Derek watched as Isaac and Stiles moved together, slow at first and then faster and faster, sweat beginning to shine on them both from the exertion. Despite the fucked up nature of all of this, and Kate's presence, had he had a hand free at that moment he would have stroked himself in time with their movements.
He knew they were getting close when Stiles started speaking, his voice honeyed and low. "I'm going to make you cry, Isaac. I'm going to make you bleed and cum, and I'm going to take it all in, lick it up, fucking bath in it." Derek had to bite his own lip to keep from moaning out loud at the filthy images that came to mind from hearing those words. "Do you know why, Isaac?"
He knew Isaac wasn't going to answer, knew where his mind was going and could smell the want and the embarrassment on him. Isaac wanted the safety of belonging, but couldn't ask for it. Derek wanted to tell him it didn't make him weak or less, but didn't know how, and he wanted to duck his head and hide from his inadequacy.
"You know, Isaac, and you're going to tell me. You're going to tell me right fucking now."
Both of them were staring at Stiles now, and Isaac looked like he was ready to break into pieces, but he couldn't disobey that voice. Derek could see micro-quakes across his body, could see the expectation of rejection, but still Isaac forced himself to answer. "Because I'm yours?"
It was a question more than an answer, but it was the right answer, the right question and Stiles hadn't really needed an answer, only an acknowledgement of the truth. Like proof of ownership.
The "Yes!" that followed was more of a triumphant roar than anything else, it echoed through Derek and something was building inside him, inside them all. "You are mine, Isaac, and I'm going to hurt you, because I can, because I need to hurt you, but then I'm going to make it all better." There was a promise there that Derek clung to, somehow instinctively knowing it was meant as a promise to him as well as Isaac.
They were rutting against each other now, nearly frenzied and suddenly the knife flew to Stiles' hand. Just as he had stabbed Derek, he stabbed Isaac, straight through the heart, the knife in and out in the blink of an eye. Isaac shifted and cried and came and Derek came along with him, untouched by anything except the bonds Stiles had forged in them. He was trying to remember what breathing was, while watching Stiles lick up the blood and tears he had forced out of Isaac.
Stiles lifted himself off of Isaac and stretched out one hand towards his chains, before climbing off the cot. He grabbed the bloody knife and turned towards Derek, again. It was as if Derek blinked, one moment there were chains holding Isaac down and the next he was following Stiles across the room. Derek could feel something building, thrumming in the air and suddenly he was free and Stiles was standing right there, with Isaac closing in behind him.
Suddenly the sour stench of Kate was rising, rising and he knew she was enraged, knew she would kill one or all of them before he would be able to do anything. But then Stiles was pulling the energy into himself and Derek knew he had to help, had to give Stiles whatever he needed in that moment, so he pushed, hard, pulling from the rest of the pack, filtering it through the bond. Isaac took one hand and it was like the energy doubled as it flowed into Stiles, and Stiles was laughing, the sound of it was so free. "I am the spark."
He could feel the otherness that had put out that awful sour stench was being pushed far away, and he didn't know if it was gone for good, but it was gone for now and the energy that had been thrumming through his very bones was poised on the edge. It felt like the world around them had been put on pause and granted them this moment, and it was just pure and simple and sweet.
And then he was screaming, because Stiles had plunged a knife, THE knife into his own heart.
Derek, who's always been a wolf, who only knew the arrows keep you from healing, panicked and tried to pull the knife out. Isaac, who had almost always been human, remembered about stopping the bleeding and damaging things by pulling out the knife, kept him from touching it. Before they could start arguing over which one was right, Stiles, who had never been anything but human, pulled himself out of his frozen shocked state between them.
"Holy shit, this is weird." He said almost laughing, his hand feeling around the knife, an amazed look on his face.
Aaaand just like that two sets of eyes were glowing in his general direction. Both clearly confused and more than a little shocked, over the situation and his bizarrely cheerful response.
"Heart's Blood." He said, tapping his chest as if that explained everything.
While Isaac was stopped, trying to figure out what the Hell was going on, Derek reached out, his instinct still to remove the weapon from the wound, only to have his hand stopped by Stiles this time. "Even if I drop dead in the next minute, you do not remove this knife." His previously laughing voice, now hard and commanding. "Unless I say its okay, you bury me with this still in me."
Both wolves nodded, confused.
Stiles ran a hand over his head, and then grimaced when he realized it was coated in dried blood. "Okay, first things first, we need to get dressed, get the HELL out of here, and find somewhere we can talk. Also, Derek, if you don't do something about this place, me and whatever explosives Lydia can cook up for me will. Just saying."
Stiles started grabbing and distributing clothes from various parts of the room, before slipping into his own pants. After they were all considerably more covered, Derek led them up and out of the tunnels and into the remains of the house. There had been a garden before the fire, and they ended up settling into the remains of it, breathing in the night air.
Looking up at the sky instead of at either wolf, Stiles began talking. "I'm not clear on everything that's been going on, but I think I have most of it straight in my head, between what Kate knew and what I remember."
Derek started at mention of 'what Kate knew' and turned to look at Stiles, eyes bright, but not supernaturally so. Stiles stepped forward and wrapped his left arm around Derek in a tight half hug. "You are not to blame for anything. You were in love and she was a fucking monster, even then."
Pulling back he took Derek's hand and reached his other hand out for Isaac's. Once he had it, he led them both over to one of the boulder's that littered the area and sat down. "Do you know how Kate died?" He asked.
Isaac shook his head, and Derek said one word, "Peter."
"Right, but you don't know specifically how?" Derek Shook his head, he had seen her body, but beyond the fact that she was dead, he had more important things to worry about at the time. "Peter clawed her throat out."
Derek jerked back at that, the vivid memory of him doing the same thing to Peter forefront in his mind. Stiles was nodding, easily reading it there. "Thing is, he was the alpha when he did it, and a sufficiently deep scratch from an alpha can turn you. Trust me, this was deep enough, she was turning. She just bled out first. Gerard knew, or at least highly suspected, and he made sure of certain things, before she was buried."
"He had an idea of how to bring her back, and considering what he was planning, maybe create a loyal second. Someone he knew had been a weakness for you already, since you were the one he needed to remove. I was just an experiment. I'm fairly sure he intended to use Allison, once he knew it worked."
"Who's to say he hasn't already?" Isaac asked, surprising them both. "I knew she was a fighter, but she was vicious that night, I've never sensed that sort of anger in her before. Scott's the only reason she didn't kill me."
"Shit." Stiles said, a hand scrubbing over his face. "If he did..." Stiles stopped himself and took a deep breath before continuing. "Alright, this," he pointed to the center of the circle of runes inked into his chest. "thing on my chest is ancient and complicated, but its also simple too. It's a door, keyed in her blood, drawing in her wolf. It has to be a werewolf, and the person receiving it has to be human. Packs like the Hales had always had plenty of human members. Mates or those born who just didn't have the talent. When they needed advice or information they would call to prior leaders, older wolves, and this rune let the humans act as mediums. It also granted them a shadow of the wolf, to use as their own, while the rune was intact. It was meant to be a great gift, practically a holy experience for the human. Naturally Gerard defiled it."
Derek was watching him, head tilted and Stiles had to bite his lip to keep from making a dog joke, Instead he tapped the ring around the center circle. "This fucking thing is a binding. It gives her, and her wolf dominion over me. If I had enough power and control I could push her out, but as long as this was here, she could push right back in. Again, so long as the rune is intact. Now I hear what you're not asking, why not just slice the damned thing off and be done with it, but the ink is imbued with were-blood, and designed to restore itself if damaged, to heal. It was meant to be a safety precaution, if one of the 'skin-walkers' was damaged, the rune would heal and then the shadow of the wolf could heal the rest of the body. The only time the bond was ever broken was when someone with the rune took the bite. Their wolf would trump the shadow of the wolf, forcing out the blood and ink, healing the tattoo, and breaking the link to the foreign wolf, unless the spirit was already inside the body. Turn me with this intact, and you're basically locking me away and turning Kate; giving her full reign, while removing the door needed to push her out."
"I needed three things; power to push her out, some way to jam up the lock, so we could have the time to deal with it, and to make sure she couldn't hurt either of you, even if I fucked this all up and she won."
"Whether I realized it consciously or not, everything I did was to raise power, dragging it from your wolves and from the bonds. She started it when she made you cry Derek, whatever she did while I was hiding from the pain of my hand. She tasted them, but they were shed because of me."
"They were shed for you, because she hurt you." Derek said, hand reaching out to touch Stiles, as if reassuring himself that Stiles was alive.
"Most spells that pull up power, draw it from some sacrifice either willing or not. Blood, sweat, tears, cum? They all carry your essence, you're power. I took those from you, both of you, and into me, building power up. Now why push her out if she can come right back in, so I had to figure out a way to block the door, jam it up, and give us time to work something else out. That gave me a second reason to attempt a mating bond with you."
"A second reason? And how the HELL do you know all this?" Derek demanded. Isaac nodding along with him.
"The first reason is you can't hurt your mate, not really, and I bound us together so tight she wouldn't be able to hurt either of you, even if I managed to fuck this up and she won."
"So you're saying you'd have bound the rest of the pack this way to keep them safe? Peter and Scott? Jackson?" He wanted to growl out the names, the idea of them bonded to his mates was infuriating. When Stiles shuddered under his hand he snapped out of the jealous feedback loop he and Isaac had been inadvertently starting, to see Stiles slapping one hand over his mouth and the other gripping his stomach.
"Fucking gross, you do realize Scott is like my brother, right? And Peter? No offense, but he's a giant creepy McCreeperwolf... and undead, let's not forget the undead part, just eww. And have you MET Lydia? She knows at least twenty undetectable poisons she'd use on the lot of us before letting us bond with Jackson, it would all be very tragic, and that's not even taking into account that its JACKSON, and he's a complete douche of epic level douchery."
He glanced up at Isaac and suddenly both of them were grinning, and reached out to carefully hug Stiles from either side.
"As for how I know, Hello, research boy here. Some of it Gerard told Kate, some of it Kate knew herself, some I picked up researching you and your family, and what I've managed to translate from the Bestiary, and I might have um stoleacopyofPeter'sfiles." He quickly turned as if looking around for Peter.
"You WHAT!" Derek yelled, eyes shifting, standing up over Stiles, who stood up himself, and started poking Derek in the chest.
"Don't you yell at me, Mr. 'Didn't share with the rest of the pack that there were fucking ALPHAS running around' Peter may be your uncle, but he was also the bastard who turned Scott, attacked Lydia, tried to fucking GUT you, and nearly drove Lydia the rest of the way out of her damned mind. I couldn't trust that either of you would warn the rest of us. Him cause he'd think it was a fun surprise and you because your all noble and stubbornly self-sacrificing and think you can move mountains without anyone else's help."
"He, uh, has a point." Isaac said, coming up to stand by them. "That's why I helped him do it. I got Peter rambling and answering questions about the alphas while Stiles snuck in and copied the files. Though to be fair unless being dead killed his sense of smell, there's no way he didn't know what we'd done the moment he got back."
"He knows." Stiles said with a grimace. "He kind of winked at me the next time he saw me. He knew."
"Okay, okay, back on track. What was the other reason you bonded with us?" Derek asked, sitting the three of them back down.
"This was." Stiles said gesturing to the knife in his chest. "There was a story about this girl. She had been promised to this hunter, as a wife, but she fell in love with the son of the local wolf pack's alpha instead. This hunter had never met her, and didn't actually care about her at all. He was just offended that she'd take up with a wolf over him, so he decided to demand satisfaction. If a wolf attacked him there would be war, but she was human. He claimed her betrayal had put a knife in his heart and he wanted one in hers. The alpha couldn't risk war with the hunters, even for his son, and the girl refused to allow anyone else to die in her place. She agreed to go to the hunter the next morning and allow him to stab her, so long as he swore to only use her lover's blade. He agreed and she spent her last night making love to her mate, cementing the bond. Knowing he couldn't change her mind, he begged her to stab him in the heart with the knife, unwilling to live without her. She did as he asked, and then pulled the blade from his body and 'kissed closed the wound'. Before he had a chance to heal and stop her, she ran to the hunter and presented the blade and stood for his revenge. He struck fast and true, the knife through her chest and into her heart. The hunter fled, his horror at his own petty revenge chased him from the land. The wolf, healed went to find his mate, to die with her, only to find her laughing at the blade in her chest. He asked her how she was still alive, and she said, 'My love, our hearts are one, and your heart's blood would never bear for mine to stop flowing.'"
Derek was speaking carefully and softly... to start out anyway. "You're telling me you stabbed yourself in the fucking HEART based on a stupid werewolf fairytale?" By the end he had one clawed hand on each arm and was yelling directly into Stiles' face.
"First off, it was the one chance I had. I'd rather be dead than trapped inside watching her hurt everyone I fucking love, and second, dude, hate to break this to you, but werewolves? ARE fucking fairytales. Magic takes belief, I was cruising on power, all I needed was a spark, to make it work, and hello standing here with a knife in my chest, powered by your love... gotta say not sure I'm feeling it from you at the moment, so snap out of your little freakout and help me finish this."
