a Guide, potential that he had fervently hoped would prove fruitless in the most secret parts of his mind. Now, a family Guide—an Alpha Guide, no less—was asking him to answer the opening ritual in a formal mate bond.

It wasn't unheard of, that a prospective Guide mated before they completed training, but most prospective Guides needed the training to create the mental pathways that would accommodate a stable mating with a Sentinel. Those pathways created empathic ties between the Sentinel and Guide, ties that were requisite to a Sentinel achieving control over their senses and the furry part of them that might otherwise overwhelm an un-Guided Sentinel.

But Stiles hadn't heard of an un-trained prospective Guide mating outside of romantic stories and history books. Certainly, no modern Sentinel would want an immature Guide, unproven in their abilities and untried in their powers. More to the point, no Guidewould welcome a pack-mate mating with an unseasoned Guide, and definitely not for a Sentinel carrying the kind of baggage Stiles could only imagined existed for Derek.

"But, why me? You can't possibly want me," Stiles whispered hoarsely, feeling his chest constrict with the panic he had been fighting down for well over an hour by then. He wasn't sure whether he was talking to Derek, or to Derek's sire, the Alpha Guide.

"My son wants you, Stiles. And he hasn't wanted anyone in a very, very long time. He hasn't even wanted to want someone since he was a child himself."

"I don't know anything. I don't know how to be a Guide. What if I can't do it?" Stiles pressed.

"We'll sort everything else out later, but if Derek could create an imprint, then you're a Guide, not just an adept. And as a Guide, I ask again, will you take Derek into your care?" Mr. Hale urged him without bullying. Stiles could feel nothing but sympathy and assurance from the other Guide.

"I don't really have a choice, do I?" Stiles blurted out, chagrined in the next moment for sounding so callous about Derek's legitimate medical emergency.

Mr. Hale was quiet for a moment, and then replied with feeling. "Of course you have a choice, Stiles, though it's to your credit that you feel that way. I promise you that Hale pack will take full responsibility for you, that we will do everything in our power to make sure you never feel trapped by something that chose you like this. And Derek will be a good Sentinel, even if I have to box him around the ears to make sure of it."

Stiles barked out a laugh. "I think I'd pay to see that," he admitted. He sobered in the next moment, leaning a bit to the side to peek out the car to where his father was standing, yards away, arms crossed and that sternly worried expression that Stiles hated etched deep into the lines of his face. "My dad knows?"

"Yes," nodded the Alpha Guide. "We petitioned him before he took over the scene from Morrell. Of course, there will still need to be a formal petition to your father, even if you accept today. And that can wait until the Hale pack has had time to prove that we are worthy of your joining us."

"Shouldn't Alpha Hale be asking me?" Stiles worried. While Guides were allowed to preside over the mate bond rites, the usual case was that the Alpha Sentinel would take those duties upon themselves.

"She is," Mr. Hale assured him. "I speak for my wife in this as in everything. As she does for me. I know how it sometimes sounds, what crops up in the news, but Sentinels and Guides are partners. That's all I'm asking you to be to Derek. Can you be a partner for my son, Stiles?"

Stiles looked at his dad for a long moment, then glanced at Derek for another.

Part of him screamed to run, run now and don't look back! The freedom he craved, the hope of turning aside a destiny as a Guide, and of finally being free of the silver chain hanging round his neck pushed hard, coiled like a lump of cold metal in the base of his throat and choked off his air as he contemplated all the ways it could go wrong, everything that could backfire on him. How miserable his life could end up being if he wasn't good enough, if the Hales simply absorbed him and then shuffled him off out of the way, if Derek was as broken as people said, if Derek didn't want him, if he didn't end up wanting Derek...

Derek made a low, soft noise in the back of his throat, his hand—declawed when Stiles hadn't been paying attention—squeezing the arm he had been holding softly, delicately. And then the blue faded out and hazel eyes focused for a moment, just one single moment, on Stiles'.

The connection ripped through him like a shock of electricity, stealing his breath and making his stomach clench roughly in a confusion of indescribable excitement and exhilarating terror.

"Yeah," Stiles breathed, the sound ripped from him while he fell into the intelligent gaze of the Sentinel he was pressed against.

"Stiles," growled Derek, pleased and predatory and awed. There was a whole world of promise in his name that he had never heard before.

Derek's broad hands lifted with purpose for the first time in their strange, brief acquaintance, cupping around Stiles' jawline and slowly, never breaking their unblinking eye contact, tilting Stiles' head to the side by minute degrees. When the side of his neck was bared, Derek paused, watching Stiles attentively for a signal.

"Yeah," Stiles murmured once more.

Derek leaned forward and, with razor sharp teeth, bit down tenderly and decisively into the curve where Stiles' neck met his shoulder.

Stiles whited out.

TBC