Stiles drove his jeep up to the far northern edge of the woods and walked with Phee to the rocky outcropping that overlooked the city where Scott had used to meet with Allison, where they had taken Jackson before they'd solved his little Kanima problem, where he had come and gotten horribly, horribly drunk on a bottle of his father's whiskey before making the decision to leave Beacon Hills for good. It was a beautiful view, had been and still was, all the lights of the city glowing far below them beneath a sky that was almost black under the lingering storm clouds of yesterday. A thin sliver of crescent moon showed through, casting only the barest silver light, but Stiles didn't need it. His senses were always sharper after he'd tapped into his darker energies, and then again after he'd run his penances. Now his skin thrummed with every movement of the air, his ears hypersensitive to every small sound that echoed out of the darkness.

Turning his back on the vista view of the place he hadn't called home in a long time, he kicked around in the dirt and dead leaves a bit, decided where he wanted to be when the pack showed. It was strategic, he supposed, to put his back to the cliff, have his flanks protected by the rough, jagged rock. They would have to come at him straight, fan out in front of him where he could see them all, and he wondered momentarily if he was expecting a fight. Pheelan was; he could tell from the way the wolf shed his jacket and tossed it over a tree branch, shook out his arms like a boxer, and although he appreciated the view of the moonlight kissing the heavy muscles in his bare shoulders, he reached out a hand to settle him.

"Not planning on any bloodshed are you?" he asked lightly, teasingly.

"Are you?" Phee countered.

Stiles chuffed a laugh, tossed him a half-smile. Didn't matter if he was or not, Pheelan would be ready. He always was. For an honest-to-god omega, a cut-and-dyed lone wolf, he was ridiculously protective of his own – the grandmother that he lived with and adored, his younger sister, who was human and who he rarely saw, Stiles. Sweet and soft on the inside, he nevertheless had the body of a fierce warrior, and he could be that warrior when he had to. Tonight was a night that he felt he had to; Stiles could smell it on him, see it in the way that he leapt lightly up to the top of a boulder just behind him and off to his left, stood with his feet wide beneath him and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He would stand guard there as long as he felt necessary; a steady yet forceful presence that would offer support to Stiles and a warning to anyone else.

Setting his own feet, Stiles rolled his neck and shoulders, threw back his head, and howled.

It was an easy trick, one he'd learned a long time ago. Easy, to pull a wolf's howl out of his own chest. He was a Touchstone after all, a human meant to live and die with wolves, and it only made sense that he should be able to call his pack. Of course, he'd never really had a pack. Still didn't, technically. But he had Phee, and he was enough to ground Stiles in his own skin, anchor him to his power, and so it was easy to open his mouth and call. They would know it was him. They'd never heard him call before, but every voice was unique, and his howl was his just as his words were, just as his scent was. It was a strong, powerful call that reflected only a bit of his rage, of his immense desire to not be calling to them, and it caused Phee to whine long and low in the back of his throat, but as the eerie, echoing sound finally faded, another struck up, somewhere near the center of the preserve only miles from where they waited. Wouldn't be long now.

Stiles frowned and dug a single cigarette from the pocket of his jeans, a slim hand-rolled that contained something other than nicotine. Stiles didn't smoke, not really, but every once in a while, perhaps two or three times a year, when he felt like the stress of his life was going to eat him alive, he would pick up a pack from the apothecary near Phee's grandmother's house, the one that sold things for people like him and just indulge. Times like that he usually ended up chain smoking his way through all of them in a few hours, spending days afterwards totally blissed out, lounging in a haze of stupid-silly grins, video games and junk food. Tonight, he just needed something to settle his nerves. Flicking his silver lighter to life, he inhaled deeply and held the smoke in his lungs before blowing it out slowly through his nose.

"That was no alpha," Phee murmured above him, and Stiles smirked around his cig.

True. Apparently Uncle Bad-Touch was still a part of the pack. Wasn't that just… interesting.

"Their alphagot hit pretty hard with my removal spell," he said aloud. "He won't have full control of his wolf back for a few days."

"Serves the bastard right," Phee snarled under his breath, no doubt intending that Stiles shouldn't hear. "Told him not to open the damn door."

"He never was big on communication," Stiles muttered. "Always did prefer just slamming people into walls."

He thought that Phee might've replied but he'd heard something, caught something on the wind and turned away, his back to the cliffs once more as he waited for the incoming wolf pack. He could hear them, heavy feet slamming against the earth, breath roaring hard in straining lungs. He could hear their hearts pounding in their chests, hear them crashing through the trees and the undergrowth as though he were running right beside them, and he felt a terrible yearning well inside his chest, hot and painful and wanting. Quickly enough they'd reached the creek bed and it was almost as though he could see them behind his eyes, knew who splashed messily through the water and slipped on the rocks, who leapt the small river and cleared it with grace and ease.

Slowly eyes began to appear in the dark, gold and blue glowing like the reflection off of a camera lens, and one by one they began to emerge out of the trees into the small clearing; Erica and Boyd, Peter and Isaac, the twins – all faces he knew but didn't know at all. They all looked exactly the same and it constricted something in his chest, because they didn't any of them look the same at all. Taller, broader, stronger, they'd all lived and grown and matured without him, and while he supposed that that was only the natural course of things, it still hurt.

Last of the pack to step into the barren place between the rock and the wood was Derek, the red gleam of his own eyes conspicuously absent, but there was a hesitance and vulnerability in his face that made him look young, younger than Stiles thought he ever could have been. It tugged at something inside of him, made him want to both ease that anxious fear with a gentle glow and crack him upside the head, ideally with his rowan wood baseball bat, and so, since he wasn't sure which option he preferred and because he'd left said bat in the hotel room, he chose to do nothing, just stand silently and take another hard drag from his cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke in the alpha's direction.

Derek took an uncertain step to his left and Stiles was sure he saw Peter smirk out of the corner of his eye, but he avoided looking at any of them directly, unable to bring himself to actually meet any of their gazes. He snarled low under his breath, angry with his own cheap cowardice, and the whole of the pack flinched back from the feral sound, surprised that a wolf's noise had come from a human throat.

Maybe they hadn't recognized his howl then.

Stiles felt his heart judder and he swallowed, focused hard on keep it beating flat and smooth and steady.

XXX

Derek stood nervously in the clearing with the rest of his pack feeling stripped, not only because of the way his senses were dulled but because of the way Stiles looked at him, at them, as though they were just casual strangers. The howl that had called them from the Preserve to the northern quarter up at the top of the bluff had sent a chill down his spine, made all the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand up. He'd assumed it was the omega, calling them in for Stiles, announcing their position to the pack, but something about it… It had felt familiar and eager and made him want for home, the wolf's den he'd managed to turn the Hale House into despite the blade of anger that had burned in the edges of the call. He begrudged Peter his responding call, angry that he couldn't do it himself, but it seemed his wolf was cowering inside him somewhere, and that was as concerning as it was embarrassing.

With his own voice out of commission it would have been Isaac's right to respond but his uncle had stepped in, earning him a furious glare and a rather unintimidating snarl, but Peter had merely rolled his eyes and taken off, leading the run into the trees towards the bluff, the pack hot on his heels. Derek had had to push to keep up, his heart in his throat as he hauled ass to keep up with his uncle, the anger burning in his veins not quite enough to give him the kick he needed to overtake the older wolf. It might have been nice, barreling hard through the woods with his entire pack, all of them intent on the same prey if that prey hadn't been Stiles, if he hadn't been afraid of what they would find at the end of the trail. He'd warned them as the sun had gone down, as he had led them into the trees half-changed that they needed to be careful, both with themselves and with the man who had once been their friend. Whether he believed it Stiles' intention or just a side effect of whatever dark thing had hold of him didn't matter; the boy was capable of hurting them, and they needed to know that.

Still, he didn't think that anything he said had sunk in. The pack had yipped and cajoled and romped through the trees, totally overcome with the joy of what to them must feel like a hunt, with the promise of finally seeing their friend again, and dark thoughts thundered in the back of his mind as he ran with them, afraid of what they were all expecting, afraid of what might actually prove to be reality. They didn't know, didn't understand that blackness that he had seen, hadn't felt the cold emptiness that he had in the hospital that afternoon, and there was no way he could make them understand. He hoped they wouldn't have to.

If they could figure out what was wrong, if they could fix…

Derek's heart slammed in his chest as he leapt the creek easily, gaining ground on the pack as they slipped and slid and splashed.

He knew what was wrong. At least, what had started out as wrong.

What he didn't know was how to fix it.

But then the scent of the omega and some strange smoke was filling up his nose and his feet slowed, the pack swarming passed him in their eagerness, breaking from the trees into the clearing where Stiles waited, braced against the rocks with the big omega looming like a hulking bodyguard above him, both backlit by a thin slice of crescent moon. Derek watched as Stiles' eyes lit briefly on each of his betas as they fanned out in front of him, but didn't linger on anyone in particular, and for a second it seemed like he was searching, and his heart skipped. Forcing his feet to move again, he finally pushed himself forward into the open and stood, scared and strangely cold. For just a second Stiles' gaze tripped over his body and it should have been like liquid electricity, but instead he felt like he was being sized up, measured and then disregarded.

Stiles lifted his hand to his mouth and suddenly Derek's stare was caught on his pale, slim fingers, the way his cheeks hollowed around the cigarette in his hand as he took a hard drag. The cherry briefly lit his face with an orange glow, making him look wicked and dark with the thin, unfamiliar lines of his beard and moustache, and then he was pursing his lips and blowing a lungful of herbal smoke towards him with a kind of dismissal that reminded him of disdain. It wasn't nicotine, but it wasn't pot either, wasn't anything he could identify, and he briefly wondered if perhaps that was what was affecting him so much before discarding the idea. He shifted anxiously, unsure if he should speak first or if it would be more… polite to let Stiles run the show. He was just about to open his mouth, just to break the tenuous silence, but a rumbling snarl had ripped out of Stiles throat and he knew – it was him that had called to the pack.

And that…

He swallowed, bit back a whine. Apparently that appealed to his wayward wolf.

He could feel the omega's hard eyes on him, only darting away fleetingly to keep track of the shifty Peter, and though he understood the wariness, even approved of the blonde wolf's obvious good judgment, it still made him feel like he was on trial, and he felt his hackles rise, tried to control his rolling emotions.

Hearing Stiles' voice, throaty and rough with smoke, break the silence didn't help with that.

"Might as well wait for the rest of your pack," he said to the wolves as a whole, though the words were directed to him. "Wouldn't want to give offense by slinging injury."

Behind him the omega snarled, low and loud, and Derek swallowed at the heavily implied reminder of the vicious, bloody slashes he had left in the wolf's side. He might have felt a little guilt if he wasn't being practically driven to his knees by the other implication Stiles had made.

Your pack.

Not our pack. Not the pack.

Your pack.

It was too exclusionary not to hurt.

"Lydia and Allison are almost here," he managed to respond around the lump in his throat. Stiles' gaze flicked away towards the trees where Derek could hear the motor of an ATV humming close by, and he wondered if Stiles somehow already knew where they were, knew that they would be in the clearing within minutes. "They're bringing lanterns, you'll be able to see..."

"I can see just fine," Stiles snapped, and Derek could have sworn that he saw silver flash in his dark eyes, like a lightning strike. It was gone before he was even sure it was there, but he was reminded of the way the moonlight looked when it was reflected off of water. Or blood.

He was distracted from his thoughts as Stiles started to pace in short, hard lines, his movements sharp and harsh as he spun viciously on his heel at the end of each stride. He was staring at the ground and sucking hard on his cigarette, and Derek felt his betas shift nervously around him, their desire driving them forward but their sudden anxiety and uncertainty holding them back. He could feel them looking to him, feel their distress on top of his own, compounding it, filling up his head and weighing him down, his chest tightening…

An ATV came roaring into the clearing, its headlight cutting through the dark and throwing Stiles into sharp relief, illuminating his pale skin and the deep, rich red of his leather jacket. He squinted against the harsh glare before the driver cut the bike's engine, climbed down along with their passenger and pulled off shiny black helmets, revealing a mussed Allison and a put-together-as-always Lydia. The red head stared at him with something almost like reverence while Allison lit the two lanterns she'd taken from the back of the four-wheeler, and even from the other side of the clearing Derek could see the tears welling up in her eyes, the trembling in her fingers as she lifted her hand to her mouth.

"Stiles?" she tremored, the only one brave enough, or maybe breaking enough, to breach the new silence.

Derek watched intently as Stiles stared at her a minute, sadness fleeting at the corners of his mouth.

"Hey Lyds," he murmured.

And then he was flicking the ash off the end of his cigarette and stepping carefully out of the circle of light cast by the lanterns, back in to the shadows as though he hadn't just cracked right in front of them, five years of pain gleaming in his eyes, in those two little words. Turning back to Derek he narrowed his eyes and just like that all the pain was gone, locked away where it might never see the light again, and the only thing that was left was the dark, endless void that he thought he might be able to drown in if he tried.

Stiles looked him up and down, a muscle ticked in his jaw.

"Let's get this over with."