CHAPTER 2

They took the rooftops home. The rain had settled to a faint drizzle, and it was quicker than following the maze of streets -

Okay, so it was a completely unnecessary werewolf thing to do. But when you possess superhuman speed, stamina and the ability to literally leap (small) buildings in a single bound, it just doesn't make sense not to indulge every once and awhile.

At least that's how Scott justified it, midair and four stories up. He landed on a warehouse rooftop, gravel scattering beneath his sneakers as he drove his toes down and transitioned smoothly from a crouch to a sprint. Crossed the length of the building in three swift strides and with a dip and a spring he was airborne again, sailing across a ten foot gap that brought him to a surface one story lower. Adrenaline burned through lingering misgivings from their meeting with Noshiko Yukimura, made everything sharp and clear and easy. Even if that only lasted as long as the brief run across the city.

"Parkour!" Aiden shouted from three blocks ahead, just as audible as the softly muttered 'idiot' from Malia, a pace or two behind Scott. He kept his laugh buried in his chest. It was never a good idea to take sides there.

The three of them set a brisk but comfortable pace, enough in sync that they required no communication to keep from falling too far ahead or behind each other. It took less than ten minutes to traverse the two miles from the club to the loft they called home. The building that housed it was a squat, ugly looking bit of brick and rotting wood, close enough to the harbor that they could hear the clang of buoys a half a mile offshore. Still, it was warm, and dry, and most importantly their landlord had owned the space since 1896. Which made the rent a freaking steal.

One at a time they dove through the window on the second floor of the building, landing lightly in the living space shared by their pack. Scott preferred to keep their comings and goings as unobtrusive as possible - they never knew who might be watching. As far as they could tell they were the only ones renting in the building. But as their landlord was a rather eccentric Sidhe of the Unseelie Court who showed up in mirrors the second they had a maintenance issue…it was hard to really be sure.

And of course, the key phrase there was Scott 'preferred to be unobtrusive'. As teenage alpha of a pack of rowdy teenage werewolves, most of whom had either run away, been kicked out, or ended up kidnapped by mad scientists with a steampunk fetish before their respective parents got around to teaching them manners - well, Scott knew better than to hold his breath on that front.

So it was with a spectacular lack of surprise that he shook the remnants of the night's rainstorm out of his hair and looked around to total and complete anarchy.

A tennis ball whizzed by his face on a ninety mile an hour trajectory towards the far wall. It rebounded and ricocheted back towards the kitchen where Liam was waiting with an iron skillet at the ready. He, Brett and Josh all seemed to be absorbed in some kind of game that involved him slamming the ball off any and all available surfaces while the other two tried to intercept it via a series of gravity-defying acrobatics. Scott couldn't tell if the object of the game was to catch the ball using the most ridiculous gyration imaginable, or to see who could ignite the steam coming out of Hayden's ears into a full fledged conflagration. With those three, it was a toss up.

The pack's second youngest female sat cross legged in an old stuffed arm chair directly in the line of fire, doing her heroic best to ignore the ball careening back and forth between her and the pack's ancient and battered TV set. A ricochet cut close enough to her head to stir her hair with wind from its passage, and she gave up the struggle. She whirled in her chair to focus her ire on - naturally enough - Liam.

"Do you mind? I'm trying to watch something here!"

"Reruns," Liam scoffed, backhanding the ball towards the lower staircase, forcing Ethan and Diego to duck and juggle the massive load of takeout food they were bringing up from the car. "Besides, you hate that show."

"I love this show," Hayden snarled. "It's my favorite show."

"I think you're lying."

"And I think you're a narcissistic asshole with no difference between the shit that comes out of your mouth and what comes out of your ass!"

Well, at least that answered whether they were on again or off again this week.

Scott skipped trying to referee that cage match and wandered around the backside of the couch, where Tracy and Carrie had barricaded themselves to hold a hushed conversation too low for even his ears to pick up.

"How's Connor?"

"He's fine, Scott." Carrie's smile was way more patronizing than was necessary, given that his question had been totally anxiety free. He was sure of that much. He'd been practicing. "He's been asleep for hours. I don't know if it's just that his enhanced hearing hasn't kicked in yet or he's somehow built up an immunity to these morons, but either way I'm jealous."

Right on cue, Beth stormed down from the upper level in a state of high dudgeon.

"Scott! Tell Corey and Lucas to stop having sex in the loft! The one where we all live! And smell everything!"

Corey swept theatrically down the stairs after her, bare chest puffed up because of course he was shirtless, because when did the fifteen year old ever miss an opportunity to walk around in as little clothing as possible?

"Scott! Tell Beth to stop being such a homophobe. In my own home. Where I live!"

"For the last time Corey, put on a freaking shirt and stop strutting around like you've got anything to show off," Ethan snapped from the kitchen bar where he was setting out the takeout containers with Diego and Aiden. The pungent scents of fried rice and kungpao chicken wafted across the room. Scott's stomach growled. "I am too young to feel this creepy on a daily basis."

Corey ignored him, per usual. "I have a right to be intimate with my boyfriend in my own home. Saying otherwise is like, blatant discrimination."

Ethan sighed. "It's really not."

Corey foraged on heroically. "It's pretty much the definition of homophobia."

"Not even a little bit," Ethan said, rubbing at his temples.

"Got anything to add?" Josh asked Lucas with no shortage of amusement when the dark skinned boy finally slunk down the staircase to join them. Fully clothed.

"Man, I just want to spontaneously combust in peace." Lucas sank down onto the couch with an embarrassed groan. "Is that too much to ask?"

"What did you think would happen?" Hayden asked from her chair, no sympathy to be found there. "You had to know we can all smell it."

"Seriously," Beth said. "I don't care what you do, I just do not want the scent of it in my nostrils!"

"Yeah, like you guys give off so many pheromones I'm starting to question MY sexuality," Zach interjected from way overhead. Scott swore to himself as they all craned their necks to look up at the younger boy, perched in his usual roost amongst the highest rafters. He really needed to stop forgetting to look for Zach there, given that he was practically never found anywhere else. Some holdover from the brief period he'd had actual wings thanks to the Dread Doctors' fucked up Frankenstein experiments. Personally, Scott found it weird, but who was he to judge?

"Not that there's anything wrong with being gay," Zach continued hastily. "Its just my only options would be Ethan and Brett and that's not fair."

"Just so we're all clear, there is no scenario in which I will ever be an option for anyone in this room," Ethan said.

Scott felt a migraine coming on, werewolf physiology notwithstanding. Aiden joined him in leaning against the wall.

"Want us to wade in?" He asked, sotto voce. Scott shook his head wearily.

"This has been building for awhile. Let them just get it all out."

Aiden shrugged but said nothing as Beth strove valiantly to corral the runaway fight back to its point of origin, bless her naive little heart.

"All I'm saying is why can't you guys go find a park somewhere and do it like Tracy and Josh did?"

Tracy's head popped up from behind the couch. "Whoa, how did I get dragged into this?"

At the same time Josh launched himself off of the staircase banister, hands raised in objection. "That never happened!"

Carrie's head popped up opposite Tracy's. "When was this? You and Josh? Seriously?"

Tracy groaned. "Can we not? It was one time, that's all. Not like it'll ever happen again."

Josh frowned and aborted all attempts at denial. "Wait what? Why not?"

"Do you really want me to answer that in front of everyone?"

Josh reared back, his hands waving expressively. He was always most animated when he felt slighted for some reason or another.

"Oh like you could do better or something? You used to be a lizard." He hissed the last word dramatically.

"Really Diaz? You really want to go there?" Tracy narrowed her eyes and jumped to her feet. And she used to be so shy and quiet too…Scott missed that. He really really did.

"Oh I already went there," Josh fired back. "I am there, checked in at four square, destination been there, done that."

"He lying," Corey said flatly. "Can't check in at four square with a flip phone."

"Seriously Scott," Zach whined from the ceiling. "When are we getting new phones? I mean, flip phones? I can't get ANY games on this. All it has is Tetris. Tetris, Scott! Tetris!"

"They're for emergencies, not toys," Ethan said. Corey snorted.

"Well its an EMERGENCY that Josh is so out of touch he thinks four square is still relevant."

Josh scowled. "If I beat him on account of he can't go five minutes without being a little shit, that's not homophobia, right?"

"Alright," Scott sighed to Aiden, confident that enough of the pack were making their way towards the lure of garlic shrimp by now that things wouldn't get too out of hand. "I'm gonna go check on Connor. Try and avert any actual bloodshed, at least?"

"Fiiiiine," Aiden dragged out with a frown. He'd rather sell tickets.

At least they were all still using their words instead of their claws this time, Scott comforted himself. That was progress right? Right. He pulled off his jacket and tossed it over the couch next to Malia and Diego - the latter carefully separating his fried rice from the carrots and peas mixed into it, the former poking her plate as though raw mice would have been preferable. Then again, with Malia that was probably true.

"I'll be right back," he told her, grabbing Ms. Yukimura's file from the back of his jeans and dropping it on the couch. "Fill everyone else in, okay?"

"Yeah, sure," Malia said. "Wait, was that just touching your ass?"

Declining to dignify that with a response, he took the stairs to the loft's upper level. "Someone save me some broccoli and beef."

"Scott, no, we have to give all the vegetables to Liam," Brett called up after him. "He needs his leafy greens if he's ever going to grow up big and strong like the rest of us."

"I will kill you in your sleep, asshole."

Oh yeah. All the other alphas just wished they could have his pack.

The upper level was curtained off into five separate areas - drapes and bedsheets strung from the ceiling to give each other as much an illusion of privacy as superhuman senses would allow. Nearest the stairs was the small space that contained Diego's bedroll and the bunk Liam and Brett used. Brett of course had long since claimed the bottom bunk, given that he was physically incapable of not being a douchebag to Liam. (Or if you went with Carrie's interpretation, he was totally in love with the younger boy and this somehow explained his behavior as well. It was hard to say. As he and his sister were the only ones of them born and raised within a werewolf pack, Brett was the best at keeping his scent under wraps). On the other side of the curtains came Lucas, Corey and Josh's room, and just beyond that the partitioned corner where Tracy, Beth and Hayden shared two futons between them.

Scott ducked his head into Lori, Malia and Carrie's room. Otherwise known as Lori and Carrie's beds and the mound of pillows staunchly defended by Malia as being far superior to any man-made furnishings. It looked an awful lot like an eight year old's idea of a fort, but they all had the good sense to keep that to themselves.

The twelve year old blonde was sprawled on her stomach across her bed, earphones in and watching a movie on one of the four laptops the pack shared between them. She looked up when she caught his scent hovering and pulled out an earpiece, head tilted inquisitively in the dim blue backlight of her screen.

"Food's here," Scott told her. "You hungry?"

She scrunched up her nose. "Is my brother being an embarrassing idiot?"

"No more than usual."

Lori rolled her eyes. "I already ate, thanks anyway."

Scott laughed. "I'll make sure there's some orange chicken in the fridge. Go down and heat it up later when you're ready."

She threw him a thumbs up and returned to her movie. If only her older packmates (particularly her brother) could be as low maintenance as her. He shook his head fondly and continued down the hall.

Zach had long ago made an actual nest for himself up in the rafters and successfully made a case for it being a superior alternative to bunking with Josh, Lucas and Corey, and Aiden and Ethan used the pull out couch on the lower level. That left the last corner of the loft for him and Connor.

Scott slipped through drapes heavy enough to keep the light from his room and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. There wasn't much to see: his bed, a table for his laptop, a trunk of clothes. And then the crib against the far wall. The twins had scavenged it from some garage sale and then spent three days scouring it with every cleaning product known to man, and a few known only to brownies. Even now it still smelled faintly of bleach. Scott worried sometimes that it might be stunting his son's sense of smell, but well. He basically worried about everything having to do with Connor, so grains of salt were required.

He leaned over the crib and gazed down at the nine month old. Drifted a hand down to sweep a curl of black hair from Connor's forehead. His son stirred in his blankets but remained fast asleep. Like Carrie said, he did have an uncanny ability to sleep through almost any crisis. Maybe it was a trait he'd adopted out of necessity…the only way to reliably get rest given the chaos that had so often surrounded his young life. Scott tried not to think like that. That way lay guilt, and as Aiden was fond of lecturing him, that shit wasn't healthy.

Instead he just breathed in deep. Inhaling his son's scent and letting the rhythm of his tiny heartbeat relax him, the tension and uncertainty of the day evaporating into so much nothingness. Babies apparently were awesome stress relievers. Okay, no, that wasn't even a little accurate. They were tiny terrors who crawled into danger at every available opportunity and were obsessed with eating things they could choke on and every single waking second of his son's life left Scott consumed with the certain knowledge that this moment coming up, this one right here, this would be the one where he fucked up so monumentally that his appointment to the Worst Parent Of All Time Ever Hall of Fame was all but guaranteed. Though if he was being honest, that moment had actually happened before Connor was even born, but -

Oh, wait, nope, there was the guilt again. Dammit. Aiden could be right. He might possibly have a problem.

But it was easy enough to get caught up again in the slow rise and fall of his son's chest, once he allowed himself too. In rare instances like this, where it was just the two of them, no chaos, no danger, no getting ready to run to who knows where for god knows how long - just for a few seconds at a time it was possible to believe that he could do this. That they might be alright, and everything wasn't just…terrible.

And then of course a crash echoed from downstairs and the murmur of voices cut off into abrupt guilty silence. Because his pack. Was literally. The worst.

"Yeah, you just enjoy your sleep while you can, buddy," Scott said to his oblivious heir apparent. He quickly changed out of his soaking wet clothes into something dry. "They're going to be your problem someday."

He regretted his off the cuff quip by the time he made it to the stairs. Why had he thought that was in any way funny? It was bad enough that his life was the mess it was just from being bitten in the woods, but to be born into it like Connor, with no choice whatsoever? Especially if Kali and Julia had been right, and his power as a True Alpha couldn't be stolen even by another werewolf. That it would always pass automatically to Connor no matter how Scott died…

Okay, seriously, enough. If his brain could shut off for even two minutes, that would be awesome. So awesome. Get on that, brain.

Everyone was gathered around the couch downstairs with Kira Yukimura's photos and documents sprawled all across the coffee table in front of them. Well everyone except for Zach, still in the rafters, and Liam standing below him, using just his mouth to catch the lo mein noodles Zach was dropping down to him. Scott was pretty sure he didn't want to know what that was all about.

Surprisingly, it was Diego who was sweeping up the remains of a lamp with a somewhat sheepish expression. Scott raised an inquiring eyebrow at Aiden, who was engaged in some kind of bizarre staring contest with Tracy. He made one little request - sure, he saw no bloodshed, but broken furniture had been pretty much implied too. They had little enough as it was.

"Sorry boss," Aiden shrugged when he felt Scott's eyes searing into the back of his neck. "Tracy was doing that oh so sexy inscrutable Oriental thing and I got distracted."

"Oriental is what you call food, Asian is what you call people, jackass." Tracy flicked a stray piece of chicken at the other wolf before smiling sweetly. With fangs. "And shit like that is why the only adjective you'll ever need to describe me is 'impenetrable.'"

Aiden grinned and leaned forward. "Maybe I meant I want to eat -"

A low growl echoed from the back of Tracy's throat. She leaned forward herself, eyes flaring gold. "Finish that sentence. I dare you."

"Don't do it," Zach yelled from overhead. "It's a trap!"

"Guys," Scott snapped. "Really?"

The two betas fell back into their seats, scents conveying shame better than facial expressions ever could. Scott held Aiden's gaze a beat longer. He didn't like feeling like he had a right to expect anything from one of his oldest friends, given how much Aiden did for the pack on a daily basis. And he knew shock factor and crude promiscuity were just part of the other boy's coping mechanism for the fucked up shit that was their day to day lives. But even with that, he took things too far sometimes. Someday he was going to cause real friction within the pack if he didn't learn when to rein it in.

"So is this bodyguard deal going to be our thing now?" Brett asked, sandwiched between Carrie and Malia. "I could get into that. Suits, dark sunglasses, business cards. We could call ourselves Full Moon Security!"

"Right, because the full moon is when people would be most secure with us," Ethan said witheringly. Brett flapped a hand at him.

"Whatever, it's a metaphor."

"That's not even remotely what a metaphor is. You're an idiot."

"This is a one time deal," Scott said before Brett could fire back. "If we do this right, our money problems will be over, and we'll have a powerful ally to help us deal with Kali's pack once and for all."

Nobody had anything clever to say to that. The mere possibility was enough to make Scott feel dizzy if he thought about it too much. Life without the constant threat of Kali and Julia and their pack, without looking over their shoulder, jumping at every shadow. They could finally find a real place to call their own. Maybe even go home…

"That said, I want everyone to be clear on one thing," Scott continued. It wouldn't do any of them any good to get caught up in fantasies just yet. "This is going to be dangerous. Yukimura was pretty vague about just what kind of threat this nogitsune is, but if she's as old as I think she is and so desperate she had to come to us for help, we shouldn't be underestimating it. If anyone wants to sit this out, I'm not going to hold it against you."

"Pfft, my middle name is danger," Brett said into the silence that followed.

"Your middle name is Eugene, you colossal tool," Liam muttered from across the room. Corey and Beth both giggled. Lucas coughed into his hand.

"Scott, we've been over this before," Ethan said. "You're an alpha of wolves, not a herder of sheep. If you say we're doing this, we're doing this."

And with that, all of them were looking at him, faces set in complete agreement. It took every ounce of self control Scott had to keep his own tidal wave of emotions contained. His pack might be a little rough around the edges, but he knew they'd go to the mat for each other every time. They'd proven it over and over again. Ethan was right. He just had to say the word and they'd follow. And…he didn't deserve it. The last time they'd all been looking at him like this, he got DeMarco killed. It was him Kali really wanted, him and Connor, and here he was putting them all in danger again just for his own selfish sake…

Aiden clapped a hand on his shoulder. "So what's the plan?"

Right. Okay. Scott focused his attention on logistics, rather than how annoying it was starting to be that Aiden could read him this well.

"Yukimura is getting four of us into Kira's school. It'll be me, Malia, Brett and Liam. I want one of us near her at all times. Malia and I will split her classes between us. Liam, it looks like she tutors after school so we're going to get you sessions with her. And she takes the subway home, but it'd be too obvious if we all took it with her so Brett, you'll match your commute to hers."

"Why'd you pick them?" Beth asked. "St. Margaret's is a really good school. I'd do way better there than Brett or Liam."

It figured that Beth would pick that part to be jealous of. "I was afraid you'd be too focused on the schoolwork to remember what we were actually there for," Scott said dryly. She frowned.

"Fine. But I want their textbooks when they're done."

"You're so weird," Corey told her. She shoved him off the couch.

"Tracy, Josh, and Lucas will keep their usual work schedules. I don't want us relying on Yukimura's money until we have it all in hand," he told the older betas. They nodded. "Hayden, Zach, Corey, Beth - you'll be on standby in the neighborhoods around the school in case we do have to engage the nogitsune and need backup."

"You need to take it seriously and stay out of sight and at the ready," he said sternly, when Corey and Zach exchanged mischievous looks. "The last thing we need is some beat cop chasing one of you down for truancy."

"Diego, Carrie, I hate to ask this of you, but I need you to watch Connor for me during the days now," Scott finished somewhat anxiously. Carrie rolled her eyes, and Diego just looked bewildered.

"Why would you not want to ask us that?"

"Scott, he's pack, not an obligation," Carrie said. She leaned forward to place her hand on his leg. Scott tensed, a fleeting second where his body coiled in on itself like a spring, but he forced his muscles to relax before she noticed. He wasn't quick enough to escape everyone's attention judging by the glances Malia exchanged with the twins.

"Yeah, uh, Ethan and I are pack too, last time I checked." Aiden feigned injury. "So what are we supposed to do? Are we invisible now?"

"I could work with that," his brother said right on his heels. His eyes glazed over slightly.

"You're picturing yourself in the guys' locker room right now aren't you?"

"Oh like you're not?"

"Not in the guys' locker room I'm not."

"I have something else in mind for you two," Scott said before they could get too carried away. "I need to check on a couple of things first though."

"Ooh, mysterious."

"I am intrigued," Aiden agreed.

"We're missing an angle."

The quiet declaration cut through the banter and focused everyone on Diego. By far the most reserved member of their rowdy pack, the seventeen year old was easy to overlook. It didn't help that he went out of his way to fade into the background as much as possible. After eight months, the lines he drew between himself and the rest of the pack were still clearly visibly. Scott just didn't know how much of that was due to Diego's own views as a hunter's son and how much of it was just his assumption of how the others viewed him, even now. It wasn't that he doubted Diego's loyalty, or that anyone else did for that matter. He'd proven himself beyond a doubt. Even Brett and Carrie had never held his heritage against him despite their former pack's fate. But there remained a palpable distance between the young Calaveras and the rest of the pack, and Scott didn't know what to do about it. Hell, he didn't know if Diego even wanted him to do anything about it.

"What do you mean?" Scott prompted when the other boy hesitated under their combined attention.

"I just mean that you've got things covered at school, but what if the nogitsune isn't at her school? All of this is information her mom provided, and yeah, she's ancient as fuck, but what mom knows everything her teenage daughter gets up to or everywhere she goes?"

Scott nodded. "Well ideally between the four of us, one of us can become friendly enough with her to get access outside of school."

"That might take too long though."

He shrugged helplessly. "I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just not sure there's anything we could do to speed up the time table."

"You could ask her out," Carrie said.

Scott blinked. "What?"

"Its the simplest way to speed up 'access' to her," she elaborated. Scott was not at all comfortable with the implications of her air quotes. "She'd be safest with you, you're the best bet to sniff out the nogitsune, and if you're dating her you have the perfect excuse to spend time with her off campus and in her usual hangouts."

"And what happens when I ask her out and she says no and then avoids me so she doesn't feel awkward?" Scott asked, pointing out the obvious flaw in the plan. Carrie just gave him a look.

"Scott, she's not going to say no."

"Well okay, I guess she might not, but its still a risk I don't think we should take."

She threw up her arms in exaggerated exasperation. "You're right Scott, you're only hot, sweet, and responsible. Every high school girl's worst nightmare. Totally not dating material."

Scott blinked again. Maybe he was developing a twitch. "Umm, thanks, I think?"

"Nah, Carrie's right," Brett said. "You could totally seduce her face off."

"I'm not seducing her," Scott growled. His vision flashed red, and out of the corner of his eye he caught the twins exchanging yet another god damn look. He appreciated their concern in an abstract kinda way but he was really starting to get sick and tired of them treating him like a nuclear explosion waiting to happen. Was he the Alpha here or not? He didn't need the two of them and Malia acting like he needed to be protected from a few stupid words and touches. It was almost two freaking years ago. He was fine. Full stop. End of story.

"I'll do it," Liam said under his breath. He'd wandered over at last to kneel by the coffee table and had his chin propped in one hand as he leafed through various photos of Kira. Hayden perked up slightly over in her chair and narrowed her eyes. Brett scoffed and leaned over to hold a hand above Liam's head.

"Didn't you read the sign? You must be at least this tall to ride this ride."

"Brett, enough!" Scott barked. Everyone quieted and the blond beta sunk back into the couch looking like a kicked puppy. In the sudden stillness, Connor's agitated cries rang out as loud and strident as a siren. Scott rubbed his face in his hands. "Nobody is seducing anyone. Kira doesn't know anything about any of this, and our goal is to keep her safe and deal with this nogitsune while disrupting her life as little as possible. We stick to the plan, and figure out a way to fill in the gaps as we go."

"You want me to go check on him?" Carrie asked softly. Her scent carried the bittersweet tang of remorse, but it wasn't her fault.

"No, I'll do it." He already leaned on her far too much where Connor was concerned. It wasn't fair to her, or any of them. Connor was his child, his responsibility. "Okay, everyone good here? We all on the same page?"

"This is the stupidest plan ever," Malia said, popping a piece of chicken into her mouth. "I haven't gone to an actual school since the 4th grade, and I was terrible at it even then."

"I have total faith in you," Scott said wryly. She snorted.

"That's not saying much. You have total faith in everyone. Its one of your most obnoxious qualities."

"I have other obnoxious qualities?"

She slanted a sly coyote smirk at him and sauntered off towards the kitchen. Well then.

"Alright. I'll be in my room obviously. Everyone do me a favor and try to keep the noise down until I get him back to sleep?"

A soundless chorus of nodding heads answered Scott's request as he trudged back upstairs to his room. Their earnest expressions lasted about as long as it took him to reach the upper landing, and he could actually smell the full-fledged food fight that erupted the moment his back was turned. No, seriously, he could smell it, tracking the scent trajectories of the various leftovers as they flew from one end of the room to the other. He sighed. At least they were doing it quietly.

After a pause, he took a moment to look back down at the room anyway, taking it all in. The dusty old piano in one corner that Lucas and Corey had found somewhere and hauled home, because Josh for all his prickly antagonism had eight years of classical piano training and a special talent for soothing Connor to sleep with Baroque waltzes. The mess of brightly colored paint spatters and abstract shapes along one wall where Zach had started to paint a mural once, before his efforts had devolved into a full fledged paint war between he, Hayden, Brett and Tracy. The kitchen where Diego had learned he had no ability to cook whatsoever, after repeated attempts to make a simple stir fry somehow ended with the twins barfing outside the window. The counter Corey had accidentally smashed a hole in with a hammer when trying to help Lori make a birdhouse like she used to with her father.

As infuriating and exhausting as they all could be, he wouldn't trade a single one of them for the world. He just prayed he wouldn't fail them like he had DeMarco. Like he had Theo.

Connor was waiting for him in his bedroom, standing upright in his crib and clinging fiercely to the side while he wailed. The scrunched up expression of misery on his face was like a sucker punch to the gut every time Scott saw it. It didn't help knowing that this was normal for babies, that it wasn't always indicative of anything in particular, it still just…hurt.

"Hey buddy, I'm sorry, did I wake you up?" He scooped the screaming baby in his arms and started rocking back and forth. Connor burrowed his face against Scott's chest without the slightest dip in volume, his small frame practically vibrating from the force of his crying. "Daddy's really sorry, he didn't mean to yell so loud."

The only reprieve from his son's wails was the slight hitch when he took a breath, filling his lungs to fuel his next eruption. Not that Scott could blame him. How often had he heard the same completely inadequate apologies from his own father when he was young? He tucked his chin atop Connor's head and contemplated. He'd been losing his temper more and more lately it felt like. It was easy to blame it on the stress of everything. The weight of everyone looking to him all the time, all his frustrations and feelings of inadequacy when it came to Connor. He could even blame it on the wolf pacing restlessly inside him or wonder if he'd inherited some of his own father's temper. Scott had plenty of options when it came to pointing the finger somewhere, but problem was he didn't want to know what to blame for it. He just wanted to know how to stop it.

Connor quieted somewhat, but he suspected that was due to simple exhaustion more than anything else. His tiny shoulders shook with sobs and Scott had to resist the urge to squeeze him tighter. He reached down into the crib and grabbed Connor's favorite blanket, biting back a curse when he almost bumped his head on the unorthodox mobile spinning above it. It was an extravagant array of plastic with bits of iron, rowen, and rock salt dangling from each of its spokes, and Scott had nightmares of it falling and crushing his son in his sleep. He never would have allowed the damn thing anywhere near his kid, let alone hanging right above him, if Henry hadn't been so adamant that it could keep Connor safe from everything from faerie magic to a druid's seeking spells. Just one more compromise in a long string of them.

He was so fucking sick of compromises. Especially when it seemed harder and harder to tell the difference between compromise and failure.

Scott counted it as a victory when the scent of the blanket lured Connor away from his chest long enough to snatch it out of his father's hand. He shoved it in his mouth, something about the link between taste and smell at that age driving him to stuff his face full of whatever he decided smelled good, and his eyes blinked sleepily. Bright, vibrant gold. Yet again Scott wished he knew what it meant that his son already had a werewolf's eyes more often than not. Was this normal for born werewolves, or did it have something to do with being the child of two Alphas? Brett had been one of the youngest in his pack. He'd never had a chance to learn what was standard for children of that age, let alone how they went about teaching kids that young control of their shifts. And it wasn't like Scott was going to be able to keep Connor hidden away from the rest of the world forever. At some point they were going to need to know they could take him out in public without worrying about his eyes flashing unexpectedly, or worse yet, him randomly sprouting claws or fangs.

Thank God those hadn't shown up yet. He had no idea what he was going to do when they did.

"Well at least your problems are solved for now," he told his son with a rueful shake of his head. Connor sucked contentedly on his blanket by way of response, the only hint of his previous mood the flush of red staining his dark cheeks. Scott settled them both at the table and booted up his laptop. "Now let's see if Daddy's victory streak continues," he murmured, pulling up Facebook. The autofill only needed one letter to know which page to take him to.

His mother had never used Facebook before he left home. (Ran away, Scott corrected himself.) He'd only randomly searched on a whim one day, and her page had popped right up at the top of the search results. Set to public view, visible to anyone, with postings at least once a week. He was ashamed of how long it'd taken him to realize it must have been Stiles' idea, only connecting the dots when he saw that Stiles' page had similarly been changed from his secure privacy settings to public view. But then, he'd been ashamed to think of Stiles at all, wincing every time he remembered the horrible things he'd said to his best friend. It didn't really feel like it mattered that it had only been to keep him away and out of Peter's sight.

In spite of everything he'd been through since leaving home, Scott still thought those first three weeks after he'd been bitten were the worst weeks of his life. Faced with his mom and Stiles' confusion as they tried to figure out what was wrong with him, afraid to utter even a single clue for fear it'd lead them to Peter. All too aware of the lengths the Alpha might go if he felt they threatened his hold on his 'investment', as he'd once called Scott.

Dinner night with the Stilinskis, he read on his mother's page. The photo of her, the Sheriff and Stiles had been posted two days ago. Scott breathed a little easier for the first time since meeting Noshiko Yukimura. Whatever had led to the nogitsune's escape from Beacon Hills, the three of them were okay. That was something at least.

"Look, its grandma," he whispered in Connor's ear, and his son glanced up at the screen. He had no idea how good a child's spatial awareness was at that age, but it felt like Connor's eyes lingered on the photograph. "And that's Uncle Stiles, who would never ever be left alone with you cuz that would literally be the plot of a disaster movie."

The joke slipped out without his even thinking about it, the kind of thing he'd said playfully a thousand times before. Except the Scott that would have teased his friend like that wasn't a Scott who would have a kid by eighteen in the first place. He wasn't sure he had the right to make a joke like that now, not with the space (and words) he'd left between them. Sometimes he liked to imagine that the Facebook pages were Stiles' way of saying 'I understand' or 'all is forgiven.' Other times he was forced to admit they might have just been a favor to his mom, a hand extended for her sake alone. He hoped three weeks of being a total shit weren't enough to outweigh eleven years of friendship, but it had only taken one bite to derail his entire life.

Scott clicked through to Stiles' page, bemused as always at the wall conversations between his best friend and his new clique. He had no clue how those particular friendships had formed. Allison Argent, Lydia Martin, Danny Mahealani - Jackson freaking Whittemore of all people. And then throw in the trio of Isaac Lahey, Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd…stranger things had happened, he supposed, like becoming a werewolf for one. But not stranger by much.

They looked happy, at any rate. Stiles was always smiling in all the photos he was tagged in, same with Lydia and Allison and Danny of course. There was something a little off about the other members of their gang, but they couldn't all be photogenic. There was another brown haired girl in most of the pictures of them all as a group, but he'd never been able to place her and she was never tagged in any of the captions. He scanned the most recent one out of habit and froze. For the first time, the mysterious brown haired girl between Stiles and Isaac had a name.

Cora Hale.

Connor let out a soft whimper of protest. Probably picked up on a change in his scent - god, he was going to have to watch that. He bounced the boy on his lap and clicked the hyperlink on Cora Hale. Her page was set to private, no big shock. Scott ran a search for her name on Stiles' page instead.

Who the fuck was Cora Hale? Peter had only ever mentioned one relative surviving the fire besides himself and Laura, the Alpha he'd killed. Derek, he was pretty sure. Mostly he just remembered Peter ranting about his idiot nephew's visits to him in a coma, about his guilt-ridden confessions that it was his fault, that he'd been with Kate Argent and she'd only known when and where to start the fire because of him. There'd been an element of urgency to Peter's plans because of it - like he needed to reach a certain stage of them before Derek arrived in town hunting his sister's murderer. Scott had always assumed Derek was the one who'd killed Peter when word of his old Alpha's demise had reached them. Everyone who knew the name Hale had agreed that Derek Hale was his mother's son, he'd set things right in Beacon Hills and keep it safe. Scott had clung to that, desperate to believe that everyone he'd left behind was safe from Peter once and for all. That as long as he kept Kali and her pack away they'd all be safe from the werewolf madness that had consumed his life.

But now here was Stiles in a picture with a Hale. A Hale his own age, a girl who most likely was a werewolf herself.

Search results popped up. He scrolled through.

Convinced Cora Hale to join Facebook at long last - Read a Wall post.

Movie night with Cora Hale. I rented the Wolfman with Benicio del Toro. Haha, she's going to kill me - read another.

And finally -

Stiles Stilinski is in a relationship with Cora Hale.

What. The absolute. Fuck.

That had not been there when he checked last week. He would have noticed it. Jesus, Stiles was dating a werewolf. A Hale who had to be a werewolf, given the joke about the Wolfman movie…and the fact that Stiles knew to make the joke meant that Stiles knew about werewolves.

Stiles fucking knew about werewolves.

The photo tagged to the change in relationship status had Stiles kissing the side of her cheek. Her eyes were closed. It was kinda adorable, Scott registered in an abstract sort of way, but like…deep, deep in the back of his mind abstract kinda way. He clicked through most of the photos tagged with Cora Hale. She usually had her eyes closed, of course, to keep them from flashing - except there were a few where she didn't. Mostly group photos. That didn't make any sense.

Unless they were photoshopped.

And the second that registered, he knew what was off about the rest of Stiles' friends. Isaac Lahey. Erica Reyes, Vernon Boyd, Jackson Whittemore. Their faces were all photoshopped. It was probably Danny's work, he'd always been good at that stuff, which meant Danny knew about werewolves too. And no way the wolves didn't know about the freaking Argents, which meant Allison had to know her family were hunters and she was still hanging with their gang anyway…

Except no, it wasn't a gang or a posse or a group of friends at all, was it?

It was a fucking pack.

"Aiden, Ethan, Malia, come up here please," Scott requested softly, knowing they'd hear him anyway. It was about all he knew right now. Stiles knew about werewolves. Was in a pack of werewolves, even though he still seemed to be human himself. Same with Allison Argent, the daughter of hunters.

Did Stiles know about him?

He had to be in Derek Hale's pack, right? Cora must have been one of his siblings, one Peter hadn't known had survived. But did Derek know his uncle had made a beta before he killed him? Had Stiles figured it out after he'd learned about werewolves?

Had he ever had to run away at all?

"Everything okay?" Malia asked, sounding uncharacteristically concerned when she peered through the drapes. Scott nodded and she, Aiden and Ethan slipped into the suddenly cramped room and took seats along the edge of his bed. Aiden leaned forward and tweaked Connor's nose, making faces and growling noises much to the boy's delight. Aiden had always seemed to be Connor's favorite of the pack. Scott tried not to analyze that too much.

They sat in silence for a minute - well, silent except for Connor's giggling. Aiden managed to combine a game of peek-a-boo with keeping a careful eye on his alpha. Excellent multi-tasking, Scott noted in a morbidly amused fashion. He'd give him a merit badge for it, if you know, they were a Boy Scout troop instead of a pack of runaway werewolves. His three betas seemed content to give him time to gather his thoughts. Problem was that ship had sailed. His thoughts were long past the point of any kind of coherency.

"The last time I saw my mom, I was half crazed on the night of a full moon," Scott said at last. All three of them snapped to attention, and yep, exchanged a freaking look. He didn't have the energy to be ticked off this time. Sides, this one was earned. It was an unspoken rule between the four of them; they didn't talk about things from before. True, they all knew things about each other the rest of the pack didn't. It had been just the four of them in the beginning after all. Well, them and Theo - (but if they didn't talk about this stuff, they definitely didn't talk about Theo). But they left it at that. They didn't have heart to hearts. They didn't monologue about the demons in their pasts. But he was the Alpha, goddammit, and he'd break the freaking rule if he wanted to.

"I was watching her standing outside the hospital on a break. Complaining about my behavior to the Sheriff on the phone. Peter was there. Goading me, trying to push me to finally make the kill, break my ties and become one of his pack. And I was close. I really…I was this close to doing it," Scott recounted. He closed his eyes, unable to ever forget that moment of sheer savagery, so wild and out of control and just done with the struggle to remain human that he almost did the unthinkable. "But he just couldn't help himself. And he made the mistake of making some kind of crack about my mom. I don't even remember what it was. And I…I snapped. And I bit him. He clawed at me, and the pain anchored me, and I just ran. Stopped by my house long enough to grab some clothes and money and leave a note saying not to look for me, and I just…took off, and didn't look back."

They knew all this of course, even if they'd never discussed it in words. Julia's damn spell had taken care of that, linked them for that one awful night and shared all their pain and painful memories between them, though they'd never actually figured out what the point of it had been.

"I've never second guessed that until now. I honestly thought I made the right choice. I knew Peter wouldn't hurt Stiles or my mom if I wasn't there. He never did anything without a reason, and he wasn't going to waste his two biggest ways of controlling me if he couldn't even be sure where I was to get the message. As long as I stayed away, they were safe."

"Scott, what's going on?" Ethan asked. Scott nodded towards his computer.

"Stiles knows about werewolves. He's part of the Beacon Hills pack, but I'm pretty sure he's still human."

"Fuck." Aiden blew out a breath. Connor giggled and the beta wilted under Scott's glare.

"If that ends up being his first word, we're going to have a problem."

"Part of a werewolf pack and dating a Hale," Malia said, examining the Facebook page. "Who knew he was so interesting?"

"Any idea how long he's known?" Ethan asked.

Scott shrugged. "I could probably hazard a guess if I spent some time looking back through his Facebook. In hindsight, there's a lot of jokes and comments between him and his friends that make a lot more sense if you're aware of the supernatural."

"But he definitely didn't know by the time you left."

"No." He was confident of that much. There was no way.

"So what do you want us to do?" Malia asked. The twins raised identical eyebrows at her bluntness. Scott wasn't sure why. It was Malia. "What? Is this a strategy meeting or a therapy session? Cuz if its the latter, I just remembered I have to go be bored somewhere else."

Scott closed his eyes, laughed, and shook his head. Whatever kind of moment they'd just had, it'd lasted longer than he'd expected. Baby steps, he supposed.

"I want you two to go to Beacon Hills," Scott told the twins.

"Umm," Ethan said.

"Seriously?" Aiden whined. "This is so not the super cool top secret mission I thought you had in mind."

"Noshiko Yukimura said she imprisoned the nogitsune in Beacon Hills seventy years ago. That's where it escaped from," Scott said. "I thought it was too much of a coincidence as soon as she said it, but now knowing that Stiles and a bunch of other kids I know from Beacon Hills are all part of the local werewolf pack?"

"It's starting to feel like the f-word." Malia wrinkled her nose. The two of them had similar feelings on the subject. Aiden, not so much.

"Fucking?"

"Fate, you moron." She dug a claw into his thigh and he yelped.

"It's starting to feel like we're being manipulated," Scott corrected. "And I'm very much over being peoples' pawn."

Ethan nodded, brooding. "Yeah, on that note. We're sure Peter's dead, right?"

Fuck. He hadn't even considered that.

"Kali seemed pretty convinced," Malia said. "Why would she lie about that?"

"Who the fuck knows why she does anything? You've seen her feet, right?"

"Okay, we're getting away from the point," Scott said, reining Aiden in. Kali's feet were among the things he was trying very hard to forget. "Speculation isn't going to get us anywhere. I think we need to know exactly what's been happening in Beacon Hills."

"So, you want us to just pop over to the other side of the country and check things out," Aiden sighed. "Any chance we can use some of that Yukimura lady's cash for a couple plane tickets?"

"Yeah, I'm not getting in a steel death trap 30,000 feet in the air with you the day before a full moon."

"Hmm. Valid. Fine, motorcycles it is."

"I wouldn't ask you to do this if I didn't think it was important," Scott said.

"It's cool," Aiden assured him. He smiled about as gently as Scott had ever seen him. "We get it."

Malia pursed her lips and tapped a clawed finger against her chin thoughtfully. "You know, it'd probably be easier for you guys to spend a couple days at the local high school. Simplest way to sniff around this pack without their knowing. I bet Yukimura could probably fix you up with some fake transcripts same as us."

"You're a vile, hateful she-devil," Aiden told her. She smiled.

"Misery loves company."

"I liked you better when you didn't understand platitudes."

"Its a good idea," Scott said, considering it. "I'll email Yukimura tonight, set it up. We can say we thought we might find some clues as to its current host there."

"Which you might," Malia said cheerfully. Aiden glared and reiterated:

"Vile, hateful she-devil."

Ethan laid a restraining hand on his brother's shoulder and stood. "We'll get some rest then and hit the road first thing. If there is something bigger at play here, its probably better we figure it out before you guys make contact with this nogitsune."

"Thanks. Be discreet, we really don't want anyone else thinking we have reason to be interested in Beacon Hills," Scott said pointedly. Ethan nodded.

"We'll be careful."

"She-devil," Aiden glared one last time at Malia before rubbing Connor's head farewell. The boy snuggled into it briefly; he'd started fading and was close to sleep.

"Get over it. You might even have fun. The redhead looks exactly your type."

"No seducing anyone," Scott said firmly, when Aiden started to perk up a little too much. The beta sulked, and even Ethan frowned. "I mean it."

"Okay, but what if we do it accidentally?"

"Seriously Scott, look at us. We're naturally seductive. It just happens."

"That's like asking a swan not to be swanlike. Swannish?"

"No!"

"Fine," Aiden dragged out and stepped through the drapes. "He never lets us have any fun."

"We should go on strike," his brother concurred.

"Mutiny!"

"Ugh no, then we'd have to make decisions. Decisions are lame."

"Restraining our natural seductiveness is lamer. We're too gorgeous to be this single."

Chuckling softly, Scott walked Connor back over to his crib and laid him gently amongst his blankets. Malia watched him from the bed. Her eyes shone faintly in the dark.

"I have a bad feeling about all this," she said, quiet enough it probably escaped the rest of the pack's notice unless they were listening for it. "You should have told Yukimura no."

Scott hovered over the crib, watching Connor burrow back into the sheets. He had his own misgivings of course, and he'd learned never to discount the coyote's instincts, but…

"I couldn't."

She sighed. "Yeah I know. Its another of those obnoxious qualities I mentioned."

"I couldn't return to Beacon Hills before now and take the chance that Kali would catch up with us there - too many innocents that could be caught in the crossfire. But if there's even a chance Noshiko can really help us deal with her and Julia and her pack once and for all…"

He turned to face her, defensive despite her eternal lack of judgment. "Its time we stopped running."

"Hey, you don't have to tell me twice." She rolled her head back on her shoulders and slipped bonelessly off the bed. Smiling that damn Cheshire Cat grin she'd wear even through Armageddon. "I just wanted to get my I Told You So on record, since apparently that's the only way it counts."

Scott snorted a laugh. "No, Malia, that's not actually a thing…you know what, never mind."

She winked over her shoulder as she strolled out of the room. "Whatever you say, boss."

Scott emailed Noshiko Yukimura before he went to bed. Two days later she supplied an address where they found uniforms, IDs, textbooks and backpacks waiting for four of them.

And phones.

"Wait, are those Iphones?" An incredulous Zach yelped from his usual spot. He dug a clawed hand into a support beam and slid to the ground. Scott winced and thanked god supernatural landlords don't ask for a security deposit. "Nobody said anything about you getting Iphones! If I knew that was the deal, I woulda done it!"

"You were never an option," Beth said flatly. And yup, she was definitely going to be holding a grudge over this.

"Liam, let me see yours," Zach begged. The other boy snatched his new prize possession out of reach.

"Hell no, this is mine," Liam said. "If I have to go to school and wear a freaking tie, I earned this phone."

"C'mon, let me just download one game! One game, that's all! Candy Crush. Bejeweled. Farm Heroes, I don't care! I'll do your chores for a week!"

"No Zach."

"I just wanna hold it!" He chased after the fleeing Liam, an amused Josh and Lucas following in his wake.

"Alright, guess this is it," Scott said to the rest of his assembled pack. "Time to go back to school."

Malia prodded a bag with her toe, frowning at the plaid skirt that rolled out at her feet.

"I hate everything."