He didn't actually know who out of any of them made the first move, but suddenly they were all tensed up, on edge and a second later they were springing, propelling themselves forwards with nothing but raw power bunching in their muscles. Both Packs meeting in the middle with a crescendo of snarls and cut off howls, the sound of battle and of war. One of the first things that he really noticed and was able to focus on was Maggie bolting past him as a streak of red and he knew what her target was without even having to look.
They were fighting two to one, the numbers never having really gotten back to him that Mason's Pack were at least forty strong, but Stiles actually found he was okay with those odds. He probably shouldn't have been, but he was.
Fighting for him was like sliding into another skin, just in a different way than Rory and Derek did it. Both of them melted out of their human forms and into the shape of the Alpha, clothes falling in tatters off their bodies and howls rumbling in their throat even as their jaws closed around flesh, snapping through bone. He vaguely registered Derek going for Mason, but he didn't pay it much of a mind, because he had his own task to focus on. He had revenge bubbling through his veins, tearing its way out of his throat as an echoing war cry as he locked Charlie in his sights and fought his way over.
He ducked blows and weaved around flying bodies like he was participating in some sort of grisly dance and this was all heavily choreographed. It was simple, the casual duck and weave of the fight, the blood running down his arm that wasn't his and the snarl in his throat that replaced his human side's incessant words. He let the wolf loose, let it rip and tear into any flesh that got into its way that didn't scream Pack at him and maybe he should have been concerned about the fact that he stopped with his claws an inch away from Boyd's face without even needed to think, but he was too focussed on the mission at hand to really wonder about the specifics of who his wolf considered Pack now.
He grabbed a wolf by the back of the neck, sinking his nails through until they bit into the guy's windpipe, turning the guy's scream into a rattling sort of sound. He lifted him up and off of Jason where he had been pinned to the floor and kicked at another wolf while snapping the first's neck with one hand. He tossed the body away and nodded to Jason, standing over him just long enough for him to clamber to his feet and regain his bearings. Because yes, he had revenge to taste, he had a person to kill, but there was no way in hell he was even letting someone as aggravating as Jason die when he had a chance to stop it.
The clearing was filled with the sounds of dying wolfs, with snarls and screams and soft whimpers weaving through it all. Somewhere off to the side he could hear Lucas laughing manically and if he listened a little harder he could hear Lee muttering constantly under his breath in a voice that was hardly human. The words were a jumbled up mixture of curses and praises, the latter directed towards Isaac who he had noticed was straying no more than a few feet away from Lee, but was still holding his own. Then again, Isaac had always been quite a good fighter.
The part that bothered him the most though was that even while tearing a wolf's throat out with his teeth and chuckling crazily under his breath at the thought of Derek's old threat as he did so, he still found his ears straining to hear the sound of Callum's whimpering sobs and he could just envision to boy curled up with his mother on the floor, hands over his ears as he tried to drown out the sounds of the fight. It made Stiles wish they had started this far enough away for him to not have to be subject to listening.
He roared when a wolf jumped onto his back, the sound that erupted from his throat more out of anger at himself for dropping his guard like that and allowing it to happen rather than the pain of the bite. He'd gotten good at ignoring his own pain in favour of focussing. A strange thing considering how much trouble he had with focussing, or at least had had in the past with it. He flipped himself, which the wolf hadn't been expecting, landing hard on his back and flattening his assailant underneath his body. The move probably would have been more effective had he weighed more, but it dislodged the arms around his neck just long enough for him to whip around and back onto his feet. He grabbed an ankle and threw the wolf at a tree, his mind more on the task of getting to Charlie rather than killing some random pitiful wolf.
He could smell Charlie now, even over the blood and the scents of other Pack and pain and that sharp hint of fear that was clogging up the air. There was a path of bodies between him and Charlie, almost all of them from the other Pack, but he spotted one of Derek's new wolves in amongst them. He also spotted Martin, one of his own, but he was still alive and didn't look to be in any immediate danger given that the only damage there seemed to be was to his legs. Hence why he was still on the floor.
"Sax, cover Martin," he snarled out as he passed, nodding in the direction of their fallen Packmate and not even sticking around long enough to see whether or not Sax followed the command. He knew he would.
He roared again when he saw Charlie take Jay down and was leaping at the other wolf before Jay's body had even hit the ground. They fell in a messy, uncoordinated tangle of limbs that Charlie was fighting his way out of almost as soon as he got into it. Stiles on the other hand lashed out with his nails and teeth, dragging the other wolf closer and unconcerned with the skin being torn off his back in ribbons by claws. All he could concentrate on was the need thrumming through his veins to end this, to avenge and to kill. His wolf was completely at the surface now and he could hear it's thoughts merging with his, demanding the kill, longing for the taste of blood on their tongue.
He wanted it. He needed it. And they were going to get it.
He didn't know who started the roll, but he thought it could have been him accidentally. All he knew was that one minute he had his fangs not even an inch away from Charlie's throat, ready to sink into flesh and tear and then the next he was rolling down a slight embankment that they hadn't realised was on the edge of the clearing.
A pained snarl choked its way out of his throat when a tree root rammed into the flesh of his torn back, but the momentum kept carrying them on past it and so he just clenched his teeth and tensed against the pain. Charlie was already up and scrambling away by the time that they came to a stop, scrambling away like the coward that he was rather than trying to seek out any sort of opening as Stiles would have done.
But then, Stiles wanted revenge, Charlie just wanted to live.
Stiles was up and following not even a heartbeat later, dropping onto all fours to gain the speed he'd need to catch up. He ignored the feeling of his back trying to knit itself back together and also ignored the dull ache of pain in his shoulder from that wolf's bite and another ache from what he suspected were claw marks in his thigh – he couldn't remember how he'd gotten those. He pushed past it and leapt, pushing himself off of the trunk of a large tree as soon as he landed, moving on to another and then using the height he'd gained to launch himself at Charlie.
He landed on Charlie's back, his teeth already locked around the back of his neck, sinking deep enough to hit the bone of his spinal column. He shook the limp Charlie almost like a dog would do with a rabbit, not really caring about analogies at that point in time even though there was a niggling moment of sarcasm and dry humour in the back of his mind when he realised what he was doing. He just acted off of instinct, closing his jaws around the sensitive part of his kill and holding on, biting down and trying to literally shake out any signs of life.
The wolf inside of him mumbled and humming happily in response to the blood that filled his mouth, the taste sharp and tangy and a little disgusting, but it was what came with tasting that blood that he enjoyed. It was knowing that it meant revenge, that it meant vengeance, that it meant the person responsible for leaving a child without a father had been finally removed from this world.
It felt like everything he had been waiting for and the adrenaline that had been surging through his veins in response to the fight was nothing in contrast to the sharp feeling of satisfaction that wove through him now.
He didn't stop shaking until the frantic heartbeat pounding in his ears stuttered to a halt, until the breaths that Charlie was trying to rasp out of his lungs faded away and until the neck in his jaws was slowly starting to come apart from the actual body. He flung the body away, spitting out the flesh that lingered in his mouth and baring his teeth in a feral sort of grin at the sight of Charlie's blank eyes. His head was hanging at an obscene angle, hardly even attached the remains of the neck any longer and he took some sick sort of satisfaction from the fact that Charlie's expression was contorted in nothing but fear and pain.
He threw his head back and howled, loud and triumphant, the sound echoing off the trees and reverberating around him. The howl was filled with challenge and satisfaction, with relief and with happiness. It was filled with finality, with the triumph of a long awaited kill. He knew when two more howls rose up in the distance, the melody loud and unabashed, he knew then that his message had been received. The responding howls contained Mona's blinding thanks and Callum's cautious happiness.
When his howl cut off, the woods seemed eerily quiet, the birds and the animals that normally inhabited the area having fled in response to the battle. If he listened he could still hear the sounds of fighting, but it was sparse now, dulled rather than the all-out pressure and volume that the battle had been before. He could hear whimpers as wolves picked themselves up and assessed the damage done to themselves and he could hear the ragged final breaths of some of the fallen. He couldn't tell what sounds belonged to what sides and he didn't particularly think it mattered.
He dragged a breath into his lungs, tasting the pain and the death on the back of his tongue and the part of him that would probably always be the quirky, hyperactive, human Stiles wanted to retch and find something to wash his mouth out with. It was only when he reminded himself that that taste wasn't unfamiliar and that he wasn't that person anymore, that he didn't have those sorts of liberties to do things like that that had the tension literally sliding back out of his muscles.
Some part of him told him that it was a sad thing knowing that they'd annihilated an entire Pack for the sake of one wolf, but that had been their choice. It could have stopped with one death, but then he would have thought less of Mason and of Mason's Pack had they just handed Charlie over. That wasn't the way that a Pack was supposed to work, that wasn't the way hunters often thought they worked.
Pack as family. Pack was protective of its own even in the face of death, even when they knew that maybe that person wasn't worth protecting. They still fought, just like Stiles and his Pack would fight for any of their number.
He heard a scream followed by a broken sort of sob and then the air was filled with the sound of mournful howls rising up towards the sky. The weight of it settled deep into Stiles' bones, filled him with a dread that made him want to vomit. It was the weight and the magnitude of the howls that had him crashed back onto his knees in the dirt, it was the not knowing who had been killed, but the definite knowledge that someone had. However, it was the blinding pain that sliced through his brain that gave him the knowledge he hadn't been sure he wanted after all.
It was the knowledge of the loss that had him blacking out.