"Stop the car."
Lydia stared out into the desert with wide, searching eyes, one hand pressed against the window.
Scott shot a confused look in her direction. "What?"
"Scott, stop the car!" she insisted, straining to hear more clearly.
He slammed on the brakes, and they all came lurching to a halt in the middle of an empty highway that stretched to the horizon both directions.
"Lydia?" Stiles leaned over her seat back.
She turned to Scott, then Derek. "You don't hear that?"
The wolves exchanged glances and shook their heads, wary.
With a frustrated sound, she threw open her door and got out, turning as though to catch the signal better. For a second, no one in the Jeep moved.
Then she started to walk.
"Lydia!" Scott grabbed the keys from the ignition and scurried out into the midday sun.
Stiles ran to the back of the Jeep and grabbed their backpacks, shoving bottles of water in each. He called Scott's name to get his attention and flung his bag over. If they were walking out into the desert, they were bringing supplies. No desiccated corpses for the birds.
Lydia led with the steady tread of a grand marshal.
They walked for hours—until Stiles couldn't see his car anymore. He scowled back in the direction they had come, and Scott stopped, watching him.
"I can see it," he offered.
Stiles gave him a sheepish look and nodded.
"I wouldn't worry. No one's going to steal it," Scott said, grinning weakly.
Stiles bristled, though just for show. "Well they should. It's a classic."
Scott snorted small laugh at him, and they kept walking.
They walked through playas covered in agave and mesquite. Kicked up a dust trail that even the poorest hunter could follow. And turned full bottles into empty ones. The red hills on the horizon stayed distant, and nothing grew tall enough around them to cast any shade. The only saving grace was that it was still the middle of winter.
Lydia never wavered. She would turn and lift her eyebrows to ask "What about now?" and then forge on.
Scott fell into step behind her. Stiles and Derek followed.
It built gradually, a charge in the air that had the hair on Derek's arms standing on end. It tickled in his head and sizzled in his belly. It felt like . . . like power. Like an alpha spark and a strong pack.
"Uh . . . Derek?" Stiles slowed to a stop, watching him with a concerned frown. Scott stopped, too, and the look on Stiles's face got markedly more alarmed when he glanced at him. "Guys . . ."
"What?" A little irritation might have slipped into Derek's voice.
Stiles pointed at his hands.
At his claws.
Derek's heart thumped hard as he held up his hands and turned them over. "But . . . I'm not—"
"Me neither," Scott said, a twinge of panic in his tone. "But I feel a little weird, do you feel weird?"
Derek nodded at him. "Like—"
"Buzzing," they said together.
Stiles looked between the two of them. "You aren't feeling, like, homicidal or anything, right?"
Derek glared, and Stiles threw up his hands. "I'm just checking! You know, uncontrolled shifting does not seem like a good thing to me."
"Guys!" Lydia called. "Can you hear it?"
She sighed, frustrated, when they shook their heads, and continued on.
The farther they went, the thicker the air became. It moved like fabric over Derek's skin, shivering with powerful magic. He lost track of time, of the dip of the sun. His senses somehow opened wider, until he could hear the scuttle of mice and taste birds in the air. And there, just as the edge of his hearing, something else. Something—
"Are—are you doing that on purpose?" Stiles asked, keeping his voice low and conspiratorial.
Derek winced at the sudden sound of him and inclined his head in his direction. "What?"
"Dude, you're wolfed out. Like"—he swept a gesture over his whole face—"totally shifted."
Derek blinked at him, stopping, and then touched his own face, feeling the altered architecture of his features. A chill of worry swept through him, and he glanced up to find Scott in a similar state, his eyes faintly glowing red.
"How is this possible?" Scott asked.
"I don't know."
"I can't shift back!" Scott flailed a little.
"Scott, I don't know!" Derek growled around his fangs. "But . . . I think . . . I think I can hear it. I hear"—he shook his head and closed his eyes to concentrate—"something."
"Like a voice," Scott added.
"Thank God!" Lydia had stopped to come back for them. "Now come on. I think we're close. It's giving me a headache."
They followed her to a rocky ridge and picked their way down the side of an arroyo.
The voice resolved further, as though the dry riverbed carried its flow, and Derek turned to follow. It felt like walking into a rushing river, the sound sending shivers down his arms and brushing his face, prickly warm.
Shadows cut across the quiet valley as they walked into dusk.
"Derek," Scott said.
"I see it."
A flicker of fire.
Without meaning to, he started to run. And running had never felt so effortless. Strength surged through his body, and the closer he got, the faster he could feel himself moving. Scott stayed at his side, the two of them darting on fleet feet. Exhilaration lifted through his limbs like a drug.
Derek slowed as the sound of Stiles calling his name reached him, and he turned to see the others running themselves ragged to catch up. Scott appeared next to him a second later, and they waited with draining patience.
Stiles scowled at him but didn't say anything.
They were close enough now to see the source of the sound, of the singing.
A figure shuffled around near the rocky wall of the gully, moving between an elaborate lean-to and a cooking fire. They approached together, and as they came into the faint glow of the campfire, the figure stopped her chores and her singing to face them.
Derek was met with a face both foreign and familiar. The Aztecs would have known this face, round with lines like the desert canyons and cracked clay. She hunched under the weight of layered shawls in browns and reds and wore jewelry constructed of tiny bones. Her hair, streaked with a timber wolf's black and grey, fell in a long, bushy tail down her back.
Derek's breath felt faint in his chest. She looked at each of them in turn, ancient eyes performing some calculation before she moved on. Scott let out an unsteady breath under her gaze. Lydia grew silent. Stiles looked awed. And Derek felt his heart race.
"Niños," she said, a voice like the earth, deep and rich.
At his side, Stiles whispered, "It's her isn't it?"
La Loba.
Derek glanced at him and nodded. It had to be. Could only be.
The old woman shuffled closer to Derek and stretched up her small hand, not hesitating to lay it flat to his cheek as she examined his face and once again looked into him. She felt like pack—that ineffable aura of safety and home. He pressed into her touch, surprised at his own reaction.
She squinted at him. "I know your blood," she said in accented English. "Evangeline's." She slipped her hand away, and Derek felt the loss keenly.
He frowned and took a second to find his voice. "My mother's name was—"
"Talia. Yes, lobito"—she smiled a grandmother's patient smile—"but her mother and her mother." She rolled her wrist, flicking through time. "Enough mothers, and there is my Evangeline." She smiled and chortled to herself, amused by something she did not share.
Derek swallowed, unsure what to say to his progenitor. La Loba calmed her amusement and peered at him, the light of the campfire flickering in her suddenly serious eyes. The sun sets quickly in the desert, and only a crescent moon and the stars now lit the barren landscape. Night creatures raised their calls and left their shelters to fuck and kill. Primal instincts made all the more urgent and harsh by the precarious balance of life on the edge of extremes.
Derek felt himself slowly exposed under La Loba's quiet scrutiny. The urge to draw back bubbled in his blood. He sensed Stiles moving closer to his side, and the knowledge let him bear her burrowing attention.
She drew a deep breath and finally blinked. "It has been hard," she said, saddened. "Will you let me see?"
They were strangers. And yet, every instinct Derek had told him he could put his trust here, that her dark hands had grown hard from ages of taking care. How could he refuse?
He started to turn to show her the back of his neck, but she gently gripped his arm to stop him. "No . . . Canta, mijo. Sing for an old woman." She put her hand briefly to his cheek again in reassurance and stepped back.
For a second, Derek stared at her, trying to decide what she wanted.
"Tell me everything," she said at his hesitation.
He nodded. Everything.
Everything . . .
Everything cracked his ribs. Everything burned his soul. Everything had been locked in so long. He did not have words for everything.
And then he understood.
Derek shuddered as he drew a deep breath and tipped his head back.
Then he howled.
Emotions forgotten struggled free. Memories, loves, laughs, and family. The thoughts bled into despair, and terror. He called out with the mournful, pitiful howl of the lonely and shattered. Sorrow and rage ripped his throat, and by the time he was out of breath, tears fell from the corners of his eyes.
He swallowed painfully and looked down at her.
"All of it. All that you love and all that you hate."
Derek glanced at Stiles, whose eyes shone with tears, and raised his voice a second time.
All that you love. All that you hate.
The cry carried out of him his anger and fear; his sternum ached with letting go.
And then Scott joined in with a howl of his own, and they modulated against one another. For a moment, with closed eyes, the canyon filled with voices of those lost.
The wolfsong hung in the air, bouncing off the stars, and faded as their breaths ran out.
Derek shivered as too much emotion pressed on the inside of his skin and then felt a steady palm press to his back.
He looked down at La Loba and found her crying.
"All that?" she said, blinking out tears. "All that for one so young?"
He didn't know what to say and struggled to keep himself in check as Stiles let his hand fall.
The old woman sucked in a breath and held herself tall, coming up to his chest.
"Do you know what it takes to make a wolf?" she asked, holding his gaze as the campfire flames reflected in her eyes. Ancient power dwelled in the depths.
He shook his head.
"Blood to give them life. Bones to make them sturdy. Love to make them fierce. Courage to make them strong." She thumped him on the chest with the heel of her hand. "I can see your heart, lobito. You are everything I pray my wolves to be."
He stared down at her, wanting so much to believe. "But, I failed . . . everyone. And—"
"You are scared."
He snapped his jaw shut and nodded.
She thumped him on the chest again. "It wouldn't be brave if you weren't scared."
Stiles made a sound, bursting the bubble that had formed around them.
"I think it might be a little more than scared, you know?" he said. "I mean, there's a difference between facing a pack of alphas and . . . and suffering."
"Stiles!" Derek barked lowly at him.
"What? There is!"
Just as he was about to be mortified, La Loba started to laugh, her small shoulders jostling under her rags. She gave Stiles a look that quickly had him shrugging and kicking at the dirt—a look not even the sheriff had mastered.
"He is right," she said, and turned back to Derek, considering.
When she held up her hands, he bent into them. Her touch was warm, at first, but rough and callused. He didn't recognize it, when she started to draw on the pain that had settled in his bones, making him weak. It had been years since someone had done this for him. Cool relief flooded into his system, and he felt himself drifting, so light he could float.
Distantly, "What are you doing?" he heard Scott say.
"Helping."
"But he's not hurt."
She tsked. "He is. A wound of the soul," came her reply. "I cannot undo all that's been done. That will take time and love, and should not be done alone. But I can do this."
He could not have described the sensations. Like the world tipping. Or the sky clearing. The instinct at the back of his mind to watch and run settled its hackles.
He could not remember the last time it had been so.
The headache at the base of his skull eased.
He wavered, punch drunk, when she stopped and blinked over at Stiles, who had his arms crossed over his chest, watching closely.
"I don't get it. How could she heal him? What's there to heal?"
Lydia shifted closer to his other side and lifted one shoulder. "There are PTSD medications. They affect brain chemistry."
Derek huffed at the both of them. He felt lighter, and that was enough.
La Loba looked at him for a long time, with an uncomfortable intensity. He didn't know what she'd heard in his howl, and part of him suspected it was more than he'd ever shared with anyone.
"May I give you a gift?" she asked. "Evangeline's children were close to my heart. I felt it"—she tapped her chest—"when so many died. Will you stay? For a song?"
Derek nodded dumbly at her, and she grinned with the mischievous glee of a child.
La Loba shuffled back toward her campfire. She lowered herself down onto a small log close to the flames and took up a piece of agave leaf. As she cut the leaf into pieces and dropped it into the pot on the fire next to her, she started to sing.
Her voice moved through him with the force of the ocean coming in at tide, pulling deep and washing through his spirit with the slow insistent movement of a force of nature. The words were a Spanish lullaby, but the power behind it older than language. Derek's knees went weak, and he let himself drop to ground, let himself sink into the thrum of her voice. Trancelike, he wobbled, staring at her dark form next to the fire, until his eyes stung. When he closed them, an itching sensation raced across his skin, and he shivered in its wake.
"Oh my God," Stiles said, breathless as La Loba's song ended.
Derek turned to look up at him, to ask what was wrong. But the sound that came out of him was not his voice at all.
Stiles stared slack-jawed at the black wolf Derek had become. It yipped and grumbled at him, then looked down at its own paws. No way. Stiles let his backpack slide to the ground and started to kneel to—what? pet him? Derek stood and shook himself, sloughing off of his human clothes. Even this close to the fire, he was a shadow, just a shape, and Stiles could no longer make out his eyes.
Derek looked up at him, then Lydia and Scott, then wheeled on unsteady legs.
He balanced a second, seeming to get a feel for his new body.
Then he ran.
Like an arrow. Like a shot.
A crest of shock and panic sent Stiles bounding after him. No! "Derek!" But he disappeared into the darkness. "Derek!" Stiles shouted louder, Derek's name blazing in his throat. He spun in a tight circle burrowing his hands through his hair. God, Oh God, oh God. "Scott!" Stiles grabbed at his arm, but even as he pulled him over and pointed, Scott was shaking his head.
"There's a ridge. Stiles, he went over it. I-I can't see him."
Stiles's breathing turned shallow with dread. He was gone. They just . . . He was gone.
How could—
They had to—
He turned in place a few times trying to collect himself. They had to go. After him. Now.
La Loba appeared at his side and took his elbow gently in her hand, leading him back toward the fire. "Let him run," she said.
He pulled out of her grasp. "Let him run? What if doesn't come back? I just got him back, what if he—"
She cut him off with a raised hand and kind smile. "He will come back."
Stiles ached to believe her. "How do you know?"
She shrugged and sat back down on her log to stir her soup pot. "I know. And if he does not come on his own, he will come when I call. He is not lost."
Stiles stood with his fists on his hips, glaring down at her. But he couldn't sustain his alarm in the face of her solemn composure. He huffed and glanced at Scott and Lydia. They both shrugged.
"So, I guess we're staying," Scott said, and set his backpack down.
He and Lydia gathered near the fire to escape the chill of the night desert air and accepted La Loba's hospitality while they settled in to wait. Stiles paced into the darkness to find some place to be alone.
The campfire slowly reduced itself to glittering embers as Stiles watched the stars. Everyone else had retired—even La Loba mumbled softly from her lean-to—but he couldn't join them. He'd found a suitable piece of ground and stretched out, using his backpack as a pillow, and spent the last few hours inventing constellations among stars he had never seen.
His body hurt with the knowledge that Derek had run. From them. From him. Maybe just from being human.
He thought—
He sighed and hugged himself closer.
Maybe it didn't matter what he thought.
A sensation of being watched suddenly sparked goosebumps up his arms, and he flicked his gaze down from the stars to the darkness of his surroundings. Nothing seemed to move. All he heard was his own breathing.
But then a shadow morphed, coming closer, and blotted out part of the sky. It drew along his side and lowered its great bulk with a massive sigh. Stiles started to sit up but stopped when Derek lifted his wolfy head to look at him. He could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips.
"I didn't know if you were coming back," Stiles admitted as he lay back down, conscious of his body, of his skin.
Derek flashed his blue eyes at him and huffed as he settled his chin between his front paws.
The wolf's fur tickled against Stiles's arm, and his pulse beat with the sudden, reckless urge to bury his hands in it.
He's not a dog, he's not a dog, he's not a dog.
He buried one. Started with just some light scratching on Derek's side, where his ribs rose and fell. It was a trance of sorts, drawing his fingers through his fur, enjoying the play between rough outer coat and soft near the belly.
He must have done something right. Derek rolled onto his side, and Stiles grunted as he shoved a huge paw into his cheek.
"Jesus, seriously?"
Derek smacked his cheek with a paw again and rolled to expose his belly more.
Stiles snorted softly. "Subtle." And began to rub big, lazy circles around the wolf's chest and stomach. His long fingers found their way down to the haunches, and he stopped as his brain mapped the touch to a human body. Derek's paws twitched, but he made no effort to close himself off. With a small smile, Stiles resumed the gentle scratches.
"I'm glad you came back," he said, whispering so as not to wake the others. "Really glad."
Derek grumbled, flashing his eyes, and pressed his paws against Stiles's side. It made him laugh, releasing tension he hadn't known he'd been holding. For the first time that night, Stiles yawned.
A gust of wind blew down into the gully, fanning the sparks in the dying fire and making him shiver. He pulled one hand into his sleeve and kept the other buried in Derek's fur.
"Who'd've thought the desert would be this cold?"
Derek lifted his head to look at him, then started jostling around. He settled when he had his back pressed along Stiles's whole side, tail swishing over his ankles.
It took a second for him to realize that Derek was trying to keep him warm, and his heart did a little flip-flop at the gesture. He turned his face into the ruff of Derek's neck and let himself drift off to sleep.
Stiles woke at the cracking of dawn and for a few seconds lay under the blanket, blinking at the bluest sky. Then he frowned and glanced down at the woven wool blanket he definitely hadn't fallen asleep under. That was weird. He sat up on his elbows and looked around. Scott and Lydia lay near the cold fire where they had fallen asleep, also under some striped wool blankets.
La Loba's lean-to was gone.
Stiles turned and found Derek asleep next to him, human again. And very very naked, which wasn't as awkward as he would have guessed. Instead he found himself concerned that Derek was sleeping on bare dirt and small stones. After a few seconds of his scrutiny, Derek stirred and slowly blinked awake.
Stiles grinned. Derek stretched and grinned back.
"Hey," he said, voice thick with sleep.
"Hey." Stiles inclined his head toward the gully wall. "She's gone."
Derek lifted himself enough to turn to see, but settled back down when the blanket started to slip, exposing his shoulders and chest to the cool morning air. He glanced down at himself and froze for a moment before turning slightly pink and pulling the blanket a little bit higher than it had been. He looked up at Stiles for a reaction, and their eyes met.
It had come like the onset of rain. A slow and steady gathering of forces that set his heart to racing, his mind to wander. Somewhere, like and care had formed their own gravity, and this, this sensation of affection swelled with indescribable emotion must be what people mean with the word love. Only there are no words for a revelation of such magnitude. Words would make it small, contained. Words would give boundaries to a comet, and he would have no such violence.
Stiles looked at him a long time, long enough that his heart started to flutter with fear. That he felt unmasked.
There is a tender wound inside everyone that has no name and is unutterable in its mystery. It is that which yearns for connection. Burns with secret passions. And knows with conviction that it cannot be loved. We protect it because it is flawed. It has only its flaws to offer.
This self, his essential self, the curious, annoying, defiant, unsure, loyal, worthless self stood naked. And in Derek's gaze of star dust and silent wonder, found its like. An aching soul, unique in quality, artful and strong, raw, uncertain, and fierce but so, so brave. With only its flaws to offer.
Derek ducked his head, shaken, breaking the contact. Then glanced up with a cautious, small smile.
Stiles swallowed, speechless with emotion, winded, and laid back down pulling the blanket up to his chin. It was early; they could sleep a little longer. Slowly, he reached across the thin, heated space between their bodies, searching. His knuckles grazed the back of Derek's hand, then he entwined their fingers, every moment anticipating him pulling away.
Impossibly, Derek sighed and squeezed his hand in reply.