Author's note: Hello guys, it's been a bit longer than usual, but I had to study for a couple of exams, don't want to rerun the fiasco of my last graduation, don't I?

But here I am. I was dying to write it, but I couldn't because I had to focus and now that the test os over (and I think I did okay, even) I reserved the day to get it ready and here it is.

I didn't reread it, so it probably has a few mistakes, but yall know that my english is pretty bad by now and yall survived, so I think everyone can handle, huh?

I really enjoyed writing this chapter and I'm aware that we've been having very few Lydia, so I'll fix it up. Just had to have this chapters done.

Also, do you miss a certain Hale whose name starts with 'De' and ends with 'rek'? I miss that grumpy cat.

And now for the chapter.

Chapter nine: Healing

"Woken up like an animal, I'm all ready for healing.
(…) I think that I'm still human."
Daughter

For an instant, Stiles wasn't very sure which path Malia and Scott had taken, but it was just an instant. Soon he heard over the motorcycle roar the alpha howl and it was easy to find the way through the houses and shortly after, the woods. Deaton was right behind him and he had a bike way cooler than Scott's that easily left him behind.

They headed to a part of the woods, opposite from the previous Nemeton, where Stiles never used to go. In fact, he knew little about that part of the reservation. It wasn't even near the place where Malia's accident happened, and he wondered how much the girl had to walk to find food or run from cougars.

It took almost half an hour bumping in tree roots and diverting from animals for them to get to the denser part of the woods and they had to leave the bikes. Scott, with his red wolf eyes, was waiting for them and they walked the last twenty or so meters, the path full of willows trees with their branches doing a good job at both hiding and leading the way.

Right before they saw two hidden willows placed so close, their branches and leaves formed a curtain to a space where two people could barely pass at the same time, Deaton gasped, as if he was suddenly breathless.

"Can't you feel it already?" he asked the two boys. Scott nodded, but Stiles was distracted by the sound of water. The Doc continued. "It's strong. Good. We need it."

He was also the first to go through the natural curtain, followed by Stiles and Scott, and what they saw next was absolutely breathtaking.

The place was absolutely beautiful. It was a glade larger than they expected; their pack could go there and stay comfortable with no worries. The grass was tall and green, dandelions all around the ground, swaying with the breeze. It smelled strongly as wet grass and pine and the amazing alder tree Deaton talked about was almost at the center of the glade.

Right after the tree, there was a very discreet creek, its water running rhythmically, a tree trunk halfway inside it. They supposed that that trunk was the reason that place existed in the first place. It was very large, even though the tree couldn't be very tall, and the fall should've happened very long before, because there was ivy all over it.

They made their way around the alder tree and Malia was there – not the coyote Malia, but the girl, naked and with her hands on the water. Stiles shrugged off his plaid shirt and she put it on. It covered her just fine, but she couldn't care less.

"It's wilder than the last time I came here." She said, her arms around her body, holding the shirt in its place. "It's been a while. But it still is beautiful, isn't it? I always thought it was magical, and it seems it really is."

Beyond the creek, there was a gigantic rock that closed the circle. There was ivy everywhere.

"This place is full of sacred trees." Deaton said, turning around the tree and going back to the clearing. Right there, everyone seemed to talk soberly and low. "Willows, Ivies and Alders are some of the more powerful living things in this world. How did you find this place, Malia?"

"After the accident." She replied. "I just wandered around until I found here. And I used to come back once in a while, just because it's quiet and the cats don't like it here."

Stiles stopped paying attention to the conversation and started to pay attention to the place he was in. He felt different, as if something was calling him all along, and now he simply was there for it. He rounded the alder tree. He didn't know much about Nemetons, and for a long time he thought it was all about the tree, but the Nemeton was a place – sacred, natural and full of power.

That glade as a whole was the Nemeton. But it sure had a central point. And the central point usually was at the center, so he saw himself stopping in front of the alder tree. It kind of was the middle of the glade, wasn't it? With the creek behind and the willows around. And as if he was dragged to it, he raised his left hand – the hand, he knew well, where Lydia made all the drawings – and he suddenly was surrounded by countless points of light that sounded like a song, encouraging him to go ahead.

The moment his fingers touched the tree, he felt powered up, filled with an devotion he never knew he could have – to protect and to counsel, to learn and teach and be different. It was as if white fire was burning his skin and he felt peace. Real peace, for the first time in years, for there was a voice (a voice he thought he was forgetting, a sound buried deep inside his memories, filled with the good in the world) telling him it was okay, it wasn't his fault. The voice was his mother and it was Erica and Allison and Aiden and they told him everything would be all right and he would heal. And for the first time he believed.

-X-

The light was in Lydia's room as well; the banshee, lying in her bed, her fingers touching the fading symbol of the lock cried. She could never lock herself out of the supernatural, she could never not hear the voices. And she couldn't deny that the voices, this time, were good and they wanted her to be fine. Lydia wanted to be fine.

"Do you mean it, Allison?" she whispered the question, the light all over her. The answer was yes.

-X-

When Stiles turned away from the tree, a couple of tears sliding down his cheeks, the drawing wasn't burning so much and he ink had faded almost completely. He saw Malia on her knees, her face to the moon and the lights were all around her, in her hair and her eyes, as if she was dear to them. The moon, high in the sky, made every detail clear and she was crying too, silently.

Looking around, Stiles saw that Scott had the lights too, but his reaction was different – more surprised than emotional, curious even.

"What is happening?" Stiles asked Deaton, who was walking around the Nemeton chanting something he couldn't understand.

"Elementals." Was the vet's answer, as if it was enough. But at that moment, it kind of was.

Stiles kneeled in front of Malia as soon as the lights started to fade. She reached to his face, caressed the places where his tears dropped and he kissed her eyes, salty with her own tears.

"Are you all right?" he asked, their foreheads touching.

"Yes." She answered and he kissed her one more time, lightly in the lips. "It's almost like a dream." She whispered and he couldn't agree more.

-X-

They let Malia go in her coyote form, Scott could find the way back and lead the others. Besides, she deserved some time in her new old skin by herself, she earned it.

On the way back, Deaton explained that, since the place was found by Malia, it had a connection with the animals, so all that chanting was to maximize the Nemeton's protection. No living thing could harm or be harmed inside the Nemeton, not when it's powered up, and the connections made there – because of Stiles, the new Druid, Malia, the werecoyote that first stepped there with innocent blood in her fur, Scott, a true alpha and Lydia's tattoos – would give it strength for days.

Midnight was past gone when Stiles finally got home. He had gotten a call from Lydia and they briefly told each other about their weird experiences, promising to get in details the following day. His father was nowhere to be found and he headed straight to his bedroom, leaving keys, shoes and jackets on the way.

He knew something was off as soon as he opened the door. And of course she wanted the window to stay open, because Malia – the coyote Malia – was sleeping in his bed. Carefully, he got closer and gently caressed the fluffy fur of her neck, shaking her lightly.

"Mal?" he called, trying to talk low so he wouldn't wake his dad. "Malia, wake up." He needed a couple more tries to convince her to open her eyes – not blue, but dark as they usually were. "Mal, come on, change back. You can't sleep in my bed like this, the comforter will be full of fur." She growled annoyed. "Malia." Stiles said one more time and with a sigh she moved.

Her transformation was something that amazed him from day one (that was, really, a few hours before, since he wasn't there the first time Scott forced her back to human) and it happened so fluidly that it was mesmerizing – the way the paws became hands, the fur reducing to all the body hair she had and her curves taking the shape of the beautiful girl sometimes he couldn't believe he had.

"Hi." She greeted.

"No coyote in my bed." He quickly said and she pouted. "Next full moon I'll find you a dog house.

"Fuck you."

They laughed and he reached for her hand. They were like this for a while, Stiles sitting on the floor, Malia lying over the covers, looking at each other, holding hands, until she decided it was better to take a shower before going to sleep.

She doesn't take long on the shower, but when she came back, Stiles, only in his boxer shorts, was already asleep; he hadn't even bothered to get under the comforter and she knew why: it was a hot night for April. Malia still felt cold most of the time, but to be in her fur for a few ours proved to be surprisingly hot and she caught herself longing for her human skin more than she would expect.

After a few minutes of rubbing her hair with a towel to help it dry faster, she was satisfied with the result and very tired. The moon, still high in the sky, was asking her to go outside, run in the woods, but she was fine, thank you. First full moon in a long time she felt fine.

So Malia went to bed. Tiptoeing her way there, she passed one leg over Stiles and suddenly couldn't resist herself. She loved his scent and when he was sleeping was when it was more evident. Well, sleeping and during sex. But she never had much focus to concentrate on all the smells that made him Stiles during sex, so now was her moment. Lowering her head, she started to sniff him from the line of his boxer, made her way up following the path of his chest hair, slowly.

Stiles usually smelled of soap, salt and musk. She knew it by heart since Echo House and before the whole couch moment. The moment she sneaked the keys for him and he held her, making sure she was okay, she noticed; and when Marin asked her if she could find where he was just by his scent – if she remembered his scent even faintly -, because someone needed to wake him up, he could not sleep, she said yes, hoping that it wasn't evident that his scent made a bigger effect in her than it probably should.

That night, he also smelled of catkins, another smell she knew well because of the alder tree of the Nemeton. It fit him perfectly.

"Stop sniffing me, it's weird." He complained. She knew he was awake by now because of his heartbeat. And she continued on, going up his neck and jaw line. "Mal, I'm sleeping." Stiles said one more time, sleepy voice and Malia stopped.

"Okay." She said and got off him, quickly getting under the comforter.

He opened his eyes surprised that she actually stopped (and, to be honest, a bit sad about it too) and got under the comforter with her, even though it wasn't cold at all.

"How are you feeling?" he asked. They were lying on their sides, looking at each other and very, very close.

"New. Comfortable. In control." She said, an easy answer for everything going on in her mind. "And that's all because of you."

Stiles shrugged, dismissing it.

"Nah, don't be so hard on yourself. Of course I'm mostly the reason, but in the end you did it, Malia, you. You're amazing."

Her hand was on his chest, feeling his heartbeat in her palm and he was caressing her hair lightly, something she liked very much. Malia looked at his wrist, the ink of Lydia's drawing almost completely gone. She held his wrist, her thumb round the circle of knots that limited the tree.

"Druid, huh?" she commented, her voice filled with the laziness of the sleepy people. "Is there anyone in this town who's just human?"

Stiles pulled her closer and she yawned in his chest. He was almost asleep again too, but still managed to answer.

"You never know."

A/N: Thank you so, so much for reading and reviewing and following and favoriting (is that even a word?) my fanfic. I'd really appreaciate if you took a little bit of time to review. I love me some reviews.

See you, and I hope you liked the chapter! x